#special snowflakes

[nancylou444]

December 7, 2014

link goes to this ask.

Anons with their "I'm following you" and "I'm a wincest shipper" bullshit. Nobody has believed it yet.

[mckitterick]

people who have suffered oppression all their lives would be much more likely to develop empathy than a billionaire raised with the creepy idea that they're so special that an omniscient, omnipotent being would specifically choose them to rule over many other, more worthy human beings

[trexalicious]

[hooned]

i need to live inside his brain

[leezuhh]

did an insane double take during the new hbomberguy video not only because he called out internet historian for some crazy plagiarism, but also because he had a separate dislike of the same guy for the *exact same thing* that put me off his channel for ages (his dashcon video)

[wishesofeternity]

The thing about HotD is that it while it absolutely minimizes the agency and ambition of both Rhaenyra and Alicent, this is specifically used to glorify Rhaenyra and frame her as righteous while condemning Alicent and framing her lacking. That's the key difference in both their textual portrayals that has directly led to 90% of the fandom hailing Rhaenyra as the second coming of Christ while spewing the most hateful vitriol at Alicent just for existing. But y'all are not prepared for that conversation.

[arcenciel-par-une-larme]

High quality Lapsang Souchong in the tags.

this generation's endless fixation on labeling everything and everyone is so exhausting especially when it comes to fictional characters

[leal-hound]

here's ani being a mom with her empyrean child who's definitely favored by the barren moon. anthe means well but she has too much power in that little body of hers, and is quick to anger - luckily her mother's embrace tends to smother those flames easily, but the sight of it is likely hard for a certain demigod nearby

[erose-this-name]

humans are not the default race

In every scifi and fantasy setting with """races""", humans are the default.

If you're lucky, we're the short-lived, fast-reproducing pests that are all white Europeans for some mysterious reason, and also have disproportionate rates of being raised as undead because we can't be bothered to make zombie dwarf minis or animate a vampire gnome that has to jump up to bite a tall person's neck.

(We've got BOTH human AND elf skeleton warriors! Oh, hey, I just changed the scale, now it's a hobbit skeleton OR a giant skeleton! Such skeleton diversity! No, Khajiits can't be bone boys, a skeleton with a tail and a cat skull is just TOO SPOOKY)

I feel like a lot of people don't realize that we (Homo sapiens) have the longest running endurance of any land animal. Being able to run a marathon is not normal.

(It's because we evolved the very unusual hunting strategy of Slowly Chasing Gazelles While Throwing Sticks At Them Until The Gazelle Collapses From Exhaustion Then Casually Walking Up And Bashing Their Head In With A Rock™).

Even Neanderthals probably couldn't match our tenacity (they were considerably stronger and tougher though, but by no means dumber judging from the size of their brain cavities{which was bigger than ours actually})

(the evolutionary Neanderthal hunting strategy was probably something like Jumping Out And Stabbing A Wooly Rhinoceros With A Pointed Stick, Then Getting Punted 12 Feet Into a Tree But Getting Right Back Up And Doing It Again Until It Dies Because You Have Superhuman Bone And Muscle Density. And If You Do Break One Of Your Unbreakable Bones Your Homies Will Take Care Of You Until It Heals™

[Neanderthal skeletons are found with healed fractures surprisingly often despite said bones being much stronger and denser than ours, they just kept evolving denser bones until they couldn't even swim without sinking like a rock, but they still got broken all the time])

So given that we, Homo sapiens, actually literally used to be the "species that specializes in sheer endurance, determination, and unbreakable fucking will", I want more fantasy and scifi settings where we are that way! I think the only setting where that's even remotely the case is Undertale. We're not just the "default" intelligent species!

The only reason we're good at everything is because we can make complex tools and can learn and aren't bound by instinct. Which, by definition, all fantasy races would also be able to do. Otherwise, they'd just be considered animals. Like trolls or Redditers.

The "default" species should just be really good at making tools and quickly adapting, but kinda suck in every other category. So I guess gnomes or goblins are the default d&d race.

And Humans are certainly not the Tolkien "that one race that lives short lives and reproduces faster than everyone else and is good at farming" because:

A) we actually do already live relatively long lives for mammals of our size and also GIVING BIRTH CAN KILL US, AND IF OUR PARENTS DON'T RAISE US JUST RIGHT THAT CAN ALSO KILL US, WE ARE SPECIFICALLY VERY BAD AT REPRODUCING

B) we are in no way adapted to farming, and most of our modern health and societal issues stem from the fact that we aren't meant to farm or be civilized, but do it anyways.

We only farm because it helped us survive the ecological collapse at the end of the ice age, now we're in too deep to go back.

When the ice age ended (quite abruptly) the ecosystem couldn't provide for hunters and gathers anymore, a bunch of things were getting heat stroke, sea levels rose, hibernation and bloom cycles and reptile gender ratios were out of wack, predators died out because herbivores died out because plants weren't doing well. Decomposers like vultures and worms had a field day (Until they didn't [RIP condor population]). It would take a while for a new ecological equilibrium to emerge and for evolution to fix things.

But farming doesn't need any healthy ecosystems except for the soil and pollinators, mostly, so that still works. And farming makes more food meaning you can have more people. So now there's more people.

But that also means you can't ever go back to foraging without all those extra people dying of starvation. So, anarcho-primitivism would technically be the most deadly ideology if implemented, and therefore is not based, unfortunately. Here's hoping for an apocalypse to do that for us! (I would not survive it)

Fun Fact: those isolated tribal societies like the Sentinelese that still do hunting and gathering only spend 15-20 hours a week doing that and another 20 doing camp chores, and the rest of their time forming meaningful relationships and not being depressed.

Notice how most of what they do as "work" (hunting, fighting, hiking, berry/mushroom/etc picking, cooking, camping, arts and crafts, oral history/story telling) are things that we need to do during our limited free time as "hobbies" just so that our "work" doesn't drive us insane. Thus leaving less time for relationships, etc.

If we were actually good at farming or industry or civilization, then things like math and repetitive manual labor wouldn't be work. They'd be the most fun activities.

Sure, these foragers die young, but so did medieval peasant farmers who were even less healthy since they had much less diverse diets (a lot of carbs) and got plague more often thanks to cities and their close proximity to livestock. Our modern sedentary lifestyle is bad too.

Hobbits are suited to farming (also Entwives I guess). Hobbits are quite good at it, at the cost of not being as good at much else (besides going unnoticed and throwing for some reason), they inherently enjoy farming life quite a bit and most* aren't haunted by the sense they should be anything else, like we are. *(The Took family got that Call To Adventure 'tism)

We only think that we're not special or can't be anything other than what we currently are because we no longer have anything else to compare ourselves to. The Neanderthals and Denisovans died out tens of thousands of years ago and the fucking aliens are somewhere, presumably

We are special, only we survived.

But at the cost of becoming the species equivalent of an abandoned child raised by wolves. We fantasize about these things because we all know that we shouldn't be alone. But our perceptions of ourselves are twisted by our trauma and lack of socialization.

Personally, the realization that having lost our family was probably our fault makes that hurt so much worse.

[genevawrenn]

If you haven't gone to watch Maepletea's new animatic, Phil commissioned a three part animatic about his characters, and the first part of it dropped today;

[nancylou444]

December 6, 2014

Anons and their entitlement, nothing has changed.

[spicynectarines]

Mikkian twins based on jellyfish

[flinxypie]

Cat: *walks upstairs by himself*

Me: ok bye

Cat: *is alone upstairs, all by himself* 😿 *most heartbreaking soggy cry like he’s been abandoned for weeks *

Me: …. You’re literally the one who left though???

Cat: *returns* 🐱 mrrp?

He’s a special kind of cat

[moonmoonthecrabking]

i often look at a ship and go: this seems toxic. they'd be cute together. now KISS.

[desertduo-but-everywhere]

[acidd-rock]

subway spawnday follow up crystalhammer post. heh