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anyway, look at krile's mtg card, it's now my bg

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An elpis flower and the infamous squapes

Archon Burger with G'raha reaching for his staff

like, listen. i know it’s probably just a game mechanic thing. but it’s interesting to me that every despair demon in the game does this—single rook out. and how you encounter a lot more despair demons the worse the situation gets. and every single time, without fail, rook is their primary target.

like. the potential juiciness of it all. rook who carries regrets and despair hidden behind a smile that no one can see behind until the regret prison. rook who has to keep up a brave face as the leader so that the team doesn’t collapse because someone has to make a decision.

I think one thing I noticed that is a flaw with the clan system, is that they seem to have added them almost like an afterthought, because many of them are like "this is our race... and then the race has these nische outcasts, I guess".

Like, Keepers are nocturnal that live in the Shroud. Seekers are everyone else.

Duskwights are the elezen that live in caves in the Shroud. Wildwoods are everyone else.

Dunesfolk are lalafell that live in the desert Plainsfolk are everyone else.

Highlanders are hyurs that live on mountains, Midlanders are everyone else. Even then they will use Midlander models for Highlander women repeatedly.

Xaela are au ra that stay in the steppes and the desert in northern Othard. Raen are everyone else.

Like, sure, sometimes they spice things up or vary, like how the dwarves of the First, who always hide their faces anyway, vary between Plains and Dunes models, but otherwise it is very rare.

The only difference seem to be stats and some aesthetic options, but the stats are basically obsolete and in 8.0 they will take away at least skin/eye colouring limits, so that makes the clans even more obsolete.

I do not even love the clan system that much; it is a tedious and unneccessary feature that limits more than it expands and it brought nothing that the game is willing to use. If they wanted there to be ethnicities or cultural groups, they could add in "place of origin" in the CC, like how we choose a patron god. But even that is basically obsolete because the patron god, as far as I am aware, is brought up exactly once, in the entire eleven years of gameplay. Likewise, we are lucky if the WoL's race is mentioned, nevermind clans (I still am convinced that if Yoshi-P got to make an MMO from the ground up, he would do away with races entirely and have everyone be human, but with like 16 different body types for men and 2 for women, to compensate).

And I think that is a general problem XIV has; they do not really like to look back and expand or use old features, not even to remove them. So many things are left behind, and they will instead make a new similar thing, like how the squadrons were replaced by Trusts. We never got the qiqirns' lore and story in a beast tribe/allied society quest, because we were currently on the First and thus we must create an entirely new ratpeople there for a story and lore reveals that we never even knew were a thing, because, again, they were created just for being allied society, when we already had a society we have yet to ally.

The clans and Keepers are the same; they are from 1.0, from the setting of that time, and now the devs want to move away from that, by ignoring it and hoping everyone else ignore it, too, just like they hope nobody notices how they have reversed the "men are rare among miqo'te (and viera) and are never leaders" lore so that they can use more males.

Within pseudo-linguistics, the misconception that some languages have words so unique to themselves that they are untranslatable, is as common as a ‘latte’ in a Starbucks. Articles on the extra-ordinarily peculiarity of words from a vast array of languages, shown off as exhibitions in a curiosity cabinet, are presented as linguistics, when in reality they are to linguistics what the Bible is to an atheist. 

Next to four, or forty, no let’s say 54958 and ¾ Inuit words for snow, a word like ‘l’ésprit d’éscalier’, so uniquely French that it presumably is not found in English – staircase wit – seems to be a favourite one in these texts. The problem here is that articles dealing with words like the aforementioned ones are sadly read and accepted as true by the vast majority of humans, and yet, the paradoxical in claiming that a world is untranslatable seems to evade most of these people’s minds. 

The main problem here however is not a naïve but harmless fascination with linguistic diversity, but rather the ways in which this naïve fascination has been turned into a less cute ideology of linguistic evolution, which in turn has been adopted by a number of colonial powers throughout history in order to facilitate the expansion of a number of colonial languages. This happened in China, where Mandarin through the use of a common script became the accepted standard language in China, and this happened even more visibly throughout the British Empire, where a false belief that certain languages did not have the capacity to express certain ideas helped English become the global monster it is today.

Untranslatability however is of course a myth; while a specific language may have a more efficient way of expressing a specific thing, this does not mean that another language cannot understand or perceive the same thing. At the same time however, this dismissal of linguistic evolution has in similar ways been used to support colonial powers linguistic expansion. The argument being that if every language is inherently capable of expressing every human experience, then the attempts to save an endangered language seems ridiculous. And indeed, many people argue that language revitalisation programmes constitute a waste of money, precisely because of the fact that they mean that it does not matter what language one speaks, as long as one speaks. 

Or to paraphrase Shakespeare, a rose is a rose no matter what name it is given.

The main fault here however is to mistake language revitalisation for a wish to keep a dying language alive against better knowledge, when what language revitalisation really is, is a way to make sure that human knowledge embedded in a culture’s collective memory is not lost forever. Moreover, when people state that an endangered language cannot possibly be modern enough to express modern concepts, they mistake language for something which, like human society, follows basic ideas of hierarchies. While colonialism and class has created an idea of certain languages as less suitable for human interaction then others – an idea as old as language itself, think of Ancient Greek who gave us the word barbarians, from βαρβαρος, i.e. someone who can’t speak proper Greek – it is important to realise that no language is better suited than another to express a certain idea. Ayoreo-Totobiegosode, a language spoken by some 340 people in Paraguay is as capable of adapting to changing circumstances as say English.

No language is inherently weaker than another language, and to believe that e.g. English is more suitable for scientific debates than say a near-extinct language in the Great Western Australian Desert is to misunderstand the way language functions in the first place. A language creates words for new phenomena whenever it needs a word to describe a new thing, and this ability to invent new words is inbuilt in all human languages. 

While it is foolish to talk of the Gaelic word cianalas as untranslatable, or to deem another language as inferior for not having a one-word translation of the same, the existence of the word does say things about the ways in which the Gaelic culture has chosen to interact with the world. In other words, to quote Nettle, ‘the vocabulary of a language is an inventory of the items a culture talks about and has categorized in order to make sense of the world and survive in a local ecosystem’. Thus, whenever a language dies, an entire wealth of knowledge relating to a specific area of expertise is lost, be it marine life as with many Oceanic languages, or snow as is the case among many reindeer herding tribes such as the Evenk and the Saami.

Let me give you a couple of examples to demonstrate what I mean by cultural linguistic diversity; in English, if I were to say ‘Iàin killed his wife’, most native speakers would assume that Iàin was an evil man who killed the woman he had married, but the truth is that the use of his in this sentence is ambiguous. Technically his wife could have referred to another man’s wife, say Sean’s wife, as his is used to refer to both his – someone else, and his – his own. In Swedish however, this ambiguity is avoided by the use of two different words; when referring back to one’s own possessions, or in this case one’s own wife, the word sin is used, whereas someone talking about something belonging to another man – his – would use the word hans. Swedish cultural practice has in other words seen it important enough to create a word to describe this difference.

Similarly, where Finnish does not bother to distinguish between gendered pronouns, and the word hän is used to refer to both males and females, English on the other hand uses three gendered pronouns, i.e. he, she and it. 

In Japanese, counting becomes a veritable task, as the make-up of an object is essential for the speaker to decide what count-word to use, whereas several other languages deems it impractical to have any count-words for numbers above say five.

And then, much much later, you start to wonder why people are getting so caught up in drama for romance or sex, like, why bother? It’s not worth it, they’re not worth it, why are you doing stupid things for something that’s so- and then you wonder if there’s something wrong with you, start mentally over compensating. Like ‘uh, okay, um, who should I date? Who can I stand to date? Who could I stand to fuck?’ like- it’s not, it’s not something you want, but you want to fit it, to be normal.

Sometimes you don’t even know that you’re doing it.

Sometimes you don’t even know asexual’s a thing.

I dunno, I guess, I just feel like, uh, people should understand more?

This past week 11 years ago Goong was airing in Korea. 

To me Goong is the best kdrama ever. Such amazing plot, very original for the country (monarchy never was an plot in their dramas till this show comes), beautiful crew work in directing, music, scenery, fashion, makeup, art direction.

The best OST in kdramas without a doubt, beautiful instrumental scores that get you to rollercoast of emotions and can we talk about Peharps Love? It’s THE ANTHEM. That song makes me emotional not only because perfectly describes Shin and Chae Kyung love story, but it’s so beautiful that a lot of people who never even watched the show still keep singing this famous song and connecting to their lives without even knowing it was from Goong, this couple.

Everytime I listen I get the feelings.

Amazing cast. The acting in this show can’t be contested. All of them are great.

Joo Ji Hoon and Yoon Eun Hye have such PERFECT CHEMISTRY. There’s lot of great onscreen couples in kdramas, but they for sure are iconic one. Their duo is so natural. so real. All their scenes we could see they were giving their best. Plus, the development of their feelings for each other aren’t the ‘tada’ kind of way, ‘boom, we’re in love’, no. It def takes time. It flows very organically.

So good for two actors in their very first role, no wonder they got their awards because of it. The scene where Chae Kyung says she decided go to the exile and Shin reacts to it breaking down and crying so hard on her. CHILLS. Ji Hoon was incredible. A+ acting (He was very humble at time saying he knew he wasn’t good enough but he hoped to get better, and hello, now he’s one of the most respected actors there, gladly, after his scandal years ago :/, really great acting). I tear up just remembering that scene. Very powerful, very earnest, so heartbreaking.

The BEST KISS IN KOREA TV HISTORY.

When I see polls or threads of “best kiss in kdramas” and there’s not Goong’s kiss in first place, let alone there at all (believe there are polls without them in it), one thing of the two:

- Or it’s the most pure bullshit, like bulshit at exponential levels, or the person behind it never even watched the show.

There is one especific epi, not going to spoil (because you should watch), we got two of the best groundbreaking kisses for Korea tv history.

One of the being public, on the streets in front of hundred people. This is a very big deal for their patrons. When the scene was filmed from afar, people on streets really didn’t know they were actors doing a scene, they really thought were two young people in love open mouthing kissing each other (thank gawds for Ji Hoon really liking to kiss Eun Hye, they didn’t have do it for real, since camera was far but they went for it) for everyone to see. We can see people’s reaction there and it’s priceless.  

Other… True Love Kiss like True Lover Kiss. (and TONGUE). 

The only french kiss in Kdrama history, as far I know of, some others can trick us, but theirs was obvious. You can think, how nasty. Nope! It’s was the first real passionate kiss. Can I remind you this masterpeace was in 2006? When people there use to be even more conservative about it like it’s almost illegal? The kiss got a big repercution after.

But it was planned to be that way, nope. It had to be a big kiss, with all the love for sure, (but what can we do if Ji Hoon got so into it they do not rehearsal kiss and try do it in one take if possible) he put his tongue there and Eun Hye actually replied. This usually never happens in kdramas, there’s no response by the girl, just the guy pretending a much while kiss and basically they’re very staged.

But she did and we got two people giving the kiss of their lives on each other. I don’t know what was going on with those two while filming that day, but I thank all gods for their urge and director for letting happen. HIS FACE, hers too. They just gave all to the scene, no fcks given to others (the street kiss was also intense, his face after loool)

The kiss alone was like a real kiss. It was beautiful, honest, emotional, realistic, passionate. Do you know the type of kiss screams true love but you also can see how they would be on bed without seeing anything? For Korea, it was almost that, but for me I wanted more and more.

Joo Ji Hoon and Yoon Eun Hye kiss was the grounding breaker kiss to others that came after in Koren tv.

We got to see, rarely, but see paionate kisses in kdramas thi past decade after Goong, some even implying in sex and stuff -with Eun Hye even-, true make out, yet, none of them could beat Goong *oh boy, imagine if only we had gotten a sex scene - sighs*. If the kiss alone was epic, include on this the moment it happened, the fcking amazing acting on it, the build up, the score, Shin & Chae Kyung’s love story. Everything made it become fcking iconic.

I basically wrote an essay on the kiss, but can you imagine my shock when I watched that show years ago? I literally screamed when I saw it in my screen. Not only because the kiss was happening but HOW it was.

Even tho it has been 11 years, Goong trully feels timeless. Rewatching it feels like it was made last year.

Goong is pure perfection? Of course not. It has flaws, we all don’t like epi 9, or think second half of last episode was incredible rushed with some wtf things, ok. Some people complains it’s ‘slow’ sometimes, I get the OTP is so good you don’t have patience to watch the elders scenes, but I really can appreciate the development of the whole story, even if I can’t wait to see my otp onscreen again. Plus, watching Goong with patience and admiration it’s that exemple of good things happen for those who wait.

The story itself was well done and gets you hooked, it makes you laugh soooo hard, get pissed soooo hard, cry sooooo hard.  

Is2g, I cried. Not inside, I literally cried. It’s rollercoast of emotions. Again, a matter of perspective.

Luke was 19 in ANH which might explain Rey’s age.

What I find even more interesting is that Anakin was 23 in RotS and Luke was also 23 in RotJ. In both stories the two men made a very important life decision about the Dark and the Light, just like Finn does in TFA.

Finally what happened between the end of RotJ and the beginning of TFA is still very much a mystery, their respective ages might make more sense when we learn more about that.

Luke grows up over the course of the trilogy, but a lot of his reactions as he does as still very boyish. From silly stuff like appealing to Kenobi’s ghost like he’s asking one parent to convince another he’s ready to play little league to serious things like his reaction to Biggs’ death during the trenchrun. Even in the ESB duel, I get the impression he’s a child being bullied, toyed with and then abused when he tries to defend himself.

But in Return of the Jedi? Luke is 23. He’s an adult, and he is a complete badass. And that’s when he has his true choice on whether or not to turn to the Dark Side.

Looking at the PT, Anakin starts out as a literal child but when you get to the second movie and he’s 19… He’s still very childish. (Very dangeorus, but very childish.) He’s still under adult supervision. He’s resentful to Obi-Wan and whines about him all the time. This is when he, like Luke, loses his parent. This is when he, like Luke, becomes a combatant in a war. However, this is also when he has his first encoutner with the Dark Side, and murders a whole bunch of people, but doesn’t fall completely. It’s because he’s still forming as a person, because he’s still not reached the Age of Decision. He can still be turned around. In RotS, he’s 23, a grownup and makes his choice then to turn to the Dark Side.

Honestly, it gives the impression that Jedi just mature that way. Obi-Wan was a padawan until he was 25, no one commented that that was a long time. Meaning that Jedi are under constant adult supervision well into their early 20s.

Rey’s a kid who has been on her own her whole life, like a Dickensian street urchin, but the point is she’s still going through her coming of age arc. She hasn’t reached the Age of Decision yet. She can come very close to the Dark Side in her fight with Kylo and may have even killed him then without falling completely, because she’s still forming as a person. Her sense of right and wrong is still forming.

Finn’s a grownup. His sense of right and wrong has formed and through some miracle it formed correctly. We saw him make his decision. That’s why, for all his Luke parallel, his plot is shaped more like Han’s ANH arc where he has to decide whether or not his newfound friends are worth fighting evil for, or if he should just go make a peaceful life by himself.

We’ve seen various character arcs in the first two trilogies. Luke and Anakin had coming of age arcs, the ones where they had serious moral choices along the way and at the end. Leia, Han, Obi-Wan and Padme got what’ I’d call learning to love arcs, where they developed relationships to others and figured out what was needed to maintain those relationships. Finn’s had his coming of age and never knew a world that wasn’t against him. He’s most likely going to get something similar to Leia or Han, where he devlops relationships with others and learns how to maintain those. He doesn’t need moral guidance, he needs social guidance. He’s already very likable and dependable, so the most fulfilling development would be turning him into a leader, whether he becomes a Resistance fighter or a Jedi.

I’ve said this for a while, and agree.

The thing is, long form comics totally work, but I think when you have a monthly published ongoing, having no variation in story length makes things a slog to read. There should be one-shots and two-parters in between your six-month-to-year-long epics and monthly comics just seem completely unwilling to do that by in large, which is why the vast majority of comics I’ve read for the past ten years have been me waiting for the trade collection to come out.

Anyway, I remember this was my problem when I was recommended New52!Wonder Woman. I bought the first volume, maybe the first two? And the story kept going, and sure, it technically changed settings and tune and introduced new characters, but it kept the arc, and... I didn't care for the arc that much (mainly because I knew that I did not like the misogynistic changes they made to WW). Yet it took, what, two years to finish the story? It certainly FELT like two years to me, and that is a bit crazy if you want to draw in new readers.

I mean, I might not have LIKED the Extreme Slow Burns of cartoons like Steven Universe, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, that frog fantasy one, and so on, where many episodes were one-off comedies with breadcrumbs in the background until they finally had to adress a bigger story, but I do think there is a reason those shows were popular, too!

Also, I still believe this is one of the many reasons Sword of Sorcery/Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld in New52 did not work; again, a long story that did not even get to finish, but got cancelled, and it spent so much of that time either trying to be Game of Thrones Lite, or to create the world-building that never got far due to the cancellation. Compare that to the original comic, which first issue introduces the important characters and the general plot, gives us an antagonist and a problem, the main character solves the problem and the issue's story ends happily, BUT with the obvious larger plot still ready to continue next issue.

And I LOVED Sword of Sorcery: Amethyst! I hated its cancellation so much, I have an entire folder on my computer with documents where I created the rest of Nilaa/Gemworld (actually in my headcanon-world, the world is called Gemworld and Nilaa is just one of the multiple continents that would be relevant in much later arcs), the other Houses, tried to mix both the original version with the New52 one, stole a ton of palace drama cliches from Chinese palace dramas because I was into that at the time (still am), and so on. I wrote a fanfic which continued from where the comic ended! I LOVED this series and I hated that they cancelled it, but I understand why it did not necessarily sell well to newer or older readers.