#(which I also extremely dislike)

[welcometogrouchland]

Disgustingly messy and crusty sketch dump but I couldn't get my own terrible theory out of my head and ended up making a bunch of sketches about it. Also at the end a bonus dickbats and Damian doodle bc I was reading an issue of their Batman and Robin run (IDs in Alt)

[thepromisedbride]

🔥 arthuriana if you want

realised after reblogging that post that i have no idea if i have unpopular opinions that deserve a flame. ummmm oh actually yes i do, the idea that because arthuriana doesn’t have a single fixed canon it means that all adaptations and versions can be classed as just as canon as each other is. really annoying. and i don’t mean this in a “you shouldn’t consume this piece of media because it isn’t real arthuriana” way bc i do genuinely enjoy some versions. but you cannot claim bbc merlin to be an actual arthurian text because it’s “all equally canon”. yes this applies to th white.

[wonder-worker]

During [the spring and summer of 1141], a number of contemporary narrative sources agreed that Matilda’s sudden and unexpected success went straight to her head. Matilda’s most renowned modern biographer has suggested that “conduct acceptable in a powerful king . . . was not acceptable in a ‘Lady of the English’. This line of reasoning can be taken quite a bit further. It is clear that contemporaries expected Matilda to emulate the behavior of those women who had previously held the rank of regina, and act like a queen consort while performing the office of king. Most queens consort, however, did not have to consolidate recognition of their position as Matilda was constrained to do. Nearly all the chroniclers who had marveled at her assumption of power turned on her immediately. Not surprisingly, the Gesta Stephani took the greatest exception:

She at once put on an extremely arrogant demeanor instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex, began to walk and speak and do all things more stiffly and more haughtily than she had been wont.

But other more sympathetic chroniclers also joined this chorus of disapproval: Henry of Huntington described her as “elated with insufferable pride” while the Worcester chronicler noted her “hard heart” as she strove to consolidate her position. Had she been a man, Matilda’s decidedly authoritarian style might have passed for a regal show of strength. Indeed, Matilda probably felt that if she was to hold on to her newly acquired status, she needed to behave like a king. Thus, Matilda’s forward movement from recognition of her status to the execution of her office was fraught with gendered difficulties concerning how a woman ought to conduct herself.

...As she anticipated her crowning, Matilda strove to consolidate her dynastic claims and establish her authority. It seems reasonable to suppose that Matilda looked to her father and her first husband for examples of successful kingship as she did for representational purposes. Both Emperor Henry V and King Henry I were suspicious, uncompromising, relentless, and ruthless in the pursuit of their aims. Probably both would have advised Matilda to follow their example. This was exactly what St. Bernard told Queen Melisende of Jerusalem following the death of her husband: “show the man in the woman; order all things . . . so that those who see you will judge your works to be those of a king rather than a queen.” Much of Matilda’s behavior during the spring and summer of 1141 can be explained as the emulation of male gendered kingship. But kings had the built-in advantage of female consorts to soften the more hardboiled aspects of their rule; Matilda had played that very role herself for her first husband. Nevertheless, in 1141, Matilda eschewed the feminine aspects of queenship completely, in effect negating what could have been useful symbolism to bolster the construction of her authority. But for Matilda to be perceived as a soft, forgiving, and gentle woman at the one moment she needed to consolidate her position at the top of a male dominant political society would not have been practical.

But by constructing herself as a female feudal lord, and emulating male gendered kingship, Matilda annoyed contemporary observers. The chroniclers’ hostility may have been due to the fact that Matilda was claiming kingly sovereignty for herself alone, and not in association with either her husband or her eldest son. The Gesta Stephani described Matilda as not only arrogant, but also spurning the advice of her chief advisors, the earl of Gloucester, her uncle King David of Scotland, and the “kingmaker” himself, the Bishop of Winchester. The Gesta implied that if Matilda had behaved as a deferential woman, and heeded the counsel of her male advisors, she could have devised a means to permanently depose Stephen, and be crowned and anointed in his place. The Gesta placed Matilda’s ultimate failure at her own door, blaming it on her arrogant reliance on her inferior, womanly intellect and emotions.

Matilda’s hard-line stance, acceptable in a male king, bothered the authors of the Worcester chronicle and the Gesta, suggesting that contemporaries were confused by what they wanted the “Lady of the English” to do, indicating that, as a woman and a domina, she should behave gently like a queen rather than forcefully like a king. Combined, all the chroniclers, with the exception of Malmesbury, suggested that Matilda should have used the intercessory powers of queenship to set Stephen free, moderated the harsher aspects of her father’s rule, and excused the Londoners from financial support. Although a more diplomatic approach might have helped, freeing Stephen at that moment in time would have realistically served no practical purpose in establishing Matilda’s authority. And, in denying Eustace his inheritance, Matilda was only imitating the efforts of her father, Henry I, who also dealt harshly with challengers to his throne. Henry I kept his elder brother Robert Curthose in prison until he died, and prevented his nephew, William Clito, Curthose’s heir, from gaining any aspect of the Anglo-Norman inheritance. Matilda wished to convince her contemporaries that she was quite capable of being a king, but their reactions betrayed hostility toward her as a woman presuming to establish kingly authority.

-Charles Beem, "Empress Matilda and Female Lordship", The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History"

[fragmentedblade]

The "Dan Heng is Dan Feng" dogmatics annoy me a lot. It entirely brushes off one of the most interesting and prevalent questions posed by the game, incarnated by several characters and stories that give the question different hues with different potential answers, and a constant also in HI3, like a thread waving the two games together

[fluentisonus]

I think I mentioned this before in my post a little while ago abt valjean not talking, but reading the barricade section just now & he talks so little. I think the only things he says the entire time is to ask for a gun to shoot down the mattress and to ask for javert & then say he's shot him -- people talk to him plenty but he never replies. and this taken with the fact that it's such a long section without his pov at all it I feel like really shows how much of a sort of. social/communicative wall I guess? he can & does put up sometimes, and how impenetrable & unreadable (& in marius' case disconcerting) it comes across. like even we as readers who know him really well are not getting much from this at all about what he's thinking or feeling or planning, he's incredibly hard to read without that element of internality

[wizardnuke]

does anyone know if we have to roll that rock up the hill again tomorrow

[icewindandboringhorror]

I have a big google doc thing where I keep track of media and stuff (putting everything in loosely ranked categories), which is mostly just for my own reference so I know what tv shows I've already seen before, etc. and I never really look back through it, typically just a quick "okay, watched two movie in the past 8 months, need to quickly slap them somewhere in the lists. okay. done. save document. exit". But today I was actually reading through some of the old notes and there are like... MULTIPLE places where my comment is basically "It would have been good if it were about elves" or "I wish there was a fantasy show made in this same style" or "It's well made, but I just keep thinking about how I would like it more if everyone was an elf or was in old 1700s costumes" or etc like...... lol.... Most biased media ranking system on earth blatantly made by someone with an extremely hyperspecific range of narrow interests. It'd be like if a food reviewer only had 5 foods they actually liked, so they'd just go to a pizza place and be like "eh, the pizza was okay, but I just think it would be better if it was cereal instead. :/ ...2 out of 10"

[running-in-the-dark]

.

[volivolition]

dude the TOP song you posted (truce) fucking kills me and the way you described the animatic is??? so good???? I'd bawl actually /pos

I need to know if there's any other TOP songs you relate to the furies/any DE character really, or any slower songs even if they aren't by TOP

OH AGREED ABSOLUTELY!! TRUCE MY BELOVED... and THANK YOU!! we are imagining animatics and crying together! /pos :'] <3

ooh!! well, i havent listened to a lot of TOP in a while, so i don't have many recommendations there unfortunately :'] but for other slow, soft songs, let's see... i'll put them under a cut with all my explanations, but ☀️ "See The Day" by The Altogether (Volition song!), 🍃 "Rounds" by The Oh Hellos (Shivers song!), 🦋 "Would You Be So Kind" by dodie (general skills song, Suggestion primarily!) are the best contenders!

Pretty sure you've seen it already, but from a different ask, i recommend "Almost (Sweet Music)" by Hozier! (and "Like Real People Do" if you want to cry and yearn with me, though my DE ideas for it are very loose hkjhg) these are slow ones i like hkjhg <3

"Goodbye" by The Altogether is a Harry and Dora song :0

"Soldier, Poet, King" by The Oh Hellos is one i specifically relate to Volition (my beloved protector/motivator/crownhead blorbo! [picks him up and wiggles him!!!]), but i would make one of those animation memes for it with every skill slotted into a "soldier" "poet" or "king" position.

☀️ "See the Day" is both another The Altogether song and another Volition song! a real "the worst is over. we made it through. we're going to survive this. it might not get easier yet, but we'll come out the other side and we'll be alive" song. it makes me cry hkjgh

🍃 "Rounds" by The Oh Hellos is a soft Shivers song, though the lyrics don't start until halfway in. ough my god listening to it makes my heart ache (/pos) <3 La Revacholiere singing to Harry in the wind. "Will you start when I end? Yeah, I'm long in the wind..."

"Northern Star" by Dom Fera, a song Harry would sing for karaoke and dedicate to Kim, and then they'd waltz a little clumsily on the dim, starlit sidewalk on their way home for the evening... <3

🦋 "Would You Be So Kind?" by dodie BUT SPECIFICALLY THIS VERSION, because i love everyone's crowded but earnest vibes. this one is led by Suggestion ("oooh you wanna fall in love with us so bad right? right???") and makes me grin, you GOTTA imagine all of the skills squished together in the front of Harry's brain all trying different tactics to get Kim to fall in love with them, (rhetoric: "I HAVE A QUESTION..." ency: "let's write a story! be in my book!") at 2:35, after all the skills singing together loudly, it's just Harry himself singing to Kim, with all the skills slowly backing him up. the ending is all of them fucking ECSTATIC celebrating when harry finally kisses kim hkjhg jesus this'd be so cute hold on i have to go plan this out i have so many thoughts hkjdh

"Seven" by Sleeping at Last would be a sweet Reaction Speed song (ironic that im adding react speed to a list of soft, slow songs though hkjgh) "I'm ready for whatever comes next!" <3 Reaction Speed is a fast, restless little fella who can't sit still for long, always loves moving, acting, doing. he's like the personification of a verb hkjhg <3 i would also accept an interpretation for echem <3

"Cosmos" by Jawbreaker Reunion is a song that The Furies recently suggested to me as a jean song and it's so right for that, very soft and i like it very much :'] (you should also ask The Furies if you want to, it's much more musically inclined than me, i feel hkjhg <3)

awuahg thank you for asking and for reading!! i appreciate it!! <33

oh and here's links to all of the songs in the tags: Come Together Now, Two, Four, Five, Six, Eight, Nine, RPG Animation Meme (<- homestuck lmao)

[perenlop]

im starting to crawl to poketubers again and im watching lumiose trainer zac’s ranking vid on the gym battles and im realizing once again that i have a veryyyy different definition of what makes a good battle vs other people’s definitions

[pissfizz]

Dude maybe I’m being petty and hating smth bc it’s popular but I get so pissed off whenever I see stuff abt mesmerizer I cannot stand that damn song… maybe I’m just a hater but I don’t get why it’s like. So fucking popular and fast growing like idk man what about it is so special compared to other vocaloid songs

[stevethehairington]

man ive been doing great with my "read 100 pages a day" goal for like. every book ive read this year so far... EXCEPT this one 😩 i just cannot make it past 50 in one day and that is SUCH a bummer to me

[planet4546b]

i’m liking this season quite a bit overall so far, but i do think it’s funny that for the last few seasons there have been moments that are supposed to be big character moments (i think) where a character just. Says out loud something we already knew from the lore. which seems like an attempt to incorporate the lore more in the text of the game, but just does not seem like the way to do that to me. and also is deeply funny if you’re even a tiny bit familiar with that characters lore like. wow you don’t say..?

[arolesbianism]

Thinks abt my lob corp nuggets oh so hard. I may only have second hand half remembered knowledge of project moon worldbuilding but I will still forever obsess over my lil guys who suck absolute ass

[ultramarine-spirit]

What you said in your previous post about manhwas reflecting the thinking of Korean autoreas is so true!! it's frustrating because people analyze it with their western mentality and throw so much hate without bothering to try to understand the story. There are many things that I have noticed in the manhwa that are very different from things in the west (for example, the FL is always compared to an angel or a fairy lol) but something that caught my attention is that in the west it is It is very common that when we talk about an 'empowered woman' it is a woman who is good at physical fights, with super powers or good at using weapons with sarcastic personalitys and other things, while in manhwas (there are women like that too, of course) but something they have that the americans movies don't usually show is that the women here are very good at studying. That surprised me (and I liked it) because it is not very common to see women who work hard in the studios and enjoy it in USA movies, but they do in manhwas. One of the few movies that reflects this is legally blonde (and it's one of the best movies out there) plus I have a great love for academically validated female characters, they are literally my favorites in any story so reading that Athy really enjoyed studying made me fall more in love with her. Also when FLs have to act cute in order to survive, fans often throw so much hate at them saying they are irritating or ridiculous but they don't take the time to think that there are many ways to be a great female character without always using weapons, I have a great hatred for the term "soft fl" it seems too misogynistic to me that they are thrown down for that reason but waiting for the manhwa community to realize that is going to take a long time.

Another thing I remember is that in the novel Athy had many modern thoughts that surprised me, like when they talked a little about Korean society and I could feel a criticism of this or the things she said when some men harassed her and Jennette or when some men Men said that she would be happier married to a prince instead of being the next empress and she was very upset by her. Also when in his debut he said "one thing I learned is that boys have to look like boys and ladies look like ladies" (this stuck with me because it made me think of oversexualizing young children but maybe I'm overanalyzing it) There are many interesting things in the wmmap novel that people take out of context.

Another thing I've noticed is that in the East it's more typical to see this kind of "sunshine" girls who are sweet and cheerful, very kind, literally the kind of people that everyone loves and in manhwas they get so much hate, it's hateful. It's also not common to see this type of girls in the west and if they are, they are always hated. Ruby from How to get my husband on my side is truly one of the strongest female characters out there and is always looked down on just because she is softer compared to the other girlboss leads. Athanasia is a character who seems to be on the lookout for between these two terms but he still gets criticized for not having acted in a more "evil" way it's funny because the scene of Athy facing the nobles and then Anastascius screamed more power to me than many scenes I've seen in movies or series.

I just want to clarify that I love my villainous girls, medea and roxana are really amazing and I enjoyed women who do morally bad things, marianne, Cosette, soleia, I love them all. But I genuinely hate how they look down on 'soft fl'

The thing is, there are a lot of things in the novels/manhwas that I feel are critical or stereotypical of them that more western minded people take too much out of context and it's too frustrating, some people have a hard time understanding which does not have to be from their point of view.

sorry for all the rant lmao, i didn't mean to make it so long, it's just that this is one of my big problems with the manhwa community 😭

Have a good day!

Don't worry for the rant, anon! I think similarly to you as well.

I'm in the position that, while I live in a country that geographically and politically could be considered "the west" (what a long conversation that is lmfao), my culture doesn't perfectly align with "western" values and ideas. So when I see people sending hate towards manhwa, I notice how they often analyze them exclusively from their personal point of view and own biases, not realizing that asian media is very different from western media. I don't know if this is a problem of media literacy or it's that people think less of asian media as a whole. Hopefully it's the former.

But yes, most manhwas reflect korean values! Shocking, I know. Perhaps people get blinded by the western settings, but even if the characters "don't look" asian, they were made by an asian author, so obviously they reflect asian ideas and values. In that sense, they are asian characters. A similar discourse happens with anime and danmei/xianxia novels.

I think western readers have an easier time liking "girlboss" FLs and revenge fantasy stories because those are more common on this side of the world. But they struggle with more nuanced stories where the FL is not perfect, she does not solve everything with schemes or being a badass, is "weak", or (heaven forbid!) is able to forgive a family that hurt her in the past. This is the main criticism Athy gets, the fact that she was able to love Claude. I truly don't understand how people decide to even read WMMAP if they are so opposed to that idea, because that's the heart of WMMAP's story. Family holds a much bigger importance on the east compared to the west's individualistic idiosyncrasy, so of course most asian stories that touch the topic of family won't end in "if your family wronged you, fuck them". From where I'm from, family is also regarded as very important, so I can understand why a lot of manhwas are about rebuilding family relationships, not destroying them. And even then, you have plenty of revenge fantasies with cartoonishly evil families, so if that's what you prefer, you can read those.

Specifically korean media, it often touches topics like, generational trauma, misogyny, capitalism, etc. As you said, WMMAP addresses these things too in some way or another. I didn't think manhwa was particularly subtle as a medium (I know it's kinda ironic coming from me, but these are very simple stories, not Dostoevsky novels), but if people have trouble understanding the point of Parasite and Squid Game, then no wonder they can't pick up on these themes.

I'm not saying asian media or manhwas are above negative criticism. They have plenty of issues of their own. But if you are going to criticize something, you have to truly understand it, and reading anything disregarding cultural context or the own internal biases you may hold is at best foolish and at worst very ignorant. Western readers often have this mentality that all stories have to cater to them, when it's obvious that manhwas were made thinking of a korean public first and foremost.

(I dislike when people say Athy should have been more "evil". The whole point of her character is how her kindness and willingness to be empathetic with others and try to build honest relationships was what saved everyone. Villainesses AUs are fun, but when people truly say that Athy's character is weak because she chooses to feel love instead of hatred, because she is selfless instead of selfish- Why are you even reading WMMAP? And even then, she is far from "soft" and has plenty of "badass moments"...)

(News to me that Ruby gets hate, I thought she was the new manhwa darling. I stopped reading that series, but to me she was the best part of it by far. I think she is one of the only few good portrayals of a victim of physical abuse and ED in all manhwa. I have always disliked how those traits are just brushed aside as little things to endear the FL to the reader, but are never treated with the seriousness they deserve).

[kumoofthemaken]

[Test headcanon: Kumo likes being addressed as "Makenshi" by the kids, and will use the name since it is easier to say than "the Demon Swordsman" at every occasion. This is also due to the fact it reminds him of Misterian, where Maken'šil would simply mean "(one) of the Maken"]