#Anti has feels

[enigmaris]

Captain Marvel overhears some of the heroes in the Justice League talk about how weird it is that he is the only major hero who hasnt brought in a child protege.

Worried about the threat to his secret identity, he goes to the one person he thinks can help him.

"Hey Danny, wanna pretend to be Marvel Junior? I dont want the Justice League to think I'm weird."

Danny, who has been hanging with Billy as a fellow homeless kid in fawcett, looks up at the sky and thinks for a minute. Other than Billy, he doesn't like the JLA. In fact, he kind of hates their guts.

"That sounds fucking hilarious, count me in."

[scribeofmorpheus]

Why Dragon Age Veilguard isn't a "Cathedral"

Concept art by Matt Rhodes

"To disinherit the storylines of past games goes directly against the notion of building cathedrals."

What is inherent with Veilguard that keeps bothering me is the fact that the world's choices truly didn't matter--and it doesn't simply bother me from a player perspective, it's not simply a grievance borne of frustration to what I (as a longtime fan) have lost. It's about the very culture of the arts under capitalism's new media habituation cycle [x][x].

Yes, I spent hours of my life playing and replaying each instalment of Dragon Age. Yes, I painstakingly curated a 'canon' world state by replaying what came before in preparation for Veilguard. Yes, I am even more unsatisfied with the end product--time hasn't helped, it's just widened the divide. But, and I can't stress this enough, these very personal gripes aren't what hit home the most. It's the inherent disregard of legacy. A legacy that the previous writers and game developers were building towards.

In the DAV artbook, "cathedral" is the word used to describe the process of making a game. Matt Rhodes' exact words are: "One artist can make a painting, but it takes a team to build a cathedral." Cathedrals took centuries to build. The architect who drafted the first blueprints would likely never see his work realised, he had to rely on those who came after him, like-minded and passionate, to see it through--for the culture, for the future, for legacy. Painters took on several apprentices for this reason too--giant frescoes were not completed by one man's hand, even if it is one man's name that immortalises them. Similarly, if you weave a narrative around choice, what good does it do to take it away at the final act if not to fall to caricature?

To disinherit the storylines of past games goes directly against the notion of building cathedrals.

Late-stage capitalism and profit-margin-obsessed game producers forcing developers to churn out meager content, to make a known brand into something it's not, to chase a fad or a popular trend... o, how reductive and cliche you've been forced to become Bioware. We have lost the cultural thought patterns relative to Cathedrals. We know only of barn-raised churches--done in a day but unlikely to last the turn of the seasons.

And don't even get me started on the music of Veilguard either. From Origins to World of Warcraft to Everquest to Baldur's Gate to Dungeon Siege, you can hear the intricate interconnected weave of sounds inspired by the Dungeons and Dragons-esque fantasy genre. You hear it in the repeated use of certain instruments, in the harmonic weeping notes of a bard-like singer or the foreboding echoes of drums as if of war. In tavern songs. But then, rather than hire someone who loves these worlds and this genre, who is a hungry artist looking to make a name, a legacy if you will, for themselves with a spectacular score, you hire any already sated composer, one well-into the encroaching years of career fatigue, whose notes repeat in countless projects, who feels less concise and more uninterested with each new project. One who has long since cemented his legacy. Someone in it for a paycheck and nothing else! And, to top it off, you let him compose something so minimalist? I am offended actually.

Cathedrals! We should have witnessed the final tile being placed on the Dragon Age cathedral. Instead, some architects walked up, tore down the interior and installed IKEA furniture and called it authentic before having to call the previous architects to come and fix the "load-bearing issues", forcing them to rush and add a coat of varnish and a few 'aged' details for authenticity.

[urfavoritemistake]

i'm not seeing any posts about it here yet, but they solved the silas birchtree riddle on reddit and there's some pretty juicy lore! first, entering "paranoid" backwards nets this conspiracy board:

then, from the black letters in the corners of some of the pages people pieced together the code "connect the dots", backwards again, gets a whopping 12 page chapter about the ciphertology cult! it's...something.

so in summary, bill puppeted a guy's corpse, became a cult leader, seemingly married over a hundred people, mass-possessed his followers, tried to get them to build his portal. his lone dissenter was a spinster who made anti-bill chick tracts and started a fire. a waco-style shootout ensued, killing silas' already-rotting corpse a second time in a disturbingly detailed manner. at some point he made some of his followers drink the kool-aid too.

entering the lady's name, emmaline butternubbins, into the computer finally gets you the reward for solving all the riddles: hd wallpapers of various graphics from the book of bill. but frankly this is more interesting and fucked up to me.

(alt text under cut, wip)

[Image 1: A cluttered conspiracy board centered on Bill Cipher. Red string and pins connect various newspaper clippings, photos, drawings and pamphlets.]

[Image 2: A history-book style chapter page. Header "LESSER KNOWN AMERICAN CULTS."

"Have you ever heard of Orchard Lake, Kansas? Chances are you haven't. It was erased from every map, book, and historical record, and the US Government's official position on it is "stop calling us or we'll send a drone to your house." (I learned this the hard way.) But if you drive to the exact latitude and longitude of you'll see bullet casings, faded billboards, and bow ties strewn across the desert sands.

That's because Orchard Lake had another name before it was wiped off the record: BillVille.

CHAPTER 3: BillVille

The First Cult In History That Was Right

FIG A: A tumbillweced

As a historian of esoteric religions, I thought I'd discovered the strangest sects America had yct to offer (see "Chapter 3: Kevin's Gate") but that all changed when I found the following items tucked away in an old trunk in an estate sale on the out- skirts of Bootstrap, Missouri."]

[thy-lovelylionheart]

Projection vs. Reality for @glisten-inthedark

a.k.a., How Will thinks Mike also makes El feel vs. How Mike actually makes El feel

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[cubbihue]

so pixies regularly try to take over fairyworld is timmy on the pixie side?

At first, Timmy was adamantly against the Pixies. He'd tell Jorgen every time he got a notice of their plans to take over Fairyworld, and work to stop it! But it gets a bit harder to resist against your own court the longer you hang out with them.

In the present time, Timmy schedules to be out of FairyWorld during their takeovers. He doesn't try to stop them, but also refuses to be anywhere near when it happens.

He... doesn't like how he's slowly starting to cheer for them. Or how their arguments are becoming more convincing. Or how he's struggling to recall why he was so against them to begin with.

There will come a point where he becomes an active participant. Timmy worries that it's coming sooner than he'd like.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[nonhumanfreak]

[housederiva]

Okay hi! This is going to be skewed if it's just the people following me voting, please reblog this poll If you'd be so kind so it gets as far away from my bubble as possible 🙇

No nuance! You gotta pick one, but feel free to talk about your reasoning in the tags xx (the clipboard I'm holding is for science and statistic purposes not moral compass or taste judging)

[pangur-and-grim]

this is so tmi, you've been warned

I have a colonoscopy tomorrow, and part of the prep is that you can't eat anything solid or ingest anything non-transparent the day before. and you also have to take 4 laxative pills throughout the day, and drink 4L of this liquid laxative poison that SMELLS LIKE SOMETHING THAT WILL KILL YOU, and all of this makes you shit every 4-10 minutes until your body has turned inside out and all that's leaving you is clear drinkable water, and also you are THROWING UP because your butthole has been seared off by stomach acid and your stomach is all gross and empty and the LAXATIVE POISON MAKES YOU GAG BY SMELL ALONE. I successfully drank 1/4 of the container, and now every time I try to take another sip I either dry-gag or fully vomit. but if I don't finish the container, this will all be for nought and I'll have to do it again in a couple weeks :,)

[autisticrosewilson]

It's not that I hate fanon or that I think fanon is inherently less intelligent or morally wrong, but a LOT of fanon is based in racism, misogyny, and classism that I feel like a lot of you accept without question.

WHY is Duke (Daredevil, son of a god, has never once allowed himself to be defined by anyone's actions but his own) relegated to a background role, only characterized by reacting to the whims of other bats?

Why is Babs - Birds of Prey leader and backbone of the hero society, tells Bruce to fuck off and die 4 times a day and is constantly ruining her relationships by being biased and unhinged - Gotham bound, the mature responsible mom of the group who never argues with Bruce and never gets in trouble?

Why is Dick, both a tactical genius and master manipulator, a himbo only appreciated for his sex appeal? Especially when he is both Romani (group of people demonized and condemned as hypersexual by their nature alone) and an SA victim.

WHY is Damian "feral" and "uncivilized" despite being raised as a literal prince? Half of you treat him like a sociopath with no hope of redemption for an unfunny three second joke and the other half of you go full throttle into Bruce's white savior bullshit so that Damian can be "redeemed". Y'know when you're not villainizing Talia and acting like Dick is his other parent, actually.

WHY is Stephanie - extremely intelligent detective who can't stand Bruce and has a living mother she loves - lumped in as another member of the Batfam, a blonde ditz who only cares about prank wars and emotionally supporting Tim?

WHY is Cass - intelligent, a grown adult, suicidal perfectionist - emotionally intelligent, primarily existing to support the characters around her, immediately accepting of everyone she meets regardless of her own morals?

Why is Bruce the golden standard? Enough so that though everyone in the fandom could agree that he's an emotionally unstable wreck, being considered "the most like him" is seen as a compliment and not the HIGHEST insult? Everyone would agree if I said that Bruce purposely self sabotages his relationship half the time and the other half he simply does things without caring about the emotional impact it will have on people because he has to be the smartest in the room, but if I said that makes him a shit partner and emotionally abusive parent the fandom would bend over backwards to argue with me.

Why is Tim "the best Robin" when Dick Grayson invented the mantle, it is impossible for someone to embody the spirit of Robin better than him because he made it and he created what being Robin means. Maybe Tim is the best in Bruce's eyes, but what Robin means and who has the right to give it over was a significant thing they argued about. Tim the high school drop out, and yet also somehow the smartest? Tim "the most like Bruce" except no he's not, that's Cass. Poor neglected, abused, victimized little Timmy (the rich boy at the elite boarding school with loving albeit busy parents and almost every instance of him being victimized by another character has either been racist bullshit - The Al Ghuls and Rose Wilson- or a complete 180 for the character that made no sense when examined through the lens of prior characterization - Jason for instance.)

Almost every fanon trope that gets passed around like gospel seems to deliberately push POC characters and women into the background and strip them of interesting complex traits and stories, usually for the purpose of fitting them all into bite sized incorrect quote character types and uncomplicated narrative roles that are not only completely divergent from canon, but primarily exist to prop up the two rich white boys.

Also the insistence that Bruce, a 20 year old at the time, should actually be excused for how much he mentally and emotionally fucked Dick up because really they're more like siblings! While deciding that Dick at the same age was actually the perfect candidate to be Damian's new parent/guardian...have you lost the fucking plot you don't even make sense to yourselves.

Okay I lied at the beginning, I do hate fanon. You guys are so uncritical about the media you consume it is BEYOND just letting people enjoy things and have fun. I guess it's one thing if you KNOW this stuff isn't canon and UNDERSTAND why these tropes are problematic and you engage with it as such, it's fine read and write what you want, but just spreading the same nonsense around and parading it around as "better than canon" (version of the character so bland and boring you've somehow made the old white men at DC look like geniuses in the art of representation) is just infuriating.

[nebulo-philiac]

Alright, pack It up guys- most insane anti-take just dropped

I don't even know what to say, this is some insane shit to spit out, there's so many things wrong in the last statement, I don't even know what to say?!?

[ms-cartoon]

"You speak just like that Striker friend of yours. The one you tried to kill me and you couldn't be bothered to help me?"

*Gasp* oh my god! You're right! I-I'm so so sorry, your royal highn-ass. I dunno what I was thinking, not stopping what I was doing to save you. I dunno why I did that.

Maybe it's because I have a life outside of FUCKING WITH YOU every goddamn minute!!!

[genericpuff]

lore olympus' brand of feminism is like if the credits for Mean Girls immediately rolled credits after the line "and that's how Regina George died"

[tackykachowch]

How it feels to not like timebomb after s2

[orphiclovers]

han sooyoung, on being the villain

[super-nova5045]

sylvia plath, todd anderson and virginia woolf (aka ACTUAL tortured poets) watching taylor “im breaking up with my boyfriend for his intense depression and blaming it on him, im dating a racist who enjoys watching woc being brutalized and harasses young woc artists, i sent my fans out on a hate train to attack a young woc actress for a line she had to say as part of her job to show how mentally ill her character was, im dating a maga supporter, i refuse to say anything about a current genocide despite being the most influential person in the world right now, i am a billionaire, i fly 13 minute flights and have the highest carbon emission of any celebrity, i am a known white feminist who only speaks about issues when it affects me and has constantly let my fans get away with extreme racism and even encouraged it by associating myself with known racists” swift call herself a tortured poet (her writing sounds like a bunch of thesaurus words slapped over gabba hanna and rupi kaur-esque poetry that was created purely as a trinket for an edgy pinterest board)