#and i'm just so baffled

[cheugyphobeao3]

rb for larger sample size! feel free to elaborate in tags about your process.

[sindar-princeling]

"remastering" LOTR movies to 4K quality is my favourite example of execs' utter lack of understanding of artistic vision and clever filmmaking. WHY are you stubbornly undoing all the meticulous work pj's crew did to make the movies look fairy tale-esque and help the visual effects age more slowly

"this movie needs to look sharper and crisper" have you considered.......... that MAYBE.......... the glowy fuzzy filter is there on purpose................... to give the movies a more fantasy aesthetic and to mask the cgi better..........

but no we have to release the trilogy again and it has to look "better"

I can't believe it needs to be said, but visual effects like these are just as an important part of the movie (which you know. is a visual medium.) as everything else and by "correcting" them, you're doing the artists' vision the same disservice as if you started to rewrite the lines of dialogue

[inspisart]

dick took the news that a strange thirteen year old broke into his apartment while he was away at the circus pretty well, I gotta say

[fuchsea]

hello kids i haven't done a controversial post in a while but i am filled with rage so here goes. louis' coming to india next week and i have already seen way too many pointed comments towards that and let me say this plain and straight: you're fucking racist. this is the first time ever in 15 years that we are getting a 1d member to come to india and yes we're enthusiastic about it and we're going to be loud and going to bring out our desiness to show louis how much we love him and to give him a glimpse of our culture. if any non-asian people can't understand that vigour then you can fuck off because it's not your country nor your culture. we love loudly and we want him to see that just as much as we've waited for him, it was definitely worth a visit for him as well. i know there's main non-asian people coming to the show, which honestly is a whole other rant, but hey if you have money and wanna spend it who am i to say anything. all i'm saying is come here as a guest and leave as one. do not for one fucking second compare or comment about how us desis are different from you whites because of course we are. different cultures, remember? also to those people who have made comments like "i hate that louis might debut a new song at a show that's not mine and is in fucking india" suck my fucking dick. why can't you just accept that we deserve it too? why can't you let go of your superiority and accept that not everything needs to happen in a first world country? that is plain racist and i hope you get your privilege under check before tuning into the instagram live of louis' set next sunday.

[halflifebutawesome]

genuine question am I the only one around here that sees the gman as actively antagonistic or am I the outlier

[necrotic-nephilim]

i personally have very complicated feelings on the Gotham Knights video game and the routes it takes with characterization. i think it has a charm to it and it goes in an interesting direction with everyone (especially within the confides of the plot of the game) but it does have certain moments that veer painfully fanon for me. (such as: the dialogue where Tim drinks too much coffee) it's an interesting story for what it is but i don't view it comics-based for characterization and therefore don't care to interact with it much for like. fanfic purposes.

that *said* though. i do have to give the game some kind of credit for giving one of the top five JayTim moments that lives rent free in my mind. every since i played the game, the cutscene lives in my mind daily. it's the specific cutscene where Jason and Tim are arguing about whether or not Jason's non-lethal bullets are too dangerous for the field, and the argument leads to TIm *standing in front of the target* Jason is shooting and telling Jason to shoot him. it lives rent free for me. i never stop thinking about this.

the absolute certainty Tim has that he is in no danger standing in front of Jason, who has a loaded gun pointed at his face. the way Jason *hesitates* for just a moment before lowering the gun. he thinks about it for just a second. Gotham Knights JayTim seem to get along very well and can rely on each other, but Jason still clearly holds a bitterness about his death and Tim that flickers through in some lines of dialogue under the guise of jokes. especially since this game deals *heavily* with concepts of Pit Madness causing an altered state of consciousness, i think it's believable that occasionally, Jason fights the urge to fight and hurt Tim for the feeling of being replaced.

i like their tension so much in this canon. they get along but you can *tell* Tim is afraid of addressing Jason's trauma or even addressing Jason head-on, and Jason leans into spooking Tim about it. which isn't very comics feeling in their dynamic, but it is an interesting way to place their dynamic if you're playing with a more timid Tim who's newer to the role of Robin. (which he seems to be in-game) he really doesn't want to offend Jason, or worse, piss him off. but he'll still face Jason head on for things like this, while completely aware of what Jason could be capable of.

and Jason seems very protective of Tim and respecting Tim as a Robin in typical Jason fashion. if Tim pushes, Jason *will* relent. he knows this is a kid who's proved himself and should be treated with equal respect, sometimes even more than Dick and Babs do in-game.

so for all that to culminate in Tim stepping in front of Jason's loaded gun that he *knows* is on the edge of being too dangerous, just to force Jason to listen? it's the most unhinged way Tim could've gotten his point across in this scene. he was literally daring Jason to hurt him and playing with a very dangerous fire. but he did it anyway bc he believed he could make Jason heel just at the thought of hurting Tim. and he was *right*. they're gay and i'm feral ty.

[dootznbootz]

Fascinating how Polites, the character who is the personification of Odysseus' optimism and is only in 5 songs, is more grieved and appreciated than Eurylochus, a character who is his own person and is in 11 songs.

[valhelos]

I've been thinking about LEP uniforms again.

My personal design for the LEPrecon uniforms is a "fake" jumpsuit with trousers and jacket, with an additional vest on top, for combat missions. Wings either attach or are part of the vest. Tool belt, and vambraces that have their wrist computers. (Holly as Captain, Trouble as Major).

The Traffic uniform is brighter than normal LEP uniform for the sake of visibility and the vest has a screen on the front and back as officers on traffic duty are described as "walking road signs". The commander's uniform is blue, but otherwise the same as any other LEPrecon uniform. (Holly as Corporal, Trouble as Commander).

Tool belt includes: Moonbelt, gun holster, buzz baton, handcuffs + additional zipties, pheromone spray (read: pepper spray), ammo, omnitool, first aid kit, camouflage foil. Optionally knife and flashlight.

The uniforms have rank insignia as well as name tags. The ranks in the books are... weird, so far we have: Cadet, Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Commandant, Captain, Major, Commodore, Wing Commander and Commander (roughly in that order). I've also given different acorn clusters to different ranks; from Private to Commandant one acorn, from Captain to Commodore cluster of two acorns, and for Wing Commander and Commander cluster of three acorns.

[tr1cked]

they block me because of my genderfluid loki swag & respect for trans muses.

[a-most-beloved-fool]

Tell us more about your hate for Dr. Mora...?

Yes!

The thing with Dr. Mora is that the people who wrote him weren't actually properly aware of what they were writing. What they intended to write was a nuanced father-figure who gets to reconcile with his formerly no-contact son. What they actually wrote was... a bit different.

I've talked about him on here before, so I'm going to go ahead and link that post here, because I think there was good discussion (and it's a bit shorter), but if you want the long answer, it's below the cut!

From even before Mora's first appearance in The Alternate, we know that Odo feels a great deal of resentment towards him as a direct result of how Odo was treated when he was in Dr. Mora's lab. He is mentioned more than once before he ever appears on screen, and always in negative or neutral ways (such as Odo speaking about the 'Cardassian neck trick' that he clearly didn't enjoy performing).

When he does first arrive on station, Odo is very obviously uncomfortable with him. He does not want to spend time with Mora - in fact, he explicitly states that he does not see Mora as a father-figure, and that he does not trust him.

Now, the plot of this episode features a gas which caused Odo, when in his rest-cycle, to unknowingly turn into a seemingly-mindless monstrous creature. Seemingly mindless, I say, because the creature does have enough of a mind to remember his resentment of Mora and repeatedly target him. I, personally, am of the opinion that That Level of resentment does not come from nothing and can't be easily dismissed.

During this episode, Mora is the first to realize that the creature is Odo. He pulls Odo aside and informs him of this. I'm just going to leave a section of the episode summary from Memory Alpha here, because I think it says it better than I can:

Odo proposes that the gas from the planet they were on affected him somehow, but Dr. Mora suggests Odo may have been responsible for unsolved crimes in the past. He then says that now that they know the truth, none of the station staff will trust Odo, and advises Odo to return to the scientific center with him, stating he has experience with Odo.

To me, that reads as a wildly abusive interaction. That is Mora trying to manipulate Odo by distancing him from his friends and casting doubts on Odo's ability to do his job (which Odo takes great pride and comfort in). He takes the two things most important to Odo - his connection to his coworkers, and his career, and dismisses both of them as false, somehow. It's deliberate, and it's cruel. The phrase, "he has experience with Odo," especially gets on my nerves. That is not a wording that would be used by a man who sees Odo as his son or as a sentient being. That's how you talk about a feral animal or a science experiment. Frankly, I think Mora does see Odo as a science experiment. He's curious about Odo's interests only to the point that he thinks it's curious that Odo can have any interests or preferences at all. He doesn't actually respect Odo as a person - he only sees him as something to study.

There's a very small amount of conversation between them at the very end of the episode where Mora says that he never knew how Odo felt about their time at the lab, and Odo agrees to let Mora be a small part of his life going forward, which is supposed to be a start down the road to reconciliation, but it doesn't feel earned. It's cheap and, honestly, a little insulting.

Already, I do not like this man, but the episode The Begotten is where things really go downhill. This episode is supposed to show a proper reconciliation between Odo and Mora. It tries to iron out all of the resentment that Odo still holds about how he was treated at the lab.

It fails, utterly.

This episode starts when Quark acquires an ill changeling infant. Odo is the one to recognize the changeling for what it is, and takes it upon himself to try to teach the changeling about the world and how to shapeshift - made more difficult by the fact that Odo is still stuck in his Humanoid form.

Sisko suggests that Odo get the help of Dr. Mora, citing the fact that Mora had worked with a baby changeling before. Odo flatly refuses. Mora shows up anyways, entirely uninvited, and Odo does not want Mora anywhere near the infant - and certainly not without supervision. We know that Mora's methods for 'training' Odo involved pain and discomfort, and Odo is opposed to allowing the same methods to be used on the infant. He wants to take his time, and let the infant grow and learn at its own pace. But the changeling is slow to learn, and Starfleet is impatient, and, eventually, Odo is coerced into using pain to force the infant to change its shape. This works, and both Odo and Mora are delighted. Both acknowledge the utility of the other's method - Mora says that Odo was correct to build a connection with the infant, because it clearly likes him, while Odo says that the pain was also necessary.

This is supposed to be read as a good thing. The use of electricity and other pain-inducing methods is, I believe, supposed to be read as a 'necessary evil' - like requiring a child to eat their greens or take a bath when they don't want to. It claims that Dr. Mora just wanted what was best for Odo, and that he loves Odo. It even goes so far as to imply that Odo is being cruel to Mora, by keeping him at a distance and not forgiving him for the past.

In my opinion, that is an absolute load of hogwash. What I see is not a parent who tried their hardest but was flawed. I see a man who tortured a child, and now refuses to understand why the child may resent that. Part of the issue is just that it's a really shitty analogy. There is no world in which tossing a child into a Pain Machine is the same as requiring a child to comply with a set bedtime. It's abuse, straight up. I cannot see that as anything other than Mora deliberately causing actual pain to a literal infant. Frankly I do not care that it "got a result"

Now, it's true that, with Odo, Mora did not initially know he was working with a sentient being. But firstly, that excuse doesn't apply to the new changeling child, and secondly, he never once truly apologizes. Throughout, he maintains that what he did was justified because it got results. Even when he acknowledges that Odo's method of building a connection with the child helped, he still believes that the pain he caused was necessary, and that Odo's resentment of him is nothing more than an overreaction.

The episode seems to agree with him. The episode, in fact, seems to think that Odo should be the one apologizing to Mora for not forgiving him sooner! Everything we've seen of how Odo interacts with Mora suggests that Odo was traumatized by him (and I do mean literally traumatized, not just the way the word is now used in pop-culture), and somehow the episode appears more concerned with the fact that Mora is hurt that he's not allowed a place in Odo's life. Odo's discomfort around Mora and around letting Mora near the child is seen as irrational.

Mora never actually acknowledges faults in how he treated Odo. He apologizes that Odo felt hurt, but never actually accepts that he caused it, and when pressed, deflects blame onto the Cardassians and deadlines. This is mirrored in the episode by Starfleet and Sisko giving Odo deadlines re: the infant's development. Odo only turns to using pain on the child because he's running out of time - and then he does use pain, and the infant responds, and Odo decides that Using Pain On Children Is Good. This was written as a spot for Odo to relate to what Mora went through and to sympathize with him, with understanding paving the road for reconciliation, but it just. it pisses me off. This is just the fucking cycle of violence, illustrated in full-color.

(I also disagree with how they wrote Sisko in the episode, tbh. That man adores babies. You cannot convince me that he could hear the word "baby" and not immediately do everything in his power to protect the changeling baby from Starfleet pressure. Like, c'mon.)

So, while the episode sees a 'reconciliation', I see a man who was abused by his father-figure slowly get coerced into using the exact same methods, and then decide that they were correct and justified after all. It reads like a horror story, to me. The message seems to be, "you should forgive your abusers if they're your parent," with a side of, "corporeal punishment is fine and often good, actually," and a little dash of, "it's cruel to go no-contact with your parent, because you owe them for raising you. it doesn't matter what they did to earn that treatment - you're overreacting."

Obviously, I don't believe this is what the writers tried to write. But it sure is what it looks like to me! And I know that I'm not the only one who reads the episode this way.

To be clear, I don't hate Mora because I think he's an abusive 'father' - though I do, certainly, think that - I hate Mora because the writers were entirely unwilling to acknowledge that he's abusive in any real capacity. They wrote an abuser who was actively abusing, on screen, and pretended he was just a normal loving father who screwed up a little, and who didn't deserve how poorly he was being treated. They could have done fantastic things with him! Instead they blindly wrote... that.

[t00thpasteface]

by and large, Fandom Discourse™ is unchanging and neverending. i joined tumblr in 2011 when i was 14, and i got into a million fights as a high schooler about what i perceived to be very serious issues within the Fandom Discourse™. now, at double that age, enough time passed that i can look back on those days and see that NONE of us had ANY effect whatsoever on our fandom nor any fandoms, and i'm awed at the scale of all that time i could've spent drawing, writing, and chatting with my friends about that thing we like instead of arguing with strangers about it instead.

issues like what's problematic to draw/write, what's problematic to read/watch/play, what's problematic to ship or not ship, etc., are largely Solved Issues— not in the sense that there's one right answer like a solved math problem, but in the sense that there's only one outcome, which is that there will never be one right answer you can just post loudly enough about to convince all the right people and forever shun the nonbelievers.

and maybe it's a little hypocritical of me to make a post like this, but i really don't want to take ANY side in ANY discourse; i just want to help reach people entrenched in the discourse and offer them a way out of it, because i know how easy it is to get trapped in those perpetual outrage cycles, and now more than ever, we need to get OUT of them!! this is your sign to distance yourself from the discourse. if i can help at least one person take one deep breath and cancel one angry post, then my yapping will be worth it :')

[theforsakenprince]

why does everyone assume all destiny players hate destiny. the damage "haha I hate destiny it's my favorite game" jokes has done tbh. no I actually like playing it I have fun that is the point of playing a video game. don't assume anything just because you're having an awful time

[mohntilyet]

okay this is actually just bias now so before you read what i have to say i did warn you. yes illario would never be able to beat lucanis at being a crow or an assassin but you know what he would beat him at. being a lord of fortune. hold my hand as i take you through my mind palace and introduce to you my ideal post-game vision for illario dellamorte

[vaguely-concerned]

powerful mental image of lucanis expounding passionately about any given one of his limited but extremely deep areas of interest (the wyvern/knives/coffee/cooking/murder continuum of lucanis dellamorte special interests if you will) while rye lounges around and Beholds him with palpable twink boutta pounce energy

[iamacolor]

Lee Soo Hyuck as Park Joonggil (Tomorrow, 2022) - Devil Saint

K-DRAMA SECRET SANTA 2023 for @khaoray

happy holidays Vic, wishing you all the best for next year! 💜

[poibynt]

Xerxes being treated as an ancient lost civilisation is always just SO WILD to me. Xerxes fell 400 years ago. 400. YEARS. That's what, like 13 generations?? 15?? In 2025 that's the 1600s. Over a thousand and a half years into the Common Era. From a Eurocentric perspective, that's the start of the early modern period. It's past the renaissance. You can go see baroque paintings super easily at major art museums. America is being colonized by then. It's not that long ago like AT ALL. Ancient Greece fell over 2000 years ago, Ancient Egypt only a bit earlier. Ancient Mesopotamia ended 4000 years ago. We know. So much. About these ancient civilisations, in comparison to what the general population seems to know about Xerxes in Amestris. Xerxes fell about 140-150 years before Amestris is founded officially, and its ruins are like next door to them by the early 1900s and no one seems to even claim the territory. (I do not know the rate Amestris expanded and I do not care enough to learn).

Xerxes is said to have been destroyed pretty thoroughly in text but like. There's a fuck ton of ruins just in the desert. There is a VERY OBVIOUS transmutation circle in those ruins. And you tell me that Amestris knows almost nothing about Xerxes?? That it's been almost entirely lost to time?? Does Amestris have the shittiest most underfunded archaeology/anthropology in FMA's world or do they just not care?? And this isn't even talking about how Xerxes was a country, not a city state and there were many Xerxan towns and settlements. We see parts of Xerxes that aren't in desert areas in the flashbacks, so it's pretty possible eastern Amestris has expanded into old Xerxian land.

"ooh yeah the possible birth of alchemy, a deeply important scientific tool in our country and a cornerstone of our military power. It might have had a direct impact on the founding of our country. We only have some storytales about it. Yeah, Frank dug up like a shit ton of inscribed pottery when he was building his shed. He just threw it out."

I am going to loose my MIND. WHY IS NO ONE OUT THERE WITH A SHOVEL.