#Sometimes I try to put out content that is meaningful and thoughtful

[8bit-cookie-thief]

The Discord is going crazy trying to figure out who may be acquiring RWBY. If on the unlikely chance that it is Disney, would that mean Salem would become a Disney Princess?

I mean, I guess she is probably more of an evil queen. But I still want to see her lined up alongside the Disney princesses. Sorry, I work two jobs and my sense of humor gets weird when I am sleep-deprived.

Salem PNG Credit: rxsilience (DeviantArt)

[andypantsx3]

And that's where both readers and authors should be looking: towards mending those community ties, however we can. Maybe that means giving up useless number-chasing if communities can't survive past a certain scale. We could choose to focus on the slow work of developing relationships and trust, creating smaller but more sustainable groups of people who can support one another. Even now, within the hostile infrastructure of the modern internet, I think these things are still just barely possible.

Alright, so: I want to explain a little more about this connection between the Twilight fandom, Fifty Shades of Grey, and seemingly, the self-publishing industry as a whole. It's a lot, so I'm going to have to chip away at it a bit at a time, and I think the best place to start is by describing the scene in late 2000s Twilight fandom.

In 2009, Twilight was one of the biggest fandoms in the world, although it was nearly invisible to outsiders because it

Was about a straight couple, while most other fandoms were predominantly gay, and

Was conducted almost entirely on fanfiction.net among a group of people who had little other background in fandom. (x)

That meant for many Twilight fans, Twilight was fandom. It was all they knew, and many had no path out. That also made it a corked champagne bottle with the pressure building.

Because of these community dynamics and the declining quality of the Twilight books themselves, Twilight fanfiction evolved to be mostly AUs so alternate they were more-or-less original romance novels that used Bella and Edward as broad character templates. (x)

Seriously, Twilight fandom got really crazy big for a few years there. It was not totally uncommon to get multi-million clicks on a semi-popular story. It's weird looking back on it and calling it "Twilight fandom" because it was really more like "Romance Novel fandom". For real, for a period there, calling a Twilight fanfic author a 'Twilight fan' would be the ultimate insult. But they never stopped writing about Edward and Bella! It's so weird. (x)

If you were in 2000s era fandom, you're probably aware of the phenomenon of Big Name Fans and the various social-climbing dynamics that happened around them. The Twilight fandom took this social power game another level:

This wasn't even just an author thing. There were Big Name Authors (BNAs) but there were also Big Name Readers. These were basically like... full-time rabid fans of a BNA. They devoted so much of their time to helping out the BNAs, reviewing their chapters, making them fanart, promoting their fics, kissing their asses with cringe-worthy intensity, you name it. Which is why you saw what looked like BNAs having 'employees', such as Moi, tby789's Director of Marketing. (x)

It became apparent that these power games weren't just for fandom clout. The fandom was proving that that social power could be translated into real-world dollars. You see, the Twilight fandom used to organize charity auctions where big name authors would auction off custom fanfiction, and the money generated was substantial:

Mostly authors would auction off stories. So if you donated in my name, I'd write you 10,000 words of porn in my Tattward universe, or something new, etc. That's how it worked. The 2009 auction raised $80,000. The 2010 auction raised $140,000. The 2011 auction raised $20,00. [NOTE: this is likely a typo] (x)

A lot of these dynamics were not unique to the Twilight fandom, but it was the combination that created a perfect storm of opportunism. This would end up changing not just fandom dynamics but the publishing industry as a whole.

[puckpocketed]

on the topic of mutuals actually ! (+ my thoughts on blocking) long and winding non essay under the cut.

mutualism and friendship

it's come up semi-regularly in conversation in the past month-ish and i've been marinating on it so I guess I should write my thoughts down here.

i'm sure this isn't a groundbreaking brainwave no one has ever had before but uh . i think this is probably a product of having grown up with very little social media but i just dont particularly care for the concept of mutuals. i dont think about it. i think of people on here as friends first and mutuals second. "mutuals" is barely meaningful to me as a label other than shorthand for friends, and even then it is rendered useless by the fact that I think of some non-mutuals as friends.

idc if you follow my blog back, if we're regularly interacting and having fun then we are friends regardless of mutual status. the focus on "being mutuals" is, to me, a little impractical (and sidebar,, honestly its kinda crazy how divorced it is from the real human phenomenon of connection and friendship. hello!!!!! why we letting social media button supplant friendship and connection. not to be Old Man Yells at Clouds but what are we doing raising this generation to think about being mutuals and commenting/liking posts as some friendship obligation, on the same level as smiling at them or laughing with them. hello. what are we doing giving them anxiety about whether or not enough people liked their posts. what are we doing???? does someone wanna talk about this with me because it eats me up lmao)

I'd rather people follow me because they, idk, enjoy the little character bits i do + my unhinged liveblogging + occasional gifs and baking - rather than out of some obligation because we are friendly. don't put yourself through the ordeal of being flooded by sharks magma whenever they play a game just because we're friends LMAO i wouldn't do that for anyone if the situation were reversed !!

^on this topic, if I don't follow you back it doesn't mean I don't like you, I might simply not vibe with your blog. the decision to follow is not predicated on whether or not we have good rapport. it's literally just choosing to see your blog on my feeds. speaking as someone who has done a fair bit of leg work to curate my internet experience, following/not following is part of that. and I think of other people's choices this way as well. i think not vibing with my blog is fine! it is incredibly scattered and the content is NOT for everyone and that's okay.

on blocking

blocking simply aint that big to me. I don't take it seriously or personally if i somehow realise I've been blocked, and blocking others isn't personal for me either. to me it is, again, simply an act of dashboard curation. I think i'd be way more anxious if i thought about blocking in terms of liking/hating.

I block people for all sorts of reasons, silly or serious. Sometimes i'm just annoyed that day, sometimes they say stuff that is deeply offensive to me. There's a whole spectrum of feelings about the blogs subject to my blocking habits that fall between the two extremes. at the core of it, it's about not wanting to see them in my feeds. simple as that.

(by the by, I block from my main blog and not my side blog, so people can still see things from puckpocketed if they want, and I don't have to see them! WIN-WIN!)

blog =/= blogger. I try to keep this distinction clear in my head. when a person makes a post on their blog and I have a problem with it, whether it annoys me mildly (stupid rude shit on my posts) or genuinely offends me to my core (racism or something), blocking them is not about saying "fuck you". it is not the "I have moral highground" button. not to me.

everything falls under this umbrella: racism, misogyny, completely out of pocket comments on my posts, being mildly annoying. Blocking isn't personal because I don't actually know anyone well enough to hate them, and the act of curating my feeds ain't praxis. blogging isn't praxis. I have bigger fish to fry so to speak. I have a real life and people to care for and communities to build. I have poetry to read and dogs to say hello to. i got a whole life to live!

the content of someone's blog is a TINY portion of who they are when weighed against the rest of their existence. it is but a sliver of their life and their personhood. I see it like this: wouldn't like it very much if someone made sweeping conclusions about my personhood based on my blog posts, and so I try not to do that either. key word is try. I don't always succeed and I think that's okay. we are all doing what we can on this bitch of an earth <3 what is most important is I'm trying to give people the grace I'd want for myself. like . shit. isn't that what its all about?? (mini confessional: I was a mean and angry person for a long time. in some ways i still feel like i am. but learning kindness by studying it instead of having it baked into my brain chemistry or however the fuck other people get it has taught me that we have to try)

anyway if u are still reading this hiii!!! I'd say sorry i just wanted to put my thoughts somewhere but . well. its MY blog and i get to paste weird magazine cutouts and glitter to my walls if i wanna !!! thank u for ur time

[alloveydovey]

Mid month dramaaaas, 2024 is giving quality content 🙌🏽

Lovely Runner, 2024 (kdrama) 8.5

FL is a fangirl who goes back in time to save her idol who ended his own life. (very shortly put lol)

I have thoughts!!! It's gonna be long because my expectations with this one were really high. Don't torch me please lol. If I have to be 100%, this drama wasn't what I expected at all. That being said, loser boy Byeon Woo Seok and cutie patootie Kim Hye Yoon were the real deal here. I came for the premise (okay, and because Byeon Wook Seok is fiiiiine) and stayed because of them.

Here's my deal with Lovely Runner. I didn’t read the webtoon or anything, so in my mind, I assumed they would explore what took Sun Jae to make such a decision in the first episode before Sol went back in time to try and fix everything. The drama starts pretty heavy with both main characters attempting in some way to take their own lives. So to go from that to absurd comedy was a bit extreme for me at first. I thought we would do a little mental health introspection here, a bit of commentary about being an idol and all. Then because the first episodes also focused a lot on Sun Jae's dream to be a professional swimmer and the doomed reality that it would not happen, I thought they would center around that as well. I guess I was picturing some sort of mix between 2521 and Twinkling Watermelon. Plus the whole aspect of Im Sol being disabled. But they didn’t really give any more thoughts to these aspects of the characters.

Moving on from my own expectations and a little disappointment that the drama headed in a different direction, I overall enjoyed watching most of it. To be honest, this is the type of drama you just have to go with it, no heavy thoughts included. It gives major classic rom-com kdrama vibes. The cast absolutely takes the cake, the adorable moments are overflowing, comedy hits and the OST is a 10/10.

I don’t mind time travel plot holes but there are still some thing that bugged me, though. One: The whole taxi guy story. I will admit I was extremely disappointed the moment he was introduced. It’s probably when I started lowering my rating. Why do writers (or webtoon authors) feel the need to just randomly pull out these guys? And this drama being so cute and funny... It didn’t need that at all. Specially, since he seemed really poorly written. Two: I might not get over the fact that these two characters both start in really dark places but it’s never really acknowledged in any meaningful way and instead the drama just does a 180° on that. If these subjects hadn’t been introduced then it would have been fine. But in comparison with what happens next, the rest of the drama felt a little superficial to me. Three: it ended up becoming really repetitive. Sol once again ignoring Sun Jae “for his own good”, Sun Jae going after Sol because he doesn’t really care, Sol ending up crying. All this mixed between cute and silly scenes.

Happy ending did make me the happiest, though 🥹

Will Love in Spring, 2024 (cdrama) 9

When they were kids and FL became disabled due to a car accident, ML’s words made her change her whole perspective. He goes on to become the town's mortician, and she becomes a successful saleswoman in the city. And you know the rest, sparks fly when they meet again.

Oof. Cdramas aren’t supposed to be this good, bro. Like… everything about it is just a chef kiss. Characters and their complexities, OST, cinematography, chemistry!! (It's crazy, for real) It presents the same problem as Meet Yourself, even with Li Xian back as the ML. But whereas Meet Yourself is a little lighter and deals with this problem in a respectful and thoughtful way, ML and FL here are filled with angst and tension. The drama itself is a lot heavier, which is not bad, but it's not always nice, and sometimes very frustrating. I saw comments saying that they found the characters to be rather toxic, and that is such a childish way of seeing their relationship. Not everything is red and green flags. This is not that type of drama. People throw the word toxic around everything nowadays. I’d say they were realistic. Both FL and ML make mistakes (because they both have issues) and the drama makes sure the audience knows they were wrong. Because, you know, humans fuck up and stuff. I liked that. But because I can't help but compare it to Meet Yourself, I gotta admit that even though I liked the pace, the OST, and the cinematography more here. MY remains superior, and therefore, I don't feel like I can give it a proper 10. I will say, though, last two episodes gave a bit ot a bittersweet ending even though it's supposed to be a happy one, and I didn't like that much.

Queen of Tears, 2024 (kdrama) 8.5/9

A lawyer from the countryside marries the top heiress of a leading conglomerate. They marry very much in love, but find themselves almost not communicating or holding much feelings for one another three years later.

I completely get why this got everyone hooked. Overall it’s a great story, and very well produced, but at the same time I gotta admit I was hoping for something a little more… exciting. Specially because it was written by the same screenwriter that did Crash Landing on You and The Legend of the Blue Sea and those two were a 10 for me. It might also be personal taste. Some people are into chaebol family dramas that focus on business with their villains cartoonishly evil. Me, personally, I get a bit bored and this is sort of what happened. Even though Kim Ji Won and Kim Soo Hyun got me hooked with their marriage story and the romance of it all, the rest was a bit 💤. Although both families living together was really cute and I loved those scenes. I’d say that’s where the magic of this drama was. The last episodes after her memory gets erased are a bit messy, but the ending still made me sob dramatically lol.

A Good Day to be a Dog, 2023 (kdrama) 7.5/8 (girl what are you doing still here?)

Because of a family curse if FL kisses someone she turns into a dog at midnight… which she does after accidentally kissing a fellow teacher. She can only break the curse if he kisses her again in dog form. The only problem is he’s scared of dogs and doesn’t seem to like her that much.

This is the first time I put on hold a drama and actually go back to finish it lol. I’m proud. This starts off very very cute. Cha Eun Woo but specially Park Gyu Young are really funny and both have great chemistry. The problem here for me is, once again, the past life storyline. I know this is based off a webtoon, but I swear that whole thing is what ruined it for me. I wasn’t into it at all and so the last 4/5 episodes I spent them skipping scenes. Howeveeer, if someone were to ask me if they should watch, I’d say yes. Because romance wins lol.

[ryuichirou]

Replies

More replies~

Anonymous asked:

I know that we put a lot of emphasis on ignoring antis but sometimes there are days where I read one of their comments and get so disheartened and tired. I do try to report and block as many as I can but it's just really difficult to pull through when a majority of them are minors who are calling for us to drop dead or be assaulted or kill ourselves.

Anyway, I'm grateful for you and your art! It really brightens my day, especially when I'm going through it.

It could be tough sometimes, Anon, I get it. You’ve said it well – if anything, it’s tiring. Even if you know for a fact that it’s just some kid trying to hurt you because of their own issues, you (and none of us) shouldn’t be forced to tolerate it just because they didn’t figure their shit out yet. And they sound so deranged sometimes that it becomes obvious that they don’t really understand what they’re saying/implying and they don’t care.

Thank you so much for your support! I am happy it makes you feel better. We’ll do our best to keep posting as long as we’re having fun, and I hope you’ll keep having fun too <3

And don’t forget that whatever they do or say, it’s not really about you – it’s about them trying to earn favor with their lame-ass friends who do the same type of shit, because creating meaningful earnest connections is much more difficult than gathering an angry mob, as well as creating actual content that can make other people happy and helps you to express your love for the media.

Anonymous asked:

What do you think is the reason for the octatrio visiting the Scalding Sands, is it just a business trip? Or maybe Azul is organizing his wedding, and wants to share his happiness with his old friends by inviting them in person! I'm sure that this isn't also one last ditch effort to get Jamil to reconsider their "relationship" (Oh, but he looks so misty-eyed after hearing the news, is that maybe a tear they see?... Ah, wait... He's just yawning...)

Ohhh, of course Jamil wouldn’t be misty eyed over this loss, Idia basically took the bullet for him… Honestly, good riddance, these two deserve each other 😭 The line between the Mafia AU and the Marriage AU is a bit blurred, but I didn’t think it was the case with this particular sketch; THAT BEING SAID, Azul is absolutely going to invite Jamil (alright, Kalim too) in person. He just HAS to see Jamil’s face when he hears that Azul is getting married! (Jamil’s face: completely unimpressed…)

When I was sketching it, I was thinking that it was a business trip; whether he is a mafia man or just an enterpreneur, Azul always has a lot of business in the Scalding Sands. And if they’re there anyway, why not pay a visit to their dear former classmates? <3 Jade and Floyd are always excited for that lol Poor Jamil.

Anonymous asked:

i love your riddle smut (especially the stuff with trey it’s so good <3) but honestly i find any nsfw of riddle a bit funny bc i can imagine him thinking something as innocent as a kiss is how babies are made. take responsibility trey!

You heard them, Trey! Teach Riddle about the birds and bees! But in general I’m sure Trey feels very responsible and probably even guilty, Anon….

Thank you <3 I love drawing Riddle in smutty situation, he is my ultimate sheltered homeschooled kid at his first party lol I really like the contrast of his innocent easily embarrassed self and his deeply hidden desires.

Anonymous asked:

My sister thought Idia was Aoba, at first…

Gotta love them blue-haired twinks with funky boots and huge-ass jackets and headphones and 10 boyfriends one of which is an AI dog…

Anonymous asked:

I think 'Kalim Overblots' plots should take advantage of their surroundings more often. If Kalim is overblotting in Scarabia, there's no reason why the dorm can't turn into Octavinelle 2.0 thanks to Oasis Maker. Especially if the Octa Trio is involved.

Yeah, using the environment is a great way to make a scene way more engaging. I wonder if Kalim could drown his dorm completely by the time he’s all out of magic and filled with blot; it would be interesting to see underwater Scarabia… lots of space for the fishies to swim in…

Anonymous asked:

If Jamil has a best man/woman in his wedding, it would be Najma because while she is annoying to him at least it is better than any of his school mates. Floyd and Ace are too troublesome to take care of. Ruggie will only just busy with the food than being best man. Kalim, if he isn't who he wed, would feel much more troublesome to take care of and wouldn't care if Kalim wanted to be his best man.

I'm sure if Kalim wasn't wed to Jamil, he will be make him his best man. If not, I'm sure Silver, Cater, or Lilia will. Except Silver, I can picture Lilia and Cater fighting for position. Then again, there will be many weddings for Kalim and they took turns.

I can’t even add anything to that, Anon; I haven’t thought about this scenario at all, but everything that you’re saying makes sense. Honestly, this is just another reason for Jamil to never bother with getting married – the thole thing is going to be so fucking annoying lol but I’m all for Najma being a best woman.

I can also picture Kalim saying stuff like “ah don’t worry, I’ll make you my best man next time!”

Anonymous asked:

I have returned from the trenches of forgetting my password and then finding out I had no access to that email anymore. So now I come back bringing some foods for thought in what can be called a part 4 of my shenanigans.

Ruggie is the campus whore, don't know where the idea came from but I feel like he'd sell his body for some quick cash.

Rook x Idia has been inching its way into my brain, I feel like Rook would find him to be a straight up sexual conquest. Idia would be an unsuspecting deer in his eyes and I don't think Rook has much impulse control lmao

Random story time rabbit hole : Your ranking for their levels of whore inspired to give Divus a pretty bastard son because I feel like Divus wouldn't discriminate on gender in his teen age years. Which made me realize Divus is not dad material, and led me to this conclusion after a friend of mine mentioned it; he would probably sleep with his son on purpose or by mistake. If he's the one to raise the kid on the other hand, its more emotional incest. On that note, my pretty boy deserves justice against his daddy (not, he is used to it by now and probably can't function without it lol)

~ The one and only, 🐩 anon

Welcome back, 🐩 anon! I’m glad to see you again :)

Ruggie would definitely sell his body; I think the only reason he would stop is if he gets himself a deal with Leona and has to protect his exclusive rights and all lol Other than that, Ruggie doesn’t see this whole thing as anything other another business.

100% about the Rook/Idia thing, we love thinking about these two, god it’s such a pity I never finished our sketch with these two LOL but it’s exactly like you described: Idia is such a rare unsuspecting deer that’s so skittish and fearful and difficult to catch. At the same time, whenever they interact, if Rook manages to keep Idia around long enough for his initial scare to pass, he seems to know just the right stuff to say to Idia to keep him invested in a conversation. He’s working on it, he’s working on this deer~

Oh god, the Divus-the-dad scenario was the one I wasn’t expecting lol I’m not even sure which one is more cursed (=better); but I feel like Divus sleeping with his bastard son on accident is more plausable, at least at this point in his life. When he gets older, he might get into the emotional incest thing….

Divus and his emotional incest era…

[raviolirash]

I think people overindulged in analyzing the characters to the point of them being their projections and not the characters anymore. Like, yes, they are fantastic little guys, but it's usually not that deep. Stories like theirs are pretty common among D&D players. Maybe it's because I'm new to TheFandom™ world, but I've seen takes sooooo stretched that I wonder if we did play the same game.

Yes, there are some meaningful messages about grooming, hubris, trauma, manipulation and corrupting power, and that's great, but it's not a philosophy treatise.

It's a D&D game, a BG3 one: there will be Bhaal, bad guys (squiddy, in this case) and a party of adventures that will do funny things. And that's frankly ok. I'm more surprised on how Larian gave us a great freedom on choices, not just with the dialogues, but also with ambient interaction. Or the great effort that they've put in acting every single line and writing the description of every single item.

I'm happy that people felt seen and happy playing the game, but sometimes an interaction is just an interaction, no need to try to find a hidden message or a great meaning behind it.

I agree and disagree and here is a rant.

Tldr. It's healthy to write analysis and it's good to make your brain think and David Cage should have his fingers cut off. Also the "it's not that deep" crowd is incredibly annoying.

I don't think it's particularly good to have a "consume product, get excited for next product" mentality when it comes to media and just drift through life. I'm not saying that every piece of media deserves a deep analytical philosophical treatment as some of it is just horseshit, but it can be a very fun exercise to just think about things. Even thinking about why something sucks in detail is an exercise in clearly laying out your argument, which is a valuable skill to have. It's also okay to say "Hey. This thing is objectively terrible, but I nonetheless love it without any elaboration." That's me with Cube Zero. It is an awful movie, I love it so much! I think writing unironic deep thoughts about how the plot of the movie is actually deep and it is commentary on the prison system and capitalism is incredibly stupid.

However.

I think when we resort to mindlessly consuming content without giving much thought to it with a "it ain't that deep" mindset is when good writers get burnt out and we allow hack frauds such as David Cage to fester. And that is criminal to me. Because fuck that guy. We get a video game where a robot is forced to sit in the back of the bus in an incredibly poor analogy for racism, and people enable him and say that it's good writing and he announces a new game and we are in hell! Who keeps giving him money?

That being said. There are many times when writing actually means something and it's frustrating when people dismiss it as "lol silly dnd game". Some people do over-analyze it, yes. Some people say something incredibly insane like that woman with a 7 minute video about how Wyll is a cop with NPD. What the fuck was that. But here is the thing with writing: Unless you're Steven Moffat, words and actions in a story are almost always written to actually mean something. It's written to be important and it's healthy to think about it. In TV shows, yes: sometimes the curtains are just blue because the person decorating the film set just felt like blue curtains would look neat. It is an entirely different thing when explicitly pointed out in written form or said in dialogue.

I often think of that one interview with Harlan Ellison, where he discusses Ellen in IHNMAIMS. A reader of the book didn't know that Ellen was black. Harlan being Harlan, asked them what the fuck the reader was talking about as he literally wrote the line "…her ebony skin in the snow" in the goddamn book. The reader didn't forget that line! In fact, they thought that it was some unimportant metaphor and it wasn't that deep. So he pushed extra hard for Ellen to be black in the game adaptation because people were just that fucking stupid.

[freezerbnuuy]

Act 2:2 - Something to Tell You (Page 5)

LORE | CHARACTERS | ABOUT / CHAPTERS / WARNINGS

← PREVIOUS | BEGINNING | NEXT →

CONTENT WARNING: a general warning for alcohol consumption in case it might be a trigger for some, but it's in good fun.

Oskar

'Awkward' doesn't begin to describe this past week and a half. These two lovebirds haven't uttered a word to each other since the admission. Áine had explained to me what she'd done after holding her silence for so long. All she'd done is accidentally kill her sorry excuse for a father, who performed a Rite to rid himself of magic before handing in her mother to the witchfinders. I told her the remorse would wear off after a while- perhaps not the best advice, but the most honest. I still seethe just thinking about it. Just the other day, I was telling Violeta about how today's witches would never dream of handing in a fellow witch, and...

Reynold and I relax in front of the fireplace, a nice break from the worsening winter snow. His face is red, and I'm not sure if it's the tearful kind or the irate kind. I'd made him some tea to warm and settle him, whilst I mellow out with another glass of warmed bloodfruit wine. Not terribly long until Winterfest, now that I think about it...Should have spiced it.

"Oskar? Are you day-drinking?"

"Day-drinking, night-drinking...I haven't seen the Sun or the Moon in over one hundred years. Makes little difference to me," I reply, with a cackle. I don't realise how evil it sounds until I'm in someone else's company, and they look at me like I'm about to sink my teeth into their neck. 

"So, I suppose you and Áine still aren't on speaking terms."

He makes a concerned noise in his throat, just like his father used to whenever he was put in an awkward position. Spend your entire life convinced your version of morality is ultimate, and you forget you are as capable of making mistakes as anyone else is- not to mention breaking all the rules you set out so firmly for others.

If there's one thing vampiric patience is rewarded by, it's aging your own wine. It's splendid. That sanguine metallic taste, with notes of...pomegranate, maybe?

"This might sound a little strange coming from someone who hasn't seen their own reflection in years, Reynold, but you ought to try looking in your own sometime."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, you've taken it the wrong way, haven't you?" I reply. "No, I mean, on the inside."

I notice him staring up at the decorations above the mantelpiece, his eyes flicking between that and the fireplace. "No, I think you're right, Oskar. I always tell people to do something meaningful instead of wallowing in guilt and, well...I don't feel much else other than guilt right now. First Clem, and now Áine..."

"I wouldn't worry about it so much. It isn't like she'll never speak to you again. She just needs time to process things- as you do. As we all do." I suppose it was easy for me to say- I have plenty of time.

"You aren't a terrible person, Reynold. Being a witch, or a vampire, or a werewolf…it's all about hiding a part of yourself to protect yourself, as well as others sometimes. It becomes second nature to you, and then you do that with everyone, even people you trust.

Spend your entire life putting up a shield, and you forget to take it down when all is safe. Deep down, I know she understands that. The thing is, this doesn't only change her relationship with you, but with her own child. Of course, she still loves you both- but she'll need to find ways of dealing with things when they get out of control, as will you- as I'm sure you have been for a long time."

"I have been."

"Of course you have, Reynold. Many of your kind gave in to their dark thoughts, and from what I hear, some were never seen as human again. You're a much better person than most, werewolf or not. Many wouldn't think to work on themselves at all. It just so happens that your blood makes it a little more difficult."

[fatherentropy]

I know a lot of you aren't going to read this or care but I needed to get my thoughts about Veilguard out of my head so I can go back to just indulging with it's content without caring anymore so: Veilguard review.

Gonna keep it non-spoilery until it's not then I'll put a big ol warning there for you to swerve outta there if needed.

(warning for 4000+ words) TL;DR:

I think this may become my favorite Dragon Age game to play and I love these characters so much

This is by far one of the worst Bioware games I've ever played

Firstly and to be completely transparent, at the time of writing this I have STILL not been able to get past Lothering in Origins (my computer got worse while i was running a playthrough.). DAII was my first Dragon Age game and is my favorite of the series. Inquisition is pretty good, much better imo after some DLCs were added and it feels more like the full on epic it deserved to be I think. At the end of the day, I am a Mass Effect fan first and a Dragon Age fan sometimes. I'm also not terribly versed in every single development problem Veilguard has gone through except for the unfortunate canning of important developers and some notes from articles I spied.

So, you know, keep that in mind.

I!! wanted to start this by talking about the things I loved in the game. Because I do in fact love this game. It's just that the love gets tangled up in the things that are disappointing because I can see the big picture and see how much better it could have been and it gets wrapped up in one big ball of-not to be overly dramatic-kind of hurt? Thus me needing to talk about it so I can get back to just loving the thing and hopefully not being haunted by my regrets like it's Christmas Eve and I'm a wealthy businessman with questionable practices.

The story is pretty great and fun if you don't think about it too much but Dragon Age fans think about these sort of things a lot and if you put a little scrutiny on some of these things it's gets kinda ???? Funky.

It feels like a lot of the heavy lifting for why anybody is willing to work with you is done by Varric in whatever he was doing the past 10 years which you aren't really told. Except in half a dozen comics and books I frankly don't have the money for and should be bonus material instead of things-you-need-in-order-to-know-what's-up. Kind of spiel.

I also think a major pain point is the neigh absolute lack of contention in most areas of the game outside the bad-vs-good guy shit (and Solas) and the lack of any meaningful choice really did shoot the game in the foot. Now I do understand that choice in particular was a thing that was eventually going to get hit. There were just too many big world wide decisions you've made in the past couple of games and that shit gets kind of hard to keep track of. However, there were choices made in Veilguard that is made for the longevity of the series while also salting the earth and it severely undercut the narrative.

I think one of the things people love and adore about the series is the choices you make. Many of these aren't even about having a hold over the narrative but having a place in it. It's been a minute since I've played it, but I think even DAII has several choices that literally have no baring on anything but netting gains or loses on companions and just choose what kind of menace you're going to be. It's fun! I don't need them to be big. Maybe just if I refuse the reward or push for bigger rewards or yadda yadda yadda. It's the little things! You cannot get rid of these things entirely but boy howdy did they ever try.

I also have gripes about the choices they make you make but I can't bitch about that without spoilers so... LATER.

I wanted to talk about the lack of contention first but realistically it combos in with the choice thing so here we are talking about it after but there is just no political or social nuance in this game at all except for maybe exactly only Solas. After playing the first three games (or playing the last two and reading about Origins like me) you kinda get the impression that Northern Thedas is actually mostly fine except a little inequality and the Venatori and maaaybe the Antaam but mostly everyone's friendly and the South is just REALLY fucking violent about everything for no reason.

With the reputation grind and the narrative's insistence that you hAVE to strengthen your allies and friends this would have been kind of a great time to have quests about winning them more strength by actually kind of doing important shit? Like maybe having to make decisions about whether or not to convince factions to accept help from shady persons or forgo it knowing you'll be weaker but maintaining the faction's ethos. Maybe some negotiations between greater nevarran Mortalitasi politics and why they should let the Mourn Watch concern themselves with shit outside the Necropolis? In fighting between in-faction groups that feel one way or another about choices you've made. It all ends with them helping you in the end, just maybe not as strong or stronger but what we get is kind of some bare bones sidequests that don't always feel connected to the faction you're helping or... important?

Which I don't think I'd have a problem with if there were more of them that gave greater scope to the world but that's also not really a thing. Tbf, there's no reason to have them. You're only grinding to 50 and faction reputation and you probably wouldn't want to do all the sidquests in Inquisition to get there. I just want to have ones that matter, give more shape to the world and aren't hunt-monsters-that-aren't-even-in-this-faction's-jurisdiction. (game that simultaneously made me fall in love with Nevarra while giving me fuck all about it outside Emmrich's quests)

I think it should be noted that this is the first time we are seeing some of these people as not enemies or illusive factions from abroad.

I need you to know this is my third draft of this document and I keep having to leave and come back because I just have a lot of thoughts. So to start off with, I have to reiterate that I am a Mass Effect fan first and a Dragon Age fan sometimes. I can see Mass Effect's influence all over the game and as a Mass Effect fan I have to say: I am... upset. Which is a thing I have been planning to write about since the beginning of trying to write this document but today's dev AMA confirmed that this was supposed to be a "Love letter to Mass Effect 2" and I am no longer upset! I am LIVID.

To recap for those of you who don't care about Mass Effect but are reading this for some reason: Mass Effect 2 has one of the worst main stories in the entire series. Nothing you do actually matters in the long run because ME3 undoes all your work and everything set up for you at the beginning of ME2 you destroy yourself by the end.

Most people regard it as one of the better if not the best game in the series.

This is because the characters are fucking phenomenal and make up 90% of the game so you know this journey is about THEM who gives a shit if your mission is whatever, it's about the satisfaction of winning their loyalty, making sure they're a team so you can focus on being Big Goddamn Heroes at the end (or fucking it up and watching a few or all of them die).

This is the game that made me paranoid about doing all sidequests as soon as I got them because *I* managed to get all my companions to live BUT at the cost of my ship crew dying which I did not know was a thing that could happen and your medic's traumatized lines "I watched them die. they were processed ─ rendered down into some kind of raw genetic paste ─ and pumped through these tubes." haunts me forever. (partly because I listen to the death whispers from ME3 to feel something but nevertheless, the delivery? raw)

This may sound familiar to you if you've played Veilguard because they... tried but there's just a fundamental misunderstanding of how ME2 impacted it's players and how players impacted the world in ME2 that made it feel the way you were supposed to despite the plot being silly.

This brings me back to the lack of conflict which especially fucks over your companions and your relation to them. Yes there's like one kind of weird conflict between Davrin and Lucanis while they're going through shit and yeah Taash and Emmrich have a situation briefly but there's nowhere near the heat there has been in past games. One of your crew in DA2 will straight up tell another one that he is sad her mother died for her not because it's sad but because she's not worth dying for. And that's the game regarded as having the best found family dynamic in DA and probably a better comparison to ME2 in the regard of fighting to keep your crew together.

In ME2, what you do matters and the order you do things matter. Mass Effect has a Paragon/Renegade system which are ways you can change a scene IF you've accrued enough points in being more diplomatic or more points in being a complete asshole. Some of your companions are diametrically opposed to one another and the minute you complete both their loyalty they WILL come into confrontation and if you don't have a sufficient enough paragon or renegade score to get the appropriate response either then or after you WILL lose one of them. If you dedicate yourself to Paragon or Renegade or the other it's easy enough to get the points but if you're trying to get an optimal playthrough, doing solely paragon or renegade isn't always the best way to go.

I'm not saying I want some of your companions to hate each other. I enjoy the friendships they've developed but the moment Rook said something like "We're a family" I cringed because I realized what was happening because they just weren't putting the work in to make that believable to me. People are messy and the stakes in DAV are the biggest they've ever been so our crew should be at their worst and there is material for contention THERE but what we get the Disney Channel version of it where they almost immediately makeup and you're really not apart of it.

One of the confrontations in ME2 pits an Alien girl who's people were forced off their home planet by the own synthetic life they created and have suffered severe biological and cultural degradation because of it and one of said creations who's rebellion for autonomy caused that. The next game, they come back and if you don't (or can't which is an important distinction in it's possibility) use their work as a catalyst for peace but choose one people over the other they both express regret for the loss of the other's people despite the contention between them and stringent desire to save their own people. The kind of orchestration required to pull off peace and this dynamic feels earned and heart wrenching and that is the level of story telling old fans of Bioware expect from it's games.

The 3rd Mass Effect game was largely disliked despite the complexity of choices that intertwined and character dynamics. It was very obvious the ending didn't match up with the narrative spun by the rest of the game and was changed last minute from another which probably would have been liked less but the choice was too big and landed the series in hot water which lead them to try and do a complete divorce from the series with Andromeda which was also largely disliked because it was just a weird jump with a very weak story. I didn't actually mind it. It had no lasting impression on me so I can't tell you exactly what happens in that game but I didn't mind the leap conceptually because I understood they did back themselves into a corner with the last decision made in ME3.

So I sit here looking at Veilguard NOT disgruntled by the prospect of change. Change is usually good and made in order for the greater prosperity of the series. The problems in Veilguard isn't simple change but the lack of care that resulted in a lesser product over all. DA2 suffered in a similar respect with it's over use of previous assets in a repeated and monotonous level design and the fact some fans felt that it didn't successfully break away from feeling like a glorified DLC to Origins. But the storytelling is still done in a way that it lives rent free in many people's minds. It's not an epic, it is a story about some shlub and their crew of messy nobodies who try vainly to protect the city they all live from increasing social pressures of the world which boils over and consumes all of them no matter what you do.

ME2 is about a soldier who is forced to work with a human supremacy agency because they are the only ones that are taking a new threat seriously so without support from the usual greater forces, you seek out specialists and old friends to go on what is quite literally called a suicide mission.

Veilguard is a direct continuance of Inquisition where some random agent is made the herald of a revived religious movement that leaps up around them after an accident only to find out that one of your friends is directly responsible for that and going off to put the world in even greater danger.

Veilguard wants the found family in DA2 to fight a threat even greater than Inquisitions while honoring ME2 (badly) but also there are a bunch of disjointed small focused factions that are helping you and while I think this could have worked and been quite possibly one of the best Bioware games of all time, the ghost of its would be greatness haunts the narrative buried under the bones of development issues and missteps which just makes it hurt in a very not good way.

I don't think old fans who complain about Veilguard are upset it's not the same as what they were expecting but, to go back to my scrooge analogy, we're haunted by ghosts of Bioware past that laid the groundwork for what to expect, and the ghost of Bioware present which is incomplete and the future which can only really get worse under the capitalistic pressures that have long run the video game industry in the ground in the name of greater profits over quality. The only people producing good games at a reasonable price are indie developers who aren't really trying to produce a game with the scope that Bioware games have typically provided.

I'm sitting here and thinking my main take away from this is that I simply don't care about the new Mass Effect game Veilguard is getting abandoned for to produce. If this was supposed to be a love letter to ME2 then it just showed a fundamental inability to create Mass Effect games that would honor it's predecessors while bringing it into the new age and if it somehow manages to be good it's just another slight to Dragon Age fans and the fumbled production of Veilguard. I don't want to see Ryder or Shepard or another N7 specter at this point. I want to see Rook and their crew in a game where I feel okay leaving them in there because DA has a very specific need to abandon it's old protags and I'm not okay with that this time! I don't feel good about where any of them were left and the state of the world!

SPOILER WARNING! I'M NOT HOLDING BACK ANYMORE. GOING ON HERE'S YOU'RE WARNING.

(don't ask me about the image, it was there. it's big, has the vibes. She was iconic for that.)

POV: You are me. Your controller has some slight drift so the little laser beam managed to slip from the target and you're trying to figure out how the fuck you messed up the puzzle because there's no way to get to an island and this is how you accidentally spoil yourself that there's a secret ending and you're about to get a part of it.

Then like the genius I am I googled it again to try and figure out how to get it, skim read something that makes you think they based this off of ME2's model and go oh! Okay. I should look up optimal assignments so nobody dies.

Then I find out Davrin or Harding dies no matter what depending on you choose to lead the distraction team and you just have to stare at a wall for awhile because that is NOT Mass Effect 2 where everyone can absolutely live if you do everything right. That is Mass Effect 1, Virmire come to haunt me again.

I need you to know when I got to Mythal it's almost the earliest you could get to her give or take a side mission because I'm bad at combat and those fuckin' ogres were kicking my ass. So when Rook drops the "We're a family" line while taking to Mythal I had to once again stare at a wall because I already spoiled this for me and I was going "what the fuck are you serious? This is what we're doing?"

I'm telling this to you because I need you to know after I figured all this out I was turning over the plot while going through it looking for one specific thing and that's the narrative that would have supported the kind of storytelling that would have gained the right to kill off one of your companions. (the wording on that was labored but I really needed to say all of that like that because I meant it like that.) It just is not there. Or at least not in a way where it feels like the inclusion of that actually added ANYTHING to the narrative and honestly reading interviews under headlines that say shit like "Devs know that you had no problem leaving stroud in the fade 🤭 and made sure they were gonna hurt you this time" feels like it was literally just thrown in for shock factor rather than a conscious effort to create a compelling story and I'm just not here for that kind of garbage.

Like, I need you to understand I straight up had to save mid mission to kill Ghilan'nain and leave in order to leave and watch the last part of Arcane. I came back and immediately rolled into the fight with her and the bit where you're trapped in the fade and yeah I cried but I was feeling ever so fucking JARRED by the difference of satisfying tragedy I felt at the end of Arcane to that stupid ass bullshit in Veilguard.

And the fact this is a wind up to reveal Varric is dead is just further insulting to all three of these characters. Two returning characters and one new character who, and I hate to be this guy but I haven't seen ppl point this out and as guy who's played a lot of Bioware games, is black. Which, Bioware has historically been REALLY FUCKING WEIRD with it's black companions. (No, I have not forgiven for the shit they pulled on Jacob Taylor and I shan't ever I don't think considering they pulled this.)

I don't mind that they killed Varric. That one I picked up on almost immediately from the hints they were putting down and I was waiting for more hints and shit but the longer it went on I realized the game wasn't even interested in setting up a pretense of giving him and his fans a satisfying ending and goodbye. This man has been here since DAII. There's not enough lingering around his memory because he's competing with whoever else died.

Frankly Rook's connection to him has to be kind of made up by the player because they don't really set up anything for you except you've been traveling with him for almost a year and he's just an amicable guy which also just kind of has to lay on the laurels of having to have known him. I love the cold opening into Minrathus, it's very cool but I feel like THIS would have been the game to go back to it's roots and have a personalized opening to each Rook's origin to establish both a connection to Rook, Rook's place in the world and their connection to Varric and Harding and just had you kind of live with Varric as a leader for a hot goddamn minute making the transition of power feel more natural and not forced. It's weird.

But then the player just doesn't feel like they mattered to the greater story actually. Not as Rook and not as Inquisitor. Not that Rook is a bad character, just weirdly hooked into the plot. Gods forbid your Inquisitor wasn't romantically involved with baldie then they're only role is to tell you every choice you've ever made doesn't matter anymore because Southern Thedas got wiped the fuck out.

I know everyone and their mothers have been kinda leering at Taash's companion quests and like yeah they're not great. Neither is like the Rivain. Like not the map tbc, I love that map and all the maps actually. Down with empty open worlds, long live intentional map design with fun puzzles makes my brain go brrr. Kissing guy who made those on the mouth. At least I think the maps are built around the needs of the script and not the other way around unless problems arise in making the stage (which happens) because that'd be kinda silly. It's just our glimpse of Rivain is around a Grey Warden keep with some chasind stuff and Antaam. All of Rivain is kind of just not about Rivain and it annoys me deeply like where the fuck is the people who aren't Lords of Fortune. I don't even know what the culture is supposed to be inspired by besides like orientalism I guess.

ALSO I need everyone to know I had JUST got done ranting about one reoccurring trope with biracial/bicultured people in another game only to turn around and run directly into Taash's dumbass choice about making them pick between their cultures.

THAT IS NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.

I'm a Filipino German American and I look Asian so I have to fight to be German American because that's what I fucking am no matter what anybody expects from me from my face. Meanwhile my Pinoy roots were stolen from me by a woman who came to the states with the idea that her kids would be American but that just ain't the way the world works when you're not white passing. You cannot run and "choose" the other culture. You will forever be expected to be what you aren't because you look and there's not a lot to do about that brokeness inside you but try and come to terms with it and embrace all that you are anyway.

I also just find using modern day identity labels to be boring and lazy world building for a fantasy world. Even modern day LGBTQIA+ folks can't agree on what to call our shit and we're so very messy about everything and we have been here for so very goddamn long and have had many different names. That's just a bit of a pet peeve, I'll admit.

I think the crowning moment of Taash's quest their mother's moment when she declared Taash's strengths before sacrificing herself for her and Taash's grieving over her passing but I'm also gonna attribute that last bit more to Taash's VA doing good work.

Think the weakest quests for me otherwise were actually Bellara's? Not that it's bad conceptually. Just that it feels like duct taped together oddly where I kind of lost track of the emotions and logic in any given scene. Like over all I got yeah turning people into demons bad but we go from 0 to 100 real goddamn quick and I just felt left behind. Just confusing. Like it's fine, but confusing.

Kal-Sharok should have been it's own faction and I will die on that hill. Dwarves have gotten the short end of the stick for SO long and they finally have a fairly comparable moment in the story and it's just nothin'. BYULLLShit

You know I haven't really cared for Solas. I think I was on copium for a bit during Inquisition because my friends liked him so I was like "yeah I like this guy" but nah, I've kind of considered him a poor man's Ascian after playing Shadowbringers (sorry) but they really leaned into making him kind of a fucked up dude in Veilguard and I do enjoy him a lot more. But also the Rook/Solas dynamic is so much more messier than Lavellan/Solas dynamic. I feel like it was a loss to not have a meaner romance path there if you weren't a Solavellan. Guys who are dragging each other down to hold the other accountable by the throat.

NGL I think I kinda hate endings where it's like "and the bad guys lost and everyone who lived were happy :)" endings like man I wanna know what they're all up to now so I can be sure they're good. That's probably a me thing but it does put me on Copium that they'll drag Rook and co back out to do more with them but I know I'm asking for too much. I am in pain.

I'm descending into less concentrated rambling now I think I just!! Love the game but like I want it to be good and it's not and that hurts me a lot and I'm afraid what corporate will take from this because it's never the lesson they should because everything is all numbers.

EDIT: oml I forgot the line I tied to complaints I'd have later about choices they make you make. Like it was largely about Taash but also like Neve where the Thread guy is like "yeah we're gonna help you for this" like isn't that why we're here? Why am I getting a say in this? Why is this the place I'm suddenly putting my foot down? Why don't I get to ask Neve for her opinion before I just become the most annoying person in the world about this like ayo? WEIRD

Lucanis, Davrin and Bellara at least straight up ask you for your opinion and Harding, Emmrich and Taash obvs need some help even if they don't explicitely ask for it and this one for Neve isn't even the BIG choice it's just a dialogue choice that can lock you out of being able to make the choice which is kind of cool because it's about the only way to shoot yourself in the foot with any of the companions which I'd like if it just didn't just kind of come from nowhere. It's like Rook suddenly remembered they're a person who has opinions in the middle of a conversation and it's just OK. anyway

[zerodderty]

Undertale Yellow feels like, and I don’t say this lightly, the Advent Children of UT/DR

Looks really cool, *is* really cool in a lot of the ways that count, even hits home sometimes… but also nobody who touched the production ever really “got” the original, so it’s just kinda hollow

That’s not always a bad thing, fanlike reverence leads to new ideas being created usually when people try to replicate the things they like about a work while cutting back on the less important bits. But when you tie it to this worship of the original text you get all these… janky halfhearted copies.

Like, oh, we gotta kinda have a Papyrus. Here’s your robot section. Didn’t you like Undertale’s Neutral Route? There’s some quieter comparison points where you can feel the thought that went into making UTY a fun reflection of the original. But also sometimes things feel needless, like they’re there to fill a quota.

The pacing gets this the worst- the actual main cast is introduced two thirds of the way through the story, so most of the early areas are JUST old Undertale zones without the humor or charm. Pacifist in particular suffers because of how much importance it puts on characters and scenarios that a first time player will have No time to care about.

The themes here are…. Incoherent. Copying Undertale’s structure so hard means that unintentionally a lot of the same Determination, Empathy, Content Consumption stuff gets reiterated, while the new stuff about Justice and Consequences feels like its totally shoved to the ends of each route where characters will start talking as if walking around doing random encounters and occasionally stumbling into bits with characters who immediately fall in love with you and proceed to do three bits before leaving means we’ve had some Deep Meaningful Arc together that is climaxing only now.

Which is to say at some point in every route characters will start ranting about Justice and Heroism in a way that just feels really goofy since it always comes out of nowhere. I can see the narrative bones of a fun western romp, but its buried under all this Undertale flavored fluff that makes the early game feel charming but hollow, the midgame feel abrupt and slow, and the endgame feel interesting but wayyyy too fast and undercooked for whats come before it.

And then there’s the Cool parts. The character design is just fifteen levels of weird, everyone is the same sort of lanky furry creature with these big mysterious angsty backstories that mainly serve to funnel people towards the two big endgame superbosses of Pacifist and Genocide. And they certainly are big, taking the form of long, multiphase endeavors with more than a few totally unbalanced attacks that go more for flash and overwhelming density than anything else.

And hey, I can’t say the flash doesn’t work…? I think with Deltarune as a comparison now, the weird reality breaking freaks of Jevil and Spamton feel a lot more interesting of a Sans followup but sure yeah, I can’t say that these anime powerups don’t look sick even if they feel a little disconnected from everything. But it feels like they exist at the expense of everything else as these all encompassing fixation points.

And hell, UTY is probably the *most* restrained Undertale fangame here, because you can tell in the base encounter design that clearly the developers liked the idea that Undertale was a game with encounters in it, even if the bits aren’t always as funny or charming they’re at least there and well executed. I like the random monsters! They’re probably my favorite thing here because they don’t feel exaggerated or cast aside to better focus in on the Cool Stuff

I dunno, I feel weirdly conflicted that a game so technically competent at emulating Undertale and so clearly passionate in its aims feels so uneven and clumsy. I’m glad it exists, I’m glad I played it, I just wish it was more… good. Maybe it’s in part that I got into Undertale from its influences (Homestuck and weird quirked up JRPGs) that it feels so weird to have those influences diminished to better do the Cool Stuff, but I feel if UTY wanted to just do the Cool Stuff it would have been better served not being so tied down to living up to the already lofty task of Undertale 2 without feeling like a direct to dvd and home video sequel.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Question Five: How do we envision our collective efficacy?

All of these things combined together don’t necessarily mean you’re building power. The fifth and final question is exactly about power: when we think about what we do with all the work we put into the first four questions, the fifth asks, to what end?

Strategies that focus only on the community itself fail to contend for power in any meaningful way. While the relationships that are built and the analysis that is developed is critical to success, it is collective action that will keep people coming back for more.

I should also warn that rigorously answering the first four questions should protect you from drifting toward prioritizing the technology itself over the goals of your organizing. Insulating your thinking against the fetishization of particular tools is critical to building a sense of collective efficacy. And an engaged, disciplined membership will also mean you’ll get pushback against campaigns where the form and the analysis don’t align.

What I usually call the “given form” of online organizing will be familiar to most people: the petition and email, often with a thoughtful social media or content strategy thrown in on top. This approach is primarily focused on mass mobilization – deft writers might be able to politicize new folks around an issue this way, but it’s more likely that you’re turning out support from people who have already been activated around the issue in the past. The form is useful when you’re trying to convince a target with power to act in ways that benefit your community or prevent harm. However, the form doesn’t necessarily lead to building power.

At 18MR, we think of our collective efficacy in more than one way. First, we do acknowledge the way mass mobilization tactics serve many of our goals. We keep these tools in our toolbox for this reason, and they’re clearly legible to members. However, we also know that there is work to do that doesn’t involve asking a legislative body to pass or repeal a law or a judge to grant a stay on a deportation order, for instance. Especially through principled collaboration with other movement organizations that specialize in other forms of organizing, we’re able to model action that is expansive and generative.

Exploring – and sometimes developing – new tools for our people to see and experience collective efficacy online pushes us toward new forms. I’m particularly interested in finding forms that emphasize depth over breadth and create space for personal as well as social transformation. I’m interested in a much more nuanced field of practice that is also about how we build the future world in our everyday relationships, as well.

[rottingraisins]

hey man, me and my boyfriend are absolutely obsessed with your clefdraki art and playlists on spotify! you have a really deep and unparalleled understanding of their really complex lores and relationship, and your art is literally like snorting crack!!! i really appreciate what you do for the scp community and your art and interpretations, it also is really nice because me, my boyfriend, and my best friend have all been obsessed with SCP and its how i met my best friend like five years ago, and you help us like bond over this content again also your kondraki and clef give us violent gender envy thank you for what you do! keep going! -dell

Thank you as always it means the world haha! i dont think my thoughts arerlly all that unparalleled I sometimes feel like that the office pepe silvia scene when i get dragged back into the clefdraki brain hole bc a lot of the writing for them is purposefully dumb and hammy and objectively Not That Deep but im unfortunately such a sucker for character dynamics playing out across different timelines & doomed romances & general middle aged patheticness… ive thought abt them a legitimately embarrassing amount at this point theyre able to encapsulate so much of what i think is interesting abt the foundation as a setting I love insane office politics i love the idea of clef as this massive hypocrite who keeps tearing his humanity out of himself only for it to grow back in i love men dialectizing on every conceivable point of their worldviews with each other it really is peak coworker shit.

It does flatter & startle me though hearing stuff like that haha! Im not trying to be much of anything within the scp community I just have to have a place to exorcize my demons, im so glad its able to be smth so meaningful 4 u all! :] Here’s a song I wanted put on that playlist but couldnt cause its not on spotify! From me to u

[cyvonix]

Cyv Reads Homestuck - The Final Wrapup

This is my last post for the main comic, covering all of Act 6 Act 6 as well as Act 7.

God I feel like I have so much to say but no way to properly put it into a neat little bow so it might be a little more like me just rambling passionately. Hey that's like the perfect allegory for Homestuck.

Anyway if you just want the TL;DR for how I'm feeling overall, I feel it should almost go without saying I fucking loved this story. I can say with complete certainty that it has been a landmark in media I've consumed and will assuredly alter the way I consume things moving forward. In the several months it's taken me to finish, I've grown so attached to this story and these characters, and despite any qualms I may have with it (and trust me, there are plenty) I think it is a wonderfully creative and excellent piece of art that I'm going to continue loving for a long time. It does so many things I've never seen a work like this do before, and it takes advantage of its format in so many masterful ways that it ends up a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of so many styles and mediums that makes it truly stand on its own as something special. As I prepare to read the continuation of the official content and assuredly follow various fan adventures, fan projects, art, music and all of these amazing things that have spawned from this, I just want to make it as clear as possible: I cannot overstate the positive impact this weird little webcomic has had on me.

So that's that. I think now I probably wanna get a bit more into the nitty gritty stuff and delve into some of my more specific opinions. Here's the problem: I have a fuck ton. Seriously, if I were to properly articulate all the thoughts I have on this work, we would be here all god damn day and I would get tired of typing and you would get tired of scrolling. So I'm just gonna kind of go with the flow and go where my brain wants to go with this post. I figure I should probably get some complaints out of the way first, because I don't wanna end this on a sour note, but I do wanna mention them, because Homestuck does certainly have its problems:

Pretty obviously, the early comic was entrenched in a 2000s edgy forum culture that made it a little cringe to read sometimes. The ableist language that was liberally used as well as pretty distasteful jokes pertaining to race and sexuality make some of these early sections age a bit like milk. Fortunately, this takes a massive dip after around Act 4, but it still lingers a while after, and it obviously didn't ruin anything for me and isn't like, EGREGIOUS, but it still makes me think like man I wish this stuff wasn't here because it adds nothing and feels so out of place in the current day.

Speaking of race, and specifically racial representation, oops! There's none! I know, I know, I know. "Aracial". And that's all well and good in theory, but it's pretty obvious that Hussie wrote these characters from a decidedly white perspective and as a result that's just naturally how they read, despite any excuse he used to try making for it. And that in itself isn't some massive problem, just a note on the authorial bias at play. But then the only ones who don't read as white? The violent one who uses broken, obviously uninformed AAVE, and the japanese schoolgirl who speaks in bad japanese and wears cute little stereotypical outfits and is constantly sexualized. All I'm saying is, come on man, we can do better.

Hey look we reached the part where I rant about the dancestors. I mean what do I even have to say. Why did they even exist ??? Meenah is the only one who ended up being interesting in any meaningful way, and I guess Aranea even though I didn't feel particularly positive about her and her place in the story even after everything had happened. The rest were less interesting than the original 12, less funny than the original 12, and way more annoying and surface-level than the original 12. Seemingly on purpose. So I thought oh ok, this story hasn't let me down with this kinda stuff yet, so let's give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is for some bigger reason, maybe it's essential that they're in the story for later, maybe we'll get some actual development and I'll turn around on them. I was wrong to do so. They're nothing. They are nothing characters. Even what seemed like it should've been something - Kurloz working with Gamzee - just kinda never got elaborated on and faded into the background. So then. Why. Why are they here? Why do they exist? Why did you make me spend hours meeting them? Genuinely felt like a total waste of time and you could take out that entire section from the story and lose effectively nothing. Worst part of the comic by far.

The pacing of this story can be rough. And I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this point, because reading this archivally and knowing it was updated serially in small bursts over time, it makes total sense and I honestly excuse it for the most part. Buuuut that doesn't mean it's not noticeable sometimes that the comic will go through dry spells that can sorta be slogs to get through, and then follow with most breakneck pace you could imagine immediately after, and is always undulating between these two modes. Eh.

Those are really the only big negative things I have to say. Well, sorta. I think the rest will mostly be positive, but I... hm. I think that... ok let's talk about the ending.

First of all, Act 7. Wow. just holy shit. I've jokingly been calling Homestuck a shonen anime since like Act 4 but ???? god DAMN dude that was fucking incredible. Never would I expect actual, traditional animation from a Homestuck flash, and it was so satisfying as a final animation. That being said, I feel a bit... conflicted about the context surrounding the ending? For the record, the actual ending itself, like the last moments of the comic, I think are lovely and thematically feel super appropriate. Seeing Caliborn basically transform into Lord English is that one final time loop after a series of hundreds of time loops, finally finishing itself off. And all the while, the kids break the cycle. No more loops of destruction and rebirth and destrucion again. They won, not in the sense that they beat the big bad guy and saved the day, but in a much more poignant way; they stopped this whole fucking thing from ever happening again. I genuinely do love it. It feels appropriately existential for Homestuck, but not quite cynical. It's an ending of death and rebirth. Hopeful at its core.

I think there are a few reasons I feel a little odd about it. First is that, just tbh, I think we were introducing way too many characters way too fucking late. I mean we basically just met Davepetasprite, who is a fucking joy btw, and then BAM ending. This means that most of these later additions to the cast don't get to have much impact on the ensuing events, and even if they do, it's not as emotionally resonant as these other characters we've had plenty of time to learn about and grow to love. I would never insinuate Homestuck should be EVEN LONGER, but it does feel a bit like just throwing the fandom a few last bones to be like here! Write some fics about these peeps! But I would've wanted more actual in-universe development and narrative relevance, otherwise I just don't get a whole lot from it.

The other thing that just feels a little... idk, odd? is that I just still have no fucking clue what Vriska did to LE with the weapon, or even like, what happened to LE or Vriska. I guess maybe they're both going to die anyway because of alt-Calliope basically ripping apart this entire continuity with the black hole, but I don't know that for sure. And since Act 7 was only the single flash, I don't feel like I have much to even go on in terms of theorizing about it. The credits did like, a liiiittle more in that department I guess?? (btw those were adorable and I loved them a lot) But even then it feels like even THOSE are opening new questions as much as answering old ones. Is Vriska who Terezi is looking for? Otherwise why is Terezi the one venturing out there? Can they just come and go as they please despite the black hole? There are so many things that are completely unanswered.

I guess my main point is that the ending just felt really abrupt, cutting off a lot of plotlines that I thought were actually gonna go somewhere, and inconclusive. And maybe it's meant to be. In fact I'm almost certain it's meant to be. But the problem lies in that it does not feel inconclusive in a "up to your interpretation" way, but more in a "literally not concluded" way. Like it wasn't actually finished telling its story. I'll put it this way: the ending feels like a big awesome season finale, but not a series finale. And I know that the post-canon sequel content exists, but it seems like the fans and those works themselves distance themselves so much from the original comic that it makes it seem like that feeling wasn't the intention, so it's just really strange.

So much for not having any more negative things to say lol. Sorry. But all in all I do still largely enjoy what I got from this ending, I just hate that it feels like it was cut short or something.

Let's balance all that out by talking about some cool shit!!! I'm just gonna spitball some of my favorite things about this comic, whether in this reading section or just overall:

The art is so good!! All of Act 6 Act 6, especially the last several updates, is so immaculately rendered. I can see why this basically became *the* Homestuck style moving forward, because it's just so pleasing to look at and captures the characters in a great way. Speaking outside of specifically this section and more generally, I adore how loose Homestuck is with its art. Hussie seemed to just pick and choose whatever style would properly represent the events at hand, and it ends up being so awesome in a way that's unbound by things like staying on-model or being consistent because it's just pure expression. Plus, the constant guest art is fuckin amazing, not only because most of it is genuinely incredible in its own right, but also because Homestuck is such a wildly community-driven experience that it only feels natural to let other talented artists make their own mark on the story. It started early on and continued being a thing all the way until the end and I love love love that.

The metatextual elements of this story are so fascinating to me. Unfortunately this is one of those things I thought was gonna be expanded on a bit more by the end, but what's there is still great. I like that it goes so far beyond "fourth wall" jokes and nods to the audience. The way the characters directly interact with the narrator, the story structure, and even the website itself, is so much more interesting. Beyond being simply fun, it manages to raise so many interesting questions about the very art of fiction. What authorship means, the responsibilities of it, the follies of poor authorship, the interaction between an audience and fictional characters, the way character voice can be used to convey tone, all this and so many more things are tackled as actual in-universe concepts that can be materially tinkered with to varying results. I could genuinely write other entire posts about the way this story discusses a lot of meta concepts.

The way this comic uses its medium to its advantage is unparalleled. I just always appreciate when a story is so thoroughly connected to its medium that it would become something else if adapted, and this is certainly one of those stories. The way that the style of narrative prompt itself can convey something about what you're reading, the banners and menus being shifted, changed, obscured, and otherwise altered to add an entire new element to the experience of reading the story, the colors of the website, the way characters and items aren't necessarily bound to the frame of the panel, the way the very act of clicking on a link to go to the next page is made to be a central part of the experience, ALL OF IT... I can't call it anything other than masterful. (Ok I'm sorry to throw yet another complaint in here but I was fully expected A6A6A6 to continue this trend and basically be a huge amalgam of all these website-bending tricks we'd come to know so I was a liiiiittle disappointed when it was just a youtube video).

The character writing, often times, is phenomenal. Even from the beginning, the way character voice was so strong was impressive and fun, but as I got later into Act 6, and especially A6A6, some of the long-running character traits, flaws, and storylines finally came to a cathartic close in mostly really great ways. Some obvious highlights: Dave, in too many ways to count tbh, whether it's him grappling with destiny/heroism/things of that nature, realizing he's not straight, coming to terms with his bro's treatment of him, reconnecting to his authentic interests, so many things about Dave are so insanely amazingly done. Of course Dirk is an interesting character as well, with many questions brought up concerning mortality, control, self-loathing, and other pretty heavy stuff. Hooray for alt-Vriska getting some justice lmao. Her and alt-Terezi finally finding peace in themselves and comfort in each other in the afterlife is like almost too beautiful to not make me wanna cry. Again, like with the meta stuff, I could write entire posts about various characters and the awesome ways they're written, but I'll leave it here for now.

I think... maybe that's all I have for now. Maybe. I have a multitude of thoughts, big and small, and there was absolutely 0 chance I was gonna fit them all in here or even remember all of them. But there you have it.

Hey would you look at that. Homestuck's good!

Not perfect, as I feel I've made perfectly obvious. But good. Full of passion. Full of care. An exceptional work of art and a unique phenomenon that will likely never be replicated. I'm so, so happy to have finally experienced it. So that's me signing off on my very last liveblog post for the original comic... Damn. Thanks to the people who've been so interested in seeing me take this journey and those of you who have contributed to the discussion, it definitely made it more special for me and I appreciate it.

Thanks For Playing <3

.........

For those of you wondering, no, this liveblog as a whole isn't necessarily over. I know the post-canon content (still don't understand why it's even called that) is contentious for many, and I feel like I've seen opinions ranging from people saying it's some of the best stuff released for Homestuck, all the way to saying it literally ruined the whole thing for them because of how bad it is. So clearly, this is some controversial shit I'm about to get into. But yes, I am indeed, getting into it. I'm going to keep this liveblog going, and at the very least, I'm going to get through the Epilogues, and what is currently released of Beyond Canon. If I really find it as atrocious as some people seem to, I guess no promises that I will continue reading and posting about it after that. But I gotta know. I need to see for myself and come to my own conclusions. And I'm taking you all with me.

Cyv Reads The Homestuck Epilogues coming to a theatre near you some time soon.

[dearweirdme]

Hello my dear (weirdme) 😄☺️! Happy Friday!

Well, I honestly have to give it to jkkrs, they will take whatever they can get and I understand why because they get very little. So if it brings them joy to gush over whatever j*kook content that comes about, so be it, because, to me, it still changes nothing about Taekook’s realness.

I still don’t understand how any taekooker can be insecure about Tae and JK after the Dreamers premiere. We saw the whole scene unfold right before our eyes in all the videos posted. Tae’s confident encouragement, JK’s hesitant shyness, it was a declaration. They can’t come out and tell us verbally “we’re in a committed relationship with each other” but the Dreamers premier was as close as they could get for now (maybe post enlistment and some years down the line they’ll tell us more, if they want to) to let us know that they are more than bros and band mates.

To me, the ring is also a subtle declaration, a “we’re apart for work but we’re still together” because like you’ve pointed out, JK knows that the ring will be traced back to Tae. I truly believe that’s exactly what his intention has been by wearing it, regardless of whose ring it is. As well as the “Kappa sweetheart” T-shirt and so many other subtle “hints” we’ve gotten.

Going to Yoongi’s concert together, leaving together, how can insecure taekookers not put faith in that? Again, a subtle indicator that they were TOGETHER 😆

I just don’t know what to make of a taekooker being so easily swayed away from the belief in Taekook by some cute j*kook banter in a live where JK was obviously giddy with excitement about life in general. Why would anyone believe Jimin and Jungkook interaction cancels out everything Taekook have shown us?

Why are there taekookers who think Tae and JK need to constantly feed their bond, closeness and love for each other to us? Because truth is, they don’t need to. They’re not together for us, for our benefit, for our entertainment. If you truly believe in Taekook then you don’t need constant, blatant “proof”. And if you DO need consistent validation then you need to reevaluate why you believe in Taekook in the first place.

Anyway, not really an ask, but wanted to add my thoughts 😁

I hope you get everything moved and it goes smoothly! Yay for saving the hedgehog 🥰

Hi @taekookibb !

So nice to see you back online! I was so happy to read you finally settled in your new place 😊.

It is so weird how sometimes something so mundane can become a whole thing. Like.. in a month or two we will still be like.. remember when Jk asked Jimin to go live together, what a day that was 😂🙈. When in reality.. it’s so meaningless.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the ring situation, though it’s quite clear it’s a meaningful ring to him. The Dream premiere was reaaally something else. Whenever I come across that footage I just.. 🥰. And Tae’s pic of them together afterwards on his insta just before the Paris stuff.. yeah those things matter.

I’ve had plenty sane anons thankfully, who are all very sure about their believes. There’s always going to be insecure persons. It’s a complicated situation, so I can understand some.. especially when you allow too many Jkkrs comments to flood your social media accounts. I’ve not gone there yet.. gonna stay on my side of fandom for a while.

Thanks so much for stepping by 😊!

[cature]

💌 ) BEST BELOVED. okay time to be normal. here’s a tag for my comfort characters, never specified by name or dug into in any meaningful depth. i am putting them in my mouth and chewing. i am asking at all times to be reading illuminated treatsies on their actions and their subtexts and their costume designs and their leimotifs and to hold their beating heart in my hands (just to look at it!) and yeah, okay, also sometimes to suck their soul out of their body twice a day for the rest of my life.

💎 ) OLD MONEY. this is quite literally just my blair waldorf tag. it’s the newspapers in print and the purses that don’t carry cash and lipstick made custom and champagne from the valley and not just imitation. it’s the world that gatsby could entertain but never enter. it’s the girls who aren’t daisy. it’s a white winter in the city, but every path you walk on is still clean and dried. the grand vizier, the high pope, the dark curl-spilled queen to serena’s lion-haired king among men, morgan le fey come again to wear chanel.

🔏 ) POETRY. another normal tag! i am a horrific poet with barely a handful of daily lit deviations (i hope reading that phrase gave you flashbacks) under my belt, but the self-published poetry scene is finally recovering from the mass damage that instagram and richard siken fanfic did to it. and i for one am fucking pumped. other quotes with particularly good cadence will also be thrown in here just to jazz things up a bit.

📖 ) MEDIA. i’m on a normal tag roll. these are the stories that are important to me in ways unrelated to comfort characters or my deep abiding need to get plowed by questionable anime men. a lot of my favorite posts end up untagged on my sideblog because they’re not as structured as i like my main to be, so the ones that do make the cut are guaranteed to have been heralded by me physically showing one of my spices my phone.

🥠 ) LITTLE THOUGHTS. essentially a text post tag. a lot of them have tended to be sweet or sad rather than silly, but i like collecting the ones that make me react. fortune cookie emoji feels self-explanatory from there. as with my media tag anything that i like enough to have but not enough to revisit or incorporate into my bird’s nest goes over on a sideblog, so these reblogs are fun treats for me to pick back through.

🪶 ) HOPE AS AN ACTION. “empathy isn’t just something that happens to us - a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain - it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow. this confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. but i believe in intention and i believe in work. i believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.” - leslie jamison.

🫖 ) LIKE REAL PEOPLE DO. domesticity, and family, and growing, and trying your best, and singing without thinking about it, and cooking for eachother, and existing in the world as a participant. being housebound on and off for years has not been good to me even as being happily married and content in my triangle has been a massive act of healing. somewhere in between the two i’m holding on fiercely to celebration of the things i can still do together with them and trying to believe that it can be enough.

🍫 ) BITTERNESS. kind of discourse, kind of venting. i’m not overly invested in collating my opinions daily any more, but i have been saying certain things for actively years now while waiting for the wider zeitgeist to catch up to me and it’s always a pleasure to see a widely accepted and welcome new take from the last three months that i got into a fight in my 2018 dms for suggesting. sometimes i just want to hit people i have blocked with a car. being a sex worker who has to ebeg will do that to otherwise perfectly lovely friendships more than you’d think. sometimes you are all just so, so illiterate. essentially a dump for anything that pisses me off.

🔖 ) AUDIENCE ASIDES. this one is for “reblog and tag yourself” memes and is functionally an about me tag that i fill up only with uquiz answers, disjointed facts from my childhood, and either/or games. they’re fun! not everything has to be complicated. scroll around this tag for interaction bait or just to hang out. maybe one day i’ll port my vent app “which major arcana are you” tag meme over here as a uquiz of some kind. that’d be fun, i think. (i’m the moon, btw. just in case you were wondering. mine was the moon.

🫕 ) BESTIES. this is a catch-all tag for my assorted friends to opt-into that is 110% just about being, yknow, kind of a cunt. all of the references to insane internet-specific drama go here, all of the polycule jokes go here, all of the “hey i know you’re high so i invited a thousand people over” jokes go here, and so does all of the sweet stuff. fondue emoji because that way people can dip in and choose to be included in it or not, and also i am too lazy to tag for each individual 🌈/🐰/🎲/📿/🐱/🐻/fruit code/tumblr mutual/etc vibe.

🕰️ ) FIRST FOLIO. because despite the lobotomy i am in fact a washed-out imitation of both english and art history qualification-havers, and sometimes a bitch wants to talk about the way the world shaped a colour choice or a turn of phrase or an adaptational choice between book and stage or stage and dance. constantly fellating the macmillan romeo juliet choreography, my own imaginary staging of ibsen’s fruen fra havet, and prospero’s final lines in the tempest. this is a dump tag for anything that i would pin to a board like a butterfly if given the chance to do so together with my loved ones.

🌪️ ) OIL ROOM. oh, hey, a normal tag again. an art tag, even, for things that rattle around in my brain for a few days after, or things that i’d spend useless hours trying to dig back up on pinterest to add to a board for a fictional character that has (in a similar manner) started to haunt me. probably going to lean more modern sculpture than traditional oil, but to be fair that is because traditional oils find their way into my other tags and didn’t need an invented catch-all for me to skim back through circa pinterest o'clock in six weeks when i get back to that.

🍳 ) THE AI-KYŌGEN. nice little oc tag for my brats. a truly insane overabundance of girls who are crocodiles in the rivers of their own narrative, girls who are self sufficient because they were grown from seed in total darkness, boys who damn themselves and then damn the world in revenge for it, girls who wear their lives wholecloth like a costume every morning until it fits or it kills them, girls who were too young for the tasks they were trapped with and succeeded anyway, girls who died but didn’t because they only remember how to get back up. and clumbo, my orc detective.

📚 ) DEAD INTERNET. short stories, flash fiction, and other pieces i am trying to scrounge up via the wayback machine. i'm an unabashed pirate who lived off of e-begging for 5 yesrs solid and do not have the money to support authors i like. what i can do is collate every short story i've personally cared for onto an un-searchable blog and cross-index my thoughts on them here.

🧦 ) BULLDOZE VENICE. disability talk, encompassing everything from my mental health conditions / sanism to physical disability justice, marriage equality, institutional ableism, and how developmental disability is treated by the wider populace. i don't believe in "mental age" and i don't steal the terms nonverbal/nonspeaking for autistics with high support needs who suffer the most under the pseudo-aba assumptions that you can make yourself speak if needed.

🍱 ) TEXT POSTING. basically the same as my audience asides tag but for posts i personally am making to bitch about running a blog, or changes i am midway through making on this one, or polls about which of my previous tagging system sections i should port over to this blog en masse that day.

📟 ) MIXTAPE. i know i run ostensibly a sideblog for music but i do also like specific songs i want to put here and cross-reference into other tags. since the ancient websites i used to use to listen to just the songs on my rp blogs in another google chrome tab has gone totally under i will have to make that possible another way (that isn't using spotify, because i'm lazy sometimes).

🎫 ) TO REMEMBER. quotable bits that i am going to drop for years into bios. i used to try to run this as a sideblog on its own for cross-referencing but porting the entire mountain goats lyrical discography was hard and i quit. i still need somewhere to store the "spit his cum back at him like a camel" post that has haunted my dreams for a thousand years.

[grokebaby]

@parasite-core

Hmmmmmm my oc of choice uhhh (<- is fatally indecisive)

Let's go with Delilah bc she deserves a bit more spotlight!!

(BTW for any future asks please send the question itself as well, ty!! /nm)

2 = What's your oc's orientation + their thoughts about it?

Delilah is an ace lesbian!! I like to think she'd be very gentle and tender if she were to get into a relationship but it's really hard to get close to her and she has little time anyways to focus on her personal life. She loves being an aunt though! I think nearly all the people close to her are allosexual so by comparison she might feel a bit isolated sometimes and lacking someone to talk and relate with about asexuality. That, and the Pride district demons tend to be really invasive or crass if they feel like throwing nasty comments so it's something Delilah has to keep close to her. She has thick skin yeah and doesn't think of herself as the type to need lots of support but it can definitely frustrate her that her aceness is really invisible in her day to day life. Obviously Deirdre and Lassi for example are very supportive to her but they're both kinda slutty so they wouldn't have common ground with her on that, which I can say from experience can feel really isolating. Obviously not saying aces can't be slutty but Delilah herself is sex neutral to averse, leaning more on the latter usually.

She's not terribly interested in dating though and/or has given up things like that due to her profession but Her identity as a butch lesbian is meaningful to her especially since she's a trans woman, so it's definitely been a journey for her. It's hard to put exactly into words rn but ykno how your orientation still affects your personal life and feelings about other people even if you weren't actively on the dating scene? That's true for Delilah as well. I sometimes think she might also be gray or demiromantic as well but regardless, having a partner isn't relevant to her life situation rn and I don't think she could see herself trying to seek one anyway anytime soon. She's content with having her family and (very very) few friends. She's very introverted.

5 = how did you figure out your oc's identity?

Uhh I think it all came soon after I figured out her being a trans woman? I kinda simultaneously decided both she and Xerxes should be trans bc fuck yeah!!!! Lesbian was just bc. Vibes. And butch women go brrr and she had the perfect vibe to be that but her being ace does have some deeper thought behind it. Since she is a butch transbian I kinda wanted some spot of her character to be subversive and I know there's a bit of a gross stereotype around both trans and butch women that portrays them as inherently more sexual and perverse (glances hatefully at terfs), so I wanted to make her ace. I know and see the infantilism often aimed at ace people and I think we need more hardass cool ace characters. Obviously you don't wanna go too far in the other direction and imply asexuality makes someone cold and jaded but you get the point I'm trying to make with this (Tangent: wow I'm just realizing the dumbass shit ace people have to put up with, simultaneously being portrayed as innocent baby beans and also socially awkward cold jerks. Aphobia is a hell of a thing we just can't win can we)

Anyway.

Since she has an overall air of being strong and intimidating, and people could make assumptions about her sexuality based on that, I wanted to do something different there. I personally think aceness adds more interesting depth to her character as opposed to if she were allosexual. I feel like it all ties into an interesting complexity with her strong exterior and soft interior that I just really like. Queer women by beloved

Besides all that, I tend to lean towards making more aro than ace characters since I'm personally more aro than ace, so ykno, wanted to balance it out

Wanna Send me more?

[willel]

Why is twitter so toxic? I think you wrote something about it some time ago, that on tumblr, for instance, there’s no immediate incentive to write a hit post and then to come up with the most outrageous claims that create "engagement"? Or because it’s not really about direct conversation made of short messages when everyone wants to "win" the argument, but favors calm analysis instead. Anyway, I just can’t go there anymore right now, too much hate and stupidity, I’m glad there’s still blogs like you and a few others to enjoy some ST escapism.

Twitter's short form context was pretty great when it came out years ago. "Tweets" were generally someone putting random thoughts out in the aether or a quick notification or an alert to check out news on this site or that site. I feel like it wasn't meant for what it is today, for people to be interacting with each other in a meaningful way. Like, what are you gonna talk about in 100 characters or less? That's why you'll sometimes see old tweets of celebrities floating around of the most random nonsensical statements with no context. That's what twitter was as its core.

Now combine that with people starting to use twitter for more than just random thoughts that popped into peoples head. It started to be used for political activism (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and fandom activities.

We all know how bad politics fandom can get on long form sites like tumblr and reddit. Imagine how much worse it is when you cut away all context and nuance to fit in a tweet.

Imo, it set twitter on a downward spiral. Doesn't matter how much they increase the character limit, the culture now is tweet fast. React fast. Argue fast. If you lose, resort to other means. Anything to win. Anything to get your tweets more attention that the other person.

It's like a game. I'm sure that plays into the desire to be "famous" that a lot of social media enjoyers crave.

I'm not saying tumblr is much better, but I feel the culture here is more like "take your time" or "time doesn't matter, old stuff is good". Tumblr does have an issue with people not reblogging content, causing good posts and content to go unnoticed given there is no real algorithm here, which is sad. But for the most part, ain't nobody here trying to get famous. Everything is talking and creating stuff for the sake of it.

Most of the time even the people arguing here are arguing about stuff that happens off site or they stay in their corners and tag correctly. (if you don't tag correctly and start fights on purpose, I immediately assume you must be from twitter)

People who have been here on my blog for a while are probably thinking "Tch, what do you know about fandom conflict?" and let me tell you, in my youth I participated in a ship war. It was just one,but still. I didn't resort to name calling or doxing people though, that's for sure. I wrote essays and essays in response to people, defended my ship, made stuff for my ship (which I still do), the whole shebang. It was all here on tumblr and deviantart. I do have a twitter for that fandom but I don't use it for any drama. I can say the drama on twitter is MUCH WORSE than anything I experienced on tumblr.

That is the ST fandom on twitter in a nutshell. No one can mind their own business. They're constantly spying on each other, posting using common search terms of the people they don't like and then acting surprised when the people they don't like respond to them. It's all like a game. Every blue moon when I go there to see if there's WillEl things, inevitably I will see shippers using it to fight against each other or crap on Will or El.

Once a week it's the same suspects saying the same things over and over again. Finding something pointless to be mad about. Sending angry anon messages. Never actually sitting down to enjoy the ships/relationships they claim to be a fandom of. Cannot mind their business and always have something negative to say. Denying what is literally in the show because they personally don't like it. Literally the worst kind of people to have in your fandom. (I associate that kind of behavior with like.... Riverdale drama or something. Sorry if you're a Riverdale fan. Lol)

In conclusion, yeah. I think twitter is that way because the short form context has breed a culture of "win or lose". Mixed with a little bit of celebrity idolization and a desperate desire for people to interact with you even if it's negative.