#so they need to pipe down

[jag-rat]

Let's analyse the drow!

Quick history on the drow: The drow have been historically characterised as ‘evil’, especially in earlier editions their alignment was always on the evil spectrum. Even Drizzt Do’urden for example was a story that essentially circles around one ‘good’ drow who managed to rise above the rest of his kin and become ‘one of the good ones’. I think we also need to acknowledge that in the earlier editions drow definitely had racist implications around them intentionally or not. With the drow initially being described as ‘completely opal black aside from their white hair’ and essentially just existed as the ‘evil’ elf counterparts to their perfect blonde cousins. Now in recent years wizards of the coast have started to rectify this. As of right now Drow have been described as being more purplish grey in colour and are steering towards being implied not to be 'completely evil'. There's no doubt about it that the drow have had a rocky history and being overtly over-sexualisalised by the early writers definitely didn't help much either. But I still think there's something very interesting wedged into this unique race of elves. 

Lolth's role: Their main goddess is of course Lolth who even in modern renditions is always depicted as a chaotic evil spider demon. You could argue she’s currently the main reason why the surface folk still don’t like these dark elves. Even in Baldur's gate three which came out last year the writers make a point of emphasising that the ‘good drow’ are the ones choosing to rebel against this goddess. Now obviously this ‘good’ and ‘evil’ thing has always been a core part of DND, which makes sense given it was inspired by Tolkien who consistently made a point about there being two sides, good and evil. And it's still a very common theme in modern fantasy but I think when we look at Lolth and her connection to the drow from a more contextual standpoint this insistence of ‘evil’ isn’t nearly as interesting as exploring the greyer implications of how this Goddess came to be. Being viewed as ‘evil’ in the dnd universe is natural as Lolth is written as a chaotic evil being, encouraging violence, the sacrifice of first born sons, and general betrayal among your fellow drow isn’t very appealing. It's enough for anyone to wonder why the drow worship her in the first place if they aren’t evil. However I think it's also important to remember in real life when we create gods they almost always reflect our world, the good and the bad. Let's take Zeus for example, he was a pretty shitty guy, cheating on his wife, kidnapping women and punishing people for petty reasons. But he was still worshipped, he just reflected power and kinghood. And kings aren't perfect or benevolent, they can abuse their power and take what they want. People are complex and imperfect and so are their Gods. So a similar sort of argument could be made for Lolth. 

How the environment shapes a culture: The underdark is almost always described as a harsh environment, with creatures like hook horrors casually wandering around, mushrooms that explode when touched and let's be honest probably not a lot of food in a place with little sunlight or stability. Earthquakes happen often here killing many and flattening villages. The underdark is without a doubt an unpredictable chaotic and cruel hellscape where death is a guarantee and often occurs for little to no reason. It's not hard to imagine how competition could become everything here. That means that every creature living in the underdark, even every other drow clan is just another competitor for those sparse food and resources in an already barren and harsh climate. In an environment so unforgiving and competitive you can imagine how a Goddess such as Lolth would be worshipped. Because Lolth, like most Gods, reflects the environment her worshippers live in, she is characterised as being as cruel, violent and chaotic as the underdark is. And the teachings of violence, sacrifice and betrayal that she encourages of her followers might not actually be such a bad thing but rather the key to the drows continued long term survival in such an impossible climate. Traditions and culture almost always stem from a purpose, in this case how you survive. The cutthroat nature of drow culture mirrors the underdark in such a way that it ensures that the strongest survive (although it's important to note when I say ‘strongest’ I don't mean it in a literal sense but rather those who possess the qualities best suited for survival in that environment.) The strict hierarchical structure also ensures this, with female drow being favoured as they are naturally larger, stronger and more robust than their male counterparts. Which in itself is most likely because larger stronger women generally lead to a higher rate of survival in offspring especially in harsher conditions where a single misstep can be certain death. This physical and social difference lends itself to the spider metaphor of their goddess both literally and figuratively where spiders eat their males. But as unfair as this rigid hierarchy based on sex seems, it can be argued like many cultural phenomena to be a curated survival method in itself. After all you need fewer males than females to maintain a stable population which is an important detail when living somewhere with a natural lack of food. Even sacrificing your first newborn son as gruesome of a tradition as it is, in a way makes sense. It selectively ensures that the male population is lower meaning less overall resource demand in an already scarce environment will be lower while still being able to maintain some semblance of genetic diversity.

Solutions to these dilemmas?: Now of course it goes without saying all these things are horrible, sex selection, strict hierarchies and encouraged violence to decrease competition are all bad. However in an extreme dystopian sounding scenario such as this one it does at the very least make sense. And I think what we can gather from this is that despite all the terrible things, at least terrible to us living in the world we are, drow aren’t really evil. Not even their society despite its depiction is ‘evil’. Calling them evil is kind of like if lions from a zoo who get fed everyday started calling wild lions evil for eating zebras. We may not like it of course but it's not fair to call it evil, it’s survival. In the same way Lolth isn’t even an ‘evil’ Goddess, she's just a cruel and unfair one, made to reflect the natural violence of the underdark and the lived experiences of those worshipping her. When debating the drows morality it's just about context. It brings some questions to mind. Like if the ‘good drow’ drow who are against Lolth did manage to rebel and forcefully shift the culture of the drow to be more like the surface elves for example what would really happen? Would the drow stop all their violent habits and competitiveness to live happily ever after in a more equal world? Or when all of this ‘evil’ behaviour was ‘corrected’ would it lead to a ripple effect causing famine and death anyway? Who are the surface dwellers to determine what’s wrong and right when they’ve never had to survive in such an environment? Perhaps instead the culture of the drow would just naturally change over time anyways if the need for those more violent and extreme traditions subsided because there were more ways of accessing resources and building a stabler environment. Either way I don’t know the future of drow society, but what I do know is that it’s far more complex and grey than we give it credit for.

[dykedvonte]

See like the only reason I think the others seriously believed Curly may have crashed the ship is cause he basically had a 30 Rock "I lie to myself" momentary breakdown in front of them after one too many mocktails and like completely forgot about it.

[msue0027]

i watched dp&w only last week, and yet my main ship for the last... 3 months? has been cherik

[unnonexistence]

jesus christ am i ever having a stressful week

[susansontag]

the fact I guessed correctly that my friend/ex-flatmate’s newest flatmate was a lesbian when I clocked her as such at my friend’s birthday get together lol. some women really do just move around in a gay way, she looked exactly like my friend the way she strode about… something about the confidence and effortlessness

[raviolitin]

I feel like most people who hate Snow and David just…don’t understand them as characters. Like at all. Saw a post saying they hate the poor?? I hate the monarchy as much as the next person but Snow and David consistently show their empathy towards the lower class.

- They picked Edmund up out of the rubble and gave him a steady job to rescue him out of the inevitable poverty he would face if he stayed in the burned-down village, despite that fact that they probably didn’t actually need a wine steward. They basically pulled a job out of thin air for him because no way their castle is understaffed.

- David tells King George that he doesn’t want an extravagant crown because he could feed the entire kingdom the money it’s worth. He made the entire deal with George because it would rescue his mother out of poverty (remember that initially, the threat of killing her wasn’t there, he literally did it because he wanted her to no longer suffer.)

- Snow consistently interacts with and helps the peasants in her kingdom, even when most ex-princesses would probably have a very different attitude towards them. Remember that entire episode where Regina was disguised as a poor girl and Snow nursed her back to health when she knew nothing about her? Regina wouldn’t have done that if the roles were reversed. Snow lives amongst the lower classes, and those people are the ones always helping her. She does not hate them.

- In s6 when Snow gave David all the money she’d saved up so that he could save his farm. She hadn’t even seen his face, and met him that very same day. Yet, she still felt that he deserved the money more than her. That’s remarkable for someone who grew up how Snow did.

- Snow and David didn’t make any classist comments towards the merry men. Y’know who did? *cough* Regina *cough*

These are only the example I can think of off the top of my head. Snow and David are characterised as kind and fair leaders, who want for the peace and happiness of everyone in their kingdom. Don’t sit there and say things that simply aren’t true so you can justify hating on two of the best people in the show. The only people who work hard to fix their mistakes.

They could never make me hate you Snow and David.

[egg-emperor]

puritan bullshit on my dash oh no >:(

[yourworldiseternallycomplete]

literally fuck!!!

[buckandeddiesverison]

Why can’t he love me lol ughhh

[bogos-bint3d]

sjsjdj i was thinking about this earlier, what do you think undyne’s sleep schedule is like/what type of a sleeper she is?

She definitely wakes up at like 5am to do like training and all that, but she's also just so chaotic so like she never really has a set bed time or whatever 'cause she's mostly doing whatever madness she can think of without really considering if she keeps at whatever she's doing she won't go to sleep until like midnight. She acts like she's absolutely fine with that much amount of sleep because she's trained for stuff like that or whatever, but like, it's very clearly very unhealthy. She does not care

I'm kinda torn, because I can't choose weather she'd: A) be a really heavy sleeper who'd sleep through pretty much anything, or B) extremely alert in her sleep who wakes up from the sound of a slight gust of wind in case there's danger. I think B sounds more like her, whereas A would probably be more likely to be played off as a joke or something

[sneeplerbeepler]

me personally if i was minecraft steve i'd be piping down villager/witch/illager baddies all day

[but-how-do-you-drive]

job interview today for a full-time library position at my alma mater! feeling nervous but excited

[svtskneecaps]

personally i think the best way to get everyone out of the way during the squad vacation to brazil is for forever to announce the completion of his prison, ""randomly"" draw the names of the members who are leaving (or they volunteer), and then say "okay cool test it out for me and let me know how it goes!!" and they get tp'd into prison and summarily kicked from the server.

[fayeandknight]

Impromptu kitten rescue was a success!

My neighbor called me to say there was a person from a rescue hunting for kittens and ask if they could search on my property. Of course my answer was yes and offered to help in any way I could.

We did end up finding the kittens, there were three of them. They seemed pretty lethargic to me so I was very happy to hear they'd be reunited with mom until they are ready for adoption. Gave them my number and told them to feel free to reach out to me with any future rescue needs as I'm more than happy to help. Also asked for updates on the kittens as they come up.

Kittens were one smokey grey, one mostly grey with some tortoise, and one black.

I have no business adding a kitten to my life right now. But part of me wanted to offer to take the black one when they're ready for a home.

My first personal cat was a tuxedo that I loved more than words could convey. And I have an especially soft spot for black cats as it is. But I responsibly held my tongue.

Anyway I am so happy we found the kittens because Mom was trapped a few days ago and they've been looking for them since.

[neeko-system]

SIGNALIS SPOILERS AND WHATNOT~~

finished my second playthrough of signalis, was going for the artifact ending. then loaded my save and got the memory ending. such a good game aaaa

the memory ending made me cry, it was really heartwrenching when ariane said sorry i dont remember, i just crumpled. watching elster be so exhausted was a lot.

not really sure if i understand the artifact ending. i feel like either its really vague (on top of all the other vagueness) or if im missing something. it kind of feels like a burial of arianes memory? like elster dies and we see ariane thikning about her and elster dancing in the wrecked ship? i’m not sure. maybe someone could give me their interpretation of it?

i also found out that theres a difficulty setting and really wished i had set it to survival before my second playthrough. woulda been nice!!! I do have one more ending so i might play the game again but might also just watch it on youtube and play the game again some other time(gotta let it ruminate so i can go back in with different eyes), I wanna get all the achievements anyways.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

all in all i fucking love this game a lot. very rarely do i replay a game so soon after playing it for the first time. its really tragic i’ll never get to experience this game for the first time again, but, so it goes. its such a beautiful game i will be thinking about it for a longgggggggggggg time. ive been wanting to talk about it so badly for so long but none of my friends have played it yet kyaaa!!! >_<

its crazy to me that the game exists the way it does. the style, the mechanics, the story, the music, everything about it oozes so much passion and care and thought. very few games have made me want to stare at every part of it to figure out how they made it look the way it did (THE GAME IS SO STYLISTICALLY RICH LIKE HOIW DID THEY DO ALL THAT) and the game mechanics are so nice to my brain, everything is so tactile and clicky and inventory management and ammo management and horror stratgey and the flesh and rust and death and love and lesbians and robots and anime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

amazing game thank you rose engine, i hope they make more stuff because i really want to see it

edit:(thinking about the first time i played compared to the second. i was considerably less scared since i had a clue of waht was going on but the fear that i felt playing the first time was special to me. i really like games with stories about ‘time loops’ because the replay-ability is baked in in a cool way. especially with how the game throws information at you, viewing things again having experienced perspective shifts from information is really cool. seeing scenes again re-contextualized makes my brain go ^-^(hots quest ding sound) but going in completely blind and being afraid of everything (i especially remember being scared of the dream beach, i had literally no clue what to expect and it was nice) it all had a different flavor than the second time which is cool because i feel like i experience that kind of emotion change *with* elster. (girlie needs a FUCKING cuddle nap)

the way the game balances reality and the surreal i think is super neat. i love surrealist dream stuff a lot and i think that a video game is a super good medium for that kind of experiential stuff that really inspires me to wanna make video games. especially because then theres also this super nerdy sci fi stuff going on about robots and space regimes and magical tech(my favorite) and planetary systems and military systems and all that good shit. i similarly wanna get nerdy about stuff like military logistics while also telling a story about gay robots and girls that keep missing each other just barely in the space time continuum. i love that the game tells you a lot but also is vague and also says fuck you (affectionate) stop looking for answers and just feel it. it explains just the right amount to not feel esoteric while keeping enough vague to leave a lot up to interpretation/figure it out by playing it again/thinking about it. it plays with themes and reality and reoccuring symbolism and all that good shit that makes stories addicting to think about.) ((also one of the endings requiring beating the game once among other things that keep between playthroughs, yummyyy. games that know they are games/stories/worlds that are aware of themselves., thats good shit right there))

[versacethotty]

izzy figuring out that jared is cirie's son: