i am so very tired

this was not proposed as a "luxury". the question was not phrased as "Do you have enough money every month to afford luxuries/luxury purchases?" this was listed with the necessities like food, housing, medical needs, transportation, bills, and clothing. this made me burst into tears when i realized it was considered a necessary part of everyone's mental and well being. my case manager told me that not a singular person on this planet deserves to have to "earn" the right to socialize, interact with leisure activities, or to do things that bring you personal fulfillment. your money does not, and should not entirely go toward survival and practicality. it will ruin your mental health.

Ranni could have been Marika’s successor, but she rejected the guidance of the Two Fingers, slaying her own flesh in order to be rid of their influence: 

“But I would not acquiesce to the Two Fingers. I stole the Rune of Death, slew mine own Empyrean flesh, casting it away. I would not be controlled by that thing.”

Ranni goes to such drastic lengths because the most intolerable thing possible to her is to be a pawn; her will not being her own, but being at the mercy of a higher power. Ranni’s quest is above all about free will – it culminates with Ranni using the Fingerslayer Blade to tear her Two Fingers into bloody ribbons, at long last giving her full control over her own destiny.

Marika in the present day is a prisoner held in perpetual torment. According to Enia and the Two Fingers,

"Queen Marika is the vessel of the Elden Ring, carrier of its vision. A god, in truth. But after the Elden Ring's shattering, she was imprisoned in the Erdtree. A grim punishment for shattering the Order, despite her godhood. The Fingers speak... "Marika's trespass demanded a heavy sentence. But even in shackles, she remains a god, and the vision's vessel.”

Marika shattered the Order, going against the will of the Two Fingers, and was punished for it gravely. In many ways, Marika’s fate is Ranni’s absolute worst nightmare. This is exactly the fate she took such drastic lengths to escape… serving a higher power with her entire being, her will not her own, but the will of the Fingers, with any attempt at change met with violent suppression, her body essentially being used as a puppet to defend the last vestiges of the Order.

“I would not be controlled by that thing.”

I think that Ranni, seeing Marika’s broken body at the end of it all, felt nothing but pity for her in that moment, despite everything she’d done. To me, the act of Ranni holding Marika’s head in her hands feels like she’s saying, “you were my enemy. But there is no worse fate in this world than what you suffered. Now, you can be truly free."

Maintaining friendships---maintaining all relationships, particularly with people inconveniently not in the same apartment or office building---is hard. It just is. I've also found there's a steady attrition of freely-available friendship in your late twenties, as people move out of their crowded apartments, shack up, start having children and/or climbing the ladder into jobs that demand more of their attention and energy.

It is tough to be in your late 20s. You realize that you've taken for granted how full the world felt, with people and potential. You're not quite prepared for when you find yourself alone, and someone starts locking doors that you thought would be open forever.

Unfortunately, there is no easy fix to this. The only fix is: you are going to have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and do it all again. And again. And again.

"It" can take a lot of different forms. I know "join a group" is the most trite, annoying advice I can give but---do it. Find a group that you think you might be interested in joining, and join. Book club, running club, esoteric interest of your choice club; go on MeetUp and see what's in your area, volunteer for stuff. Ignore (for weeks, if not months) the fact that you feel awkward and out of place, and make it a commitment.

And then, when you've been part of a group---well, it's not so weird to ask if Lisa wants to go to a street festival with you. Not if you've packed lunches for the homeless with Lisa or laughed about a particular book with Lisa or been running alongside Lisa as you train for the upcoming 5k.

(Maybe Lisa will politely decline. Maybe Lisa will come to the street festival, but then has excuses for the next thing, and the next; she's too busy to make a good friend right now. And so---you will pick yourself up. You will do it all again.)

Or you can reach out to those people you've fallen out of touch with. "Hey, James, if you're in town let's grab lunch!" sounds very fake but it's not if you genuinely want to grab lunch with James. Ask Aiden if they're doing anything on Thursday, and would they like to come to bar trivia with you? If they're not in the same city, find some time for calls, or zoom---or hell, go old-fashioned and write letters.

If those ideas sound labor- and time-intensive, hard in the way that making yourself vulnerable always is......yes.

council as a band hehe // coming from this

Now, quick preface: I used to watch Vtubers, I don't anymore, but I don't dislike them or shit on them, I just moved onto other things, plus I don't like certain aspects of it as a culture on the corporate side. One of the biggest things I dislike, though, are the fans. I sincerely have never before wanted to not be perceived as something as much as I have with being a fan of Vtubers, not because Vtubers are cringe, but because being associated with Vtuber fans would legit lead to an ego death for me.

I obviously mean the ones that are the most infamous with that statement, if it wasn't obvious enough: The ones that seem to try and grasp at every chance to aggrandize, or, say, idolize Vtubers. You know the ones I'm talking about, the people that say "wow, normies fucking suck, they see Markiplier making weird noises and lose their shit, I don't get it" and 5 minutes later are laughing their lungs out at Amelia Watson making weird noises, the ones that'll see the Vtubers do something in a game and claims she's a Goddess Of The Game, The Best Player Alive At It, the ones that'll endlessly circulate clips of the Vtubers "using their real voice by accident" or "FUNNIEST VTUBER CLIP" (she said something sexual or burped) or "[Vtuber] is a FREAK?" (she said 'feet' or 'vore' or otherwise mentioned any other widespread milquetoast fetish), the ones that'll absolutely die on the hill of going to bat for the Vtuber or Vtuber corp they like (especially Hololive, Hololive shills are lab-grown weirdos with burnt out brains that you'd think are constantly in MK Ultra activation mode except just to defend Hololive at any cost and by any means).

This isn't every Vtuber fan, obviously, but this is what is known as the Vtuber Fan. This is what a lot of people think of when they think of "Vtuber Fans". And seriously, I find it hard to blame the talent -- in the majority of cases, because there's plenty of Vtubers that really lean on the so called "GFE", or "Girlfriend Experience", or "Really Fucking Vile Parasocial Shit", these ones can legit go explode and I support not giving them a platform -- because, see, streams are hours long endeavors for most streamers, and Vtubers definitely are expected to stream at least some good amount of hours per session. The majority of cases, these Vtubers are just making some jokes or commentary that may make reference to sex or involve more raunchy topics, which is completely normal for the average streamer, even non-Vtubers, but then Clippers (or Clip Channels), as they are known, clip only those parts, so for outsiders, Catgirl McTuber is known exclusively for making references to feet, piss, and saying the word sex a couple of times per clip, when the reality of the matter is, Catgirl McTuber only brings those up maybe twice or thrice every couple of streams. There are definitely Vtubers that leverage this, mind you, the whole "ehehehe if I say nipple and feet and imply being into this one obscure fetish, I'll get a shitload of views on my clips, which translates to new followers" so, almost as if on schedule like old Moistcritikal videos, suddenly they will unleash "uhhh yeah chat that health potion I just drank, it's so red and colorful, it looks delicious... Delicious like feet! Like a giantess' feet!" followed by a silence where chat goes "HUH?????" and they know that's going to be their clip, but again, that's not all of them, and some are really misrepresented. In a way, it's largely Clippers' fault that Vtubing in general is so often seen almost necessarily as this Thing For Perverts: Yeah, those clips get traction, from both enjoyers and detractors, and with those delicious views rolling in that aggressively, of course they'll replicate the formula more and more.

This, in turn, feeds into the usual view of the Vtuber Fan: It's easy for anyone not interested, not even hateful of the culture/craft, just uninterested, to view it as "Oh, vtubers? Those super perverts that only ultrafreaks like? Hmm yeah not really, no, I don't watch any of them".

And, again, the need, the compulsion, to aggrandize: "WOAH Pink Vtuber just dropped a new song! It's THE BEST!" maybe it's not bad, really, but it's definitely mid at best, and seeing people really push it as this breakthrough of music so aggressively because they jack it to the Vtuber's model, well, it doesn't sit well with Actual Music Fans of the genre. "WOW Dog Vtuber is FERAL!" she's literally doing much of what Markiplier-type streamers did and do, but she's got a cute anime model and is Female, so fans will go rabid, and other people will eventually find this behavior annoying out of principle.

See, these things I mentioned... Do they warrant hatred? Not really. A streamer can release a track and it can be mid and that's fine. A streamer can make noises and say "unhinged" things and that's fine. Streaming is about doing something you enjoy as much as it is entertaining a crowd, in my opinion. Going about it the way you want to go about it is always the right answer. But then you have these incredibly aggressively parasocially invested fans that make the visible, perceptible bulk of what a Vtuber Fan is, and that's when public opinion, well, it goes to shit, because it's not longer just "a streamer with an anime rig just chilling and doing their thing", it becomes "a streamer with an anime rig doing anything at all and this army of people with usernames like lolifeet9000 proudly proclaiming they are, in fact, the funniest feralest greatest internet supersensation alive, even though all she said was 'armpit' this one time in a 7 hour stream".

I made a website where artists and designers can get color palette inspo from fire hydrants I've 3D scanned all over the US

Some of my favorites:

There are about 100 hydrants so far and I'm continuing to add more all the time

Public infrastructure is sexy, baby!!!!!! Pass it on!!

There's that scene in the first intro where the two panels divide and separate as a metaphor for time, with Frieren in the middle, indicating that Stark and Fern are successors to Eisen and Heiter-- they are successors, carrying on the legacy of their forbearers, with Frieren as the link between time for them

But then, who is Himmels successor? If Eisen and Heiter have one, then logically shouldn't there be a fourth member of their party to continue his path?

Solar titan Shep and void warlock Liara~