wildcreativemastermind

[wildcreativemastermind]

On the one hand, it's true that the way Dungeons & Dragons defines terms like "sorcerer" and "warlock" and "wizard" is really only relevant to Dungeons & Dragons and its associated media – indeed, how these terms are used isn't even consistent between editions of D&D! – and trying to apply them in other contexts is rarely productive.

On the other hand, it's not true that these sorts of fine-grained taxonomies of types of magic are strictly a D&D-ism and never occur elsewhere. That folks make this argument is typically a symptom of being unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons' source material. D&D's main inspirations are American literary sword and sorcery fantasy spanning roughly the 1930s through the early 1980s, and fine-grained taxonomies of magic users absolutely do appear in these sources; they just aren't anything like as consistent as the folks who try to cram everything into the sorcerer/warlock/wizard model would prefer.

For example, in Lydon Hardy's "Five Magics" series, the five types of magical practitioners are:

Alchemists: Drawing forth the hidden virtues of common materials to craft magic potions; limited by the fact that the outcomes of their formulas are partially random.

Magicians: Crafting enchanted items through complex manufacturing procedures; limited by the fact that each step in the procedure must be performed perfectly with no margin for error.

Sorcerers: Speaking verbal formulas to basically hack other people's minds, permitting illusion-craft and mind control; limited by the fact that the exercise of their art eventually kills them.

Thaumaturges: Shaping matter by manipulating miniature models; limited by the need to draw on outside sources like fires or flywheels to make up the resulting kinetic energy deficit.

Wizards: Summoning and binding demons from other dimensions; limited by the fact that the binding ritual exposes them to mental domination by the summoned demon if their will is weak.

"Warlock", meanwhile, isn't a type of practitioner, but does appear as pejorative term for a wizard who's lost a contest of wills with one of their own summoned demons.

Conversely, Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Legends of Ethshar" series includes such types of magic-users as:

Sorcerers: Channelling power through metal talismans to produce fixed effects; in the time of the novels, talisman-craft is largely a lost art, and most sorcerers use found or inherited talismans.

Theurges: Summoning gods; the setting's gods have no interest in human worship, but are bound not to interfere in the mortal world unless summoned, and are thus amenable to cutting deals.

Warlocks: Wielding X-Men style psychokinesis by virtue of their attunement to the telepathic whispers emanating from the wreckage of a crashed alien starship. (They're the edgy ones!)

Witches: Producing improvisational effects mostly related to healing, telepathy, precognition, and minor telekinesis by drawing on their own internal energy.

Wizards: Drawing down the infinite power of Chaos and shaping it with complex rituals. Basically D&D wizards, albeit with a much greater propensity for exploding.

You'll note that both taxonomies include something called a "sorcerer", something called a "warlock", and something called a "wizard", but what those terms mean in their respective contexts agrees neither with the Dungeons & Dragons definitions, nor with each other.

(Admittedly, these examples are from the 1980s, and are thus not free of D&D's influence; I picked them because they both happened to use all three of the terms in question in ways that are at odds with how D&D uses them. You can find similar taxonomies of magic use in earlier works, but I would have had to use many more examples to offer multiple competing definitions of each of "sorcerer", "warlock" and "wizard", and this post is already long enough!)

So basically what I'm saying is giving people a hard time about using these terms "wrong" – particularly if your objection is that they're not using them in a way that's congruent with however D&D's flavour of the week uses them – makes you a dick, but simply having this sort of taxonomy has a rich history within the genre. Wizard phylogeny is a time-honoured tradition!

#dungeons and dragons #dnd #fantasy #as far as fantasy in general #these terms all just mean magic user #you can decide whether you want the words to have different meanings or not #and you can pretty much make the differences whatever you want

[wildcreativemastermind]

I know I'm gonna regret posting this, but I just can't not say something: I'm so sick of people who are actively contributing to the ongoing oppression of and violence against Palestinians calling themselves "pro-Palestinian."

In the same way that so many people in the anti-abortion movement are actually pro forced birth rather than pro-child, there are a lot of you who aren't pro-Palestinian, you're just violently antisemitic or in it for yourselves.

If you aren't:

Also angry with the other countries that abuse their Palestinian populations, refuse them citizenship, keep them in displaced person camps under horrific conditions, and/or close their borders entirely to them;

In support of genuine grassroots movements that aim to create some kind of stability, peace, and safety through diplomatic relationships and community building, because that's ""normalization"";

Willing to condemn antisemitism in the diaspora, which helps fuels right-wing rhetoric in Israel;

Willing to shut down lies, propaganda, and disinformation even if it "supports" Palestinians in theory, because lying repeatedly associates the Palestinian movement with lying and makes it harder for survivors to tell their actual stories and be believed outside of the far left movements (and also the truth is bad enough - there's no need to lie);

Willing to focus on practical problem solving over political posturing, especially when it will save Palestinian lives;

Willing to condemn Hamas, which started this most recent disaster, steals aid meant for civilians, uses civilians as human shields, and has been torturing dissenters for years;

Willing to work with Israeli leftists who hate their current government and want peace and full equality for Arab Israelis and their Palestinian neighbors, and also have the best shot at making that change happen; and/or,

Willing to learn about Palestinians as living human beings and value their lives over using them as a political cudgel, whatever that looks like on the ground;

.............then maybe you're more interested in looking radical and jerking off to some fantastical version of The Revolution, and/or hurting Jews than you are in promoting peace, safety, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinians.

Like seriously with "friends" like these, do they even need enemies??

Anyway you should call out the Israeli government for its very real abuses of Palestinians and nothing in this post should be construed otherwise. But if you genuinely care and aren't just in it for internet cool points or leftist cred or feeding your Jew-hate boner or whatever, you gotta prioritize solutions that have a realistic shot at short-term relief and long-term possibility over whatever fits some idealistic goal that will only ever end with more dead Palestinians.

#i/p #i/p conflict #palestine

[wildcreativemastermind]

btw one of the key components of actually being in a healthy relationship is just asking for things that you want. i keep seeing posts on this website saying 'i really want to do/receive [X] but my partner has never done it'. just ask. 'nobody exchanges love letters anymore' ask. 'i want to have my partner's hair in a locket like the victorians' just ask. 'i want to be bought flowers regularly :((' literally just ask. your partner doesn't know they're being held to these expectations and that you're unhappy unless you tell them. it's so unfair to expect your partner to read your mind. 'it's less special if you have to ask :((' grow up and stop pretending you're the lead in a romcom. when people say communication is crucial they mean it !! just ask !!

[wildcreativemastermind]

this may just be me going into overanalysis mode but i feel like the choreography of spellcasting can tell you so much about a magic user. a snap of the fingers, for example, implies confidence, even arrogance, while hands thrust out and straining to the fingertips suggests desperation, throwing one's whole body into the spell as though hoping the physical effort will make a difference. rapid, jerky body language tells you that a spellcaster is passionate and reckless, while graceful, fluid movements demonstrate calm and concentration. some magic users may choose to stomp their feet or clap their hands when casting, channeling power through percussive motion, whilst others may see magic as a tool separate from the self, and focus is through objects like a wand or staff. a new spellcaster just coming into their power may be tentative and slow, but a practiced study of magic will be able to rely on muscle memory to guide them.

[wildcreativemastermind]

For those of you who weren’t able to get 100% of the total solar eclipse today… I gotchu <3

[wildcreativemastermind]

Natalie Portman being confused by the fact that you have to say “hi” to someone before starting a conversation in France got me like ?????

[wildcreativemastermind]

This might suck to hear, but if you're a people pleaser that is motivated by praise and avoids disagreements, you are easy to manipulate.

When I was in therapy after surviving years of domestic violence, my therapist had to tell me that my personality was primed for abuse and we needed to work on that so I would be better equipped to see the red flags and respond appropriately in the future.

I'm still working on this, and it's been 8 years. If you tell someone how you want to be treated, what behaviors you don't tolerate in your life, what you're looking for in that relationship, and they react negatively, don't compromise yourself. Just move on.

This one's for all the praise-kink girlies: differentiate, self-actualize, stay sexy

[wildcreativemastermind]

This might suck to hear, but if you're a people pleaser that is motivated by praise and avoids disagreements, you are easy to manipulate.

When I was in therapy after surviving years of domestic violence, my therapist had to tell me that my personality was primed for abuse and we needed to work on that so I would be better equipped to see the red flags and respond appropriately in the future.

I'm still working on this, and it's been 8 years. If you tell someone how you want to be treated, what behaviors you don't tolerate in your life, what you're looking for in that relationship, and they react negatively, don't compromise yourself. Just move on.

This one's for all the praise-kink girlies: differentiate, self-actualize, stay sexy

[wildcreativemastermind]

Maybe not the biggest culprit behind the Radioactive Bad Takes on this website, but the one that’s bugging me the most lately: Please, I am begging you, learn what genre conventions are and read the text accordingly.

Fiction is not reality and pretty much every genre of fiction has certain standard ways in which it deviates from reality. And I’m not just talking about how we shouldn’t nitpick the physics of how Superman is able to fly. There will be ways in which the characters’ behavior and relationships will be informed by the genre as well and it makes just as little sense to judge them by realistic standards as it does to complain about something in Star Wars being scientifically implausible.

For example, “Adults are Useless” is a well-recognized trope in children’s literature. But that’s not because children’s authors are all going around writing adult characters who are terrible parents or teachers. It’s because the protagonist of a story written for children is almost always going to be a child, and the protagonist of the story has to get into trouble and solve problems themselves for the story to be any good. Yes, in real life, teenagers shouldn’t be fighting in a war. But if the grown-ups stepped in and stopped the teenage protagonist of your action-adventure series from fighting, there would be no story.

Does that mean the grown-up characters in that series are evil people who use child soldiers? No, because we accept a child being in these kinds of situations as a conceit of the genre of children’s fiction, and we interpret the characters and their choices accordingly. We don’t apply a realistic standard because the very premise is unrealistic to start with.

Another example: An adult hitting a child in real life is horrible. But if the child is a superhero, and the adult is a super villain, and they are in a cartoon, then we can’t read it the same way. All cartoons with any kind of action or fighting in them use violence unrealistically, and if the child and adult characters are presented as equally matched adversaries then that’s how any violence between them has to be understood. The villain might be a real bad dude, since he’s, you know, a villain, but hitting a child superhero in the context of a super-fight does not make him a child abuser, specifically.

I’m focusing on children’s books and cartoons here because I think that’s where tumblr fandoms have the biggest trouble with this but it applies to everything. Characters in a romantic comedy won’t behave realistically, characters in fairy tales won’t behave realistically, characters in police procedurals won’t behave realistically, all of them will behave as characters within their specific genre have to in order to make that genre work. The second you start trying to scrutinize every single action a character takes by realistic standards, you miss the point.

Repeat to yourself: “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.”

[wildcreativemastermind]

i dislike small talk. not because i think im better than everyone and only deserve thoughtful conversation, but because the purpose of it is outside of my field of vision, like infrared light. i dont have access to the thing that allistic people have happen between them when they go through the motions, i'm not smarter than you i'm actually way dumber

#communication #social skills #small talk

[wildcreativemastermind]

Kind characters are not boring; in fact, due to the vast amount of people who hold that opinion, kind characters are as edgy as it gets. In this essay I will

[wildcreativemastermind]

NOTE TO SELF-SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!

[wildcreativemastermind]

“LOL. You think your vote matters? ROFL and LOL.” Yes, I am aware my vote carries less and less relative power the more people I’m voting with, but unlike your glorious violent revolution, it actually exists.

#us politics

[wildcreativemastermind]

TIL that in 1903 the New York Times predicted that building a flying machine would be possible in 1-10 Million years.

via ift.tt

#history

[wildcreativemastermind]

Slutshaming women is not ok Slutshaming Alexander Hamilton is totally ok Tumblr logic

#this is so funny #oh tumblr #i have no idea which founding father's name being in the same sentence as slut shaming would be funniest

[wildcreativemastermind]

When absolutely 0 of Biden’s accomplishments have made any kind of news, and we’ve been fed a steady diet of fear and panic for 3 years, no one gets to be shocked when he loses the next election to Donald 2.0.

Posting anything positive about the president here will get you called a capitalist bootlicker.

What do we expect to happen?

Anger sells better. Anger feels better, it feels righteous.

It’s easier to protest against a president you don’t like then to actually remain in charge and keep pushing ahead, even if small, consistent accomplishments are all you receive.

#us politics

[wildcreativemastermind]

Allow me a ramble about something important, and YES it is about US politics and YES it is also kind of about Ukraine but not in the way a lot of my Ukraine posts are and YES it is another example of me being a huge nerd. It's also about democracy in general, of which I am a fan.

I was pleased to see this post from 2016 came across my dash again (with updated and accurate commentary in the reblogs which is great). Friendly reminder as we head into the rest of This American Election Year -- this, below, is a post that was churning on Tumblr in 2016 and I know for CERTAIN I saw it on my dash from multiple people at one time without the clarifications).

***********

^^ This post got tons of traction with many sarcastic "welp"s and on and on.

Someone back at the time, to their credit, tried to interject:

Importantly, it was uncovered after the election that:

THE ORIGINAL POSTER -- and I can confirm this because I even went back and dug up the email about it -- WAS ONE OF NUMEROUS BLOGS, ON A LIST, DISCLOSED BY TUMBLR AS HAVING BEEN TERMINATED BECAUSE THEY WERE QUITE LITERALLY COMING FROM THE RUSSIAN "INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY":

Look. I am not the Democratic Party's #1 Fan or anything. And yes, even though this particular time it was coming from a bot affiliated with a government that generally hates the USA, obviously the idea that the USA does need to have conversations about critical topics like prison reform is not incorrect. (That said, should fucking RUSSIA of all fucking countries be attempting to play this card? Do I even need to point out how fucking horrible THEIR prison system is?? MOST of their bad press right now in the West is understandably about the humanitarian nightmare they're perpetrating on Ukraine, but Human Rights Watch also has a lot to say about how they're doing within Russia itself. Its most recent article from LAST WEEK is titled "Russian Human Rights Defender Pays with His Freedom for Speaking the Truth" about a sham trial that just finished.)

If you go through the list of blogs the IRA spread around on Tumblr specifically in 2016, the clear majority were very VERY clearly aiming mostly at a young, idealistic, left-to-far-left-leaning, socially-conscious, primarily American audience. Which isn't a slam on tumblr users! If you cut out the "youthful" part I'd say that describes me pretty well too, hahaha! Being idealistic and wanting social justice and equality and free college for those who need it etc etc IS ALL GOOD STUFF! But they used peoples' kind hearts and justified anger at the things that are broken here, and targeted them on purpose with half-truths, lies, and all of the usual Russian government trash. Not because they actually give one single flying fuck about any of those issues you are passionate about (see also: Russia's absolutely horrible record w/regard to the LGBTQ community), but to serve the needs and wants of, primarily, an aging psychopath who is fucking terrified to lose anything he has. (As this blog gets a lot of Star Wars nerds, I feel compelled to point out that the Biggest Villain in the entire Star Wars franchise himself once warned us all that when someone is motivated to obtain nothing but unlimited power, eventually the only thing you become afraid of is losing that power.)

There is an excellent documentary -- HBO's Agents of Chaos directed by Alex Gibney, who has also directed worth-watching docuseries about Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes, and Scientology, for example -- from a few years ago about all of this. It goes into tons of detail about the connection of the color revolutions, the Arab Spring and ESPECIALLY the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, followed by the very intentional, very targeted effort to make Americans stop trusting more or less anything other than their own personal biases and fears, to be able to shape the national dialogue in ways that would favor Russia, to make Americans look like fucking idiots (and to their limited credit, that isn't a long journey for some Americans) and ultimately also hurt people like Syrians and Ukrainians in the process. The documentary ALSO shows how Russia started by perfecting this technique on their own citizens, and what "the news" looks like there today, which if you've ever seen it is somehow both equal parts absolutely horrifying and the most unintentionally hilarious shit you will ever see.

Being a discerning consumer of information -- wherever and whoever it comes from -- is important. I'm not over here telling you to ALWAYS believe [whoever/whatever]. But Russia clearly undermined some really fundamental and stabilizing things here in the USA the last decade or so in ways I think we are only really beginning to understand and see the effects of.

Be smart and be careful out there, guys. Thanks for letting me ramble.

#us politics #election 2024 #election 2016