I just Live Here

She/Her, 29, GMT, Queer

[what-even-is-thiss]

I tend to do a lot of cooking experiments and frankly the amount of closed mindedness people have around what food should and shouldn’t look like is holding them back I think

[what-even-is-thiss]

I notice that a lot of people’s immediate reaction to hearing about a cooking technique or flavor combination that they haven’t come across before is open disgust. A disgust and primal hatred that they will then take out on the messenger of this new and glorious news that the world is a little bit bigger than they thought it was.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Yeah I put apples in soup sometimes. People have been doing that for centuries. Get the fuck over it like an adult.

[panic-at-the-aromantic]

i do agree with this however i think that peoples horrified response to me putting guacamole on banana is at least a little bit reasonable

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’m not gonna lie. The only thing stopping me from trying that now is my allergy to both avocado and banana.

[unnamedmedicalprofessional2]

To be fair to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, if I wrote some pulp short stories for a quick buck and an obsessive fandom sprung up around it at a time when fandom culture as we now know it didn't really exist yet, and I had to witness people being insane about my characters while having very little precedent for what the fuck was going on, I would also be confused and frightened and desperately trying to escape from the situation I'd ended up in.

[anxiousbiscuit]

I was talking about Sherlock Holmes with my cool weird 42 year old coworker the other day and he said that he had read other works by ACD but not any Sherlock Holmes. ACD is smiling down from heaven on his one and only true fan.

[anxietyproblem]

[billfrancois]

Ghosties

[pixlerelish]

My toxic trait is that no matter what I need three hours to myself at the end of the day to do absolutely nothing.

[luntfontanne]

everything is truly so terrible but i just remembered doreen ketchens playing clarinet for her infant grandson and then i was kind of okay again for 36 seconds

[1xtralmillz-deactivated20250209]

I have to reblog this when it comes back around.

[thinking-about-hotd-a-lot]

I make it no secret that I am not the biggest fan of Fire & Blood. It's by far the weakest of GRRMs work and honestly the majority of the changes in House of the Dragon have been for the better. There are quite a lot of perplexing writing decisions in the book, and I think, if the trailers are not misleading, that the show has actually resolved one of the biggest and honestly weakest bits of writing for the Dance in the book. Again, spoilers for season 3 of House of the Dragon.

In the book, Aemond is laser-focused on Harrenhal and Daemon to the point his brain falls out. He makes no effort to really take any precautions for King's Landing. No attempt to recruit Helaena to battle, no attempt to make sure its defended. The idea that Rhaenyra might use her dragons to take it is not even thought of by him. As if that's not bad enough, he then spends 19 days marching with Criston Cole, riding ahead of the column on Vhagar. That's 19 days of leaving the city undefended. Plus however many days he dicks around at Harrenhal celebrating his "victory."

He is so inept he practically holds the idiot ball and delivers King's Landing to Rhaenyra on a silver platter. It's one thing to think Daemon is the bigger threat, but it is quite another to literally just do things to make the Blacks war efforts go smoother. There's a lot of foolhardy and glory-seeking buffoonery in this series, but personally speaking I enjoy characters in the fiction I consume to actually, you know, be intelligent and not braindead.

In the show, Aemond is still kind of a fool and a moron, but he's actually a lot more proactive, methodical, and careful about his actions. He sends Criston ahead of him, which does leave him vulnerable to potential attack by Caraxes but also means he stays at King's Landing and keeps Vhagar around to deter any outright attacks by the Blacks. And when the dragonseeds claim new dragons, he makes the effort to try and recruit Helaena to fight on Dreamfyre. Already, I view this as a considerable improvement as it actually bothers to have the characters try to take into account the possible ways their plans may fail, to show that they are thinking people trying to strategize and adapt to ever-changing situations.

Once Aemond reaches Harrenhal in the book, it is empty. There is nobody there. Just Simon Strong's family. Not even an army. And instead of going "huh, that's weird, Daemon was definitely here so where did he go?" Aemond just thinks "oh... well I guess this means I win," and then starts partying to celebrate what a great job he's done finding an abandoned castle and not finding his ultimate rival anywhere and finds absolutely nothing suspicious about this.

The trailers for season 3 however show that something very different goes down when Aemond arrives at Harrenhal.

Harrenhal can't catch a damn break. Dragons just keep fucking burning it.

Me when I'm aurafarming like a shounen antagonist.

RIP Simon Strong, I'll miss you :c

Aemond arrives at Harrenhal with fire and blood, no holds barred, burning shit and cutting people down eagerly. Considerably different from the book. We also have shots of Daemon fighting in the Red Keep so I wonder if they'll cut between the two of them taking each castle. It'd fit pretty well. And though this would be a show-only battle, I don't think this is solely for providing more action for the series.

It's actually really fascinating as a thematic parallel between Daemon and Aemond. Both men have fearsome reputations as very hot-tempered, fiery, dangerous warriors. However, despite this, Daemon actually manages to take Harrenhal bloodlessly. At most, he kinda just knocks one guy out, but he doesn't burn anything, nor does he slaughter anyone. Meanwhile, Aemond fully indulges in violence to burn the castle and massacre the garrison inside of it. The book kind of has this as well, since Daemon also takes Harrenhal without casualties and shows mercy while Aemond massacres the Strongs to a man. The show is merely making this contrast all the more noticeable than the book.

I also think leading to more of a battle at Harrenhal fits as a better climax than the book. The show spends a lot of time building up Aemond's approach to Harrenhal and Daemon building his army at Harrenhal. Far more than the book. The climax of this in the book is an anti-climax done in a spectacularly incompetent fashion that makes for quite honestly a very boring story. Here, the show is genuinely building up to an explosive climax at Harrenhal, even if, like the book, Aemond is not going to find Daemon there.

But that isn't the most interesting part of this for me. In the trailer we also see Alicent warning Aemond:

"Rhaenyra is coming. It is no longer safe here."

And she is later seen trying to escape the city with Helaena. At this point, Aemond is very well aware that Rhaenyra is almost certainly going to try to take King's Landing when he takes Harrenhal. It's mentioned too many times for him to really ignore. And since this is after the Gullet and Jacaerys's death, Alicent is almost certainly convinced that Rhaenyra will not be kind when she comes to take the throne.

Here is my prediction: what Daemon does to Aemond at Harrenhal, Aemond does to Rhaenyra at King's Landing. Let me explain.

Daemon purposefully leaves Harrenhal so that Aemond goes there to find he has wasted his time and in that time he helps Rhaenyra take King's Landing. He essentially sacrifices Harrenhal to take King's Landing, the bigger prize. Meanwhile, I think Aemond purposefully leaves King's Landing so that Rhaenyra can take it while he defeats Daemon at Harrenhal. In other words, sacrifices King's Landing to get rid of Rhaenyra's most competent supporter. Both men believe they are sacrificing something to gain an even greater strategic victory against the other.

Of course, this works out better for Daemon than Aemond, but it suddenly makes the two prince's rivalry that much more compelling. If I'm right, then the show has taken an aspect of the book that has always bothered me as sloppy and poorly handled and actually made it a more interesting, compelling back-and-forth game of strategy with more of a climax. I'm also fairly excited to see what Aemond does after this, since he kind of disappears and does nothing before committing genocide in the Riverlands. That simply isn't going to be the case in the show, so I'm looking forward to see what he does exactly, especially with Alys Rivers.

[yorqia]

Solas giving up being a spirit for Mythal will never not hurt my feelings

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

“DATV is about hope and is escapist” then why is the story retroactively trying to paint Solas, the only person of the Evanuris who used his power and privilege to help end slavery and liberate the elves, as a prideful arrogant self-centered bastard who secretly loved being worshipped as a god when every single thing he has ever said and done contradicts those assumptions made by the Veilguard companions.

Oh I’m sorry, do you think slave rebellions can be accomplished through peaceful means? Through purely decentralized anarchist uprisings? Are we trying to argue that Solas didn’t rebel the “correct way”? Are we trying to argue that Solas actually wanted to be worshipped as a god by those he freed. Solas, a man who wanted nothing more than to be a spirit of Wisdom and act as nothing more than an entity that would help people act and think mindfully?

The game’s dialogue for the companions tries to make it out like Solas enjoyed being a rebellion leader, rather than it being one of the most frustrating and agonizing and embittering experiences of his existence. The game is so clumsy that is seems to imply that Solas trying to do right by the elves with the rebellion was another mistake on his part, as if someone trying to fight for the rights of an oppressed people is something that is ever a mistake one could make.

Real liberal (derogatory) hours here. Even at your most uncharitable—Solas helped give the elves bodies and helped the Evanuris secure their power—he was trying to correct that mistake and was the only one of the Evanuris that was actively doing so. Mythal was dragging her ass the entire fucking time trying to be a fence-sitting centrist that thought you could actually parley and negotiate with slave owners. Oh but wait, Veilguard conveniently proves you can! Just look at Dorian! Apparently all you needed to dismantle centuries upon centuries of brutal inhumane slavery was a dandy saying “please let the slaves go” and everything is all but resolved in ten fucking years. Solas, why didn’t you try taaaalking to the blood magic warmongering slave sacrificing Evanuris? Maybe things would’ve gone better if you’d just asked nicely 🥺

Veilguard tries to go the “Solas is corrupting into Pride” and they botched it so terribly. Solas is prideful, but the writers made him out like his problem was a secret vanity or desire for power. No, his problem was that he thought he was correct. That is a 100000% entirely different issue and it shows that the writers have no concept of nuance for psychology or even what Wisdom and even Pride are. And for people to swallow “Wow Solas was just a power-hungry arrogant bastard all along” is like reading Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee —the abandoned prototype of To Kill a Mockingbird that was meant to remain an unused manuscript—and thinking that is the real story and everything established in TKaM about Atticus Finch was just smoke and mirrors. Like come the fuck on.

Solas’s issue is that as a mortal he is inundated with mortal feelings that interfere with the purity of Wisdom. All mortals have levels of dignity and pride that are inextricably linked and mutually dependent to their recognition of their own personhood. Self-esteem, if you will. Wisdom is the act of deliberating and determining and enacting the best—most morally correct, most benign, most benign, most “good”—course of action in a scenario based on an aggregation of information and experiences. Solas’s “Pride” and biggest flaw is that he believes his judgments are the most objectively correct or best because this guy has spent tens of thousands of years watching and observing and experiencing people make the same mistakes over and over, behave in similar cyclical predictable ways in matters of love, power, violence, hatred, greed, tyranny, cruelty, ignorance, oppression, pride, grief, etc. Because Wisdom is derived from being able to apply knowledge and history and experience to solve a present problem, Solas naturally thinks he’s no spring chicken to all this and that he’s got a better grasp than most. Where Wisdom turns into Pride is the nature of the mortal mind, which for many likes to rely on rules of thumb and shortcuts and patterns to solve issues. While this is present in the dissemination of Wisdom, the flipside is that it can leave one vulnerable to stubbornness and partiality to one’s viewpoint regardless of new developments. Again, the mortal mind likes shortcuts because it saves time. Puzzling out whether this person or that scenario is truly uniquely unique every single time, wastes time. This is how presumptions and stereotypes arise. That Solas could only observe modern Thedas through what was reflected in the Fade gave him a half-understanding of people. That he chose to develop a resentment toward the Dalish after one bad encounter and remain detached from other races before joining the Inquisition meant he had fallen prey to these intellectual pitfalls, which is the result of his mortal nature interfering with his Wisdom nature.

It is also why he seems so philosophical and open-minded and lofty in some conversations and extremely definitive and judgmental in others over the same topic, notably modern elves and Dalish. This is the humanitarian nature of Wisdom—the pacifistic thoughtfulness—having been granted reactive, if at times impolitic claws. He is a man in flux, frustrated at the presence of pride in others; flush with his own thread of pride as an ages-old being; forced to endure ignorance of the Dalish that he cannot alleviate because he tried to once and failed, and to try again now while in the Inquisition would risk his identity being found out; and in his frustration forgetting what he knows very deeply, which is that the reason the Dalish are ignorant is because elves have suffered centuries of erosion of their civilization and culture, on top of enslavement, conquest, and cultural genocide. The Wisdom part of him knows that. At times he can remark and highlight very astutely on the plight of people when the topic of oppression comes up. The mortal part of him that is “active”, i.e. flossed with personality, esteem, and cognitive bias, obscures this clarity granted to him by his original nature. It clouds his thinking, it makes him forget, and it is even harder for him to recalibrate and remember their circumstances because once his Pride radar is pinged, it’s what he latches onto and mirrors. Unfortunately, Pride rarely conquers Pride. They only amplify each other, like gasoline on flames, so Solas’s mirroring unintentionally encourages more of what he detests. The pure material world is not like the Fade where strength of will can consume or cancel out another will. He should know that by now, but as stated, he’s in flux. His grasp on How to Be a Person is far more extensive than Cole’s, but it seems former-spirit-turned-mortals possess some lingering cognitive habits from their time as spirits, and this throws their mental gears out of whack.

Solas has never wanted to rule over people. He has never once wanted to be worshipped even at his most manipulative and Machiavellian. He wants to sit under a tree in the summer and idly discuss whether fire could be considered alive and if good requires evil to exist and the pros and cons of allowing collective memory to remain unchallenged. He wants to explore the Fade and see what new gentle incorporeal friends he might encounter.

Like of all things, the butchering of Solas’s character pisses me off to no end. Dislike him if you want, hate him if you want, but don’t for a second try to misconstrue that his problem is that he has secret aspirations for godhood. Does he think ancient elves are a superior race? There are definitely indications. But he doesn’t think of himself as someone to be worshipped by anyone, least of all other elves. Very huge distinction.

[becquerel]

made yaoi alcatraz where i put two miis i want married until they fall in love

[becquerel]

there didnt used to be a bridge until one kept crying about being lonely like Maybe you should talk to the boyfriend i put in this saw trap with you. 🙄. but fine. theres a bridge now.

[becquerel]

as soon as the one who kept crying about being lonely got off of his oil rig he immediately fell in love with a mii on the outside. someone is losing bridge privileges tonight .

[becquerel]

bridge privileges restored his saw trap partner fell in love with him.

[becquerel]

i ran out of miis to force in love so i started locking all of the miis who abandon their children on the prison island except they keep asking to move in together so im like 80% sure its now just a deadbeat dad orgy spot

[becquerel]

also it now connects to the other islands by making them walk through slenderman's forest to see their children

[stonesense]

seriously what was anso’s deal

[stonesense]

do we have any idea what his dynamic with fenris was that he was willing to ask around the best mercenaries he could find in order to con them into walking into an ambush (potentially ruining long-standing business relationships with meeran and athenril that he seems to have?) by doing an elaborate act of being a new to the surface terrified lyrium smuggler for basically no reason

[laufeysons]

AU: Loki gets himself in trouble with SHEILD (again), so Tony has to come to sneak him out. They bicker, of course.

[laufeysons]

turns out, he was both. (x)

[godricslumos]

“This was the man I loved. A little bit messy. A little bit ruined. A beautiful disaster. Just like me.”

[spiribia]

I like in rpgs where if you don’t romance two of the characters they start romancing each other instead. You think you’re the only fish in the sea

[goth-queen]