@justenwrites / justenwrites.tumblr.com
HEY WAIT A MINUTE
I thought ppl made up Cardassians bickering to flirt to fit their Garashir fics. YOURE TELLING ME THAT WAS REAL THE WHOLE TIME???
it was ALL real the whole time
My favorite part about this is that Gilora's still into him enough that she rats out an Obsidian Order agent to protect Miles' reputation later in this episode. Miles O'Brien, the game you never knew you had.
Challengers (2024) is "Toxic Codependcy Throuple: The Movie" and it is actual perfection. Cooking with something beyond gas.
Terry Pratchett started his career as a crypto-monarchist and ended up the most consistently humane writer of his generation. He never entirely lost his affection for benevolent dictatorship, and made a few classic colonial missteps along the way, but in the end you’d be hard pressed to find a more staunchly feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, unsentimental and clear-sighted writer of Old White British Fantasy.
The thing I love about Terry’s writing is that he loved - loved - civil society. He loved the correct functioning of the social contract. He loved technology, loved innovation, but also loved nature and the ways of living that work with and through it. He loved Britain, but hated empire (see “Jingo”) - he was a ruralist who hated provincialism, a capitalist who hated wealth, an urbanist who reveled in stories of pollution, crime and decay. He was above all a man who loved systems, of nature, of thought, of tradition and of culture. He believed in the best of humanity and knew that we could be even better if we just thought a little more.
As a writer: how skillful, how prolific, how consistent. The yearly event of a new Discworld book has been a part of my life for more than two decades, and in that barrage of material there have been so few disappointments, so many surprises… to come out with a book as fresh and inspired as “Monstrous Regiment” as the 31st novel in your big fantasy series? Ludicrous. He was just full of treasure. What a thing to have had, what a thing to have lost.
In the end, he set a higher standard, as a writer and as a person. He got better as he learned, and he kept learning, and there was no “too late” or “too hard” or “I can’t be bothered to do the research.” He just did the work. I think in his memory the best thing we can do is to roll up our sleeves and do the same.
This post seems to be making the rounds again so here it is on the word blog
GNU Terry Pratchett
why is it that we only have like two licenses from any mech producer that’s a good guy? For a game where like there are clear good and bad guys (even if who you play isn’t necessarily linked to that) it seems strange to me that the only loot and XP you get is… more benefits from the bad guys
I can tell you the answer, but to do so, we're gonna have to talk about a completely different TTRPG.
If you've read @makapatag's truly excellent Filipino martial arts TTRPG Gubat Banwa (and if you haven't, here it is), you may notice that every single character class description (with one notable exception) ends with one of these babies:
I am not Makapatag, and I cannot write with quite as much grace and eloquence as he can, but I will try:
If you choose to become a Lancer, ask yourself why you mock the name of peace with these weapons of war. You call yourself a saviour, but your steed was forged from the murder of a world. You stride across the sky in a colossus built in your own image, so why are you too cowardly to give it your face? Why do you believe these machines of death can preserve life?
It is important to note that the admonitions in Gubat Banwa are not just there to make you feel bad; they are there as legitimate questions. The Sword Isles have seen so much blood, death and tragedy. Wars are not glorious and killing is not a game. So, knowing all of that, why have you taken up this discipline - no matter how noble and virtuous it might claim to be - to shed more blood, to bring more death, to write more tragedy? What could possibly drive you to this? What need is so great that you must kill?
The thing with Gubat Banwa is that there are legitimate answers to these questions! There are bad people doing bad things, and some of them will not be stopped with words or kindness. Sometimes, as sorrowful as it is, killing is the correct choice to prevent greater suffering and deeper tragedy - but adding less misery and death to the world is still adding some amount of it. Even the most necessary wars will drench the ground in the blood of the innocent.
A sword is a tool meant to kill humans; while it can be used for other things, it is not well-suited to anything other than this. A mech is, in its most basic essence, just a very complicated sword: it's usually used on things larger than a person, but it's still a tool built to kill.
So why have you taken up this path? Humanity was saved from the brink of extinction and has created wondrous technologies like printers, cold fusion and mind-machine interface, and yet you use them to play soldier in a giant metal man. Why do you choose to take up this machine of death, built by the greedy and pitiless? Why do you think these machines can ever make things right?
Because sometimes, despite everything, they can.
Warhammer 40K shows an awful world full of monsters and monstrosity, and in the darkest moments of its history, Lancer's world looked just as bleak, but Lancer's world differs in one crucial way. Warhammer's world has long given up trying to be better, but Lancer's world never did. Lancer's world kept insisting a better world is possible, and it used what tools it had to make it so.
Sometimes the correct choice, no matter how bitter it may seem, is to kill someone. When you need to do this, a sword is a perfectly good choice for the job.
If you find yourself discomforted by the fact that all the people you can buy mechs from are corrupt and immoral - good! You have correctly engaged with the text. You have understood that the sort of people who would make giant walking death machines and sell them for profit are not good people. But you still have a job to do, and you need the correct tools, and those people have them.
Lancer is not a game about a perfect world - it is a game about a deeply flawed and imperfect one that does not let its imperfection stop it from trying. You have to try to make a better world, even with imperfect tools made by unpleasant people.
THIS IS FUKING AMAZING WHY CANT I SPREAD THIS EVERYWHERE I WANNA SHOW IT TO EVERYONE. LITERAL GOOSEBUMPS
composer IN progress????
NO, YOU ARE READY FOR THE WORLD. IN FACT, THE WORLD IS NOT READY FOR YOU
Have fun
Imagine being lost on the Enterprise all alone and it’s just miles and miles of corridors like this
Oh, let me tell you a story…
I was a production assistant on “Deep Space Nine”.
One day I was in a hurry, and decided to shave a half minute off my journey but zipping through a soundstage and out the other side. It was Stage Four, and held Ops, some personal quarters, Sisko’s quarters, the Cargo Bay.. and hallways.
It was lit, because we were moving there later in the afternoon. I began jogging through the corridor and stopped right in the middle, where I could see neither end of the set piece. Suddenly, I WAS THERE. I was on the station. It was a complete alternate reality feeling, almost deja-vu, a deep familiarity. I paused, and a chill ran down my spine.
But I was in a hurry, and my feet took me quickly to the end of the set, and I looked back… yep, just a lit set, all alone on the soundstage, nothing I hadn’t seen a thousand times.
And yet. I had been there. On the station. For a split second, I was no longer on Stage Four, on the Paramount lot, in the middle of Los Angeles. I was in Bajoran space, on a station in the stars. It was only a moment… but the feeling and the memory has never, ever left me.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone else experienced the same thing.
people who don't follow chess I promise this post is really funny
Karpov had cemented his position as the world's best player and world champion by the time Garry Kasparov arrived on the scene. In their first match, the World Chess Championship 1984 in Moscow, the first player to win six games would win the match. Karpov built a 4–0 lead after nine games. The next 17 games were drawn, setting a record for world title matches, and it took Karpov until game 27 to gain his fifth win. In game 31, Karpov had a winning position but failed to take advantage and settled for a draw. He lost the next game, after which 14 more draws ensued. Karpov held a solidly winning position in Game 41, but again blundered and had to settle for a draw. After Kasparov won games 47 and 48, FIDE President Florencio Campomanes unilaterally terminated the match, citing the players' health. Karpov is said to have lost 10 kg over the course of the match. The match had lasted an unprecedented five months, with five wins for Karpov, three for Kasparov, and 40 draws.
okay, yeah this is pretty funny
Something Rotten!
omg a musical song about COMPLAINING ABOUT WRITING My whole life I have been waiting for this. MY WHOLE LIFE.
OH MY WORD
YES.
I REBLOG THIS EVERY SINGLE TIME IT COMES ON MY DASH AN I HAVE LOVED IT EVERY TIME
I saw this show live on Shakespeare’s birthday and it was amazing!
They always leave out my favorite part of the song:
SO YOU WRITE DOWN A WORD
BUT ITS NOT THE RIGHT WORD
SO YOU TRY A NEW WORD
BUT YOU HATE THE NEW WORD
AND YOU NEED A GOOD WORD
BUT YOU CANT FIND THE WORD
OH WHERE IS IT
WHAT IS IT
WHAT IS IT
WHERE IS IT-
*INCOHERENT SCREAMING*
@petermorwood on the off-chance you haven’t seen this yet
Like it…
And I’d like to have heard the missing bit as well, an evocation of those times when neither dictionary nor thesaurus nor synonym finder are of any help at all…
You’re in luck, they made a music video for it!
post: hey isn't it fucked up to try to achieve the idealized self through war machines that you're forced to pilot
someone whose understanding of the genre is exclusively through 4th wave armored core 6 memes: yeah and it's also sexy as hell and your mech is your perfect body that every woman strives for and you should always obey your handler like a good puppy
if you said “both are true” you are exactly why I wrote this post. Go watch 86 until you develop enough genre literacy to send Isabel Fall an apology
Pro wrestling is one of the bigger bastions of pathopsychology-resistant art because it fulfills the role that theater about gods once did: a mythological stage regarding events that really might be true
"Marvel characters are a modern Greek pantheon" Wrong! John Cena
hey did you know that uhh
oh shit i didn't expect this to actually get notes lmao
these are all direct quotes from jeffrey jerome cohen's "monster culture (seven theses)" (full pdf linked) i highly encourage you to read it yourself!
that said, while i think cohen's writing is evocative, it can be a little dense, so while i'm here, here's my capsule summary (you can also hear me talk about this in the first episode of my podcast) (listen to @ghostswerepeopletoo)
My Human is Not
Written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly
Art by Sonny Liew
My sister is doing pet play with women on roblox and I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s probably a kink for the others involved
No, I can’t emphasize enough that she’s totally clueless about anything that could be weird about it, she just thinks it’s funny. I had to sit there with a straight face as she told me about how she made this girl eat off of a plate on the ground (in roblox) and sleep in a dog bed (in roblox) whenever she misbehaved and go “oh haha that’s so funny” and pretend like everything’s normal.
maybe
how old is she
She’s in college, she isn’t like, a child
she looking for another dog?
Hey is your sister single (obviously not counting her harem of dog girls)?
No she’s straight (but says she’d go gay for Taylor Swift) and has a boyfriend, sorry petplay girls
Volunteering to stand in as this person's sister during this time of need
I have a name
This post really makes you take a deep breath and ponder...
I swear to god if this blows up enough that it gets reposted on other social media and my sister sees you all wanting to be her roblox dog…
this will be 100k notes. I feel it.
Sorry liberals, despite 400 tags saying “posts that have 100k to me,” we’re capping out at a nice cool 11k. My white ass is not making it onto tiktok, no robot lady is going to read this text, and my sister is not seeing it. Thank you all for playing
Don’t sell yourself short just yet
Everything is fine. I’m going to live forever
Does reblogging this count as accelerationism?
faqs:
is this real? / i thought pro wrestling was fake? wrestling is 'fake' in that the fights are choreographed and the winner is predetermined, but the physicality is very real. there's no way to 'fake' getting whipped with a metal chain so hard it leaves welts.
why ARE they chained? this is a specialty fight called a 'dog collar match' where both participants are, you guessed it, fitted with dog collars which are then chained together.
is this legal? / how can this be allowed? why wouldn't it be? they're both consenting adults who planned and agreed to it.
but they could be seriously hurt! they know, and they accept the risk. pro wrestlers are well aware of the injuries possible in their line of work, and they do it anyway because they're crazy people.
IS there aftercare? of a sort, yeah - there's a medical team on hand to patch everyone up, and lots of coworkers backstage to give them a 'job well done!'
why are they wearing thigh highs? they're kneepads/shin guards for protection. looking like sexy thigh highs is just a bonus side effect!
ok, but why's that guy in a shiny speedo? personal preference. wrestlers can design their own outfits and some prefer full coverage long tights, while others wear less to show off the gams.
is that cm punk? yup! he unretired last year.
why do straight men watch this? i'm still trying to figure this one out. 🤷
