#remarkably humans

[riversebb]

https://youtu.be/fYfe_JkVsDo?si=EPlxfuBje2h5y5Wg

[trashtulip]

A normal dentist's office

[yukipri]

Do you ever think about how common eclipses must be on Coruscant, which not only has FOUR moons, but has zero unpopulated surface area?

Eclipses are awesome, but they're also Events to us because Earth's so covered in water and inhabited areas are comparatively limited, so it's special when we can actually see them. But that's probably not the case for a lot of (most) planets.

[lestatsbian]

as a watcher of the show before i touched the books, i was already literally awestruck by sam reid’s performance as lestat (duh). but upon my first read of TVL i just can not fathom how well he was cast. he is truly phenomenal in every sense of the word and just completely perfect in every way. he is an absolute gem of a human being and i adore him. he deserves every single bit of praise he receives AND MORE. sam reid, you are constantly raising the bar and doing it flawlessly.

[song-writer-melo-wrath]

Thinking about how BG3 goes “Gods will not save you unless you become one yourself. And even then, to get to their level, are you rising, or falling?”

[doorp]

Hot take? Maybe? Idk I saw ppl yelling at Lenore earlier but

idc Lenore was completely justified in yelling at will, even if it wasn’t the best way to get him to be more effective. he literally aided and abetted putting Duke in that wall. Duke begged him for help and he said “…sorry?” He lured him into that cellar USING LENORES FACE. Then the next day, using DUKES FACE, the face of the man he helped put behind the wall, he used the face of someone the misfits trusted (knowing that the guy was suffocating in the walls as he did this) to lure Berenice, eulalie, and Lenore, into the graveyard, where he helped Monty beat the shit out of them.

just bc Monty is mean to will and uses him doesnt mean will isnt making his own choices like he’s not an innocent little baby here he doesnt deserve for Lenore to baby him. Like Lenore, Lenore SO deserves to be mad at will and not gaf about his feelings she DOESNT KNOW HIM and he HELPED IN HER FRIENDS ATTEMPTED MURDER and he literally is an imbecilic little paintywaist so

i will forever advocate in favor of Lenore destroying the piss out of people emotionally idc. I cheer. Annabel, Monty, will, Ada, GET EM GIRLY

I will say that this was goofy as fuck here like ohhhh girl

if he lives 😒

i may deign to spare your life 😡

SHES SO DRAMATIC stop waving that thing around you lunatic - shes rly trying to make up for the fact there’s no bullets, really trying to sell it. you can tell shes an old rich lady 💀 “move swiftly” girl you sound like a train station recording.

I love pluto standing in the back there like a goon

Last thing i love how Lenore is like wtf girl what the fuck are you on about im not your therapist are you serious right now??? Are you CRYING?? Is he really doing this in public??

[ravencromwell]

Fuck, just had a hell of a Holland realization, which everyone else probably realized years ago but indulge my horror: The Danes have their stone statue garden of traitors. And the only thing we've ever seen in WL that can turn people to stone is As Staro. The command Holland used to kill his fucking brother. The idea of him having to replicate that kill over and over with the traitors the Danes wanted to make sharpest examples of, and then walk past those kills every fucking day? I have nothing else to say except it's a fucking crime Holland didn't get the same sort of triumphant, bloody fight against the Danes Lila got against the earth mage who tried to kill her in the tournament, because to say he deserved it so much more is the flimsiest possible understatement.

[gingermintpepper]

hi, i haven't read the iliad and the odyssey but want to - do u have a specific translation you recommend? the emily wilson one has been going around bc, y'know, first female translator of the iliad and odyssey into english, but i was wondering on if you had Thoughts

Hi anon! Sorry for the somewhat late response and I'm glad you trust me with recommendations! Full, disclosure, I am somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to translations of the source text of the Iliad + Odyssey combo wombo, which means I tend to prefer closeness in literal verbiage over interpretation of the poetic form of these epics - for that reason, my personal preferred versions of the Odyssey and Iliad both are Robert Fitzgerald's. Because both of these translations (and his Aeneid!) were done some 50+ years ago (63 for his original Odyssey tl, 50 flat for his Iliad and 40 for his Aeneid) the English itself can be a bit difficult to read and the syntax can get confusing in a lot of places, so despite my personal preferences, I wouldn't recommend it for someone who is looking to experience the Iliad + Odyssey for the very first time.

For an absolute beginner, someone who has tried to read one or both of these epics but couldn't get into it or someone who has a lot of difficulty with concentrating on poetry or long, winding bits of prose, I fully and wholeheartedly recommend Wilson's translation! See, the genius of Emily Wilson's Iliad + Odyssey isn't that she's a woman who's translated these classics, it's that she's a poet who's adapted the greek traditional poetic form of dactylic hexameter into the english traditional poetic form of iambic pentameter. That alone goes a very very long way to making these poems feel more digestible and approachable - iambic pentameter is simply extremely comfortable and natural for native english speakers' brains and the general briskness of her verbiage helps a lot in getting through a lot of the problem books that people usually drop the Iliad or Odyssey in like Book 2 of the Iliad or Book 4 of the Odyssey. I think it's a wonderful starting point that allows people to familiarise themselves with the source text before deciding if they want to dig deeper - personally, researching Wilson's translation choices alone is a massive rabbit hole that is worth getting into LOL.

The happy medium between Fitzgerald's somewhat archaic but precise syntax and Wilson's comfortable meter but occasionally less detailled account is Robert Fagles' Iliad + Odyssey. Now, full disclosure, I detest how Fagles handles epithets in both of his versions, I think they're far too subtle which is something he himself has talked at length about in his translation notes, but for everything else - I'd consider his translations the most well rounded of english adaptations of this text in recent memory. They're accurate but written in plain English, they're descriptive and detailled without sacrificing a comfortable meter and, perhaps most importantly, they're very accessible for native english speaking audiences to approach and interact with. I've annotated my Fagles' volumes of these books to heaven and back because I'm deeply interested in a lot of the translation decisions made, but I also have to specifically compliment his ability to capture nuance in the characters' of these poems in a way I don't often see. He managed to adapt the ambivalence of ancient greek morality in a way I scarcely see and that probably has a hand in why I keep coming back to his translations.

Now, I know this wasn't much of a direct recommendation but as I do not know you personally, dear anon, I can't much make a direct recommendation to a version that would best appeal to your style of reading. Ideally, I'd recommend that you read and enjoy all three! But, presuming that you are a normal person, I suggest picking which one is most applicable for you. I hope this helps! 🥰

[immediatebreakfast]

The introduction of the bloofer lady in the hands of children, and then in the words of adults really opens a lot of thematic potential for Lucy, and for her new second life as a vampire.

She doesn't feel real, a beautiful lady taking the blood of your playmates after they played with her? It reads as the type of morbid tales that children tell eachother. But, it's real, that young lady is the monster.

You as a child see her, sitting alone in a bench as the moon rises and reveals a weird visage, funeral white dress, wild hair, hollow eyes, and shining teeth that seem so long when she smiles; yet she is beautiful, like an older sister or a nice lady. Then you wake up in the morning, not in your bed but at the same park that you met her. With torn wounds on your neck, and no memories at all.

Lucy is now the bloofer lady. She has probably forgotten everything about her life except people (now prey) that were close to her. The bloofer lady is probably confused about her own existance, why does her body hurts so much? Why does she feels like she lost something? Who are the people that blink in her mind?

Yet all of that is secondary to her, a new vampire looking at the moon as her entire being claims for food. The bloofer lady is hungry, and she must eat to keep still, so she does. As unrefined as a starving animal.

Lucy is not the maiden that holds the hands of death, she is now the monstrous parody of the perfect victorian lady. A victim now being unsettling to nothing.

I wonder if after feeding, Lucy sees her bloody reflection somewhere, and out of trained instict she moves her hand to clean herself with a handkerchief that is not there.

[anghraine]

Speaking of GW1 and GW2 ... I've had plenty of complaints over the years about how GW2 has chosen to handle and retcon human-centric GW1 lore, the framing of the human gods, etc. That said, I've recently been appreciating that GW2 has retained a particular element of GW1's treatment of humanity and their gods that I've always really liked.

Humans in the GW universe are not really generic everymen, as humans so often are in fantasy settings. Nor are they so wildly varying and unpredictable that there's no sense of humanity having its own distinct flavor like the other playable species do. In many ways, they occupy a vaguely "elvish" position in the world—they've been on this world for a very long time and used to be a major power, or rather, made up many major powers with various warring factions that sometimes found common cause.

But in more recent eras, many of the ancient human civilizations have dwindled and/or suffered various atrocities and/or lost their minds. And culturally, humans tend to have a strong affinity for the mystical and even more for the divinely mystical, which their political power in previous eras was directly tied to. The vast majority of humans in this world are faithful worshippers of a human pantheon of six gods (formerly five).

Not all humans are magical or religious, to be sure, but a lot of them are, to the point that this seems their most distinctive cultural quality. Minor NPCs tend to have background dialogue invoking the gods ("By the Six!"), or referencing one of the gods (often but not only the goddess Dwayna, leader of the Six). The main human NPC of the core game, Logan Thackeray, continually references the gods, as do most of his military fellows.

Most interestingly, though, if you choose to play a human, you will automatically be a devout adherent of the faith of the Six regardless of any other choices you make. In addition, human PCs are blessed by one specific god among the Six whom you choose at character creation.

This mostly has minor flavor effects in practice. A priest of the god you chose permanently hangs out in your home district, and sometimes other priests of your god can perceive some mark of their deity's favor when they look at you.

Howeverrrrr, when I say "their deity," I don't mean that they exclusively worship the god they've dedicated their lives to, or that "your god"—the god whose favor you enjoy as a human PC—is your god in any remotely monotheistic way. Humans faithful to the Six are faithful to all the Six until one of the gods falls to evil. And when that god becomes the villain of the second GW2 expansion, various human NPCs are shown going through a crisis of the soul regardless of whether he was their particular patron or not. Having a more specific personal tie to one of the gods, or being particularly blessed by one of them, or being specifically devoted to a life of service to one of them, does not in any way prevent humans from devotion to the rest of the pantheon.

Mechanically, this means that no matter which deity you choose as your particular patron, your human PC starts the game with the ability to pray to Dwayna, goddess of life and air and healing. When you pray to her, a blue image of Dwayna materializes, heals you, and vanishes. As you level up, your human-based skills will extend to prayers to the other gods.

Praying to Lyssa, goddess of illusion/chaos magic and water and beauty, confounds foes by inflicting random conditions on them and random blessings on you. Praying to Kormir, goddess of spirit, order, and truth, will free you from negative effects like immobilization. The final prayer you can use, iirc, and the most powerful, is the prayer to Balthazar, the god of fire and war who ends up going super evil. If you're playing a fragile class like an elementalist or mesmer, praying to him is actually great, because he blesses you with two fierce hounds made of flame who fight alongside you and soak up damage. (Praying to Balthazar does feel a lot weirder in retrospect, I'll admit.)

In any case, the point is that you can pray to ANY human god and receive a brief visitation from that god, because the entire human pantheon are your gods even if you're only special to one of them. A similar dynamic is at work for NPCs as well. A recurring NPC in the core GW2 story, for instance, is Rhie, a priestess of Grenth, god of cold, darkness, judgment, and death (he's not evil, just goth). Even by priest of Grenth standards, Rhie is greatly favored by him, and as a result is able to perform powerful rituals dealing with the boundaries between life and death. But there's no expectation that this means she should abjure the other gods in any way, and she certainly does not (in fact, she provides a Human Religion 101 rundown about the gods in general in her first appearance in the human storyline).

And it's so common in fantasy, I feel, that polytheistic cultures are conceptualized as giving adherents a wider choice of gods to be the one they actually worship for real, often with the implication that worshipping one god in the pantheon naturally translates into hostility or apathy towards other gods in the same pantheon. And so I do enjoy playing a religiously devout character who has a special patron deity blessing her and who is emphatically polytheistic throughout her entire original storyline.

[daily-hanamura]

[lesbiangiratina]

New evidence for my theory that some people just hallucinate whenever they look at pre strive testament

[mister13eyond]

I think people in general would be less weird about gender and trans people if it were just made more clear how incredibly artificial the idea of a human sexual dichotomy really is

External genitalia is the same basic structures configured in slightly different ways, and it's less of a binary set of options than a spectrum between two poles as intersex people fully prove

Secondary sex characteristics are entirely dependent on hormones, which means they a.) already have a wide variety of natal presentations across genders (ex cis women capable of growing facial hair, cis men with breast tissue etc are all completely normal (if slightly uncommon) outcomes) and b.) Are extremely easy to change with HRT

Hormones can affect PHYSICAL reactions to emotions (higher testosterone making anger an easier physical reaction to stress than tears, and higher estrogen vice versa) but it doesn't actually affect the ways you think about or react to things, just what your body does with that emotion.

Social and behavioral differences are EXTREMELY affected by nurture more so than nature and there are no inherent neurological differences between men and women's brains.

Our bodies are so similar to one another that transition- while socially and financially potentially difficult- is MEDICALLY incredibly fucking easy. The fact that we can just alter our secondary sex characteristics with medications and our external genitalia with fairly simple surgeries should be a clue how incredibly close all human bodies are? We Have the possibility to change so easily because there are not inherent, hardwired unmovable differences. The only real difference at this point is the capability to carry and birth children, and with the way science is going that doesn't seem like an impossible breakthrough at this point.

Idk, I'm so tired of seeing discourse from other trans people that upholds that there are fundamental differences between men and women. Until we all start agreeing that these categories are artificially enforced and that they aren't really biologically inherent whatsoever we're never going to get anywhere

[marsixm]

never ever will i feel comfortable w how star trek fans who love mccoy rationalize the shit he says to spock its so fucking weird and uncomfortable

[filurig]

folke tomte afforded top surgery moment

[neocurio]

R.I.P.