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leftoblique · 49 minutes

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impostor syndrome is a common problem in academia. For example my colleagues keep putting me in the airlock and ejecting me into space

#laugh tag

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leftoblique · 5 hours

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Isn't it funny how this is almost canon?

Inspired by this post.

#always reblog

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leftoblique · 18 hours

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Practical

You know what you want and you know how to get it. No standing on ceremony here: no complicated plots; no monologuing; no elaborate executions. If you catch the hero you're gonna double-tap him and go on with your day.

When you use force it's either surgical or overwhelming; when you buy a politician you make sure they stay bought or you make an example of them. Your henchmen are chosen for professionalism and an even keel.

You never assume you're smarter than your opponents. Your plan A is always stronger than your plan B. You don't make deals with entities more powerful than you. If it's too risky, you don't do it.

You aren't genre-savvy, though. You might shoot the hero in the head, but you're going to dump the body without another thought. You'll probably trigger the prophecy in an attempt to thwart it. Your ice-cold lieutenant will almost certainly fall for the hero in a completely character-breaking way, just as you're about to seize victory. Them's the breaks, I guess 🤷🏻‍♀️

What Type of Villain Are You?

"Come on, get up! Our FUN isn't over yet!"

Sportsmanlike- "You may be a villain with selfish goals, but you recognize that there are rules to this back and forth between heroes and villains. You have honor. Morals. Some may call you old fashioned, but there's tradition to this whole evil business and you'll be damned if you let yourself break it. You offer hospitality to the heroes when you recognize you must, even when it gets in the way of your plans. You play dirty only when absolutely necessary. You honor your word and if you lose, it is with grace and dignity. You consider yourself classy, respectable, and while you realize you may be evil, you're not gonna let that make you an asshole."

Quiz can be found here

Tagged By: @nolanel-corbeaux, tyty!!!

Tagging: YOU, reading this!

Boop

#villain

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leftoblique · 2 days

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all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.

#my goddamn condolences #you poor thing #I'm embarrassed for the rest of us

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leftoblique · 2 days

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The thing I thought was coolest about the umbral wind weather condition wasn't that you could see the moon (weird timey-wimey hallucinations or whatever aside), but that you can see the constellations of the Twelve as well.

Basically, you're seeing the post-Sundering sky.

I always chalked it up to being some kind of portent; perhaps one only the WoL can see. But it also makes sense that they just did an "#import UmbralWind from Weather" and didn't realize it would bring the entire skybox along lol.

Gee ffxiv it sure is a good thing that we have two moons and only the first one was a fucked up spaceship. I'm so glad the other moon is just a normal moon and not a fucked up spaceship. Hold on I have a weird rabbit creature (who lives on the normal moon) trying to talk to me. Okay. Alright. Hmm, I see... WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS ONE IS ALSO A FUCKED UP SPACESHIP

#ffxiv #endwalker spoilers #ffxiv lore

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leftoblique · 3 days

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Also I'm kinda surprised these folks go out in public when there are so many folks out there who would [redacted] if given the opportunity?

I mean, I guess the minor celebs and academics don't have a choice, but billionaires? They need to hole up in their mansions with their walls and armed guards.

ARGH

more details to follow

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leftoblique · 3 days

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"COH-SEH-TAY"

j/k

Just checking.... We all pronounce Miette like My-TAY in our heads, right?

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leftoblique · 3 days

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It's very clearly French, folks. /mjɛt(ə)/, or in English, /mi'ɛt/.

(That's mee-ET for those who don't speak IPA.)

Just checking.... We all pronounce Miette like My-TAY in our heads, right?

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leftoblique · 3 days

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Okay, but, you also need to consider the relationship between the character and the audience/reader/consumer of the media.

Imagine a situation in which we've seen this character increasingly struggling with what they're doing, to the point the switch flips and all of a sudden they decide they're going to throw away whatever had been tying them to the enemy and throw themselves fully in with their new friends or found family. This could be a profoundly emotional moment that we get to witness, even if nobody else does.

Now, consider the viewer or reader's frustration with this character in addition to their sympathy. Maybe the heroes have been thwarted, or had to make hard decisions, or people were hurt due to this character's actions in the past. They're all very down on themselves. The audience shares in this frustration!

And then the traitor changes sides for a really important job - maybe the thing that will turn everything around. And the job goes amazingly. Everyone is hitting on all cylinders. In the moments where the traitor would have sabotaged them in small, subtle ways, instead, they help their friends in small, subtle ways (again that their new friends don't notice, because they don't want to make it obvious that they weren't helping them before; maybe they have skills that they never even disclosed to the team).

Finally, they come through and deliver the lynchpin of the plan. Everybody celebrates together. The former traitor is the hero! It's the end of the season!

This is completely epic and a huge thing for the audience to experience. We struggle with this character and their team, and then we get to share in their triumph. So we absolutely do experience the redemption arc, even if the character never comes clean.

(Except, of course, that they can never let their new friends find out. They have to keep nudging things in secret to make sure their special skills aren't discovered. And now the bad guys have blackmail. This is a constant source of tension in future seasons/books/movies.)

Series with big cast of protagonists, but it’s revealed to the audience very early on that character A is a traitor who’s secretly working for the villains. They secretly sabotage missions, they leak information to the villains, they do tangible damage to the protagonists’ success, they possibly even hurt people, and the audience is prepared for them to be revealed as a traitor or redeem themselves or both.

And they do have a character arc — over the course of the series they continue to feel worse about trying to sabotage people who see them as a friend, and in one episode character A finally goes “Wait this is awful. I don’t want to do this anymore.” They cut contact with the villains and actually for real start helping the protagonists.

But character A never tells anyone that they were ever a traitor. To the rest of the protagonists nothing’s changed except that wow we’re having a lot more luck these days, isn’t that weird? They never apologize for working against the protagonists but they do work to change themselves and try to help people they’re warily calling friends.

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leftoblique · 3 days

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DEICIDE

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leftoblique · 4 days

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we talk a lot about ohhhh what if my calling is to be the greatest mammoth hunter ever and I'm wasting my talents in the modern era but we never think about what if Thog from 30,000 BCE was the only person ever born who could get a sub-7min Donkey Kong Country any%, and he never got the chance. what about thog

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leftoblique · 5 days

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You saw they're going to redo the benchmark because the lighting in character creation sucks, right?

One of the biggest problems they cited was the backlighting washing the colors and features out.

Feels like blue skin and green hair is muted in benchmark. But oh well grumpy war crime dragon.

#ffxiv #ffxiv dawntrail

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leftoblique · 5 days

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To be fair, Alphie heard that voice. He just consistently ignored it because it sounded like his sister.

Alphinaud: I have a bad feeling about this...

WoL: What do you mean?

Alphinaud: Don't you ever get that little voice in your head that tells you if you're going into trouble?

WoL: No?

Alphinaud: ...That actually explains so much.

#ffxiv

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leftoblique · 6 days

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More importantly: there are probably some people on your local or statewide ballot that are awesome and that you won't get to have in government if you stay home.

I live in Seattle and occasionally get to vote for an honest-to-goodness socialist. I'm not gonna give that up.

Something about the idea that voting for president only matters if you live in a swing state, and that all the people in blue states or red states can indulge themselves in principled nonparticipation because the outcomes are preordained, strikes me as akin to playing with fire.

Is it really coherent to say "both sides are awful, write in Mickey Mouse or burn your ballot or just stay home and get drunk, unless you live in Pennsylvania, in which case maybe consider taking one for the team and compromising yourself by voting for the lesser evil?" Is that really the message that will lead to a preferable outcome?

What it sounds like to me is a sign that 1) you take your local electorate for granted, and 2) you see avoiding the worst case scenario as somebody else's problem.

I remember when Florida was a swing state. I also remember when Pennsylvania wasn't.

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leftoblique · 6 days

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since the cowboy and the samurai were both dying out in the 1800s i want an action adventure historically wildly inaccurate comic about the last cowboy and the last samurai teaming up BUT one of them is gay and the other doesn’t understand what being gay is and there are multiple comedic mishaps resulting from this

#amazing premise #i want to read this

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leftoblique · 7 days

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I'm adulting! [sitting in one place on my couch for days mindlessly consuming sustenance]

Source: Instagram

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leftoblique · 7 days

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I sometimes say my pain scale is, "1, 2, 3, oh my god everything is terrible, 8..." but now I realize I just switch over to the mental health scale for a bit because my pain tolerance is weird.

(in our house we use this pain scale btw; it's the only one that's even moderately objective)

My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.

I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”

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