LongSleeveLeper

Lover of the world / 26 / Bisexual / Thoroughly Neurodivergent / Male / Quite literally Down With The Sickness

[longsleeveleper]

Can’t put into words what finding Nurgle meant to me

Not long after Halloween I got chronically sick and was confined to my room with naught but my computer to keep me company. During that time I fell into Warhammer 40k via a let’s play of Dark Crusade and as a Warcraft 3 kid oh man love at first sight. I’d fall in love with fantasy later but that’s another story.

The funny thing is chaos isn’t my favorite faction, though it is one of them. My favorite faction is Orks. And the Death Guard aren’t my favorite chaos warband, it’s the Night Lords (yes yes edgelord I’m aware it’s what I’m here for). So I don’t really identify with Nurgle on a tribal level, I don’t love him because my favorite character or faction is Nurgle. I identify with Nurgle on a philosophical level, because of the value they had to me metaphysically.

Now let me clarify, I don’t want everyone to die of super-mega-pneumonia. Quite the opposite I want nobody to ever be sick because I now know for an absolute fact being sick SUCKS. But, I am sick, and I have been told I will be sick forever. This is where the value of Nurgle to me enters the picture.

Nurgle and Nurglite worshippers are the first time I can recall truly see people with diseases being represented with strength. It definitely want the first time such a thing was presented to me, but Nurgle is such a strong and repeated example of it that it I couldn’t ignore it. Because illness is strength for those who worship Nurglites. They are some of the most stubborn damn near impossible to kill just straight up fuck you try me durable. In mechanical terms being a nurglite will make you tougher to kill. Because they are sick, because being sick is a gift from their god to make them stronger. WOW!

There are so many further layers to my love of Nurgle. For one, Nurglites are described as being able to feel no pain. Now pain has an important biological function, but let me tell you, I have way too damn much of it. I haven’t been without pain for 13 years, I haven’t fully relaxed in 13 years, I haven’t been able to think without a dagger in my head in 13 fucking years. So the notion of feel no pain has quite the appeal to me, even if on a rational level I understand that feeling no pain would be it’s own dire problem.

There’s also how the Death Guard fall to Nurgle, where so much pain and suffering is inflicted on them to the point they begged on someone anyone to take the pain away. And yeah Nurgle is the guy who made them feel away, he is evil remember. But hey I’ve been there! I have begged and pleaded and prayed to doctors to please do something anything to make the pain stop, to make me feel better. And you know what? At least the death guard got a fucking answer. I’m still in pain! No one’s answered my prayers. So I understand the utter desperation of a situation like that.

But speaking of what Nurgle does let’s talk about him! Grandfather Nurgle, that’s his title, because that’s his demeanor. He’s a doting fatherly god who loves and cares for his worshippers, giving onto them lovely gifts. Sure, those gifts are horrific diseases. But he’s one of the few deities to show anything close to benevolence in the entire setting of 40k. A lot of his followers follow suit as well. Whether it be the jovial Great Unclean Ones, the feral shitkid nurglings, the Beasts of Nurgle who are literally described as puppylike, or an amicable friendly cultists who smiles at you through rotting teeth a lot of Nurgle’s followers are *happy*. The notion of finding happiness even in a setting as terribly horribly bleak as 40k inspires me to hope I can find happiness in our much happier reality.

There are many, many things I love and adore. So many things that have meant the world to me, that have taught me something that isn’t irreplaceable. But when I chose to get a tattoo I picked the Mark of Nurgle. Because to me, that symbol means love, but it’s also something that will never ever not be a part of me. It means acceptance of where I am and who I am. It’s an attempt to salvage what strength I can from a situation that has rendered me weak. So whenever I need to remind myself of that meaning I touch my tattoo, and I try to embody what Nurgle means to me. My illness isn’t something I can beat. But it’s something I can endure.

[all-mammal-creechur]

Long-tailed Planigale Planigale ingrami

The smallest of all marsupials, and one of the smallest of all mammals with a body length of 55 to 65 mm (2.2 to 2.6 in). It is rarely seen but is a quite common inhabitant of the blacksoil plains, clay-soiled woodlands, and seasonally flooded grasslands of Australia's Top End.

img source

[longsleeveleper]

it looks SO sad and pathetic

[charl0ttan]

huge fan of the depth of a good purple but another area that draws me is definitely around aquamarine/turquoise/seafoam. you can not go wrong once the green starts getting just a tinge more blue. a gal could certainly do worse than to pull over there and stay a while

[charl0ttan]

something earth shattering going on here

[emily84]

this is why one of my favorite all-time paintings is Ship in Stormy Seas by Ivan Aivazovsky... he was really onto something there

a close up to just... light shining through those waves, makes me feel faint with exhilaration every time

[is-there-a-boat]

THERE IS A BOAT BY IVAN AIVAZOVSKY!!

[clayandsorcery]

Ivan Aivazovsky could paint glowing water. One of the GOATs for sure.

[twistcmyk]

poverty, video games, and success

[seabeck]

Yesterday I got cut off in a roundabout by someone with massive sticker writing that covered their back windshield that said “Relax God is in control”

[longsleeveleper]

real life is so cliche

[nurrgleth]

[nurrgleth]

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

What is the relationship between Mannfred and Vlad? I read the vampire omnibus years ago and thought Mannfred basically just used Vald’s name and stuff. Did they ever even meet?

Mannfred is Vlad's most powerful and (likely) first vampiric thrall/child/whatever. Vlad is effectively his father. His sire. Mannfred has a back and forth relationship with him where he wants to impress him, but also surpass him, and depending on the writer this manifests in different ways. So, did Mannfred, who was turned into a vampire by Vlad, and was Vlad's most capable and trusted scion, ever even meet Vlad? No. They've never met in their lives, obviously.

[longsleeveleper]

any books that go into their relationship?

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

do you ever think mannfred gets an unfair rap for being the guy GW decided would kill fantasy?

I remember thinking he was pretty cool before the end times came out. A sneakier more conniving successor to Vlad.

Surely he will do a much better job then Konrad <- clueless

Yes and no. On one hand, Mannfred's characterisation during the End Times is very poor, not overly reflective of him in the rest of the setting, and a result of GW hurrying the writing along so that they could cross off all of the narrative conditions for exploding the world. On the other hand, he is, like it or not (for the moment) canonically the dipshit who Did That, so people disliking him for it isn't entirely out of left field, especially with how little people actually read about the setting or fully understand the external reasons for characters doing the things they did during the End Times.

To be clear, I do think you could narratively explore and (poorly) justify Mannfred's behaviour by drawing on his history of doing what he believes is necessary, and pursuing his ideals, at the expense of allies. It would not be great, and would still fly in the face of all common sense (an undead handing the world to chaos is fucking nuts) but you could write an egotistical Mannfred who dooms the world because he is attempting to fix the situation himself. Because he has a plan. Because he is trying to do what he believes Vlad would want him to do. This is by no means what I would want Mannfred doing, to be clear, but if he has to be used to make everything explode, this is the kind of loose thing I'd personally go for. I would not have him acting like a Skaven and impulsively double crossing every motherfucker he's in a scene with.

[fractally]

don't worry about me when I say this but I think in a way being hunted for sport would be a relief. my nervous system would be like, wow. finally, a proportional reaction

[rumoglobalheavyindustry]

I love you NuCaloric

[sadhoc]

there is a very real tendency of teenagers with anxiety disorders self diagnosing with considerably more stigmatized and impairing mental illnesses (e.g. schizophrenia, DID, personality disorders), but the best response to that isn't to get angry with them for "appropriating" lol. instead you show them coping resources for the problems they're actually having and deemphasize diagnostic categories in general. if an 18 year old is claiming to have alzheimer's, they're probably making an innocent mistake and are in genuine distress. be kind.

[mariaalenkoshepard]

Also I think this trend comes, at least in part, from how brushed aside anxiety disorders can be. If your parents and teachers dismiss you with 'oh everyone feels anxious', then inevitably you're going to start thinking that there must be something else going on with you

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

”You must feel very scared right now; let’s talk about how to help you personally, tailored to your symptoms” will always be more helpful than “stop faking (X) for attention”. If theyre that desperate for attention or an explanation, something is wrong.

[codex-entry]

Around 2:25:45 in your last Of the Devil stream, you casually mentioned "that autistic trauma" around making sure people understand you, and that's been stuck in my head ever since, which is why I have the exact timestamp. And I wondered if you had more to say about it. Is it really a trauma thing?

While I obviously can't speak for every autistic person, I'm pretty firmly of the opinion being autistic in our current society is inherently traumatic. Even before getting into the broader politics of it with things like how the structure of the education system, mental health system, economic systems, general negative stereotyping, etc. that all fail autistic people in every country, being autistic all but insures a lifetime of tumultuous interpersonal relationships with people, allistic ones especially.

I'd wager about 90% of my friendships have ended abruptly because I had violated some social norm I didn't understand, or misinterpreted a signal, or was just decided to generally be too weird, distant, and off-putting to deal with. There's a lot of things I love about being autistic, but this is one way it has undoubtedly made my life harder and I've never met an autistic person who didn't have at least one story about being horrendously misunderstood for, bluntly, acting autistic. All the while, I often struggle to understand why the problem is even a problem in the first place.

And when you're both horrifically misunderstood and struggling to understand, you really only have two options: You either try even harder to understand and be understood, or you say fuck it and just let the consequences be what they will.

Hence, you tend to end up with autistic people who have put extensive effort into understanding the rules and communicating their feelings within those rules using the surgical precision and anxiety of someone disarming a bomb, or autistic people who move on pure reflex and just leave it to others to either accept them as they are or leave.

Can this happen to allistic people too? Sure. But it has happened to basically EVERY autistic person I've ever known in some life defining way and seems to be a consistent throughline in the life stories I hear from autistic people online and in writings as well. Trauma doesn't define the autistic experience, but it is absolutely a central fixture of it.

[fox-on-the-moon]

Actually making your selfinsert overpowered and friends with all your faves and a hybrid of the coolest species and in a relationship with your crush and the long lost sibling of the villain is called having fun and its cool as fuck

[wholesomey-artist]

[lightningspiral]

I've been having some thoughts lately that feel relevant so here goes.

First, I have this concept in my head that fanfiction is the natural shape of storytelling. Learning more about Arthurian lore and Trojan War mythology has just made me think again and again how taking established characters and adding stuff to them, or expressing your opinions on how they should be, or fixing their canon, or undoing the parts of the story you don't like - it's all just, what people do with stories, naturally.

But something that's also been part of storytelling for forever, which I think has gotten a bad rap due to the franchise-ification and endless extension of pop media, is hyperbole.

"Hybrid of the coolest species" for instance - well yeah! If you have cool species in your setting, "What happens when they are combined?" is a natural question to ask. "What if X had a brother?" is also natural, as is created a new love interest for a character that draws your interest as a writer.

Most of the compelling characters who've made an impact on pop culture have had a ton of hyperbole in their initial presentation. Grab a Spider-Man comic from the 60's and see how often Doctor Octopus is seriously presented as the "most dangerous" and "most deadly" villain - doesn't matter that the Fantastic Four are fighting Galactus over in the next comic on the stand, it's important to Spider-Man's story that his opponent is the toughest he's ever faced, no matter how many holes you can poke in that statement. Superman, from the start, was always strong enough to do whatever was impressive - he was only "weaker" in the original stories because the scale of those stories could be steamrolled with less cosmic power. Going back to Arthuriana, Galahad defined an entire archetype by being the most pure and most perfect, and the more memorable knights are the ones who are the most of something. And going back to the Trojan War, there's no cast speciation where the smartest guy, Odysseus, can't also be strong and fast and capable of everything.

And I think there's an insidious relationship built up when the Official Canon - largely defined by law, not by quality or original authorship or what have you - is held to be sacrosanct, and anything else is an aberration, which drains this important element from the story. Even the Official Canon is subject to this kind of holding back - partly because the stories have been extended and stretched for so long and so far that it feels more wrong than it should for genuinely viable story ideas to be explored now. Franchise stories are often either scrambling to prove that something is in fact The Most, or are making do with what stories can be told while avoiding answering questions that are naturally begged by the setting.

This idea is kind of half-formed, but, I want it out there a little.

[solsticelosthermind]

I know this is a deeply American thing to say but I am begging everyone to stay the fuck away from military recruiters. Especially high school kids. You are going to be seeing an unholy amount of them in schools or around schools or literally anywhere kids are known to congregate. THIS INCLUDES ALL FORMS OF ROTC. Stay the fuck away from military recruiters. As someone who’s familiar with entirely too many branches through entirely too many friends and family, including my partner, recruiters are authorized to say literally any fucking thing they think will make you sign on that line. They cannot and will not deliver on those promises. They need bodies for the war they’re pretending is only now starting up again. That’s all you are. A body. Stay the FUCK away from the military.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

RECRUITERS LIE

[apfsds]

Their job is to lie. They are insentivised to lie to your face. They do not care about you, they don't control anything about your process. They aren't even the person who signs your inital orders. Thats someone else at your MEPS. You will likely never see the recruiter again unless you do "hometown recruiting". Its like free leave, just come home and visit schools with them, help them gather more bodies in your age group.

Do not talk to them, do not let them talk to you. They will lie. You will be fooled. You are not the good guy in that uniform. You are a tool of oppressive hate.

Stay. Away. Please.

[gnarlyghost]

Robots repairing space commune from recent comm

[oak-n]

spare parts <3

it makes sense for his spare body to never show up in-game but. BUT. it's fun to speculate. my two favorite options are:

1) he sustained some critical damage prior to the main story, and the spare body had to be either butchered for internal organs or used entirely. i also like to think sam did it, as a big fuck you to world marshal/desperado budget... more fun for my depressed boy and another scenario to throw sundowner into a meatgrinder, just how i like him. he'd find it amusing anyway.

2) sun is resourceful, so it was meant to be used after raiden's mmm visit. which leads to more tasty details. first, he expected bad damage from the get-go. second, he could just throw this ai controlled chassis at raiden to wear him down and finish him off later. so he doesn't really care about killing raiden, just giving him enough hell and action. and i don't think he cared about his own well-being, too. not in a reasonable, human "i need to set up all the soft padding/financial backup" way. more like "this will be my new skin once i shed this one, rub it off on rocks RUB IT OFF".

i'm always trying to pin point this feature in him. yes, he's an entrepreneur by nature. quick on his feet and intelligent, thanks to having no inner dialogue at all. no doubts, no ego. probably what helped him survive for so long AND led to such a fiery crash for desperado at the same time. big hollow reptile to me ↓