#“none of this makes any sense”

[thatdammchickennugget]

explaining wilde kerle lore to my american friend is the hardest task I've ever had to do

[andsewingishalfthebattle]

Novice sewing pattern: Cut out shapes. Line up the little triangles on the edges. Stitch edges together. We've also included step-by-step assembly instructions with illustrations.

Novice knitting pattern: yOU MUSt uNDerstANd thE SECret cOdE CO67 (73, 87, 93) BO44 (63, 76, 90) 28 (32, 34) slip first pw repeat 7x K to end *kl (pl) 42 * until 13" (13, 13, 15) join new at 30 pl for 17 rows ssk 27 k2tog mattress lengthwise BO and sacrifice a goat to the knitting gods. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT "INSTRUCTIONS," I JUST GAVE THEM TO YOU

[threeshadesoflime]

set post-never let me go (fic)

(forgot to mention but masky is using ASL here, the exposed hand was originally intended to be drawn doing a "wasn't me" sign (or the closest translation) but i forgot completely until posting this)

[purpleshadow-star]

It's kind of funny (heartbreaking) that there were multiple Ravens who wanted a number, to the point where some tried to manipulate Jean into helping them one way or another, but none of them would have been next in line. No matter what they did, there was always someone ahead of them on the list. Someone who wasn't even on the team. That someone wasn't Neil. Neil was a surprise to everyone, including Riko. That someone was Andrew.

Kevin might have had to beg Riko to go visit Andrew, and Riko might have laughed at Kevin and dismissed Andrew when Andrew turned him down, but make no mistake, if Andrew had accepted and had become a Raven, he would have taken that #4 spot within his first year.

If we're being real, Andrew had more of a chance at becoming part of the perfect Court than any of those Ravens ever had. Even Jean thinks of Andrew as one of them.

The other Ravens never stood a chance.

[yet-another-autism-blog]

I'm fed up with the way that autistic people are expected to constantly accommodate allistic people.

My moms best friend died on Saturday, we found out on Sunday. My stepmother is upset and was yelling at me because I "don't look sad."

So it's not enough that I lost someone I care about. Someone who has been a part of my life since the day I was born. But I also have to police my outward expression 24/7 to make sure I look sufficiently upset for the sole purpose of making allistic people comfortable.

[calware]

programming comments headcanons

june: tries to leave helpful comments but most of them are like

// this sucks

// this sucks

// ugh

karkat: constantly forgets to write comments so when he goes back and can't remember what he was doing he writes new comments that are just keysmashing

sollux: at one point he had to force himself to start writing comments because he was convinced he doesn't need them and kept having to learn the hard way that, yes, he does need them

vriska: convinced herself she doesn't need them. will never learn

equius: man i don't know. there are way too many of these guys

roxy: all of her comments are completely incomprehensible to everyone except her

dirk: all of his comments are written in iambic pentameter. they are also completely incomprehensible

[tavina-writes]

I'm not exactly sure how I want to phrase this yet, but I think a lot of the utterly weird takes I see sometimes float by me on our cursed blue hellsite (esp when it comes to mdzscql fandom) is coming from a refusal to meet the genre where it's at.

Like, why are we trying to interrogate classism in MDZS society, MDZS is a romance, the societal worldbuilding is just enough to support some general big ideas and the provide context for the romance. We can't get ANY kind of read on general classim/sexism/anything else from. this source material. if you think you can get granular when your sample size of characters from various social and gender strata are so small and we don't know how the vast majority of people in here live you are making stuff up.

Like, meet the story where it's at: it's a romance novel.

[alluralater]

it’s pretty horrifying to know that however this genocide ends, the united states government- my government, will take no accountability for it’s war crimes, the global destabilization, the cultural impact of casually assisting in the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. the media outlets will pretend they were non bias and still have journalistic integrity as if they told the truth to the core population. history textbooks will be published with fake reasons this ‘war’ began and how america was somehow heroic in involvement. politicians will use their involvement as a stepping stone to even more power. it literally turns my fucking stomach thinking about the future because i know what the past has been. indigenous people being removed from their lands, brutally murdered and/or tortured for one reason only. greed. however it ends, we cannot just forget and move on. palestinians deserve our fucking support. ‘to the victor goes the spoils’ how about no. how about we take this as the turning point in history that it is and stop pretending things will magically get better if we avert our eyes from the subject. barbaric acts of senseless murder should be met with extreme vocal condemnation by those who are left standing to talk about it. there is no world in which this is justified. however it ends— do not forget that this has set a precedent for governments to begin globally murdering indigenous people en masse and get away with it. the past will always be the future until we decide to change it.

[epiphainie]

i can't with all these "the show is highlighting tommy's jealousy, they're planting seeds that it will cause problems" takes like bffr. he mentioned being envious over the 118's dynamic twice, sure, but in what world (literally how?) would that cause a relationship problem? do yall expect him to be in cahoots with gerrard behind their back and murder buck to take over his life or something?? like even with the hyperbole aside, i genuinely cannot see how they can turn this into relationship drama without going against everything they showed us with tommy so far

[odetojupiter]

this is a surprise to no one but i’m thinking of the twins again. cause i don’t know whether we’re told when tilda developed her drug addiction but considering her erratic behaviour surrounding the twins birth im assuming she was already using prior to the twins arrival. and if she was using before, during, and after giving birth, that introduces so many heartbreaking possibilities for the twins.

this one ran away from me (they say, as tho they don’t always)

i see people saying they just couldn’t take andrew or aaron seriously because they’re five foot even cause that’s a funny height apparently and i just think: did u know a long term impact of prenatal drug use is impaired growth? add that to potential malnutrition and yeah suddenly it’s not that funny anymore. besides andrew being short probably made him seem like an easy target to his abusers which is what made it necessary for him to learn to defend himself in the first place sooo

other impacts of prenatal drug use: altered brain development, cognitive and behavioural issues, damaged communication/language development, newborns can be born addicted and subsequently go through withdrawals (called neonatal abstinence syndrome, which has a long list of symptoms and can cause newborns to be hospitalised or worse). in any context, this is a horribly traumatic thing for a baby to go through but then consider this:

andrew’s brain is already struggling to develop properly thanks to his mother’s drug abuse. and then you add on frequent repetitive abuse including but not limited to several occurrences of child sa. already a 7 year old brain is not wired to be able to cope with that. tie that in with his significant abandonment issues stemming from first his mother and then every subsequent family he stays with giving him up. his own narrative tries so hard to doom him, and he responds to that the only way he can: through anger. violence. how else was he supposed to respond? yes this is more andrew defence bc it seems there’s been a sudden influx of andrew hate and it boils my piss

that brings me to a new point: andrew as a newborn. and his foster family does not want to give him the extra attention he needs as a baby born through prenatal drug use. so they give him up. again and again. so

but to talk about aaron for a sec - not only could he have been born addicted, but being breastfed by a drug user (it’s up in arms whether tilda would breast feed) also has its symptoms - can make the baby sick, can ruin its sleep, cause later behavioural issues and even transfer the drug to the baby. aaron, living with tilda, was also doomed to follow the narrative.

[adimouze]

All I can actually take away from this is that he got his phone back didn’t he

[t1sunfortunate]

I truly do think one of the largest pitfalls among the "media consumption is my passion" crowd is the tendency to treat characters as human beings with agency rather than narrative tools manipulated by the author

[rearviewghost]

one thing that really fascinates me about alex is his devotion to art – and more specifically, how he chooses to get some inspiration from scientific works of what he aims to implement in his art. every time one gets to examine some of his lyrics, or even how he explains these lyrics in an interview, they can be greeted by some bits of actual scientific information. an example is how he named his taquería on the moon with the term “information-action ratio”, coined by the critic neil postman, and referenced it in the song four out of five, something that might also indicate an interesting articulation with postman's concept. the line “cute new places keep on popping up”, for example, can express his well-known sardonic discontent regarding the flood of information being generated and transmitted over and over and, as much as it seems visually appealing and does give the idea of benefiting from advanced technologies, it doesn't really add anything substantial to the receiver's critical thinking – and worse, it distances the information receiver from the sender in a communication channel, according to postman.

what i'm saying with this interpretation is, it's known that alex is enamoured with the idea of gathering a bunch of references and condensing them into a mixture of metaphors in his writing, but it's so thrilling how, at times, we can find some bits of science inside of it – and it's even more exciting, just like playing a puzzle game, to find these references and analyse them by doing a similar research to what he did to create his works.

[autisticaradiamegido]

day 306

pov shes about to say smth really mean to you but you lowkey deserve it

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[hopeswriting]

was thinking about takeshi and how he's my favorite brand of unconditional devotion btw. the utter and absolute and all-consuming kind that runs so deep to the very core and is so intrinsic and fundamental to it, it can only express itself in the most casual and natural and certain way. without second thoughts, without any room for doubts or for any moral dilemma to be had over it, because of course he ought to always be breathing and living for his chosen person first and foremost. of course he ought to hang on their every word and make them true no matter what, no matter what he has to do to make it happen, no matter what he has to do to other people to make it happen, and no matter what it might turn him into in the process. because it's obviously the way the world should be for his chosen person. at their feet, ready to bend over backwards and break and build itself again to better answer to all their needs even if they don't ask it for it. it's the only right way it should be for them, and of course takeshi's going to do his utmost at all times to make it a reality as much as possible.

and his devotion comes out as naturally as breathing, comes out lighthearted and nonchalant like he might as well be talking about the weather, but it's not unaware of itself. it's not that takeshi doesn't know it's unhealthy and wrong and that he's willing to go entirely too far in its name for anyone's good. it's not that he wouldn't hear you out if you were to sit him down and explain to him just why he needs to tone it down a little (a lot). logically, he'd agree with you and know you're right. and then he'd tell you he's still not going to do anything whatsoever about it. that he's not bothered by it and doesn't feel the need to change anything to his attitude. makes it a point to never let anyone or anything sway him even an inch in the stand he took when it comes to that, no matter how many thousand of times you might go over the subject with him.

because the morality of his devotion isn't the point at all. is entirely irrelevant to it and doesn't affect the way he expresses it all. it's not the metric with which he draws a line in the sand to hold it accountable to. because the thing is, takeshi's entire world revolves around tsuna--tsuna is his entire world altogether, and it's just a matter of fact, that simple. to him it's a truth as unchanging as the sky being blue, and so being the way he is according to that truth is the only way he can imagine being that'd feel right to him. and so the actual and only metric that matters here is "would tsuna be happier if i were to do this?" and/or "is this something tsuna needs me to do?"

and like. i don't think takeshi ever stops being a kind person capable of compassion and understanding and mercy and forgiveness even ten years later once they became mafia through and through. and i don't think either he grows up to be feared and called a monster per se despite the things they inevitably had to do during those ten years (and the things they'll inevitably keep having to do as long as they keep being mafia), at least not in the way, for example, they'll never stop fearing and calling mukuro one. but i do think that among the tenth gen, he ends up being the one with the most ruthless, merciless and horrific blood on his hands of that particular and distinct loving kind. you know the one i mean, right? he comes to be the one most expected and the one first expected to be willing and to take it upon himself to go through with it when the need arises. and to think little of it after, if anything at all. all in the name of making tsuna's reign as easy on him as possible.

and it's to the point where it's the kind of blood that makes even mukuro pause at times. or, when takeshi is the one coming up with solutions himself during meetings, makes even reborn blink. not because it's unjustified or wouldn't be safe or efficient or anything of the sort, but because it is unwarrantedly thorough in its retaliation. and sometimes, at times like this, he's the one tsuna needs to step in for the most, because he's the only one who can reason with him that "yes, this would work in getting rid of our problem" but "no, please, don't do that takeshi". because if tsuna is the only thing that infers on just how much and in what ways he'll let himself be devoted to him, then of course, he's also the only one takeshi's willing to reign himself in for without second thoughts. because he'd hate to ever do something tsuna would disapprove of or wouldn't want him to do. or do something that'd make tsuna see him differently or love him back less even in the slightest.

and it's also like. his devotion isn't an undisciplined one. it's not one he doesn't have control over, the very opposite. it's a very purposeful and conscious choice he chooses to keep making over and over again every step of the way, and he taught himself to have control over it, to know when it's needed and/or wanted, and how much and in which ways it is when it happens, and to keep it down otherwise. and, yes, to also reign it back in at tsuna's request at times when it still slips past his control. because it's all about making tsuna's happiness easier and secure and long-lasting, and never about burdening him with just how committed he is to do that.

so it comes down to this: takeshi willing to go above and beyond and more for tsuna unless tsuna explicitly asks him not to. and to tsuna needing to ask him not to every now and then. and to other people pointing out to him how too many times tsuna's already needed to stop him, and that maybe there's a hint for him to take there. and to takeshi seeing the hint, looking it straight in the eye and recognizing it for what it is and just. deciding it doesn't apply to him because it's all perfectly normal behavior to him. because it's the only kind of behavior that makes sense to him and feels right.

and so—to circle back to my first point—he can only express his devotion as naturally as breathing, so casually, almost like it's something inconsequential and not worth talking about despite how unmistakably it couldn't be further away from being the truth. it's the only way he could have always known how to express it, because, after all, who has ever taken time to ponder about the details and the hows of the way they breathe?

and i, for one, absolutely eat that shit up every time, thanks for coming to my ted talk <3