Realizing That Amok Time, From T'Pring's Perspective, Is Basically The Equivalent Of A Vulcan Hallmark

This map shows all the major roads in the Roman Empire.

thinking about the video where a bunch of guys get together to un-corrupt a blastoise that got bad egged years ago in a leafgreen game and how that whole scenario is like. the loving side of cosmic horror. you are a blastoise. you trust your trainer. you've been through countless battles together, and while they never say anything, you can tell your trainer loves you. what you don't know is that your trainer is, at all times, being puppeted by intelligent forces outside of your dimension, holding knowledge far beyond the scope of anything you could ever know. they know things about your world that you do not; that nobody in your world ever could. the distinction between your trainer and this creature is minimal. at the same time, this creature is not god. it does not have infinite knowledge; it understands far greater than you, yet in still a very limited capacity. they understand what your world is made up of and how it can be manipulated to fit your whims. this creature loves you. your trainer loves you. they love you so much that they want to help you become stronger. they manipulate the very laws of your world to attain this feat. however, they did it wrong. they didn't know what they were doing, and the makeup of your being- everything you ARE- was twisted. you are no longer a blastoise. you are a bad egg. your trainer remains the same as ever. everything continues on, the same as it ever was, yet you cannot be what you once were. your trainer tries over, and over, and OVER again to hatch you, but you never become what you once were. you are a bad egg. there are other bad eggs now, other pokemon you used to know; pokemon you helped your trainer catch, pokemon you may have even fought alongside. now you're all bad eggs, sealed away by ancient protective magic known as Code. you never knew such a thing existed. you wonder if you're dangerous now. your trainer sets you in a box. over the years, he forgets which box you're in. unbeknownst to you, the creature is panicking, trying everything it can possibly think of to restore you to your blastoise state. the creature is just a child. he carries the pain of your loss long into adulthood; in his mind, he is responsible for your death. in the grand scheme of the universe, you do not matter; you're a "game". a few lines of code and some pixels. you do not Exist. and yet, you are mourned. and yet many others just like you are mourned by many others just like him. the world has been still for many, many years. you don't know this, because your world does not contain an internal clock. time doesn't really exist for you; it's a concept far outside of your reality. and yet, it is important. your creature contacts another of its kind. it shares the story of its sin, the insignificant act of corrupting you beyond repair. it shares this story in hopes that it could save you. the other creature recalls its own destruction of a world not unlike yours. it agrees to help. many creatures within the world outside of yours have gathered all together, using technologies familiar and unfamiliar with one collective goal in mind: to rescue you. specifically you. your loss is widely considered nothing. and yet, they put in incredible effort. obstacle after obstacle, they perform miracles for your sake. they copy your world; they use strange windows to view it, they layer your world over itself many times over to view it from every angle. they dig deep into the very makeup of your universe just trying to find you. one of them uses a method that only he has access to, in all the world, to find you. and they do. you have lost your name and everything else that makes you you, but there is something that remains in tact, that makes you findable; a piece of "data", an invisible quality to you that you and your trainer would never see, something you could never possibly know about. this is what ultimately makes you you, and not another blastoise. slowly but surely, they begin to put you back together. it's much harder than it needs to be, it is far too much effort for one

creature in one game that will never be touched again, and yet they do it. they race against the clock, stressing endlessly, sweating bullets and crying out in relief when they finally find the exact values, the last pieces of invisible quality that makes it YOU. you are now a blastoise. you are now "legitimate" to the game. you do not know it yet, but your trainer - your creature - is waiting for you, excited to Transfer you into new worlds until you are where he wants you. until you are safe. you also do not know that at this time, two of you exist. there is the You, here, being put together, manipulated through the fabrics of reality to restore your original form. and there is the Original you; the one waiting home, on the cartridge. the Real you. you are a clone, but you are not. you are a new pokemon, but you are the original. you are both corrupted, and legitimate. you are many things. the new you is saved, and this version of your world- this version that has fixed you, and only you- is re-uploaded, overlayed and overwritten to the original. you safely arrive. You are a blastoise. You were a bad egg, for a short time. But now you are a blastoise again. your trainer acts the same as ever, because he cannot display anything that would suggest he notices the difference. you do not know what happened. you have no idea. you have no idea how much you are loved.

I'm fuckin wheezing

Exploring out how Greenland looks in ten different projections.

by @pokateo_

The Road Goes Ever On embroidered by seejor.

“After 100ish hours of work, I’m so happy to say this beast is done!!

For the most part, I had an idea that I thought would be cool, drew it up, and transferred it to fabric (here’s the hoop pre-stitching). Prior to this piece, I’d only done florals – some from patterns I bought online (Namaste Embroidery) and some of my own design – so really I just wanted to see if I could embroider a dragon. I hadn’t been embroidering long but was feeling ballsy.

So that’s the pattern… as for color choices: the mountain, clouds, fog, and trees were entirely a product of I’d bought a bunch of floss I thought was pretty and kind of went together and figured why not give it a try. I love how the mountain came out. The gold for the text was my favorite gold I’d worked with in a sunflower piece (I have an entire floss organizer of just shades of yellow because of that piece, so the gold pieces pretty much just followed). Smaug’s colors and pose in general were inspired by an illustration of Smaug Tolkien did that I’ve always loved.

Process in general: I kind of made most of it up as I went along. I knew what effect I wanted in various sections and if I couldn’t figure out a way to make it look the way I wanted with stitches I knew, I’d go googling. The pile of gold Smaug is on is all seed stitch (I don’t know if it’s technically seed stitch, but that’s what I’m calling it) and literally caused me to set this piece down for two years.

- the implement I used to transfer the design was a Sakura Gelly Roll white pen. In a pinch, the gel ink can be removed (like when I edited out the two other mountains)

- I wore a reasonably high powered, rechargeable headlamp for a lot of this project in an attempt to have my stitches be as precise as possible. It ain’t pretty, but it worked pretty well!”

THE EXPANSE (2015-2022)

HIGHEST RATED EPISODE OF EACH SEASON ACCORDING TO IMDB

Credit where it’s due

Even good-faith non-haters of Discovery and Picard were like “enough with the grimdark already” after a couple of seasons—and look at the Star Trek slate now:

Discovery is an LGBTQ safe space where the computer’s your friend and everyone gets free therapy;

Picard S2 was a fever-dream mashup of “Tapestry” (TNG), “Past Tense” (DS9), the One with the Whales, and “Unimatrix Zero” (VOY), if you took all the lesbian subtext in “Unimatrix Zero” and made it actual, literal text;

Lower Decks, a whole-ass sitcom which also feels like a genuine sequel series to TNG, my ultimate comfort watch;

Prodigy is arguably the darkest series they’ve got going right now, and that’s literally an animated show for kids;

Strange New Worlds, which isn’t afraid to get dark, but which is even less afraid to get silly.

And… I think we won, y’all. We said “Star Trek, please lighten the fuck up”—and it did. At this point I’m almost willing to let Michelle Yeoh’s Section 31 series have a few war crimes—you know, as a treat. 😈️

Hiberno English ❤️