my contribution to @thriversidezine 🍉

Black vulture (Coragyps atratus), a.k.a. the American black vulture, Mexican vulture, zopilote, urubu, or gallinazo.

1980 Hallmark Muppets Kermit & Miss Piggy Greeting Card (via: muppet fandom)

Extremely rare and unknown officially licensed 1993 Yoshi mall ride from Japan, which is known to have appeared only once in a trade magazine, and for which there is no definite proof that it was ever actually released to begin with.

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Literal definition of spyware:

Also From Microsoft’s own FAQ: "Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. 🤡

KillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKill

There's a way to remove it~

Go into the power shell

then paste in:

reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot /v "TurnOffWindowsCopilot" /t REG_DWORD /f /d 1

like this

Then restart. Also here is how to turn off the awful search suggestions:

incase anyone didnt know there's some great free software to handle disabling windows bloatware without needing to mess with the command line

these are a mandatory part of every windows install for me. been using them for years and it's such a lifesaver

Because this has mostly been talked about with Windows 11, heads-up that this installed itself on every Windows 10 computer in our house with this week's update.

Mm, yeah, time for my periodic reblog.

If you havent turned off your "built in spyware" and "computer file search bar doesnt search the computer files first" 'features', now is the time to do so. It really is just a couple clicks even for people who don't really get how it works.

your boyfriend isn't thematically significant

Ever since chapter 3+4 came out, there's been a bit of discussion on whether the Knight is ACTUALLY strong or they're just bullshitting, mainly because we can ""defeat"" it in chapter 3 and most of the times after that it runs away or attacks from far away.

The thing is that the Knight isn't weak, hell no, it's just that they're petty.

Extremely petty.

I feel like the Knight loves being the big bad scary guy the heroes are trying to defeat. I mean, look at how they were moving. They LIVE to be sassy dude.

But there's a couple of times where they drop that evil playful shtick and go straight to the point.

-When Tenna ignores their orders.

-When Susie thinks they're weak.

-When Susie thinks they're weak Again.

-When Flowery tries to defy them.

There's a common pattern among those cases.

The Knight isn't seen as threatening.

The Knight could've defeated the Fun Gang at any moment during their battle, - hell, they could've killed them - but where's the fun in that? So it lets them struggle, because it wants to making itself seem undefeatable, a looming threat that will haunt them until the end of their journey.

But then they manage to get their health down by like, 30%, and Susie chips their sword. And at that moment, it isn't fun anymore. If they aren't scared, then what's the point?

And what do they do to Kris, who gets an attack boost as soon as their friends are swooned during the fight?

They get them on 1HP and remind them of their place. Remind them that they will never be in control by making them kneel.

In the Dark Sanctuary, the Knight prefers to watch from afar, being an ever-present threat hanging over the heroes' heads.

But when they reach it at the end of the dark world, they go back to toying with them, mocking them for thinking they even have a chance.

(Also they dodge Susie's Rude Buster so they were probably purposefully letting themselves get hit by it in the fight.)

But, yet again, they stop playing pretend because of Susie. Because she implied that they are weak.

So what does the Knight do seeing a 16 year old talk shit about them?

They summon a goddamn Titan.

The Titans are never mentioned in the Prophecy unless it's about the Roaring, so the Knight was fully willing to start the Roaring early because Susie made them mad.

Of course, they could've thought that, in the end, it wouldn't actually kill the Fun Gang, but for all we know, they didn't know that either. But it shows that the Knight doesn't like not being taken seriously.

And finally, there's the most recent one: Flowery.

Flowery already didn't think much of the Knight before they even appeared, but when they come to take Asgore, he immediately rushes to save him.

And I think that the most important part here is that, when Flowery taunts the Knight, they actually speed up, to the point they crash into a wall due to being distracted.

Flowery poses no threat to the Knight, not only is the Knight far more powerful than any character we've seen, but Flowery is constantly said to be very fragile, even by Darkner standards; the Knight had no reason to even attempt to outrun him outside of competitive pettiness.

And when he does catch up to them, the Knight stays kneeling for a moment, not necessarily because the wall genuinely hurt them, but at the sheer shock that the goddamn jarona guy is trying to put up a fight against them.

The same way they ended the fight as soon as Susie got too confident, the Knight barely bothered to play along with Flowery. He isn't scared, he isn't cowering, and that's not what the Knight wants, so it gets rid of him.

My point is that the Knight is powerful, but it doesn't want to be just that. It wants to be threatening, it wants the heroes and anyone that opposes it to be terrified of their mere presence. But when they don't? When they do try opposing it? It gets mad, because it takes away the enjoyment they get out of purposefully holding back and toying with them.

It's like if an adult was play fighting with a kid, and as soon as the kid punched a bit too hard, the adult beat their head in with a sledgehammer.

#the knight SUCKS #but really it's this dramatic cockiness that's so interesting #it wants to win so bad #and yknow. it'd be great characterization for a certain candidate

Um

was talking to a coworker and realised i could not for the life of me remember his name but i was too embarrassed to ask because we've spoken multiple times so mid-conversation i started concocting a plan to nudge the conversation towards the ID photos on our building passes so that i could be like oh my ID photo is awful haha the camera they use to take these has a real talent for making me look as unphotogenic as possible and then he would say oh yes me too haha everyone says that (because they do) and then i would be able to say well let me see yours it can't be as bad as mine! and he would show me his ID because we are coworkers and why wouldn't he and this would allow me to see his building pass which of course would have his name on it and then i would be able to say well yours is perfectly nice it must be me that's the problem! and then we would have a polite chuckle about it and i would have his name without needing to ask for it and he would be none the wiser and all would be well but then before i could execute this fine plan a little voice in my head went "so this is some light yagami bull shit you are about to pull" which was such a violent reality check it shocked me completely out of my embarrassment and i went "hey im so sorry your name has slipped my mind could you remind me" and he did and it was fine.

"This is some Light Yagami bull shit you are about to pull" <- Littany against avoiding small embarrassing/awkward moments that don't matter with over the top ass mind games.

I really don’t want to open this can of worms because Tumblr hath no fury like people called out on their political performativeness but it is literally driving me up the wall to watch people react to Serkis’ ‘keep Tolkien white’ commentary by insisting twice as hard that Tolkien would descend down to earth and dropkick the entire Republican party to hell or whatever, just because they want to ensure that a piece of media they enjoy isn’t seen as being morally impure. Case in point: I have seen at least five instances of Tolkien’s ‘I hate apartheid’ valedictorian address being used as a ‘counter’ to Serkis being racist, including by actual news outlets.

Except it’s only ever the ‘I hate apartheid’ line that’s shared, and not the actual quote in its full context. Because here it is:

Which is to say. This isn’t exactly the antiracist quote of the century, to say the least. This is a white South Africa born man and a white Australian shaking hands and going ‘omg we relate’ and expressing what is a very, very mild ‘segregation is not great’ opinion in order to convey his thoughts on an academic subject, ie the confluence of language and literature. Using race to make a point about his own subject of interest, in his own interest, which is, amusingly enough, what a lot of ostensibly well meaning progressive seem to be doing.

I also think that some of the general surprise around ‘what do you mean large swathes of the Tolkien fandom are incredibly conservative!?’ in lib/left Tolkien fandom is the result of a tendency in said parts of the fandom to transpose one’s own progressiveness onto Tolkien and turn a blind eye to things like, say, the Shire being a very specifically mid-century British racist construct that is very, very clear in its politics, often going so far as to insist it’s anarchist or an ideal society or whatever the fuck… and then getting really Pikachu-meme ‘but they’re misreading it’ every single time a conservative explains exactly what it is about the legendarium that they really love, and get surprised when someone uses the Shire being a racist construct to do more racism. It is 2026 let us do away with ‘I don’t see colour’ interpretations of media, I beg. Nobody is cancelling you for enjoying a book that is not kind to race. Most of the books I love are not kind to race.

fandom approaches male characters from a watsonian perspective and female characters from a doylist perspective

by virtue of being made up constructs everything about fictional characters only exists as far as what is told about them, and yet underdeveloped male characters are assumed to have rich inner lives that the writer have simply not tapped into - when they actually did not give them any - and it's therefore up to fans to rescue the character from the writer's assumed negligence and explore him themselves through headcanon-ing the shit outta them picking up small bits of characterization and expanding from it, whereas female characters are taken at extreme face value: if the writer did not give them an inner life then she doesn't have one period, even within the universe of the story where everyone is a living breathing person, and it's not worth exploring. even when the small bits of context and characterization about her insinuate something interesting about inner world and leave room to spin an interesting backstory and motivations there seems to be no interest in fandom to do so.

I'd add that female characters are approached from a Watsonian perspective When it's worse for them. Like a female character's crimes (ranging from actual villainry to 'being understandably blunt to the golden boy) are treated as real things are real person did to another real person, but things the same or worse done by a male character get the "it's fiction, it's not real" treatment which yes. but you sure were being watsonian when you talked about bad things that happened To him

ok there’s been enough reblogs from enough people on enough various posts of mine that now i need to stand up for the bitches who don’t fuck of the world. people aren’t writing bad smut because of a lack of having sex. they are writing it because a lot of people have very poor visualization skills and forget halfway through what position characters are supposed to be in, or don’t understand what makes a word a good or bad choice, or can’t create compelling dynamics. i promise that even the sexually inactive, by virtue of also existing within the human form, would know that if you’re behind someone you can’t lick their nipple. and i promise that the frequently sexually active are equally prone to using the word “mewled.” i can pretty much guarantee that having a lot of sex and writing good sex scenes are unrelated. do you think your favorite horror authors are cutting people up in their basements. do you think your favorite food critics are michelin chefs. do you think the people blocking cool combat scenes in movies are routinely getting into cage fights. no they just understand how to utilize tone, pacing, momentum, and the tools of film direction, while keeping action tied to character. like believe it or not this is simply a skill like everything else. idk i always think that that point of view shows a lack of understanding of what makes a sex scene work. it removes the craft of it in a way i find short-sighted. i think people are confused about the reason teenagers are writing bad sex scenes. it’s not because they’re not fucking, it’s because they are young and haven’t had the years to hone their writing craft the way someone older has.

a wise and true post that reminded me of my favorite interview moment of all time

I really wonder if the occasional references to dinosaurs and paleontology in Deltarune are meant to kind of reference how Christian thought (specifically irt the flood narrative and primordial chaos) adapted to early paleontological discoveries. At the very least there's probably this baseline Fossils = Leftovers of an "Old World" association going on

CHAPTER SERF

CHAPTER SERF is a tabletop roleplaying game and adventure, set in Warhammer 40K, where you play those hooded peasant weirdos you sometimes spot in the backgrounds of the art.

Full PDF downloadable >>>HERE<<< Printer-friendly version >>>HERE<<< A5-booklet format version >>>HERE<<< (thank you @tubilak!)

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Here's the pitch:

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CHAPTER SERF is a game about candles.

As a fan of Warhammer 40K, I think about Space Marines a lot. Space Marines are:

These are not well-adjusted, fully-developed persons. When do they ever get the opportunity?

What would it be like, to serve such persons? To run their supply chains? Keep their households? Satisfy their desires? Clean up their messes?

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In artwork and cinematics; on miniature bases and in bitz boxes; described in comics and novels, Space Marine architecture is replete with candles. 

So many candles.

A Space Marine doesn’t think about where candles come from, or what candles cost. (They think about war and xenos and traitors, stuff like that.)

A Space Marine wants candles—so there should and must be candles.

CHAPTER SERF is a game about getting an emotionally-arrested, casually-genocidal bossman demigod—to whom it would be sacrilege to say no—the candles they want.

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I keep trying to write fan TTRPGs for 40K.

The first was Paper Route, also set on a giant flying cathedral of a spaceship. I never finished it. It was called "Paper Route" because the ship was cargo hauler, transporting a planet's worth of office paper. There were orks with origami guns, and paper-wasp tyranids, and eldar scooped up alongside a whole forest.

Where my mind was at with Paper Route was: "40K should be funny."

The second 40K TTRPG thing I made was for Kieron Gillen / Rowan Rook & Decard's DIE RPG. It was an adventure called "POWERSWORD PURGATORY"---a bunch of 30-year-olds, former regulars at ye-olde-FLGS, get Jumanji-ed into POWERSWORD (ie: not-Warhammer 40K) for one last hurrah.

With "POWERSWORD" I was trying to work through how I felt about the fandom, and 40K's place in culture now. Its drift from Thatcher-era DIY nihilism to corporate-IP neatness; its earnest embrace of "xenophobia is justified actually" power fantasies.

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CHAPTER SERF is my third attempt. And my strongest, maybe?

Because it isn't a piss-take. There are jokes in it, of course. It wouldn't be 40K without jokes. But I am taking the Warhammer 40K setting seriously. I'm not being meta, nor winking at the reader.

I finally have something genuine to say, through all that grimdark set-dressing---about the weight of inhuman institutions crushing ordinary humanity, and what we make of the scraps soul left us:

Forcing a mother to betray her own son; Saving a labourer from lobotomising servitorhood; Arranging the funeral of a Space Marine's discarded lover;

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Design-wise, I am most pleased with CHAPTER SERF's favour mechanic.

The Imperium of Man is an extremely feudal network of bickering fiefdoms, each with iron monopolies on different facets of far-future life.

It made sense to me, to link what stuff you can have with how much factions like you. Buddy with the Mechanicus and you get access to fancy bionics and lightning guns. Piss off the astropaths? No psychic powers for you.

This is essentially a gear list married to a faction / major NPC relationship map. I like it because it removes the need for players to worry about dollars and cents---a thing that makes no sense in most 40K TTRPG framings.

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I hope people find CHAPTER SERF a fun idea. I am pretty proud of it! I particularly enjoyed writing the various vocations / professions---thinking up what sort of servants Space Marines would want / need.

I started making some sketches for it, but I can't really spare the time to make all the art that I need---so the PDF is text, only, I'm afraid.

I did the layout myself, in Google Slides, which I know is the least efficient way to do things---but hey! If that isn't 40K I don't know what is.

Full PDF downloadable >>>HERE<<< Printer-friendly version >>>HERE<<< A5-booklet format version >>>HERE<<< (thank you @tubilak!)