#And critics will be more meaningful

[set-wingedwarrior]

People really be talking about peace and love and understanding of others and social justice, then the moment a villain in a children cartoon sees the errors of their way and gets redeemed through love and understanding they yell outraged that they didn't use a guillotine

[crossdressingdeath]

You know what the most frustrating thing about DAV criticism is at the moment? It's that I do in fact have criticisms. Quite a few, actually. It's a Bioware game, of course I have criticisms. No one I've spoken to or whose posts I've seen thinks it's perfect or above criticism. But the thing is, I—and I imagine a lot of other firmly positive blogs—know that if I share any of those criticisms, if I make posts discussing them and talk about the game's flaws, I will immediately be inundated by people using those complaints to insist that the whole game is garbage and the writing is bad and Bioware's a terrible studio who can't make good games and DAI (of all fucking games) was so much better and blah blah blah blah. I know that because it's happened every goddamn time I've made a less-than-positive post about DAV. And I don't have the energy to deal with that! The endless stream of bad faith criticism wears me down and having to constantly stop to defend a game I like when I'm trying to discuss its flaws because if I don't (and frankly half the time even if I do) people will use my posts to claim the whole game is garbage is exhausting, and fandom is supposed to be fun. So I can't discuss DAV's flaws on tumblr if I want to avoid that, and it is infuriating. I see people bitching about toxic positivity and people refusing to acknowledge the game's flaws, and I really want those people to take a second to consider: do the game's fans ignore its flaws and refuse to accept that anything about it is bad? Or have you created an environment that is so toxic that no one who likes the game wants to risk getting your attention by mentioning what's bad about it and they respond more aggressively than is warranted to even genuine critique in an attempt to ward you off? Because there will always be assholes who claim that genuine problems are Fine, Actually, Stop Being Such A Baby... but if people can't address the game's flaws in public without immediately getting dragged into five different arguments about how it is in fact ultimately a really solid game, they're not going to do it no matter how much they recognise those flaws.

[0alix0]

you hate solas x mythal because you think solas shouldn't have had any previous relationships in thousands of years of his life

i hate solas x mythal because it's yet another exhausting love triangle where the slaver and abuser gets a funky reincarnation and the victim gets blamed for absolutely everything and put into magical prison forever..........

we are not the same

[lonelysa1lor]

If I see another "if only silco had read that letter :[" literally anywhere im going to start gnawing on peoples computers

[ganondoodle]

okay i typed this in a reply but i need to say this more detailed here too, the way totk dealt with horses (and stables) is bad and worse than botw imo (yes i can rant about that too, these weird choices are in every little spot in totk, its almost impressive)

in a game that lets you build cars and stupid flying maschines, towers that shoot you into the stratosphere AND teleporting points all over the place, the chance is already low that you use a horse- though i would be one of them bc i love horses and hate building and didnt find it fun at all-

(also i almost never used any parts i had with me bc you cant put them back and your dumb vehicles despawn as soon as you dont look at them- also a negative thing about that system that reinforces the feeling of actually using it being more punishing than rewarding with the added bonus of the good ol saving your health potions forever problem)

-and something i DID like was that you can have more horses and the ... one.. new color (the lil spots but only AFTER you do that one quest in the spy post)

the stable points seemed like a neat idea, but like so many things, are utterly cheatable, imo the system should have only given you a point when you visit a new stable, so you actually have to go around and visit them all

(also .. add new stables, like mini ones or sth that dont offer beds- you dont need that anyway- so you have more places in which you can get them ... why did they remove some of them anyway, shouldn there be MORE now that the land is supposedly healing/being repaired? especially the one next to the big canyon, its so empty there it would have the perfect place for sth like a new settlement or a big boss arena but no its more empty than it was before, why?? and then putting yet another repeating annoying quest there in that weirld empty place?? i just dont get it)

letting you farm points by sleeping at a stable or bringing in a horse gives you LESS incentive to actually go around the world bc you can just farm it there

(and if that was done so youd 'discover' the malanya talks to you in your sleep 'secret' ... that is literally told to you, and if its bc you dont want to force players to go around and find every stable to get all those rewards ... why do you have 140 or whatver caves then with the majority of them being the literal same thing over and over ... to make people actually use the sleeping thing there? .. why, who uses that anyway, and farming points by sleeping there .. what the hell does that add? AND THEN the stupid sleep over tickets, probably the most nothign reward ever, dont count?? i dont think i ever used one- it just all doesnt make any sense, everything plays against each other)

the upgrading system for your horse is .. once again, a neat idea horribly executed, you have to go find malanya to upgrade them, and similarly stupidly like the fairies, they only tell you what food you need for what upgrade when you are there .. or when you are sleeping in the special tm bed at a stable, randomly, one food, bc the quantity changes too

which is just so ??????????? let me go and do a quest that rewards you with a lil booklet in which you can look up what an upgrade costs, or let the stables have that, either as a list or in the menu when selecting a horse or something?? (also why the hell is malanya in a different spot anyway, like, it feels like a modder just plopped them over there, their og spot is just empty now - except for yet again a stupid filler quest for .. another big horse and a yaaaaaaaaays crystal shrine quest- ... the spot is even still called spring of the horse god .... its so stupid, just like the fairy shuffling around, like you really couldnt think of a better way to reuse that concept other than to ... move it to a different spot in the same map and map level???? and not change anything in their og spot except idk, put a hole in the map ... for one of them like .. its like they moved them around last minute just to have the semblance of things being 'changed' with no regard what makes a change actually feel like one and what just feels like, pick up thing, click on random spot on map, drop thing- its like that for the fairies and shrines too, its so dumb and .. feels disrepectful to botw and how much thought seemed to have went into these spots that were clearly built about those things)

and like it couldnt get WORSE, they cut off the paths that horses follow automatically with one of those miasma buttholes (sorry its just a hole cut into the map, it doesnt even look like miasma burst through, it just .. cut out) a monster camp (that RESPAWNS, i thought those camps you clear with a quest would stay clear, but that would make sense, so of course it respawns and you can do the frame rate killer quest over and over yippieee) or otherwise like, with a big rock or a broken bridge-

and there is NO WAY to create a new path or fix or move anything in a game ABOUT BUILDING supposedly, like you needed more reasons to never use a horse????? i liked jsut hopping on and letting them follow a path and chill looking at the landscape, you cant do this here, and you cant even excuse it with 'its bc of the theme' as in, stuff is destroyed bc calamity 1.5 or whatever bc nothing in the game makes it feel like theres anything actually at stake, but the real crime is to make it not be fixable. WHY??? link moves entire buildings with ease but cant move one freaking rock that fell into a river?????? you swing around logs like a club but cant fix a bridge so your horse can get over it??????????????????????????????

[corpocyborg]

so like... the Qun being reveled to be pro-trans in DAI makes zero sense... considering both sten & the arishok are shown to believe strongly in gender roles... and that sten even goes as far as to say that a person can never be anything other than what they're born and that a fisherman who tries to become a merchant will never be a real merchant and will only ever be a fisherman pretending to be a merchant... like... ?????

I mean i get wanting iron bull to be pro-trans himself but wouldn't it make way more sense for that to be something he actually dislikes about the Qun... and then it would actually create tension in his storyline between his own viewpoints & agency and the messages he's learned from the qun and partially actually believes and has partially been forced to believe through literal indoctrination and abuse... and therefore whether he becomes tal-vashoth or not could actually be something that matters instead of just a meaningless pseudo-choice...

[fangsandfeels]

Shathann deserved better

Among my many jabs at writing, I feel that it did Shathann dirty.

The concept itself is fascinating: a woman from a society that doesn't have such thing as "family", who became a mother. Who chose to be a mother. She a scholar. She never meant to be a parent. She is nostalgic, but she chose to leave her home and become an apostate in her kin's eyes - out of love for the child she meant to surrender to caretakers.

She is used to calm, analytical thinking, but she made a very emotional decision and took an uncalculated risk.

She doesn't know how to mother, she sticks to the routines she knows even after finding herself outside her society.

And she loves her child, but she doesn't know how to show it.

She is clueless but she is trying. She wants Taash to like her, but she also wants to make sure that Taash never gives in to impulses and can put emotions behind them when necessary.

I don't say that Taash shouldn't have had a conflict with her, but it should have been centered around Taash being an adaari. Because not only did Shathann abandon the Qun for an entirely "selfish" reason - keeping a child to herself instead of letting the Tamassran take care of them and find their place in the Qun, but she also absconded with a dangerous thing, the one with dragon blood in their veins. The one that Qun would have wanted either contained, leashed, and serving or destroyed. For the greater good. We saw what Viddasala did to a dragon in the Trespasser - we can only imagine how Ben-Hassrath and the military forces of Par Vollen would have weaponized the adaari. It certainly wouldn't have been pretty.

It should have been about Taash wondering sometimes if their own mother is afraid of them or regrets having them because she had to leave her home and life behind.

It should have been about Shathann being torn between simply loving her child and trusting them and feeling responsible for whatever will happen if she doesn't teach Taash control, if she doesn't show them the way, if it turns out that her emotions blinded her and she doomed her child from the very beginning.

It should have been about Taash feeling guilty for enjoying themselves when they let the fire burn, when they don't have to hide their heritage as they fight, live, and love - and not knowing whether they should be mad at Shathann for putting that shame into them, do their best to prove her wrong that they're not a mindless beast to be put down or to give up and prove all her fears, just because they can never be what she wants them to be.

It should have been about Taash wondering whether Shathann even loves them or just sees them as some kind of an experiment, to prove a point.

It should have been about Taash's confusion overlapping with Shathann's own repressed trauma of having to leave her life and put everything behind, dive into the unknown - out of love.

This could have been such a fascinating story to explore - the story of a Qunari woman undergoing the trial of parenting, the lore additions about the Kossith and their draconic heritage, the scholarly discussions Shathann could have had with Rook.

There are so many identity issues and questions that we could have dug into, but it all boils down to Taash throwing a tantrum even though Shathann isn't even angry or unaccepting of their gender.

She is inquisitive, trying to understand and obviously worried that she might have made Taash feel inadequate about their biological sex, that her comments about Taash's manners or way of dressing hurt Taash and she didn't even know. This is not offensive, it's a normal reaction. Shathann is an inexperienced parent and she knows it, but she cares a lot about Taash and beneath all of her polite and strict attitude, she is terrified of hurting Taash.

Moreover, as soon as Shathann sees that Taash is obviously distraught, she removes herself to give Taash some room and not to add to their discomfort. She is upset herself, but she prioritizes Taash's wellbeing over her own feelings.

And then later Shathann just symbolically dies to redeem herself for the crime of...trying to have a dialogue with Taash and check in with their feelings.

A dialogue about the matter she already accepted, just wanted to make sure that Taash's identity doesn't stem from self-hatred.

Yes, Taash's final quest was supposed to show just that: that all that time Shathann was trying to protect Taash and that she always accepted Taash and that all that time Taash loved their mom, but instead of being painful in a good way, it was just painful.

Because Shathann's death and final words were clearly showing "see, she accepted Taash in the end and died to atone for her sins, hooozah" - and nothing more. The writers didn't exploit Shathann feeling homesick and having her doubts - for instance, if she gets contacted by the Ben-Hassrath (yes, I still think that it should have been Qunari invasion, not the Antaam going rogue and playing warlords) and offered to surrender Taash voluntarily in exchange for being allowed back (under strict supervision and with a permanent ban on reproducing, but still), but she refuses because no matter how out-of-place she feels, she would always choose Taash. Always.

I feel genuinely sorry for her and the potential she and Taash had as characters. They both could have been so much more and they both didn't deserve this (like many other characters in Veilguard, to be honest).

[thelaurenshippen]

cw: harry potter, jk rowling, transphobia

I occasionally see posts/get messages about the various harry potter references in the bright sessions, etc. and I've gotten a bunch of new followers recently so just so any new/younger listeners of my shows know:

jk rowling is a terrible transphobe whom I hold zero respect for and I haven't given a dime of my money to her since she revealed who she truly is. I want the whole bright universe to be a safe space for trans people (including the trans folks in our cast and crew!) and if I could go back and remove those references, I would. but I can't! harry potter was an extremely significant part of my life until...well, until it became very clear who she really was. it makes me so sad to think that folks might be finding TBS now and get thrown out of the story by these references, but just know that the people who made the show do not stand by jk, and that in many ways, the show is a product of its time.

[reblogandlikes]

Daydreaming and wondering why SJM never once thought to perhaps have done a romance between Cassian or Azriel with Rhysand’s sister as their past love interest? It would make more sense as she would have been within Illyria far more than Mor. Perhaps live in that house alongside their mother, which they all grew up in.

It could have been a whole little trope of 'brother's best friend/ best friend sister' with the addition of nobility hierarchy and inadequacy. Plus, I don't recall a single Illyrian couple within these books. It's always Illyrian's with a High fae and I dunno; seems a bit sad and really pounding down that Illyrians are just worth nothing; not even love between them, apparently. It would have given a chance at getting to know more about Rhysand’s sister as a character than a far away memory despite meaning so much to these people: for starters, what's her NAME?

[bibibbon]

The line is actually on the next page (4), the same page where Twice puts on his black shirt. It's the third panel. There's a second another speech bubble commenting on Endeavor's fans being mostly young men.

"While the number of incidents Endeavor's resolved is certainly high, the instances where his furious disposition has gone too far are are not few either." Chapter 115

Oh Iam so sorry anon!!

Yeah this is spot on! And also very much holds your point and so does the previous page.

Enji is incredibly violent and thats not a good look heck the heroes, the civilians and the villains don't like him but I suppose he is high on the list for the amount of work he is done and the weird demographic that he has seemed to acquire.

I want to comment on that demographic but I don't think I can actually put it into a proper conscience response so I won't say much but what I will say is that it's not a good look on enji and something something about toxic masculinity and the whole red pill ideology.

We haven't actually seen a lot of enji fans in canon but the ones we have seen aka inasa end up being very questionable characters.

This is also the reason when all might points out that enji and bakugo are similar or that bakugo and enjis have parallels it's not a good look on bakugo (even if enji gets a horrible attornment arc)

That aside I do actually wanna talk about how the reporter says that we shouldn't passively protect the status quo just in the end for the status quo to be preserved and be uplifted by hawks and the heroes.

[bayetea]

seeing non-black people critique rick's portrayal of black characters is interesting sometimes. only like 30% of the critiques I see make any sense to me to be honest

[bookwyrminspiration]

when you make a point and then someone goes "yeah! I agree that *a completely different misinterpretation of your point that they missed entirely*" like. dude. that wasn't at all what I said where did you even get that

[dxxtruction]

Part of me feels like if you enjoy and/or are involved in the fandom of IWTV, knowing how a rather significant part of the show is set in Dubai (a part of the UAE), you should be aware of, and taking action about what's going on in Sudan.

To explain: the UAE has been exploiting Sudan for its resources in gold (mostly), and in many ways actively fueling the war there to get it. Making the UAE a responsible party for the multiple humanitarian crisis happening there; over 6 million displaced peoples, genocidal massacres, extreme sexual violence, etc. - just look into it.

There's been a demand not to travel to the UAE/Dubai for this reason. Luckily, from what I gather they don't film those scenes on location, except for the aerial driving sequence in Season 1 episode 1. This would've also been before the war started in Sudan where this such demand wasn't in place (as far as I'm aware). Which is good for fans as it means enjoyment can just be critical and not reason to turn it off.

Anyway, just something to very much consider.

[anambermusicbox]

Excerpt from 2024 人物 interview, found here:

For example, [while redoing the album] Qian Lei "forced" him to write a song. Qian Lei thought, this new album was extremely significant to him, so there should be a song Zhou Shen wrote himself. What's more, others have criticized him for not being able to compose. But Qian Lei knows he can---and quite well too. "It's not possible someone with strong emotions and a sensitive heart to not be able to write a good melody, it's completely not possible." Usually, Zhou Shen will hum out a melody and record it with his phone---sound engineer Xu Wei has listened to them and thought the melody lines were really good, and could absolutely be straightened out into an original song. But Zhou Shen always felt it wasn't good enough, and even said, to compose beside such a skilled composer like Lei-ge, it would be like an elementary schooler insisting on reciting their composition in front of a doctorate holder---so imprudent. His friends all know his personality---for a "master in self-deprication," being unduly humble was a daily occurrence. His old friend of ten years, lyricist 沃特艾文儿 said: "Not just composing---when I first met him, he even thought his singing was bad. It was so upsetting to me. I'm very relieved that he at least recognizes his singing ability now." Qian Lei has also listened to Zhou Shen's compositions before, and told him, isn't this pretty good? Zhou Shen said, don't mess with me. Qian Lei said, I'm serious, I'm not joking, it's quite good. Zhou Shen said, bye bye. Qian Lei said, bye bye yourself. Thus, when working on the new album, he would use every means possible to force him to write a song. One moment he would "hold a hammer behind him and get him to hurry up and write," the next moment he would set his mind at ease, saying "you don't have to overthink it, gradually the more you write the easier it will be. I'm here, so don't worry." This song was written at Qian Lei's home---once the first step of writing was taken, the rest went smoothly. Musically, Zhou Shen already had things in mind, and a few hours later, the main melody was basically set. Zhou Shen also participated a lot in writing the lyrics. He really liked the line "I can catch the flowers floating in the wind; I don't care whether I fall into the galaxy or into the mud." But "no matter how I sang it, it felt a little off, like it was missing something." He hummed it and hummed it, and out of nowhere added a soft, low, even a little "rude", "嘿，少管我," and "suddenly it came to life." Before, Zhou Shen had always wanted to write a song called "少管我." In his earlier years, he had randomly used these words in replies to fans, and in an interview where he talked about how his fans were never satisfied no matter what he changed his profile picture to, he ended up jokingly shouting "少管我, " and it then went viral. After that, Zhou Shen thought, as a singer, if one day I could turn "少管我" into a song, how interesting would that be. These past few years, he found a lot of people to compose its melody, but he always felt the melodies weren't quite what he wanted. The album that was cancelled also had a song in it named "少管我," but he still felt it wasn't quite right. Until now, it came to him like a "gift" from above. The first impression many people get from these three words is more or less rigid, sharp, harsh, stubborn, and capricious. But to Zhou Shen, a rebellious attitude is easy but truly knowing yourself is a long journey. "It's not necessarily about rebelling against the whole world, but you have to clearly know what version of yourself you want to be, and only then can you become yourself."

The day of the interview at an art park in Tongzhou, Beijing, the sky darkened a little. Zhou Shen took out his cell phone and played the unmixed recording of "少管我." The melody was light, "like travelling, very free." He shook his head to beat, and listened to the song he had listened to countless times one more time. "When I was writing this song and its lyrics, I didn't have "少管我" in mind, but in the end it became the "少管我" that I wanted." Moments like these, sparks flying, you think, "that’s right"---that's the biggest joy in making an album.

[sharkface]

I also don't think hbomberguy's video about RWBY is very good this is because I do not inherently agree with everybody who dislikes RWBY because sometimes their problem is less that they think some things were handled poorly and more that they don't really enjoy any aspect of the show and I think you can differentiate these attitudes by the amount of nitpicking being done. Like. I think it's worth mentioning the objectification of Yang early in the series (Kerry calling her "everyone's dream girl," her inexplicable romantic relationship with an adult man that is not seriously addressed) when discussing the overall trend of misogynistic tropes in the series, sure, that makes sense, but like, why the fuck should I care that they (probably) called them "volumes" because Miles Luna based some things on ATLA and they're called "books" in that series? Idk. I find it very silly.

[bandtrees]

Annoying fandom people when you tell them characters do things based on writers’ decisions and biases and are not fully autonomous sapient beings they’re watching in a terrarium