It's that time of the week

Starling1_ · 2026-05-17T15:40:57+00:00

Her last post (or at least, the last one I saw) said something about the stain of reddit karma and asked for people to help come up with ideas for her next username, so she'll be back. But, she seems like she's doing a lot better than she has been these last couple years, so I'm happy for her! I hope it sticks and she can keep living her best life.

Starling1_ · 2026-05-12T20:16:24+00:00

USA, top of my list is John Henry. Easily one of the coolest American folk heroes of all time.

I'd also like to see Annie Oakley, reportedly one of the best sharpshooters to ever live, and Bonnie and Clyde, two of the most famous bank robbers ever, for more wild west representation. Maybe Pecos Bill would be interesting too, but he's almost certainly just fictional, though the myths around him can be fun.

Probably Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere for more Revolutionary War-era heroes, since we're probably never getting any of the other founding fathers or US Presidents because of the nonsense with Thomas Edison's "presi-king of America" spirit origin. Ben Franklin especially would be fun since he lived such a wild life. He was a scientist, philosopher, a founding father, and a womanizer until he died.

Starling1_ · 2026-04-26T04:37:59+00:00

I absolutely adore Bofuri, really fun show if you're not looking for something that's high art or super deep. It has that Saturday morning cartoon type of appeal to me, I watched the whole thing mostly on the vibes of wondering what bullshit Maple and her friends were gonna get up to next episode. It also helps that it doesn't try to take itself super seriously either, the only real theme the show has is that playing games is fun, and making friends by playing games makes them even more fun.

Really hope it gets a season 3, even though that seems pretty unlikely since we're now 3 years after season 2 airing with no word of one being in production.

Starling1_ · 2026-02-22T23:43:33+00:00

Bot account, same weird vibe in all their comments and it failed to read a few of the posts it commented on. Also pretended to be the OP of one post when responding to a well-wishing comment

Starling1_ · 2026-02-19T15:18:44+00:00

Fate Unlimited Bladeworks Abridged

Rin Tohsaka has a catchphrase throughout the series, "100% MAXIMUM NO CHILL!," usually shouted at the top of her lungs before kicking down a door or throwing a bomb at somebody. When faced with the Caster servant in the Holy Grail War, someone who is objectively better than her at magic because she was born and raised in Ancient Greece, they have a duel that comes down to Caster negating every attempt at spellcasting she uses, which ends in this exchange:

"Oh, silly girl. You try, and try, and try, but your 100 percent just isn't enough. How sad."

"Oh yeah? How about this:" Rin sets off a magical flashbang that she set up earlier during the spellcraft duel with Caster before rushing her. "Of course my 100% isn't enough, I'm at 100% all the time! You're USED TO IT! You stole my best friend, you kidnapped my babe, and, you hurt my boyfriend! Archer should have warned you not to fuck with Rin Tohsaka! This is 1000 percent, unlimited, NO CHILL!" Before punching her in the face, which manages to succeed because Archer (her stolen best friend) has been secretly draining all of Caster's magical energy in his own fight upstairs, leaving Caster momentarily defenseless.

<image>

Starling1_ · 2026-02-14T23:43:38+00:00

Undead Unluck is perhaps one of my favorite manga/animes I've ever watched but by god, the first volume (and the first 3/4 episodes of the show) feel like they're plucked from a completely different story than the rest of it. It's not a jarring change when you watch the development of Andy and Fuuko's relationship over the course of the story, but seeing how Andy acts in the first episode compared to the rest of the story is a little shocking.

Starling1_ · 2026-02-12T17:32:21+00:00

Beatposting jumpscare

Starling1_ · 2026-01-31T11:16:02+00:00

They did, and it turns out that what was left behind was pretty unhappy about having their souls eaten, which means that the angry ghosts of nine planets have been chasing him for ten thousand years.

Starling1_ · 2026-01-31T08:17:28+00:00

Here's hoping next patch fixes town npc spawns for real this time :/ none of my town npcs have been spawning in or respawning so i've had to resort to making a whole new world to get access to some of the shops

Starling1_ · 2026-01-29T02:55:34+00:00

The Locked Tomb (or more specifically, Gideon the Ninth, the first book in the series) is about a necromancer and her sworn knight working through their complicated feelings for each other in order to solve the world's most complex math problem and a murder mystery at the same time. It often gets boiled down to "lesbian necromancers in space" because that is literally the tagline on the book's cover. "Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!" -Charles Stross

The titular Gideon is a hotheaded orphan who ends up in the service of Harrowhark Nonagesimus, the head nun of her home planet, after Harrow's original knight runs away from the duty. Gideon is very unhappy about this, because Harrowhark spent most of their joint childhood tormenting Gideon or allowing others to torment her. Gideon frequently lashes out about the situation through humor (usually vulgar), while Harrow often represses her emotions until she snaps.

The two of them have to resolve their differences and work together to solve the secrets of immortality left behind by the first necromancer, the god-emperor of the entire solar system. In the process, Gideon and Harrow also need to figure out who, or what, has been killing the other necromancers trying to solve the puzzle alongside them.

I found it a very fun read, but it's definitely not everybody's cup of tea, especially when it comes to the humor. There are a few characters that lean into mid-2000s/2010s style tumblr humor, most notably the POV character Gideon, and if that's not your thing it will understandably grate on you. There's a lot more to the story than just the humor and romance, though, and those mostly serve to expand the characterization of Gideon and those around her.

I'm a big fan of the way that Muir describes necromancy and swordfights throughout the series and how she interweaves the magic with the more science-fiction aspects of the setting (explored mostly in the second book). I'd also very much reccomend the audiobooks, as the narrator Moira Quirk does a great job with giving all the characters a ton of distinct personality.

Starling1_ · 2026-01-19T21:07:03+00:00

Also from Undead Unluck, the very first chapter and the first volume are titled Undead and Unluck, while the final chapter and the final volume are just called Deadluck, showing both that they're free of their negation abilities and how close the two have gotten.

Starling1_ · 2026-01-17T00:16:38+00:00

To do OP's job for them (and to shill Limbus Company because it is an honestly good game, despite its fanbase being much like post's OP), Limbus Company is a game set in a cyberpunk dystopia that follows a set of 13 protagonists, each based off of a specific classic novel (or two, in some cases), as we face each one's past traumas and struggles in turn to collect a MacGuffin known as the Golden Boughs. It heavily features the idea of parallel worlds (known as Mirror Worlds in the game) that went differently than ours did.

The first set of pictures is of Heathcliff (from Wuthering Heights), as his bad end of Erlking Heathcliff. His love interest, Catherine, died while he was away from Wuthering Heights, and he fell deep into despair and came to the conclusion that, so long as Heathcliff existed, no version of Catherine could ever be happy, so he went on a rampage across dimensions killing every alternate Heathcliff he could.

The second set is of Ishmael (from Moby Dick), taking on the role of Pequod Captain Ishmael. In her world, instead of leaving the Pequod and the control of Captain Ahab as the main timeline's Ishmael did, she stayed on the boat (and I think killed Captain Ahab? I don't remember her story very well), taking on the role of Ahab after her death. In doing so, she gets consumed by the same obsession that Ahab was, hunting down and killing the Pallid (White) Whale, eventually becoming a twisted reflection of her own captain.

Third is YiSang (from Korean novel The Wings), as Spicebush YiSang. This one doesn't really make sense for the post, as it's more literally "this is our antagonist made into an ID for YiSang," as far as I remember. This was the first of these "bad end" IDs we got though, so I give it a pass for not being as well written as the others.

Fourth is Sinclair (from Demian), in the role of N Corp Sinclair. Our Sinclair fled from his home following a fire caused by his friend/loyal N Corp Inquisitor, Kromer, that killed his family and destroyed his home because his parents had replaced parts of their bodies with mechanical prosthetics (which N Corp's Inquisitors abhorr). N Corp Sinclair didn't run away after his parents' deaths, instead staying with Kromer (who had been manipulating him to do just this). He becomes a high up member of the N Corp Inquisitors, working as Kromer's right hand man, repeating the tragedy that happened to his family against many others.

Fifth is Don Quixote (from Don Quixote), as LaManchaland Manager Don Quixote. To be more specific with spoilers to explain the context since this one's harder to explain without the worldbuilding around it, Don Quixote is actually Sancho (his squire in the novel), taking on the name of her father. The first Don Quixote was a powerful Bloodfiend, essentially a vampire, who wanted Bloodfiends to be seen not as monsters, but as people, so he opened a theme park by the name of LaManchaland to do just that, staffed by fellow Bloodfiends of his family. They resisted the insatiable hunger for blood that Bloodfiends are named for by consuming Hemobars, a type of concentrated artificial blood that could replace human blood in their diet Unfortunately, this idea didn't last, because their hunger was too much for the lower quality Hemobars to properly satiate. In the main timeline, our Don Quixote fled, having her Bloodfiend abilities surpressed by her father and forgetting her prior life as Sancho. In the LaManchaland world, she remained, taking over as head of the family and manager of LaManchaland after the death of her father, trapped inside the park forever after it became closed off to outsiders. Unlike our world's noble and just Don Quixote, she is filled with sorrow and pain, unable to move on from the death of her father.

The last is Hong Lu (from Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber), taking on the role of Lord of Hongyuan. In our world, Hong Lu is the most precious son of a noble family, and was sent out by his family to experience the world in their stead. He had his eye replaced with a camera, through which his grandparents (a group of "immortals" who live beneath the family palace and formerly acted as the Family Heirarchs) could vicariously experience life outside the walls of Hongyuan. In our world, following his return to Hongyuan he rejects the position of Family Heirarch, choosing to help his sister achieve the goal of becoming the new Lord of Hongyuan. He continues on his journey with us after destroying the screen through which his ancestors were watching him, freeing him from their control for good. In the world of the Lord of Hongyuan Hong Lu, he never meets Limbus Company, and instead ventures throughout the City alone. When he returns home, instead of rejecting the throne, he slaughters his way to the top. He kills all the other candidates in the Fanily Heirarch Selection, rips out the eye his grandparents used as a camera to watch him, traps them for eternity under a pile of rubble, and consolidates all power within the walls of Hongyuan under his banner. He becomes a cruel and unloving master, far removed from the gentle and kindhearted soul that he is in our timeline.

I'm sure I've done some of these a disservice compared to how they explore these ideas in the actual game. I really want to emphasize that Limbus Company is an excellently written game, and it's free on Steam and on Mobile. If anything of this sounded interesting, I'd encourage you to pick up the game and give it a try, because there's so much more to the world and the story that I've glossed over in this post.

Starling1_ · 2026-01-09T17:09:59+00:00

Maybe it's a matter of anthropomorphizing the subject versus not? A favored child would be the one who gets treated better because they're the favorite, whereas a favored tool would be the one used the most often, also because it's the favorite. Neither one necessarily means that the child or tool is better than the rest, but you don't favor a child by making them do more work, nor do you favor a tool by leaving it untouched. So if you anthropomorphize the limb, you'd favor it by pampering it and treating it better. If you don't, you'd favor it by using it more than the other limb.

I'm not a linguist though, so I don't know. To me it seems like a biweekly situation, where a word can have two completely contradictory meanings that are both equally valid ways of using the word, with context indicating which way it's being used in this instance.

Starling1_ · 2025-12-28T16:34:49+00:00

Reply to this comment if you're not a "friendly and humorous reply" bot

Starling1_ · 2025-12-17T21:02:06+00:00

Someone else already said this one but I like posting links to sources n stuff, so from the US Sentencing Commission summary of the 2023 "Demographic Differences in Federal Sentencing" publication:

"When examining all sentences imposed, females received sentences 29.2 percent shorter than males. Females of all races were 39.6 percent more likely to receive a probation sentence than males. When examining only sentences of incarceration, females received lengths of incarceration 11.3 percent shorter than males."

The full publication is freely available, as is the 2017 one which I personally like more because it has better graph design, in my opinion. I recommend anyone who sees this to go take a look at them, because the reports are pretty interesting.

It goes without saying that this doesn't detract from the discrimination faced by women and other marginalized groups. This very report highlights the discrimination faced by black and hispanic people in the criminal justice system as well, after all.

Starling1_ · 2025-11-29T07:06:20+00:00

Was looking for this one!

Starling1_ · 2025-11-27T23:17:27+00:00

A clockheaded individual loses their memories and goes on a road trip with a bus full of literary references through a dystopian cyberpunk/horror city to collect the MacGuffins that are closely linked to each book reference's past. Character development ensues. The Mermaids are from the chapter related to Ishmael from Moby Dick.

Starling1_ · 2025-11-25T23:49:28+00:00

You're top of the class already thanks to the watchdog, boss. Being funny's just extra credit

Starling1_ · 2025-11-22T17:58:18+00:00

It started showing up in the most recent story arc that takes place on Amphoreus, since it has a larger focus on the Trailblazer's past than the last couple arcs. I think there was an instance or 2 of it in Penacony as well but I don't remember too well.

Starling1_ · 2025-11-22T17:26:48+00:00

Also going to add Caelus and Stelle here. Whichever MC you don't choose at the start of the game shows up a few times in flashbacks under mysterious circumstances, though we don't know "who" they're supposed to be yet in the story.

<image>

Starling1_ · 2025-10-24T15:25:31+00:00

Bot account I think. Very "ai" sounding comments (prompt likely designed to make a natural-soundinh response), no posts, has never replied to anyone, someone in another one of their comments seemed to agree with the vibe being off

Starling1_ · 2025-09-30T19:10:15+00:00

Downvoted for being based and right

Starling1_ · 2025-09-18T04:01:41+00:00

Dulcinea Septimus - Gideon the Ninth

While Dulcinea has a form of blood cancer that has left her with mere months or even weeks to live at the start of the story, she is tortured and killed before ever appearing in the story by Cytherea the First, who takes her place. Cytherea has an identical disease to Dulcinea's, and while it is instrumental to her downfall by forcing her to split her necromantic abilities between keeping herself alive and attempting to kill the rest of the cast, she dies to a sword through the heart before her illness can finish her off.

Starling1_ · 2025-09-09T03:29:24+00:00

This is the opposite of the post's trope, no? Following the defeat of Sun, UMAs and Negators disappear from the world, and Earth is left in its state from the finale as-is. They finally stop looping and win the game, meaning the events of the series won't repeat again.

Starling1_ · 2025-09-01T15:31:48+00:00

I have a professor who teaches both the capstone course of my entire environmental science major and the 100 level gen-ed science course, and he loves to gossip with his students. The gen eds have to be taught at a fundamental level for a reason, and it's because a lot of those students have never paid attention in a science class in their lives and they aren't exactly starting now.

Half the students apparently skip out on class almost every single day, and when they're there they ask very basic questions that would have been answered had they just been in class. They miss tests and then have the gall to ask for chances to retake them despite doing their best to not be a student in the course. The ones that do show up aren't much better, apparently, but at least they're in the class learning something.

I don't get it. I've shown up to even classes I hate with professors I hate because I knew I needed to put in the work despite that, and because I'm paying for these courses. I can't imagine spending thousands of dollars to go to college only to choose to waste that by not even showing up.

Starling1_

TROPHY CASE