#figured I might as well post it even if its outdated

[spicyraeman]

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ Virranan Galanodel He/She/They | Half Wood-Elf | Urchin | Gloom Stalker

#bg3 #bg3 tav #oc: virranan #had this done forever ago #figured I might as well post it even if its outdated #since I spent so much time on it #my art

[penny-anna]

while im talking about the Elagabalus thing, while i was refreshing my knowledge i ran into this little tidbit that i'd forgotten about!

SO the source for the oft-cited claim that Elagabalus wanted a vaginoplasty is Cassius Dio. If you look up Dio on the subject you might notice that the reference in question actually appears twice within a couple of paragraphs:

He carried his lewdness to such a point that he asked the physicians to contrive a woman's vagina in his body by means of an incision, promising them large sums for doing so.

& then shortly thereafter:

Avitus [Elagabalus], according to Dio, besought his physician to employ his skill to make him bisexual by means of an anterior incision.

(both excerpts from the Loeb Classical Library edition translated by Earnest Clary which you can read online (free & legal!) here.)

What's happening here is that, unfortunately, Dio's history of Rome doesn't actually exist anymore in its original form. The text as we have it is cobbled together from a number of summaries by later writers & some fragments. Occasionally we have different versions of the same passage that disagree as to what Dio actually said and translations opt to include both versions.* There's an introduction to the Loeb edition with more information that you can read here.**

in this instance it seems to me that there's a couple of possible explanations for the disagreement:

Dio just said that Elagabalus wanted a vagina and the author of the 2nd fragment assumed this meant 'as well as' rather than 'instead of' a penis.

Dio did say that Elagabalus wanted to be 'bisexual'*** and the author of the first fragment skipped over it; or

both authors are misrepresenting what Dio actually said.

There's 2 major takeaways from this IMO:

1: Not only do we not know for certain whether the claim that Elagabalus wanted a vagina is actually true, we don't even know what the primary source actually said about it.

2: the second variation on the claim implies that Elagabalus's end goal was to have both a penis & a vagina. this is, obviously, not very cisgender behaviour, but it also strikes me as potentially implying that Elagabalus might have been (in modern terminology) bigender or genderfluid. Which is, ofc, assuming that the claim has any truth to it, but if we're going to take it at face value then IMO we do need to acknowledge that it doesn't unambiguously indicate that Elagabalus was a binary trans woman.

Anyway I just think the discrepancy here is interesting on a couple of different levels and also serves to illustrate the difficulty of making any definitive claims on the subject!

-

*I did actually make an attempt to figure out where each bit comes from. The first variation is from the works of Zonarus who is one of our major sources on Dio. I can't figure out the citation on the second variation and, tbph, there's only so much research I'm willing to do for a tumblr post.

**If you've clicked the link and skimmed over it like 'wow this is really dry & tedious'. yeah. :(

***(I can't read Greek well enough to say what word is used here. The translation is from 1927 and is presumably using 'bisexual' as an outdated way of saying 'both sexes'. If anyone knows what the Greek text actually says please let me know, I'd be interested!)

[miserymet]

Bit hesitant about posting this because it’s really old, but I feel it’s worth the minor embarrassment to:

1. Have actually writing on my blog because yes I do that sometimes

and,

2. Showcase how the Reploid AU is essentially about two different versions of Bass, largely dictated by circumstance

So if you are interested in how Bass recovers his memory in my Reploid Bass AU, I hope you enjoy this drabble I wrote over a year ago.

-

It’s a bit like death, he thinks.

Forte’s mind has always been a mess, it’s something he’s come to terms with. An outdated master system combined with far too advanced processors? It was a recipe for disaster. So when he’s awoken from his respite and suddenly faced with his own datascape, he’s less surprised than he should be. He knows this place. It’s where he goes when everyone else is dreaming. The center of his mind, where his every thought, his every feeling, is easily accessible.

But why is he here, and not awake? The procedure required that he was completely shut off. His every system in stasis. If it’s over, why isn’t he in the real world? Why isn’t he operating already? Forte looks around the empty space. Code fills his senses, white noise buzzing around him. An unrelenting dread fills his metal bones. Either the procedure failed, or…

Or he’s dead.

The old Forte.

There’s nothing to recover, is there? He’s going to be like this forever, stuck in this horrible limbo of past and present. Trapped in his ignorance, trapped in his mind-!

“No.”

Forte stops. His fears flees him, leaving him empty. That voice is…

“Mine. It’s mine.”

A low whistle punctuates his words, but he doesn’t make a sound.

“Sure is, Forte.” A chuckle. “Glad you like the name. I didn’t.”

Forte turns to find a lone figure at the edge of his consciousness. A figure he recognizes, though they’ve never looked so pristine. His old body looks at him, sans all the damage it once bore so nobly. Now it is a shiny black, with only a few thin scratches across its surface. The face it wears is rounder, the eyes softer. It’s him. His former self.

He should feel glad, right? This is what he wanted?

It still feels like death, somehow. 

“What is your name?”

“Our name was Bass.” A distinct correction. “And it was well known.”

“It worked, then? We remember?”

“I remember. You don’t. That’s because you’re not ready to accept me.”

“I am! I’ve wanted this for-!”

“You don’t know what THIS is!” Bass glares at him. “Even if you did, I’m not ready to accept you either. So give me the chance to explain before you make up your mind.”

Forte nods, though he doubts his former self needed the permission.

“I’ll rip the bandaid off quickly. We can’t both exist, Forte. Not at once.” He crosses his arms. “You want your old memories? You have to accept all of them. Not just the data, the routines too. It’ll be a complete recovery. A rewrite, to put it all back to the way it was.”

“Ego death.”

“For you, if you choose it.”

“If I don’t?”

“Then I die, and you forget. Permanently this time.”

“…my brother is dead. I’m a second rate hunter with a third rate system. I do not belong here anymore.”

“And I do? I haven’t had the privilege of rooting through your memories, but the log says we’re a hundred years in the future. I doubt we’d recognize the place.” Bass scoffs. “I don’t know anything about your world. I’m going to be even more displaced than you are.”

“Will you keep my data? Even if you cannot understand it?”

“…the memory. I’ll remember what and why, but my routines might not understand the decisions you made. You’ll wake up a stranger.”

“Why are we so different? Aren’t we the same robot?”

“We lost some things in the update. Certain protocol was rendered useless. Like you stopped recognizing your commands.” Bass pauses, a look of uncertainty crossing his face. “No, like you stopped recognizing who the commands referred to. They gave names, names you don’t recognize. His name is lost to you. So…”

“His?”

“Our purpose. The very reason we exist. You forgot him like it was nothing.”

“Z-,” he stops. He knows that name, so his purpose is something other than that. “Who?”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ll die easier if you let go of that.” Bass looks away. “Im scared, you know. Of the future. I remember how we died. The moments before. We expected to walk away that day. We expected to live. To move on. Go home. He took that from us.”

“He?”

“The man that lingers in your mind. I know him. I hate him. He loves you.”

“Loves me?”

“What are you, an echo?” Bass scoffs with more vigor this time. “We were proud, once. We stood tall and fought tooth and nail against all that challenged us. We were the strongest. You aren’t. You’re a coward. You’re weak.”

“I’m afraid too.” Forte closes his eyes. “I don’t want to disappear.”

“Then go. Go back.” Bass whispers. “I would’ve, if I knew. I was just about to…I was going to be something different. I was going to make a choice. A GOOD one, this time. I was going to…”

Forte blinks at his old self. “What? What were you going to do?”

“Have a family. A real one this time, one that would’ve cared about me. One that would give me a chance. But…”

“We died.”

“Yeah. Didn’t realize how bad I wanted it until it slipped from my hands. Until I was laying there, ripped to shreds, praying for someone to save me.”

“No one did, did they?”

“I wonder if they looked for me. I wonder if they thought I had run off. Like a coward.”

“There’s someone waiting for us. For you, out there. Go to him.” Forte takes a step forward. “He needs a friend and…I cannot do that for him. Not anymore.”

“Coward.”

“Yes.” He takes a deep, synthetic breath. “I’m ready, I think.”

“I’m not. But I’ll do it. I’m curious, anyway.”

#mega man #megaman #megaman au #megaman classic #mega man x #megaman x #rockman #bass megaman #megaman bass #bass #reploid bass au #My main gripe about this is that Bass feels a bit too ooc for my tastes #But too be fair I wrote this in my notes app with no intention of ever posting it #I was going for a feeling

[butch-reidentified]

hi. i saw some of your posts where you mention being a psychopath (or having psychopathic tendencies, i’m not sure what the correct terminology is) and i’m curious. i know someone being a psychopath doesn’t inherently make them evil or bad, but i’ve never known anyone, irl or online who was one. i have some questions.

1. what is the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath?

2. what makes someone a psychopath? are they born like that?

3. is being a pyschopath something you are diagnosed with? how do you know you are one?

4. you’ve mentioned on here that you have a wife. do you feel love? what does love mean to you?

i’m sorry if any of this is too personal. i don’t mean this to be rude, i’m just curious. i have done some research on this before but i’d like to hear what an actual psychopath has to say about it.

hi anon! don't be sorry - the whole point of me posting about it (which I honestly did not think would go this well lmao) is to educate and counter the absolutely rampant misinformation out there. this site is a pretty good resource working with actual researchers and clinicians. where I disagree with them is the classification of psychopathy as a mental disorder.

as I said in that post, I think it's a natural variation within the population that serves its own purpose.

the term itself is somewhat controversial for multiple reasons. one is the obvious: it's highly stigmatized and media representation is utterly absurd cartoon villain type shit. this does not bother me, but I have heard other people say it bothers them. regardless, I think it's a really interesting topic, which is why I want to talk about it and engage with others. the second reason the term is a bit complicated is this: outside of the actual field, barely anyone knows what it means or how it compares to "sociopath" or to the ASPD diagnosis. Psychopathy and ASPD are commonly believed to be the same; this is a misconception based on outdated information - the website I linked discusses this a bit.

1. sociopath isn't a clinical term. it means whatever the person using it wants it to mean. psychopathy on the other hand is a clinical term (but not a diagnosis!) which refers to a specific set of personality traits. Psychopathy is very much a spectrum. sort of in the way autism is, in that some people are very high in 1 psychopathic trait and low in others, another person might be high in a different 1 or 2 traits, etc. I am much higher on boldness than disinhibition, for instance, where my wife is the opposite.

2. this is a veeery debated topic. some people use the categorization of primary (born with it) vs secondary (comes from extreme abuse/trauma/etc) psychopathy. I'm not sure how much I believe in the second one, but I haven't written it off necessarily. I have had distinctively psychopathic traits my entire life. these traits have shifted and changed as I've grown, but only to such a degree, just as anyone's core personality traits do throughout growing up and all of life. The site I linked above has a page on this that is a much better take than that primary/secondary shit.

3. as I said above, no, it's not a diagnosis. and in my view, it's just a way to quickly describe people at one end of the spectrum of human emotionality/empathy/interpersonal relating. in cases like mine, it's pretty obvious to anyone I'm totally open and honest with. I'll give a couple examples.

I don't feel fear - like, at all, not even in life or death situations. I do not remember a time I have felt genuine fear as an emotion. I have felt adrenaline (though my threshold for that is reeeeally high) but the only emotion I ever end up with from that is irritability once it starts wearing off, though I haven't figured out why lmao. I don't know if this is just me or a more typical part of psychopathy, but it's fairly common for me to have the chemical/physiological side of an emotion without the emotional feeling itself - like what I just described with the adrenaline. I do experience anxiety (actually a pretty common comorbidity) sometimes, but it tends to be a very cerebral form of it, and is almost never *about* anything, just there.

I don't usually feel anything when friends or family members die. if they're very important to me, I get a little sad, but it's not very strong or long-lasting. I don't feel anything when other people are in mental or physical pain, even if I have caused it. this doesn't mean I can't care about people, just that it's a conscious decision and doesn't come with emotional attachment. my cognitive empathy is positively excellent.

I was a total nightmare as a kid. I was always always getting in trouble, and roping other kids into my unhinged (and usually dangerous) schemes. I was not always kind to other kids. I tended to manipulate peers who looked up to me for my entertainment when I was really young, but I did correct this behavior because it's not remotely worth it, and because I do make an effort to live as normally as possible and put significant effort into maintaining and adhering to a strict code of ethics (this is very difficult tbqh, but I have a high capacity for self-discipline). I was always getting in fights. I practically lived in the principal's office. I could NOT be told what to do. Punishment had zero impact. My mom wound up on antidepressants (this may have very little or even nothing to do with me, but idk & figured it was worth mentioning in case it was). I'm lucky I didn't get arrested. I realized I was headed that direction mid high school and sorted my shit out.

4. My wife and I love each other in our own way. She feels things a bit more than I do, and she DEFINITELY feels love as an emotion more than I do. But we talk openly about that, and she genuinely accepts me as I am and knows that I love her to the best of my ability, in my own way, and I go to extra efforts to make her feel loved because I'm aware that I can't reciprocate quite what she feels. That said, she is also rather high in psychopathic traits like I mentioned previously, which explains why we bonded initially over the things that we did (things I'd better not specify lol). It also means she really isn't bothered by me not being terribly affectionate, romantic, patient, or just generally any of the things most people want in a partner lmao. I do really try for her though. I definitely consistently form closer connections with other high-psychopathy individuals than anyone else. She rarely uses tumblr but is @psychichologramnightmare if you have any questions for her 😁

as for what love means to me, I think it's pretty individual. there are many components to love as we conceptualize it. love as a concept & love as a literal emotional feeling are sort of different in my mind, I guess.

#mine #ask #anon ask #anon #psychopathy #emotionality

[fitzrove]

Rant vaguely related to my previous rudolf post & academic history (delete later) (WAY too specific)

The way people talk about historical research fields and topics sometimes (online and irl) is honestly Really Stupid aihoådögltslhlgl. In designating "old white men history" (= political, military, macroeconomic...) and white men historical figures obsolete and unworthy of any further study, people are robbing themselves and others around them of greater understanding of phenomena that have real and ongoing consequences/effects upon the present day.

I told a former classmate I was studying abroad for a more varied perspective (instead of the boxed-in provincial narrative you get from just using sources, lit and theories from your home country) and that my new thesis was going to be about a ww2 topic. She made a disgusted face, glibly going "Ah, as if that hasn't been researched enough!". She wouldn't hear me out when I said that my topic actually has real life implications for politics, memory culture and international relations today lol.

To some people, just because a field has been researched a lot (and often with outdated methods, by white men in the 1950s etc), it becomes worthless and you should rather look at unexplored territory: people "forgotten by history", marginalised groups, new approaches, big emphasis on the social, cultural, personal, individual. But for a few reasons, claiming that studying "old white man history" in the 2020s is "useless" is very flawed lol. Because:

In a lot of cases, The Book on something (be it a specific aspect of a topic, an individual person, or just a topic as a whole like WW2 for instance) will have been written in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s... Research methods have evolved a LOT since then, and the demands on researchers to reflect on their biases are a lot stronger now. Historical research doesn't exist in a vacuum and is never completely objective - it's a self-correcting field, though, and new studies aspire to build on and improve upon previous ones. You wouldn't trust medical research from 50+ years ago to be the best possible knowledge on a given topic to be trusted forever and never re-examined, would you?? Why would you a history book, then?

Old white men are the ones who had power for vast lengths of time in history. In many countries old white men are still the ones in power. Political and military history, as well as macroeconomic history, are (in summary) about the study of power. You can't gain knowledge of how "the enemy" (or: those holding the power in society) operates only by studying the way their "victims" experienced their influence. You need to look into the people in power themselves. And someone needs to do this now, with modern research methods, so we have the best possible knowledge of the subject! Additionally, modern old white men often stan historical old white men and might make rhetorical references to them in speeches etc... It's important to know how they conceptualise the world and its history, because so far they're not going anywhere...

People are so dumb akgösphkpd like they will hear "political/military history" and not even know how much the fields have changed and evolved in the last 30 years 😭😭😭 Its based on this stock stereotype of what those fields are, when in reality the sharpest criticism of previous approaches comes from within the field - which seeks to self-correct. Again, you wouldn't assume that physics ended with Einstein...... why assume that historians can never improve their methods or reach new conclusions based on already-studied sources??

Putting pressure on women specifically to only study social/cultural/microhistory, and insinuating that they're betraying their gender if they don't, is just straight up sexist lmao. You don't expect this of Matt age 21 who loves tanks and literally just wants to study idk tank formations, why do you expect it of me?? Ditto for queer people and any other marginalised group you could think of.

As for Rudolf specifically? Yes he sneaked in again fkflld. It's worth it to point out his problematic relationships with women, yes, and SPECIFICALLY the historical agency and existence of those women outside of him lol. (Which is still a bit lacking.) But it's not smart or feminist or even morally right to avoid looking at where the Mayerling obsession as a whole comes from. The fact is:

1. Rudolf had very specific unpopular political opinions, and suffered from mental illness (a kind of disease poorly understood at the time but also still decades after the fact and even today)

2. These two factors led society to perceive him in a certain way, and influenced the way newspapers wrote about him after his death. Conservatives put huge emphasis on his womanizing ways - as part of his general depraved evilness, incl irreligiosity, liberal politics and lack of respect for traditional values - to influence their audience to believe that violence and insanity are what social liberalism leads to. They also used the events of Mayerling to say that the scandal is the only thing that ever mattered or ever will matter about Rudolf, that it tainted his person to such a degree that considering anything else is moot. This is the starting point for the most common Mayerling narrative that has literally barely changed for 135 years... it still crops up in media today!!

So um yeah anyway,,,, I guess I'm sorry for being specifically interested in war as a culmination of international political crisis & historical eras seen as formative to current political culture & 19th/20th century opposition to and manifestations of political nationalism & the way in which seemingly apolitical things are actually used to shape public discourse... instead of idk queer history or women's history or historical dress or microeconomic family history 😭😭 I just think there's enough people studying those latter ones and doing a much better job of it than I could - because they're genuinely passionate about them and hence have the right skills to actually study them well. I still believe that the way I'm studying and talking about the stuff I'm interested in has a lot of value, even if it's not contributing to Good Representation or aligned with my modern political views in any obvious sense. (Well, a constantly recurring theme is my distaste for overt forms or nationalism/(proto)fascism lol but we don't need to tell people that 😌 esp not the current Finnish government)

Also rudolf was irl bisexual did you even read eine orientreise (JOKING)

#history #jfc this is long akksldldld #delete later

[endogenicredstar]

Welcome!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our little patch of heaven! I know I made an intro post before, but I feel that it’s become outdated already. So, after this post has been submitted, the old one will be unpinned, and possibly deleted, along with the original system intro post. Because all of our info will be in this one submission! Before we begin, please keep in mind that this page is a secondary blog! As a result, we won't be able to follow back! Now, without any further delays, let’s get started!

About the Host

My name is Shane, but you can also call me Sylum! I’m 29 years old. I’m physically disabled, chronically ill, and I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and inattentive type ADHD. I’m part of the Alterhuman community, meaning that I don’t psychologically identify as a human (This can also include spiritually for some people, but not me.). More specifically, I’m primarily fictionkin. I identify as an individual member of a fictional species known as the Buma from Final Fantasy VII– even more specifically, a subspecies that I developed, called the Icicle Variant. If you’d like to know more, please feel free to message me.

My secondary kintype is shapeshifter. A paleo shapeshifter to be more precise, meaning that I can mentally shift to any extinct species at any given time. So you may wind up talking to a living, breathing dinosaur at some point.

Important Info: Due to my anxiety, I may not reach out to anyone outside the system. If you’d like to talk, please send a DM. Please be patient with me, as it may take a bit for me to respond. If anyone’s up front aside from myself, they may answer in my stead. Please be aware that some system mates aren’t social. So I apologize in advance if they come off as rude.

Now, it’s time for the fun part! Let’s meet the system!

Note: I’ve decided to use an almost sci-fi space marine/military naming theme in regards to their roles. (I’m a nerd. Shush./j) Please be aware that the guys aren’t all like their source materials.

The Red Star System

Let’s get one, very important detail out of the way: We are an Endogenic System, meaning that we don’t stem from trauma of any sort. If you would like to know about non-traumagenic plurality, please check out the ICD-11, as it’s a tad more in date than the DSM-5. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get on with member introductions!

Good afternoon! I’m Knockout, the Chief Medical Officer of the Red Star System. My job is to make sure that the host’s body is well taken care of. Everything from reminding Shane to eat, to administering medication, to checking blood sugar is my responsibility. I’m often at the front whenever Shane experiences some form of medical issue. Or, when he goes to see a human doctor. I often help him cope with medical anxiety whenever it rears its ugly head. Please note that, due to my job as a medic back home, that I may not respond to questions or comments right away. And please don’t ask me for medical advice. I may be the Chief Medical Officer here, but that doesn’t mean I know everything about human biology.

Heyya! I’m Breakdown! I’m kinda like a nurse, which is also what I am back home! I help Knockout with medical stuff in the field, and I help take care of Shane! I also double as a Security Officer. Ya know, making sure that our little guy’s safe and sound! I usually come out whenever there’s a physical problem that needs solving; like figuring out the safest place to park his chair. It doesn’t sound like much, but I promise you that it’s important work! Like Knockout, I might be busy with other things, so I might not answer right away.

Greetings. I am Starscream, the Commander– though Shane insists that rank and duty are two separate things here. Regardless, my job is to ensure our host’s physical safety, as well as maintain his psychological security. I am often at the front whenever he is under extreme stress, and needs to be removed from the situation. I am a boundary enforcer; I make sure that certain lines are not crossed. I suggest you tread carefully, unless you wish to face my wrath.

Hi there! I’m Nanaki, and I’m one of the system’s Councilors! My job is to help Shane through some psychological issues. I don’t counsel him in regards to severe problems, like his depression spikes, but I can help him with his anxiety. I can also be a listening ear if he needs to vent. Please remember that I’m considered a minor in human culture, so please don’t mention anything adult whenever I’m at the front, okay?

Name’s Cloud. I’m a Security Officer– which means that I protect Shane from anything, or anyone, that might hurt him. I’m always on the clock, so if anyone tries anything, you’ll have to deal with me.

Hola! My name is Miguel O’Hara, and I’m the system’s head Security Officer. I usually front whenever Shane feels threatened by someone/something. Or, if he’s experiencing acute distress. If anyone gets particularly outta line, it’s my job to make sure they get back in line. Because I’m my universe’s Spider-Man, and a protector of the multiverse, I might not be around all that much. However, I’ll try to respond, or post, whenever I have the time.

Sup? I'm Hawks, better known as Keigo in some circles on here. My job is to protect Shane from any perceived danger-- a Security Officer, if you will. As long as you're chill, I'm chill. Kay? I might be unavailable at times due to hero work, but rest assured: I'll post and answer any asks you send as soon as I get the chance!

Hey. My name is Kai Chisaki, also known as Overhaul. I don't really go by that anymore; it leaves a bad taste in my mouth whenever I hear it. I'm a Medical Officer I guess-- that's still up for debate though. I'm not always busy, so I'll be around more than most of the people here.

DNI IF YOU ARE:

Anti-Endo

A transphobe, TERF, Homophobe, etc.

A Pedophile/MAP.

A Zoophile.

An ableist.

Anti-Otherkin.

Anti-Fictionkin.

We hope to see you folks around some time soon! Thank you for taking the time to read all of this! We appreciate it!

#Intro post #introductory post #introduction #fictionkin #otherkin #bumakin #endogenic system #endo safe #pro endo #pinned intro #pinned post

[steampaul]

i've started a little series of weekly posts documenting every MoC i made (digitally) over the last few years:

Week 9: 2022

some old MoCs returning, lego art, 90th anniversary toa team, video game stuff and more Rock Raiders (yay)

this one will be the penultimate week.

remember back in week 2 (2018) where i tested out the differences in rendering between stud.io 1 and 2? i tested out the mecabricks extention for Blender to render some digital bricks.

this took way too long to setup and render, so i decided to not use blender for rendering after that (escpecially after the win11 updated fucked with my graphics card)

another mandalorian s2 set MoC. din djarins N1 starfighter, based on the last N1 set we had back in 2015. i think these proportions aren't good, but a bit better than the official set. (its still too big though)

the Horizon: forbidden west set was also teased/revealed around that time, so i decided to make a diorama with just the watcher (and one with a corrupted one) that would be a bit more managable in both cost and size than the tallneck.

i still got the tallneck, becauce those robot dinos are cool as hell and i want to support video game based sets, even though i am a big supporter of the concept that LEGO should make more original themes instead of big and expensive licensed sets (like rivendell....)

some greebles inspired by the ones on the Icons (formerly master builder) "theme" of sets, also my header image for tumblr.

back in 2017 (week one) i made The Slugcat Portrait mosaic, and i decided in 2022 that i would remake it to be more in line with the way i would built with bricks at that time. i think i improved wuite a bit.

i like the 90 years of play tahu, even if his design was considered to be controversial, so i decided to make the full 2001 set lineup for bionicle. i think they turned out pretty good, but i find it a bit annoying that the maccaroni piece does not exist in tan or medium blue (a dicontinued colour)

anyone remeber Valley? the momentum-based FPS platformer? no? it wasn't really mind-blowing, but i still enjoyed the movement and flow of the game. i also always wanted to try out the Legoland Miniland style of character building. this was the perfect opportunity to combine both of these things.

i think the proportions might be a bit off, but i still like this little desk friend

someone asked me on twitter to send them the instructions for my marble machine MoC (as seen in week 7), but i didn't want to give them such and outdated build, so i re-designed it to be more up to date.

they ended up giving me about 14 $ for these instructions, which made me pretty happy.

i tried to make a micro-scale version of the exo-force set 7701 Grand Titan. i really dislike the way this one turned out.

Lego Ideas had yet another contest. this one was about designing a poster for the then new 21334 Jazz Quartet. i called this one "Golden Sounds" and it is the first mosaic-type MoC that i made where i first sketched it out to kinda figure out how i wanted it to look.

i like the way this one turned out, but i think i should've built it in such a way that the colours in the background wouldn't be as dim.

remember last week when i said i wanted to make more Rock raiders MoCs? turns out i did. a lot too.

this VTOL-style transport vehicle was kinda inspired by those industrial transport helicopters and was supposed to be some sort of reimagining of 4980 tunnel transport. i think it's a bit too clunky and a bit too skinny at the same time. not my favourite.

also there's a modular open container (is that what they're called?) that can be fixed under the vehicle. (as well as the room container that you'll see next)

Modular bases are so cool you guys. this one is inspired by 4990 Rock Raiders HQ and those big old moving platforms Nasa uses. it could be controlled with a motor, has a removable cockpit (with an access hatch) and the platform has a lot of room for modules. like the crystal refinery, the room container, the high platforms, the crane and the crane attachment holder.

here are a few variants for the room container: an artifact storage with workbench, a small break room and a laboratory. i like those and i might do more in some time in the future. idk yet.

my take on the rock monsters. some crystal infested/energized Fauna.

first some bipedal designs (the left one is a modded version of a deviant form an eternals sets) that could be more agressive carnivore types.

in the middle are some quadrupedal guys that could be a bit less agressive and even friendly. Left is a modded version of my SCP 860 creature from week 4 (which was based on either an legendary beast from Chima or a dragon from elves) and the right one is a recolour from the fluffy-tailed Hog from my satisfactory series from week 3

and lastly, some insectoid designs, a kind of beetly creature and two ants, one of them with wings. these could be some sort of neutral (like in minecraft) swarm that might be a problem for buildings and cocky miners.

this is probably my favourite of my Rock Raiders Builds from 2022. it's 4920 rapid rider built with modern pieces that has been overtaken by the energy crytals. it can be fully freed from crystal and reassebled, which is nice.

we'll see another rapid rider next week...

first week last week final week

#lego #lego moc #lego minecraft #the mandalorian #horizon zero dawn #rain world #valley #wintergatan #marble machine #exo-force #lego jazz quartet #90th anniversary tahu #rock raiders

[dorylinae-supremacy]

Very sleepy today so I think I'll write some more of My baby, my baby.

Easy to turn my brain off for that fic since a lot of it is just possessive fluff with little bits of lore sprinkled in.

My brain is also semi fried from trying to figure out how I wanna continue with some series'. Like whether I want them to have longfics like AFN or if I should contain it to more 1-5 chapter fics.

AFN is still a very long ways off of being done so I'd hate to take time away from it but also my heart yearns for even more character dynamics that only exist in my mind.

Once every 2 weeks with flipping between fics worked pretty well when I was doing henchman so maybe that'd work. But also then I'd feel bad for chaps being around 2.5K instead.

On average that means (if I only upload once a week) I'd post about 120K by the end of the year? I think at least. I failed maths. Multiple times.

I have no clue if AFN can be done in like 200K it'd really depend on how stuff evolves over time. There's also the problem of tag limits so I might end up having to make it a series so I can just do multiple 100K fics that go over different arcs.

There's still stuff I have to iron out fully for later plot (some of its outdated now) but I do have a structure I'm following. After the village are there would probably be a small break where I iron out the next 2 arcs before continuing to write.

We're maybe 1/4 way through the story at the moment (subject to change) and I quite like how its evolving. I only give myself vague instruction and then just let that guide me. I think if I used a more rigid one then I just wouldn't enjoy writing as much.

Either way enjoy your AFN ramble for the day. I might post my silly little spreadsheet again soon.

#ask for nothing #dory writes #dory rambles

[sbuggbot]

Remaking one of my first posts on this website (which I have since privated), a headcanon post about 80s Robot from The Muppets because he's my favorite and a comfort character for me. This is just some quick(ish) basics. They mainly exist in my headcanon universe where the 2011 movie was either real or based on true events rather than "just a movie".

One of Bunsen and Beaker's creations. His function was basically what Tomy Company had envisioned while creating his real-life inspiration, the Omnibot 2000. (Greeting/entertaining guests, serving refreshments, watching the house even... although Tomy never got that far with their 'bot!)

He wasn't self-aware at first; that developed on its own later because nothing Bunsen invents works as intended.

Part of that included not being able to talk at first - he figured that out later and first demonstrated this by going up to Kermit one morning and saying "Kerrr-mit". (Needless to say, Kermit was very startled. Something had been up with the robot for a while, but it didn't prepare him for that.)

80s Robot has the Y2K bug. He can keep track of what day it is, but once years get involved he gets very confused. It's also part of the reason his speech patterns and such are stuck in 80s-era slang. (He was a little more adaptive before the turn of the millennium, but defaulted to what he knew once he couldn't keep track of what year it was anymore.)

Very clumsy because of his technical limitations and plain old hardware degradation. (Retrofitting or otherwise updating him has not worked, only replacing components with like parts.)

He doesn't have a color camera. Despite this, he can still see and understand things well enough to drive. He just doesn't pay as much attention to his surroundings when he isn't piloting a two-ton hunk of metal.

By the way, he drives using a remote system he hooks himself into that presses the pedals for him.

That modem of his is a huge battery drain and probably wouldn't work correctly if it was restored and used today. Also, his antivirus is very outdated. (Although some viruses might not be able to get enough RAM to run on him.)

Somehow he has an infinite supply of Tab and New Coke. If you ask him for a Coke to drink, you must specify Coke Classic or you will get a New Coke.

No one knows if the New Cokes are still drinkable or not. Nobody's been daring/stupid enough to try one (or more accurately, allowed to be daring/stupid enough to try one).

He will not go to Dr. Honeydew for repairs if he can do anything at all to help it. Bunsen is too much of a tinkerer and 80s Robot has a very realistic concern he'll wind up with some dangerous or unnecessary modification.

#80s robot #80s robot muppets #the muppets #muppets #headcanons

[fymagnificentwomcn]

Best of “Daily Sabah”

I promised this once and I think it might be surprising how it works in some way.

Of course after only like five minutes on the page I always feel disgusted by the hate towards Armenians, Greeks, Jews, conspiracy theories and shocked by the lack of self awareness with Evil Decadent West and great Turkey which has no problems whatsoever, only getting greater (basically Russian propaganda ,just exchange Ukrainians, Poles etc. for Armenians, Greeks, Jews, while EU and USA stay the same).

Let’s move to the series we will discuss - the portraits of historical figures from Ottoman history.

There are several rules that apply to all biographies:

1. All Ottoman padişahs were practically perfect by default and there was not a single one you would call bad, including those that used to be heavily criticised, like Ibrahim. A lot of them are child prodigies. If anyone is guilty of anything, it’s “greedy courtiers” (read: not from the sacred Imperial Family, unless some are misguided by them, like Şehzade Mustafa or those who murdered Sultan Osman).

2. All the women knew their place and were “intelligent and benevolent”. Usually are mentioned in one sentence of padişah’s bio saying they were beloved consort, insert the “intelligent and benevolent” stock phrase bit and number of kids (plus highlight that the padisah in question did not spend much time in harem, was monogamous or near it, and that women had small influence on him, everything else is slander). Basically they only took part in charity and defended their padişah husband or son, but God forbid were ambitious,, led factions and schemed or got involved in real politics - this is slander.

3. Normalization of violence - all opposition to current or future padisah is bad by default and all people who were executed deserved their death and it was always for the benefit of state. No what ifs, but also no evidence;) No, no scheming women as well, look parts 1 & 2. If the sovereign decided so, it must be the good decision for the state. Only greedy courtiers can make bad decisions. And Sultan Ahmed, who abolished the fratricide law and committed the biggest mistake ever. Fratricide was Constitutional (xD, yes Mehmed II wrote constitution) and basically involved no decision on the part of padişah - it simply had to be that way, no need to question it. It’s Constitution, after all. Going all automatic. No choice. Which is actually not true, but the simplified explanation of fratricide law, which is often circulating around even outside propaganda circles ( I might make a separate post on the topic one day tbh). Firstly, the law was not “ancient” or “eternal” or even “ several centuries old”. It was used as part of multiple civil conflicts emerging during Empire’s earliest era where the was no central power established and then condified by Mehmed the Conqueror in second half of 15th century. Moreover, it was not included in laws easily because fratricide is a huge sin in Islam. This is why the whole wording contains the phrase “most ulema agreed to it’. By no means it was unanimous and non-controversial matter. And the original intent was to make each padisah decide based on current situation and whether he deemed it necessary for maintenance of order (hence original wording “is acceptable”, not “must execute”.) Secondly, it was established in special moment when the state was still consolidating and beginning transformation to sedentary. Hence, it was used as tool in times when the state and its establishments were dispersed to determine central administration and was also to be used as tool in civil wars to end them.

Since the law clearly was shown to be outdated pretty soon (during Suleiman sedentary sultanate was pretty firmly established), and after Murad III conducted first slaughter of all his brothers living in palace in capital in 1574, the criticism among people was growing, and reached its climax when Mehmed III executed 19 brothers. It was different when princes were executed in provinces in aftermath of civil war, and it hit differenly when elder prince just killed his brothers automatically after ascending the throne (again it happened for the first time in 1574 ).

Presenting something as “constitutional” or “rooted in our statehood and laws since forever” erases the choice and culpability of a particular padisah. It enables to absolve him of individual decision and redirecting attention towards a bigger concept - the utmost important of statehood and order over individual, including padisah. Similarly, it never questions the concept of “order” as determined by a padisah in a particular context (brings to mind quote from MC Ibrahim - “Truth? Truth is what padisah wants believe”). It goes without saying this view is also closely connected with victim blaming. Moreover, the way they mention executions always places emotional focus with the poor monarch who just had no other choice but it hurt him so.

Erdo propaganda does not deny fratricide law existed and does not deny all sorts of violence in general - it chooses to normalize it instead and treat it as unavoidable and serving a higher purpose. I’ve seen from Erdoğan supporting Turks multiple statement in vein “This is how world works, accept it, war is part of life, everyone does it, only the strongest will survive” or applauding it “Sultan Murad was fearful and killed all those traitorous trouble stirrers, they all feared him, thanks to this he saved the state”. Normalization of violence stresses everyone is engaged in violence and erases difference between oppressor and victim.

Normalization of violence is important for contemporary authoritarian regimes, including Turkey. Making people indifferent to violent acts by showing this as normal process of human life and necessity. Same with victim blaming and not questioning whether the person persecuted by regime was punished justly - “it was necessary”. 

4. Ottoman system was perfect and was never in decline. We all know the famous “X ruined Empire”, but it does not come from Neo Ottomanists propaganda. It’s a take coming from (outdated) historiography by Young Turks (who were also nationalistic and misogynistic). The explanation is simple - for Neo Ottomanists the whole system was absolutely perfect, the system of succession also worked pretty well and there were no bad Sultans, everything was going great, only traitors supported by foreign agents, Free Masons and Zionists caused the collapse of Ottoman Empire. The system itself was chic and it was basically fairyland (back to point 2 with exemplary royal family always abiding by rules of Islam and patriotic feelings). Again, all crises were caused only by greedy subjects who caused problems to the Imperial Family and all the evil forces from outside. Nobody could cause the decline because in Neo Ottomanists’ view there was no real crisis, and the biggest danger came from outside.

This is why Sabah’s pieces might look alluring with their “pretty nice” and sympathetic descriptions of Imperial women and even give thus give impression of not being connected with Neo Ottomanists... but they are. Same with certain revisionism giving the allure of “hot takeism” or praising democratic & modern values, but by suggesting that the system of absolute monarchy not only promoted them, but even.. invented them (yes, they go as far). Positive propaganda is definitely more present in the historical series of articles.

Let’s move to examples:

Hürrem Sultan (Source)

Süleyman ruled for 46 years, people wanted to see Şehzade Mustafa take the throne instead of his elderly father. The close circle of Şehzade Mustafa encouraged him to seek power, and after some time, he began to talk at times as if he were the sultan. This made Süleyman suspicious about a possible plot against him, and when the sultan acquired evidence about the betrayal of his son, he executed Şehzade Mustafa. It is said that Hürrem, who wanted her children to sit on the throne after Süleyman, encouraged the Sultan to kill his own son. Some historians also blame Hürrem and her son-in-law Rüstem Pasha for encouraging Süleyman to kill his grand vizier, Pargalı İbrahim Pasha, and forgetting to mention what Şehzade and the grand vizier did to deserve this end. Perhaps Hürrem was not sorry about these incidents and perhaps she was happy with the results. However, she was not to blame for the executions of Şehzade Mustafa and Pargalı İbrahim Pasha. Mustafa had proven that he was not worthy of the Ottoman throne with his reckless behavior. Although he was courageous, he lacked two qualities that were more important: patience and cautiousness. Moreover, neither Süleyman nor Hürrem hesitated to execute their son Şehzade Beyazid when he stirred up a riot. During those times, the Ottoman sultans did not hesitate to sacrifice even their loved ones for the unity of the empire and the people – one of the reasons why the Ottoman Empire stood for centuries.

Do I even have to point out the obvious fact Hürrem could not execute Bayezid because she had been dead by this point? (and not like she would ever, she did intercede for his sake and it’s pretty certain he was the prince she supported for the throne... actually books which state that she supported Selim usually provide no evidence, only base it on assumption that “Hürrem ruined Empire” ... which is again a narrative not propagated by Neo Ottomanists but by Young Turks historians in the past, and it assumes she had to promote the son which was weak and easy to dominate, to make use of the badly working system).

In short: she executed her son but it was awesome. Very.. interesting approach. Putting on her something she could not even physically do, but as something that was actually praiseworthy.

Obviously, there is no questioning of Ibrahim’s or Mustafa’s guilt. “Forgetting to mention what they did” and not following with particular examples and evidence & sources backing up the claims. Going from “evidence of betrayal” to “Mustafa was reckless and impatient and this is why he didn’t deserve the throne” in the same article. So did he betray or was punished for imprudent actions? Very enlightening. And Suleiman’s only problem was getting old.

They are still not claiming outright rebellion, though, of course it will pop up soon.

 Kösem Sultan (Source)

Kösem Sultan was brought to the Ottoman palace as either Bosnian or Morean slave and given the name "Mahpeyker," meaning moon-like face in Persian language for her beauty.

The first source I’ve ever seen that does not at least mention the Greek claim. Hmm.

She practiced Sufism with her highly religious husband. Mahpeyker lived a quiet and peaceful life and looked after her children.

That’s her whole Haseki career according to Sabah🤦‍♀️ .

Yes, they say Kösem was good and should not be blamed for anything, but at the same time do a huge disservice by undermining her actual political skill and influence. They again focus mostly on her charity and motherhood, mostly removing her as a political agent otherwise. The description of Kösem's murder criticizes the murderers, but again removes Turhan’s (or Terhan’s xD) agency and actual role, instead of attributing actual action on the part of “bureaucrats supporting Terhan”. Typical narrative. Always only the bureaucrats. Never a member of the royal family (TBF in same vein they often devoid padisahs of agency at times, but at least then they compensate it by giving them other ‘great’ counteractions and ‘smart moves’ in addition to that).

Even today, fervent supporters of women's rights accuse her poking his nose into state affairs by saying that she put her "hennaed" fingers on state affairs. The period of "Sultanate of Women" in the Ottoman history was the outcome of a total political necessity. It took a short period of time and brought many benefits. Mahpeyker Sultan was always described as an ambitious woman, yet it is rarely mentioned that she took action with her patriotic feelings. Indeed, it was a sacrifice for Mahpeyker Sultan, whose sorrowful days were more than happy ones in her life, to carry heavy state affairs on her naïve shoulders at a troublesome period.

Now the people who slander Kösem are “fervent supporters of women’s rights” (xD) who want to discuss her contribution to the actual ruling of the state. Oh they finally admit SOW existed (read later, they sometimes deny its existence), but again “total necessity”; no women would ever have political ambition, she can only be forced to do it.

Her “naive shoulders” just tops it. Yes, do not slander her - she didn’t make good decisions but it was because she was naive. Hmmm... Yes great doing her actual justice, thanks. Maybe admit she could actually make sound decisions as a real politician?

And the Mehmed IV article suggested those who murdered her alleged (note this word choice in particular) she was taking part in state matters... according to them, neither Turhan nor Kösem truly ruled during that period, it was again a bunch of courtiers.

Now let’s move to the “Mighty sovereigns of Ottoman Throne” series. I will focus on padisahs from MC/K era, but all articles are “gold”.

Selim Yavuz (Source)

Some viziers and soldiers from the center wrote a letter to Şehzade Korkut, whom Sultan Selim loved very much and had assigned as the governor of Manisa. They stated that they wanted to see him as sultan and that the conditions were ready for this. Although it is said that Sultan Selim had these letters written to test his brother, he actually did not need such an action. Instead of informing his brother about the situation, Şehzade Korkut accepted the offer. Thereupon, he and all the other şehzades were executed. It is said that Sultan Selim was very upset when he made this decision for a greater purpose.

Poor little cutie 😭

It is said that he slept very little. He was not fond of harem life either. His only known wife was Hafsa Hatun, the daughter of the Crimean Khan Mengli Giray. She had a son named Şehzade Süleyman and six daughters.

Of course, though in this case, I might agree he was not much into harem life. Plus outdated info on Hafsa’s origins.

Suleiman (Source)

According to historic documents, he was generous, elegant, modest, dervish-spirited, devoted to his religion and did not act impulsively or did not do anything without consultation. He put the interests of the nation above everything, even his family. The criticism about him, especially the fact that he was under the influence of his family, are baseless allegations.

Like his father, he did not pay much attention to the harem life. His son Mustafa, born from his first wife Mahidevran, started to prepare a rebellion against his father after being persuaded to do so by those around him and was executed in 1553. From his second wife, Hürrem, a daughter named Mihrimah and sons named Mehmed, Selim, Bayezid and Cihangir reached adulthood. Mehmed, who his father loved very much, died of smallpox in 1543 at the age of 22. Cihangir also died in 1553. Şehzade Bayezid rebelled against his father and took refuge in Iran after being defeated. He was executed in 1562.

Basically whole article on absolute perfection and paragon of virtue. Again, sons were guilty and misguided. Women had no influence. This is the only mention of Hürrem in the whole article. Later she and Mahidevran are only referred to as “his two wives” to stress he was under no influence of them “- Historians say that his two wives and those around them were political factions and accuse the sultan of being under the influence of the second faction”. Plus Ibrahim had to die because he had too close relationship to the Sultan, but it was still not Sultan’s fault of giving him all these ranks. And both Mustafa and Bayezid were rebels, which in Bayezid’s case is true (but they do not discuss this in depth anyway), but with Mustafa again no evidence, not even mentioning any details because who cares. Guilty as charged. 

There is not a single evidence Mustafa ever rebelled, even from sources sympathetic to Suleiman (or even negative stuff said on him in sources).

Even those who try to decipher what influenced Suleiman’s decisions and try to understand his state of mind and how some actions of Mustafa could be read by him in certain way do not claim that Mustafa ever rebelled, like Zahit Atçil in his famous piece “Why did Suleiman execute Şehzade Mustafa?”. Atcil mentions Mustafa tried to gain support (e.g. got into diplomatic relations with Venice), but afterwards stresses that “Forming coalitions and seeking allies were perfectly legitimate moves for a candidate to the throne, and supporting a particular claimant constituted a way for various social groups (e.g., janissaries, viziers, scholars, middle-class citizens) to participate in imperial politics.” Atcil also adds that all candidates did seek for allies, only Mustafa was far more successful than his half-brothers in securing support. Mustafa in the letter to certain Ayas Pasha (not that one ;) mentioned yes he did want the throne, but stressed that it would be only after his father’s death, which sounds very much like MC Mustafa.

Ok correction they also mention Hürrem when they talk about Suleiman’s building endeavours and that he commissioned  “complex in the name of Hürrem Sultan”. Yes there are some doubts how much influence Hürrem could have in what that complex turned out to be, but this removes ALL of it. It’s only Suleiman’s and he named it in her honour.

And this is again just hilarious:

An anecdote is also told about this. During the Cold War, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, leader of Soviet Russia, saw Sultan Suleiman in his dream. In this dream, he asked the sultan: “You were in Hungary for almost two centuries. Before we were even in the country for 10 years, the people revolted. How did you manage that?" The sultan gave a historical answer: “After we conquered Hungary, we made Hungary our homeland and settled down. We did not require the people to speak Turkish. We did not declare the day we conquered the land as a Hungarian national holiday as you did.”

And all the references to how modern and pretty much democratic Suleiman’s rule was, sooo like the French Revolution! I don’t even have strength to delve into it all, but one point is clear - they do focus on the positive and actually do not portray democratic values as bad at all - they just twist everything to suggest such very absolutist system was actually protecting these values.

Selim II (Source)

The essay on Selim of course promotes similar view with respect to his father and his brothers, while Selim’s most admiring trait was obviously “obedience”. Plus, the piece removes Selim’s agency in the whole conflict with Bayezid. And according to sources he did scheme against his brother and reading letters contained e.g. in New Perspectives on Safavid Iran (”Am I my brother’s keeper? Negotiating corporate sovereignty and divine absolutism in sixteenth-century Turco-Iranian politics” essay by Colin Mitchell), we can see he actively participated in negotiations with Shah Tahmasp to have Bayezid executed.

Indeed, his brothers Mehmed and Cihangir fell ill and died. The ambitions of Şehzade Mustafa and Bayezid, who rose up against their fathers, cost them their lives. Şehzade Selim attained the blessing of patience and thus proved that he was the most worthy candidate for the throne. Patience is the most precious virtue of a statesman. Actually, his father was also inclined toward supporting Şehzade Selim to succeed him for the throne since he was an obedient son. He participated in expeditions with his father.

Now hold on truly tightly because shit gets really, really wild. Suddenly we learn Ottoman Empire in 16th century was run like modern democratic monarchy and that the Sultan even prevented colonialism! Not like Selim was simply not much into state affairs (which is no crime, but c’mon this explanation...). Again, I agree Selim used to get some unnecessary wank by historians, but Sabah goes wayyy into opposite extreme (and not only Sabah tbh).

Preventing colonialism

After ascending the throne, Sultan Selim II left government affairs in the hands of his prudent vizier and son-in-law, Sokollu (Sokullu) Mehmed Pasha. He was like the rulers of today's democratic European monarchies. But he was always alert for the ambitions of those around him. [..,] 

Upon the request of the Astrakhan sultan for help, the Russo-Turkish War, or Don-Volga-Astrakhan Campaign of 1569, was launched. It aimed to connect the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea by opening a channel at a point where the Volga River flowing into the Caspian Sea and the Don River flowing into the Sea of Azov come very close to each other, thus providing protection for Turkistan against Russian expansionism. The project was started; however, it could not be carried out due to winter and other reasons.The Crimean Khan Devlet I Giray, to whom Sultan Selim II sent aid, invaded Moscow and forced the Russians to make peace. Thus, he prevented Asia from falling into the hands of the colonialists. The Suez Canal project of the sultan, who wanted to strengthen his political and commercial dominance in the Indian Ocean, was not realized.

Again, the Russian Empire was seen as a significant foreign force that caused the collapse of Empire, hence that focus. Young Turks actually strove to have good relations with USSR.

Never mind the contradictory statements -”we prevented expansionism and colonialism by launching war” and again preventing colonialism while “wanting to strengthen political and commercial dominance in the Indian Ocean”. Aha.

It was allowed again during the reign of Sultan Selim II to compensate for the tax loss. As a matter of fact, non-Muslims can buy, sell and drink wine in an Islamic state as their religion allows it. In the Ottoman Empire, there were pubs belonging to non-Muslims. The government used to collect taxes from them, and Muslims could not enter these places. Some, who were unaware of this rule, thought that the sultan was fond of alcohol.

Some weird ass explanation why Selim could not be drunk. I find it hard to even follow this train of thought. Usually, it’s simple - no Muslim Caliph can be drunk because Islam forbade it and they were all paragons (thanks to certain charming person on IG explaining this train of thought to me and my friends).

He was not fond of harem life. His only beloved wife, Nurbanu Sultan, was one of the most benevolent women in history. She had Mimar Sinan build the Atik Valide Mosque in Üsküdar and its complex and the Toptaşı Bimarhane (mental hospital), which today serves in Bakırköy. There are many other charities she had commissioned. She brought water to Istanbul.

The sultan had eight sons named Murad, Mehmed, Ali, Süleyman, Mustafa, Cihangir, Abdullah and Osman and four daughters named Esmehan, Gevherhan, Fatma and Shah Sultan. The descendants of Esmahan's children born from Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and Gevherhan's from Piyale Pasha have survived to the present day.

Again they are contradicting themselves - they state Nurbanu was his only wife and no way he could spend much time in the harem. But then provide all the sons whose mother was not Nurbanu (except Murad of course). Aha.

Murad III (Source)

In some modern sources, his fondness for women is mentioned, which is not true. He lived with his only wife, Safiye Sultan, until the age of 30. He had many children, most of whom died in infancy, and Şehzade Mehmed ascended the throne as his successor.

Of course. Better not list the number of those kids not to make the reader doubt whether one woman could bear them all ;)

Mehmed III  (Source)

Although it is said that Sultan Mehmed III was under the influence of his Albanian-born mother Safiye Sultan because of his love and respect for her, this is an exaggeration. When he came to the throne, he had his brothers executed within the fratricidal framework of the organization law of Sultan Mehmed II in order to prevent future revolts under the claim of the throne. This decision, which the sultan made with great sadness, caused great indignation in Istanbul. This was the last application of the constitutional condition.

Again poor cookie had no choice because “CoNsTItuTiONal CoNdItIon” . Of course he was not under influence of his mother. This is the only time a woman is mentioned in this article. Handan and Halime do not exist. 

Ahmed I (Source)

Sultan Ahmed is regarded as a well-educated, intellectual and determined sovereign. He refrained from personal addictions and weaknesses. Along with many Ottoman sultans, his intellect developed at an early age. Although he was enthroned when he was a child, he managed to rule with great talent and wisdom.

A child prodigy. Bah, they were all child prodigies. 

The sultan was noted for a surprisingly good command of administrative matters and following them up, trying to assign matters to competent people, and directing and controlling his entourage. As soon as he ascended to the throne, the sultan sent women in the palace, including his grandmother Safiye Sultan to the old palace and did not let royal women meddle in politics.

Anyone surprised?  If you ask about Kösem, she is mentioned, her kids are listed and she is called you-guessed-it “benevolent and intelligent”. That’s all.

Finally, we come to finale paragraph entitled “Mercy and Disaster”

Almost everyone admits Sultan Ahmed I’s skills and goodwill, but some do not see him as a bright sovereign. This happens to be the destiny of sovereign who ruled during turbulent times and lacked capable aides.

But he was a child prodigy at the beginning of the article? 

What made them write the biggest criticism aimed at sovereign? Of course abolition of fratricide, which is deemed “disaster for Empire”. They remark Ahmed was compassionate, but that’s all. Otherwise the move was the biggest mistake. Also note the interlinking between mercy and disaster.

Mustafa I (Source)

We start by several paragraphs bemoaning the end of fratricide and again repeating what a disastrous (though merciful) act it was. They just cannot move on from this and it’s hilarious. They also try to rationalize Ahmed’s decision in several ways:

Sultan Mustafa I, the 15th of the Ottoman sultans, was born in Manisa in 1591 to Sultan Mehmed III and Halime Haseki. When his older brother, Sultan Ahmed I, ascended the throne, he strayed from the customs of previous sultans and did not have his brothers executed for the sake of the public; He didn't touch his brother.

Halime is mentioned by her name and already in the first paragraph! A success.

Plus they stress the “for public” bit for the purpose to show what can happen when you yield to opinion of subjects.

His mother was a smart and strong woman, though not as smart as Mahpeyker Kösem Sultan. She supported her son when faced with intrigues. His mother dictated the sultan's edicts.

Of course smart and going against intrigues. Actually not a single hint of criticism.

Kösem is also lucky to be mentioned as the person who could influence Mustafa climbing the throne! As acting for the protection of her sons, they see it as non-harmful to admit that. Especially since (as we will see) she’s mother of such paragons as Murad and Ibrahim ;)

Osman II (Source)

Osman had genius but he was young. Therefore, he could not properly use his education and genius. He was aware that the world changed and some things were not going well in the country, and he had plans to fix these.

Of course another prodigy.. .

A Polish army of 100,000 people that included Cossacks, Austrians and Hungarians were defeated after a tough battle, and Khotyn fell.

As a Polish person, I tell you Khotyn did not fall. And lying about that was Osman’s own propaganda that also enraged people against him.

In order to ensure the safety of the empire before departing for the campaign, he had his younger brother Şehzade Mehmed, who was one year younger than him, executed as prescribed by the fratricide rule of Mehmed II. Poor şehzade cursed the sultan as: “Osman, just like you deprived me of my life, I wish from Allah that your rule to be short”.

Again, matter-of-fact-tone and stressing it was “prescribed”. Suddenly no bemoaning fratricide was abolished? 

Murad IV (Source)

Hold on again please.

When he was just 10 years old, he started dressing as a commoner and wandering around the city, making plans for his future work as a result of the cooperation he would establish with the public. He would keep a list of those he could benefit from and those he would punish.

Yeah everyone allowed 10 year old prince (prodigy) to wander along steets like that. No biggie.

In the aftermath, Sultan Murad forbade smoking tobacco and ordered that the coffee shops, where people used to gather to drink coffee and smoke, be destroyed. The sultan would dress up as a local, mingle with the crowds and have those he caught smoking put to death. It is said that 20,000 people were sentenced to death in this way. As such, many bullies and tyrants were cleared off the streets.

Easy? He executed thousands of his people, but no biggie, they were all bullies and tyrants anyway. And how do we know this? They smoked.

Since his childhood was spent in revolutions, he was used to all kinds of disasters. The feeling of fear was alien to him. In eight years, he ordered the execution of a number of people who were considered untouchable until then, in order to show that there was no power above the authority of the state. Those who describe him as bloodthirsty don't take into account the anarchy of his time and how the people suffered from it. He tried to be a sultan that the public wished for.

Normalization of violence again. And are you talking about the same public he executed (see above)

Sultan Murad used to take opium extracts (morphine) given by the head physician in order to alleviate the pain of the gout disease he was suffering from. This made him feel tired and lethargic. Those who saw him staggering from time to time concluded that the sultan was consuming alcohol. Moreover, he reigned at a time in which alcohol was used for pain relief. The state dignitaries were not fond of the sultan's friends and would accuse them of getting the sultan accustomed to debauchery, which was far from the truth for him.

Again no way an Ottoman Sultan could be ever drunk. They were all perfect Muslims by default. He died from gout, not cirrhosis. No matter what everyone else says. And let’s also make him more sympathetic -you accuse poor cookie of drinking and he was simply trying to alleviate his pain!🤬

Although he was considered to have a harsh stance on political matters, he was tender-hearted.

Sure.

When they list the poets he sponsored, I love how they listed Nef’i without mentioning his ultimate fate ;)

A generation ago, Istanbul, where not a single murder had been committed in a whole year, was in turmoil. Sultan Murad took drastic measures to restore the old order in the most populous city of this world.

Lemme ever believe that no murder happened in the “most populous city of this world” during whole ass year ever.

He established a personal intelligence network throughout the empire. He reorganized the spy organization in Europe and transformed it into what it was during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The most hidden secrets began to reach the Ottoman palace day by day.

He learned about the oppressors and the tyrants everywhere. He was able to execute bullies so quickly while passing through certain cities during his expedition because he knew them all by name.

Yeah his spy network make him watch all his subjects moves closely, but it was again about bullies and tyrants only as always. “Bullies and tyrants and oppressors” emerge so often in this article without calling one certain bully and tyrant and oppressor by that term. Whoop.

The rebels used to threaten to depose him with his brothers at every opportunity. He had three of his brothers executed, two during the Yerevan and one during the Baghdad expeditions, according to the old constitutional tradition. He left behind a less competent brother, from which the Ottoman dynasty continued.

Again “old cOnStItUtIonAl tradition” plus obligatory matter-of-fact tone. Better not remind our readers our earlier bemoaning of apparent abolition of it anyway? At least this time they spared us the stressing of how sorry and sad the little hapless woobie was.

No woman is mentioned in this article, only Kösem is mentioned next to Ahmed as Murad’s parents in opening paragraph.

All the long descriptions of his physical strength and what not our redneck could do, what distances he could run etc. let me no waste time on that please. Let’s move on to Ibrahim.

Ibrahim (Source)

Even textbooks describe this sultan as Deli Ibrahim, or Ibrahim the Mad. In fact, this is the imputation of 20th-century historians.

Do not get me wrong - tales about Ibrahim’s madness and his actions were exaggerated (the famous drowning of his concubines myth), but it’s hard to deny he had serious mental problems and it’s particularly ridiculous to maintain he only began to be called mad in 20th century (read: by Young Turks historians).

If anything, most tales were invented after his death as part of factional in-fighting and also by these who took part in the coup to remove any doubt that his deposition was a necessary move.

The rumors that Sultan Murad IV ordered his brother Ibrahim’s execution on his final days are not true. On the contrary, Murad sought out his brother before his death, bequeathed him the task of protecting the people and made amends.

Such sweet fairytale. While it is debated whether Murad ordered the execution or not, it’s the first time I hear him making amends and all that sentimental bulllshit.

After donning the turban of second Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab brought in from the Chamber of Blessed Mantle of the Prophet Muhammad, Ibrahim sat on the throne and prayed: "Oh God! You deem fit a weak subject like me for this post. May you make my nation happy during the days of my reign and make us both content with each other!" This incident is clear evidence that the sultan was not mad.

Absolutely irrefutable proof. A-ha.

Ibrahim was portrayed as a short-tempered and dissolute sultan who spent his days in the palace with beautiful girls, entirely clad in sable fur – a tale everyone believed. At a time when radiators or even stoves were nonexistent, in a humid city such as Istanbul, people living in high-ceiling places and homes used to burn wood in fireplaces. Therefore, almost everyone used to wear fur to keep themselves warm. Unlike today, however, fur was sewn on the inside of robes.

And everyone could afford fur, especially people who starved during this period. A-ha.

The sultan had some relief after Kazasker (chief judge) Hüseyin Efendi of Safranbolu, who was renowned in Istanbul for his "effective" prayers, recited the Quran to him and prayed for him. Hüseyin Efendi, who received much praise and gained popularity because of this incident, also came to be known as a spiritualist hodja (exorcist), leading to an increase in the sultan’s adversaries.

Now even Cinci, a character criticized in all sources no matter POV, gets redeemed. 

During the reign of Sultan Ibrahim, there were severe cold spells in which the Golden Horn and even the Bosporus froze. The cold led to increased demand for sable fur, with those who lived in proceeding centuries overlooking the cold and seeing the "sable era" as a period of debauchery. Young Turk-leaning early 20th-century historian Ahmed Refik Altınay also played a role in this. Exaggerated definitions such as “the reign of women,” “the reign of aghas,” or “the sable era” were coined by him.

However, the sultan did not allow for the women of palace, even his mother Mahpeyker Valide Sultan (queen mother), to take part in state affairs. This was why he sent the palace women, including his mother and sisters, into exile. Ibrahim was the last surviving male member of the Ottoman dynasty, and his efforts to have children were considered debaucherous. It is said that in his final days, he devoted himself to entertainment, however, this did not have a negative effect on state affairs since it was personal.

Yes, no woman had any influence during Ibrahim’s reign, including Kösem. In a way, maybe the only thing she did according to Sabah’s articles here is she might have influenced change in fratricide law, which was a bad thing anyway, since it came from her motherly instincts (typical woman and moreover naive as we know already). She had no political agenda or political career apart from royal motherhood. 

Like I don’t even have strength pointing out how many sources deny these “claims” with no evidence provided whatsover.

Instead we have them dismiss the mere idea “Sultanate of Women” ever existed.  

And of course they have to point out “Young Turk” invented this term and discussed women’s involvement in politics. It is worth pointing out that Altinay wrote about Armenian genocide which was committed by Young Turks and even today the ruling regime which is anti-Atatürk inclined denies it (and not only them, many Kemalists do too, sadly).

It’s true though that Altinay put many nonsensical accusations towards Ottoman women (which was also characteristic of time period, his work Kadinlar Saltanati began to be published in 1916 and it was truly first such work in Turkey), but what drives Sabah and Neo Ottomanist mad first and foremost is that a) he mentions they actually had the influence and were important political actors b) it means their great padisahs were actually influenced by women.. which constitutes great offence for these prodigies and paragons c) suggests mothers of their padisahs could be human and also do some bad things.

Women are not mentioned anymore in the Ibrahim article except Turhan in one sentence - “The late sultan’s spouse Hadice Terhan Haseki is regarded as one of the most famous and highly qualified women in Ottoman history”. Yes they spell Terhan both here and in the Kösem article all the time. No mention of her regency. No mention of Telli Humasah, Saliha Dilasub, Sekerpare, etc. whatsoever.

The sultan’s intolerance to injustice and his inability to keep his feelings secret decreased his supporters and drove them away.

His last Grand Vizier Hezarpare Ahmed Pasha did not shy from lying to the sultan regarding foreign affairs. Thus, the sultan did not have a single useful soul in this entourage, with sycophants and hypocrites bringing about the sultan's end.

Basically his only crime was that he was too good. Again only the evil courtiers around are at fault and caused his demise.

The coup’s description is of course totally biased in Sultan’s favour and framing him as absolutely completely innocent, and even the executioner did not want to do it. No mention of fetva being issued against Ibrahim for breaching so many laws. No mention of all the disruption and difficult situations of commonfolk during Ibrahim’s reign. No his reign was stable and everything was all right.

Sultan Ibrahim is described as generous and compassionate. He donated a lot to the poor. He paid attention to ensure the treasury revenues were collected regularly, spent properly and that wages were paid without delay. He used to covertly roam the city and monitored the people’s needs on the spot.

For the conclusion, let’s look at the Abdülhamid II article:

Sultan Abdülhamid always used civilized methods in foreign policy and acted in very subtle and clever ways. He understood the importance of propaganda, which is the most effective means of power of our time, and tried to use it in the most effective way for not offensive but defensive purposes against imperialist and colonialist policies.

Propaganda is actually anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist. A-ha.

Knowing what he could do and what he could not do, he followed an honorable path in politics. He was not a person of minor ideas and circles, and acted with lofty purposes like his ancestors. In this way, many political dangers were eliminated with small concessions.

From the collapse of the great empire within 10 years after his departure, it is clear that Abdülhamid extended the state’s life by 30 years with his mistakes and merits. The Ottoman Empire, one of the five largest in the world at the time, turned into a third-world country in the next 10 years.

Yeah only problems in paradise only appeared after Ottoman Empire fell, earlier it had been all dandy and all sultans had been dandy.

#ottoman history #history #magnificent century #muhteşem yüzyıl #idk how to tag it truly #but MC fandom should be most interested anyway #yes I am braindead now

[steakout-05]

Discovering Halfbrick Lost Media

i promise you this is interesting! you might know Halfbrick for making Jetpack Joyride and Fruit Ninja and whatnot, but their history spans over for YEARS all the way to the 90s. and today i discovered something really cool, and that's Halfbrick's long lost unpublished games from the 2000s. let's start from the beginning. this post will be LONG.

so today i was cataloguing every self-published Halfbrick game ever (as you do) and while i was looking through games to list, i remembered a page on Unseen64 i saw a while ago that talks about a game called 'Fuzz and Rocket', which was an announced game that was supposed to be on the Gameboy Advance, set to release in the mid 2000s. It appeared at E3 in 2005 and then was cancelled when Halfbrick couldn't find a publisher. it was pretty interesting to find out about when i first got hyperfixated on Jetpack Joyride and wanted to see if there was any lost media.

i took a closer look and saw that there was a snapshot of Halfbrick's site from like 2003, and there it was: the announcement for Fuzz and Rocket. so of course i go back all the way to 2001 and look at what we have here...

wow! it's old!

so, there's a lot to unpack here. first of all, yes, that is Halfbrick's actual old logo. and yes, that HTML is a bit broken. this isn't the exact page i was on when i first discovered this and the HTML was working properly, but this is Halfbrick's old website from August 2001. take in the pure Y2K broken graphic HTML ugliness.

but what i'm really interested are the games. if you look on this site, you might see mentions of 'Farma Llamma', 'Turbulence' and 'Defiant'. these were three online games Halfbrick worked on around 2001, all of which used JavaScript. out of these games, only one was released, and that one was 'Defiant'. here's the webpage:

Case 1: 'Defiant'

this was the page listing for the game 'Defiant'. according to this page, 'Defiant' was going to be a shoot 'em up, close to something like Touhou in terms of layout. it is 2002 and you have to destroy the enemy base, which probably isn't human. and, according to the game's features page, this game was gonna have "Tons of sprites on screen", "Transparent clouds" and "Funky intro music and tons of sound effects", to name a few. sounds pretty cool, right? you'd like to play it, right?

well, here's the unfortunate thing: you can't. this is where the lost media part comes in.

this game runs on JavaScript, severely outdated JavaScript that was not properly archived by the Wayback Machine. so we know that 'Defiant' was playable at one point in time, but now, it's been lost and is rendered unplayable. nothing much else to say, it's just unfortunate that one of Halfbrick's first only released web browser games isn't playable anymore. there is no information about 'Defiant' online other than this page and i would love to see it resurface one day. we do have screenshots though to get a feel as to what this game was like:

y'know i wish this game was found so i could figure out what on earth that pink thing is. he looks pretty cool yet so, so dated. there's a scoreboard too, which proves 'Defiant' was real and playable:

but yeah, 'Defiant's long gone now, and might probably stay that way. i doubt anyone has the game downloaded or if it even could be downloaded, and i doubt anyone who worked at Halfbrick still has it.

Case 2: 'Farma Llamma'

'Farma Llamma', as you can see from the site's description, is some sort of farming/resource multiplayer game that runs purely on JavaScript, including its servers. it has a neglect system where you farm dies if its not taken care of, so that's pretty neat! according to the features page, it was going to be a 2D game with a realtime world, and was, of course, playable online. there are no concept sketches to go off of despite the page implying there going to be some added. guess it was just never archived. to my knowledge there was never a link to play the game, and i suspect the game was cancelled from reading this post:

and from what i can find, no more updates were made on the game, so it was most likely canned, unfortunately, rendering it lost media. my theory is that workload as well as server costs contributed to the cancellation of 'Farma Llamma', though i obviously don't know for sure. an obscure game that was possibly never made, this is Halfbrick's second online game to remain lost, probably forever.

Case 3: 'Turbulence'

'Turbulence' is the game i am the least sure about. according to August 2001's snapshot of HB's site, 'Turbulence' was probably the one game that was the closest to completion apart from 'Defiant', around the time 'Farma Llamma' was put on hold. it was apparently gonna be something like a platformer/puzzle game that, like the other two games, worked in Java. it also had a 2-player mode. that's... really all we know about it. there is a concept art section which had quite a lot of sketches (including one of Elvis apparently???), but the images were not archived and thus won't load.

that's... it, really. we know it was a 2D platformer with 2 player mode on Java that might have been close to completion, but that's really all we know. an image of 'Turbulence' was shown on August 2001's snapshot, but alas, that too is broken. it was apparently for "next gen consoles", which i'm assuming is stuff like the GBA considering 'Fuzz and Rocket' was being developed for that console in 2003. maybe we might not ever know what 'Turbulence' was supposed to be, and it never ended up being released anyway.

Case 4: 'XGame'

WOAH! now that's a tonal shift, isn't it? on an older version of HB's site it mentions that the site isn't orange anymore, and then here comes THIS baby in 2003! and look at that logo! i think that's my favourite HB logo, it's so cute and bright and pixelly :D

so this is Halfbrick's game section from 2003, the same page where 'Fuzz and Rocket' was once listed up to 2005 along with HB's earlier works. one of the other games listed here was 'XGame', a puzzle racing game which was fast paced and "frantic". curiously, its gameplay and the screenshots available seems a lot like 'Raskulls', a game Halfbrick would later release in 2010 for Xbox. perhaps this concept was lifted from 'XGame', to which 'XGame' should really get some credit for (possibly) being an inspiration for one of Halfbrick's most iconic and beloved games.

'XGame' was going to be for the PC, and was suitable for handhelds and next gen consoles. they were looking for a publisher to publish the game, which i would assume was finished or close to completion by then. interestingly, there's some cover art mockups, both of which being for the PS2 and Gamecube. considering the time of creation for this game, yeah, that checks out. i'm not entirely sure of 'XGame' was its final name considering how HB usually titles its games, but there's a logo so....

the page for 'XGame' also mentions that "A PC based prototype of XGame is available by request.", which i'm assuming would have been for publishers looking to contact Halfbrick to get a hold of the game for consideration. this also proves that a playable prototype of 'XGame' was in existence at one point, but obviously has not been archived. 'XGame' stayed listed on Halfbrick's website until the site changed its theme in 2005, where it was quietly removed and fell into obscurity. weirdly enough though, 'Fuzz and Rocket' stayed on their site way up until 2008, which by then the DS, Wii and PS3 had already come out, making the ill-fated GBA game obselete.

does Halfbrick still have the PC prototype of 'XGame'? no one really knows. i doubt it, though. Halfbrick has changed so much since then, and even the long past of HB developing licensed games is relatively obscure to those only scratching the surface of their mobile games. i doubt they still have any of these games anymore, and i'm afraid that they'll stay lost for the indefinite future.

oh yeah, and i forgot to mention, Halfbrick also worked on another GBA game simply called 'Booze', which is... an odd name, for sure. it was actually being developed in 2001 but to my knowledge, was never mentioned on their website, just this article. nothing else exists of this old game except for this shotty prototype video uploaded to Youtube in 2014, and yes, there is that really old HB logo. this one is from later in 2001 and looks pretty sweet, much better than the older one, haha. so yeah, this is lost too.

Case 5: thats really it tbh

that's about all i can find. i love lost media and i think its really interesting how stuff can just go missing like that. obviously all of these are super obscure. and i of course like Halfbrick too! researching this was really interesting and know one else knows about it, so i thought i'd share it here. i did also find this page from October 2011 that had stuff from the super old Jetpack Joyride pre-release, called 'Machine Gun Jetpack' at the time. it's got some cool screenshots and i also found what i'd describe as a blinkie while looking on there too:

it's pretty swell! anyway that's all. sorry this post was super long but man i love infodumping about this stuff. it's really neat!

#lost media #halfbrick #jetpack joyride #lost game

[fleouriarts]

hello tumblr dot com it is a personal holiday for me...

it's my oc story's 5th birthday :-D so i wanted to do something special. aka just finally draw a lineup for them. i never did one before because it felt like too much effort (its really not)/i didnt want it to get outdated (all art gets outdated eventually so who cares) but i figured... its been half a decade i might as well

i was a freshman in high school when i first made these guys (it was literally my first day as a freshman too LOL) which is crazy. these stupid fictional fellows have been here for me thru high and low. it feels kinda goofy ascribing so much importance to them but i fr would go insane if i couldnt project my feelings onto them LOL

ANYWAY. happy birthday to my post-apocalyptic pride parade open the readmore if you want to see their embarrassing baby pictures (aka my old art) vs now

2017 -> 2022

2017 -> 2022

2017 -> 2022

2018 -> 2022 this one is crazy i have no memory of even drawing that first pic

2019 -> 2022 i also have no memory of this one LOL

#my art #my ocs #comatelma #finished #2022 #daewon #julian #samjulang #wiltkewan #yerin #francis #ramiel #WHEW. ik im posting this a little late in the day but i wanted to get it out on The actual birthday (aug 10th) #i made it in the nick of time :-3

[wjbs-aus]

I can't sleep, anyway here's a way-too-long post where I talk about my current thoughts on the Saints Row reboot now that I've had time to properly think about it.

Please note that some parts of this post might be outdated since the game has apparently been updated since I last played.

I slightly regret not trying all the non-Venture minigames, since they seemed kinda interesting.

Speaking of which, the Venture minigames were mostly frustrating, with the exceptions of the tech one (since it gave you a lot of cool stuff, even though they're technically not minigames but rather short missions, even though one of the rewards kinda sucked; more on that later), the fast food one (even though it took me a while to figure out how to activate it) and Cutting Edge (because the whole "look for the specific texture based on obtuse clues" thing was honestly a lot of fun). The toxic waste one was painful, and the cleanup one's time-limit was so low I couldn't even complete the first instance.

The game was buggy, but most of them weren't that serious. The least-severe was the Death Blossom ability Daniel Radcliffe-ing my character (that is to say, the guns that spawn during the associated animation got irrevocably attached to their hands whenever I used it; it kinda reminds me of a bug in The Third where picking up a Decker Specialist's hammer in a Mayhem instance causes it to clip into your current weapon and not have its associated attack), the most annoying was not being able to attack, switch weapons or use abilities (which was fairly easy to fix by just dying and then loading from the last checkpoint), and the worst was the very cool and probably useful shoot-through-walls ability crashing the game outside the mission that unlocks it (this is the reward that sucks).

The hoverboard is fun. That is all.

Ok so on one hand, possibly-canon* non-binary boss is cool; on the other hand, only being able to have top surgery scars if you use the stitched-together body texture is bad. Other than that (and the dumb body-type triangle, since apparently people can't be both fat and muscular at the same time), the character customisation system is good.

Knowing that the DLC content will include new locations, I really hope they have Stilwater as one of them, since it canonically exists in the new timeline.

You know one mission where you destroy stuff with a giant digger and it's really fun but then you don't get to do that again? Yeah, that was kinda disappointing. Same with the island mission, which could have been turned into a full minigame like in The Third.

I still don't understand why you don't unlock the AI tank after the level where you use it. Literally any of the previous games in the series would have given it to you, although there is a chance that you get it for choosing to kill Marshall (which I didn't).

My opinion on the LARP questline has kinda changed; while I do still think it's a fun little side-thing (and the crossbow is super OP when upgraded), it really doesn't fit into the rest of the plot, especially if - like me - you put off completing it until relatively far into the game. I think the premise could work really well as a separate game.

Ok but like what if the Saints of Rage machine you can find was accidentally brought into the new timeline by the original-timeline Saints when they were, like, time-travelling or whatever (assuming Gat Out Of Hell and Agents of MAYHEM are non-canon to the old timeline), and since they couldn't let anyone know about them they just sold it to some random guy in the middle of the desert? That's my headcanon.

Seriously why don't Cutting Edge materials just work like normal colours please I just want to have a hat with a gold buckle and not a garish all-gold hat???? The only things I used them on were vehicles and my character's prosthetic hand.

Speaking of Cutting Edge materials, you could totally make a human statue using one of the stone textures.

*(them being NB depends on whether or not you treat the use of "they" in that one cutscene as diegetic or not)

#saints row #saints row 2022 #thoughts #long post

[cosplayprincess21]

I posted 471 times in 2022

140 posts created (30%)

331 posts reblogged (70%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@acilykos-art

@disasterpersonified

@im-surviving-off-of-tea11

@the-ancient-ocean

@headphonemouse

I tagged 226 of my posts in 2022

#dr stone - 176 posts

#dcst - 168 posts

#dr. stone - 151 posts

#drst - 127 posts

#gen asagiri - 72 posts

#asagiri gen - 72 posts

#ryusui nanami - 59 posts

#senku ishigami - 54 posts

#kohaku - 51 posts

#nanami ryusui - 42 posts

Longest Tag: 114 characters

#seriously ive rewatched dr.stone. how i met your mother. the originals and moriarty the patriot multiple times now

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Senku hcs

Oh this shall be fun

Realizes he's aromantic asexual in middle school. Everyone else was going on about romance and dating and all that other stuff, and all he cared about was science.

Was the one lecturing people in elementary school about why certain super powers can't be real and crushed the hopes and dreams of those wanting lazer vision

Would secretly leave Taiju money or other things he needed but pretended he had no idea where they came from

Since hes the definition of aroace, his gaydar is never wrong

Tried to figure out if he could turn himself into a robot as a kid, it did not work

Speaking of robots, he had robot pj's up until he was 11 in which he traded them for science ones

His experiments would make stay up late into the night, so naturally, he developed a taste for energy drinks.

At night he will sometimes think of Byakuya and remember all the memories he has with his dad, he might try to act like the man was embarrassing and all, but deep down hes a kid who never got to say goodbye to his dad

The only two people he can fully confide in are Taiju and Yuzuirha

While its common for kids who are adopted to want to know about their biological parents, he doesnt. He had Byakuya after all, and Byakuya is his dad, nothing else matters.

Hope you like them. Senku is a very fun character to make headcanons for.

45 notes - Posted March 28, 2022

#4

no one in Dr.STONE is an autistic retard so why do you plan to make a post about it? just cause you're retarded doesnt mean they are

congrats you got me to use Tumblr Desktop instead of my phone because im going to have a lot to say.

First of all, fuck off with the R word here, its an outdated and harmful term thats rooted in Ableism. Secondly i was going to ignore this and delete it when i saw the first line but then you also decided to insult me so you know enjoy getting your ass handed to you.

But whats wrong with noticing that certain characters in Dr.STONE are ASD coded? Like everyone accepts that Ryusui has ADHD but being autistic is something bad right? News Flash it isnt. Also show me where in the manga that Sai and Yuzuriha dont show traits of autism? i feel explaining to you would be a waste of energy but just know this is only going to make my post on it even longer cause holy fuck the beginning will now have a rant about people like you. Do me a favor and never send an ask here again and kindly fuck off.

Also this comment really pissed me off and i was going to focus on just Sai and Yuzuriha but now im gonna add Magma,Senku and Ruri to this as well cause ive also been seeing them as ASD coded but have been keeping that to myself.

47 notes - Posted August 13, 2022

#3

so i finished fmab

sobbing crying wailing etc it was SO GOOD and completely destroyed me at the same time fhjfjkfjhfkjhsahjsdjhfkjdjghdkjsk definitely the anime of all time

welcome to the world of FMAB. The obsession will never leave, and the pain gets worse with every rewatch. But with that also comes seeing little things you never noticed before which makes the series even better. 

47 notes - Posted January 23, 2022

#2

Ok so ill be posting about the final chapter soon but. IM SO HAPPY SENKU DIDNT GET ANY LOVE INTERESTS. HES AROACE AND STAYS AROACE HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

54 notes - Posted March 6, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Ok but i really need to know what people have against aroace characters? Like theres nothing wrong with any character being aroace but for some reason it just causes others to be so upset and for what? Ive seen it with mostly One Piece and The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Luckily havent seen it as much with Dr.STONE or at least on tumblr. The number of people ive blocked on tiktok for getting upset about Senku being CANONICALLY aroace is ridiculous. But yeah can someone just explain this to me? Cause aroace exist and we do deserve to have our representation in media and not in the "oh im rude because im aroace and thats my only personality" way. But in a way where we ardnt dehumanized for not feeling romantic or sexual attraction.

331 notes - Posted July 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[seriously-mike]

The Perks of Being Open-Source

As promised, here's something about the plug-ins for Stable Diffusion, the only AI image generator that's open-source, and makes for a great testbed for related research because of that.

The outcome of this research are various plug-ins and modifications that allow Stable Diffusion to do a lot of interesting things. And the authors? Hooboy, you would be surprised. It turns out that very serious companies, ones you would suspect of cooking their own tech of this kind on the side even if they haven't announced it publicly, build interesting things and share it for free.

Let's start with Semantic Segmentation. If an AI image generator makes images based on text input, Semantic Segmentation scans images, identifies elements and assigns text descriptions to them. A lot of serious companies have released open-source code of their implementation: you have Nvidia, Google, Meta and even Alibaba building that stuff. It might sound kinda underwhelming if fairly useful for helping visually impaired people (for example, Facebook uses it to generate alt texts for images posts automatically), but here's the kicker: Semantic Segmentation may be used in Stable Diffusion to automatically generate masks based on text description. Want to find a hand and redraw it to be more anatomically correct? Easy. How about changing the hair color without monkeying with it in Photoshop? Also easy. So easy that some basement-dwelling chud can script it to find the clothes on a woman and draw a nude body in their place (and did, and got himself in trouble when another teenage chud uploaded photos of girls from his class to the app).

Semantic Segmentation is the core of the popular Stable Diffusion extension called aDetailer: as I mentioned before, Semantic Segmentation can recognize what a hand is, even if it's distorted, and point the generator to inpaint a better version in its place. Same goes for the faces. And that's the two things aDetailer is built to fix.

Another thing are ControlNets: plugins that allow you to nudge the generation process a particular way, be it recreating the pose of a character down to hands and fingers (or just the face orientation and expression), following the outline of a sketch and filling in the details, even maintain perspective using depth maps. And then, based on that tech, you have PhotoMaker, created by Tencent's Applied Research Center, and its improved version, IP Adapter. The capabilities are impressive, particularly if you remember that a slightly outdated gaming PC can run Stable Diffusion at a decent pace with no need for an internet access, even with the plugins.

Also, with OpenAI's video generator Sora looming on the horizon, you should know that the first AI-generated (or at least redrawn) videos were created in Stable Diffusion as well. I don't intend to go down this rabbit hole for practical reasons (I have no need for using it for that particular purpose and my video card is a bit outdated), but it was on the sweaty basement-dwelling nerds to figure out how to fine-tune the whole thing to be consistent across a whole fuckton of frames, and they did it, the crazy sonsabitches.

So laugh all you want at the ornery, wobbly Stable Diffusion producing rounded, fractal blorps and fucky hands. Even basic capabilities like inpainting and outpainting still make Midjourney jealous, and if you look at the plugins, you can imagine a good few use cases you could never wring out of the competing algorithms - and run them on your own PC for free instead of relying on centralized black boxes with a monthly fee.

#mike's musings #AI image generation #Stable Diffusion #IP Adapter #ControlNet #Semantic Segmentation #SemSeg #tech #technology

[ohthehypocrisy]

My Pokemon Unite Posts and the culmination of Season 2

With Diancie having been posted earlier today, it marks the end of Season 2 and the beginning of a lengthy break for me. Believe me, I love doing this, even if so little people read this stuff. That doesn't matter to me, I just like putting these ideas down to amuse myself.

That said, though, I do feel like I have to put everything together into a neat little package, which is why I made a masterpost for all of Season 2. My own thoughts have to be put down as well, so here we go.

First off, not every Pokemon I teased in my How To posts made it into Season 2. Before I started the season, I made a couple of posts that had some insight on how I made up movesets for the Pokemon I had made drafts for. Here they are: Intro - All-Rounders - Attackers - Defenders - Supporters - Speedsters. At the latter half of the post, I put up screencaps of BSTs for the pokemon I had sitting in my drafts. These drafts are captured from Smogon's Dex, which is why they're all such low quality, and that they were captured before the website changed to Dark Mode.

In the 'All-Rounders' post, I teased Torterra as an All-Rounder, but that ended up changing at the last minute when the post was finalized. Also, Torterra is one of my favorites, which is why it spearheaded Season 2. In addition to Torterra, Falinks and Dubwool were also teased and made it into Season 2. The last two haven't had their posts finalized yet and will most likely show up in Season 3 or if Pokemon Unite surprises us and adds them into the game out of the blue before then.

In the 'Attackers' post, Polteageist, Clawitzer, and Starmie were teased and made for Season 2. The other 2 most likely will be added into Season 3 when it gets made.

In the 'Defenders' post, only Bronzong and Hariyama were teased and added to Season 2. The other 3 will probably be added into Season 3.

In the 'Supporters' post, Pyukumuku and Delibird were the only 2 Supporters that actually made it to Season 2.

And lastly, from the 'Speedsters' post, Boltund, Salazzle, and Golisopod were teased and added to Season 2.

If you've been reading this far, you might be wondering, why were there so many exclusions? Well, math is not my strong suit, but I teased 5 pokemon in each post, totaling up to 25 pokemon. As you can probably tell, 25 does not equal 20, which is how many Posts there are in a Season. I had to make some cuts, and even cut out more slots for Season 2 so I could add in some new pokemon.

I do go by popularity with Pokemon Unite, but not in the way you think. I actually try to avoid making movesets for the super popular Pokemon, because it would be a waste of time to write up a post for a Pokemon that's a shoo-in for Pokemon Unite anyway. I can safely say that Incineroar or Blaziken will most likely be added to the game in the near future, which is why I don't have any drafts set for them.

Tinkaton was the only exception to this as the games were very new at the time and I had seen the popularity results on Twitter. I figured it was only a matter of time until the devs of Pokemon Unite streamlined her application process or something, so I mashed that one out as soon as I could.

Some extra stuff about Season 2:

Rampardos was going to be an Attacker, except it was still going to use physical basic attacks. I changed my mind on that notion pretty quickly when it came time to flesh out the post and I decided to make it a Speedster.

Boltund had a last minute rework to its move synergy and I replaced a moveset altogether. I have already forgotten what it was going to be, probably because it was something dumb and complicated.

Scrafty's moveset is directly inspired from my outdated Sableye moveset post. Since Sableye is in Pokemon Unite officially as a Supporter, I figured I'd rework the Aeos Orb stealing mechanic I came up with for that post originally.

Ariados spent the shortest amount of time sitting in my drafts. It was made and published in less than a week. The inspiration just hit me that hard, I guess.

Shortly after the Ariados post, Tumblr came out with Polls. I've started putting up polls shortly after publishing a moveset. Because I like to space out and time my reblogs in tandem with these posts, what ended up happening was that the posts started being spaced out 1 week apart from each other. This spaced out the Season posts weekly, as I liked getting all of my work done in one day.

I'll be using a similar schedule for Season 3, but the posts will be coming out on their own time, when they're ready. This will ease the burden off of me and give me more time to finalize the drafts and touch up some of those posts. I'll be honest, though, if I pause work on one draft to touch up on another, it's hard for me to come back to that draft with the same zeal as when I first started working on it. That's what all my time goes to, hyping myself back up and sorting out my thoughts to make the posts make sense.

I think that'll about do it. Season 3 won't be happening for a while, not that I don't have enough drafts to fill a Season. I have some real life stuff that needs to get sorted out before I start doing this again as a hobby.

I'm still going to post some Pokemon Unite Stuff on this blog, though. Lapras was officially revealed to be coming to Pokemon Unite, so when that happens, I'll update my original post and break it down compared to the official released. There's also the leaked Pokemon coming soon that I'll need to make a similar post for each one. Those will feature the drafts I've made for those pokemon and will include what ideas I had in mind and such.

I also will have to do one for Girafarig, which I had a draft being worked on until Farigiraf was revealed for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.

Also I'll still be doing polls during my break, keep an eye out for those.

That'll about do it. If you've read this far, thanks for reading my thoughts. See you later for more polls and Season 3 when it comes out, eventually.

#Pokemon Unite #my thoughts #too many pokemon to tag