#mod rant

[spiderpunkofficial]

I'm not even joking jm genuinely scared for if Trump wins this election, cuz like as a young trans kid thinking abt the fact that I literally won't have rights if he wins is genuinely horrifying to me and all my family talks abt is how they hope Trump wins so 'all those immigrants get deported and those f@ggots get their rights finally taken away'

(NO BRO THIS IS SO REAL, I'm a trans kid as well, and it's fuckin' stupid. ALSO, HELLO PEOPLE, HE IS A CRIMINAL?? THE FUCK???? And people fucking wonder why we are declining in economics, and just general intelligence. And I'm not saying Kamala would have been perfect, nobody would have been, but BITCH. Trump has literally said "I am the best president for the black people, since Abraham lincoln" like first off, no you aren't, shut the fuck up. There's a lot of baggage there, but AGAIN TRUMP IS A CONVICTED FELON.

A CONVICTED FELON CANT GET A REGULAR JOB, SO WHY DID WE JUST GIVE ONE THE HIGHEST JOB POSSIBLE???

Sorry I'm just fucking pissed about it. As a person, as a kid who has to grow up in this society, as a trans person, as everything. -mod.

[pastel-medic]

Okay tumblr when I say "I'm not interested" in a post why do you keep showing me posts from the same person or content on my feed??? 🤨

CEASE.🫵🏼

[sebbiesolace]

Cmon tre.

Post more.

I’m not trying to like bomb you. What. Nooo.

:)

mod:bestie it is Trepan from Transformers. Trepan. 6 letters.

this guy. thas my dad :) das my Father. my user is trepans apprentice not tres apprentice PLEASE /nm

[stop-right-there-criminal-scum]

people on nexusmods act like these are real words

[soft5ku11]

Yo, update on the Guzma WG drive finale, the way I've framed it means I'm doing a shot of both Guzma and Axel, head to toe, and at weights a bit bigger than I usually draw AND at a difficult angle.

It's slowly getting there, but I'm trying to not get upset with it again and then not touch it for two months LOL

Thanks for bearing with, ik u guys have been sending me replies and asks about it and I ain't forgotten 👍

[kokusfluffyhair]

Really just wanting my fictional simp of choice to hold me and make all the shit go away rn

[shiftermod]

Updated thoughts on A Canterlot Wedding.

I've been thinking about the whole love-sucking thing and other people's headcanons and my disagreements with them, and I realized a few things many years ago—and a few things now, a bit over 11 years later (the episodes were screened on April 14, 2012, and aired on television in the U.S. on April 21, 2012.)

So, there are some key conceits to this two-parter but I've glossed over the biggest:

These episodes are, at their core, an advertisement for a Princess Cadance toy.

Every single thing we see in the episodes stems from that.

In Part 1, we see flashbacks of Princess Cadance, who—it must be stressed—is a princess. This character is royalty, and she's royalty in Equestria in the MLP universe.

In this instance, she has a signature spell that can—at this time at least—only be cast by her. It is clearly something she developed, likely as some aspect of her duties as a princess. It is something that is unique to her specifically, because it is also marketing for a toy.

In order for the episodes to succeed as an advertisement for a toy, she must use this spell in the episode.

We'll call this Chekhov's Spell. It is shown in a flashback, and talked about with great fanfare, which means the spell is going to be used in the climax of the episode in order to save the day. Why? Because these episodes are an advertisement for a Cadance toy.

Unfortunately, spoilers:

Cadance is behaving very differently from her usual behavior—almost the opposite of her usual behavior, come to think of it—and it is eventually revealed that she has been replaced by a shapeshifter called a changeling. The imposter is narratively, thematically, functionally, and archetypically an "evil twin" whose behavior is the opposite of the original (compare the impostor's behavior throughout Part 1 to the montage at the end of Part 2 featuring the real Cadance), and this is important.

Now, Equestrian Magic as seen in Season 1 has three main components:

Emotion: the fuel source for the spell. Friendship is literally magic.

Concentration: the magic-user shapes the spell to accomplish a specific task or goal.

Physical effort: the magic-user casts the spell. The larger or more powerful the spell, the more of a physical toll it takes.

In season 1, Twilight Sparkle casts a spell that allows her to lift a very distant, very large, and very heavy structure that was initially filled with water and was later filled with milk—and in doing so, she plants her feet, grits her teeth, scrunches her eyes, and visibly struggles. She then also lifts an enormous heavy animal AND the water tower, and transports them into the Everfree and into a cave that the animal emerged from in the first place.

Casting takes a physical toll on the caster, and that toll might be nothing or it might be significant depending on the circumstances of the spell. Twilight herself explicitly states that magic takes concentration and effort twice in Season 1.

Here's Twilight collapsing after she finishes:

This is going to come up later in this essay.

So, Cadance's signature spell (presumably using her love as fuel) takes magic out of her, converts it into love energy, and puts that love into a pony as an act of giving (altering the pony's mood and thought process, which is Totally Not Creepy At All™.)

Reminder that this is a toy commercial for a Princess Cadance toy.

Within that boundary, our changeling imposter—the evil twin who behaves opposite to the original—is revealed to fundamentally function by doing the opposite of Cadance's spell.

The changeling queen takes love out of a pony, converts it into magic, and puts it into herself! Cadance specifies that the changelings "gain power" by doing this, suggesting that they either need to fuel their magic with stolen emotion, or that they wish to increase the power of their magic with stolen emotion.

The thing that makes Cadance marketable unique is the opposite of her evil twin's entire schtick! Queen Chrysalis is the figurative and literal opposite of Cadance's whole deal—not just her behavior but her signature spell! The evil changeling's behavior is the opposite of how the real Cadance would behave; the evil changeling's love-sucking is a thematic and literal reversal of the thing that Princess Cadance does!

The corollary then is that Princess Cadance's signature spell is the thematic and literal reversal of Queen Chrysalis' love-sucking.

Cadance's signature spell is Chekhov's Spell—and is what is used to market the Cadance toy. This means that Cadance's love-installation spell is going to save the day... by installing love in someone.

Someone who Chrysalis has drained to the point where only installing love can save them.

We see ponies under Chrysalis' mind control spell in Part 2:

Contrast with Shining Armor:

Shining Armor isn't merely in a trance because of Chrysalis using a mind control spell on him; Shining Armor has been drained dry. He's empty. No love, no passion, just apathy to the point where he can be controlled easily.

(I'm sure there's a metaphor in here somewhere, something something Neverending Story maybe?)

(Well, I was close.)

(Shut up, Gmork!)

Although maybe a better take might be Elie Wiesel's famous quote:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”

As a side note, Shining Armor does get mind-controlled but briefly:

Then Cadance saves the day by reinstalling love into Shiny.

Same visual effect and everything.

Shining Armor awakens from his trance, with an emphasis on "awakens"; he is groggy and confused. A villainous monologue ensues and Shiny stands tall, glares, glowers, bares his teeth, and is clearly ready to kick Queen Chrysalis' butt.

Cadance encourages Shiny to use his signature spell, and the guy with the cutie mark of a shield with a magic symbol on it attempts to cast a magic shield.

What happens next is more easily understood if you've ever worked a job doing manual labor. I mentioned earlier that magic requires emotion (in this case love) as fuel; concentration to shape the spell; and physical effort to cast it.

Twilight collapsed after lifting and transporting a water tower and a very large bear.

Shiny is trying to create a magic shield the size of a city with only the small amount of love that Cadance installed in him to wake him up—and he can't: he doesn't have enough fuel.

The logical thing to do when you realize you can't do something is to stop.

The problem is that Shiny, like many people, is an illogical creature and so he does what many, many people do when they find they can't do something: he tries harder.

And harder. And harder.

Remember that magic requires physical effort to cast. What happens when you actually continue trying to do something physical that you can't physically do?

Your heart rate increases.

Your pulse rate increases (because of your heart rate.)

Your blood pressure rises.

Your body temperature rises.

You perspire.

There are other symptoms I am missing, but the end result is you begin to develop a medical condition called "exhaustion" which is not merely "being tired." Keep trying hard enough for long enough and by the time you finally stop trying, you are drenched in perspiration, your heart is pounding in your chest, your breathing has changed, you can hear a rushing sound in your ears, everything hurts, and when you stop, you immediately go limp. (Hi, I have personally done this; don't do this!)

At this point it is prudent for someone to help you into a chair in a cool room and administer first aid because you are at risk of heart attack, stroke, heat exhaustion, and all this other stuff that can kill you. This is not "being tired", this is dangerous.

Shining Armor tries to cast, and tries, and strains, and strains, to no effect... and then he finally stops and goes limp, drenched in perspiration from the effort, displaying clearly identifiable symptoms of exhaustion.

We have learned throughout Season 1 that unicorn magic takes concentration and effort. Shiny is not some exception to this rule!

Shiny's exhaustion was caused by his failed attempt to cast a spell the size of a city without any fuel.

At this point Cadance leverages her signature spell—the reverse of the changeling's feeding technique—and essentially uses herself as an external battery to give Shiny the fuel he needs to cast a spell the size of a city which somehow only expels the invading army while leaving the residents and guests unharmed.

So, why is any of this confusing to the layperson?

Well, the layperson isn't trained to recognize and treat exhaustion; misidentifies the symptoms as side effects of fever instead of side effects of exertion; and assumes that Shining Armor is near the point of collapse because Chrysalis fed on him—despite his ready-to-kick-Chrysalis'-butt behavior and stance immediately preceding a bunch of physical exertion.

This is then compounded by Katie Cook's (and by extension, Andy Price's) assumption—based on this symptom misidentification—that changeling love-sucking is functionally identical to the modus operandi of The Wraith from "Stargate: Atlantis": quasi-insectile aliens with doubled voices who suck the life out of their victims, resulting in rapid aging and death.

So, we get a comic book with illustrations of changeling victims withering and dying as seen in a science fiction TV show from the 2000s which has nothing to do with emotion-sucking vampires in a cartoon and everything to do with lifeforce-sucking vampires in a live-action sci-fi show. This then reinforces readers' existing misapprehensions with regard to changeling love-sucking.

Anyway, this rant is a delayed response to a bunch of blogs a decade ago ignoring the subtext and thematic and narrative elements and arbitrarily deciding that changeling love-sucking is lethal based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Shining Armor's symptoms and when those symptoms set in.

This then allows those blogs to justify killing changelings because the Canterlot Guard have Chekhov's Spears, and therefore they need to kill someone—and it might as well be the parasitic insectile menace because American movie audiences don't seem to understand that "Starship Troopers" (1997) was a practical joke/experiment on American movie audiences (and the majority of viewers failed the test), but they did like "Aliens" (1986).

And since none of those blog admins have the slightest understanding of the Geneva Conventions (or the UCMJ, or the Hague Conventions, or the body of U.S. Military Law going back at least as far as 1882, or god(s) forbid the Articles of War or the Law of Armed Conflict) we get "Hey, let's have the Canterlot Guard give no quarter and execute enemy prisoners in custody and face no consequences! Also jokes about torture! Because applying/obeying military law selectively instead of uniformly is clearly a great and effective way to maintain good order and discipline; I'm sure nothing can possibly go wrong if we apply the Uniform Code of Military Justice in a manner that isn’t uniform! Obviously Special Forces are 'Special' because they get to ignore all the military laws that absolutely everyone else in the army (including the brass) has to follow! OLC unilaterally said that illegal combatants are not party to Geneva, and then failed to ever define what the phrase 'illegal combatant' means, so it must be true!"

Side vent about Queen Chrysalis' motivations as a megalomaniacal lying sociopathic narcissist and (perhaps more importantly) a despot: the Canterlot Invasion was never actually about food; Chrysalis has inserted herself into the process to keep herself necessary and uses it as a carrot for her soldiers. When she tells the ponies it's about finding food, she is either lying or at least shading the truth.

(Side note, Season 6 later confirms that Chrysalis' own actions were keeping her army starving and desperate; the question is whether those actions were—as I strongly suspect—deliberate in order to point her people at external enemies in order to keep herself necessary and cling to power. You know, like most human despots.)

After they bring the Mane 6 to her, Chrysalis orders a large squad of her soldiers to "Go!" and then qualifies that instruction with "Feed!"—to get them out of the room, only giving away her actual motives during a music number once the soldiers are safely out of earshot.

Seriously, she literally closes the door behind them so they won't hear her gloating.

🎶 "Every pony I'll soon control; every stallion, mare, and foal!" 🎶 has nothing to do with food, but has everything to do with a malignant narcissist and despot who repeatedly demonstrates an obsession with being obeyed, whether it be by Shining Armor (e.g. "Are you disagreeing with me?!") or anyone else. This isn't about food, it was never about food; it's about conquest, but her army doesn't realize it. If it was about food, that would have been explicitly mentioned in the musical number.

Seeing Season 6

and then Season 8

actually confirm that Chrysalis' obsession with ruling is her prime motivation in all things warmed the cockles of my little black heart.

Anyway, enough ranting, at least for now. Getting that off my chest felt good.

EDIT: I have never served—partly due to chronic health issues, partly due to research. But a good friend later enlisted and fought in Afghanistan and went career; he’s the most ethical guy I know, period; and I have asked him questions about U.S. Military Law and the Rules of Engagement, Geneva, etc. It's all public-facing stuff, but it's easier and more reliable for me to ask someone with actual experience instead of looking stuff up on the internet and hoping Wikipedia is accurate.

[big-bad-skull-boss]

Thinking im gonna revive my old guzma propaganda blog as a slightly more serious rp blog, now renamed to @guzma-official :P

[nipuni]

Alright, time to share my opinions about Veilguard!! I have both criticism and praise so bear with me as I jump from one extreme to the other 😆 spoilers ahead of course!

The game has a very rough start with the dialogue being formulaic and rushed and the characters overexposing. It feels like a heavy handed attempt at summarizing all of previous games' lore for newcomers or in case you forgot but it's so overdone it feels coddling and trivializes a lot of previous events. Luckily this gets better once all of the introductions are out of the way, though the excessive hints and clarifications continue until the end sadly.

The locations are absolutely incredible and very diverse!! This is a highlight of the game for me. There is so much detail and care in every map and there are so many of them. My pc is struggling to reach medium settings and yet everything looks stunning. The verticality of the maps is so imposing and the graphics have a very dreamy quality that I love. I also enjoy the maze-like structure to the maps, it's more linear but makes everything look a bit more intentional. The color and light direction was amazing, all the visual development really!! it has to be one of the prettiest games I've ever played.

When I started I have to admit it did not feel like I was in Thedas and it all felt a bit theme-parky, if that makes sense. A lot of previously important and established world elements that made Thedas what it is were overlooked or made irrelevant. But the more I played the more it started to feel a bit more similar to Inquisition, for better or worse depending on what you feel about Inquisition. But!! this also feels like a selectively sanitized version of Thedas compared to previous games. In it's attempt to stay safe and uncontroversial in some aspects it loses a lot of substance and it changes the tone. The surface level politics, ignoring previously established major societal issues and a tell-don't-show approach makes the world seem more simple and shallow with no grey areas to explore. ( the humor also falls flat and out of place often too, and WHY is everyone always smirking, enough!! godlike beings are destroying the planet please this is not the time for Marvel banter aaaa )

The pacing at the start is a bit of a mess. It is so fast it felt like jumping from one world shattering discovery to the next with no time to process. The characters also seem to underreact to important information and major developments. It felt like the game was rushing me through all this to get to the part of the story it wanted to tell me while I was still wrapped in my shock blanket trying to catch my breath lmao. I really like all the key story points they touched upon, I just wish they dwelled more on them to give them more narrative weight. ( though blaming every bad thing to ever happen on the Elves was certainly..a choice )

I think the writing could have used more subtlety in the first half and more boldness in the second 😆 but I loved the thematic parallels between Rook and Solas and how every quest informs the main storyline. I do wish Rook was given more impossible choices and put in more difficult situations that forced them to lie or betray their own to better drive the point home though ( listen I just love a Trolley problem!! we need more of those, I'm the Trolley problem's number one fan!! ) I feel like they missed the chance to put Rook in Solas' role and be as vilified and hated for it as Solas was despite their best intentions which would make Rook's regrets stronger and in turn make their escape from the fade all the more impressive and give them a better understanding of Solas to either use against him or earn his respect. The line 'they called me the Dread Wolf, what will they call you when this is over' from the trailers was so good I was waiting for this!! But everyone just loves Rook no matter what!!

But I feel like I stated too many negative aspects in a row so moving on to some things I enjoyed!

The characters were very lovable to me. The romances weren't as long or impactful as I would have liked but I enjoyed all the companion quests. Emmrich is a delight and his quest is so wild and fun. I loved learning about Nevarra and I was awestruck by the Grand Necropolis. The mourn watch was so interesting, it showed a whole new side of Thedas' lore I knew nothing about! and I loved Manfred! Davrin is so charming, he became a favorite. I loved his quest too and learning more bits and pieces about the Dalish was great, I wish we got more. Seeing the Wardens through his quest also made me enjoy them a lot. Assan was very cute too and I'm glad he was treated as an animal and not turned into a goofy Disney sidekick too much lmao 😭 Lucanis is hilarious. The fantasy Spain/Italy was a bit silly and off at times but he is very sweet! and I love the Spite possession, that was so fun I'm glad they kept him that way! Bellara is adorable, her first backstory quest made me cry and I just love a nerd! I wish the second part of her story was written better however, and she sort of devolves into 'it's hard, I wish it was easy but it's hard' dialogues too often sadly. Anaris and the Forgotten Ones' portrayal was underwhelming and anticlimactic which was disappointing. Harding is also very cute and her Titan plotline was the most interesting to me, I bawled my eyes out in her quest!! I love the dwarven lore of this universe I'm so happy we got more of it!! ( she also fucking died in my playthrough?! I was devastated what the hell 😭 'whatever it takes' WEUEUGHHHG I'M SO SORRY) Neve was a slow burn for me because of my choices in game slowing that relationship down ( saving Treviso I mean, perdón amor 🙏 ) but I love detective novels and she is such a badass I ended up loving her. Taash was unexpected, I didn't think they would be so young. The coming of age story was sweet, though I found myself cringing a lot too at the handling of it I have to admit ( and the Lords of Fortune in general, and the Antaam...and que Qun..listen- kajshfgf ) but I also enjoyed learning more about the first expedition and the Qunari in general despite the messy writing and choices. I also loved Antoine and Evka! and Strife! And I haven't even read any of the novels they are in 😆 also Mila!!!! and her dad oh my god and Felassan haunting the narrative!! speaking of haunting, I would have loved for Cole to be in the lighthouse too I think it would have worked well 🤔 especially with the whole 'reading Solas' secret diary' thing the game had going on lmao

Everyone seems to get along except for a bit of friction that is quickly resolved at the start, which is hmm missed potential? I would have preferred more tension personally. I enjoy the drama! gives me more to work with and gives you a better grasp on everyone's personality by contrasting values. I think they wanted to speed run a found family trope for the new hero to establish some emotional stakes early on but it ended up making everyone seem like a group therapy session instead. The group meetings also have everyone either state the obvious or repeat the same opinion or conclusion to each other, I would have loved these meetings to have more bickering, have people get mad and storm out and also get to listen to different takes on a situation. Make Rook struggle more to take the reins and keep the team functional, learning how to be a leader.

Speaking of Rook! ( who in my case has a northern British accent that I loved so much 🥺) They seem to have a very established personality. I was expecting more of a blank slate but I'm lucky that the personality they went for kind of matches what I would normally choose in a first playthrough. Though the lack of range in the choices is irritating and takes away some replayability and role playing potential. Rook is very supportive and selfless, I wasn't expecting this tbh! But it all made my Rook turn into the team's weird supportive necromancer mom so it worked out in the end I guess lmao. I can't wait to draw her!!

I was so overwhelmed by the amount of information we got about Solas and his past!! I was expecting answers but not these many and not for them to be such an integral part of the plot!! The game feels like it's about him more than anything else. His arc is the best written out of all. He is mentioned in every conversation, he's the main advisor and the narrative foil, you get to talk to him often, you work for him and with him and go into his memories it all feels so surreal to me lmao I love him so I'm delighted ngl! but also making the other Evanuris so cartoonishly evil makes Solas into such an obvious choice of an ally, god of trickery or not, that it sort of takes the decision out of your hands and makes some dialogue options and companions' opinions seem almost nonsensical. I have no idea how this game would feel to someone who absolutely hates Solas' guts honestly. I suppose I will find out soon enough 😆

About Solas' story, I loved it! I somehow also feel that I knew it already, all the speculation and theories that Solavellan fans were crafting for years were so accurate that it was all very validating. Even the wildest ones! Solas as the Maker, the elves spirit origin, Mythal giving him a body, the war with the Titans, the origin of the Blight, Solas being on your side as advisor, I can go on, we knew!! Also I have to mention this I'm sorry but they made him look so hot!! unbelievable. And the bloodied teary eyed pathetic look in the end ouurghhh I'm cheering and clapping!!

The romance conclusion was so lovely 😭 the Loki and Sigyn ending we deserved to such a mythological epic!! and open ended enough for all of us to cook!! and we got to see him fight and transform into the Dread Wolf!! and whimper and cry!! and bleed and love!! that's all I ever wanted, incredible we were really spoiled what the hell I still can't believe it 😭 GDL acting was brilliant as usual! the visuals were also incredible and exactly what I had in mind when I imagined where the story may go, the eclipse, the giant wolf, the glowing eyes, the Elvhenan ruins, the statues, even the hair lmao it all aligned exactly to what I've been painting all these years but better I was thrilled 😭

Solas backstory with Mythal also offers players that didn't romance him a chance to see him act out of love and show a side they wouldn't be able to reach otherwise and I think it was smart! also very tragic and sheds more light into all of his choices and words and his relationship with Lavellan too and the parallels and reversals and uughh thoroughly enjoying the emotional distress 👌

Pleasing both the Solas lovers and haters at the same time was always going to be hard with him being such a polarizing character by design and the world states being so different but I think they did a good job! at least from my side of things.

I think my favorite part besides the Solas related stuff was the Blight. I loved how horrific and gross and threatening it was! I've always loved the concept of the Blights and I'm glad it was such a huge part of the story in this game. I also loved Treviso!! has to be the most beautiful city in Thedas ahhh and the Necropolis!! the gardens!! Vorgoth!!! Kal-Sharok!!! I can't believe we got to see it!! and a Titan!!! the giant floating face of Ghilan'nain in the clouds??? and the huge archdemons and dragons!! oh and that warden dragon trap in the shape of a griffon?? and the giant blight tendrils!! the siege at Weisshaupt was outstanding!! and the floating panopticon castle situation in Minrathous uughh there is so much I loved.

OH I also enjoyed the Varric arc even though I saw it coming since the trailer it was still played well and it was touching 🥺

The ending felt a bit jarring to me in tone though, a bit too cheerful considering...the horrors. Over half the continent destroyed and most of the problems Thedas had before the game are still there. Veil in place and all 😆

But I had fun!! I'm nitpicking really, the conclusion to Solas' story feels very satisfying to me which was my main worry so I'm happy. It is a good game!! with a sort of soft reboot feel to it and aimed at a younger audience which is probably what they were going for? You can sort of feel the struggle the team went through during production in the way the target audience seems unclear sadly. I also can't help feeling like this is an ending, so much was revealed and resolved!! but maybe I feel that way because that is what I felt after Shadowbringers / Endwalker in FFXIV once my favorite part of the story was wrapped? They can always pivot to a new continent and expand on the world and cultures we know almost nothing about, but that is always harder to sell so I have no clue where they will go from here 😵‍💫

Anyway I'm still processing a lot of stuff that I will probably talk (and draw) about later, this is already long enough!! for now I'll look up how to get the artbook because the art direction of this game is fantastic!! I would love to hear your thoughts too really, I'm curious about the experiences of players who made different choices and with different tastes to mine!!

[middymod]

Strange sadness

Ever since the news about the new Avatar movie came out, I get this strange sadness mixed with regret and anger whenever I think about the movie, that I see an ad, that I hear people talking about it. Not that I was not excited about it! I even made a bingo card (did not get a bingo). Watching it was the one thing I wanted to do during winter break. Yet this cocktail of emotions did not go away. In fact, it got worse when the images for the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 came out. I was so confused by these emotions. At first, the only link I could find was:

Science-fiction/action movies

Set not on Earth

Zoë Saldaña

Aliens???

...none of which would explain why I felt like crying at the thought of these movies. Even weirder when you think that I've waited for so long for these two sequels to come out... Or maybe not that weird.

When Avatar came out, I went to see it at the theatre. In fact, it was pretty much the first not-a-children's movie I got to see in a theatre. Remembering the date, it makes a lot more sense. My life was turned upside down in December 2010. It turned right side up again about a year later, but still. There was a moment people thought I was going to be lost. So the announcement of the sequel was before my life was "broken". I was already looking forward to it, even if it seemed like it would be in a very, very distant future. Now, onto Guardians of the Galaxy. I watched the first one as a teen with my friend, at her home. We bonded over it in the last few years. After I learned that the third one would come out in 2023, I thought "Cool, I'll be nearly done with my bachelor's degree, I'll be able to see it with my friend". Except I'm not and I'm not sure I will. (Just in case she reads this, know that I really, really want to.) After small traumas, burnouts, hospitalization and 1-2 undiscovered health problems, I'm just restarting my second year of uni... out of 4 1/2. Including mandatory summer semesters.

I'm nowhere I thought I would be when I first found these movies. It feels as if time slips away and these sequels finally coming out feel like a deadline, or the end of something I wasn't ready for. So I have to remind myself that this isn't the end. Well, it is the end of the GotG franchise, but it's not the end for me. I can still get somewhere nice, in my own time. And maybe make fanfics along the way.

[mumbojumbo-fanblog]

You know what I'm tired of? People mischaracterizing mumbo. He is not a normal man. Nor is he a calm and sweet little guy. He can be, but most of the time he's crazy. Make mumbo crazy. Show the side of mumbo that angrily sniffed iskalls shirt, show the side that made a horrifying tree his house, show the side that insults Rendog whenever in a ten-mile radius. SHOW THE MUMBO THAT FUCKING JUICED HIS BEST FRIEND??? I need THAT mumbo guys- stop making him polite let him go insane

[pastel-medic]

Someone on my tiktok asked about my reasons for shipping Medic and Spy and tbh I'm not too good at explaining my reasons for liking stuff (I'm bad with words) but this is a good enough summary of it!

Developed understanding and appreciation between two individuals is a concept that I deeply resonate with. Most ships I love be it canonxcanon or ocxcanon always have an element of healing in them. As someone who struggles with a broken sense of self-worth I find solace in ship dynamics that depict a healing kind of love. 💌

I am also Cupioromantic. I don't really feel romantic feelings for others but I have the desire to have that kind of relationship, to know what it's like. I've always yearned for a romantic connection but I just don't feel any form of romantic attraction. I often project that into the ships that I love/find reassurance in, so when I call something a comfort ship I mean it genuinely with no exaggeration. 👏🏼💖

[mischiefwife]

Hey, think twice before supporting the BG3 Stardew mod.

Saw this nice looking Stardew Valley mod with BG3 characters, pretty quickly knew something was off when you see Halsin/Astarion/Rolan front and center with no mention of Wyll at all.

Then we get this whopper of a cry post, maybe suggesting they can't be anti-black because they're not white? They can't show misogyny cause they're women? They can't be blamed at all because they're just polling their PATREON votes? Fucking do better. Can't even hide behind the usual excuse that it's a free fanwork, it's not.

Fandom's got a racism and misogyny problem. Step up and draw the line with these creators crying victim when asked 'where's Wyll?' (And yes I checked, the replies are 90% positive and 10% where's Wyll, where's the women) when you've already fully developed your random minor npc first. Team members being made uncomfortable translates to being called out for contributing to a lil' racism.

The misogyny hydra and the racism in fandom runs deep i know, but for the love of fuck can we push back against it?

Or you can side with the mod's supporters (this is one of the devs actually lol). Who post things like this.

And the creators don't say a fucking thing at all about it, they just keep playing victim. It would be so easy to approach this system with a SMIDGEN of respect, just acknowledging the racism at all. Seriously BG3 fandom. Demand better.

I don't give a shit if they're the most popular, there's also a REASON why Wyll is not. But if you want to just eat this shit up and contribute making your fandom shitty and uninviting, by all means.

[sims3fiend]

Some dumb sims 3 updates/stuf

Or, how to develop severe brain damage in 10 easy steps.

Sooo… This is going to be more of a blog post than anything of any real substance, more of a whinge with maybe a few teasers for some stuff I may or may not release (probably not). Feel free to skip if you're after hot tips or coherent writing.

Stutter "fixer"

Sooooo…. The sims 3 has some stutter issueeesss… Incredible discovery, I know! I started looking at remedying them with settings, found some hidden settings that help reduce some of the issues but that can only do so much when the game was made in 2009 for 2009 computers.

So I had a looky at some things I thought could be causing it, mainly WinAPI functions because that's the easier route (h-haha…), and started to try to "optimize" some of the more common ones:

ReadFile: Was the first, and looking at the sheer volume of like 12783972198 calls a milisecond every time you move the camera, I thought surely I can speed it up a little r-right. Not really. I tried all sorts of… interesting things, file caching in memory, implementing the overlapped flag (took ages), etc. Oh and the performance increase? Literally nothing. It's called weirdly from wherever it's called and so we must suffer.

Threads: So, I had a look at other areas that were potential targets for speedup, ran an actual profile and it showed a problem areas namely threads and some other stuff I don't remember. ZwWaitForMultipleObjects and WaitForSingleObject take up a lot of time, so I very poorly attempted to optimize them, adding some timeout optimizations (and a bunch of other failed attempts). Despite being the most insane, this actually worked, and I got like a 40% speed increase in a very very niche metric that did not noticeably effect the game one single bit. I plan to combine all my failures into a single script eventually, maybe once combined they'll do something…

Actual insanity - Memory IPC: Then I had an idea, everyone hates e12, why don't we shove the games memory into another process and that'll fix it. No brain moment. No clue what past me was thinking, for some reason I thought you could like, access another processes memory if it was spawned from it, but uhh.. no, that's not how things work… I tried a few other things in a similar vein but it just crashed and crashed, so for now I'm just gunna work on:

Alloc/free mee - Current insanity: Currently, I'm still working on VirtualAlloc and VirtualFree (which is what I was redirecting to another process), but more from an optimizing memory usage standpoint than a… whatever the IPC thing was. There's a lot of things to try, and I've had some luck in some areas and some abysmal failures in others. There's a few promising functions calling VirtualAlloc/Free that seem to be potentially pointing towards memory leaks (004e54d0), but I'm too dumb to investigate that. At the moment, I'm going mostly just gathering more logs which takes forever and hurts my brain real bad.. On testing there's like 180 allocs that we could probably yeet no problem, which is like 750mb saved… Maybe idk.

I have plenty of ideas for deduplication, memory pool implementations to reduce churn/fragmentation, shoving things aggressively into pagefiles if they're not being used, etc. etc. Basically, there's a lot of avenues to explore, and I feel like there's potential… though I've definitely said that before and been dead wrong so…

Anyway, rambling over. I plan to release a dumb little renderer settings mod maybe-soon-ish that'll let you do dumb stuff that might be useful for reshade like turn shadows/drop shadows off and post processing off and on. I guess I could add max lots and other settings eventually too since they're static values.... Might also do a mythbusting post for some performance "tweak" stuff I see thrown around that isn't super accurate but I also don't want people to be angry at me so maybe not.

Sorry to whoever read all this, but also thanks :)

[kokusfluffyhair]

I might delete this later, but I need to vent and at least this Tumblr is anonymous instead of IG or other social media. I'm very overwhelmed with my writing project and even though I once thought it was good or marketable, I'm having severe second thoughts. I still think I've got some good use of emotion in some scenes, but all in all I don't think any reader would stick with the story. It is massively long. I wrote it with the intention of being a "manga series in a novel form" with shorter adventures for the mcs to conquer on their path to "defeating the final boss" and solving the problem of the plot. I'm not done with it yet after working on it for 11 months (but I'm close to the end, finally). I've been doing some wc tests and I've hashed out over 250k words of crap.

While researching what publishers and agents require for manuscripts, they go for 75k max (100k max in fantasy), especially for new writers who don't have a name to them. I first thought, no problem I'll break my thing down into a series of 2 or 3 books. But then I've found that publishers and agents want you to have your first (and probably second too) to be "self-standing with the potential for a series". This is really crushing because I can't really make a self-standing book out of it. Well, technically I can but it wouldn't really be the same story. I know that if I happened to get an agent and they/the editor told me I had to change things that I'd have to, regardless of if I liked it or not.

What makes this worse is that if I didn't have to write in English (or really any language that isn't Japanese and maybe Korean or Chinese), I might be able to go with my "adventure" plot spanning over 5-6 books of 30-40k words each. I feel my project could thrive being marketed as an LN (light novel) series, and really it would be my dream to be able to sell it as that and if I'm lucky for it to be adapted into a full-out manga or an anime. But many people, including thes subreddit for LN, limit this type of writing to Japanese people only. There are some OELN (original english light novels), but they are quite rare to come by and most of them except for a lucky few are self-published. There's one publishing house out of Canada that I know of that will consider taking OELN manuscripts. I swear, at this point I'm wondering if I should finish the series, edit it, and have it translated into Japanese and work with it from there -- which is a ridiculous idea because I speak N5 Japanese at best. I don't think that I'd be taken seriously, or I'd have to hire a translator to work with me during all kinds of communication, which is impractical. I don't really want to self-publish, and part of it is from my own submitting to hearing how people don't take self-publishing seriously and that only the "rejects" from traditional publishers do it. From a practical standpoint, I don't think I can take on the marketing aspect, not just because of the marketing itself but because I'd have to rely on my personality to appeal to others. Honestly, I think that by hearing me make a TT on my book to market it that seeing and hearing me would make readers not give my book a chance, rather than get interested.

The other part of it, I admit, is my own greed and financial desparation. I'm mentally convinced that traditional publishing has a better chance of making money, even though I know that most writers don't make much money, regardless of how they publish. I didn't start writing my project with the idea of making money, but like anyone, I would like to make money off of it after finishing it.

I know that my writing needs work. The manuscript does need to be cut in places, whether it's unnecessary dialogue, other parts that are drawn-out, and even getting rid of a couple arcs that don't serve much extra to the story as a whole. I don't mean to write all of this to say that my work is perfect or that I don't need to do any effort besides hashing together a plot from conflict to resolutioon. I know that this is tough -- honestly maybe even tougher than the other creative industry I'm in (acting). But it really doesn't give me any consolation or boost in confidence or love when I look at my own work.

I wish I had the love for my work that I used to. And I guess it's not that I don't still love it. I still love the characters and the story of my imagination, it's my writing that I no longer love.

I guess all I can say is that if anyone read though this rant and it resonates with you and your own artistic struggles, know that you aren't alone. I hope, even though I might find misery in the situation I find myself in, that maybe it will make someone else feel better to know that it's not "just them" who feels like shit about what they create and see nothing but a bleak future ahead for it.

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

DIRK, thinking out loud: …I hate the way you walk, the way that you talk, I-

JAKE, attempting to join in: DO YOU HATE HOW MY FACE DISINTEGRATES INTO CHALK-

[Awkward silence…]

DIRK: [Kisses Jake]