#because they “replaced” someone

[multifandomangel]

fine. i’ll say it.

the only reason people hate jordan and seaver but love emily is because the characters jordan and seaver “replaced” eventually came back; emily technically replaced elle, but everyone eventually got over it when they realized she wasn’t coming back.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[bixels]

Scary Sunset.

I'm concepting things way outta order in this story, but I'm sure you can piece things together. Context is for a storybeat where, after defeating and capturing Adagio (thus having all three sirens in her possession), Sunset enacts her revenge plot to release the sirens on Canterlot as Thea discovers she's been manipulated. In a confrontation, the two scuffle and fight over the siren orbs while Sunset struggles with her conflicting wants and emotions.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

I just want to keep my job even though I don't know how to make memes. Buy our coffee. We've got holiday gifts for the coffee lover in your life.

Awesome Coffee is different because 1. we source our beans directly from small farmers collectives, 2. it's better and fresher than grocery store coffee, and 3. ALL of our profit goes to fight maternal and child mortality in impoverished communities, whereas almost all other coffee makes rich people richer, which is the dumbest thing that can be done with coffee (or other forms of wealth).

[arrimorr]

My ocs, Sir and Ser, aka the eldritch malevolent policemen 😔

[happyk44]

actually lol the story playing out as it does but after Annabeth reunites with Percy, he looks behind her and is very quickly, "where's grover"

cue depression that some other satyr is joining them on this quest instead of Grover, who obviously decided not to come get Percy himself because he hates him

("percy, he doesn't hate you, he's just busy preparing trying to keep Gaea down with all the other nature spirits")

("HE HATES ME")

[thecoolsquirrel]

[plumadot]

i don't think i ever shared the full arts of my dnd character on this blog for some reason??? this is roselle she's a little bard who made a pact with a fey creature for the power to make her drawings come to life!!! :D and now she's lost in barovia :'))))))) all of this art is almost two years old but i still like it!!!

[anghraine]

jenndoesnotcare replied to this post:

Every time LDS kids come to my neighborhood I am so so nice to them. I hope they remember the blue haired lady who was kind, when people try to convince them the outside world is bad and scary. (Also they are always so young! I want to feed them cookies and give them Diana Wynne Jones books or something)

Thank you! Honestly, this sort of kindness can go a really long way, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

LDS children and missionaries (and the majority of the latter are barely of age) are often the people who interact the most with non-Mormons on a daily basis, and thus are kind of the "face" of the Church to non-Mormons a lot of the time. As a result, they're frequently the ones who actually experience the brunt of antagonism towards the Church, which only reinforces the distrust they've already been taught to feel towards the rest of the world.

It's not that the Church doesn't deserve this antagonism, but a lot of people seem to take this enormous pride in showing up Mormon teenagers who have spent most of their lives under intense social pressure, instruction, expectation, and close observation from both their peers and from older authorities in the Church (it largely operates on seniority, so young unmarried people in particular tend to have very little power within its hierarchies). Being "owned" for clout by non-Mormons doesn't prove anything to most of them except that their leaders and parents are right and they can't trust people outside the Church.

The fact that the Church usually does provide a tightly-knit community, a distinct and familiar culture, and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting its members' needs as long as they do [xyz] means that there can be very concrete benefits to staying in the Church, staying closeted, whatever. So if, additionally, a Mormon kid has every reason to think that nobody outside the Church is going to extend compassion or kindness towards them, that the rest of the world really is as hostile and dangerous as they've been told, the stakes for leaving are all the higher, despite the costs of staying.

So people from "outside" who disrupt this narrative of a hostile, threatening world that cannot conceivably understand their experiences or perspectives can be really important. It's important for them to know that there are communities and reliable support systems outside the Church, that leaving the Church does not have to mean being a pariah in every context, that there are concrete resources outside the Church, that compassion and decency in ordinary day-to-day life is not the province of any particular religion or sect and can be found anywhere. This kind of information can be really important evidence for people to have when they are deciding how much they're willing to risk losing.

So yeah, all of this is to say that you're doing a good thing that may well provide a lifeline for very vulnerable people, even if you don't personally see results at the time.

[homoeroticgrappling]

He ain't slick, I saw what it said before he edited it

I will now be overthinking about this until Saturday

[pippuns]

the only thing that could have improved SVSSS is if shen jiu was in the background providing scathing hateful commentary the entire time. i want to see him and shen yuan eat each other alive <3

[certifiedlesbianvampire]

we know where that smile comes from now

[foxstens]

'he wasn't sorry but he didn't know how to live without kevin'

that's so fucking interesting you don't understand. kevin did not have a good time in his first few months at psu, or throughout the entire year actually, but he latched onto andrew and then neil so hard, even if the foxes weren't particularly nice to him they still probably helped keep him afloat mentally.

jean became riko's official partner after but he had a longer leash than kevin and he still slept in his own room. riko left kevin's side of the room untouched. riko slept alone the entire year. when was the last time he slept alone, woke up alone, did anything at all without kevin by his side. a decade ago?

but he wasn't sorry, because in that moment he saw kevin as a threat and this is what happens when you defy a moriyama. and the ravens turned on kevin instead, because of course they did. so he wasn't sorry but he still wanted kevin to come back, he wanted kevin to watch from the sidelines as riko lived out their dreams because he still couldn't imagine a future without kevin there in some capacity. he very nearly destroyed kevin to keep his status as 'number 1' (because who is he when he's not number 1) but at the same time he couldn't give up on kevin. and that ended up being his downfall, because between his obsession with riko and his need to be the best, kevin chose the latter, somehow.

[uniiiquehecrt]

Voice actors are NOT the same as actors.

It takes a specific kind of skill-set and training to be able to warp and meld the voice. It takes a certain kind of talent and dedication to hone that talent into the ability to meld the voice and invoke emotion with one's voice alone. Actors are used to using their voice secondarily to their body language and their facial expressions. It's all mirrored back on camera. They do have nuance. But it's a different kind of nuance and a different kind of training to produce that nuance.

Voice actors might get their likeness transposed on their character's design, and maybe their mannerisms might seep into the character's animation. But when it's all said and done: their presence is in their voice. They are bringing a character to life, showing that emotion in their voice, trying to keep a specific accent, drawl, pitch, tone in that voice and keep it consistent for their recording sessions.

The voice actor is like a classically trained musician who can play first chair in a competitive, world-renown orchestra. The actor (who fills the voice actor's role) is like a moot who played violin in beginner and intermediate high school orchestra and thinks they can get into Juilliard with that 2-4 years of experience.

This doesn't mean that the HS orchestra moot can't play. They can even be really good at it. Maybe they won competitions and sat first chair. But they are not in the same league as the person who's been training their whole lives and lives and breathes to hone their craft using the instrument and all of the training they've ever acquired to perfect it. They are not meant for the same roles. They are not in the same caliber. You do not hire the HS equivalent when you want to play complex music in a competitive orchestra.

Actors are not the same as voice actors.

And furthermore, actors - especially big name actors - taking the roles of animated characters for big budget films or TV pilots makes no sense anyways when - at least in the case of TV pilots - there's not a point to hiring a big budget actors anyways. That money could be used elsewhere (like paying your animators), and the talent that is brought onto the screen for X character could then be hired on to voice said character no recasting required.

I wouldn't say voice acting as a profession is in danger exactly, but it's certainly being disrespected and overlooked for celebrity clout, and this has ALWAYS been an issue. Shoot, even Robin Williams knew that much - which is why he tried so hard not to be used as a marketing chess piece for Aladdin and got royally pissed off when it happened anyways. People shouldn't go to any movie (but especially not animated films) because "oh famous actor is in it". People should go because it's a good movie and the voice acting is good.

People who honest to god think that voice actors are replaceable because "oh well anyone can voice act" or "I like xyz celebrity so naturally it'll be good" ... Honestly I just wish you'd reassess your priorities because you're missing the point and are part of the problem.

Voice Actors ≠ Actors.

[mr-payjay]

im actually going insane how are there so many people INSISTING pda does not have npd. pda has like the Most textbook npd i have ever seen on a character It's Okay for someone to have npd guys it doesn't make you Evil and Fucked Up

[acearohippo]

I love fandoms, especially witnessing what fans take away from source material and how fans interpret it based on their experiences. Not to mention the stark difference of interaction between new fans, casual fans, experienced fans, and long-term fans.

I say this because the SVSSS fandom has continuously fascinated me in insisting in discussions that there are parallels between Shen Jiu and Luo Binghe (tell don't show), but in their fanworks, I just see parallels between Luo Binghe and Yue Qingyuan (show don't tell).

And it's not even (fully) a case where they're blending character personalities because they want what the other dynamic has, it's just how the characters are based on canon in two different timelines.

All of this to say, perhaps original draft PIDW (NOT original!PIDW nor pre!SY PIDW which are completely different) was supposed to revolve around the dynamic between SJ and YQY vs SJ and LBH. Perhaps YQY was to be the last hour mastermind, the true foil to LBH.

And fandom is just circling this idea without realising it because, once again, the unreliable narrator that is SY has already convinced this fandom that any version of SJ has to be a/the villain, regardless if it's through his own actions or baseless rumours.

Warning, run-on sentence ahead.

I don't know, mans, but it's gotta mean something that LBH and YQY have such similar life beats of being orphaned and having a tough life but remaining kind/compassionate because they had someone to live for until they didn't which left them empty until they found (or refound in YQY's case) one (1) man to obsess over in an uncomfortably intrusive way with no regards for his feelings and rejections, eventually reaching a position as the most powerful being in existence with a huge caveat that their sword is 83% of that power and is slowly killing them which did nothing to soften said man of their obsession's into showing them kindness leading to the ultimate confrontation between the two in which only one could survive and keep their obsession, not that it mattered because neither of them got to experience his feelings reciprocated, except in another timeline where the same things are happening until their obsession suddenly stops rejecting their (still intrusive) advances even if he is acting a bit silly, but hey take advantage while you can and take advantage they did because now they have that reciprocated feeling (except one still "won" as he gets to keep him for himself) and be thankful that all it took was, in their perspective, a near death fever that drastically changed his personality and most likely left him crippled in some other way, preventing their obsession from not NOT needing them anymore, all-in-all fulfilling their desire to be relied upon again, hooray! 😋😁✌🏽

In all seriousness, at the end of the day people are going to draw connections between characters that fit whatever narrative they understood from the story. SVSSS fandom just seems to be trying to convince others of one narrative while believing on a deeper level of another narrative. It's amusing and makes following the fandom fun.