Ngl I feel that I don't see enough ffxiv people playing xaela characters, where are all my funky steppe lizards???

In an ideal world me and all the other xaela players would be hanging out in here

i know this has probably been said numerous times by now but every time i run P12 it strikes me how much athena's Mandatory Evil Murderous Boss Lines are, specifically, abusive-mother coded like

"shine brilliant for me!" <- a typical form of (specific) maternal abuse: the child's existence being treated as a spectacle meant to validate the mother, extreme focus on the child's outward accomplishments and/or beauty (think beauty pageants moms for example)

"you cannot escape my eternal gaze!" <- hyper-scrutiny of every aspect of the child's body, emotions, speech, no privacy allowed, emotional manipulation/pretending to "know the child better than they know themselves" and to "see through the lies", etc

"from nothing, i mold life" & "to silent vessels, i give voice" <- pretty self-explanatory. acting like Giving Birth To The Child grants her a special, elevated status and a unique and eternal leverage/power over them

"these chains are forged from the fabric of creation" <- this one might be a reach but it does remind me of the "life debt" idea from the point above (chained by biology itself, too, if you consider the chains themselves might be a little bit reminiscent of DNA modelization) (?)

"today, my theory shall be proved as fact" <- forcing her own narrative and interpretation on the child, manipulating the extended & immediate family in her favor & against the child, gaslighting, etc

THAT WAS TESTAMENT AND THEIR PRONOUNS ARE THEY/THEM AND I KNOW THEIR COCK IS BIG

Canonically, they have to wear an iron plate on their panties just to hide the bulge.

It's real but rarely seen. The only mod is removing their skirt.

Extreme tuck

It's Foxgirl Friday!

Install Firefox and become a girl!

people discovering steven universe in 2023 are always like "this show is really good why the hell were yall so weird about it"

#LITERALLY ME#I could probably find the conversation with my friend where I was like#‘yeah I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop bc I heard all the Bad Show Propaganda and then uh. That shoe never dropped. Good show.’

As someone that was there and started blocking the SU Crit tag because of so many bad faith accusations, yeah I think I can say a bit of what happened. Might be a bit disjointed but these are the things that I remember happening.

First thing was the release schedule. The Steven Bombs. Releasing like five episodes in one week and then nothing for months. This was something that CartoonNetwork had control over and might have been something that they tried to use to get Steven Universe to stop being so popular because it was gestures pretty queer.

If Steven Universe was a show that every episode was a stand alone, this wouldn't have been an issue, but it was a linear story. So major developments could drop; major character reveals/fuck-ups could happen and then the fandom would just sit on those for months. Instead of getting the next part of the story that resolved whatever just happened the fandom could sit there and stew in theories and emotions. So characters messing up would be blown out of proration and the resolution wouldn't feel like it actually enough effort on the one that messed up end.

One example was Cry for Help. When Pearl tricked Garnet into fusing more often. If I remember right, we didn't get to Pearl and Garnet actually talking out what happened there until months after the fact. In story not much time had past but for the audience that was plenty of time for people to be offended on Garnet's behalf and distort what happened.

Anther issue was "Gem Harvest" dropped right around the 2016 election. You know when Trump became president. This was made long before the election, but there were people who took that timing as somehow Rebecca Sugar and the Crew saying stuff that they weren't. I would also say this was when the discourse really took off. If that episode had aired when the crew thought it would, probably a year or months before then, I don't think people would have misread it was much as they did. It was about communication and also Uncle Andy is the one that had to realize that the way he acted had caused him to be isolated from his family. This wasn't Steven had to "make his racist uncle no longer racist all on his own" but "Steven gave him encouragement that it wasn't too late to change". But the timing was terrible and the Crew had no control on that. The Steven Bombs made several seasons last for years when they should have been over in some months.

Second, studio interference that fandom blamed on Rebecca Sugar and the Crew. The scheduling, the ending of the show feeling rushed; those were things that parts of the fandom blamed on the crew not the network. There were people that I recall saying that the crew just needed to change how Steven Universe was written to fit with the bomb format better, when the bomb format wasn't something that the crew ever wanted. That wasn't the show style that they were telling. The show got axed because Rebecca Sugar and the Crew wouldn't drop the wedding. They wanted it there because it was important to have in a kid's show. But because they stuck to their guns the rest of the story had to be speed up, and people thought that the crew should have written the ending better; when that ending was planned to have at least another season, not a week long set of episodes. Steven Universe was set up to be a long term story. One that gave time to each character to unpack their mindset and issues. But they couldn't do that with the Diamonds.

Third, people not understanding the theme of the show. Steven Universe was about family, emotions, and open communication solving issues. Characters resolved their issues by talking about them. By being open about what the issues were. That was the reason Gem War happened; because open communication because Pink Diamond and the other Diamonds just couldn't happen. We see that Steven is at his worst when he bottles up his emotions or refuses to talk about an issue that he knows he has. But despite this theme by the time we got to Change Your Mind, people were cheering for the idea of Steven shattering the Diamonds. Which ignores the theme of the show; communication. There were people that wanted Steven to kill the Diamonds when this wasn't that type of show. Steven always hated when he couldn't talk to another character and had to bubble them. Why would this kid resort to killing? That goes against the themes of this show.

Fourth, the rushed ending. The events of Change Your Mind, was something that the crew wanted to be its own season. I imagine that if the crew had gotten what they wanted we would have spent more time on Homeworld with Steven getting to know the Diamonds and sorting out their issues. Blue Diamond would have been first since we had set up with her character first. We saw her living with the regrets of losing Pink Diamond and now not doing her duties as a Diamond. But because of how rushed the ending had to be at that point the audience didn't get that time that they had wanted. Think about how long Lars's arc was. That was several seasons long. If they had gotten a season with the Diamonds like they wanted people probably wouldn't have thought that the ending was rushed.

Fifth, bad faith criticism and very toxic fandom. As I said I blocked the SU Crit tag because after a certain point people would take anything and start shoving completely off the rails criticisms at the show and expect everyone to take them in good faith. Like people claiming that Sugar, a Jewish creator, was a Nazi Apologist because Steven didn't kill the Diamonds. People projected things onto elements of the story that weren't there. People would take a screen shot and call it lazy animation because a character was off model for a fraction of a second that wouldn't be noticed without slowing it down. There was a lot of bad faith criticism. Some of it was probably from people that didn't like how queer Steven Universe was and hid it as saying it wasn't progressive enough. There were probably people that thought that a kid's show was actually not progressive enough without looking at everything behind the scenes that the creators were dealing with. There were fans that drove one of the story-boarders/writers off the show because on her own Twitter account she posted shipping art of two of the characters (Lapis Lazuli and Peridot). It was just one member of the crew showing that she liked the dynamic between two characters that was not cannon and people started harassing them. There was a lot of entitlement from the fandom.

All of those things combined just made for a terrible time.

TL;DR: The show schedule being all over the place, studio interference, people not understanding the theme of the show, the rushed ending, and a toxic fandom with bad faith criticisms all led to the show having the worst reputation. I would say that the show schedule and studio interference played the biggest part of it since other parts stemmed issues that those created.

Agreed with all of this, but as a sort of continuation of point three:

The danger of adults watching a children's show because "It's so good it could be an adult's show!" is exactly this. Shows that are literally and explicitly for kids have much simpler messaging. One of my least favourite sentences in the world is when you remind someone who is whining about a piece of children's media for not doing what they wanted out of the story that it's aimed at kids and they say "But being for kids doesn't mean it can't still be good!"

Bitch it IS good. 'Good' doesn't mean 'Does the stuff adults want so it feels satisfying and fulfilling to adults'. It means 'Does the stuff the target audience wants and successfully conveys to that audience its message.' Adults are not the target audience. Get a grip and remember you're a guest. Your enjoyment is not the point. You cannot say "The Animaniacs sucked because there was no character development and they would suddenly sing educational songs - I wanted more world building about what these alien things were and how they got into the water tower and what that means for the fabric of American society" IT WAS A KID'S SHOW THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY AND EDUCATIONAL. AND IT WAS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

In the case of Steven Universe, Rebecca Sugar once said the aim was to 'redefine masculinity' for children - the point of the show is that Steven is surrounded by powerful women without ever feeling emasculated, and is properly and healthily connected to his emotions. He's not afraid to cry. He's open with his fears. He goes through increasing trauma, and the moral of that is 'Dont bottle up, talk to your loved ones.'

And, crucially, his first and primary response to antagonism is "Let's talk about this" and not "Let's punch this."

It was adults who turned that into a "Talk to Nazis uwu" parable, and then got mad about it; children, the target audience, did not. Children are people who are very much still learning how to process their emotions and handle conflict on the playground. Young boys are learning that they aren't allowed to cry or have feelings other than anger. Young girls are learning that they aren't allowed power and strength. All children are being told that a family can only look one way, that love can only follow one path. SU provided clear role models to the contrary and was extremely valuable for that.

And then adults projected real world political allegories onto it because that's how adult fiction works, and decided that meant it was bad and that Rebecca Sugar, a queer Jewish enby, was actually a Nazi apologist. Just a trash fire of a fandom

“You’ve found your own reason to fight.”

“Yes. Yes I have.”

thanks man

I wasn’t socialized enough as a puppy

From my last post about FFXIV sketches the G'raha one done! Im not so into looking at my own work but lately been enjoying the result of my art :'D

And if you're into women instead of men, I have some great news: the same technique applies for seducing autistic women!

You can in fact use this method to seduce autistic people of all genders!

So You Need To Buy A Computer But You Don't Know What Specs Are Good These Days

Hi.

This is literally my job.

Lots of people are buying computers for school right now or are replacing computers as their five-year-old college laptop craps out so here's the standard specs you should be looking for in a (windows) computer purchase in August 2023.

PROCESSOR

You can get away with a Ryzen 5 but an intel i3 should be an absolute last resort. You want at least an intel i5 or a Ryzen 7 processor. The current generation of intel processors is 13, but anything 10 or newer is perfectly fine. DO NOT get a higher performance line with an older generation; a 13th gen i5 is better than an 8th gen i7. (Unfortunately I don't know enough about ryzens to tell you which generation is the earliest you should get, but staying within 3 generations is a good rule of thumb)

RAM

If you don't have at least 8GB RAM on a modern computer it's going to be very, very slow. Ideally you want a computer with at least 16GB, and it's a good idea to get a computer that will let you add or swap RAM down the line (nearly all desktops will let you do this, for laptops you need to check the specs for Memory and see how many slots there are and how many slots are available; laptops with soldered RAM cannot have the memory upgraded - this is common in very slim laptops)

STORAGE

Computers mostly come with SSDs these days; SSDs are faster than HDDs but typically have lower storage for the same price. That being said: SSDs are coming down in price and if you're installing your own drive you can easily upgrade the size for a low cost. Unfortunately that doesn't do anything for you for the initial purchase.

A lot of cheaper laptops will have a 128GB SSD and, because a lot of stuff is stored in the cloud these days, that can be functional. I still recommend getting a bit more storage than that because it's nice if you can store your music and documents and photos on your device instead of on the cloud. You want to be able to access your files even if you don't have internet access.

But don't get a computer with a big HDD instead of getting a computer with a small SSD. The difference in speed is noticeable.

SCREEN (laptop specific)

Personally I find that touchscreens have a negative impact on battery life and are easier to fuck up than standard screens. They are also harder to replace if they get broken. I do not recommend getting a touch screen unless you absolutely have to.

A lot of college students especially tend to look for the biggest laptop screen possible; don't do that. It's a pain in the ass to carry a 17" laptop around campus and with the way that everything is so thin these days it's easier to damage a 17" screen than a 14" screen.

On the other end of that: laptops with 13" screens tend to be very slim devices that are glued shut and impossible to work on or upgrade.

Your best bet (for both functionality and price) is either a 14" or a 15.6" screen. If you absolutely positively need to have a 10-key keyboard on your laptop, get the 15.6". If you need something portable more than you need 10-key, get a 14"

FORM FACTOR (desktop specific)

If you purchase an all-in-one desktop computer I will begin manifesting in your house physically. All-in-ones take away every advantage desktops have in terms of upgradeability and maintenance; they are expensive and difficult to repair and usually not worth the cost of disassembling to upgrade.

There are about four standard sizes of desktop PC: All-in-One (the size of a monitor with no other footprint), Tower (Big! probably at least two feet long in two directions), Small Form Factor Tower (Very moderate - about the size of a large shoebox), and Mini/Micro/Tiny (Small! about the size of a small hardcover book).

If you are concerned about space you are much better off getting a MicroPC and a bracket to put it on your monitor than you are getting an all-in-one. This will be about a million percent easier to work on than an all-in-one and this way if your monitor dies your computer is still functional.

Small form factor towers and towers are the easiest to work on and upgrade; if you need a burly graphics card you need to get a full size tower, but for everything else a small form factor tower will be fine. Most of our business sales are SFF towers and MicroPCs, the only time we get something larger is if we have to put a $700 graphics card in it. SFF towers will accept small graphics cards and can handle upgrades to the power supply; MicroPCs can only have the RAM and SSD upgraded and don't have room for any other components or their own internal power supply.

WARRANTY

Most desktops come with either a 1 or 3 year warranty; either of these is fine and if you want to upgrade a 1 year to a 3 year that is also fine. I've generally found that if something is going to do a warranty failure on desktop it's going to do it the first year, so you don't get a hell of a lot of added mileage out of an extended warranty but it doesn't hurt and sometimes pays off to do a 3-year.

Laptops are a different story. Laptops mostly come with a 1-year warranty and what I recommend everyone does for every laptop that will allow it is to upgrade that to the longest warranty you can get with added drop/damage protection. The most common question our customers have about laptops is if we can replace a screen and the answer is usually "yes, but it's going to be expensive." If you're purchasing a low-end laptop, the parts and labor for replacing a screen can easily cost more than half the price of a new laptop. HOWEVER, the way that most screens get broken is by getting dropped. So if you have a warranty with drop protection, you just send that sucker back to the factory and they fix it for you.

So, if it is at all possible, check if the manufacturer of a laptop you're looking at has a warranty option with drop protection. Then, within 30 days (though ideally on the first day you get it) of owning your laptop, go to the manufacturer site, register your serial number, and upgrade the warranty. If you can't afford a 3-year upgrade at once set a reminder for yourself to annually renew. But get that drop protection, especially if you are a college student or if you've got kids.

And never, ever put pens or pencils on your laptop keyboard. I've seen people ruin thousand dollar, brand-new laptops that they can't afford to fix because they closed the screen on a ten cent pencil. Keep liquids away from them too.

LIFESPAN

There's a reasonable chance that any computer you buy today will still be able to turn on and run a program or two in ten years. That does not mean that it is "functional."

At my office we estimate that the functional lifespan of desktops is 5-7 years and the functional lifespan of laptops is 3-5 years. Laptops get more wear and tear than desktops and desktops are easier to upgrade to keep them running. At 5 years for desktops and 3 years for laptops you should look at upgrading the RAM in the device and possibly consider replacing the SSD with a new (possibly larger) model, because SSDs and HDDs don't last forever.

COST

This means that you should think of your computers as an annual investment rather than as a one-time purchase. It is more worthwhile to pay $700 for a laptop that will work well for five years than it is to pay $300 for a laptop that will be outdated and slow in one year (which is what will happen if you get an 8th gen i3 with 8GB RAM). If you are going to get a $300 laptop try to get specs as close as possible to the minimums I've laid out here.

If you have to compromise on these specs, the one that is least fixable is the processor. If you get a laptop with an i3 processor you aren't going to be able to upgrade it even if you can add more RAM or a bigger SSD. If you have to get lower specs in order to afford the device put your money into the processor and make sure that the computer has available slots for upgrade and that neither the RAM nor the SSD is soldered to the motherboard. (one easy way to check this is to search "[computer model] RAM upgrade" on youtube and see if anyone has made a video showing what the inside of the laptop looks like and how much effort it takes to replace parts)

Computers are expensive right now. This is frustrating, because historically consumer computer prices have been on a downward trend but since 2020 that trend has been all over the place. Desktop computers are quite expensive at the moment (August 2023) and decent laptops are extremely variably priced.

If you are looking for a decent, upgradeable laptop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

If you are looking for a decent, affordable desktop that will last you a few years, here are a couple of options that you can purchase in August 2023 that have good prices for their specs:

If I were going to buy any of these I'd probably get the HP laptop or the Dell Tower. The HP Laptop is actually a really good price for what it is.

Anyway happy computering.

another important point about ssd versus hdd:

hdd is not only slower, but it can be damaged and lose all your data permanently if you jostle it wrong (like by dropping your backpack too hard or knocking them off a table). ssds do not have this issue, so they are safer.

if you literally never move your computer, or you're getting an external drive you will basically never move, an hdd is safe enough. but dropping them can corrupt your files so just be aware of that when weighing pros and cons!

So the counter to this is that SSDs are static sensitive in a way that HDDs are not, and data lost on an SSD is *lost* lost, not recoverable like data on an HDD.

This means that no matter what kind of drive you have in your device you should have an external backup drive that you use to make regular backups of your hard drive. I recommend making both image and file backups.

An image backup is a snapshot of your computer from a particular moment in time and can be used to restore your device if the drive is damaged and needs to be replaced. A file backup saves all the files on your computer but doesn't save any programs or changes to the operating system. Again, you should to BOTH.

External Hard drives are pretty cheap these days; I recommend getting a drive that is at least 4 times the size of the storage drive in your device so you can do regular file backups AND save at least one full image backup on the same drive. A 5TB backup drive should cost you about $100 and has a reliable lifespan of about five years. Drives don't last forever, so please plan on replacing your backup drives on about the same timeline that you should plan on replacing your computer.

ALSO JUST GENERAL GOOD ADVICE FOR COMPUTERS:

Zenos Boba

@cherry-blossomtea since you reblogged the text here is the video

no im not a catboy. im a catguy. i have a black leather wallet and i drive a car. i also meow and purr and stretch real long but only for like one person

my favorite thing about this post is all the people who chose to use the default icon defending themselves in the notes like no stop it just put a picture up

Loving this energy

*wipes tear* they learn tumblr culture so fast . . . the spite . . . the malicious compliance of it all . . . I'm so proud

Oh wow they are just THROWING stuff at you for this one