swtor n veilguard brainrot

Like... sure, if I can suspend my disbelief for a story with dragons and wizards I can suspend my disbelief for a story that features food products that didn't exist on the version of europe the author is basing their setting on.

But we're not looking at this on the level of *a* story but on the level of the fantasy genre more broadly. When nearly every fantasy story features a setting that is aesthetically and culturally based on the trappings of medieval europe as filtered through the author's cultural lense, and these settings almost universally feature things like tomatoes and potatoes as staple foods, doesn't that say something about the cultural landscape that shaped the worldview of so many of these authors? It kinda reveals a tendency for global north people to just take the ways in which their society has benefitted from colonialism and imperialism for granted. These benefits of colonialism are so deeply culturally ingrained as a thing that just neutrally exists and belongs there that they're unable to imagine a world without them, so when they're imagining a world based on medieval europe they anachronistically project them back in time as things that just exist there completely unquestioned.

Surprisingly, it's not a choice between "Tolkien levels of worldbuilding" and "that's just there."

It can be in the details, or in descriptions, or as part of how characters react to things. You know, like how you establish the value and meaning of everything else. It can be incredibly valuable, actually.

For example, if there's a war next door to your kingdom and you want to show the dread of it heightening and how it's starting to affect people's lives even before the actual fighting gets there, you can show that traded goods arent getting there as fast or as often by having people lamenting how much they miss coffee.

Or maybe people used to trade for coffee with a prosperous kingdom from far away, centuries ago, but then mages figured out how to grow it in big magical greenhouses. If you want to show that magic in your kingdom is failing, you can have the greenhouses stop working as well and your protagonist comment on how the new coffee sucks or is suddenly much more expensive.

It doesnt even have to be something new. You can have your protagonist be fed something with tomatoes in it and have them be surprised and admiring at this, because tomatoes, being imported from far away, are an expensive luxury youd only actually cook with if youre trying to impress someone.

Have the noble family show off pineapples as decoration! That was actually a thing!

And depending on whether youre writing an empire or something more egualitarian, you can have it explicitly acknowledged as colonialism ("X has never once thought about where coffee came from, but uprisings in the far south have suddenly made the supply dwindle") or as a better world ("Y's great uncle was sent to the far lands where they cultivate potatoes in order to learn how to; in exchange he has brought them European crops that have done well" or "The trading ships from far over the oceans have arrived, bearing people from another kingdom to bring their goods").

Is your protagonist a little annoyed that the far away revolts have limited their purchasing power of some luxuries they were counting on? Is it a point of pride in their family that they have traveled far and dealt fairly with people from all over the world? Do they see themselves as a good person and are shocked to find out that their favorite dessert is made with slavery, or do they know and (as we do!) justify it to themselves?

Is the noble courting your beautiful protagonist or trying to bribe your prince shown as arrogant and cruel because he feeds her goods that are known to be made in especially bad conditions? (See The Goblin Emperor, where there is a type of fabric that is so white it is known to blind the workers that make it, and one of the main antagonists gifts the new emperor with a whole new set.)

Even buying from Bandcamp in-between Bandcamp Fridays yields more profits to the artist than Spotify. Bandcamp charges artists 10% to 15% to host their music, compared to $0.003 and $0.005 per stream on Spotify.

That's right, you'd have to play the same song 200 times minimum to earn the artist $1, and 30% of that $1 earned goes to Spotify. Worse, Spotify pays the rights holder these royalties, not the artist. So if your band has a contract with a label, the LABEL gets paid, then the artist gets a percentage of that.

This article is from 2020 but illustrates the issue with an example. The spotlighted artist earned $4200 from Bandcamp via 700 customers in two days. The same artist earned $100 from roughly six years of streaming.

Also, while you can stream from Bandcamp, you can keep your music! Download the mp3 and it's yours forever.

Also also, there's no ads!

Also also also, there's no AI!

Armin here, your favorite trans from Mexico.

I’m not proud of this, I’ve reached my lowest point and I’m being forced to ask for donations.

As some of you might know, I’m the main caregiver of a family that has two disabled people, I also have Fibromyalgia (among other maladies) and this made me seek for paid help to take care of my mom and sister. Mom has early dementia, spine problems and a damaged arm, she can’t walk and she needs assistance. My sister is mostly bed ridden thanks to the Long Covid Syndrome.

This month, I had to pay a huge bill; around February my dad’s account was hacked and we had to go through a huge lawsuit and shit… To make it short, they stole him 12k and, he is paying a loan already.

It’s the beginning of the month and I only have 15 bucks in my account. Could you please, help me out? Either sending me whatever you consider to my PayPal: [email protected] or sharing this post?

I need 400 bucks to cover the following expenses: the paid assistance’s cuota, medical supplies like gauze, lancets (for glucose measurements), surgical gloves, medication and other related expenses to my mom’s daily care.

It could be a loan, I could pay you back in August or, I could write you something.

Thank you so much for your help, I appreciate it like you have no idea.

I still need 298 more, to cover the expenses for mom and sister until July 15th. You help me a lot if you either contribute or reblog this post.

Screw it, two in a week, last day Mermay piece

I ❤️ Tomodachi life

They just got married in Tomodachi life while I was drawing this

“Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave it to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale (BA, 1977), and was trained to be a museum curator in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (MA, 1980). A decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum for thirty-seven years before he retired, Ulysses has never stopped writing for the sheer pleasure of it. Aside from books on Victorian furniture, art pottery, studio ceramics, jewelry, and the White House, Ulysses created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel, appeared in 2012. His most recent novel, Cliffhanger, was released by JMS Books in December 2020.

“Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of 45 years. They have two grown children, adopted in 1996.