A Lone wolf among many.

RP blog, and other random bits of gaming, music, and life.

[teme-xuha]

Kranaki For thousands of years Kaa'i had served as a priestess of the light, guiding her people through the savage wastes of this planet called Draenor, yet all of it was about to end. The blade of that murderous orc had sunk too deep, and she no longer had the power to heal the wound she feebly grasped with her hand. She pushed herself against the rock wall, no longer having the strength to stand. She noted with some disdain how her bright satin robes had clung to her now that they were wet with her blood. As she straightened them out of habit, her thoughts returned to her home world of Argus, which she would never see again. Rising above the ridge came the same orc that will have soon ended her life. She was tall, muscular, and covered in fur, metal, and bones. Kaa’i wasn’t familiar with all of their clans, they were all the same simple minded brutes who failed to understand the Light. A powerful feeling gripped her. She desired one last moment of petty revenge. She was overlooking a cliff. All she had to do was possess this orc’s mind and have her walk off of it. Hopefully she would hear the crash before she was finally embraced into the Light. Kaa’i poured the strength she had left into her magic and seized the orc’s mind. As vision returned to her she saw her own body lying against the rock. She was now in control of the orc. She smiled around unfamiliar tusks, ready to leap to this orc’s embarrassing death. Quickly the smile had vanished from her. Seeing her own body clearly now, she realized she was already dead. Her eyes had dulled, and her chest was still. In the matter of moments when this spell had ended, her consciousness would dissipate into oblivion.  She knew she was going to die, but now the thought gripped her heart in terror. Without her body she could already feel the spell unraveling, and the orc’s mind returning. “No.” Moments stretched. She seized onto any hold she could find. “You do not belong here. This is mine.” The voiced pushed her down, fighting her. “No. I will not be overpowered by some brutish monster.” “Foolish. Arrogant. Like all of your kind.” “We saved you! Are still saving you! The light will save you!” “Who will save the Blackrock? Who will my people be when we become you?” “We aren’t forcing you to be us!” “What are you doing now then?” For a moment Kaa’i loosened her grip, and she felt herself flung into the swirling pool of this orc’s soul. As she drowned in darkness, she realized the shadows were the ones she had brought with her. The shadows are what she had used to cling onto this last moment of life. In her desperation to increase the light, she had lost her way.  The light was far off, and these shadows were long, and dark. She prayed one last time for a small candle’s worth of light.  Soon the swirling soul of the orc was laid bare, and Kaa’i saw Ran’ka for the first time. She saw the pride of her parents as she trained day to day. She felt the numbness in her fists as she won her first fight, the awe she felt the first time she had seen the Blackrock forges. She felt the pain and embarrassment of the injury she sustained in her first battle with the ogres, the excitement brought hearing tales of the iron horde and the fight against the legion. She saw Ran’ka argue with those who said the Draenei were no danger. She felt the terror as the Lightbound forced her people into servitude. She felt the determination to fight back. She felt the grip of her sword as she stared down the Draenei priest in battle. ... “Ran’ka” “Kaa’i” She could feel her soul dissipating. All that was left was the void. ...and yet she lingered. Swirling, mixing... “No, let me die!” “You are mine.” “You don’t understand! It will change you!” “Foolish. Arrogant. Like all of your kind.”

New eyes stared across to the body of the dead priestess. They looked down at their own hands in wonder. The could feel the power of the light surging through them. It was no longer her body, and yet she buried it. They were no longer her people, and yet she returned to the Blackrock. She was no longer Kaa’i. She was no longer Ran’ka. She was both, and neither. When the battle went ill and she fled to Azeroth. A new world for a new soul. A new chance for the light...

[creaturefeature333]

here’s the qui-gon and obi-wan vs darth maul fight from phantom menace but tracked to gimme gimme gimme by abba

[kisforkarol-deactivated20260127]

Watching this almost 20 years later… why did Qui-Gon die? Lightsabers cauterise whatever wound they make. Qui-Gon should have survived that injury!

[teme-xuha]

Exactly! Maul can survive getting cut in half, but Qui-gon can’t survive a gut shot for more than 30 seconds? @kisforkarol

[creaturefeature333]

here’s the qui-gon and obi-wan vs darth maul fight from phantom menace but tracked to gimme gimme gimme by abba

[teme-xuha]

I mean... I like “Duel of the Fates” as much as the next person... but... I kinda like this better?

[v9z-deactivated20201221]

rb this with ur opinion on this shade of pink:

[inkwingart]

This is magenta, and not pink. Unlike pink, magenta doesn’t actually exist. Our brain just invents magenta to serve as what it considers a logical bridge between red and violet, which each exist at opposite ends of a linear spectrum.

TL;DR this color is fake (and also I hate it)

[achromic-red-dreams-doze-angrily]

w

what

[achromic-red-dreams-doze-angrily]

im

[pococurantina]

[shaaknaa]

Wait til you learn about Stygean Blue

[pyrrhiccomedy]

Your brain is a badly-designed hot mess of bootstrapped chemistry that will tell you that all kinds of shit is happening that has no correlation to physical reality, including time travel. It just makes things up. Your brain is guessing about what’s happening when your eyes saccade, what’s happening in your blind spot, and what the majority of the visible light spectrum looks like, and you don’t know it’s happening because it doesn’t aid your survival to become aware that a lot of what you see is fake.

The human eye only has three types of color sensitive cones, which detect red, blue, and green light. Your brain is making up every other color you perceive.

Let’s have a little fun with that thought. This is the visible spectrum of light.

You will of course note that yellow is on the chart. Yellow has a discreet wavelength, and is therefore a distinct physical color. But we can’t see it.

“Sorry, what the fuck?”

What we call yellow is just what our brain shrugs and spits out when our red and green cones are equally stimulated. We have light receptors that can pick up on the physical spectrum of light we call yellow: that’s why yellow things don’t just look like moving black blocks to us. But your brain has no fucking idea what the color yellow looks like. 

Some animals have eyes that can perceive the color yellow! Goldfish have a yellow cone in their eyes. If they could talk, they could tell us what yellow looks like. But we wouldn’t be able to understand it.

What your brain actually sees of the color spectrum:

We can measure the wavelength of light, so we know that when we see ‘yellow,’ we are seeing light in that 550-ish nanometers range. But we don’t have a cone in our eyes that can pick that up. Your brain just has a very consistent guess about what color that wavelength of light could be. We decided to name that guess ‘yellow.’ We can’t imagine what yellow really looks like any more than a dog can imagine the color red.

Here’s the funny thing: your brain is never perceiving just one photon of light at a time. Something like 2*10⁸ photons per second are hitting your retina under normal conditions. Your brain doesn’t individually process all of them. So it averages them out. It grabs a bunch of photons all coming from the same direction, with the same pattern, and goes, “yeah, that cup is blue, fuck it, next.”

That’s how colors blend in our eyes. So sure, if a photon of light with a wavelength of 550 nanometers bounces into our eyes, we see what we call “yellow.” But if we see two photons at the same time, coming from the same object, one of which is 500 nms and the other of which is 600 nms, your brain will average them out and you will still see yellow even though none of the light you just saw was 550 nms.

So how does magenta factor into this?

Well, as we’ve just established, when your brain sees light from two different slices of the visible light spectrum, it will try to just average them together. Green plus red is yellow, fuck it. If it’s more red than green, we’ll call that ‘orange.’ Literally who gives a shit, we’re trying to forage over here. There are bears out here and it’s so scary.

What happens if you take the average of blue and red light, which we perceive to be magenta? What’s the centerpoint of that line?

Fucking green.

Hey, that’s not gonna work? We live on a planet where EVERYTHING IS GREEN. If something is NOT green, that means it’s either food, or a potential source of danger, and either way your brain wants you to know about it.

So your brain goes, WHOOPS. Okay - this is fine. We already made up yellow, orange, cyan, and violet. We’ll just make up another color. Something that looks really, really different from green. 

And so it made up magenta.

So, physics-wise, is magenta “real?”

No; there’s no single wavelength of light that corresponds to magenta. But you’re rarely seeing only a single wavelength of light anyway. And even when you are, every color other than RGB is a dart thrown on the wall by your meat computer. This is the CIE Chromaticity Diagram:

Explaining this thing is a little more than I want to take on on a Saturday morning, but I’ve included a link above that goes into it a little more. The point is that only the colors that actually touch the ‘outline’ of the shape actually correspond to a specific wavelength of light. All of the other colors are blends of multiple wavelengths. So magenta isn’t special.

Given that color is just a fun trick your brain is playing on you to help you find food and avoid danger, is magenta real?

Yeah, absolutely. Or at least, it’s just as real as most of what we see. It’s what we see when we mix up blue and red. It would be disastrous from a survival standpoint to perceive that color as green, so we don’t. Because it’s not green. Light that’s green has a wavelength of around 510 nm. Stuff that’s magenta bounces back light that is both ~400 and ~700. Your brain knows the difference. So it fills in the gap for you, with the best guess it has, same as it does with your blind spot.

The perception of color exists within your brain, and your brain says you see magenta. So you see magenta.

[atopfourthwall]

[humanpersonface]

So I googled Stygian Blue and…

Yall.

FORBIDDEN.

[teme-xuha]

[swan2swan]

The Phantom Menace is the best movie ever because the entire premise is essentially “Amazon has obtained its own private army and now two future samurai have to stop it from forcing Natalie Portman’s planet to use its services by cutting through Jeff Bezos’s army of robots and attempting to convince Congress to do something about it SPOILER WARNING Congress doesn’t do anything so Natalie Portman has to take matters into her own hands also the day is saved by a redneck kid the samurai picked up when the car broke down”.

[brotherv]

The question is actually how the movie managed to suck despite that being the plot

[swan2swan]

The question is why you listened to people who told you it sucked instead of watching it and enjoying it like a normal person. There’s something new and fun happening in every scene. Secret meetings with shadowy figures, sneak attacks, fierce warriors, elegant queens, stampeding animals, mystical cities, monster attacks, harrowing escapes, whispered conversations, backroom deals, howling storms, thrilling races, ferocious fights, breathtaking skylines, political intrigue, worldbuilding, tests, infiltrations, sieges, rescues, spinning, explosions, all culminating in a fast-paced duel set to one of the most memorable cinematic scores of all time…then ending with a solemn funeral and a joyous parade.

It’s just as important to know how to enjoy a movie as it is to criticize it.

[jakeander11]

Counterpoint: Jar Jar Binks

[swan2swan]

You mean the founding father of motion-capture animation characters, the hapless castaway who was given a chance by war heroes because the Jedi value all life, the immature fool who matured upon the sun-scorched sands of a distant planet and the fire-blasted fields beside his home, the sole witness to the Battle of Naboo who survived to watch the Empire fall? That Jar Jar Binks? Frank Oz’s favorite character? Played so passionately by Ahmed Best, the man who nearly committed suicide because of the backlash and malice he suffered following the movie, but refused to do so and endures now to this day producing his own videos and delivering motivational speeches? Is this the Jar Jar Binks you speak of, or did you just jump on the first hate train that stopped by the station and say “well this seems like a fun ride”?

[grootiepie]

@patrocles

[patrocles]

I rarely add onto posts, but if there’s an opportunity to further defend the prequel trilogy, I WILL DO THAT. If you were a kid who grew up with the prequels as your first intro to the star wars franchise, then you’ll also know that the only reason why they were hated SO MUCH was because Older Fans just… didn’t like it. They dictated all the criticisms and effectively made sure that they were the most hated films and that if anyone were to like them, well you just aren’t a good enough star wars fan. 

No one’s denying Lucas’ clunky, and sometimes cringey dialogue writing. But I’m absolutely going to argue that TPT added more to the star wars universe than any of the other 6 films had. I’m talking the absolute grandeur of world building, costuming, score, an entirely new fighting style. The CGI is a product of it’s time, BUT we’re talking about a fully relevant narrative about how a democracy collapsed - which, I might add was completely enthralling, smart, and interesting. 

All of the actors not only understood their characters, but their arcs, and essentially had an uphill battle of bringing back a 20 year franchise for a fresh audience - this meant pleasing the old fans as well as the new. And if we know anything about the star wars fandom, that was literally an impossible job. None of the star wars films are perfect - I’m definitely including the Original trilogy. But it’s absolutely unfair to treat them like trash when they were actually amazing. Literally just a bunch of neckbeards made you feel bad for having fun and you bought it.

 (I’m going on a limb by saying Revenge of the Sith was probably better than any of them.) 

Lucas created an incredible origin story for one of the most iconic villains ever. And whether people are willing to accept it or not, it was a goddamn good one. The fact of it is this - this fandom, particularly the old fans, are some of the most elitist and frankly TERRIBLE fans ever. It’s driven several actors to both career ruin, but mental breakdowns simply because they just didn’t like the performances. And the ripple effects have lasted so long because those incredibly loud voices have dictated the General Opinion. This is all despite what the Prequels have done for this franchise’s universe. I urge everyone to go back and try them again! 

[drowning-moonlight]

thank you for this, because I always feel like I have to apologize for liking the prequels

[antheiasilva]

Slams Reblog!

[littlebluecaboose]

Additional information for your consideration: Darth Maul big sexy.

[teme-xuha]

I strongly dislike the prequels. So many things we take for granted now about how Jedi operate were shoehorned ideas Lucas shoved into the prequels without any understanding of the philosophies he was trying to convey. The over-importance of Darth Vader within the universe made him vastly less interesting as a character. On top of that, they were lazily made films. Oh sure there were giant spectacle scenes here and there, but the actual plot, the character moments, were all shot in the most efficient, flat, boring way possible. Shot, Reverse-shot, cut, print, done. I could go on, but there’s enough information out there as to why people think they failed. If you love the prequel movies, then great! It’s not my job to convince you to hate them, nor would I take that enjoyment away from you. I would say, assuming someone was told it was bad, and they aren’t a normal person who can think for themselves and find it subjectively bad on their own, is kind of a shitty attitude.

[ubercharge]

look. look at this beautiful sword meme. i’m going to cry

[literallybyronic]

@petermorwood

[petermorwood]

I saw and reblogged this one a while back, but it’s always worth repeating, and this time I’m adding a bit of background info comparing common fantasy sword features to the Real Thing (with pictures, of course.)

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…

[ladyinquisitor-deactivated20211]

Love, Death + Robots - Sonnie’s Edge

[forgingmeanings]

Kryn Warriors. a soldier and a wizard

[squiiids]

me 20 minutes ago, before i heard the title screen music for Solstice (NES):

me now, a permanently changed man:

[squiiids]

[imgonnafucktherobot]

[chirasul]

[bloodravyn]

Marvel's 'Loki' Series Lands 'Rick and Morty' Writer (Exclusive)

Michael Waldron was up all night to get 'Loki.'

God FUCKING damnit, why did this have to happen to my fave. Lol. That’s the fastest I have ever lost interest in a show.

[teme-xuha]

There’s still hope. Rick and Morty is usually a pretty smart and funny show, it’s just the FANS of Rick and Morty that are absolute garbage. I’m not saying it’s ideal, but it could be a lot worse. When writing for a different audience with a different character?  Who knows, it may work.

[sclera]

ok we're settling this discourse right now

put ur zodiac sign in the tags & if you like or dislike:

- pineapple on pizza - mint ice cream / mint chocolate - ketchup in mac n’ cheese - fries dipped in ice cream

[the-man-who-sold-za-warudo]

Knight: I have trained in all forms of combat and weapons since birth. I cannot be bested.

Some horsecock motherfucker: 

Knight: … What the fuck

[cerastes]

OH FUCK YES I GET TO TALK ABOUT LANTERN SHIELDS.

For anyone seeing this post and wondering what kind of unholy heresy is currently having a blacksmithing orgy in front of their eyes, this is called a Lantern Shield.

This came from, YOU GUESSED IT, fucking Italy, home of lunatic steel-weaving mother fuckers who often simply looked at each other, and by each other, I mean their frenzied reflections in their shattered mirrors, and said “WHAT IF WE JUST DO THINGS”, which is, as we all know, Aunt Jemima’s recipe for success.

Lantern Shields were very indicative: They were meant to be bucklers that could carry a lantern, oftentimes for night time duels. Now, you’re wondering, why carry a lantern on a night duel when it could just prove detrimental to your overall movement? Why, to blind the mother fucker, of course! But, see, and this is the funny thing about Italy, when Italian blacksmiths realized that they could just add a hook to a buckler, they noticed they could also just add whatever the thrice condemned shit they wanted to them, so they started forging stakes, spikes, and blades that protruded out of the buckler and gauntlet as additional defense against anyone who, due to the poor visibility of mist shrouded, dark blanketed nights, would just walk right into your handheld barracks.

I mean, nothing better than a bloke closing the distance to you losing an eye or six because they didn’t consider you might just carry a porcupine on your arm, right?

Some specimens exists, but these are not numerous. If you know of or possess an actual, physical Lantern Shield, congratulations, you probably have an item that likely killed.

[awed-frog]

Given the fact that yeah, you’d need to be completely demented and more than a bit overdramatic to come up with something like this, I’m 100% unsurprised this shield also appears in medieval Russia. 

Only they made it pink, because of reasons.

[queen-schadenfreude]

rockabilly inspired jester bc why not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[filibusterfrog]

halflings love their new giant children

[teme-xuha]

That moment when you realize that not using the eagles to just fly to Mordor from the beginning isn’t a plot hole because Sauron is a giant eyeball on a tower. He would see them coming from miles away and would have destroyed them all if they attempted that. The eagles could only fly there after he was destroyed.

[danieandflars]

describe your dnd characters in the worst way possible

[unwinona]

pink rage gigolo

[missvulpix212]

Drow Ranger: Nautical version

[oswednesday]

gay and from hell

[caramelcrow]

wolf who stabs

[vakariasdragon]

bird that accidentally read a book of power

[thebibliosphere]

Uses lute like a melee weapon.

[naamahdarling]

Aunt Carol is here.

[comternet]

It’s Another Cat Girl

[kaijutegu]

knife rabbit

[neonprotagonist]

alice in wonderland but a gay bitch

[bybobbysbeard]

a boulder that found god

[bloodravyn]

Booty shorts that say “God won’t let me die” on the ass.

[teme-xuha]

Literal Rainbow Gay