Tom Holt/K.J. Parker’s Fantasy Works Do Include Some Byzantine Names And Allusions, But They Tend To

“This place is someone’s memory of a town...and the memory’s fading.”

This is distressingly on-point. You should share that demo tape with me sometime, @coppermarigolds.

I heard @coppermarigolds wrote an eight verse song about #kuvira ?????

i wish orson welles was here to run a toxic blog

I used to have a friend who was pretty big into both WW2 militaria and animé, and she used to argue that people in both these groups have a bad habit of adopting imagery from Wilhelmite Germany in substitution for Nazi imagery as a way to glamorizing German militarism without being immediately accused of pro-Nazi sympathies. Now she was very hard-left politically, and some of this may have been hyperbolic. Still, this something that has given me pause, and I feel that Tanya the Evil does straddle the line, particularly in the later installments when WW2-era technology starts appearing. Still, while I don’t want to die on the “let people dress like Nazis!” hill, I would not ban Tanya cosplay on the grounds that it depicts a “fictitious Nazi organization,” because it bloody well doesn’t and a personal interpretation of subtext is not the same thing as out-and-out pro-Nazi propaganda, and if it is then we might as well cut out the middleman and just start arresting people because we don’t like them.

Well… that’s dumb.

Oh my god @wyattsalazar, I was just bouncing through deviantArt and I found this amazing piece by glucosefiction. I don’t know if you commissioned this or it was just fanart but I had to show it to you. Consider it a belated birthday present of a kind. ;)

You’ve hit the nail on the head. While I have a conservative temperament, I don’t agree with a lot of traditional North American conservatism. And yet I’ve loyally read the works of a few conservative writers for years now, because they shared the qualities you listed. They’re able to articulate their beliefs so you can understand where they’re coming from, they try not to caricature their opponents and give credit where credit is due (sometimes), and they have a lively awareness of themselves and their blind spots. (Having a sense of humor about all of this is also a big help.)

I don’t think the solution is to follow a bunch of people from across the political spectrum to ensure that you’re not ensconcing yourself in an echo chamber, but to follow smart people. Period. People who aren’t afraid to criticize their own tribe. People who don’t speak entirely in buzzwords. People who’ve given some indication that there’s a brain in there, not just a collection of ideological talking points.

The mirror universe, transporter accidents, other parallel universes, time travel, cloning technology operated by unscrupulous doctors and scientists, the holodeck...the list goes on and on.

The “would you fuck your clone?” question is so uncomfortably real in Star Trek because of the Mirror Universe.

Not only that, but if you don’t enjoy the podcast you’re probably a prokaryotic organism.

If you’ve never listened to an anime club podcast please try to listen to the Wixoss podcast. I know Betterman was definitely a hard sell, but Wixoss rules.

But also go back and listen to the Betterman podcast sometime. If you don’t I guarantee your T-Cells are fucking weak,

So here’s two questions: can airbenders only bend ordinary air, or can they bend other gases? Are there limits based on the state of various elements, compounds, and solutions at particular temperatures and atmospheric pressures, or does every substance have a particular “essence” that only a specific type of bender can manipulate? (i.e. can an airbender bend steam?)

can waterbenders bend oil can earthbenders bend glass can airbenders bend sound can firebenders bend mixtapes