*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?
tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.
the funniest possible thing that could happen is if mercedes keeps hiring childhood best friends for their team and everybody's holding their breath waiting for them to tear each other apart like brocedes except it doesn't happen bc everyone else is normal about each other and brocedes is just that fucked up that they would've torn each other apart even if they were on different teams
ANCIENT wip that i finally got around to splashin color onto. NO idea where this colorin style came from n it WONT happen again!!
anyway i LOOOVE the general dynamic between arthur n emizel. both are so cool and so awesome and yet SO silly...
antoine + étoiles insane moments, p.2. aka the ass saga. p1 here
transcript + context for some of the clips below
[Video Transcript:
[First clip plays.]
Rivenzi: You want to see Etoiles’ ass, of course…
Antoine: Yeah, I’m gonna stare at your ass, Etoiles…
Etoiles: Fuck, what dread, during Popcorn [a talkshow Etoiles had been invited on the previous week], when I went up to the map and you said that, and I thought ‘whoa—‘
Antoine: Sorry
[Second clip plays: the moment during Popcorn]
PA/Domingo: Antoine Daniel has posted a tweet for us: ‘I wanted to look at this map of Africa, but Etoiles’ ass in the shape of a standing bell is driving me crazy. Smiley face with eyes in the shape of hearts.’
[Third clip plays: a continuation of the first clip.]
Antoine: Sorry, bro…
Ponce: Oh but that tweet, besides
Rivenzi: A standing bell…
Antoine: What’s more is that I never tweet and when I do it’s to tweet this sort of shit
Ponce: That’s exactly what I told myself. When PA read the tweet, I thought to myself, ‘but he never tweets!’ And he tweets to talk about Etoiles’ ass
Antoine: There needs to be a good reason, you see
[Fourth clip plays: a clip from the Team du Lundi’s minecraft server.]
JDG: Someone (in chat) said, ‘I can’t tell whether the atmosphere is good tonight or—‘
Antoine: It sucks, it sucks
Florence: You don’t need to ask every time, it always sucks
Baghera: Always sucks. Especially when Etoiles talks about ass [which had been a previous topic of discussion for him that night]
Antoine: Stooop, I enjoy it
Mynthos: You enjoy it?
JDG: It’s true tonight that it’s more weird than bad
Antoine: I like it when Etoiles talks about ass….
[Fifth clip plays: a second and different clip from Popcorn.]
Etoiles: —you’re not allowed to tell me that [Xari claimed to not know much about cinema]. I know you, I studied, because you’re my rival [in pop culture]. I really enjoy what you do in life, Xari, and you’re really knowledgeable about cinema
Antoine: What do you mean he’s your rival? And I’m just shit?
Etoiles: You, you’re my lover
Antoine: Oh yeah, sorry, my bad
PA/Domingo: One of the three is gonna die soon. There’s a whole situation, there’s a whole lore
[Sixth clip plays: a clip from the QSMP.]
Antoine: Don’t you want to get married, dude?
Etoiles: Well, I don’t have the time to fuck
Antoine: What the fuck?!
Etoiles: I don’t have time to fuck, dude. I just need to kill everyone
Antoine: No but just a marriage, you see. You’ve watched Game of Thrones— you haven’t watched Game of Thrones, you can’t know how marriages work in that series
Etoiles: I’ve watched it, but I’m married to the street, dude. I can’t give out my heart that quickly
Antoine: Yeah but you can give out your ass quickly, no?
Etoiles: No, frankly, my ass—
Antoine: What the fuck?!
Etoiles: Giving out your ass takes time, dude
Antoine: What the fuck…
Etoiles: Then again, I need to think about it. I’ll give you my answer. I need to discuss, and everything
Antoine: I’m tired of getting betrayed. You get married with someone else—
Etoiles: Never in a million years!
Antoine: —it’s like yesterday. Apparently Maximus got the mic from his ass removed while I wasn’t there. I was supposed to be the one to do it
Etoiles: Oh okay, so I’m your second choice?
[Overlapping]
Antoine: No! It was just to help him—
Etoiles: No, but, okay
Antoine: He got— listen—
Etoiles: There’s no problem!
Antoine: Fuck, nevermind
Etoiles: There’s no issue! Oh, so you’re opening my chest and stealing?
Antoine: I was just looking! Out of curiosity
Etoiles: Yeah, that’s it
Antoine: I don’t even understand what’s in it
Etoiles: Yeah, out of curiosity. Dude, your opinion on my cave?
Anakin being haunted by his mother once he becomes Darth Vader and having an Azula from Atla style breakdown where Shmi tells him something along the lines of "this isn't the life I wished for you/you're back to being a slave" and Anakin smashing a mirror
2023 good omens fandom would never survive may 2019 when the entirety of season 1 got leaked on the emmy fyc site and me and several other blogs spent the entire month slowly feeding people spoilers and screenshots and we all shared the fucking google drive folder with the leaked episodes still with a watermark over them and spoke to each other about it publicly in riddles and it was the best month of our fucking lives. like we did that shit because it was funny it was like we were all staying up past our bedtime and getting away with it. you are all so boring now
And the experience of each man was peculiar. For Pompey's name and power were greater in the city when he was away from it, owing to his campaigns; but when he was at home, he was often less powerful than Crassus, because the pomp and circumstance of his life led him to shun crowds, retire from the forum, and render aid to a few only of those who asked it of him, and then with no great zest, that he might keep his influence the more unimpaired for use in his own behalf. But Crassus was continually ready with his services, was ever at hand and easy of access, and always took an active part in the enterprises of the hour.
Plutarch, Crassus
from the vault of half finished one shots and rejected scenes! what a pair of guys! some real complementary personality stuff going on with these two!
this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it
and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?
anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode
I love to hear what people say about Youtube Drama* but it's SO tacky when it gets so offbase that the posts people make start to be about completely off topic infighting within the Watcher fanbase
The danger is clear and present: COVID isn’t merely a respiratory illness; it’s a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body’s organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long COVID is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long COVID is now being considered a long-term chronic illness — something many people will never fully recover from.
Dr. Phillip Alvelda, a former program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and the development of mRNA vaccine technology, is the founder of Medio Labs, a COVID diagnostic testing company. He has stepped forward as a strong critic of government COVID management, accusing health agencies of inadequacy and even deception. Alvelda is pushing for accountability and immediate action to tackle Long COVID and fend off future pandemics with stronger public health strategies.
Contrary to public belief, he warns, COVID is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if things continue as they are, with new COVID variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long COVID.
Let’s repeat that: At the current rate of infection, most Americans may get Long COVID.
[...]
LP: A recent JAMA study found that US adults with Long COVID are more prone to depression and anxiety – and they’re struggling to afford treatment. Given the virus’s impact on the brain, I guess the link to mental health issues isn’t surprising.
PA: There are all kinds of weird things going on that could be related to COVID’s cognitive effects. I’ll give you an example. We’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic that accidents are increasing. A report published by TRIP, a transportation research nonprofit, found that traffic fatalities in California increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022. They also found the likelihood of being killed in a traffic crash increased by 28% over that period. Other data, like studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came to similar conclusions, reporting that traffic fatalities hit a 16-year high across the country in 2021. The TRIP report also looked at traffic fatalities on a national level and found that traffic fatalities increased by 19%.
LP: What role might COVID play?
PA: Research points to the various ways COVID attacks the brain. Some people who have been infected have suffered motor control damage, and that could be a factor in car crashes. News is beginning to emerge about other ways COVID impacts driving. For example, in Ireland, a driver’s COVID-related brain fog was linked to a crash that killed an elderly couple.
Damage from COVID could be affecting people who are flying our planes, too. We’ve had pilots that had to quit because they couldn’t control the airplanes anymore. We know that medical events among U.S. military pilots were shown to have risen over 1,700% from 2019 to 2022, which the Pentagon attributes to the virus.
[...]
LP: You’ve criticized the track record of the CDC and the WHO – particularly their stubborn denial that COVID is airborne.
PA: They knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that.
[...]
LP: How would you grade Biden on how he’s handled the pandemic?
PA: I’d give him an F. In some ways, he fails worse than Trump because more people have actually died from COVID on his watch than on Trump’s, though blame has to be shared with Republican governors and legislators who picked ideological fights opposing things like responsible masking, testing, vaccination, and ventilation improvements for partisan reasons. Biden’s administration has continued to promote the false idea that the vaccine is all that is needed, perpetuating the notion that the pandemic is over and you don’t need to do anything about it. Biden stopped the funding for surveillance and he stopped the funding for renewing vaccine advancement research. Trump allowed 400,000 people to die unnecessarily. The Biden administration policies have allowed more than 800,000 to 900,000 and counting.
[...]
LP: The situation with bird flu is certainly getting more concerning with the CDC confirming that a third person in the U.S. has tested positive after being exposed to infected cows.
PA: Unfortunately, we’re repeating many of the same mistakes because we now know that the bird flu has made the jump to several species. The most important one now, of course, is the dairy cows. The dairy farmers have been refusing to let the government come in and inspect and test the cows. A team from Ohio State tested milk from a supermarket and found that 50% of the milk they tested was positive for bird flu viral particles.
[...]
PA: There’s a serious risk now in allowing the virus to freely evolve within the cow population. Each cow acts as a breeding ground for countless genetic mutations, potentially leading to strains capable of jumping to other species. If any of those countless genetic experiments within each cow prove successful in developing a strain transmissible to humans, we could face another pandemic – only this one could have a 58% death rate. Did you see the movie “Contagion?” It was remarkably accurate in its apocalyptic nature. And that virus only had a 20% death rate. If the bird flu makes the jump to human-to-human transition with even half of its current lethality, that would be disastrous.
not to be a freak but I think when Trump loses he will either kill himself or Putin will let loose the real assasins. it's just the smart move like he knows too much and he's losing all the power he used to have lol. like if I were putin I'd be worried about what kind of information a desperate man like Trump is willing to surrender once he's caught 👀