Latest Posts by alcibiadesdildo - Page 3
The Pokemon regions
odysseus absolutely does present a threat to penelope if he perceives her as at all unfaithful, and i feel the unfairness of this, and i think people tend to undersell how much tension at least potentially exists between odysseus and penelope. but i'm also like. his reaction, all speculation aside, his actual reaction in the odyssey to her flirting with the suitors is delight, because he immediately ascertains that she is running a con. sorry that they're so in-sync in spite of the forces that try to drive a wedge between them, including their own misgiving hearts. sorry that they invented homophrosyne ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
mayor of nipton: i cant believe the deal i just made with none other than the legion! we'll have a new ally and the underground business and services i run here will prosper
the nefarious vulpes inculta:
@angstflavoured’s dtiys!! Had a lot of fun with this!
also this teehee
The Witch King's very bad day continues.
Brother Ignatz trying to get out of dish duty by pretending to be a stand of reeds. again.
We had a storage warehouse on our realm already, but I really wanted a space for plant-specific storage for the ten million oak leaves I inevitably need to save for custom trees -- so I built us a greenhouse! I think this might be the largest build I've done yet!!
A couple of things have labels, but for the most part storage spaces are delineated by the plants themselves -- barrels for a particular type of leaf have the corresponding sapling sitting on top, flowerboxes show off what kinds of flowers go in the barrels next to them, etc. I really wanted the space to have practical room to store EVERY PLANT, but to also feel like the primary purposes is growing and enjoying them.
And bonus planning sketches:
it took a LOT of planning -- these are just a few of the sketches I did trying to figure out where everything should go. IT WAS HONESTLY QUITE INTIMIDATING TO SORT OUT, I can't believe it's done!!
Also, a couple shots of the little dirt storage room just b/c I think it turned out nice too:
If you wanna watch me walking through the space (these screenshots don't quite show it all), I streamed a little tour recently over here!
Does your world need more chonky cat statues? The answer is always yes.
[tutorial]
29 / 08 / 2024 🪩💪🏽🌈
this is one of the stupidest things ive ever come up with! 💘
#suggestive #nsfw talk
“a forward-dawning futurity;” ~
“we may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality.” ~ josè esteban muñoz;”cruising utopia” [2009]✨
if you love it, put a leash on it~~
it is a moral imperative to write nasty shit that's a little in poor taste
wanted to draw his scars properly visible since they're always under the clothes. Pretend this is a checkup at the medical office or something
KIP'S BIG POST OF THINGS TO MAKE THE INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY SUCK A LITTLE LESS
Post last updated November 23, 2024. Will continue to update!
Here are my favorite things to use to navigate technology my own way:
A refurbished iPod loaded with Rockbox OS (Rockbox is free, iPods range in price. I linked the site I got mine from. Note that iPods get finicky about syncing and the kind of cord it has— it may still charge but might not recognize the device to sync. Getting an original Apple cord sometimes helps). Rockbox has ports for other MP3 players as well.
This Windows debloater program (there are viable alternatives out there, this one works for me). It has a powershell script that give you a little UI and buttons to press, which I appreciate, as I'm still a bit shy with tech.
Firefox with the following extensions: - Consent-O-Matic (set your responses to ALL privacy/cookie pop-ups in the extension, and it will answer all pop-ups for you. I can see reasons to not use it, but I appreciate it) - Facebook Container ("contains" Meta on Facebook and Instagram pages to keep it from tracking you or getting third party cookies, since Meta is fairly egregious about it) - Redirect Amp to HTML (AMP is designed for mobile phones, this forces pages to go to their HTML version) - A WebP/AVIF image converter - uBlock Origin and uBlacklist, with the AI blacklist loaded in to kill any generative AI results from appearing in search engines or anywhere.
Handbrake for ripping DVDs— I haven’t used this in awhile as I haven’t been making video edits. I used this back when I had a Mac OS
VLC Media Player (ol’ reliable)
Unsplash & Pexels for free-to-use images
A password manager (these often are paid. I use Dashlane. There are many options, feel free to search around and ask for recs!). There is a lot that goes into cybersecurity— find the option you feel is best for you.
Things I suggest:
Understanding Royalty Free and the Creative Commons licenses
Familiarity with boolean operators for searching
Investing in a backup drive and external drive
A few good USBs, including one that has a backup of your OS on it
Adapter cables
Avoiding Fandom “wikias” (as in the brand “Fandom”) and supporting other, fan-run or supported wikis. Consider contributing if its something you find yourself passionate or joyful about.
Finding Forums for the things you like, or creating your own*
Create an email specifically for ads/shopping— use it to receive all promotional emails to keep your inbox clean. Upkeep it.
Stop putting so much of your personal information online— be willing to separate your personal online identity from your “online identity”. You don’t owe people your name, location, pronouns, diagnoses, or any of that. It’s your choice, but be discerning in what you give and why. I recommend avoiding providing your phone number to sites as much as possible.
Be intentional
Ask questions
Talk to people
Remember that you can lurk all you want
Things that are fun to check out:
BBSes-- here's a portal to access them.
Neocities
*Forums-- find some to join, or maybe host your own? The system I was most familiar with was vbulletin.
MMM.page
Things that have worked well for me but might work for you, YMMV:
Limit your app usage time on your smartphone if you’re prone to going back to them— this is a tangible way to “practice mindfulness”, a term I find frustratingly vague ansjdbdj
Things I’m looking into:
The “Pi Hole”— a raspberry pi set up to block all ads on a specific internet connection
VPNs-- this is one that was recommended to me.
How to use computers (I mean it): Resources on how to understand your machine and what you’re doing, even if your skill and knowledge level is currently 0:
This section I'll come back an add to. I know that messing with computers can be intimidating, especially if you feel out of your depth. HTML and regedits and especially things like dualbooting or linux feel impossible. So I want to put things here that explain exactly how the internet and your computer functions, and how you can learn and work with that. Yippee!
I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.
I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.
Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.
I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.
I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.
Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.
I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.
My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.
I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?
No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!
anyways tl;dr on that last post it’s like we’ve reached a point where in popular culture the ancient Greeks are remembered for their mythology and literature (and maybe Athenian democracy) while the Romans are remembered for their patriarchal imperialism, despite the fact that both cultures did plenty of both. and the consequence is that we’ve ended up with a bizarre quasi-gender binary where Greek stuff is for people who like mythology and literature and Roman stuff is for people who like patriarchal imperialism
Plot Like A Eunuch Fuck Like A Emperor
thank u dungeon meshi for the dwarves
how am i supposed to go to work when im literally thinking about The Character
People who hate Frodo Baggins are my enemy. "He didn't do anything and was useless"--yeah, okay, so what you're not understanding is that he was the sacrificial lamb. He endured physical, mental, and emotional torment that got worse and worse as his will broke. Everyone knew this. EVERYONE KNEW THIS. That's why everyone was devastated about it. Because Frodo was the most innocent among them, that was the entire point. He represented ordinary peaceful people being destroyed by the horrors of war. And as a hobbit he also represented some of the last vestiges of magic in what was basically a post magic apocalypse.
Frodo was basically an innocent puppy thrown into the Torment Nexus so that EVERYONE ELSE could maybe have a hope of surviving. And he did that willingly. HE DID IT OF HIS OWN FREE WILL, KNOWING IT WOULD RUIN HIM.
Frodo haters won't see the light of heaven
[guy who doesnt watch shows voice] yeah ive been meaning to watch that show
bingo
Ok, so if Eowyn wants to die in battle to avoid a worse fate at the hands of the enemy, why is it so easy to miss that??? Why does Tolkien misdirect us?
I could write a whole essay on Tolkien’s love of understatement, of meaningful silence, of “glimpses of untold stories,” but let’s focus on Eowyn for now.
Tolkien creates a suffocating bubble of silence around Eowyn. It’s brilliant and horrible and I love it and I hate it.
Faramir tells Eowyn what he thinks about her motives: “You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn…. But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle.” And Eowyn doesn’t correct him! She just looks at him silently. And she declares her love for him during this scene.
Eowyn is often described as “frozen” or “cold,” and it’s clear that she has to hide her true feelings a lot of the time. Tolkien REALLY hits us over the head with the silencing of Eowyn in the Houses of Healing, when all the men are staring at her unconscious body and wondering why she was so unhappy. Eomer is positive that her crush on Aragorn was the problem; Aragorn doesn’t want to take the blame. Finally Gandalf speaks up:
“My friend, you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, being born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours.”
And then he says this:
“My lord, if your sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips, you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?”
Gandalf has just made the most openly feminist statement in the novel (aside from Eowyn and her “burned in the house” speech), but he follows it by saying that Eowyn has private thoughts that he cannot or will not explain. It is up to the men to decide if they want to know more. Eomer is deeply struck by Gandalf’s words and silently rethinks his entire life with Eowyn.
And then Aragorn has a truly infuriating bros-before-hoes moment: he breaks the uncomfortable silence by reassuring Eomer that yeah, maybe Eowyn’s crush on him was actually the problem after all. Just a minute earlier, he had denied responsibility for Eowyn’s despair. But he hates to see his friend, his brother in arms, feeling shamed. So he jumps in to rescue Eomer from his negative emotions. And Eowyn is RIGHT THERE, silent and unable to defend herself.
We already know that Aragorn is reluctant to know more about Eowyn’s problems. During their confrontation in Dunharrow, Aragorn dodges all of Eowyn’s attempts to make him see her point of view.
“A time may come soon,” said he, “when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.”
And she answered: “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honor, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.”
“What do you fear, lady?” he asked.
Neither Aragorn nor Eowyn want to talk about what will happen to her if the enemy wins; this is why there is so much misdirection about Eowyn’s motives! Aragorn glosses over the atrocities that are likely to happen and tells Eowyn she can have a heroic last stand, as a treat. Eowyn is infuriated by his poetic vagueness and spits out this horrifying image of being burned alive—but then she fiercely insists that she is a warrior and fears neither pain nor death. She doesn’t want to perform feminine vulnerability to get Aragorn to listen to her. Eowyn is proud and dignified, which makes it especially painful when she resorts to kneeling and begging Aragorn to let her fight. As she tells Faramir, she desires no man’s pity.
I have to give a shoutout to @balrogballs, who has written about this subject extensively:
The cultural fantasy of the female victim of violence often traps women in an unyielding present tense, positioning them as symbols of sentimentality. These women are objectified and become sites of social intervention, their suffering the focal point of external pity and mourning. The narrative demands their pain be witnessed, but rarely offers a way forward, reducing them to objects for emotional consumption rather than subjects of their own story.
This is exactly what Eowyn is trying to avoid. She wants to be remembered as a hero, not a victim.
Tolkien embroiders this theme very cunningly by having Faramir give Eowyn a cloak that belonged to his mother, Finduilas, who died when he was five. Faramir thinks the cloak is “fitting for the beauty and sadness of Eowyn,” which has a deeper meaning that he probably does not intend. Finduilas is also the name of an elf maiden from the Silmarillion, who was captured by orcs and killed with a spear. In Tolkien’s work, both Finduilases exist mainly to provide tragic backstories for male protagonists. Oh, and Arwen’s name was originally Finduilas as well. To be a Finduilas is to be beautiful and passive, and to die tragically. A fate that Eowyn rages against.
(The Finduilas thing becomes even more absurdly cryptic when you recall that only Tolkien knew about the tragic connotation of the name at the time LotR was published. But he did this kind of thing!!! Recall Elrond and his warning against oaths.)
I have always wondered why Eowyn didn’t challenge Faramir when he informed her that she was suicidal because of Aragorn. Perhaps she simply wanted to put the whole nightmare behind her.
But the most painful silence, to me, involves Theoden. Gandalf reveals that Wormtongue was planning to rape Eowyn, and Theoden says nothing. Eomer grabs his sword and has to be restrained from killing Wormtongue, but Theoden actually offers Wormtongue a second chance to prove his loyalty:
"Do you hear this, Wormtongue?" said Theoden. "This is your choice: to ride with me to war, and let us see in battle whether you are true; or to go now, whither you will. But then, if ever we meet again, I shall not be merciful."
This betrayal of Eowyn happens so fast that it is easy to miss. None of the characters comment on it, and the narrative moves on. There’s something horribly realistic about a powerful man with a beloved image casually offering a second chance to a sexual predator and everyone, including the reader, being unable to process what is happening.
The silences in Eowyn’s story come from the male characters and from Eowyn herself. Theoden and Aragorn want to avoid talking about the type of violence that threatens her, and they ignore her desires. Eowyn doesn’t want to be trauma porn; she resents having to explain herself. And this silence offers readers the freedom to empathize with her, like Eomer, or to fall back on sexist explanations, like Aragorn.
I’ve been obsessed with this tweet for a while so I’m posting the it to tumblr to inflict it on more people
It’s easy to forget JRR Tolkien was a fairly prolific academic translator with an interest in early medieval literature and philology. It’s so inspiring that he found time to write The Hobbit while fighting for his life over Beowulf.
It's always so weird to come down from the biology heavens to see what the average person believes about animals, plants, ecosystems, just the world around them. I don't even mean things that one simply doesn't know because they've never been told or things that are confusing, I'm talking about people who genuinely do not see insects as animals. What are you saying. Every time I see a crawling or fluttering little guy I know that little guy has motivations and drive to fulfill those motivations. There are gears turning in their head! They are perceiving this world and they are drawing conclusions, they are conscious. And yet it's still a whole thing if various bugs of the world feel pain or if they are simply Instinct Machines that are Not Truly Aware of Anything At All????? Help!!!!!! How can you look at a little guy and think he is just the macroscopic animal version of a virus
I’m sorry but poly ships are just inherently better
