I know we collectively agree that Hiccup isn’t romantically inclined, and his getting married and having kids didn’t make sense in the epilogue, but consider: Hiccup getting married for political reasons.

It’s a marriage of alliance, which is recognized both by him and his partner, and they enter it without expectations of romantic involvement. Since they’re now married, they live in the same castle, spend time together, and Hiccup finds he really likes his spouse. They’re funny, get along with his friends, and has the same interests and values. They both probably speak multiple languages. She understands why Hiccup is so dedicated to making the Wilderwest better, and holds similar views. She’s a good politician (her job after all, was to be an ambassador). Hiccup likes spending time with them, and the feeling is mutual. They’re not in love, they have their own lives, but they’re dedicated to each other and eventually decide to raise children. They teach their kids how to train hawks and hunt with dragons, riding, history, the Languages, and all the necessary skills of their world. They’re not in love and they’re happy together.

Are yyou team green or black? And why?

team green, though I'm not in support of every green character (namely Otto though my opinion of him is complicated. I also have opinions on Aegon and his characterization that makes it even more complicated)

[I have only read bits and pieces of the book, so my opinion is based almost solely on the show. keep this in mind]

I'm team green for 3 big reasons. they're more complex, thought not perfect by any means, more morally "right", and are simply more my vibe when it comes to characters. now this is very simplified and not at all nuanced, so stick with me for a minute.

Firstly, they're more complex. the greens have very deep, detailed, and nuanced lives and stories that lead to them being very complex characters that can't be put into a box. Alicent was a child bride who had lost her mother young became a mother young and suffered at the hands of power and men all her life. her children were affected by this and the world they were forced to grow up in throughout their lives. even individually her kids are drastically different; aegon the child who was forced into a life he did not want and suffered due to his father neglect and mother pain. Helaena who was never understood and grew up treated like an oddity. Aemond who was never seen to his full potential, always ignored or looked over, angry throughout his life. each of them has strengths and weaknesses, flaws and benefits, they're imperfect but never completely horrid. they're also never simplified (not entirely, even when the plot and writers seek to simplify them) to the point that they put on a moral pedestal or made straight evil (i'd even argue that the attempts of the writer to oversimplify them as evil and in the wrong makes them 10x more fascinating). I find TB characters tended to miss the mark on that, always put in the moral light, not even allowed a moment to reflect on their actions, lives, or positions in any nuanced or meaningful way, so they always just feel dull. they're also out on a moral highground that they can never be budged from, which makes them harder to like and honestly, really boring. they get away with everything instead of being emotionally and morally nuanced.

secondly, they're more morally "right". I will never say that any of the greens are perfect, they are far from it (with the exception of Helaena and her kids, who have done literally nothing to anyone, but I digress). what I will say, 9/10 times there is some level of reasoning that has some level of reasoning. Alicent always tries to do whats best for everyone, all throughout the series she tried to do best by the court, the king, her children, the realm, and Rhaenyra. did she always succeed? no, but she always tried and her mistakes were almost always honest. I will say she held resentment towards Rhaenya, but honestly, I can't blame her. Rhaenyra's lies and behavior hurt Alicent over and over again so for her to be angry is expected.when it came to succession, Alicent backed Rhaenyra until it was made clear she and Daemon would be a threat to her children's lives and even than she held mercy for Rhaenyra. Aegon's drinking can be blamed on the abuse and neglect he suffered at Viserys, Otto, and Alicent's (though the abuse and neglect from his mother is insanely different and nuanced. she perpetuated her pain onto him because she couldn't heal herself. so I hesitate to call it abuse, cause its so much more complicated than that) hands. though nothing will justify his rape of Dyana, I personally think it was a bad add in on the writers part, and leave it at that. Aemonds rage after years of being ignored doesn't entirely justify what he did to luke, but he had reason for his cruelty after years of Luke (and jace tbh) being cruel just because they could. TB characters tend to do terrible things in response to either A. nothing B. their own terrible things. Daemon kills who he wants when he feels like it, even for stating facts. Rhaneyra will lie and hurt those around her to protect her bastard children. both of them conspire to protect themselves and allow themselves to be wed, really just cause. while there are times they have their reasons, its a lot less of the time, and typically the backing to their actions, is they were trying to unbury themselves from within their own graves. (to preface, I don't care about rhaenyra sleeping around, it doesn't bother me, but its the fact that she will hurt everyone around her to protect her lies, allowing a child to be maimed and people to be murdered)

thirdly, they're my vibe. I like morally complex character, who are, to be frank, pathetic. I like characters with complex trauma's and issues, who aren't perfect people but its not entirely their fault. I would much rather watch a whole show about alicent, a child bride who tries so hard to be a good wife, queen, and mother while not prepared for any such role. Aegon who is a boy with severe mommy and daddy issues, a drinking problem, a flawed past, and constantly wet eyes. Helaena an ignored girl who has suffered for no better reason then her family. and Aemond, a boy who was tormented, bullied, maimed, and made stronger by it at the cost of his compassion and emotional stability - over a nepo baby who was coddled by her father, her murderous husband with a knack for unneeded violence, and her similarly coddled children (the show boiled them down to this, in my opinion). one is simply more up my alley than the other. I want character that need to be dissected, who have suffered, who hurt me to look at.

also, team black created almost all of their own problems. seeing as the main source of contention had to do with Rhaenyra's kids being bastards, which was Rhaenyra's problem, which she caused, and kept digging and digging that grave (faking Laenors death just so she could marry daemon, turning the blame on aemond when luke maimed him furthering the divide amongst the house, trying to wed Helaena to Jace putting her in danger, trying to take the driftmark throne and killing Vaemond for a claim her sons did not have, etc,) till viserys's death, earns her a lot less pity from me. at the end of the day, her being a woman was only a needle in a haystack worth of problems she caused herself that hurt her claim. if she had just strived to create to connection with ancient and her kids, and didn't make herself look like a threat to everyone who lessened her claim (which alicents kids would be the first people to be taken out) alicent would have backed like she had all season and there would have been no war, maybe conflict, but no war.

theres also the effect of the fans on my opinion. I have faced more cruelty, terrible media analysis, and outright ableism/misogny/(blood and sexual based) purist ideology/etc. from the TB fans then I have ever witness by TG fans. TB fans have ruined almost all of the TB characters for me in more ways than I can count, so I will say I am very biased.

thats why I'm team green. as a whole they are simply more appealing, their stories are more interesting, demand more attention to detail and emotional understanding, and from my point of view were the "right" side to be on in the war (the war was wrong on both sides, but my chips lie in the favour of the greens).

some of y’all have got to focus on amplifying palestinian voices instead of speaking. especially because half of y’all don’t know what you’re talking about and then when you’re antisemetic in the name of antizionism you not only don’t do anything meaningful but also do active harm

Thank you so much for the tarot reading you did for me a little while back 💜 i'm sorry it's taken me so long to say that! i do rather think you have prophetic gifts, by the way- it was spookily accurate and helped me a lot 🔮

No problem! I'm glad it was helpful to you!

I do tend to get at least one message like this every time I do a tarot night for my followers, and like... you are totally entitled to that belief! What do I know about psychic phenomena and prophecy anyway? lmao. Maybe I am psychic.

But personally, I believe that tarot has a high likelihood of speaking to us no matter what, if just because the archetypal nature of the cards means that they're dealing with problems that we all struggle with. We all have self-doubt, we all have complicated relationships with money, we all crave love of some kind. We all have trauma in our past and we all want to believe that this time, things could be okay.

One of the reasons I like tarot cards is because they are inanimate objects that we imbue with meaning. They were just playing cards, y'know? We're the ones that gave them power over us, and we did that by filling them with our own stories. We placed a mirror in those cards, and while mirrors can be used for scrying, they can also just be used to take a good hard look at ourselves.

If I say "oh, you've had money troubles in the past," who doesn't that apply to? Maybe I'm thinking about me, when we were homeless for a while when I was a kid. Maybe someone else is thinking about the money they lost to gambling last week. Maybe someone else, someone wildly wealthy, is thinking about a stock market crash that brought their five mansions down to two. Maybe a final person has just never had quite enough to make ends meet. God knows that describes a lot of people.

I like tarot because we can all look at the same spread and see something different. I see a story to tell to the best of my ability, and that's how I do readings. But for the people getting those readings, they're often looking into little mirrors and seeing how they reflect their own personal experiences.

Because, you know, we all see different things in the same mirror! That's how tarot works, I think. Maybe some people are a little better at reading things in that mirror and interpreting what they see there, but we all see something new and different and deeply, deeply personal when we look at those cards.

Love that for us.

Occasionally we debate on illustrating random bits from our Discord PMs that we find really funny but then we remember that we're, like, the physical embodiment of the "ace that makes sex jokes" stereotype and phrases like "iterator dick discourse" would both be remarkably difficult to illustrate and probably require us drawing something at least somewhat NSFW (we do not particularly care to learn how to draw this)

species don’t exist — i mean, obviously, they do. but they aren’t objective. species are (as most things are) a cultural construction, a coalition of humans deciding where and when to draw what lines. constantly in debate: did you know paleoanthropologists are unintentionally incentivized to claim to have discovered entire new genera along the path of human evolution because they are more likely to generate media buzz and gain desperately needed funding. thousands of plants may be categorized together but a centimeter’s difference in skull thickness warrants an entire new genus name. we are more genetically similar to chimpanzees than they are to their fellow non-human primates, but due to the rules of Linnaean taxonomy humanity will never be collapsed into the same genus as them because the rules dictate that the older genus name prevails: humanity would never accept becoming Pan sapiens, especially not after it took decades for it even to be accepted that humans were a part of the taxonomy in the first place. even the most basic of criteria we’ve used in the past to decide where a species stops and starts continues to be debunked - fish from entire opposites of the world can produce fertile offspring. analogous evolution can find lines that split millions of years back creating critters that would be side by side in a disney cartoon. categorization is a eternal battleground of western scientific standards requiring universalized objective qualifiers vs. the futile efforts to recognize the unmeasurable amounts of nuance held in traditional ecological knowledge — versus the fact that, inevitably, it all boils down to a vast continuum contained with only a few percentage points of variation in the squiggly lines that tell the cells of everything on the entire globe how to eat

i am, really just fucking hoping theres gonna be more safety regulations around this kind of stuff now. and that the greek coast guard gets fucking sued. also that the submersible company gets sued. and nothing like any of these things happens ever again

honestly as someone who has both attained cis+ as an intersex person AND is indeed some sort of platonist i think people who are like "explaining gender to cis people makes me finally understand the allegory of the cave" have a great chance of fundamentally misunderstanding what the theory of forms is all about

idk what to do about the 4s man. They're either really whiny manipulators and groomers (4 -> 2) or they are bona fide psychopaths (4 -> 1 false security) or they are an ungodly combination of both.

In fiction I've seen good examples of 4s but in reality I struggle not to blame them for all the world's problems. There are reasons.

also to go "wow this is just like in pentiment" about absolutely anything and/or "wow this is just like iphigenia crash land falls on the neon shell that was once her heart (a rave fable)" about absolutely anything further:

the Narratives within crash land falls where like, in the end iphigenia being Given the story of both "this is going to happen anyways" and "so why don't you see it as a noble sacrifice to accept." the situation happening to Create a story that she was killed, so her father must be tragic, and sympathetic. that iphigenia does take on that Narrative of taking on the Noble Willing Sacrifice, and it kills her, but she also would have been killed anyways, as everyone also knows. that we even get a bit of pentimentesque [other characters observe & assess things] like, the fresa girls as a chorus, and one at the end like yeah She Was No Saint, i saw everything, but being cut off by The News that's like yeah looks like iphigenia was killed, that seguing into her father saying yeah she was killed, god's will was done, She's A Saint now. seguing to the emcee who introduced the play, but that superceded by achilles, and that superceded with iphigenia's extasis monologue as the end of the play. that whether iphigenia's a saint or not, she dies. that [the whole play] tells us as much, like, this isn't a What If kind of retelling where she escapes her fate, this is a retelling examining itself like, she Will die because the story's preset, so what to do with this as the story that has to take her there, what to do with this as iphigenia who has to go there

that iphigenia takes on another narrative in addition to the one offered by like, violeta as guide and oracle telling her she has to die (As A Noble Sacrifice), that again (as per iphigenia in aulis being like uh hey daughter. let's go to aulis so you can uh marry achilles (it is to be sacrificed)) achilles is this bait, but it's only in the ending that there's any Story about being with achilles, and when iphigenia goes to the mercenary soldier who she knows will kill her, she's the one telling him what to tell her about where she's going and why, i want you to tell me achilles is waiting for me....and she still dies, because This Is The Story. as also applied to the reality, iphigenia as another dead and missing girl following & preceding many; any disappeared deaths when consumed as disposable & replaceable, not given part of any narrative about it. while also iphigenia only gets a chorus of fresa girls from there being crosses put on the factory wall with their names, with one girl even remarking like hey they spelled my name right for once. but at the same time they're also like, both mere Apparitions but also like standins for people who are simply alive. real [shades]esque kind of, i suppose, but like they're not Sanctified for dying either, they'll comment on iphigenia but not with any like, divine knowledge, just as this out of place rich girl. whether iphigenia's A Saint or Not A Saint, she's still dead either way. she wants to be a fresa girl, they maybe want to be her, but everyone's doomed anyways thanks to way larger forces and the Stories that have been told and will be told again

but there's also the moment right before the final section wherein, before she's having to say what she wants within the bounds of [she has to die], there's achilles asking "you still want me" and iphigenia answering with "i want everything" and her vision for, like, getting to be alive actually, i'm on the gulf where the sea is gray, and no one wants a piece of me....the whole inciting event here where iphigenia wants to evade her fate however she can, exiting the bounds of her life, the physical bounds and the family unit and walking away from the rank of status / class / wealth, trying for [have her body for herself] and what the body wants, the sensuous indulgences of (a rave fable), let's hear some more about the roman state like "we don't like the examination and challenge and upending of class and convention in a bacchanalia, so only do the official versions we permit;" the Threat of people's desires for themselves, when that's going to be counter to those in power who'd want these people to be resources at their disposal; the burden on the disempowered to suffer [the only way out is through] with the Additional pain & loss that has to be taken on in pursuit of their autonomy, while also of course suffering for the autonomy they lack, that restricted and controlled and mitigated versions of what you might want are deigned to be provided or permitted so that you have Something, but that everyone's actual undeniable personhood will always be spilling past those bounds, the potential power of transgressive pleasure when one's wellbeing and autonomous choices are counter to the power structures that have to constantly try to suppress and preclude this. achilles just as bait, doomed to die like iphigenia is also still doomed, sex was never going to save everyone and the [recognizing connection as these two parallel people / We're The Same] with your lover here is not going to save everyone but it still makes more things possible for them both; iphigenia does know what she wants, and gets some of it because she wants it, same with achilles in turn, while it can't save anyone from their fates still. but it can mean something even if it doesn't transcend, like even a fleeting night of insignificant dancing that doesn't change anything can mean something, and we all die, but that doesn't mean it's Nothing to be killed any more than it's Nothing to have your desires or choices one way or another to be wrung out of your life before you are

anyways, the stories. the Looking and Presenting here. achilles and iphigenia first encountering each other as images put together and presented by someone else for their own purposes. the presence of what's seen through film/camera/recording versus in person; the potential power relations and even violence in framing, presenting, and the intended looking and assessing. repeated language about eyes/looks that burn, while also that connection between iphigenia and achilles, and their finding the least room in what they do have of their lives for more of their own wants and selves and something genuine and not predetermined, is also connected to eyes and looking and being seen and light and burning. while they're also connected to the protection and possibility of night and darkness, getting to exist and be Without being lit up or seen; that with the power that's still in play, it's never like, well then you should have nothing / no reason to hide; the penultimate moment in the play with achilles being one that's in person and fades into darkness, rather than coming in from the light of a projection / video onscreen as the introduction....iphigenia needing to be guided through a crossroads to even get to achilles in person; violeta giving the Advice and Story and Tradition to pray to eleggua, as iphigenia does before getting to encounter achilles for real, who also doesn't get to break out of a role or a fate in full in any way, but their tragedies are like, pointing towards [autonomy, imagine it] in both the ways they manage to find a little bit of it for themselves, in no small part for simply recognizing each other as in the same boat here, and in the ways they still don't have it and still can't get it

and anyways it's also inevitably saying like, telling a story?? this Play is a told story!! looking? assessing? interpreting? you're doing that in the course of experiencing it! and it's really so fucking true.

shout out to milva and regis. got to be some of my favorite genders

i feel like discourse about hockey (and sport in general) would really improve a lot if more people realized that spectator sport is a form of narrativized media and applied their literacy skills accordingly

OMG youre right 😭😭😭 idk if the fandom would be able to handle a listener that is kinda lazy, I feel like theyd get called selfish or some shit 💀💀 Begging Erik for a “comforting you into doing the damn thing you have to do”

I seen so many people relating to all the listeners that overwork (so all of them 😐) like damn. You got the energy for that? wild. Makes me feel a little bad but aight okay that’s fine.

god that would be AMAZING as an audio...... catch me playing that on loop to get me through my day 😫😫 if i had the energy to work like those listeners i would be literally unstoppable!!

i know that the whole point of this kind of self-insert bf audio stuff is to put yourself in the listener's shoes, feeling like the characters are speaking directly to you, and that people don't generally enjoy feeling like they're being criticised - but damn i do wish we could have a little more collective tolerance for listeners who aren't necessarily wonderful perfect people whose only downside is that they're too good at what they do 🕺🕺

whenever I see asoiaf fans pulling out “the feudal contract” as some kind of gotcha power move abt anything I can’t help but laugh. Social contract theory as we know it was first elucidated by freaking hobbes during the English civil war no one during the war of the roses period was sitting around ruminating abt social contract theory. It didn’t exist 🤣🤣

Israeli Caterpillar bulldozers are so symbolic of settler violence and brutality towards Palestinians; they are literal death machines. D9 bulldozers are sold by Caterpillar Inc., based in the US, and are equipped with armor and can be fitted with machine guns and grenade launchers. The nickname for these machines in Israel is "Doobi" - meaning teddy bear.

In 2004, Human Rights Watch called on Caterpillar to suspend bulldozer sales to Israel because of their use in the demolition of Palestinian property and infrastructure. Caterpillar makes military specifications for the D9 and sells them to Israel as weapons under the U.S Foreign Military Sales program, upon arrival, they are armored by Israel Industries Ltd. Before Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, D9s were used to demolish over 2,500 Palestinian homes in Gaza, most being in Rafah where the Israeli Government tried to expand a "buffer zone" along the border with Egypt. This was almost 20 years ago.

During these demolitions within Gaza, Rachel Corrie, an American activist who had been protesting against these home demolitions across the occupied territories, was buried with dirt by an Israeli bulldozer and repeatedly run over. Israeli military sources blamed her and the other activists who were protesting the demolitions, the IDF investigations found themselves not to blame, and no charges were brought for her murder (In the aftermath of her death, Israeli soldiers made fun of her through Facebook communities called "Rachel Corrie Pancakes and Fun", so no justice, the IOF murdered her and then laughed about it).

A federal lawsuit was filed against (which was later dismissed) Caterpillar on behalf of Rachel Corrie's parents and four Palestinian families that had members who were either killed or injured by these bulldozers trying to demolish their homes (including children). The CCR's lawsuit was "on behalf of these families charges Caterpillar, Inc. with aiding and abetting war crimes and other serious human rights violations on the grounds that the company provided bulldozers to the Israeli military knowing they would be used unlawfully to demolish homes and endanger civilians in Palestine. "

And again in 2018, more human rights groups condemned international construction firms (Caterpillar, JCB, and Liugong) for their roles in the destruction of Palestinian villages - Khan al-Ahmar was a small bedouin village in the West Bank that was planned to be razed and bulldozed for a new road for Israeli settlements, but due to international outcry, postponed the eviction. However, in Sur Baher, several Palestinian homes were demolished by bulldozers after a long legal battle that ruled in favor of the IOF. Israel often uses the guise of 'security' as a justification for these demolitions, but ultimately they are used to make way for settlements.

Massafer Yatta is another Palestinian village that has been under threat of Israeli demolitions for years now and was greenlit for destruction. Bulldozers crushed the village's school and destroyed the homes of 121 families in the area. The Palestinians who had their homes crushed by the bulldozers were forced to live in caves (which they were forbidden to even renovate), it is a decision between leaving their land and community or trying to build a new home that will be demolished by Israelis.

Palestinians throughout the West Bank know that the arrival of a bulldozer means the same thing time and time again: "You have 24 hours to flee, or we will shoot you." There are countless towns/villages/communities that have faced demolitions by the IOF throughout the decades of Israel's existence, I couldn't even begin to name all of them here.

In cases of public infrastructure, bulldozers were used to crush the main water pipelines of Al-Auja. The iof forced their way into the village and welded-shut the sole pipeline which supplies water to more than 1,200 people and used a bulldozer to crush it beneath the land. This is part of a larger history of Israeli oppression, specifically in regard to stolen water, which is supplied to Israeli settlements (it also forces Palestinians to buy water directly from Israel).

Outside of home and public infrastructure demolitions, the military bulldozers are also used in Israeli raids. In August this year (2023), the IOF raided Nablus in the Balata refugee camp, accompanied by a military bulldozer that destroyed several homes. I can't even pick a date for raids in Jenin refugee camp, which has been raided continuously this year and years before, but Israeli bulldozers have been filmed tearing up streets in Jenin and leaving them in rubble, making the roads unusable.

The Armenian quarter is not safe from settler encroachment either, as demolitions in the West Bank continue, real estate companies have sent in settlers and bulldozers to steal land belonging to Armenian Church property and Several Armenian families. Settler attacks have continued on the Armenian community and Palestinian Armenians have been getting arrested for defending themselves from these mobs.

And now, we have not only gotten the confirmation that these D9s will be used in Gaza but images, testimonies, and videos of them being used on Gazan homes and infrastructure. They are also being used to crush Palestinians to death just as Rachel Corrie had been in 2004, just as those Palestinian families had been in 2002-2004, and (extreme trigger warning for mutilation of a corpse) videos are circulating of Israelis flattening already deceased Palestinians with bulldozers out of pure contempt for us. Almost 20 years since Israel demolished thousands of homes in Gaza (not even including the genocidal bombings campaigns and the blockade Israel has placed on Gaza for years), now they're back destroying anything in their path.

I will repeat: these bulldozers are death machines and are designed to be so. Caterpillar is complicit, the US is complicit, and both are actively benefiting from the mass murder and displacement of Palestinians. Keep your eyes on Gaza but also remember the Armenian Quarter and the West Bank, all of Palestine is under threat of demolitions.