Alright tell me in the tags, what’s Your Poem? That poem you heard once and it has dwelt within you ever since?
Mike Driver
cherry valley forever
AnasAbdin
Today's Document
Cosimo Galluzzi
todays bird

PR's Tumblrdome

Origami Around
trying on a metaphor
styofa doing anything
sheepfilms
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸

★
No title available
RMH
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

Discoholic 🪩
dirt enthusiast

shark vs the universe

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
seen from T1

seen from United States
seen from Japan

seen from France
seen from Japan
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from France
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom

seen from Malaysia

seen from Germany
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
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seen from Mexico
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seen from United States
seen from United States
@quantum-mechanic
Alright tell me in the tags, what’s Your Poem? That poem you heard once and it has dwelt within you ever since?
summer
1. make a syllabus for yourself - books, media, places, recipes
2. complete 40% of it
3. eat every fruit u can
Gonna chill out the rest of May and then change my entire life in June. Possibly July if that doesn't work out. Certainly no later than September or October.
Hunter-gatherer's approach to manufacturing textiles:
Find a suitable 3D mass
Peel off its outer layer to get a 2D sheet
Agriculturalist's approach to manufacturing textiles:
Produce a 1D filament
Shape it into a 2D space-filling curve
Having watched last night's episode and the previous one and a half Schemers eps in the few days preceding, as fun as I think they are in combat and in principle, the Schemers might be my least favorite table to watch overall. It's a table full of players who really want to milk their play in order to get at the Themes - I feel like we're constantly getting overwrought descriptions of spells and Symbolic Actions the Characters Take, unsupported dramatic pauses. We're constantly getting lines that are supposed to Clinch the Scene, except that there are three other people at the table who also want to Clinch the Scene and so they do a lot of repeating themselves and dropping lines that are designed to be laid on top of fanart. I love a good line or spell description or scene-ender, when it's earned and done well, but with at least 3 of 4 players trying to force it to happen in any given scene it gets tiring. Which is a shame for my personal viewing experience, because I do love the politics of it all, but it's a bit of a slog.
arts degrees r so funny because you go in class and theyre like What Is A Poem? we dont know for sure... and then moral of the story is we don't know what a poem is. and then the worst part of it is that theyre right
once i read everything on earth then i think ill be prepared to write
a 6 year old i work with told me how much she got from the tooth fairy for one (1) tooth and it seemed insane so now I need to know
how much did you get from the tooth fairy as a kid?
up to 25 cents
up to 50 cents
up to $1
up to $2
up to $5
up to $10
over $10
didn't get money for teeth
got something other than money
bonus- put in the tags if you're an 80s/90s/00s kid etc.
(I used USD as the frame of reference but answer however u want)
need a lesbian who's ev— (remembers i don't believe in evil) — need a lesbian whose material conditions incentivize her to be mean to me
The most frustrating part about giving my own characters sexualities and labels is that i always feel like it gives the impression that these characters are aware of this information and would actively use these labels for themselves when that is rarely ever the case
They do not know what aro or ace means, that dude would never describe himself as trans, that other guy is nonbinary but they got a job so they don't care about that right now, she's bisexual but if you ask her she'll just tell you everyone has a beautiful soul and move on, they use multiple pronouns but not out of choice people just keep on guessing and she doesn't mind and honestly kinda enjoys it but he's not telling you that
Ooc They're gay or bi or aroace or bigender or whatever the fuck but in-universe they're looking you in the eyes and telling you that every man on earth secretly wants to kiss other men and that's just a desire you gotta live with and that it's completely normal and they will not for a second question what this implies about themselves
me: yeah so a few years ago someone invented infinite scrolling and really it was a terrible idea
the elf I just hooked up with, taking the lavender and honeysuckle lollipop from their mouth: An infinite scroll... most elfmaidens learn to enchant a scroll to never end before they're a mere 300 years old. It saves on paper.
me: oh see that's just writing, with social media it's really bad, it just leads to people doomscrolling all day
the elf I just hooked up with, spluttering and panicked: The Doomscroll! Be silent human, thou shoulds't not speak the name of that fell parchment
me: oh so you get it
happy friday the 13th, pi day, and ides of march weekend <3
Here's an absolute big swing guess for next week's episode, involving Tachonis' plans in Tanisar and why things went down the way they did at the Palazzo (with several other sub-guesses on new lore from episode 17).
My big swing is that Julien is intended by the Tachonis to become the vessel for/physical aspect of the Deva Vindicta, or that he's at least an option they're considering, and that one of the ways that he's being "prepared" to serve this purpose is by inducing a great desire for vengeance in him. I honestly don't think I can possibly be right, but I've got enough red string that I want to talk about it, because it's a fun idea.
We've never found out why the two primary targets of the attack on the Palazzo seemed to be 1) Occtis, who's been explained, and 2) Raimond Davinos for some reason? Maybe it's a simple as that he's a powerful warrior and they wanted him off the table quickly, but I have a hunch there's more to it. They were sort of vague about wanting to kill Aranessa, and Primus fully walked away from Julien. "Well struck, warrior," he said before leaving. Maybe killing Raimond and the house of Davinos in general will serve the magical purpose of pushing Julien into deep vindictiveness and desire for revenge, which will be necessary for the Deva.
Furthermore, we learned in this episode that the people who were sent to the Barrowdell by the twins were specifically Julien's battalion, specifically his students. Why was that choice made? Did they specifically request his battalion? Is it just because he was gone, or did the Tachonis choose his people to send, knowing it would fuel his desire for revenge and draw him after them to Tanisar, where maybe they need him to be for the ritual?
The Tachonis seem to need to do some sort of procedure on someone, in Tanisar, in connection with the creation of the Deva, and we have multiple references to an "apotheon." There's a "Chamber of the Apotheon Vindicta," guarded by the "Hall of the Demon Guardians," and a long bridge over a lake that goes to the "Apotheotic Obelisk." An apotheon is a mortal who is deified or otherwise elevated to godhood/adjacent - so I'm guessing from these words that the Tachonis need not only the sacrifice of Occtis, but a person to be exalted into this deva.
Quotes from the letters:
"Our most recent findings were from about two-and-a-half months ago. The final experiment was a failure, and wasted our last supplies of ossement."
"A new source of calcidian (?) has revealed itself, but we need to move quickly. The Cloak is moving faster than anticipated. If the obelisk holds fast in Tanisar, does the sacrifice itself need to happen in Tanisar?"
My guess is that "ossement" is the (un)dead equivalent of the Halovar's filament, which is harvested from a living celestial. The Tachonis, maybe, are making ossement by refining artifacts/remains from dead celestials, hence their interest in the stone and the coffin? Maybe "calcidian" is the unrefined version, or otherwise somehow used to make the "calcidial prosthesis"? These are all bones words, so I'm guessing they're connected, and the -ment suffix connects it with filament for me. The obelisk is the Apotheotic Obelisk, which connects the concept of an apotheon to the deva ritual.
"The Halovars have proven a dead end. Some inherent power of their sorcery immunizes them against the procedure."
I read this as evidence that filament and ossement are inverses of each other. Putting ossement into a Halovar, or otherwise doing the procedure, doesn't work because they're immune due to the filament - which seems different from what happened to Tertia.
"Final experiment a partial success, but largely failure. It is my opinion that Tertia's innate gifts and connection to the Tenebral Reaches thwarted the grafting of the calcidial prosthesis. I will miss her dearly."
So Halovars don't work at all, and it's the opinion of this lord that the fact of Tertia being a sorceress at all made the experiment fail.
Which brings me back around to Julien: if they need a person to serve as the apotheon for the creation of the Deva Vindicta, and they need them to not be a sorcerer, and they need them to be swamped with a burning desire for vengeance, who's a better choice? They seem to have tried a Halovar before they tried a Tachonis, so they'd prefer someone from outside their circles - i.e., a Davinos is better than a Seramai. Julien is potentially the most well-known knight of any vassal house, given his work in the Rebellion, and is publicly known to be something adjacent to vengeful in nature, given his relationship to Thjazi.
I know this is a huge swing, and I think it's honestly too complicated and centers Julien too much to be the real plot, but it's fun to think about. It would also give Julien a deeper tie in to the lore questions, if he becomes some sort of partial-celestial OR if the procedure goes sideways because he's cursed, and it would give him reason to reevaluate his relationship with vengeance if it's also tied to Tachonis plotting.
Since we generally agreed the other poll was too extreme on the cold side and did Not give an idea of how much people enjoy cold/heat, here’s one with the cold end just above freezing. Would you rather spend a full day running errands when the temperature is…
3° C (~37° F)
30° C (~86° F)
bald/results
I know I'm a million years late to the Aranessa discourse of the past, like, three weeks, but I wanted to wait until I'd seen all the relevant episodes and cooldowns before posting my thoughts, which are a lot less cool and glamorous now that the most recent cooldown has gotten on to the topic I wanted to discuss as well.
The short version is that I agree with everyone who's been arguing that Aranessa is neither a DMPC nor a hinderance to the party's development in terms of mechanics, social cohesion, decision-making, or whatever. (The only place where she almost was, I think, was when she went to go check on Julien alone in his room - in a more developed party that should've been a PC, but literally who is going to go check in on Julien atp, their relationship is important to develop, and it quickly became a full-party scene anyway). My new contribution is that I think one of the reasons she's been difficult to parse for many people is because they don't understand what she is there to do for the party thematically, which I write about below.
Reblogging this again because I'm right, and also because I want to put a pin in something Matt said in the Cooldown that I think requires more thought than I can do before tonight's episode.
He commented, after hearing of Occtis' belief that his family's power exists for a purpose, or did once upon a time, about the power that science holds in modern reality. Specifically he says, "I can believe in science, and acknowledge that some people use science for really bad things." Which is true (I quibble with the word "believe"), and also it's a brief, off-the-cuff comment. But as I'm thinking about power and how it functions in a fantasy, proto-mercantilist world, I do think there's a meaningful distinction between science and/or empirical knowledge as a tool that can be misused, and the power of hereditary nobility and/or sorcery as something that exists, as Alex said Occtis thinks, "for a purpose." I hope we'll get to explore that with Murray and the ongoing efforts of the Houses to suppress non-sorcerous access to magic. It'll be interesting to see how well, exactly, metaphors about magic and specifically wizardry vs. sorcery map on to real-world examples of acquirable power and influence, and how this influences Aranessa's thematic work with the party.
I know I'm a million years late to the Aranessa discourse of the past, like, three weeks, but I wanted to wait until I'd seen all the relevant episodes and cooldowns before posting my thoughts, which are a lot less cool and glamorous now that the most recent cooldown has gotten on to the topic I wanted to discuss as well.
The short version is that I agree with everyone who's been arguing that Aranessa is neither a DMPC nor a hinderance to the party's development in terms of mechanics, social cohesion, decision-making, or whatever. (The only place where she almost was, I think, was when she went to go check on Julien alone in his room - in a more developed party that should've been a PC, but literally who is going to go check in on Julien atp, their relationship is important to develop, and it quickly became a full-party scene anyway). My new contribution is that I think one of the reasons she's been difficult to parse for many people is because they don't understand what she is there to do for the party thematically, which I write about below.
hold on let me try to invent a version of myself who can get us out of this mess [holds really still for a minute and a half and then turns to you with a flat affect] we probably should have killed ourselves an hour ago