DEAR READER
No title available
No title available
pixel skylines
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Kaledo Art
AnasAbdin
ellievsbear
RMH
🪼
Xuebing Du
JVL
noise dept.
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Cosimo Galluzzi
@theartofmadeline
NASA
#extradirty
shark vs the universe
seen from France
seen from Ukraine
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Spain
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from Algeria
seen from Singapore
seen from Ukraine
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany
seen from Malaysia
seen from Brazil
seen from Germany
seen from Tunisia
seen from United States
seen from United States
@mysteryteacup
Hi, I'm Teacup!
Here's the post where I keep my massive list of fanfic ideas and thoughts for:
Humans Are Space Orcs
SVSSS
Dimension 20: Cloudward, Ho!
Here's my AO3 if you want to read any of the fics I've written because of all those ideas.
Also while we're all talking about anti-racism, here's a helpful tip:
Performative self-flagellation over being white is not a substitute for doing serious introspection about the ways you have been complicit in or rewarded by a white-supremacist society, nor doing the work to dismantle white supremacy.
A white person chiming in to a conversation about racism to say "I'm sorry for being white" or "white people suck, I say this as a white person" is just a masturbatory way to try to assuage your own feelings of shame without actually doing anything. It doesn't make you look like "one of the good ones." It makes you look like someone who centers your own feelings about it.
"I learned a lot from making this" is artist talk for "making this sucked ass and I'm not entirely happy with the result."
^what artistic growth feels like
Hi, Foone here, I'm a retrocomputer educator! I'm here to explain the real reason this laptop is like this.
So this is the Panasonic PRONOTE PD CF-62, it's a Pentium 133mhz running Windows 95, released in August 1996. Panasonic did this sort of trick more than once, they did a similar thing with an under-keyboard CD-ROM drive in the PD CF-41, from 1995.
This one is so fancy because that's not just a self-loading under-keyboard laptop CD-ROM drive, it's a HYBRID PD/CD-ROM self-loading under-keyboard laptop drive! It has to be this complex because it takes PD discs (which are the size of caddies) and caddyless CD-ROMs!
So what's PD discs?
They're an optical format by Panasonic, the Phase-change Dual (or Phase-change Disc). They're from 1996, store as much as CD, but are rewritable... much like the later CD-RWs which used basically the same technology, just in a slightly different format. Unlike CD-RWs (which you had to burn (usually), they acted like a hard drive, fully rewritable at any point. That's why the disc is hard-sectored, which you can see through the shutter gap. Those vertical lines indicate where sectors start and end.
So yeah, this laptop has a complex drive that can take both types of discs, and the whole thing folds under the keyboard. Fucking wild.
But the root reason, of course, is that they did this because it's a cool design, and they wanted to do that. Why did they think this was cool, why did they want to do this?
Pervert reasons.
Next question!
Movement nudge!
X
Follow the money behind America's data center boom. Track 2,300+ projects, PAC spending, and the politicians who sign off on it.
Reasons for hope: Lots of amazing people did a ton of work to make this fantastic, fully interactive resource available - because no matter how bleak things seem, there are millions, and millions of people doing everything they can to protect both the world and their own communities.
You can use this to view and subscribe to updates, project statuses, and for at least some of them even whole dossiers. This is an amazing resource, I highly recommend checking it out
relevant xkcd
ok some days being visibly homo is the most wonderful thing in the world. an old woman walking her dog stopped to say hello to me and I asked if i could say hi to her dog. she seemed really excited and told me "his name is rupert brooke. i named him after a gay poet from the era of the first world war. he had red hair just like my dogs fur". then she leans in and whispers like she's divulging some great secret and says "i don't usually tell people about the gay part"
I’ve told this one before, but: I was in a long-distance relationship in 2010. One time, after flying back into Toronto, I got a cab to my apartment. The cab driver, who was a recent Pakistani immigrant, asked where I had been travelling.
And I had to think about my safety as a passenger and a woman, but I decided to just tell him: “I was visiting my girlfriend in New York.” And he went quiet, and I was briefly terrified, and then he said, “It’s good here in Canada, for people like us.” AND THEN I FUCKING CRIED OBVIOUSLY.
It’s good to be visibly or openly queer, when you can be. There are so many more of us out there than you ever realize otherwise.
Maxwell Gotch is such a fun character for a lot of reasons. He's carried Torse (who weight thousands of pounds because he's made of cast iron) like it was nothing, he thinks a healthy exercise routine makes it reasonable that he can leap between flying aircraft, and he's so focused on being a proper gentleman that he tips into repressed.
Zood is such a fun setting for a lot of reasons. It has magic fungi that can swap the minds of animals from different species, it has a crystal city and a tree city, it's a giant tube, and it's all so bananas you could believe anything is possible there.
What I mean is that I think that Zood totally could have fuck or die sex pollen and Maxwell is possibly the only character I can believe would look the sex pollen in the eye and go "no, you blink first" and win.
I know this is an ice cold take but watching TOS was shocking because I thought Kirk was a womanizer before going in and no it turns out he just loves falling in love.
Yes, he's a slut, but he's an emotional slut and he deserves credit for that
If you haven’t read Kirk Drift, read Kirk Drift.
This. …And honestly: watch the episode “Metamorphosis”, and not only acting but plain old dialogue both make it clear that the man’s a near-unreconstructed romantic. The sheer yearning after True Love damn near cracks the fourth wall from side to side, like the mirror of idiom. 😄
That’s my James T. Kirk.
Hey, uh, Vampire the Masqureade fans? I'm trying to do a write up of a realistic takeover plan for Purpee for Dimension 20's VtM season and I don't know your game very well. And the wikis are very confusing with a lot of links.
Could someone give me a quick run down of how many positions (prince, primogens, etc) there are in a city's Camarilla court and how many clans/types/subclasses??? of vampire there are (I know nosferatu and ...ventrue?) that would be expected to have a primogen in a city.
pls help i'm very smol and lost.
Hello! Allow me to help with your questions.
First, I'll quickly cover the Camarilla structure.
At the VERY top, there are the Inner Circle and the Justicars, who determine the laws that they want all of Kindred around the world to obey. If a Prince fucks up, it's the Justicars who will punish them by sending agents called Archons. I don't know where the Justicars are based, so don't worry too much about them. In most VtM games, they never come up.
Each city run by the Camerilla has a Prince. (A Prince can be any gender, and may choose to go by another title such as "Sovereign." Most of the time, they go by Prince though, even if they are female or NB.) In order to claim a city as theirs, a Prince declares what's known as Praxis, which summarizes the Prince's "right" to hold power over the city.
Under the Prince is the Primogen Council, which is made up of one member of each clan in the city. The Primogen is often (but not always) the oldest and most powerful member of that clan in the city, and represents the entire clan in court meetings. The Prince may also seek advice from their Primogen Council. Occasionally, an individual Primogen will have a second in command known as the Clan Whip. If a clan has only a very small population in a city, (like, less than 10 maybe) the Prince might not bother with having them be represented by a Primogen. I'd expect that, despite probably only having one, MAYBE 2 members of their clans in Purpee, City Council of Darkness will probably have them all be the Primogens for their clans anyways for the lols.
The Seneschal is the personal advisor to the Prince, the Prince's second in command, and acts as the Prince when the Prince is unavailable.
The Sheriff is the one who hunts down Kindred rule breakers and punishes them according to the Prince's orders, including preforming executions. Sometimes the Sheriff has deputies, known as Scourges or Hounds.
The Herald is the messenger for the Prince, who makes sure the Prince's messages reach the ears and/or eyes of all the Kindred in the city. They also often collect (and spread) gossip. Sometimes they're called Harpies. (Especially if the Herald is female.)
The Keeper of Elysium is the city's Kindred events coordinator, and makes sure everyone obeys the rules of Kindred gatherings. In particular, it's usually forbidden for Kindred to use disciplines at Elysium, because they don't want to risk triggering their Beasts into frenzy and possible murder and/or Masquerade violations.
The Shadow is a formal advisor assigned by the Prince to watch over a coterie of young vampires to help shepherd them, teach them Kindred ways, and act as a go-between for the coterie and the Council.
And now a quick rundown of the clans! There are 14 of them in Vampire the Masquerade 5th edition. I'll do them in alphabetical order. You should *definitely* do more reading on these yourself, because each clan has it's favored disciplines, and it's own clan banes, etc. There's a LOT more to them than what I've written here!
Banu Haqim - Known for their passion for justice and upholding their very strict moral codes.
Brujah - Rebels who usually oppose authority. It is EXTREMELY RARE to have them in the Camarilla. They're usually the spearhead of the Anarch movement. (Apparently Zeath is a Brujah though lol)
Gangrel - Kindred who tend to be more animal/beast-like. They are also usually Anarchs. (The Camarilla don't want "animals" in their court...)
Hecata - Necromancers who use blood magic to create zombie slaves, trap ghosts, etc. They usually only embrace new vampires from within their own family.
Lasombra - Kindred who use shadows and Oblivion powers. (The thing Bat Child has in her throat.) They have strong ties to the Catholic Church and have only recently been allowed back into the Camarilla.
Malkavian - Kindred who are cursed at their creation with some kind of mental illness, the symptoms of which can be very extreme.
The Ministry - AKA The Followers of Set. They believe vampires have a different origin than the accepted dogma, and as such, don't play along well with the Camarilla. They tend to be lairs and tricksters with lots of snake imaginary.
Nosferatu - Cursed with the "repulsive" flaw, often have a hideous outside appearance. Known for being very strong, usually very smart, and often using Obfuscate to hide themselves. (Darkness Man.)
Ravnos - Another mostly Anarch clan. They are cursed with Wanderlust. They have to sleep in a different place at least once a week, or they start burning alive from the inside! They tend to be daredevils.
Salubri - A clan that has almost been hunted to extinction because their blood tasted ridiculously good to other Kindred. Their curse is that and also each one has a third eye in the middle of their forehead that weeps blood when they use their disciplines. There are only rumored to be 6 left in the entire world. (But you can fudge that for your own storytelling.)
Toreador - The very beautiful, glamorous, art-loving Kindred. (Madeline is a very stereotypical Toreador.)
Tremere - The Blood Witches and Wizards, often feared by the other clans for their blood magic. They have their own internal social structure called the Pyramid.
Tzimisce - The flesh crafters who can change their own appearance to be however they want. (And can change the appearance of other people too at high levels.) They tend to be your "dark lord in a high castle" type, and Dracula was one in the VtM lore.
Ventrue - The Clan of Kings who usually prefer to be in charge of things. Most of them are in the Camarilla. They tend to be big users of Dominate to both get people to do their bidding, and to wipe their memories afterwards. (LaVonte is a Ventrue.)
Thin-Bloods - What's this? An extra clan? Well, kind-of. You see, each generation of Kindred has "weaker" or "thinner" blood than the generation that came before them, to the point now where sometimes, vampires are created who are not considered by most other vampires to be "real" vampires at all. These are called Thin-Bloods or Duskborn. They have their own abilities, Thin-Blood Alchemy, that can mimic or replicate the disciplines "normal" vampires get. Sometimes Duskborn can walk in the daylight, or eat human food, or still have their heart beat. They still have to drink blood though. They're not quite human, and not quite vampire. (For more on Thin Bloods, I strongly recommend you watch Project Ghostlight: Private Nightmares on Youtube.)
The clans that are favoured by the Camarilla are the Ventrue, Toreador, Tremere, Nosferatu and Malkavian. All the others are generally considered either entirely unwelcome, or on a case-by-case individual basis as determined by the Prince of that city. The reasons for why this is are very long and complicated in the VtM lore, it but basically boils down to either religious war, or Anarch rebellion.
Please feel free to ask me any other questions about Vampire the Masquerade you have!
Wow, thank you, that's a very in-depth run down! 💜💜
I guess my main questions are how many primogens would be expected/normal for a city to have and can a vampire hold both the position of a clan primogen and one of the prince's government office positions (idk what better to call the ones you listed as working for the prince)? Like, can someone be both the Herald/Harpie and on the primogen council or is hoarding positions a no-go?
(I'm working on a fan essay about what an actual plan not made by clowns for the takeover of the tiny city/town would look like, so I'm trying to figure out what positions they would be able to fill to build their power base vs how many more people they would have to bring in later as they grew their city and what - strategically - would be the best positions for them to take, if that makes sense?)
You are welcome!
You would usually have one Primogen for each clan represented in the city. So if a Camerilla city has 5 different clans in it, there would be 5 different Primogens. (Unless a Prince decides a clan in their city should not have representation at the council for whatever reason. Like say, there are anarch coteries of Brujah lurking around a big Camarilla run city. An anarch-hating Prince probably isn't going to have a Brujah Primogen because they don't want a Brujah voice in their council.)
And yes, a Primogen can also be the Herald, or Keeper of Elysium, or whatever else. Most of the time, there's a large enough population of vampires where they don't have to double up on jobs, but for a tiny city with only 6 vampires in it, like Purpee, they're probably going to have some Kindred doubling up on some of the jobs, or just cut out those jobs all together. You don't need a Herald to spread the word of the Prince if every meeting is already going to have every single Kindred in the city present.
As for bringing in extras, that's not an easy question to answer without knowing the exact circumstances of the Kindred involved. Whether or not to bring in extras would all very much depend on which roles they would want filled by extra Kindred. Most Kindred are selfish, and want the best jobs for themselves. Every now and then, you'll get a young Kindred who has no ambition whatsoever to be in a position of power, and will refuse to join a council, or an older Kindred who gets tired of the political bullshit and doesn't want to do it any more and quits. Sometimes, you get sires trying to push their childe into a position of power because they'll get benefits and bragging rights along with that for the same reason why parents might push their child to be a doctor or lawyer. There's a lot to consider.
I can give you my 10 cents on what I think the best council roles for the Purpee coterie would be, if that'll help?
So the clown coterie did something odd by making their only Brujah member their prince and reducing their number of primogens from 4 to 3? Or am I wrongly assuming a prince cannot also be a primogen?
Cool, so they can basically award themselves all the titles except primogen of clans they're not, or dangle those titles on offer to the ambitious and reasonably trustworthy. Excellent.
I was thinking about it in terms of when Purpee grows - if it becomes their desired New Rome... they're probably going to have a lot of other vampires complaining if they try to keep it to a six vampire city, so at that point or in preperation for that bringing others in. But yeah, that one's very much a "the plan is to find someone with characteristics x,y,z but we'll substitute q for x in a pinch" sort of deals. Luckily with so many vampires in the world, they can afford to look around - especially if they don't need to fill positions immediately.
Thanks, but that I can handle the strategising. I was mostly focused on how much power they could consolidate in the six of them so I would know if it was a big issue or something they could pretty much ignore beyond picking a prince and being able to flex with having titles they gave themselves.
Oh! But I did realise I had forgotten a question earlier: if a non-Camarilla vampire is willing to follow a Prince's rule can the Prince, how to say, give them Camarilla citizenship? Or would the Justicars be like "hey, no, this is not adopt-an-anarch, you cannot bring in strays so they'll be loyal to you instead of us"?
Kissing him
Beloved Bitches,
The "Grocery Shop like a Boss" post is making rounds again, and one of the bitchlings commented that they are moving out on their own for the first time so they were collecting ideas/recipes.
Which got me to wondering; do we have a "How to Preserve Your More Precious than Gold Grocery Haul" post floating around? And if not, should we start one?
We do not! And I agree--we should start one!!!
I'll start:
Tomatoes, carrots, and peppers can all be frozen without any preparation whatsoever. Just bag 'em and toss 'em in the freezer. So if you're worried you won't get to those vegetables before they go bad, freeze them for later recipes. They can then be used in a stirfry, curry, soup, chili, sauce, salsa, smoothie, whatever. And it's much easier, cheaper, and faster than canning.
WHO'S NEXT, BABIES? How are we preserving our grocery hauls?? This WILL become an official Bitches Get Riches World Heritage Post.
Cosmic Truths of Cheap Grocery Shopping: 12 Universal Rules to Save Money on Food, No Matter What You Buy or Where You Shop
Did we just help you out? Say thanks by joining our Patreon!
While most of the stuff in this article is good (albeit American), one of it's points (never shop hungry) is one they claim is backed by science. They refer to research by Brian Wansink. You know. The guy who was found to have committed so much research fraud that he was forced to resign.
Nothing I hate more* than when a story promises that they's being realistic and then still lets their protag get everything and win at everything. Especially when they're political stories.
There is no magic way to play politics perfectly and get rid of all your enemies and win the love of everyone else and only ever make deals that benefit you. That is not how politic works.
If you're going to write a power fantasy, have the guts to admit it's a power fantasy. Don't try to pull "chocopuffs: part of a balanced breakfast" bullshite by claiming you're writing "realistic politics".
*hyperbole
