#I'm sorry I'm being negative

[dizzying-faust]

Yeah, I know the ML special came out but I'm not interested in watching it.

Not because I think it's going to be bad or anything. I'm just so burnt out on the show.

[lazylittledragon]

ok i swear i'm not going to talk about my breakup forever but the thing that just keeps bothering me:

i know that not getting what you need in a relationship is a COMPLETELY valid reason to end it but also. i feel like having a very vulnerable moment where i opened up about my struggles with intimacy and being relieved that i didn't have to keep doing things i wasn't comfortable with, then being dumped a YEAR later because of my lack of intimacy. is something i should be allowed to be very hurt by???

[sylvancastor]

Why is the show acting like the smallfolk don't have a single brain cell among them? Aemond even brings up in the episode that the reason everyone is starving is because of Rhaenyra's blockade. While yes, I can obviously see the smallfolk becoming upset with the castle for not taking care of them, they should be feeling just as much if not more resentment for Rhaenyra. Her sending across food should have been an insult, especially because the way she distributed it caused a riot and forced people to literally fight each other for scraps. The implication is that she has more than enough food for her to be able to send it to King's Landing in mass quantities like that. And why is that? Bc she CONTROLS the BLOCKADE. SHE is the one starving them. Which I completely understand the people's frustrations growing with the Greens especially with Aemond locking them in and being a harsher ruler than Aegon, but they should also be just as angry towards Rhaenyra. Just because they're not nobility doesn't make them stupid.

[nimblermortal]

Heck yes Tonys halted due to WGA strike

Heck yes Stranger Things halted due to WGA strike

Heck yes no new Last Week Tonight due to WGA strike

IMPACTFUL THINGS AND THINGS I LIKE BEING HALTED DUE TO WGA STRIKE IS GOOD

PAY DEM WRITERS! BOOYAH!

[justfeelme]

I just want kill myself but i’m scared. I guess i’m just coward…

[agirlking]

The Veilguard subreddit has not heard of critical thinking or expecting quality out of something you pay for. It is insane over there. "It's not bad at all! GoTY!" Holy shit.

Btw this post isn’t for anti Solavellan people. Stop blaming us for liking a ship and acting like that made DA4 what it is. BioWare has been on a downward spiral for a long time, the game was in development hell, and many people were fired. The fans mindlessly giving them money right now (who are NOT only Solavellans) are contributing to future issues by giving them a pass, but even they didn’t create these problems.

[nightmarish-fallen-angel]

... this is incredibly hurtful and transphobic.

I shouldn't have to detransition to talk about the issues I face because I am transmasc, and implying such is fucking awful. We are not "obsessed with our status as AFABs" (those of us that are). It's not bioessentialist to state that some of us experience misogyny or bigotry relating to our bodies.

And they are literally just calling us "misguided little girls" and saying the TERFS are right (also wild to acknowledge terf rhetoric that primarily targets transmasc/some nonbinary people then... agree with it???)

[musical-chick-13]

This is the only thing I'm going to say about the election until it's over:

Anyone who did not vote for Harris or who attempted to dissuade people from voting for Harris, you are indirectly responsible for whatever shit Donald Trump does if he gets elected. That blood is primarily on his hands, yes. But it is also on yours. I hope you can live with that because I sure as hell wouldn't be able to.

[forestgreenlesbian]

youre not allowed to b a freak loser loner anymore or at least youre not allowed to mention it lol. even like five years ago you could talk about being awkward and socially weird around meeting new people but now if you do that eveeryones like "ok edgelord you are deliberately cutting yourself off from community why are you so obsessed with being alone. you all need to go outside and make real friends you are too online." which like yes obviously but why is eveyrone acting like the only two options are you either a) have a load of friends or b) you don't want them??? it is so weird. to be seen trying & failing has become so taboo that people assume if you're alone it's because you want to be and youre trying to be cool & aloof or else you see things like small talk or reaching out to people as "emotional labour" and choose not to do them. like i am not fucking choosing not to do them i literally try to do them every day and find it very hard and then you tell me i can't even joke about that struggle or being a lonely friendless loser to maybe for one second make light of the bottomless pit of disconnect + loneliness i experience every day without someone blaming me for not putting myself out there. idk

[kwillow]

REAL Theo romancers know that the best Theo route is balancing between flirting with him and pissing him off/j

That's the spirit!

(But I do feel the need to emphasize again, just in case, that the romance system in Wishbone is an extremely extremely extremely small part of the game. The next demo will contain dozens of cutscenes and quest-lines and only one of them briefly touches on a potential romance about 1/4 of the way through and then there's no more romance content in the remaining hours of the demo. I don't want people to play the game expecting a love sim and be disappointed when it's about farming, doing chores for weird townsfolk and shaping the melodramatic cowboy plot instead. :'D)

[cuddlytogas]

an incomplete list of terrible but extremely popular Our Flag Means Death takes that I would like to never see again please

(and I do mean popular, as in, lots of people seem to think they're canon, to the point where I feel slightly insane and like I was watching a different show to everyone else)

1. Ed's mum was loving and nice and supportive, if hampered by her bad situation

this comes up more in fic than analysis, to be fair, but good god, what show were some of you watching? this isn't to vilify her, because yeah, she's clearly a product of colonialism, white christian supremacy, and domestic abuse, but like. that doesn't make how she raised Ed good. clearly she was trying to keep him safe, but "we don't deserve nice things", and especially "it's not up to us, it's up to god", speaks to me of someone who squashes down any ambition on her son's part, has fully bought into the lies of christian colonialism, and tries to pass them down to her son.

as does happen in colonised communities, particularly among older generations. I know us white people like to think that every indigenous person is a perfect left-wing anti-imperial activist, but that's simply not the case, and Ed's mum is so clearly an example of an older conservative christian indigenous parent who had to believe the lies told by their coloniser in order to survive, but is now passing on that trauma to their children. and I just...

if I read one more fic where Ed's mum is a perfect loving supportive angel who always believed in her kid and always supported and protected him, I'm gonna scream. yes, it's sweet, and it's fun to sometimes veer from canon and give your blorbo nice things, but it's still veering from canon. and yet, I see very few people acknowledge that, or actually talk about the nuances of Ed's mother, and how she definitely tried to protect him, but was far from sweet, doting, and unconditionally supportive.

2. Ed's loving look when Stede is picking food from his beard in 1x07

like most of these things, I enjoyed it as a joke or exaggeration at first, until I realised that people were actually being serious. but every time I watch that scene, I see Ed looking absently-mindedly over Stede's shoulder, because a) that's what you do when someone leans in to pick something off you, and b) surely the point of the scene is that they're so comfortable and easy together that they don't notice the intimacy of what they're doing, but Lucius, an outside observer, thinks it's obvious. right?? I can't be the only one seeing it???

[sigh]

anyway. finally, the really really big one:

3. Ed is a soft uwu babygirl princess femme bottom sub who loves her cat collar and is teaching Stede how to dom him in the "say you're the captain" scene

I mean, there's not much to say except to link to duke's absolutely phenomenal twitter thread about "how the 'babygirlfication' and infantilization of ofmd ed teach is an extension of racist perceptions of indigenous men being inherently violent and thus needing to be emasculated to be considered sympathetic"

but especially That One Fucking Scene, good lord. talk about taking shit out of context. everyone looked at a slowed-down gif of one shot in the trailer and cried "babygirl!! he's such a simp, he just wants to be dommed!!", when actually that scene is about how a) Stede is cringefail and terrible at being a typical harsh, commanding pirate, and b) Ed is lovingly embarrassed by this. he encourages Stede to assert himself (and give Ed something to do during his probation/help him make amends with the crew), but like. normally. he's acting perfectly normal in that scene, and mostly annoyed by the outfit and embarrassed by how badly Stede fails. but just because he's sitting down while Stede is standing, and he happens to take a breath in that one shot (because, you know, people breathe sometimes), everyone's doubled down on their "submissive babygirl" bullshit, and I can't get the fuck away from it.

which - listen, it's fun for me, too! it's fun to explore exaggerated aspects of a character, it's fun to read/write/draw that angle in smut, I get it! but I keep seeing people keep claim it's literally canon, and I cannot stress enough that that is Straight Up False. for the love of god, please just watch the show without your (potentially kinda racist) bias glasses on, and remember to treat the characters with respect instead of projecting onto their every interaction a shallow dom/sub binary just because you find it hot.

Our Flag is a show very specifically about masculinity, and what it means to be a man; how assumptions about that can harm and restrict men; and how men can grow beyond them. it's a nuanced and sympathetic examination of this. the whole point is that Ed is allowed to like nice fabrics and be tired of violent piracy and still be a man. the point is that two men fall in love - equal, honest, sincere love - and are still men, still exactly who they are.

(on that note, insisting that Ed is canonically trans or femme because of these things often ends up just leaning into gendered stereotypes: men are harsh and active and dominant, and women are soft and passive and submissive, and if Ed's not the former, he must be the latter, right? it also tends to hetero-ify the central relationship, casting Stede as "the boy" and Ed as "the girl", needing one to be masc and one femme. not always, and again, I understand and have enjoyed transformative works that take those elements and run with them, and explore what the story could be like if Ed were trans/nb/etc - but it's still a transformative interpretation. it's not canon.)

relatedly: those fucking wedding toppers! it seemed blatantly obvious to me that half the point of those scenes was that Ed is distraught and blaming himself for Stede leaving because he wasn't the ideal partner. it's his entire arc for the first half of season 2! Ed hates himself and believes there's something wrong about him that makes him unlovable. so he keeps and then discards the wedding toppers, painting himself onto one of them, because he's projecting himself onto an image of ideal/successful romantic love that he thinks Stede wants, and in which he doesn't fit. he's trying to mould himself into someone else to make himself lovable, not realising that Stede already loves him for himself.

so it's important to the whole narrative that Ed's yearning for/projection onto the wedding toppers is false, and born from his insecurity. he gets drunk, and play-acts a stereotypical image of romantic happiness into which he doesn't fit, but real love looks nothing like that, because real love isn't found in stifling hegemonic cultural structures, but honest, emotional connections between people allowed to be their whole, vulnerable selves. Stede is not like the groom, and Ed is not like the bride, because they shouldn't have to be. Ed should not (and does not) have to warp himself into a demure bride in order to be worthy of love: he's already lovable and loved exactly as he is! that's the point!! of the scene!!!!!!

like, it's important that the groom figure isn't actually like Stede, either. yes, it's blond and has a nice, peach-coloured suit, but a) Stede was very specifically unhappy in the posh, heterosexual, married state the figures represent, and b) Stede by this point looks nothing like that figurine. it's directly contrasted with the image of him in the rowboat, scruffy and plain and earnestly in love, rather than fancy, cold ceramic.

[EDIT 29/12/24: I ended up writing a whole Twitter essay about the wedding cake toppers that I then gussied up for Tumblr; so if you want a clearer, more substantial, and better supported argument about those, check that out!]

but no, I have to wade through swathes of art and fic and meta about how badly Ed wants to be a sweet little demure kitty princess, how he wants a wedding night and a ring to prove he's Stede's property, and acting as if this is somehow canon, because people on the internet have zero reading comprehension and are scared of brown men.

the whole point of Our Flag is that you don't need to compress yourself into prescribed social roles, and in fact, doing so will only make you miserable; and that racist, patriarchal, colonial institutions should be resisted and dismantled at every opportunity.

so tell me again why the ultimate message is that Ed and Stede should get married under an arch in front of an altar and their lined-up friends, with flowers and rice falling around them, all dressed in white, one in a suit and one in a dress, with rings and a kiss and a honeymoon after, before they move into a detached house with a yard and a fence and re-adopt the kids that Stede abandoned? and this isn't about promises, fidelity, or even monogamy - I'm specifically talking about everyone in this fandom who seems to think that the ultimate goal is the most stereotypical 20th century cisheteropatriarchal christian wedding, but with the name "matelotage" slapped on top, as if that takes away all of the underlying baggage.

just - I know we're all meant to hate men and masculinity and yadda yadda yadda, but actually, to be earnest for a second, men deserve respect too, because all people and all genders do. and two men are allowed to be in a relationship and still both be men - complex men, with their own, layered relationships to their gender - without having to fall into neatly-arranged dom/sub masc/femme roles, or seal the deal with a hegemonically-approved ceremony.

so please, stop reducing an indigenous lead character to a caricature of a femme uwu princess bottom just because he has long hair, wore a robe once, and you're too scared of brown men to imagine him with proper agency. and then please, for the love of god, stop claiming that that interpretation is canon.

[serpentface]

Do you conlang? I was wondering if you had naming languages (or possibly even more developed ones) for pulling the words you use. I tried to search your blog but didn't find anything, wouldn't be surprised if the feature is just busted tho. Your worldbuilding is wonderful and I particularly enjoy the anthropological and linguistic elements.

Ok the thing is I had kind of decided I was not going to do any conlanging because I don't feel like I'm equipped to do a good job of it, like was fully like "I'm just going to do JUST enough that it doesn't fail an immediate sniff test and is more thoughtful than just keysmashing and putting in vowels". And then have kinda been conlanging anyway (though not to a very deep and serious extent. I maybe have like....an above average comprehension of how language construction works via willingness to research, but that's not saying much, also I can never remember the meanings of most linguistic terms like 'frictives' or etc off the top of my head. I'm just kinda raw dogging it with a vague conceptualization of what these things mean)

I do at least have a naming language for Wardi (and more basic rules for other established languages) but the rudimentary forms of it were devised with methods much shakier and less linguistically viable than even the most basic naming language schemes, and I only went back over it LONG after I had already made a bunch of words so there's some inconsistencies with consonant presence and usage. (This can at least be justified because it IS a language that would have a lot of loanwords and would be heavily influenced by other language groups- Burri being by far the most significant, Highland-Finnic and Yuroma-Lowlands also being large contributors)

The 'method' I used was:

-Skip basic construction elements and fully move into devising necessary name words, with at least a Vibe of what consonants are going to be common and how pronunciation works -Identify some roots out of the established words and their meanings. Establish an ongoing glossary of known roots/words. -Construct new words based in root words, or as obvious extensions/variants of established words. -Get really involved in how the literal meanings of some words might not translate properly to english, mostly use this to produce a glossary of in-universe slang. -Realize that I probably should have at least some very basic internal consistency at this point. -Google search tutorials on writing a naming language. -Reverse engineer a naming language out of established words, and ascribe all remaining inconsistencies to being loanwords or just the mysteries of life or whatever.

I do at least have some strongly established pronunciation rules and a sense of broad regional dialect/accents.

-'ai' words are almost always pronounced with a long 'aye' sound.

-There is no 'Z' or 'X' sound, a Wardi speaker pronouncing 'zebra' would go for 'tsee-brah', and would attempt 'xylophone' as 'ssye-lohp-hon'

-'V' sounds are nearly absent and occur only in loanwords, and tend to be pronounced with a 'W' sound. 'Virsum' is a Highland word (pronounced 'veer-soom') denoting ancestry, a Wardi speaker would go 'weer-sum'.

-'Ch' spellings almost always imply a soft 'chuh' sound when appearing after an E, I, or O (pelatoche= pel-ah-toh-chey), but a hard 'kh' sound after an A or U (odomache= oh-doh-mah-khe). When at the start of a word, it's usually a soft 'ch' unless followed by an 'i' sound (chin (dog) is pronounced with a hard K 'khiin', cholem (salt) is pronounced with a soft Ch 'cho-lehm')

-Western Wardin has strong Burri cultural and linguistic influence, and a distinct accent- one of the most pronounced differences is use of the ñ sound in 'nn' words. The western city of Ephennos is pronounced 'ey-fey-nyos' by most residents, the southeastern city of Erubinnos is pronounced 'eh-roo-been-nos' by most residents. Palo's surname 'Apolynnon' is pronounced 'A-puh-lee-nyon' in the Burri and western Wardi dialects (which is the 'proper' pronunciation, given that it's a Kos name), but will generally be spoken as 'Ah-poh-leen-non' in the south and east.

-R's are rolled in Highland-Finnic words. Rolling R's is common in far northern rural Wardi dialects but no others. Most urban Wardi speakers consider rolling R's sort of a hick thing, and often think it sounds stupid or at least uneducated. (Brakul's name should be pronounced with a brief rolled 'r', short 'ah' and long 'uul', but is generally being pronounced by his south-southeastern compatriots with a long unrolled 'Brah' sound).

Anyway not really a sturdy construction that will hold up to the scrutiny of someone well equipped for linguistics but not pure bullshit either.

[wernerherzogs]

don't care if i get cancelled for this but i genuinely don't think we're getting an offscreen breakup Because Of Woke (i'm 100% serious) so if thomas is there by 08x02 i'm fine with it! let's get this show (breakup) on the ROADDDDD

[0brighta]

✦

[blindmagdalena]

I'd say HL ending up depowered and trapped in another box would work IF they planned for him to appear in any of their endless spin off series and escape. But then I don't know if we can trust how any of them are gonna pan out. 😭 I know they've said they're worried about becoming the thing they're satirising and. Yeah. They should be.

antony has been pretty vocal about the fact that he's not ready to be done with homelander, but he's also talked about wanting to end on a good note and not milk (haha) the character/franchise into being something he's not proud of anymore.

i don't really know what his definition of that would be, though. he clearly LOVES playing homelander. he did the gen v cameo for free because it just wasn't in the budget.

if antony starr wants to continue playing homelander, i hope he gets to do that. especially if it's a post-kripke era where we completely drop the shoehorned trump allegories. i say this selfishly as someone who continues to enjoy his performances, regardless of how bad the writing is.

the reception to gen v was extremely mixed. i anecdotally noticed it was more popular with folks who actually didn't watch the boys. i'm curious what the mexico spin-off is going to be like. the creatives involved (diego luna and gael garcía bernal) give me hope it'll be good, though.

i don't think anything is really gonna capture the spark of the original, though. especially that first season. the spin-offs kind of just confirm that they are, in fact, the new marvel. regardless of whether they wanna be perceived that way or not lol satirizing and subversion can only go so far before you're just doing the thing you're making fun of, and imo we've already reached that point.

[helpami-flaffy]

Man, i was so hyped for Get in the water and now that it's here and i don't like it because of the story I'm really bummed out.

I always thought:

" Ooooh an impossible challenge, an impossible choice! If Ody doesn't accept death his wife, child and Kingdom will die! How will he get out of this one I wonder? What will it cost him?"

And the answer is just...beating the shit out of Poseidon?

That's so anticlimactic!

It also doesn't solve the fucking problem!!

So now you've beaten the shit out of Poseidon (okay?I guess??)

What's stopping him from going through with his threats and pulling an Atlantis on Ithaca?

Where you even thinking about that Odysseus?

Hello?

And if Poseidon doesn't... like, why not?

He hasn't learned shit from this experience! And him and Ody have not made peace of any kind!

If he wanted he would totally drown all of them! He's an immortal threat!

And if it's revealed that he actually can't drown a fucking island and that's how the conflict resolves, what kind of wet paperbag sort of god is this??