#i'm sure you can guess who

[coquelicoq]

what i like especially about the pronouns in the goblin emperor is that this language doesn't just have the T-V distinction (aka informal vs. formal second-person pronouns, in this case 'thou' vs. 'you'), it also has informal and formal first-person pronouns. having BOTH of these distinctions in the same language lets you fine-tune your tone by mixing and matching. with only one axis of formality, when you use informal pronouns, are you being familiar in an intimate way, or in an insolent or dismissive way? when you use formal pronouns, are you being polite or standoffish? you can't tell just from the pronouns; there's ambiguity. but a language where you can use a formal first-person pronoun in the same sentence as an informal second-person pronoun allows you to distance yourself (via the formal first) while also being familiar (via the informal second), thereby achieving the conversational tenor known to linguists as Fuck Thee Specifically.

#just kidding i don't know what linguists call that tenor. or any tenors. i'm not totally positive what a tenor even is #but i can't let that stop me from writing a jokey post on tumblr dot com #register is a very interesting area of linguistics that i know very little about #so i'm probably revealing the depths of my vast ignorance here to all the sociolinguists who surely hang on my every word #but i've always thought of the formal/informal pronoun thing as being about two things: intimacy-distance & rudeness-politeness #and of course you can usually tell from context whether a formal pronoun is meant to indicate distance or politeness #(plus distance and politeness are related to each other (to various degrees depending on culture)) #but it seems like it would be cool to have a built-in alignment chart of sorts just for pronoun combos #instead of prep jock nerd goth...why not try intimate self-effacing polite superior? #the goblin emperor #pronouns #register #sociolinguistics #my posts #f #anyway i know i said i wasn't going to reread the goblin emperor...but guess what. lol #and i edited my tags on that earlier post but fyi the language DOES distinguish between plural and formal singular pronouns #i had said i thought it used the same pronouns for plural and formal but i just wasn't paying close enough attention #so anyway i just reread the part where maia is talking to setheris in formal first and informal second #and you can see setheris going ohhh shit. oh shit oh shit oh shit #i'm in biiiiiig trouble #you sure are dude. that's the Time to Grovel signal #it's interesting because at the very beginning of the book when i first saw the formal first used i just thought it was the royal we #because i knew the main character was supposed to be royalty #but then EVERYONE was doing it. so it's not the royal we it's just the formal we #however. this does make me realize that the way the royal we would function in a language that retains the t-v distinction #is the same way i'm describing here. it's just reserving that particular tone (i'm better than you and am displeased with you) #for royalty only. which makes sense given royalty's whole deal

[lulubeanie]

Where are my guys..? My funny guys..? I miss them dearly

#duck speaks #I'm not going to tag them but I'm sure you can guess who I mean

[zxal]

So you guys have just been coping with this since 2019. Okay.

#yugioh vrains #ygo vrains #vrains #'now i understand that definition. i loved you.' OKAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #i need to go back and listen again but i'm like 95% sure that the word that gets translated as 'people' can also mean 'someone' #ai means to love someone. i loved you. #vrains spoilers I GUESS? SORRY I KNOW THERE ARE PEOPLE FOLLOWING ME WHO HAVENT WATCHED VRAINS #BUT IT'S ALSO BEEN OUT FOR 4 YEARS. IDK. #i've been steadily processing this for the past three days straight. i admittedly wasn't crazy about vrains' last season but good lord #i didn't expect the finale to grab me and shake me violently about like that. you guys really live like this?

[snarkspawn]

KP ANNIVERSARY week 2: Favourite Supporting Characters [1/?]

Big

#kinnporsche #kinnporsche the series #kinnporsche fanart #kpappreciation #big kinnporsche #nodt nutthasid #userpharawee #bl tag #ok to be fair he's the main character iN MY HEART #but I'm pretty sure this comes as a surprise to exactly no one lmao #and I'm ALSO sure you can guess who will be number 2 (bc he's a little shit) #pathetic losers (affectionate) #anyway I love him. he's everything to me #my blorbo. my silly rabbit

[unopenablebox]

i admit that i find it a little bit frustrating how Wildly Astonished other antizionist jews act when i tell them my israeli jewish family have lived in the region since [some unknown length of time before 1800 when there start being records about it]

#and then they're like ''ohhh they're mizrahi!'' [connotation nonwhite‚ virtuously indigenous] #and i have to be like. no. it's just that‚ as palestine was in fact ottoman-administered greater syria for most of the last 600 years‚ #you could get there from other parts of the ottoman empire. such as the part of now-ukraine your ashkenazi family is also from. #it wasn't actually a hermetically sealed arab-only ethnostate that evaporated immigrants on sight. it was a pretty decent place to live as #a jew by at least some accounts. or better than the front of the hapsburg-ottoman war anyway which is where they were coming from. #i'm not sure who you think it's serving exactly to believe that there were literally no ashkenazim in the middle east before the 1st aliyah #however there were some. and this information does not actually threaten a modern anti-state of israel position like at all. #but since apparently you've constructed your new Diaspora-Centric Identity around the idea that 'palestine' and 'diaspora' #are the two mutually exclusive nonoverlapping regions and the former is ontologically a no-european-jews-allowed zone #i guess i can give you a minute to try to figure it out. #ugh sorry this is nothing it isn't anything. for one thing it's fantastically unimportant #and for another thing i don't know how to like talk about it in a way that doesn't make me sound at least kind of like im trying to justify #myself as being somehow less complicit or something. i mean i think my complicity as an american dwarfs the rest of it honestly but. #i just feel really insanely alienated where the rhetoric of my theoretically most closely politically aligned group is not really built to #like. accommodate the facts of my family history. #sorry. i have honestly no idea why im so obsessed with articulating this concept ive just been chewing on it pointlessly for days #box opener

[the-punforgiven]

I'm curious rb and put in the tags what your favourite fantasy race is and why

#I'm sure I can guess for a couple mutuals #but I want to hear y'all's reasoning for it #idk if it counts since it's not a playable d&d race but my favourite's haunted armor #haunted armor/animated armor/whatever it's a suit of armour and it moves around #but it's my damn post so it counts to me #My reasoning is that armor is a wholly genderless thing who's whole purpose in life is to protect people #keep them safe #plus wispy spooky ghost effects are always 10/10 #and also just because I really like crunchy armor noises #you bet your ass the fist time I got to wear plate I was annoying as fuck lmao #Pun's text Posts

[alsojnpie]

hey. um. i love him

#O_O i really love him #it's getting warmer every day and i can't draw him in a sweater for much longer #by the way. is this site going to. yknow. die #sigh........i kept telling myself I'd get better at it one day #kind of like the way i tell myself i can get together courage to speak up but i never do #using another website just sounds so depressing #im not good at social media. im tired of pretending like i can get good at it #but you can't even pretend like you can jump into a conversation if no one is having a conversation #i wanted to be part of a community here but i never could figure out what belonging looked like or how i could do it #and maybe it's my fundamental misunderstanding of that that prevents it but how can i understand it without experience #I'm so jealous of everyone who looks like they achieved what i couldn't even put my finger on. but since i didn't even understand it #i can't even be sure what exactly im jealous of #the other day i walked past a trio of friends and they had their arms around each other and were laughing as they walked #and i felt really strongly that even though I've always wanted a friend like that I'm actually fundamentally incompatible with that. #there's several reasons #but it made me feel really sad. but it made me feel a little better too. i guess it's really not my fault. maybe. i don't really know #in that moment it felt very much like something that was not my fault. and it was nice and sad at the same time #idk what's going to happen here. but one thing i know for sure is that i can have a happy tomorrow. no matter what #no matter what i have to give up on. i can find joy in other things. even in myself #and if there's one idea that he is about. it's that one

[mermaidsirennikita]

I'm sorry, and I say this as someone who loves a lot of books with an accidental pregnancy in them, but like...

If you're writing a contemporary romance set in the now times, and your heroine gets knocked up in like a one night stand, and she isn't like, specifically crazy and attempting to get pregnant by a random, if she's genuinely not at all trying to get pregnant or planning on a pregnancy...

I'm not saying you have to have her consider an abortion, but the idea of her being like "this is all hunky-dory", even if she wants a baby in the long term, is INSANE

Like... in this economy? In this current world? In a reality wherein even if you don't typically support abortion, you know you can't have one even if it threatens your life depending on where you live? Not second-guessing your accidental pregnancy or having negative feelings at all is INSANE and to me it makes your heroine unrelatable, even if she was knocked up by a random billionaire who later swoops in and takes care of her

I mean, I know someone who recently got pregnant by accident, and she was with a man she was planning on marrying and kids with in the long term, they lived together, they had a dog together, the proposal was discussed and right around the corner... and she wasn't happy and she wasn't immediately sure she was going to have it. She decided to in the long term, but she was like, SOBBING when she found out. Because it's a big deal and even if, after some contemplation, you're super happy about having the kid, it's at min OVERWHELMING.

idk I just... that's bad writing imo.

#romance novel blogging #like i guess i can see a heroine who wanted babies super badly and previously had been told she couldn't have kids #being happiER about it #but if it's accidental and the father isn't a sure thing in terms of his emotional or financial involvement #i don't think your feelings would be wholly positive unless you were like DELUSIONAL #and i'm gonna be real... i've known girls who were just thrilled to be pregnant at like 16 #and i was 16 at the time and i thought they were idiots and i still think they were idiots #you don't have to terminate but to not be at least a little freaked out is idiotic and naive and out of touch w reality #and i'll say it: if you aren't at least somewhat concerned about your totally unplanned pregnancy conceived without a steady partner... #idk man. maybe it's not a gr8 time to have a baby just yet

[arcanewonder]

beyond the throat of the world.

#the sims 4 #ts4 #ts4 render #skyrim save #rowan #i give you credit if you can recognition my shitty sims personification of #my skyrim followers for rowan's save #i'll give the first person who guesses them all correctly except the dunmer at the end #a lil' x-mas present of my of my render scenes or redecorated builds of their choice #because the guy at the end is the only ec companion #i'm using for sure for rowan's squad #eye edits

[hypocriticalspicewrites]

God, I love Billy Idol. I want to dance around in so much sexual tension to Flesh for Fantasy that you can see it with my really hot vampire boyfriend while trying to keep our hands on each other as sensual as possible.

Maybe I want him to rail me till dawn to Rebel Yell, who knows.

#I'm sure you can all guess who this post is about #🍒daily dose of cherry🍒 #🍒cherrys spice cabinet🔥 #fruitbats🦇🍒 #the lost boys david #tlb david #david the lost boys #tlb 1987 #lost boys #the lost boys 1987 #the lost boys

[magistralucis]

"I forgive you." - Yenekh/Oltyx (for @courgowr)

(Drabble Oneshot for a prompt fill challenge, prompts available here.)

——————-

Even after all's been said and done there's one more thing that lingers, a guilt that has never gone away. Forgive me for what I have done, Oltyx often asks of his formal admiral, his hand upon a silver claw or a bloodied forehead, his own head bowed in shame. It is not enough that he overcame life and death for his atonement, it must be spelled out, or he is a sinner still. I was cruel and I was craven, and I had dealt with you unjustly.

Well, I forgive you, Yenekh had laughed the very first time. The following year Oltyx took him as consort. Yenekh has been nothing but patient with him since, repeatedly reassuring him that all had been long forgiven, the tips of his claws ticking fondly upon Oltyx's carapace. The king doesn't doubt that he means it, for the Razor is not by nature dishonest. But he's sure there must be more he can do for Yenekh, if not as a sinner than as one beloved, because as far as he's concerned Yenekh has always deserved the world.

It just feels hypocritical to claim this when he's destroyed it once before.

He's not doing it to be burdensome. He's like this because he loves Yenekh. His old lives feel so distant from him now (and are, since nothing is as close yet so far away as death), but here's yet another shortfall from those august times: Oltyx has no idea how to be good to his amours, for there was never a match made for him in Ithakas, nor did he and his brother ever entertain admirers. Frankly he's not even sure Djoseras ever knew the C of courtship. No one is left to teach Oltyx either way. He is very loved in Drazak, more than he was loved in his previous lives - which he now understands was more than he knew at the time - but he has not been in the position to love another as equals until now. And so the Fallen Lord contemplates, day after day, how he might truly be the friend and king that Yenekh deserves.

To talk about it, at least, without putting his guilt on the other's shoulders. All the time in the world is theirs and he still feels it to be slow learning. 

An opportunity arises on the next occasion he orders the bounty.

[Published 25/01/2024 - continued on AO3 here.]

#warhammer 40k #wh40k #the twice dead king #oltyx #yenekh #necrons #necron #fanfiction #prompt fill #drabble #(it is not a drabble but i'm tagging it as such so you can find the other... actual drabbles....... lmao) #oltyx: i'm just not sure if my brother ever loved ;( #djoseras; who canonically survived the unsurvivable by trusting in his best friend for hundreds of years: say what you little bastard #so i guess i have full time unable to control wordcount disease now. i actually thought about this prompt for a very long time #and what came of it was both a question that needed answering and too long to be confined to a tumblr post tale #so here we are. first fic of 2024 and it's a 2300-word oneshot #thank you courgowr for letting me do this :D i'm sorry to have kept you waiting for so long #notes will be updated in a little bit

[forcedhesitation]

my younger brother recently started playing bald gay three and his opinions are exactly as rancid as I anticipated from a straight guy in his 20s who told me it's "weird" for me to play a male tiefling because "tieflings should only be girls."

#bg3 #thoughts about media #yeah idk what I did to deserve this but it feels like an unnaturally cruel punishment for it. #I'll spare anyone who reads this his godawful takes on the characters. I'm sure you can guess who he likes/dislikes. #his tav is a lawful good human male paladin.🙄 if you needed further help guessing....

[presiding]

What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?

(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)

thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -

short answer: she’s really cool

& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...

long answer:

i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.

since you ask...

billie is a cool character

when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.

then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!

she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.

but... the meta

mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.

skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.

i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.

most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).

i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.

ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.

while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.

it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-

- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?

.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.

lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.

you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.

in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.

all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3

billie's character potential

she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.

she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).

her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.

she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!

#i assume my followers are cool enough to let me give a brief measured critique on fandom trends and DotO #thanks for the anon question!! what fun! #i love billie lurk <333 #jumped on the opportunity to rant n rave #what part of billie isn't my fav! (im a guy who likes the bad stuff too. mmm interesting meta) #trying to be not unfair or mean- i'm not targeting anyone but rather trends. and it's ok to be disappointed with something you love #fuck it. make it part of the appeal! her writing sucks! plenty of room for me & other creators! #its easier for me to indulge my billie brainworms when it sorta feels like she's not getting as much love as she deserves #you know? i want stories where her history is explored and her agency is important so i guess i'll roll up my sleeves #tumblr is a terrible place for this sort of critique IMO- lots of nuanceless empathy-free guilt-trip-ish rhetoric #so i hope i avoided that. but not so much that i seem forgiving. #that said i'm not tagging this one with fandom tags! no thank you. #i am blaming arkane yes. but that is also not without games industry context #i could complain about amateurish writing but that also never happens in a vacuum. industry problem(s) for sure. #people love to blame writers for things #and yeah a couple really fucking good writers can push a boulder uphill #but its usually a company problem #hire lots of diverse people in your company. give them authority and respect and reasonable workloads. and no crunch. #ah fuck this is a separate essay in tags. again #THIS WAS A SIMPLE QUESTION #*clutches head in hands* #uh if you're still reading at this point im SO sorry and thank you and i love you

[uncanny-tranny]

Do you think that terfs will calm down with hating on trans women once womb transplants are a thing? Because their whole argument is that "trans women aren't women because no womb uwu"

No, because that frankly isn't their whole argument. They don't argue against trans women solely because "no womb," and if womb transplants were a viable and safe measure, that would absolutely not be a good argument to calm their grievances - a transphobe doesn't deal in a genuine care for others, it a disgust response.

Transphobes already have issues with trans women getting FFS, vaginas, and hell, they even have issues with trans women being fem (or masc), even if they say, "we're okay with gender nonconformity!" as a cover. Because, again, it is a disgust response that blooms in response to their own transohobia, it isn't about being able to debate them, really.

Additionally, with my experience of dealing with that kind of extreme reactionary transphobe, they don't fucking care if they're wrong. Like, do you know how many times I've talked to a TERF who tells me I only transition because of misogyny, only to then talk in circles once I say, "misogyny against me had only increased since I have transitioned to male, plus, I never faced misogyny before I transitioned," because again, it isn't about the trans people themselves per se, it's about this viseral disgust response. It is them trying to reason with their discomfort with hatred. That isn't going to go away when trans care expands or becomes even more advanced.

I really want to stress how important it is to not whittle their whole argument down to "[trans women*] don't have wombs," because you will end up missing a lot of trans people who are affected by this type of extreme reactionary transphobia.

#ask #anon #transphobia #transphobia tw #terf tw #terf mention tw #like... hatred toward trans women has existed for a *long* time not at the fault of trans women either mind you... #...but because of that... a surgery alone will not change the hearts of a person already stewing in their hatred of trans people #and frankly... i wouldn't care about changing their minds really because at some point there is only so much you can do #but like... i have had terfs wish death and assault on me for being a trans guy and it's like... #...surely if their WHOLE grievance about trans people were 'no womb' that wouldn't be a thing right? #and what about intersex trans women who may well HAVE a womb? do they get treated well by them? #no because intersexness AND trans people are something abhorred in spaces like that #so it's in our best interest to defend and include as many of us as we possibly can #i'm not angry at anon btw u guess i'm kind of... intrigued at how the reasoning works #this rant is more general which is why it is in the tags. #if i posted a fraction of some of the anons i've gotten lol....

[haydendemonlizard]

Day 10: Love of my life

@flufftober

Remember when Garmadon was like. A monster but not a monster

#flufftober 2023 #day 10 #also can you guess who forgot to post again #ninjago #lego ninjago #lloyd garmadon #lord garmadon #ninjago lloyd #lloyd montgomery garmadon #ninjago season 2 #i think this was 2 #or 1 #it's been a while since i last watched them so I'm not sure #can you believe it they had this for only a few episodes #they deserved better #bring back Garmadon #the real one #haydendemon art

[essektheylyss]

How is Alamo Drafthouse not running an organized Barbieheimer double feature. Like as a business move. There's not one near me so it's irrelevant to my life one way or another but like. if ANYONE was gonna run an organized double feature in theaters, they're the folks.

#you can tell I'm a Capricorn because sometimes i have really specific opinions on how other people run businesses #despite never at any point wanting to run a business. #a nonprofit or a social service maybe but that's not what we're talking about. #honestly even if their price for the screening was pretty discounted compared to the price of two individual movies #they'd probably make way more than that difference in concessions #i guess i dunno for sure but #also for the record. i am the lunatic who would go barbie > oppenheimer #and by 'would' i mean i am planning to do this. #Ryan gosling make a good point to have another barbie screening as a chaser tho.