Not today Justin
occasionally subtle
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Three Goblin Art
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One Nice Bug Per Day
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Janaina Medeiros
JVL
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Jules of Nature
Cosmic Funnies
Sade Olutola
i don't do bad sauce passes
Origami Around
$LAYYYTER
Sweet Seals For You, Always
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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
noise dept.
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@56853
Is that a worm in your pocket or are you just happy to see me
is that a twig in your pocket or did your penis experimented on
is that a pact in your pocket or are you just someone who looks a lot like my lawyer
is that a claw in your pocket or OH FUCK MY EYES ARE OUT IM BLIND
I'm seeking what's in your pocket but I'm afraid if I look it will fry my brain.
Every Ward spoiler on Tumblr is like “the chapter where Marquis sleeps with and then implodes Legend to become the king of Dracheheim was so racist” or “I liked it when Lily picked flowers for Sabah” and there’s no in between
”the portals explode because of Nazis, so THAT Jessica Yamada and THE Riley Davis are probably dead” is one of these moments.
what are you on about???? “also Lisa does found family :)”
Ward’s Dr Phil bullies Kenzie
Lisa and Victoria go to a BDSM club.
like
people reblog this post with crazy shit
and I can’t tell if they are ALSO making stuff up, or if Lisa and Victoria go to a BDSM club. And Amy makes a cum monster in a PS4. Or Legend fucks with Marquis.
give me three crazy Ward things, 2 bs 1 true. I guess the real one, two lies and a truth
Rain experiences an extremely uncomfortable handjob while at a public gathering. Victoria accidently injures one of Rachel's dogs, has to wash and groom the dogs as recompense. Aiden attempts to recruit a case 53 with the powers of an egg named to his team, the Chicken Tenders.
I actually already got read to the Rain handjob one. Bruh imagine this dude killing your daughter then like every 5th night or whatever you gotta watch him get a handjob awkwardddd.
so I know that’s true
Vic injures a hellhound, MAYBE? But I don’t think Rachel would let her touch her dogs after or before that, so 20% chance that this happens.
THIS IS THE SECOND TIME IVE HEARD OF THIS EGG GUY. So this might be true. Or is he fake?? Like damage character? Cmon legal name is Egg and he joins a bird themed group? Also how old is Aiden? Like 14? He prolly doesn’t have his own group atp. 30% chance
if his name was legit anything other than Egg I’d believe it. Like, Egg? No way.
That last one was a bit of a trick because there is in fact a Case 53 named Egg with the powers of an egg. However he never interacts with Aiden or the Chicken Tenders.
Every Ward spoiler on Tumblr is like “the chapter where Marquis sleeps with and then implodes Legend to become the king of Dracheheim was so racist” or “I liked it when Lily picked flowers for Sabah” and there’s no in between
”the portals explode because of Nazis, so THAT Jessica Yamada and THE Riley Davis are probably dead” is one of these moments.
what are you on about???? “also Lisa does found family :)”
Ward’s Dr Phil bullies Kenzie
Lisa and Victoria go to a BDSM club.
like
people reblog this post with crazy shit
and I can’t tell if they are ALSO making stuff up, or if Lisa and Victoria go to a BDSM club. And Amy makes a cum monster in a PS4. Or Legend fucks with Marquis.
give me three crazy Ward things, 2 bs 1 true. I guess the real one, two lies and a truth
Rain experiences an extremely uncomfortable handjob while at a public gathering. Victoria accidently injures one of Rachel's dogs, has to wash and groom the dogs as recompense. Aiden attempts to recruit a case 53 with the powers of an egg named to his team, the Chicken Tenders.
shout out to the silly creatures from scavengers reign‼️‼️
spooky scary babygirl sends shivers down your spine (˶ˆᗜˆ˵) and she is a big fish that kills you and eats you (>/////<) ♡
On the third day, a black circle, but with sliver-like gaps. I’d drawn eyes in the gaps. I’d elaborated around, in what I’d intended as rays of the sun. On the fourth, the same idea, but the eyes were larger, and there was less black. I realized now that I’d invoked the Wretch, with so many eyes, and with the ‘rays’ radiating out having frayed ends, like wavy, reaching arms, fingers extended out.
— Breaking 14.1 , Ward
"The gaming industry is bizarre. It is not an industry of success. It is an industry of your competitor, your direct head to head competitor, tripping over their dick and faceplanting into a bunch of shit. The only reason Sony got ground with the PS1 is because Nintendo fucked them with a deal and then went with carts for N64 and spent so many years pissing off third parties that everyone was willing to jump ship. The Saturn fucking killed itself by dropping into stores that were only Kmarts. The PS3 fucked up its entire early launch cycle by going a year late $200 more. And if you can just keep your company not shitty, if you can make a not terrible product, and your competitor makes an awful one, you’re the one who gets all the money"
-Pat from Two Best Friends Play on a interview from over 10 years ago.
It's amazing when you look at the Middle Ages, and when it comes to monarch's power, there was actually a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between a king and his vassals on a lot of things.
A king had to rely heavily on his vassal lords to pay homage to him, due to how fragmented and decentralized the Middle Ages was, so lesser lords could get a bit of wriggle room in various ways.
King wants to go on campaign abroad? Okay, so he's calling up muster from your lands, but you don't want to get rid of all the men of fighting age. You live in an agrarian society after all; you need to keep some men back so they can work the fields. So you haggle the amount of men you will send on campaign in your name, either under your own personal banner or sending a knight banneret to fight in your name.
King needs food? All right, but obviously you've got your own manor to support and feed too, so you can't send him all the bushels and cattle and pigs he's requested. But you can send some.
This obviously doesn't mean a king was powerless: the response to the Hotspur Rebellion in 1402/03 against the new Henry IV shows that just because some lords might chose to fully withdraw their support from their king doesn't mean that all would.
Because a king's power is as much about the projection of physical and political power and strength, through armed forces loyal to the king and also through laws, but there's also that a lot of the king's power comes from a place of reputation and trust; about a vassal keeping faith with his king because said king, who he has met personally, has bestowed upon him his rank and title, deserves his support and his trust.
Yeah. I feel like a lot of people have this perception of a feudal monarchy as like "This is the king and he has absolute power and these are all the people he owns and tells what to do :)" without really understanding how this system actually worked at all or any of the logistics involved at like every stage, but as with anything, the more you look into it the more complex it gets Like there are so many moving parts and it seems kinda fascinating. I'm half-remembering this, but supposedly, you also needed to worry about these kinds of meetings at the lower ranks of society as well. So like a Serf family was entitled to periodic meetings with the lord of their land to discuss matters such as the management of work and taxation, marriage and if the lord would approve of them (since Serfs were tied to land and the like,) to seek aid and charity in times of famine, etc. Obviously the power was generally more with the lord here, but there is management and negotiation and relationship management going on with that even so. So like... I dunno. A feudal monarchy seems like it's sort of a constant balancing act of meetings and negotiation and continued good relations at like every level of society you could possibly interact with. It's neat to think about it like that.
Someone on Twitter did a meme that describes EXACTLY this:
Is it true that if the holy roman empire went to war with the roman empire, they'd lose despite technological superiority?
As I heard it, the advances in warfare technology reduced the size and readiness of armies simply because you could not have a standing professional military any more, a standing professional military was 100% going to rebel and unseat its lord.
When the Holy Roman Empire goes to war, who shows up to fight the war? Depending on your time period it could be the Franks, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the Habsburg Empire including Austria-Hungary plus Spain and the Netherlands.
I think technological superiority would play a big enough role to render everything after the Franks into a one-sided rout. Charles V's army had guns, crossbows, pikes, and better armor than the Romans. His army was also semi-professional. I think a Roman legion probably would have melted in the face of a Spanish tercio.
The Holy Roman Empire existed for like a thousand years, and in all that time it never really had an army. I have no idea how to even approach the question tbh.
the dynamic encapsulated by the ancient chinese phrase "the mountains are tall and the emperor is far away" is important for understanding the dynamics of feudal systems. even with the strongest monarch their practical ability to enforce power over a large area was very limited, in practice the law was what local powerful said it was, even if they in theory reported to a distant authority. And they needed to cultivate the support of the people who they delegated that authority to
The actual age of Absolute Monarchy was the early modern period. Charles II of England, Louis XVI of France, heckled the Tsars of Russia kept it going till 1917. But the reason they were able to reign as absolute monarch (for a time) was that they had developed a centralized state over many generations, including a bureaucracy and civil servants loyal to them so that they didn’t need to rely on local lords for everything. And even then it was hardly perfect. All 3 examples I gave were executed by their subjects after all.
Many of you are questioning the viability of my research. Luke, why experiment on teens with powers? What is the benefit of mentally and physically torturing them?
My colleagues, that is exactly what we are trying to find out. If we stop now we'll never discover what all these kids died for.
dr mother.jpeg
Scion and Eden
Is hiphop more political than Eurovision?
I think the only fairly consistent and semi-objective answer here is to use it as a springboard to discuss what we actually mean when we call a given piece of art 'political' and how the word can denote basically entirely different things in different contexts.
Also like, the period you're talking about. Hiphop now isn't especially more political than any other kind of incredibly normative and high-budget popular music produced mostly in the united states whereas the debate around Israel's inclusion (at least) remain loud and live enough that I ear about them on the far side of the Atlantic so I guess Eurovision by default? Probably a different answer back in the 'senate hearings about the danger of rap music corrupting the youth' era though.
Eurovision has a higher amount of background politics by default given the whole contest between countries format, but also a much lower ceiling on what kind of speech the producers will actually allow in the performances. Hip-hop meanwhile can absolutely produce songs with no greater theme than "girl got a fat ass" or "smoking weed is fun" but the genre also regularly produces explicitly often confrontationally political songs. You aren't going to here the likes of "This is America" or "The Bigger Picture" at Eurovision even if they added the USA to the competition.
genius takes on reddit today
controversial take, but i don't think that would change anything. War crimes don't actually matter anymore. Russia's been bombing apartment buildings, power plants and hospitals for years now. Israel pounded most of Gaza into rubble.
There is no enforcement mechanism. The UN Peacekeepers have proven to be inept at best between UNIFIL, Darfur, Haiti and a dozen other failures and catastrophes.
Well, that's not true. There's one enforcement mechanism. Reciprocity.
Fear of reciprocation keeps the nukes in the silos, the anthrax in the vials and the chemical weapons in the tanks.
Also, on the grand scale of cruel and unusual weapons, putting a bomb on an RC quadcopter is one of the less objectionable creations of the last hundred years. Way less so than like nuclear weapons, or even white phosphorous. Hell I'd argue that they're less objectionable than the big drones since the smaller payload means less collateral damage risk.
We know that Pact and Pale exist in the Parahumansverse as aspects of the popular Maggie Holt franchise. We also know that as a tween, Ashley Swansong fancied herself a "dark sorceress", and modeled her costume off that.
So, which Otherverse character did tween!Ashley stan? Maybe Gabrielle Gerhild? Or some other Maggie Holt villain that we haven't met yet?
She probably latched on to Rose Thorburn during the Jacob's Bell leadership contest. Of course her true passion was her Otherverse OC Ivory Damsel Dementia Swansong Way. She's a witch/vampire/faerie with long ivory white hair (that's how she got her name) with purple streaks and red tips, and people tell her she looks kind of like Amy Lee (if you don't know who that is get da hell out of her here.)
Ashley 100% wrote self-insert ship fic about (an incredibly OOC version of) Blake Thorburn.
I was thinking that if Maggie Holt was a real YA series Blake Thorburn, the older dude with edgy powers, cool tattoos, and a tragic backstory would be absolute catnip to a certain kind of fanfic writer.
We know that Pact and Pale exist in the Parahumansverse as aspects of the popular Maggie Holt franchise. We also know that as a tween, Ashley Swansong fancied herself a "dark sorceress", and modeled her costume off that.
So, which Otherverse character did tween!Ashley stan? Maybe Gabrielle Gerhild? Or some other Maggie Holt villain that we haven't met yet?
She probably latched on to Rose Thorburn during the Jacob's Bell leadership contest. Of course her true passion was her Otherverse OC Ivory Damsel Dementia Swansong Way. She's a witch/vampire/faerie with long ivory white hair (that's how she got her name) with purple streaks and red tips, and people tell her she looks kind of like Amy Lee (if you don't know who that is get da hell out of her here.)
theres a lot of really really funny stuff around aussie sovcits. but one of the best has got to be the fuckin red aussie flags they inexplicably wave. these are literally australian flags but red instead of blue. the reason they use the flag is so obscure most sovcits couldn't really tell you why they do it, and absolutely no one watching them does. top stuff honestly.
still not as good as when they misquote the US constitution as a legal defence but nothing can top that can it
Are they part of the “Misunderstanding Magna Carta” branch of SovCit or is there some uniquely Australian reasoning why they don’t have to pay taxes?
There's a whole book or even multiple sagas to be written around the question of "why do adventurers exist in this world at all". I hate the term "murderhobo" with a passion but there is a lot, a lot to talk about what kind of society hires wandering questing warriors to solve problems and where do those "adventurers" come from and what role do they have in society.
Lots of people have talked about this but I would like to point out this essay on ACOUP that starts with seemingly a semi-related matter (why gold coins in fantasy don't make sense in historical societies) and ends with a very revealing insight... gold isn't the reward that "fantasy adventurers" should seek. It should be power and influence, noble titles, a comission in the local army, land.
This week on the blog I want to take a brief detour into discussing historical coinage, particularly in the context of modern fantasy and ro
As usual and expected from a blog titled A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry, it does take a long (but very interesting and worth reading) read to get to that point, but I'll point out the interesting thing in this context:
Here, "Big Man" is a stand in for the nobles and rulers and landowners of agricultural societies. While more urbanized and industrial societies may have a use for coinage, what do these societies based in interpersonal relationships can give you as a reward for a quest, as a reward for solving a problem? Social power; a title, a relationship, a promise of support. And not only that, but this isn't often a reward but a necessity in the first place. To have a horse, to have armor and weapons and the means to wage war (go adventuring) in the first place, you don't go to the medieval store and buy them with 20gp, you often have people supporting you and even , you are a man-at-arms, part of a noble retinue a noble yourself, maybe part of a holy order, or in more early-modern scenario, part of a mercenary group.
However, this doesn't happen often in fantasy because of these reasons reasons:
The idea of the selfless hero who doesn't choose glory or fame but instead continues questing endlessly to do good or defeat an ultimate evil. Making a hero have a patron feels like selling out (but I will address that)
Even with those characters who aren't selfless and would probably take the power and titles, it seems to tie them down to a place or obligation and this makes adventures boring (but I will address that!)
Dungeons & Dragons
People say that every generic fantasy world is inspired by Tolkien but I will argue that he's the grandfather of modern fantasy, the father is Gary Gyax. The ideas baked in D&D have been present in ALL over popular fantasy for decades now, even more prominently than Tolkien (and of course D&D 'borrowed' a lot from Tolkien). Now what this means in this particular case is the idea of wandering "adventurers" solving problems for "gold" in "dungeons", often with the undertone of a frontier or decaying civilization full of monsters and bandits to be killed and tamed into civilization (some other people have written about this better than me)
Nevertheless, even beyond the setting implications, there are deep gameplay implications that have filtered down popular fantasy. Dungeons and Dragons is a survival/combat game. It's a survival game because you have to rely in your abilities and limited equipment (which you buy with gold) to survive in a dungeon, through combat. Of course you can do a lot more than that, but this is the core of the game, what it was designed for: buy equipment, go into a dungeon, survive, get treasure, use it to buy equipment, go into another dungeon. Here "dungeon" can mean many things... combat, travel, puzzles, but the loop is clear.
There is no "gain a patron and get social capital" loop in the game, though it might be simulated, it isn't fun. So there is a lack of interest on exploring this, or really, anything beyond the "quest". And since again, it's D&D, not Tolkien, that shapes most popular fantasy, we see popular fantasy repeating this deeply baked in idea of fantasy once and again and again and again. Sometimes even making them into actual, literal points inside the world: making literal worlds with Adventurer Guilds and Dungeons and Quests and sometimes even Levels and XP as part of society (they're only lacking the dice... and that's because D&D is also the main influence behind videogames).
Is EVERY SINGLE FANTASY WORLD like this? No, not at all. But I want to talk about where does this idea of "gold" and "adventures" comes from, and it's NOT medieval or historical inspiration, and it's NOT even Tolkien. It's D&D.
Ward 2.4 Spoilers
Jesus fucking christ this chapter is so hard to read
I know there are *more* viscerally upsetting things in this universe, like what Bonesaw did to Brian and Blasto
But fucking hell this stuff just feels so impossible to do anything about. Our heroine feels so absolutely helpless to actually help anyone, and she just has to watch this mass casualty event.
Even so, she does everything she can to help as many as she can, including holding Anne as comfortingly as possible while her brain shredded itself. I love her and wish she didn't live in such "interesting" times
these new tumblr ui changes are getting out of hand
