#or a meaningful structure

[goblins-and-gloves]

Angry at parents hour!

Undiagnosed autistic fuckers are delulu.

[jzargo]

I know we love to clown on Cassandra for shoving responsibility onto other people - making Cullen of all people the military advisor for some reason, forcing some rando to be Inquisitor - but I think this is very much a deliberate character choice for her. I don't think she makes a good leader, and I think she's at least semi-aware of this.

Cassandra is someone who needs authority; she needs someone - or something - to follow. She is the most broken by Divine Justinia's death, not just because she lost a close friend, but because she lost the strongest authority figure and source of stability in her life. She's desperate to find the real Lord Seeker, in spite of all evidence earlier pointing to him probably being dead or a traitor, because she needs an authority figure. When she finds out the truth about the Seekers, she asks the Inquisitor whether she should reform them or not, and if the Inquisitor tells her no, she doesn't disapprove, she thanks them. She needed someone to tell her to let them go.

And what happens when Cassandra is put in a position of leadership? What happens when Cassandra is made Divine? Does she take risks, or use the information she's learned about the Seekers, the Chantry, and the Inquisition to make serious reforms in the Chantry? No. She reverts immediately to how things used to be; she falls back on the structure that she's used to, on what's familiar and comfortable. Because she needs that structure as a sense of security, for better or worse.

[hungwy]

"what if there was a swampman and his life was completely meaningless"

[inquisitor-apologist]

Have we, as a fandom, progressed to the point that we can realize that Twilight of the Apprentice, while a good episode, is not a particularly great Rebels episode and is certainly the least functional finale in the entirety of Rebels?

[notbecauseofvictories]

honestly if poor things did nothing but dramatize the moment when emma stone learns about suffering and almost throws herself into the sea with horror and grief, it would be enough.

[wetthandss]

i have never and will never use rails and minecarts in minecraft because they are just so inefficient and expensive for such little gain. theyre incredibly slow unless you use a rare and expensive material thats difficult to find and much more so get in large amounts to make a small number of powered rails that you have to place pretty close to one another if you want to reach an actually useful speed, and if youre making a rail system that small whats the point you can just walk or run there. there are no other relevant blocks for rails except detectors. no bumpers or launchers or stations or anything, very little utility outside of complicated redstone machines for furnace, hopper and chest minecarts that most players arent concerned with. i think theyre a horribly underdeveloped feature but also one that has SO MUCH potential. here's what i would do to make this feature better and how i actually would use it if it was that way.

i would remove the need for powered rails to go at any useful speed. you could travel in the minecart at the speed you can with a powered rail in the game now just by holding the direction you wanna go. powered rails are still there, and you can use them to go even faster if you want. they're like a speed upgrade rather than a necessity for travel. secondly, you dont have to keep holding down the button to keep moving, the minecart wont lose speed as it goes unless it hits a powered rail, where it will decrease in speed similarly to how it does in the base game, but only down to normal speed and not to a snail pace or complete stop. if you push a minecart (without being in it) it will slow down quickly to a stop, because itd be pretty annoying watching it run away on you if you accidentally push it. but also that already happens when you have to place powered rails down every 10 blocks and if the minecart touches them it just runs away on you. in my ideal update, to push a minecart down a track without losing speed, you can either get in it and get out of it when you reach speed, or you can use a powered rail to get it going. ADDITIONALLY, powered rails just act like normal rails when inactive instead of stopping entirely. if you want a rail that automatically stops the minecart, keep reading cause i have a replacement for this usage.

i would allow diagonal rails to exist, including on slopes. this is something i wish for other blocks that connect to each other in minecraft too, like fences, walls, iron bars etc. the zigzagging pattern is very ugly in most use cases and requires you to use double the materials. this would also be useful for setting up proper train stations where a train can be pulled to the side of the track either to let another train pass or to be filled with passengers/items.

i would allow multiple rails to connect to one another, letting you have multiple paths. a redstone activated directional rail could control which path you go on while in a minecart, while the default is just continuing straight.

I would add rail signals with an associate redstone connected rail that can decide when a minecart is allowed to pass or be stopped, or set a precise timer that counts down before making a redstone signal. you can set it to repeat or to only start its timer when receiving a redstone signal. would this remove the need for other forms of redstone timers? yes because i think its such a simple thing that requires incredibly complicated setups to do precisely that are frankly unnecessary to the average player and would allow them to make redstone more useful to them without having to spend nearly as much time and energy fine tuning multiple different complicated timer setups. you can still use the complicated timers if you want. no one is stopping you. anyways, this would let you automate trains a lot easier or automate a round trip rail system with consistent schedules, or to send a minecart back to you after sending it away.

Minecarts will have an updated model with a clear front side and a back side. you can flip directions whenever you want if youre riding in it, its mostly just an aesthetic change, but ive run into situations where if i stop a minecart on an inactive powered rail and activate it again, it will start going back in the direction it came from rather than continuing forwards and that is REALLY ANNOYING. i get that thats useful for sending a minecart back and forth but my bumpers would solve that issue while the clear front/back side fixes the one i mentioned above at the same time, as well as just making it more predictable and visually clear.

I would also aesthetically change the chest minecart cause i think it looks really ugly, i would prefer the chest minecart to show the minecart filled up with the sprites of the items that are inside it. i think that would be way cuter than just having a big wooden chest inside a metal minecart.

finally have actual linkages to tie minecarts together. it can just be a lead idc.

maybe a minecart that can be filled with rails that it automatically places as it goes? idk about this one

another maybe is that detector rails could be configured to only activate one-way.

a third maybe is having "lazy rails" that let the minecart travel at the speeds that they do now, so people who would inevitably complain about these changes ruining their finetuned overly-complex redstone rail machines could have something to use.

And finally i would have a bumper rail that can bounce back a minecart at half its speed, or its full speed with no loss if powered with redstone.

so i would definitely use rails and minecarts WAY more if these features were in place, they would be actually efficient for long and short distance travel, more versatile and less rigid in how you can actually place them, you can use redstone and train linkages to create more complicated railway setups if you want, it would all LOOK better, and it could actually be useful for putting in mineshafts. as it stands now, you have to put powered rails all over the place (a full chest minecart can only move 16 blocks per single powered rail boost! and it will slow down heavily before reaching the next too), fill up your stupid looking chest minecart and push it down where you then have to have a big redstone setup to automatically send the cart back, timed with a redstone timer (either a massive repeater one or a smarter comparator/observer one) so that the cart has time to unload into the hopper below it before being sent off again where it can make its way back to you.

in my update, you can fill the (good looking) chest minecart and use a single powered rail to push it where it will continue to the end (slowly, but at a far more consistent and as a baseline FASTER pace) where it will reach a detector rail connected to a rail signal which will start its timer, stopping the minecart. the cart will unload into the hopper, the timer will finish, sending the minecart into a powered bumper rail on the end where it will flip directions and be sent back, it will pass through the rail signal (because the detector block is on the other side) as if it were a normal rail, and come all the way back to me.

[stephantom]

I’d need to watch it again to confirm this, but I’m pretty sure that Thomas Becket is the only character who independently initiates touch with Henry?

There are plenty of people whom Henry touches, and it’s almost always possessive or threatening: the villager woman in the first flashback scene, the Saxon peasant girl (and possibly the old man? I think he prods at both of them with his riding crop), Gwendolen (holding her shoulders/neck), the French prostitute (kissing, leaning over, sitting on, slapping her butt), his sons (pushing and kicking them), the bishop (strangling), his barons (clutching onto one, tapping one’s head to indicate his vapidness), and Thomas too—(clasping his shoulders when he realizes Thomas is hurt, holding his hand to put on the chancellor ring).

Interestingly, I don’t think we ever see Henry touch or be touched by his mother or his wife. There’s the moment when he grabs/kicks their needlework, and later on he knocks all the plates off the table, possibly vaguely in their direction—so there are two physical interactions which are violent but still sort of… distant? And still the direction is just Henry to them (in terms of physicality, anyway—verbally, they do initiate conversations/fights with him).

Does anyone touch Henry? There are the monks who whip him in the end, but Henry has ordered them to do it. Likewise, there’s the servant/valet/page who begins to wipe him dry in the bath scene, but again, that’s someone performing a duty. Thomas Becket though, cuts in and takes over the drying, and the dialogue tells us explicitly that he’s not expected to do this, and doesn’t have to (“You’re a nobleman—why do you play at being my valet?”) but Becket seemingly wants to do it, and he knows Henry likes how he does it: enthusiastically, confidently, warmly, and freely (“No one does it like you, Thomas”). He towels Henry’s head, helps Henry put on his boots, and then casually uses Henry’s legs to push himself up to stand.

There’s the scene in Henry’s tent, after the French prostitute has left and the two of them are sitting on the bed: Becket sort of leans in and briefly clasps Henry’s arm where it’s lying in his lap, casually and warmly.

There’s also the getaway horse ride, where Becket is holding onto Henry, arms wrapped around him, and they’re both laughing and smiling. Henry’s shirt actually falls open a little and Becket’s hand winds up on his bare torso.

And then there are the thwarted attempts at touch, after the split: the two scenes where Henry accuses Becket of not loving him. Both times, Becket moves toward Henry and reaches out to touch him, and both times, Henry moves away and tells him to keep his distance.

They’re quick little things, but if they are actually the only instances of anyone touching Henry affectionately (or even of their own volition) that we see over the course of the movie, it does support an impression of Henry as fundamentally isolated—maybe there is truth to his claim that Becket is the only person who’s ever loved him.

What’s tragic is that 1) Henry doesn’t really know how to express love himself (see: Henry expressing nothing but violence and entitlement to everyone else around him, and even to Becket for the most part), and 2) Becket’s love, albeit huge in Henry’s world, is conflicted and unfulfilling—for both of them.

Becket might be the only person who’s dared to reach out to Henry and meet him on something close to a human level, and Henry loves him for it, but why does Becket do it? Part of it may just be an instinct of Becket’s to fulfill a need where he sees one, if he can, and if it benefits him. I think it’s so interesting that Henry seems obsessed with the question of whether Thomas really loves him, when it seems the truth might be that Thomas actually doesn’t know; maybe it’s an unanswerable, even nonsensical question to him. Like, what else could he do? I don’t know. “Insofar as I was capable of love, yes I did [love you].” But the fact that his last words, unwitnessed and private, are, “Poor Henry.” Fuck me up.

Ok, that last paragraph got away from me and now I can’t stop. Tempted to draw comparisons to “Beauty and the Beast” (this is a sad version where no magical transformation happens… unless you take a particular Catholic stance and consider that both of them maybe took real solace and meaning in Thomas being made a saint and that Henry maybe found real absolution through his penance).

I also want to compare all of this to “The Lion in Winter”, where it feels like, rather than a story about one lonely monster in a castle full of people he sees as objects, it’s a whole microcosm of traumatized and power-hungry people, reaching out for power and security and love and stabbing each other in the back, over and over. (Like, of course his mother and wife and kids have complex feelings for him—some of which involve love!) I think that depiction is better and less myopic, more true to life and probably a more accurate portrait of the historical figures involved (even when it comes to Henry and Becket—Becket was of that world too, after all), but I think I’ve rambled enough about all of this, so I’m going to end this post now. I’ll just say that there’s something nevertheless appealing about the boiled-down fairytale melodrama of “no one else ever loved me but you!”

[txttletale]

is it morally okay to enjoy british panel shows and shows such as Taskmaster or does that make me a wee bit cringe. Please im in such a panic

what am i catholic

[mummer]

barry being obsessed with going all YourFaveIsProblematic on 'great men' as a way to justify himself because if they could do bad things and still be regarded as great then so can he. he’s “doing” the “work” of “bettering himself” and berating sally for being drunk because it “sets a bad example” and hiding guns behind live laugh love decor. He’s literally putting on a wholesomecore front lol, he’s play acting as a ted lasso type and using lib therapy language which is indistinguishable from when he’s using evangelical language which is all utterly meaningless and he uses it as a violence. Ha ha ha

[astragatwo]

In contrast to my last two Rain World OC posts, these guys aren't one offs and are part of my current core OC group. More info about them under the cut since it's lengthy.

First starting with The Serpent —

The Serpent is one of AV's many bio-engineered slugcats - if you can even call him a slugcat at this point - as part of a simple passion of experimenting with flexible slugcat biology

They share several traits in common with red lizards, those being constant hyper-aggression, tremendous strength, projectile spit and size

As for similarities with slugcats, well, a general elongated shape? Oh, mobility, unlike red lizards, the Serpent is very adept with vertical movement

AV didn't really have a clear goal in mind with the Serpent unlike the rest of their tube babies, they just sort of... happened.

The spontaneity of their creation though has been very interesting as despite initially being created with the solitary lifestyle of a red lizard, the Serpent still keeps his slugcat instinct of adopting random children they find

Though the Serpent seems at first, displeased with this development but rest assured that if you ever LOOK at his pup wrong they will kill everyone in the room and then himself

Though not pictured in his reference since he was my first Rain World OC, created with very little knowledge of the lore and started as a one-off, he has a citizen ID drone which AV uses to keep track of him

He was also simply created out of my desire to have a long slugcat and my obsession with red lizards combined so there's that, too

Speaking of AV, moving on to Administrative Violence —

Named after the song of the same name by Lauren Bousfield, you'd expect them to be - well - violent. They're not, at least not with those they commonly interact with

They are actually quite sweet with Blown Blooms, their partner, and Peach the slugcat

Weather conditions, all things considered, are pretty mild where they are but far, far off into the distance their partner Blown Blooms isn't so fortunate and natural erosion as well as other random unfortunate events unrelated to weather, has taken quite the toll on them

As a result and fearing for Blooms in every way possible but especially for their communication's inevitable severing and also Blooms being lonely all on their own, AV created a slugcat who resembles a strawberry lizard - a species of lizard Blooms is especially fond of

Peach was designed for protection and companionship first and foremost and an emergency messenger/relay secondly.

Outside of worrying for Blooms' condition and yearning & longing for close physical proximity to them the way creatures who aren't supermassive structures have the luxury of, AV spends most of their time studying their bio-engineered slugcats.

Each and every one of them is given a citizen ID drone for ease of tracking as well as general classifications

They couldn't give a shit about whatever problem the other iterators are working on - just these funny little slugcats

They take the occasional interest in other animals too but it's mainly slugcats

And finally, Blown Blooms and Peach —

Blooms, like AV, is named after a song of the same name by Lauren Bousfield. Peach is just named after her colors.

Blooms, like their partner AV, has a complete disinterest in the great problem and a very big interest in bio-engineering

This time with plants rather than animals though they have a soft spot for small critters but they're usually never the subject of any experiments - just study and admiration

However, due to a deteriorating state, Blooms isn't quite able to use their equipment to manipulate genetic information like they used to - which is upsetting

So instead, they help AV with their current studies as well as keeping tabs on their own prior experiments

They have Peach now, though, which brings a much appreciated break from constant studying and nice close companionship

Peach will often catch prey outside and come back to eat it with Blooms and occasionally Blooms will play around with Peach and levitate the prey around for Peach to chase in anti-grav

The event that pushed AV to create Peach was when a creature entered Blooms' chamber and attacked them, partially damaging their puppet before being killed and then expelled from the chamber

Blooms is absolutely still capable of themselves and ultimately damaging the puppet a bit is nothing when taking account the sheer scale of an iterator - but AV will be AV

Plus, Blooms isn't complaining about getting a cute little companion from AV

And general trivia/info —

Everyone here is aroace. All of them. AV & Blooms' relationship is non-romantic in a sapphic way

The Serpent's pup's name is Pipsqueak

I know rudder tails shouldn't curve like that but I decided that after I finished drawing the Serpent and I wasn't about to redraw anything at that point

The other Iterators in AV and Bloom's local group are Illuminated Crown of Fire, Projections of Watchful Eyes, and an unnamed lunar-eclipse inspired iterator.

I have little information on them right now, but they are each based off of solar eclipses, stars and lunar eclipses respectively

In all, this local group is just a bunch of experiment freaks to varying degrees except for ICoF whose presence is often forgotten because of how little they speak but is also ever looming

And that's all! Thank you for reading this far in <3

[thisbrilliantsky]

u ever read a book that has cool ideas and compelling characters and the writing itself is decent but. there is just a total lack of actual storytelling skill. and it's 1000+ pages.

[1o1percentmilk]

something that bothers me is my inability to see people as people and rather more as a collection of themes/motifs/objects/skills

[thedreadvampy]

christ almighty some people are sad fucking miseries huh

[rustchild]

.

[imreallyloveleee]

the best way I can find to describe the whiplash of watching Oppenheimer immediately after Barbie is that one minute I was watching Barbie make fun of mansplaining, and two hours later I was watching Oppenheimer's wife be introduced in a scene where she LITERALLY goes "tell me about these quantum physics, they sound hard"

Barbie is a silly movie that takes women seriously; Oppenheimer is a serious movie that barely even acknowledges them as an afterthought

[daincrediblegg]

You know… I think I’d enjoy bridgerton more if it engaged in its stakes more than it engaged with its payoff. You know. Like all the jane austen’s novels it’s trying to chase through charm