#the sheer fucking hubris

[thequeenofcringe22]

Girl help I am in the trenches defending Technoblade in r/place

[saltpixiefibercraft]

Okay, when i mentioned in a recent post that you should keep notes on your weaving I said I would share some of my notebook pages because, and I cannot stress this enough,,,, notes about your projects is So So Important in weaving. At least for me, if I want to recreate a certain fabric and I haven't done the due diligence in notes, it has ALWAYS come back to bite me. "But I'll remember later-" no you will not that is the devils voice whispering sonorous lies into your ear. Take. Notes.

Take these really cool red/white/grey/black dishtowels. They came out So Freaking Excellent. I was on the tail end of not having written down Anything for a previous project and being mad about it + i was in a hyperfocus mood, so so many notes got taken.

These purple/green dishtowels were pretty cool, I did end up changing the plan halfway through, as you can see pffttt

And here's a few more examples of some projects and their notes, plus a page of me workshopping possible warp combos. Having written down The Striped Dishtowel Template has literally saved my ass so many times, I make so many of these darned things for craft shows and they SELL OUT.

I'm excited to start my 2024 Weaving Notebook!

[hellboundhimbo]

i have this inside joke with a friend of mine where hiei keeps making bets that he is most certain he will win, but inevitably loses them after a long period of time.

funniest part about it is like, he doesn’t have any money, and he doesn’t recognize the monetary value of human money bc “foolish human games,” but he’s so confident he will win that he just makes a complete ass of himself every time. so he’s just accumulating debt through sheer hubris until he decides to terrorize his local 7/11 by applying for a job to pay off his owing. or just. robs someone, probably.

anyway have this meme i made last night

[sodiumlamp]

Lower Decks

I'm not gonna liveblog Lower Decks because I only liveblogged Picard to maintain my sanity as I endured it. It was more of a defense mechanism than a plan. The only reason I bring up LD is because I wanted to end the Picard thing on a more positive note. Lower Decks is a much better show, and I dare say watching Picard first made me enjoy the experience even more.

It's a comedic take on Star Trek, and the show could be forgiven for playing fast and loose with the premise, but it doesn't. Lower Decks feels like a very authentic Star Trek expereince, but it just has a comedic flavor to it.

It also does a whole lot of callbacks to old Star Trek lore. The difference is that LD isn't depending on the viewer to get all the callbacks. If you don't notice or recognize Spock Two's skeleton hanging in that display room on the collector's ship, it doesn't matter, because the plot doesn't hinge on it. LD also doesn't pull the Picard trick of making callbacks as an end unto itself, like Adam Soong holding a folder entitled "PROJECT KHAN" and nothing happens. Lower Decks has some running subplots, but it's very clear to its audience about which moments are clues and which moments are fun easter eggs.

Most critically, Lower Decks maintains the optimism of the classic 20th Century Star Trek shows. You watch an episode, and things usually work out by the end of it. More importantly, when people lose faith in the world they live in, there's some moment where that faith is restored. Starfleet stands for something and it's not just empty slogans or cynical public relations. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel and the characters generally find it. Except for Peanut Hamper. Fuck you, Peanut Hamper.

The fundamental conflict in the show is that these are all good people who strive to be better, to do better, and they tend to get in each other's way as they try to improve. Mariner defies her superiors because they doesn't always know best, but sometimes her superiors do know best. Boimler (and other characters) crave promotion and recognition, but he sometimes has to take a step back and consider why he wants those things. There's an episode where he joins a group of ambitious ensigns and they practice making inspiring leadership speeches, but he eventually realizes that it's a skill he can't use in the here and now. "We have to inspire the crew!" "We are the crew!"

The show demonstrates just how badly Picard fumbled the ball with its "everything sucks now" philosophy. In theory, you can do a utopia-gone-wrong story with Star Trek, but there needs to be a clear understanding of what went wrong and how it gets fixed. You can't just make a Star Trek story that flat out repudiates the optimistic future. You can just have the characters say "Whoops, that never worked!" That'd be like Batman deciding that crime is actually pretty cool. Shows like Picard try to convince the audience that the only way to tell a story is to break everything and make it miserable. Lower Decks proves that's a lie told by lazy showrunners who only know how to pull one lever.

Part of the problem, I think, is that these studios keep trying to do big events, relying on spectacle over storytelling. That's why Picard Season 2 had to climax with Picard's mother hanging herself. It has to be this big provocative moment, regardless of whether it makes sense or fits the characters. Picard has prophetic dreams of Data, the exploding girl looks just like the one from the old painting, it was the Borg the whole time, and by golly there sure are a lot of decapitations in this show.

By contrast, one of the most powerful moments on Lower Decks is when Captain Freeman finally gets fed up with Mariner and has her transferred to Starbase 80. It's not a big, apocalyptic moment that will Change The Marvel Universe Forever™, but it's effective, because the show took the time to establish that Starbase 80 is the worst assignment in Starfleet, and it's the one punishment Mariner takes seriously, and Freeman must be really upset if she's decided to take it that far. And then later, she regrets her decision, and when things work out in the end, their reconciliation is that much more satisfying. It just works. Not everything has to be a swordfight in a Borg Cube, for crying out loud.

I haven't watched Season 4 yet, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the new Vulcan character, T'Lyn on the show. Now we have two blueshirts in the cast. And they're not doctors or nurses! Nothing against doctors or nurses, but there's a severe lack of science division characters in Star Trek, and that screenshot of two of them doing something involving hydrogen samples is more exciting than a hundred Jack Crushers. I hope they do a whole episode about hydrogen samples. That would kick ass.

[aq2003]

rewatching ben whishaw's richard ii and yea i think the biggest difference between his and the rsc version is that he plays richard's flippancy/disregard for other people's lives completely straight and in a kind of sinister way while david plays it for humor

[savageboar]

...so anyway besides the mental illness im rediscovering my love of war of the worlds.

[ardentpoop]

well,

[sun-ni-day]

[chicago-geniza]

We're supposed to be using MyFitnessPal to log our intake etc. but also any "anomalies" including vomiting, diarrhea, what have you, and I don't think experimental protocols were designed for "post-ED dual-wielding gastroparesis/IBD-NOS patient who would take 'dignity of risk' as a family motto if they had a crest & coat of arms, but would settle for 'NOTHING CAN DO ANYTHING TO ME'"

Anyway we were meant to enter our values from the previous day and I was like "well I had two plain Shake Shack burgers on gluten-free buns with extra pickles and then I vomited 700 mL of bile and blood. Is there a tab for that" and the dietician looked like she'd been shot

[brotherfrog]

sobriety is cool actually

[antixabound]

much like some jack ass in a cautionary tale from fcukin like five hundred years ago or some shit. my hubris is my downfall, I should have just gone the fuck back to bed but I didn’t and now I pay the price. in my next life I will try not to be a dumbfuck but I doubt I will succeed on that front

[patricia-taxxon]

I have a feeling you won't get this but in fighting game terminology, someone trying to accuse you of weird outlandish bullshit then being calmly but firmly disproven is one of the IRL equivalents of whiffing DP at full health then just being fucking destroyed for sheer hubris. Rock on sis.

Jokes aside, your sheer honesty about yourself is pretty inspiring. I mentioned being plural to a friend that I know locally and they didn't mind at all. Even that was a pretty sheepish admittance even though my group would probably get the idea that I was, since I kept bragging about how one of my Melty Blood mains was plural, and not in a poor representation of it either. Good to see other people break out of their shells with full stride instead and I think I might mention it to the rest of my community as well.

i hate that the only solution to protect myself was to just become unassailable and aggressively cultivate an audience that doesn't care about all the messiest things about me, it is exhausting, i guarantee if I was cis I would have maintained a clean image for my whole career. i'd be out here nick robinsoning it, making brainless clean content for all ages, never responding and never clarifying until ppl just forget whatever they heard, credible or not. it's not fun being transfemme now that the donky kong memes are stale.

[sodiumlamp]

Picard

Maybe they should have named it "Star Trek: Suckhard". Get it? Get it? Because it sucks.

All right, this is season three finale, and the very last episode. So the Borg Queen (not the Jurati one, the original) has this whole bullshit plan that depends on assimilating Jack Crusher and using him to complete the assimilation of a bunch of twenty-something Starfleet officers assembled over Earth. The only ones who can stop her are Seven and Raffi on board the Titan, and the TNG gang aboard the reconstructed Enterprise-D. All Titan can do is distract the Borged-up fleet from attacking Earth. This buys time for Enterprise to track the Borg Queen to what is apparently the last functioning Borg Cube, hidden in the Jovian atmosphere.

As far as I can tell, stopping the Borg Queen's plan is actually pretty simple. There's a "beacon" they have to blow up, and that will destroy the whole cube in the process. Once they're out of the picture, the affected Starfleet crews will return to normal. The only problem is getting Jack Crusher out of the cube alive. Picard can't get through to him, so he connects himself to the Borg collective, something he vowed would never happen again. He can't convince Jack to leave, though, so he offers to stay with him to the end, and that seems to get Jack thinking straight. He yanks out all the cables and they leave together.

And this is why the Borg suck, because the writers keep trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, we're led to believe that Picard's assimilation was so thorough that there were still traces of it left behind that remained undetected. Those traces were passed on to Jack, which turned him into some sort of super-powered jerk, able to defeat four Changelings at once, and mind control people with his creepy red eyes. And yet, the moment he chooses to resist, all he has to do is pull out a few cables and he's free. Which is it?

In theory, the Borg Queen was all that was left of the Borg, unless you count xB's like Seven and Jack, or the Jurati Collective from Season 2. This whole caper involving Jack Crusher is presented like the last, desperate gasp of the Borg after they were nearly eradicated by Janeway at the end of Voyager. I would like to think that this means CBS/Paramount/whoever will use this as a clean break and future projects will be required to stop using the damn Borg so much. But Q appears in the post-credits scene, so if he's not dead then there's no reason to believe they won't bring the Borg back whenever it pleases them.

Seven gets promoted to Captain of the Titan, which is then rechristened Enterprise-G. Jack Crusher is assigned to serve as some sort of special counselor. Like, not a psychologist like Troi, but I think like an advisor in general? It seems appropriate, but I don't know what it means. The La Forge sisters are there, and I guess anyone else from the Titan who didn't get killed this season.

Her first officer is Raffi, who is now celebrated as a hero, thanks to Worf leaking information about her role in foiling the conspiracy. That's nice and all, and it's objectively good that Raffi's family is speaking to her again and everything. But it kind of bugs me that Raffi literally has to save the universe just to get that kind of approval. I don't like the message that sends, where the only way to get people to like you is to make some big achievement happen to distract from your flaws.

Anyway, the idea of an Enterprise-G kind of bothered me, but it's been about 30 years between D and G, so that's a fair amount of time for E and F to have their runs. And F was reportedly scheduled for decommission around the time of its first-and-only appearance, so it's basically in the same status as the Enterprises B and C.

Much of the episode is just a reinforcement of the problem introduced in the previous episode. There's a part at the beginning where Picard's group is basically just describing the situation in different soundbytes, as if they're taking turns reading lines that will be used in a trailer, or a "previously on..." segment for an 11th episode that doesn't exist. Despite its antiquated systems and lack of a proper crew compliment, the Enterprise-D never seems to be in any real peril. So everything just sort of hinges on Jack choosing to break free of the Borg, and I guess the idea was that he needed his dad to tell him how much he loves him for that to happen? I don't know.

There's a lot of ending sequences of the gang celebrating their win. They all hug on the Enterprise bridge, Worf falls asleep, Data gets counseling sessions from Troi, Beverly becomes an admiral and her son joins Starfleet. Finally we see them all drinking toasts in Guinan's bar, and Picard whips out a deck of cards and they play poker through the credits. It's supposed to tug at my sentimentality, but it doesn't.

I already watched these folks play cards like this 30 years ago. It was how the series finale ended.

I've already seen them defeat the Borg Queen.

I've already seen Data get emotions. I've already seen Picard wrestle with fatherhood. Remember that guy Daimon Bok turned into a fake son of Picard?

The whole thing just doesn't work for me. The idea is to bring back all these characters and continue their story, but they can't come up with new ideas for the story. It all boils down to repeating ideas we've seen before. I missed TNG when "All Good Things" ended, but at no point was I thinking "I need to see them play poker again." That was never the point.

I think this is where the hype for "Star Trek: Legacy" has come from. As far as I can tell, no such production actually exists, but people who worked on Picard have spoken positively about it in the abstract. Sure, do a show with Captain Seven on the Enterprise-G. No one's saying no, but I don't think anyone's actually making the show right now. Fans take that as a guarantee, though, so all the promotional stuff I see for it is just fanart. Ultimately, the fans are less concerned with seeing the familiar old faces and more interested in seeing new stories that build off the old ones. If Geordi or Tuvok shows up, great, but that's not the real meat of it.

But I don't think the Star Trek franchise is inclined to make a show like that. They want to do these big movies-disguised-as-TV-shows, or whatever this Picard thing has been. And they'll want to push all the big buttons and tell big sprawling tales, and the only way to pay for all of that spectacle, they think, is to rely on old, established IP like Q and the Borg.

I haven't given up hope on a good Star Trek show happening. I still need to watch Lower Decks and I think that'll be promising, but I once thought Picard would be adequately mediocre and it's thoroughly disappointed me at every turn. I can't un-recommend this show enough. Avoid Star Trek: Picard if at all possible.

[minotaurs-my-beloved]

Not the mermaid anon but I was thinking of a nun encountering an angel, who is not as virtuous as the scriptues say, and the angel convincing the nun that she is going to hell unless she has sex with him.

Jesus Wept.

(or the terrible pun of a title i originally used, The Second Cumming)

What a fun idea anon, it also gives me a reason to be dramatic, sacrilegious, make a terrible pun, and dump a little bit of bible lore thats been ingrained in me

TW: Sacrilege and noncon or dubcon (the demon is pretty coercive and lies about being an angel)

He'll whisper sweet lies into your ear to try and get you on board, "You are chosen to be Mary. Through you will the second coming of Christ occur as the scriptures foretold all the way back in Genesis. To crush the head of the serpent, don't you remember?"

You call him out on the fact that Jesus already did that in his first coming and he laughs it off, saying, "Oh Ye of little faith, you all have interpreted this wrong. He has yet to fully crush the head, that is why demons and sin still exist. Hence him needing to return a second time, to fully end it."

When you ask why God would make you commit an egregious sin such as sex and not perform a miracle like he did with the virgin Mary, he angrily strikes you down. "God would not want that? You would dare question God's plan? As a mere mortal who cannot even wrap your head around his sheer existence, you defy him? Such hubris, do you want to suffer eternal damnation?"

You quickly try to redeem yourself, the threat of hell absolutely terrifying you and simply say that you do not understand. He just tells you that you do not need to, it is not your place. You try to rationalize all of this, knowing your God would never wish to harm you, this must be the way. I mean, he's an angel, is it really even considered fornication?

So, you agree.

He quickly strips you, his eyes don't look like they used to, now predatory, losing some of the light they used to hold. You just stand there, unsure of what you're meant to do. You're a virgin of course, you had never even kissed someone, and never thought about sex lest you fall into lust. He realizes this and starts telling you what he wants. Ordering for you to get on your hands and knees before him.

He goes behind you and you feel something sliding up and down your pussy, you whimper in fear, not knowing how this will feel, but you push all that to the side because you want to serve your God. He is surprisingly gentle in the beginning, slowly pushing his cock into your cunt, asking if you're okay. But the second he's fully inside, all of that disappears as he drives his cock in deep over and over. He grabs you by the hair, making you look up, "Look at the crucifix, you're worshiping your savior as I speak. Recite the holy prayer for me, c'mon."

He sounds completely different, from a booming, holy voice he now sounds raspy and strange. You try to look back at him, but his grip on your hair tightens, forcing you to look ahead. You begin saying the prayer as he commanded you, but it's so hard to think when he's fucking you like this. With each stutter he slaps your ass and you whine, trying your best to remember the entire thing. It gets exponentially harder to do so when something starts pushing against the rim of your asshole.

Before you have time to ask what he's doing, he rams his cock fully inside your tight hole, making you scream. He's now fucking you with two cocks. Why does he have two cocks? (for the second cumming, ikik im so funny) You have completely given up the prayer at this point, and he seems to have too, instead focusing on fucking you.

"I'm going to cum. I'm going to fill and ruin your holes and you're going to fucking take it. Thank your God. Thank him for my cum."

[elvenforestwitch]

Thinking about the dragon age characters meeting the bg3 characters occupies a large part of my brain nowadays

Anders would likely hate Astarion with a passion (probably because he reminds him of himself without Justice) and also want to fuck him. Zevran would jump Astarion immediately. Knives to each other’s necks as they both try to assassinate each other at the same time and then just end up on the ground for a different reason. Fenris, despite their similar backgrounds, would fucking hate Astarion. Isabela would so enjoy tormenting Gale. Karlach would try and probably fail to befriend Fenris. Lae’zel and Fenris, however, would be friends. Same with Shadowheart. Anders would not be able to resist Halsin. It is canon that this man likes bears (not the actual kind). Alistair and Lae’zel would get along like oil and water. Alistair and Shadowheart however could talk about their religious trauma together. Alistair and Wyll would definitely get along. I want to see Morrigan, Solas, and Gale all interact. The sheer amount of hubris in one place would literally cause an explosion (“I fucked a god” “I gave birth to a reincarnated old god” “bitch I AM a god”). Merrill and Withers. That’s it.

Please add more I want all the headcanons about these idiots

[centrally-unplanned]

Adam Tooze giving some pitch-perfect pornography targeted at me specifically with Israel's "Gaza 2035: A three-step master plan to build what they call the Gaza-Arish-Sderot Free Trade Zone", capped with an AI generated Gaza-Dubai:

I'm in love, this is so glorious. "The world if Israel could play around with Gaza like a little set of Legos" tell me this is not identical energy:

Except its not a shitpost its an actual report from the Office of the Prime Minister. And folks we have got it all! The most convoluted administration system you could possibly imagine for no reason:

The new free trade zone would be administered by Israel, Egypt, and what the Israeli Prime Minister calls the Gaza Rehabilitation Authority (GRA)—a proposed Palestinian-run agency that would oversee reconstruction in Gaza and “manage the Strip’s finances.”

A cutesy little minimalist graphic of all the brand new industries that will magically become globally competitive in export markets because Israel says so:

The beach resorts are in my beloved!! But what are the little factories you ask? Oh nothing, just electric car production facilities!

Remember, before building your first factory, you need 18 Burj Khalifas. We economists call this "infrastructure development", take notes.

It will have high-speed rail through its center, oil projects on the coast, and of course, I'm saving the best for last - a rail project to NEOM:

 🥳The 🥳Line 🥳Mentioned 🥳

The legend on the map literally just says "a mega project" like, oh yeah, one of those! See em all the time.

Now, you might be asking - Ash, if this is your goal wouldn't you have not destroyed every square inch of habitable urban infrastructure in Gaza and shredded their economy into scraps of paper soaked in blood if your plan was to Singapore-on-the-Sea the place? You sweet summer child, those apartments? They are apartments of the past, darling, you don't need organically developed urban ecologies built over time to compliment human habitation. That is for fucking libs. All of this "war" thing was just set-up to create a blank slate for the construction of The Line 2: Its Definitely Real This Time!

I am going to murder James C Scott myself just so I can hover this plan over his corpse and watch the sheer hubris of this monument to the state's desire for legibility and technocratic solutionism resurrect him from the goddamn grave.

"Well....at least after all this they would have to recognize Palestine as a stat-" Woah woah woah woah, hold on:

The final stage would be when Palestine signs the Abraham Accords signaling “Palestinian self-rule,” albeit without statehood

Lets not...lets not get overambitious here. Baby steps, you know? We have to be careful.

Anyway this is the most ludicrously ill-considered and ill-presented reconstruction plan I have ever seen in my life and I shudder to think that, instead of it being an off-hand drip of propaganda intended solely to brush off nosey reporters and diplomats, it might actually be serious. Bibi hasn't let me down yet on the "thinking things through" front!

But tbc if this was fiction - instead of a ruthlessly grim reality - the Regional Deputy Minister of Trade charged with implementing this technocratic abortion would be my precious little blorbo and I would stan her to hell and back.