paragonrobits

[paragonrobits]

i love how hyenas still have the winter coat gene

#animals #photos #hyenas #lions #queued

[paragonrobits]

it occurs to me that the World of Darkness could qualify as a setting which you could argue has rebuttals to 'vampires should always be sexy and sexiness is their defining trait' sort of baked into it

the first part of it being that many vampires are not sexy. This does not include the likes of the Nosferatu or Gangrel, who generally look inhuman and not really in a sexy way (at least by the standard); sure some Nossies might merely have a repulsive aura, and some Gangrel might keep enough of a lid on it that they aren't mistaken for Garou in need of a decent bath, but they're not generally alluring.

now, they CAN be, but that's not the point of it; that one aspect of the setting means that vampires are heavily encouraged to depersonalize humans to an extreme just as a matter of survival and psychological well-being.

Vampires kill people. It's what they do. its what they are. They don't have to, but that kind of restraint is hard. It hurts. It's so much easier to just... let go, to drink your fill until you find your fangs meeting in the throat of a dead man, or woman, or child. Maybe they were a friend of yours, or even family.

It bothers you the first time.

Until you do it again, and again.

This is, in part, one thing that Humanity loss can depict; vampires killing people to survive, and while it is possible for them to retain their humanity and be more humane than any human could possibly be, its extremely difficult to maintain it, and so emotionally exhausting, and so painful that many might not find it worth the bother.

So they make small compromises here, and there. A serial killer who needs to be taken out anyway; some guy who beats his family. People no one will care if they die, and even cheer their passing.

And in terms of this setting, these compromises aren't that big a deal. But things escalate. Small compromises can, and for most vampires will, lead to bigger ones.

You need to feed the Beast. Because here's the funny thing about vampirism and sexuality in older editions; vampires don't like sex as a general rule. They can't like it. Any drive they might have had for sexual desire, or attraction, generally dies with their human lives. They might pretend otherwise, or try to retain the abiltiy to remember when they genuinely desired other people, and try so hard not to pretend that the first thing they think of when they see humans is 'MEAT'. Walking talking meat, only existing to convey blood.

So much effort, having to deal with them. Pretending to be something you're not.

And a lot of vampires build an identity of playing at it. Toreadors like to imagine themselves gliding gracefully through the ages at the top of human society, for instance, but its often shallow, and certainly hard to maintain. The personal connection is hard, and generally not something they can maintain for long by the laws of vampire society; someone who notices that the beautiful and elegant patron of the arts has looked young for over 50 years is someone who's going to put something together, and one day he disappears too. The Masquerade is kept in place by human death.

Vampires might LOOK sexy, they might be good at manipulating those feelings, and some can even be genuine about it. The question, though, is how long does that last? Probably not long, for most. It's just too hard, too exhausting to keep up for long.

Even the act of feeding is pleasurable, but not precisely sexual. It's euphoric for both (most of the time), but you are FEEDING on someone. Draining them to satisfy your own monstrous needs. You might get them addicted to the sensation, and you get addicted to them, and then one day-

You can't stop yourself in time. You feed until there's nothing left, and your friend, or lover, or something else important to you, is just so much dead meat on the floor.

How long before you stop caring?

Vampires call humans kine, or cattle, for a reason.

In the world of darkness, a vampire's defining trait is not sexiness. They can BE sexy, if they so choose. But in earlier editions they were outright incapable of having sexual desire (though they could be good at faking it), and more than anything else what they are are monsters. They're corpses hungering for the blood of the living, and they know it.

They're not like the Garou, irrational and alien forces of nature though the werewolves seem to the vampires; the Garou know what they are, and they exist for a purpose and function vital to the world. Vampires just kill people. Mages are enlightened, in their own way; changelings are functionally everything vampires WISH they were, or like to pretend they are; patrons to inspire humans, surviving off the creativity and energy of humans without (barring some of the practices of the Unseelie Court) hurting them in any way. And the other denizens have their own things going on, that make vampires look more obviously monstrous.

For vampires, maintaining an interest in sexuality is more often than not pretending to be something they're not, and can never be again.

#vampires #world of darkness #queued

[paragonrobits]

concept, an official name for Creatures of the Black Lagoon/fishmen/gill boys/whatever you call the root species of abe sapien and Shape of Water fish husband

BOGLIN

They live in bogs and wetlands, generally, and are thus known primarily for preferred habitat. 'lin', in this case, is a suffix meant to indicate something like 'of', understood to often mean something like 'primary inhabitant'. in the setting the name structure of '[environment + lin]' is understood to be a common name for creatures that have a specific environmental requirement so notably that they are defined by it

(goblin, then, may be understood as a general catch-all term for unfortunate or weird little guys who live in places considered so awful that spitting in them would be a net improvement)

#queued

[paragonrobits]

A bit belated, but happy birthday to Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor.

My favorite character in all of assassin’s creed from the first game I played, and a character that inspires me to keep holding on.

Despite everything he has gone through, and how the world tried to beat its own cruelty into him ever since he was a child, he still keeps hope and fought tooth and nail for a future worth living in. This could probably be said for multiple assassins, but Ratonhnhaké:ton’s story just felt… so much more rooted and real to me. It’s tragic, but the way he perseveres for those he love will never cease to inspire me.

There is nothing naive or weak about kindness and fighting for what’s right.

#assassin's creed #ratonhnhaketon #art #queued #fav

[paragonrobits]

Reblog if you can hear this image I'm trying to see something

#i hear a horrible throaty noise that sounds vaguely interrogative #the dark crystal #queued

[paragonrobits]

This is the highest compliment I can bestow, but Dungeon Meshi reads like it was written for, if not by, Terry Pratchett.

Oh, you have a dungeon with monsters and adventurers? How does it work? Who pays? How do you get enough supplies? People will eat anything when hungry; do they eat the monsters? People will cook feasts from rotten meat and weeds; what feasts can you make with monsters?

By the way, here is a terrible pun about soup.

You want heroes to have peril, but also to live? Easy! Just have a ressurection spell. Well how does it work? What's the point? What would people give to live forever? What would people give to die?

Here's a dwarf whose magical shield is a wok.

And if they come back, it still hurts right? Do people remember? What happens if they forget that, outside of the dungeon, they can't come back? What if the thing that brings them back also ties them to the dungeon more and more, changes them, makes them different without knowing why.

Whilst you were thinking about that, the halfling founded an adventurers guild. It's an actual union with dues etc. btw he's a deadbeat dad apart from this.

The dwarf from earlier carries familial trauma that will haunt you for the next decade. The protagonist holds his sister's skull as the first proof that there is anything left of her. The two female leads share a love so deep that giving it a name would pollute it. The protagonist's sword is a mollusc.

#dungeon meshi #inspiration #sir terry pratchett #queued

[paragonrobits]

a random thought but it occurs to me that the Sith invariably and inevitably turning into burned out, hateful and lonely killers who impulsely wind up either murdering everyone they care about in fits of anger or not caring anymore about the causes that originally drew them to the Dark Side has a lot of merits, viewed objectively

among other things, the Dark Side encourages drawing on the worst parts of yourself; your drive to hurt others, the need to destroy, violence and anger for its own sake, and the specific point I think about is not only does the Dark Side involve a cultivated lack of compassion and willingness to hurt others

but also an erosion of self control, and especially impulse control. The light side is all about harmony, compassion, connection and so on, and especially discipline. The Dark Side specifically abandons that control.

So a Dark Sider is functionally supposed to be someone who embraces their darkest feelings and aggressively acts on them, and that self-control and not instantly obliging your impulses are antithetical to the Dark Side. To be a true Sith and use its powers consistently and well, you have to not have any self control. All signs indicate that impulses and violence drive a Sith and other Dark Siders as much as anything else.

When you have people entirely motivated by anger, resentment and hatred, it doesn't just erode their ability to care about anything or to cognitively understand that other people have feelings and lives, the sort of things the Sith do makes even more sense.

So in this case, Darth Vader strangling his wife in a fit of rage by him immediately assuming she's betrayed him at the first sign of her not instantly being on board his military empire idea, is not an isolated incident, or even something that would be particular to him.

For a Sith, this kind of violence is actively encouraged and demanded by the Dark Side. It's an inevitability.

#when someone trains themselves to act impulsively and not use self control at ALL #and indulges their every thought and idea the moment they have them #and are ALSO violently angry at all times #the BEST case scenario is a violent abuser #there's a reason you have to basically make an entire new setting with the names of these characters to #have the sith be ANYTHING other than frothing at the mouth tyrants #its specifically BUILT INTO THEIR NARRATIVE #queued #star wars

[paragonrobits]

me, who hasn't read or watched Delicious In Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi but learned a few things and am curious how people are going to react to some Stuff that I learned happens later: I want to know what the people now getting into the series think of what happens in Chapter 67

#if you know you know but if you dont #massive spoilers #STUFF HAPPENS.

[paragonrobits]

today's thought experiment; applying some of the principles to creating charismatic over the top classic villains can be applied to creating protagonists by just taking the basic idea and applying it a viewpoint character or someone the author intends to be a hero.

In particular, let's look at the concept of the BACKSTORY.

So, backstories are a surprisingly finnicky thing. A lot of store is presently put by the backstory, to the point that they're considered character defining; as an example of how this can be done well, Magneto was originally not characterized as having a particularly notable backstory, and it certainly didn't inform his character as a standard villain with mutant supremacism at the core of his character; it was not until he was written by Chris Claremont that he was imagined as having survived the Holocaust as a child, which has an obvious wealth of resulting implications on his viewpoint, fears and overall motives, both in terms of defining his antagonistic perspectives ('My people will never suffer again, no matter what I must do to ensure it') AND his heroic depictions ('NO ONE shall suffer as I did').

But at the same time, enough backstory can lock a character down and make them feel more limited, or at least prevent you from characterizing them as freely as you could if they didn't definitely HAVE that back story; if you establish Character A as having been from a wealthy family fallen on hard times and you establish a very specific character history and the precise details of how they fell and the structure of that family, its excellent material but it also prevents you from bringing up any ideas that would contradict it. And if you think later on that Character A works better as having always lived a poor and struggling life, obviously that's not an option without retcons or really wacky plot twists that are functionally ALSO retcons.

So, here is my radical point; unless the backstory DIRECTLY feeds into the character's core motivations and direct impact on a specific plot, a backstory isn't strictly necessary.

Among other things, I've found that what's important for a character is what they do in the HERE AND NOW; in the present events of the story they're in. A backstory doesn't have to really exist for them, and I've found it helps just as much to keep it minimalist to inform their character without having too much to limit potential concepts in the future.

Now, this feeds back into the villain archetype mentioned before; they rarely have any real backstory, and this allows them to enact a kind of unfettered charisma that isn't held back by bagagge. Of note, just about EVERY SINGLE classic Disney villain beloved for being fun antagonists has been given a backstory of some kind to justify their attitudes in remakes, and almost without exception EVERY SINGLE one of them fell flat.

People didn't like these reimaginings. The backstories, meant to recontextualize their actions, made those villains lose the over the top charisma that made them so compelling to begin with.

So, therein lies my proposal; flip the script and apply that same premise to your heroes! Do very little with their backstory and make it vague, or even just a few sentences worth, JUST enough to contextualize their general perspective.

You may also consider going the full mile and having your characters initially start out as villains, but who at some point changed their ways. (An example of how this might work, I would suggest looking at Steven Universe's Peridot, the more heroic depictions of Magneto, and the versions of Harley Quinn present in the Injustice setting; these are characters defined by being protagonists, but initially started out as villains whose characterizations wound up inverting.) On that note, I would also suggest inverting this former villain's characterization to give an impression of having them go full circle; as Peridot started out as a cold and callous person with a very subdued characterization, she wound up becoming a high energy and very empathetic person who is by FAR one of the most hammy and dramatic character in a show where people generally show deep feeling by bursting into song. Magneto also surprisingly is an example, despite his original characterization generally not being considered canonical for the most part; old school Magneto of the Lee/Kirby era was a very hammy and dramatic villain in the style of Doctor Doom; ranting on how his MIGHTY POWER will defeat the puny humans and those foolish X-MEN.

Whereas now, Magneto is still very dramatic, but completely inverted; his drama is cold and filled with gravitas, barely speaking above a level tone, and even this threats are calm, even with a faint hint of joviality; when he tortures a woman who has been having the homeless population abducted and converted into killer cyborgs to kill mutants in premeptive defense of human kind, Magneto indicates his intentions by simply giving a gentle smile and saying "Ah, but I CAN make you talk, with this," and reveals a small floating paperclip.

(This final thought might also lean into people liking villains; instead of bending your favorite villains out of shape to justify their actions and attitudes as secretly being the true heroes all along, why not go the extra mile and write your heroes with the same kind of energy you'd give for villains, but legitimately being good? And of course, writing your heroes as former villains who came full circle!)

#how to write #suggestions #writing #villains

[paragonrobits]

Life in an Autism World

#yeah #autistic problems #like a loud noise can be difficult to deal with #but its significantly worse if there's a LOT going on #like people screaming outside for hours while there's really loud vehicles too #thats far worse

[paragonrobits]

i don’t like to beg. but i will literally get down on my knees and grovel at your feet and BEG you, BEG YOU! to watch whatever the hell is happening here. i desperately need other people to experience the emotional whirlwind this had me in. absolutely nothing could have prepared me for anything in this video whatsoever

#loony tunes #videos #queued #for some reason the only comparison to come to mind is #a less murderous Llamas With Hats

[paragonrobits]

Cultural Fashion: Zuko’s Book 1 Hair

We all know that peculiar hairstyle Zuko sports in Book 1. It’s also a hair style we see on the male Sun Warriors. This hairstyle, like other facets of the Fire Nation aesthetic, is inspired by Thai culture. In this case, Zuko and the male Sun Warriors are sporting traditional Thai topknots.

In traditional Thai culture, the crown of the head is the sacred portal of the spirit of life and is not to be treated lightly, especially regarding children. This sacredness extends to the hair on the crown, resulting in top knots grown over children’s fontanels (soft spots). In practical terms, it discourages careless adults from touching the most delicate part of an infant’s developing skull. The cutting of the top knot, known in Thai as kon chuk (โกนจุก), is seen as a rite of passage and an auspicious event for children between the ages of 7 and 13.

Obviously, these implications don’t quite carry over into the Avatar-verse, since we see plenty of adult Sun Warriors sporting the ‘do. Most likely, the hairstyle is meant to add to the Southeast Asian “flavor” of the Fire Nation.

That said, I do think this cultural subtext adds new dimension to one of Zuko’s most memorable moments, whether intentional or not. When Zuko cuts off his topknot, you can essentially view it through three equally valid lenses:

If you view it through a traditional Chinese/Korean lens, Zuko is renouncing his ties to his father; Confucians viewed hair as a precious gift from one’s parents and to cut one’s hair was seen as an act of disloyalty.

If you view it through a traditional Japanese lens, Zuko is renouncing his status in Fire Nation society and abandoning his title for the life of a peasant. In Japanese culture, a samurai seeking to join a monastery or the peasantry would cut off his top knot and undergo a dramatic decline in social status.

In you view it through a traditional Thai lens, Zuko’s hair cutting is a rite of passage. He’s leaving behind childhood and beginning his journey into adulthood. There’s no denying that Zuko matures a lot after he cuts off his top knot.

All of these interpretations fit the Fire Nation as they are a combination of Chinese, Japanese, and Thai culture.

Stuff like this is what draws me back into Avatar as an adult. The series is a mish-mash of so many different cultures, yet they all meld together in a way that still preserves the context of the different cultures they derive from. The show has a masterful way of integrating real-life cultural motifs and historical events into its own story, and it still manages to work both metaphorically and in-universe.

#atla #meta #analysis #queued #iroh #iroh atla #zuko

[paragonrobits]

I've been into Fallout since 3 came out, which got me to play and learn all about the lore of 1 and 2, and the planned Van Buren, and then i played New Vegas and then 4, and I have to say I have never heard of ghouls ever having a need for drugs except maybe on a case by case basis.

That's never been a thing before; it's always been apparently completely random and unknown in-universe, which spurs a lot of anti-ghoul prejudice, as many people apparently believe that ALL ghouls inevitably turn feral, which is easily disproven by characters like Raul, who is older than the Great War but is completely fine, and a lot of his issues about feeling old seem psychosomatic.

Sometimes it's been suggested too much radiation has a higher chance of making someone go feral, which would seem to be the reason that intelligent Glowing Ghouls (ghouls which radiate actual radiation) are incredibly rare, but this also doesn't have much precedence, since ghouls outright thrive in radiation to the point that a lot of them take up residence in such areas even if they're horrible to live in, because then people leave them alone.

Fallout TV show spoilers below, I just have a question for those who might know more than I do

Ok can someone, without spoiling the show, explain to me the weird addition of ghouls and the drug dependency? Especially with it preventing them from turning feral? Was this a thing before or is this introduced just for the show

Because from playing the games, I thought ghouls didn't know what caused them to turn feral, that it happened seemingly at random or from the bombs, etc. and that them turning feral at any point was kinda just a rumor.

Also, isn't it a thing from fo3, that ghouls need more potent drugs for it to be able to affect them? Since when was every single ghoul ever an addict?

Maybe California coast ghouls are just built different idk

#fallout #queued #fallout ghouls

[paragonrobits]

Honestly I have to disagree, and I think the issue is less that the NCR bases itself on the old world governments (and its specifically an imperfect understand and they're just repurposing its symbols and imagery because it seems meaningful to them, not that they are a continuation of the old world), and more specifically that it is a creation of Black Isle/Obsidian, and not Bethesda.

There's many reasons for the fandom to, by large, view a lot of Bethesda's contributions to the setting as frequently shallow or retreading already established territory (the most obvious being them constantly misusing super mutants and ignoring what made super mutants interesting in the first place), and so far this kind of implies pretty heavily that Besthesda isn't happy about it.

Bluntly put; so far, it makes Besthesda look like a bunch of childish people throwing a fit that people like the pre-Bethesda stuff and the contributions of New Vegas more, so they're just smashing the board and going 'OH YEAH YOU LIKE ALL THAT STUFF? WELL ITS FUCKING DEAD, TAKE THAT'. It just feels incredibly petty and spiteful, as well as leaning into the idea of constantly resetting the board every time actual progress happens.

While Ulysses may dislike them, it still feels to me that the NCR is something new; it might take a lot of symbolism and feel from the US, but unlike the Enclave it doesn't view itself as a continuation. Personally I view the setting as less about civilizations easy to destroy, and more like... people can't change, not as a whole. They won't change. They won't learn from the past, and they'll keep making the same stupid mistakes. It's tragic and bleak, and the NCR represented a step forward, and just nuking them feels both offensive to the original creators of the IP, and a part of fallout 76 just ignoring the horrors of nuclear war and going 'shooting nukes is FUN!' and playing it off as something cool and dramatic.

For what its worth, I am most likely going to properly watch the show at some point and then I'll see if these fears are justified and there's a posisble risk of Bethesda's take on the series being more prevalent among the fandom. For what its worth, I'm considering this all as an alternative continuity in its own right.

from what i hear, supposedly in the fallout tv show they had it so that the NCR was completely destroyed, which functionally FEELS like Bethesda being incredibly spiteful at the fandom vastly preferring the societies and plot threads from 1, 2 and New Vegas and just going 'no they're all dead, while implicitly getting rid of just about everything done by the original creators of Fallout before Bethesda bought it. And if its done to keep resetting the societies of Fallout so the post apocalyptic struggling scavenger theme isn't lost, it honestly makes any kind of in universe progress feel completely pointless if they're just going to keep doing that to perserve the status quo. Funnily enough, Chris Avellone (one of the main writers of New Vegas and the original two games) has ALSO said something similar, but I didn't care for when he said it then and definitely not now. (Not the least because apparently he really hated the sapient deathclaws from 2, and I still insist that THEY would be a better pick for ultimately being the new inhabitants of the world instead of humanity. They figured out pacifism from first principles, humanity has been rediscovering new and exciting ways to murder each other over ideology in virtually every game.)

To be fair the NCR as a faction isn’t really interesting for me, they’re basically the sane version of the Enclave, remnants of the old US government that is a hundred times worse than the real life one.

Surprisingly my brother was excited Shady Sands got nuked in the show’s first plot twists because he thought of Ulysses firing the missiles at the NCR in Lonesome Road DLC was the canon event, and if the writers are smart they’ll reference that as well, and could ease feathers to the hardcore fans (and by hardcore I meant the loud fnv gamers who never played the black isle games). And this story shows how easy a civilization dies because a petty asshole is angry about something Courier Six may or may not even do.

And yes on the smart talking deathclaws. Can’t believe they were never referenced again in the main games.

Am I sad the NCR is gone? Maybe? I was with Cass in her opinion that the country is the dumbass brother that can’t get his shit together living aimlessly with no direction so I was hoping their leadership gets better after the events of the game.

Or I can ignore the show and just move on and in my headcanon they got better.

#fallout show #queued #replies

[paragonrobits]

in case you were curious, this is the current state of NFT crypto bros on twitter

#i feel like they're THIS close to comprehending the concept of a fursona and are missing it #and also comprehend the idea of avatar as shorthand for how people see you in the abstract #but too hung up over money and getting legitimately distraught over the fact that you cant make a digital thing truly unique #queued

[paragonrobits]

I think I can trace my intense hatred for the whole "regulations are just corporate bullshit, building codes are just The Man's way of keeping you down, we should return to pre-industrial barter and trade systems" nonsense back to when I first started doing electrical work at one of the largest hospitals in the country.

I have had to learn so much about all the special conditions in the National Electric Code for healthcare systems. All the systems that keep hospitals running, all the redundancies and backups that make sure one disaster or outage won't take out the hospital's life support, all the rules about different spaces within the hospital and the different standards that apply to each of them. And a lot of it is ridiculously over-engineered and overly redundant, but all of it is in the service of saving even one life from being lost to some wacky series of coincidences that could have been prevented with that redundancy.

I've done significantly less work in food production plants and the like, but I know they have similar standards to make sure the plants aren't going to explode or to make sure a careless maintenance tech isn't accidentally dropping screws into jars of baby food or whatever. And research labs have them to make sure some idiot doesn't leave a wrench inside a transformer and wreck a multi-million dollar machine when they try to switch it on.

Living in the self-sufficient commune is all fun and games until someone needs a kidney transplant and suddenly wants a clean, reliable hospital with doctors that are subject to some kind of overseeing body, is my point.

#queued

[paragonrobits]

Saw a dress, put Ame in it

#su #amethyst su #art #queued