"Unfortunately has principles" -- @lexiconofdreams

[kneelbeforeyourdogbabylon]

German trailer for The Thing (1982).

[gobusto]

[the-eternal-moonshine]

[gregdotorg]

vs no it won't

[snarpreplies]

He sat still a long time. Music will not save us, Otto Egorin had said. Not you, or me, or her, the big golden-voiced woman who had no children and wanted none; not Lehmann who sang the song; not Schubert who had written it and was a hundred years dead. What good is music? None, Gaye thought, and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and factories and Leaders, music says, "You are irrelevant"; and, arrogant and gentle as a god, to the suffering man it says only, "Listen." For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses men build for themselves, that they may see the sky.

-- "An die Musik," by Ursula K. Le Guin (1961)

[songofsaraneth]

reminiscing on the time in my beloved groupchat slack (yes, we use a slack not discord) two of the members made a secret channel named "freefeetpics" without telling anyone, since you only see channels you are a member of, and have to look at the list and actively. and then for the next EIGHT MONTHS or so they would just forward any pic someone posted that had feet in it to that channel. Other individual members started finding it one at a time and joining to go "WHAT IS THIS PLACE, WHEN WAS THIS CHANNEL MADE" and they'd go "yaaaaay you found it :) isn't it funny :)" and everyone decided to simply keep the joke going for ages and not mention it until more and more people found it. beautiful. hilarious.

[sparrowhawksshadow]

I need all of you to know that I've been in Jade's groupchat for over a decade and this is the first I've heard of #freefeetpics

[luna-azzurra]

Most writers don't have a writing problem. they have a finishing problem. and finishing is its own completely different skill that has almost nothing to do with talent. finishing requires you to be okay with the thing being real, being done, existing in the world where people can have opinions about it.

And a lot of people would rather keep it unfinished and perfect in their head than done and flawed and out there. an unfinished draft can still be anything. once you finish it, it becomes one specific thing with specific failures that specific people can point to. so you keep tweaking. you keep saying it's not ready. you go back to the beginning again.

And the years pass and you are a person who is always working on something and never the person who made something. and those are two completely different people with two completely different relationships to this thing they claim to love.

[tysonfurybattlepass]

public defenders get behind me. i’ll defend you this time

[tysonfurybattlepass]

“so you like criminals?” I LIKE THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL.

[sparrowhawksshadow]

The human toll of America's public defender crisis

Years of drastic budget cuts have created bottomless caseloads for public defenders – the ‘pack mules of the system’ – and tipped the scales

Public defenders in America are desperately overworked and underfunded, to the point that many of the poorest Americans do not have in reality the right to a fair trial that the Constitution should guarantee them.

[tysonfurybattlepass]

public defenders get behind me. i’ll defend you this time

[tysonfurybattlepass]

“so you like criminals?” I LIKE THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL.

[thydungeongal]

The issue is manifold:

There is a large secondary industry that has emerged around D&D that produces content out of and for D&D. This includes third party rules and adventures as well as transformative content like actual plays as well as gaming video essayists and so on.

The most visible parts of this industry are the actual plays.

There is a clear financial incentive in using D&D for actual plays, because actual plays using other systems do not draw the same crowds as actual plays using D&D. There is no nefarious intent at play here, it's simply financial realities at play.

However, these people may wish to obfuscate those financial incentives and present them having arrived at D&D as coincidental. Since a lot of actual play content eventually wants to branch out from dungeon-killing fantasy monsters, this creates tension with the game mechanics.

What this creates is a lot of talk about how the fact that D&D chafes against this type of play is either a non-issue that can be fixed by the GM or actually inherent to the very medium of TTRPGs as well.

A lot of people are coming into TTRPGs with an a priori understanding of the medium like "it's okay that TTRPGs (D&D) can't handle all types of situations, the real power of TTRPGs (D&D) is that they can be modified by the GM on the fly."

This creates tension between these people and the people who actually think tabletop RPGs are worth engaging with as texts taken at their own word as well as the people who have a vested interest in their tabletop RPGs being treated as things worth engaging with on their own terms and not just as lesser versions of D&D.

Again, there is no nefarious intent at play here on any side, but it's simply in my personal interests to engage with RPGs as texts. Because the aforementioned cycle feeds and repeats itself and it doesn't actually result in a lot of interesting and good and cool new design. it just leads to more D&D with different numbers.

[reggiemess]

A lot of media these days wants to be The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny and the thing is that The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny already exists and would not be improved by realistic cgi and three hours of lore and self-aware smirking.

[reggiemess]

Disney wants SO BAD to have a moment where Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's black knight and Benito Mussolini and the Blue Meanie and Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie, Robocop, The Terminator, Captain Kirk, and Darth Vader, Lo-pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger, Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan, Spock, The Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan all come out of nowhere lightning fast and kick Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass but they can't. They will NEVER have that moment. So instead we're just going to have Avengers Lego Pixar Princesses crossovers forever.

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

I want to update the dune abridged post but I think I captured something beautiful with the original and I don’t know that I could make the rest as funny while still keeping it accurate

[chaumas-deactivated20240115]

something like

“My plan to destroy the Atreides involves playing upon the Duke’s innate fear and suspicion towards women,” said the Baron. “His bound concubine—”

“Wait, for real?” asked Feyd. “He hates women?”

“Everyone hates women,” the Baron spat. “As I was saying, his bound concubine—”

“I don’t hate women,” said Feyd.

“Yes you do,” said the Baron. “Everyone does. His bound—”

“Even Piter likes women,” Feyd insisted. “Which was a little surprising, given the coding, but I guess it is era-typical homophobia to establish gay-coded characters as being sexually menacing to the female protag—”

The Baron heaved a sigh, shaking his head clucking his tongue. “Feyd, Feyd. We all hate women. Just because you have sex with women does not mean you actually like them. Even I have had sex with women! It means nothing, and it won’t be plot relevant. Really Feyd, it’s like you haven’t read any feminist theory.”

“Hang on,” interrupted Rabban. “When did you—”

“I said, it’s not plot-relevant. Don’t be stupid!”

~~~~~~~

LATER

~~~~~~

“I could never hate or distrust your mother,” said Leto. “Even though she looks like if the Baron were a hot girl for some reason. But I’m going to pretend like I hate her. This will help us out in the long run for sure.”

“This seems like a bad idea,” said Paul uncertainty. “Shouldn’t you just tell her you’re pretending to have fallen for a plot to discredit her and are trying to suss out the real traitor? She’s a Bene Gesserit, after all.”

“Paul, Paul,” clucked Leto. “How little you know about being benevolently patronizing towards women. No; I am sure it is one of our other trusted friends who has proven their unflinching loyalty to us time and time again.”

“What about the doctor?” asked Paul.

“Hmm? Yueh? Oh, no, don’t be silly, Paul. Everyone says the Suk conditioning against doing harm can’t be broken.”

“Has anyone… tested that?”

“What, like by holding their wives hostage and blackmailing them? No, of course not. Who would do such a thing? Anyway I’m sure it’s fine. He’s real sad and cagey about his backstory, which could mean nothing.”

~~~~~~

LATER

~~~~~~

Paul and Jessica cowered in the desert, shattered by Yueh’s betrayal and the death of Leto.

“Hey, Mom?” Paul’s voice was full of sudden venom. “You know how you look just like if the Baron were a hot girl?”

“I’m sure that’s not plot-relevant,” Jessica replied quickly, frightened by the uncanny look of knowing that had newly entered her son’s eyes.

[deadpanwalking]

Красиво жить не запретишь

[sparrowhawksshadow]

Happy Easter to all who celebrate!

[sparrowhawksshadow]

Classic organizing dilemma: "is this guy in your meeting a wrecker or just a self-centered dumbass"

[larkandkatydid]

I think we talk a lot about the ways that interpersonal drama wrecks left wing movements, but I think we also need to really understand how much interpersonal drama, stupid, petty personal beefs and ridiculous cycle of egoism vs. extreme backlash to egoism there was happening in the movements that we revere for their discipline and success. Per Thomas E. Ricks military history of the civil rights movement, up to 50% of the cool, effective shit that happened in Birmingham happened because two (or more) icons of the Civil Rights movement were being petty assholes to each other. Per Clara Bingham's oral history of Women's Liberation, which makes the funny and informative choice to constantly put women who hate each other back to back, this also was true for the movements that made abortion legal and marital rape a crime.

This tendency is, alas, not a comical failing of the left wing movements you hate, but a universal human frailty found in all social movements.

[larkandkatydid]

One time William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, two of the true Saints of the Second Founding, heroes who built America, etc, had an argument that went on for literally an entire day and which caused neither of them to compromise on any of their positions. We cannot pretend that people weren't ungodly annoying before twitter.

[louisegluckpdf]

hate when people are like "trust your gut! listen to your intuition!" like okay well my gut is telling me every person i lay eyes on is hunting me for sport and my intuition is saying i should find a secluded cave and live there forever so what do you suggest i do with that information

[the-domestic-mammoth]

EVERYTHING'S FINE :) By W.B. Yeats

Tracing a neat straight line, adept and sure, The falcon heeds the calling falconer; Things hang together, and the center holds; Mere symmetry is ordering the world, The sea-bright tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence proceeds; The best have strong convictions, while the worst Are full of resignation and are sad.

Surely no revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming's far away. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When an indifference borne of stable comfort Leaves my sight clear: somewhere in sands of the desert A lion with lion body and the head of a lion, A gaze calm and leonine, as is usual, Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it Reel shadows of the normal desert birds. What a nice lion, right? And now I know That twenty centuries have gone along And things were bad sometimes, and things were good, And if a lion slouches toward Bethlehem, That's 'cause it's native to the Levant.

[fish-to-male]

“incomprehensible politics” should not be applied to run of the mill anti-capitalists or eco-fascists. i am very familiar with how those belief systems works. “incomprehensible politics” should be applied to my dad who

grew up in a draft-dodger commune but resented the hippy community for being too promiscuous and involved in drug culture

joined a Trotskyist reading group as a young man who had a physical brawl type rivalry with another group called The Young Bolsheviks

(he notably got kicked out of the group for not actually reading)

still believes that the basic point of contention amongst anti-capitalists is whether you align more with Trotskyists or The New Bolsheviks

cried when Queen Elizabeth died

advocates for a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine but gets very offended if you note that is also Zionism

still refers to himself as a Communist and occasionally post-Trotskyist and gets very upset if you say anything negative about Leon Trotsky

[fish-to-male]

was fathered by multiple activists for Indigenous Americans, within the context of the Americas he’s actually pretty passionate and educated about this but internationally it gets weird. he considers the degradation of varying Celtic languages and cultures to be an issue of Indigenous rights but he gets riled up if you refer to Palestinians as Indigenous

was fathered by multiple gay men. when asked what ideal healthy masculinity should look like often cites gay men. when my brother came out as bi my Dad freaked out that he was a bad father who had caused his son to be gay

believes workplaces should be employee owned. when he was a restaurant manager he was notorious for pressuring his employees to not take food breaks (or any breaks) and called them selfish when they pushed back

[mechanical-empress]

your life sucks because you're not a warrior of darkness

[kuttithevangu]

Sometimes people reblog my posts about writing with “this makes me not want to write anymore” or whatever and I have to say like. If a single stranger on the internet can make you not want to write anymore you weren’t ready to write anyway. You need to work on your emotional resilience first because if you ever share what you’ve written you will need it