Marina Tsvetaeva,from "As people listen intently", Selected Poems (trans. Elaine Feinstein, with Maxwell Shorter)

the older and weirder i get the more i'm beginning to realize that i was actually a very cool kid who had no shame or fear until i was taught that i'd be punished for it and everything since then has been a slow uphill battle to get that part of myself back

hi

so I started playing the new Frontiers of Pandora game last night, and was pleasantly surprised that not only did the opening cutscene feature a few lines of spoken Na'vi dialogue, but said dialogue was actually pretty accurate!! Good job game!!

Here’s the lines transcribed as far as I can tell:

Aha'ri: Plltxe po nìtsleng! He speaks falsely/he lies! Player: Ma tsmuke, ftang! Sister, stop!

-

Aha'ri: Ma Nor? Ma Nor, tìtxen si. Awnga ngahu, tam. Nor? Nor, wake up. We [are] with you, it’s ok. Nor: Tsat oel uniltsola nìmun…tsatxon a fol awngat kämolunge. I dreamed about it again…that night they took us.

-

Aha'ri: Awnga kä ne kelku! We go home! Player: Za'u, ma Teylan. Oeng kivä ne kelku. Come, Teylan. We [may] go home.

I know he’s literally a lifeless puppet controlled by Shane but I can’t help but feel sad about the professor amidst all of this lmao

"Thrawn only joined the Empire to help the Chiss!"

Okay sure but have any of you bothered to self-examine why Thrawn chose to join the Empire instead of, say, the Republic, when that was still around? Or why he didn't chose to throw in with the Rebellion, put his tactical mind to use helping them overthrow the Empire quicker?

Could it be... perhaps... that maybe he values the Empire's military strength... more than he cares about the authoritarian tyranny with which it oppresses its own people?

Is it possible that he thinks the Empire's main problem is that it isn't effective enough, too much politicking getting in the way of sound strategy, but if he's around (and in charge) he can guide things so that those annoying little wrinkles (AKA the pockets of discontent and rebellion and fully justified anger at their rights and freedoms being trampled on) are all smoothed out and the overall Imperial machine is better, more in control of its assets, a stronger more unified bulwark against the outergalactic threat of the Grysk or the Vong or whatever.

Is it perhaps just a bit self-centered of him to only care about the Empire's ability to service his own goals and desires and be apathetic (at best) to the way it makes people suffer daily under its inherent systems? The Twi'leks and Wookies being constantly kidnapped and sold into slavery? The careless industrialization of arboreal worlds? The socialization and absorption of all private industry, forcing everyone to work through and with the Empire if they want to work at all? The systematic persecution of anyone remotely Force Sensitive? Is it not the mark of some kind of soul rot to be aware of all of that and go, "Yeah, but I don't care, they have the bigger guns, which is what I need."?

Maybe... just maybe... Thrawn has some Machiavellian tendencies and opinions and maybe this just might... make him not entirely a good person?

And maybe y'all should think about that before you come back and whine about his portrayal as a villain, as if all he has to do is explain to people that he did everything for a good reason and he gets an automatic narrative pardon for all of the shit he did while Grand Admiral that still needs to be addressed and answered for.

Have to say the flattening of Julia Serano's fairly nuanced views on gender into a nebulous "gender essentialism" by a lot of trans people (who tend to fit a very specific ideological category) is extremely transparent transmisogyny

drowning in phoenix and apollo's relationship because it's not easy it's not easy at all but i know apollo is there waiting for the grand gesture and he knows it's not coming he will never admit he wants it but god. he Knows he's somewhat important to phoenix but how much?? is phoenix willing to truly put himself in danger to save apollo? is apollo willing to let him?? or is it going to be yet another step in the cycle of sacrificing for something neither of them truly believe in????

The Warning Call.

Sometimes speaking to people with opposing viewpoints shouldn't be to change them. That's the mindset of posts I come across online, but I believe that default can breed dangerous narrow-mindedness. Sometimes speaking to people with opposing viewpoints should be to collect data. Sometimes it should be so you're made aware where you have incomplete information. Sometimes the result should be you practice humility, learn how to change your mind, increase your ability to handle and produce nuance, and grow.

Sometimes it should be learning to coexist and grow with people who have different philosophies, and learning they are neither the cardboard cutout villain media makes them out to be, or the more complex villain internet discourse says they are.

You aren't a missionary to those who think differently than you. If you go into every conversation believing you're right, you're never going to grow yourself. Realize the valuable complexity people truly are. Learn to listen and understand.

Anyone who says, "Yeah, except X group of people" isn't going in the direction I want to reflect upon in this microcosm of a thought, and isn't engaging with the meaning and intentions I want to focus on right now. Of course there are "excepts." We wouldn't be wise if we had no "excepts." But when we categorize everyone into "excepts," we run into that dangerous breed of narrow-mindedness.

There is much we can learn about people with challenging perspectives. It's valuable. I encourage you to enter conversations with an open-heart instead of a desire to convert. They are people with knowledge and character, just as you. And you don't know everything - not about them, and not about the world.

hey you guys know Sam was the righteous man right? We all watched the same show right? “the righteous man who started it is the only one who can end it” we all saw that right?

listen i get where people are coming from when they say that nobody should have expected a radical overhaul of the shinobi system considering the series very squarely set up its main theme as not abandoning friends. that certainly was the setup. but i also think it would be inaccurate to say that the story as it evolved affirmed that refusing to abandon one's friends was the be-all and end-all fix for everything. i cannot emphasize this enough: it's not as though the prior generations we saw lacked devotion to their teammates. the problem was that the larger sociopolitical circumstances obstructed their ability to connect in one way or another. even naruto acknowledges at the land of iron that his and sasuke's positions made it impossible for them to reconcile. so for the series to do a 180 and assert that actually friendship was the solution all along (even though there have been no meaningful systemic changes, even though the source of these intergenerational conflicts has not been addressed) rings hollow. it's especially glaring that being violently beaten in a fight makes sasuke desert his quest for justice without any reservation -- therefore no ideological or political separation was bridged, sasuke was just made to forget what motivated him for the entire series' run. naruto and team 7 succeeding where their predecessors failed was not a function of anything they did differently, but mere narrative convenience.

I have a question. Since YRZ read the entire archives what type of knowledge did he learn and what did he do with it?

Uuuuuuhhhhh honestly I haven’t really. Thought about it???? It’s obviously not full of like dark magic because it is heaven after all. So there’s for sure magic of various types, historical records of notable angels and saints, and honestly? A ton of shit.

Idk if I mentioned it anywhere but the place was massive. I’m talking miles and miles and miles of books and scrolls, more than anyone should be able to read in a thousand years. More than any human could read in ten thousand lifetimes. If Yrz were anyone else, or even if he was still a little bit more human, this would’ve been a pretty good gig for him! But he wasn’t, and it wasn’t. So he devoured 4/5th of the archive before realizing he was never going to be let out. That’s when the dread set in for him.

An angle based on information should have, theoretically, been happy to stay there indefinitely. It was a perfect compromise for a troublesome human rights activists who nonetheless deserved to be there, and it also isolated any dangerous ideas of change from the rest of the flock. Win win! Yrz was never consulted. His desire to be let out was brushed off. Note: this was a well intentioned move.

The road to hell, etc.

does anyone have any good places to get walking canes? looking for like. selections beyond Standard Boring Cane that have cool colors or designs that also aren't super expensive

my mom is actually letting me get a cane which is good!! id rather have that than nothing!! but she doesnt want to get me "an old lady cane" and i also just want to get like. one with a dragon on it or something

i have no idea where to even start looking for them and how to find a good reliable source that isnt either decorative or from some sketchy company that will snap in half

something i'm grateful for about Wally is the representation for people who love eye contact. we're underappreciated smh

thinking about how scared odalia was of the golden guard and how he could've made her do ANYTHING and it's making me so fond. consider. almost canon-compliant AU where after eclipse lake, hunter feels pretty bad about how things went down with amity, but not QUITE bad enough to defect, so he starts making increasingly stupid and unreasonable demands of amity's parents instead. amity - who has ZERO ability to put two-and-two together wrt what she told hunter about her upbringing - is like "....does he think this is going to upset me?? is this his way of being passive-aggressive?? literally... why would i care. i hate my mom so much. ah well. if it keeps him away from luz he can have at it" meanwhile hunter's just out here like "i'm really sorry i threatened to kill your girlfriend i also like her a lot and am so fucking unhappy. for reasons that i'm Sure are unrelated to that. hey tho. if i make your shitty mom so miserable that instead of being rude to you, all she has the energy to do is come home, get drunk, n go to bed....... are we like..... are we cool,"