#first order triumvirate

[pizzat-i]

happy belated new years!! again!!! 🎊🎉

#(being on time is overrated anyways) #my art #first order triumvirate #armitage hux #general hux #captain phasma #kylo ren #star wars sequel trilogy

[tomatette]

Boop - awful people edition

#boop #star wars #armitage hux #general hux #kylo ren #ben solo #phasma #captain phasma #kylux #reylo #gingerpilot #gingerrose #huxma #first order #first order triumvirate #who are you? #pointless polls

[calliecat93]

The Enemy Within is a really good episode when it comes to Kirk and the Triumvirate's dynamic.

In it, we have Kirk split in half. The good half, which has all of Kirk's positive traits but is also indecisive, uncertain, and even a little meek in comparison to normal. The bad Kirk is... well, an unpleasant maniac. Aggressive, impulsive, lack of empathy, all traits that most of us fear. And yet without it, without these negative aspects, Kirk isn't Kirk. A Kirk without any of his bad traits is just as incomplete as a Kirk without the good ones. He needs that decisiveness and aggression to push himself as a captain. To act. To command. We saw it in The Corbomite Manuver and this only helps reinforce it.

On the one hand, Kirk's struggling to function. On the other hand, he's still the captain. He can't allow himself to slip. He can't allow himself to show any weakness. Spock outright reinforces that to him, which in this case imo was the absolute worst move but it's absolutely in character for Spock and for this analysis as we'll see in a moment. Kirk is unwilling to relinquish command, so he tries to force himself to continue. But as time goes, his will continues to falter.

Things really get interesting, however, once they've finally captured the bad Kirk. If you go by production order, this is probably the first time we've had Kirk, Spock, and McCoy in a scene that lasts longer than a few seconds. On the one hand, we have Spock. He delves into how Kirk, without the bad half, is losing his ability to command. He's utterly blunt about it too, which isn't a surprise since this is Spock. The same guy who outright told Kirk not to divulge to the crew the exact details of the situation because it would damage Kirk's captain image and thus provoke a loss of faith by the crew. McCoy practically acts like he's offended on Kirk's behalf. The fact that to him, it sounds like Spock would dare even question Jim and his command ability speaks a LOT. Of course it's Spock's job and Kirk outright told him to do so if he saw him slipping, but McCoy doesn't know that nor would he really care in this instance. He tries to tell Jim that he can still command like he is, but it's clear that they all know that that's not true.

So we have Spock pointing out the facts as they are and telling Kirk that he won't be able to captain soon, his logic utterly sound. Then we have McCoy getitng mad and denying it at first but ultimately admitting to Jim that Spock was right while also assuring him that having these negative traits is not bad. Kirk has his mind telling him one thing, but can't get over his feelings about it after what he's seen. He can't ignore the reality as much as he wants to. He has to accept that as repulsed as he is by seeing his raw darkness, he needs it. He has to accept it to be whole. To be Captain James T. Kirk. Otherwise, he is only half of what he is, and he can't live like that.

But what happens when you have the mind and the heart talking, but the soul is unable to balance it?

After we find out that the merging may kill Kirk from the shock, we have Spock and McCoy arguing again over what to do. All while Kirk sits there, listening to both sides and considering every option, but being unable to decide. The screencap above outright has Kirk in the middle, Spock and McCoy to the side like they were his shoulder angel and devil. They couldn't have symbolized it better if they tried.

On the one hand, we have Spock. It's clear to him that it was shock that killed the unicorn dog, unable to comprehend what all had happened to it when split and forcibly merged back. But Kirk IS able to comprehend it and thus will be able to avoid the same fate. Spock himself struggles with his two sides regularly and is able to manage it... well, he thinks he can anyways, but that's not the point. From his experience, he believes that Kirk can survive and regardless, the landing party will die unless they take the risk of merging Kirk and thus confirming that the transporters are safe once more. As is the duty of the captain.

On the other hand, we have McCoy. With no autopsy completed, he can't be for sure what caused the death and as a doctor he's not going to make a conclusion without it. He's utterly against using the teleporters until the autopsy is complete, at least. He's unwilling to risk Kirk's life without the proof. Plus, if they do it and Kirk dies, then they won't be able to beam up the landing party, and thus they'd die from the cold anyway. He needs absolute certainty before he's willing to allow anything. He's a doctor, so of course he's not going to recklessley allow anyone to risk themselves unless it's himself but shush, but he's especially not risking Jim.

That leaves us with Kirk. He can listen to the two sides. He can weigh the options of the two sides. If he doesn't go through the transporter, his stays split and his men die. But if he does, he has no way of being certain that he'll live. But the key to the Triumvirate is that Spock has his side, McCoy has his side, and Kirk either concedes to one or finds a third option. But he can't. Not at this moment. He has no ability to decide. That essential element is gone. He's still unwilling to relinquish command, and thus neither Spock nor McCoy can make the decision. It has to be Kirk.

Ultimately, the good Kirk chooses to go through the transporter, his men's lives coming before his own. The bad Kirk refuses, trying to abandon his men to save himself. The good Kirk isn't afraid of the risk while the bad Kirk fears for his life. The logical half and the emotional half at odds. In the end, the good Kirk convinces his terrified dark side that it has to be done. Thus, they are brought back together and become whole once more. James T Kirk becomes whole once more.

I have no idea where I'm going with this, and I'm probably reading into this WAAAAY too hard. But in short, just as Kirk needs his two own halves to function, Kirk needs Spock and McCoy as well. He needs Spock to be able to rationalize him and keep him and his head in check. He needs McCoy to be able to process his emotions and to embrace what he otherwise would be unwilling to. He needs both to be able to find that middle ground and make the decision, whether it be right or wrong but a decision nonetheless. Without him as a balance, the two halves are separate. Nothing to balance them out and at war with each other, unable to reconcile. Unable to be function. Unable to be whole.

#star trek #star trek tos #mcspirk #triumvirate #this is all jumbled and all over the place and im sorry #im funcitoning on insomnia rn and was struggling for hours last night trying to make words happen #but hopefully its coherent enough that I made some kind of point

[lilisouless]

Okay, if Leigh´s new novella is about the grishaverse, and she will kill of another character, i have only two guesses and one maybe

First, i think Leigh is self aware enought to realize that the grishaverse books already peaked. Its been enought time after KoS duology to add one more book to the series as an organic continuation. Therefore any adition would be an expanded story, an epylogue, etc. The only way it could peak again is with new characters entirely.

Its important to mention it, because i think that most people know that killing off important characters after your peak its a terrible idea that instead of sadness like you want to evoke what you get is frustration, eye rolling or people to see it as desesperate (No i am not saying narickriordanames)

If you haven't read all the books, beware of the spoilers

Even without this in consideration, some characters being killed just brings more trouble than a clousure. Meaning: Zoya,Nina and Hanne have inmunity. The onyl way it would work its a novella that takes place centuries ahead with another protagonists, and them being old already.

Here´s the thing: i believe Leigh can't go higher than Matthias (being the closest to a main character death) or David (being there from the start) , i seriously doubt she would step up of that, if she were she would have done it at the grishaverse peak, which like i said, its over.

Ohter thing is that its not very on brand for Leigh to kill of women that went trought a lot, otherwise she would have killed off Alina, so Inej and Genya are safe too. In fact, she hardly kills female characters at all, that aren't antagonists or very minor, i can only think on one female character that can be killed.

Kaz and Nikolai are too popular to die, lets get real. Even if Kaz is the crow most likely to die(so you can figure out Wesper are safe) ...he is still very unlikely to die.

I don't know how to explain this, but i think if she would kill Tolya or Kuwei she would have done it already, or kill of Tolya instead of David in RoW

Now, there´s the danger zone:

I think Adrik or Mal would be decent candidates if it weren't for

-Unlike Genya, Alina doesn't have her friends around all the time. While of course she could eventually heal, i think it would be unsatisfying if the least we see of Alina is grieving, considering Mal was brought back to life in order to be with her. So, for this reason only i think Mal is safe

-Now, Adrik would be surely the next target, after all there´s a remaining etherealki (Nadia) to fill up , but i think if we could notice that killing off another member of the triumvirate would seem repetitive, so would Leigh.

To finish up, this doesn't mean this characters are certainly going to die, just that this are the mot likely options : Colm and Misha

Maybe, just maybe Marya, but given that Wylan´s arc was more closed that Jesper´s its less likely than the previous ones

#netflix shadow and bone #six of crows #crooked kingdom #leigh bardugo #grishaverse spoilers #sab spoilers #shadow and bone spoilers #shadow and bone netflix

[ewingstan]

Tell me what philosophical thought experiment I should get really opinionated about: Doctor Mother

SEND ME A WILDBOW CHARACTER YOU LOVE. I WILL TELL YOU WHICH PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT EXPERIMENT YOU SHOULD GET REALLY OPINIONATED ABOUT (SLASH DEVELOP A PSYCHOSEXUAL FIXATION ON)

Well lets see. Cauldron is an interesting spin on the "secret society that controls the world" trope. The formulation it's working from is "cabal of important world leaders and their unseen puppet-masters who all worship an evil god/are alien invaders/are otherwise jewish coded because really all these conspiracies are just The Protocols with a new coat of paint hastily slapped on." Cauldron doesn't fully depart from this space; antisemetic conspiracy theorists from Terrats to Icke have had too much influence on the popular conception of secret societies for any derivation not to share some of that DNA. But it departs from it in some important ways: first of all, its remarkably small. It has a wide number of important people indebt to them, sure—but the number of people who actually know whats going on is what, five? Secondly, its members have almost nothing in common; certainly nothing to fit them in as a stand-in for a religious/ethnic minority. Thirdly, there's no narrative of good vs evil, no righteous undercurrent opposing a purely malicious group: most of the case 53s want Dr. Mother and her crew dead, but they're hardly positioned as righteous warriors of the light or anything by the text, and Cauldron's ultimate goals fall far short of the evil-for-evil's sake New World Order shtick.

Finally, while Cauldron is an incredibly major player with a hand in every major event in the world of parahumans, they are not proper masterminds: they're hypercompetent in their specializations for getting things to go their way, but they often either don't know why they're doing what they're doing or can't predict the effects of their actions. Nothing in the story could happen without them acting behind the scenes, but they're less the authors of what happened and more the people knocking over dominoes and hoping the rube-goldberg machine spits out something akin to what they wanted to happen. They can give people faustian bargans, but as Battery's case shows they don't always have the power to ensure the bargains are met. They can create disasters for their own ends, but they unleash disasters on accident nearly as often.

Doctor Mother represents this tendency more than any other member of Cauldron, lacking Contessa and Number Man's predictive abilities yet directing them and the Triumvirate to enact worldwide change. The least powerful member in literal terms, but for all that no other character is so directly behind the world events of earth Bet. She's almost more responsible for Earth Bet's divergences from the real world than Scion; everything comes back to her in some way. Doctor Mother moves, and the world moves with her.

All that to say, Doctor Mother stands stans want to fuck The Unmoved Mover from Aristotle's Metaphysics!

(Other answers here)

#leo says #doctor mother #wormblr #wildbow #parahumans #thought experiment ask game

[casteliacityramen]

Munday Tuesday Lore Post - Unovan Kingdoms and Wars

| Light and Dark Stones |

Pictured: Icirrus City Museum of History

Twin Heroes

At the end of a struggle for independence from the Paldean Empire, two human brothers arose from the chaos to bring an end to Paldean rule in the region. 

These two brothers were heralded as the Twin Heroes, backed by an all powerful dragon. 

The brothers agreed that they needed to be ready in the potential event of another invasion. The Twin Heroes dreamed of a unified nation, leading to them split their dragon and travel eastward and westward to strengthen their numbers.

In the West, the Vidraco Kingdom started as a conglomerate of various tribes indigenous to the region. Composed of draconic cultures of harsh lands, they came to recognize the strength of the Hero of Ideals.

In the East, the Vellumblanc Kingdom combined the native population with the remnants of Paldean and Kalosian colonists. Benevolently led by the Hero of Truth, Vellumblanc flourished as a contender for world trade. 

The First Unovan Civil War

When the brothers met again after twenty years, in what is now known as Relic Castle, they disagreed with each others’ methods and ideologies. In the name of their kings, the people of Vidraco and Vellumblanc fought a bloody five-year war before an armistice was signed.

With no clear winner, both kingdoms believed that they lost. Vellumblanc and Vidraco were ravaged, with social and economic livelihoods taking a downturn. Ten years of misery passed, ending with the untimely demise of both kings, distraught as their dream of a unified region fell apart.

The Second Unovan Civil War

The kingdoms and dragons were inherited by the Twin Heroes’ sons, both of whom grew restless at the inaction of their fathers post-armistice. In their inexperience, the new kings disregarded their advisors and continued the war. Although a breaking of armistice means the continuation of the first war, this new conflict is still considered by most to be the second Unovan Civil War.

Not long after the fighting began, the commonwealth of each kingdom paid a higher price in food, resources, and population in order to continue the fight. The people of these two kingdoms, no longer enchanted by the benevolence of their old kings, had enough of the conflict. A new middle faction was born from insurgency and rebellion, with the main driving force being none other than the draconic shell left behind of Reshiram and Zekrom's split: Kyurem.

Vidraco and Vellumblanc, slowly hemorrhaging their citizens to this new united faction, couldn't fight each other and an insurgency at the same time. Before long, both kingdoms crumbled and the Unovan Republic rose from their ashes.

Most of the events of the second civil war are shrouded in mystery. While each kingdom regarded the preservation of history to be paramount, much of it was lost. Traces of the times are strewn about everywhere, with little to be gained from carved stones, written parchment, or glyphs on the walls of Relic Castle and the Abyssal Ruins…

… and that’s by design. 

Just as the Order intended. 

Head Scholar and Triumvir Lok

|| The Order of Arceus ||

(A big thank you to @ask-the-royal-absol, @lightofunova, @lustrous-dawn, @sinnohsiblings and @askcapital for listening / providing input in naming the countries and figuring out the colors for these banners (you should hopefully already be following them!))

#pokenoa #pokeask #pokemon ask blog #pokemon bw #pokemon bw2 #unova

[jack-pseudonym]

A Love Letter to Herobrine

So, fun fact: that screenshot that I'm using as the thumbnail is not the origin of Herobrine as a piece of Minecraft mythology. This image was first posted on 4chan around August 31st, 2010, and the character had been floating around the Minecraft forum for a while before that.

The earliest description of a character resembling Herobrine was posted around July on a general creepypasta thread. The Minecraft wiki calls this story "White Eyes." It was posted by a user named Flaky and you can read it here. The post doesn't feature the iconic Herobrine design, but it's the origin of a lot of the beats that keep coming up in Minecraft horror stories.

To summarize real quick: a Minecraft Alpha player is so creeped out by the weird noises and phenomena in a cave under their base that they seal it up and move elsewhere. Eventually they discover a dungeon with a single broken music disc inside, which causes the cave noises to return louder than before. To play the disc, they need resources from their old storage room built directly above the cursed cave. When they return to their base, the player has an encounter with a pair of glowing white eyes. Eventually they go creepypasta-insane from listening to the music disc and (I think) die.

The contents of this post are not as important as the fact that the author provides us with a screenshot of the cave, which should be right next to the famous Herobrine image in the history books.

(If you're not seeing it, check the bottom left.)

The next Herobrine sighting is the famous one. It's pretty much a compilation of all the ideas about the character that were floating around the Minecraft forum at the time. The main thing it introduces to the canon is the idea that the "Herobrine" account was owned by the deceased brother of famous Minecraft dev Hatsune Miku. The obvious implication is that Herobrine is his ghost. It also gives us the classic "fog hill" image, of course.

The third "canon" sighting was concocted by an early Minecraft streamer named Copeland. This is the highest effort of the three and probably the first Herobrine Sighting Video ever recorded. The first thing Copeland did was edit Herobrine into a few wide screenshots of his base to create hype for the stream. This resulted in the third member of the triumvirate of famous Herobrine screenshots, and honestly maybe the creepiest.

In order to get Herobrine on video, Copeland changed the texture of a painting. He went live shortly after, playing like normal for a while before “encountering Herobrine” in a dimly-lit room, screaming, running out of the room, and turning the game off. He continued to stream for a bit after that before declaring he would delete the world.

Why is Minecraft scary?

It's important to keep in mind that Minecraft at this point had exactly one full-time developer and no marketing department. The only reason a given thing was added to this version of Minecraft was that the developer thought it sounded interesting. This had two major effects on the state of the game that enhanced its creepypasta factor substantially.

One: the game is very bare-bones. Minecraft Alpha's infinite replayability comes from its core concept rather than a depth of additional features. Even some basic quality-of life fixes like the ability to stack most food items are absent from this version of the game. This resulted in the features that were present being scrutinously analyzed and theorized about by hundreds of people at a time on the forums, because once you had diamond armor and a big house there wasn't much else to do except dig into mechanics.

Two: many of those mechanics and features that did exist in Alpha were bizarre, and several of them seem like the developer was going out of their way to create a creepy atmosphere. Let's take a look at the mechanics I'm talking about and examine how each of them contributed to the Herobrine mythology.

Fog and light

One thing the White Eyes story and the famous Herobrine post have in common is a focus on low view distance. The second post even specifically mentions that they were playing with their render distance set very low since their computer didn’t have the specs to run anything higher, which most people in the 2010 indie gaming community could probably relate to.

This is relevant because Minecraft cuts off your view distance really sharply. If your render distance is set close to you, everything beyond the cutoff disappears into a thick bank of fog. This is probably best illustrated by looking at the same hill from the famous screenshot with a higher render distance.

In the Herobrine screenshot, this entire back half of the hill is completely cut off. Literally anything could be inside the fog and it would be totally invisible until you got within a few dozen blocks.

On top of that, this hard cutoff of visibility happens the same way with darkness. Walking just a few blocks into a cave leaves you completely unable to see anything until you place a torch. And, of course, if that torch were to be somehow removed, you would be instantly plunged into pitch blackness. Just look at the White Eyes screenshot up above.

The simplistic lighting engine of Minecraft Alpha is obviously not intended to make the game scarier. That said, as someone who’s become totally accustomed to modern Minecraft’s smooth lighting mechanics, it’s really remarkable how much more eerie the game is when you’re consistently forced to walk into total darkness and thick fog to get anything done. Without smooth lighting, when night starts to fall it looks like an enormous shadow passing over the whole world.

If you've heard of the classic Internet creepypasta Ted the Caver, there's a bit where Ted is stuck inside a similarly cursed cave with no light. Earlier in the story, the writer points out that darkness in caves is different from darkness above ground - there is straight-up no light to see with. Your eyes never adjust. Something could be literally inches from from his face and he would never see it. These older versions of Minecraft feel like that.

(If you want to experience the horrors yourself in the modern day, turn smooth lighting off, brightness down to Moody, and crank your render distance down. I seriously recommend it.)

Dungeons

Dungeons are the only place in this version of Minecraft where you can find naturally generated cobblestone. The normal way to get cobblestone is to mine stone and place it back down, and it was the go-to strong building block for quite a while. This gives dungeons the distinct feeling of having been built by someone.

But this is contrasted with the monster spawner, which is one of the most alien blocks in the game. It’s not obtainable in survival mode in any way, it’s destroyed if you try to pick it up, and the floating image of a monster inside the cage is still probably the least blocky thing in the game.

Dungeons are also extremely rare for some reason. You could easily spend weeks in the same survival world and never find one, especially if you didn't enjoy caving for the sake of it once you had all the diamonds you needed.

All this is to say that if you were a Minecraft player in 2010 who’d never encountered one, someone on the forum describing finding a dungeon would sound exactly like the intro to any other creepypasta you'd read recently, right up until it happened to you. It's hard to convince your subconscious that an eerie forum story is completely fictional when things like dungeons are real.

Music discs

Okay, I've been writing about the eerie side of Minecraft for like a thousand words, and I somehow haven't brought this up yet. We need to talk about Discs 11 and 13.

The vast majority of music discs in Minecraft are electronic music tracks composed by German musician C418. They’re basically lo-fi beats to relax / play Minecraft to. There are two considerable exceptions to this genre. Let’s talk about 11 first.

The first thing you’ll notice about it is that the colored portion is black and the outside of the disc is cracked and broken, which is one of the most creepypasta things to ever be in a real game. And then, when you pop it into the jukebox and turn it on, instead of lo-fi electronic beats, you get this.

The track opens with heavy breathing and footsteps on stone, as the recorder of the disc runs through what is pretty clearly a cave. They sound terrified of something, but after a few seconds they stop and catch their breath. Soon, though, there’s a sound like faraway music and the recorder breaks into a run, faster this time, terrified again. The speed of the footsteps increases until the sound changes from stone to dirt, a sign that they’re almost at the surface, until there’s something that sounds like a growl and the sound abruptly cuts off. The last few seconds of the recording are static.

This is probably the most overtly horror-themed Minecraft ever gets, and this disc features heavily in a lot of Minecraft creepypasta. It makes sense. In the middle of an album of chill, electronic music, there’s one disc that’s a found footage horror short film, complete with the person holding the recorder meeting with some fate at the end. Imagine you’re going through your friend’s old VHS collection and there’s a copy of The Poughkeepsie Tapes in the middle of it with no explanation.

Also, this is the only time there’s any real physical evidence of another person existing in this world. Villages weren’t added until the release of Beta months later, and even then, this doesn’t sound like a villager. It sounds like us.

Disc 13 is less infamous by comparison, but it’s still jarring compared to the rest of the soundtrack. 13 consists mostly of slow, reverberating ringing sounds, and at this point I’m going to bring in the last weird Minecraft feature, because they sound like cave noises.

Cave noises are maybe even more infamous among the community than disc 11 as “the thing that makes Minecraft scary.” The most common of these noises are either relatively realistic, like wind or something, or eerie but obviously musical, like part of the soundtrack. Every so often, though, you’ll get one that sounds like footsteps, or the sound of a minecart traveling down a distant track. There’s obviously nothing actually there, but it’s another piece of evidence that even if you’re the only person in this world, there are things here that you didn’t make. This is not helped by the fact that the criteria for a cave noise occurring include darkness.

Conclusion 1

If you take all of these things together - the fog, the darkness, the weird signs that you’re not necessarily alone in this world - it’s easy to see where the sheer amount of creepypasta about this game comes from. It would not be unbelievable in 2010 that something like Herobrine could actually be in the game, and even if you were an adult and didn’t buy that he literally existed, Minecraft Alpha is still a nearly perfect game for scaring the shit out of yourself after just having read a bunch of horror stories.

(I know this because I scared the shit out of myself several times while revisiting Minecraft Alpha for this essay.)

Why Herobrine?

Surprise! There's more.

So we know where the Herobrine story comes from: a bunch of people playing an old, weird sandbox game that - intentionally or by accident - also functions surprisingly well as a survival horror game, and scaring themselves because it’s fun.

Now I want to talk about why the Herobrine story specifically resonated so hard with people that it still exists while hundreds of others have been basically forgotten. Keep in mind, the White Eyes story originated on a thread for a completely different creepypasta that no one has ever heard of. So what’s special about Herobrine?

To start with, we need to take a look at the specifics of Herobrine that set it apart from other creepypasta characters. The Minecraft wiki has a definition of “canonical” Herobrine that includes the first forum posts and images, like the famous 4chan post, as well as the Copeland streams. These are, quote, “fundamental to the creation and popularization of the character.” So let’s look at the commonalities between them.

Herobrine apologism

The most interesting thing these stories have in common, especially compared to more modern Herobrine, is a complete lack of aggression from Herobrine in game. The narrator of White Eyes does go crazy and maybe die, but that happens due to influence from Disc 11. The actual entity with the white eyes only appears once, and it never personally acts on the player.

In the original 4chan post, Herobrine is explicitly stated to run away and disappear if the player tries to approach and get a clearer look at him. The Copeland saga begins with Herobrine watching him in the corner of a screenshot, and even during the close encounter Herobrine doesn’t chase him out of the house or even follow him. He just stands there.

Just looking at the original Herobrine canon, there’s almost no reason to even conclude he’s malevolent at all.

So if Herobrine isn’t out to get you in the original canon, what does he do? Aside from watching you from the edge of your vision, there are a few consistent things to watch out for in the oldest videos. The most famous Herobrine signs are pyramids made of sand, trees with the leaves removed, and tunnels to nowhere, almost always lit with redstone torches.

The thing that strikes me about these signs is that they’re almost player-like, except with no internal logic to them. Building structures, cutting down trees, and digging tunnels are core to the gameplay loop of Minecraft, except in the Herobrine versions there’s no productivity. The pyramids are uninhabitable and the tunnels are never deep enough to find ore. It’s like what someone would do if they knew what you were supposed to do in Minecraft, but couldn’t understand why.

By far the most common explanation for the origin of Herobrine is that he’s a ghost. The most famous herobrine story says that he’s the dead brother of Hatsune Miku, and that part of the mythos is considered basically canon now. Even if you don’t like that element (can you tell I don’t?), a lot of posts from this time period describe him as the ghost of a miner. This is probably because the game literally has inexplicable mining sounds programmed into its caves. Either way, it’s hard to avoid the idea that Herobrine used to be a normal guy. Someone who lived in this empty world before you did.

"REAL HEROBRINE SIGHTING 100% PROOF"

There’s a Youtube playlist that I come back to a lot. It’s called “The Oldest Herobrine Sightings Ever (In Order!)” Most of the videos are either clearly faked, made by a 9-year-old, or clearly faked by a 9-year-old, but they still have a vibe to them that totally captivated me when I was younger and half buying into it.

They still give me a similar feeling years later, which is obviously partially due to nostalgia, but I don’t think the feeling is actually the exact same. It’s not quite nostalgia, and it’s not the the fear-slash-fascination I felt in 2012, glued to these videos while ready to run out of the room at any time in case something too scary happened. It’s closer to a good kind of melancholy.

And if you go back to The Oldest Herobrine Sightings Ever with the idea of feeling some empathy for him, it makes them hit a lot harder than if you just assume he's a murder ghost who’s coming to get you. I know I’m pretty far into Death of the Author territory at this point; I’m projecting an amount of emotional complexity onto fake cryptid sightings made by internet babies that almost definitely wasn’t there to begin with, but that doesn’t make this reading of the story any less impactful to me.

In order to make this point of view more believable, I’ve cherrypicked a video from the playlist for us to look at. The video is, naturally, called “REAL HEROBRINE SIGHTING 100% PROOF” by CreeperAssassin87. It's only five minutes long and I recommend watching it so you can determine for yourself if I'm making shit up.

In the video, CreeperAssassin heads out of their (pretty impressive) base only to find themselves face-to-face with the man himself. What happens next is probably the best example of my point in the whole playlist, but if you watch the other videos closely you can notice this pattern.

CreeperAssassin says very confidently that Herobrine started “chasing” them, but look at what he’s actually doing. He’s not running at the player or even really looking at the screen, and he’s not armed with anything more dangerous than a pickaxe. Remember, at this point in history, Herobrine wasn’t believed to have any magic powers to attack you with either. There’s nothing actually threatening going on here.

After that jumpscare, CreeperAssassin naturally spends the rest of the video running away and hiding, with Herobrine following close behind. My favorite part comes after the player has sealed themselves inside the wall of the castle. Herobrine breaks in, and once he has CreeperAssassin completely cornered...

...he doesn’t do anything. He just stands there and stares. The narration claims to have “luckly escaped” [sic], but I genuinely find it hard to see any malice in his behavior here.

One of the last appearances of Herobrine in the video is him watching CreeperAssassin through the window of their base after they block off the door. At this point, the video has firmly established that he's able to break blocks, and CreeperAssassin is completely cornered again. If he wanted to harm the player, he could do it easily. But once he's shut out, he just resigns himself to it.

Again, this video is probably the strongest example, but this observation holds pretty well for the vast majority of Herobrine sightings from this time period. If you shift your perspective a little bit, his behavior is not far off from what a normal person might do if they encountered another player for the first time.

Oh, hello. Who are you? It's nice to finally meet someone else. I thought I was alone out here.

Of course, nearly everyone he meets runs away and shuts him out. Eventually most of them either abandon their haunted worlds or delete them entirely.

Conclusion 2

For a lot of people on the Minecraft forums in 2010, Herobrine may have been an introduction to stories like this. I obviously doubt that a tragedy about a ghost doomed to wander alone forever was what any of the people involved here intended to make. That said, those emotions are still present, and strongly enough that they inspired me to write this entire thing.

I believe this contrast between the fear created by reading a scary story about an eerie game and the inherent sadness of the Herobrine figure is what made this story stand the test of time. Compare Herobrine with his more one-dimensionally hostile imitators, and then compare him with other creepypasta hall-of-famers like Ben Drowned. All the greatest urban legends make you feel something more complex than "afraid."

One last thing that I thought made a really good anecdote to conclude this vibes-based essay.

One of the most successful post-canon additions to the Herobrine lore is the idea of a Herobrine spawner, a structure you can build that will let him in to your world. The materials needed to do this are pretty consistent between stories, involving a base made of gold, redstone torches, sometimes some mossy cobblestone, and a netherrack pillar on top. Lighting the netherrack on fire is what activates the structure.

(There are some pretty obvious parallels here with real-life rituals meant to summon ghosts or spirits, especially the lighting of a fire.)

The origin of this structure, as far as I can tell, dates back to one of the first ever mods meant to add Herobrine to the game, a server plugin released in 2010. This plugin not only introduced the spawner, but Herobrine’s behavior in it is really interesting. He’s much more docile in this plugin than in the substantially more famous Herobrine Mod released the following year, where he directly attacks the player and summons zombies and whatnot.

The keystone here is the name of the plugin, the file you have to download to let him into your world. It’s not called “Him,” or “WakeUp,” or “WhiteEyes.”

It’s called “iLoveYou.”

#pseudoessay #minecraft #minecraft alpha #herobrine #creepypasta #migrated from old website #long post

[f0xgl0v3]

Octavian headcanons :3

Another round of general Octavian headcanons, family edition! Would first like to state I’m not touching the legacy strands currently because stuff like Augustus Caesar and his demigod status in Pjo and all of that messes stuff up and I need more time to think about that and actually reading ToA and stuff.

Anyways, motivation for the Octavian post is to settle pre-audition jitters. Drama club beauty and the beast production, and auditions are tomorrow :,] gonna have to weasel my way through the singing part and hope my acting carries me the rest of the way through (in the words of Perseus Jackson; if I tried to sing I’m pretty sure it’d cause an avalanche.)

*Update because I’ve been writing this post for a day; we had dance auditions first! Pretty much just seeing where we are in dancing skills for this, it was really chill and fun and vibes were immaculate! Sorry this post is kind of ajifnsdb and I couldn’t get names down for these people, but I’d want to do that after figuring out.. naming work?

But ajdienajdjfneb whatever onto the headcannons!!

Big family, BIIIG family. In my head he has 8 other siblings (he is indeed the eighth child just for my amusement and it works for the little time before I work on how I think New Rome does naming, and I’m not touching that with a 39 and a half foot pole)

Old money family too. They’re descended from Emperors and they’ve managed to continue that legacy and have a family business, aware of Triumvirate holdings, may even have positive work relations.

Octavian is the 2nd youngest, in order his siblings go; 1st eldest, 2 kid, 3 child, 4&5 were twins, then 6,7,8,9. His poor mom has so many kids- but got solid breaks between them, though I don’t want to calculate ages at the moment.

Staring with his youngest sister. It’s Julia, that Julia. The one that’s Terminus’s little ‘assistant’. Octavian likes getting the opportunity to see her more often than most of his other siblings. She’s a little menace but gets away with it, nothing bad though, just mischievous.

Skipping Octavian we go to child 7. Who doesn’t have a name but just got out of the legion a few years ago, and moved out of the legion/New Rome. Bit of a rebel, but just wants to settle down with a family of their own and distance themselves from the family. They had a neutral-to negative relationship with Octavian. Octavian doesn’t like his siblings distance from Rome, and sibling likes Octavian but can’t help worry over him.

Kid 6 would be probably Gaius or something (again. Not about to go think too hard about what is gonna end up being Octavian’s Oc siblings. I can think about them later) he got out honorably after Mt.Tam, I like to think he’s still looking for a job and drifting in that University stage.

Kids 5&4 are twins, fraternal (maybe identical but I want more fraternal twins) and absolutely wild?? Jobs set up probably as something like loan sharks, they help upkeep the family fortune. Think like Ebenezer Scrooge or how Bob Marley are described in Christmas Carol. Taught Octavian everything they knew about blackmail, manipulation, etc. but they’re generally silly. Both usually try to charge people for various scams, think of the cartoonish dealer with the giant trench coat.

Child 3 has their own family and works for Bombillio’s (?) pretty comfortable with life. Fascinated with the mortal realm, slips on trips their parents take for business.

Child 2 and 1 have significantly branched off and live sort of anywhere, I feel like 1 is supervising that outpost in Canada (that’s another Hc I have that I talked about a LOOONG time ago) and then 2 probably lives out with their partner in San Fran and cats.

Okay a sorry I’m a little jittery because it is SNOWING!!!!! Where I am at least but still, SNOWING!! Sorry I couldn’t name anyone but still, wanted to get general family stuff down and writing posts like these calm me down when I’m feeling a bit aaaaaurgh.

Octavian has mostly good relationships with his siblings. Though he feels like he’s the only one really invested in being a citizen of New Rome and upholding the family name.

I’ll probably change around the siblings and their order whenever I decide how their ages work. But I feel they’re all relatively close in age and then Julia is just the odd one out.

His mother is a legacy from a newer family in New Rome, she’s pretty silly and generally just wants the best for her family.

His dad inherited the unnamed, unspecified family business/company and currently runs it, preserved his old crown awards and has them framed in his office, takes his family very seriously.

Okay, I’m working on the rankings research. It’s… a thing, but for now I might just make more of these random little hc posts, in between larger posts and passion stuff y’know?

Also maybe other fandoms? I’m still very much a Pjo person but I still wanna talk about other stuff lol,

Anyway here’s a quick Octavian thing I did, I’m still messing with his design, I feel like this might stick but I’ll still mess around with his hair, but I just wanted to add a little more to this post because it felt… pretty empty lol.

Also possible post on how some of the weapons characters have look? Would love to draw actual referenced things like IVILIS(? Don’t wanna go check but the Juno sword I think- Jason’s sword-) Reyna’s spear sword & dagger. Octavian’s Pilum & dagger, some hc stuff, maybe actual Camp Half-Blood stuff (because I wanna draw Backbiter)

Okay, I think I’m done now :3

#hehe :3 #pjo hoo toa #hoo #hoo headcanon #pjo octavian #hoo octavian #octavian headcanon #octavian pjo #octavian hoo #idk how to tag this #literally wish I could tell you more about his siblings but these are bare bone #forgot about his parents for a second lol #okay bye

[lenievi]

TOS-tober day 6 (triumvirate prompts)

Favourite romantic duo?

My doorway to mckirk was the bar scene between them in Beyond. That was the first scene I saw from AOS, and only after that I watched the films in order. Because it was the their "final" AOS dynamic that I fell in love with, I feel it's only logical (lol) that I would also like everything about their TOS version because Beyond is the closest to TOS in feeling and characterization (even though I'd still say it's closer to TOS films rather than the show itself).

Yesterday, I said that the spones dynamic is the most engaging, and it is. But Kirk and McCoy's relationship has always been my favourite. It took me a bit to cross the line into the romantic nature of it, but I'm embracing it fully now~

When it comes to Kirk and McCoy in TOS, their relationship is the most quiet, in a way. Their most important scenes are at the beginning of s1, and when you don't get on that train early, it's easy to just miss it imho Not that there aren't good scenes as far as s3 (but they're mostly part of the triumvirate scenes, and Spock-McCoy overshadow the Kirk-McCoy angle), and then the films are just full of mckirk scenes, but at that point, I feel like most people are just focused elsewhere. The lack of fanworks doesn't help either, unfortunately.

But from early on, you know that Kirk and McCoy are close friends. McCoy approaches Kirk in a way no one else does, and Kirk lets his guard around McCoy down. He shares his doubts with him, and he's often willing to listen to McCoy without telling him he doesn't need to be psychoanalyzed. Even though there's literally no need in 90% of cases, Kirk will take McCoy with him on most missions. The show itself even acknowledged how neither of them were necessary in landing parties, but Kirk's need for exploration include McCoy around and giving McCoy opportunities to study things. Which is then again reflected in TMP, where Kirk just needs to have McCoy with him and pesters an admiral to grant him that need.

At times, McCoy sees Kirk through rose-coloured glasses and he cares about him so much, but he's also afraid that Jim will push himself (and also others) above his limit. Kirk is someone who is 100% dedicated to his job, his ship, and his crew, and McCoy is afraid that it will consume him one day - stress, duty, regulations, pressure. He's afraid that Spock will enable Jim to continue on a path of cold logic and forget himself. Destroy himself. And so he makes sure that he can always try and pull Jim back. And Jim? Jim would be lost without McCoy. (McCoy is so important to him.) He might not acknowledge it, but he needs to occasionally hear what McCoy has to say. McCoy is his connection with a world outside of "command" - McCoy specifically isn't welcome in that world. He can question Jim himself, but he can't question Kirk's command decisions. It's not his place.

They're both genuinely fond of each other and they understand each other. And they can hurt each other the most because they know where it would hurt the most. They have a strong emotional connection that isn't diluted too much by professionalism and the chain of command, but it's still an important part of their dynamic.

All of this works for me as a basis for them as a romantic ship where I can exaggerate some of it and mold it into something that I enjoy, that can be a little bit messed up. In a way, "I need you. Damn it, Bones, I need you. Badly." & McCoy killing a living being twice because of Kirk is an important part of the way I ship them.

But at the end of the day, I love Kirk and McCoy's relationship in any way, and I honestly don't know how to properly describe what their friendship in TOS means to me. And it's all thanks to one youtube video of their AOS versions having a drink together in a dimply lit bar.

[prompts]

#terms of service-tober #mckirk #leonard mccoy #jim kirk #i love them so much 🥺 words are not enough #but linking my fics is not really explanatory either haha #i need to write more fics but i need to get over feeling it's weird writing kirk always pining and needing mccoy

[nysus-temple]

Got any interesting facts about Virgil?

Boy, do I... 👀

I mean, I can say a couple of them, but I will ALWAYS bring up first the whole funeral he organised for his dead pet fly. *clears throat.*

SO- Augustus had formed a triumvirate and one of its known laws was the expropriation of huge estates from large owners to distribute among their retired legionaries. In any case, it was a political move.

Virgil did not want to give those retired legionaries absolutely nothing of his terrain, after all, he was obessed with staying there and not moving into the big city. So he took the law to an extreme in order to avoid that: land that was considered sacred could not be expropriated.

So what did our guy do?

He buried his "dead pet fly" there. That's what he did. He even organised a god damn funeral for it. So with the fly being buried in that terrain, it was now a sacred place since it contained the "corpse of a loved one" lmao.

Virgil is my favourite poet of all time for various reasons, this is one of them, and the one that I always bring up when someone asks me about him.

#i think it was a fly iirc according to the biographies #but tbh doesn't matter the bug. it's equally funny #i love you Virgil #virgil #vergil #publius vergilius maro #answered #anon

[just-late-roman-republic-things]

What I really love about Robert Morstein-Marx's work is that he'll start with an "obvious" fact like "Julius Caesar overrode Bibulus' veto to force through his laws," and then he'll investigate the context to see how well our sources actually reflect that. Like, was there actually a veto? What does "forcing through legislation" mean? Did Bibulus even have the right to veto a bill in the first place?

Which brings us to today's chapter of Julius Caesar and the Roman People: What really happened in Julius Caesar's first consulship?

Let's go in roughly chronological order:

The first triumvirate wasn't really a triumvirate. "Triumvirate" is a legal term implying a group assigned to a specific task. Caesar, Pompey and Crassus were simply allies, in the same way Cato, Bibulus and Favonius were.

Caesar first proposed a very moderate bill to the Senate. Agrarian reform was sorely needed but constantly blocked for various political reasons. Caesar drafted a revised bill that aimed to answer Cato and other senators' objections, asked for feedback in the Senate, and...Cato started filibustering. Neither Cato nor anyone else had a specific criticism; Cato was acting solely to prevent a vote taking place. Caesar may or may not have threatened to have Cato ejected from the meeting, but in any case failed to get the Senate's approval.

Caesar then proposed the bill directly to the People. Usually tribunes did this, but consuls could, too. He invited Bibulus (his co-consul and enemy) to give his side of this story, and Bibulus flatly refused, at one point telling the audience "You won't have this law in my consulship even if you all want it!" This is both insulting and illegal: since only the People could ratify laws, Bibulus was essentially telling them he - supposedly their elected representative - was going to deny their legal rights.

Caesar attempted to hold a vote. Bibulus and his allies returned to the stage and started illegally interfering with the proceedings, whereupon a crowd dragged them away, beat them up, and smashed Bibulus' symbol of office - analogous to stripping a police officer of his badge, this indicated they no longer saw him as a legitimate representative. At this point the story starts getting muddled. Suetonius, Plutarch and Cassius Dio claim Pompey brought in soldiers to intimidate the voters, but Pompey had no army at this time. It's much more likely these were veterans who'd been in the city for years, waiting for the land law to be passed, so they could retire to their farms. They would've attended primarily as voters, but Pompey may have asked his old friends to act as unofficial security, too. Why would the vote need security? Because Cato had physically attacked Caesar and another politician the last time Caesar tried to publicly promote a bill. That had led to a riot which effectively cancelled said bill. Based on the fact that Bibulus and his men could freely approach the stage, were only pulled down after trying to prevent a vote from taking place, were not seriously injured, and Pompey is quoted as saying he'll act as a "shield" in case of trouble, Morstein-Marx believes the "security" were attempting to protect the referendum, not intimidate voters or start a riot. He also notes other signs indicating the bill would be overwhelmingly popular and thus didn't need threat of force.

The Senate upheld Caesar's law. Bibulus attempted to have it struck down on claims of violence, but to no effect. Some sources claim the Senate were intimidated by Caesar's men, but remember A) Caesar and Pompey didn't have an army, and B) it was extremely rare for the Senate to overturn the Assembly's vote on a law unless mass violence had occurred, and here it hadn't.

Bibulus then attempted to invalidate all of Caesar's legislation for the rest of the year on a religious technicality. The technicality in question was so obscure no one even knew if it was valid. Bibulus hoped that by hiding in his house ("Caesar's threatening me!") and claiming Caesar couldn't pass laws while Bibulus was watching for omens, he could effectively shut down legislation indefinitely. This had never been attempted because it was transparently stupid and against the spirit of the law, and in the following year the rule was amended to prevent further abuse. Now, was Caesar's legislation therefore "illegal"? Even the Romans didn't agree on it at the time. There were also arguments over whether Bibulus had broken the law by not actually reporting any omens. But we know the overwhelming majority of the Senate treated Caesar's laws as de facto legal, including even Cato when it was convenient for him. The argument appears to have been dropped by 54 BCE.

Did Caesar run the consulship like a dictator, with armed gangs roaming the streets and a cowed Senate? Actually, no. Cicero's letters from this year show he was afraid of violence breaking out several times, but no indication that it actually happened. (Besides Bibulus getting dragged off the stage.) Nor do any of Cicero's later speeches or letters accuse Caesar of using military force during his consulship. Nor did the topic come up in the political debates of 51-49, when Caesar was attempting to secure his second consulship. The triumvirs were not able to get all of their motions carried in the Senate, nor all their candidates elected to office. Several of Cicero's letters indicate rowdy and full Senate meetings (including one great exchange where Caesar tells his opponents to suck his dick and someone jokingly accuses him of being a woman).

Most of Caesar's laws were actually pretty good. His biggest achievement was the Lex Julia repetundarum, a massive anti-corruption reform that cracked down on bribery and extortion in the provinces. He also increased accountability in jury trials, and had the Senate's meeting notes published, making senatorial debates more accessible to the public. And though his agrarian reforms were extremely controversial, they did meet a real need of the urban poor, and provided veterans with their long-awaited pensions.

It wasn't a completely normal government, though. Bibulus' (likely false) claims of being confined to his house did win a lot of sympathy and get people upset at Caesar for ignoring him. And although the Senate ultimately upheld all of Caesar's legislation, and seems to have dropped the matter by 54, his treatment of Bibulus did sour his relationships with many senators and cast a shadow over his term.

Overall, Morstein-Marx makes a strong case that although Julius Caesar certainly had a...forceful personality, he was not a demagogue governing through mob rule, he did not use violence to control voters or the Senate, and it's not clear that he actually broke the law during his first consulship. He did alienate some powerful people and disrespect his co-consul, to be sure. He was hella controversial. And in later years, he continued working with Pompey, who did resort to political violence. But, just looking at Caesar's career in 59 BCE - we aren't looking at a dictator just yet.

(Based on Julius Caesar and the Roman People, by Robert Morstein-Marx, pp. 117-191.)

#jlrrt reads #julius caesar and the roman people #robert morstein-marx #caesarhell #julius caesar #marcus calpurnius bibulus #i'm not even getting into the provincial assignments or vettius affair #but robert does! go read him it's awesome #jlrrt essays

[brother-emperors]

Sorry if you've answered this before, but do you have any recommended sources for someone looking to start learning about Crassus/the first triumvirate?

forever ago someone ALSO asked this and that ask (so sorry to that anon) has been sitting in my drafts half finished because I realized I needed to finish reading something before I could answer it. then I got busy reading about the fall of the templar order of all things (and romance literature about the order that may or may not have had an impact on grail quest literature) and forgot to finish writing it up.

SO! at long last, after ten thousand years, my recs list for anyone just starting out:

I. Plutarch's biographies on the Tris Homines/Trikaranos (Crassus, Pompey, Caesar)

II. These books by Gareth C Sampson

- The Collapse of Rome: Marius, Sulla, and the First Civil War

- Rome, Blood and Power: Reform, Murder and Popular Politics in the Late Republic 70-27 BC

#i was going to rec biographies originally but i actually believe in going to the ancient sources and then going to modern biographies #keavney's sulla biography is a good time. sampson's work on crassus is a blast. morstein-marx is the caesar guy to go to #pompey is. uhhhhh. i have the fewest thoughts on pompey bc i care more about what he has going on in lucan's pharsalia lmao #ask tag #rec tag

[calliethetrekkie]

Triumvirate Prompts: Day 21

#21. Favorite McCoy moment?

The sacrifice in The Empath... but I already used that one. So here's five other fantastic McCoy moments. In no particular order.

1. The Final Frontier Flashback

Look, I like my angst, okay?! Honestly, to see McCoy this emotional and distressed... I think the only time we ever really saw it in the show was in The City on the Edge of Forever. And he was drugged at the time, so that wasn't exactly of his own volition. I don't think that anyone expected ending his own father's life to end his suffering to be a part of his history, but God the whole scene and especially DeForest Kelley's performance (especially after he REALLY got cheated out of strong material in the other films)... it's so good but so painful. Then the big reveal that had he just made him wait, the cure would have been found and this never would have had to happen. You see this, and it explains a LOOOT about his character in-show and puts episodes like Operaton: Annahilate in a whole new light. But seriously, it's such a painful moment but a very good one.

2. "Would you like to see how fast I can put you in a hospital?"

I joked that this was the scene that made McCoy my favorite character. That's not entirely true, but it's not really a lit either. McCoy under the spores effects was actually kind of cute, just because we NEVER get to see him that at ease and carefree most of the time. I mean, look at him with his mint julep~! But the thing that snaps him back to normal? Not Kirk and/or Spock provoking it. No, it's the colony leader telling him that he can't be a doctor anymore. That was all it took to piss McCoy off and punch the guy to the ground. I like the idea that McCoy sucks at combat most of the time, especially compared to everyone else. But he CAN throw his fists and HO BOY does this scene prove it. Never tell McCoy that he can't be a doctor. Ever.

3. Staring Down Khan

So what happens when Khan, a super strong war criminal, grabs McCoy by the neck and holds a scalpel at his throat? McCoy not giving a shit. Seriously, he doesn't so much as flinch. He remains insanely calm and composed, staring right back at Khan and even tells him the most effective way to kill him. It earns him Khan's respect and he pulls back. There are two things to say about this. One, McCoy is a stone-cold badass. Two, for a guy that us in the fandom often characterize as temperamental and volatile, this shows us that he knows how to handle intense situations with calmness that could rival Spock. Remember, he's a doctor, but he's also an expert in psychology and has probably had plenty of experience handling dangerous patients that could easily kill him and those around him. You want an example as to why he's the CMO? Look no further than to this scene.

And speaking of McCoy giving the middle finger to powerful beings that could easily kill him...

4. "I will not peddle flesh"

Return to Tomorrow is an episode that doesn't get talked about much. Which is a shame because the McCoy material in this is freakin' excellent. Whenever I get back to reviewing, this is one of the episodes that I'm most excited to get to go over. But here? We have the female God-being wanting to keep the Girl of the Week's body, asking McCoy to only keep quiet. If he does, she'll save Kirk's life, who at this point as far as anyone can tell, he's dead. I cannot stress how much Kirk means to McCoy. Even earlier in the episode when Kirk first got possessed, McCoy was ready to shoot and kill if Sargon didn't get out of him right then and there and Hell, the only two times that McCoy has killed were to protect Kirk. But his response to this offer?

MCCOY: Neither Jim nor I can trade a body we don't own. It happens to belong to a young woman. MULHALL: Who you hardly know. Almost a stranger to you. MCCOY: I will not peddle flesh. I'm a physician.

As much as he cares about Jim, as much as he doesn't want to lose him, he won't risk another's life to save him. Not when said person can't consent. He knows that Jim would never allow that. He would never allow it. It goes against his oath as a doctor. It doesn't matter that he barely knows her, he won't peddle flesh. He doesn't have to think about it and even if Mulhall didn't change her mind and kept trying to kill him, he still wouldn't have changed his stance. Seriously, it's such a good McCoy moment and is just another reason why I love him.

5. Testing The Vaccine on Himself in Miri

I thinkt hat this was the first McCoy scene that made me go '...holy shit'. McCoy and the others are infected with an illness that will soon drive them to insanity. As the eldest of the landing party, he's likely going to be first. He and Spock have developed a vaccine, but unable to get it tested. Spock refuses to let it be tested until they're able to reach the Enterprise... but McCoy knows that time is running out. So as soon as Spock walks out, he injects himself. If it works, he's cured, and they're all saved. If not and it kills him, then at least he won't be able to hurt anyone else. The only one who can get hurt with this act is himself, and he won't test a dangerous, untested substance on anyone else either. This is the only option he's got, and this is the only chance he's got to do it.

Is it extreme? Sure, very. McCoy's lucky that it paid off. But it is 100% something that McCoy would do. I think sometimes people forget because he looks rational compared to Kirk and Spock, but McCoy wouldn't be where he is if he wasn't willing to take dangerous risks. It's just that he won't do it when it comes to others, and it's his job to ensure others well-being. But there are plenty of examples where McCoy can and will do something dangerous, even insane, in the name of his profession (The Immunity Syndrome is a good example). He's a doctor. Just as Kirk lives and breathes the life and risks of being a Starfleet Captian, McCoy lives and breathes being a doctor. He saves lives, no matter the risk to himself, and this scene displays that perfectly.

#tos #star trek tos #leonard mccoy #terms of service-tober #finally got this one done #should be able to be caught back up in a day or so

[tarisilmarwen]

Please, if you want, DUNK on the blue bastard.

Oh? I am being given permission to shittalk Thrawn? *rubs hands* Listen, I love the guy as the Affably Evil villain he is. He's imminently polite and respectful towards his adversaries, sharp as a tack brilliant which makes him a formidable foe, he appreciates good work from his underlings, he's hilarious bouncing off other characters. He's a fully three-dimensional, rounded, likable character.

Who also happens to be an authoritarian nightmare bastard.

He is at best apathetic to the Empire's atrocities, at worst, willingly complicit. He genuinely believes in the fascist tyrannical system as the best status for the galaxy, because they put up a "stronger", "ordered" front. He might bemoan some aspects of the Empire but only because he sees them as wasteful, ineffective, inefficient, and he absolutely thinks he could run things better if given the chance. He is the epitome of Machiavelli's Prince, deluded into believing himself some kind of benevolent tyrant, or willing to serve at the behest of one. He is Might Makes Right and The Ends Justify The Means and fits right in with the modus operandi of the Sith Code and the Empire's whole overarching philosophy.

The man is part of Palpatine's personal Triumvirate with Vader and Tarkin. You do not get that high up into the upper echelons unless you are a true believer.

Which is why fandom's constant excusing him because of his supposedly sympathetic and noble motivations is so damn irritating.

Oh Thrawn is doing everything For The Greater Good? He just wants to protect the interests of the Chiss? His first priority is to his own people?

None of that shit matters.

He still willingly inserted himself into the infrastructure of a fascist regime that was installed by genocide and regularly murders its own people and tried to help said regime run better and oppress the galaxy more effectively. He depersons and dehumanizes beings he doesn't consider useful, and sees the useful ones as "assests" ("allies" at best). He is perfectly willing to do horrible things if it suits him or gets him the results he needs. And he sees nothing wrong with his own actions. He is self-serving and self-righteous.

He. Is. A. Villain.

Doesn't matter how cute you think he is with Eli or Ar'alani or whoever or how sad you imagine him or how sympathetic and likable you find him, he is not a good person. He is a Bad Guy, and it's laughable that y'all wring hands over that fact. You're allowed to like the bad guy. You're allowed to find the bad guy hot and sympathetic and likeable and funny. But it annoying as hell when you insist he can't be a Bad Guy because "Oh he did it for a good reason!" which is, again, irrelevant.

And no, Zahn writing him with more sympathetic backstory and likable moments in New Canon doesn't mean he's no longer a villain. It does not mean his alignment has changed. It just means his time with the Empire becomes a corruption arc, as we see how a supposedly good person can become more and more fanatical in the pursuit of their goals.

And Zahn is on thin freaking ice anyway, if the hearsay about his asinine empty buildings headcanon is true.

I hope when August comes and the Ahsoka show has Thrawn being the magnificent bastard fascist asshole he is, fandom comes around to appreciate him properly, as the awesome villain he is.

#dunking on the blue bastard #askbox #that's all i'm gonna tag for now #watch me get anon hate for this lololol

[huevokinder24]

Shadow and bone rant

Was shadow and bone S2 a good one? It was enjoyable. It was watchable. That's it.

For those of us who have read the books it was a huge mess.

Let's talk first about the grisha trilogy.

They joined book 2 and 3 (and crooked kingdom for some fucking reason, but I'll get to that later) and just rushed through the plot.

While I'm not the biggest fan of the trilogy and SOC is one of my favorite books ever, I still think the crows had no business being there. They just took too much screentime, something I usually wouldn't complain about but now I am. The sword subplot alone would have been okay. The rest? What the fuck was that??

Due to this, we didn't get to see the actual story of Sab. And don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting a word by word adaptation, but this felt.... The characters weren't themselves.

Nikolai felt incredibly plain. He was just a nice guy. But where was his wit? His charm? His "my mother was an oyster, I'm the pearl". Where was his personality?

Also, he never loved Alina, and Alina didn't love him. Why would they push this narrative?

Everyone loves the darkling because he is charismatic and a master manipulator. This season he was just a dying guy. He didn't feel threatening. He didn't feel like the villain at all.

Zoya was completely sidelined for Alina. My girl had like 3 scenes and she didn't do much. In the book we saw rare moments of vulnerability, saw her friendship with Alina and genya grow. But she was still the cold bitch everyone loves because that's what makes Zoya Zoya.

They offed David just like that, and again, replaced him with Alina in the triumvirate. And I'm so mad about this. The triumvirate was made up of the three leaders that the orders chose to lead them during the war (except for genya). There are one of each order so the darkling's favoritism wouldn't repeat, so all the orders would stand on equal ground. Again, they were leaders. Political leaders. Now we have 2 summoners and a colporalki. What about the materialki? They lost their place in Nikolai's circle.

Also, the little reunion of Alina, genya and Zoya at the end was more like "uwu besties hanging out" than, "we have the responsibility to lead the orders and rebuild the country"

Mal just left. JUST LIKE THAT. we have a season full of Malina kissing and vowing they'll spend their lives together after they destroy the fold and kill the darkling, and the dude just leaves. Not just leaves, BECOMES STURMHOND. Do the writers know what sturmhond means to Nikolai? He would NEVER let any other person, least of all Mal take over the role.

And the twins left with him. The twins would never leave Nikolai.

Also Tolya, canonically ace, giving inej heart eyes????

And Alina. Where was her internal struggle? She kept her powers and is ready to become queen? And marry Nikolai??? She never wanted the crown. She never loved Nikolai. She only wanted to disappear into the sunset with mal and open an orphanage to help children like her. She literally told Nikolai that Zoya would make a better queen, hinting at zoyalai.

The whole point of Alina's character was that she was just a girl. She was just a girl turned saint, something she didn't want, with an enormous power she never asked for. She was just a girl who wanted a normal life but had to play the hero at 17. By the end of ruin and rising, she is exhausted, weary, drained. She faked her own death so people would leave her alone, so she could retire to the middle of nowhere with Mal and live a quiet life.

Now they're making her Nikolai's betrothed, future queen of Ravka, and... Evil? After she fought so hard to not become a monster like the darkling??

And where's the religion??? A huge part of the grishaverse revolves around religion, especially in the grisha trilogy. The manipulation of information and public image, twisting the narrative so it fits your goals, the zeal of the masses based on that exact narrative that those in power created.... There was none of that. Only inej called Alina "Sankta Alina" but they never showed what becoming Sankta was like for Alina.

This was just... Ugh. It was not BAD, but I'm so disappointed, especially for the crows, so part 2?

#shadow and bone #six of crows #shadow and bone netflix #crooked kingdom #nikolai lantsov #the darkling #alina starkov #zoya nazyalensky

[opinated-user]

so... this is a straight up lie that MO told to save LO's face.

back when that video that MO linked came out, Courtney was at the bottom layer of the iceberg of the LO rabbit hole. nobody knew if he even existed because he had been a non entity for years. nobody had seen from them nor knew anything about what they could tell about LO. the "allegations" that KP would have heard around were Stockholm, Lizzy, Brittany and Patchs, none of which reached a big enough audience for people to take them too seriously. which is a shame, but being around LO and especially having someone like MO constantly insisting to you that it was all made up lies made by transphobic people that should and can be easily dismissed. KP at the time was facing her own allegations, so i can't really blame her if she honestly thought LO must have been in the same boat and that she was probably right that it was all made up. we can sit here and blame her all day long for not doing a better research, for not reaching out to any of LO's victims, for not trying to do her due diligence, but the truth of the matter is that those allegations are easy to dismiss if you never look too deeply into anything. if it was necesary for Courtney, the actual real life sister of LO, to come out and tell his own experience from his own mouth, to finally wake her up to the fact that she was interacting with a predator then i can't really blame her. Lizzy can be an spiteful ex, Patch could be a mentally unstable liar, Brittany could be an attention hungry drama generator. but the real life sister, someone who lived with LO, someone who is related, someone who came from the same family, you can't dismiss that so easily. "nevermind the fact the person who "the video made by those goons was taken down because their triumvirate fell appart" this is another lie. they weren't taken down. they were first unlisted and then put behind a paywall because PZ are greedy nobodies that need to scrap for any intertnet attention they could grab. P also has many allegation of sexual miconduct that are being documented as we speak and there's a lot more about those two that we still have to uncover. LO knows that P has the allegation of spreading Courtney's nudes. nobody believes that actually happened, but she acted as it was and she used that excuse to post the irl workplace email of P, since she did had her doxxing information since long before any of this. point is... why, honestly, why are we suddenly giving so much unjustified integrity to PZ that they would take down Courtney's video because somehow they just knew it was all lies? LO never trusted on PZ having any single good intention in their bodies, so why are suddenly treating them doing the one thing that would benefit LO as something they did out of a good reason? "nevermind that the person who made those heinouse accusations did the same thing but it's different" actually, it is different. a child, who was abused by a family member and therefore has no real idea of what those actions mean, touching another child and stopping because somehow they could feel that it was wrong to do so... it's miles different than another child taking advantage of another that was sleep, therefore unabled to reject them, for almost a decade and only stopping when that child put a physical barrier in order to stop them. if anyone out there really thinks those two things are the same, then i implore you to read in the effect of CSA in childhood and how that manifest. a child being abused and having their senses of boundaries broken because of it it's not evil, and i'll not accept that kind of victim blaming. LO's molestation probably started off the same way, but unlike Courtney, whatever negative feelings she had about it were never enough to stop doing it. she kept abusing, molesting, touching, stealing her underwear, saying to third people that she'd date a girl like Courtney and then, when she was already an adult and Courtney was out living his own life, she continued on to keep

creating scenarios where Courtney would have sex with her or their incest was normalized. MO, you were used to draw one of those scenarios. you should know there's a reason why those panels were eliminated from the blog.

this is honestly vile. i guess i really shouldn't be surprised because MO fully supports the narrative that a 6 year old Courtney was fully able to stop the abuse that 7 year old LO was going through, but still. this is gross and dissapointing.

#lily orchard #lily and mikaila orchard