arrowpunk

[arrowpunk]

half the men yall call daddy can't even put air in a tire. yeah he can pull your hair but can he chop an onion? no he cannot.

[arrowpunk]

stop doing wlw cop characters society has moved past this. do something else

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Kind of obsessed with this quote from Henry Jackman, the composer for Winter Soldier, about writing the Winter Soldier theme: 

“Because there’s a human element to the Winter Soldier that gets revealed toward the end of the film, the Winter Soldier starts off unrelenting and brutal and mechanized and almost Terminator like but the difference between The Winter Soldier and Terminator is that somewhere behind the wires and all the mechanization is a character that we know and we care about and that more importantly, Cap knows about and it’s very painful to him. So one of the things I ended up doing with the Winter Soldier was I spent literally ten days just on production with vocals because I wanted to get the sensation of a human trapped inside machinery. So I did a lot of vocal recordings and then processed the living hell out of them to get these tortured, time-stretched human cries of someone who has been so processed that it’s become mechanized at the same time but you can still hear the human in there.” 

[arrowpunk]

i often see ascended astarion sort of automatically paired with an embrace dark urge as a natural pair that goes together perfectly & obviously yes it’s great narratively for 1,000 reasons so keep doing that & putting out art of it bc it’s delicious

but i do think the flip side of the pair to consider is: a Bhaalspawn who would Not put up with being ordered around and owned by a sad little vampire lord so they 1. know that already and refuse to let Astarion ascend or 2. let him ascend assuming the best and then get to know him post-ascension for 45 seconds and they’re like ah….shame….I have to kill my boyfriend

[arrowpunk]

my life has changed

[arrowpunk]

i hope that the discussion about student protests does not get reduced to "privileged rich kids faffing around at an ivy league school." setting aside that tenuous claim, over the last week, protests have erupted over the entire country. a few days ago, riot police beat, pepper-sprayed, and arrested NYU faculty shielding students; protests started at the university of southern california when the admin cancelled the valedictorian's speech; encampments appeared at the university of southern carolina, UT dallas, the university of maryland, the university of new mexico, IUPUI, virginia tech, the university of virginia, the university of illinois, the university of north carolina — chapel hill, the university of pittsburgh, uc berkeley, the university of michigan — ann arbor, MIT, emerson, tufts, the university of rochester, rice, swarthmore, the new school, vanderbilt university, with students arrested; students protested or walked out at miami university, northwestern, temple, the 5 claremont colleges: pomona, pitzer, scripps, harvey mudd, and claremont mckenna, stanford, washington university in st louis, students were arrested at ohio state, students were confronted by riot police at cal poly humboldt, after which they occupied campus, students were arrested at the university of minnesota — twin cities, after which faculty walked out; and yes, there are protests at the other ivies, most notably yale, with students facing mass arests after encampments, but there is also an encampment at brown, protests appeared at cornell, princeton faculty issued a statement of solidarity while students are preparing an encampment, and harvard banned the undergraduate palestine solidarity committee. there are thousands of students who are protesting for palestine across the entire country, facing harassment, arrest, and suspension in return

[arrowpunk]

Insane to me that the biggest concern with Machine Learning immediately became about if it can produce art, and not about the hundreds of other ways these models are being implemented to make your life worse. Producing shitty stolen jpegs is probably at the bottom of the list in terms of stuff you should be angry about with this tech. It's annoying for sure, but compared to the way this tech is being used to automate surveillance and warfare... It almost doesn't even matter. The way that these algorithms need to be trained by 30-50 people to a room sweatshops in India or Silicon Valley is more disgusting than any piece of stolen art. The water usage alone is a crime. You're missing the forest for the trees, and allowing yourself to be distracted by reactionary talking points that dominate the conversation around this new technology.

[arrowpunk]

wally west is a guy of all time for me. funny haha jokester kid who had to take on a huge amount of responsibility he was definitely not ready for, developed the worst imposter syndrome known to man and instead of coping made it everyone else’s problem. will be sooo petty and selfish about small things but also sacrifices his life with 0 thought like it’s a regular tuesday. had an abusive dad and absolutely refused to acknowledge that shit or think about it ever again. completely unrelated to this he immediately cuts off his entire family the minute he reaches twenty-one. incapable of hiding his emotions and will unfairly be a bitch to you if he’s struggling with something. said himself that no one loved him until his aunt iris. would actually not hesitate to burn the world down for his wife. claims to be a laid back go with the flow guy but also will spiral at the slightest provocation. is allergic to nuance when people he loves make mistakes and will be in their corner no matter how wrong they are.

[arrowpunk]

"con artist" is maybe the profession with the biggest gap between How Cool They Are In Media and How Cool They Are In Real Life

[arrowpunk]

sitting anti-kink posters down in front of a wrestling match and explaining kayfabe to them with the patience of a preschool teacher

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reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

[arrowpunk]

Ryoko Kui please return my calls

[arrowpunk]

The fact that Microsoft Word has to be a subscription is upsetting. I already paid for it why do I have to pay again

[arrowpunk]

me seeing a mutual's happy post: "hell yeah buddy :)" *hits like*

me seeing a mutual's sad/vent post: "aww no buddy :(" *hits like*

[arrowpunk]

Congratulations to Marcille DungeonMeshi for achieving Pathetic Little Man status on tumblr, a hard glass ceiling for many female characters to break. I look forward to calling you my sopping wet beast and poor little meow meow for fandom days to come. Keep trucking babygirl, you'll bag Falin one day

[arrowpunk]

the 5 love languages: song recommendations, parallel play, talking about The Character, offering to kill each other’s parents, gifting little trinkets

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why are french people rude?

Ah well, the safest explanation when an entire country’s people are stereotyped as rude is that they have their own culture with different criteria for politeness than the ones you are used to. It’s probably easier for Americans to forget this than for the rest of the world, because they consume less foreign media than the rest of us (from literature in translation to foreign films) and are less exposed to aspects of foreign cultures that could inform them about different norms of politeness (online interactions happen in their own language and follow their own (anglo) social codes.) With this insular worldview it’s easy to take it for granted that American good manners are universal. They are not!

A very common gripe against American tourists in Paris is that they talk so loudly in public spaces, which is definitely rude here but I assume that in the US, people just have a different threshold for what constitutes ‘loud’ (I wonder if it is due to being used to having more space than Europeans). I also remember a discussion I had with one of my translation professors about the American concept of ‘active listening’ and how negatively it is perceived in France. It may be that in the US it is polite to make ‘listening noises’ at regular intervals while someone is speaking to you, ‘uh huh’, ‘right’, ‘yeah’, ‘really?’, and that you would perceive someone who just stands there silently as disinterested or thinking about something else. In France it is more polite to shut up and listen (with the occasional nod or ‘mmh’) and it’s rather seen as annoying and rude to make a bunch of useless noise while someone is speaking.

There are of course countless examples like that. The infamous rude waiters in Parisian cafés probably seem a lot more rude and cold to people who have a different food culture… People from other cultures might consider a waiter terrible at his job if he doesn’t frequently check on them to make sure they don’t wait for anything, but the idea that a meal is a pleasant experience rather than just a way to feed yourself (esp when eating out) means we like having time to chat and just enjoy our table for a while, so we don’t mind as much waiting to order or for the next course. French people would typically hate if an overzealous waiter took the initiative to bring the note once we’re done with our meal so we don’t have to wait for it, as it would be interpreted as “you’re done, now get out of my restaurant.”

The level of formality required to be seen as polite is quite high in France, which might contribute to French people being seen as rude by people with a more casual culture. To continue with waiters, even in casual cafés they will address clients with the formal you and conversely, and won’t pretend to be your friend (the fact that we don’t have the American tip culture also means they don’t feel the need to ingratiate themselves to you.) I remember being alarmed when a waitress in New York introduced herself and asked how I was doing. “She’s giving me her first name? What… am I supposed to with it? Use it?” It gave me some insight on why Americans might consider French waiters rude or sullen! It might also be more accepted outside of France to customise your dish—my brother worked as a waiter and often had to say “That won’t be possible” about alterations to a dish that he knew wouldn’t fly with the chef, to foreign tourists who were stunned and angry to hear that, and probably brought home a negative opinion of French waiters. In France where the sentiment in most restaurants is more “respect the chef’s skill” than “the customer is king”, people are more likely to be apologetic if they ask for alterations (beyond basic stuff) as you can quickly be seen as rude, even by the people you are eating with. 

And I remember reading on a website for learning English that the polite answer to “How are you?” is “I’m fine, thank you!” because it’s rude to burden someone you aren’t close to with your problems. In my corner of the French countryside the polite thing to do is to complain about some minor trouble, because saying everything is going great is perceived negatively, as boasting, and also as a standoffish reply that kind of shuts down the conversation, while grumbling about some problem everyone can relate to will keep it going. (French people love grumbling as a positive bonding activity!)

Basically, before you settle on the conclusion that people from a different place are collectively rude, consider that if you travel there and scrupulously follow your own culture’s social code of good manners, you might be completely unaware that you are being perceived as obnoxious, rude or unfriendly yourself simply because your behaviour clashes with what is expected by locals.