GlitterDork

[purrplecatart]

I was recently part of a layoff from my old job and while I look for something else I wanted to put these back up. I’m cool with nsfw and gore. Please fill out this form if you’re interested!

Commission Form

Commission Form

Reblogs appreciated

[doodlerh]

cathmir </33333

[superdaisypowerhour]

I spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that between claude edelgard and dimitri, and rhea, edelgard is the only one who goes into the events of three houses with any sort of retirement plan. Dimitri can never retire because as terrible and emmiserating an experience as being king is for him, as happy as he would be doing literally anything else, at the end of the day he and his friends are all trapped in the thing they fought to preserve. Even if he wanted to abdicate he couldnt, everything would fall spart and he would have no peace. Claude has a similar problem in that he is the lynchpin holding everything he does together, but the world he wants to make doesnt tie him there the same way dimitri’s does. It stands to reason that with the church more or less gone and the both almyra and fodlan under his control, the situation would stabilize enough for him not to have to hold it together, but its claude. He is going to keep his hands on the thing that is his new open world for as long as he can because he wont trust anyone else to do so. Rheas continued and adamant refusal to give up power is a significant factor of damn near everything that happens in the game. The nobility and he crest system are the direct result of her actions to maintain power, as is their perpetuation. And then there’s edelgard, 10th of 11 children, born first in line for absolutely fuckall, and as far as im aware, the only one to retire when she wins (i would not define rhea’s whole situation at the end of claude or dimitri’s routes a win for her and frankly i dont think she would either). I just think its interesting that shes the only one to abdicate without being forced to. Frankly, i just think its nice she doesnt have to or want to rule forever. That she chooses to live in the world she made.

[hopeymchope]

PlayStation Bad

In just the past two months, Sony has:

Suggested the PS6 *may* cost more than $1000 at launch

Announced the end of all physical PS game releases

While simultaneously announcing the end of two of their console game stores — ensuring multiple games will die forever

Declared that they are wholly dedicated to (A) leveraging A.I. when making games and (B) creating live-service games above all other game types

Announced that if you bought any movies through their PlayStation Store, over 550 of them will soon be deleted from all users' libraries — with no restitution offered of any kind

Gamers, it is time — to paraphrase Robert Vann — to turn Sony's picture to the wall. Any one of these insults would be bad, and taken alone? Maybe it could be swallowed. But this is an ongoing campaign of disdain towards customers, with each declaration worse than the last.

PlayStation does not deserve your patronage any longer. The PS6 must fail. Leave them behind.

ETA: Regarding that first bullet? A Sony spokesperson was asked about reports indicating increasing cost means that the PS6 will logically cost $1000 or more. He simply shrugged it off by saying that Sony can't be expected to eat the rising cost of components. So that wasn't strictly a confirmation, in reality. It was more of a "yeah, that'd be fine if that's the case."

[thorst]

That last point is truly incredible when you consider that going completely digital will mean Sony gets even more revenue from every game sold than ever before. So they will ensure that we can only really buy games from them, while also refusing to eat any rising cost of manufacture? Fuck them

I don't even like Xbox, I've always found the controllers a little uncomfortable, but I won't buy a ps6

I mean listen I didn't buy a PS5 but that was because I umm haven't stopped replaying rdr2 for *checks notes* the best part of 8 years

I used to be serious gamer, okay, I just got old

[humbababa]

Damn. I didn't hear about the game stores being shut down.

I'm guessing the PS4 and PS5 ones

[psychopomp-namine]

it's the PS3 and vita storefronts that are being shut down. they tried shutting them down a few years ago but didn't go through with it after the backlash

PS5 and PS4 storefronts are still up and running, but they'll probably try to close them in the future as well. in an all-digital future, it's likely that you'll be forced to buy ports of games you already own, if they even get ports for the next gen

[gallusrostromegalus]

I Have No Teeth And I Must Fundraise

Hey everyone,

It's Your Local Bardic entity, Gallus Rostromengalus of Bread Jesus and other Weird Tumblr Story Fame.

Despite my best efforts to mitigate mt Terrible English Dental DNA, today two of my teeth broke.

I don't even have a fun story about this, it's literally terrible genetics and stress-grinding my teeth in my sleep.

I just got back from emergency surgery to get the pieces pulled and the hole in my jaw closed so I don't get an infection, but a second reconstruction surgery to give me a bone graft and dental implants will be needed so I can actually chew and use my mouth for it's intended purposes.

I do not currently have dental insurance. I haven't talked about it here much, but my husband was unemployed after getting laid off for almost all of last year. He has a job again, but it pays like 2/3rds of his previous one and the benefits are crap. Like no dental insurance until he's worked there at least a year.

So I'm on the hook for the full cost of Today's emergency surgery, Medication, and the necessary follow-up reconstruction, which my dentist estimates will cost between $5000-$7000. Our dentist has given us every discount she can and we have a payment plan, but losing half our household income has left us with no savings and credit cards at their limits. Even though I only need to come up with $500 this month to go ahead with the reconstructive surgery, I do not have any money to spare. It will also be VASTLY cheaper overall to pay for everything up front rather than pay interest over the months with the payment plan, but literally anything will help me right now.

Link To My GoFundMe

Link To My Ko-Fi

Thank you all so much, Gallus

Pic of Chaleston Chew lounging on his pillows because pics generally help these posts but I do not want to inflict images of Dental Trauma on all of you.

[stephexmachina]

proposing a new genre of fiction called an anti-romance where u r presented w a couple at the start & the story is about their emotional journey towards a catastrophic break up

[stephexmachina]

will they won't they (end this farce). there's only one bed (but for some reason they don't really want to share it). out of context eavesdropping (that paints the relationship in a better light than it deserves). chasing after them to stop them getting on that plane (and stopping them from finally being free)

[stephexmachina]

nobody understands my vision i don't mean any old story where a relationship fails and it's tragic or w/e i mean a story where the intention is for the audience to root for it failing the same way u root for it succeeding in a romance. & when the relationship finally implodes at the climax of the story it's all very cathartic & everybody cheers.

[stephexmachina]

like have u never wanted a fictional couple to break up so badly it hurt?

[boomgun]

My most evil opinion really is "they're all just different flavours of liberal (not derogatory at all, the political history of the 18th to 19th centuries are interesting and inform a lot of our current world)."

[boomgun]

I actually have a lot of things to say about class mobility in Leicester and how that might relate to how Claude wants to open up Fódlan to the world.

To make sure we are all on the same page; Leicester has more class mobility than the other two nations. However, I do not think this is something the nobility of Leicester like very much. The Roundtable is the primary governing body of Leicester and it is literally made up of all the old money, sans Margrave Edmund who was let in because he gave a convincing performance to look like old money (adopted Marianne). Ignatz requiring a noble patron to serve as a knight under implies that the nobility of Leicester is trying to manage this new class of people that have money and power in their society. Yes, you can join the nobility, but you have to pledge fealty to the folks who are already nobles. It seems to me that the merchant class in Leicester grew due to circumstances outside of the control of the landed aristocracy, simply because this sounds less like integrating something you wanted into the system as much as trying to manage an aberration within it.

However, it does lend a different dimension to Claude's goals for Fódlan. Evidence suggests that trade outside of Fódlan is heavily regulated, with only certain ports being allowed to exchange foriegn goods (3 Hopes mentions this with the Aegir territory having one such port). This would explain why a prominent and widespread merchant class only exists in one country, and why the one country is still predominantly ruled by landed aristocracts. In a system where trade is so heavily restrained and potential markets limited, a merchant class is going to have a hard time building momentum in the halls of economic and political power. So, hey, what if a dude just lifted those restrictions? I think, in Verdant Wind, Claude wants to change the class system in a very slow and generational way (he seems hesitant to exercise his power unilaterally, so he opts for the very slow and steady approach to not directly disrupt lives and livelihoods). So, Claude decides to maximize the institutions that already exist to force change. The Church is the big one because, well, Byleth is in charge of it now and Byleth is his friend and ally in Verdant Wind, Claude would be a fool to not use that connection to its fullest to shift the cultural norms of Fódlan. The merchant class, I think, is the more discreet one because Claude makes no big deal of it, but if Fódlan's self-imposed isolation were suddenly lifted the merchant class in Leicester would probably kick into overdrive and spread into the other two nations of Fódlan. Suddenly, seeking patronage from nobles and swearing in as their vassals would seem unappealing to a young merchant who, if they were tied down in such a way, would have a harder time reaching the new markets of Dagda and Almyra and vice-versa. Especially in conjunction with a Church railing against xenophobia and reforming the power of the nobility.

The power of the old nobility over the continent would not be broken, as Edelgard seeks to do, but it would likely shift over time with these new social pressures. The change may be 'fast' and happen over a few decades or it may be slow and happen well after everyone in the story has died of old age, but it would certainly happen. Claude has a thing for the big picture, looking at the map beyond Fódlan, it makes sense that the timetable Claude operates on is longer than his peers too.

[mimzalot]

[I walk into the room clearly continuing a muttered conversation I was having with myself] because he's mixed, and because he's rich, that's what people keep missing about Claude, he does not fit neatly into a shallow perception of what it means to be oppressed so they make jokes like 'ha ha ha Claude's so obviously not from here and everyone is stupid for not seeing it' but it isn't obvious to the people around him because they never expect an outsider to be in a position of power, and folks fail to acknowledge that part of Claude's identity is that he CAN pass as a Riegan without closer inspection - in a way that, say, Cyril or Nader could never! Claude is more easily able to assimilate due to how he speaks, looks and acts, and that's not a flaw of the game design, it is actually a weirdly nuanced detail of what it means to be 'pass', yes, visually, and also through proximity to wealth, power, class - not because you don't 'look brown' but because you couldn't POSSIBLY be brown, THAT'S a key difference. the game did so many things weird about racism but the idea that Claude 'passes' isn't the unrealistic part, what I find unrealistic is that so few people have assessed the blind spots and grey areas of how racism manifests in society, oh my god what do you mean this isn't something you've all had to experience or think abou- [I exit via the same door I came through]

[elainerei]

Seasons of Fódlan

🌱🌧️🌾❄️

I don't see ppl pointing this out much but the yearly weather cycle in the world of 3Houses is based more on that of Japan than the typical four seasons in the West. So I will list them out here cuz I love the worldbuilding of 3H :3 This will be based on the narration for each month.

⏳📜🌌🔮🗡️

An interesting thing I want to note is that the numbers used to help us identify which Imperial Moon correlates to which Gregorian Month (like Great Tree Moon - 4 -> Apr or Ethereal Moon - 12 -> Dec) were, in-universe, actually from an old Fódlani calendar that predates the Imperial calendar :> You can think of it like how many countries still use both the Gregorian calendar and a lunar calendar.

The way the Imperial calendar was imposed in Fódlan is pretty much a direct reference to our modern calendar.

But I digress... This is supposed to be about the Seasons of Fódlan🍃🌹🌨️🌕

🌱 Spring starts in Great Tree Moon (Apr). It is also the start of a new Imperial year, with the Adrestian Empire Founding Day being on the 1st.

"The icy winds of the Oghma Mountains have begun to scatter, and the verdant fields once again spring to life across Fódlan, heralding the start of a new year. As they celebrate the dawning year, the people pray that they may realize their full potential, just as a tiny sprout hopes to one day grow into a great tree."

🌧️ Summer, aka the rainy season, starts in Garland Moon (Jun).

"When the warm winds blow from the from the sea to the south of Adrestia, residents of Fódlan know that the rainy season is upon them. Before the heavy rains take their toll, the young women hurry to pick the last of the white roses. The ivory buds are woven into garlands and given as gifts to close friends or potential lovers."

🌾 Fall starts in Horsebow Moon (Sep).

"As cold air begins to creep in from the north of Faerghus, Fódlan welcomes the riches of fall. The women spend their days reaping the golden fields, gratefully embracing the bounty the goddess has once again provided. The men venture into the wild with horsebows and empty sacks ready to be filled with game."

❄️ Winter starts in Red Wolf Moon (Nov).

"Hoarfrost now graces treetops and open fields alike, and an icy chill blown in from the north of Faerghus blankets the land. All of Fódlan's creatures begin to settle in for a long winter. The setting sun bathes the full winter coat of every wolf in a foreboding scarlet glow. Hunters can now spread the word that the red wolves are back on the prowl."

In summary:

🌱 lasts 2 months: Great Tree & Harpstring Moon

🌧️ lasts 3 months: Garlands, Blue Sea & Verdant Rain Moon

🌾 lasts 2 months: Horsebow & Wyvern Moon

❄️ lasts 5 months: Red Wolf, Ethereal, Guardian, Pegasus & Lone Moon

Jeralt wasn't kidding when he said winter would be long, huh...

🌟 One particular detail the narrations deemed important to point out is the appearance of the Blue Sea Star, aka the Goddess' Home, aka the star Sirius, which is behind two very important names in this game, "Sothis" and "Seiros".

The Blue Sea Star can be seen in Fódlan's sky from Blue Sea Moon (Jul) till Red Wolf Moon (Nov). This somewhat matches our Sirius being a winter star in the Northern Hemisphere.

Ethereal Moon: "... the Blue Sea Star has gone back into hiding..."

🌬️ Another piece of info given be the narrations is that the weather system in Fódlan is maintained by warm, humid wind from the South in Summer and cold wind from the North in Winter.

Garlands: "When the warm winds blow from the from the sea to the south of Adrestia, residents of Fódlan know that the rainy season is upon them..."

Horsebow: "... cold air begins to creep in from the north of Faerghus..."

Red Wolf: "... an icy chill blown in from the north of Faerghus blankets the land..."

The Winds of Winter (heh) seem to be quite strong over this continent, to the point where even Southern Adrestia & the sea beyond are chilled. Their effect can be felt for 7 months of the year, with 5 months suffering from frosts & active snowfall.

I'd like to hazard a guess that Fódlan suffers from the same phenomenon that happens to Japan. The dry, cold air from Siberia picks up moisture when it crosses the Sea of Japan, dumping a fk ton of snow onto Northern Japan (this country has 3 of the snowiest cities in the world!).

Similarly, the North of Fódlan where the winter winds blow from is also surrounded by a sea.

Winter in Faerghus must be such a struggle... Although the land there is actually blessed with minerals and oils :))) so maybe what they need to turn their fortune around is a few industrial revolutions :)))))))))

But no I need to stop there. I think too hard and now I'm imagining capitalism in my favorite medieval fantasy. Nope nope nope 🙂‍↔️

🔎🗓️ Edit: some other fun details I neglected to mention

1) Wyvern is a migratory species which flies to the South in, you guessed it, Wyvern Moon (Oct). Did that have any impact on Fódlani taming them? Does Almyran wyverns migrate? Or is the climate there much warmer and they belong to a different species from Fódlani wyverns?

2) The main grain of Fódlan grows in ~4 months. Seeds are sown in Harpstring Moon (May), and the harvest is in Horsebow Moon (Sep). That seems to be the average for spring wheat? And, well, the rest of their year is winter :)))

Seriously, winter in Fódlan is way too long 🫠

Bonus edit cuz I keep finding weather related info 🫩

In chapter 5 Verdant Rain Moon (Aug), Annette tells you to prepare a coat bc Faerghus is chilly even at that time of the year (end of Fódlan summer), and it rains a lot. The Tailtean Plains map, which is in Blaiddyd territory, is also raining

Yk, Faerghus being a perpetually cold & humid hellscape is the kinda condition I imagine Northwestern Europe (the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark) suffer from :Đ No wonder the Faerghan are depressed

I hope you have as much fun reading this as I had while reading the texts to compile these info (⁠ ⁠╹⁠▽⁠╹⁠ ⁠)

[d4ggerfish]

[isan0rt]

I was just reflecting on how the way Dedue acts about attempts to connect with him before the timeskip, when he's been completely isolated from his community for four entire years with no hope of reconnecting with them, is directly echoed in the way Dimitri behaves after the timeskip, when he's been completely isolated from his community for five years, to the degree you could legitimately take it as foreshadowing.

Dedue before the skip, convinced he will never reconnect with his culture again: You shouldn't talk to me, you'll only be punished for it. Dimitri after the skip, convinced he will never reconnect with his proper role in his culture: Don't talk to me. It will only get you killed. Dedue before the skip: -doesn't even respond half the time when spoken to, gives curt answers most of the time he does respond.- Dimitri after the skip: -Doesn't even respond most of the time when spoken to, gives curt answers most of the time he does respond.-

Dedue before the skip: I'm just a tool, there's no point in wasting your effort treating me like a person. Dimitri after the skip: I'm just a beast, there's no point in wasting your effort treating me like a person.

Dedue before the skip: -Shuts Ashe and Mercedes down hard when they try to connect with him on a personal level.- Dimitri after the skip: -Shuts everyone down hard when they try to reach him on a personal level.-

Their circumstances flip so completely during the timeskip and so do their ways of interacting with other people. Dedue before the skip has been completely alone except for Dimitri and is standoffish and rejects attempts by anyone else to connect with him, while Dimitri is reconnecting with his friends and acts open and engaged and speaks frankly with them. Then, Dimitri is severed from his community and is completely alone for five years and becomes standoffish and rejects attempts to connect with him (except Dedue, with whom he audibly starts to cry while reconnecting with him at Myrrdin), while Dedue has been reunited with his community and returns more relaxed and open, willing to be open with people and speak frankly about his feelings with them.

I think there's also something interesting too visually in how Dedue and Dimitri obviously are wearing a uniform before the skip but the color palette is basically black, with Dedue only wearing one small indicator of who he is individually (his earring) - but then when he returns flanked by a squad of his countrymen, he's wearing silver armor and is blatantly wearing his culture's colors and motifs in your face. Dimitri, meanwhile, after the skip is still wearing black, and his armor has a Crest of Blaiddyd on it but it's completely hidden at the base of his neck...but when he opens back up and reconnects with his community and support, he changes to white armor as well, with the Crest of Blaiddyd fully in your face across his whole chest.

I guess my conclusion is Dimitri and Dedue are both not only in a yin and yang kind of interplay with each other, but that they both demonstrate the effects of isolation vs. integration with community, flipping who is isolated and who is in community during the skip and showing incredibly directly how much Azure Moon is about the importance of community and connection for support.

[jawlipops]

quick redraw of this since im back in the building

[pavlover-boy]

happy canada day. please consider donating to an indigenous-led charity. fuck colonialism.

indian residential school survivors society (BC)

toronto indigenous harm reduction (ON)

native women's resource centre of toronto (ON)

water first (nationwide)

indspire (nationwide)

miskanawah (AB)

ma mawi wi chi itata centre (MB)

manitoba indigenous cultural education centre (MB)

native women's shelter of montreal (QC)

native friendship centre of montreal (QC)

first light (NL)

list of indigenous charitable organizations sorted by cause (nationwide)

[autolenaphilia]

This is such a shallow interpretation of Dracula the novel, so shallow that it prevents answering its own rhetorical question. It's especially noticeable since the post goes on to discuss Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde quite a bit better. Dracula is like a blind spot for analysis for this poster.

So let's be blunt here: Dracula is a racist, anti-semitic, anti-immigrant book. It's about an evil count pretending to be a peaceful immigrant but actually he is an evil eastern european jewish rapist who is coming here to rape and corrupt good white englishwomen.

It's a bit offensive to describe this literal bloodsucking jew character as some anti-capitalist metaphor, as the screenshotted post seems to imply.

All this is fairly obvious to me, who has read the book many times, and even more obvious to just about any literary scholar who has read this book. Now it might not be obvious to the general public nowadays, who I think might not fully understand the novel since it's almost 130 years removed from the present-day context. For example, people reading it today might simply not understand what Stoker means by describing Dracula's face as "aquiline." They might not understand the word means in its most basic sense, and just skip over it. And such readers are even less able to understand that Stoker is clearly coding Dracula as jewish.

A lot of it also has to do with how popular Dracula is despite it's age. There is a strong fandom here on tumblr, of the book itself, as the Dracula Daily craze a few years ago proved. So there is the usual fan's reluctance to admit that the work they love is racist. It takes an unusual fan to admit that "I love this book, this book is racist", but I'm that fan.

Anyway, once you understand Dracula is an uncomfortably racist text about the evil foreigner rapist, then you can finally answer question asked in the screenshotted post.

The reason adaptations like the Francis Ford Coppola film change Dracula to a sympathetic, tragic figure who is Mina's lover, despite that being the opposite of the original story, is because that original story is racist.

It's one easy way to subvert the racism of the story, and fairly common in horror media. Turning the monstrous outsider (a trope that is inherently racist and xenophobic) into a sympathetic and misunderstood tragic figure, unfairly persecuted by the forces of normality and turning the rape of the (white) female lead character into a consensual relationship, it's a standard way of subverting an old racist horror story.

See The Shape of Water for a movie that does the same to The Creature from the Black Lagoon. These films are unfaithful, but they are engaging with the themes of the work.

And it's probably for the best that a Dracula adaptation is unfaithful. A faithful adaptation can't help but reproduce the racism inherent to the story. See Robert Eggers's Nosferatu (2024) for an uncomfortable example (it deserves its own post).

[a-book-dragon]

You don't have a male or female brain – the more brains scientists study, the weaker the evidence for sex differences

Rather than distinctly male or female, the human brain is much more like the heart, kidneys and lungs – basically the same no matter the sex of the body it's in.

rb to make a biological essentialist mad <3

[liminalweirdo]

“This collapse is a telltale sign of a problem known as publication bias. Small, early studies which found a significant sex difference were likelier to get published than research finding no male-female brain difference.”

[mckitterick]

the notes on this are toxic - to help clear up any misunderstanding, here’s the actual science paper:

Dump the “dimorphism”: Comprehensive synthesis of human brain studies reveals few male-female differences beyond size

With the explosion of neuroimaging, differences between male and female brains have been exhaustively analyzed. Here we synthesize three dec

in short: brains are brains

[crybabysatan]

Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal

Residents of a St. Louis suburb turned out in droves to unseat four incumbents just days after the council approved a development agreement

Original post I found is AI generated wildly enough so I’m just gonna drop this link here that people posted in the tags and go pour a glass of wine to celebrate this Rare Missouri W.

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

We could do this in all towns that approve datacenters. Hell last week I showed up to my town's budget hearing when they wanted to buy ai tracking software. I was the only non town employee there. I raised concerns with the accuracy, the privacy concerns, and the cost. Now they're no longer interested in buying it. Sometimes it just takes one idiot showing up and asking questions. And we can all be one idiot.