Bet you were expecting quality

[visenyaism]

What percentage of the Kings Landing population got herded into the dragonpit by the gold cloaks for Aegon Coronation Dragon 9/11 in season one AND got herded by the velaryon troops into the high sept to witness Rhaenyra coke ranting about being the Prince that was promised against the northern apocalypse in season three AND will in two years go onto storm the dragon pit in season four do we think

[visenyaism]

this is my fleabottom resident OC the unluckiest girl in the world. Her mama was a white worm informant and died in that horrible fire. Three days later, on the way to the market with her five year old half-sister, they got herded into the dragonpit for Aegon’s coronation by the gold cloaks and separated in the rubble of dragon 9/11. She never found her again. Her betrothed leaves her to sneak out of the city because he thinks he’s a dragonseed and wants to try his hand at honor and glory by claiming a dragon and is summarily incinerated. Her oldest half-brother gets conscripted to die defend Rook’s Rest, which means that her stepdad has to pick up extra shifts as a ratcatcher to support her and her other half-brother, until Aegon hangs him for catching rats. The blockade is hard on her and her remaining half-brother both, but they manage to scrape together enough with him lying about his age to enlist in the gold cloaks and her lucking into a gig as a scullery in the red keep. Unfortunately for them Rhaenyra seizes the city, which means she gets detained, sharply questioned, and fired with the rest of the kitchen staff for perceived disloyalty. When she finally gets out of the black cells she learns her brother has been disemboweled on his first day on shift due to the treacherous machinations of Ormund Hightower AND also Rhaenyra never paid him so they’re broke. While figuring out what she is possibly going to do, she gets swept off the street and into the courtyard by velaryon troops and forced to witness Rhaenyra coke ranting about the icy northern apocalypse that ordains her to the throne or they are all going to die and also she killed the Pope so mass is cancelled. This does nothing but contribute to her decision to kill Dreamfyre with a rock the next year and die in the attempt. She will be forgotten by history but her contribution to creating a world without dragon warlords still matters.

[visenyaism]

oh and like any good house of the dragon OC her biological father is daemon targaryen she was conceived during his dead baby brothel sex party in the pilot but that’s hardly here or there really he didn’t give her anything but the family tendency to get caught up in things

[visenyaism]

It was her questionable waitressing gig in high school the economy just was not great at the time needs must

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

friend of mine recommended a video essay that's like 5 hours long about why it's currently a whole Thing for fascists to claim they only eat meat and demonize vegetables etc etc, and it's genuinely quite well researched in many places and contains some fascinating history and has made me feel very weird about my status as an adult who enjoys drinking milk. but I've not finished it and I genuinely don't know if I will because at one point the ol' "you can't say you care about animals and also eat animals" chestnut got dropped by the white vegan essayist and it put such a bad taste in my mouth that I had to leave instantly

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

like idk man it just feels genuinely parodic to dedicate hours to analyzing how foodways have frequently been used as white supremacist propaganda and then casually toss out an argument that pretty invariably demonizes indigenous hunting practices with 0 regard for traditional knowledge and land stewardship guiding those practices

[prokopetz]

One of my favourite bits of media history trivia is that back in the Elizabethan period, people used to publish unauthorised copies of plays by sending someone who was good with shorthand to discretely write down all of the play's dialogue while they watched it, then reconstructing the play by combining those notes with audience interviews to recover the stage directions; in some cases, these unauthorised copies are the only record of a given play that survives to the present day. It's one of my favourites for two reasons:

It demonstrates that piracy has always lay at the heart of media preservation; and

Imagine being the 1603 equivalent of the guy with the cell phone camera in the movie theatre, furtively scribbling down notes in a little book and hoping Shakespeare himself doesn't catch you.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Thou wouldst not downloadeth a car

[cannibangel]

im so insane about our lady of the passion and part of my insanity is how i've noticed just how much pash is contrasted with gideon (specifically kiriona gaia). has anyone else noticed this?

like their hair. pash has electric blue hair while kiriona's is orange. kiriona's eyes are golden, while pash's are green. pash's face is littered with scars and burns and a misshapen nose, while kiriona's dead face is described as smooth and waxen. kiriona wears a gaudy white uniform, while pash wears dark grease paint and military clothing. when they're first introduced, we can't see pash's face, but she won't stop talking; we see kiriona's face but we don't hear her speak until much later.

i'm so insane about them. they're my nepo babies. the cousins ever. i hope they have more interactions in atn.

[thelooniemoonie]

Since it's mid-august it's time for a reminder for the DIY folks or those who like to cosplay

[thelooniemoonie]

It's about that time of year again, and after having this circulate for a year now, it interesting seeing some observations:

Despite making this post in August, this post spikes in brief periods throughout the year, depending on when folks like to start.

Reading all the cool costume projects people are working on

Some of you animals reblog this on November 1st

[red-garden]

MAGA boomers SHOCKED by 20y/o commie speaking fluent hog

[red-garden]

Hog 201 for anyone interested in trying this:

Bodily autonomy (like abortion, anti draft, etc) -> “The government shouldn’t be able to force anything on my body I don’t want.”

Anti surveillance -> “I don’t trust big government/big tech (big brother if you’re feeling frisky) with the ability to spy on me and my family.”

Immigration -> “Next to all of us immigrated at some point, I don’t see why the elites get to decide who’s allowed to be where. What’s to stop them coming for me?”

Climate Change -> “Big oil shouldn’t get to determine whether or not I get to go places. I don’t want to be dependent on some big business to survive.”

State Violence -> “I don’t want the goddamn secret police breathing down my neck! I trust my community a whole hell of a lot more to help me than I do the state!”

The vast majority of conservatives think of themselves as underdogs being repressed by the government/the elite, and they value personal freedom (specifically their personal freedom, they don’t care about other people). The will almost always agree with leftist points if you can find a way to blame the problem on their vague enemies (useful, since rich people are the root of most problems), and tie it back to their ability to say fuck everyone else. NEVER appeal to science, theory, logic, or human goodness. Make it seem as if you are a paranoid lunatic who trusts no one. They love it.

[screenshotsofdespair]

[swordrogue]

Harrow the Ninth

[its-murderous-business]

“You should be at the club” wrong YOU should be at the dashcon dance circle

[creekfiend]

I was in Mormon brain jail concurrently to when Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped and held, as it turned out, like 20 miles away from us. We would see billboards when we were driving past in our big white institution van, and we would see magazines in the checkout aisle, on the rare occasions we were allowed to enter shops accompanied, about Elizabeth Smart being held somewhere by some guy. This teenage girl who had been kidnapped and brainwashed and held basically in the next valley over. I don't remember how long she was with him, but this was when everyone was freshly looking for her and panicking about how she had been abducted and was being held against her will and brainwashed. Her picture was EVERYWHERE.

So. Imagine dozens of other teenage girls, being held against their will and brainwashed in Utah, seeing these billboards and going, "huh. I'm having a complicated emotional reaction to all of this. It's possible that I might unpack that in two to three decades."

Both of these situations arise from the same societal attitudes. This guy wanted a teenage girl to be trapped with him and unable to leave, regardless of her feelings on the matter, and for her to act a certain way and comply with his desires. He took her from her home and forced her to be somewhere she did not want to be and would not let her go, and he tried to turn her into a different thing. The difference in societal reactions to when one specific, unauthorized guy does this, compared to when someone's parents pay a fancy sounding institution to do it for them, tells you a lot about how we think about the autonomy of teenage girls.

In Utah, the reason these types of institutions are allowed is because their youth rights laws are abysmal even compared to the rest of the US. Children aren't people, they're the property of their parents. Elizabeth Smart's parents didn't want her to be kidnapped, so it was bad. Our parents did want us to be kidnapped, so it was fine.

Elizabeth Smart’s kidnapper’s crime was that he didn’t go through the established system for kidnapping and brainwashing teenage girls. This is not even a little bit hyperbolic.

[creekfiend]

Some ppl are confused about this, I recommend at the very least reading the Wikipedia article on the troubled teen industry. For more info, you can listen to Paris Hilton's podcast Trapped in Treatment or the Salt Lake Tribune's podcast Sent Away (or both). This is something you probably should know about if you have any interest in mental health treatment or youth rights in the USA. (Thanks Kuzu for the latter two recs!)

The types of institutions I'm referring to, which operate primarily in Utah, accept kids who have no criminal history or history of drug use, which is usually a requirement in other states, or that is my understanding of how it worked at the time I was imprisoned. And I am equally against them in both cases, to be clear. 👍

[datsderbunnyblog]

This comment was left on a post about making the most of the Libby app. "Excessive use of generous lending policies" is the most absurd phrase I've ever seen anyone use to discuss libraries.

[catboycommunist]

evergreen

[dragon-in-a-fez]

personally I'm annoyed by the socioeconomic conditions that made words like "unalive" necessary but simultaneously impressed by the linguistic adaptations young people have made to continue talking about important things while subject to those conditions and I think if you can't hold both of those thoughts in your head you might just be old man yelling at cloud

[a-wild-embubble]

Two of my niblings (10 and 7) self-censor like this in real life during actual conversations. I tried briefly to explain to the 10-year-old that they didn't have to do that in real life after they said "unalive" out loud in casual conversation, and they just said they preferred to. On the one hand, I'm sad to see them unconsciously and fully without awareness succumbing to the panopticon. On the other... this post.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

it's not unprecedented in the evolution of languages to see euphemisms adopted as synonyms or even supplanting earlier terms. lots of people say "passed away" even in situations where there would be no particular social cost to saying "died".

for a particularly strong version of this kind of replacement: the word "bear" comes from a proto-Germanic word meaning "brown one" because there was a taboo against saying the animal's actual name. the taboo is gone but it was so strong in the past that we have no record of what the proto-Germanic word for "bear" even was.

maybe in 300 years the word "die" will be archaic and kids will dig it out of an etymology textbook and start using it because "unalive" is getting censored.

[luggifer4]

die has actually already undergone this process. die originally meant "flow" (i guess it's like you're flowing out of life or something? or maybe your life is flowing out of you idk). it was (probably) loaned from old norse to displace the now obsolete "swelt". and yes, that is the root word of "sweltering"

[dragon-in-a-fez]

[enki2]

[transcyberism]

ok but this unironically works. talk about how the working class is exploited and you can basically sell full-on marxism to your average republican if you do it right. all you have to do is avoid the words "Marx," "capitalism," "socialism," "communism," "means of production," etc - just use synonyms. say "big business" or "corporate shareholder interests" instead of "capitalists." say "a government that prioritizes the needs of the working people" instead of "socialism." it WORKS. I've DONE it. the hardest sell are usually things like social and racial equity, welfare, things like that, because people have been primed with the racist/classist idea that those things are somehow unfair - but you can get your foot in the door to getting them to buy into those too if you start with class issues. read up on your theory, make sure you REALLY understand your own ideology, because that will enable you to reword it and successfully sell it.

[a-ginger-in-black]

In my experience, you can often help sell 'welfare' stuff by appealing to self-interest with a touch of Aren't We Great.

Disability benefits: "I mean, sure, there are probably some sad sacks who are gaming the system, there always are, but hell, with the amount of taxes we pay, the government can afford a few freeloaders, right? I'd rather pay for a couple people who don't really need it than not have the system at all for if I need it, or my kids do, or whatever. I mean shit happens. What if some asshole drunk driver puts me in the hospital and it takes me a year to get back on my feet? Or Heaven forbid something permanent happens. I'll sure be glad that I can get disability then, won't I?"

UBI: "I dunno, the kind of guy who'll just sit on the couch playing Call of Duty all day if he doesn't have to work, I kinda don't want him on my job site anyway. That type is just taking up a place that you could fill with someone who'll actually get the job done, you know? You end up short-handed even though you technically have enough people because everyone else has to pick up his slack. And it'd mean that if your boss is a dick you can tell him to shove it and not worry your kids are gonna go hungry while you find a better place. We can sure as hell afford it."

Racial equity: "I've got a lot more in common with a Black guy who's just trying to get the job done than I do with some rich white asshole who thinks the sun shines out of his ass because of how much money mommy and daddy have."

[existennialmemes]

Companies in the 2000s: You wouldn't download a car! Digital copies are still stealing, even if the original copy remains with us.

Companies in the 2020s: That digital copy, which you have paid for, doesn't really belong to you. We're removing it from your library now.

[existennialmemes]

Companies deleting media you've literally purchased is 1000x more realistically "stealing" than digital piracy, you cannot change my mind

[subjectsix]

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

[subjectsix]

glad this post is resonating with the local populace fr

[homunculus-argument]

There's this one specific interaction on reddit that I wouldn't call "infamous" but I also know that everyone who knows it knows it by the punchline, so in order to not ruin it for the ones who haven't, I'm just going to talk all of you through it as I'm saying this.

The beauty of it is that you could place that exact same dialogue into any time and place in human history and it would make just as much sense, you could have it as a conversation between sailors in a 1600s ship, a group of bronze-age warriors cleaning their weapons, stone age hunters walking home from a hunt, or a bunch of 21st century redditors on the internet, and it would hit just as splendidly.

There was this conversation about if you could have sex with any specific person from any time through human history, which one would you choose? Famous legendary lovers were brought up, queens, emperors and such were popular, might as well fuck Rasputin just to see what the hype was all about, the kind of answers one would expect.

Then some guy said he would choose his own late wife. He went on to talk about how brutal it is, that you might find the love of your life, but there's no promise that this life couldn't be suddenly cut short. That his body aches for hers and how there isn't much he wouldn't do for one more opportunity to make love to her one last time.

Now, I'd like you to imagine a pause in the conversation. A solemn, contemplative moment of silence, with several of the people present nodding in agreement that this is indeed the finest answer - it wasn't a competition, but there's no doing better than that.

And then someone breaks this solemn silence and says:

"I also choose this guy's dead wife."

[enby-denby]

For the sake of letting the full story be known: you have to imagine that after another moment of horrified silence, Dead Wife giy bursts out laughing and says, with a bittersweet smile "yeah, that was her sense of humor..."

[homunculus-argument]

Oh fuck that's right I neglected the most important part of this.

[purpleisdebeste]

I’m sorry Orpheus i was too harsh on you…

[purpleisdebeste]

i was in the physics lab today and we were working with lasers, so the Lab Freaks (legal name) were being very careful to stress that we Do Not Turn Around or Look Behind Us because we’ll get extremely blinded by the power of high strength lasers

and i’m not gonna lie it was actually extremely hard to resist turning around. i misjudged orpheus it turns out this isnt extremely easy actually

[purpleisdebeste]

okay i’ll be honest i 100% looked back at the lasers. actually multiple separate lasers multiple different times. they were pretty

and i didnt get blinded. so clearly lab safety isnt real and you should always risk it cus taking risks is awesome #gambling

but uh. my ass is NOT making it out of the underworld 🔥🔥🔥

[overnightshipping]

[briannyssey]

some people read an awful lot, but don't read very well. deep reading is itself a skill. being able to untangle the threads of theme, subtext, characterization, narrative style, and more are all things that it takes time and intentional engagement to learn.

if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars

literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that. Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?

there are other more involved ways of finding criticism. Learning to use academic databases, going to your local library to do interlibrary loans, finding critical voices you appreciate; these are all useful subskills. Literacy isn't just being able to read words, it's being able to read words in context and think about what they tell you about the text, the author, or the time and culture in which the text was produced. Literacy is the skill of being able to look at the world with open eyes and think clearly about how its parts are connected. It'll change your life

[briannyssey]

this keeps getting shared around and ive seen some different tags responding differently so i just want to make some important clarifications and distillations

you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)

if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too

learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life

writers tend to put a lot of work into their stories. if you learn to read that work you'll (probably) appreciate the stories you love even more. And if not, then you'll have developed your taste. This too is worth doing