#YOU ARE CONTRADICTING YOUR OWN SOURCE MATERIAL

[broadway-and-books-love]

No because you know what I’m still not over it

Why would ROTT send Jim back to the beginning to live a normal life when the show literally had a whole episode about him being sent back and not choosing the amulet and then everything goes straight to hell

[transvarmint]

Sometimes... people who write books... are wrong

[ovaryacted]

me and a friend were talking about Leon during classes today and I couldn’t get dad bod Leon out of my mind😪 I need it bad

I just imagined him coming home tired after a long day of work and needing and relief and just letting reader suck him off or bending us in half, being all soft and warm and I had to stop thinking about it because I was getting distracted😭

-🐏

MDNI/18+. NSFW. | Vendetta! Dad Bod! Leon x fem! reader CW: blowjobs, fingering | WC: 1.1k

I've been meaning to answer this message for a while but haven't had the energy to properly decipher my thoughts. But yeah ram anon, listen I've been in a serious dad bod Leon phase which is all @larvamars fault with their recent drawings. I have moments where I'm at work and my brain just goes "mmm, Vendetta! Dad Bod! Leon" and I lose focus so I get it. It's just something comforting about him having a stomach and thickness that you can grab on to. I need it bad.

Stepping through the front door, the agent walked over the threshold of the entryway and closed the door behind him. Lowering the zipper of his leather jacket, he tossed it over the back of the couch and trudged towards it, plopping himself down with a heavy grunt. Leon placed his head against the edge of the couch and inhaled before exhaling out of his mouth, fingers pinching at the bridge of his nose as his eyes fluttered closed.

Today was a pain in the ass, the cycle of continuous bio-weapon debriefs and missions gave him a run for his money and an unwanted migraine. All he had been thinking about was coming home and cuddling with you, rotting away in bed together until the next morning. He missed you, he always did, and lately, you have been the only source of release from his pent-up stress.

"Leon? Is that you?" He heard your voice filter through his thoughts, lifting his head slightly from where he rested to skim your silhouette.

"Yeah baby, it's me. Come here," opening his arms out for you, you didn't need to be told twice to move, gravitating towards him and situating yourself over his denim-clad lap.

"Rough day?" You asked him, thick arms wrapping around your waist to bring you closer to his warm chest. He breathed in and breathed out, your scent filling his senses and easing his ticked nerves.

"Something like that," he groaned when you rubbed at the base of his neck, lightly massaging his nape. He gripped your thighs and caressed you, the rough material of his fingerless leather gloves contradicting his needy touch.

"I missed you today," he confessed in a tired whisper, kissing softly along the side of your neck, his affectionate side coming through.

"You did?"

"Of course I did. Needed to come home so you can take care of me." He squeezed your body a bit harder, the tension he felt building up and flowing to another region down south.

You hummed in contentment, hands running down from his neck to the softness of his chest and towards his lower stomach. He knew he didn't have the same physique from a few years ago when he was younger, the extra weight counted on with time and his figure began to expand. It initially bothered him and it took him a long while to fully look in the mirror again. But to you? It just gave you more to grab, more to hold, more to love.

"Yeah? Need me to make you feel better baby?" You leaned forward the slightest bit, giving him a sweet peck and his hips a teasing grind. The corner of his lips curved in a smile, his dimple shy of making itself known along with the growing bulge hidden underneath his jeans.

"Mhm. You're the only one that knows what I need," he gripped onto your hips, meshing his lips with your own and urging your mouth open to make room for his tongue. You could taste the faint traces of whiskey left behind from when he snuck a sip from his flask earlier, not that you minded.

He was always touch-deprived, always greedy for more but you never complained. You were more than inclined to please him the best way you knew how.

Propped on your knees in front of the couch, you bobbed your head over Leon's cock, a daily occurrence it seemed, and one of your favorite things to do. The fingers of one hand grasped at the thickness of his thighs, a soft layer of fat over the muscle he sported so frequently. The other was busy rubbing at your clit beneath your cotton shorts in tight circles, moaning with every pass of your tongue over his length.

"Feels so good sweetheart," Leon said above you, his neck strained with the way his head was thrown back, clasping your jaw to guide your movements over him.

“Open wider for me baby, want to be deep in there,” he commanded, instinctively relaxing your jaw until he hit the back of your throat with ease, gagging before repeating the act over and over again.

“Fuuuck, that’s it,” he hissed, shifting his attention downwards to watch you suck him off. 

You held his gaze then, following up his happy trail and his lower tummy, admiring the way it folded and creased from the way he slouched. You focused on the stretch marks that made a tantalizing path around his hips and his biceps, lines you wanted to trace with an imprint of kisses. Whimpering at the thought, you drooled around his length, his pelvis becoming a mess of spit from the amount that dribbled out of you. You moaned loudly when you slipped two fingers into your pussy, wishing you had something more to fill the empty ache between your legs.

Leon grinned at the sight of you craving his touch so badly, paying attention to the telltale signs of you reaching the edge with the way your hand pumped in and out of you.

“So desperate for me, poor thing hates being empty,” he patronized you, the pleasant hum you gave him sending his hips jerking into your face. It was only a matter of time before he spilled down your throat and made a mess of you—just the way you wanted.

“Don’t worry. I’ll feed ya, honey. Just a little bit more and you got me,” Leon grumbled, fucking up into your mouth with an audible plap plap plap. Your throat constricted around him, his balls hitting your chin with every thrust he gave you. Eyes rolling into the back, you focused on regulating your breathing when he slammed your head down to press your nose into his pubic hair as he came.

“Take it, fucking take it.” He practically roared from his release, pudgy stomach and dense legs flexing from your touch, your nails digging into him and leaving crescent marks. You choked as your walls clenched around your digits, in tune with his climax and your own hitting you with a dull cry.

As gently as he could, he drew you away from his softening cock, letting you catch your breath with a light cough. Your lips felt numb and your eyes were bloodshot with tears, but you’ve never been more satisfied, a dopey smile evident on your features.

“How about I return the favor now? Gotta clean up the mess my girl made.” He proposed with a smirk, affectionately wiping away the spit that stained your cheeks along with the tears that left their streaks.

This was why Leon liked coming home to you. You’ll always be there with open arms, an open mouth, and open legs.

©️ ovaryacted 2024. Please don’t repost, copy, translate, or feed into any AI. Support your fellow creators by reblogging, commenting, and liking!

[avephelis]

okay. jrwi fandom. sitting you all down. i need everyone to hear this. all sides. okay? ready? the discourse is stupid. (TLDR: block each other)

making a dichotomy out of what is a nuanced topic, and enforcing it on EVERYONE with an "us versus them" mentality, is stupid. boundaries and fandom activity are not a black and white moral issue, and you are all harassing each other over having different personal opinions. and forcing that discourse onto everyone else.

you CANNOT and WILL NOT "win" an online argument by harassing people. if you group people up, and ostracise/villainise that group, those people are going to LASH OUT. and DOUBLE DOWN. they are not going to magically agree with you. it's frustrating, but that is how the internet works.

boundaries and fandom are complicated topics. jrwi boundaries, especially, hinge on a message from 2021, which has since been contradicted by the source material. it is a grey area. but REGARDLESS of your stance on that, the point of boundaries (about fictional media and fictional characters of age) are to protect an INDIVIDUAL, and what THEY see and interact with. not to create a code of rules for everyone. and as far as i'm aware, nobody has been making the council interact with nsfw content.

FURTHERMORE. people are ALLOWED to have their own boundaries. people are ALLOWED to be uncomfortable with sensitive content, and to choose whether to engage or disengage with it based on the information they are given. making fun of people (ESPECIALLY minors) for being uncomfortable with a complex situation, and for disengaging to look after themselves, as well as acting intentionally obtuse, is not counterculture. or a "ha, gotcha". it is not cool. it is immature and needlessly cruel.

and, while it is important for people to have safe spaces, jrwi is a piece of adult media. it is fine if teens are interacting with it and the fandom space, but you cannot expect everyone to cater to your personal comforts in that space. and i don't mean this condescendingly, but everyone NEEDS to be responsible for catering their experience to best look after themself and others. because social media by design is a hostile environment.

block tags that are uncomfortable. block people you are uncomfortable around. and the people creating said sensitive work? TAG IT so we can avoid it. rate it appropriately. it is not funny to intentionally expose people to content you know is triggering for them.

and as for callouts. if there is nobody being actively hurt (which there were not in recent events), you can handle it privately. otherwise you are actively exposing uninvolved people to content they are probably trying to avoid. which isn't productive.

please just be respectful and take care of both yourself and others.

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

Handing out a pamphlet to any mangahood fans giving the 2003 anime a shot:

Ed and Al (and Hohenheim) are not Xerxian. In fact there is no Xerxes. Don't interpret these characters through that lens. Similarly, Xing has no relevance here (it's a single line in a discussion of Amestrian geopolitics, and that's it)

Ed does not metaphysically supply Al's body with energy and nutrients. That's not how the Gate works here

Alchemy itself is handled differently from the manga and Brotherhood

This version of the story will not coddle or spoonfeed you. You will have to deal with complex themes and upsetting scenes, and you will have to pay attention to what's going on in order to understand and interpret the story and characters

In fact, if you're so inclined, repeat watches will absolutely reveal new layers to the pathos, mysteries, and themes presented, and answer questions you will still have after your first watch

I am begging you not to take everything at face value. The characters are not treated as infallible encyclopedias nor are they dispensers of morality lessons. They are treated like people. In that they are flawed, they are not omniscient therefore they do not have Complete Objective Knowledge over their own lives and the world, and the world/other characters will contradict and challenge them regularly

To put a finer point on the above: Don't take Ed and Al's perspectives as gospel. They are not the arbiters of righteousness who shine the light of Goodness and Reason onto the rest of the cast, they are orphaned teens scraping by in world that, by its nature, looms larger than themselves

Romance is not a big element here. You will not be eating well from the Edwin and Royai troughs this go-around

In mangahood Scar was right in killing state alchemists, but prepare yourself for: Scar was right in killing state alchemists, AND he never relents in being anti-military, AND he escalates that fight to magnificent proportions. Your fears about the "scary racialized radical who doesn't reform to your side nor assuages your guilt for the gains of imperialism you enjoy" are made real in 03

No doubt you've already heard that homunculi work differently in the 2003 anime. But to emphasize one of those major differences: the homunculi are not split aspects of one guy. They are all separate, unrelated, individuals

The characters shared between mangahood and the 2003 anime are, ultimately, not the same characters. Character design and some basal core traits link them to the manga, but their backstories, choices, character growth, and even their perspectives end up completely different from the source material

[voidcat]

— the maker, far away and the muse, ardent

characters: endo yamato, you

notes: this is more in the style of my typical dazai content so iykyk. artist!reader, gender neutral pronouns used. small picture of dorian gray reference. a mini post explaining my vision for this fic basically

Drawing Endo Yamato is a tricky feat.

Despite his simple looks, you realize there are more details to him that meets the eye. Sharp edges and curves, eyes and lashes that cut through, wavy locks of hair that fall with an order to itself.

It is difficult but so is to create. That’s the thing with art, and that’s what you love about it until the very end.

No matter how hard, how detailed something is, no matter how long it’ll take you to reach that level of skill required to make it, it is never impossible.

And so you sit back and keep observing him, smoothing out the page before you, you sharpen your pencil.

Despite the numerous pages adorned with his face, you’ve never spoken with Endo Yamato, not even once. Nor did you feel the need to.

Does god often seek an audience with their followers, does a nature artist eat the apple even after days of mold has accumulated— does everyone kill the thing they love? Or do they just leave it be, to their happiness or misery.

To you he is nothing more than a pretty face, beautiful features and an impressive body, one he uses as his own canvas, recording his life and feelings onto his skin permanently.

Endo Yamato never sits still, as if offering a challenge to you. Another thing that helps you in the long run, your pen begins to hasten, your sketch line improves and you begin to remember and transfer every small detail of a millisecond to paper without breaking a sweat.

It begins piece by piece, part by part. When one thing proves difficult to grasp, you have no choice but to dissect it one by one.

You begin with his structure, how he carries himself and his body. You have confidence in your figure drawing but it takes something extra to show off his pride and nose high up attitude in his posture. You don’t know Endo Yamato all that much but you know enough that you don’t like him or his kind at all.

Then comes the face, the edge of his jaw and the softness to his cheeks despite coming off as thin. It’s the details that prove the real challenge. When drawn apart, be it his eyes or the hooked nose, you’re good. Yet the way they have been placed on his face, you have to remake the dough figurine over and over again. His hair proves a great distraction, you’d suppose it is the real source of your problems. It hides everything characteristic to him, every small detail, the arch of his brows, the wrinkles on his face when he smiles or furrows them, the angle of his nose and how the bridge comes down, the light in his eyes though they are absent majority of the time.

You sketch over and over, the pencil glides off the pages. You change the materials but the subject remains the same. Noticeable changes begin to appear after some time. You’ve lost for how long you’ve been drawing, but it comes natural now.

So you switch up the medium, and try the process from the start with watercolors. The uncontrollable nature of the medium met with the difficult subject growing familiar on your muscles perfectly.

Too perfectly in fact, as you are lost in the thrill of it, that you don’t even notice how time passes nor the shift in scenery unless it contradicts your paintings— and you’re slouching over the papers once more, face contracting in focus as shadows disturb your view and lighting.

When you steal a glance above, you’re met with not a cloud but none other than Endo Yamato himself.

Hands shoved deep in his pockets and his confident yet relaxed posture, he glances down at you and the papers, wearing a smug smile the whole time.

You wait for a moment of breath then divert your attention back to the work before you, adding shadows currently.

You hear him let out a slight grunt, and maybe you’d see his expression shift into something of surprise too, were you to be carefully watching.

“It’s sublime knowing I have a fan.” He says, still not stepping one step to the side, adamant on blocking the light apparently.

His words register far too late for you, you let out a hum at first, “hmm… oh?” The sound fades into surprise on your end, “ah, no, you see-“

You dip the brush into water and to the shades of blue and purple, mixing and lightening the amount of paint on the brush. 

A tapping of feet brings you down to earth and reminds you for once you are not alone in your leisure time of painting.

“Ah… sorry.” You say more as an apology for forgetting he was right there up until a second, “it’s nothing like that.”

Your words take him out like a chain of inconveniences following one after another, building up until you’ve lost your temper.

You don’t notice this either, focus solely on perfecting the shading, calling it another painting done and complete.

To Endo, your nonchalance is odd to say the least. Here he stands, the subject of your attention for many a while now, from what he has seen, and you don’t seem to care one bit. Or is it the paper that is holier than him? Or is this another, albeit looser case of Takiishi, not caring for the people but for their reflections, their end products, what comes out of them and the hand that crafts them into something bigger, brighter.

Along the lines Endo Yamato says to you, you do catch something like ‘having the real thing before you already.’ An enlightenment perhaps, a revelation you didn’t need nor asked for.

So he is a charmer, you think, or tries to be. Considering the things at hand it’s the former most likely— walking up to you without a care in the world as if you’ve interacted before. It takes some sort of confidence, as most charmers carry with them. He is just not trying it to the fullest with you, but is it because he thinks he already holds a part of you in his hand, you’re unsure.

In the short timeframe of thinking over a man you couldn’t care any less, you notice your brush staggering, slowing down. Any more and the drops of water will be too much for the paper, ruining all your hard work on this completely.

“So… listen,” you begin, cutting off whatever he was saying. “If you don’t have anything important to say, would you mind-“ 

You wait and wait for him to catch on. Instead met with empty eyes looking at you with not a single clue inside that brain of his, you let out a sigh.

“The light at this hour is very good and you’re making me lose it minute by minute right now.”

Endo looks at you, in disbelief again. Not the reaction he was expecting and definitely not the words he expected to hear. And compared to how quiet and just shy you sounded up until the last sentence— that last demand, all that timid nature of you dispelled within a second. 

Deflated, he admits his defeat for the time being and leaves, stealing one last glance at the paper.

As the man leaves, you watch his back for a bit, waiting for your brush to dry.

Odd, you think. 

What did he really expect you to do or say? 

You may not know Endo Yamato but all you’ve observed is more than enough to deem him as weird. You are somewhat aware he is filled with burning passion down to his very being but that’s just not who you are as an artist.

The views people have on you, and by extension, on artists has always been far fetched from what you’ve seen.

Must art always be loud and intense, waging war upon any heart that gazes at it? Should you too be destructive and heavy— not all artists see their subject like Basil to Dorian, not all art is an all consuming fire, an endless devotion, a declaration of war. Art can be natural and gentle, like a breeze, like a stream of river.  Love can be accepting and gentle, unifying and kind with the familiarity it brings, the comfort hidden in the routine, as he fails to see.

By the time the painting has come to an end, darkness has fallen. Endo Yamato has already left, and the sunlight soon after him. The sky begins to darken, purple spreads of paint among the clouds. You turn the page and leave today in the past, crossing another thing off the list and moving on.

[ckret2]

How do you (personally) rank the validity of different canon sources?

Ex. Show, Books, Livestreams, Panels, Deleted Scenes ect.

Disclaimer ahead of time that this is solely for my own personal canon-compliant fic writing purposes and I don't expect anyone else to follow this or even think they're obligated to write canon compliantly

Tier one: the show is more canon than the books, but only 1% more canon. In defiance of Alex's decree, I do treat Little Gift Shop of Horrors as canon.

Tier two: everything in the books (plus the books' tie-in websites, like Shmeb-You-Unlocked or TINAWDC) is canon UNLESS it's contradicted in the show. If there's a contradiction, usually the show wins, but it has to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes contradicting book info take precedence over show info if the book's info is better. The best outcome is when the info can be smoothly synthesized. (Note that having to weigh a book against the show only applies to CONTRADICTIONS; if the book just ADDS ONTO our knowledge of the show in a way that doesn't actually contradict it, it's automatically canon.)

Also in defiance of Alex, I consider Time Pirates' Treasure wholly canon, with the "official" timeline being one of the ones where they get the treasure and all of the other choose-your-own-adventure branches being things that happened in neighboring parallel timelines.

Out of the books, Journal 3, TBOB (+TINAWDC), and Lost Legends (+Shmeb-You-Unlocked) are the most canon. TBOB takes precedence over Journal 3 on matters where TBOB's lore is clearly intended as an upgrade on prior ideas (ex: the shaman's portal and the pyramids). Dipper & Mabel's Guide, Time Pirates' Treasure (+ the Axolotl page), and Don't Color This Book are secondarily canon. Lazy screenshot-based novelizations of existing episodes are whatever.

I choose to selectively semi-reject some of the skeevier conspiracy theory claims in the books as "Bill's lying about these": outside of those exceptions, going "there's no evidence Bill's lying about this part but I've decided that he is just because I don't like it" is the coward's way and dishonorable.

Info in the Bill Cipher AMA is third tier canon, since it was written in-character and comes directly from Alex. (Some quotes from the AMA were recycled directly into TBOB + TINAWDC.) Gus Burnside's twitter account is also third tier.

For the first three tiers, all info is canon unless something in a higher tier contradicts it.

The Cipher Hunt is 3.5th tier.

All out-of-universe materials—livestreams, panels, interviews, DVD commentary, tweets, doodles & concept art, etc—are fourth tier. If it's contradicted by anything in the higher tiers, they take precedence; but, for lack of a conflict, out-of-universe materials fill in the gaps. But the person involved matters: show writers' statements on the characters are more canon than voice actors' statements. If fourth-tier materials contradict each other, the newer one takes precedence. Fourth-tier materials can be selectively ignored if so desired, but better to find a way to twist them to make them work.

The Gnome Gemulets game is fifth tier; all the lore from it is canon, but the events may or may not have actually happened, or else only loosely happened like that. Gnome Gemulets may occasionally rank higher than the out-of-universe materials.

Disney.com flash games and the like are semi-canon; you CAN take lore and details from them if you want but the events probably didn't literally happen unless you really want to make it work. Okay to imagine that events happened that were loosely inspired by the games.

Deleted scenes and cameos (ex: Bill in the Simpsons) are semi-semi canon. They probably didn't happen, especially if it contradicts canon; but you can freely take ideas and vibes from them and use them as examples of the kinds of things that could happen (ex: Bill would try to con people into buying crypto just for the heck of it).

Unwritten episodes are semi-semi-semi canon: they definitely didn't happen, but by god, you could MAKE them happen.

The How Not To Draw Grunkle Stan short is as yet unknown. Under normal conditions it ought to be semi-semi canon, but since TINAWDC did some stuff with the Henchmaniacs escaping to reality shortly before this clip came out about Bill escaping to reality, there's a slim possibility this is part of a budding storyline about Bill & the gang in the real world, so I'm reserving judgment for now.

[transmutationisms]

ok i still haven't seen the video du jour so i'm not casting aspersions on it, specifically, but i must say i am baffled by seeing responses to it on here that seem to be written under the presumption that newspaper journalism is somehow immune to the economic forces that cause digital creators to churn out endless streams of low-effort, plagiarised content. have we not all had the experience of trying to find information about an event and clicking on a few different news stories from 'respectable' outlets, only to discover they're all using the same three quotes and just paraphrasing the copy around it, and then clicking around more and determining that those three quotes all turn out to have been sourced from a local paper that broke the story last week but has a circulation of approximately ten people and was mostly ignored, and meanwhile critical details of the situation have now been distorted or omitted in a game of lazy newsprint telephone?

this is more of what i mean when i say that plagiarism is not a bug of capitalist knowledge production and circulation; it's a feature. newspapers and academic articles and youtube video essays are all products and they all exist to sell themselves. individual writers and journalists and editors may be more or less invested, personally, in what they're making, but regardless they are all subject to the same forces incentivising more content and shittier source attribution: it's good for your bottom line if you can continually present yourself as some brilliant thinker who is coming up with wholly original ideas and bestowing them upon the masses. it is much less beneficial to you, economically, to direct people openly and honestly to others' work by crediting them and presenting your own output as part of a larger collaborative social endeavour.

this sort of knowledge production is therefore prone to plagiarism as an expression of the contradiction between the idealist pretense to knowledge circulation as a beneficent activity of social enlightenment, and the material reality of knowledge circulation as a capitalist activity both productive of and dependent on structures of exploitation and inequality. it's not a problem that's unique to individual bad actors, or to any specific medium or professional credential or lack thereof. let's be serious

[laststandx3]

There are many bad things about wish, but one of the most annoying is how it fails to pay off its own set ups.

It's established Asha's father believes in the magic from the stars. He died of an illness (never specified), that Asha's grandfather (her father's father) never got his wish granted in YEARS, well now to me this feels targeted.

Follow my thoughts for a minute, how easy would have been with this already established set up to add the part where it's Magnifico who killed Asha's dad because he was promoting a different kind of magic that would undermine Magnifico's power? This would've established Magnifico as an actual villain from the start, manipulating people's perception of him with magic and the lengths he would go to keep his power and crown.

This would have impacted Asha's journey as well,instead of asking Magnifico to grant her grandfather's wish immediately (which imo is a good reason for him not to hire her, she literally asks for favoritism the moment she arrives), let her instead be perfect for the position, not clumsy and awkward but make her qualified and respectful of the king's secrecy about the wishes. And still she's still not hired. And then she starts questioning him, she's studied, she's ready and it's not enough and the king seemed to like her until she mentioned her father.

And then she talks with the people of rosa about the king, if that was unfair of him maybe , but the answer is that the king is good and kind and doesn't he grants everyone's wishes, isn't that so wonderful of him? (and maybe this can be a song) and at first it sounds like she just doesn't want to accept that she wasn't chosen but after the forth person answers the same exact thing, well then this starts to feel more like a script than an original thought. Just then she looks at all the wishes Magnifico's granted so far and they're all material, it's all about people owning bigger houses, better clothes, riches, nothing is about community, knowledge, about people becoming something(musicians, teachers, scientists, artists...) . The guy that got his wish granted last year also got it granted a few years ago too, Isn't that weird? Some people never get their wishes and this guy twice? And also his wish was so selfish? He wanted a swimming pool! How in the best kingdom, with the best king, nobody wishes nice things for others? And isn't that weird that she and her friends used to make graffitis and jokes on the guards but when Sleepy gave away his wish at 18 suddenly he doesn't make jokes about Magnifico's beard anymore? He's so respectful of the rules now.

And idk maybe Asha doesn't just wish upon a star and everything is given to her. Maybe Magnifico's source of magic is Star and she frees it and that's why Star tags along. The magic of the starts was real, her father was right! Star knew her dad, he tried to save the magical pet but he was killed instead! Now it's not just about freedom and justice she wants revenge. And this is maybe when she fucks up because she was too reckless, she got discovered. Her friends/family are watching how she's getting arrested/executed for treason and that's SO UNFAIR such a cognitive dissonance it breaks Magnifico's brainwash spell.

Now a song about revolution makes sense. But singing about revolution bc they want to be able to wish? Are you kidding me? Not only the movie established that you can have new wishes and that they make you whole again, but also girl, you all read the terms of services when giving Magnifico your wish. You give it to him and if he finds it worth it, it'll be granted. Making questions about the king choices is the opposite of living under a monarchy.

Ultimately I agree with everyone who says this movie feels empty, because it's true, it's a bunch of disney trope stitched together with easter eggs that don't makes us feel anything and that contradicts its own message. The fact that disney doesn't want to make grey characters anymore it's felt. And it mirrors the way people have started to see enjoying stories as media consumption, everything that alludes to people being flawed is an endorsement of abuse. So disney's characters have all turned is these empty shells of heroine tropes. They're always bubbly, their worst flaw is being clumsy, but the worst is that they're always right. Asha's quest to free the wishes is based only on her conviction that the king is wrong in not granting everyone's wish. It's never even hinted in the movie that the subjects of rosa lack something. It's a fairy-tale kingdom in every aspect (maybe the king is a bit egocentric but that hasn't hurt anyone so far), except that her grandpa's wish wasn't granted and so the king must be wrong. If it wasn't for Magnifico's long exposition of I don't accept criticism she wouldn't have questioned him. And even then, that's what living in a kingdom means, that you follow the king's rules. I'm sorry but singing about revolution and then ending the movie still under a monarchy is just contradictory with the whole premise.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

rather than hijack someone else's post (esp considering it was written in good faith and seems to be genuine about soliciting opinions and feedback from the community), i just want to say that i don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with really vibing with fanon-only content, or getting really into a specific fanon AU, or even with building a little community of fans who are also hype for that fanon and so create content based on it. i've got a number of xiyao fix-it AUs bookmarked on AO3 for that reason and have totally bought into the niche joke that "pluck the stars" is the 'canon' xiyao sequel to mdzs. in my heart. (because it is. have you read it? go read it, it's good.)

but i also just strongly, strongly disagree that it is gatekeeping to draw a firm line between fanon content and what is actual canon. like... okay, no, don't go onto someone's fic and nitpick at them in the comments section of their own story, that's a dick move and nobody will like you if you do that. but if you're in an otherwise pretty neutral community space shared by lots of people in your fandom (e.g., the general tags here on tumblr, or an old school lj community, or, idk, whatever passes for a community space on the clock app i guess), and you make a fanon-based claim about the book or video game or show or whatever that is contradicted by the source material... yeah, people are going to correct you. they're going to tell you "that isn't what happened" because... because it isn't what happened.

i know it's a tired metaphor at this point, but it's a common one for a reason imo. canon and fanon are like grammar rules. you really do need to know what the rules are first before you decide to break them. imo the best transformative AU works i've ever read have been written by people who know the canon source material inside and out.

[mesetacadre]

>send me asks im bored

:

something ive read, and then seen people like txttletale talk about; being a marxist isn't just about rattling off a parroted opinion, but developing a framework utilizing diamat to consistently come to a correct conclusion. identify the primary contradiction, etc.

obviously it is a practiced skill, but how would you say is one of the better ways to practice building that framework?

You are completely right! Marxism is not a dogma, but an philosophical framework for analyzing, criticizing and overcoming wage labor and the system that upholds it. As exposed by Lenin in The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (it's a great book and a short read, highly recommend), "Marxism is a continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism [...] German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism". What marxism is, is the logical continuation of these three components; from German philosophy grows dialectical materialism (read: Theses On Feuerbach), from English political economy grows the description of how capitalism works (read: Capital), and from French (utopian) socialism grows scientific socialism (read: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)

Instead of, for example, just memorizing how reformism is bad and revolution is good, you should instead understand how class struggle influences both of these actions, how reformism is used by the capitalist class to misdirect the workers' struggle, and how the way class struggle functions and has always functioned necessitates that the proletariat take its historic role as the overthrowers of capitalism, and beyond this, how this is worked towards. It's also very important to understand how common marxist positions are reached in order to continue analizing new situations, such as the Palestinian struggle.

I will never grow tired of saying this: the only path towards becoming a better communist whilst advancing the class struggle bit by bit is through constant theoretical and practical education, the involvement of yourself in the workers' struggle and the capacity to extract lessons from it via what you learn by reading the works of other communists, who most probably have already dealt with an analogous situation to yours more than 90 years ago, and then to complete the cycle, reapply those lessons to your work as a communist. You can only get so far by only reading or by only doing things (of course everyone's personal situation will influence the ability to do either or both of these, I think it goes without saying). Synthetically: Learn from the past, learn from the present, exercise your own mind, and never grow complacent. In due time (we're talking more than a year at least, probably more), the marxist framework will be as natural to you as the liberal framework is to most people

[jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear]

When it comes to comics, I think that engaging with the myriad of source material IS important to a point. Comics showcase this rare thing in a sense in that most characters have multiple stories, origins, universes, etc

So you're allowed to pick and chose what you, the reader, considers canon. But you're also allowed to come up with your OWN canon and because of the multi-dimensional nature of the sources, your ideas could very well become canon someday.

I'm a bit of a people pleaser and hate stepping on toes, but the drama that the comics fandoms is soooo exhausting when we're literally talking about if Riddler likes hot chocolate because of one random voice line, or if Scarecrow doesn't like crows because his grandmother trained a flock to attack him. We're not talking political life altering opinions, we're talking about fictional men in spandex.

Please understand that someone else headcanons are not out to hurt you. We can co-exist in peace. Yeah, it's important to read a least a little of the source material, comic, game, movie, etc....

but coming up with headcanons that MAY contradict ONE story is not the end of the world for the fandom. Many people use these characters to cope with real life trauma, who are you to tell them they can't make up their harmless stories, whether they be "problematic" or "cute and fuzzy"

Just chill and let people have fun. Create what makes YOU happy and people will come for that, if you like -insert headcanon-, I'm positive you're not alone.

[kiragecko]

cherrystainedknuckles

I guess the only problem with being asked to take a “marie kondo approach” is that in order to find any fanfic that appears to be based in actual canon timeline and plot points and characterization (which does exist, and I’m not sure why fanon fans seem insistent that it doesn’t), I literally have to search for hours. I’m not joking, I consistently make fic rec lists, and I have to search for hours and hours for actual canonical basis. same thing with character tags on tumblr.

I’m not saying fanon fans have to stop enjoying fanon or making up their own content. I’m just saying that when the tags used for both fanon tim drake and canon tim drake are the same tag it just becomes incredibly annoying sometimes, and I understand why people who like to engage with canon (me, often) become frustrated

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I have definitely had periods where I got incredibly frustrated with fanon! Around 2019, I was wondering if I needed to leave the Batfandom, because it had been so long since I read a new fic where the characters felt 'right'.

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But, if you're willing to, I'd like you to consider what you mean when you divide 'fanon' from 'canon'. Because I struggle to find a hard line between the two, for several reasons:

1. Fandom is transformative. Every fanfic is going to have some interpretation of the source material. The line between what is too much interpretation and what is acceptable is different for every person. For me, I find it can even vary based on writing style or other odd things - lighthearted fic can have more noncanonical stuff in it than heavier fic, and still seem true to canon.

2. 'Canon' is subjective. I do not consider the movies or video games to be 'canon', and it annoys me when things from those creep into the fic I'm reading. (I'm okay with SOME Battinson.) Some aspects of the cartoons are okay. I consider precrisis Jason Todd to be an alternate reality version, but Donna's precrisis origins are more canonical than the dumb retcons. Wayne Family Adventures isn't my main version of the characters, but I'm not bothered if some elements show up in my stories. I'm ignoring most of the nu52, but I like Duke and I'm still watching this new Lian to see what happens. I doubt your divisions are identical to mine.

(Also, some things that I think of as 'fanon' have shown up in nu52 canon! I do not accept them as any more canon because of this.)

3. Most 'fanon' is based on canon. Canon Tim has weird sleep habits. 90s Dick is really lighthearted and joking around some characters in ways similar to fanon. Dick can canonically not be trusted to take care of himself if his mental health gets low enough. Jason likes classical literature. Etc.

These are exaggerated and/or twisted in a lot of fic, but where is the line where they stop being canon? I wouldn't bat an eye at a lot of this stuff, if it didn't show up SO OFTEN.

4. Most 'fanon fans' do know some canon. What line are you going to set where it will be 'enough'. And are they allowed to mention parts of the canon they haven't read yet? Is anyone allowed to talk about Dick's early Robin days, or only the tiny amount of people who have read the golden age stuff? A lot of the 'mistakes' I see are obviously made by people who have read ABOUT canon, but don't know quite how it fits together.

5. 'Canon' is FULL of contradictions. Yes, there are canon events. Yes, there is characterization that is consistent across 3/4s of comics. But. I'm still working on my sidekick timeline. I've devoted days to figuring out ages and passage of time. I've spent over a decade trying to figure out Jason Todd's motivations, and why Tim treats him the way he does. I've read all the 90s and early 2000s CANONICAL character assassination of Jason.

I spent years thinking that Donna's death was almost as foundational as Jason's, only to later discover that I had just happened to read the specific comics that focused on the fallout, and she only stayed dead for a short time. That happens to fans ALL THE TIME! We read a character summarizing an event we haven't directly read, and just accept it as what happened. But characters have biases, and not all writers care about accuracy.

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I've read some Tim Drakes that I consider to be almost entirely 'fanon'. And quite a few that were so scarily 'canon' that I got chills. (Not all of which were similar to each other.) But the vast, vast majority have fallen somewhere in the middle.

I definitely do not want the responsibility of deciding which ones count as 'canon'! And I think I would strongly dislike anyone who tried to decide for me.

Being frustrated is logical, and I empathize. But the original post was about the impossible expectations some fans feel. The expectation to read thousands of comics, synthesize all the contradictions, and come to conclusions that match the 'true fans'. That's a perfectly reasonable thing to be complaining about.

If that's what some fans are experiencing, of course they're not going to want to engage with canon! There's no way for them to succeed, so why should they even try?

When you join THAT conversation to discuss your frustration about fanon, it strengthens that perception. When you call them 'fanon fans' it emphasizes their belief that you don't think they belong. And rather than trying to change, it's more likely that they'll double down. Canon is full of gatekeepers, so they'll avoid it.

[dkmbookworm]

Oh my god so this topic exactly is why I dont see diomedes fitting in with epic. Like im a HUGE fan of him (and odypendio) and I could see him being in Ithaca in some post-canon even in the epic canon but he is just not A Character in Epic to be encluded in ody's time in the trojan war as as close as he is in the source material yaknow

Oh definitely. I think it’s fun when I see works include diomedes in a future/post-canon fic or comic. But Jorge is trying to keep his story self/contained to the odyssey itself because it creates a clearer storyline to work with

Most people have read the odyssey in hs and have a decent understanding of its plot, but by composition the Illiad wasn’t covered as much outside of notes (at least in my school’s case). He already has to juggle a lot of characters and storylines and musical themes and motifs, so this just makes it easier for him as an indie creator + he is retelling his story to get the theme he wants across most.

It’s why he has been explicitly clear that epic cannot be supplemental material over reading the odyssey. You will fail, he took creative liberties for his retelling. To say the least about translating a character for a modern audience within the setting itself

Just think of how much it takes in terms of the set up to have a character who opens the story with killing a baby. And still walk out of it sympathetic after that. We have an entire trope around “wouldn’t hurt a child” for villain character and Odysseus explicitly goes against this. Because we have the set up that he is being faced with trolley problems throughout his journey “the blood on your hands is something you won’t lose, all you can choose is whose”. Violence is inescapable in this world and you have to make a decision about whose blood is going to be spilt, your own or someone else’s.

But this kind of falls apart if you consider the original illiad as canon to this and see what ody was during the actual war. He was already ruthless, downright cruel at times. And this has been memed on plenty in cases where diomedes comes back into the story to recount what they did together in the war. If the illiad was adapted, any idea of what happens specifically has to come from Jorge as this is his version of Odysseus and would need to fit into his storyline/character progression for him.

The death of Iphigenia, abandoning Philoctetes, enslaving Hecuba, etc. All these things contradict actions/decisions Odysseus takes in the story and it makes sense to leave them out in this context.

[patchwork-crow-writes]

The RalsAlmanac, Volume I

Okay, here it is! A series of essays that will attempt to definitively explain just who or what Ralsei is, referring to scenes from the game as evidence, as well as external sources where appropriate.

There will be some conjecture, as there's just so much we don't know about him, and what little we are given isn't exactly the most revealing. However, I've done my best to cleave as closely to the source material as I can, and I believe there's a strong case to be had here.

Hopefully you'll be able to see where my points come from, or at the very least you'll learn something you didn't know before. Either way, thanks for your consideration!

Volume I - Ralsei Is A Character In A Role-Playing Game.

Self-indulgent reference out of the way, lemme ask you a question.

Who is Ralsei?

It's a question that seems like it should be easy to answer. He's the Prince From The Dark, the third of the three Delta Warriors, he exists to serve the lightners, and is the most precious little cinnamon roll that ever lived. He enjoys baking and crochet, can hold a tune, is a decent interior-decorator, and holds his friends Kris and Susie in very high regard.

Thing is, that's about all you can really say about him without veering into speculation and headcanons, and they're more surface-level observations than anything else. What exactly does "Prince From The Dark" mean, for instance? Prince in what sense, exactly? Ceremonial, or with the actual power that royalty conveys? Where does he rank in comparison to, say, King or Queen, both actual rulers of actual kingdoms? The title of "prince" would suggest that he answers to them, but while they rule their own municipalities, Ralsei's title implies he rules over ALL dark worlds. You could go on asking these questions forever, but I think you see what I'm getting at.

A more productive avenue of questioning might be: What role does Ralsei play in the story of Deltarune? Perhaps more of his underlying character and motivation could be gleaned by looking at what he does for the story and the game. And this would be correct... sort of.

We tend to think of him as the squishy healer of the party, the Heart and moral centre of the Fun Gang. And he absolutely is that, but he's also quite a bit more. He plays all sorts of different roles and character archetypes in the first two chapters of the game, including but not limited to:

the old man whose purpose is to wax poetic about the ancient prophecy...

the know-it-all tutorial fairy who walks you through the basic game mechanics...

the straight-man DM trying to keep everything on the rails...

the young sheltered noble experiencing the outside world for the first time...

the demure love-interest to the main protagonist...

the Polyanna determined to see the good in everybody...

the mysterious waif who knows things he shouldn't...

...eye candy…?

...and so on and so forth.

And so what, I hear you cry. Characters in video games can have more than one personality trait, after all. And yes, this is true! But usually, the different aspects of a character's roles, how they interact with, reinforce or contradict each other, can tell us more about their inner world - what motivates them, what they actively like and dislike... in short, it grants them depth and allows us to engage with them as actual people, rather than just a series of game functions and character traits dressed up in a pretty bow.

But that's not what we see with Ralsei. In fact, far from showing us any real, deep aspect of his character, each new guise he dons and part he plays in the narrative further obfuscates him from us. We learn no new meaningful information from any of these exchanges... except for one thing, but we'll come to that in a moment.

This vexes us, because we WANT to know more about him, but all we end up getting is stock JRPG tropes dressed up in a warm, fluffy coat. There HAS to be something deeper, we reason - he's hiding things from us, so he must be a secret villain. Or his backstory is so tragic, so traumatising, that he cannot properly articulate it to us right now. Or maybe what we see really IS what we get - a simpering, airheaded fool whose only desires in life are to be cute, please his betters and do what he's told. Yet even this explanation seems... unsatisfying, especially since we KNOW he harbours some angst about himself and his sense of identity.

And speaking of which, that one thing we learn? Right at the end of Chapter 2's Acid Tunnel sequence, he utters a single sentence:

This is arguably one of the most significant lines of dialogue in the entire game up to this point. But what does it mean, exactly? I believe most people assume it means he doesn't have a clear sense of who he is outside of his ordained purpose, which is certainly valid, and definitely something I believed for a long time. And yet, this explanation does not deepen our understanding of his character in any meaningful way; looking back over all his interactions with the cast, it does not allow us to glean any further information about him.

And you can say that's because he himself doesn't know what he's like... but again, this doesn't actually change anything, and we just end up with a circular logic trap. We don't know anything because he doesn't tell us anything, and he doesn't tell us anything because he doesn't know anything, so how can we be expected to know anything, except that no-one seems to know anything about him… which is very frustrating to us Ralsei scholars, and gets us no closer to truly understanding him.

But look at what he says again. Really look at it. It’s a very strange way of saying “I don’t really know who I am”, isn’t it? After all, if that’s what he means, then why doesn’t he just say that? I’m certain you’ve realised by now, but it’s because that’s NOT what he’s saying at all. He literally has no clue what being “himself” is supposed to be, because he wasn’t even created with a sense of “Ralsei-ness” in the first place. Little wonder, then, that we can’t discern anything about his internal world, when there is nothing there to be discerned.

But before I elaborate any further, I want to talk about a couple of scenes in Deltarune that are just... puzzling. This is relevant, I promise. The first is during the dialogue with Rouxls Kaard before the rematch with K.Round. Ralsei says something interesting in the lead-up to the fight:

Note Susie’s baffled reaction to this. Then not long afterwards, he continues with:

Throwaway joke, right? We laugh because Susie's right - K. Round and its crown do look exactly the same to us, and so Ralsei's dramatic utterances are deflated and lose their impact. We laugh, beat the boss with Susie's help and forget all about it. But here's the thing - if K.Round looks the same to us, and it looks the same to Susie, and presumably by extension the rest of the in-game characters... when why exactly does Ralsei take the time to insist otherwise?

Is he... lying? Our most precious little boy, guilty of perjury? Say it ain't so! :O

The second scene is in chapter 2 - Queen has challenged us to a game of Punch-Out on her absurdly tall arcade machine, and we can talk to the characters before trying to interact with it. Talk to Ralsei, and if you answer "Gaming is my life" to his prompt, he says this:

Most people don't even come across this in their playthrough, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's new to you reading this. But again, note this strange discrepancy between what Ralsei reports is happening and what Susie says is actually happening. It becomes apparent to most people that Kris can affect the tone of their voice when saying what we tell them to, which affects how the response is taken by other characters and gives us a subtle clue about how they actually feel about certain characters or situations.

Are we to assume, then, that Ralsei isn't actually listening to how Kris says things, but only what they're saying? And if that's correct, then... what does that say about him?

Taken at face-value, within the context of the game, neither of these events really make much sense. It just looks like Ralsei is being overly-dramatic, or lying, or perhaps even insensitive to what their friend is trying to tell him, which doesn't quite track with his per-established shallow traits of kind, all-loving and moralistic. It's perplexing and seemingly out-of-character for him. So it might help to consider, in each of these scenarios, who exactly Ralsei is talking to.

Is it Kris and/or Susie? This would make the most sense, but it's actually not that likely, considering the aforementioned discrepencies between his descriptions and Susie's observations. So is it himself? Again, if he can see things the same as everyone else in-game, that wouldn't make much sense, because then he's just saying stuff that... isn't true? Or in the latter example's case, just completely ignoring what Kris is saying, which doesn't seem to entirely gel with what we know about him.

So, who does that leave? Well, the only other person - or should I say entity - who is present for both of those scenes is... us. The player of Deltarune. And that might seem even stranger than the previous options, until you realise what it is he's actually doing - providing flavour text, additional exposition informing us of details that we wouldn't - or shouldn't - be able to make out on a pixelated display with no voice-acting, attempting to give us a richer sense of these events in order to increase our sense of immersion in the game and world of Deltarune. In effect, he's playing the part of a character in a role playing game, doling out “flavour text” that contradicts another character’s experience of the same scenes, and he's doing it entirely for OUR benefit. Not Kris’s, not Susie's – ours.

He tells us that K.Round's crown is different, and that it is in pain from its forced control, to try and increase the stakes of the fight, and to give us a motivation that's not "here's the exact same boss again lul". He responds to Kris's words the way he does, not because he doesn't understand the nuances of their tone, but to try and amp us up for the upcoming challenge, and to validate our choice when we select the dialogue option "Gaming is my life". Because we cannot hear Kris's tone of voice - and Ralsei knows that. To him, Kris's tone literally doesn't matter, because he doesn't believe it matters to us in that exact moment.

And here’s the thing: if not for Susie’s asides immediately contradicting him, we’d likely take what he says here as what’s actually going on. To Ralsei, the reality he and his friends experience is not important – it’s the image of that reality that he’s trying to convey to the player. It’s like he knows he’s part of a game, meant just for us to experience and enjoy, as opposed to a real world filled with real people having real experiences.

And the reason I brought this up is to illustrate what I believe Ralsei to actually be - namely, that he a walking, talking, singing and dancing amalgam of stock JRPG characters and tropes that's trying very hard to present as an actual person, to the point of knowing absolutely nothing about who he even is outside of that. Put in even blunter terms, he's literally a fluffy goat-shaped vehicle to set the player on their journey through the game, to keep them playing and to keep them invested. People looking for deeper aspects of his character come up short and are disappointed because they're looking for something that does not currently exist.

And just so that I'm clear, I do not mean that Ralsei is "acting", or that he's "wearing a mask", because that would imply that there was actually something underneath his "facade" to begin with. No, this is who the Prince of the Dark is - a very convincing fascimile of a person, following his directive to ensure that the story of Deltarune is resolved, and that the game of Deltarune is played to completion. And once you realise that, a lot of things that Ralsei says and does that seemed strange before suddenly make a lot more sense.

As for the why... well, that'll have to wait for another time. But hopefully you can begin to see how my future essays in this series all tie in to this one, because I think you can only really understand those with the framework that this text provides. I hope that my reasoning made sense and wasn't too difficult to follow, but I'll be happy to provide additional information, clarification, or even just discussion on any aspect of this essay... even if we just wind up (respectfully) agreeing to disagree. Would love to hear what people thought about this!

Thanks for reading!

[gipzisays209]

Hi! Hi, yes! R/systemscringe has an unofficial discord! And yes, it's JUST AS BAD as the subreddit!

Hiding it under the cut for a lot of swearing

Exhibit A:

"Just like how you guys come in this server... They can go into yours."

Didn't you just claim in the sentence prior to NOT be advocating for raiding? Yet that sentence literally contradicts everything you just said? By insinuating people can doxx and raid that server? Pick one, maybe?

Or how about exhibit B, a prime example of the source material the server was built off of:

Let's not take away from the point, doxxing is horrible, it's illegal and NOBODY should be doing this, no matter who you are, and this server should not have had to go through that. But this is not the way, as server staff, to be handling such a situation. ESPECIALLY not doubling down and giving a major victim complex over harmful, and quite frankly, incorrect, views.

The real kicker?

This is straight from the rules of their server.

So "Just like how you guys come in this server... They can go into yours" isn't talk about raiding, then? So the rules only apply to the people OUTSIDE of the server? Got it. Your own rules don't even apply to you. Checks out.

Like, who would have thought the discord for the subreddit known for fakeclaiming and policing disorders would be bad too! On so many levels!

And if the server being mentioned (whose name I blurred out for privacy) did do the things this server is claiming they did... You don't think it's for a reason? Like I said before, doxxing and raiding are inexcusable no matter who does it, but I'm sure this server was not chosen indiscriminately.

These are not the kinds of people you want to listen to. They've clearly demonstrated they're immature, incapable of understanding the rules, even the ones they set in place, and most of all, only care about creating an echo chamber of hate and harm.