#also this fandom is so naive

[gracefullou]

Idk how I feel about this because I have massive hate towards the covers and 1dead anything.

https://x.com/LouisWT91World/status/1828489506460147938

I despise those covers. Even from this video, the man admitted he didn't know one direction that well. Yes, he was screaming with night changes but i've always said that it is a very popular and nostalgic song. I feel like him and his friend were the only ones singing along 7 💀. People behind seem to not know the song at all. But it's Louis' choice, i'm tired of this discussion. If he wants the 4 covers, if he wants to be known as the 1D guy forever it's on him. He had a whole ass 16 songs album (not counting the bonus songs) that he made specifically for the live shows and yet he chooses those decade old songs that'll never be half as good as his own 🤦‍♀️.

[supremeladyoftherandom]

Imagine being me

Imagine you live in a country where popular american cartoon show gravity falls was not even heard of

Imagine growing up a little and going on the internet, and finding out about this show

Imagine seeing fanart on pinterest, of a boy in a pine hat and a girl in a shooting star sweater and two similar looking old men and a one eyed triangle

imagine seeing fanart of the fucking triangle being kissy kissy and tender with one of the old men/the boy with the pine hat/the girl with the shooting star

Imagine seeing the triangle looking over the boy reading a book/the girl knitting/anyone doing literally anything in the fanart

Imagine thinking the triangle must be a tinkerbell-type side character

Now imagine seeing the show for the first time

[volitioncheck]

nvm this is still on my brain. kim does not like to watch harry suffer… to say that kim takes satisfaction in harry’s pain is a huge misconstruing of his character.

the “getting thrashed like a schoolboy” line comes from a board game, lol. it’s a tease, not a cruelty. there’s never any line that implies that Kim enjoys seeing Harry taking actual morale damage.

he can be amused if you fail a check, but the check is always relatively inconsequential, and again, Harry isn’t taking damage in these.

Failing to pry the trash bin open:

Failing to shatter Ruby’s lorry window:

(also in both of these examples he only responds smugly if you choose for Harry to stubbornly dig in his heels. if Harry gets huffy, Kim teases. If Harry backs down right away Kim won’t rub it in, which feels significant to me! it reminds me of that recent post goin around about Kim meeting your energy!)

and here’s some reactions to failed checks where he does take damage.

Failing the jump to get your cloak:

Failing to break down Plaisance’s door:

he’s not laughing if Harry’s taking damage because he’s not a dick lol.

aaaaand here’s some other instances of morale/health damage and kim’s reactions.

alternate dialogue for failing the harbor jump:

after the call with precinct 41:

seeing bullet holes in the wall:

most significant examples to argue this point for me come when harry has done something to jeopardize the RCM’s image. which kim goes on and on about the importance of maintaining— and yet even here, he still extends worry and assurance.

telling Billie about her husband and handling it badly:

hardie authority check failure cock carousel:

aaaaand the car. this line is one of the most mask-off kim moments we get in the game in my opinion, honestly.

tying this back to the schoolboy line— that line doesn’t show up if you have a negative reputation with Kim. if you have <1 rep, it gets replaced with him calling it “about four hours of our lives that we'll never get back,” lol.

it’s affectionate ribbing!! twisting it into anything else is bizarre 2 me lmao!

anyways. kim is a foil to every other cop we meet in the game specifically because he doesn’t view harry as a punching bag or a lost cause. gottlieb does nothing but sling jabs and glib jokes about harry’s health. torson+mclaine and the others laugh at harry’s panic attack over the radio. in response to harry’s suicide-by-car attempt(!!!!) jean yells about RCM budget. all kim’s lines in response to harry’s check failures and health-damage are consistent, explicit textual contrast against the callousness of the rest of the RCM. twisting kim’s character here requires a bad faith interpretation of the whole game.

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

Just to minimize my chances of being genuinely misunderstood OR deliberately misinterpreted, and crucified for something I don't think, How Dare You Say We Piss on the Poor website etc...I'm gonna say this right up top. I absolutely understand why people don't like Thessaly as a character, if anyone does completely unironically stan her as some kind of feminist hero who Did Nothing Wrong uwu, I personally see it as a bit of a red flag. I don't like terfs real or fictional. In a vacuum, I could even completely sympathize and agree with the people who want her cut.

HOWEVER.

It's really something to me to see people clamoring for her to be cut, because she carries and expressed an ugly indefensible prejudice (transphobia) in words towards (1) person. Meanwhile Hob fucking Gadling enacted one of the most violent forms of antiblack racism I can even think of against thousands no, millions of people, the ripple effects of which still affect billions more today. Just a little light idk, profiting off the fucking slave trade and had to be told by someone else that it was bad...and he's a fan favorite.

People are saying Thessally being Dream's love interest reflects badly on him or is somehow endorsement by the narrative (?!?!?!?!?!? Didn't she (SPOILER ALERT AS IF IT MATTERS BY NOW) help participate in his extended assisted suicide? She's not painted as a great person to me just another character what are y'all SMOKING whatever fine. It's fine this is fine.) But shipping Dream with Mr. Former Slaver is not only not verboten or frowned on widely in the fandom but its THEE most popular pairing by far. So...why the difference?

Like where are the same fans who are saying Thessaly shouldn't just be more clearly shown to be wrong, she shouldn't even be in the show at all when it comes to Hobert's crimes??? Yes, transphobia is indefensible. Isn't racism?

And I hear the cries of "it's fiction!!!" Already rallying (if anyone who needs to hear this even sees it lol) to which I say:

HORSESHIT. I KNOW you don't, deep down, really agree because if you did, why get upset about Thessaly being included??? Why does what she said to one person matter if it's Just Fiction You Guyze. Fictional characters are allowed to do bad things and fiction isn't reality sweaty....except when you only apply that standard to fictional racists you like and simp for, but fictional transphobes you don't are SO HARMFUL they shouldn't even be portrayed in fiction.

Like. Give me a big fat BREAK. This looks like bullshit, no? I'm sorry, but I'd love for someone to try and give any other explanation besides one personally offended you or hit home for you, and the other doesn't.

And if that bothers you or you feel like it says something negative about you...idk what you want me to say??? You can't control how other people perceive you and that's how people outside this majority-of-the-fandom bubble see it. You don't need to respond, I just wish and genuinely hope this gives you a moment to think about why fans who ARE bothered by both (and not just paying lip service to being bothered by the one but railing against the other) are so frustrated with people saying everyone is welcome but in practice only bending over backwards for the comfort and emotions of themselves, and people they can easily relate to.

You don't have to like Thessaly (I don't. I find her an interesting antagonist, I don't stan her. And frankly imo likability is not. the point of her character) but you'll pardon me for feeling more than a bit cynical and side eying people's motivations for what seems a...pretty obvious double standard, on what fictional crimes related to real world issues matter to y'all, and which clearly don't. Either actually bring the same energy to the table for fictional people who committed atrocities, even if against a group you're not part of and thus don't feel the need to empathize with, or just carry on, but accept that you don't have the SLIGHTEST room to talk about cutting characters who do immoral things. And you also need to accept that you look like a hypocrite when you do.

[hauntingofhouses]

guys cmon. be ffr please. akemi did Not love taigen. the only reason why she was desperate to search for him to the point of putting herself in danger is because she didn't want to get married to an abusive man (which she believed at the time that takayoshi was). when seki tried to dissuade her from running off, her reason was not "but i love taigen and wanna be with him 🥺" it was because she refused to be controlled and have her autonomy taken from her; she literally says "i won't be locked away in edo married to a stranger." and when seki still tries to argue that getting married to the heir of the shogun would be better than getting caught by brigands, she then says "that kind of man"—referring to takayoshi—"treats women like animals. they say he's a tyrant." and when seki chuckles and says "what man isn't?" her response is "you." she doesn't even talk about taigen. she is using him as much as he was using her. they both see—or, well, saw—each other as means to an end. for taigen he saw that marrying into the tokunobu clan would elevate his status and wealth. for akemi she wanted the right to choose who she married, and she wanted that person to be someone kind. that's it! neither of them loved each other. but since they were courting of course they acted sweet to each other, and they do still care for one another, especially due to their romantic history. but let's be real! akemi is a boss bitch who dropped taigen and forgot all about his ass as soon as she saw takayoshi was a nice guy. because duh? not only is takayoshi a better lover (it's implied their lovemaking lasted a long time) but he's also kinder towards her and presents her with an opportunity to claim power and freedom, which she would not have if she had married taigen, as she would have still been stuck under her father's thumb. so literally why should she settle for taigen's stupid ass! she may be a little naive at times but she's still incredibly intelligent. she would not do something stupid for the sake of "love." you know who would though? taigen.

[gammija]

sherlock & co is a lot of fun but it is also, and i dont know another way to say this, the most normie fiction podcast ive listened to

[starlooove]

Call me jaded bitter and black but I’ll never care about the nuances of the police fill in on tv. Like we already have to deal with the ‘my dad is a cop :(‘ or ‘my broke brother joined the military’ irl why the fuck am I wasting my brain power on Caitlyn or vi. Like we know materialistically the authority of being a cop can get u what u want faster and that emotionally u either need strict routine with an outlet for ur violence or ur so used to it that u have to be a cop. I still fucking hate u tho like idc about how sad u are about being privileged and I said cop fill in but it’s really every kind of that character on tv like Zuko esque sorry I genuinely have less empathy for you than I do for other people idc

[cementcornfield]

good lord my inbox is a mess lmao

[normalbrothers]

[aknolan]

Okay so, here's how I read into the Nuts and Dolts dynamic:

Ruby: "I love Penny but I don't know if she feels the same way and everything is so chaotic and I don't want to make her uncomfortable so I'll just keep this to myself and focus on other things!"

Penny: "Ruby is such a good friend! I want to make out with her! That is TOTALLY a thing good friends do, right? I'm pretty sure Blake and Yang make out, and they ALSO seem like very good friends! Weiss, are you okay? You look like you are trying to ease a headache."

I feel like that really doesn't give enough credit to Penny tbh. I get that it's funny to treat her as super naive on how everything works, but especially in v7 and v8 she's just... not.

Penny not realizing her feelings for Ruby are romantic? Sure. Penny not realizing that making out is a romantic thing? That just seems a bit infantilizing to me. And I'm not really blaming you because it's a common thing in the fandom, but I'm also not gonna gloss over it. That reduces Penny to a joke about how she has 0 social understanding, when v7 very clearly moves waaaaaaay beyond that.

Anyways, the way I read them is that up to v3, Ruby may have had a bit of a crush on Penny, but never really thought about her feelings long enough to notice. Then after v3, she thought Penny was dead and it didn't matter what exactly those feelings were, it just hurt. Then v7 happens, and she's between "too much work to think about feelings" and "no clear time limit to figure this out so whatever" again with regard to her feelings. In v8 she of course has even less time to think about it, but a lot of opportunity to notice how important Penny is. How much the thought of losing her again hurts. That leaves her in v9 with a very clear understanding of how deeply important Penny is, with it only being a matter of time before the quarter drops and she has her realization that the feeling is love.

Penny I think has the very specific problem of not having a reference point. This especially goes for v3. The people she's close to are her dad and Ruby, and so the difference between the feelings is easy to think of as family vs friend. And that's how things stay. Sure, Winter becomes a friend of sorts, but that's still... different. It's only really in v8 that she ends up briefly surrounded by friends, as everyone tries to save her. Everyone is willing to take risks for her. This is when she gains a reference point for how the feelings she has for Ruby are different from friend-feelings.

I also think either of them may have noticed much sooner if the concept of kissing was on their minds, but it's not, and that's fine.

[motleyfam]

Mx motleyfam, why do you have 5 ao3 accounts? What do you do with all of those?? I am desperately curious.

(And i'm guessing they aren't open pseuds, but if i'm wrong, do you feel like sharing what they are?)

I like to keep an ✨ air of mystery ✨

[perenlop]

wc animators who make amvs involving dovewing that dont vilify her or make her look like a vain airhead who bullies her sister and is proud of taking hollyleafs place or heavily sideline her in favor of ivypool and act like shes just the beginning of ivypools arc i am kissing you directly on the mouth

[lameotello]

I've connected the dots. The reason people write Mikey as innocent is because he's a positive, optimistic person and nine out of ten times that seems to be equated with not knowing how the world works instead of choosing to take the world with all its flaws and still be able to see the good in it

[cats-thoughts]

@arcticsilver

really fun duo you have there. mind if i add arbitrary roles to their relationship dynamic so i can write one of them as an overprotective caretaker and the other as a naive helpless baby?

[romance-of-three-memes]

A lot of people in mainland China are perfectly capable of getting around the so called 'Great Firewall of China' and interacting with the internet beyond it but the thing is a lot of them just flat out don't want to or don't really care all that much. Yeah sure the internet is heavily censored, but outside of that non-English spaces have gotten smaller and smaller while English takes over as the lingua franca of the internet, and they may or may not be able to read and understand English very well.

Also a lot of people on the internet beyond the 'firewall' are very hostile to them, they get treated like naive idiots or brainwashed infiltrators for the ccp. I remember a few years back when a lot of Chinese fanfic writers started uploading their stories on ao3 en masse because there had been a big uptick in websites that host fanfiction getting taken down and some people were so utterly vile about it, making jokes about how they could get the fics taken down by mentioning the Tiananmen Square massacre in the comments and things like that.

All because they were apparently offended by their favorite tags having more non-English works that can very easily filter out so they don't have to look at them at all. Because God forbid a fanfiction website that already greatly skews towards English fics have more works in other languages, right? That's like the only thing I miss about fanfiction.net, it had way more non-English fics, well that and more stories for certain fandoms than ao3 does.

And it's not like a lot of tech companies and other governments don't censor the internet to some extent or another, China isn't unique in that regard, it's just particularly infamous for being so heavy-handed and easy to use as a red herring.

[doberbutts]

One of the really insidious ways black people in media get treated is that despite our stereotypes expanding outside of "thug" "slave" and "prostitute", we are still very limited on *what* we can be portrayed as.

It is no shock to me that the two black women in Veilguard, for instance, are either medium toned like myself or a nonhuman skin color (introduced as a woman). It doesn't escape my attention that the only black woman in Baldur's Gate list of companions is also a nonhuman skin color. Dark skinned black women are still considered too unattractive to include as potential romanceable candidates, as it *also* does not escape my attention that the darkest we've had was Vivienne who was simultaneously regarded as an incredibly unlikeable character by huge swaths of the fandom and also unavailable for romance.

But moreover- why can't the bubbley nerdy cute mage be a black woman? Why can't the shy but resourceful archer be a black woman? Why does the black woman have to be someone with their guard up, walls as high as a skyscraper, cynical and callous? Why can't the black woman be the warm and loving Wynne, or the somewhat naive yet devout Leliana? The stalwart and just Aveline? I know plenty of Isabelas, and Viviennes, and Neves, and Taashs, but I also know plenty who are Merrill, or Bellara*, or Harding, or Cassandra, and I even lived with a Sera for a while. Why can't she be Bethany or Morrigan?

The closest we had was Josephine, who again is still fairly light skinned, but at least she has a bit more flexibility. And she isn't a companion, so her screen time is fairly minimal if you're not taking the time to romance her.

*And I don't begrudge Bellara too much, as A: I adore her and B: I'm pretty sure she's our first visibly Asian companion which is a milestone in itself. My point is more that Bellara could be black with virtually no story change because I know plenty of bubbly chirpy friendly black women who have a deep love of their hobbies and interests, who are bisexual and even prefer women, with deep trauma in their pasts, and yet the choice to *not* do that speaks to a problem the media has in their depiction of black women that is far bigger than Bioware.

And it doesn't escape my attention that the men have this problem as well- Wyll and Davrin* are both regarded as boring by their respective fandoms due to the choice to play it safe and stick with the extremely good and upright and just knight character instead of giving them something more messy- Astarion and Lucanis could be black with, as said, little-to-no change in their storyline because I know-even have dated- pansexual former sex worker black men with intensely complicated feelings about sex and intimacy, and I've had plenty of ex-con soft yet dangerous men holding themselves at a distance to prevent themselves from hurting anyone as my friends and even extended family.

I know plenty of intensely nerdy and probably autistic black guys who will infodump gladly about their special interest to the point of it consuming them. I know plenty of black guys with martyr complexes who think they have to tear the world- and themselves- apart just to fix what is broken in this world. I know plenty of black guys who, despite their own inability to get their shit together, are like a port in a storm every time you talk to them. I know plenty of black guys who are extremely educated and well respected within their field, with gentle yet commanding demeanor. Any of these characters *could* be black, and yet they aren't, and the choice to do so is again far bigger than Bioware and Larian.

*Davrin, like Vivienne, being the darkest and first blatantly black male companion instead of potentially able to be ambiguously "of color" like Zevran, Fenris, and Dorian. Even more damning that they'd considered, like Sera, making Solas blatantly black in his concept art and instead chose to make him a pale egg.

As someone desperate for representation, it becomes quickly obvious as I take inventory of what roles black people are given that we still aren't considered as complex and nuanced and interesting. We're allowed to be more than we were before, but we still have a long way to go.