#and you have a right to criticize

[realian]

I recall your post on some cartoons just being meanspirited for the heck of it. Well I don't want to be controversial but IZ sometimes veered into that, namely in how Dib was treated even when he was trying to save the world. I especially hated some of the comics like the Gargantis Array, it really felt like Dib was flanderized into a character the writers love torturing and bullying.

why is this ask worded like a gotcha?

[andi-o-geyser]

ohhh girlfriend is about to be humbled so badly. get glintshore'd, bitch

[lo-andbehold]

A callout post (it’s me I’m calling myself out)

[anneapocalypse]

So, just curious how many writers and creators will have to be forcibly outed by relentless harassment before we acknowledge that "This queer characters was written by a cishet person and that's why they're bad" is not good criticism.

[miniimerry]

My litmus test for deciding if I respect or value a person’s One Piece opinions is looking at the way they discuss Usopp tbh. You can tell a lot about someone based on how they talk about Usopp specifically.

If a person insists that Usopp is useless (whether it’s because he’s not as strong as Zoro or Luffy or Sanji or because he “doesn’t have a real job” on the crew) it tells me that they don’t pay attention to what Usopp does contribute, nor do they pay attention to what the story itself deems useful. Usopp may not be a massive, hulking powerhouse with ultra-powerful haki, but he does have utility in the crew. (And even if he didn’t, he would still belong because they wanted him.)

If a person insists that Usopp is just a crybaby or a coward and that he sucks because of this, it tells me that you don’t pay attention to what he’s doing while he’s running or crying. He might cry or shake or run, but he always comes back. He always stands up and fights in the end. He feels scared and then he does it anyway. It’s easy to forget, but Usopp is just a human in a world of monsters. For him to stand up and fight takes a lot of courage.

If a person insists that Usopp is not strong, it tells me they miss what the story itself tells us about what strength is and what it means to be strong. He has a skill that most do not. He is able to shoot with a degree of accuracy that is borderline inhuman. Whether he can kick through a boulder is irrelevant. Sanji can’t snipe from hundreds of feet away.

If you can’t look at Usopp and see where he fits in the story, I am truly uninterested in anything else you have to say about this story.

[deadrocks]

I do think that, when discussing the merits of a post-god Exandria, it's important to remember that many people in this world find peace, comfort, and purpose in their worship of the gods, and would be devastated by their loss. Not just clerics or god-aligned paladins, but many, many regular folk. Here in the real world, significantly more people ascribe to some kind of religious faith than don't; imagine what that proportion would be like in a setting where the gods are clearly and objectively real. Where people can pray and truly feel the presence of their god with them. Where they can grieve their loved ones in death yet know, without doubt, that that person's soul was welcomed into a divine domain. Where they know these gods came to their world and created all mortal life. Is there truly nothing there worth preserving? Is the imbalance of power between gods and mortals so fundamentally unjust that all that faith grants should be violently ripped away?

[benevolenterrancy]

("Always. Continuously. With increasing apprehension, and decreasing hope. I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this." -- paraphrased from The Beatrice Letters, Lemony Snicket)

[plaguedocboi]

The fucking audacity of Starbucks to name their brand after a Moby Dick character and then completely abandon that theme… I should be able to roll up to a Starbucks and order a ‘Moby Dick’ (lethal amount of espresso in an extra large white cup)

[helpallthenamesaretaken]

Annabeth in TLT:

what was the name of her doberman? what happened to her doberman? is she sad because she had to leave her doberman behind when she ran away? did something happen to her doberman? did whatever happen to her doberman contribute to her abandonment issues?

will I ever get to know? will I ever get to cry about it?

[rookinthecrownest]

when are we gonna wake up and realize that Romanced Rook should have made an appearance in Lucanis’ mind prison - a reflection of all his insecurities about their relationship, his fears around intimacy, his fear for their safety around him. To have all that made flesh and be spoken from Rook’s own mouth?? Sheesh 😩

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

Clarification: the point of MDZS isn't to distrust every rumour you hear. Some of the rumours in the prologue turn out to be right! The Jiang clan did take Wei Wuxian off the streets! Wei Wuxian did destroy (half of) the Yin Hufu before he died (and did ‘destroy the weapon’ in the sense it couldn’t be used anymore, because it required two halves to work)! He was one of the most promising cultivators and found success at a young age! He did die!

The point is thinking critically about the information you receive. Don't believe something because it suits what you want to think of someone, or because everyone else is agreeing with it. Believe it because there's strong evidence for it. Lan Wangji puts it best:

Lan WangJi slowly shook his head, “One should not comment without understanding the whole picture.” - Chapter 30, EXR translation

With Wei WuXian expanding on the reasoning (same chapter):

Just like you, I don’t understand the whole picture, so I’m not going to comment either. You’re right. Before knowing all of the turns and twists, causes and effects, nobody should presume anything about anything.

(And for context, this attitude is proven right! The conversation is about whether Xiao Xingchen performed lingchi on (severely tortured) Chang Ping, and there end up being so many unexpected twists and turns in his story that any judgement made without evidence would have been impossible to get right*. Wei Wuxian only makes his guess – that Xue Yang did it to take revenge for Xiao Xingchen, in his twisted way – after he has the relevant information of the Yi City quartet's story. And, seeing the nerves he hit, it seems to be correct.)

In fact, that's something we ourselves have to do throughout the course of the novel – weighing up what we know of Wei Wuxian's past deeds with what we see of his personality and actions in the present day. Those who still blindly trust the rumours up until the Second Siege are shown how unwise that is by being proven wrong... but that's not because having any opinion that happens to agree with a rumour, no matter the amount of evidence, is automatically wrong. As I mentioned, some of the rumours are correct! It's because how Wei Wuxian acted in the present day – ie the concrete evidence we have – didn't match up.

Blindly distrusting rumours is exactly the same as blindly trusting them.

---

*Without making a random, lucky guess. And since that would have no proof behind it, and a greater chance of being wrong... well, I think we can all afree that random unbased guesses aren't the way to solve mysteries.

[luddlestons]

anyone else think another feywild vacation would fix them?

companion to my polynein art, we're trying it not cropped this time bc there's no dicks.

[chengchengj]

''Odysseus cheated on his wife'' My first reaction is: you don't know how to differentiate sex from rape and it's disgusting.

[utilitycaster]

The thing about Ashton is while I have grown incredibly frustrated, there is something, again, terribly real about how they're behaving and how (I assume) they're feeling. There's something horrifying about learning you have endless possibilities for who you could have been in your head, and yet having to live in the one where your parents nearly killed you and your friends abandoned you for dead and you were right about your prediction that your new friend would sacrifice themself. It's just...the solution is not trying to undo the past (impossible) nor find whoever will tell you you're most special regardless of their other positions.

[greenqueenhightower]

The fact that Geeta Patel doesn’t know that F&B heavily implies that Elissa Farman took the eggs that would come to Daenerys’ hands and that Rhaena carries three eggs to the Vale, with one of them hatching to a dragon, thus leaving only two, and that GRRM made this decision purposefully, so that we know that Daenerys’ eggs don’t come from Rhaena, is disconcerting.

I’m starting to believe that the writers/producers/directors/showrunners have either never read Fire & Blood, or lack basic-level critical thinking skills.

[yudol-skorbi]

nice *adds them to my collection of cool rocks*