I believe Tsubakura's ability works like "They can find out about fun things more easily" (according to some interview or other). My headcanon for why they never use it is depression and a lack of motivation.

Yeah, that's the train of thought I'm going down with their ability too (since it is worded in a very... interesting way lol). It just makes the most sense at the moment (though I have gotten creative with it before).

Poor Tsubakura...They probably feel they don't deserve happiness or something like that (assuming they aren't refraining for plot reasons of course). What an ironic ability for them to have if that's the case!

been going a little bit insane about this sentence from Ace by Angela Chen for the past week

hi heres art so you pay attention to me now go read the tags

Here's my take on the dragons zonai forms! As I've been playing Tears of the kingdom it has become more and more clear to me that the three dragons flying around were probably people at some point. So I tried to guess what they might have looked like based on the matching outfits you can find throughout the game!

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

follow for more occasional dumb polls :)

Regarding Mina's description of Dracula and why it's problematic, a good starting point would be to read the Wikipedia article for physiognomy, which is the outdated pseudoscience of face reading that is unfortunately rooted in racism, antisemitism, ableism, etc., and was very popular during the Victorian era as a way to judge moral character based on facial features.

So when Mina says 'His face was not a good face', she is not just saying that Dracula is ugly (though concepts of ugliness and beauty are not value-neutral either), but that she can tell that he is evil based on his facial features; note that one of the facial features she singles out is a 'beaky nose', which comes from Cesare Lombroso's idea that among other traits, hawk-like noses are a marker of criminality on the basis of criminals being evolutionary throwbacks who are less evolved than non-criminals; many of these allegedly 'criminal' and 'degenerate' facial features are obviously racialized and not associated with Gentile whiteness, but in opposition to it.

Stoker was definitely interested in physiognomy and uses it as a narrative device to show how certain heroic characters are intelligent, perceptive, and educated on the latest (pseudo)sciences (the modernity theme again) - namely Mina and Van Helsing, but also Jonathan to a lesser degree; we will definitely see this idea come up several more times, including explicit references to Lombroso himself.

It is also important to remember that linking physical appearance and morality still happens today - think about how many people say they can tell someone is a bad person bc they're ugly or that 'People get the face they deserve' where good people age gracefully and bad people age poorly, even though aging has nothing to do with personal character.

so uh

for 1. most people are gonna take advantage of black friday and wont see your specific niche tumblr post, I hate to say it

2. the us isnt running out of money for war any time soon, so...

3. this is just antisemitism???????? all we need is some (((echoes))) around the us and israel and then I'd have no reason to suspect otherwise from op...............

so about the header that proceeded today's statement:

Viability as agent: Low

Viability as subject: None

Viability as catalyst: Medium

i didn't know what to think of this part of the entry at first, but the longer the statement went on... was the institute in this universe trying to manufacture avatars?

the dice can't do anything without someone to use them, they can't be an "agent" by themselves, but might be capable of manipulation, so in that aspect their viability is "low."

the dice could be a "subject" in the sense that they could use further studying, but the statement itself was a very thorough investigation of their workings, so in that aspect their viability is "none."

the dice seem to influence their holder to roll them, or at least find more victims to roll them, and could therefore be described as a "catalyst" for someone's becoming. but, as seen in the statement, their owner can give the dice to someone else (albeit not without consequences), so in that aspect their viability is only "medium."

so what about the line following all this, what does "Recommend referral to Catalytics for Enrichment applicability assessment" mean? if we go by this interpretation, i'd say it could mean the institute wanted to find a way to make the dice even more potent as an artifact, maybe even remove that pesky ability for their owner to reject them.

imho all of this this brings a whole new level of context to the events of episode seven, of unknown violent agents going after an influx of objects that seemed straight out of artifact storage. was that the nature of the titular "magnus protocol" first mentioned in episode four, the one that involved the starkwall group? containing or destroying potential artifacts before the institute could get their hands on them?

it also makes their "gifted kids program," and sam's link to it as one of the kids being studied, all the more horrifying to think about. was it not just avatars in general they were after, but child avatars specifically? no wonder gertrude got so defensive over the possibility of sam and celia dragging gerry back into the institute's business last episode, we all picked up on her clearly knowing more than she's letting on but now we might know the shape of that information a bit better.

and one final bit of food for thought... this statement had a lot of familiar themes, didn't it? free will or the illusion of it, gambling and not-so-random chance, the statement giver being done in by one final hit from what feels like a bit of an addition... all hallmarks of a certain mother of puppets. doesn't it seem fitting that "chester" would use this kind of statement to warn sam about what harm pursuing the magnus institute could bring to him, considering the one his voice might draw from? and doesn't it seem so painfully ironic that his warning seems to have only driven sam further into that web?

Panic Attack

(QUICK THING BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE- I added an aftermath to the last comic that is kinda needed to properly understand this one, & just in case some of y'all haven't seen it, just go to "←prev" down below and it should be properly linked up )

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I like to think that, while Leo has seen & helped Donnie through panic attacks before, Donnie has rarely, if ever seen Leo go through a panic attack; hence why he is unsure what would be best to help Leo right now. so he does what he knows how to; relay information and facts. His voice helps ground Leo through it.

Drew these to take my mind off the bad weather.

Anyways Susannah is a good song to sing along to in the car.

Seeing Twitter users recommending the People Make Games documentary as a good way to get insight on the issue is so….

I know, I’m always extremely disappointed whenever I come across someone who thinks it’s the end all be all explanations regarding the Studio ZA/UM situation.

Recommending that video always comes with a heavy caveat from me that the person needs to stop around the 40 minute mark since the interviewer shows a very clear bias that’s unbecoming of a journalist.

Regardless, now that more people are finding out about these layoffs, which might take out members of the studio that have been there since the beginning, it could finally help smack some sense into those Twitter users that actually thought, FOR SOME REASON, Rostov, Kurvitz, and Hindpere were lying for shits and giggles rather than seeing what's ACTUALLY going on which is that the investors have a very obvious agenda against the real wronged party. Hopefully this'll also open their eyes to how the People Make Games video fed into this twisted narrative that Kurvitz was somehow at fault/responsible for the theft of his own IP, but that might be asking too much from their concrete brains. Here's hoping though!

If we get a scene of Arya crowning Jon, it needs to parallel the scene of Jon gifting Needle to Arya for me. A personal scene between the two of them that's about their unconditional love for each other. It isn't about Jon becoming King but about Arya supporting him in the same way he supported her. "Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not the arms" come full circle with two outcasts supporting each other occupying spaces that society says they can't

Kinda wish that people would be giving the same kind of criticism and scrutiny to Internet Historian that they have been giving to James Somerton. IH is a much bigger and more well known channel and his cave video got a lot more attention. Like I know his video got taken down, and he's only done this to one video (that we know of) but he employed the same sort devious tactics to try and hide his plagiarism, so would be nice to see the same sort of outrage for him too.

Don’t mind me im crying like a baby

see everyone worried and fretted and panicked and yet quesadilla island looked at pepito and went