#there’s a common factor

[greeneyedsigma]

Male characters Sigma finds attractive for whatever reason in a few fandoms:

One Piece

King the Wildfire (Pretty + Vicious + big boy)

Charlotte Katakuri (Good big brother + orc teeth + big boy)

Crocodile (James Bond Villain Vibes + big boy)

Sakazuki (Pissed off grumpy + potentially tragic background + daddy vibes + big boy

Transformers

Megatron (Super Villain + Fallen Knight Vibes + Grumpy Old Man energy + big boy)

Optimus Prime (Just Knight + Tired Dad + Daddy Vibes + big boy)

Ultra Magnus (Exhausted + Done with your immature shit + ‘Kind of needs a hug’ vibes + big boy)

Red Dead Redemption 2

Arthur Morgan ( ‘Life insists on fucking me and I don’t know the safeword’ + sad cowboy + secretly soft AF + big boy)

Norse Mythology

Odin (Not even trying to hide the he’s an asshole + big dick energy + big boy)

[gothhabiba]

I saw this whole long thread of people hand-wringing about "anti-intellectuals" on tiktok and how scary it is that they're believing sourceless claims other people on tiktok tell them, because they claim they have the same chance of being correct as anything that "science says."

and said hand-wringers were waxing poetic about the scientific method and replicability and how everything that's published in an academic journal is guaranteed to be true and correct because of a little thing called peer review whereby scientists (naturally a petty and pedantic people) are encouraged to tear each other's conclusions apart.

and I just have to say. if you believe (in the midst of a major replicability crisis amongst scientific journals, no less) that everything published in a scientific journal is de facto factual or trustworthy, and if you believe that peer review of all things is a process that is guaranteed to prevent papers with anything from flaws in experimental design to full-blown fraud from going to print (as if publishers don't have a literal profit motive to publish studies that yield novel, startling conclusions),

then you are 100% as "anti-intellectual," foolish, & averse to thinking for yourself as the tiktokers you're making fun of. actually I think I like you less. at least their ideas might be bizarre enough to be interesting

[irhabiya]

i'm always thinking of the syrians i met at university. one lived in aleppo for a while and is deeply traumatized by her time there, can't hear a plane flying by without freezing in place. another was telling me about how difficult it is to get basic necessities there. "these sanctions kill people. we have to travel to syria a couple times every year to make sure my grandma gets her medication, otherwise she'll die. these are basic, life-saving medications that are readily available elsewhere but we have to bring them back home in our luggage."

[crabsnpersimmons]

inspired by @starriegalaxy and our conversations that go nowhere because she goes and does this to me:

she does this to me on the regular guys

(also to pair with Starrie's "At My LimitTM" post)

but where is Moon's hat, you might ask?

in the claws of the victor, of course

[utilitycaster]

I must admit that despite my typical hesitation to make direct comparisons from fantasy d&d worlds to modern politics the best analogy I can find for the people joining the Ruby Vanguard is the modern (20th century to present) support of right-wing populism. I think many of the people who follow those leaders do have legitimate concerns and needs that aren't being met; I think the frustration and disillusionment is very real; but also they are latching onto an extremely powerful guy who is using them, isn't actually helping them, and to follow him requires a willingness, bordering on eagerness, to fuck over your neighbors. And in the end he's not here to help you, he's just bringing in a force of psionics who will mind-control anyone who dissents. The only rather cold comfort is that they'll probably kill him first.

[asurrogateblog]

[saltyb0ba]

a deep blood moon, a starless night

dark enough to see the light

[juniesfairies]

this genre of anime boy is so beautiful and captivating to me. I can’t help but be entranced.

[wraith-caller]

Fia is a Tarnished called to grace without having first experienced death, which may be something of a rarity. Melina tells us some of Marika's words across 2 different churches, the Third Church and the Church of Pilgrimage:

My Lord, and thy warriors. I divest each of thee of thy grace. With thine eyes dimmed, ye will be driven from the Lands Between. Ye will wage war in a land afar, where ye will live, and die.

Then, after thy death, I will give back what I once claimed. Return to the Lands Between, wage war, and brandish the Elden Ring. Grow strong in the face of death. Warriors of my lord. Lord Godfrey.

That indicates that Tarnished get their Grace back only after dying. The opening cinematic does a little to corroborate this. Hoarah Loux is impaled by arrows, the Dung Eater is being hung, and Gideon Ofnir is in his casket. Goldmask is a little more ambiguous, but given the others are dead, and the way he's sort of splayed out on the ground with his prayer book and other items in disarray around him, it seems like he could have fallen dead abruptly.

Fia is the only one that is unambiguously alive. She is sitting up, actively looking at the sight of Grace, and she tells us she was exiled from home for seeing it. So it's very interesting that she is very devoted to and at peace with death, when she may be one of the few Tarnished to never have died to begin with.

[mllenugget]

I have only one word and one word only : CRI CRI CRI CRI CRI CRI CRI CRI CRI

"I intended to skip Purgatory 2 to catch up faster on VODs since I was told they were unrelated lore-wise But my biggest mistake was to vibe check all the new players - I was not expecting to completely fall head over heels for Team Capybara, hot damn I love them all so much ????" - Me, February 2024

────────────────────────────────────────── Support all the admins that spoke out (& do your daily click) ──────────────────────────────────────────

I took @sunshinetomioka's werewolf Guill headcanon and ran with it btw, credit to it

[silusvesuius]

n*loth not being able to bag anyone over the (human term) age of 25-30 at most is the only logical and real conclusion to me because it can be just explained away as him wanting to prove and control everything and anyone (Cus he's a man!) but being stuck in that demographic because his unbearable and vile personality is a force that nobody can look past once they've outgrown the possible fear and idolization period of anyone but also n*loth in particular.

[silviakundera]

more Li Rong/Pei Wenxuan/Su Ronqing dynamic thoughts...

Ep 18, Su Rongqing: "Don't forget that if it wasn't for His Majesty's fear of the imperial relatives, you wouldn't have even been able to get close to Her Highness in your life. Not to mention to be with Her Highness."

imo it's key that SRQ is from a super prestigious land-holding family, whose wealth and power are old & deeply entrenched. He's your modern day chaebol nepo baby, smart & educated & ready to inherit his family's slice of the empire.

Because he's every insecurity PWX has, tied up in a bow and sneering dismissively at him lol. PWX whose family worked hard to get out of the countryside and entered officialdom just in his dad's generation, and who doesn't even have the backing of that family. He has had to work 40x as hard and without being the princess consort he would never in his lifetime have achieved the stuff that's just handed to SRQ.

Part of PWX being determined to fight for Li Rong and not letting SRQ get in his head is that he needs to internalize that she sincerely thinks PWX is valueable and has never thought he was inferior to SRQ. None of their problems were ever about that. She saved SRQ for her moral conscience. Then she settled for him because her husband couldn't let go of his childhood engagement crush (plus his own acknowledged pride issues about a marriage arranged by the throne). He never actively tried to repair the marriage - his insecurities overtook him and he gave up. SRQ didn't "win". There was never any contest.

But though Pei Wenxuan tells himself this and tells Su Rongqing that she'll never say yes to him.... we gotta know that it's not that easy to defeat all your inner demons. That's why I think he gets a bit erratic and overblown in his romantic moves in the succeeding episodes - subconsciously anxious to tie Li Rong further to him.

[arctic-hands]

I get why potatoes are popularly associated with Ireland and to a lesser extent other parts of Europe, but it's a bit messed up that most people will think potatoes were originally cultivated in Ireland and not ancient Peru and Bolivia like they actually are

[staurean]

I think about X-Factor 2020 a lot. Not only is Akihiro in prime himbo phase in this run, but he also learns to start letting people in.

He starts out just wasted in the Green Lagoon and there’s no telling what the hell he drank to get pass out on the floor slurring his words drunk. Or how much.

He does his nasty flirting routine at the start to interact with others because how else is he supposed to act? But then he joins a team and starts actually helping people and he finds it rewarding?

He starts an actual relationship with someone that wasn’t just in his head (love you Carl but that dream probably fucked him up for a WHILE) and he made friends? Even when he thought he’d been abandoned he made friends that care enough about him to track him down and save him.

This page with Jean-Paul is my everything. He didn’t think anyone was coming for him because no one ever has before.

[mashbrainrot]

i wish people made comments about any other member of the mash cast's appearance with the frequency that they do about Mike

[ouredentogether]

man why do people villainize/make fun of vash's (to a fault) forgiveness of humanity? saw a few posts on twitter (yeah i know lol) that were more or less like "lol what would vash tell tesla if she was still around? 'sorry about All of That but you should forgive them lol'"

LIKE NO. THAT IS NOT WHAT VASH IS EVER ARGUING WITH NAI OHHHH MY GOD.

vash's main crux in these arguments (at least in tristamp, bc that's what i Know Best and what im p sure those twts were arguing from) is that humanity isn't deserving of wholesale genocide or abuse, just like the plants! he never tells nai "hey your pain is fucked up but you should let go of it teehee". he tells nai, more or less, "it's fucked up, we're both fucked up, but maybe don't murder people that YOU did this to?".

because nai's trauma has made him a worse person & he uses that as a justification to hurt others. however he is totally valid to feel that way and vash understands that as well, he just isn't willing to write ALL of humanity off. he'd probably be the same with tesla.