#but the things it does that are annoying

[abigailnussbaum]

Some Grumbling Re: My Adventures With Superman S2

There's more items in this list, but I think you can probably sum up my frustrations with this season when you observe that its best episode so far has been the one that Clark wasn't even in. There's a version of this show where, per the title, Clark/Superman is a secondary character and the actual heroes are Lois and Jimmy. But that's not what MAWS has ever tried to be. Clark has always been a main character, and yet he's also the character that the show seems to have the most trouble using well.

"Krypton was an expansionist empire and its remnants are targeting Earth and expecting Clark to act as their conquering vanguard" is not a terrible idea, but it's not the Superman story. It's the Invincible story, and Invincible is probably doing it better because it's not tied to a PG-13 rating, is able to go a bit deeper into what imperialism actually means and looks like, and doesn't have MAWS's bizarre tonal whiplash between scenes of genocide, quirky workplace shenanigans, and new adult romance.

This is something I've observed in a lot of recent Superman stories, but there's a tendency to respond to the problem of "how do you write a story about a character who is omnipotent" by making Superman a lot less powerful. By which I mean physically - notice how often Clark gets smacked around on this show, even by creatures or machines that Superman should be able to easily swat aside; or how rarely he's able to control a confrontation in a way that prevents it from turning into a city-destroying brawl - but also mentally. This is a Superman who is seemingly always on the back foot, reacting to everything from supervillains from outer space, to government agencies who are (not unreasonably) suspicious of his motivations, to most eligible bachelor competitions. And, to be fair, that's a lot more justifiable in a show where Clark is 22 and has only been doing the hero thing for a few months than in something like Superman & Lois, where he was forty and had been Superman for decades. But watching MAWS, I never get a sense that Clark is thinking about these issues and trying to develop as a superhero. There's no indication, for example, that he is trying to come up with strategies to manage government and public mistrust, or testing his powers to see how he can use them safely without constantly being a nuclear weapon at a knife fight. Instead, he's forever flustered and reactive, and I'm past the point of finding this cute or charming. I would like a hero who actually behaves like a hero, or who is at least trying to get to that place.

(On that note, holy crap did I want Clark to read Sam Lane the riot act. Among the things I am past finding cute or charming is men being all "I'mma get a shotgun" in response to their daughters having a boyfriend. Sam being a deadbeat dad who abandoned Lois years ago makes that attitude even less tolerable. That Clark put up with his delusional posturing and self-aggrandizing protectiveness crosses the line from young and insecure and goes all the way to doormat, which is not something I enjoy in a main character even when they're not Superman.)

I am not OK with Kara being a multiple genocidaire, however unwittingly and unwillingly. Again, it feels like a reflection of this show's tonal inconsistency, and the age group it's aiming at, that it expects me not to think too hard about the fact that this character whom it is setting up as a quirky fish out of water and Jimmy's potential love interest has slaughtered billions of people, and that we will probably be expected to handwave that at the end of the season. Call me a stick in the mud, but I'm just not there for it.

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

bee gets to meet his idols

[egophiliac]

still rolling around on the ground over the contrast between Jack and Mal. it's so...🤌🤌🤌

[elodieunderglass]

And one amang, an Iyrysch man,

Uppone his hoby swyftly ran…

WAIT HANG ON - slamming the brakes on drawing this stupid picture - do you nerds even KNOW the etymology of the word “hobby”? The thing you do for pleasure? The thing you have too many of? The thing you spend too much money on and share with your friends? The thing tumblr probably is to you? Those hobbies?

It comes from a now-kind-of-extinct breed of Irish pony-horse. It was called the Irish Hobby. Supposedly the hobby got its name from the Gaelic word obann, or swift. They definitely were. They’d obann your pants clean off.

Fast tough little bastards, built for rough terrain and renowned for their speed and stamina, hobby horses belonged to the Celts, and their highly annoying style of mounted warfare. but their conquerors liked hobby horses a lot, kept them, used them for themselves, and found them useful enough, despite the fact that they also had famously useful things like mounted knights or horse archers. A lightweight Irish warrior, mounted on a hobby horse, was called a hobelar.

Reportedly and in depictions, hobelars rode without stirrups. Or saddles. Or bridles. Or - well - this is all sounding very improbable, because the hobelars COULDNT have just been charging around basically bare-assed on naked ponies, screaming, and somehow in the process undoing the composure of actual mounted armoured knights. Knights who, I remind you, had stirrups. Stirrups are useful! It’s quite likely the hobelars had some gear. And clothes. and weapons. And the ponies probably had some tack - I am picturing a bellyband that you could at least hang a saddlebag on, and a neck rope for catching the bloody thing, even if not a saddle. But the overall impression, somehow created by people on darling little ponies, was apparently quite striking and fearful.

I mean. God Forbid People Have Hobbies.

Anyway after a while, whatever people became the British had eventually conquered all of the rough terrain that hobbies were best at, and horse archers just got sexier, and mounted knights became aristos, and all the bog and forest people had been subdued, so it was time to sunset the hobelars. but WAIT! Hobby horses are still tremendously fun and appealing! They’re so fast! and you can ride them without a saddle! Sure, they’re not up to the weight of a mounted knight, or indeed a lot of guys… but surely we can still find a use for a hobby or two? In the back garden? Somewhere?

At which point an English king decided to keep hobby horses just for fun. No military application. No further development of the technology. Not for fun. Just as expensive, pleasurable, pets. Just for the joy of the thing.

And that is how hobby (activity done purely for pleasure) comes from hobby horse (small horse) possibly from obann (swift.) they’re very interesting and you should look all this up for yourself! because it sure sounds like Elodie doing a bit, doesn’t it?

Today, Irish Hobbies are functionally nonexistent. References for drawing include the Kerry Bog Pony, the Connemara, and (I personally think) Dartmoors and Exmoors. They’re said to have lent their speed to the Irish Hunter/Sport Horse and from there to the Thoroughbred, but every damn horse in the world claims relation to the Thoroughbred, and they can’t be THAT thoroughly bred.

At any rate - you can never have enough hobbies. Just be glad that yours aren’t expensive beasts with minds of their own, eating their heads off in the pasture! …Unless they are. In which case, you’re part of a proud tradition.

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

aroace sonic: *says the most flirty shit ever* also aroace sonic seconds later: *does a backflip of the couch and almost lands on his face* literally anyone: wtf.

He’s got the range

(Aroace Sonic compliments pt 4)

[babykittenteach]

No Context Reasons You Should Watch Dead Boy Detectives

[forgettable-au]

FORGETTABLE-AU (page 82-85)

THAT LAZYBONES!!

[BEGINNING] [PREVIOUS] [CONTINUE]

[eva-birdman]

I love John's capacity to just be annoying

[naumala]

im sorry but i really wish a lot of you x reader writers would learn that afab/amab are not stand in words for "cis female"/"cis male".

you can literally just say "fem reader" or "reader goes by she/her pronouns" when writing fics that aren't smut and not describing genitals because using AFAB in place of that makes no sense and is incorrect.

even when writing smut people know that the majority of the time if you just say "fem/male reader" it's a cis reader, whereas saying "afab/amab reader" alone does NOT imply gender (unless stated otherwise for trans readers) which is why people usually pair and assume gn terms and pronouns with it.

pls I promise you don't have to use terminology you see on here if you don't know what it means

[fappellmoan]

[wardensantoineandevka]

at the end of the day, for me, the most disappointing thing about C3 isn't the poor narrative structure, the bad pacing where everything feels dragged out and rushed at the same time, or never giving the characters the space and focus to breathe and develop their own centric subplots

it is ultimately that Marquet started off very strong as a setting and did feel like it was making strides to properly draw from its Asian and SWANA inspirations, including with good use of work by other authors and consultants, only for that to rapidly fall off as the Ruidus plot became central and for there to be just as little space for Marquet as there was for Bells Hells as characters beyond carriers of The Moon Plot, with no space to develop and explore either to potential and richness. It's disappointing for Marquet especially, given the continued dearth of Asian and SWANA inspirations in Western AP, and I felt C3 started off promising with Marquet as a grounded and rich location in those inspirations.

I think a lot about Ela Lumas, whose sons' murders is the inciting incident, and how her title Ginang is a Tagalog word and how exciting that was for me personally. The fact that we lost this even as smaller notes, and that ultimately Marquet was supplanted in favor of Vasselheim (not even Issylra as a whole) and Ruidus without any real grounding of why Marquet was the setting in the first place or what Marquet's importance was specifically to the narrative other than "it has to be set somewhere", is just so intensely disappointing to me. The biggest disappointment I have with C3.

[alanide-arts]

an argonian, khajiit, and dunmer walk into a bar

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

bro chill. that's your girlfriend

transcript:

JENNIFER: Well, what d'ya think? Do I make a good cowboy? MARTY: o////o MARTY: Yeah! Good! Great! Good. Good cowboy. Great. Good. JENNIFER: Ah. JENNIFER: Aw, you really think so? MARTY: Aaugh. JENNIFER: Y'know, Marty, you make a pretty good cowboy yourself- MARTY: I do? JENNIFER: Yeah, you do. DOC: [LIVE DOC REACTION] DOC: *AHEM*. When you're done with that... about the Delorean... JENNIFER: (forgot he was there) OH MY GOD.

[fellowfights]

Y'all non-disabled folk are pissing me off. Actually mouthwashing fans. Someone does not DESERVE disability and disability isn't "karma" or "justice".

[bacchuschucklefuck]

sometimes I think abt how the months coming up to and the prom night in freshman year must feel to class swap sklonda. your perfect kid who has literally never gotten a single reprimand for anything does what can only be described as a quad crit crime combo and becomes a nerd punisher by the end of the night

[feligayzed]

a wip that i more or less abandoned ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

the thought was sonic is a social smoker at most, and he has a habit of catching shadow during his breaks. who knew he'd end up preferring the chitchat over his own brooding silence sometimes