#and her main comment was like

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Deeply funny to me that academia is like "the cloying romance of North and South ruins this otherwise fine social novel" and then people be out there like "I read the book after the miniseries and it wasn't romantic at all! The book had nothing of my favorite parts like when Thornton and Henry Lennox were having a manhood measuring contest at the London exhibition!"

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

people will see a female character that made a mistake and go 'is anyone gonna hate her' and not wait for an answer

[bumblingbabooshka]

Thinking about marriage/women's rights on Vulcan Some may think that T'Pring not being allowed to divorce Spock was because he was going through the pon farr but if she were allowed to divorce him at all she probably would have done that a long time ago, confirmed by T'Pol when she's speaking with Koss, who isn't suffering from the pon farr. She says that he can choose another mate (without invoking a fight it seems: note the difference between a 'mate' and a 'challenger') and after he makes it clear that nothing she says will change his mind about marrying her, she finally threatens to declare a kal-if-fee. It's clear that Vulcan women cannot divorce/refuse to marry a man they've been betrothed to under any circumstances if A) He himself doesn't consent to ending their marriage or B) She doesn't have someone else waiting in the wings to be given to in his stead. Though, if the challenger she selects fails to win the fight, she'll have to marry her betrothed anyway unless (again) he decides he doesn't want her after the challenge. That seems like an incredibly unfair system, heavily biased towards men. SNW is an alternate universe in many obvious respects but most egregiously in that T'Pring has a lot of non-canonical agency over her relationship with Spock. It's interesting to me that Vulcan society has women in many positions of power and treats women as equal to men from what I've seen despite these laws. We don't really see Vulcans exhibiting a misogynistic attitude towards women in general but in TOS (perhaps because of its general writing style but it's still interesting to note) both Sarek and Spock take on patriarchal attitudes specifically regarding wives. Amanda says that 'of course' Sarek commands her because "he is a Vulcan and I am his wife." It's worthwhile in my eyes to note that she specifies 'wife' instead of attributing this attitude to women as a whole. Again, with TOS' writing style it wouldn't be out of place for her to say "he is a man and I am a woman." Spock, while in a pon farr induced irritation, states that it's "undignified for a woman to play servant to a man that isn't hers" - again implying that there's something specific about being a Wife in Vulcan society which is different from being a woman in general and demands subservience to a husband. This could perhaps stem from the extreme sense of ownership that Vulcan law has permitted men to have over women. A woman legally cannot point blank refuse marriage. There is no option which guarantees she won't have to marry her betrothed other than death. When T'Pau speaks of T'Pring she refers to her as being 'property' and Stonn, before being interrupted, states he's made 'the ancient claim' - we don't know what this is because he gets cut off but it's obvious they're both using the language of Vulcan law. Men are permitted true freedom to choose. If a woman wants to choose someone else to be with there is no option available to her other than the kal-if-fee which might result in the death of the one she wants to be with. And, if her lover fails, her husband can still just decide he wants to marry her and she'll be forced to. T'Pring gives two scenarios: One where Spock 'frees' her and one where he doesn't - it's still ultimately his decision which is clear when he ends the conversation with "Stonn, she is yours." This again isn't just because of the pon farr as T'Pol also goes through this. Koss can choose another mate and when the option is talked about there's no implication that this would result in any sort of fight (both by the casualness of its mention and by the fact that there's no formal word for it unlike the kal-if-fee.) Also, the fact that Koss does eventually grant T'Pol a divorce and it's all fine means that T'Pol isn't lawfully required to have another man waiting if her HUSBAND doesn't want her. It's ONLY required if SHE doesn't want her husband. Tradition must take precedence over individual desire UNLESS!!! You're a man. Then it's fine. Like, your parents might not be happy but legally you're golden.

[greatgoddyke]

time to make your choice only you can be the one

[fluxweeed]

Hii, I just discovered your fics and am reading my way through them. Love, love, love the ones I’ve read so far.😊 I was just wondering what your favourite Draco is you’ve written, and what your fave Draco is in fics written by others? ☺️

ACK thank you!! what a question!! i've considered this v carefully and it turns out i have………a lot of thoughts. i will keep them under a cut so nobody is accosted with a full 700 words of my Draco Opinions 😂 so my quick answer is:

my fave draco i've written: the taste of țuică my fave draco ever: rookie moves by peu_a_peu

draco is an interesting one for me bc i don't really LIKE him? but i have sooo many feelings about him. really not sure i could summon the same fervour for harry, for example, who is my number one boy forever and always.

(i saw a thing once that said a pairing becomes ur otp when u relate to one of the characters and want to fuck the other one, and 🙈 i mean, i think you're supposed to relate to the gryffindor, aren't you. whoops.)

OKAY SO HERE'S THE UNHINGED DRACO MALFOY ESSAY BY FLUX W. EED.

listen. i love and respect people who are Refined Draco enjoyers. connoisseurs of redemption arcs. appreciators of majestic malfoy bone structure and ethereal grey eyes and soft windswept hair. fans of dracos who insult harry (with hidden affection) and who are a bit snobbish (in a rich, sexy way) but ultimately have realised the error of their teenage years and have become a better person. perhaps this draco has built a potions business and helps the aurors. perhaps he IS an auror. either way, he has a biting sense of humour, maybe, but he's a good guy.

unfortunately, the draco of my heart is a horrid mean little rat man.

i've never actually managed to write him the way i love him. i tried to aim for immoral bastardy in what's mine is yours but i got so caught up in trying to nail the feelsforbreakfast-style humour in the narrative that i ended up focusing much more on that and much less on writing genuine bastardhood.

i've written him as reserved and clever (in the four doors – this draco was written entirely for @jovialobservationanchor, who had a weak spot for closed-off academics with soft centres) and as a traumatised self-loathing mess (in two to lie and to some extent for lack of wanting and say no to this) and hopelessly sexually/emotionally horny for one harry james potter (in, um, most things) but i've never managed to capture the genuine cruel streak and flawed personality that is sooo so important to me.

WHICH IS WHY i picked țuică!draco for my favourite of the ones i've written. he's still a bit too emotionally intelligent to be Just Right, imo, but i think he's maybe the closest? he's unrepentantly rude to people. he's not attractive. and he has a streak of self-destructive fucked-upedness that is some form of wartime guilt, but certainly not a pretty one.

HOWEVER. rookie moves?? NAILED it. i adooored how genuinely fuckin MEAN he is, even tho he's an auror. i love love LOVED that he's kind of bad at his job in a way that's in complete opposition to how drarry!draco is often written these days:

The look on Malfoy’s face was not only troubling, Harry realized, but familiar. At once activated and dead behind the eyes, like an invasive species in an ecosystem that could not check it. It was the look of the meanest fucking teenager Harry had ever known, giving in to his urge to bully.

-

What Malfoy wasn’t good with was people. Despite his repeated insistences that his upbringing had equipped him with impeccable manners and a facility with society intrigue, the truth was that he rubbed almost everyone the wrong way. He was, undeniably, annoying. Witnesses were put off by his snide, dismissive tone, and he didn’t know how to coax out information with curiosity, warmth, or strategic silence.

that's not to say unrepentant cunt draco is the only one for me!! i DO enjoy the classic redeemed drarry draco!! i love a quirky draco, à la wwpwcs or maya's drop dead gorgeous. gallaplacidia's draco is sooo painful for me to read (complimentary) that even though i adore her fics, i still haven't read them all bc i have to space them out, for my health. and i'm sure there are dozens more dracos that i'm forgetting how much i like – basically, as long as he isn't super suave, absolutely gorgeous and/or obviously tom felton, i'm on board.

[scherzokinn]

Btw I'm serious when I say Sarek has a human fetish. This is how those with a fetish for a certain group of people act. Sarek being disgusted by Spock's human side while also marrying human wives is 100% because of a fetish. Sarek is just the Star Trek version of Alma Mahler.

[shayminlucario07]

It absolutely means EVERYTHING that the battle theme is named after one of Susie's abilities

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

i stand with you in the face of a defensive misunderstanding of what critique is.

i think understanding what a critique actually is is a skill that increasingly is not taught. i remember going through freshman art courses feeling the frustration that all negative, nasty, unhelpful, and missed-the-point-entirely feedback is so commonly conflated with critique, and then critique gets a bad name because everyone remembers the time someone said their painting looked like an asshole (true story, altho now i think i would take it as a compliment) instead of the time a teacher or friend or classmate helped them uncover a hurtful bias or think of new ways to explore the same idea or how to connect it to related ideas or how to look up and understand other people's ideas on the same topic.

anyway i think you're great.

ahhh you're so kind to me!! i appreciate your support, and i think you are great also.

i have experience with giving and receiving critique as a student myself, and i think it was the best part of my degree! i majored in creative writing in college, and critique was just a generally accepted part of learning to become a writer. i don't even remember people being especially worried about receiving critique on their work. we had guidance on what kind of feedback was useful, but we were still at liberty to give it as we saw fit as like messy 19 year olds. the standard was that we gave it both written on printed copies of the work AND aloud in front of the whole class, and the writer receiving it was not permitted to speak during the critique. understanding how people are perceiving your work is important!

i don't have any particularly negative recollections of the critique process, although once in a high school writing class, the boys in the class told me that my male characters touched each other too gently and real boys are more rough with each other. in particular, they took issue with me writing that one boy nudged another. nudging is too soft. nudging is for girls. that was more than 20 years ago, and i still think about it sometimes because it was such an interesting perspective! i did not take their advice, though.

i should dig up that piece and see if it reads queer in any other ways. i think that's what they were getting at. (actually i once had a non-fiction class tell me i was in love with my roommate after reading an essay i wrote about her)(i did not listen to that advice either, but having 12 acquaintances tell you that you're gay in 2006 before you realize it yourself is Truly Something!)

i think people have conflated criticism and critique and think that being more openly analytical is the same thing as being negative. but analysis is so fun to me! analysis is why i joined fandom in the first place, and it's why i write fic! can we trust each other to be respectful and to speak in good faith even when we're not singing each other's praises? for me fandom would be better if we could.

oh i also want to clarify that i don't think it's impossible to demonstrate that you've thought deeply about a piece of fanwork while remaining completely positive. people do it all the time and do it very well!

i know i sometimes have tunnel vision wrt my own perspective. in a lot of situations, i wish it were more acceptable to be more direct, and i know people sometimes find the way i express myself to be kind of shocking. i know a lot of people like to be spoken to more indirectly than comes natural to me, and i don't mean to imply that my perspective is the only correct one or that there's no good reason to err on the side of gentleness/politeness in our responses to amateur art and writing. i just think that at a certain level of circumspection, it feels like we're all holding each other at arm's length.

i think for people who can't bear to feel exposed, making and sharing art is always going to be painful and difficult, and maybe too painful and difficult to enjoy the process unless they're sure of a soft landing. but like. the rewards of being loved only come after the mortifying ordeal of being known, right?

[meg-noel-art]

Okay I have to get a single vent off my chest and then I promise I'll be quiet.

I need ya'll to please realize now (before backlash at Guerrilla gets hurled in three years) DLC characters/content do not become mainstay installments in the way you imagine.

DLC characters do not become main characters.

DLC plots can be removed from the main story and recited as exposition in a main entry.

It HAS to be removable, because not every consumer buys DLC. Whether for lack of resources, access, or principal.

I just really don't wanna see people griping that Guerrilla "dropped"... ahem, anything... in three years from now. Or that some kind of endgame was promised and then taken away.

We been knew, or we SHOULD know bc this is how DLCs have worked always forever.

Not to mention BS was even MORE exclusive by proxy of being literally exclusive to a console people STILL don't have easy access to.

Please everyone just be reasonable when the time comes, that's all I'm worried about.

[goldenganjj]

I am very proud of my Pizza Spaghetti

—

[ID: First image is a group chat screenshot. I say, “I saw this a few days ago but I still wanna share it with yall. "Luigi Mangione sounds like a name Jk Rowling would give an italian character".”

Blue says, “Honestly, that’s crazy accurate.”

Red says, “It really do though. This timeline running out of ideas. A guy named Luigi in New York murking a dude outside his job is def ChatGPT level plot writing it recycled from a 1940's mob story”.

I say, “"JK! we need a name! It's an Italian kid we're gonna frame for murdering a ceo!" she cracks her knuckles, her first draft Pizza Spaghetti and her second Luigi Mangione”.

Second image is from another chat with me and my partner who says, “Pizza Spaghetti lived in cupboard above a pizzaria, with his rotund evil mother and his string bean lanky evil father.” / End ID]

[risetherivermoon]

Part 5 - Sock's Fame Au

- Part 5: Tarty Crouch Jr

Part 4 <- -> Part 6

[iinryer]

i know tommy is a tertiary character or whatever but after rewatching all the begins i desperately want to hear him talk more about that time at the 118 from his perspective. i want to know if he was afraid! i want to know if he wasn’t! how much did he know about himself by then, an inkling? nothing at all? all of it?? i want to know about his guilt and bridging the gap to friendship and if having made amends back then feels any different now that he isn’t hiding anymore…

[longagoitwastuesday]

I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha

I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.

I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.

It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.

Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?

And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.

The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.

These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?

Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.

The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.

After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.

[cathodic-clairvoyant]

There's a lot about discussion of hdwr that baffles me (not all discussion to be clear, because i do think there's a lot of good discussion about hdwr. But equally so are there the ones that make you wonder if you're reading the same story) and I think one that is especially annoying is the constant infantilization of miwa as this passive eternal victim. It drives me up a wall because this is quite literally an issue she's struggled with within the text of the story! She had an arc about how she dislikes how people treat her this way like towards the beginning of the story! And like even ignoring that, this story is about like nuanced and realistic portrayals of being in relationships and learning how to navigate them and so it's like what's the point if you're going to immediately reduce the characters to "the victim" and "the victimizers?" Is that even interesting? Is that a useful lens to look at interpersonal relationships?

[latewife]

can i be real for 5 minutes I'm so sick of everyone acting like james is an incel sex pest but I'm also so sick of everyone pretending like he isn't a misogynist............ like I don't think he Hates women but there are lots of things in the game I can point to regarding his weird feelings about women

[front-facing-pokemon]