taciturnlexemic

[taciturnlexemic]

[taciturnlexemic]

robot mecha anime that is almost entirely about all the hundreds of mechanics and engineers that make the mech possible. the actual mech is only ever shown in parts in the bay or as a blip on a radar. the whole this is shot in a way that makes the machine as eldritch and incomprehensible as the monsters it is fighting. maybe it’s set before digital video so all glimpses of it in action are bad angles on terrible analogue monitors. such that you never even really lock down how its anatomy works. the pilot can be there and be important, but like it’s like a weird eldritch horror take on office politics.

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we are in a media literacy crisis

[taciturnlexemic]

🔹 Someone else's fiction cannot cause you physical harm.

🔹If someone else's fiction is causing you emotional or psychological harm, or distress, you can put it down and not read/watch it.

🔹Your emotional well-being is not the responsibility of fiction writers.

🔹Someone else's fiction is not about your personal trauma.

🔹When reading or watching fiction, you always have the power. You can always stop. You are never reading fiction without your own consent.

🔹Fiction writers are not responsible for other people's mental health.

🔹The content of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality of its author.

🔹Just because someone writes about bad things happening, doesn't mean they want those things to happen.

🔹Don't like? Don't read.

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The younger me stares for a long time. She approaches as if walking towards a volatile creature she's never seen before, and moves one side to another to inspect. I've always been a little too curious. She reaches out to feel my hair, which is chopped short compared to hers in my old ponytail style. It won't be another year maybe before she makes that choice.

I can't help but notice the lightness behind her eyes, knowing it hasn't happen to her yet. She's got a couple years yet... and I can't help but be jealous.

She notices. She knows to look beyond my glasses for dark circles, because they're hers. Despite all the people telling us we look so young she knows I look older and more tired than I should. I wonder if she's disappointed, or scared that this is what she'll one day be. One day, she knows within the next 5 years, this will become her future. She stares at me for a long time before speaking.

"... will it hurt?"

I'm more cynical than I've ever been but I make the effort not to scoff at her, "Yes... it'll hurt more than anything ever has in our life."

She nods. I know she's scared. I know myself.

"More than Matt?"

"Much much more..." I debate telling her. But it won't be stopped and knowing ahead will probably make it all worse. "I can't imagine something hurting us more than it did."

I tear up thinking about it. It's been a while, I figured I'd gotten used to thinking about it by now since I never really stopped. Maybe her being here is making it all more real again. Knowing how close it is.

"... wow... that terrible, and I'm still here."

"... what?" My attention shifts, coming back from being miles and years away to watch my younger self.

"I've had a bunch happen already, and things suck pretty bad right now, but it sounds like you've been through a lot... and I'm still here." She shakes her head and sighs. "That's comforting, right? I mean we were really over dramatic in 2016, remember?"

"Over dramatic might be uh--" she gives me a pointed look and I relent quickly. "Right, yes, very over dramatic... though shit sucked."

"We made it though. And we're holding out now... so I'll take it. I'm proud of us."

"... thanks."

[taciturnlexemic]

Top-Tier Villain Motivations

They will be safe. It doesn't matter who else or what else burns as long as They will be safe.

I will be safe. The hunger and the cold will never touch me again.

Fuck any bitch who's prettier(/cooler/better-liked/better at making dumplings) than me.

Yes, Master

Love me. Love me. Love me. Love me. LOVE ME!

I know the terrible things these so-called "heroes" will do if I don't stop them (<- is absolutely wrong)

I don't want a better future, I want a better past!

No other way to get performance art funded these days

[taciturnlexemic]

btw. your search for the most morally upright and ethical piece of media that has the most correct “representation” will destroy your ability to find the most profound and beautiful and human of stories. and may even destroy the stories themselves before they are created. if you even care.

[taciturnlexemic]

The "there is only one bed" romance trope, but there is only one mech instead.

Each of you have mission critical skills for this op, but we only have a single seater chassis available. You two are going to have to figure out who is sitting on who's lap while also sharing a neural link to the mech.

You've grown accustomed to your sensory inputs getting lost in a machine, but never the nerve ending of another pilot.

You try and shake these concerns away. Think of the mission, only the mission. You reach out for the mech's weapons systems and feel the presence of someone else's ghost reaching out in unisin. The warmth of it cause you to hesitate. Is it getting hotter in here? Is that racing heart yours, or the other pilots? Maybe it's the reactor, its rhythmic thumping increasing in pace and heating up from the additional inputs and feedback

[taciturnlexemic]

When you understand that kids and teenagers being salty about literary symbolic analysis comes from a very real place of annoyance and frustration at some teachers for being over-bearing and pretentious in their projecting of symbolism onto every facet of a story but you also understand that literary analysis and critical thinking in regards to symbolism is extremely important and deserves to be not only taught in schools, but actively used by writers when examining their own work to see if they might have used symbolism unintentionally and to make sure that they are using symbolism effectively:

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By Czeck writer Karel Čapek, inventor of the term ‘robot’ as well!

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I'm sorry but I have one draft that I never finished but I laugh every time I see it

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ok fine maybe i DID come back wrong. what are you going to do about it. kill me? put me back in the ground? after all this effort? all this pain and suffering only to find out bringing me back wasn't worth it after all? you worked so hard. are you going to waste all of that just because im not what you wanted? just because i belong only to myself? are you going to let me pick out my own coffin

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im a fucking sucker for the “character gets so badly injured that they can’t think clearly and start calling for help in a distressingly vulnerable way.” characters who start using nicknames for their friends they haven’t used since they were kids. characters who start begging for their brother they haven’t seen in years to be there. characters who would usually use their parents’ names or call them mother/father/etc crying out mama when they go down. u understand.

[taciturnlexemic]

‘don’t you want your favourite character to be happy???’ no? i want my favourite character to be interesting. i want me to be happy. which sometimes involves my favourite character being in exquisite agony

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Could really use more media where wives viciously protect their husbands

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You will not use AI to get ideas for your story. You will lie on the floor and have wretched visions like god intended

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The way fantasy writers talk about a thousand years as this uneventful amount of time is really funny to me because like—in less than 1000 years we went from the Norman Invasion of England to Skibidi Toilet.