#so far that's been true though

[valcove]

I have decided that, in light of ao3 being down for maintenance on Monday, I'm going to spend the entire day baking and cooking. As in: I'm making cheesy garlic bread, fully from scratch (garlic butter and all), along with chicken fettuccine from scratch, pasta and all. I figure it should be easy

[tainebot01]

You know, the AAI2 fandom’s insistence on referring to the characters by their fan localized names we’ve had for like a decade instead of the ones we received this week is really funny. It almost reminds me of something…

God damn it.

[zeb-z]

see ok I don’t think it’s bad who stole the furniture because he didn’t go to f5 and zoom in on himself a billion times

[gibbearish]

every time i see discourse about fundraisers go by on here im just fully struck with the realization that not a single one of you people have either taken a cybersecurity fraud prevention course or bothered to take one singular second to consider the website youre on. this is the broke bitches website. none of us can afford to fund our mutuals' grocery bills, much less entire evacuation funds, and CERTAINLY not FAKE evacuation funds taking advantage of genocide victims. all this shit abt how people are deliberately choosing not to fund every post that passes their dash because they hate palestinians literally just does the work of actual scammers for them by laying the high-pressure sales tactics groundwork, and the "do you guys have any idea how hard it is to keep coming up with new attention-grabbing fundraiser posts?" ones just ring EXTREMELY hollow because YEAH! YEAH I DO! and so does everyone i follow! and everyone they follow! because all of us are FUCKING BROKE and surviving on crumbs! i just saw one that said "i make sure to keep $40 in my wallet at all times so i can give $20 to any panhandlers i see, this is the same" and its like!! good for you, thats very nice, but like!!! you need need NEED to take a step back and realize that /being able to do that/ is a position of privilege, not the default setting to be a good person. i wont discount that some people do ignore fundraisers specifically because of racism because Of Course, but like. a) yelling at them isnt gonna make them stop, or more accurately yelling at /everyone else/ isnt gonna make those people stop, and b) trying to apply that as a blanket motivation for everyone just. realistically doesnt work. not donating is a nonaction, it is the literal default status, and while in specific situations you can use CONSISTENT absence of SPECIFIC actions to track a person's motivations SOMETIMES, broadly speaking that just. doesnt work.

there are 8 billion people on this planet. most of them will never know you exist. of the ones that do, most will not be able to help you. of the ones that can, most will not be on the broke bitches website passing the same communal $20 around. consider your audience and stop shitting on fellow poor people for having the gall to need to be careful with their money. and if you are genuinely only posting your fundraiser to tumblr, like. im sorry, but you need to anticipate not reaching your goal and prepare accordingly. theres a reason the last big scam scandal people talk about actually getting the money is like. all-or-nothing era, as a website none of us have the funds to make that kind of thing happen anymore or the security to risk it. a fundraiser not meeting its goal on here is not a personal sleight against whoever made it, its just how life goes sometimes. and it's unfair and it sucks and we should help however we can, but. sometimes you just arent able to help someone else, and continuing to feel responsible serves only to torture yourself. and blaming OTHERS serves only to move that guilt from yourself off onto another person. i imagine that has to be where a lot of the vitriol comes from, is people who cant afford to donate more getting pissed at people they see as having the funds but choosing not to share them, but again, sometimes you just are not able to achieve the goals you set out towards, through no fault of the specific parties involved.

people on tumblr choosing to buy groceries rather than potentially donate to a scam are not your enemy and are not the ones facilitating a genocide. we're all victims of the same horrific system, the question is just how that system manifests its influence on each of us. poverty kills just as thoroughly as a bomb. everyone is just doing their best to survive, and as much as we like to pretend that everyone should be a perfect selfless angel that puts others before themselves no matter what, humans are by default a selfish species, and it is a lot easier to say what youd do in theory than actually do it. and there's a reason you have to put on your own oxygen mask before helping the person beside you, youre of no help to anyone if youre too dead to do anything.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

behold: my second least favorite string of words in the entirety of Tears of the Kingdom.

(it's a little less transparent why this time so I'll explain my thoughts under the cut)

So why do I not like this?

In so many words: because if you remove it, the scene still works, but you lose the moral certainty of what is going on.

This single sentence does so much legwork for the entire game (the kind I dislike), to the point where I'm about 60% sure it's the product of a rework that realized how ambiguous Rauru's position was as the Good Rightful King and needed to nervously reassure the players that Ganondorf Is and Always Was the Invader, Actually.

(no matter that it leaves the gerudos in this awkward in-between state of both invaders and victims, while never dwelling in the specifics of their history and their own agency in the entire thing; brushed off as a sin they have to expiate through loyalty to the winners of that particular strife, but without explicitely blaming them either to avoid the implications of what that would have looked like)

If you remove it, not only do you lose a pretty clunky line that detracts from Ganondorf's intimidating presence (who is he even speaking to? who needs to hear this right now?) that honestly speaks for itself when it comes to his experience with warfare, but also you lose any tension and any mystery regarding why he is attacking in the first place.

You also... kind of rob Ganondorf's motivations of their meaning. "Hyrule will bow down before me" leads to asking... why? What does he want? What does he see in those lands? And what little we get with Rauru and then Link during the final fight begs more questions; why do you prefer hardship to peace? Why do you value strength? What leads you to want to rule a land devoid of survivors, become a king without a kingdom? I don't think we ever get satisfactory answers. If you remove this sentence, on the other hand... Subtextually, it becomes pretty clear that his motivations is that he felt threatened by Rauru's power, which is ripe with subtext and questions about whether this is a legitimate reaction, whether his "no survivor" stance is due to a feeling of betrayal when his own people turned against him post the Demon King shenanigans... I'm not saying it would fix the entire game's writing, far from it, but it would already do *so much more*.

(genuinely, I think he could have stayed completely silent during the Molduga Assault, speaking only in the Show of Fealty before going completely nuts after Sonia's murder, and it would have worked MUCH better in terms of characterization but anyway anyway

EDIT: ALSO!!! that way he wouldn't speak hylian to fellow gerudos, which is weird inherently)

Without this line, the core of the tension between the gerudos and Hyrule comes front in his conversation with Rauru; it allows the cause of his hostility to be Rauru's invitations, that he would have taken as a threat, and would have still made him warlike and domineering without making him cartoonishly flat, because, once again, Rauru is not acting in a particularly more legitimate way when Zelda arrives in Ancient Hyrule; and it would have been... fair to point that out. And make for better characterization for Rauru, and Sonia, and Mineru, and everybody. But the priority was for Hyrule to be pictured as unquestionably holy; always legitimate, always truthful, always beautiful, always just.

Also, and this is more of a nitpick but: why would Ganondorf want Hyrule, specifically, to bow down before him also? Was he at war with the rest of the disparate tribes before, and just carried on his ambitions to the very very newly-founded kingdom as they allied under a new banner? (though it seems to be implies the lands were crawling under monsters in a generic sense, and not Ganondorf's attacks in particular) Why would he even consider Hyrule a legitimate entity worth taking over then, if it is so new, born from the will of a powerful rival, founded by what is basically a stranger to these lands? Why would he covet something so young instead of destroying it and just calling the lands Gerudo Lands II or Grooseland or something?

I don't think any of that was even accounted for, because, beyond everything else: to me, this sentence is so clearly and painfully crammed in here to shield Hyrule from any potential blame and immediately characterize Ganondorf as Bad without having to remove any of the causes that could lead one to side-eye Rauru's little pet project as equally questionable.

Beyond the clumsiness, it is cowardly --and, I think, a little damning.

[best-enemies]

I've reached season 5 on my CSI rewatch and I'm a few episodes past "Swap Meet", where a woman is murdered after attending a swing party with other couples from the neighbourhood. Near the end of the episode there's a moment that made me jump from my seat:

(Grissom walks up to Sara and takes the seat next to her. He's holding two cups. He hands her a cup of tea.)

[INT. POLICE DEPARTMENT - BRASS' OFFICE]

Erin Brady: Everybody fantasizes about other people. (She glances at Grissom.)

Even you, Mr. Grissom. A neighbor, a friend ... girl at the office.

[INT. POLICE DEPARTMENT - HALLWAY]

(The door opens. Paul Brady walks out of the hallway. Erin Brady walks out into the hallway. Sara is sitting in the hallway chair watching them. She watches as they meet and kiss.)

(Grissom walks up to Sara and takes the seat next to her. He's holding two culps. He hands her a cup of tea.)

LIKE!!!!!!!

Right after Erin ends her sentence with 'girl at the office', the first time Sara and Grissom meet again, he brings her tea. This might be an innocent interaction but to me it seemed like a nod to this relationship they have where both are into each other, know about the other's feelings, but can't/won't do anything about it (although Sara has kind of given Grissom an ultimatum). I don't know if it was intentional - I'm guessing it is, because I picked it up immediately. I might or might not have squealed in delight.

[wizardofarles]

Survivor (Victim)

Did I survive? I breathe, I think,

but am I alive?

I did not overcome—I failed,

gave in, gave up.

I never fought, and never won.

I slayed no demons—I couldn’t

face them. I left

the door wide open, let them in, let them

change me, erase

me,

bury me cold,

six feet under their monstrous weight,

I laid down and was grateful

for the rest and how they allowed me to

hide. I closed my eyes,

but my mouth like a wound remains

open, waiting

for the right moment—for the right

words—to scream, waiting

for caring hands

to claw through the earth and tear my body

free—

waiting always, always choking

on the dirt that fills my lungs,

as countless bright full summers

pass above. Is this breathing?

Is this living? I fear I’m just a ghost,

a whisper

of what could have been, what once was

—tethered to this place

by a thin thread—

You have not found my corpse.

[victimized-martyr]

As awful as Cartman is, his true desires are simple. He just wants attention and praise— and it’s not only important to Cartman that he gets that praise, but also by whom it’s being said. (there’s a reason Jimbo is one of the people to say good job)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

omgg lol [guy who won't stop going "more like scapeGOATED" voice] now hold! on!! lmao [same guy just saw encanto voice] Hold on!!!

[tecchan]

Mitsugi squatting everywhere is the only highlight of this damn game

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2023. THAT WE MAY LIVE and NO EDGES from Two Lines Press.

NO EDGES came in my Migrations subscription box earlier this year, and I finally got around to reading it this week! It's a collection of Swahili fiction translated to English. I love little multi-author anthologies because it's the perfect amount of taste testing without committing. My favorites were A Neighbor's Pot by Lusajo Mwaikenda Israel and the excerpt from Nakuruto by Clara Momanyi.

Up next is THAT WE MAY LIVE, which is speculative Chinese fiction in translation! The whole series of books looks really cool, so I'll probably be adding all of these to my library piecemeal.

[loverboybrightsideghost]

martin when he's lonely. reblog

[adore-gregor]

ugh

[its-ahnist-wurk]

This review of The Outsiders musical from the NY Times is so funny to me, like did the actors/writers/whoever make Johnny and Ponyboy so gay this reviewer thought they should get hatecrimed??

[biromanticwritergal]

From my current journal. March 2023.

[chalk-homunculus]

I've been once again maining Klee throughout this Veluriyam Mirage questline a nd while exploring the mirage, both because I did get her skin, but also because it cheers me up so much to see her having fun.