virtualyric
VirtuaLyric
732 posts
polyamory, TTRPGs, words, media, philosophy, pretty things
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virtualyric · 15 hours ago
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“Pillars and crossbeams can be used to ram down a wall, but not to plug a hole, for this requires a different kind of tool. A great stallion can gallop a thousand miles in a day, but it cannot catch mice as well as a cat, for that requires a different kind of skill. Kites and owls can catch a flea or discern the tip of a hair on a dark night, but in the daytime they are blinded and cannot even make out a mountain range, for that requires a different inborn nature. So if someone says, ‘Why don’t we make only rightness our master and eliminate wrongness, make only order our master and eliminate disorder?’ this is someone who has not yet understood the coherence of heaven and earth and the realities of the ten thousand things. That would be like taking heaven alone as your master and eliminating earth, or taking yin alone as your master and eliminating yang—an obvious impossibility. If someone nonetheless insists on talking this way, he is either a fool or a swindler.” - Zhuangzi 17, Autumn Waters
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virtualyric · 5 days ago
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man who insists penises are gross, while also being the father of two young children who have penises
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virtualyric · 7 days ago
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When I was a very suicidal trans activist in Texas, Benjamin Sisko saying “sure, you would [die for your people]. Dying gets you off the hook. The question is: are you willing to live for your people?” changed and possibly saved my life. It’s up there with “if we are going to be damned, let us be damned for who we really are” from Picard. Star Trek not only shows us a better world, it teaches us how to make it there
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virtualyric · 9 days ago
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So... does Shae just have chemistry with every woman, or....?
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virtualyric · 9 days ago
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So the chemistry between Olympia and Shea was really hot, right? Like, in that scene where they were confessing their secrets to each other, I really thought that we were going to find out that whatever beef was between them was really just the nasty fallout of an affair or hookup gone wrong.
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virtualyric · 9 days ago
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The dog world is so allergic to “management” as a concept like “my dogs are fighting!” Separate them. “My dog runs off!” Leash them. “My dog is aggressive!” Muzzle him. “My dog destroys my house!” Put him in a secure area he can’t destroy stuff in. It is literally that easy.
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virtualyric · 22 days ago
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hol up, I've got a weird hunch I want to test
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virtualyric · 24 days ago
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I never watched Mister Rogers or Thomas the Tank Engine as a child. Yes it still looks small.
I imagine Mister Rogers and Thomas the Tank Engine aren't the only media that had that kind of thing but I can't think of any examples of it.
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The short answer is... a tilt-shift lens.
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The slightly more complicated answer is... Mister Rogers.
Depth of field is the area in front and behind your chosen focus point that remains in focus and then slowly gets blurry as you get farther away.
Shallow depth of field only has a narrow slice of the image in focus and gets blurry super quick. This is caused by a large lens aperture and being close to the subject.
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Deep depth of field can extend through the entire picture if your aperture is small and you are super far away.
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Usually the depth of field lines up with the image sensor of your camera. So if it is tilted forward, the plane of focus matches.
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The stuff outside the green area would be blurry. The edges of the green would be slightly blurry. And the dashed green line would be the sharpest area of the photo.
But the tilt-shift lens allows you to create chaos with your plane of focus. In most cases, you would use this to flatten the depth of field so you can get a 2D plane entirely in focus.
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If you were to use a normal lens, the bottom left and top right would be blurry.
But with a tilt-shift lens you can do this.
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The green area is taking a little nap on the floor.
However, there is an unintended side effect created by this lens. (The "Scheimpflug intersection" if you want to go down the rabbit hole.) You can choose absolutely wacky planes of focus that create a very narrow depth of field over a geographically large area.
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Believe it or not, this is when psychology comes into play.
And possibly Mister Rogers.
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Our only reference for such a large area having a shallow depth of field is our memories of miniatures on TV. So Mister Rogers and Thomas the Tank Engine trained our brains to see this effect as... small.
Depth of field shrinks the closer you are to something. And when filming miniatures, you are placing the lens close to the scene. But the scene represents something big in our minds. We buy the effect, but not 100%. That blurriness wouldn't be there at a regular scale. So our subconscious remembers we are watching small things pretending to be big. It just files that away in the back of our mind.
And then when we see something like this...
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Our brain is all, "Look at all that tiny shit!"
Without Mister Rogers, our brains may have never made these connections and tilt-shift photography may just make us wonder why everything is all blurry. That connection to past experience is vital for this effect to be convincing.
Brains are neat.
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virtualyric · 26 days ago
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virtualyric · 1 month ago
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So a while back I won a cheap eBay auction listing for a collection of love letters from the first world war.
They arrived today, and…the listing was WAY more than I expected for the price I won it for. There’s over 100, and they’re not just from WWI, but from 1906 (earliest I’ve found so far) through to 1915.
Charlie writes to his girlfriend, Gertrude. This is the most beautiful, lovesick stuff I’ve ever read. He sends her so many letters, sometimes twice a day, and lots of poems. He seems to have been an artist, as he talks a lot about small exhibitions of his stuff, and included a flyer for one. He also talks about how her parents don’t approve of them and how he’s desperately awaiting the day they’ll be married.
I haven’t found the latest of the letters, but the fact it’s up until 1915 and then stops…doesn’t give me hope for a happy ending.
This man continuously refers to his precious beloved Gertie as his queen and goddess, and whilst most of it is sickly sweet, there’s some raunchy stuff too, with him talking about how he can’t wait until they have a little house together and can ‘please each other all day’…
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There’s. So many.
I’m going to put them in order by date, read them through, and then maybe even transcribe them so we can find out a bit about Charlie and Gertie’s love story.
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virtualyric · 1 month ago
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x
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virtualyric · 1 month ago
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I just really want to see the emperor tell Silas, "You're the heretic actually," so we can see how he reacts.
Does he decide to embrace apostasy and turn against the emperor? Does he cling to denial, continuing to insist that the emperor is testing him and that accepting lyctorhood would be a failure of the test? Does he simply capitulate to his god and change his mind about lyctorhood being evil (unlikely)? Does he self-destruct like a glitching robot?
Every single one of you has managed to somehow be wildly, stunningly incorrect as to whether Silas Octakiseron would become a Lyctor in the absence of external pressure, which is sort of insane given the multiple chapters clearly stating the extent to which he Would Not Do That, including the chapter in which he literally dies in large part due to his staunch opposition to Doing That. But we can go over this again, that's fine. Hopefully this is in some way clarifying.
The first indication we're given regarding Silas's attitude toward Lyctorhood is when he's talking to Gideon in chapter 28, when he reveals that he's not just opposed to the Ninth achieving Lyctorhood, but that he thinks no one should, and that he himself has already abandoned the entire endeavor.
"In fact, I am unsure that any of us should become Lyctor. Since when was power goodness, or cleverness truth? I myself no longer wish to ascend, Gideon."
We can combine that with his specific breed of annoyingness in chapter 33 to deduce that whatever he saw in the only Lyctoral challenge he completed (implied to be Anastasia's, since he has the black key already when he takes Cytherea's off her) was enough to put him off the concept entirely:
"I won the first key to see what I was up against, and took possession of two more to preserve them from misuse," said Silas. "I hate this House. I despise the reduction of a holy temple to a maze and a puzzle. I took the keys so that you wouldn’t have them. Nor the Sixth, nor the Third."
Then, of course, we get to chapter 34, in which Silas literally dies because of how staunchly morally opposed he is to the truth of Lyctorhood as a concept and how convinced he is of the idea that Ianthe should be put down like a dog for having pursued it.
"So that is Lyctorhood," said Silas. He sounded quiet, almost fretful, lost in thought. Gideon thought—just for a moment—that she could see Colum Asht's throat working, that his pupils had dilated just a very, very little. "To walk with the dead forever … enormous power, recycled within you, from the ultimate sacrifice … to make yourself a tomb." "You understand, don't you?" said Ianthe. "Yes," said Silas. Colum closed his eyes and was still. "Yes," repeated Silas. "I understand fallibility … and fallibility is a terrible thing to understand. I understand that if the Emperor and King Undying came to me now and asked me why I was not a Lyctor, I would fall on my knees and beg his forgiveness, that any of us had ever failed this test. May I be burnt one atom at a time in the most silent hole in the most lightless part of space, Lord—Kindly Prince—should I ever contemplate betraying the compact you appointed between him, and you, and me." Colum opened his eyes again. "Silas—" he began. "I will forgive you eventually, Colum," said his purse-mouthed uncle, "for assuming I would have been prey to this temptation. Do you believe me?" "I want to," said his nephew fervently, with a thousand-yard stare and his missing finger twitching around his shield. "God help me, I want to."
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virtualyric · 1 month ago
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I would rather spend a lifetime with you, than face all the Ages of this world alone.
*t4t indigiqueers your fantasy otp* (inspired by @neechees gif sets!!)
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virtualyric · 1 month ago
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Silas seems to believe that when the emperor asks people to become lyctors, it's actually a test. A temptation, which you are supposed to say no to. So he might believe that the "saints", the original lyctors, are actually those who failed the test (but maybe sainthood was something they earned after they committed the sin of lyctorhood and they felt sorry about it).
What would he do if the emperor told him to his face, "No, actually I really do want people to become lyctors and it's not a test or a temptation"?
Every single one of you has managed to somehow be wildly, stunningly incorrect as to whether Silas Octakiseron would become a Lyctor in the absence of external pressure, which is sort of insane given the multiple chapters clearly stating the extent to which he Would Not Do That, including the chapter in which he literally dies in large part due to his staunch opposition to Doing That. But we can go over this again, that's fine. Hopefully this is in some way clarifying.
The first indication we're given regarding Silas's attitude toward Lyctorhood is when he's talking to Gideon in chapter 28, when he reveals that he's not just opposed to the Ninth achieving Lyctorhood, but that he thinks no one should, and that he himself has already abandoned the entire endeavor.
"In fact, I am unsure that any of us should become Lyctor. Since when was power goodness, or cleverness truth? I myself no longer wish to ascend, Gideon."
We can combine that with his specific breed of annoyingness in chapter 33 to deduce that whatever he saw in the only Lyctoral challenge he completed (implied to be Anastasia's, since he has the black key already when he takes Cytherea's off her) was enough to put him off the concept entirely:
"I won the first key to see what I was up against, and took possession of two more to preserve them from misuse," said Silas. "I hate this House. I despise the reduction of a holy temple to a maze and a puzzle. I took the keys so that you wouldn’t have them. Nor the Sixth, nor the Third."
Then, of course, we get to chapter 34, in which Silas literally dies because of how staunchly morally opposed he is to the truth of Lyctorhood as a concept and how convinced he is of the idea that Ianthe should be put down like a dog for having pursued it.
"So that is Lyctorhood," said Silas. He sounded quiet, almost fretful, lost in thought. Gideon thought—just for a moment—that she could see Colum Asht's throat working, that his pupils had dilated just a very, very little. "To walk with the dead forever … enormous power, recycled within you, from the ultimate sacrifice … to make yourself a tomb." "You understand, don't you?" said Ianthe. "Yes," said Silas. Colum closed his eyes and was still. "Yes," repeated Silas. "I understand fallibility … and fallibility is a terrible thing to understand. I understand that if the Emperor and King Undying came to me now and asked me why I was not a Lyctor, I would fall on my knees and beg his forgiveness, that any of us had ever failed this test. May I be burnt one atom at a time in the most silent hole in the most lightless part of space, Lord—Kindly Prince—should I ever contemplate betraying the compact you appointed between him, and you, and me." Colum opened his eyes again. "Silas—" he began. "I will forgive you eventually, Colum," said his purse-mouthed uncle, "for assuming I would have been prey to this temptation. Do you believe me?" "I want to," said his nephew fervently, with a thousand-yard stare and his missing finger twitching around his shield. "God help me, I want to."
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virtualyric · 2 months ago
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Zorella, the centaur pop queen ✨
Thank you to everyone who helped me by voting on her final design in the poll from last week! I'm so so so happy with how she turned out 🥰
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virtualyric · 2 months ago
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Many things can be orientational, or part of one's identity, and they don't all have to be sexualities. People can have orientations related to things like friendship, or familial relationships, or even meta orientations about how they relate to their orientations.
For some people polyamory is an orientation—a relationship orientation, not a sexual orientation.
For others, like me, it's a strong preference.
monogamy and polyamory are both lifestyle choices not inate sexualities send tweet
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virtualyric · 2 months ago
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Fat people on airplanes get secretly photographed and their photos posted online for… existing?
And then people argue that it’s about health and that everything is about health.
Publishing photos of someone with the intent of bullying or harassing them, has nothing to do with health. That person has the right to be on the plane the same as you do. They likely even bought a second seat for everyone’s comfort.
Fat people do much more than enough by purchasing a second seat on a plane. The cost of seats isn’t low, and we fat people don’t own 2 bodies that would require 2 seperate seats.
Airlines could very well have a couple seats on their planes that are bigger than the rest for fat customers, or they could come up with another method for making sure that fat people don’t have to pay the price of 2 travelers.
But what’s happening is that airlines are actually shrinking their seats over time. They like the extra money they get from fat customers having to buy more seats, of course. And fat customers get blamed for everything.
The least airplanes could do is to make sure the seats fat people purchase are next to each other. After all, we don’t own two seperate bodies. Yet fat people get publicly shamed whenever news report on stories of airplanes messing up our seats.
I mean, f*ck fat people, why would they need to travel anyway? /s.
Nothing about this is about health. Everything about this is about public humiliation, oppression and profit. We fat people literally have our privacy breached because people get offended by fat people existing on planes, even if we buy extra seats. Have a lovely day y’all👋
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