#not to say that this isn't alarming

[ncfan-1]

#fandom is one way to look at it but y’all… it’s poverty#it’s the quality of education kids receive based on where they live#which is directly influenced by their parents’ income bracket#when kids are going to work with the time/energy they could be spending on education - that feeds into this#when kids are expected to stay home and take care of their siblings while their parents are at work - that feeds into this#when kids are not receiving the help they need in school - due to lack of resources or space or time/energy from teachers/educators -#that feeds into this#and that’s not even getting into immigrant-heavy populations where you have a lot more kids learning english as a second language#i need to look into this more but i want to know how this correlates with high school attendance and graduation rates#long post#academia like the nut (@chidorinnnnn)

Quick question, genuine question:

Why on earth does "more than half of US adults under 30 cannot read above an elementary school level" not strike horror into the heart of everyone who hears it?

Are the implications of it unclear????

I'm serious, people keep reacting with a sort of vague dismissal when I point this out, and I want to know why!

If adults in the US cannot read, then the only information they have access to is TV and video, the spaces with the most egregious and horrific misinformation!

If they cannot read, they cannot escape that misinformation.

This obscene lack of literacy should strike fear into every heart! US TV is notoriously horrific propaganda!

Is that???? Not??? Obvious???????

I know this sounds sarcastic, I know it does, but I'm completely serious here. I do not understand where the disconnect is.

[jesuis-assez]

↠ Tim & Lucy ↳ 2x10 - The Dark Side

[canisalbus]

Your art tastes like aged paper, sugar, and chocolate to me, with a hint of salt every so often

Machete looks like white chocolate, and Vasco's like buttery caramel

.

[uncanny-tranny]

A vital part of political knowledge (and knowledge in general) is knowing when to say, "I'm not educated enough to make a statement about this topic."

It's okay if you don't know every little detail of every single issue at hand. But it won't help if you refuse to acknowledge where you lack information, where your blindspots are, and what you just don't understand. It's okay to not have an answer.

[tales-of-magic-and-chaos]

The probability of Loki having a gigantic crush on Stephen upon meeting him is 100%.

[fromtheseventhhell]

Interesting how the Trident incident is the only moment where people question Joffrey's capacity for cruelty. He is almost universally considered one of the worst asoiaf characters, with no redeemable qualities. No one ever attempts to justify his actions when he abuses Sansa, orders Ned's executions, or any of his other many acts of violence. It's only this moment, a moment meant to introduce us to his cruel nature, that people seem to believe him to be a rational character with limits. It's honestly laughable. It's evident that the people who think like this are just biased against Arya; the majority of these arguments are centered not around Joffrey's violence, but Arya's actions to defend Mycah. People seem to truly believe that the better option would have been to let Joffrey "have his fun" and torment Mycah.

Debating how badly Joffrey would've hurt Mycah misses the entire point of the moment. Joffrey attacks Mycah because he's lowborn, he finds amusement in tormenting others, and he knows he can get away with it. He was quick to pull his sword and draw blood and, from what we know of his character, he undoubtedly would've taken it further. Arya stands up to him because she thinks that Mycah is worth defending which is significant considering she is the only one to do so. She is also the only character who mourns him and is affected by his senseless death, even books later (Ned is affected by his death but I wouldn't say he mourns him, although it is a moment that influences his feelings towards the Lannisters and Robert). Even if, which is a very big if, Joffery hadn't intended to go any further he had already crossed a line by attacking Mycah. The only alternative would be that Arya simply sits by and watches Joffrey further injure Mycah...and that's somehow the "better" option?

The people coming to the conclusion that Arya was the one who escalated the situation (and that it's somehow not Joffrey pulling his sword on an innocent boy) are coming from the perspective of the classist society that they live in. Joffrey attacking a lowborn boy wasn't an issue worth action, but harming a prince is "wrong". Mycah being attacked, and later murdered, is seen as inconsequential to the other characters (and readers) because he is lowborn. That's the thing though. You aren't supposed to look at this situation where a young boy is murdered for no reason and think that the only one who defended should've behaved differently. This moment is a criticism of the classist society these characters live in. It is significant that Arya is markedly less classist than a majority of other characters and cares when no one else does.

Further, if Arya were truly in the wrong for her actions then Joffrey wouldn't have needed to lie about what happened. From the very existence of the "trial" and Arya being given the chance to tell her version of events, we know that there wouldn't be any punishment if the truth of the situation had been told from the very beginning. The only reason there was an issue is because Joffrey decided to attack Mycah, and then later lie about what happened. Arya is not responsible for Joffrey's cruelty, Cersei's enabling, or Robert's subsequent apathy. The fact that people can't seem to comprehend this is maddening. I've never seen people have the same attitude towards Sansa for speaking up for Dontos, even though it incurred Joffrey's wrath and would've escalated had Sandor not spoken up. Why are Sansa's actions brave and kind, but Arya's are seen as stupid and reckless? What happened to not blaming young characters for the actions of others?

This is one of those things where the fandom decides for themselves that they know the story being told, without actually looking at how it's written. They would rather debate on (baseless) hypotheticals than look at why George presented the story to us the way he did. It takes an insane amount of misinterpretation to decide that Arya's actions are the reason for Mycah's death and misses a, rather large, point being made by the author. Notably, none of these people can ever provide evidence from the book to support their insistence that Joffrey would've simply left Mycah alone. You would think that since that's the basis of their argument and they're so adamant that their analysis is correct, they would be able to support their reasoning. It's almost as though the books don't support their interpretations...

[haredjarris]

(louis de pointe du lac voice) meow.

[undertalebabbleblog]

Why do Monsters in Undertale and Deltarune use Words like 'Hell' and 'God' in their Everyday Language?

Additionally, a Theory on the Time Period During Which Monsters were Trapped Underground

OKAY SO hi Pup here with more UTDR insanity on a topic that I do not have the historical knowledge to be properly qualified to talk about, but am going to talk about anyway because it's been lingering in my head for a long time.

The monsters in Undertale and Deltarune use terms like 'hell', 'god', 'damn', etc., implying that they have enough of a concept of hell, god, damnation, etc. ingrained into their society for it to be used in casual speech. But that stuff comes from human religions. It fits easily into our understanding of language, given that those are the terms we commonly use, but monsters don't follow human religions as far as we see, and the widespread use of those terms comes from the influence that Abrahamic religions have had on our society. We don't see any established monster religions at all in Undertale, and in Deltarune there's obviously the Angel.

The Doylist reason for monsters using those terms despite the lack of human Abrahamic religions in their society is obviously just that Toby Fox is a human living in our world who is used to using those terms and likely didn't think twice about including them in his game. However, that reason is not nearly as fun as going insane over minor details in video games. Thus, this lengthy post.

In Deltarune, the religion we see in Hometown is the one that worships the Angel. We don't know how prevalent this religion is in the wider world, nor how many people in Hometown actually worship it, but it's a commonplace enough belief that the town has a church in it that seems to have been around for a decent amount of time.

While it's highly possible that the worlds of Undertale and Deltarune are entirely different from ours, I am going to be operating on the assumption that they both take place in worlds that are pretty much the same as ours, with only minor differences aside from the existence of monsters, which I'd say counts as a pretty major difference.

Now, as the Angel religion doesn't have a concept of sin, we can assume that there's no concept of punishment for sin either, and therefore no hell. However, through Alvin's wording of "our religion", combined with Asriel confessing to his 'sins' despite the lack of sin or confession in said religion, we can infer that there are indeed other religions in the world of Deltarune, and at least one relatively prevalent other religion contains the concepts of sin and confession. (Susie and Lancer both actually directly mention Christmas at one point, which means that Christianity exists in Deltarune, alongside the religions and practices that are the origins of many Christmas traditions.)

Assuming that monsters were never trapped underground in Deltarune, they were likely living alongside humans that whole time, and it's therefore quite likely that they would have picked up popular phrases that reference human religions. In fact, it's likely that monsters themselves followed the beliefs of Christianity, Catholicism, or the like at some point, given those religions' prevalence. (It's also possible that this influence is part of why monsters in Deltarune don't seem to use magic like their counterparts in Undertale do, given Christianity's whole thing about magic and stuff.) Monsters, like humans, probably don't all follow the same religion (Monster Teen, for example, wears a necklace with a cross pendant. While this choice could simply be aesthetic, it's equally likely that they're Christian, Catholic, etc.). And, given the whole Angel thing, it's possible that Hometown's predominant religion is an offshoot of a pre-existing Abrahamic religion.

In Deltarune, it is not at all out of the question and in fact makes complete sense for monsters to be referencing things like god or hell.

In Undertale, monsters have been stuck underground for an unknown but very long period of time, to the point where most of the adult population has never even seen the surface. (I am NOT going to be theorising about how monsters age, because I have already been down that rabbit hole multiple times and have nothing to show for it except confusion.)

My current theory is that they were trapped sometime during the 11th, 12th, or 13th centuries, most likely the 12th. If we look at the architecture of the Ruins, the first place that was settled by monsters:

It's quite similar to Romanesque architecture, which lasted from the 10th century to the 13th and was predominant in the 11th and 12th centuries.

This style is mostly reflected in New Home

Except for in the Last Corridor

Where the pointed arches are reminiscent of Gothic architecture, which was active from the late 12th to 16th centuries.

While we know that monsters receive human garbage via the dump in Waterfall, I'm going to assume that nobody would be throwing out schematics for their Gothic windows. Therefore, considering the timeframes of both these architectural movements, monsters were likely trapped underground in either the late 12th or the 13th century, with my money being on the late 12th given the prevalence of Romanesque architecture as opposed to the much rarer cases of Gothic architecture that we see (acknowledging, of course, that we do not see all of the Underground, and that I am only working off the knowledge I have here).

More potential proof for this time periods comes from the intro, where we see the silhouettes of several humans.

There are no guns or other firearms shown, meaning that the War of Humans and Monsters occurred in a time when spears and swords were used in wars instead of guns. While I couldn't find a spearhead that matched the one depicted, there is a human shown holding a sword, which we get to see at two angles.

I originally assumed from the first image that it was a leaf-shaped blade, but looking at both the first and second images, I theorise that this is depicting a knightly sword, also known as an arming sword, used as a one-handed sword, usually alongside a shield, in the high middle ages (1000 - 1300 CE).

While still used in the late middle ages (1300 - 1500 CE), longswords were more common as a primary weapon, and arming swords were often employed as a sidearm in addition to a primary weapon. While the sword depicted in the image is too short to be a longsword, it seems to match the length of an arming sword fairly well, and we can see that its wielder is using it as a one-handed weapon, rather than the longsword's intended two-handed grip.

Now, I'd say it's likely that most or all monsters only lived around one area, since it would have been a bit difficult for the humans to trap every single living monster underground if they'd been spread all over the world. If monsters only existed around one area in the high middle ages, they could have been fought against in the war and trapped underground much more plausibly, and they could have been easily dismissed as myth in later millennia.

The prevalent religion during the Middle Ages was Christianity, and we know that there were some pretty strong opinions about things like magic and other belief systems. It's stated in the game that the war started because humans were scared of the monsters' power to absorb human SOULs, and while that was probably part of it, it's not hard to see how the humans of that time could have turned on the monsters out of fear of their magic, or even just not being human, in addition to the stated provocation of monsters being able to absorb human SOULs. We also have to remember that we only get information about what happened from the monsters' perspectives, written on stone plaques, thousands of years after the fact. We don't have the full story here, and I suspect that the conflict was already brewing, and that the monsters' recorded reason for the war was simply the thing that tipped it over the edge.

Anyway, if monsters were living amongst or near humans during the Middle Ages, they were probably following or at least had a lot of exposure to the prevalent religion and its effects on commonly-used language. (It's also possible that the symbol of the Delta Rune and the prophecy about the Angel who has seen the surface is a remnant of the Angel belief system we see in Deltarune.) Their use of language could have evolved in a similar way to ours over the centuries, words like 'hell' and 'god' becoming more detached from their religious connotations when used in everyday expressions, and, with the added influence of human media that began falling into the garbage dump in Waterfall, their use of those words, as well as language in general, became remarkably similar to our own, despite them having been trapped underground for all that time.

And... yeah. That's it. That's the theory. If someone who actually knows about this sort of stuff happens to come across this post, please feel free to add your expertise. I'm going off internet research here, I'm not qualified to be talking about this.

[girlivealwaysbean]

should I not wish my bestfriend even tho im awake

[crimeronan]

wow that latest silt verses episode. i've listened to it twice so far and i feel like there's Some essay meta connection i want to make about terminal illness and tragedy and losing people to the mundane even when you have the power of gods at your fingertips and when you've tried so hard and done everything Right..... but i don't know how to fathom it into words. maybe with another listen or two i could post coherently about it but for now just. waow. hey. what the fuck.

[sunsetzer]

Setzer: I think I need to just sleep for the next six months.

Edgar: That's called a coma.

Setzer: Sounds festive.

[thevampirediariesdiary]

but what if I DID make this a double elimination bracket

what if

[fazcinatingblog]

She's out of control, why is she like this

And then when I explained myself, she doesn't reply so I'm thinking okay great I made a good point, she'll just back down and not argue with me, but she follows up at 6am:

[spiderwarden]

" Minthara . Let's stick it to the Goblin Trash , take from The Absolute , KILL ORIN . My blade is itching . &. so am I , for a red war . "

The words from the newly appointed ally inspires a tilt of her head- once focused on the map she turns her head ever so slightly as her weight balanced on the palm of her hand. Minthara's lip twitches as her mind reaches for that voice of their GOD forever echoing on the inside of her skull. OBEY. there's a huff - an almost dark chuckle before she straightens and tosses the feathered pen back on the table by the jar of ink. Turning to face the apparent ally with the curious - yet darkly intrigued, cast of red eyes.

"You would speak blasphemy to Orin's own.." Her words trail off, feeling those words again echo in her ear again. OBEY ME. But this time it was quieter, and where reverence had blossomed in her heart at the very mention of Bhaal's chosen - suddenly there was anger. Rage - an oath of... Something else. Something was not right here, the voice was quieting, and Minthara suddenly felt her mind grasping at nothing. An alarming absence of the Absolute that she could not explain. Suddenly her mind held her own thoughts, her own desires. Minthara turns her eye to the table, to search for the the Heretical Sanctuary.

And thus the Drow stares at that map - long and hard, before her jaw tighten and she turns her expression back to them. The thoughts turning between her ears when the want to obey conflicts with - whatever else this feeling was burning at the core of her chest. Shoulders lift and then fall with the big inhale she releases.

"You have my ear, iblith, do not squander it."

@z4r / random ic things that i love.

[toastingpencils37]

Bro, the heaters at my school are fucked up.

Yesterday, apparently at the beginning of the day in one of the buildings, the AC on one side was 60 degrees, whereas the other side was at 80 degrees. (I don't have classes in that building during that part of the day)

So they turned off the AC on the hot side. But then around the time 5th period started (my class period in that building), the AC on the other side went up to 80 degrees, so my teacher had to turn it off. And the principle even came to talk to my teacher about it briefly during class.

The AC in that class was apparently still at 80 degrees some point today as well.

And then in my brother's math class yesterday, the AC was really cold. But then today it was really warm.

So yeah. AC's fucked up.

[lizasweetling]

for todays page react, here's some panels from three weeks ago!

(and here's a link to todays page(Feb 27), since the picture goes elsewhere today)