The Machine

It really is crazy how if you mention you write fanfiction with people outside fandom, they're always like "you should change the names and try to sell it." It misses the point (fun), but more importantly to me, I get slightly (and I know irrationally) insulted on a craft letter. Excuse me, my fanfic is entwined with the canon, thank you very much. I wish sometimes less entwined. You wouldn't believe the stupid bullshit some of my fics have to include because of canon.

another cool bug on this site is when youre on mobile and suddenly the ads will just move and cover the post youre reading

im so sorry ill make it up to you

enjoy the WOOLLY CHAFER BEETLE

@rainbowobsidianbutterfly

today we are going to learn about horses

horse fact 1: horses are partially exoskeletal

horse fact 2: horses are partially trees

horse fact 3: got frogs in em

these are all the facts we have about horses.

OP that's not even a full horse. You've literally only looked at the feet.

maybe one day we will be brave enough to lift our eyes and look, trembling, at the rest of the horse. not today, though. today, these are all the facts we have about horses.

Shakespearean Seinfeld episode like:

"He thoued me, Jerry."

"He thoued you?"

"He thoued me!"

Weird they would go to Jerry about that and he would use the formal you:

"He thoued me, Jerry?"

"Thoust got thoued?"

"Thoued!"

"Wow."

I think Jerry would employ the formal address in response to George's complaint in this specific circumstance purely to be passive aggressive.

#george would of course completely fail to pick up on it

Okay it's a funny skit but I'm gonna be serious about this for a moment because I think it's interesting - the thing about this is it does actually make sense if you go back to the source material.

A lot of stuff that's considered canon in star wars is actually kind of ascended fanon. Like, if you really dig into it, it's remarkable how much of the lightsaber-juggling, movie-retreading atmosphere of pop culture/the expanded universe Lucas incorporated into the prequel trilogy, likely without realising.

Example: Strictly according to the original trilogy, does Master Yoda possess a lightsaber? I would say no. It is significant that in a film, where every shot is deliberately planned, we never see a lightsaber in relation to Yoda, and the one time he acknowledges Luke's it is dismissively; "Your weapons, you will not need them." By implication, Yoda is a Buddha to Obi-Wan's warrior monk. Yoda is a teacher and a mystic, but he is not a warrior.

Force lightning is another of these things. You go back to the original trilogy, and there's a sense that the Force and what you can do with it is very personalised. Nobody but Palpatine throws lightning, not even his apprentice, and in turn nobody but Vader chokes people to death. Luke does learn the mind trick introduced by Obi-Wan, but that's part and parcel with Luke's growth into a compassionate warrior-philosopher who tries to solve conflicts nonviolently. Force Choke is not 'a dark side force power', it is Vader's power, a manifestation of his crushing authority and smothering presence.

Likewise, Force Lightning is not 'a dark side power', and it is not generic lightning. It is the Emperor's power, characteristic of his cruelty, his sadistic delight in corrupting and hurting other people. We can see this in how it is used. Force Lightning does not split steel or blast people off their feet or blow things up, like a real bolt of lightning - it transfixes Luke in agony, sends him reeling to the floor with torturous pain until he screams for his father's help.

Force Lightning is not a power of clean, straightforward energy blasts. It's a torture power. It's the power of wielding your hate and cruelty against someone with the deliberate goal of setting fire to their nerves and killing them slowly and painfully. Shit yeah it's evil as all get out, way more than the power to convince guards to look the other way rather than have to fight them.

btw being excessively nonconfrontational is NOT a positive trait. it does not mean u are “too nice” or just too kind to hurt people, it means u have a problem communicating and you need to work on it.

There are people in the notes saying that the alternative reason is that they’re doing it because of trauma and i gotta say that

1) same. I did have this same problem and reason for doing it.

2) this is not actually an alternate reason. You guys also have a problem communicating and while you can trace exactly WHY you have trouble communicating that doesn’t mean it’s okay to treat everyone like they’re potentially your former abuser and that you DO still need to work on this.

‘This behavior comes from trauma’ and ‘This behavior is harmful to you, to others and to your relationships with others’ are two truths that can co-exist, and that do co-exist quite frequently.

The most fascinating thing about this poll is the idea that Yukari would ask before dragging someone across the border.

You say no and Yukari politely says that she respects your decision, and then you try to leave the room and walk directly into a gap portal. You end up in the bamboo forest getting mugged by rabbits and wondering why she gave you a choice in the first place.

The most fascinating thing about this poll is the idea that Yukari would ask before dragging someone across the border.

As a young girl at the Shubenacadie Residential School, Phyllis Googoo found a special way to hang on to her Mi'kmaw language: talking to ladybugs. 

In the documentary Phyllis & the Ladybugs, Googoo explains the bugs were actually potato bugs. She would make roads for them in the grass and sing them lullabies.

"I'd take care of my babies. I'd say, 'Don't be afraid,' because I was afraid," she says in the documentary. "I wanted to be treated how I was treating the ladybugs."

The film was co-directed by Googoo and Ann Verrall. It follows Googoo's story from being forced to attend residential school at 4½ years old to leaving for the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis in March 2022 along with other residential school survivors.

...

"I think that's one of the things that really drew me to it is looking at how the imagination is a survival mechanism and how this very young child was able to engage her imagination to help herself and to survive in that environment."

@rainbowobsidianbutterfly

Examples:

every time i look at or think about this scenario i am stricken with uncontrollable giddy laughter

You don't have to like weed but I find people who are vehemently anti-weed but claim to be left leaning infuriating. If you go into a rage because you smelled someone smoking pot, how the fuck do you expect to form community with people addicted to meth? It's easier to say you hate smokers than to say you hate all drug users in leftist spaces because one makes you sound a bit like a square while the other is the writing on the wall. You aren't anti-weed, you're anti-drug user and anyone who uses substances is not safe around you.

I know dozens of people who use meth, coke, and fentanyl. While heroin is harder to get I do know some folks who use it when they can. Some of these drug users are my neighbors, some are my clients, and some are my friends & family. One does not cease to be human just because they use a substance you find scary.

Community doesn't mean you need to invite them to your home and look away if they smoke there. It means you don't call your property manager because you suspect your neighbor uses. It means you don't require drug tests for homeless shelters and housing services. It means the very idea of someone who smokes meth in your community doesn't make you go, "what the hell."

Genuinely kind of a wild thing to see in the replies as someone who has been professionally practicing harm reduction for years.

Considering recent events over here in the States, this seemed like a good time to bring this back. Over the next four years, expect an increase in discourse around "undesirables." This will include but not be limited to drug addicts.

Also, from someone who works at a smoke/head shop: WAY MORE PEOPLE ARE DRUG USERS THAN YOU THINK. Way more people are addicted to opiates, meth, whippets, cocaine, you name it, than you have been lead to believe, and on top of that, they are often the "normal" or "functional" people you see every day, not just the person tweaking out at the gas stations. Judges, bank tellers, grandmas, teachers, the nice lady who runs your bakery— all of them. You are ALREADY IN COMMUNITY WITH THESE PEOPLE. Start fucking acting like it.

I'm gonna keep repeating this: 'community' is not a fucking friend group.

It's not a clique. It's not you and the people YOU think are cool and funny.

Drug users are your neighbors whether you're too much of an obnoxious self-righteous asshat to be aware of that or not. You don't *get* to say drug users don't deserve to be meaningfully connected to and included in the populations they call home (which is what community actually means, btw) and the mere assertion that you can is a big part of why ppl seek connection in drugs in the first place.

It doesn't matter if ppl use or not but tbh if we really wanted to cut down on addiction all we'd need to do is have fewer stuck up motherfuckers who look down on 'undesirables' in the first place.

'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.'community' is not a fucking friend group.

It’s still so wild that we have raytraced reflections now.

I don’t think game visuals/effects have really made the most of them yet.

[song: Ghost Data - Aromatheraphy]

Chicago Simulator

@yurisorcerer

marty scorsese cosmic guilt tuesday everyone give it up for marty scorsese cosmic guilt tuesday

it makes me feel insane that D&D is so wildly popular among "queer folx" despite it having The Moral Alignment Of Certain Races Over Others as a core mechanic of the game. like this game manages to be shockingly, impressively racist. you don't get to be that racist without trying really hard to be racist.

This^

Yeah fantasy racism isn't great but this post made me laugh because it's just a game with apparently fantasy racism toward races that don't actually exist. Like World Of Warcraft. Like Harry Potter. Like a lot of media.

Yeah okay point this out whatever, ask for and share better media, but don't start infighting over a stupid game when there are people are trying really hard to take away our Healthcare and our autonomy and our right to exist in public and prioritizing guns over children. There are way bigger issues to focus on right now that these takes just feel like an attempt at moral superiority.

The races DO exist. The creator of DND used the "monsters" as stand ins for black and indigenous people. This is common. If you understood literary analysis beyond gushing over media then you'd get that. Everywhere you go, everything you look at, everything that you hear or speak or smell is constantly reiterating that I am worth less than you. Look at your reaction when somebody challenges it. You are in the belly of the beast and you're saying, it's fine in here, let's talk about real problems. Like the ones that affect me!

I'm saying let's talk about real problems like the ones that are actually harming people. Not just people like me, but people like you. Problematic media sucks and we can boycott it (i dont even play D&D) but there are bigger issues. If we devote our energy to bickering over games and tv shows, we're never going to accomplish anything worthwhile.

I am literally a member of an all black communist organization. I also review ttrpgs. Despite what you may think, some of us also enjoy playing games. Too bad that the majority of games are made explicitly about genociding people like me and OP. Which is a reflection of a world that wants to genocide us because they don't want to hear or see us. The issue at hand is that there is absolutely no space without horrifying racism that people tell you is "not a big deal" for you to go to. Which I clearly explained to you but I guess you're just too honky to read. Would it be better if it was an animated cartoon episode where a bunch of quirked up white girls explained what's wrong?

There is no "we" here. You are the problem that I want solved. You immediately saw that a bunch of not white people were discussing an issue and jumped on it to condescend to them that it isn't a big deal and has nothing to do with real people. Even now that I have explained that actually it does concern real life race, you're saying this isn't a real problem, it's just problematic media.

Ending racism starts with YOU.

World of Warcraft based much of the Horde on various non-white cultures, with the trolls being bad Haitian stereotypes (up to and including religious figures from Voodoo) and the tauren being bad Native American stereotypes.

Harry Potter uses justifications for house elf slavery that are functionally identical to those used for actual chattel slavery. Never mind the rehashing of Jewish stereotypes with the goblins and JKR's general contempt for anybody she doesn't personally sympathize with and trans people in particular. Contempt that she backs up with millions of dollars.

DnD had two different player options based on the idea that race-mixing is a real thing that has real consequences to the resulting progeny, especially half-orcs. Early editions of both Pathfinder and DnD usually imply that half-orcs are the product of a male orc forcing himself on a human (read, white) woman, and that half-orcs are playable (in contrast to their orcish parents) because the human part of them makes them just civilized enough to be playable. Literally the same view towards interracial relationships as Birth of a Nation. It took 50 fucking years of DnD getting increasingly coy about the origins and justifications of half-orcs as a player race before Wizards decided to cut half-elves and half-orcs out entirely.

Fantasy racism is not developed in a vacuum. Writers have to create fictional prejudices through the magic of creativity, and white writers have a habit of writing what they know and just rehashing their own prejudices, knowingly or otherwise. And 'otherwise' is the case more than you'd fucking think - Gygax was a racist sexist asshole and Rowling would rather run a campaign against trans people than learn a single fact about a non-European/USAmerican culture. And this does matter because media that implicitly supports conservative views is inevitably used by conservatives. Games Workshop accidentally created justified fascism while trying to lampoon it and now WH40K has an indelible Nazi problem. I've seen DnD fans use biological essentialism to justify what would be hate crimes and genocide in real life. I am not going to slap the D20s out of anybody's hands, but if you're not going to at least spend five minutes to consider the bigoted implications of your comfort media, then you don't get to participate in the conversation.

Yes, global politics are shit right now, but do you think we'd be raising these concerns if they weren't relevant? Do you not see Trump ranting about the undesirables, the outsiders, the 'bad guys', and draw a line to DnD's long history of fundamentally different and often evil races? Do you not draw a line between that and Zionists bombing Gaza? Is it so wrong for us to not want this kind of thinking to bounce around leftist and liberal spaces unaddressed and unchallenged? The fucking gall.

it makes me feel insane that D&D is so wildly popular among "queer folx" despite it having The Moral Alignment Of Certain Races Over Others as a core mechanic of the game. like this game manages to be shockingly, impressively racist. you don't get to be that racist without trying really hard to be racist.

This^

Yeah fantasy racism isn't great but this post made me laugh because it's just a game with apparently fantasy racism toward races that don't actually exist. Like World Of Warcraft. Like Harry Potter. Like a lot of media.

Yeah okay point this out whatever, ask for and share better media, but don't start infighting over a stupid game when there are people are trying really hard to take away our Healthcare and our autonomy and our right to exist in public and prioritizing guns over children. There are way bigger issues to focus on right now that these takes just feel like an attempt at moral superiority.

The races DO exist. The creator of DND used the "monsters" as stand ins for black and indigenous people. This is common. If you understood literary analysis beyond gushing over media then you'd get that. Everywhere you go, everything you look at, everything that you hear or speak or smell is constantly reiterating that I am worth less than you. Look at your reaction when somebody challenges it. You are in the belly of the beast and you're saying, it's fine in here, let's talk about real problems. Like the ones that affect me!

I'm saying let's talk about real problems like the ones that are actually harming people. Not just people like me, but people like you. Problematic media sucks and we can boycott it (i dont even play D&D) but there are bigger issues. If we devote our energy to bickering over games and tv shows, we're never going to accomplish anything worthwhile.

I am literally a member of an all black communist organization. I also review ttrpgs. Despite what you may think, some of us also enjoy playing games. Too bad that the majority of games are made explicitly about genociding people like me and OP. Which is a reflection of a world that wants to genocide us because they don't want to hear or see us. The issue at hand is that there is absolutely no space without horrifying racism that people tell you is "not a big deal" for you to go to. Which I clearly explained to you but I guess you're just too honky to read. Would it be better if it was an animated cartoon episode where a bunch of quirked up white girls explained what's wrong?

There is no "we" here. You are the problem that I want solved. You immediately saw that a bunch of not white people were discussing an issue and jumped on it to condescend to them that it isn't a big deal and has nothing to do with real people. Even now that I have explained that actually it does concern real life race, you're saying this isn't a real problem, it's just problematic media.

Ending racism starts with YOU.

World of Warcraft based much of the Horde on various non-white cultures, with the trolls being bad Haitian stereotypes (up to and including religious figures from Voodoo) and the tauren being bad Native American stereotypes.

Harry Potter uses justifications for house elf slavery that are functionally identical to those used for actual chattel slavery. Never mind the rehashing of Jewish stereotypes with the goblins and JKR's general contempt for anybody she doesn't personally sympathize with and trans people in particular. Contempt that she backs up with millions of dollars.

DnD had two different player options based on the idea that race-mixing is a real thing that has real consequences to the resulting progeny, especially half-orcs. Early editions of both Pathfinder and DnD usually imply that half-orcs are the product of a male orc forcing himself on a human (read, white) woman, and that half-orcs are playable (in contrast to their orcish parents) because the human part of them makes them just civilized enough to be playable. Literally the same view towards interracial relationships as Birth of a Nation. It took 50 fucking years of DnD getting increasingly coy about the origins and justifications of half-orcs as a player race before Wizards decided to cut half-elves and half-orcs out entirely.

Fantasy racism is not developed in a vacuum. Writers have to create fictional prejudices through the magic of creativity, and white writers have a habit of writing what they know and just rehashing their own prejudices, knowingly or otherwise. And 'otherwise' is the case more than you'd fucking think - Gygax was a racist sexist asshole and Rowling would rather run a campaign against trans people than learn a single fact about a non-European/USAmerican culture. And this does matter because media that implicitly supports conservative views is inevitably used by conservatives. Games Workshop accidentally created justified fascism while trying to lampoon it and now WH40K has an indelible Nazi problem. I've seen DnD fans use biological essentialism to justify what would be hate crimes and genocide in real life. I am not going to slap the D20s out of anybody's hands, but if you're not going to at least spend five minutes to consider the bigoted implications of your comfort media, then you don't get to participate in the conversation.