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Congratulations to Marcille DungeonMeshi for achieving Pathetic Little Man status on tumblr, a hard glass ceiling for many female characters to break. I look forward to calling you my sopping wet beast and poor little meow meow for fandom days to come. Keep trucking babygirl, you'll bag Falin one day

That's because this is Silmarillion

One thing that really gets me about Urianger comforting Minfilia in Amh Araeng is that when she says Thancred hates her, Urianger never actually says, no, he doesn't. He says instead, none of this is your fault, and the original Minfilia wouldn't hold anything against you, and in typical Urianger form he says some things about fate and faith, and his words are kind and beautiful--but he also completely sidesteps the question of how Thancred feels about her.

And I think this moment is very reflective of Urianger's relationship to Thancred and child!Minfilia as a whole. It reflects what we see when we first see all of them together in Il Mheg.

Urianger knows that the way Thancred behaves toward the girl is hurting her. He's spent enough time around the two of them to see that plainly. Theoretically, he could say something to Thancred about it; they're obviously close friends, and if Thancred was going to value anyone's opinion, it would be his. But he doesn't say anything, because he still feels guilty and responsible for all of it: about their Minfilia going to the First and what happened to her there, and thus for what both Thancred and child!Minfilia are going through now. Even though Thancred has never outright blamed him for it (however he may feel privately, which I think is hard to say), it seems like Urianger still feels like he has no right to say anything.

So he tries to compensate instead. He's kind to Minfilia, connects with her in his own way and gives her books, and by the time we see them together he's obviously become something of a familial figure to her. I would say that he and Thancred aren't so much raising her together as they're doing it... around one another. Thancred is gruff and cold and holds Minfilia at arm's length emotionally so that his protectiveness comes off harshly even when it's well-meant, and Urianger dotes on her and tries to make up for it all while avoiding the actual problem.

So that conversation in Amh Araeng is both touching and maddening to me, and it really drives home what's maddening about it when, upon overhearing it, the Warrior of Light turns to Thancred to ask him if he has anything to say to Minfilia--who has just said, out loud, that she thinks Thancred wishes she was dead--and Thancred just says, "Not today."

And so they both go on avoiding the actual problem, for just a little longer.

This is it. So much. This is why this entire section of the game makes me crazy.

Urianger is trying so hard but refuses to address the real problem. Thancred is being a cold asshole because on some level he thinks he's going to get 'his' Minfilia back and Ryne is just a placeholder.

This scene is so good because it sums up the entire situation so well.

I really wanted to reblog this addition because a big part of my frustration with Thancred's arc in Shadowbringers is that I don't really agree with the narrative framing I see there, that Thancred's whole problem is that he just doesn't know how to tell Minfilia/Ryne how he feels. She goes out to summon Minfilia Prime thinking Thancred wishes her dead and even hearing that from her own mouth, he at no point decides to disabuse her of that notion. Then he gets the crap beat out of him for her and when she returns he just smiles and says she's family almost like she should have known that all along, and the story and all the other characters act like the whole thing is resolved now and he's basically her dad, isn't that sweet, he should totally get to decide her new name, and we move on without him ever really acknowledging what he put her through.

Part of the messiness, imo, is also Minfilia's doing. She stresses to Thancred that he has to be Ryne's protector, and he needs to take care of Ryne the way he took care of Minfilia, that he should prepare her to make the choice of either embracing being the Oracle or not. That this kid will either make sure the loss of Minfilia is permanent ... or that Minfilia will come back at the cost of Ryne's life.

She has to know what a terrible thing she's asking of him, right? Either way, he's going to lose someone he's supposed to protect, someone he thinks deserves to live their life out to their full potential, rather than having it be cut short.

He doesn't want Ryne dead, but admitting that feels like saying he's cool with Minfilia being dead in her place, which I'm sure feels gross as hell to him. And the opposite, getting Minfilia back at the price of Ryne, probably feels even worse, since he'd at least theoretically had time to make peace with the idea that Minfilia may not ever return until ... well, that got upended by Minfilia herself. He also knows Ryne desperately wants his approval; I think he's afraid of influencing her choice, while being in denial that he still kinda is with his bullshit.

Thancred handles it all entirely wrong, of course. But I really don't think his struggle is as simple as resentment that Minfilia is gone and Ryne is here instead, that he doesn't see Ryne is her own person. We see his occasional moments of warmth towards her before he shuts down and goes back to being cold, so I think he does see her as her own person, and that makes it all that much harder on him, so he tries to distance himself to protect himself from the reality that's rapidly bearing down on him. If she chooses to let Minfilia take her over ... well, maybe the loss of Ryne will at least hurt just a little bit less. If she chooses to take on Minfilia's powers as her own, at least he can make up for that distance later.

And so, not today.

So yes, he finally acts warmly to Ryne because there's no chance Minfilia is coming back ... but not only because he gets to finally see her as her own person without the visual reminders of what she is and what she represents muddying things, but because the weight of that awful lose-lose situation has finally been lifted. The choice has been made, there's no going back, and he doesn't have to stop himself from getting too attached to Ryne, only for her to turn around and sacrifice herself, like Minfilia did before her.

My favorite part of Shadowbringers is how all these fucking sad dad's are foils of each other. Thancred can't entirely commit to accepting the new (Ryne) at the expense of the old (Minfilia). Emet-Selch is sacrificing the new world to bring back the old, but there's a part of him that doubts it. The Exarch just fucking yeeted his timeline into oblivion (so far as he knows) to restore the past and he's not conflicted about it at all. It's like pottery. It rhymes.

Something about the idea that voting for president only matters if you live in a swing state, and that all the people in blue states or red states can indulge themselves in principled nonparticipation because the outcomes are preordained, strikes me as akin to playing with fire.

Is it really coherent to say "both sides are awful, write in Mickey Mouse or burn your ballot or just stay home and get drunk, unless you live in Pennsylvania, in which case maybe consider taking one for the team and compromising yourself by voting for the lesser evil?" Is that really the message that will lead to a preferable outcome?

What it sounds like to me is a sign that 1) you take your local electorate for granted, and 2) you see avoiding the worst case scenario as somebody else's problem.

I remember when Florida was a swing state. I also remember when Pennsylvania wasn't.

For the love of fuck, vote in your local elections and don't fuck around with presidential ones either. States are in play now that I would never have dreamed of being 'swing' states. When I first started voting, PA absolutely was not a swing state. The district where I cast my first vote went blue for the first time I can remember last election.

This was a popularish meme in the mid-2000s when liberals were mad about Bush's re-election. Note that "Jesusland" includes Nevada and Arizona (now considered swing states), as well as Colorado and Virginia (now considered blue).

Hell, it also includes Georgia, which was considered a red state in 2016 (when Trump won by 5 points) until Biden shock won it in 2020.

For comparison, another localized 5-point swing left in a state would cause Biden to win Florida or North Carolina, and would be very close to letting him win Texas.

And, more long term, a big reason Progressives can't get a Bernie Sanders type nominated is that a lot of moderate Democratic primary voters are stressed about electability. Blue Texas would thus be really useful for the long-term goal of pushing the Democrats to the left.

The audience can not tell the difference between foreshadowing and remembering.

I wanna see bluepoint remake dark souls. Not because it'll be good or anything, they would absolutely fuck it up so bad. But it would be funny to me, to see that.

No, they need to remake Dark Souls 2, because they could fuck it up in a way that makes Dark Souls 2 Remake as divisive as the original DS2 for different reasons

for several weeks now this tweet has been causing wars on twitter

Call me a bucket full of pennies the way having sex with me is difficult and painful for others

call me aloe vera the way having sex with me is easy and healing

my name is jamie

hi jamie!!! ^_^

Hi jamie

★ 【조철홍】 「 1 // 2 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me on twitter

some indie TTRPG settings are so obsessed with being Wholesome and Low Conflict that they end up being like "what if Footloose was set in a town where dancing was ALLOWED!"

well I'll tell you. the answer is that that would not be very interesting