Untitled

[crownthorns]

Parallel Lives: Lyanna Stark and Sansa & Arya Stark

Seed is strong: Long face, grey eyes and dark hair, features she shares with her brothers, and are typical among the Starks. Arya shares the same characteristics, along with her brother Jon. Her other siblings look more like their mother and her Tully roots. Arya is even nicknamed ‘horseface’ and reminds her father of Lyanna.

Personality: Headstrong, courageous and hot-tempered. Lyanna was a keen horse-woman, and loved to sword fight with her brothers. Arya is a tomboy, and would rather fight with her brothers than do needlework with her sister Sansa. She becomes an accomplished fighter and rider. Her fierceness and determination, reminded Ned of Lyanna.

Brotherly Love. Lyanna was close to her brothers. Her brother Brandon, stormed king’s landing, demanding her release and her brother Eddard searched for her, and when he found her he promised to keep her final secret safe. Arya was close to her bastard brother Jon, who gave her a sword, Needle, her most prized possession. When her brother Robb was killed, she swore she would kill Walder Frey for betraying her family.

Beauty: Lyanna was considered a beauty and won the admiration of Robert Baratheon and Rhaegar Targaryen. Many remember her even years later for her ‘wild beauty’. Sansa is considered beautiful, and is admired by various men including the Hound and Littlefinger. Arya has grown into her looks, and having once been mistaken for a boy, now receives compliments on her appearance.

Unwanted attention: Robert Baratheon loved Lyanna, but Eddard claimed he was only infatuated by her beauty and was unaware of ‘the iron underneath’. Robert hoped to marry Lyanna. Lyanna did not believe the marriage would be strong enough to prevent his infidelities. Rhaegar Targaryen also admired her even though he was married. He was said to have taken her by force and raped her. Sansa’s beauty is admired by Littlefinger, who kisses her without her consent. The Hound ‘stole a kiss’ from her. She is also nearly raped by Lysa’s musician Marillion.

Tourney and the rose. Lyanna was presented with a crown of blue roses by the victor Rhaegar Targaryen at the Tourney at Harrenhal. Sansa was given a single red rose by Loras Tyrell, who offered his victory to the Hound at the Tourney of the Hand.

Crown Prince: Prince Rhaegar, next in line to the throne, fell in love with Lyanna, and crowned her the Queen of Beauty during the tourney of Harrenhal, rather than his actual queen, Elia. Sansa was betrothed to Prince Joffery, eldest son of King Robert Baratheon.

Escape: Lyanna was supposedly kidnapped by Rhaegar Targaryen. The Hound offered to take Sansa away during the Battle of Blackwater, but she eventually escaped along with Littlefinger. Arya was taken from King’s Landing by Yoren under the guise of a boy. Arya was later kidnapped by The Hound from The Brotherhood without Banners.

Family Loss. During her lifetime, Lyanna lost her father and brother, when they were killed by King Aerys. Sansa and Arya lost their father, killed by King Joffery, and their mother and brother killed on the orders of the Lannisters.

Illustrations by Elia Fernandez

[gailynovelry]

You know those aesthetic image posts that float around tumblr? I'm . . . starting to see a lot on my dash that are obviously ai-generated. Are non-artists having trouble telling the difference between AI images and real photos, or are people starting to stop care about the stolen art that gets fed into those programs?

[wolven-skull]

I have no actual art training, so I want it known that if I ever DO reblog some ai stuff please let me know. It was unintentional and I would like to know. Thanks~

[gailynovelry]

Yeah, I figure this is the case for most people. I’m going to put up a guide to spotting AI images after work!

[gailynovelry]

I think people know by now how to tell if an image of a person is AI-generated. Count the fingers, count the knuckles, check the pupils, yadda yadda. I've seen several posts circulating about what to look for. However, I think people are a LOT less educated about backgrounds, and about the specific distinctions between human error and AI error. So that's what I'm going to cover.

Now, don't feel bad if you've reblogged or liked any of the images I'm about to show you guys. This is just what's crossed my blog, so it's what I have to work with. (Actually, thanks for providing the examples!)

I also generated a few images from crAIyon purely for demonstrational purposes, because I didn't have anything on-hand to show my thoughts.

Firstly — Keep in mind that AI has a difficult time replicating "simple" styles. Think colorless line-drawings, cartoony pieces with thick lines, and pixel art.

Looks unsettling, right?

Why is this? Well, when a human makes art, we're more prone to under-detailing by mistake than over-detailing, because adding detail in the first place place is more effort. A skilled artist should be good able to capture an idea with minimal, evocative shape language.

But when an AI makes art, it is the opposite. An AI doesn't understand what it's looking at, not in the way that you or I do. All it can do is search for and replicate patterns in the noise of pixels. As a result, it is prone to mushing together features in ways that a human artist . . . wouldn't intentionally think to do.

It also over-details, replicating what it knows over and over again because it doesn't know when it's supposed to stop. Blank spaces can confuse it! It likes having detail to work with! Detail Is Data!

Again, this is why we count fingers.

These general principles still apply when we're looking at styles that an AI is better equipped to imitate. So . . .

Secondly — AI's tendency to over-render details makes it easier for it to pick up heavily detailed styles, especially if the style will still hold up when certain details are indistinct or merge together unexpectedly.

Scrutinize images that utilize a painterly, heavily-rendered, or photo-realistic style. Such as this one.

Thirdly — An AI piece that looks pretty good from a distance falls apart up close.

The above image looks almost like a photograph, but there is architecture here that you wouldn't find in a real room, and mistakes that you wouldn't find in the work of an artist that is THIS good at rendering. Or most beginner artists, even.

Can you see what falls apart here? Hint; we're counting fingers again.

Check the window panes. Isn't the angle that they all meet up at a little off? Why are the panes sized so inconsistently? Why doesn't the view outside of them all line up into a cohesive background?

Count the furniture legs. Why does the farther-back case have a third leg? Why does the leg on the closer case vanish so strangely behind the flowery details?

Examine the curtain(?) fabric at the top of the window. What on earth IS that frilly stuff?

Another mistake that AI will make is drawing lines and merging details that a human artist would never think of as connected. See the lines crawling up the walls? See how some of the flower petals glop together at hard angles in some places? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

You can see more strange architecture in the outdoor setting of this image.

A lot of the AI's mistakes are almost art nouveau! We recognize that buildings are consistently angular, for stability reasons. An AI does not. (Also look at the trees in the background, and how they tend to warp and distort around the outline of the treehouse. They kinda melt into each other at some points. It's wild.)

Fourthly — An AI will replicate any carelessness that was introduced into its original data set.

Obviously, this means that AIs will make fake watermarks, but everybody already knows that. What I need you guys to look out for is something else. It's called artifacting.

Artifacting is defined as "the introduction of a visible or audible anomaly during the processing or transmission of digital data." To put it in layman's terms, you know how an image gets crunchy and pixelated if you save it as a jpg? Yeah. That. An AI with lots of crusty, crunchy jpgs fed into it will produce crunchy images.

Look at the floor at the bottom of our original example image;

See the speckles all along the glass panels, table legs, and flowers in shadow? Artifacted to hell and back! This shit is crunchier than my spine after spending half a day hunched over my laptop.

Again, legitimate art and photography may have artifacting too just because of file formatting reasons. But most artists don't intentionally artifact their own images, and furthermore, the artifacting will not be baked into the very composition of the image itself. The speckles will instead gather most notably on flat colors at the border of different color patches and/or outlines.

Cronchy memes; funny. Cronchy AI art; shitty jpg art theft caught red-handed.

That's probably all the lessons I can impart in one post. Class dismissed! As homework a bonus, consider these two sister images to our original flower room. Can you spot any signs of AI generation?

@wolven-writer I hope this helps!

[shoomlah]

after eight years, I finally updated my huge Historical Fashion Reference & Resources Doc! Now in the form of a MUCH more easily updated Google Doc with better organization, refreshed links, and five more pages of books and online resources.

I know tumblr hates links, but it’s worth it for a doc that I can now update with far more regularity going forward! RIP to the original, you did your duty for far longer than you should have. 😔🙏🏼

[lamaery]

👀

[shoomlah]

after eight years, I finally updated my huge Historical Fashion Reference & Resources Doc! Now in the form of a MUCH more easily updated Google Doc with better organization, refreshed links, and five more pages of books and online resources.

I know tumblr hates links, but it’s worth it for a doc that I can now update with far more regularity going forward! RIP to the original, you did your duty for far longer than you should have. 😔🙏🏼

[shoomlah]

Claire's fancy-pants HISTORICAL FASHION MASTER POST

DON’T REBLOG THIS VERSION I MADE A BETTER ONE

Keep reading

[lamaery]

More Avatar stuff… mostly sketchbook scribbles and a silly Sokka x Zuko on a unicorn (+ kilt) request for a friend. 

[lamaery]

Promise The colours of the stormlight illustration I am working on at the moment reminded me a bit of another fanart I did yeeeeears ago. So I clicked my way through some through my fanart folder and there are a few pictures that are older than my Tumblr account but have a lot I still like about them. Hence I want to take you on a little nostalgia fandom trip… :)

[dracofidus-deactivated20200523]

Hey, dumb American question here. Every UK person I have ever met hates Margaret Thatcher. Why? What terrible thing did she do to piss off that many people for so long?

Where do I fucking start?

So, Thatcher was the bane of the working classes, and much of what she did still has repercussions to this day. So, in no particular order, just in the order I remember them, here are some things she did that pissed us off - 

•In 1989 she introduced this thing called the “Community Charge” but which everyone calls the “Poll Tax” which replaced an older system in which your tax payment was based on the rental value of your home. This new tax meant that people living in one bedroom flats would pay the same as a billionaire living in a mansion. Obviously, the rich loved it, everyone else… not so much. So there were riots (video of news about the riots) - There were lots of riots in the Thatcher years, and they were all notable for the extreme levels of police brutality.

(photo, poll tax protest in Trafalgar Square, 1990)

•Then there was her war on industry. There was a lot of inflation when she came to power, so she instituted anti-inflationary measures. All well and good… except not the way she did it. She closed many government controlled industries, most famously steel and coal. The amount spent on public industries dropped by 38% under Thatcher. The coal miners went on strike, for almost a year, but in the end, the pits were still closed, and 64,000 people lost their jobs. Unemployment rates soared in industrial areas, and inequality between these (generally northern or welsh) areas and the rest of the UK is still there. During the strike there were numerous violent clashes with the police at picket lines which were widely televised. As a memoir from one miner attests: “I saw a police officer with a fire extinguisher in his hand, bashing a lad in the back. I tried to get closer to note down the officer’s number but they were wearing black boilersuits with no numbers. The next thing I knew, a police officer struck me from behind. I was coming in and out of consciousness as I was dragged across the road into an alleyway. They blocked off the alley and beat another lad and me with sticks until I was unconscious.” (I can’t post the whole thing it’s too long, but read it in the Guardian) Images such as this swept the country, turning many people against Thatcher -

And after it was all over people felt Thatcher had lied, saying she wanted to close only 20 pits, when in the end, 75 were closed down.

• Inequality soared whilst she was prime minister. There is a thing called the gini coefficient, it is the most common method of measuring inequality. Under gini, a score of one would be a completely unequal society; zero would be completely equal. Britain’s gini score went up from 0.253 to 0.339 by the time Thatcher resigned.

•During her time as prime minister the notorious ‘Section 28′ was published. It stated: A local authority shall not (a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; (b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. - Section 28 wasn’t repealed until 2003.

• She introduced the Right To Buy scheme, which allowed people to buy their council houses for a very low price, which, at first glance, seems like a great idea, allowing people who normally wouldn’t be able to afford their own home to have one - however, loads of people have entered the scheme and now we have far too little social housing, meaning there has been a sharp rise in homelessness.

• The Battle of the Beanfield was a clash between hippies and police near Stonehenge in 1985. 1300 police officers converged on a convoy of 600 new age travellers who were heading to Stonehenge to set up a free festival in violation of a high court order. Again, there was an insane amount of police brutality, and 16 travellers were hospitalised, 573 people were arrested (one of the biggest mass arrests in UK history) - “Pregnant women were clubbed with truncheons, as were those holding babies. The journalist Nick Davies, then working for The Observer, saw the violence. ‘They were like flies around rotten meat,’ he wrote, ‘and there was no question of trying to make a lawful arrest. They crawled all over, truncheons flailing, hitting anybody they could reach. It was extremely violent and very sickening.’” (source) - Once everyone was arrested, the empty vehicles, which were in many cases the only homes the travellers had “were then systematically smashed to pieces and several were set on fire. Seven healthy dogs belonging to the Travellers were put down by officers from the RSPCA.” (source same as above)

Most of the charges were dismissed in court after Lord Cardigan, who had tagged along with them to see what would happen, testified on behalf of the travellers against the police. 

•Her removal of Irish dissidents right to be placed in a category that essentially made them political prisoners instead of merely criminals led to a hunger strike that ended in 10 deaths, including that of Bobby Sands, who was elected from his prison cell, reflecting the immense national, and international support for Irish nationalists. Thatchers lack of sympathy, or even empathy led to her becoming even more of a hate figure.

• She presided over a rapid deregulation of the banks, which ultimately led to much of the problems during britains 2007-2012 financial crash many years later.

• She took free milk from school children, which, though not as serious as anything else listed here, directly affected every child in the UK and was very unpopular, leading her to get the nickname “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher”, which is still used today.

• Oh… and she supported Apartheid and called Mandela a terrorist.

This is nowhere near everything she’s done that pisses people off, but I hope it goes some way to explaining why when she died “ding dong the witch is dead” became number one in the UK charts, people partied in the streets, and people protested her (State funded) funeral. She is a decisive figure, some people in the UK do actually love her. I do not. She decimated the UK’s industrial heartland, she caused mass unemployment and the destruction of much of working class culture, she was cavalier in her financial policies and increased inequality by staggering levels, she approved serious police brutality and attempted to destroy the culture of unions in this country.  I fundamentally disagree with all she stood for and it angers me that her mistakes are still affecting this country and the people who live in it. And I am VERY angry that the current government are spending £50 million on a museum about her.

[imbackbaybee]

Regarding selling off social housing, it was specifically that the income that local authorities generated from doing so was not allowed to be reinvested in acquiring new social housing. And no extra budget was allocated to cover building new social housing. The aim was clearly to create a social housing shortage as a twisted way of “motivating” people to stop being poor.

Great post. I hate seeing US feminists praising Thatcher, and I’ve seen it a lot.

Let’s not forget how she made repeated attempts to get Britain’s most prolific sex offender Jimmy Savile a knighthood, gave him free rein to do whatever the hell he liked at Stoke Mandeville hospital (including running it into the ground, making himself indispensable there, and oh yeah, abusing scores of patients), as well has having a close friendship with him. This is all in spite of the fact that rumours about him were going around even back then, and on a related note, she actually knew of the abuse accusations against many of her ministers and let them go free despite this.

A feminist? Pah! She actually said, “The feminists hate me, don’t they? And I don’t blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison.” (and if for some reason you don’t trust that article, just google that quote). She also said that “the battle for women’s rights has largely been won. I owe nothing to women’s lib”, and whilst being PM for 11 years, she only ever appointed one woman, Baroness Young. As this article says, she basically “refused to accept that the majority of women do not have the privilege she had, in other words a rich partner, and lots of childcare provision.” In terms of feminism, she hated any woman who wasn’t financially well off, able-bodied, cishet, white, neurotypical (as you can see in this article), and basically, like her. Great feminism.

She also played a huge part in making Rupert Murdoch the hugely powerful man he is today (and consequently, making the British press so unreliable, ridiculous, and downright dangerous), and it seems she also used this connection to help giver herself more “sunshine headlines” (read: favourable).

I could go on but I feel like I’ve been at this for a while. OP has done a great job in summarising most of the main reasons she’s so hated. I’ve added a number of other important ones here too, but to be honest, just look at any reasonably credible article about her. If it seems positive, then google the topics at hand, and I guarantee there will be the flip side, often explained with a more socially conscious approach.

If you want proof of the bigoted, unrepresentative establishment’s continuing hold on Britain and our politics, just take a look at Thatcher, and take a look at those who praise her to the skies.

[bitchmael]

This is a great post, all I really want to add is that Section 28 (which was a hateful enough piece of legislation anyway) was introduced during the AIDS crisis, & homophobia was very much on the rise at the time.

It’s also worth looking up the controversy surrounding the sinking of the General Belgrano, which killed 323 people. during the Falklands War (Thatcher’s response on hearing of it was “Just rejoice at that news”)

[assassinregrets]

she supported pinochet both politically and personally and i hope she burns for 10,000 screaming years of agony

[twistsofsilver]

My favourite piece of London graffiti (since been removed, I believe) was on the line coming up from south London to London Bridge station:

“The witch is dead but the spell remains.”

It’s tragically true in the UK.

[earhartsease]

Elvis Costello said it well - she was a monster and I’d happily piss on her grave.

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

OP talks about a lot of disparate things but doesn’t really tie them together. Thatcher did hundreds of awful things and this doesn’t talk about the horrific things she did in Northern Ireland enough (we are talking children being killed with rubber bullets).

However, the real reason people hate Thatcher is because she tried to break working class class consciousness in the UK, and arguably destroyed the UK’s social democratic ‘Post war consensus’.

The destruction of nationalised industries, selling off of council housing, breaking the power of the unions - all of this aimed to break the idea of a working class which were ‘looked after’ by the state.

And the thing is she succeeded-she dragged Britain drastically to the right, and everything that has come after, from the Iraq war to austerity to asylum seekers dying in the back of lorries to Boris fucking Johnson can be blamed on that.

Thatcher broke this country and we never recovered and that’s why we hate her.

[callmestannismaybe]

[upsettingandunfortunateclasshate]

Great contributions, everyone

Thatcher should have been assassinated, it’s that simple.

[m7angela]

finally sketched the wise girl :’)

a companion piece to percy sketches~!

[pururin]

[nateswinehart]

Ha ha seriously tho.

[kitsiinabox]

[nateswinehart]

[anightvaleintern-blog1]

I needed to hear this right now. <3

[marqweabyss]

My new favorite post.

[blueandbluer]

As someone who finished her undergrad at 40, I feel this later update. Take your time. Progress made at any speed is progress.

[captainpikeachu]

It is really strange to me when I see posts and fics that make Andy seem just distant and “civil” to Booker post-film if he were to return to the group for any reason before the 100 years are up. Because there is nothing presented in canon that would make Andy act that way.

Yes Booker betrayed them, and of course Andy is more than justified to be angry at him but the scenes we see of them post-betrayal is not of Andy being all angry and distant. It makes no sense for anyone to claim or write that Andy’s somehow now not particularly caring about Booker or treating him like an outsider.

She literally looks to him with sadness and concern.

She has to take a breath before telling him about the 100 year sentence before she knows it means she will be gone by the time he returns to them. And THAT HURTS HER.

DOES THIS LOOK LIKE THE FACE OF A WOMAN WHO IS JUST NOW GONNA BE “CIVIL” TO THE PERSON SHE’S LOOKING AT???

She literally has to fight back her emotions before telling Booker that she will miss him. You don’t say you’re gonna miss someone and then somehow be angry or just simply “civil” when they return to you sooner than expected!

LOOK AT HER FACE. LOOK AT THE EMOTIONS.

She literally had to forcibly wretch herself away from him, because if she didn’t, she would have probably held onto him forever because SHE DOESN’T WANT TO LEAVE HIM ALONE.

And even when she knows she has to leave, when it could mean this is their last time together, she still chooses to tell him “have a little faith, Book”

I’m sorry but there is no universe where Booker’s return to the group while Andy is alive doesn’t end with another tight hug and a very very happy Andy.

Because quite frankly, she has already forgiven him. 

From the moment he was explaining things to her, she realized why he did it and what little parts she played in contributing to his line of thinking. 

If that is not the pain and disappointment of a parent who realizes that what their child had done wrong while thinking that they were helping the parent, then I don’t know what else it is.

She was angry and betrayed before, but once Booker explained, she realized how his thinking, while well-intentioned, clearly went off the rails. She realizes that his actions aren’t out of malice but out of this misunderstanding, this miscommunication between them.

And we know Andy values their relationship in a special way. 

They share the “misery loves company” way of thinking.

They both see this life as a “shitty game” and she needs him with her.

It’s them together, now and always.

When she realized this miscommunication between them, she is also realizing that she in part led him down the wrong way of thinking about their immortal life, that she was role-modeling the wrong things.

It’s why when Booker tells them to leave him behind, she says this:

Andy learned that what she was doing wasn’t living, and she realizes that she had inadvertently pulled Booker into this with her, and enabled the misery and pain, not realizing that Booker was taking all the wrong indications about it.

And here in this moment, she is trying to teach Booker the right way. She is passing onto him what she learned. She realizes what she had been role modeling for him wasn’t right and she is trying to fix it.

Andy knows that Booker, whether consciously or unconsciously, follows her lead, they have a special connection.

And she knows that she can’t fix everything for him, but she can do what little she is able to do.

Nile taught her about her purpose and hope, and even in the last moment standing with Booker, Andy is trying to impart that hope to Booker, doing what she can in her “mentor” role to set him on the right path. To show him to have a little faith in life, that not everything in the world is shitty and dark and misery as she might have led him to believe.

And as I was saying before, the Andy who left Booker standing by the water would welcome him back with open arms if such a reunion were to happen. She would not be cold or distant or angry or just civil. 

She would hug him tightly and hope that he finally found the right path, just as she had.

[itspileofgoodthings]

I know that Peter’s Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy technically has flaws but also....it doesn’t. It’s perfect.

[byjoveimbeinghumble]

‘Are these magic cloaks?’ asked Pippin, looking at them. with wonder.

‘I do not know what you mean by that,’ answered the leader of the Elves. ‘They are fair garments, and the web is good, for it was made in this land. They are Elvish robes certainly, if that is what you mean. Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lorien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”

- Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 8: Farewell to Lorien

This is how I think of Jackson’s movies. Yes, there are serious flaws - Gandalf’s de-powering, Gimli as comic relief, and Faramir, namely - but come on.

Remember when the guys making their chain mail invented a new method for quickly producing large amounts of it by hand? Remember Miranda Otto walking down the street, practicing sword positions? The guys who forged all of the swords - for leads and for extras? The men and women riders who volunteered to be riders of Rohan? The costume designers who designed the inside of Theoden’s armor (which no one would ever see) so beautifully that Bernard Hill said he felt like a king? The friendships between the cast, and their size doubles, and the stuntmen?

When they made that movie, they put all that they loved into all that they made.

[melusinemuse]

#just hundreds of people who went ‘sure let me try this’ #and they made something breathtaking #and then they made it 12 more times in different sizes ( @byjoveimbeinghumble​ )

[phoxxent]

Wait tell me more about that chainmail thing

[byjoveimbeinghumble]

“Kaynemaile has worked tirelessly to perfect the material science behind beautiful architectural mesh, collaborating with architects and designers on projects that embolden urban environments with positive buildings. The company’s patented polycarbonate mesh, inspired by 2,000-year-old medieval chainmail, was initially created for the armor and weapons seen in the The Lord of The Rings movie trilogy and is now used on major architectural projects around the world.

“The film’s art director and Kaynemaile’s founder Kayne Horsham worked with his team to construct each garment from plastic plumbing tubes, coating them in pure silver. Once filming wrapped, Horsham dedicated himself to creating a change to the liquid state assembly process to mass produce the polycarbonate chainmail for architectural applications — products that were light, but strong enough to protect the interior or exterior of a building. Now an industry-leading manufacturer, Kaynemaile produces mesh for everything from small interior screens to large scale exterior façades. Their mesh is easy to install and can be custom created for specialized applications.”

https://architizer.com/blog/practice/materials/kaynemaile-mesh-facade-systems/

How “Lord of the Rings” Chainmail Was Transformed Into an Innovative Architectural Mesh - Architizer Journal

Kaynemaile's patented mesh façade systems are incredibly lightweight and easy to install while bringing a bold look to any scale building.

[byjoveimbeinghumble]

YOU GUYS

[ultrafacts]

Source

Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

[morwenpost]

That sounds about right for Mythbusters.

[ultrafacts]

[mickeydraws]

- Blendo was put together before Mythbusters was a thing - Blendo was so strong and dangerous (for throwing debris into the audience) that The Boys were asked to withdraw it in exchange for a co champion title - they re-entered Blendo years later when the protective wall was much higher. It was once again asked to be withdrawn for a co champion title for the same reason. - copy cat Blendos started appearing and would tear each other apart - Blendo is in the robot hall of fame - Blendo is too strong and powerful

[rocketverliden]

Blendo cannot be stopped.

[torpidgilliver]

bonus fact: grant imahara also had a competitive robot named deadblow that would just fucking. hammer the shit out of other robots

[xserpx]

“Do that,” Ebenezar called, “and I’ll sink this boat right now.”

“No,” I said, calmly, firmly. I swallowed and faced the old man. “You won’t.”

The old man’s brows furrowed, and the air suddenly became as brittle and jagged as broken glass.

“If I let you do this,” the old man said to me, his voice desperate, “you’re out of the Council. You’re an outlaw. The svartalves won’t care about who hired who. They’ll know you prevented them from having justice. And they’ll kill you for it. It’s the only outcome their worldview will accept. Don’t you see, boy? You’ll be vulnerable, compromised. Mab, and this creature, they’re isolating you. That’s what abusers do.”

My heart broke.

“I think,” I said quietly, “that I’m just about done making my choices based on your mistakes.”

~ Harry Dresden and Ebenezar McCoy, Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

[asoiafuniversity]

ghostwithananxiety​:

Robert should have scoured the isles after Balon Greyjoy rose against him, Cersei thought. He smashed their fleet, burned their towns, and broke their castles, but when he had them on their knees he let them up again. He should have made another island of their skulls. That was what her father would have done, but Robert never had the stomach that a king requires if he hopes to keep peace in the realm. A Feast for Crows, Cersei VII

Joffrey, when your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet. Elsewise no man will ever bend the knee to you. And any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king at all. Aerys never understood that, but you will. When I’ve won your war for you, we will restore the king’s peace and the king’s justice. A Storm of Swords, Tyrion VI

I don’t know if someone noticed this before me, but omg Cersei…

[xserpx]

I opened the envelope. It had one piece of paper in it. On it was written a very large number.

“What is this?” I asked.

“The total of everyone’s medical bills from last summer,” she said, her voice quieter, soberer. “Everyone who got hurt. It’s all paid for.”

I didn’t want to think about the peace talks.

Pain. So much pain.

“What about the funerals?” I asked. My voice was bitter.

Molly was quiet for a long moment before she said, gently, “Those too.”

I bowed my head.

I counted my breaths.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re trying to be kind and I’m just…”

“Don’t,” she said. “It’s supposed to hurt, Harry. I’m glad you hurt. It means you’re still you.”

I looked in the direction of the den, where Maggie and the youngest Carpenter children had fallen asleep watching movies.

“Sometimes,” I said, “I can’t believe how arrogant I am. If it wasn’t for the kid…”

Molly leaned down and rapped me sharply on the crown of the head with one knuckle. I eyed her and scowled. “Hey.”

“Stop it,” she said. “You didn’t choose for things to fall out the way they did. You did everything in your power to stop anyone from being harmed. And you risked an awful lot getting in everyone’s face after the battle. It helped a whole lot of people.”

“People who might not have gotten hurt in the first place if—”

~ Harry Dresden and Molly Carpenter, Christmas Eve by Jim Butcher

It’s interesting rereading this story again after Peace Talks. Aside from this quote, Harry seems very standoffish toward Kringle!Vadderung as well.

But mainly I’m super interested in what Molly says about Harry getting in everyone’s face after the battle. I mean, everyone? Who’s everyone? It sounds like way more people than just Ethniu.

This fits with my current working theory on Peace Talks, which is that instead of peace talks, those first two events were actually war councils, and that while Harry was running around after his brother, various members of the Unseelie Accords were fully intending to start a war with the Fomor. The UA members knew all along that the Fomor wouldn’t follow the Accords – in every short story they’ve been in they’ve been a razor’s edge away from breaking the rules, if straight up ignoring them altogether. It just doesn’t make sense that Marcone would make the mistake of thinking the Fomor had anything but ill intentions on their minds when they called for peace, and so he surely would have had to come up with a contingency or five. My main question is whether they needed Harry out of the way and so set up Thomas’s predicament as a distraction or not.

Hence why Molly offers to pay for the medical bills, because perhaps the Winter Court was partially responsible for what happened during the battle. Because Vadderung shares that responsibility. Because Chicago was never a random choice of venue…

I’m still working on this theory in conjunction with @vicmin​, and it’s a pain because I don’t have a Kindle/ink and paper copy of the book to easily reference. But still, I really feel that Harry isn’t much more than a pawn on everyone else’s chessboard, and they’re all trying to use him in one way or another.