#actions have consequences that’s storytelling baby

[greenmeanqueen]

Ever since I first heard the rumors, I was worried that they would really fake Laenor's death - ngl, that was cringe af 😭 I get that they wanted to avoid the Bury Your Gays trope and maybe whitewash the Blacks (they still killed an innocent!), but the execution was so awful and poorly written. That whole thing? Did such a disservice to Laenor as a character. He really just ditched his family like this shortly after his parents lost their daughter and clearly gives not shit about Rhaenyra's kids. Also: what about Seasmoke??? He left his poor dragon behind? Wouldn't Seasmoke's behavior indicate that he's alive? And since Laenor is alive, how will Addam claim Seasmoke? Unless Laenor dies randomly in Essos at some point... Or they bring back Laenor for the war and cut out Addam? That would suck, I was looking most forward to Daeron and Addam for the dance (from characters that are still to be introduced).

Sorry for the rant! The twist was just so stupid, I can't take it seriously, lol.

thank you for your asks, both of you!!

“bury your gays” is an extremely problematic trope, full stop. in westeros, gays are buried quite often, and it sucks. that’s the world written, where it’s not okay to stray from heteronormativity. so was it nice, as a modern audience, that we didn’t watch laenor be murdered one episode after his sister’s immolation? yeah. but from a writing standpoint, it was clumsy AF and contradictory to laenor’s character.

he spent all of 1x7 lamenting how he wasn’t there for his sister, wasn’t there for his wife and her kids, and now he’s running away, leaving behind his nieces and his parents and making them believe their last child is dead right after they lost their other? being there for the people you love was set up as a theme of laenor’s story, and you expect me to believe he would’ve left them just like that? especially his nieces, the last remnants of his beloved sister, who are the spitting image of their mother when she clutched his hand at the tourney when they were preteens. especially his parents; rhaenys’ scream of anguish was haunting. we haven’t been shown anything to suggest that he didn’t love his mother, and she him; corlys, with his denial of laenor’s sexuality, is suggestive of another story, a strained relationship. but rhaenys, who didn’t want her son involved in the game of thrones, who accepted him for who he was and defended him to her husband?

if they wanted to make it work, we’d need to spend more time with this decision from laenor’s perspective, but that might’ve not been as good of a look for the blacks bc it might hammer in that it wasn’t exactly an option for him to stay. was it “nice” of rhaenyra to accept laenor for who he was and not literally have him murdered so she could carry on as she pleased? it was the bare freaking minimum, and a man was still murdered to carry out the ruse. RIP serving man, you deserved better. also lest we forget daemon “i murdered rhea royce to be rid of our marriage” targaryen. i am truly baffled at their decision-making, because they’re really just digging their own graves deeper if, by chance, laenor returns or is found out. i sure wish we’d explore these complications and consequences, but that doesn’t seem to be where we’re headed. nevertheless, dae/myra and fandom can ignore them all they’d like, but that doesn’t mean they’re just going to go away. RIP to the bastards five, they were kids who didn’t deserve these situations.

#actions have consequences that’s storytelling baby #and the writers are creating a bit of a mess for themselves for incorporating the characters to come like addam #who knows they might retcon something or kill laenor off unceremoniously from across the sea #messy messy messy #laenor velaryon #rhaenys velaryon #corlys velaryon #laena velaryon #anti rhaenyra targaryen #anti daemon targaryen #anti daemyra #hotd critical #house of the dragon spoilers #fire and blood #asoiaf #ask a gal

[alexxncl]

‼️NIGHTBRINGER LESSON 39 SPOILERS‼️

masterlist | all lessons | lesson 38 | lesson 40

this was hilarious until i remember that satan is indeed the avatar of wrath and has destroyed the house of lamentations more tines than i can count on both hands. then it got slightly less hilarious, but it's still hilarious

ik we all joke about lucifer being satan's dad bc he technically is but this is PEAK father-son behavior 😭 satan throwing a temper tantrum, no pun intended, over not being able to adopt a cat is one of the funniest things ever actually

y'all know i love me some angst but dear GOD am i happy that we're getting something lighthearted after the emotional rollercoaster that was lesson 38

also we got our room back hehe 🫶🏽

aaaaand now they back to brothers

"nuh uh" "uh huh" DAMN just let him have the cat 😭

shithead lucifer my beloved 🫶🏽 and it's even more heartwarming bc we can see how much he's relaxed and recovered from the incident in cocytus. him smiling and laughing and joking with his brothers freely after the fear of losing them has finally been dissipated has to be a weight off of his shoulders, and a weight off of his brothers' shoulders, too. he's probably been less of himself since the fall, and this is probably more reminiscent of the lucifer from back in the celestial realm

i hc that mammon's familiars/crows just roam around the house freely, so this is even more frustrating for satan bc he's like "well if mammon can have pets, why can't i?"

oh baby :(((

just when i thought we'd gotten away from the angst, i was reminded that we are (i am) indeed on lesson 39 outta 40...ykw at least i was happy for a little bit

10/10 storytelling and writing. i love it when siblings ACTUALLY act like siblings, bc some media doesn't do sibling dynamics justice

granted, solomon isnt their sibling, but lucifer said it once AND doubled down bc he saw that it pissed satan off the first time. the older sibling in me smiled

ik i've said this before but...

lucifer says he hates when his brothers pester him like they don't get it from him 😭 oh no, if it isn't the consequences of your own actions!

now i feel like mammon might be onto something...what if he actually is stronger than lotan? but he doesn't want things to go past empty, playful threats bc hurting lotan would devastate levi, and he adores his little brother too much to do anything that irresponsible. more on this here

the brothers ever 🫶🏽 petty sibling dynamics always get me

satan reusing asmo's phrase after lucifer and solomon used it against him is peak comedy

ADHD TWINS

i can't do long, complicated shit for the life of me without getting sidetracked or overwhelmed

...unless it's these long ass posts

but that's different...kind of

so THAT'S why he was giggling and kicking his feet the whole time?? "hehehe" my ass you sly bitch

also, you can see the amount of pride lucifer feels towards satan just by the way he's acting throughout this entire lesson. he also knew wholeheartedly that satan would, one way or another, find a way to summon the white dragon. he egged satan on and teased him on purpose, which probably made his powers stronger. but i feel like the teasing also was a mask for encouragement

it was obviously still teasing at the heart, but there was a little more to it that reflected how proud lucifer is of his baby brother for coming into his own

also satan initiating the family picture at the end ??? I SOBBED

the lucifer from our timeline would NEVER allow a pet into the house. but the lucifer from our timeline also didn't get to heal the way this lucifer did, so now i'm kinda sad just thinking about that

maybe he thinks having a pet would mean that they're permanently staying in one place? and he still doesn't feel secure enough in his place in the devildom even after all the time he's spent there, even after making a home and a name for himself and his brothers. maybe he considered letting satan get a pet once mc came into the picture, and still toys with the idea, but keeps deciding against it for some internal reason that he won't address

MY WIFE MY BELOVED THE LOVE OF MY LIFE IS BACK

they really do invite any and everyone into the family. i love them so much it makes me insane

completely unrelated but i never realized that the kiss sounds are different for each brother ??? is thus just a nightbringer thing or am i just too far removed from the og game

#obey me #obey me nightbringer #obey me spoilers #nightbringer spoilers #obey me nightbringer spoilers #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me levi #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmo #obey me asmodeus #obey me beel #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphie #obey me belphegor #obey me simeon #obey me solomon #obey me luke #obey me diavolo #obey me barbatos #obey me mc #lucifer obey me #satan obey me #mammon obey me #obey me thirteen #obey me mephisto #obey me mephistopheles

[hawkogurl]

Just took my meds so sorry if this is incomprehensible and or I repeat myself but I will never not want to put my head through a wall when people treat Harry not developing a goblin personality in the raimi trilogy like a plot hole because it’s just so obviously not. I know a lot of the third movie doesn’t make sense but please don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. As always will elaborate if I explain poorly cause I love talking.

From a narrative angle, performance enhancers do not by default make you evil or give you a goblin persona. They intensify who you already are as a person.

From the very scene they’re introduced, it is stated the performance enhancers did not affect every single animal they were tested on with the stated “violence, aggression, and insanity.” It was stated to be a single test. In real life, that could be an outlier, a fluke, or these symptoms could be random chance. That’s not how things generally work in storytelling.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, every single scene where the goblin does something evil and horrifying is foreshadowed and established with a scene where something related happens to Norman. Norman is about to lose his contract to Quest Aerospace, the goblin bombs Quest Aerospace. Norman is ousted by the board of directors and the announcement of this will occur after the world unity day festival (whatever the fuck that was even I can’t explain that), the goblin murders the board during the festival. He very noticeably ogles MJ during the Thanksgiving scene, who is, I feel compelled to point out, 17-18 in this scene while Norman is in his 50’s, and the goblin later threatens to rape her. And one of the most very obviously stated examples, Harry unintentionally tells Norman what Peter’s emotional weak point would be and he kidnaps MJ to use as a hostage to bait him. There is a constant and explicit link between the actions of the Goblin and the actions of Norman. Norman also folds incredibly easily to the Goblin, never really meaningfully resisting it. Hell, the scene where he finds out about the goblin he doesn’t even oppose him, he just remains in an area of neutrality. The very next scene where he interacts with the goblin, he is a willing and unresisting participant and enabler of the goblin’s actions, which he continues to be until he dies. He never resists.

The goblin was never an evil split personality that forced Norman to be evil. The difference between Norman and Harry that I believe caused the goblin is that Norman refused to be honest with himself in regards to what he wanted to do, that the actions of the goblin were things Norman would have done if he had the ability to do so without consequences for his actions. Power does not corrupt, it reveals, and Norman had the power to do horrible things without the things that would normally prevent him from doing so.

The goblin is a way for him to avoid accepting responsibility for his actions. It allowed him to redirect his bad behavior onto an external source. He was not forced to do anything. He was just a greedy and corrupt man who didn’t want the consequences of being greedy and corrupt on his own. That is the point of the parallels between him and Peter, give a man a mask and see who he is, Norman was given a mask and he took his chance to be cruel because it wouldn’t reflect on himself behind it and Peter was given a mask and chose to help people despite the fact nobody would know and give him credit for it.

Now back to Harry. Harry has no reason to manifest something that allows him to deny responsibility for his actions. Harry is, though dishonest with himself in regards to his emotions and frequently in denial about his fathers guilt because it would require him to address that the perfected version of his father that he bordered on worshipping was not real and something he crafted to cope with the fact Norman was neglectful and sometimes abusive towards him, developed because Harry didn’t want to believe and have to reconcile that. But Harry is consistently completely honest about what he wants to do. He wants to kill Spider-Man. He does not need to sugar coat that fact to himself, to make it less violent or to act like it’s not him who wants that because Harry is sure that’s the right thing to do. He has no reason to sugarcoat that to himself.

As a result, the performance enhancers do not make Harry suddenly want to mass murder or do terrorism, because Harry has no reason to want to do that. Harry’s motivations are very open and shut from this angle. He wants to kill Spider-Man, because he killed his father. He has no reason to do things like that because they won’t bring him closer to that goal. He has no reason to want unrelated people dead. I think it can very easily be argued that the serum lowered his inhibitions in what he was willing to do, going from letting Peter go to fight Doc and making an admittedly flimsy defense of Peter to his hallucinations of his father and walking away from him at MJ’s musical with only a few words prior to, after the serum, being willing to not only attack Peter directly but also being a bit more willing to drag other people in when he deems it necessary. But even when he threatened MJ, which was obviously bad and I hope we all know that, he does not threaten her life because he has no reason to want to hurt her. And I’m not saying he does that because he still loves her romantically and the whole scheme was earnest because I don’t think that’s true and if it was he would have actually forced her to be with him, ignoring how dubious his romantic feelings for her even existing to begin with are, but what I am saying is that Harry is pretty consistent with who he directs violence towards prior to his change of heart. He does not threaten MJ with violence towards her because he has no reason to want to hurt her. He has reason to want to hurt Peter. His desires in that regard are consistent.

Additionally, if the performance enhancers did just make people violent and crazy by default, Harry would have continued to have violent desires when he lost his memory. He didn’t. Because the moment his reason to be violent were gone in his own mind, his own mind lost its reason to behave violently. The same thing applies to after he had his change of heart. Once he actually accepted his father was at fault and responsible for his own actions, he no longer had any desire to hurt Peter or really anyone because the desire was no longer there.

The performance enhancers are not intended as something that changes you or suddenly makes you evil and the goblin isn’t DID and I will always maintain that idea as being ableist. To pin everything Norman did on the goblin is to allow him to do what his very goal was from the get go: to be able to use it as something to pin his behavior on that would allow him to walk away consequence free. To deny his responsibility for his actions is just this really irritating woobification that seems to have happened to almost every evil male character people like because people can’t just accept they like bad people for some reason. And don’t get me started on NWH, a lot of this perception is because of that movie, a movie that completely failed narratively on almost every front and couldn’t even get the basic timeline of the trilogy right, so it’s not outrageous to think that Norman was outrageously out of character in that movie.

And to a degree I can’t even begrudge it. Norman is a very different character in NWH. And I understand very well that it’s probably not fun for someone to see NWH, like the funny angsty old man who’s sort of harmless and silly seeming, and then have to reconcile that he’s a vastly different character and a deeply bad person in the original trilogy. I guess I just sort of wish NWH’s characterization hadn’t come to be treated as the default, correct, or as something that should or even can be retroactively applied to the trilogy. Because it shouldn’t. On many fronts, not just Norman, retroactively applying NWH to the trilogy basically destroys it.

More than willing to have good faith discussions if someone disagrees as long as it’s, well, in good faith. Not gonna begrudge anyone for liking Norman because of that NWH characterization either. I do perceive these movies through a more specific lense.

#harryposting #harry osborn #raimiverse #raimi trilogy #spider man #spiderman #norman slander #Norman Osborn #anti nwh

[loren91]

In my last post about Wilhelm and why his flaws are important for the narrative, I may have come off as a tad bit harsh calling him a bad person. So let me elaborate on that one more. I don’t think he’s a bad person. He’s an interesting character, my favourite character in the show even, which in terms of storytelling, is a much larger compliment than saying ‘he’s so sweet and good’. He’s an incredibly nuanced character and I’d like to talk a bit more about his personality.

Let me really emphasise one thing.

WILHELM IS NOT SHY.

For some reason, it seems to be very common to interpret his character as a shy, nervous little cry baby. Which I don’t agree with.

Usually in filmmaking, the first time you show your protagonist you want to have a scene that displays the character's core essence. To properly introduce them to the audience.

Look at how Wilhelm is introduced to us:

We see him having an anxiety attack, his face is covered in bruises and he’s trying to control his breathing. There are flashbacks of a bar and a random guy harassing him, and of course, the fight. There are paparazzi outside the car that are clearly bothering him. Then he’s arguing with the poor assistant about the script for the statement, raising his voice at her.

What does this tell us about his character? He’s got anxiety issues, he’s not very happy with living in the public eye, he’s quick to anger and he’s rather aggressive. Wilhelm is an angry, angry boy. And he stays angry for most of the first episode. Except for when he’s in close proximity to Simon. (Or when he’s drunk)

The church scene in ep 1, where Simon is singing, that’s the first time we see him smile. Which is a really sweet way to show us his fascination and attraction to Simon from the very start, but not only that, it also offers something that can counteract his anger issues. That’s why we are rooting for Wilmon from the start!

Yes, Wilhelm is nervous around Simon to begin with, but that’s because he has a crush, not because of his personality. Later, as soon as Simon confirms that his feelings are reciprocated, Wilhelm becomes a lot more forward. I mean come on, who was the initiator in the fish scene really? Wilhelm knew exactly what he was doing, kissing Simon’s neck and hugging him from behind. But even in the beginning, who’s the one pursuing who first? Who’s the one chasing after the other at the party? Who’s the one texting first? Who’s the one reaching out their hand first during the movie night? Wilhelm! Those are not the actions of a chronically shy person.

If he ever seems unsure or withdrawn around his peers, especially around August, that’s not because he’s shy or nervous or sad. He’s frustrated. August is so fucking annoying. He dislikes August with a passion from the very beginning but he’s trying so hard not to let it show. Mainly, I think he’s frustrated that he can’t just dump his ass immediately.

The opening to ep 1 is also really smart in another way, it establishes the possible consequences Wilhelm may face for his mistakes. If he doesn’t behave, his mother will make sure he pays for it. When they decide to send him to Hillerska, against his wishes, his mother says “Hillerska will help give you routine and the right type of friends” (although she does say ‘umgänge’, which technically translates closer to ‘company’. So I think she might be more concerned about him being integrated into the correct community rather than making actual friends) We also see Erik tell him that he can trust August. So Wilhelm is expected to like August, and he doesn't dare break his family’s expectations of him, because he’s terrified of the consequences. He can’t speak up against August, even when he’s saying awful stuff or bullies Simon right in front of him. He’s scared of what could happen if his mother found out he’s not ‘making the right the right type of friends’. So he’s trying to conform to the elite culture at Hillerska, at least for show. 

Just a side note about August, the dislike is 100% mutual. Considering how he takes any opportunity to scold and lecture Wilhelm as a sick power move. He also talks shit about him behind his back and belittles him in front of Erik and their peers. August is not really interested in being his friend at any point, he just wants the status and bragging rights of ‘being close to the royal family’. He’s trying to compensate for only being the 2nd cousin. I think Erik generally has a lot more patience with people and takes the stuff August says with a pinch of salt. ‘It’s just August. He’s just like that, it doesn't mean anything’. But Wilhelm certainly doesn’t have the same kind of patience, and when he’s not cooperating the way August would’ve liked him to, August gets more and more agitated, and when Wilhelm spills his secret about being broke, that’s the last straw. They really bring out the worst in each other.

But then when Wilhelm is with Simon (and sometimes with Felice and Erik as well) we get to see his true self. A sweet, goofy, confident yet sensitive kid, who values authenticity and freedom above everything else. And he can tell Simon has the same values, therefore he feels comfortable enough with Simon to just be himself around him. So it’s made very clear to us who the ‘right type of friends’ for Wilhelm actually are. But that’s not what his family or the royal court values. Keeping up the facade is more important to them.

He’s so scared, of his mother and the press. All of these expectations and the weight of a several centuries-old institution resting on his shoulders, is a lot of shit that a 16-year-old kid shouldn’t have to deal with, that’s where his anxieties come from.

I really hope Wilhelm finds a way to be his authentic self in the next season, carrying so much anger and pretending to be fine with all that bullshit must be fucking exhausting.

#young royals #young royals analysis #Prince Wilhelm #august horn #character analysis #my analysis

[neonjawbone]

My webcomic PARADISE resumes this friday after a 4 year long hiatus. Wanna know what it's about? Here's a primer! It's got a 260+ page backlog (350 pages on patreon) so its a good time to check it out!! Here’s what’s written in the images for those who need it:

WHY YOU SHOULD READ MY WEBCOMIC PARADISE by NJ “Neonjawbone” Barna

Paradise is a shonen inspired, super-powered/action/rom-com/crime drama webcomic. It follows Pam, a delinquent daughter of a city councilman in a world of superpowers. Through CONSEQUENCES she ends up having to work for the city fighting super-powered crime, and is partnered with her childhood frenemy Evon. Following a rocky start, the pair become friends...and perhaps something more??

In the city’s shadowy underground, the Nebula Cartel holds an iron grip over crime in the city, but there’s dissent among it’s members in how to proceed with it’s long-term plans. The city itself isn’t clean either, lurking just beneath the surface are the machinations of the government officials, and not everyone wants to use their authority for good.

It’s got action!! It’s got jokes!!

It’s got intrigue!! It’s got heart!!

It’s got an ensemble cast!!

And it updates Tuesdays on Patreon and on Fridays at globalcomix.com/c/paradise! The patreon archive is about a year ahead of the GC archive, as a little incentive to join my Patreon, wink.

Thanks for reading!

And as a final note, from my initial “Paradise is back” post: 

I want to thank everyone who stuck around. For anyone who shared this comic, who read it, who’s been here since the hiatus started in 2018. And I especially wanna thank my patrons, for sticking with Paradise while updates were drip-fed for YEARS, often going months at a time inbetween single pages. I really needed this time, to grow as a person, an artist, a storyteller, and to evaluate what this comic means to me and what it should be going forward. I appreciate your support so much more than you could ever know.

To my new readers, welcome! The comic you’re about to read is something I’ve been drawing since 2015, and it’s quality (in the early chapters especially) reflect that. I hope you enjoy it.

PARADISE IS BACK, BABY.

READ PARADISE

ON PATREON

twitter//patreon//pillowfort //ko-fi  

#paradise #paradise webcomic #comics #webcomics #pam gripps #evon bali #demarco caskets #rashida darius #the boss #monty lebruce #king #hawking #otto von kelvin #onyx dumant #and eveeryyybody else #reblogs appreciated

[andmaybegayer]

Look, I'll be honest, I got very little for you here.

Typically around this time of year I'm either still out wandering some wild place in South Africa or I have just got back home from said wandering and either one of those means I've got like, three or four books that I've just finished and a bunch of albums and probably some kind of photographic shenanigans.

These are not happening right now.

I am currently in an apartment in Prague with some visiting family I've been touring around so it is. Different. In light of this fact we're going to do our:

Last First Monday of the Year 2024-01-01

which is going to be a wrap-up of notable entries from 2023. It's true, I got some notes!

Listening (Music):

There is a clear winner for Most Important Album for me this year and that has to be Titus Andronicus putting out The WIll to Live. I picked up Titus Andronicus a few years ago on a rec from a guy on IRC and after putting The Monitor on loop for days I was so down with it. Unfortunately while the rest of their repertoire is honestly really solid punk, The Monitor is truly next level shit. The Will to Live finally closes that gap. It's so good.

There's a lot of good pull songs from this one but I do adore Baby Crazy which is just a breathless rundown of the core philosophy of the album. Part of what links The Monitor and The Will to Live is a very heavy handed metaphorical through line, The Monitor through American Civil War references and The Will to Live through the convoluted nuclear family analogue.

Truly no one is doing it like Titus Andronicus.

Listening (Podcasts):

Noted originator of the new weeklypost tradition @girlfriendsofthegalaxy was always talking about Friends at the Table and so I was like "Hey her taste is pretty good that's probably better than the median TTRPG podcast" and hey. It was. SO much more than I was expecting.

I started with Partizan which was at the time the current season, and hoo boy. F@TT does many things that handily sidestep a lot of my issues with RPG podcasts. By running tight little game systems with strong narrative focus and leaning more into the storytelling side than actual play (while still allowing rolls and player decisions to completely upend the plot) they get into the action quickly, have strong character driven scenes, and manage to hold my attention.

I will be open and say that the politics of Austin Walker's storytelling are very mixed. A lot of people act like these games are incisive political commentary but they only really hit that occasionally, which I think is good. Leaning into the weirdness of these settings is important, and trying to make them cleave too close to modern problems at all times would weaken them, compared to what they actually do well.

What If Han Solo Was Beyoncé. Remember: You Have Beaten Your Worst Days. Destroy Something Instead Of Understanding It.

Within four episodes of the start of Partizan, one half of the game has seen the death of a minor god and started a false flag operation with consequences that would persist to the end of the season. The game systems in play often outright prevent character death in all but the direst situations, but they replace that with dramatic character change. Clem becomes Obsessed, Valence becomes Righteous, Sovereign Immunity becomes Paranoid.

They are definitely playing "for the camera", if you aren't a fan of heavy allusions to other media as part of storytelling you will not like this, but they work it out well. There's a commitment to interesting storytelling that follows well into the next point, which is:

They are very good at getting into characters motivations. Clementine Kesh is despicable, she is terrible, and she's the central focal point of a huge run of Partizan. Hella Varal of the Hieron series is also a spectacularly character-driven entity, frequently a major driving force of the plot, doing things none of the players would really want to have happen. This also applies to Lem King, to an extent.

After catching up with Partizan I went back and I've been running through the backlog. I am almost caught up to Twilight Mirage, I might step out to listen to the current season since it follows directly from Partizan. I'll see.

Reading:

Without a doubt the big one this year was Terra Ignota. Absolutely lodged in my brain forever.

Terra Ignota is like the flipside of the Culture. The Culture assumes that its members are so far gone from their humanity that their utopian issues are almost incomparable to ours. The Hives are instead a utopian society built on a hard break from modernity that has left them very, very vulnerable to our modern problems. The approach Terra Ignota takes to gender, nationality, and family is set up to argue a very interesting case, not that those things cannot be changed, but that you can't just go cold turkey on them.

(The Gender is particularly forceful. Mycroft's haphazard attempts to reverse-engineer gender for his imagined Reader are so good, they perfectly replicate the internal experience of going to a very very queer environment with a brain that was still ultimately wired by the recent past.)

The actual plot of Terra Ignota is kind of secondary to the spectacle of all these Types Of Guys interacting and exposing their internal processes in a way that is so satisfying. The Hives are unusual in part because there's so few that probably appeal to the readers. I don't think pretty much any of Terra Ignota's expected audience have much interest in the Europeans, Masons, or the Mitsubishi, and while some of them might agree with the Brillists they are given so little screen time that it's hard to say. Really it ends up being the Humanist/Utopian debate at its core, with the Cousins there to balance it. As a result it's impressive that by the end I think most people I've talked to are less sure whether they agree more with the Humanists or the Utopians.

Watching:

Arcane, a one that I don't think I talk about too much, in part because it's so tidy. A perfectly wrapped gift of tragedy! Any story where at almost any point a few characters could just talk it out and resolve all their problems but they don't is *chef's kiss* to me. If you like Othello you will love Arcane is what I'm getting at here.

Arcane is such a gorgeous show, dripping with character, every single scene is so carefully considered. There's an extremely long (in time) close shot of Jayce throwing up over a bridge that I think of all the time.

Arcane is so clear and uncompromising in its presentation of its characters. I've said before that there's actually very little character development among any of the main cast, instead the show builds on bringing very strongly defined characters into conflict and exploring what they do next. This works wonderfully.

And the music! I have probably listened to the Arcane soundtrack a little too much. Basically the only time I went on spotify this year was to look at the Radio channels for songs from the soundtrack.

Playing:

Given that I spent so long playing Breath of the WIld this year you'd think it would be that and you'd be dead wrong. Not that great! It's fine! I like an immersive sim open world game but do you know what I actually do when I feel like I want to play a game just for the pure thrill of it. I go open TItanfall 2.

Titanfall 2 is the ideal first person shooter campaign. It is short and sweet and interesting and manages to keep you sufficiently overpowered without making you feel like it's easy. I played the campaign on Hard at the start of the year and it is the shooter I remember shooters I don't actually like as being.

The reason I play first person shooters is for the fast reaction twitch play. I do not care for long kill times, I do not care for gradually plinking enemies down, I do not want to think about a target for more than 5 seconds. Titanfall is absurdly fast if you play it right, you never stop, you optimize for shooting on the run, and you bounce around the field like a pinball. Delightful.

Titan Combat in the campaign is meh, it's so often just a slog against artificially toughened bosses, or figuring out how to deal with those little AI bots. It's fine. I like being a big robot. Titans are probably better in multiplayer. At some point I will install Northstar so I can try multiplayer lobbies.

Tools and Equipment:

The 3D printer! I have been in the orbit of 3D printing types for ages but now that I have one I can see why its an essential tool for so many electronics types. The ability to just Make The Thing You Need is so powerful. Printed items have their limitations but they all pale in relation to "I hit a button and the exact thing I need appears in 2-12 hours".

So many projects stall out because you need a bracket or an adapter or a flange or a box that you know all the specifications for but that will take two weeks to arrive or has to be ordered in batches of 200 or costs 10× as much as you're willing to pay.

My printer is cheap as shit, the Anycubic Neo cuts as many costs as possible without being actively bad, and it's still a great printer. It can do anything I need well enough that I can carry on with the rest of my life. It has the precision to do slip fit parts and even basic materials have the strength for fairly crucial components.

Like, sure, you can make a lot of these things quickly by hand if you have the parts available, but like, even if somehow all your problems can be solved by cutting a PVC pipe to the right size and shape, do you keep all possible dimensions of PVC pipe in a drawer somewhere? No, you run into a problem that needs 60mm pipe and you only have 50mm pipe and now you gotta go to the hardware store and buy 2m of pipe for a project that needs 0.2m of pipe. It is such a problem-solver to be able to fabricate arbitrary complex shapes from plastic stock.

Making:

The big one. The Penrose Quilt.

This took months for me and my mother to put together, and it came out exactly like we hoped. It's so good, it looks incredible, we put it together by hand with needles and thread and time, I sleep under it every night, it is the ideal item. Few things to build your handsewing confidence like backstitching probably over a hundred meters of seams.

This was a really ambitious project and yet we pulled it off. Absolutely ridiculous.

#Bandcamp #Youtube #last Monday of the week #last first monday of the year

[david-talks-sw]

Do you think Anakin did the right thing opening the Jedi Holocron for Cad Bane (the one with the location of all the force sensitive infants) to save Ahsoka, or is this another example of his character flaw of not being able to let things go and sacrificing the greater good for his attachments?

Anon is referring to this scene, from the TCW Season 2 episode "Cargo of Doom".

Earlier in the episode, Cad Bane tortures another Jedi, Bolla Ropal, to death. Having seen that Ropal - like any other Jedi - was willing to die rather than endanger children, he decides to use a different tactic.

Bane says it himself: the bond between a Jedi teacher and his apprentice is strong.

So he lures Ahsoka into a trap, takes advantage of her impulsiveness and captures her, then makes Anakin choose between her and the Holocron. Anakin saves Ahsoka, because of course he does... and in doing so exposes countless Force-sensitive babies to Cad Bane, and, indirectly, Darth Sidious.

Normally… a Jedi should've put the mission first.

Then again, the Jedi believe all life is sacred.

Any Jedi would've done their best to save both.

But the question becomes which do you save first?

So, in theory, it's a tricky situation because you need to choose to prioritize one of two selfless acts. It's sorta like the classic "trolley problem" thought experiment:

You gotta pick between two choices knowing they'll both have terrible, awful consequences.

But this type of choice is also a very common storytelling trope.

When a protagonist is faced with two choices, they'll usually pick a third out-of-the-box option. An example off the top of my head:

Spider-Man saves Mary-Jane first and then the ferry in one swing.

Now, upon first glance, it seems like Anakin chose to do something similar, but failed. In reality, though... Anakin didn't choose at all.

Instead, he surrendered and obeyed Cad Bane's orders because he can't lose Ahsoka, as he states out loud. Bane cornered him and Anakin went along with it out of a selfish fear of loss, rather than selflessly putting duty first.

Dave Filoni had this to say on this moment:

"I mean, [Anakin's] angry, he’s intense. He’s willing to kill everyone in that room to save his Padawan. In a way, we’re seeing this dark side of Anakin, and in a very real illustration of why Jedi should not have attachments, we see that attachment issue get exploited before our very eyes." - Dave Filoni, “Cargo of Doom” Featurette, 2010

That's the issue.

His decision-making abilities were compromised and he complied with the villain. He went from an active position to a passive one.

Sure, later, he tried to fix it and recover the Holocron, but by then the damage had been done and Bane was holding all the cards.

Other Jedi would've gone for the Holocron or, hell, gone for Ahsoka, but they would've acted, they wouldn't have given up their advantage because that would've been irrational.

Ahsoka herself told Anakin not to do it, and we saw moments later that she was so resourceful that she hung on long enough for Anakin to press the button. Chances are, if he hadn't given in to Bane's demands and cut him down... he would have still managed to press the button and save Ahsoka too. We'll never know, because Anakin was emotionally-compromised and refused to roll those dice.

Again, it's a verrrry tricky situation. As Bane points out, some other Jedi would've hesitated too, nobody is perfect.

Anakin's action (or lack thereof) is understandable and it doesn't make him a bad person.

But, according to the episode's narrative, it was a failure nonetheless.

#QnA #anakin skywalker #ahsoka tano #jedi order #the clone wars #cargo of doom #cad bane #star wars #attachment #long post

[knightotoc]

Prodigy Theory: Dal is one of the Lizard Babies

- lore evidence: he has human DNA

- lore evidence: Starfleet knows about his DNA and wants him to call them ASAP

- storytelling evidence: would be emotional if he was really janeway's son

- meta evidence: above average star wars vibes from this show so it would make sense to have a dramatic parent reveal and secret siblings

- meta evidence: we like Threshold now (at least people of good taste do) and why not take it seriously?

- storytelling evidence: the protostar can go super duper fast, just like they do in threshold

- so, theory: one of Voyager's delta quandrant enemies found the lizard babies and messed with their genes for some nefarious purpose; the experiment succeeded with Dal's siblings, so they're now in the thrall of some evil aliens, but failed with Dal, so they sold him off to that weird lady

-best thing for me: married old man Tom Paris has to face the consequences of his actions!!!

- worst thing for me: Dal is dealing with being nobody's child rn and that would be great if they would actually stick with that for once instead of making everyone a legacy character's kid; but I think in this case it would be great to deal with the fact that two legacy characters literally did abandon their children in a random swamp somewhere, they should feel bad about that, and so should chakotay and tuvok who made the call

- counter evidence: no way in hell they'd ever fucking do this

- counter evidence: he's literally in starfleet rn and no one has brought this up

- nail in the coffin: no más prodigy :(

#star trek #star trek prodigy #star trek voyager #tom paris blogging #star trek threshold

[aonehattown]

Kayfabe and Live Action Role Play

People will say there’s no such thing as a bad larper. That’s not true. There is good & bad larp. I’m not like a wrestling junkie or anything and have only a basic understanding of the sport. But. I do know this. The key to being a “good” larper is understanding kayfabe. There’s no right or wrong type of larp or style of play. There’s no single way to have fun at larp. But there’s loads of ways to be selfish at a game and negatively impact other people’s fun. You can burn yourself out by not sleeping enough or drinking water. You can get too caught up in the seriousness of the drama and suffer bleed after game. You can refuse to go down from damage when you should because you're overly competitive or are too afraid of your character dealing with consequences. I would say any and all of that is indicative of bad larping. Understanding how old school carnies and now wrestlers use kayfabe is in my opinion the best principle for tackling LARP. Keep in mind that it’s a game while also letting yourself fully buy into the story. It's about equal parts fully being into the story while still understanding the practicalities of the function of the game. Don’t be overly competitive, recognize the nature of the game by sharing the spotlight. Don’t get bent out of shape when things go sideways but work with the stories on the fly. Do a lil improv when ya gotta. Sell your damage & your hits. Don’t be afraid to take the fall. Trust the story to play out and the cyclical nature of a monthly larp. Play it up like you have an audience in the cheap seats! LARP is all Kayfabe baby! Metagaming is a dirty word for roleplayers but it's not all bad. Metagaming so that you are providing more fun for other players or metagaming so the story can move forward in a dramatic way is good. There is good metagaming! That's Kayfabe style of larping. You’ll have more fun when you embrace this style of play. You’ll be easier on the storytellers, you’ll be more exciting to rp with as an npc or as your pc, your marshaling will improve, and youll take bigger risks as a role player. It is a game and it is a story, both need to serve each other. Now get out there and have an adventure!

(this all also applies to table top)

#larp #live action role play #ttrpg #kayfabe

[yukidragon]

U know? Actually we always talk about Jack or Alice having a happy family, seeing their ups and downs or their actions towards the pregnancy and the baby.

But in reality we have never stopped to think if the son of Jack and Alice feels about having a ghost father which only he and his mother can see and touch. Wouldn't this create some kind of conflict for the child? I mean, it's great to have a supernatural dad but no one except your family can see or touch him, it's great that you can do tricks like "fly" or "have telekinesis" but after all everyone think you don't have a dad.

Other than that, the boy would gain his father's powers? It would be half human half ghost hybrid? He would be unlucky enough to meet Ian and he told him: "I should have been your father"? What consequences do you think this would generate for the child and what would be its advantages?

This is an excellent line of questioning. There's so many possibilities that are involved, especially since we don't know how the game's story is going to go. For all we know, there might be a happy end route where Jack becomes human again... or maybe a route where he becomes something else and keep his powers while still being able to be seen by others.

My previous pregnancy headcanon posts were done with the assumption that Jack's ability to affect reality stays the same since there's so many variables involved if it changes and how he might settle into living as a normal person. This was to keep things simple for me. It also offered some interesting storytelling ideas, like Ian seeing Alice and her kids talk to empty air, yandere Ian watching Alice get yanked away from him, Jack carrying his baby and (deceased) sunshine out of the hospital, Shaun having to drive Alice to doctor's appointments because Jack can't, and of course what would happen if Jack drove while unseen by others and using his spooky ghost(?) powers on a speed radar.

Personally, I do believe that Jack becoming real and tangible to others is going to be part of the climax of the game... for good or ill depending on the route.

Still, it's fun to consider how the kids might deal with having a dad that only they and their mom can see. It would be something normal to the kids. If anything, they might get upset at people treating them like they're lying and making things up. Alice and Jack would have talks with them early on that Jack is special, so only they (Alice and her kids) can see/hear/touch him. Jack pipes in that it's because they're even more special. Cue a proud papa pulling them all in for cuddles.

It would be a strong source of frustration, but Alice and Jack wouldn't have children without considering that problem. They would've practiced how they would explain it all in a way that would impress upon the kids that it's better not to mention that their dad is a ghost(?). I figure the official story Alice would tell people she can't trust with the truth about Jack is that her partner is shy and reclusive (which was hard for her to say with a straight face the first few times). He is camera shy, and he prefers to only show his face with people he trusts.

Alice would even try to get her family and friends in on the act. The more people who claim this is true, the less likely it seems to be a lie that's been made up. The kids would be encouraged to avoid talking about their dad with strangers or people that aren't close to them, like the family.

I don't have too much in mind yet for their eldest son, but I can imagine him wanting his dad to carry him so he can "fly" and impress other kids. Jack would have to explain that would get the bad kind of attention.

If there's one thing Jack would impress upon his kids, that would be stranger danger. He has reason to greatly distrust "other people." Sure, he's managed to open up more thanks to Alice, but she's a pretty guarded person herself.

Though Jack will compromise and let his son pretend to be a superhero and fly around when playing with his cousins. They know about uncle Jack after all, and were also told to keep it a secret.

Kids being kids, chances are one of them might tell someone else anyway. Even if rumors spread... who is going to believe it that a classmate's dad is an invisible clown? The parents would just tell their child that whoever told them was just making it up. It would be something Jack and Alice would've cautioned their kids not to do for this reason after all.

It would be a complicated situation, one that would require a lot of talking about, but ultimately Alice and Jack would emphasize that some people are just really special. Not everyone will be able to understand things like that, and that's okay. They have each other, they love one another, and they take care of each other. That's what counts.

As for powers... I really like the idea of the kids getting some sort of supernatural power out of the whole deal. I'm not entirely sure what exactly. Hell, maybe if they hold Jack's hand or hold onto him, he'll be solid/visible/audible to everyone who sees him. I mean... they're half of Alice and half of Jack. If they have some of his supernatural abilities and Alice grounds him to reality, what if they could, even unknowingly, do the same thing even more effectively?

It would fit with the idea that Jack would become more real the more his sunshine loves and needs him. His kids would be born needing him.

Aside from that, I'm not entirely sure what their powers would be. I'd be inclined to have them all have different abilities related to the things Jack can do, but not all of them. They're decently powerful, but not as powerful as he is. There's so many possibilities here that I'm not sure where to start. I'd have to give it more thought.

As for a bitter Ian telling their son that he should've been the father... That would confuse the hell out of any kid. Then there's Jack and Alice's reactions...

Alice, when she's a mother, will have strong mama bear instincts. They'll be enough to make her push back strongly against even Ian for her children's sakes. If she overheard Ian saying that, she would snap at him, telling him coldly that no, no he would not have been. She then would tell him to get the hell away from her son and never talk to him or any of her other kids ever again.

Jack's reaction would be worse, naturally. While he would have mellowed by this point to be less violently yandere... Ian would be having nightmares for quite a while to pay him back for that and to scare him away from Alice and the kids. At minimum.

Depending on how hard Ian pushes his luck, he might push Jack into deciding that he really does need to be taken care of... permanently.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

#Sunny Day Jack #Something's Wrong With Sunny Day Jack #SunnyDayJack #sdj #swwsdj #Headcanon Ramblings #Ask

[tenebrius-excellium]

Book 10 - How To Seize A Dragon’s Jewel Liveblog

WHAT A BOOK (so far, I’m at 2 of 5.5 hours)

Valhallarama finally makes an appearance! Although an odd one.

The Deadly Shadow clearly served as inspiration for the Zippleback, for Toothless and for the Light Fury. The bat-like behavior, the turning invisible in the clouds??? Aaaaaaaahhhh...just imagine if Toothless had been able to change color too!!

The Windwalker smells like drinking chocolate what?

“But sometimes the bravest thing a hero has to do is not fighting monsters and cheating death and witches, it is facing the consequences of his own actions.” that got me

awwww Hiccup really seems to have changed a lot. He’s growing up!

Baggybum telling Snotlout “I am ashamed to be your father” that hurts

Snotlout: “Ashamed of me? I should be ashamed of you, and you should be proud that I am a Chief! You were never a Chief, Baggy, wwere ya? You are not really Chief material!” Somehow, that response felt strong in the moment tho???

Warty McSmelly, your waistcoat is on fire XDDDD

YO. Excellinor stares at Hiccup. does she recognize him mm. DOES SHE

EGGINGARDE. MY PRECIOUS BABY. PROTECT HER AT ALL COSTS

I like Eggingarde. Why has she never been mentioned anywhere by the fandom???? I didn’t know she exists!!! She’s so cuuuuuuuute!!! Also I am unapologetically shipping her with Fishlegs??? *EDIT: they’re kids they’re kids I forgot I’m so sorry

Her bedtime horror story is a little lengthy though, isn’t it

yo, Eggingarde’s story was really grim O_O

THE HOPEFULL PUFFIN TWOOOOOOOOOOOO

“We may be slaves, but we can still be the best slaves we can be” this book is DRIPPING with the good lines...!!!!

“And then something unexpected happened. Gobber the Belch stepped forward, calmly wrestled Snotlout’s whip from him, broke it in half, and gave it back to him.” LOL

STOICK IS CHIEF AGAIN YASSSSS

GOBBER FLIPS SNOTLOUT’S YOT OVER HAHAHAHAHA

“.....and now I’m going to break it some more” Gobber is SUCH A BADASS

GOBBER EDUCATING SNOTLOUT ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF HIS ACTIONS REGARDING CHIEFTAINSHIP IS EVERYTHING THAT’S THE BEST LESSON I’VE HEARD IN A WHILE DUDE

I’m sorry I don’t know how to spell ‘yot’

I love how Cressida constantly mentions the presence or absence of birds in her storytelling. That detail seems to be important to her whenever she’s being descriptive. Having been to Scotland before, they’re certainly a prominent part of the landscape. I vividly remember almost getting a hole pecked in my skull by a raging mad seabird once because I was walking too close to its nest - the critter did not hesitate to go right for my head with its beak!! Also, I feel like there really isn’t much other wildlife apart from sheep and the ugliest sea stars you’ve ever seen. So, ya. Birds. They’re a thing.

Ohmygosh Stoick gives Hiccup that Great Hall talk he had with Gobber about doing what you’re told instead of questioning everything. Hnnnnghhhh that’s awesome. I love the dynamic of that talk to this day.

“I just did what I was told, I followed the traditions, I stuck to the Barbaric code!” I respect this generational thing actually. Because it’s real. It’s a real problem too. And I’d genuinely give money to find out where this attitude came from. Like, what made Stoick’s generation - the generation of our parents - behave and believe like they do.

I had this part on repeat for like 3 times because it was so good

look tbh the swordfight against Stoick and the Test Drive sequence from Book 9 still haunt me...

“...the old order broken, all because of my son Hiccup and his questions.” Silence. “Can you blame me for being angry with my son?” Gosh the shame. The blame of being Httyd1′s Hiccup. I feel it all over again and it’s glorious.

“And yet...was he actually brave to ask this question? Was he right to ask this question? Was it even a question worth losing a world for? So, the answer to your question, McJelly, is yes. I am the father of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third. I am hoping against hope that somewhere out there he is safe and well, and I am proud to be his father. Even though I don’t always agree with his questions, and I do not yet know whether they were worth the loss of the world I loved.” WOW. Best stuff Stoick ever said. Also the “I’m proud to call you my son” moment from the movie. Auuuuuughhhhh.

The pessimism and hopelessness and the spite with which Hiccup is continuing to live nevertheless is sorta catching on. It hasn’t paid off yet. That’s disturbing, because it’s getting old. There needs to be a final win. Soon.

Anyway, that’s it from me so far! 

#will make new posts for the next parts because this is already very long #reddie's liveblog #how to seize a dragon's jewel #I'm TWO HOURS IN and they haven't found the jewel yet #WHAT is going on #this book is 5.5 hours long! #wherethekiteflies #httyd books #httyd books fandom #I could use some reactions to this - feel free to interact!

[nightingaletrash]

...so my sims 4 save got interesting. I had a teen pregnancy mod for another family in my save because Drama and Storytelling, then forgot about it because haha vampire fam took priority.

And then Amicia accidentally ended up with a teenage pregnancy. So now I'm debating if I wanna add that to her lore and just give her that extra bit of fucked-ness with her backstory.

Like, she just got really, really unlucky while messing around with a lad that she liked and got pregnant despite using protection, and her god-awful mother made her carry to term under the guise of 'learning to take responsibility for the consequences of your actions.' But in reality, she really just wanted to ensure that Amicia provided the de Lacroix's with a future heir because she suspected that Amicia would avoid having children if she could. So she essentially forced her sixteen year old daughter to have a baby for the sake of their family's continuity and managed to pry some child support out of the father's parents too.

The whole ordeal was deeply traumatising for Amicia and her inability to get pregnant as a vampire is a huge bonus for her because thank fucking god she never has to run the risk of that happening again.

Needless to say, if Sullivan and Kara ever hear this story, Lady de Lacroix is getting hunted for sport because how fucking dare you-

#nightingale rambles #vtm #amicia de lacroix #yeah its fucked up but then the fucked up-ness goes a long way to explain why amicia is the way she is #she definitely prefers millicent as a mother over her actual mother #millicent might have brought her into the sabbat but she'd never force her through an unwanted pregnancy

[pumpkinupsidedowncake]

Hey you're 100% right about Malevolent being ttrpg related btw. It was based off the writer's Call of Cthulhu campaign and takes place in the same universe with a handful of common characters. Also, Patreon members have a perk where we get to vote on Arthur's decisions a couple times per episode. This mechanic used to be more in-depth (with perception rolls, skill trees, and a sanity mechanic) but that was dropped pretty early on because it interfered with storytelling

Yes, but like it goes beyond just the origin and the dice roll sounds in the first episodes and the audience collaboration and all that. The way the plot beats shake out feels like they could have just happened in the Call of Cthulhu system. (I haven’t played it, so my knowledge comes from when I was researching how to run it and also indirectly from playing other ttrpgs. Mostly DnD 5e, unfortunately for my esoteric street cred.)

And that’s the bit I don’t know how to describe. Like, there’s a bunch of arcs that involve doing different things in different places instead of sticking to one type of story, which reminds me of when I was reading a series of DnD books and one was like “you know that guy you’ve been reading about? He’s on a boat now. I don’t know why either. Ocean time baby”

Like it isn’t that stark, there’s still a goal being pursued and the standard or subverted dynamic of Arthur and John, but if you tried to tell someone about all the interesting things that have happened in the podcast it would sound like you were describing all the crazy things that happened to your group in your ongoing game. “Like there was this guy with a gas mask and we stole his dead sister’s head, and there was this random baby we had that one time, and also we ended up in the Dreamlands and oh don’t even get me started on that, then we broke into this guy’s mansion after drinking at the murder inn and then we went to NYC and met a serial killer on the train ride over and then became tenants and released a horrifying entity and then” et cetera et cetera (that’s where I left off last).

Like other podcasts can become that way too, but they seldom feel like that when you listen to them. So much has happened in Malevolent that even though we’ve been following the same person throughout, I regularly forget all the shit that’s happened to him. It’s a different vibe than Juno Steel or Archive 81, maybe because the narrative focuses are different?

Like Archive 81 builds up a strange world with rules different to our own just out of sight to most, and each season feels different, but it’s more about the world than any one character. It’s them getting shaped by the strangeness and adapting and sometimes wishing they hadn’t and the choices offered never have a clear meaning until you’re knee deep in the consequences, maybe not even then.

Juno Steel has a clear narrative style, and that’s what I think of first: the character we’re focused on adding their thoughts and context to whatever’s happening “onscreen”, a la film noir or at least the improv game of that title. I am uncultured. The story feels constructed and clear and grounded, even though we are on Mars and impossible things are happening. (This is another one I’m not caught up on, but the focus seems to continue to be a wide range of characters and their motivations and how they interact with everyone else.)

I guess typing this all out, Malevolent feels more immediate in action and consequences. The focus is on whatever Arthur is doing. When he isn’t dealing with the world’s lore or his past, we don’t hear about it. It still shapes him and the conflict he faces, but we get less insight into it than we would if he monologued about his martyr complex or learned enough about the strange Dreamland inhabitants to establish what each of their “deals” are. We either don’t stick around long enough to, or they’re important and therefore a mystery to us, or they are murdered in cold blood. In any case it isn’t really about them because compared to Arthur, they’re NPCs. They keep us moving forward, even if we’d rather stick around and learn more.

I guess it’s the focus on Arthur and John’s planning and actions combined with the way everyone else’s motivation matters less than how it impacts them, the party/investigators/main characters. Like I’m describing it in extremes but I’m not wrong. It’s the closest you can get to being a ttrpg without actually being one, even ignoring the origins and patreon voting. Those definitely add to it, especially the patreon voting and the hints you get of it even without hearing the vote-on-this-thing prompts, but if it was just that it would be a choose-your-own-adventure type deal. Actually, I realize I don’t know enough about that type of game/narrative to definitively say that.

So basically, it feels like a ttrpg in ways that it shouldn’t necessarily just based on where it gets its lore and some plot-important background characters from, even with important choices being decided on by people on Patreon. I am pretty sure this has a different style than a choose-your-own-adventure story would, but all I can speak to is how different it feels from other fiction podcasts with big worlds and lots of characters.

[jordanianroyals]

Queen Rania of Jordan’s speech at Web Summit Qatar 27 February 2024

“Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim,

Thank you, Katherine. I am grateful to be here in Doha with all of you today.

One of the most fascinating things about technology is its ability to reveal human nature. The way we interact with our devices tells us a lot about ourselves.

We are, by nature, storytellers; it’s how we make sense of the world. Every selfie, status update, photo, and video we share adds a few more lines to the story that we are constantly writing, and rewriting, about ourselves.

We publish moments of our lives to our social media pages, never quite knowing how they will be received. Will we be praised? Judged?

Or, worst of all, will we be ignored?

Because, for a social species like ours, invisibility is akin to death. How can anyone feel they belong in a world where their story fades into the background?

For decades, one people’s story has been obscured… relegated to a footnote in a narrative authored by someone else. It is the story of Palestine, whose people have been pushed to the periphery, just out of sight – and out of mind.

For too long, Palestinians have been dehumanized and discredited… turned into a people unto whom anything can be done, without consequence.

Their status as an occupied people is glossed over. Their diverse population of doctors, educators, and activists is disregarded. Their many attempts at non-violent resistance – from historic strikes and civil disobedience, to Gaza’s Great March of Return – have been crushed, even criminalized.

Instead, Palestinians are reduced to antagonists in someone else’s story: They are cast as terrorists and security threats, nothing more.

Yet, today, for all the cruelest reasons, Palestinians have come into the world’s field of vision with sharper focus. And, three-quarters of a century since the Palestinian-Israeli conflict began, millions around the world are getting their first glimpse at what it means to be a Palestinian today.

In the wake of the war on Gaza, many of us have seen our social media landscapes redrawn. The colorful feeds on our phones have given way to monochrome: white shrouds, grey rubble, and black-and-white screens warning of “sensitive content” ahead.

I sometimes hesitate to reveal what is behind the warning screen. Because, after more than 140 days of war, I know what awaits: a harrowing snapshot of life and death in what has become the most miserable place on Earth.

Babies covered in searing burns… Children with bloody bandages where limbs should be… Mothers peeling back shrouds to kiss angelic faces goodbye…

Scrolling through these images of a merciless war, I find myself thinking, “It can’t get any worse.” And then, it does.

The bar for humanity keeps falling to new lows.

Actions that were once unthinkable are now commonplace: Hospitals under fire. Houses of worship destroyed. Civilians killed with white flags in hand. 

How can we possibly make sense of that?

The fact is, when one side of a conflict has been robbed of the right to tell its story, we’re left with an incomplete narrative.

The current iteration opens like this: “The war began on October 7th.”

To be sure, the brutal October 7th attack opened a new and devastating chapter in the saga. But the larger story has been unfolding for more than most of our lives: 75 years in which Palestinians have not known a single day of genuine peace.

Acts of war are not always as clear-cut as an airstrike, an ambush, or an abduction.

Sometimes, violence takes the form of a crippling 17-year blockade… as decades of almost daily deaths. It appears as checkpoints, a separation wall, armed settler violence, detentions without charge, and the endless indignities of life under occupation.

At The Hague last month, while presenting Israel’s defense against the charge of genocide, a member of its legal team argued that the historical context of the conflict was irrelevant… because, for him, October 7th was context enough.

That’s the trouble with so-called cycles of violence: no one can agree on where to start the story. Each side instinctively centers the suffering of their own people and minimizes the other—a posture enabled by digital echo chambers that reassure us that our opinion is the only credible one.

The historical story of Israel is centered on World War II, the Holocaust, and the Jewish people’s desire for a homeland.

Yet, this account has overshadowed the Palestinian story: the Balfour Declaration, the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba, and the decades of displacement, dispossession, and illegal military occupation that have followed… and continue to this day.

The echo chambers in our minds are hardwired to dismiss anything that doesn’t confirm our convictions. Yet, the war in Gaza, livestreamed to the world, has brought into full view the power imbalance that has dictated the story of this conflict.

Many in the West have been left with an uneasy sense that the Palestinian issue isn’t as black-and-white as they had been led to believe… that they didn’t have the whole story.

It’s uncomfortable to challenge long-held beliefs. But beyond the comfort zone of the familiar lies the opportunity to understand, connect, and grow.

One can acknowledge that, for many, Israel’s founding countered a historical injustice – while recognizing that it created another that has yet to be resolved. You can condemn the killing of Israeli civilians, while affirming that absolutely nothing could ever justify the annihilation of Gaza and its people.

But many who have expressed these sentiments have faced a backlash – as if it’s a crime to place equal worth on Palestinian and Israeli lives… As if Palestinians exist outside the limits of our humanity.

Yet, just as stories can dehumanize, they can also empower. They can help us see our own humanity reflected in another’s eyes.

Over the past few months, many Gazans have been thrust into roles they never asked for: photographers and content creators, turned war correspondents… reluctant spokespeople for Palestinian suffering and strength.

For those living half a world away from Gaza, it can be difficult to relate to a faceless people under attack. But that distance falls away when scrolling through the Instagram grid of a cheeky, teenage boy in northern Gaza.

His sense of humor may remind you of your son, your little brother... yourself. Yet, he is joking at the irony of surviving months of shelling only to potentially starve to death. 

Another brave young woman shares updates from a sea of tents in Rafah. When the lack of clean water forced her to cut her curly hair, activists across the world cut off a lock of their own in support.

This is, at once, a tragic and a transformational moment for the people of Palestine. Just as their lives are crumbling around them, people everywhere are connecting with them. From London to Madrid, D.C. to Dublin, people are mobilizing for Palestine in unprecedented numbers. Jewish activists around the world have been some of the loudest voices calling for a ceasefire. Murals of Gazan bloggers have appeared on European streets.

This new generation of citizen journalists is being credited with “humanizing” the people of Gaza. 

The tragedy is Palestinians have been human all along – it had just been simpler to believe otherwise.

Today, the visibility of Palestinians is dependent on their devices – but also on decisions made worlds away, in office buildings and corporate headquarters.

Many Palestinians and advocates have said they believe major platforms are limiting their reach. Some have had their accounts suspended or deleted after speaking up on what the International Court of Justice has deemed a “plausible” genocide.

It can be nearly impossible to prove that you have been shadow-banned or censored. Yet, it is hard for users to trust platforms that control their content from the shadows, based on vague standards.

Online and offline, blurred standards have never worked for Palestinians’ advantage. Just look at global benchmarks of human rights… international law… universal values of equality and justice… Some of our most basic principles are being rewritten in real-time, to rationalize an irrational level of violence.

Why is the killing of some condemned, while the killing of others justified?  Why is depriving one child of food a crime, but starving one million Gazan children an acceptable outcome of war?

These questions are echoing across the world, creating an unmistakable shift in global perceptions.

But what’s the point of changing minds without changing reality?

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the power and limitations of solidarity.

The people of Gaza have never been more connected – yet never more isolated. Cut off from food, water, medicine, fuel, and everything required to sustain human life, they have continued to reach for their phones… to reach for us.

Palestinians have long dreamt of telling their story to the world. Today, they are being heard, loud and clear…but at what cost?

It has taken their mass killing to garner mass support.

Why must Palestinians audition for their humanity?

Why must some fight tooth and nail for compassion, while others are given it freely?

What does it matter if millions of people believe you have been wronged… if the injustice continues?

My feelings on social media activism have always been mixed. Can a TikTok takeover or trending hashtag really make a difference? Are we elevating the stories of the oppressed, or providing ourselves with an easy out?

I have no simple answers. If anything, I become less sure each time I pick up my phone.

Because, every browsing session is an exercise in digital whiplash – a little girl’s mutilated body dangling from the ruins of a building hit by an Israeli missile… followed by a Japanese man taking to the streets alone each day to demonstrate in solidarity with Gaza. Hungry children wandering in the rain, carrying empty pots and pans… followed by a Swiss mommy-blogger spreading awareness of their plight through tears.

A punch to the gut, then a glimmer of hope.

But we need more than a glimmer.

We need a ceasefire. A cease to the destruction… A cease to the displacement… A cease to the deprivation by design.

This war must end, now… the inhumane obstruction of aid delivery must end…and the hostages and detainees on both sides must go home.

But that is only the beginning.

Ultimately, Palestinians want what most of us take for granted: The right to self-determination. The ability to govern their own lives, in dignity and security. Freedom from occupation.

These things are only possible through the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, living side by side in peace with Israel.

When we fail to stand up for what is right, we sign off on all that is wrong.

Palestinian solidarity cannot become a passing trend. The millions who have amplified their voices cannot let the story of Palestine fade into the background once more.

Each voice sends forth a ripple of possibility. Together, they can create a new reality for the people of Palestine.

Public pressure can rewrite the future. Collective action has compelled leaders to take steps once thought impossible: to abolish slavery … to end apartheid …to take down walls.

But, make no mistake: There is nothing more powerful than an informed, indignant global community, calling for an end to a great injustice.

Because, change is possible. Injustice is reversible.

But the onus is on us. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”

We must insist on a world where peace, dignity, and freedom are inevitable.

For you. For us. For the people of Palestine.

Because, their story is part of our story. And, in showing up for them, we are showing up for ourselves.

Thank you all very much.”

#Queen Rania #video

[buzzinfoxyz]

Netflix Latest Movies List: What's New on Netflix?

Netflix, the popular streaming platform, continues to amaze its subscribers with a wide range of captivating movies. Whether you enjoy thrillers, romantic comedies, or action-packed adventures, Netflix has got you covered. In this article, we will explore the latest movies added to Netflix's extensive library. From acclaimed blockbusters to hidden gems, we'll reveal the must-watch films that will keep you entertained for hours on end.

The following section presents a comprehensive list of the latest movies recently added to Netflix's collection. Prepare your popcorn and get ready for an incredible cinematic experience:

"The Trial of the Chicago 7":

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Genre: Drama/Thriller

Summary: Based on true events, this gripping courtroom drama follows the trial of seven individuals charged with inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

"Enola Holmes":

Director: Harry Bradbeer

Genre: Mystery/Adventure

Summary: Embark on an exhilarating journey with Enola Holmes, the teenage sister of Sherlock Holmes, as she embarks on a quest to find her missing mother while unraveling a dangerous conspiracy.

"Ma Rainey's Black Bottom":

Director: George C. Wolfe

Genre: Drama/Music

Summary: Set in 1920s Chicago, this powerful film depicts the tensions and struggles faced by a talented blues singer and her band during a recording session.

"The Midnight Sky":

Director: George Clooney

Genre: Science Fiction/Drama

Summary: George Clooney directs and stars in this post-apocalyptic tale where a lonely scientist in the Arctic races to stop a group of astronauts from returning to a devastated Earth.

"I Care a Lot":

Director: J Blakeson

Genre: Thriller/Comedy

Summary: Rosamund Pike delivers a stellar performance as a cunning legal guardian who deceives her elderly clients until she encounters a wealthy woman who proves to be more than she bargained for.

"Pieces of a Woman":

Director: Kornél Mundruczó

Genre: Drama

Summary: Vanessa Kirby delivers an emotional portrayal of a woman who grapples with the loss of her baby and the resulting consequences on her relationships.

"The White Tiger":

Director: Ramin Bahrani

Genre: Drama/Crime

Summary: Experience the dark realities of social inequality in India as a driver rises from poverty and becomes entangled in a web of ambition, corruption, and murder.

Why Should You Watch Netflix's Latest Movies?

Variety: Netflix caters to a diverse range of movie lovers. From nail-biting thrillers to heartwarming dramas, there is truly something for everyone.

Convenience: Unlike traditional theater releases, you have the freedom to watch these compelling movies at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home.

Fresh Content: With new films being added regularly, you'll always have something to look forward to and be up-to-date with the latest releases.

Acclaimed Performances: Many of these latest movies feature stellar performances from renowned actors, promising an unforgettable viewing experience.

Timeless Stories: These movies offer a glimpse into different eras, societies, and cultures, providing a rich and immersive storytelling experience.

Netflix's latest movies list presents a treasure trove of cinematic delights for movie enthusiasts. With an ever-growing collection of captivating films, Netflix ensures that there is never a shortage of quality entertainment. From thought-provoking dramas to adrenaline-pumping adventures, the platform continues to push boundaries and cater to all tastes. So, grab your remote, sit back, and immerse yourself in the world of Netflix's latest movies!

#netflix #movies #cinema #2024 #latest movies

[markjacobmallari]

Mike is the author of "Minsan may Isang Puta", an allegory which has been circulating since 2004 and with over 50,000 likes and shares in social media alone. It won a film grant in 2010 to be included in the multi-narrative Indie film "Ganap na Babae" (International title: Garden of Eve). The teaser, reviews and commentaries are here. The movie was honored as Cinemalaya 2010's opening film and has won international and local recognition. The royalties from the initial 150 copies of Mike's first sole-authored book, The Dove Files, went to a Project Malasakit scholar who graduated Cum Laude in April 2013, the rest was also paid forward to baby Mark who underwent a liver transplant in March 2013. Part of the royalties of the "Minsan may Isang Puta" book at Barnes and Noble Online goes to support the education of a young Yolanda survivor taking up B.S. Accounting at U.P. Tacloban.

The term 'literary writing' calls to mind works by writers such as Shakespeare, Milton, or Wordsworth; definitive examples of all that the term implies. We instinctively associate the term with characteristics such as artistic merit, creative genius, and the expression of mankind's noblest qualities. In this essay I will explore some of the characteristics of this kind of writing.

The plot of a story defines the sequence of events that propels the reader from beginning to end. Storytellers have experimented with the plot of a story since the dawn of literature. No matter what genre you write, understanding the possibilities of plot structure, as well as the different types of plot, will help bring your stories to life.

Action research is a philosophy and methodology of research generally applied in the social sciences. It seeks transformative change through the simultaneous process of taking action and doing research, which are linked together by critical reflection. Kurt Lewin, then a professor a MIT, first coined the term "action research" in 1944. In his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems" he described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action".

Gender role conflict research with African American, Asian American, and Latino men is scarce, and scarcer still with women of color and Native American men. The theoretical foundation of such research must be based upon the cultures and values of people of color. Furthermore, qualitative studies are as important as quantitative studies in shedding light on the complexity of GRC. Ideally, qualitative research should inform the development of instruments or refinement of existing instruments for the measurement of GRC, femininity, masculinity, and other gender-related concepts in people of color. Further, femininity-masculinity measures should assess both positive and negative feminine characteristics and masculine characteristics.

Atmospheric chemistry came of age during the latter half of the twentieth century. Through the application of modem analytical and computational techniques, scientists were able to elucidate the critical role the atmosphere plays as the "connective tissue" for life on Earth. In the process, another, more disturbing insight was uncovered: the activities of an increasingly populous and technological human society are changing the composition of the atmosphere on local to regional to global scales. Experience has shown that air pollution on local and regional scales can be environmentally and economically destructive. The consequences of chemical change on a global scale have yet to be fully assessed, but the potential for catastrophic effects exists.

When this century began, "streaming" was something that might refer to a river, not a way to watch TV shows and movies. The big four broadcast networks still reigned. People sat through commercials to get their nightly programming fix. Over the two decades that followed, the medium has gone through multiple Golden Ages, as Difficult Men dramas gave way to Complicated Women Sagas, and the rise of streaming services flooded our screens with Too Much TV.

Contemporary writers often consciously draw inspiration and ideas from the writers who have come before them. As a result, many works of 21st literature grapple with the events, movements and literature of the past in order to make sense of the present. Additionally, the technological advancements of the 21st century have led other writers to hypothetically write about the future, usually to comment on the present and evoke introspection.

#21st century