Pinned
the reason it takes me as long as it does to do my transportation homework, is at least half of the time I spend it doing shit like this instead of the actual write-up....
Reblogged stripedroseandsketchpads
So tariffs were A Choice. But one of the territories tariff-ied (ha) is an island which is full of penguins, and nothing else.
So Threads is having fun.
Penguin President weighed in.
And we renewed this old classic:
Flippers up.
Reblogged veliseraptor
Being an evil doppelganger has to be so fucked up like imagine meeting a better version of yourself. Some chain of events going differently that led to "you" being a better person in a way you can never achieve. Personally I'd have no other option but to try and kill them
It's always "oh no my evil clone or twin or whatever is trying to kill me" and never How is my evil clone? Says a lot about society
Me, crashing the fuck out: you think you're better than me? You think you're fucking better than me???
My good clone, dodging a glass: I mean like objectively yeah
Reblogged gloriousmonsters
i think when it comes to knowledge gaps (especially on tumblr) its easy to get insecure about not knowing everything. but the real secret is that you can get away with not knowing everything if you just dont insert yourself into conversations you dont understand with blind confidence. the internet also gives you the privilege of 1) googling/wikipediaing shit before you say it, and 2) not volunteering how little you know. you dont actually have to enter the conversation just to say how little you know. part of the stereotype of dipshit stupid american on here is that americans will say full chestedly that they dont know which continent tchad is in and then go out of their way to justify it with their lack of education. when no one asked them to say either thing. and even if someone did ask, you are never under any obligation to actually answer.
Reblogged veliseraptor
some favorite bits of late Act I/early Act II conversations >:3
- I had forgotten Tarkis Arri gives you the "aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper" treatment! love it. I do really like her, especially as far as the various rebel leaders are concerned.
- poor Eb has to put up with So Much -____-
- the convo with Lady Lucretius is fascinating to me bc on one hand it's like...... uh. yes? as a general rule, the state will often render "justice" that's in its own best interests? are we really surprised here? -- but also the assumption she's making that genuine justice ought to look essentially like the conditions the petitioners are hoping for. which in the context of "lots of nobles and other relatively well-off people swarming Tunon's court" (on top of simply "there are two different cultures clashing here regarding what is actually a just outcome, restitution, etc").... Interesting. telling, honestly. particularly since some of Kyros's laws are pretty transparently aimed at preventing e.g. merchants from accumulating large amounts of wealth or single-industry expertise.
to Ilevath this is very much a desirable feature and not a bug of Kyros's Peace, ngl. he has... a poor opinion of the non-imperial Ruling Elite and the way they treat their subjects. "our noble Kyros's Peace / their dastardly abuses of power" etc. etc. - lmao speaking of Poor Opinions of Ruling Elites. I do think there's a decent case to be made that (regardless of whether it's true of the PC or not), Calio's "oh so do you want to rule instead? hmmm?" is a bit of a reflection of her own desires, too, which is fun. (and at this point, yes she actually is making an incorrect read on Ilevath's thoughts in particular. he doesn't want glory for himself, he wants A Good Grade In Fatebinder and for Tunon to force Ashe and Nerat into a Get Along Shirt and have it actually stick.)
- yes, yes he does like secrets and trickery!!! what's it to you, sir! ...I mean at least Mark parses what's actually going on rather than assuming he's just super into, y'know, pillaging&murder&chaos. but.... yeahhhhh Ilevath's getting a little. cranky. by the end there lmao. as far as he's concerned he's just being competent at his job!!! leave him alone!!!! he's not in this for personal power
except when he is but we're not talking about that!!!!
next up: heading to Lethian's Crossing, a.k.a. "trying to toll this road is literally illegal, please fuck off, you obnoxious self-important mercenary scum >:("
hey...... hey obsidian? quick q: why is this game like this.
#to be completely clear: I am Not complaining#all of these bits of dialogue are giving me life#and specifically I'm really happy that it's *not* just the Chorus getting this treatment#I'm just. so curious. as to how the discussions went in the planning & drafting stages#such that we ended up with 'decidedly cross-faction bdsm motifs' as a running theme#James liveblogs video games#Tyranny#legal clerk destroyer of worlds
Reblogged theoppositeofprofound
Having read all 5 Imperial Radch books, I am intrigued by how often they come back to the legal establishment and confirmation of identity. A lot of SF, especially when it brings AI into the mix, is about identity and personhood, and typically it lands on how you get to decide for yourself, that identity is a very personal thing that other people can't impose on you. Whereas in Imperial Radch... obviously we have the Radchaai concept of civilization where they divide between Radch and non-Radch, human and inhuman, civilized and uncivilized. At the end of the first book Anaander changes Breq from ancillary to human simply by saying so with the legal and political powers that she has. At the end of the main trilogy, Breq outmaneuvers Anaander and asserts her own identity not by asserting the moral high ground of any personal epiphanies (not that she doesn't have them) but by appealing to a treaty. She takes the issue to committee. In Provenance, another character escapes eir legal troubles by appealing to that same treaty and getting eirself legally defined as an alien. Then in Translation State, a Presger translator does the opposite and calls a committee to define e as human.
So much SF takes this very internal, emotional view of selfhood and identity and 'only you get to say who you really are!!' and Imperial Radch is like woe. committee meeting be upon ye. Sometimes characters are having personal epiphanies about their identity and sometimes they are doing this for convenience, but either way the win state involves appealing to bureaucracy.
Reblogged
NEW CROW PIN! At long last. Excited to have a pile of new releases for this week--starting with this big beautiful baby! Has this raven just landed on your pallid bust of Pallas to quoth nevermore at you? Or is the park just a little too damp for this crow to feel anything but grumpy? Up to you! In my shop
the dlc companion quests are very cool but I do wish the plot flags were more thoughtfully integrated into the base game :/
as in, it's a little weird and immersion-breaking to have Barik's dlc quest start automatically - so you get a mandatory convo where you're both being relatively friendly to one another and he asks you a personal favor - followed immediately by his super pissed off initial act 2 convo if you side with the chorus instead of the disfavored. did they..... just forget that there's a whole route where you can do that when the programming steps happened?
#let Ilevath actually EARN his way back into Barik's trust before he starts asking favors ffs!#he just coerced him into staying with the party like last night! bc Barik lost his temper and hit him (very illegal)!#the 'help me make my case before Tunon' convo should Not be allowed to happen while that shit isn't resolved#(or well. ''resolved''. their relationship is... a mess of contradictions and cognitive dissonance for a Long while on Barik's end)#James liveblogs video games#legal clerk destroyer of worlds#Varoyen Ilevath
Reblogged
thinking about a post I saw that was arguing that how an author portrays a given thing can "tell you more" about that author than if they do or not, and while there is maybe some truth to that I also had an instinctive "well, sure, but" reaction to it.
I think that reaction is a little bit about the fact that there's a tendency on here (and sometimes elsewhere) to read an artist's work (whether literary, visual, or otherwise) as a revelation or a window into their inner world. And I don't think that's necessarily accurate, warranted, or a good direction to take criticism or analysis.
I'm thinking some about this post I reblogged about intentionality and art, specifically the prioritization of the unintentional in art and what it says about the creator/the lionization of the unintentional as more genuine/authentic, and how it relates to generative AI.
It's certainly possible that a creator depicting a queer character in a way that evokes queer stereotypes is showing their ass about the way that they "really" feel or what they "really" believe. It's also possible that they're intentionally saying something and that something may not be "queer people are bad." This is a clumsy example but I think it goes back to the desire to seek out didacticity or morals in fiction/art - to look for what the creator is telling the reader or wants the reader ("reader" here used loosely to refer to any interpretation of art) to think.
as opposed to, perhaps, creative work as play ("what happens if I...") or even just as an invitation to think; not toward a specific end or purpose but to provoke some kind of consideration in the reader's mind.
Of course this doesn't mark anything as above critique, and works deserve engagement with the social context from which they emerge and with which they engage. But I think it's possible to do that critical work without assuming that it necessarily grants some kind of privileged access to who the creator themself truly is.
#fiction#writing#+1 +1 +1 +1#and imo it's much easier to be in the right ballpark when looking at a corpus of multiple works#and going 'hmm this author appears consistently interested/preoccupied with xyz theme'#than trying to make any definitive claim about *the author's personal opinion of a topic* just by looking at their work#...not least bc. I suspect a lot of things that writers linger on and come back to are things they have *multiple thoughts & feelings about#which y'know. is part of what goes into something being an inspiration for creative work
Reblogged ultraviolet-eucatastrophe
“The old magic persists thanks to it’s unfathomable power.”
No, the old magic persists because the new magic can’t run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I don’t want or need onto my orb.
Look, if the new magic didn't have a personality construct that kept trying to tell me which spells to use, maybe I wouldn't still be using the old magic.
Yes it had a deep blood cost, but at least it was a one time sacrifice and not this monthly bloodletting nonsense new age magic has
The old magic is robust enough to survive a decade of use and it's compatible with every wand, staff, scroll, and charm in our collection.
The new magic stops working after three days and every spell uses proprietary runes.
Our preferences, as an archiving institution, should be pretty clear.
You try to get guidance for the new magic and the king's sorcerers maybe will answer you in a few days with an unhelpful suggestion to buy the newest orb.
You need guidance for the old magic and a dozen retired middle-aged wizards will pop up to explain it to you rune by rune if necessary.
Ilevath and his very uneasy relationship with the Scarlet Chorus, it's recruitment practices, and it's ~survival of the ''''fittest'''' doctrine; and on the flip side, the balancing act story he tells himself about how he really was uniquely worthy of being saved from the absolute nightmare of that recruitment where so many others apparently weren't/aren't, while at the same time feeling an intense gratitude and indebtedness toward Tunon & the court for being those saviors.
the idea of his being chosen to serve the court as essentially just a random lucky stroke would be rather upsetting to the notion of a world that's largely just and ordered and reasonable, obviously! and he himself is very willing to be the agent of sparing other people's lives from whatever fate the Chorus would have in store for them, if/when he can find other acceptable options to divert them toward in his capacity as a court agent.
but even so... the Chorus has its right to recruit. and he's certainly willing to have captured/surrendered prisoners given to them as a fair ("fair") option for a second chance. awful as the conscription/initiation process is, in these cases it's something like a logical (and frankly merciful) consequence of their own actions - that's not something he's going to lose sleep over.
(and if it's a sensible consequence in those circumstances, then that also brings us back around to the opposite, that his being claimed by the court instead was also a sensible consequence of.... something about his person and talents, that others didn't have. surely. .....he does not, as a general rule, try to ever linger overly long on the occasional thoughts of the other members of his prior guild.)
#Varoyen Ilevath#legal clerk destroyer of worlds#and why yes I DO have kicking around a character concept for one of those former guild members for post-game headcanoning purposes#childhood friend/acquaintance type who played the hand he was dealt and rose up to middling respect as a Chorus mage#but oh boy was he Not Chill about any of it. is still not chill in fact. is perhaps going on a personal deceptive revenge quest about it#like. your life was capriciously ruined and then years later the one kid who got spared shows up again in Cushy Powerful Position 1??#yeah no. knife-twisting payback time for that shit