#I'm just complaining here LOL

[aroceu]

I know we know I am an apologist of the ending of Lost and a big fan of the show-

-but I really want to complain about the fact that so many people (who avid Lost fans like myself condescendingly refer to as "casuals", aka people who started watching the show when it aired, dropped it when they didn't like something about it, but tuned in for the ending) tend to call Lost a "bad show" because it didn't answer every question they had

Like first of all. Are these people stupid. I mean that genuinely. Do you need the show to tell you the answer to every question. Do you not want to exercise your brain muscles and a little bit of curiosity. Do you need things to be told you directly, like a child. Truly what a maddening "criticism." "Why did the others take the children" WHY DO YOU THINK!!!! The Losties were survivors with minimal resources and knowledge of the Island; the Others for better or worse were natives who had both the resources and the knowledge; they also valued people's lives. No it certainly wasn't the ethical thing to do. But the Others don't really care about ethics in that way. Does that not make sense if we think about it this way for a second

And I mean people have had a LOT of questions about the show after it ended that they argue that not directly answering one or any of them makes the show bad. It's just like. Maybe watch the show again. Have you people ever tried rewatching or rereading something. You know, so you can pick up on things that you missed the first time around. Yeah it's 120 episodes. But if you care so much to know more about this show, and you want to have an informed opinion, it might help to engage with it again, critically, like people with actual critical thinking skills tend to do?

But my main point is this:

You know what makes a good story? One that doesn't tell you everything, but gives you hints. One with Themes and Motifs. One that requires you to engage with it critically in order to understand not only the writer's intention with the story, or deeper meanings of the story that writers may not have even intended (though this does not make any perceived meaning less meaningful!!!!), but also requires you to learn something about yourself.

When you have feelings about a character, or a relationship, or a sequence of events, or the way a narrative is presented to you, you are not only experiencing something new and valuable, you are also learning something about yourself through your emotions and reaction and passion for the thing. Critical thinking and critical analysis and critical approach does not just come from a need to nitpick or find flaws or even in a more generous way with the desire to make things better. Being critical comes from caring. It comes from engaging with something from a deeply personal experience, and constantly trying to find an objective meaning through the emotions you have from that experience.

This post is getting away from me, but with the point of Lost: this tv show not directly answering any or even most questions one has does not make it a bad show. People can not like it or call it bad for whatever other reason they want to present; but the lack of "answers" is not one of them. Not a rational one, anyway. I posted about this on bsky but minor plot holes does not a bad story make. Because stories are not about fucking answers. They're about a sequence of significant events happening to people who are significant in that timeline - if we want to get that broad with it. And a lot of times, in that sequence of events, it is not natural - much less good storytelling or worthwhile execution - for the story to explicitly drop random "answers" to things that irrelevant to the characters or the story, even if the audience may be curious about those things. Where is the suspension of disbelief! Where is the understanding that storytelling is about necessity! Where is the respect towards writers who don't try to pander to all of their audience's whims! Where is the understanding that if a good storyteller knows where a story is going to start and end and it's evident in the execution of the narrative, then maybe whining about minor plot holes because you didn't get the question explicitly or deliberately answered within the realm of the story is a uncritical response

This is not to be a plot hole apologist. Yes I do believe that there are bad stories with plot holes - large plot holes. A lack of answers that make no sense within the linear passage of the story to the point that they are noticeable, memorable, and bothersome. Of course evaluating this is extremely subjective and I'm sure the sort of Lost watcher who NEEDS all of their questions answered would still argue that whatever "plot hole" they complain about is noticeable or memorable or bothersome to them. But that hypothetical aside, I think it's important to take the time to look at the broader scope of a story the same way we may look at the broader scope of our lives.

Because we won't get the answers to everything. We don't know why someone mistreated us in the past. Or even treated us well! We don't know everyone's inner life - or anyone's, except our own. We often don't get closure or apologies. We don't know what everyone is doing at any given moment; many things happen "off screen" in our lives because they're not our lives, and not as relevant to our personal journeys compared to what we are experiencing at any given moment. Life is like this. Life does not have answers for most things. Life is a goddamn mystery box

And yet we still try to make sense of our lives and our existences because they are our experiences; because everything that happens to us and the choices we've made in the past continue to affect how we make choices in the future, how the rest of our lives pan out, even if it's just tomorrow. Of course there's still absurdity and randomness and coincidences and unpredictability in the world. But we are still unique individuals at any given point too; not only that, but still made up of our past experiences and choices, still aware of our own existences, and still try to seek meaning both in the rational and in the nonsensical in our own lives.

So this is what I want taken away from this: try to seek some goddamn meaning from the show. Try to find your own answers. Try to interpret your own way. Whether or not people will agree with you, I think it's more healthy for your brain (as well as being actually and reasonably critical) to try to figure out the answers yourself instead of complaining that your questions didn't get answered in the way you want them, and that because of that, it makes a story bad. I know people have short as hell attention spans these days that they don't want to take the time to actually process and understand. I know people like to engage with stories to be entertained rather than to think. But I think that if you approach every story this way, especially one that pretty implicitly wants you to think, you are not being as critical as you think you are. You're just being dumb.

[radiosummons]

This is supposed to be the outfit that "protects" Link from acquiring frostbite pfffttt

Between this top and the mandatory acrylics that come with the new arm, gotta say I'm loving how much Nintendo keeps leaning into GNC Link XD

MINI UPDATE: (Guys, I've already updated this post with the correct info. The "protects" part was supposed to be a joke about how skimpy the outfit was. I didn't realize the outfit gave an attack bonus at first, either. That was it. That was the post. You don't need to keep sending me messages trying to inform me about the frost attack. I know, I promise).

Update I: Just realized they gave him a set of blue acrylics for his left hand

Link really do be out here serving cunt 💅💅✨✨

Update II: Many thanks to the people who pointed out that this outfit gives you a special frost attack when in cold temperature areas, it doesn't actually protect you from the elements. I'll be honest, I am purposely avoiding any guides or walkthroughs for my TotK playthrough (since I'm trying to replicate my BotW experience). When I found the Frostbite Shirt, I was just happy that I finally had a piece of clothing that I thought could protect me from dying of hypothermia (was chugging spicy elixirs like you wouldn't believe) so I didn't notice the attack bonus until a bunch of you pointed it out lol

[theminecraftbee]

so a thing this fandom does that remains FASCINATING to me, as a function of the fact a lot of this fandom is people's first fandom or only current fandom, is just... assume a lot of things it does is a scourge that this fandom has invented or doesn't exist outside of it? or like, is uniquely bad here? and i won't deny that sometimes mcyt fandom is a bit more intense by virtue of numbers, but like...

duo names: confusing fandom-injokes to describe duos and groups tend to be an anime fandom thing specifically for many historical reasons, but they're not uncommon. hey quick--if you haven't been in KHR fandom, can you guess what 1827 is? no? i'll give you a hint: that's actually a ship name. or, ygo fans, tell me the difference between puppyshipping, prideshipping, violetshipping, and rivalshipping. my hint is that they're all kaiba ships and two of them are actually the same ship. good luck!

reducing characters to a specific trait: have you read fic in another fandom before? i would recommend you go do so and come back to me. my example here is "sasuke likes tomatoes", for the record.

common au fanon that's confusing to outsiders: my deep cut here is "when i got into certain tv fandoms i was baffled by the existence of sentinel/guide fics", which is a slightly older tv fandom thing so many of you probably don't know what i'm on about. but trust me: in certain fandoms it's ubiquitous and unless you've watched a completely different tv show you're gonna have to entirely pick it up from reading fic. oh hey, hybrid aus and watcher!grian, nice to see your relative here,

fanon being treated as canon: did you know there's this whole bnha character, naomasa, who is treated as canonically having a lie detector quirk? did you know that, best i can tell, that's not in canon anywhere, it just got echoed through fanon enough that everyone treated it as canon? 'fanon trait becomes so ubiquitous everyone assumes it has to be there' is not a new thing. also, batfamily fans, i have been lead to understand the tim and coffee thing is also this.

characters being treated badly to make a different dynamic look better: the fact we have the term 'character bashing' tells you all you need to know, here. if anything my one complaint on this front isn't even that it's happening--it's that i wish bashing and/or "not [character] friendly" was tagged a little more frequently, haha.

characters being reduced to their family dynamics: tale as old as time. "even the family dynamic thing" yes even that. just because this fandom tended to be particularly ship-adverse in the past didn't mean it didn't do basically the same behaviors as any fandom with shipping did with those dynamics, just gen. and other gen fandoms also do that. yes, down to the "and shipping reduces them to a ship, unlike my gen dynamic, which is very in-character; why can't people just be friends?" thing. some of you have to have been marvel fans right.

characters being reduced to their ships: some of you have to have been marvel fans right.

The Discourse: yeah this is an "actively running show" fandom thing, but also a hiatus fandom thing. ask a homestuck about vriskourse sometime. as much as i hate to say it, it probably made doomsday discourse look cute.

and those are just like... some things i've seen people complain about on my dash recently. idk it just hit me there are probably fans in mcyt fandoms who are assuming that some things (like hybrid aus or duo names) are the kind of things that only happen here, so i thought i'd offer some examples of other places they happen! i also have even more examples if you'd like.

to be clear: this isn't shaming anyone for complaining about any of these things. lord knows i go complain to my friends about it all the time, just the other day i was complaining in the category of 'they keep bashing my guy'. it's more of just... a gentle reminder that maybe we're big, maybe we're loud, maybe we have problems... but these problems aren't always unique.

so uh. we're all suffering together i guess...?

[revenantghost]

Alright. I really didn't want to make this post, but it's one week before the next Trigun "deluxe edition" drops (Oct. 8th), and Dark Horse hasn't addressed the plethora of printing and text issues despite the very loud response on social media and the reviews on storefronts. If you don't want them to keep making cheap cash grabs and want a quality release, consider canceling your order.

I know all of us who missed the first print run are desperate for this manga--me too! Of course you don't have to listen to me, I'm some just guy on the internet. It's just, to me, the corporate greed of this is upsetting. The basic ask is that they do a quality check and proofread. That's it. They already knew the peeling gold on most copies was an issue, and they had the rights to change the text to add ellipses and sfx/translation notes.

Regardless of any discount, it's $50 MSRP for this, and I just feel like Nightow and his work deserve better. I don't know if we'll ever get that with Dark Horse, but I would hate myself if I didn't try.

[wimbledonstrawberry]

Holger unfollowing Carlos for like 5 minutes and then following him back is the most Holger thing to do

[etoilesombre]

You know what? People shouldn't feel bad about liking things in fandom, or creating things that make them happy. I'm absolutely vagueposting, but this really isn't about one post, it's about a tone I've noticed popping up again lately from multiple people (including people I follow and generally respect!)

-"They absolutely cannot fuck! So crazy people would think about that and be into it, it would break canon! "

-"Mod AU doesn't work, they're Serious Characters they aren't gonna run a coffee shop its OOC! "

-"Actually, fun fluffy fic about them at all during a certain era doesn't work!"

I get it. I agree with a fair part of it. People post all kinds of asinine shit that I hate actually. But you know where I bitch about it? Privately in group chat.

Let people fucking have fun. I get the sense that many people come to this fandom specifically because it's Serious and Challenging and you want to Do Serious Analysis. I think a lot of folks around these parts either are in school and not having a good time about it, or wish that they had gone into better academia that doesn't really exist, and they're getting that need met here. And that's great! For real!

But you know what else is fine? People who either don't have that need, or are getting it met in other parts of their lives, and come here for stress relief and a fun free hobby.

Of course they can't fuck for real! It's not in the text, they simply don't. But the tension is obviously written in, and playing with possibilities can be fun! Also if you can't see how it could happen and still not fix shit, that's a skill issue. Fic authors aren't stupid, we don't fail to understand canon, but not everything has to be everything all the time. Sometimes you want to do all the work and try to match the level of writing in the show, and sometimes you want to have something nice and easy. The show is REALLY well written and what it needs to be, the point of transformative works is playing with what it's NOT. Some people cope with fluff, or good ending everybody lives AUs, and it might be so totally valid to look down on that, but maybe being publicly correct might be less important than being kind?

Actually, the main thing I want to say is that if YOU reading this are a person who wants to write a cute coffeeshop AU, or be horny on main about your boys kissing, it's actually fine!! At least, it historically has been fine. This is a really small fandom now and not that many people are actively creating, please don't be discouraged by this stuff, because the people who criticize on tumblr are actually not the majority. The REASON they criticize is that, if you go to AO3 and sort by kudos, much of it is this super sweet OOC stuff! It looks like that's most of what there is, because a lot of readers in the wild who watch the show and look up fic like it!

Anyway. Let people have fun, it doesn't cost you anything, and not every thought needs to be public. It actually does discourage people.

[gingermintpepper]

The amount of insane nonsense I have in my drafts is directly proportional to how much of a pain in the ass it is to collect the references to explain my interpretations.

Yes I am looking directly at you 'Apollo of Mousike' post I have been writing for almost a month now. Yes I am also looking at you Brittany Broski greek myth podcast episode I have been timestamping and doublechecking to make sure my quotes are correct. Yes I am also looking at you 'Traditional Kitharody and the Mystery of Apollo's (and Orpheus!) Dresses' post. No, I do not know when any of these will be finished, I have a writing speed of soured molasses, thank you so much for asking.

[nerdy-talks]

I know I’m a bit late to the party, and this topic has already been discussed by others… but I wanted to add my own thoughts/opinions regarding Lesson 35.

Personally… I think Mammon is absolutely correct :

Oh, I beg to differ, Satan.

Maybe Lucifer won't be fully controlled by his own powers, but it's extremely possible that he's being heavily influenced by them.

I'll go a step further and say I firmly believe that, although Lucifer may be better equipped at controlling himself/hiding the fact that his sin is starting to take over compared to his brothers, he IS still being greatly affected by his pride.

I previously said that Lucifer genuinely seems so manipulative and borderline controlling now (moreso than ever).

I also said that I strangely like that side of him not just in a kinky way either lol. I just truly mean that, generally speaking.

Why?

Because doesn’t it fit Lucifer perfectly?

I mean, think about it :

A prideful demon such as Lucifer couldn’t possibly be wrong. His viewpoint is the only thing that should make sense. His opinions matter, his advice and decisions should be accepted with the utmost gratitude. Because Lucifer knows best.

He’s right.

Call me crazy, but I feel like all of that plays in so well with the power struggle going on between Lucifer and MC right now.

(In reality, I would be butting heads way more with Lucifer. Simply because I am a pretty stubborn person, and I would challenge his idea that he knows me better than I know myself..... Yes, I still haven't let that go lol)

But I’m most excited for what may happen next…. because I wonder if Mephisto’s arrival will end up fueling Lucifer’s sin.

We all know how much Mephisto dislikes Lucifer.

And it’s bad enough that Mephisto is going to successfully interrupt a private trip between Lucifer and MC… but if Mephisto starts questioning and/or contradicting Lucifer, inserting himself in their conversations, acting like he knows more than Lucifer… perhaps it will lead to Lucifer’s pride consuming him.

After all, who is Mephisto or anything else to question or challenge the Avatar of Pride?~

Plus if MC is directly involved, I’m positive that will only exacerbate matters.

Well… either way, MC will be involved because we have to save our favorite sadistic old man haha xD

Anyway!

I am seriously looking forward to the next Lesson.

Maybe I’m a bit of a sadist myself for saying this, but I kinda really want to see Lucifer struggle to control his sin to the point where he absolutely needs MC’s help.

At the very least, it would be a good reason for Lucifer to potentially give in/change his mind and finally make a pact with us.

Either way, I’m excited for what will come next (:

[non-un-topo]

All it takes is a wee little nightmare to make you too scared to step foot outside for fear of Bad Things happening, like it’s an omen lol

[pics-pizza-peace]

some traditional doodle crap I lazily drew over. not gonna finish this one it's just silly :^P

[anistarrose]

terrible breaking news: person who shares your exact queer headcanon for Blorbo is also baselessly saying said queer identity is "basically canon" and unambiguously the author's intent, therefore making you look bad for sharing that headcanon while they go about giving the creators way too much credit

[quarks-pussy]

[Images description: Twelve pictures of Star Trek actors. The phrase "thank you for being both amazing actors and amazing people" is written across most of the images one word at a time, except for the two images in the middle. The middle images are of William Shatner, reading "not you!" and Robert Beltran, reading "or you for that matter". The actors in the other images are George Takei, René Auberjonois, DeForest Kelley, Gates McFadden, Wil Wheaton, Kate Mulgrew, Patrick Stewart, Siddig El Fadil (aka Alexander Siddig), Nichelle Nichols and Leonard Nimoy. End image description.]

Non exhaustive list of course. Many more such cases, in fact feel free to add

(insp)

[bubblegumr1ck]

coloured version with an actual background coming when i feel like getting around to it

[nikatyler]

missed his lighter hair era a bit

[riddlerosehearts]

okay, i've got some things i wanna say about twst EN's translation of scarabia's story that i was originally typing out as part of a response to an ask, but then i realized i was going off on a bit of a tangent and was like "this could basically be its own post"--so now it's going to be its own post!

i'm a twst EN player, and for the most part, i do really like the localization. i don't speak japanese but i love learning about language and the process of translation and localization, so at one point after finishing books 1-5 i went and reread them all (and 6 as well, once it was fully released on EN) with a fan translation and the localization side by side to compare them. and from what i could tell as someone who isn't a japanese speaker, i honestly thought it seemed like they usually did pretty well? sure, there were a few mistakes like cater claiming to be an only child (this one, i think, has actually been fixed recently), or how in book 2 they removed a small mention of falena making it seem like he's never mentioned at all until leona's flashback and they also removed the numerous times that he said "be prepared" (at least they finally properly translated it in book 6, though!!). but i thought most of these mistakes were somewhat minor and could be forgiven... until book 4 (well, and book 5, mostly in regards to vil and epel's conflict and i'm not talking about them here, so).

see, i actually realized that something was off about the localization when i first played through book 4, because i have a weird memory and have picked up a bunch of random words and phrases from being into japanese media and reading so much about the localization process. and i also play twst with the sound on because i love to hear the voice acting. so sometimes i would hear jamil speak, i'd pick out the words "shujin" and "juusha" for "master" and "servant", and then the subtitles wouldn't include them at all. so i'd guess certain things about the actual intent behind the story based on that. take this message i sent to my friend when i was sharing my blind reactions to the game:

and she ended up telling me that apparently, what i thought he should say essentially IS what he originally said!! according to the fan translation on wiki.gg he said this instead:

i had wondered if maybe i was reading into things and assuming too much, but it turned out i was completely spot on! but most people who play EN would not be able to pick up on this and realize that jamil was born into servitude to kalim and has no escape, because as i later discovered almost every single mention of him being a servant at all was removed, in events and vignettes as well. which is actually really weird to me because they don't remove it entirely, they do in fact bring up the fact that jamil has to test all of kalim's food for poison during book 4 and they also left in a line where he says he "works as kalim's servant". but they only really mention these things once or twice and then they try to sort of play it off as jamil being a paid employee or something most of the time... seriously, during beanfest there's dialogue where jamil says it would be rude to refuse an order from his boss but i've read that that line was originally him saying a servant couldn't disobey his master. and in the scalding sands event he calls himself "a dedicated employee" of kalim's... what, am i supposed to assume he works as a butler by choice or something? yeah, no. also, one of his birthday vignettes, which are fully voiced so i could TELL he said, with a devious smirk on his face, that if he had a parrot the first word he would teach it would be "shujin-sama". "master". what did EN change this into?

the person i was originally writing all of this in response to said that sometimes people's takes on jamil make them wonder if people are reading a completely different story but also that part of that can probably be blamed on the way EN completely changed the context of his situation with these translation choices. and yeah, i fully agree with that assessment: more casual fans or people who just aren't that interested in the scarabia duo could be said to be reading a different story with this whole "boss" and "employee" thing that has jamil make it sound like the worst that could ever happen to him if he got in trouble would be getting a really stern lecture from his parents.

and it makes me sad because i really do love both jamil and kalim so much and i think their dynamic is so tragic and complicated and interesting to think about. i think they're both really complex characters who are trapped in an awful situation. kalim is so kind and loving and would never wanna hurt anyone but he hurts jamil just by existing as part of the fucked up society they live in. kalim thought he and jamil were best friends, he had no idea of the toxicity of their dynamic and the pain jamil was in, and people say jamil should've just talked to him about it earlier... but jamil's first memory as a child is of seeing his parents bow to the asim family. being a servant is practically all he's ever known and he's had it drilled into his head since they were both small children that he can never be himself around kalim, can never just treat him like a normal person because he's a servant and kalim is his master. and even if he did accept kalim's offer to start over as equals and be friends, what would happen when they had to go home to their families? they won't be at school forever.

and i just. augh. i hate what the localization does with them. if you try to water them down to just an employee who's super mad at his obliviously crappy boss, or just two childhood friends who needed to communicate better or something like that, then you take away from the complexity of both characters. you also lose extremely cool writing choices like how jamil is a character who was born into servitude but has the power to make himself the master with his unique magic. i see so many takes about how jamil is just a jerk who betrayed his best friend and how kalim never did anything wrong in his entire life and i hate it but i'm sure the localization's choices are in fact to blame for a lot of this.

so anyway jamil and kalim's actual dynamic is fascinating and lives rent-free in my head, no thanks to how the EN version gutted it.

[hurglewurm]

me: keeps drawing random one-off fanarts from things that aren't currently big at all

also me: why no notes on my arte