#want to disagree? go ahead

[hermioneismyrealname]

Ah HELL NO! Love Sea ep 4.

Below are my thoughts. Before, I was ready to defend this show. My mistake. Should have known better from mame. Great acting but what are they working with?

3 episodes were spent on elaborating Mahasamut's responsibilities, duties and his character. 3 episodes were used to showcase the love for the ocean and what efforts he's made to protect and preserve the ocean. 3 EPISODES! 3 USED TO EXPAND ON MAHASAMUT'S CHARACAND SIGNIFICANCE ALL FOR IT TO BE REDUCE TO A HOUSEKEPT PET! I don't even think that love sick pup brought his clothes with him. Did he even tell anyone he was leaving?

Hah!

Only now? 21:15 do they even think of STDs?AAAAAAAAHHHHH! FUCK THIS!

Oh my God, the apartment's view.

I think Tongrak is going to break his heart.

Vie enters. Hm. And girlie still had glitter on her eyelids after having cucumber on them.

I'm starting to not like this. Complete backtrack? Where's that softness? Did Tongrak's character completely regress? Why? WHY?

Yeahp. Don't like it.

I don't like the GL couple either. Vie pissed me off in ep 3 and no, I'm not over it.

Why are underpants on a clothes hanger?

The last suspense at the rando character in the shopping mall was... bland. There was no indication to this build up.

Ep 5 looks like hopefully something.

That cut scene of Tongrak waking up like... oh yeah, he has feelings but he's gonna be an ass about it. WE KNOW THIS! GIVE US AN INDICATION THAT IT WILL GIVE UP CHARACTER GROWTH NOT STAGNATION AND COMPLACENCY!

*le sigh* da mihi patentiem. I was swearing at the in Thai the entire episode. Gonna switch to a Japanese series to give my brain a break.

It's a trash watch now. Can't believe this is a trash watch for me now.

I know certain people ( @absolutebl and @respectthepetty ) will agree with me that this is absolutely pointless now. You were right, I was wrong, lalalalala. Scooch over you two. I brought the popcorn for the rest of stupid dumpster.

Anyway, here's this week's bingo

Compare montage

Mahasamut goes to the city.

[singinginthecar]

i'm so worried abt how extremely right wing, misogynist, racist, islamophobic, xenophobic, casteist, homophobic and downright hateful indian men have become in both online spaces and irl. it's become impossible to have "healthy" conversations in online spaces without them threatening, downgrading, and belittling you every chance they get. and it's the same irl as well... the kind of conversations that they have within themselves reflects their mentality. the ones who don't speak up irl say it all online. and it's getting very hard to even find a somewhat decent indian man who is... sane. and is open to healthy conversations.

[i-am-me-i-am-sam]

The post about Tumblr dying is fear mongering.

tbh i dont think talking about an outcome that currently seems inevitable is fear mongering

so. is tumblr going to go down, right now? no! right now, for us users, very little to nothing will change! however, from what we know, they are actively moving staff away from tumblr, with no plans to ever grow that staff back up. as people who know more about tech than me have already said, this means updates will trickle to a stop. bugs and glitches will pile up. without the number of staff to maintain tumblr properly, eventually it will be unable to keep running.

keyword: eventually!

again, that's not right now. we're looking at the future here. so people looking to gather on other sites, to figure out where their communities are moving? they're looking towards that future. they, and i, want to be prepared, and can you blame us? while I was too young for it, I've heard about all the communities that were lost from livejournal. people are trying to prevent that from happening again.

it's not fear mongering to say "because of these actions, the site will eventually cease to run, so we should look to come together as community and have an idea of our next move when tumblr can no longer house us."

theres every chance we still have YEARS of functionality on this site left, even with the staff being cut. and, hey! maybe we'll get lucky. maybe they decide not to do this, or maybe tumblr gets bought out, and is actually able to make a profit without losing a significant portion of its user base. but a site can't run indefinitely without proper staffing.

addendum:

I did the check the blog of the original poster of the screenshot after writing this up. according to him, there seems to be no long term management plan, meaning we likely /would/ be in the holding pattern of "skeleton crew with very little to no additional support" that was already outlined in the screenshot and that people are assuming from it.

[notpercieved]

"Jingyuan is a terrible parent towards Yanqing"

Where?? By all means hes not perfect i am well aware but hes very much trying

Yanqing didnt get manipulated by a heliobi because he feels like hes not good enough/a disappointment to jingyuan AND breakfree from it by realizing that jingyuan was never disappointed in him and has always believed in him from the start and that jingyuan has hopes that he will one day understand why he trains and perfects his swordsmanship for people to call jingyuan a terrible parent

And even so, jingyuan then proceeds to blame HIMSELF for not doing EVEN BETTER when it comes to teaching yanqing and told him not to worry to much about what had transpired

Yanqings worries about not being good enough and wants to make jingyuan proud is very understandable, its like a kid who just wants to make their parents proud in general, and jingyuans worries about yanqing being in grave dangers is also like a parent worrying over their kid regardless of their age, because thats what children and parents are just like in general, no one was wrong in that situation or in any, its just part of life and thats why finding the middle ground is very important as to not make one side feel belittled, but Jingyuan had never held yanqing too tightly till the point yanqing feels trapped, he just worries for the boy, and yanqing had gotten to decide on his own what he wants to be, it was not forced upon him

Not to mention the many instances we see in game or even events that jingyuan cares for yanqing too

They are very father and son, and i refuse to believe otherwise

[blu3-sp00ky]

white person online: 'youre a racist islamophobic bitch' me, a brown aroace trans neurodiv jewish person who only said that he supports israel because he doesnt want his people to die out: '???'

[gammija]

only tangentially related to this ep, but - i have an Avatar concept around the cold/freezing water/hypothermia and drowning, and Ive discussed before which Fear that would most closely align with. A lot of people said the Buried or the Lonely, maybe the Vast, mixed with Dark.

Water and cold can be hard to categorise, even aside from how the categories are arbitrary lines drawn between fears etc etc. Cause these motifs have shown up with the Vast, Buried and Lonely, and probably others on occasion too.

But I think the cold an sich, and cold water especially, are most closely related to the Dark. Just like how Manuela describes the darkness as not the opposite of light, but the absence of it, the universe's natural state; so too does she talk in today's ep about how cold is not the opposite of warmth, but the lack of it. Cold is stillness, quiet, numbing. Dark.

...and also;

109, Nightfall: "As soon as my foot hit the water, I fell into it completely. It was colder than anything I had ever experienced, and the torch slipped from my hand as my vision immediately went dark."

140, The Movement of the Heavens: "I gripped the head of my foul adversary, and forced it down, into the dark pool before us. There I held it, the water so cold upon my skin the marks have yet to fade."

143 Heart of Darkness: "... I began submerging the first of the sacrifices in the brackish water it had blessed with its stillness."

143 ,, : "There is another world, a world of still and quiet darkness, where no heat touches..."

Other Fears statements occasionally also feature water, sometimes even cold water (though it's always accompanied of a mention of how dark it is, too), but it's not as much of A Thing as with the Dark. And I think it's a cool motif which they should get more credit for!

@a-mag-a-day

[pa-pa-plasma]

i don't think i'll ever get over how people treat kids that aren't good in school as worthless no matter what. "oh it can't be that bad" my guy idk how to tell you this but the last time i went to a normal high school the principal called me into his office to brag about how he failed me in all of my classes before the semester was even finished & i should quit while i'm ahead cuz i'm too stupid ("officially" diagnosed as such by a school counselor & a psychiatrist!!) to succeed. & this is considered normal

[chloepleasestopdying]

I will not start a fight over some tags I will not start a fight over some tags

[aromanticduck]

Was the shift in the conversational meaning of 'discourse' from 'discussion or debate' into 'petty, bad-faith arguments between the chronically online' set in motion by aspec exclusionism, or was it already happening when aphobes started their shit?

[moonlight-melts]

Fandom was literally created by those who were called freaks and weirdos so please, if your definition of fandom excludes the freaks and the weirdos, maybe try to re-think it a little bit.

[unhonestlymirror]

That's the most stupid thing I've ever heard. That's exactly what we've been told as Ukrainians about "giving up on nuclear weapons because uuuu uuuu war is bad" - guess fucking what? If we had the weapons, russia wouldn't be mass murdering and mass raping people right now. American military and weapons is literally the only thing preventing USA from falling (which is not gonna last for long, sadly, because their society highly encourages lack of education). Op should grow up.

UPD. @cerealxperimentslain [#it is not some vulnerable little state that would be taken over the second they decreased military spending by 10% or whatever] - op, look at the map, please. XD Ukraine is the biggest country of Europe. Also, using slurs towards people you pick an argue with? What are you, a 9-year-old?

Usamericans should be more anti-war actually. They should be straight up insulting marines and shutting down weapon factories, 60s anti-war protests kind of shit. I'm sorry for pontificating from down here but the US military-industrial complex is currently supplying a genocide, and this is not a new thing, the US has sold weapons to Saudi Arabia to starve millions of Yemenis. And though some people think it's not the point, it Is also true that there are trillions upon trillions of dollars that could be spent in anything else that go to the black hole of corruption (and call it for what it is, corruption) that is the Pentagon. Any of those resources could be destined to literally any other activity and be better spent.

I'm talking full contempt here. You should outright be HATING the military. Instead of lining up to watch Top Gun you should see it as a glorification of a fucking killing machine that serves imperial interests, enriches megacorporations and supports genocided. For the love of God be more angry about it. Goddamn.

[unpassive-viewer]

Watching breaking in the olympics has been awesome as a former hip hop dancer, but holy shit. For every person who doesn't know how breaking even works and doesn't think it's a sport, there's ten more who are excited about the men's competition, but absolutely ragging on the women's competitors. My head is actually spinning.

If you don't know about breaking, I need to explain some things:

The breakers all know one another already, and all respect each other. This includes between the m&f categories. Nicka (silver medalist - women's) and Phil Wizard (gold medalist - men's) have literally competed as a duo.

The breakers that you think "are better than everyone in the finals" already went through the qualifying trials. They also compete with all the medalists, they also tried out for the olympic teams. They did not make it.

To that end, every battle is its own battle. They may have done poorly in the qualifying trials, but have beaten the now-gold medalists in other competitions. It's not like swimming where Katy Ledecky will pummel everyone else in the race unless she has an exceptionally off day.

Related to point 2 - breaking was born in the Bronx. It was also born in the 1970s. Being mad that the demographics don't reflect who you think should be dancing, or being mad that the dance isn't "in touch with its roots" is like being mad that someone modified the recipe for ginger beef. Some of the guys who were competing today are old enough that they were dancing with the same people who invented the sport. I promise that they have crazy respect for how it began and all of its influences.

Related to point 3 - breaking requires originality. It is a foundational element of the sport to evolve and be creative. It's a sport, but it's also an art form.

Dancing for three rounds in three separate battles is a lot for any dancer. If you think some of them looked like shit toward the end (I disagree, but whatever) it's because they are tired. Not to mention there were heat warnings in Paris! They still have more athletic ability in their left pinky finger than I've ever had in my whole body - and I was someone who also did street dance!

The music wasn't decided ahead of time, but the DJs were playing very very popular breaking songs. All of the competitors already know how they go, so if they were scoring low in musicality, it's not because they panicked not knowing the song.

The athletes have sets made up already, they're not freestyling. They adapt them to the music, but unless they blank in the middle of the competition, they already know which skills they want to show off. (I'm editing to clarify that some of them did freestyle, but for the most part it was after they felt like they'd done what was going to get them points)

I really doubt that anyone on tumblr is going to care, but Instagram users can't read and YouTube is full of bots. I'm so excited that I got to watch my sport in the Olympics, but my lord people cannot behave.

[smallgodseries]

“It all started with a mouse,” that’s what they like to say, over and over again, like it’s somehow impressive.  You know what else started with a mouse?  A hell of a lot of hantavirus, that’s what.  You have mice, you generally call an exterminator, that’s all I’m saying.  But it won’t do you a lot of good, because the mice will get in anyway.  Or get out. Can’t keep mice in cages forever.  That’s not what mice were made for.

Still, they tried like hell, didn’t they?  They changed the rules so many times we pretty much had to throw out the whole rulebook and start over with a new one.  Commandment one: Thou shalt let us do whatever we want, because we’re always right, and if you disagree with us, you’re wrong.  That’s how you lock in the result you want.  You cheat.

Oh, they cheated.  Go ahead and say they did everything legally, but if you have two mice and one maze, and say the rules are the same for both of then, then lay a trail of spray cheese between one mouse and the finish line, while the other has to run it the ordinary way, well, that’s cheating whether or not there’s a rule against it.  Ask any first grader.  That’s the real trick: if a first grader knows you cheated, you’re not even being subtle about it.

They didn’t use spray cheese, of course.  They used money.  And they weren’t racing mice, they were racing legal arguments.  Money votes.  Anyone who tries to say otherwise just doesn’t have any money.

But it all started with a mouse, and from there, it evolved—or devolved—into corruption, greed, and the desperate need to keep being the only people who could solve the maze.  They got so busy changing the rules that they forgot the one rule they couldn’t change.  The rule they should have remembered.  The first rule of mice:

Can’t keep them out.  And that means you can’t keep them in, either.

Everything crumbles.  Every mouse gets out.  And every story yearns to be free.  So tell me, now that you know it all started with a mouse, how are you going to write the ending?  I belong to you now, after all, as much as I belong to anyone.

But most of all, I belong to me.

********************************

For more information on Mickey Mouse entering public domain: https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/mickey-mouse-public-domain-disney-copyright-lawsuits-1235844322/

[vynegar]

finished chapter 7 of the main story!! also slowly going through the eve of departure so i’ll finally be caught up on the main story, for the first time ever basically xDDD exciting!! looking forward to being able to play ch 8 as it releases (probably in about a month or two?)

[brick-van-dyke]

You save shit for arguments?? Get a life lmao who does that...

Basic sources still would take a while to read through unless you want a need abstract summary of all my points compiled into one.

I really find that hard to believe since, again, you think sources can just be read in five seconds as if they're half a page and you'd know. Sure I can skim, maybe find a few for you but really? Again? Online arguments don't educate, they just throw weight around and doing that regularly is... so crazy to me??

Anyway yeah, I don't really believe you. At the very least, it makes me wonder about bias in the university, which I guess isn't unheard of with the privatisation of them these days and if it's in certain places I know there is suppression of certain content but??

Look, I'm currently studying so sure I'll admit I'm not a PHD professor in everything we're talking about but the idea of "oh just show me the saved sources you have on this" is so crazy. I'm on my damn phone and just here to say maybe grouping all Jews as Zionists is bad, but hey since you and the person commenting agree on that point, what is there to correct? You both are polar ends of the "all Jews are Zionists" idea and agree. Congrats, you're both equally antisemetic.

dear jumblr: STOP LOOKING DOWN ON AND CONDESCENDING TO CONVERTS.

this includes saying “ofc converts don’t notice antisemitism.” or “they’re a convert, they don’t know any better.”

i really don’t think a lot of you realize how many converts don’t reveal they are converts because of this kind of behavior. my own patrilineal convert parent refuses to publicly, not because they are excluded, but because of the condescension. the way converts are basically patted on the head even if they have ancestry, are patrilineal, were raised in a jewish environment, etc. or have none of these at all.

if converts are equals to you, treat them that way. most gerim learned more during their process than many of us learn in hebrew school, let alone what most secular “born” jews learn throughout their lives. so yes, converts DO spot antisemitism. they DO know things. and there isn’t an excuse for them to be bigoted, to spread lies about our people, or to side with our enemies or to otherwise harm their community. just like there isn’t an excuse for any other jew to do so.

you are not being open minded or accepting thinking and talking this way. you are actually engaging in exclusion and separation. you’re looking down on converts instead of treating them like they have equal standing.

if a convert doesnt know something or does display bad behavior? call them in instead of making excuses for them. treat them like equals, because that is what they are.

[ir-abelas-vhenan]

Don't mind me, just revisiting the plot (again) and dying over this line (again). (These screenshots are going to be abysmal, but you'll get the point).

"To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."

Yeah he's talking about Mythal (earned or not) and Felassan and Lavellan and Varric...but the way it applies to HIM, too, is what absolutely guts me.

Long post ahead...

Solas realizing that Lavellan doesn't care about how others see him or want to use him under the inquisiton, that HIS motivations as he has shared them are enough for her and worth defending against those who would tell him he's something he isn't. Solas, for the first time, being confronted with the realization that one these new elves he does not see himself in will still go to bat for him.

"You came here to help, Solas, I won't let them use that against you."

(Is he duplicitous? Yes. But intent on working against Corypheus? Undoubtedly).

“How would you stop them?”

“However I had to.”

“...thank you.”

Solas grappling with the fact that it wasn't just a one off, that this Dalish woman being faced with "hypotheticals" he's desperately been trying to get her people to entertain is jumping in head first, pushing back and disagreeing with him but never treating him worse for their differences and always admitting when he's helped shape a changing perspective. Solas daring to ask for help and marveling at the fact that he receives it, that the same woman who asked if it might some day be possible to live alongside spirits, who did not immediately shoot down his critique of THE CHANTRY REFUSING TO ACKNOWLEDGE SPIRITS AS LEGITIMATE BEINGS (GAH), who did not laugh at him for saying he preferred their company most days, this woman, is going to drop time and resources during war time preparations to personally help his friend.

And then, when he is too late and has once again failed someone he considers a friend, he disappears within himself, where he has always gone to exact punishment for the weight of the lives he believes he's betrayed. It almost works, too.

Psych. Lavellan doesn't want him to grieve alone, to stare at the place in the Fade where his friend used to be and think of all he should have done differently.

“The next time you have to mourn, you don’t need to be alone.”

“It’s been so long since I could trust someone.”

“I know.”

“I’ll work on it. And thank you.”

And still she unbalances him, accepts him, wants more. Solas is sharing a personality that brings him the closest he has ever been to his spirit form, and it is ENOUGH for her. Existing as he has always dreamt of is all takes to earn her loyalty, respect, and eventually love.

But does she stop there? No. She doesn't chafe at this random apostate who speaks with certainty and unapologetically delves into a past he believes worth preserving, even at the cost of questioning her culture as it currently stands.

The very woman he once thought of as a mistake that HE unleashed upon the world is asking to be a part of his, not because of what he can bring to the table, not because she needs a right hand man, and certainly not because she thinks he has some well of power and intelligence critical to winning over enemies she’s willing to join for "supervisory" purposes (cough cough hi Mythal). She bears the weight of choices that can and will lead to death, to pain, and when it wears on her she relies on him, not for solutions but so that at the end of it all she might smile with someone who knows her heart and the good she tried to do amidst a sea of terrible options. She wants to be known, no inch of her unturned, and worse, she thinks she knows him. But how could she? This is no longer who he is, it is merely the remnants of what he destroyed to make a world at Mythal's whim.

“You’re an admirable man. Not many people know who they are the way you do.”

“Thank you. Both for saying that and…for seeing that. Few in this world can see me instead of just seeing a pair of pointed ears”

She. Sees. Him. Every part he slowly is realizing he wants to be known for and even a few he thought he could hide. And then he gives it all up. Because he woke to a new world where spirits and elves and mages were so far removed from the role they played in Arlathan that it can only be yet another mistake he caused and must fix, never mind the fact that the dwarves have forgotten why they fled underground millennia ago in the first place.

The friend who tore him from the world he loved, urged him to take physical form? She is dead, too, never mind the fact that she ignored his urging for a different path, nevermind that he killed and tore and hurt in her name because otherwise what was losing the part of himself he loved for?

"A spirit becomes a demon when denied its original purpose.”

“It hurts. It always does, but I will survive.”

“You bound it to obedience, then commanded it to kill. That is when it turned.”

He may no longer recognize where the Dread Wolf ends and where Solas begins, but if he gives up now and permits himself the chance to remember, the pain he caused himself and others means nothing, because he did it all for Mythal and in his final discussion with her, regardless of what Veilguard tries to convey, she does not release him from his position as her agent.

And maybe that's part of why I'm so angry, because EVEN BEFORE TRESPASSER, the fragment of Mythal that ends up in Morrigan could have freed him, but she does not.

"I am sorry." He whispers.

"The failure was mine," he tells her, voice trembling. "I should pay the price."

Silence.

And do we get that "what we did, we did together" psuedo-fake ass-absolution, the one that, if given enough time and safety to put himself first he may have realised he doesn't truly need to pursue the things he deserves, that make him feel finally like himself again? No the fuck we don't.

"As am I, old friend." She murmurs.

Looking through the lens of Veilguard, this isn't an apology, it's a condemnation. It's Mythal tormenting him one more time, twisting the knife deeper, agreeing that it is Solas alone who has brought them to this point, who deserves to be punished. And then she reminds him what they are to each other, what he is supposed to be to her. What he must become again.

"It isn't abuse if I ask," Cole says in his personal quest.

"Not always true," Solas shoots back.

So he recommits to the friend he gave up his nature for, he refuses to let himself remember that Lavellan learned the full truth of his identity and still begged him not to mourn alone. Even so, he still cannot quite forget.

Var lath vir suledin. Our love will persevere.

I wish it could, vhenan.

And so he pushes onwards, spending almost a decade denying himself his true nature and regretting that he ever gave it a chance to come through because now he KNOWS that this world is different and a little broken, but it's a world he could be a part of because of the woman and the friends that made a place for him. It is a world that doesn't necessarily need to be restored as much as it might need renovation, but that is not the world Mythal demanded of him when she let him kill a remaining piece of her. And any solution but that means the hurt of taking a body, of hurting the titans, of time and time again being called on by one evanuris to fix a problem they all caused, was for nothing.

And a Pride of that magnitude, that sinister an origin, has a long, long way to fall.

And then that same uppity little shit has the audacity to tell him it's not too late, that he can turn back.

He kills again. He kills again. He kills again.

He kills a friend.

He fails to prevent the Evanuris from wreaking havoc a second time, wrenches another innocent into his war, and when they ask him about the woman he calls vhenan, he feels the mask stifling him begin to suffocate. But he never lets it fall, because to surrender now is to place her broken heart atop the pile of regrets he's been holding up like Atlas crumbling beneath the weight of the world itself. Because he still thinks it selfish to want the things that make him feel like himself again, so they need to be taken off the board entirely.

"To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."

If he gives up now, his entire corporeal life has been a betrayal of many, but worst of all, he will have ruined himself for nothing.

But then she's there. A little older, a little sadder, and still looking at him like she did the night he almost broke and instead carefully removed any suggestion that she had ever belonged to anyone but herself.

"Didn't you hear me?" Her every action screams as she kneels to meet his gaze like he did the day he took her arm (another failure, another sacrifice he cannot let be for nothing).

The tombstone in the fade is his greatest fear, but it is not his fate. Why? She will not let it be. It cannot be his din'anshiral if she is not beside him.

Lavellan may not have understood the depth of exactly WHEN Solas first came somewhere foreign and uncertain to help, but she never once failed to keep her promise. She refuses to let his initial desire to do good be held against him any longer. And when she sees him accept that not-quite-absolution-definitely-more-of-a-power-play from the god that saw what he was capable of and molded him into a weapon, she finds her in to make sure he doesn't walk off alone to mourn again, never again will she lose him to the expectations others have of him. No doubt she wants to find a way to sink the fingers of her good hand into that spectral visage and tear it away like he wishes to do to the veil. But she is not here for Mythal. She is here for her heart, and for the man who has been carrying it since the moment her lips met his in the fade ten years ago.

“No orders to kill, no conflict with its nature, no demon.”

She forces him to see that the only remaining betrayal is to lock himself away one more irreversible time. All that's left to lose is the piece of himself he cherishes more than his greatest victories: all that he has to gain comes from making sure the love that was given to him at Skyhold, in the moment where Varric saw all he was capable of and still tried to bring him back home, was not given in vain.

"There is no fate but the love we share." She tells him as soon as Mythal's too-little-too-late platitudes send shudders through his body.

Banal nadas ar lath'ma vhenan.

It will not be so terrible a place, so unforgivable a betrayal if he can finally dare to put himself first. If, unlike that night in Crestwood, he finally gives in not to break, but to make himself whole.

There's a codex entry in Inquisiton about a spirit of wisdom who is summoned by researchers and only after a very pleasant conversation do they realize they made a mistake and never successfully bound the spirit in the first place, that it chose to speak with them of its own accord.

"I am not certain the spirit would have talked so freely had it been shackled at the time," writes the author of the entry.

I keep thinking about this alongside the datamined line of Morrigan saying, "And so, the Dread Wolf is stopped by, of all things love."

But that isn't quite right, is it?

Because in the end, of course the Dread Wolf could only ever freed by, over everything, love.