#but I did do a whole deconstruction for myself
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#tag talk#vent#I don't wanna do the whole “I'm so good at psychology cause I've fixed myself. I should go into counseling” thing that overly empathetic#empathetic people do. but like. nothing like deconstructing a tense social conflict to make you feel good#the smol autistic minecraft enby who adopted me had a moment and I helped break down the situation and resolve shit with them. it was cool#but also I immediately went out to the living room and napped for three hours. thinning that hard was exhausting.#do you ever do the depression nap thing? when I'm doing well I never sleep during the day. but when I'm sad I take naps a lot#because I don't want to be awake and I sleep poorly at I night and am just generally lethargic so I nap on the floor or couch a lot#ugh knowing the stress will go away doesn't help the fact that it's super awful right now.#it's times like this that I wish I'd really committed to it in Feb. like. in two weeks I'll be better and joy de vivre and all that.#but right now? ugh. big fuckin ugh#the minecraft emotional labor thing is just a natural responsibility of being a 25 year old playing online video games with 15 year olds.#if I see a situation blowing up I can't hear sit by and watch someone destroy their friendships on the server. I have to help#but also bro I am struggling to help myself. maybe I say I'm packing up my pc early so that I have a good excuse to stay off the server#I literally did the thing again where I make new friends. make everyone love me. and then get burnt out at the speed of light and disappear#making friends is so easy. leaving friends is so easy. nothing is forever and we all die someday. blah blah blah you know it already#meaningless meaningless. all is meaningless. maybe king Solomon was just fuckin depressed when he wrote that. sure sounds like it to me.#I just can't do anything when I'm like this. we're subsistence living now bois.#I wonder if part of my neurological damage is from the lead I used to eat in high school.#the windex shots can't have been good for me. but I don't think that stays in your body the same way#though it did fuck up my urinary tract for a few months. that was wild.#anyway. I wonder how much of my chronic periodic funk is just effects from bad choices and how much is normal natural inevitable.#everything is an ocean. nothing is a lake. the waves are always thirty feet high and the troughs scrape you on the bottom of the reef#nothing is midline except when you're rushing through to one extreme or another.#you're either overstimulated or absent from your body entirely#both of which cause wild and oft unbearable dissociation.#everything gets better and everything gets worse. I'm only like this when I'm stressed. but that's my secret cap (avengers reference)#anyway. I'll survive. I'll make it. I'll live because I need to become even more gay to make my family mad.#I need to keep living so my dad realizes just how much he's lost touch.#so my mom cries about how she should have done something differently so I wouldn't grow up gay. because that makes so much sense right?
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I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got paid to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.
So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."
I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?
It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.
Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.
So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.
Update: This is literally just a thought exercise to help you be more intentional with how you critique media. I'm not enforcing this as some divine rule that must be followed any time you have an opinion on fiction, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to structure every single sentence in a review to contain zero negative phrases. I'm just saying that I repurposed a rule we had at that specific reviewer to be a helpful tool to check myself when writing critiques now. If you don't want to use the tool, literally no one (especially not me) can or wants to force you to use it. As with all advice, it is a totally reasonable and normal thing to not have use for every piece of it that exists from random strangers on the internet. Use it to whatever extent it helps you or not at all.
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do you have any thoughts on daenys the dreamer?
extremely fun and obvious play on the cassandra figure. a version where her family not only believes her but venerates her visions and prophecies—like, she saves them and a handful of dragons and, in doing so, the world, but it also curses her bloodline. the thing that once saved them becomes an obsession that consumes them literally in wildfire. the idea that you can be doomed by believing in and actively trying to fulfill a prophecy (aegon v at summerhall, melisandre and stannis) just as easily as others are doomed by their disbelief or their attempts to circumvent fate (cersei echoing my buddy king laius)—like that’s so, so cool to me. i love the ambiguity between fate and choice, the way grrm takes the whole trope apart and plays with all the individual components.
also very interested in the line running from daenys to daenerys, and i always wonder if daenys saw her too and if so, how much of her life daenys saw and was able to contextualize? did she see clear images like melisandre and bran or more metaphorical ones, like jojen or dany in the house of the undying? something like… a dragon with three heads fighting in a frozen wasteland lol?
considering the the loss of female power in house targaryen is so deeply entwined with the dying of the dragons, underneath all of that for me is aemon’s line in affc and the context that follows it:
![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/40667be4055d4ff794644e75a4080bb6/5c1ec528ffb74ff4-47/s540x810/976feb25f048814a4346ee7ddf2af2917cf76c32.jpg)
what were they translating?? were some of the documents in other languages? it couldn’t have all been daenys’ works because aemon says they’ve been wrong for a thousand years. this prophecy has been a motivating factor for the targaryens (and valyrians?) for a thousand years, but i wonder at what point the translation error actually crept in? daenys was valyrian and that would’ve been her primary language—i like to think she would’ve understood the nature of the dragon in a way her male descendents couldn’t. no one ever looked for a girl, but it was always a girl. not men in a patriarchal feudalist society reducing women to their reproductive capabilities (rhaella’s miserable life being one of the most egregious examples of this) and then being surprised when a woman is needed to rebirth the dragons lol.
this got away from me because i think the (deconstruction of the) use of prophecy in asoiaf is fascinating and everything we know about daenys is tied up in that. cutting myself off before i start talking about gender as it relates to this prophecy. beyond that, i’m really not interested in interpretations of daenys where she’s catatonic or broken by what she’s seen any more than i am in interpretations of dany where she goes mad, just because i’m sick of the seeing the general victimization of women in asoiaf taken to such an extreme that they’re defined by it—with whoever suffers most ecstatically being the least problematic to stan, especially when the women in question are from/associated with house targaryen.
#me every time i get an ask: this got away from me ajdjsks#daenys the dreamer#also aemonnnnn 😭#i really need to do a reread bc i couldn’t remember where we find out he says this#also notice me not mentioning rhaegar re: the prophecy obsession#i think he was actually pretty normal about it considering literally everything about his his life from the moment of his birth#asoiaf
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If it's okay to ask, how do you handle acephobia as an adult? I know that's a broad question, but it feels like ever since I become an adult, the acephobia in my life has kicked into overdrive. Suddenly, if I'm not an active, excited participant in 18+ conversations, I'm being @'d and teased for it no matter how many times I disengage from the conversation or say to just leave me out of it. I've had (ex, otherwise extremely toxic) friends tell me that my version of aceness doesn't exist because "nobody is that sex repulsed" because I don't read fics if they have 18+ scenes, that I can't be childish forever, and that they hated that people wrote fics about sex repulsed aces. My mother told me that she regretted not being more openly loving with my father because she thinks that's what caused me to be asexual as an adult. Being a kid gave me a shield to hide behind, but now that I'm above 18, there's just this assumption that if you're not totally comfortable with 18+ topics, you're either an infant or a puritan, and you need to be fixed, and I don't really know how to handle it without making these people feel validated that I'm "just a puritan." I just don't like being the butt of the joke because of my sexuality all the time.
Hmmm... I'll be honest, I guess I didn't see that much difference between as a teen and as an adult myself? But I guess it might be a cultural thing about the rapport to sex related to age. In my country, at least when I was growing up, you were very much expected to have an interest in sex-related topics in high school already.
That said, everything you described is true. And because I've wanted to hiss so many times at what you've described, here's deconstructed thoughts:
I'M that sex-repulsed, anyone who says that shit can fuck off
Anyone who says they downright HATE that people write things about sex-repulsed ace has a queer hate issue. That's downright what it is. It's fucked up and they oughta check themselves and their aphobia.
Aah yes, the classic "sex=adult and that's the only thing that equals adult ever". While we're at it I'll also assume that when they say "18+" they just mean sex and none of the other many many things only a person over 18 experiences and understands?
Anyway... It sounds like you're surrounded by pretty fucking sucky people. Granted personally there's a fuckton of bullshit I just smile and nod at on a daily basis, and I don't hang out in group spaces, much less in fandom spaces, because sadly with the state of how things are, I know they're kinda anti-me by nature. It's lonely and heartbreaking and I won't pretend it's easy every day, far from it, but the alternative of having to force oneself to put up with even more hate and erasure is worse.
So yeah, lots of self-preservation reflexes. Lots of laughing at a person's aphobic joke like "Wow that's a glorious asshole if I ever knew one and I'm gonna stay as far away from them as I can from now on." Got very tough when that description involved some coworkers in the past, but hey, at least my dance of joy was all the more satisfying when they left the company.
And on the flip side, if a person is friendly and open to listen, and learn if needed, without dismissing me? Oh you bet I'll hold on to those people for dear life and do my best to hang out with them more. Such people are scattered across my life, but they helped me build a support system of self confidence that made it much easier for me every day, and helped me build the confidence to come out as ace to my whole family over time. (I also have amazing bros who somehow always seemed to consider my asexuality as an obvious part of me and their opinion is the one that mattered the most to me from the start family-wise, so y'know, I'm lucky.)
So yeah... Preserving myself from people who invalidate me and cherishing those who don't really did a lot for me. It made me more and more confident over time to mention that I'm ace casually to new people, because these people taught me that hey, sometimes you tell someone you're ace and they somehow DON'T turn you into a laughing stock for it! And yeah, it's kinda fucked up that this has to be some kind of incredible news, but... Hopefully the fact that it's possible nonetheless can bring you a bit of hope.
Ofc that also means that sometimes I'll be having like, dinner with friends of a friend that I've never met before, and suddenly I'll find myself thinking "Wow these people who just met me and know nothing about me just made like 3 jokes involving me having sex in the span of 2 hours, and I forgot that was apparently 'normal'." It's weird for sure. Bit of a survival game of sorts sometimes. But hey... It's a life, ig, we didn't choose our lives so we gotta play the hand we're dealt. And uh... How did that Bojack Horseman quote go again? Oh yeah.
#anon#asexual#ace#aphobia#this was very long i'm sorry#i sympathize with all the shit you're going through I relate deeply#but I promise not everyone sucks#and I hope you find some of those good people out there who'll just treat you with decency
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I can understand how Shuro may be a frustrating character to some folks - in fact that is kinda what he is there for, narratively speaking. But it really gives me ick when people just wanna shit on him for "being awful/the worst/an asshole"
The way I see it, the dude is his own different flavor of Autism- repressed, conditioned, awkward, and forced to participate in high society, not to mention the culture clash - and he sees laios just being his own weirdo self and he hates it --- no, thats not it. I honestly don't think he hates laios; i truly believe he hates that Laios gets to be TRUE to himself, and he (shuro) Doesn't get to be.
And it's a feeling I can understand and sympathize and empathize with, as I have been on my own personal journey to try and un-mask and deconstruct and heal myself in a world that has made me feel broken my entire life
People scream "hypocrisy" as shuro sees the same traits between the touden siblings, and is attracted to one whilst hating the other - and yes, I can agree that it's a bit hypocritical, but yall are taking it at face value and not understanding where his feelings are coming from. Shuro doesn't hate laios because he has a special interest, shuro hates that his whole life, he has had to squash himself into a form-fitting box, behave as his family commands, and now he sees laios being free of expectation, just out here being a weirdo, and shuro is possibly feeling that frustrated grief that comes with the late diagnosed autistic situation of "I could have been happy, too, but no, *I* had to be the responsible one"
... at least, that's how I view it. Coz I myself have had those thoughts. And I know, it's NOT a good look for me to be out here admitting that I have felt this way, like for example, maybe I see someone else's struggle with anxiety, whether it's online or in real life, and I have this bitter thought to myself of "yeah, I have anxiety too, but *I* was still forced to be a responsible adult anyway" which makes me momentarily frustrated.
And before anyone jumps my ass about it, NO, I definitely DO NOT think that "if I had to suffer thru it, so should everyone else" that's NOT what I'm saying. But I AM saying that, there is a bitterness, when u see someone who is able to avoid a struggle that you had to endure - that bitterness is NOT thinking that everyone should suffer as I did, but me being bitter that *I had to* at all.
Does that make sense? Coz I really feel like Shuro just gets shit on because people think he's there to interrupt the Yuri and be mean to Laois, and I really feel that he's a whole ass person. And a somewhat melancholic one, at that. He makes me think of how I had to grow up Christian whilst being queer and undiagnosed Audhd my entire life, and I would be very very surprised to hear that a large chunk of dunmeshi fans didn't ALSO grow up this way, feeling broken and stupid and tired, forced to do things the "normal people" way, and then NOT understand how Shuro feels when he sees someone who is in a position to be mostly free of that...
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I wonder why christian misrepresentation are rarely talked about if compared to other religion misrepresentation. Like, I've seen people really vocal about Greek myths misrepresentation in LO and such (and it's valid because it's a culture and religion) but I rarely saw the same thing with christian even though there are many media who use christian religion innacurately, to the point where it comes off as using it as an aesthetic and not a proper religion.
Is it because of rampant religious trauma especially in western world? No ulterior motives on this question. I'm not a christian and yet I'm curious about this. I apologize if this sounds harsh.
I obviously don't have The Answer(tm) to this but personally speaking (and I'm about to get VERY personal here so take this with MOUNTAINS OF SALT), I think it's just the obvious - Christian mythology is one of the most well-documented and strongly protected out of virtually any other religion on the planet. Especially here in the West, it's commonplace for kids to go to Sunday school, for couples to have Christian weddings even if they're not practising Christians themselves, even the American anthem references the Christian God. It's simply not as easy to 'misrepresent' it because the representation is written into our very fabric of society. Even Greece itself is primarily made up of Orthodox Christians.
So anyone that does 'misrepresent' it are either completely mislead hardcore Christians, or people who are doing it intentionally, such as with the intent to make a parody of it or to deconstruct it through a different context or whatever have you. And of course, people will still get mad at those things, if you're implying that people aren't vocal about Christian misrepresentation then frankly IDK what to tell you there LOL If you want a contextual example in the realm of webtoons, Religiously Gay was dragged to hell and back during its launch for having a very crude and insulting depiction of St. Michael, and frankly, yeah I don't disagree because what the fuck is this-
(like at best it's just terrible character design lmao that said, there's also plenty else to criticize Religiously Gay for, including its fetishy representation of gay relationships and the fact that it's still just the "naive person who looks and acts like a child hooks up with mean person in a position of power" trope, blech, but the character design is definitely the first thing you notice)
There are even plenty of hardcore Christians who will deadass claim "misrepresentation" over things that ARE factually correct but they just haven't read the actual Bible and simply cherry pick what works for their own agenda. And of course those people are routinely called out by people like myself who know for a fact that Jesus wouldn't have promoted the war crimes that many modern day Christians are committing and justifying today. So it really depends on the definition of "misrepresentation" here.
The issue specifically with LO and Rachel that I personally call her out for (and many others) is that she's called herself a "folklorist" and claimed she's so much more knowledgeable on Greek myth than anyone else, while making a complete mockery of the original mythologies while not being honest about her intent as to whether LO is actually supposed to be a legitimate retelling OR a parody (because it sure acts like the latter more than the former, but she still seems to expect us to take it seriously and consider her knowledge of Greek myth superior?) Which leads to a lot of her teenage audience claiming shit like "Persephone went down to the underworld willingly" and "Apollo did assault Persephone in the original myths actually" and the classic "why would Lore Olympus lie or make up fake myths?"
You just can't pull off this extent of erasure with Christian mythology because we have a whole ass book of it that's been preserved, sold on shelves, and systematically integrated into society for thousands of years. Of course, there are people who will still try their damned best to twist the Bible to match their own bigotry with the whole "Jesus hates gays" bullshit (he would never), but it's met with equal amounts of 'misrepresentation' that are actually fully well-read and are intentionally subverting and changing things to either critique, parody, or restore the original intent of a lot of stories in the Bible without all the manufactured right-wing crap.
Greek myth, on the other hand, has some stories that are well preserved, and others, not so much. And in the modern day outside of the poems and hymns, you'll also rarely, if ever, see anyone use stories from Greek myth to ostracize, torture, and murder other people. "Misrepresenting Christianity" is more often done by actual Christians who are using the Bible to commit hate crimes than the people who have actually read the Bible and are just taking creative liberties with it for the sake of deconstructing / parodying / analyzing / subverting it. Veggie Tales "misrepresents" Christian stories because obviously Moses wasn't a fucking cucumber lmao but it still accomplishes its goal by retelling Christian stories in a way that's fun and educational for children.
By comparison (on the whole, I'm not comparing LO to Veggie Tales LMAO) LO just isn't clear in its intentions beyond Rachel's initial statements that she was trying to "deconstruct" the myths, while labelling herself as a folklorist. Therefore, I'm going to criticize how she does it because the way she's done it up until now has been very mishandled and has resulted in a lot of misinterpretations of the myths simply for the sake of fandom. And yes, these people exist in Christian media as well - they're called TV evangelists.
And that's my (very heavy) two cents.
#here's your reminder that missionaries are colonizers#find me the Hellenistic pagans knocking on people's doors asking them if they want to hear about the glory of Aphrodite lmao#honestly it also depends on what you're surrounding yourself with#obv if you take part in the LO fandom and avoid what's going on in the christian world then what you experience and see will seem skewed#like even i could be very wrong in my opinion based on my own experiences as someone who lives in the west-#maybe there ARE pagans knocking on doors and using greek myth to commit hate crimes#so yeah we all gotta try not to fall for survorship bias#there are plenty of stories of people getting mad about christian mythology and its misrepresentations on BOTH sides#lo critical#lore olympus critical#anti lore olympus#webtoon critical#ama#ask me anything#anon ama#anon ask me anything
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I feel like this entire fandom got as far as "Dumbledore had a messed up past!" and turned off their brains from there
This drives me so fucking nuts.
Dumbledore WAS attached to an extremist group in his youth-- Grindelwald's "greater good" was an ideal he believed in, it's true.
UNTIL it wasn't any more.
It fucking pisses me off when people write fics about Harry having to deal with "greater good" phase Dumbledore because!!! the whole point is that he saw the error of that way of thinking!!! He deconstructed and decided to avoid positions of political power!!! That's why he refused to be minister, not because he wanted to keep manipulating from the shadows or whatever but literally because he did not trust himself with that much power!!! The existence of the prophecy put him in a deeply strained situation between "I have a duty, a responsibility, as a person with the abilities and experience I have, to do everything in my power to stop Voldemort" vs "I literally do not trust myself in positions of power or responsibility because I have proven to myself in the past that I cannot be trusted." He doesn't want to make it a numbers game! He wants Harry to grow up and live happily ever after, so much so that he nearly destroys all of his own plans in order to achieve that end! Calling Dumbledore manipulative and equating that with him being bad is such a shallow take. Yes, he's manipulative; that doesn't make him evil! If slytherin ambition and slyness can be positive traits why are you intentionally plugging your ears to avoid letting machiavellian manipulation be used for a positive end as well? Is it because you decided in your edgy middle school phase that the Light Side are Secretly Evil and the Dark Side is Tragically Misunderstood and you haven't grown or matured since then? Did you completely miss the part where Dumbledore utterly despises himself with his whole being? Did you miss the part where he made the choices he thought he had to, not because he wanted to but because they were necessary, and even then he couldn't keep from sabotaging himself in the hope that Harry might get just one more happy year, one more happy month with his friends instead of having to fight or die in a war he shouldn't have had to face? Grow the fuck up. Do you want me to get on your level? If you think Dumbledore was "raising Harry like a pig for slaughter" you're agreeing with Professional Racist and Child Abuser Severus Snape. You're agreeing with the guy who quit the KKK not because he didn't agree with them anymore, but because the girl he wanted to be his exception didn't survive her family's honor killing to marry him instead. How's that for a childish argument? Does that get through your thick skull? Does that appeal to your barely pubescent sense of morality? "It's for the greater good" my ass. If your year-5 or -6 Dumbledore is still making Greater Good arguments then you've accidentally transposed him with the teenage version of himself that Rita Skeeter exhumed for clout and controversy. Dumbledore was a highly intelligent cult victim who got out and never trusted his own perception of a situation again but still did his fucking best, okay? get over your authority issues without reasonable solutions, deprogram yourself, deradicalize yourself, and figure out that people are still people no matter their past mistakes and when they're genuinely doing the best they can, especially when they're drowning and alone and trying to make the best of a shitty situation for everyone involved, maybe have like. A single ounce of compassion instead of declaring them wholly evil without possibility of parole.
#rick's rambles#angry rambling#harry potter#dumbledore#pro dumbledore#anti snape#i do have compassion for snape too btw#i just also don't think he was trying to improve and that limits my patience with him#this isn't anything#i'm just tired#the harry potter fandom never grew up they just radicalized#and it's exhausting
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Isn’t Hal jordan life just filled with propaganda? Grew up in a military household, joined the usaf, was a pilot for Ferris air(believe they tests military aircraft) and then joined the gl corps that’s basically just military propaganda in itself
Whew. Must suck to be him, buddy can’t catch a break
I don’t really think myself qualified to speak on this, but I’ve been thinking about this ask since I saw it.
To be fair, I think it could be argued that while Hal’s life is chock-full of military service, sometimes it can be interpreted as deconstruction rather than propaganda--although the hotshot Top Gun way he’s written post-Johns can totally feel propagandistic at times.
Like, look at this variant cover. I feel more patriotic already.
Post-Johns, Hal’s father Martin Jordan was portrayed more positively than he had been previously, (notably, that he wasn’t either physically abusive or particularly dismissive of Hal versus his brothers). Another thing: Emerald Dawn suggests--and it is also emphasized in Green Lantern: Sleepers book three--that Martin purposefully did not eject from the test plane because he would rather die a pilot than eject, leaving his wife a widow and his three sons orphans. So, arguably, the Top Gun bravado that Hal is so infamous for now, has been criticized from the beginning of Hal’s life.
And the possibly military propaganda of the Green Lantern Corps is something I’ve been thinking about since I became a GL fan. It’s either a highly militarized police force or a policing military force, which...does not feel good either way. And where do the Guardians get the authority to police the universe anyway? Power should come to rulers from those they rule, right?
Honestly, I kinda liked that the Corps was shown as corrupt for a while in iirc Geoff Johns’ run, with the Guardians allowing lethal force against the Sinestro Corps and later any enemy of the Corps, and then altogether scheming to get rid of the Corps from the inside out? I thought it was really, really interesting. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? We kinda saw that with Sinestro, and with Parallax, etc.
But, because this is superhero comics and we tend to want our superheroes to be good guys, I do think about possible ways the Corps can be characterized as less of a police force. For one thing, I think we should get rid of the Guardians and reinstate John Stewart as Corps leader. The Guardians literally cause, like, half of the Corps’ problems, either directly or indirectly. For another thing, I would love for the Corps to perhaps be more akin to firefighters than police, if that makes sense? Put more emphasis on saving people from natural disasters or, like, space pirates, or traffickers, I don’t know.
I’ve heard it said that the Corps could just be a really big team of superheroes instead of a military, but I do think if we get rid of the military aspect entirely, we’re...kinda losing out on some of the aesthetic appeal? And, yeah, I know I know, the whole “you are not immune to propaganda” meme. Military is all about discipline (at least, the ideal of it), and the willpower of a Green Lantern is very closely related to discipline.
So...this answer got out of hand. Yeah Hal cannot catch a break, sorry buddy.
#anon#ask#simu's two cents#hal jordan#green lantern#dc#if anybody has anything else to add pls chime in!
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Lessons in Story: Editing
I was a pantser for a very long time. I lived in the writing of a story, and couldn't be bothered planning it. Or editing it, frankly. I was just a drafter. The writing of it is glorious, and then it's over, and I'm done. Is that a best practice? Definitely not. But that's what so great about fanfiction. I can do that. It might not make for the best fics, and they would be full of typos, but the whole point of fanwork doing what you want the way you want to do it, right? So I did the part I understood and loved, and nothing else.
Why did I do that? Because I'm a brat, probably? I mentioned already that my maturity level has always been low.
But I think there's more to it than that. I think I worked that way because it was fun and it produced stories that weren't bad, they were sometimes pretty good, but I had no idea how they functioned. If you don't know how a story works, how do you edit or tweak it? I think I was afraid to look back at it most of the time. The only way I knew how to fix a story was to start over and write another one. That's the only thing I knew how to do. The experience of the story was living the story. How do you edit that? I always felt like restructuring the beginning of a story would mean a new branch had started, the rest of the story wouldn't match anymore. It would be a new story, I would be throwing this one way. You see what I mean?
I learned to be a slightly better editor over time (but not really). At least I fixed dropped words and typos (mostly). But even then could say to me, "Hey, this could be good if you edited it and expanded on X and got rid of Y." I'm sure people tried. But I didn't know how to do that. (Okay: I technically knew how to do that, but this basic misunderstanding made that really difficult.) It would probably freak me out a bit. I would have understood what you meant, but the only way I knew who to do that is to delete the whole thing and start over. Because I didn't really understand the pieces that make up a story. It was all one piece to me. You could cut it up, sure, but it wouldn't be one piece any more. It would be broken.
I'm not suggesting this make sense, that's what I'm learning about my own history of process.
I wouldn't have said any of this at the time because I really didn't understand that that's how it was. I could (and did) talk until I was blue in the face about narrative, but I really didn't understand how it was working from a writing perspective. If I had understood it and said it out loud, it would have been easier to fix, but I didn't realize this was my obstacle. Now I'm learning about it, and repairing it. Because of course a story isn't one piece. It's many pieces, and they fit together and look like one piece when you're done.
This is also connected to planning, which I can (and will) go on about at great length.
How did I come to have this completely bonkers belief system about how creative writing works? Who can say. It might have something to do with learning to read by myself at a very young age (2). Stories were always whole pieces that I fell into face first. I don't even exist when I read, I just experience a story whole and then return to myself. I was writing the way I was reading.
So that's an obstacle I've deconstructed, and let me tell you: it's a lot easier when you know that's behind your own process and thinking.
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I was going to make this a poem but I feel inept in that regard right now so buckle up for Just a Rant
I'm 28 years old and I've identified as so many things that I've stopped counting. And I don't think that any of them truly were "wrong" and that just adds to my confusion.
I thought I was bi, I came out as asexual when I realized other people thought about "sex" and I did not. I came out as demisexual when I met my first girlfriend and I realized making her cum made me feel good. I came out as nonbinary cause I realized I'm not cis and that felt like the "less radical" thing to come out as. I came out as a trans woman when I realized I wanted to transition and I thought that estrogen was just for women. I came out as nonbinary and butch when I realized that people's well-meaning "womanhood 101" felt just as oppressive as the endless choir of "how to be a man". I called myself a bambi lesbian when I found REAL ADULT LOVE for the first time and I did realize that I quite liked the label and the things that it contained. I spent years skirting the edges of identity and listening to weirdos giving me exclusionist talks until I threw all that in the bin and stopped giving a fuck what other people thought about the divide between "bi" and "lesbian" and what that all meant about who was allowed to be what and why.
I came to realize that to me "lesbian" is more about my feelings regarding EVERYTHING that society expects of me in terms of gender AND sexuality and that maybe if it truly came down to wording it I was panromantic.
I started exploring polyamory more and realized that most of my relationships had at least been partly queerplatonic.
My relationship with one of my partners started as as non-romantic, non-sexual and then gradually started looking more and more that way. We started being horny for one another, we had so much sex one time they visited me that I injured myself a number of times. Eventually over the years they lost their libido and I spent some time crying in therapy cause I thought that meant they didn't love me until I realized that they obviously do love me and if they desire sex or not REALLY shouldn't matter to me as an ace person in the first place.
I got into another relationship, with one of my long time best friends, and that ended up involving sex. I realized I'm not exclusively a top and a dom, I realized that maybe I wasn't just stone butch after all. I started exploring all that more.
Eventually my partner of 5 years came out to me as aromantic and I thought that my heart broke until they told me that they'd always felt that way and they just lacked the words. When we sat down and mapped out common ground I'd never felt as happy and I came to realize that love could change and still be whole.
I started getting closer with someone and I realized that I wanted to hold her hand and maybe kiss her. That budding romance came to be one summer long and there were countless talks of what "romance" actually meant because after my partner's coming out I started to deconstruct all that. I entered that connection prepared to get my heart broken and then the heartbreak never came. We've been together for over a year and we've redefined what "together" means multiple times and what remains the same is that we love each other.
I'm a service top. I'm a power bottom. I'm a switch verse. I'm a soft stone butch. I'm a bambi dyke. I'm a transfem femboy tomboy drag peasant. I'm a lesbian but not in the way that society thinks. I'm asexual, I'm aromantic, I'm so in love.
Does it make sense? Maybe not. But love is like a living being. You cannot rightly cut open its skin and dissect it without killing it.
#queer#contradictory labels#labels#lgbtq community#lgbtq#queer labels#love#romantic attraction#identity#gender identity#queer community#lesbian#dyke#punk dyke#butch dyke#butch#stone butch#butch lesbian#lesbian love#queer questions#questioning#gender#unlabeled#transgender#trans#trans questions#trans questioning#nonbinary#nonbinary butch#coming out
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Hello!! I read some of your Trolls stuff and I really really like them! May I request Trollex, Branch, and Floyd with a super supportive s/o who’s experienced in a lot of genres of music and dance? They have a TON of instruments and they know how to play every last one like girl where did you get these???
Sheet music and music theory knowledge is through the roof like you’d think they teach it as a profession, and if they give them physical affection and compliments and actually just normal relationship stuff??? They are a puddle on the ground they are NOT used to someone close actively caring so much about them besides like family they love that shit, giving AND receiving 😎 (they can be shy about it sometimes tho it’s adorable)
Uhhh tldr local music nerd is smitten with their amazing s/o, they down bad tbh /j
If this is too much in a single request, don’t hesitate to message me in case this is too long!
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Them Dating an Music Theory! Troll
Pairing: Trollex X S/O, Floyd X S/O, and Branch X S/O
Warnings: Lots of Fluff, Mild cursing
A/N: OOOOH I LOVE THIS REQUEST! this is so good okay okay! plus I do music theory myself so this is fun! >:D
Trollex
- Trollex loves the way you explain music theory in a way that is easy to understand and engaging
- He enjoys listening to them talk passionately about music.
- He enjoys watching you play music for you and analyze the pieces in depth
- He listens when you rant and explain Music theory to him explaining that music theory covers things such as pitches and scales, intervals, clefs, rhythm, form, meter and time signatures, phrases and cadences, and basic harmony for music which he nods his head listening to you - Trollex loves how you play many instruments and stares at how you play it with ease - Trollex listens to you rant about it and is very patient with you even with his short attention span and endless energy.
- loves the way you light up when you talks about things that are about music
- He asks so many questions and forgets since his brain is re-setting sometimes - He can't help but admire your dedication to studying and refining your endless knowledge of music - He loves that they challenge your preconceived ideas about music and open you up to new perspectives of different musical styles and genres.
- He loves your creative ideas and imagination for how to explore and experiment with music.
- He values your willingness to share your knowledge and experience with you.
- He loves the way you express yourself through music and many genres not sticking to one and enjoys how you dance with him to techno music
Floyd
- Floyd loves to encourage you to express yourself creatively and explore your musical side more around him which you obviously do
- He appreciates how you share music tastes with him and discover new songs to listen to together
- He finds your knowledge of music history fascinating and enjoy learning new facts about the origins of different musical styles.
- Floyd is fascinated by your ability to deconstruct a piece of music and understand how the different elements interact to create a cohesive whole
- Floyd can’t help be impressed by the way you can find common threads between seemingly disparate pieces of music and make connections that he had never noticed before and would ask more
- You love the way your shy emo partner aka Floyd opens up to you and shares his emotions through music with you
-You two enjoy discussing the deeper meanings of songs and analysing the lyrics together though he mainly stared at your face to see your focused face
- He loves to play you a song that relates to your current emotional state and makes you feel understood and comforted.
- He can’t help but be drawn to how your musical knowledge and understanding of music theory can shed light on your personality in ways that you may not have been aware of but he was aware of it
- He finds it amazing how you can deconstruct your emotions using music theory and communicate with you on a deeper level which he also does I mean he is the sensitive one and knows about emotions
- He can’t help but be amazed by how much you can learn through many genres of music and their musical knowledge… I mean he’s Pop Rock but he can’t help but be shocked how you know ALL the genres
- He can’t help but be charmed by the way you approach music with pure enthusiasm and wonder as he stared at you lovingly.
Branch
- You both feel a strong connection with each other through music and can tell that you're both on the same wavelength even though he doesn't show it much,
- He can't help but admire the way you are fine with how branch can effortlessly switch between serious discussion and playful banter
- He finds it adorable when you become shy and blushes after realizing you have been rambling on about music for too long.
- He loves when you start sharing your favorite songs and artists with each other and discovering new music together
- He loves to support your creativity and encourages you to express yourself through music. - Branch can’t help be impressed by the way you can find common threads between seemingly disparate pieces of music and make connections that he had never noticed before and would ask more about it towards you
- He's impressed by your intelligence and knowledge of music theory.
- He finds himself admiring at your musical skills and wishing he could play or compose music the way you do.
reblogs + comments are appreciated ⸜(。˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡
©brights-place 2023 — do not repost on another platform, copy, translate or edit my works! if you fit my DNI list please don't interact!
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#©brights-place 2023 — do not repost on another platform#translate or edit my works! if you fit my DNI list please don't interact#copy#trollex x reader#trolls trollex#trolls band together#trolls x reader#dreamworks trolls#trolls#trolls 3#trolls dreamworks#trolls fandom#king trollex#trolls world tour#queen barb#poppy#branch#delta trolls#synth trolls#trollstopia#trollex#king trollex x reader#reblogs + comments are appreciated ⸜(。˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡#fluff#headcannons#x reader#trolls art#band together#trolls movie#trolls Floyd
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AAAA your art is amazing! How did you learn to draw poses btw? I know the shapes, I always do gesture drawings everyday and I cant draw poses at all, despite breaking it into shapes! any advice? im not a beginner artist and I love how you stylize your anatomy KJDalksf
(Deadpan) We ball. Take all those rules you learned of anatomy? Throw them out the window.
HALF JOKING!! But it still applies to an extent imo! Especially with gesture drawing practice, but in general too, focus on the movement/flow and vibe/energy you want to convey with the pose instead of worrying about getting every single shape right. To me, rules are meant to be broken, especially in the world of art. Something I do is instead of seeing body parts as separate pieces to get right, start seeing them as in relation with one another! Stare at references(!!!!) and something that personally helped me, contort your own body if you can to see any relations - ex. Press your arm to your sides, to your head, feel where the elbow ends up. It can help with keeping proportion even when you stylize/stretch and bend. As always, practice practice practice. I’m still improving myself,,,, but at least I can kind of eye-ball things now! Keep sketches loose :) I tend to think of the whole picture/vibe I’m going for then kind of deconstruct backwards into something that actually looks ‘correct’(perspective and composition can really effect how a pose interacts with the canvas and stuff and feel etc etc.)
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no but sofia the first didn’t need to go as hard as it did.
like that was my shit when I was a little kid and I caught some episodes when my brother was doing a rewatch during quarantine so I know it’s good. but now rewatching it for myself in full, they did not need to go this hard.
they didn’t need to emphasize that the main character had a blended family when so many fairytales demonized stepparents and step siblings. They didn’t need to make amber a deconstruction of the very stereotype (the evil stepsister) she was meant to embody. They didn’t need to make the soundtrack slap so fucking hard. They didn’t need to draw up a map of the show’s universe that can’t be shown to the public for writing purposes.
And Cedric? Don’t get me started. They could’ve left him as the bumbling antagonist of the series, but they didn’t. They could’ve had sofia befriending him be a one off something that affects nothing in the show and never explore the storytelling possibilities with that. But they didn’t. You know what they did? They fucking RAN with that! They saw the potential for conflict that could affect the entire story as a whole and just went with it.
they could’ve gone and said “eh it’s a princess show for five year old girls, let’s just half ass it.” And they didn’t.
it’s almost as if, kids are smarter than we give them credit for and the entertainment made for them should reflect that.
#But what do I know#I’m just a rando on the internet who talks about cartoons and shit#sofia the first#cedric the sorcerer#princess sofia
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did you know your ex bf was weird about israel going into the relationship or do these freaks hide it well and spring it on you later?
“or do these freaks hide it well and spring it on you later…” it’s a terrible question, maladjusted and provocative.
when people on the left possess whatever liberalism-that-turns-to-fascism-under-pressure idea, it’s normally not because they’re a nefarious imp. it’s far more likely that they’ve struggled to do the necessary deconstructive work to effectively continue engaging in antifascism (and historically, many many people have fought valiantly for rights in one area and been cowardly oppressors in another.) weakness, cowardice, blindness. when the contradictions are heightened it’s easy to laugh at such failures (and they can indeed be very funny, because some people really do give in to a fascistic impulse for unserious, superficial, ahistorical reasons—) but it is a capacity that we all possess, and i don’t generally find it useful to fool myself into thinking there is some fundamental difference between me and anyone who succumbs to those qualities. i don’t think i am part of a heroic “us” fighting against “freaks hiding it well,” i think i am fighting against the passive perpetuation of status-quo evil, even as i know that i perpetuate the same status-quo evil in littler ways. it might be a touchy answer; you’re asking rudely about a recent ex.
re the specific and singular post that you’re responding to, i don’t actually think that my ex reposting an instagram story about israeli hostages was him being “weird about israel” exactly. i know WHY he would do that; two of his family members were taken hostage. the whole point is that he doesn’t have to go put of the way to act maliciously; outside of a vacuum, his rhetoric perpetuates a larger myopic focus on the recent harm caused by palestinian fighters decontextualized from a larger history of their oppression.
because i was dating a human jewish person, and not a thinkpiece or caricature, i wouldn’t say that either leg of your dichotomy is descriptive of the experience i had with them. nor do i feel any vindication in having to separate myself from a jewish person i was very close to, even though i think it was the right thing to do. i think it sucks that israeli fascism is further isolating jewish and gentile people in my own community at large from each other. there’s not like. a gotcha or a clapback. that’s sad
#i could probably talk more about this if it were a better question#some mutual tell me if i aint got not 1 thing 2 do
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...So...about the second episode of RWBY Beyond...
[SPOILERS AHEAD! NUFF SAID]
It skips over the return of RWBY and Jaune, reuniting with their comrades in Vacuo and getting to see everyone’s reactions to being reunited with their missing comrades after so long.
Alright. I guess they're saving that for V10 if it gets greenlit. Fair and fine.
That being said, it skips over the reunion to focus a whole episode on Jaune in the aftermath of the return from the Ever After?
...Huh?
I’m sorry. But for the sake of being that person, I’m gonna be that person.
Just to set the record straight, I don’t hate Jaune. I've never hated Jaune as a character. I have mostly had issues with the way the Writers just love to have Jaune’s development usurp others who deserve the screen time and focus more than him.
Personally, I do not care for Jaune’s development right now. Jaune’s whole experience in the Ever After, for me, did NOT need to be a focus episode for RWBY Beyond.
Especially since there are other characters who had more tragic experiences in the Ever After whose feelings I would’ve liked to see in the aftermath.
And by other characters, I mainly mean Ruby!
I do, however, love the detail of Oscar being someone that Jaune gets to talk to.
That was nice and I’m pleased to see that for a second time, Oscar is featured in RWBY Beyond. I actually hope that’s a thing for the final two episodes. I hope that Oscar appears in each episode of RWBY Beyond, even if he’s just in the background.
But going back to my original rant, Jaune is NOT the person I was itching to see Oscar talk to especially in respect to their experience in the Ever After.
If there is any body I wanted to see talk to Oscar, it’s RUBY ROSE! And no, this has nothing to do with Rosegarden or shipping potential at all. I’m talking about this from a narrative perspective.
Ruby’s whole arc in the Ever After was basically about life, death and rebirth in a sense. A complete deconstruction of her character, resulting in her committing the Ever After equivalent of “suicide” and be faced with an ultimatum of choosing to become someone else or be herself in which she chose herself.
Ruby lost herself in the Ever After for a moment. Oscar is on the cusp of losing himself at this moment.
Ruby saw Oscar “die” as part of an illusion that hinted at her being responsible for his death and/failing to save him just like she did with other friends like Penny.
Oscar is on the cusp of “dying” metaphorically right now.
YOU DON’T THINK THESE ARE TWO PEOPLE WHO DEFINTELY NEED TO TALK TO EACH OTHER?!!
C’MON CRWBY! IT'S FINE THAT JAUNE GETS TO TALK TO OSCAR BUT I NEED RUBY TO TALK TO OSCAR TOO!
And speaking of Oscar, don't think I didn't notice his little awkward cough and shifty eyes, immediately redirecting the conversation when Oscar made a point about being in similar situation to Jaune and Jaune be like "You mean Ozpin, right?" and Oscar be like "Aah yes, of course". Ya'll ain't slick dropping dem Merge crumbs! For what it's worth, I do hope an episode focus more on Oscar and Oz in the cards for the final two episodes.
Overall, this second episode of RWBY Beyond was alright. As was the first.
The artwork of RWBY Beyond is absolutely breathtaking to me and is easily my favourite part of watching the anthology. Inspite of the limited animation, the beautiful artwork more than makes up for it. I definitely wouldn’t mind an actual physical RWBY storybook anthology series done in this same art style.
Makes me wish that Fairytales of Remnant animated series was done in this exact same style instead of the awkward Camp Camp style that DID NOT feel like RWBY at all.
All in all, onward to the next episode of RB. Makes me wonder who will be the focus of the final two episodes.
Like which characters will be we get to have an episode about? Obviously, speaking for myself, I would love an Oscar-centric episode. I mean…he’s been in every episode thus far so it’d be nice to see on all about him for once.
Outside of Oscar, I wouldn’t mind an episode about the Schnee Family done from Whitley’s perspective? That’s also a good one to see.
And of course, if there is one person an episode needs to be done on, it has to be Ruby. I mean the Oscar and Whitley ones are probabilities but a Ruby-focus episode for RWBY Beyond has to be in the cards, right?
If they can touch base on Jaune’s feelings during the Aftermath of the Ever After then surely, they gotta talk about Ruby's whole experience with her literal death and rebirth, right? RIGHT?
I guess only time will tell. 2 Episodes down. 2 more to go so see ya’ll next week.
~LMS (2024)
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20, 22, 46, and 67 for the writer question ask game! >:3
Hi Magpie, thank you so much! ❤️💕💖
20) Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?
Themes that come back a lot, mmmh... well, misunderstandings are my bread and butter, whether it's small ones in the middle of dialogue, or the premise of the whole fic. So maybe that one?
For the words and/or expressions that come back a lot, I honestly don't even WANT to look, because if I do I'll start noticing it all the time and it'll ruin my groove. 😅
And for the settings... well, the boys certainly do spend a lot of time at the office, so I feel like it's not MY fault if a lot of scenes I write end up taking place there. Add a bed in there (with its obligatory justification), and it's the perfect space. 😜
22) Are there certain types of writing you won’t do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc)
Style: I feel like my style shifts depending on the story I'm telling, but that happens pretty naturally, so I don't think I would like to try and write an entire story in a style that didn't feel easy to me. After all that's the whole reason I write, to see the sort of writing I want to read come to life under my eyes! ✨
POV: I have no issue with any POV, I think anything can work if you MAKE it work. I personally wouldn't write fanfiction in 1st person POV anymore, because that's what I wrote when I started and so it feels a bit young to me? These days I mostly write fanfiction in 3rd person POV, but I've written some In the Flesh fics in 2nd person POV, and I still think it was the best fit for it.
Genre: I'd feel a little intimidated with some genres out there, since I’d need to work on familiarizing myself with them, but I'd be down to experiment if I felt inspired.
Tropes: I am a fervent supporter of the idea that you can make any trope work if you've got something to say. Bad tropes are bad when they're used on auto-pilot, because it was easy or convenient. But tropes used in a thoughtful way, to be built upon and deconstructed and explored in all the intricate details they imply? YES PLEASE.
46) How would you describe your style? (Character/emotion/action-driven, etc)
Already answered here!
67) Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas?
Ooooh that's a really good question, and quite relevant to me personally because I almost never write with prompts or challenges. 😅
I wish I could! But to be honest they just make me nervous. I don't like having a deadline, I don't like not being sure I haven't missed some secret rule, and most of all I struggle with fitting the story around elements that didn't come to me naturally.
Honestly I really admire people who can do it, and I have a lot of fun reading prompt-inspired or challenge-inspired fics? But for me, it's just more pressure to try and control what I'm writing instead of just following the flow and having fun, and honestly I put enough pressure on myself already.
I do love to be part of events and stuff, but then the most I'll do is try and assign a fic I already know I want to write or that is already mostly done to a prompt that happens to work for it, like I did for above all I want you to be warm, for example. Anything more elaborate, with required themes or words or settings, is not for me. 😬
Aaaaah that's it for my ramblings 😅 Thank you so much for asking Magpie, I hope this made sense! 🥰❤️💕
#dead boy detectives#payneland#about writing#about fanfiction#get to know your fic writer#ask games#ask games and my answers#my posts#my fanfiction
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