#and it’s fun to see what the fandom does with that

[dearmyloveleys]

"Zhao Yuanzhou once told me that he often stared into space alone by the sea in the Wilderness. Because the sea never cared about his sadness and loneliness. The sea has a lot to worry about. Because, everyday, ten thousand waves are born from its embrace. And everyday, ten thousand lives fall into it and their souls sink into the deep sleep. I didn't understand it then, but after he left, I understood that bone-deep sadness. It was the base colour of his soul, like a broken song, vast, distant, and desolate."

- Zhuo Yichen, Ep 35 (Extra)

I’m not sure if this is has been raised by the fandom in the early days when the series started airing, but I find it so… it’s not foreshadowing, it’s just… (melancholic) now that we have the full view of everything. Zhao Yuanzhou’s name in Chinese characters are 赵远舟. 远 (yuan) — far away, 舟 (zhou) — boat. I recall there was an episode where he, ZYC and WX were making fun of each other’s names. Though, in that scene, they only mention his birth name, Zhu Yan, which funnily enough, the Yan (厌) does indeed stand for ‘annoying’ as the other two speculate. Yet it also stands for loathing, or be fed up with something. His birth name represents the slow grudge and despair he bears for his birth Demonic nature, the things out of his control. His human name doesn't fare any better. In fact, it is rather tragic.

Yuan Zhou — a far away boat, never docking on the shores of tranquility. It's a gifted human name from a person he cares about, yet, the humanity that this represents is innately unreachable. Gifts never have permanence in his life after all. He is always physically on the shore, looking out at the ocean of the Wilderness. He looks out to this yuan zhou, this metaphorical boat beyond his grasp, floating on this ocean of intertwining dreams and nightmares. The ocean is his ironic safe haven, as he finds that it "never cared for his sadness or loneliness". But his mind is simultaneously also the boat itself, drifting endlessly in sadness and loneliness. He looks out into the ocean where ten thousand waves are born and ten thousand lives are taken, each scenario representing the endless birth and death of his hopes and despair. He looks out at the ocean and sees himself in its waves.

As humans, regardless of culture, our names stand for our hopes and wishes. Names have power, in fiction and mythology, they are often a character’s prophecy. His human name reflects the human side of him that is unreachable and desolate, adrift at sea never settling on the shore - this human nature that is in sight but never attainable. On the other end, his Demon birth name reflects who he is and what he loathes, but it also comes with fond memories. To be a human or a demon? To which he says, "Be whatever you want to become". The tragic truth is, deep down, he cares for both his identities. He doesn’t want to solely become either. It wounds him that the two sides of him, the demon and the human can never truly reconcile. His nature eternally jostles with what he nurtures. Neither of his names comes with meanings of comfort — his prophecy is one of endless contradiction and encompasses his pain that is thoroughly evoked through the series. The base colour of his soul, like a broken song, vast, distant, and desolate.

Though there is hope, as the story reiterates. As far as mythological prophecies go, fate will bite you in the ass if you avoid it. ZYZ doesn’t avoid these prophecies. Instead, when a human and a demon shows him that both sides can be loved, he fulfils both identities of himself. His self-fulfilling prophecy that he expects from all his inner grief and turmoil, comes true, but not in the way fate expects. But fate cannot condemn him any longer. He still has met his dictated end, hasn't he? He hasn't tempted it in any way or form. Light shines through, and I believe the Heavens are chuckling away in a corner of their world. They let him go to be whatever he wants to be, and he becomes the guiding love that he has always wanted.

[marta-bee]

I'm fascinated by this.

First, thank you thank you THANK YOU for talking seriously but generously about book!Denethor and book!Faramir's relationship in a way that doesn't treat him like an outright villain. I'm a huge Denethor fan (in a way that hopefully revels in his moral complexity/complicity rather than whitewashing it, because where's the fun otherwise?), and we really need more of that in fandom.

I'm not sure I'd call Faramir cruel, but he's definitely living in an imperfect world where he probably understands he can't save everyone, even as he's probably better able to do that than Boromir just because he's working with a much smaller group. But he's harsh when he's questioning Gollum. He's not even overly quick to reassure Frodo and Sam that they're safe and he believes them, after the drumhead trial-type interrogation before they all decamp to Henneth Annun. And he takes part in several really bloody battles and he's still prepared to lead men into almost certain defeat to defend the various outposts around Minas Tirith. I see him making lots of hard decisions in the books.

(It's been years since I've actually reread the books, and it's also late so if I'm misremember or misrepresenting anything, please take it as a good-faith misremembering.)

But I do think --fascinatingly-- he sees an even bigger picture than Denethor does. That's the tragedy of Denethor, that he sees the whole struggle in terms of Gondor vs. Mordor. I was going to say book!Faramir isn't this overly moralistic person, it's more that he's concerned with the fate of everyone, coupled with having the wisdom to see what his father would prefer he'd do wouldn't actually work. I'm thinking of the temptation to bring the Ring back to Minas Tirith here especially. If he thought it would actually bring the goal he's working for, I'm not sure he wouldn't have done it.

But he's wise enough to know it would destroy the Gondor he loves, and broad-thinking enough to know saving Gondor isn't enough. And maybe that is goodness in the Arda-verse or close to it: not some idealistic clinging to principle totally divorced from the practical consequences of how you act, but thinking more universally and seeing more clearly.

Or put another way:

I don't know. It's a fascinating thought, and one I'll probably be turning over in my mind for the next few days.

book!denethor and faramir are like

"i need you to make the hard decisions now that your brother is gone, because you are the one that will be my heir. i need you to weigh the good of many and the good of few. and i need you to do it independently for when i am gone as well."

and

"i refuse to be anything but gentle. i refuse to let the concept of a greater good justify cruelty. i love you. and im sorry to be a disappointment."

[vethbrenatto]

Curious what your thoughts are on critical role season 3/campaign 3 continuing to bring back previously main characters from 1&2?

Idk I’m having a hard time with this campaign and the way the party seems to have badly analysis paralysis and it seems so dragged out with the characters not wanting to make decisions.

So when I see that they keep bringing pre established characters in for the story instead of focusing on things NOW, I’m a bit exasperated lol. I’m glad they’re having fun and it does make for some good moments! But I’m just feeling bleh overall atm

i actually stopped watching c3 somewhere in the 90s so i can't really comment-

what i can say is that this is not a storytelling device i particularly enjoy; it particularly bugged me early in c3 with the intervention of vex and keyleth and even pike (my girl, my love, my light) as these sort of god-like deus ex machina figures. i have a lot of old posts detailing why i didn't like it then, but a lot of it is sort of a stakes thing, right? vox machina and m9 have saved and saved the world... what the fuck is bells hells even qualified for in comparison? why not just let the professionals handle it (story, that's why)?

and then we get this sort of culmination that i've heard about recently where the cast has been swapping between parties and conceptually that's really cool, even if it doesn't appeal to me.

what it comes down to is that this is matt's vision for the world- an interconnecting web of events and people. in my ideal version, the world is an expansive place and these are 3 equally important but unconnected stories. set in the same place but never directly connecting- just some little overlap to remind you it's all in the same place (i.e. the allura cameo in the m9 campaign). but, quite simply, that isn't what matt or the cast want.

i am interested to see if this will be the last campaign for the main cast, or the last exandria campaign overall because the plot does seem so dramatic and "it all connects/comes together" that i have no clue where they could go from here.

c3 overall was hard for me to connect to since the mid campaign (i also think watching CR live is probably my least favorite way of consuming it- i do think the content works better on a binge) but maybe ill catch up at some point.

TLDR; i am not currently watching but agree that the return of past characters doesn't appeal to me specifically, though i know the fandom and the cast probably have the opposite opinion about the returns.

[spirk-trek]

Hey so, it's me. The debbie-downer vaguing you in the spirk tag. I didn't mention you directly because my post wasn't directed at you, although it was made in response to checking some of your posts because I do have Unification in my filtered list (content and tag), so those fanworks? Behind a button, so my choice to look is all my own. (I didn't send the anon, though. That was someone else, sorry to say.) It sucks that that's how tumblr's system works but yay content filtering! Tumblr didn't always have that.

I didn't make that post to start drama, and I'm not the sort to get my kicks by being a contrarian for opposition's sake (like. I'm a Shatner fan. In a lot of online Star Trek spaces, I might as well say I hate K/S or Leonard Nimoy or kick puppies in my spare time, you know?), but I did make it in anger and for that I apologize. I should have waited longer on it to phrase things better or simply have deleted it from my drafts after typing it out. (But it's out there now and I'll live with it.)

I do understand where the joy of connecting the past to the present comes from (as a lot of your posts do with connecting old and new fanworks together), and that a lot of people are celebrating the Unification short as a culmination of 50+ years of K/S despite their initial separation according to the initial story, but for me (personally! I want to stress that. It's just me and my own opinion here), I keep seeing it as a valuing of what a company is finally offering fans rather than the celebration of fans who saw where K/S's story ended at the time, rejected that ending that was offered by the corporation, and made their own ending for K/S, without looking towards any official channels as a guide for their visions. That's what my post was about, where my anger was from, those questions--what becomes lost in fandom if we accept canon from the corporation that holds the copyright? What does it say if we look towards that same canon as being above what fandom has already envisioned? In a fandom as old as Star Trek's, one that laid so much groundwork that we take for granted, to overlook that worries me.

I suppose the biggest issue here is it's too similar, like a reflection in a mirror: on one side, Unification stands as the canonization of what the fandom has envisioned all along. It culminates. On the other, Unification appears as a bone tossed to finally appease fans who have seen K/S from the start and it feels too little, too late. Ironically enough, the short has seemingly managed to divide people, but it's too early to tell how lasting such a division could be.

Hopefully I've cleared the air by this. Unification clearly is not my cup of tea and I'm honestly not trying to ruin anyone's fun (most of my posts have gone untagged for a reason but I forget tumblr still parses for post content to index. Yikes. That post was tagged, though, because it was a snap decision made in anger and I wanted my thoughts to be seen). One could argue the short wasn't even made for me as I've long wondered if I will watch Generations because I've read the summary and didn't like it. But that's the joy of fandom and transformative works. We can look at the story and pick our favorite parts and rewrite the ones we don't like. If we didn't do that, fandom wouldn't exist, or it would but it wouldn't be as much fun.

Sorry for the essay in your inbox and for causing any confusion and hurt. I hope you've had a great day 💛

i'm not going to lie, it does hurt a little. i wasn't going to answer this publicly but i don't have the time today to have a private convo and i don't want you to think i deleted it or ignored it, so here we are.

i don't think unification made spirk any more canon than tmp did. i don't think the short was made with k/s in mind at all, even as a bone to toss starving shippers. star trek at large was never intended as a love story between them, but people have always seen it anyway. 

i'm conflicted about the use of nimoy's likeness too. despite that, i think that they did it as respectfully as they could have and involved the right people. it was a goodbye, not using him for a cheap cameo or advertising purposes (yes i know it was an "ad" like everything is, but it's not like spock holds up a coke at the end). you can disagree with me, and i understand your point of view. that's why i said i understood where that anon was coming from. 

what i see is william shatner and others taking a story that ended in a way that was disrespectful to both characters, one of which he himself has been playing for the majority of his life, and trying to fix that. it doesn't mean there's no corporate greed involved. both can be true. at least they posted it on youtube, they didn't premiere it or put it behind a paywall. it was just eight minutes, and less than a quarter of that had nimoy's face in it. my favorite part of the whole thing was seeing tos kirk meet his future selves. i love that even though they both die out of their times, they find each other in the end. 

i don't want to be an activist or defend or endorse anything, i just... 

those zines i tagged were 1) a poem by della van hise that was so accurate to the short that others were already reblogging it (i posted it weeks ago). i found it super interesting that she wrote a poem about them meeting again in death before tmp/wok even came out, let alone this short. 2) i was gushing about unification in the tags. 3) another poem about being side by side, which again, i found incredibly relevant. the other one i posted was because it went well with the others visually. it has nothing to do with unification other than the fact that spock is laying down. 

this has just made me sad tbh. i'm not angry and i love your analysis/fan work so much, so :( idk, i don't want anything i post to be divisive or disrespectful. i wasn't even worried about that before. i just really needed a win and maybe i clung to that a little too hard :/

[bonemeal12]

The urge to put The Guy in creepy Pinterest bathrooms is real… and I have no self control

[venti-death-watch]

i think a lot of people have a hard time reconciling aventurine’s ruthlessness with his kindness. and like to be honest, i fall into those traps a lot too.

he’s someone who has fought for everything he’s ‘had’, whose all-or-nothing mentality comes from how anything less than the best is not an option if he wants to survive, who i think is a lot more ruthless and cunning than people are willing to see him as.

but he’s also the guy who instantly was incredibly kind to his child self without even knowing it was him.

and tbh, i don’t see why he can’t be both at once.

[philosophiums]

I have given into peer pressure.

Below the cut is my un-referenced, not proofread, off-the-cuff thoughts on the main JJK characters and their tendencies to have traits that contradict themselves, which not only makes them more rounded characters but also creates a really interesting situation in which characters have mirrors and foils not only with other characters, but also with themselves.

The point of this post is that the characters in JJK are complex. None of them are one-trick ponies and all of them contain multitudes and have, at least once, contradicted themselves and their beliefs.

Might be spoilery? I tried to keep it vague enough that it shouldn't be, but read at your own risk if you're anime only, I guess.

The Obvious One: Gojo

Gojo is "the strongest." It's debatable, I think, whether or not being "strong" is a personality trait, but he makes it his defining personality trait. (And I'm not here to do a Gojo character study, so for my purposes, it will be viewed as one.) Obviously, The Strongest is a title given to him by others, but he fully owns it and believes it. This is his identity; it's how he views himself, how he handles himself, and it is a preceding reputation that he gladly leans into. It's not a mask he hides behind, it's a flag he proudly displays on his ship to warn others of exactly who they're dealing with.

It makes sense, then, that Gojo's self-contradiction is that he has the biggest, most obvious weaknesses of all the characters in JJK. The first of these weaknesses is his knowledge of how strong he is. Toji exploits that weakness in the Hidden Inventory arc, and it almost costs Gojo is life. His second weakness is, very simply, Geto. Kenjaku exploits that weakness during Shibuya. Interestingly, Geto is a victim of Gojo's first weakness (Gojo is so self-assured that he seems to extend that assurance to the people around him, thinking that they are "as gods" like him just for being in his presence, and therefore he does not pay mind to Geto's spiraling), and exploits his second. He, better than anyone else, knows that he is Gojo's weakness, and he uses that knowledge to do everything he does before and during JJK 0 without repercussions.

Gojo is framed by himself and by many characters within JJK as being the "savior" of the jujutsu world, but in many ways he was, in fact, its downfall - because of his strength, and because of his weaknesses.

The Main One: Yuuji

Yuuji is the king of contradictions to me. Not all of it is within himself, and in fact a lot of it occurs because a large part of the plot is happening to him instead of the other way around, but he has one dichotomy that I do think is All Him. Yuuji defines himself as a cog - in his thoughts, he has been used and beaten down for evil already, so why not just be used for good as well. He thinks of himself as expendable and easily replaced; a foot soldier in a war being fought by titans. At some point, his goal stopped being to follow his grandfather's last request and instead turned into the simple act of persevering for as long as he can just in case anyone may have need of him. In a way, his outlook and perspective on everything became rather bleak and inhuman - quite literally, as, again, he views himself as nothing more than a cog.

And yet, for someone who has claimed his only purpose is to be used to kill Sukuna, everything Yuuji does is so achingly desperately human and is born out of his own desires to save people. Every other sorcerer has a CT or a fighting style that disconnects them from their foe - be that ranged attacks or weaponry - but Yuuji uses his fists. It's raw and almost savage in a way that is unavoidably intimate and human. He says, "Use me," (and, don't get me wrong, he is used) but even the act of offering himself negates the connotations that revolve around being used and shines such a lovely warm human light on him.

Yuuji doesn't push people away. The other "strong" characters isolate (Gojo has infinity, Yuuta literally fucks off from the narrative, Geto fucks off from jujutsu society, etc.), but Yuuji hoards people and connections (and yes, those become weaknesses, but the thing is: they become strengths, too). Sukuna takes Megumi away from him, but that just makes Yuuji more determined to kill Sukuna and get Megumi back. Everything he does is out of love, and he has a drive to do what he has to in order to save (or avenge) the people he keeps close. That's not exactly cog-like behavior.

The Fandom Discourse: Megumi

In my opinion, of all the characters (but especially the first-years), Megumi is the logical character. Especially when it comes to his job as a sorcerer (fighting and killing curses). He is knowledgeable about the world of sorcery, the most book-smart of the first-years, and he is smart and methodical when he fights.

He is also the only character who has openly admitted that he really only cares about saving the people he wants to save, as opposed to the general rhetoric of saving everyone. He's selfish, and he's not shy about it. Even he doesn't try to rationalize it; it's just part of who he is. Logical, methodical, smart, but also deeply, truly, selfish when it comes to where and how he expends his energy and efforts.

And yet, he is also the character who is most willing to die. Now, before half the fandom jumps down my throat, I don't mean to say that he wants to die or that he is constantly trying to - I'm just saying that he is willing to. (Obviously, Yuuji is also a character who is willing to die, but Yuuji is only willing to do so if it would also kill Sukuna, and he is determined to stay alive until such a time. Megumi, on the other hand, doesn't have a similar end-goal ultimatum for death). Yes, he comes at dying from a logical point of view, and yes, he only ever brings martyrdom into the equation if he feels he has no other option, but he has no hesitation when he reaches that point. And you (he) can rationalize self-sacrifice as much as you want to, but that is a very emotionally driven response, regardless of the situation. It's a last stand not only for himself, but for his friends, his family, the world. It's the end of the line for him, and it's something he is willing to do if it means taking out his opponent and making the world safer for everyone else - not just for his "select" people.

He is willing to run away from a fight he cannot win, but he is also willing to do something that he knows for sure will kill him if winning and running are no longer options. And I know that not everyone will see these things as opposites or all that detached from each other, but, to me, intelligent and methodical fighting does not naturally go hand in hand with, essentially, grappling your opponent and jumping off a cliff with them.

The Favorite Child: Yuuta

Like Gojo, Yuuta has access to an overwhelming amount of power. There's no doubt that when it comes to raw energy, he is the strongest sorcerer in his generation. He's exceptionally skilled when it comes to fighting and is often able to get by on simply overpowering his opponents (truly, much like Gojo). He doesn't embody being strong, though - he knows that he is, but it's not something that he considers a defining trait for himself. Instead, Yuuta's whole thing is that he has a tendency to shoulder burdens that other people won't (much like Yuuji, actually) (also it's kind of funny because of all the characters in JJK, I would consider Yuuta to be a "cog" way more than Yuuji, but that's a whole other thing). Yuuta is willing to be a monster, to make hard calls and suffer the consequences, because he has internalized what everyone keeps telling him - that, after Gojo, Yuuta is now "the strongest."

Which means that Yuuta also needs an equally large weakness to balance out that power. But where Gojo had arrogance (and his boyfriend), Yuuta has innocence. There's this pure sort of worldview that Yuuta carries with him that completely counterbalances the part of him that is willing to get his hands bloody. He has this youthful sort of hopefulness and naiveté that if he does the dirty work and puts in effort, then things will work out in his favor because they must. If he is sincere, if he shoulders an unbearable mantle, then everything will be fine simply because he chooses to do so. He does things because they are right and just, and he wants to believe that the universe will acknowledge that and be fair - even though he wouldn't have to do these unnamable things if that was true.

The Less Obvious one: Nobara

Nobara doesn't have a lot of screen time compared to the others, and specifically not a lot of time spent planning for/fighting in the "big fights," but she has one thing that the other characters don't have: self awareness. Nobara is the only character who knows what her contradictions are - she even says them out loud.

She wants nothing more than to be a normal girl who is into fashion, who could be a model, who does her hair and her nails and her makeup, who goes on dates, who has a lot of money and spends it freely. That's her ideal, that's her goal. But that's also who she is right now. She dyes her hair, wears makeup, is feminine in all the ways that would mark her as a girl to strangers on the street, goes shopping and buys too much and makes Yuuji carry her bags. She likes being girly and doesn't shy away from it.

But she is also, and I mean this with all the love in my heart, a feral little gremlin who is willing to bash people's skulls in with a hammer. She's brash and rude and loud. She takes up space and is unapologetic about it. She's vicious on the battlefield. She's not afraid to get bloody, and she hates being viewed as a damsel in distress. She's strategic in her fights, and she uses the fact that opponents underestimate her to her advantage. And she knows all of this, too, and she likes it.

She's self-actualized <3 No notes from me; I love my girl.

Anyway, that's it KSJDBVJKLDFVBJKDFVB There's no real point to this. I'm not saying anything profound, I don't think. This was all just a thought that I had, a little thing that I noticed, and I was bullied (affectionate) into sharing.

[pixlokita]

I feel like ? I gotta remind people it’s ok to unfollow a blog when it upsets you in any way >> like if I ever do that sure, you can let me know if it was anything I did personally I’d appreciate it but if you just don’t enjoy something it’s ok to unfollow ;w; can’t stress enough how important it is to put your mental health first 👌

[trafficshippingtournament]

WELCOME, TO THE TRAFFIC SHIPPING TOURNAMENT OF 2023!!!

Where 32 trafficblr ships will be going against each other to find out who comes out on top, so vote for your favourites!!!

The 32 ships chosen for this bracket are the current ships with most fics on 3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series fandom on ao3

All of the ships were arranged randomly for the bracket

Every round of polls will last a week

Finally and most importantly, be kind to each other. This is just a silly tournament

Tags for easy navigation:

The actual match polls -> Polls

The propaganda made by people with hopes to sway your votes! You can support your ships with your own propaganda by sending this blog an ask with the link to the propaganda post you want to be reblogged! -> Tournament Propaganda

Fun stats about the polls for those who enjoy them! -> Tournament Stats

The tournament is over and our winner is GemPearl!!!

[bookwyrminspiration]

real quick because the fandom's experiencing some growing pains--reminder to be nice to new fans! yes they'll have different dynamics, energies, and ways of doing things, but that's not a bad thing

we are all here to enjoy ourselves, so let them enjoy themselves. we were all new at one point. if its harmless, who cares! block if its that much of a problem/nuisance

we do not need a fandom generational divide, please and thanks <3

(and to new fans: hi! sometimes we have genuine points about etiquette like spam and tagging conventions to make the space better for everyone, but otherwise! just have fun!)

[sci-bax]

Sebastian Solace sleeping peaceful in 4k hyper resolution oculus meta quest 2 quality

Drew him sleeping cause of this:

Same drawing but without the slight darker filter over it:

I wanna draw fish man angst

Also its 4am so im going to sleep goodnight, or goodmorning idk

[madbard]

Quick question for my fellow UTMV fans…

(Glances around, then drops poll and runs.)

(This may or may not be an extension to that Dustplates post from earlier…)

[ispridestillasin]

So I decided to watch a bit of Bridgerton with my mother, which I'm not really interested in (I don't really like period pieces unless it's a fanfic for a ship I like) but it's a show she enjoys so I sometimes catch her watching it and join her, and literally the only takeaway from the stuff I've seen with her is that Colin, Lord Debling, and Penelope should have all been poly

[akkivee]

saw some fan art that went like this and it kinda destroyed me lmao

[krash-and-co]

friendly reminder this fandom isnt a job and you don't have to actively work to 'save the show' all the time, you can just have fun

[monsterfuckermilligan]

i am not anti sam but i sometimes find myself hating sam because some samgirls are super into bio/gender essentialism whether or not they realize it. sam is a woman and dean is a man and sam is the victim and dean is his abuser like what show are you watching?