Here Be the Nerdy Shit

This is just a blog of stuff I like, mostly Wheel of Time, Dragon Age, and BG3. I hope you like it too!

[anyboli]

All that said, my petty bitch criticism of The Odyssey is STOP DRY-FIRING YOUR GODDAMN BOW!! YOU’RE GONNA BREAK IT!

[evidently-endless]

the odyssey (2026)

[anyboli]

(I’ve seen this criticism a lot on tumblr, I promise I’m not picking on OP or the person who put this on my dash). I also went into the movie expecting the “Nobody” moment, but I feel like this criticism, is, in a vacuum, missing a lot of context.

The sequence with the Cyclops as it appears in the film isn’t out of the Odyssey, it’s out of the Aeneid. More specifically, it’s exactly how Achaemenides, a starving man abandoned on the island by Odysseus, describes it.

Nolan pulls a lot from the Aeneid. Virgil condemn’s Odysseus’s/Ulixes’s “guile” and description in the Trojan Horse scheme in a similar way that Nolan does. He also more or less invents Sinon as a character, but makes him a complicit schemer, unlike the tragic innocent Nolan writes him as. Nolan also pulls elements from later writers, like Dante, but shifts their framing again.

Nolan’s Odyssey is fundamentally syncretic. He cares about how the Odyssey has been reinterpreted and mythologized throughout history.* He has layers of influences outside of Homer that he’s playing with. Theres a great conversation to be had drawing out those influences, talking about what they’re doing and saying, and where they might fall flat, etc. But if you’re not bringing up points like this in the context of that conversation, you’ve made a customer service complaint and not a criticism.

*side note: I think you can see this too in the much-derided Roman aesthetics. I almost wish Nolan had gone a lot further with this, almost like Taymor’s Titus, and layered in a lot of different aesthetics, but I can see how that would have been too divisive.

[shorthistorian]

Odysseus: Our age of bronze is collapsing.

Me:

[anyboli]

Gonna improve my life by:

1. Reading some books on military strategy and operations.

2. Swinging around a big stick for fitness.

3. Getting laid a lot and/or getting into an arranged marriage.

Call that Cauthon-maxxing

[highladyluck]

Drosselmeyer had a town

E-I-E-I-O

And in that town he had a duck*

E-I-E-I-O

With a quack quack here, and a quack quack there

Here a quack, there a quack

Everywhere a quack quack

Drosselmeyer had a town

E-I-E-I-O

*Additional verses: crows, a ballet studio (plié here, plié there), a cat, an alligator, a knight, a story, an eel…

[zkretchy]

I keep forgetting that after waking up and for a loooong time after Rand is just naked...and he also decides to hold a conversation while standing naked holding the blanket to prove just how totally fine and ready for fighting he is, so every time I reread this section I get to be surprised and have fun all over again :D

Anyway-just how many outfits does Asmodean have and how? Unclear!

[neongreentoxicity]

Ok that was probably the most fanfic-ass series events I’ve ever read in a published novel.

Aviendha, who is (to the audience; he’s convinced she hates him, for maximum tension and Jordan Oppositional Sexism Moments™️) very clearly in love with Rand and one of the three women he’s destined to marry according to Min, has been forced into sleeping in the same room as Rand for Plot Reasons

She decides to wash up in the room they’re unwillingly sharing (this should not be a problem for her, since she’s Aiel and Aiel are very comfortable being naked around people of other sexes, but this is conveniently forgotten for the scene)

Rand comes back early and finds her naked. She is horrifically flustered and embarrassed by this, yelling that she has to get away, and in her desperation makes a Traveling gate. Traveling is a completely lost talent that no Aes Sedai has been able to use since the Breaking of the World (even Rand, the fucking Dragon Reborn, can’t quite figure out how to Travel, though he can do something kind of close). She’s so freaked out she just does it by instinct though and she runs through. Naked

Her Traveling gate has conveniently opened into the middle of a blizzard in northern Seanchan. Seanchan is a massive fucking ocean away from where they are in inland Cairhien, and is very conveniently the worst possible nation in the world to Travel to, since they either kill or magically enslave anyone who can channel

Despite suddenly finding herself naked in a blizzard half a world away, she’s just so embarrassed that she keeps running away from the gate and Rand when he comes to get her out of the fucking blizzard. She then immediately stumbles onto a frozen lake and falls in

Rand must now pull her out of the frozen lake and warm her up. The gate is too far away by now for them to survive getting back to, naturally, so they have to wait out the storm. Rand uses the Power to create a super-strong igloo and heat the air, but oh no! She’s not warming up fast enough. The only choice is for him to get naked and cuddle with her, using body heat to warm her up (the only choice, because conveniently Rand does not know how to Heal)

This works incredibly well, and very fast. Aviendha wakes up completely fine (and apparently quite energized), with no frostbite or lost extremities or anything, despite running a mile in a blizzard and falling straight into a frozen lake, and upon waking up naked cuddling with Rand, can no longer run from her feelings for him

They have sex

Robert Jordan how did you write this *checks dates* fifteen years before AO3 was invented. I’ve read this exact storyline at least fifteen times from authors who have never even heard of the Wheel of Time. Also why. It’s so fucking jarring.

[dr-gaytorius]

1st base: raw ethically dubious fucking

2nd base: exist in a public space together

3rd base: you witness me have a real, candid emotion

4th base: I reveal an aspect of my tragic backstory to you

[wherethesunsails]

pov: you're al'lan mandragoran. your entire people was wiped out when you were a baby. your platonic soulmate girl bestfriend is falling for a gilf (weird. shrug.) you're falling in love with a girl half your age (hashtag oops) she Hates your girl bestfriend. you are all trapped together on a roadtrip. girl bestfriend is Thee ragebait queen. also the devil is coming back. everything is bad and this is the funniest anything has ever been.

[super-nova5045]

and just when you think you’re at your absolute lowest a blonde motherfucker comes along and makes everything so much worse

[dipperscavern]

rhaenyra targaryen journal entry

[iliiuan]

Things Dracula and The Wheel of Time have in common (an incomplete list):

Ever increasing number of pov characters

Ever increasing overlap in pov narratives

An abrupt ending

[moghedien]

So outside the gods relevant to the main storylines (the dead three, Selune, Shar, etc.) are there other gods that can make their presence known in BG3?

Because the only one I’m aware that sometimes does is Lolth

I’m not talking like indirect cleric magic stuff, there’s at least two instances where Lolth can directly known. One is if you fail a check to try to get some spiders to obey you by convincing them you are Lolth (she isn’t happy you did that) and the other is if you’re a Lolthsworn drow and take the sword associated with Eilistraee (she doesn’t like that).

Are there any instances like this other gods in the game or is it just Lolth watching and getting pissed off at your choices

[moghedien]

STOP 💀

[freakoutgirl]

sorry for being annoying [remembers that practicing gratitude instead of shame is better for my mental health and my relationships] thank you for letting me be annoying with you

[nerd-artist]

I ship it and Esquie approves

[iconicplottwist]

LISTENN

I KNOW it's almost June and it's not Christmas but I just finished my nutcrackers and I NEED to show them off

So yeah 😁😁😁

There are things I love about them and things I don't like as much about them but they're overall really cool

Perrin's hammer is a little big but this is how he started and I sculpted the hammer on

(I didn't take before pictures, this is the egwene one that I AM going to do but I still haven't decided how I'm gonna do the dresses and such, I also have a nynaeve one in the works)

Rand is absolutely my favorite he looks so sick

Mat's scarf is actually brown but it's fine that was the only fabric I had at hand and I just decided to add it and it makes him 10× better (also his Ashendarei is SOOO SICK I love it much)

I might give them hair. Still deciding, the yarn is really annoying

[feast-of-lights]

Reverse Bang Writers' Sign-Up Form

Hi! The artists' form is now closed, and the form for writer's to look through potential matches is now open!

Click here to sign up.

The form has options for writers to look through the sketches that were submitted and rank their choices, or to just put your name in as a pitch hitter. If you are interested in being a pitch hitter, here is the place to sign up.

The form will close late on 2 July, and I will do my best to make matches promptly and get everyone connected so there is plenty of time to collaborate! If you're interested in the event at all, please sign up quickly.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment here or DM me @anyboli. Thanks in advance to anyone signing up!

[tending-toward-silence]

*through clenched teeth* All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well