#thanks for coming to my ted talk lol

[sugarpasteltmnt]

Hi! I had a question regarding the last chapter, Leo doesn't recognizes Cassandra because he doesn't remember her? Because the story takes place after the fight with the Shredder and the Kraang so it's imposible he doesn't know Cassandra is no longer with the foot.

Btw I have read so many fics of rise and in my opinion your is by far my favorite. You are doing amazing!

⚠️Chapter 21 Spoilers!⚠️

thank you so much!!! I’m so glad you like it! 🩵

But as far as Cass goes— season 2 ended right after The Shredder fight, right? I personally believe that there would be very little contact with Cassandra immediately after the fight. After all, the fam lost their home and had to find a new lair. They needed time to recover from the fight, both physically and emotionally. And I’d imagine there was some…. hard feelings towards the person who released a world-dominating terror on their family who nearly killed their dad.

That being said, I like to believe that Cass’ contact with the boys was pretty minimal prior to the invasion. I like to keep the amount of time between the end of season 2 and the start of the ROTTMNT movie up for interpretation, but I still feel like Cass' relationship with the Hamatos is... 'complicated' during that time. Maybe she got along with Splinter, but I imagine the brothers would have a harder time accepting her, even if she defected from the Foot. In the fic, it’s post-invasion (and after Leo is lost to the Prison Dimension) that the Casey Jones Jr becomes the catalyst for Cassandra to bond with the Hamatos-- Leo wouldn’t have known how much she’s changed and grown as a person all this time.

And

Leo’s a petty guy LOL

Throughout the show we see the cheeky, spiteful side of Leo and i love that. And after losing a good chunk of his sanity, he’ll only remember the ‘important’ things… and a bad bitch like Leo never forgets who wronged him. Or wronged his family. Seeing Cass and remembering the Shredder fight is all that mattered to him in that moment.

To Leo, it didn't matter if Cassandra had defected from the foot. Nor did he have the capacity to consider maybe she's changed in the heat of the moment. He only remembers her as Foot Clan, and the Foot Clan was bad bad B͕̙̦͆ͭ͟Ǎ̢͍̓̆͊ͯͦ͗D̍͜

#thanks for coming to my Ted Talk lol #don’t worry I’m team Cassandra all the way #i just think bringing attention to her actions and past makes the found family trope even more delicious LOL #TNV asks #pastel prattling

[so-called-quail]

Okay, I need to rant about something that entered my mind when I read TTT recently.

Flotsam and Jetsam is the name of one of the many chapters we're reading from today. It covers the section where Merry and Pippin recount to their friends their recent adventures with the Ents and the attack on Isengard.

Flotsam and Jetsam. Two words I've heard paired together, but had no idea what they meant. So I looked it up. From NOAA we get this:

Flotsam and jetsam are terms that describe two types of marine debris associated with vessels. Flotsam is defined as debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often as a result from a shipwreck or accident. Jetsam describes debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by a crew of a ship in distress, most often to lighten the ship's load.

Overlooking the fact that there are no vessels in this part of story, the use of "flotsam" makes sense. Although the insane amount of flooding at Isengard was intentional on behalf of the Ents, the debris that ended up in the water was not deliberate. We even have the term "flotsam" used twice in the text:

We spent a busy time after that, searching the flotsam, and rummaging about.

It was through our search for man-food that Pippin discovered the prize of all the flotsam, those Hornblower barrels.

So that's resolved. However, the chapter is titled Flotsam AND Jetsam. So the question that's been on my mind is what exactly is "jetsam" referring to?

It could be something really simple. Maybe some of that debris was intentionally thrown into the water. Or perhaps you can make the argument that Wormtongue is the jetsam, because he unceremoniously gets chucked into water by Treebeard. A really amusing answer, and one I can get behind, but it still leaves something to be desired because it's not as clear-cut as the case for "flotsam". He wasn’t thrown in the water in distress from the flooding, but instead during the aftermath as a means of dealing with him.

This isn't important at all but I am still so curious about it. Reducing it down to "oh, Tolkien didn't think of that. It doesn't mean anything" feels wrong. There has to be a reason, whether Tolkien was aware of it at the time or not.

#thanks for coming to my ted talk lol #it probably isn’t worth asking but I’d still like to know!! #lotr newsletter #lotr newsletter march 5th

[nabexis]

Look. I know it's toxic and controversial and not all that great but I love the "I can Fix Him [I can Make Her Worse]" mod that is Skyrim Romance. I WISH it had less gendered phrasing, but it is pretty fun to tell off fuckboi Bishop for his shittyness. Also just finished reading the scrapped DLC's script and honestly,

[spoilers below the cut]

what a bold move to have Bishop break up with Vampire-side Dragonborn at the end. Shame it doesn't stick (player agency and all that.) but fuck, imagining if that was permanent, I'd actually get a little bit of respect for Bishop because, yeah, it IS fucked up that the dragonborn joins the dawnguard only to turn around and become a vampire lord. I love Kaidan way more than Bishop, but his quick turn around on the Vampire thing was surprising. [I read it as just becoming enthralled by the DB's passive vampire powers, but the Bishop break up actually interested me way more writing-wise.] The writing team behind the DLC did an excellent job with Bishop, and actually made me like him more. He feels like a real person instead of all jackass all the time (until marriage where he's suddenly domestic and docile which was always such a big personality change it felt jarring. Like I get it the whole point is "I cAn FiX hIm" but it doesn't feel realistic at all.)

Hooo boy this is getting rambly. Any way I usually like to have SR installed because I like the ballroom and dresses and Casavir's whole thing is kinda neat. Bishop is a necessary evil for me to get the cool ballroom.

That said I could do without the CTD it causes when I go to more than one Inn :/ Wish there was a fix for that.

#I cAn FiX hIm #Skyrim romance #skyrim romance mod #that mod has been my guilty pleasure for YEARS #Now I'm playing it again but only because I want to have Bishop break up right before the battle with Alduin #then have Kaidan warp in to help with the battle (Along with Inigo. I WISH Lucien had a warp spell to have him join too) #and then wind up treating Bishop as the shitty ex that he is and marry Kaidan instead #Kaidan is still like broody but he's not a jackass #and he's not nearly as so much as he's had his emo phase already and has matured beyond that into an Actual Adult #instead of a whiney Man Child that Bishop is #thanks for coming to my Ted Talk lol

[bridgeportbritt]

How does Bria know for sure that they aren’t there to cause trouble?

Thanks for the question Nonny! @royalmedani and I have been going over Bria's philosophy with this extensively lol

To directly answer your question, Bria does not know that these kids won't or haven't caused any issues. There's no way for her to know. She's really only taking what she knows to make a decision.

She knows Terra and a bit about her country so she figures there is no reason for her sister to cause trouble.

She knows Terra's sister, Ros, is young and pregnant. So in this instance, Bria's thinking more like a mom. In her mind the girl should be with her family. Bria herself was also a young mother so I think she has some sympathy there.

Lastly, Bria is literally in the middle of a huge production for her brand. As we've seen, Bria has had to change a lot to follow Royal protocols. Most of which she finds to be pointless. KBE is a bit of an escape for her from all that because she gets a little freedom there. So to be bombarded with what she assumes is just more pointless protocal stuff, kind of makes her want to just push it aside.

#thanks for the ask!!! #bb asks #thanks for coming to my ted talk lol #hopefully it all works out right?? #right?????? #bria's like the show must go on! lol

[sweetmaple]

Okay. Hi. It's almost July. (It is now actually July, but it was June when I wrote this. Whoops.) I just finished In Space with Markiplier. I have so many feelings and now it's everyone else's problem.

To be clear, I haven't yet done my customary ending-hunting for part 2 at the time of drafting this because I got what I'm certain is the best possible one the first time and had to sit down for a minute.

I don't post much about Marker-Pliers, despite having watched his stuff regularly for an amount of time that makes me feel old for my relatively small amount of years, but this time I gotta say something. I've become increasingly impressed over the years by his ever-growing Markiplier Cinematic Universe, his lengthy list of Egos, and the way his creative visions (and his budgets) seem to grow and complicate themselves in new and interesting ways each time he comes out with a new project. I'm sure that if (when?) he makes more content for the MCU we will all be falling over ourselves again in wonder/astonishment/praise, etc, and MatPat will be shaking in his boots trying to fathom how the new content fits into the existing lore. For now, we have ISWM. And I think it is the best thing Mark has done to date.

Part One of ISWM feels fairly standard. It has the choose-your-own-adventure format we've come to know and love, it has maddening easter eggs, references to past channel lore, goofs and gags, all the good stuff. I could tell it was trying to pose a more significant question to watchers than previous adventures, but it didn't push me to think especially deeply. I fucked around, but I hadn't yet found out.

Part Two....Part Two got me good. My choices mattered more and yet I had even less idea of what would happen when I made a decision. The identical branches of wormhole obfuscated my future so I had no way to predict how my choices would affect my path until I'd already acted. I could even make the same choice without knowing I was doing so, thereby perpetuating the loops I was stuck in. (An unconscious replication of the cycle of abuse, perhaps; an interesting callout to those of us who have been in that situation before, and possibly a reference to something that may have been part of Mark's journey as well.) I tried to follow Mark for a while and choose the paths that he fell through, but that quickly became impossible when other important characters like the Lady fell in the opposite hole (what if I was supposed to follow her instead? Did she hold the key to solving this whole mess?), or I witnessed multiple Marks going in opposite directions. I couldn't please everybody. I couldn't always make the right choice. Snap decisions are hard for me, especially when I know I could potentially hurt someone, and choosing blind only to discover I've repeated an old pattern was discouraging, to say the least.

But I had something no one else had: a back button.

What kind of power is that? And what kind of world is it where only one person has it? Most of all, why me? Putting us the audience in that situation is like, what? I am God? Except I'm just some guy. Knowing I'm just some guy and I never wanted to be much more than some guy, really, maybe learn how to love well and take care of my friends and my community, and I was just trying to get people to safety as well as I could, but now I'm here and somehow I've become immortal, and yet everyone seems to know more about what I'm doing than I do, or if they don't then they place all of their trust in me anyway, and I still have to make choices that are potentially world-ending -

And that's how it feels to grow up. That kind of terror. I'm told I stand at the crux of everything and I look at all the people around me who made all the wrong choices but they can't or won't tell me how they got there and I am still expected to choose. Now.

And at the end of it all, when I've made all the wrong choices despite my power and I've hurt so many people and I can't even know how far-reaching the consequences of my actions are because I'm just so small in comparison to all the things I've done to the universes, and who decided it was a good idea to give me this much power anyway - after I see the despair and confusion and pain and regret and guilt I feel reflected on the face of a human being I've held and comforted in my arms as he wept, lifetimes ago - after I wake up behind the same glass door of the cryo-chamber that I've seen a hundred times and feel the drop of a stone into my gut at the thought that it might have been meaningless, that I was unable to save even one person from pain - after all that, do you know what Mark says when we choose to Hold On?

"Thank you. For, uh, not giving up on me. Just...thank you."

And I am rewarded by what happens when you hope.

I step out of that formerly hellish frozen portal to the faces of my crew. They are smiling. They chatter amongst themselves. The colony made it to our new planet after all. I took care of my community. We took care of each other. The satisfaction and pride I feel has no words, only a swelling in my chest that feels too big for my bones as I accept my mistakes and realize that, without all the stumbling and the opportunities I misjudged, I never would have made it here at all.

So, in fits and starts, we come to the end. Always fearfully looking over our shoulders towards the past, always rooted in the steps we take in the present, always with eyes shining in wonder and hope as we consider the many permutations of the future. The end credits roll as I sit back on my bed, slowly coming out of the world Mark has created. I breathe. I reflect on the journey I have taken, with him and with many other people, whether they knew it or not. I open up a blank document and start to write.

#iswm #markiplier #markiplier cinematic universe #the power of media the universality of the human experience etc etc #thanks for coming to my ted talk lol #rant #kind of? #iswm spoilers #just in case #iswm meta #maybe #i just kinda word vomited and then hit post idk

[crazysnor1ax]

Does anyone else ever think about the exact magnitude of everything Wendy’s been through? Like maybe it’s just my writer brain overanalyzing characters but that poor girl has been through so much.

Of course Abby dies, but from what her short shows us it’s entirely possible Wendy SAW her die. Imagine how traumatizing that is for a 10ish year old. I mean Wendy could’ve easily seen Abigail impaled by those rocks at the bottom of that cliff. That’s goddamn horrifying.

And there’s the desperation she has in trying to bring her back. Almost like she’s so heavily in denial that she does everything in her power to bring what was probably her only friend back. She literally tried everything and failed in all of her methods, eventually following the instructions of a mysterious voice from a radio in that desperation.

Something I don’t see people talk about a lot is her being dragged away from the only family she has left on top of losing Abby. She’s already grieving and is suddenly pulled into this wilderness to fend for herself completely alone, without her mother or father. I’ve seen people mention Jack’s grief in losing his daughters but not Wendy’s in losing all of her family. She doesn’t have anyone left to help her in her mourning and suddenly has to deal with her emotions on her own.

On top of all that, when she finally is reunited with Abigail, she’s not alive. Wendy did absolutely everything to bring her back to life, and I bet you anything seeing Abby’s ghost for the first time was the realization that she can’t bring her back. She’s gone, and nothing will change that. Though she might have her in ghost form, she’s never going to have the same sister she once knew.

I just see a lot of people going “man this girl talks about death a lot for only having lost a sister” but the thing is it’s so much more than just Abigail. Losing a sister is hard, but so is losing your entire family and having pretty much everything you do be a failure.

#thanks for coming to my Ted talk lol #wendy dont starve #abigail dont starve #dst #speaklax #long post

[kinosternon]

same person who asked abt ur opinion on the movie! i think you made good points; i again didnt actually watch it mostly bc idk how to access it so i cant really gauge the flow of it, for lack of a better word, but from the plot of it i felt like it was too many things pushed together. notably i feel like kinjou’s involvement was unecessary, i dont understand why theyd add another character to the ensemble in the movie closing off the series when we have SO many characters at play already.

i know albert and specifically haru and albert’s rivalry/rship drives a lot of the swimming plot but similarly to kinjou i dont think it was necessary to get into a whole other backstory and angst about another character to achieve the same themes message conclusion etc.

you’re right that expectations probably play a big role in how you receive the movie - personally i think more could have been done to actually tie off the major conflicts amongst characters, but i guess free! has always dealt with conflict through swimming so i cant actually complain. i do wish that we could have seen hiyori and ikuya’s rship (ie their conflicts and development) a little bit more bc thats one of the most unresolved plot points from past seasons imo.

anyway thank you for responding to my question! your insight was rlly interesting :)

These are very good points, honestly, and they reflect a lot of the more...unconventional storytelling decisions KyoAni made with Free! So I hope you're ready for another short essay about them :D

But I'd argue that the "let's add new characters instead of solving old problems" thing has been showing up from the beginning. Like, I agree it's weird! But they did it in season 2, with the addition of Sousuke, and again in s3 with Hiyori and Ikuya. (And as they're officially my favorite, I feel like I've somewhat lost the right to complain about it lmao)

And speaking more broadly...it's kind of like life, isn't it? Especially for young adults. The biggest problems are not easily solved (or even easily recognized), and new people keep coming into our lives, recontextualizing those old problems in new ways. That and the decision to build the story backwards as intensely as they did forwards were some pretty innovative-feeling storytelling choices, at least from my perspective.

As for adding Kinjou and Albert, and HiyoIku development: (more spoilery stuff below)

Kinjou's arc really didn't make sense till this finale, even though it was really started off in the Road to the World movie (which was mostly a Dive to the Future rehash) where he randomly threatens Hiyori at the end. The setup seems to have started from (roughly) there, so this direction had to have been planned from at least that far back. (..."Road to the World" indeed. Huh.) And by the end, his role felt absolutely essential to me given the direction Haruka's arc went in.

Basically, Kaede acts as a really direct foil for Haruka's arc in the final film.

Most importantly, he has secondhand (but intense) familiarity with the risks Haruka seems to be taking for granted, and it's his choices more than anyone's that lead to Haruka making it to and winning the final race STRIKEalive and relatively unharmed.

Moreover, his relationship with swimming is so interesting to compare to Haruka's. It's not that Kaede was always a talented swimmer! He actually got started pretty late, and for reasons that didn't have to do with the water at all! Instead, it's implied that he started swimming seeking a place to belong, because he couldn't find one outside of it. And when he lost the person he was closest to and was rejected by Hiyori others, he became even more dedicated to swimming, seemingly at least a little out of spite.

This isn't Haruka's relationship with swimming at all! And yet, a lot of the underlying factors keeping them focused are similar—they're just more explicit in Kaede's case. (More than once in the film, via flashback, Kiyofumi tells him things like "swimming will become something that accepts you," which between that and his extremely ND vibes as a kid? Implies to me that he faced a lot of rejection growing up.) And yet he still is more aware than anyone else of the very real risks Haruka is taking, when the people around him are intentionally letting them slide.

Because—this is important—who else was going to tell Haruka to stop literally risking his life, just to win against Albert? Ryuuji tries, but ultimately, can only do so much. Almost everyone else looks up to Haruka too much to tell him to stop, and know him just well enough to believe that he wouldn't listen if they tried.

The only real options, to me, would've been Sousuke, Hiyori, Rin, or Makoto:

Sousuke does actually try in the movie, but he just isn't close enough to Haruka to be able to make much impact.

Hiyori already went through all this with Ikuya once, more or less, and deserves a break. Actually, I kind of wonder whether on a creative level Kaede was introduced as closest to him because he didn't really turn out to be dickish enough to get this job done.

Rin could've been quite interesting! And he seems relatively well-positioned to do this, especially with his very visible concern for Haruka throughout the movie. But even though he's finally making real steps to repair some of the interpersonal issues he's had with Haruka from the beginning...he's still really inspired by him and wants him to compete. Plus there's the problem that everyone who knows Haruka well comes up against—knowing how deep his passion goes, and not wanting to fight him on it.

Makoto...see, this would have been another place where the movie could've happened very differently, I feel. What if Ryuuji had pushed Makoto, not Rin, to try to reach Haruka? What if Haruka's well-being had ended up depending directly on Makoto finally managing to drill it into Haruka's head that he cares about him himself—not as an abnormal person and not as a prodigy? But instead, by this point Makoto's so worried about hurting Haruka's chances or their relationship (possibly remembering their s2 argument that was never fully resolved??) that he's actually more willing than Rin (or at least agrees first) to let Haruka keep hurting himself in the name of his dream.

(Actually, one weird dark-horse option would be Albert himself? But the timing doesn't really work on that.)

But with Ryuuji's tragic backstory (of Kiyofumi) already added in and everything, Kaede was really uniquely positioned to do the job he does regarding Haruka.

And speaking of Albert: I'd actually agree that a lot of his stuff felt shoehorned in, but I get why they did it—it adds an "international" level to the rivalries that's pretty necessary, given that the world championships are the final setting. Then as far as backstory goes, Free! has always been about coming to understand people's situations/perspectives better to overcome conflict with them. Haruka's journey with Albert (or vice-versa) is about him coming not to hate Albert's swimming, and showing Albert's issues to the audience helps make him relatable as that happens.

I enjoy that they tried to make a character like Albert work (even though his English lines made me cringe a little bit, especially this time around). I just...don't think they quite got there.

Then there's Hiyori and Ikuya. So. I say this with absolute love for them and their dynamic, but like—drama was never going to be the main fix for HiyoIku, because they're both predisposed to being dramatic in a way that is frankly part of the problem. Instead, Hiyori's development seems to come from both settling into a healthier role supporting Ikuya, and also learning to lighten up a bit and think about people other than him. Kaede plays a surprisingly important role here, as do Kisumi and Ikuya's friends. Even littler moments like his exposure to the disaster (at least on the surface) that Rin and Haruka's interactions often are probably had an impact. Ikuya's development, OTOH, mostly comes in the form of getting to know Rin and realizing that he isn't the only person in Haruka's orbit, while also making friends in general after years of acting like a loner. (Sousuke is a particularly good influence on both Hiyori and Ikuya, I think.)

So overall, getting away from the drama of everything after basically being the center of the drama for Dive to the Future is probably a welcome reprieve where they're concerned. And we did get to see them have a very pleasant convo pre-Ikuya's final race that hints that they're much better adjusted than they were, so for me it was an exercise in faith that they've worked on their shit more behind the scenes.

#free! the final stroke second part #free! spoilers #haruka nanase #kaede kinjou #albert volandel #hiyori toono #ikuya kirishima #sousuke yamazaki #if you're wondering if I'm aware of the irony in my position on HiyoIku drama: the answer is yes. #I am and I'm having a good time anyways (lol) #meta rant #disclaimer that I am not an expert and am just having fun here #after watching the movies a bunch to figure out what was happening #in conclusion though: it WAS a lot and there are SO MANY BOYS #thanks for coming to my ted talk lol

[sully-s]

Listen I've been watching a lot of movies with Gene Kelly lately and just wanted to dress up Clark as him. Even tho I think Gene Kelly looks more like Bruce or Brucie Wayne.

And if were talking about dance styles as a character study there could be a great case that Gene Kelly's dance style of using his whole body would be much more Bruce than Fred Astaire who Gene is often compared to who's dance style which is more foot-centric.

But Gene Kelly was known for dressing as the everyday man for his time and that's more Clark. Which doesn't matter.

Point being I bet Bruce has watched a lot of Gene Kelly movies with Alfred and you best believe if DC would allow a universe where Bruce could be at least bi he'd have a little bit of a crush on Gene when growing up and seeing his crush in the same atrie well ...

#Superbat #World's Finest #Superbats #Clark Kent #Bruce Wayne #Superman #Batman #Fanart #My art #Messy art #Messing around #Thank you for coming to my TED talk about Gene Kelly and Bruce Wayne lol #The text in the photo is not really important is just Clark talking about bringing a pie and being late from a wild fire and #And gushing about Alfred's hardwork setting up the party which is a labor day party for the league

[dykecubes]

Tazercraft mental link but make it a lil bit weird, they’ll have a conversation mostly in their heads but partially out loud which from an outside perspective is just fragments of words and half sentences, they go dead silent for hours at a time only for them to suddenly start shouting out loud, very clearly mid-argument, Pac says something but it comes out of Mike’s mouth, Mike starts speaking with his mouth and finishes speaking with Pac’s, sometimes their thoughts become so tangled that they’re unsure who a thought belongs to so they both express it at the same time like horror movie twins, do you see my vision

#fae.txt #qsmp #qsmp tazercraft #tazercraft #there was gonna be fitpac (fitpacmike??) in this post originally but I chose to cut it out bc I’m not sure if it fit lol #(pun not intended) #but anyway #I just think that if you shared a mental connection with someone like that it wouldn’t be as easy to control as some fics make it out to be #not without like #an absurd amount of meditation and mental work #which let’s be real neither of them have the patience to sit down and do for several hours a day #and it’s extremely hard to control your own thoughts as is WITHOUT being connected to someone mentally #so I think if you had a bond like this it would be a little weird but they’d definitely be used to it #thank you for coming to my ted talk #maybe I’ll write a fic about this idk yet

[heartbreak-sandwich]

I love Dacre Montgomery as a person and an actor. And I am well aware that he is a gorgeous man. BUT can we just talk for one second about how when he plays Billy, he looks wildly different than he does in his other roles? And I'm not talking about the costume, or the blast from the past 80s yassification, or the fake tan, or any of that. Dacre is a master at his craft.

He looks MENACING as Billy Hargrove. He looks tough, and angry, and edgy, and terrified, and hurt, and just.....SO DIFFERENT from himself and any other character I've seen him play. When the cameras aren't rolling, and he's chilling behind the scenes in costume, he looks like Dacre. But when the lights go up, and he channels Billy Hargrove, he CHANGES ENTIRELY, and it's fucking uncanny. Does anyone else notice this, or am I delusional??

#thank u for coming to my ted talk #dacre montgomery #billy hargrove #stranger things #idk I just notice this every time I see him as Billy vs seeing him as anyone else including himself lol #he's such a great actor seriously #sando speaks

[kinard-buckley]

it's been a couple weeks since the cruise ship rescue when buck takes that tour with tommy. so. how long did buck fret and try to talk himself out of it and agonize before he finally made the call to tommy???

#911 on abc #911 abc #911 #evan buckley #tommy kinard #buck x tommy #bucktommy #kinkley #tuck #i can't keep up with all the different shipnames lol #thanks for coming to my ted talk #911 spoilers #text #exQUEUEse me

[artist-rat]

my old and new tes character Saima <3 she’s a combination of a couple of my prev. ocs!

#elder scrolls #tes #khajiit #oc: saima #i play / will be playing her in both eso and skyrim bc the 'worldstate' my sister our friend and i have... we just stopped caring lol #probably if asked to take time seriously it would/will be all happening around skyrim times but #we just have such great time running around together in eso building the stories #:') #she's from dragonstar craglorn originally #. traveled... met a pirate captain and fell in love w/ her and became a pirate as well... #is besties with a daedric cat creature literally called 'lockpick' <3 (collects mint for them) #... always keeps a diary and loves collecting books and tomes.. #once got to peek into an elder scroll (but only lost vision from one eye bc kept the other one closed <3) (shh i know it doesn't work like #that in canon but i thought it was silly and awesome for her lol) #...her birthsign is the serpent. most blessed and cursed <3 #BOW GAL! both crossbows and uh. the usual ones? #in eso her class is nightblade. i once did another version as a necromancer and it was rly cool too but decided to keep the nightblade #THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK of my gal <3 it's over now #oh. one more thing.! she/they #💗

[tinartss]

on moving out

#for context i drew this during the paradise of providence event👍 #repost of old art #kavetham #haikaveh #i still think abt kaveh moving out often #always a bit torn between it signifying him getting back on his feet + regaining confidence in himself #but like sometimes he's a bit of an unreliable narrator....remember when he was like #hm. the first thing i will do w the prize money is move out and then build another palace but ten times bigger! like oh...kaveh..... #plus he can sometimes be blind (purposefully or not) to what's actually good for him..bc we (and alhaitham LOL) know the significance of #him having a home that's not just a house and how full circle of a moment that is for him #its always interesting to consider that their living situation in itself is this in-between flux moment #though i think kaveh trying his best to escape this “chapter of his life” isn't necessarily the solution..... #i still don't know how tumblr works so if u have to go thru all my yapping in these tags to repost i am so sorry </3 #ok thats all thank u for coming to my ted talk

[sugarpasteltmnt]

just had a random question come up in my mind- if Void did in fact age in the prison dimension, but couldn’t die as he claimed in the fic, what would have happened if he didn’t manage to teleport? Would he have just continued to age? Does that incline that he would just grow super super old but never die from his old age? Perhaps there was a time loop thingy for the prison dimension where it makes you age multiple times: for example, you would grow very old and then “restart” to the age you were when you got trapped there. Like an endless cycle of aging. I mean- the place was created to be an inescapable prison of physiological torture and high chance of insanity-

…I’m probably looking wayyyy too much into this- my brain likes background info a lot hehe ✨👍

oooooooo this is a fun theory i love it!!

well, to be honest... i hadn't thought about it too much. because, frankly, my base was that aging would not stop. which is probably a bit too Hard Core to think about, but I do love the idea of a cycle style hehe.

"but what about the other Krang trapped in the prison dimension"

WELL this also may be over thinking it, but i like to think that Krang 1) have extremely long lifespans and 2) for them, there isn't quite a state of "death"...

Rather, I like to think that if a Krang becomes too old to fight or their minds start to deteriorate, they move on to their 'last stage of life'.... which is to be assimilated into the organic matter that makes their Krang tech. I like to think that the organic matter that makes up the Technodrome (and other Krang tech that utilizes the 'hive mind'/'organic piloting') is made up of Krang that have 'died'. That's how their tech can be organic and mesh with the pilot so well.

But!! That's just a fun theory. (A bit more comforting than Leo running into vegetable Krang bodies just laying around, right???) But for Leo, homie would have ended up looking like Master Oogway eventually LOL

#TNV asks #TNV Final Chapters Spoilers #catch me turning away and pretending to not see the Horrific Implications of my own World Building #me @ me don't think about it too hard ;w; #thanks for coming to my unsettling ted talk LOL #pastel prattling

[lookbluesoup]

I honestly do NOT understand why the Ancients are constantly called fascists? A few similarities doesn't equal a 1x1 correlation. You can have a deeply flawed society without using a modern buzzword.

To be absolutely clear, this is not a post supporting fascism. I don't support facism. I don't support oppression. It is only a post pointing out that the Ancients, while seriously troubled, weren't fascists and it doesn't even make sense to call them that.

(definition from the Brittanica)

They're not militaristic. Did they even have an army? I would have expected to see that mentioned during the Final Days.

They don't have a contempt for democracy. Just because they aren't a pure democracy does not mean they have hate for it - the Convocation are chosen in part based on the good word of the community.

Moreover the debate hall was a place where people could argue over all manner of topics, agree and disagree, examine alternative ways of thinking. Oppressed fascist societies don't get to play devil's advocate or disagree with the majority so openly.

Hermes seriously pushed the envelope and committed MANY social taboos during the Elpis arc to where a fascist state would probably want him being punished or disappeared, not given authority, and they were STILL willing to consider him for the position of leadership. Azem had a reputation for breaking the rules and causing trouble and was still one of Emet Selch's best friends. Venat, also with a reputation for causing trouble, who broke tradition by not Returning to the Star when she left her seat, still wore the white robes of an honored teacher.

The Convocation are considered to be in a position of service, not ownership (and are expected to die when they step down), and Convocation members are not "legacies." They don't inherit positions from their parents. In Pandaemonium it's even implied that having too much an attachment to your biological family over the society as a whole is considered abnormal.

And they are explicitly insistent about not having an elite class. Everyone wears the same clothes, ideas and creations are meant to be shared for the benefit of all society. There's not much evidence of rich elites hoarding the best concepts. When you can literally just think an apple or a piece of gold into existence starvation and money hoarding isn't really a concern.

Hot take: the Ancients actually have more in common with Socialism. But I wouldn't call them Socialist, either, because the entire nature of their existence and the resources at their disposal are so vastly different from what we, in real life, have to work with.

They cannot die of old age. They can create animals and plants and at will. They were gods in their time. Literally. Their entire context was different, and their system of government and culture was an attempt to address their own unique situation.

The simple truth is no system of government is perfect and we can't just accuse every flawed society of being fascist. We can examine the failings of the Ancients without trying to shove them into a modern box based on a modern world.

And while I think a strong argument could be made that there is some criticism of real life society in the game, which is absolutely worth discussing, diminishing the story of Emet Selch and the Ancients to "fascism evil" dismisses an incredible amount of nuance built into the storyline. And also dangerously oversimplifies the real life complexities of oppression and the way those systems can manifest in human societies.

It's also important to note that the oppressive cultures Emet Selch built after the Sundering were designed to be destructive. He wasn't modelling Garlemald and Allag after the Ancient way of life. He was doing the opposite. He was creating these violent empires to bring in Calamities, because he could justify doing anything to fulfill his duty and bring back his loved ones.

He essentially claims to the WoL that humanity's willingness to embrace these violent regimes is proof that they were INFERIOR to the Ancients, because Emet did not believe his true people would have succumbed to such evils. (And yeah, there's a great discussion about hypocrisy, there! It's said the burden weighed heavy on him, and I'd argue you can see him wrestling with his own morality through most of Shadowbringers)

It's worth considering how vastly Zodiark's tempering affected the Ancients - and how this doubling down to a singular idea and solution when faced with a world-ending threat, excommunicating people like Azem who disagreed, ultimately only contributed to the destruction of their way of life rather than saving it. Zodiark was arguably a betrayal of the Ancient's actual ideals. And unfortunately, once he was created, and the masses were Tempered, there was no going back.

Zodiark was created in a time when their very existence, the entire world, was at risk, and it's not fair to claim that actions they chose while terrified, faced with otherwise certain doom, reflect the way their society was as a whole for the vast majority of their existence. It doesn't mean the Ancients were perfect. But context matters.

Azem had existed as a seat for a very, very long time as a mediating voice and it took the world ending for that division to become so extreme their seat was expelled (and not replaced.) This was presumably the first time in the Convocation's history that the voice of the Counselor to the People was silenced. In order to create Zodiark, they had to compromise their own longstanding traditions.

In the modern era, the Warrior of Light was betrayed by other people over far less serious conflicts of interest. It's wild to me that the Ancients are frequently maligned when the game points out, over and over, that problems run rampant in most, if not all of the societies you run into. Not just the ones Emet Selch created.

Races are massacred and disenfranchised by one another (and commit massacres in kind.) Refugees are treated like slave labor. Mixed-race children are abandoned. Wealth disparity leads to extreme poverty. Religious fervor leads to bigotry. Hoarding of knowledge leads to censorship and assassinations. All of those are serious Eorzean problems that the Ancients, so far at least, have not appeared to face.

Moreover the only reason the Warrior of Light is strong enough to face the Endsinger and the Scions are able to survive is... because of both Hydaelyn and Zodiark. The amount of rejoinings that have taken place are one of the main reasons the WoL is so powerful. Plus Emet Selch, Elidibus, and Venat all play crucial roles throughout the narrative in guiding the WoL and protecting them.

Azem was the counselor. The bridge between. The WoL is the balance between Light and Dark. Not the enemy of either.

Someone who could look back at the past and honor it, and also look forward to the future and pursue it.

When you really look at the story, it doesn't make sense to present the narrative as if it's "evil fascists" vs... what, exactly? The Ancients are not narratively presented as an enemy any more than Ul'dah or Sharlayan are. I'd argue the latter two are actually worse.

Ultimately this is still a fantasy game. These are fantasy people. The story challenges us to question our biases against others who are different from us, and to humanize our enemies. Trying to pigeonhole the Ancients into a real world political system of oppression kind of misses that entire point.

#ive been rereading and tweaking this all afternoon #trying to organize my thoughts lol #hopefully they're relatively coherent #thanks for coming to my ted talk #ffxiv #emet selch #ascians #ancients #endwalker spoilers #shadowbringers spoilers #text #long post #shower thoughts

[azaracyy]

"...that's all from me. does any of you have any questions?" "nope! crystal clear." "kew!" "that's good! um... thank you for this discussion." "you're the one who came up with this awesome plan, lopmon. have more confidence in yourself." "kew, kew kew kew!" digimon survive week 2024 day 2: cooperation

#digimon #digimon survive #lopmon #kunemon #labramon #survive week #survive week 2024 #oops i did it again in which i scrapped my sketch and redrew everything from scratch although the idea remains the same #worth it tho i like this one better #my personal extended prompt is like tamer like digimon #their tamers in particular assume respective roles of responsibility in the team #so i entertain the thought of their digimon strategizing together #unintentional is how i opened the official survive poster with the kids and kemonogami in the classroom as drawing reference #lo and behold i forgot these three mons are in fact positioned close together in that official art #with labramon and kunemon looking at lopmon too lol #cue me lowkey going nuts at my rough sketch having manifested that image unconsciously flajskdlfjl #oh and also. this trio makes the vaccine-data-virus trifecta :) #so you can say they are a balanced combination by attribute #their tamers being 'grouped' this way could well be coinkydink or intentional. but bottom line it's very cool #thanks for coming to my ted talk #png