#nonevahed

[littjara-mirrorlake]

the fact that Elspeth of all people was able to see *something* in the Phyrexian ideal, and point out how Elesh Norn's evil ultimately is about her own self aggrandizement... it gives me a bit of hope that WotC can do something interesting with the Phyrexians.

sorry bestie this aged like milk didn't it

[gurguliare]

Yang Wen-li in the Eva setting. Just Yang, no other LoGH characters.

i actually JUST started watching eva for the first time so i’ll keep you, and everyone, whether they want it or not, updated on this

[mmmmalo]

nthing the recommendations for Detective Pony and Theatre of Coolty, they seem very much in the vein of what you're doing here.

I actually read and watched Theatre of Coolty before I was aware that @blurds wrote fanfiction, and upon learning he wrote it I read some of his Nepeta fic and felt like the world was quieter afterwards.

[xhxhxhx]

What's your favorite video game

Civilization III, which had a better mod community than its successors

[silver-and-ivory]

How did you first become interested in Islam?

I was reading about the Middle East on a news website! There were lots of news articles about Afghanistan. There were, of course, quite a few noxious and Islamophobic commenters, as there are. I became distressed about their comments and wanted to know more about Islam so I could investigate the factual components.

So I read a book called The Prophet of Mercy Muhammad. It was a Sunni hagiographic of Muhammad. I gave a presentation on it for my class, also. This was in 5th grade.

I ended up arguing with people on this one really sketchy website that was based around hating Islam and hating Muslims. I did a lot of research - and motivated reasoning - to argue with them more effectively.

That summer, I talked to both my uncle and my cousin. My uncle had served in the navy? or something like that, and he spoke Arabic (as well as Serbo-Croatian). My cousin was becoming involved with this Muslim guy, and therefore engaging with his religion also. (She has since married him).

These were both quite encouraging - it felt like Allah was urging me on ~through Providence~.

In 6th grade, I was nominated for a mentorship program and chose ~Arab culture~ as my focus. I actually wanted to focus on Islam, not Arab culture, but thought that that might look overly religious.

So I got a Kenyan woman, who was Shia, to tell me about Islam. She introduced me to the ever-relevant, ever-wise Internet resource al-islam.org, run by the Ahlul Bayt (people of the house [of Muhammad]) Foundation (or something like that).

I continued to be fascinated and in love with Islam - in fact, I decided to become an ‘ayatollah - until the summer of 8th grade, when I read hpmor and realized that I needed to admit that I was an atheist.

[littjara-mirrorlake]

as someone familiar with the limited forma: corrupted is kinda hard; it's something you really want to be all in on with cheap toxic creatures+the payoffs, and also attendants/shepards to push through in case oppo is able to slow you down. beware of understatted toxic creatures, though; Syphoner is miserable when you're on the back foot, while Headcleaver can struggle to get profitable attacks and also dies miserably to Hexgold Slash. BW is powerful when open, but rarely so because its cool.

Neat!

[gurguliare]

What do you think of Oberstein? I really feel like his intelligence was kinda overrated... that last plan of his was probably one of the dumbest, most unnecessarily risky things I'd seen in the entire show. He's good at thinking outside the box, yeah, but he's got a bad habit of thinking outside the box ideas are inherently good.

OBERSTEIN DISCOURSE BELOW

I tend to agree, though to be fair the characters lauding/cursing his intelligence are also not the brightest bulbs in the crocus bed, by and large. The exception is Reinhard, who especially circa Westerland doesn’t have that obvious a reason to treat Oberstein as omniscient but sort of does anyway—I couldn’t tell if that was like, hmm, more of an emotional reaction to… like, I get the feeling that Oberstein came as a shock to Reinhard on a number of levels, maybe because before that he hadn’t really considered that anyone might attach themselves to his cause for purely ideological reasons? Or rather, pre-Oberstein he has a sense of the present Goldenbaum dynasty’s corruption and excess, and he has the huge personal grievance, but Oberstein is his introduction to the raw wound that is the whole history of empire. So maybe that affects his oddly ginger touch with Oberstein early on? Especially since Oberstein’s drive is also a factor in… you know, once the Kaiser dies and Annerose is free Reinhard has technically lost his nominal ‘cause’, even if it takes him no time at all to retrench; Oberstein is there to Smooth The Transition and is weirdly essential as a reference for “how other people might come to view me, Reinhard, king of the universe.”

Anyway idk that was a digression I just enjoy Reinhard’s substitute for daddy issues, which is like, “no one has any actual influence over me so sometimes I have to invent some.” the point is, it can be hard to tell whether we’re supposed to take the utilitarian dilemmas Oberstein poses as having any… reality to them, because Reinhard’s reaction is so muddled and the actual numbers cited are kind of ridiculous. But that’s so often the case with real life utilitarian either/or Hard Choices that I kind of like how stupid and unsubstantiated a lot of Oberstein’s are. He could in theory be right, even though he’s very conspicuously omitting a ton of third options! He could also not be? Our information is sketchy and we’re making sweeping snap decisions regardless? So on thaaat level I appreciate how average/mediocre much of his strategizing is—he’s a foil to Yang in that he’s sort of naturally passive and reactive, but unlike Yang he lacks either the imaginative reach to (sometimes) worm out of impossible bargains, or the empathy that prompts those leaps. In terms of out-of-the-box thinking, all he has is the willingness to sacrifice stuff, until finally he runs out. As the famous saying goes, with trolley problem hammer, everything looks like a trolley problem nail. He’s not the person who can turn unwillingness/refusal to spend lives into its own tactical virtue. So he’s sort of boring. BUT IT’S FINE

[mmmmalo]

tfw when you think of some clever thing in homestuck, go looking for it, and realized you completely misremembered it.

Yeah... I’ve had to delete a lot of posts because it turned out I was basing arguments around fabricated memories and similar crap. Wild extrapolations have to be well grounded!