#and the creator's own biases could be what are getting in the way of them writing what are frequently lady villains properly

[genericpuff]

i find it funny that one of rachel’s drawings of herself in the afterword that just went up is just fully persephone. is that something she does a lot?

Alright so I've been making it a general rule for myself to like, not harp on Rachel in any way outside of LO as much because frankly the horse is dead now and there's not much left to say outside of what can be analyzed in hindsight. I think despite everything I have to say about her and her work, she still deserves to get away from this nonsense and I don't wanna spend eternity hovering over her shoulder.

But the afterword was posted within the LO series and is clearly meant for readers of LO in the functioning of being an afterword so let's just call it fair game LOL

I will say, on the whole, it does feel very honest and sentimental and I can respect Rachel for taking the time to write out and illustrate her afterword in a way that was personal to both her and her fans. I can understand why she went at it from the angle that she did and I'm not gonna fault her for that.

But there's also something that feels deeply... disingenuous about her approach right from the starting gun. I will say, before I continue, that I'm well aware I am biased towards Rachel as a creator, and I fully acknowledge that I could very well be reading too much into things. This is just my opinion, take it with mountains of salt.

I can get looking back on your own childhood, your past self, whatever, and going "see! it all got better!" because sure! For a lot of creators like Rachel, it must be wild to look back on where they came from and there's a lot of sentimentality on expressing that through an afterword like this where she reflects on where she came from. Though she STILL didn't acknowledge her other comics outside of LO, I can understand if she wants to leave those skeletons in the closet.

But I feel like her drawing herself as a child who's being given an Eisner by her adult self and all that just feels like some gross attempt to disarm any criticism of her because "don't make fun of me, I'm just a sad lonely baby girl!"

She's not a child. Child Rachel didn't grossly misappropriate Greek myth into their own self-indulged vanity project. Child Rachel didn't claim herself a folklorist of a culture's works only to bastardize them completely. Child Rachel didn't create a hostile environment within her fanbase by bullying anyone who she perceived as a threat, sneaking into critical spaces to try and cause trouble, and writing her own clapbacks into her comic. Child Rachel didn't claim to be challenging misogyny and purity culture only to reinforce misogyny and purity culture through her own self-insert baby-virgin-gets-rescued-by-rich-tycoon power fantasy that regularly glorified abuse towards women and the lower class.

30-almost-40-year-old Rachel did though.

At best it comes across as really cringe sentimentality from a Greek-weeb (heh, greeboo) and goes to show how much Rachel inserted herself into Greek myth without ever absorbing its messages or cultural contexts, it was all about her and her feelings as a sad New Zealand girl with dyslexia who thought Persephone's story was about another sad girl being rescued from her "horrible childhood".

At worst it's an active attempt to play on people's heartstrings by drawing herself as a child who people will naturally not want to criticize. I don't want to assume she's doing it intentionally, I really don't want to leave her afterword on a bad foot, as I can definitely understand as both a creator and a person who struggled with learning disabilities in their own childhood how and why she wants to pay homage to her past and where she came from... but let's just say, as someone who's also gotten way too "lost in the sauce" concerning personal self-reflective projects, I think there's a lot to say about how this confirms that Rachel made LO entirely for herself, about herself, without any actual intention to respect the original myths, because she never truly separated them from herself when she was a child. And, in my humble opinion as someone who has Been There with the self-insert OC's and self-reflective angsty plotlines, I can fully attest to the fact that that's not fucking healthy. Even with personal projects, you NEED to learn to get your head out of the sauce, you NEED to learn to objectively separate yourself from the narrative so the story doesn't fall apart under your own hubris and ego, you NEED to learn to draw a line if you want to have any sort of identity as a human being outside of what you make for people. And that's with just normal original stories, this was a story based on Greek myth which doesn't belong to her.

And this goes for a lot of the things she's said and done in the past, so much of her own "sources" even are tethered to things that she read / watched in her childhood and only vaguely remembers, as if she never mentally left her childhood at all, which just... if the point was to highlight her past and the traumas she went through and how they contributed to her present, an Eisner isn't going to validate those experiences. And drawing attention to her past through the lens of her childhood self absolutely 100% does not absolve her of the negative effect her work has had on the modern Greek myth zeitgeist nor the things she's said and done as a 38 year old woman who should absolutely know better.

The community she entered and took from will forever remain changed by her influence and taking, in many ways not for the better. She has the privilege of walking away and never having to think about it again, with all the awards and accolades that were bought for her, the bravado that she built around being a "folklorist" with zero credentials, and the platform she was given over many other creators struggling to even be heard.

That "place" she claims to have now was built entirely on inserting herself into another culture's works and doing nothing but taking, taking, taking, while offering nothing in return but vanity and lip service. That "place" was paid for and brought to you by Webtoons.

[creatingblackcharacters]

hi. I have a male Black character who's main "trope" is that he is Pretty, popular, and makes people jealous. a key dynamic he has is with a White female character. she is silently competing with him and trying to do her make up like him (and has a crush on him). I intended for this to be a subversion of the usual trope for Black male love interests but I'm worried it might be problematic in another way I cant see.

so... is this problematic?

I'm saying this kindly and assertively: I need y'all to stop asking me if prompts are problematic. A whole lot of prompts will be problematic if you're thoughtless in your delivery. Plenty of examples of those same prompts that, in the right hands, could be excellent. I need us to start changing the way we approach these worries, in order to 1) acknowledge that it depends on us and our discipline as creators and 2) to help open our minds to the solutions at hand.

That said! I can see how this premise would be an issue if you didn't acknowledge just how... Dangerous, this could be. The negative emotions of white women are often weaponized against people of color, and in the context of Black men has been used historically to have them (and whole towns, even) murdered to excuse their own lust. So I gotta be honest, as a Black woman reading this story, I would struggle to see her jealousy as something cute because I recognize that if she really wanted your Black character out of the way as a threat to her self image, she has the power to make that happen. Hell, Black people being pretty and popular already does cause issues of jealousy 😅 it's certainly not a subversion of real life, though maybe in stories.

I think my advice on this depends on where you're taking this story. If it's a "this young woman is crazy and this is a downward spiral" angle, then yeah having her surrounded by people who don't prevent those thoughts and showing the damage she could do in this one sided rivalry could be really cool in a dark way. Or, if it's meant to be a light hearted romance, really just incorporating that these are her feelings, they're real, but they're silly. That the narrative knows this, that she's struggling, and eventually needs to recognize that she's gotta treat him as a partner and not a threat to get anywhere with him.

Like I guess what I'm saying is I don't think I'd be comfortable reading this if your narrative is gonna imply that her behavior is harmlessly cute. I wouldn't be able to read it without concern for the young man's safety 😅. But I admit my relationship with the depiction of white women in media may be biased due to my experience as a Black woman. I'm curious to hear other thoughts on this!

[hazard-c-horror]

what does Modrolith and hazard think about the entire celestial family and tsams characters in general? ( I want to find out what they feel about the creator too. )

I haven’t thought of it yet, so thanks for making me do this

Part2

Hazard — (this will mainly also be my own thoughts bc it is my sona) Hazard cares little for the family, they simply just watch form the background. Not really wanting to get involved in the drama. But does have small biases and opinions

Moon - they’re uncomfortable with his personality and sarcasm at times. And confused at his way of thinking. But he’s interesting to watch and fun to see scared,

Sun - admires his will to stay kinda, despite how much has happened.

Earth - she fine, they don’t really have any major opinions on her, but she good in their book

Lunar - his behavior kinda puts them off, but they also understand that he’s been though stuff, but wishes he doesn’t accuse and so quickly (so luckily for his arc right now)

Solar - he means well. And that’s nice in their opinion. He’s fine. Likes his sarcasm and humor

Jack & Dazzle & molten- they think the children are adorable, and very fun to watch. Though pities that their stuck in such drama

Creator - indifferent, though he’s amusingly dumb at times

Monty - they’re uncomfortable with Monty’s personality, but tries not care too much. He’s fun to scare and mess with however

Modrolith — he’s very annoyed by how the family acts and dysfunctional it is at times. He wishes some members were more open and understanding of one another. But knows deep down that not every family is perfect. Like his own

Moon - on the teetering edge of being hated in Mo’s eyes. Sure he means well, but if doesn’t feel like it sometimes and that just annoys him to the core

Sun - he finds Sun very admirable, pleased by how carding Sun is to the children and his desire to protect them. He’d give Sun his blessing of more power to protect the children

Earth - a good women is a terrific queen in his book! Hard working and trying her best to help the family. Deeply wondering if he and her could have a spay day of sorts

Lunar - pities the life Lunar’s been though. But also hates how the family didn’t bother to completely address Lunar’s before

Solar - also admires how he also try’s for Jack. And pities that he had to live with a horrible brother before.

Jack & dazzle & molten- protect at all cost, they are the world. If one being hits hands on then he will personally torture them for eternity.

Creator - kill on site. The man creature does not deserve any title of parent. If he was able, the creator would be buried six feet under of molten lava

Monty - his feelings are surprisingly mixed. He doesn’t trust Monty. But Mo also see that he and Monty have a similar problem with their anger and emotions. And trying to make up for past horrible actions

[goodolddumbbanana]

Can you rate all TSAMS characters?

Oh boy.... That will be a lot. Warning, it is all for my personal taste, so that could be a little bit biased, okay

Sun: (100/10) What can I say? I love that silly one too much. He is like if you put a normal guy in the worst scenario ever, and then keep reviving him no matter how he beg you to stop. He is just like a can of contradictory. He wants to find a girlfriend but he keeps pushing them away.

He is cheerful, but he is also the most depressed person you ever know. He is a coward, but he keeps putting himself in the most dangerous area. His self perseverance is lacking just like the love Creator has for him.

He is likely has the most morally compass in the house, aside from Terra. But also, he is the only one who has his siblicide highest. Like even BM of all people or Moon or Eclipse, didn't take as much as family members counted like him.

And the most funny thing about Sun is that, he is kind and nice. But also, he is an asshole. Like a really uncaring asshole. Heck, even Moon or Eclipse has more sympathy than Sun, and that talks a lot. He is like if you put more morals and hope and an ideal of a loving father inside the Creator chest.

If Creator using his façade to use people, to make them work for him, to enslaved and torture them for eternity then Sun using his kindness to edge people to be better. (Obviously it's not working for Nexus for a while)

His complexity in his character always makes me giggle.

Moon: (Which Moon? The old moon, or moon V3) now I just realised there is a lot of Moon and just one Sun lol.

Old Moon: (10/10) He is an asshole, a real one. He cried himself to sleep because of all the mental torment he causes, but he never changed. He just keeps making it worse. He rather spends time with people he hates, than people who love him (Monty at first, and then KC, Eclipse) he keeps hiding shits and then lets it blow up into his face.

He is a hypocrite, and a liar, with how many times he walked away from Sun to help another person who is not Sun. He is the cause of mostly trauma Sun has experienced. he is a master of brother's issues. He is the main character who has a hero tragic plot stories. People love/respects/ needs and hate him at the same time. (Eclipse, Sun and literally everyone else)

Moon V3: (9/10) I like him but with amount of Moon keeps dying like rain, I would not invest my emotionally on him too soon.

Also, he seems much nicer but also more depressed? He has a lot of hidden issues too, and I'm dead on my hill that he is just Nexus with Old Moon memories. I like how his relationship with both Sun and Solar is very much balanced, even with Monty his best friend doesn't take that much screen time. Though... It seems like, he wants to get away from Sun nowadays.

Solar: (6/10-10/10) at first, I don't like him much. To put it more simply, he is like if you have a very cool picture inside your head and then you proceed to draw it.

There was no ending for him, he just exists for the need of the plot. Even back then when he moved to Tsams dimension and became Nexus besties, he still doesn't have any traits of his own personality. Like, he is a very yes man to Nexus , and he keeps doing everything in the most self desperate way, keeping things in the dark because he doesn't want to bother people. His relationship with Sun, very much awkward and far away, also makes me feel a bitter taste in my mouth. And the whole killing Creator arc is also kinda boring and unrelevant

But then he changed. Slowly, but he sure does. He becomes more sassy, more confident in himself. He goes out more, relaxing more. He can prank family members without making it too far, or insulting them for being stupid. (I'm crying when I see him saying f*ck you to Moon and Monty. My baby is growing)

Something really ironic that Nexus tries so bad to be his own person, but he gets worse and Solar who just wants to make everyone happy, changes

Nexus: (7/10, 100/10) I can't rate him man, he is just.... everything about him causing me pain.

I don't like how he relies on Solar and literally every enemy so much at first but now... He is everything.

Like he is silly. But he is a bad boy. But he is also silly. He is the definition of good goes evil but well handled.

Like unlike some other guys who when you go evil, you become sexy, hot and mysterious and evil.

No, my boy is just purely cringe. He sewed his own clothes, he makes himself taller and his booty is bigger than Earth and Moon. He is addicted to crack and monologue his tragic backstory for hours for Sun like they are in the therapy room.

He is cruel, yes. But no one takes him seriously, and even now when he says he hates Sun the most, Sun is the only person who caught him off guard and is able to use it to throw him into a different dimension. Like girl, why do you let Sun talk so much???

You can just hit him just like you beat KS, why girl????

He lives a tool and even in death, he is still a tool. My boy is really tragic.

Creator: (10/10-5/10) he used to be the baby girl. But he lost his brain (literally) and just became a husk of meat. Like he got so much potential, especially his relationship with his children but they just killed him off and that just sad.

Dark Sun: (10/10-8/10) he is so cool at first but I feel like he lost his spark when his arc is full filled.

KS: (10/10) he is cool. Very cool. He is like what would happen if Sun snapped and got mixed in the blender with BM. He is addicted to crack. He is lonely. He is a girl dad. He has a lot of issues.

[gophergal]

Perhaps an obvious one, but for the ship ask game – HeavyMedic? :3

"What do you mean, obvious?" I ask dumbly, looking at my laser engraved HeavyMedic coaster

What made you ship it?

Funnily enough, I do this thing when I'm considering getting into a fandom where I just kinda peruse as much of the fanworks as I possibly can. Probably very common. I saw that Heavy and Medic were a popular ship, looked into why, was rapidly convinced. Definitely helped by the similarities they have to my other Main Ships from previous fandoms.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

I'm a sucker for ships that are dangerously devoted to each other. Mostly when they're dangerous to anyone who threatens their beloved. They make each other better, have one another's back, serve as a center point of the team. I think it's really beautiful how their popularity isn't just based on secondary source material (the animations and comics), but also the gameplay itself! A good Heavy/Medic duo in game is a force the whole team can rally around, and- honestly? I've got quite a few scenes in mind inspired by Heavy/Medic pairs I've seen in game (none I was part of though lmao. Forever alone medic main)

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

HEAVY IS NOT AN ACCESSORY TO MEDIC. THEY ARE EACH THEIR OWN CHARACTERS. THATS WHY THE SHIP IS SO NEAT. I can't STAND fic where Heavy's entire character boils down to "I Love Doktor <3". If you write it, thats fine, but man. I love Heavy, if I didnt like him as a character I most likely wouldn't be shipping Medic with him. Heavy CANONICALLY shows discomfort towards some of Medic's antics. Not only is is totally fine if they experience conflict on that front, it makes the ship more interesting. Let them argue and question if their relationship is going to make it. They dont need to be Goals to be worth shipping (though they certainly can be. Both Is Good is what I'm trying to say) While Red Oktoberfest is my favorite merc/merc pairing and I'm thus biased toward them, PEOPLE CAN SHIP HEAVY AND MEDIC WITH OTHER CHARACTERS. Even OCs. I know thats not specific to this ship, but by god do I see people try to enforce that "Heavy/Medic is CANON so you have to ship them". They are not canon. Makani's artwork that wasn't part of the published comics is Non-canon. The VAs' shipping them and making (psuedo official???) fanworks, despite how FUCKING COOL that is, doesn't make it canon. In the comics, SFMs, and games they are not explicitly shown to be or described as a couple in a romantic/sexual sense. Now, the ship is LAMPSHADED (alluded to by the creators) frequently. Which is fun! And they are meant to be close! But I feel like this very much a K/S situation. Yknow, since Gene Roddenberry was like "well, if I want Captain Kirk to be popular, then I have to make people associate him with Mr Spock, so now they're besties" then that close friendship and deep devotion read as homoeros to folks and was later alluded to by other writers of the source material? I'm not saying it had the same motivation. I don't think this was meant to be a way of making either Heavy or Medic more popular, but I do think Valve originally just wanted to depict them as a Duo. A well oiled machine. Doing so makes sense, given it mirrors how they work in the game. But over time they realized that fans picked up on homoeros undertones, and not wanting to alienate either the fans who saw HeavyMedic nor the homophobic fans (as alienating either would cut into their profits/cause a backlash), Valve began walking the tightrope of shipteasing, but not being too explicit I dont want to call it queerbaiting, because really? It's not used so much in the marketing. But it is kinda a frustrating thing to see. But uh, long yap short. I suppose my most unpopular opinion is "Red Oktoberfest isn't actually canon, even though it easily could be"

[badlifedecisionshotline]

☆~《Colour magic!》—Part 1. {the what, why & how}

▪︎ What is colour magic? — Its the act of utilising asosiations behind certain colours to further spesify a spesific outcome wanted out of a spell.

~How do i figure out what certain colours mean?

Go online, and surch for keywords if you dont want to go past surfice level & make them personal ^^ <(gl trying to find asosiations that aren't common tho, it can get annoying but theres many interesting opinions/ideas others have made)>

Figure out your own asosiations!

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-–

▪︎ {On the topic of the second thenuiqe, heres about it in depth:}

×General advice:×

▪︎The way this works in general is simply with asosiatons. They posses the symbolism *you* perscribe them. And biases against colours and refusal to think of them in different light *can* hinder the amount of tools you have at your arsenal in regards to this topic.

▪︎Your asosiations can be lots different than most peoples, but that doesn't mean they couldn't apply or that they are bound to not function properly.

But that also doesn't mean the common belief surrounding colours isn't correct.

▪︎If your practice is heavily based in your culture, then also what people from your enicity asosiate with the colours themselves!

<[The actual process behind the how to figure out the asosiations you should use them for?]>

Grab a pease of pen and paper.

Write what comes to mind

If you're a people pleaser, please write what colours make *you* think of. If you're planning on helping others learn- tell them my advice about personalizing them instead. That way, its more genuenly something uneqe to them/you— so theyll serve you/them the best ^^.

What if you're having issues in regards to foguring out what colours symbolise?

You can absolutely use online keywords.

I myself started out with those before being able to figuring out what they could mean for me.

But, something you probably hear a lot, tiktok isnt the best source— there are good accounts like the "sandwitch" (link limk.)

So that's atcualy it for now— if anyone's curious ill atcualy post my own notes and link it here ^^

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-–

Creator of the blue, to green, to yellowish green divider: meow:3

Creator of the star divider: meow:3

[the-fabled-void]

Give you a fandom phenomenon? Uhhhhh how about the fact that people overcorrected with Sans and his edgy 2016 characterization and instead had him...not care over anything, including Papyrus' death. I'd be mad at it but honestly I can't help but imagine people cringing so hard at their 2016 characterization that they went in the complete opposite direction and it's so funny

Oh yeah it's a very interesting phenomenon for sure! It's extra noticable with Sans due to how popular he is. As for you mentioning people cringing at their past interpretations - that's probably a part of it. People who joined the fandom as angsty preteens are now young adults with different views.

Not to mention, especially the AU fans, but also a lot of others spent a huge amount of time in fanon echo chambers (cough cough, evil Chara effect) instead of interacting with the source material. The fandom being a video game you can only play a few times before it feels repetitive probably doesn't help.

So, there are the old fans. But mainly in 2020, other people have also joined. And unlike the old ones, they just started interacting with the game. It's still fresh in their mind.

... And 2020 led to a lot of people who are new to fandom joining fandoms without knowing proper fandom etiquette. Those people that comment on noncanon ship posts to complain about the fact that it's not canon, and neglect to ignore that fandoms are about fun.

By trying to make him more 'canon' people basically just make him fanon in the complete opposite direction. I also feel like people saw what they did back then by making him so depressed, not just from his brother's death in a no mercy, but also just in general. Usually from a knowledge of resets.

One thing that I haven't noticed a change in is interestingly enough is how people treat his knowledge. Which is way less than people make it. He knows there's a possibility and that the human is connected to it. Hell, he tests if Frisk is a time traveler by giving them a silly password because he doesn't know for sure.

Not that I'm criticizing stories that give him more awareness. The fact that there's so many just means it has great potential. Aftertale is probably my favorite example of that. Geno is such a cool character and the nightmares are a creative way of handling it. 4th wall breaking is probably my favorite phenomenon in all of fiction.

Recently, people have started exploring the idea of other characters having that awareness. I mean, Flowey is canonically aware, and is a mere millimeter away from grasping his world's nature as a video game. He's already treated it as one himself. So, UT!Dusttale was born.

A lot of AU Sanses have that baked into their very character, so I get why people wouldn't touch that (though, it would be extremely interesting to figure out how Dusttale or Something New would work if it was just a deja vu feeling)

I am totally not biased to say I would love a take involving Chara. Pretty sure No More Deals is a similar thing. And you specifically know exactly the details I've thought of for Storyshift: Elevation :)

Oh, and another aspect of the overcorrection thing: AUs.

Back then you could just read up on the concept of an AU Sans and put him somewhere and nobody would give a shit about mischaracterization. Which, you know, isn't perfect but I have to admit it was really fun to do.

Nowdays you compare Dreamtale to Celestia and Luna ONCE in a Discord server to make a bad joke and all hell breaks loose. I get wanting to respect creators more than we did back then, but we have to remember that AUs are just as fanon as 'Don't curse around my bro' Sans.

The creators' words are not gospel.

As much as I love Toby, his words aren't gospel either.

People are allowed to have their own takes, their own opinions. I am never going to police anyone's takes on fandom shit. But one important thing to note is: people can have their own takes, but people should also aknowledge what's their own take and what's the creator's original vision.

[damthosefandoms]

🗣️✨Speak on it friend- who’s going and staying for both socs and the Curtis gang

people who stay: soda, two-bit, steve

people who go (although none of them end up doing that): darry, pony, johnny, dally

not doing the socs only bc. i have no idea. they have the money to come and go as they please, and the only ones i could say anything about are cherry, paul, and maybe marcia. all of whom i think i'm too biased bc i'd want them staying bc the people i ship them with ended up staying.

paul is a special case bc he has no reason to stay and i think he leaves for a while before moving back, except he never gets over darry curtis. actually he and darry are just whatever is implied for them in this fic (by @qprpbj) lol we love old men peril.

explanations on my thoughts below the cut bc this might get long lol

I cannot imagine a world where Sodapop Curtis willingly leaves Tulsa for good. I am a sucker for roadtrip AUs—seen a couple ones that have incredible vibes. a few posts like this one here (by @horsegirlsodapop) and fics like here (by @your-unfriendlyghost who is lowkey one of my favorite creators in this fandom lol) in particular. Like okay, Vietnam is one thing—I don't always love him going to war and I don't know I'd say it's in my canon that he goes to war (mostly bc the way @haljordangreenjedi and i made up our vietnam soda au is extremely convoluted and specific to us and the fic i posted about it here is all you guys get to see of it. iykyk). But Soda was born in Tulsa. He lives and breathes Tulsa. He will grow up, get married, have kids, grow old, and die in Tulsa. And he'll be happy about it.

Two-Bit just simply does not have the vibes of wanting to leave. He's lazy, he mooches off his friends—but he is unwaveringly loyal to them, as well as his mother and sister, I think. He seems like the type to be extremely close to his family and honestly I think that for him, it all boils down to doing the one thing his dad didn't: sticking around, forever.

Steve is weird bc Steve is the only one of the gang—excluding Darry & Pony—who I can see going to college in any way, shape, or form. I like to headcanon that Evie's dad owns the DX and the guy really likes Steve, so he pays for the kid to go to college enough to get a business degree to take over when he retires. I don't know where Steve would go; if he gets a scholarship somehow, if he leaves town (I don't think he would go out of state tho), if he goes to community college—but I think he values education enough to do it. But he and Soda end up running the DX for the rest of their lives. Steve might go for a bit but I don't think he stays away very long.

When Darry was younger, all he wanted was to go; he lost his chance. And now I think because of the way his circumstances changed, he'll always yearn for the knowledge of what could've been, but deep in his heart, he's knows he's home. His brothers are here and they always will be. I don't think he ever moves out of their house. It becomes a generational home and the extended family comes and goes as they please. All the holidays are celebrated there, all the birthdays, it's home. Darry ca't get away from it. But he always wonders, and I think once Pony publishes his book, he pays for Darry to go to college, but by that point Darry just goes locally. He and Pony will travel the world at some point, more than Soda ever could've dreamed of—they did take Soda surfing in California though, and took him to get pizza in New York, which were the top two things on his bucket list. Darry loves it, but as he gets older, he realizes he can't ever leave Tulsa, and Tulsa can't leave him.

Ponyboy has to leave. He has to. He wants to, he dreams of it, it's all he is. I think he goes to college and publishes his book—and a few others—and he travels the world. I personally think he was a journalism major and used his book money to go on all kinds of study abroad trips; I think he even went to Vietnam as a member of the press (but that's a whole other thing). He told his story and he wants to tell other peoples', too. He wants to know EVERYTHING he can, see the world from very angle—and he wants to live his life as if every day is a new beginning. He's staying gold. I think he lives—or is based out of—New York for a while, but honestly, he's in Tulsa more often than not and as he gets older he ends up settling down there (whether that's with a family of his own or a significant other is up to interpretation—I can't settle on how I think Pony's future goes in terms of relationships and/or family. I know I don't think he ends up with Cathy Carlson though LMAO this boy is GAY), maybe even back in the old house with Darry. I think they're a lot closer in their old age.

Johnny and Dally... they're dead. But they're both hard to decide for in a timeline where they live. Realistically, Johnny would probably not have an easy time leaving if he lived due to how the world treats people with disabilities. Now, if Bob never died, it's really up in the air. He and Pony might've run away. Sometimes I wonder if Johnny would've up and left with Dally at some point—Dally is not the type to stick around anywhere, unless he has a very good reason to, and Johnny kind of seems to be that reason. I think Johnny's problem is he wants to go but would stay, for the same reasons he won't run away from his parents. They're both a hard call.

[swordfright]

Tell me about how the structure of the medium impacts the story 🔫

My brother in Christ, prepare yourself for the most boring essay you could possibly imagine. I'm going to over-simplify a few things here for the sake of Getting To The Point, so bear with me.

I think a good starting place is that DSMP is an example of New Media. The go-to definition most folks use is this one: that New Media are stories told via "communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content." In other words, NM is basically this category of stories made up of convergent elements, which satisfy a multimedia requirement, and are heavily reliant on both participatory fan culture and recent advances in technology that allow creators/audiences to communicate with one another instantly.

There's a couple ways you can understand DSMP as a New Media, but as far as I'm concerned, one of the most interesting is prosumption. The term "prosumption" describes a creative situation where a piece of art is being produced (at least in part) by the same people that consume it; they're both audience and creator. DSMP is a really great example of this phenomenon, because A) it's serial and therefore the CCs had ample opportunity to respond to and engage with the audience's reception of their story; and B) because the chat feature allows CCs to interact directly with their audience during roleplay rather than after the fact. These features, among others, kinda set the stage for DSMP to function as a highly prosumptive piece of media.

In particular, the stuff that interests me is the stuff to do with storytelling convention (genre, perspective, etc) and how prosumption turns all that on its head. There are a number of altercations in DSMP canon where the course of the story is altered because of real-time interactions between the CCs and their chat - particularly times when a CC's chat warns them about events happening at the same time elsewhere in the server. In this kind of scenario, the CCs are static, they can't really leave their own stream. Their viewers, on the other hand, are able to jump between streams and talk to each other to figure out what's happening in the overarching story. When this happens, viewers have choices to make: are they going to tell a CC what's going down on the other side of the server? If so, how are viewers going to communicate those events? Viewers are biased, they directly inform CCs, and the information they divulge (as well as how they divulge that info) goes on to influence CCs' actions and thus the events of the story, to some degree. In my opinion, this is a pretty new and exciting way to prosumptively construct a narrative! Media has always been interactive to some extent (especially serial works), but the interaction being live and in real-time is pretty significant in my view because it can exert unique pressures on a narrative.

Speaking of audience choice, that brings me to the next thing I want to yap about: ergodic storytelling, a term that refers to stories “negotiated by processes of choice, discernment, and decision-making.” For reference, a good non-MCYT example of this would be hypertext fiction, because it's generally characterized by the ability of the interactant (that's the reader, in this hypothetical example) to explore material provided by someone else, either as a kind of conceptual landscape (think setting in a video game), or as puzzle pieces that must be put together in order to give the interaction the "big picture" of the story. Basically, with hypertext fiction, there is a core text (the main document that forms the skeleton of the story) and there are multiple hypertexts branching off of the core text - and whether the reader ends up reading those branches, and in what order, inevitably shapes that reader's perception of the whole story.

So here's where it gets tricky. In the case of DSMP, where is the core text located? Is there any one identifiable core text at all? Or is it more appropriate to consider each individual stream or VOD as its own singular core text, with the related Twitch channels and Youtube recommended in the sidebar being "branches"? Alternatively, if the streams and recordings distributed on the server members’ official channels are the central text in the grand hypertext fiction that is DSMP, then can adjacent spaces where audiences do the work of creating and archiving lore be considered their own story branches? I don't have answers to these questions. No one does. That's part of what makes DSMP exciting.

To translate the above quote out of Academia Hellspeak: in an ergodic story, the audience has agency, but the agency enabled and allowed by the text varies in its intensity and mode. Yes, stories told ergodically necessitate choice — and therefore enable agency, turning the reader or viewer into interactant — but that element of choice doesn't always look the same. Some hypertexts are more choice-reliant than others, or are choice-reliant in different ways. So, rather than being a choose-your-own-adventure story, DSMP is more closely analogous to a story where the audience chooses the perspective through which they view plot developments, in addition to having some influence over how plot developments unfold.

(☝️From a 2021 Polygon article, if you think I sound crazy☝️)

The web of choices DSMP presents to viewers is very complex, even compared to other forms of choose-your-own-adventure game. Because each CC approaches the task of story-creation from their own angle (bringing their own narrative baggage to the writers’ room, so to speak), those shifts in perspective this Polygon article describes often also constitute shifts in genre. For instance, cc!Wilbur brought his music production experience and interest in musical theater to the server, cited operas and stage musicals as some of his main inspirations; and accordingly, much of c!Wilbur's most crucial arcs observably draw from those sources. When you watch a c!Wilbur stream, you’re watching a story about statecraft, about revolution, about the triumphs and tragedies of ego that play out during the process of nation-building. On the other hand, cc!Quackity has repeatedly identified Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul as his primary influences; accordingly, his RP character’s story is closer to a piece of gritty prestige television in some places (especially LN series). Unlike with c!Wilbur, a lot of c!Quackity's tension does not revolve around a romanticized fantasy of revolution but around more personal conflicts: securing your place in a new regime, navigating exploitation as both exploited and exploiter, etc. In terms of both plot beats and character arcs, Wilbur and Quackity’s respective storylines embody many of the genre conventions the content creators are working within.

Moreover, a shift in genre often entails a shift in style or mode. Because cc!Wilbur was heavily inspired by musical theater, the presentation style of his character’s storyline is correspondingly both theatrical (i.e. only loosely scripted, nearly always televised live, and improv-heavy) and musical (featuring multiple instances of Wilbur singing in-character ballads and anthems.) On the flipside, Quackity’s streams (especially the later ones, since I'm mostly focusing on Las Nevadas era here) demonstrably mimic the prestige TV shows the CC draws his inspiration from, with lore sessions being pre-recorded rather than televised live, featuring distinctive sonic and visual aesthetics popularized by neo-Western thriller dramas. So, where a piece of media like DSMP is concerned, shifts in perspective entail shifts in genre, which in turn entail pronounced shifts in style. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it's an entirely new story depending on which character the viewer decides to follow. In that regard, what initially appears to be a single choice (whose perspective to watch a plot event through) has the power to determine a wide array of other elements, as viewers’ responses to the options presented to them will decide the overall tone of the section of the story they're about to watch.

While I think the genre-switching is genuinely super cool, lately I'm a lot more interested in perspective-switching and how it's related to viewer empathy. One side-effect of DSMP being televised live is that yes, you can watch a plot event from 30+ different POVs, but you can't watch every POV live. Typically, you either have to switch between multiple streams, or you need to pick one streamer to watch live and maybe later you'll watch other characters' POVs as you see fit. This has an impact on your perception of how that plot point went down because watching something live feels very different from watching something after-the-fact. I haven't done study on this, so what I'm about to say is mostly conjecture, but I wouldn't be surprised if viewers felt greater empathy for (and greater degrees of kinship with) characters whose POVs they watched live.

The choice of which character to follow also has observable impacts on other kinds of narrative conventions (who is the main character of DSMP? the boring answer is c!Dream because the server's named after him, but the real answer is the protagonist is whoever's POV you watched most of the major plot events through) but to be honest, those questions don't interest me as much.

So, going back to perspective and empathy. I think viewers' reactions to Exile are a really solid way of exemplifying the thing I'm trying to say, so this is the part of the yapping where we gotta bring up the dreaded Exile discourse.

Even though the Exile VODs are available and new viewers can go back and watch them, those viewers experience the Exile arc in a way that is fundamentally different from the experience had by viewers who had to wait in between updates as the videos were being streamed serially in real-time. I would argue that viewers who were “present” during the whole arc noticeably felt the brutality of c!Tommy’s treatment to a greater degree, because the audience was effectively forced to sit in exile alongside Tommy’s character - stewing in anxiety, looking forward to the possibility of appearances from other characters, and living in fear of Dream’s next visit, etc etc. Obviously you could also make this point using c!Dream's time in Pandora as an example, but I'm using Exile here because I've actually seen a lot of fans bring this up when discussing the arc: "people who didn't watch live Don't Get It," "the reason newer fans don't see Exile as scary is because they didn't have to watch it live," that sort of thing. And while I have certain qualms with some of the implications here, I do think these are really fascinating responses! These sorts of responses show that viewers consciously perceive their viewing experience as having been fundamentally different from others' based on a temporal element that's unique to serial fiction!

This instance of a divergence in collective fan experience is an example of choice being rendered unavailable to viewers by virtue of the story’s structure and means of distribution; audience members who happen to accidentally miss streams or who begin following the story after major events have occurred will never be able to engage with and witness those events as LIVE viewers, merely as retrospective ones. They don’t get to make that choice, but they do get to make choices about which perspective (and therefore genre) they get to experience the story through. So it follows that each aspect of DSMP, a semi-ergodic story, can be categorized as either ergodic or non-ergodic, and whether a particular storytelling element is ergodic can change depending on WHEN the viewer began tuning in to the story.

I have a lot more shit to say (shocker) but I'm gonna cap it here for now. Though I do want to add that this is kinda why I have a lot of patience for the crazy diversity of interpretation you tend to get in DSMP fandom. If you took a random sample of fans and asked them what they think of various arcs, characters, and plot events, chances are they would all have fairly different things to say. To me, that's a feature, not a bug. Obviously I have my own opinions, and obviously I do think it's possible for a given interpretation to be "bad," i.e. not grounded in the text - but I have a lot more patience for it here, in a fandom where agreeing on what "the text" EVEN IS presents a challenge. We can't all agree on who the main character is, so I don't ever expect us to agree on more nuanced questions of theme and conflict resolution in the narrative. Again, that's a feature, not a bug. I don't think it was ever possible to reach a consensus with a piece of media like DSMP because of how inextricable the audience is from the story.

[rinzler-smoocher]

Actually kinda love the idea of Tron and Flint having animosity between them... starting when Flynn brings Flint into the system & assigns Tron to be Flint's mentor/bodyguard while Flynn's new sorta user "partner in crime" gets used to the Grid... & while they spend their first few days getting Flint acquainted with everything in this digital world, Flint is enamored with Tron, thanks to having been saved by him more than just once. After all, Tron is very friendly and endlessly patient with Flint despite him being a disaster-prone mess, but....

After a long day of some very nearly critical mess ups, Flint's about to sign off and exit the portal to the human world. He's tired, feels just a bit more than a failure for all the trouble he caused during this cycle, but it's ok. Tron assured him everything was going to be fine snd was easily fixed, so Flint felt better with every passing minute, knowing the program was on his side.

Before rezzing out, though, Flint stopped by Flynn's office to check in with him before he went back to the real world.

Right as he found himself a few centimeters from knocking against the dark metal of the doors leading to Flynn's office, Flint stopped dead in his tracks, noticing a tense conversation going on inside.

There, Tron was arguing with Kevin something about: "When I suggested you bring a new user in, I didn't mean HIM."

Flint flattened himself against the door and listened in, trying desperately to stifle his breath and vanish into the wall.

Cold dread creeped up his spine as he heard Flynn retort: "Hey, give Flint some credit. He's amazing. I know you haven't seen him shine yet, but man! I promise you he's the best we could ever hope for."

"I doubt it," Tron snorted. "Have you seen what he did today?"

They... they were talking about HIM.

Flint knew he should run away - this was something forbidden like hearing your parents talk about you behind their closed bedroom door when you were supposed to be sleeping. But...

He couldn't move an inch.

"Listen, I know you wanted Alan in here, but it wasn't gonna happen, buddy. He's got a kid on the way, and there's no way in hell I would risk blowing up his whole understanding of the world when he's living his own busy life himself."

Flint hears Tron groan in annoyance.

"Just because he's my creator doesn't mean I'm so biased and narrowminded that I had meant only Alan. If you had picked ANYONE that was less of a nuisance, we'd all be better off!"

Flint's heart felt like it had been ripped straight from his ribcage and tossed into a cold, endless, bottomless pit.

Tron had seemed so happy and in such a pleasant mood while they'd been together since Flint had first signed in to the Grid.

Had he been harboring all this anger and annoyance this whole time while Flint was completely oblivious to it?

This felt like a punch to the gut.

After all, how stupid could he be, if that was the case?

"C'mon, man, now that's not fair," Flynn returned. "It's the kid's first few days here. He's just getting used to the Grid. Give him some time. I'm tellin' you, he's going to do great."

"Well, if you're determined to keep him around, find someone else to babysit him." Flint heard a hard THMP that rattled the walls. He shrunk back in fear, assuming it was Tron hitting his fist against the other side of the door he was plastered to. "I have enough work to do, I don't need a liability like HIM weighing me down and adding more on my plate."

"Tron, calm down."

Feeling hot tears pricking at his eyes, Flint forced himself away from the wall and began backing away down the hallway toward the elevator, needing to get out before he could ever see Tron face to face again.

"No, I'm done here. Figure it out yourself. Flint is NOT my problem."

Then, the unthinkable happened.

Before he could even retreat a foot into the shadows, Flint found himself rooted to the spot as the office doors burst open, and Tron stood there opposite of him, and the program registered instantly what must have happened.

Tron's face was stoic as always, but his eyes betrayed the shock he must've felt finding Flint there before him. All too quickly, his frown quirked upright into a smile, but... the warmth didn't reach his icy eyes.

"Hey, Flint, uh... How long have you -"

"I'm leaving," Flint snapped, cutting off Tron before they had to have THAT conversation confirming that Flint had heard every single insult Tron had cruelly spit his way behind his back. "I just wanted to let you guys know I'm logging off for tonight."

Flint looked past Tron, if not completely THROUGH the program, towards Flynn sitting there at the edge of his desk, looking dismayed but quietly waiting for his protoge to continue.

"I... I, uh, don't know if I can come back," Flint found himself saying, his body near trembling as he forced himself to remain calm despite the tear curving down the swell of his cheek. "I'll email you tomorrow. It might be my two weeks notice, I'm not sure yet."

Flynn sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Hey, no problem. We'll talk in the real world tomorrow. Get some rest, and I'll see you in the office first thing then, ok, kid?"

Flint nodded before turning his gaze to Tron.

"You know," Flint said, his voice waivering only slightly. "You could've just said something to me. Now, I think... I think you've ruined this entire place for me."

Tron's throat bobbed as he swallowed harshly. "Wait, Flint, I -"

"G'night," Flint said over him, before he turned quickly on his heel and hastily made his way toward the elevator to get out of his personal hell.

Tron watched on as the elevator opened and Flint ducked inside it. Keeping his dead gaze glued to the floor, the user was swallowed up by it at once.

After the user finally was gone, Tron turned back to Flynn, ready to defend himself at once.

"I didn't mean for... for THAT to happen."

Shaking his head with a hand to his head covering his eyes, Kevin Flynn hoisted himself off his desk and sighed.

"Way to go, Tron. You probably just cost us the best chance we had at getting this place online."

"I-I didn't mean..." but he couldn't finish his thought. Tron DID mean every word he had said, but now in retrospect, with the user having heard every single word thrown out his way...

"It wasn't supposed to..."

"That's enough," Flynn replied, his voice endlessly calm but undeniably stern. "I'll talk with Flint tomorrow and try to straighten up this whole mess. But, either way, I can't stop the kid from making his own choice."

Tron's fists clenched at his sides. That user - that KID - wasn't his responsibility. He shouldn't feel bad that he had overheard all of Tron's true grievances about Flint, but still, Tron couldn't stop an awful feeling of dread from mucking about his core.

"Shit, if you cost me him and he leaves the company, I'm going to reconfigure you into a BIT, I swear god."

"Flynn, I -"

He waved Tron off, cutting through his words.

"You already said enough. Get back to your work. We're done here. And if I have the luck to convince the kid to come back, you better damn well be sure to keep 'fighting for the users...' if that really IS what you do, anyways."

Tron huffed out a heated breath before nodding and heading back down the hallway, as well.

It might've just been a weird feeling, but Tron hated to imagine this nightmare was only just getting started.

[genericpuff]

I’m gonna have to disagree with you that Kaos is any better than LO. It’s all the same bull crap.

Kaos just seems like live-action LO, both having a boring storyline with bad or fetishized characterizations of the Greek Gods and figures, and both looking artistically beautiful and some cool concepts, but badly executed. The only difference is that Kaos has more LGBTQIA+ themes than LO, has a tiny bit more Greek references, and gets much darker. That’s pretty much it.

As a Greek who studies our myths and stories extensively, I’m tired of the west trying to take and rearrange our stories and retell them ‘with a modern, western lense’. It’s exhausting and infuriating.

It’s time the west gets over its fascination with us and move on.

Fair opinion! Honestly, the initial post I made about it was after only watching the first couple episodes. Now that I've finished it, I can definitely see actual glaring issues with it, both in their characterizations as well as in how they kind of lose the intrigue after a few episodes of the setting and elements of them being gods. Which are all issues that LO have as well.

Though I will say, LO has those issues far more than Kaos does, but what really separates LO from Kaos, in my opinion - the creators of Kaos aren't pretending that Kaos is more than it is. To me, Kaos isn't in any way a singular Greek myth retelling, more so a fun "Greek epic" style story featuring the gods in a modern setting, the way LO could have been if Rachel hadn't tried to make it into something bigger than it was (and if she didn't put herself on a pedestal as a "self proclaimed folklorist"). I can watch Kaos and appreciate it as a fun Greek myth inspired piece of media because that's pretty much all it's trying to be. Meanwhile LO gives us middle-school-level writing with very little real Greek myth influence (aside from what it benefits Rachel to do so) that even goes so far as to outright disrespect the myths that they were based on... all the while people praise it as the greatest Greek myth retelling ever.

I think Kaos is miles better than LO because it at least tells a more coherent story than LO ever could have, with a lot more attention paid to the stylization of a Greek epic (compared to LO which tried and failed to implement those same things, such as the Fates, self-fulfilling prophecies, and witty narration as to retell a story that's already happened).

Granted, that story still takes a lot of liberties with the source material (some that I enjoyed, others not so much), but in that regard, I refer to the above - Kaos isn't trying to be an actual retelling like LO did, so I view it the same way I do as something like Hercules or Hades, where the people who made it clearly love Greek myth and wanted to do some Greek myth-inspired story with their own twists on the narratives, and it paid off in a story that, in spite of their flaws, still feels intentional and thought out.

LO, by comparison, is just a mess of ripped off half-baked ideas thrown at a wall and filled in with self-fulfilling power fantasy garbage written by someone who claims to have deeper knowledge of the myths but clearly doesn't. It's hard to enjoy LO in spite of its flaws because it's all flaws and they're so deeply-rooted in the context of Rachel's own biases and sexual preferences that you really can't separate it from that once you know if it.

I do have some criticisms of Kaos and some of its more creative choices - Hera cheating on Zeus with Poseidon (literally wtf lmao), Persephone still being the "I went down there willingly!" archetype (though at least she's not 19 in this, the casting for her and Hades was great), as well as the fact that things weren't wrapped up by the end of the first season which really bums me out because now it's up to the mercy of Netflix to give it that second season - but ultimately, from a story-writing perspective, Kaos absolutely did accomplish having an actual narrative with themes and goal-driven writing that LO failed in having. That comparison doesn't make Kaos a 100% perfect show without flaw, but I made the comparison initially anyways because much of what I enjoyed in Kaos was what I expected from LO (and ultimately didn't get).

That's just my own two cents though! And I need to make it clear - I am not a Greek person! I have no say or merit within the discussion regarding Greek myth and how it's been appropriated!! - so ultimately... my opinion of these things really aren't as valuable as someone who actually is Greek or studied heavily in it.

So that said, I can completely see the merit in your own arguments that a lot of these "modern retellings" tend to miss the point of the stories they're trying to retell (esp with the criticisms I outlined above) and are often chewed up through a Western lens. The lesser of two evils is still evil. But if we're purely talking Kaos vs. Lore Olympus here as modern entertainment that are both attempting similar things... I'd be way more likely to rewatch and recommend one over the other. Plus there are a lot of adaptions out there made by Westerners / non-Greeks that are incredible and are, at the very least, amazing stepping stones into the world of Greek myth for those who want to learn more about it. Out of the pool of ongoing modern Greek myth retellings/inspired works - Blood of Zeus, Hades/Hades 2, Kaos, Epic: The Musical, Hadestown, Hercules, Percy Jackson & The Olympians, and Lore Olympus - it's not hard to guess which one I'd be the least likely to recommend as gateways into Greek mythology. If those titles were organized in a list of best to worst, Kaos isn't at the top of that list, but it's sure as shit higher than LO 💀😆

[bonesandthebees]

As someone looking for a new fandom after the DSMP collapse, how do I get into QSMP? I haven't watched any of it but from what I've seen it sounds pretty interesting.

if you were a fan of dsmp I definitely recommend qsmp! it's got similar styles of humor and also some incredibly intense lore that has been so fun to watch unfold. however, it is very hard to get into because, y'know, we have a lot of different creators the majority of whom don't speak english primarily that are on the server so catching up is certainly difficult

if you want summaries of the early days stuff, this channel on youtube has 3 summary videos but it only covers up to I think around may of last year? maybe june?? so like, a lot of stuff is not included in those.

if you want a more isolated event that's easier to catch up on so you can get a feel for the characters/ccs you could watch purgatory 1 vods from whichever creator you're interested in, but also, uh, purgatory was kind of hell to watch. I personally really enjoyed it from a story/character perspective, but so much of it was just miserable grinding and fighting so it kind of sucked to watch live 😭 also it had weird repercussions on all the lore that happened before purgatory so it definitely holds a contentious place in the fandom

if you want a different (and slightly more accurate way of getting an idea of everyones characters) there are plenty of server events you can watch vods for! the ones that pop to my mind as being especially fun was festa junina for a holiday, and the spiderbit wedding was also pretty great

the cc I watch the most of on qsmp is phil, so if you want recs for him I can list some specific vods that I think were really great for his character. but I don't watch a ton of streams so I'm also not the best person to ask. my second main pov is tubbo so I can also provide a few recs for him but I'd definitely be leaving some important ones out unintentionally

then I also try to watch tina and bagi when I can but definitely not as often so my recommendations are limited for those two

the only thing I'd say to avoid when trying to catch up is don't trust the qsmp wiki especially anything written in the relationships section for individual characters. those wiki editors put so much inaccurate info on there just to fuel their own biases and headcanons. just be aware of that if you need to reference it

if anyone else has any recommendations for how to catch up feel free to add them!

[junesrooms]

one of the most interesting things to me about anglo saxon literature is that we don't have any documentation of the origins of the texts. i mean like, sure, we have the original transcriptions, but those aren't reflective of the creator's initial tale for a multitude of reasons!

the anglo saxons' literature was shared and performed orally by a scop (bard) at large feasts and gatherings, typically to celebrate battles won. the anglo saxons were a warrior-based culture so obviously their literature reflected that, revolving around heroism/heroic deeds, valor, honor, etc. in the form of alliterative epic poetry (one of the most well-known examples being that of beowulf). on the opposite end of the spectrum, the anglo saxons also remembered the people that were lost in battle and created the most similar form of the elegy that we see today (my favorite example being "the wife's lament"). the anglo saxons lacked written tradition and would not have transcribed their own literature but luckily some religious figures (priests/members of the clergy/monks, if i remember correctly?) lived near the anglo saxons were literate and took an interest in their culture and took on the task of transcribing whichever pieces were performed for them, which is now the collection of anglo saxon literature we have today!

there are a few problems with this though. first, simply because of the nature of oral tradition it's difficult to trace back to who originally wrote it, what their intent was, what their life was like, even down to the very basics of their age, gender, and social class. there's also the fact that since the pieces are all orally performed, words could be changed or forgotten from person-to-person or emphasized by one person and disregarded by the next, all depending on how they're being performed. all of these things affect the perception of the piece and how it can change as it passes from person to person until it eventually ends up being transcribed. there's no way of knowing how many changes and iterations it went through before it ended up the way the transcriber heard it.

then of course, there's the other problem: the biases of the transcribers. the anglo saxons were primarily pagan and of course their literature reflected that. again, they were a warrior-based society so their ideals were much different than those of the general british population in the middle ages. their scibes were catholic (so obviously anti-pagan) and because they were the ones transcribing everything, they had the freedom to alter things as they pleased. this is where we get some really interesting and confused pieces of anglo saxon literature like beowulf which has really strong pagan themes and and ideals but will then constantly reiterate that it's all due to the grace of god and jesus that beowulf is so strong and heroic. it's such an interesting phenomenon that's seen a lot in anglo saxon literature (another example off the top of my head "the dream of the rood") where they'll carry over the strong pagan themes of the anglo saxons but then cram in that it's all due to the prayer and worship of the christian god. super interesting to see how they interact and what aspects were taken from which.

but this also leads to my other point—it's literally impossible to know what actually was written by the anglo saxons and what was written by the scibes. we can theorize which portions were written by who, but because at the time there was an active effort to convert anglo saxons to catholicism which did end up partially (and i believe ultimately?) successful!! so there's an awkward sort of overlap there that makes it so we'll never really know what was actually intended by the anglo saxons and what was altered by the catholic scribes.

anyways i was just working on my research paper about women in anglo saxon literature and was just thinking about authorial intent and just wanted to rant about it

[chaotictempleknight]

Writer's Problems Vent Post 1

I'm going to take this Wednesday to do a little venting as I am a bit frustrated with my writing career at the moment. No, this is not a "negative" post that deserves to be "ignored." This is me taking a step back and looking at things I perceive to be a problem so we can potentially find a solution.

In case you could tell, I have a science fantasy adventure series that's having trouble getting off the ground called ULTRAMagic Alternate. You can understand why I feel the need to make this post. I am a writer, so I like to think I have a degree of authority on these matters.

Where are my fans at, people?

You know how there's a push for Independent art at the moment? That's fantastic, but I do feel that there are a lot of people who are just doing this for the clout. They don't want to actually support independent artists and writers, they just want the praise and adulation for "caring." On the other hand, finding new stuff is hard as quality can vary and websites often make it borderline impossible to find new and obscure stuff. They only want the "popular" stuff getting exposure. The internet is a mess and all of the tech giants are hellbent on making it even more of a mess because they need to pump up those numbers so they can scam their investors out of their money. Is it cynicism if its true, honestly?

And I understand the apprehension towards starting a new series. Is this new series worth your time or are you better off doing something else? I have no definitive answer to that question that would not lean into my biases as a writer. I can say 'give people a chance, what's the worst that could happen?' but on the other hand it is infuriating to have a bad piece of media completely waste your time.

Can we ease up on the pressure a little bit?

Hear me out: right now society as a whole is way too entitled in the sense that they DEMAND the creator to also be the audience and the critic. I feel like I have a gun pointed to my head by every website under the sun with them going 'you better engage with content or we'll bury you in the algorithm...' EXCUSE ME? I'M BUSY WORKING ON THE "CONTENT" YOU KEEP DEMANDING I POST. If these websites could replace both creatives and the audience with AI, they would give it time... You cannot expect the creator to also be the critic and audience, not if you want coherent art/writing from them. It is unfair and does not make any sense to overwork them like this.

I'm also getting really tired of this mentality where people demand all of your time and if you want a break? FREAK! DEMON! MONSTER! BAN THEM BAN THEM BAN THEM! Sorry, I have autism and mild self-esteem issues... Ahem, please understand that not only does the creator have to be proactive, but so does the audience. You cannot sit around and go 'oh, someone else will like their content...' that someone else is you, my dude. And if you are already engaging with original and independent art/writing, awesome. If you are busy on a regular basis with work or a personal hobby, I fully understand. If you have a spare moment, however, why not go look up a new, obscure series you've never heard of?

I only read/watch/play stuff that's popular (pretentious groan)...

Really? You realize that mentality is the death of independent art and art in general, right? Well, to be fair there are a lot of other factors, but this one certainly does not help and needs to be called out. You cannot do this to creators. You are refusing to give them a chance and by your own logic, you should not be consuming any piece of media. Everything you've ever watched or read started out from a place of obscurity. Nothing starts out popular, and anything that does either comes from another piece of media from obscurity or is some backhanded form of propaganda.

Hilarious given that as an autistic I've been told by normies to go outside of my comfort zone, yet they never take this advice themselves. Can I get hypocrites for 500, please?

Please take a chance on something new and obscure. Seriously, what is the worst that could happen? I know the universe loves to punish people for that mentality, but it is true. You wasted your time? No, because you gained a new experience, for better or for worse. You discovered bad work? Then state your grievances. The creator is insulting and belittling you? Then block them and tell other people about how that is something you should not do. Action heals, apathy kills.

Quick note: I have not experienced any of these next topics yet, but I am stomping them out before they pop up.

Okay, but why are YOU so important? Kind of arrogant, cooked.

(facepalm) I never said I was important, I was just asking you to humor me on things that I feel are worth discussing. I've been at this for two years and have 6 Books under my belt with a seventh on the way. I am no more important than the person down the street. I'm not asking for your praise, I'm asking you for your time. I understand we all have limited time on this planet, but I'll do my best to make it worth your while. And that's the thing, true artists and writers don't want praise or fame, they want to create. It's ideal if people see their work and enjoy it, but ultimately we are here to tell a story.

Okay, but offer something already!

I AM! Look, I literally have 6 Books ready to read, in addition to multiple short stories and an entire collection of lore entries! Furthermore, I draw art. It's not great, but at least it's something. What else do you want from me!? I'm not attacking you, I'm just pointing out that yes, I have stuff for you to read and see. To be fair, I'll admit that I am not a perfect writer and quality can vary from book to book, but I am open to criticism and feedback. Whether or not I agree with you is a whole other discussion, but say it anyways. And if we don't agree, we can have a conversation about it.

STOP UPDATING YOUR BOOKS! IT'S WEIRD!

No. I am going to keep updating my books until they are perfect. And since perfection is impossible, I will never stop improving my work. Are you against a piece of art or writing being the best it can be? I understand that it can be a little exhausting to reread something, but I don't expect you to go back and reread my books every time I fix a typo. That is up to you. This need of mine to update my work is an admission that I am not perfect and am fully open to fixing my work. Also it drives me nuts when I use the wrong honorific for a king and it's been there for months, requiring me to comb back through all of my books and fix it.

No one responds to your work? Clearly it's garbage that no one wants! Why are you even bothering? Quit wasting everyone's time!

Have you read my books though? On what grounds do you make this assertion? Please read my books before you call them garbage. And if you cannot be bothered to read them, you have no right to call them garbage as you have no frame of reference to hurl that insult at me. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it all.

On the other hand, if you read the books and feel, say, that the plot is too strange, fair enough. I don't think that's a problem, but I accept your stance on that as I agree that the series is weird. Do you feel a character is lacking substance? Okay then, I'll work on fixing that. There are always future books and short stories. Do you think I could be more organized and should follow my story outline more? Yes to the organization, but no to the story outline issue, as I always come up with some better, ha.

I am not wasting anyone's time, nor are you with me (debatable), because "discourse" gets the gears in my brain turning. How can I respond to you and does this have any bearing on how I can improve my work? Also telling people to give up because they are 'wasting everyone's time' is incredibly toxic and insulting. Please do not adopt this mentality, especially not towards creatives.

Closing Thoughts

And that's it for now. Activity and interaction has been fairly low at the moment, which was already low to begin with. You'll have to forgive my need to vent. The way I look at it is that this is completely fine as long as it's not self-loathing. Hear me out:

"Life sucks, everything sucks, why should I even bother? There's no point. All this stuff means nothing. We should overturn everything because life means nothing." That's self-loathing. That does not solve anything, nor does it provoke any meaningful thoughts.

"This sucks! Why does this system have to be so janky? If I was working on this, I would make it so option B occurs as much as A does. Seriously, you are being inefficient and could easily improve this process greatly!" While this complaining may come off as negative, it seeks to point out the issue and provide a solution, something self-loathing does not.

Please do not conflate or confuse the two, as it stops genuine concern and a desire to fix things from being noticed. I cannot even begin to state how annoyed I am with toxic positivity. It's pretty much the other side of the self-loathing coin. One side aggressively ignores all solutions while the other aggressively ignores all problems kind of like Dark Souls 2 discourse, ha.

Feel free to give your own thoughts on these issues. I wouldn't have posted this if I didn't feel confident about expressing my thoughts on these topics.

[the-final-sif]

One of the things I think people as a whole don't understand about the internet today is that so much of what's wrong/dangerous/flawed about the internet exists because so much of the internet started as one person's hobby they built in their spare time or as a specific task for a specific function that was just useful/functional enough that literally everyone started using it. There's tons of biases built into the modern internet and some of that is carelessness but a lot of it is... just like. This was invented by a group of grad students fucking around for a few weeks. How the fuck were they supposed to know it'd be become the global standard and that nobody would bother to address or change these things?

Like, the whole reason that the US government gets the ".gov" domain name is because this entire system was invented in the US primarily for use in universities. Under the original system, you had to phone in to talk to the center who owned the list, tell them what name you wanted and then a person would type your name/ip onto the list attached to a nickname much like a phonebook. Then people slowly figured out domains and maintaining domain registries. And then the system became useful enough that more of the US started using it, and then people realized "oh shit, other countries want to use this too, guess we need to figure that out".

The "world wide web" or the thing we all know as the internet (and the reason that every website you visit has www in front), was invented originally by one dude trying to make his own job easier (Tim Berners-Lee). He thought it was pretty cool and shared it, and he was one guy who only spoke English and was just doing what he thought was going to work.

Like, this is a very lighthearted article talking about him, but I think it illustrates the point really well,

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has confessed that the // in a web address were actually "unnecessary". He told the Times newspaper that he could easily have designed URLs not to have the forward slashes. "There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said. He admitted that when he devised the web, almost 20 years ago, he had no idea that the forward slashes in every web address would cause "so much hassle". His light-hearted apology even had a green angle as he accepted that having to add // to every address had wasted time, printing and paper.

via "sorry for the slashs"

We have an entire internet and infrastructure built rather haphazardly but also in such a way that going back and trying to change or fix things either requires an insane amount of work or could render vast swaths of the prior internet inaccessible.

Like, I think everyone here remembers Flash getting shut down and how much of childhood games got wiped off the generally accessible internet and relegated to projects like Flashpoint. It was really hard to see, but Flash was also a project started in 1996 (or 1993 if you count the OG version that turned into flash) that was supposed to be for a limited set of use cases, and not the medium on which major parts of the internet would run. By the time Adobe shut it down, Flash was incredibly dangerous with the constant risks of malware, it was buggy, slow, and there were a million better programs. It had to be killed to make way for better things, but because of how the internet was built, that death came at a pretty high cost.

So if you're ever wondering why it feels like the web is a bunch of dominoes ready to fall down at any time, it's because it is. And it does. And so many people spend so much of their time combating all the problems created by using systems that were never intended to handle everything they are currently handling because the alternative is a task of monstrous undertaking that would almost certainly turn decades of history to dust.

[phanyu]

i think one time you said you’re not a dannie or a phillie you’re somewhere in the middle and i’m also in the middle and wanted to ask if you also noticed this trend i’m picking up on. when they came back and so many new people joined the phandom it felt like a lot of people initially came in identifying as phillies but grew to have a dan preference, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all because of course dan deserves all the love he can get and he’s more for some people than others but these people almost always simultaneously grow to either not care about phil anymore and/or be kinda rude about him? like sometimes people’s praise of dan is at phil’s expense or they write sonnets about their love of dan and their love of phil is just ‘and phil’s cute too’. i broke so many mutuals because one cluster of popular post-comeback phannies do it more than others i feel kinda crazy being hypersensitive to this but then i remember new phannies didn’t put up with over a decade of phil being othered so i’m allowed to be sensitive to people doing it again. i wonder what it is about dan and phil’s dynamic that through the years repeatedly leads to phil mistreatment

HMMMMM these are some really interesting thoughts anon! i dont know if ive witnessed the same thing only because i think the vast majority of blogs i interact with are pre-comeback phannies. but this actually made me turn things around in my head for a bit and i do think i can kind of rationalize this pattern.

i think weve discussed many times on here how the current public narrative allows for more outright praise to be put towards phil compared to dan. this is partially because of the nature of their images, with phil's relationship with fans always being much more polite and strict on boundaries, and dan's relationship being two-way teasing and personal reliability. and partially because of the swing away from the HUGELY dan-centric days of yore, which gives phil back his equal right to the spotlight. so a theoretical newcomer joining the fanbase and stepping into fan spaces for the first time would likely see a lot more phil positivity and unconditional hype towards phil, and seeing as they havent formed their own opinions yet and havent fully gotten to know the two of them, join in in being biased towards phil. after some time, i mean there is a reason that dan had more mainstream pull that phil and that's that his image and online presence is ULTRA catered towards the parasociality of the creator-fan dynamic, and it's pretty obvious across fanbases and personalities that that carries a huge amount of weight and influence. and can make those involved incredibly defensive, especially in the initial "honeymoon" phase with a new idol. so i guess it would be easy to be caught up in the dan of it all. again i havent personally seen this phenomenon myself but i would hope that after enough time and acclimation they would start to just feel normally and balanced towards to two again instead of derisive towards phil. bc i have no idea how that could come about under this line of logic. but yeah. hmmm. unfortunate but interesting to think about!