stuff&nonsense

Becausewhynot. Memes. Ramblings. Little untested contras to pop songs. Here There Be Spoilers. She/her

[bubblytardigrade]

I am giving my sourdough starter a ff name

But I haven't decided yet. Here's what I've thought up so far

Lahabread

Moenbreadough (for a starter that gets fridged)

Thancbread

Y'eastdoughla

Quina (leaning towards this)

Doughga

Doughlia-Chai (I'm big myself and have never understood doughy as an insult for fat people; dough is categorically amazing)

Elidoughbus

Fordoughla

Bakingway

Any other ideas?

[bubblytardigrade]

Ultimate Showdown of Eorzean Destiny

with apologies to Lemon Demon -_- ENDWALKER SPOILERS

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Titan, the primal, was hopping around Eorzea's cities like a big playground When suddenly the Warrior burst from the shade And hit that primal with a big Cascade

Titan got pissed and began to dig in But didn't expect to be blocked by Pipin Who proceeded to stab him with a Plunge that struck true When Ysayle and Midgardsormr fell out of the blue

And they started beating up poor Emmanellain And nobody stopped them cos he was such a pain But before Artoirel could intervene Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn arrived on the scene

She pulled out her pistols, and she raised them like that Sent his brothers off to Haurchie with a rat-a-tat-tat But she ran out of bullets and she couldn't reload; She got squashed by a massive gigantoad

This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny Good guys, bad guys, and explosions as far as the eye can see And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny

Emet-Selch got bored and he stifled a yawn Urianger started casting Death of the Seventh Dawn And it hit Emet-Selch for a full KO Sent him smashing into Lahabrea watching the show

Thancred was injured, and trying to get steady When Curious Gorge showed up, war axe at the ready But suddenly something caught his leg and he tripped-- That goobbue from 1.0 with its arm whip

Then he saw Kan-E-Senna sneaking up from behind And he reached for his gunblade which he just couldn't find 'Cause Nanamo stole it and she swung and she missed; Sadu Dotharl had blocked it with her fist

G'raha Tia jumped up and he did a somersault While Estinien Varlineau tried to pole vault Onto Hildibrand, but they collided in the air Then they both got suplexed by Godbert up there

This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny Good guys, bad guys, and explosions as far as the eye can see And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be This is the ultimate showdown

Sin eaters sang for their Immaculate leader But down from the heavens descended Moenbryda Who delivered a kick, (with a punch to the skull) Into the crotch of Fandaniel

Who fell over on the ground, insta dead As Lahabrea tried to shapeshift into Lahabread But Y'shtola grinned, seeing through this clever ghost And she triplecast Fire, made him into Lahatoast

Then Raubahn the Bull and X'ruhn the Red And Louisoix even though he's super dead Venat, Erich, Themis, Hermes, Hyth and Nashu Thirsty girl Aenor and the Blue Bird too

Papalymo, Jandelaine, Lyse, the Warrior of Light Alisaie, and Alphinaud, and every single Temple Knight Gaius and Rammbroes and Nero tol Scaeva Noraxia, Tonaxia, Lucia, Slowfix, and Leveva

All came out of nowhere Levin fast And they kicked Prince Zenos in his Juicy a-- 'Twas the bloodiest battle that the world ever saw With civilians looking on in total awe

The fight raged on for a century Many lives were claimed, but eventually The champion stood, the rest saw he was more: Masayoshi Soken with a death metal score \m/

This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny Good guys, bad guys, and explosions as far as the eye can see And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be This is the ultimate showdown Of ultimate destiny

[necra-loid]

ok like. thancred isn't my fav character I'll say that readily. he's like up there, top ten I think, but not a fav. however, I DO really like him, particularly because he's a more mature version of the character type I enjoyed growing up - that is to say, self confident, flirtatious, and overly sarcastic. in fact he's easily all of these things in a:rr. - which honestly, having played it as an adult, made me dislike the character at the time.

with that said, I think the reason he appeals to me NOW is because while I was annoyed by him at the beginning of a:rr, he actively is given the chance to mature. he's clearly traumatized by what happens to minfilia, he blames himself for it constantly, and it's that look into a deeper character, one who isn't just surface level, and isn't just self focused, that makes him more appealing to a viewer.

this is all to say that I think his growth as a character is what makes him and urianger work well as partners, in my opinion. they both over went tremendous growth over the course of the story - thancred learning to accept that his minfilia was gone and it wasn't his fault, and then by the end of shadowbringers being a proper father to ryne, and urianger learning to process his grief and find the courage to open himself up to his friends and others - and in a way that distinctly parallels the other. at the crux, a large part of both character arcs revolves around processing grief. I think, that after endwalker, once they've gained new outlooks and new experiences, then their travelling together is only natural. they just Work, in much the same way a puzzle snaps together.

[bubblytardigrade]

FFXIV Endwalker/post-EW spoilers!

Legend of Korra spoilers!

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5.55 the best possible outcome for The Boys would be if SE korrasami’d them

6.0 *screaming* 🤩

[bubblytardigrade]

When my friend was talking about how she ships the boys, her fc was like "what do you mean, they're just colleagues" and like cool all interpretations are valid. Platonic relationships are great, and they're delightful bros too! At the same time, a game that frequently makes pop culture references did a shot-for-shot/similarly scripted riff off a famous, transformational, deliberately coded scene in an expansion where they added more representation, and I struggle to see it as anything but totally on purpose

[bubblytardigrade]

New computer + FFXIV = totally different game

So I started ffxiv a little over a year ago, and it was a *steep* learning curve. I felt like I could barely keep up, when everyone else kept saying “it’s easy, it’s easy” and I felt awful. Joined a fc of lovely lovely people, but still just felt like a drag on everything I went on with them. I couldn’t understand how they were so quick to respond to mechs when my response time just didn’t add up. I also don’t feel comfortable in roulettes anymore because the targeted malding got so bad. On top of that I’m photosensitive, so I sometimes get physically stunned by the strobing in ffxiv, even though I wear adaptive specs.  WELLP. I finally found a good sale and bought a new computer and solved the mystery. I’d been running ffxiv off an external drive on my old laptop, a six year old touchscreen Pavilion with all effects off etc. I now have an Omen. The game is *completely different* with an adequate processor. Turns out playing ffxiv on an older computer is like trying to do a mud run drunk peering through a paper towel tube. Here’s some ways that played out for me: 

LAG. So it turns out I had an inconsistent lag time of anywhere between 2 and 5 seconds, and it was worse and less predictable the more people were loaded into an instance. This meant that mechs would go off while it was showing me that I still had time to respond. Now that I have a better computer, I have found I don’t know what to do with myself because I have 2-3x as much time to do mechs. So older computer = nightmare mode mechs. I used sprint and corps-a-corps (rdm main) regularly for movement just to do the basics, and have been rescued from short mechs by very patient healers (thank you!!!) more times than I could count because they *never showed up for me* or would blink after the mech went off in realtime.  

Lag also affected my rotations. Every sixth or eighth (inconsistent) button I pushed would skip-- just not respond at all. So I had to direct extra attention to watching whether each spell had taken before hitting the next one. Sooo many times my dualcast would get off kilter, or I’d try to use my auxiliary hotbars and couldn’t get to them for a few seconds. I was slow. Real slow. But I was clicking faster than anyone else. One of the adjustments I’ve had to make with new puter is to relearn not to triple-click every button, because this one responds!

Second: cropping. When you play on a smaller screen or at a lower resolution, the game doesn’t scale, it crops. So while the rest of my party could see mechs on the edge of the arena, I literally had to choose between watching bosses, watching for adds, and watching for side mechs. I’d flip back and forth but it’s easy to miss, especially in raids when things happen in quick succession. My screen was also super crowded with my necessary HUD stuff because it was so small. I shrank HUD elements but there’s only so much you can shrink with lower res and still be able to see. 

Fourth: resolution. When you have to go windowed/low res (I was working on about an 8x8″ screen) some mech markers aren’t legible. Simplest example is Darkened Fire in P3: it looks like white and purple blobs and it’s extremely difficult to tell which order you’re in. It super helps if you have a friend with you who can see what it is and tell you what’s sitting on you. 

Ideas.  If you are new and playing on an older machine and practicing and practicing but feeling like you aren’t keeping up, it is likely *not you but the computer.* Processing speed and graphics card don’t just make a difference in how the game looks, but a drastic difference in how it runs and how you sync with your party. It’s especially okay to pick an easy job like smn, rdm, or dnc, because the rest of your game is in already in super hard mode and it’ll help compensate.

The simplest solution to all of these issues requires a lovely and generous friend or fc member who’s willing to get on voice chat and call when you need to move and where so you aren’t dependent on your own screen. It makes all the difference and can be tons of fun! :3 The next simplest is finding a better computer, if that’s within range of where you are in your life. 

If you are on a good computer, please be aware that especially if you’re in low-end content like roulettes, people may be on slower computers than you, and may not be able to afford something better. Their machine can significantly affect their gameplay, so they may not be ignoring you or playing wrong: they may be responding appropriately to a different situation shown on their own screen. Clues that this might be the issue are: they do something wrong very consistently, are having trouble seeing a marker, or are consistently slow. What you see may be very different from what they see. And I can say as someone who’s been there, when a more successful player recognizes what’s going on and is willing to give me a hand, it makes all the difference in the world <3 

[bubblytardigrade]

that ffxiv qpr

okay trying this again, since it never went into the tags. This time with no linkies, short terms only, no words Tumblr doesn’t like, etc. we’ll see if it works....

Endwalker spoilers

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While I'm Getting Out All These Thoughts I've Been Mulling for a Year, I want to fling into the aether some thoughts about another thing that I related really strongly to with Urianger: his struggle to figure out what the heck he felt for Moenbryda.

Before I start, let me reiterate that all headcanons are valid. What I want to dig into here is specific to me, and if it's not your hc that's cool too!

So Urianger reads, to me, as aspec, or on the ace spectrum. This can mean A LOT of things and even under the same subcategory people experience being aspec very differently. The Scions are written intentionally vaguely, and in the same way that the game is written to invite you to coauthor aspects of the story, they invite you to coauthor their characterization.

So I will unabashedly admit to projecting my own orientation onto Urianger. I'm demi, and the way that pans out for me is I don't experience traditional attraction at all until I have a strong connection with someone. (For many people different kinds of attraction are totally separate spectra.) In other words, for me bits of people that give other folx the vapors are just where different limbs connect, and I get very confused about the idea of not saying "I love you" until further into a Relationship (I'm using the capital letter to differentiate the amatonormative meaning of dating, not because it's more important) because I can only experience interest in a Relationship with extremely specific people I already love deeply. I'm in my mid-30s, I can count my lifetime crushes on one hand, and I've dated two people—I'm married to the second.

That said, the number of people I have absolutely adored with all my heart is much larger. And for a number of them I absolutely agonized over what I was feeling. English really doesn't have a strong vocabulary for describing a variety of types of attraction or relationships, and the late 20th century white American culture I come from lacks a variety of frameworks to describe them.

So… while I was in denial about my feelings for my now-wife for years because I didn't think it was the right time and I didn't think she'd reciprocate them, I didn't struggle to fundamentally understand what they were. I loved her, in a way that opened the doors to wishing for a Relationship with her.

The number of times throughout the game that they very specifically talk about Urianger struggling to understand his feelings toward Moenbryda resonated with me in a really specific way. It certainly seems that at least some of the writers intended him to have latent romantic feelings, but the difficulty understanding the nature of what he felt reminds me of something else. While recognizing and describing romantic love was relatively straightforward for me, I have absolutely spent ages agonizing over the nature of my feelings toward people toward whom I have felt qpr (see: “The Struggle to Explain Relationships That Transcend 'Best Friendship' But Aren't Romantic....” by Jasmine Rose-Olesco)

In an amatonormative society like mine and possibly like Eorzea where, culturally, on a rough linear scale of closeness you're friends, you're best friends, you're romantically linked, you get married, you're family, there's not an easily accessible way to describe feelings like this person means everything to me. We are so close, not like siblings, but like…I don't know? It feels different from friendship, and it's not romantic… but I want to share my life with them. The [Ace] Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) was founded in 2001 and I wasn't aware of it until about 6 years later. Only in the last decade has the ace spectrum been more widely discussed in the mainstream and broader relationship vocabulary in general become more widespread. (People in qprs can have any orientation.) Growing up without language to help unpack these feelings, I struggled with them, ricocheting all over the amatonormative spectrum of vocabulary. I would very much relate to Urianger having qpr feelings for Moen and his studious little brain, like mine, failing to find good examples for how to describe or understand them. Agonizing over it for a decade makes perfect sense—been there/done that myself. The struggle is real! His relationship with Thancred does read romantic to me (those romcom camera angles tho!) and there’s a lot of really deep and satisfying emotionality to explore introducing romantic love to an aspec heart experienced in qpr love. There’s a lot that is shared, and some that is different. They’re both deep. 

One of the things that ultimately I love about ff (even as it drives me a little crazy) is that very few relationships—straight or not, romantic, platonic, etc—are explicitly defined. In the game, love is love is love, and with the Scions the deep platonic relationships are given the same weight and taken as seriously as the (possibly) romantic ones. You don't often see platonic relationships valued on the same level as romantic ones in media. It's…. refreshing. :3

[bubblytardigrade]

if you have been writing little urithan tangent essays and they don't show up on the tags after like a month what does it mean? pls help ur geriatric millennial

[beetlebrownleaf]

also anyone who think Urianger's fancy speech makes him all neat and tidy and put together: please look around the Bookman's Shelves. It is chaos. That man is a disaster intellectual who furiously blows through tomes and leaves them there to move on to the next one, all in a caffine-fueled hyperfixated haze.

[chysgoda]

I also love that there are apples and things in really random places and i totally headcannon most of them being half eaten. I think the pixies randomly drop off foodstuffs to keep him alive so that can continue to watch the funny disaster scholar.

[voidsentprinces]

Sooooo....

[beetlebrownleaf]

I just want everyone to see these tags and laugh as much as I am rn 

[weenwem]

♥

[bubblytardigrade]

Wait a second......

(ShB spoilers)

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......when we fight Titania the song is called What Angel Wakes Me, which is what Titania says to...Bottom

Soken are you making fun of us 😂

[star-anise]

The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.

I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.

Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.

[bead-bead-deactivated20190901]

I needed this so much.

[andyromoart]

(ny)Azem and Hades

[andyromoart]

Running trusts as tank vs. as DPS

[bubblytardigrade]

I see and salute you, Pratchett fan!

Spoilers up through 6.1 Aglaia

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[bubblytardigrade]

I have the best fc leader, or, A Flash Effects Guide to Aglaia

Y’all. I just need to brag on my fc leader @kh-terra for a sec. 

I love ffxiv, obviously, but I’ve struggled since I started playing last year because of the flash effects-- especially the ones on raid bosses. (Eternal gratitude to the devs for the pvp fx toggle! Please please please please add one for bosses and mobs?) I have postconcussive syndrome, and flashing/strobing lights give me really bad migraines. I use a red filter and a pair of special glasses which help a ton, but in all love, ffxiv can really go overboard on the flashing lights in raids. This especially means that new raids, where I don’t know when to shut my eyes, can be especially challenging for me. 

If you’re curious, what happens when I take a flash to the face is I instantly become stunned/disoriented/dizzy/nauseous for about 6-10 seconds, have difficulty stringing thoughts together, half the time I forget what my controller is for, and have migraines for several days straight. It hurts, and it’s really difficult to do even rotations I have in muscle memory. If the light strobes, it compounds on itself and gets worse and lasts longer. Obviously, want to avoid the side effects as much as possible. 

SO knowing this, I asked my fc to take me on a field trip to Aglaia and call the mechs on voice so that I can play with my eyes shut as needed. They’re taking me this evening because they’re literally the greatest. And my fc leader went above and beyond and LITERALLY MADE ME A PLAY-BY-PLAY FLASH FX GUIDE TO AGLAIA. He’s letting me share it here in case it helps anyone else :3 

In conclusion, @kh-terra is the best and I’m lucky as heck to play with this group of folx :3 

[bubblytardigrade]

Mystery in Radz-at-Han

Endwalker-6.1 spoilers! Also lots of urithan shipping :D

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So background: I love hugs and periodically do little hug circuits of all the Scions (it’s driving me crazy that they’re offscreen after 6.1, lol!) I also run ffxiv on an elderly non-gaming laptop with an external drive, so am chronically laggy. When Endwalker came out I was having a hard time loading NPCs even when I limited the number of players the computer loaded. It was okay except for one scene. 

In Radz-at-Han when we get the scales (lvl 81, The Color of Joy, cutscene 1) you go to the meeting place with Alphinaud and he mentions that you’re running late. When we arrived I went to hug everyone and managed to find all but Urianger and Thancred. I messed with my settings (there was a huge crowd of players!) but still couldn’t find them. Alphinaud and I were late! Where were they?? Finally I gave up and started the cutscene.

And then they strolled in

Casually

Together

And no one said anything. 

Now I realize this is culturally determined and probably varies around the world but where I’m from if you have a group of friends and two of them are particularly close and they show up extremely late to a meeting, the only reason you wouldn't acknowledge it at all or tease them for being late or check if they're okay is you know exactly where they’ve been and what they’ve been up to, and don’t need (or want) to hear details. 

Just saying.

They’ve been doing this since about halfway through ShB, too, often arriving and leaving together in a different direction from everyone else. 

Beyond that, in the Radz-at-Han scene they arrive with their voices sounding a little rougher than usual, almost like they’ve been crying, and seemingly with a plan already in place for what each of them will do next, which involves them being separated for a while. They're not surprised when Y'shtola suggests splitting up the group to cover more ground. Just like when you’re going to Garlemald and Thancred is like “oh yeah we don’t need coats we’re fine” like they’re married.

So what did happen when they were awol? All hcs are valid, and mine is that they were having some couple time with emotional processing, planning out next steps (both their jobs are in espionage after all, they are both used to thinking ten steps ahead), and.... etc. 

Just throwing that out there ;) 

[bubblytardigrade]

Words, words, mere words

Super glad the Eorzibethean basics infographic is useful! :3 I've seen in a couple of places folks looking for a wordlist as well. This stuff is super relaxing for me, so conscripting @davetheshady once more into helping put a quick Eorzibethean wordlist together. 

The words that follow were selected by the extremely scientific method of skimming Urianger's lines in Dialogue Collection FFXIV and @uriangertxt and being like hey that's a fun word, gimme one of those, yeah I'll take one of them, and that one too…and then sprinkling in a couple more just for the heck of it. If you think of any others please pop them in the comments and I'll add them!

The short definitions are from our heads and my favorite toy a great resource, the Online Etymology Dictionary, which is linked on each for further reference and linguadorking. 

Abiding - depending on the context it can mean lasting (“abiding love”) or staying/living/remaining somewhere (“abiding in the town”)

Akin - related/similar to

Amenable - to be okay with something

Anon - soon, in a little bit, right away

Arbiter - someone who sits in judgment making decisions

Arms - weapons

Aught - something, anything

Aye - yes

Begotten - born from, caused by 

Behest - command, urging (“I did it at their behest”)

Benevolent - kind, wanting to do good

Borne - carried, or endured (the present tense is “bear”)

Brazen - to do something in an obvious way (usually arrogantly)

By my reckoning - I think, by my calculations

Cease - stop

Counsel - advice

Curst - ill-tempered

Divest - to take away stuff, to take off stuff

Duplicity - deception, dishonesty

Ere - before

E’er - ever

Errant - wandering, traveling

Fain - gladly ("I would fain have thee accompany me")

Fair - attractive

Falsehood - a lie, telling lies

Forestall - prevent, get in the way of

Forsooth - indeed, truly (see also “sooth”)

Forth - forward

Froward - petulant, contrary

Hark - pay attention to, listen to, listen up! 

Hence - from here

Hie - go quickly

Hither - to here

Howsoever - in whatever way

I pray thee - please (literally “I beg you”)

Impertinent - sassy, rude

Import - importance

Impropriety - being improper, being rude, usually with euphemistic connotations of drunkenness or sex

Inclination - something a person likes

Indolence - inaction

Insidious - deceitful in a sneaky way that might be a trap

Insinuate - to imply, to indirectly suggest (usually something negative about a person)

Ken - to know or understand

Knave - a tremendous jerk, an asshole

Libations - drinks (usually alcoholic)

Linger - to hang around in a place, especially after you know you should go

Morn - morning

Morrow - morning, tomorrow

Must needs - necessarily, important to

Myriad - many, a lot of

Nascent - coming into being, just beginning

Naught - nothing

Nay - no

Ne’er - never

O’er - over

Oft - often, repeatedly, frequently

Parlance - how someone talks

Peevish - petty, ill-tempered

Petitioner - someone who is asking for help

Portents - omens, usually bad or ominous

Predilection - inclination toward something, predisposed to like something

Pressing - urgent

Pretense - disguise, faking something

Proffer - to give something

Provender - food

Puissant - strong, powerful, influential

Quicken - become alive (the moment life was considered to have begun in a pregnancy was "quickening," when the parent could feel movement)

Roused - awakened or energized

Scion - heir to, child of, descendant of

Scourge - a harmful force (the literal meaning is a particularly nasty kind of whip)

Sooth - truth

Straightways - right away, immediately

Suffer it - allow it 

Supplicant - someone who is humbly asking for help

Surpassing - very much, exceeding

Thence - from there

Thither - to there

Thus - in this way, as follows

Unhand - let go of

Unto - to, up to, as far as, until

Varlet - rascal

Verily - truly

Visage - a person’s face

'Ware - beware, be warned about, be careful of

Wend - to travel to a place

Wherefore - why

Whither - to where

Wont to - in the habit of, likely to

Yea - yes, indeed

Yester - yesterday

Yield - to give something, to give up something

Yonder - over there (usually a moderately far distance)

And there you have it, with many thanks to Jen! Hope it helps! If there are any other writeups that would be useful let me know; it's genuinely nice to have fun things to make on insomnia nights.