palominodragon

[palominodragon]

And one more thing, can you imagine the hilarity that is Varric having to watch Hawke fall in love with Fenris/Anders and then watching Lavellan fall in love with Solas?

After mr. "What has magic touched that it did not spoil?" and mr. Blow up a chantry for the mages he thinks that this time his friend might just be in safe hands. It's Chuckes! He hates tea and wears comfortable clothes and yeah, he is a bit weirdly fixated on the history of ye good ol' empires (like who in Andraste's tits asks a surface dwarf about the fall of the dwarven empire, seriously now) but he is polite enough and intelligent. And then he starts pulling shit like "for all the dalish got wrong, they got one thing right, they made you" and starts teaching Sera how to fight guerilla wars and poor Varric thinks to himself "well, shit, here we go again".

And the funniest part is that no matter what Varric may have expected, Solas did so much more.

#dragon age #solavellan #lol poor varric

[palominodragon]

Oh my fucking god I was about to be disappointed with the end of The Expanse. I'd googled Filip Inaros earlier and the search autofilled "Filip Inaros death" for some fucking reason, so I was already bracing myself for the Ben Solo character to die, and then they make me think Peaches is gonna die too, so halfway through the last episode I'm already composing in my head my next rant about how much I hate the redemption=death trope, lol.

Then the destruction of Marco's ship comes so abruptly, and it doesn't show Filip even doing something to counter his father and dying for it like I expected, so I'm thinking "what the hell was that loose end?" right up until the very last scene and the flashback that sneaks in while Naomi is talking to Holden.

Holy fuck.

The relief I felt.

I was literally the "wait, hold on, I need a minute" meme.

oh my god

#The Expanse #Filip Inaros #Filip Nagata #villain redemption #I also loved the stunt Holden pulled to put Camina in charge instead #I thought him taking the post was pretty bland and predictable #great twist there

[palominodragon]

Had to pause this episode to have an Amos moment over her outfit. Queen. Who makes your clothes. I would wear that.

#the expanse #chrisjen avasarala #all her outfits are stunning but this rogueish piratey black and gold look is my kinda thing

[palominodragon]

Writing tip of the day: whenever you can, plug a plot hole with a character flaw!

Every time you realise that it makes no sense that the characters didn't do some super logical thing in the first place, figure out which character could have prevented it by simply the way they are as a person. You're not only solving the problem of the plot hole, but also the issue of writing flaws into your characters in a way that doesn't feel gratituous and contrived.

Why did the characters not use this weapon they had access to the whole time? - The character who could have told them about it wants to have control over people and had personally decided they shouldn't have it.

Why didn't that one genius character just tell everyone how to dismantle the robots? - They meant to, but being an absent-minded genius, they literally just forgot.

How did nobody notice that this little girl has been hanging out with an actual demon for seven years? - The demon made her pinky-promise not to tell anyone about it, and being naive and overly trusting, she didn't find that sketchy at all.

Why didn't the characters go to The Big Cool Guys for help in the first place? - The character who is stubborn and overly proud wanted to choose death before dishonour and didn't want to ask for help.

Every time there was a perfectly reasonable solution accessible to the characters all along, that could've resolved the whole plot in minutes, always try to find an angle where someone prevented it just by who they are as a person.

#writing

[palominodragon]

Why do we say that capitalism must be “dismantled”?

You’ll hear phrases like “Smash the state!” “Eat the rich!” and “Smash capitalism!”

And, yes, of course, but… :)

However relevant those sayings are, our work must be careful, highly organized and above all planned.

Because capitalism and all of its associated systems are not discrete, abstracted entities we can attack independently.

It is a structure, like a complicated machine with many thousands of working parts…

And right now it is connected to absolutely everything.

If we do this… [picks up huge hammer and smashes the machine]

Then a lot of vulnerable people will die.

The machine was built and improved and redesigned and patched over the course of generations. It is very good at its intended purpose, which is ultimately to generate profit.

Every human being alive today relies on the byproducts of the machine to survive, without exception.

The machine’s engineers want it to keep working like it does. In fact, they want to optimise it.

That will kill all remaining life on Earth.

So, we must destroy the machine, quickly and carefully

We must examine its deadly programs and mechanics and replace them with alternatives we built together.

The engineers don’t want us tampering with the machine.

However, we make it run…

So we can make it STOP. Together.

How will YOU help us to safely dismantle the machine?

iww.org

p.s. My computer is on its last legs. If you would like me to draw you a little cartoon and help me get a new computer, learn more at this post.

#turns out that a lot of people who disagree with anti-capitalists think we want to do the 1st thing instead of the 2nd #and they recognize just like op does that smashing the system all at once would fuck over a lot of innocent people - and that scares them #politics #capitalism #socialism

[palominodragon]

i just don’t think “is dude gender neutral” is that productive of a conversation because a word can be gendered and still used regardless of gender. i call my male friends girlypop and my female friends man but i don’t think anybody would agree that those are somehow not gendered terms.

the real question is just “would you be willing to apologize and stop using a word if somebody told you it made them uncomfortable?” the answer to which in a surprising number of cases is no mostly because it seems like overall ppl r more upset abt getting accused of transphobia than they are abt being transphobic

[palominodragon]

tbh I was only a casual fan until one specific sequel trilogy character triggered my sympathetic villain special interest. Only then did I start caring enough to go back and read some of the old books and stuff.

so yeah, this is true.

hm not me suddenly caring about the star wars oc i made up when i was six years old when i don’t even care about star wars

#star wars

[palominodragon]

I just NEED everyone to agree with me that Rey's parents are nobody. We should all agree about that. We should collectively, as an audience, say, "clearly the best idea was to have Kylo Ren be a dynastic heir to the major legends of the Force who wants to throw off his family's shadow, while his rival is nobody from nowhere who wants to belong--so we're going to stick with that."

And then, what should have happened is, Rey can finish her story by being able to say, "My parents might have abandoned me, but that doesn't mean I'm worthless." And eventually Kylo Ren can say, "My family might have been powerful, but I don't have to be," and all those other things that they can bounce off of each other as great foils.

It can keep being a good story about accepting past failures and choosing to grow beyond them.

Let's just all collectively ignore Rey Skypatine because of how silly that was. I mean. If they can just ignore the setups in the previous movie, we can ignore their choices in the conclusion. Right?? Right? Tell me I'm right

#star wars #the fucking blatant (and petty) retcon to Rey's backstory was about as bad as “somehow palpatine has returned” #“waahh Johnson wrote us into a corner” #no he set up a cohesive plot for you to follow but you had to be a baby about it and prioritize “plot twists” over stories that make sense #/rant

[palominodragon]

Misc Path of Titans screenshots

#Path of Titans

[palominodragon]

Some pictures of my lambeosaurus after the model update.

#Path of Titans #lambeosaurus

[palominodragon]

After growing my kaiwhekea in Path of Titans, I amused myself by seal-flopping my way to almost every landlocked lake or pond on the map, and then waiting there to surprise whoever came along.

#path of titans

[palominodragon]

got into the taboo subject of politics with the Path of Titans discord group I've been running with and even the casual Republicans want free healthcare these days.

#us politics #healthcare

[palominodragon]

this is the best sentence ever typed

#reblogging for that last line tbh

[palominodragon]

Was playing Path of Titans tonight. I've been playing for a month or two, but was teamed up with someone who's only been playing for 3 days. Somebody in global chat made fun of her, and I threw back something like "can we not be horrible to brand new players?"

And this somehow set another random guy off on a whole tangent about "snowflakes" and "safe spaces" and "Biden lovers".

Mind you, no one else had mentioned politics or any related buzzwords, so I'm left thinking about how interesting it is that certain people who are right-wing associate being nice (or even just not being mean) with the political left. If you think one side is so defined by being polite and fair to other human beings, why would you want to be against that? It's fucked up, is what it is.

As this guy went on and on about how "the world's not like that, most people are mean, trying to set an example by being nice is useless because you can't change anyone, and bullying is good actually", I finished the conversation with "I'm sorry you don't know enough kind people."

He went right into bullying somebody else in the global chat.

(my group mass-reported him for it.)

#path of titans #us politics #bullying

[palominodragon]

I’ve never been a real star wars fan but the phantom menace came out when I was 6 and my older brother was 8 so we were absolutely among the target audience and we had toy light sabers & we spent a lot of time playing star wars but my brothers were anakin and obi wan etc. and my best friend was padmé which meant i had to come up with a star wars oc and since my brother was anakin i decided okay. i would be anakin’s sister.

i made up a backstory that i was his twin sister who also lived on tatooine and i also had latent force potential but qui gon and obi wan didn’t even try to meet me even when anakin mentioned me and they left me behind.

this was an utter betrayal to me obviously, like my brother got rescued and i got abandoned and i could have been him and i should have been him. i should’ve been at his side. i should have gotten training and all else. i should have been a jedi too.

but they didn’t even care to meet me. so i had this intense grudge against the jedi and i ended up developing my skills myself and then i grew up and got myself off tattooine and set out on a mission as a rogue force user to kill obi wan.

and 6 year old me really embodied that role. she felt that. so when I was like 25 & rewatched the original star wars trilogy for the first time since childhood, when obi wan came on I was like ugh. I hate that guy. and my friend was like “WHY?”

and I thought about it and realized it wasn’t actually his character. I was remembering my childhood self insert oc beef.

Like, sorry you wouldn’t get it but obi wan and I have history.

#I would totally read a novel-length fanfic about this oc

[palominodragon]

#the question is: does she want to throw Loki or does she want to be thrown?

[palominodragon]

You shouldn’t have to be trans to get any sex characteristic-related surgery. It’s not a limited resource. Plenty of cis men get implants and cis women get breast reductions. From Colby Gordon today and Leslie Feinberg in Transgender Warriors (1996).