#don't get me started on this shit tbh

[anachrosims]

Maybe this is just a White People(tm) thing-- and none of you better come at me because a) I am a White People and b) even if I weren't, it's a fucking valid criticism--

Why is it that Gen X and older are so fucking hard to get assistance from? Like, "hey I've been super ill and am struggling to do basic self-care on top of my job can you be an extra pair of hands for 2-4hrs tops to help me throw stuff into boxes" is apparently a tall enough ask that every older adult in my life has tiptoed around just outright saying "no." But the second I ask my brother, who is an older Millennial, he's like "oh yeah sure, do you have a plan? You do? Great, I'll see when I can come over. ... Is Wednesday good? Awesome, I'll be there." EIGHT MONTHS of asking people and I should've just gone to my brother in the first place.

The fuck is up with that???? Like, I'm not even sorting stuff, or asking people to haul large furniture. I just cannot logistically do this alone and a second pair of hands for ONE SATURDAY tossing shit at random into boxes is all I ask. And I just wonder-- is this a generational thing or is this a White People/Generational thing? FFS.

EDIT: I ask if it's a White People Thing because I am well aware of many WASP and WASP-adjacent American cultural habits and that not everyone else does them. And I don't want to sit here and blame All Gen Xers and Boomers either. It is just... absolutely wild to me. Dealing with Millennials on the whole is so much easier than dealing with the general populace of older white folk and the older I get the less patience I have for all their stupid bullshit.

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[athina-blaine]

I think the reason your labru fics managed to keep me hooked when i normally don't like a lot of fan content about them is that it's reciprocal. Laios and Kabru both look out for each other and take care of each other, when normally a lot of content for them is focused on Kabru being there foe Laios without much focus on the reverse. I love, love, love Nourish especially, with Laios not really understanding what Kabru's talking about but trying to engage and pay attention anyway, making him a tasty meal so he'll sit down and let himself unwind, and just showing how he cares about people

Thank you so much! You can assume whenever I'm writing from Laios' POV at any given moment I'm beating back the urge to spoil Kabru rotten. I want to give him a wardrobe of full of nice clothes. I want to make him dinner. I want to find him falling asleep at his desk and carry him back to bed. If there are 0 Kabru simps, I'm dead. The threat of complete and utter derailment looms large with every fic I write and I must tread carefully 😤

It doesn't surprise me that a lot of labru stuff focuses more on how Kabru supports Laios than the other way around, since that's how it largely manifests in the series. Laios, being the main character, has a lot of plates he's spinning in the air, but Kabru is uniquely focused on Laios and how Laios relates to his own goals. I'd be curious to count up the panels that has Kabru referring to Laios, both verbally or mentally, and compare it to other characters outside the main party, because I think the results would be quite funny haha

But while there is a disparity, the scenes where Laios reciprocates this support, in my opinion, are arc-defining. Laios, with zero prompting, realizes Kabru would be hungry after his resurrection and makes him something to eat with his own party's supplies. It's Kabru's aversion to monster cuisine that factors into his emotional bid to Marcille, in that you can't make a perfect menu that looks the same for everyone. And, crucially, Laios promises to share a meal with Kabru that doesn't include monsters. For the entire series, Kabru wanted to know whether Laios could be interested in people as much as he was interested in monsters, if he could prioritize people over monsters, and this is where he gets his answer. This is what convinces him to put his trust in Laios enough to help him escape from the Canaries and to let him try and talk down Marcille. Because Laios demonstrated he was capable of taking people's i.e. Kabru's wants and needs into consideration, even if it had nothing to do with monsters.

Labru appeals to me because of everything they have to offer each other, yes, but mostly because of everything Laios has to offer Kabru. Here you have this character who is routinely seen to have a suppressed appetite, who makes himself smaller in order to be more appealing to the people around him, who makes space for and services everybody but himself, and here you have this other character walk right up to him and say, "You look hungry. Let me make you something to eat."

[rapidhighway]

venting like an idiot

the main reason i dont wanna go back to uni is that i feel like i've completely embarrassed myself last year. idk, i feel horrified at the thought of returning and looking these people in the eye. i didn't do anything, i was lazy and barely finished my projects and the only way to redeem myself somehow would be to come back with some new energy and work hard. i didn't even really get a job this summer because i really wanted to rest, cause i thought i would drop out. and i just feel worse, i feel even more tired

[old-skyguy]

Look.

Ace Attorney fandom.

I know why people don't like Turnabout Bigtop. I am among the people who dislike Turnabout Bigtop.

But I GET why people like the case. I'm not going to be one of those annoying people who just blindly dump on it because I hate those mfs too.

Thing about Bigtop isn't that it sucks. Thing isn't the weird grooming stuff (though that is a huge part of it). It's not that it could've been good.

It's that - in my personal OPINION - it could have been *great*.

I think it had the potential to be one of the best third cases in the trilogy. It had everything; a fun and goofy setting fit for a pretty dang goofy lawyer game - where the environment itself had jokes and quips and one-liners and mishaps and tomfoolery written all over it, it had the previous case introducing a very interesting and important plotline that gave background for one of the more well-loved characters while also introducing an equally fucked up and lovable new one who was a child forced into a shit childhood of naivete in a CIRCUS with another character who was very naive and childish - whose interactions could have been funny and cute and reflective of said shit from the previous case (seriously she becomes such an important character in the 4th case, WHY would they not include her in this one for some character development? How did they fuck up letting a CHILD explore a CIRCUS?? That would have made the interactions flow MUCH better).

They had a pretty good, sympathetic killer imo, a morally dubious victim, an asshole of a client (who was pretty flat admittedly in-game, but I like his weird, topsy-turvy reasoning for it in the anime. Also, I think Max being kinda a dick would have bode well for the themes of Farewell since most of his clients up to this point have been like...nice? Not nice, but sympathetic, but him having to defend someone who's innocent but a prick would have shown him that just because someone is an asshole, doesn't mean they deserve to suffer for it and that they have the potential to grow as people, which is almost a complete foil to what Matt was. Ultimately, I would have loved the contrast of them as clients and I think it would have also served as character development for Phoenix, especially with his low-empathy tendencies).

They just didn't think that far ahead. They just didn't execute it well enough. They just decided to make three of the adult characters fight for the hand in marriage of a teenage girl. (Bat's part of the story was actually kinda good if he was just YOUNGER, I think him doing that for Regina would have been a stupid thing someone in the circus would do to impress their crush. Damn you Ace Attorney and your weird treatment of underage girls!!)

It just flopped and that's ok.

Even though it kinda sucked, it can still mean something to me.

Also I'm a Moe Curls apologist. I liked him, shut up.

[solradguy]

I love that the "Vincent is Sephiroth's father" headcanon hinges entirely on the fact that they've both got generic bishounen anime face syndrome under the spiky hair rofl

Vincent is Reno's father confirmed. Because they both have the same delicate facial features. Vincent is Cloud's father. Vincent owes $95,354 in child support for his 12+ children. Confirmed by lack of facial feature variety in the (modern) Final Fantasy universe

[aro-culture-is]

Not an Aro-culture-is thing but I do have a question you might be able to answer? Is there an aromantic/asexual term for this: AroAce but if I wasn’t I would be gay? It might just be homoplatonic or homoaesthetic but idk if there was a term for it that relates to being AroAce. Thanks! <3

possibly you might vibe with oriented aroace labels, like gay aroace? i'll put this out there for other folks to consider as well, but I feel like oriented terminology sounds the most applicable from my POV.

[lord-squiggletits]

Speaking of Tyrest. A lot of people forget that he treated Pharma with absolute disdain, not only using him as a test subject for a clearly painful mass murder machine, but talking to Pharma like he saw him as nothing but some henchman to order around that was nothing more than a 'diseased cripple' if Tyrest hadn't come to rescue him.

Like it really is an interesting background dynamic with some curious implications, but when you look at fandom posts from around that issue/the years after, for some reason people just saw "Pharma worked with Tyrest" and concluded Pharma is a card carrying bigot ksjfnskxkd. Like yeah Pharma didn't do anything to stop Tyrest but it seems his main beef with the Autobots was with Ratchet in particular and maybe a general disdain for his ex-comrades. As well as continuing to hate Decepticons which like, not even the "good Autobots" are immune to (even in Pharma's introduction, First Aid says in his journal something like "yeah we all hate Decepticons, but Pharma REALLY hates them"). And despite what fandom likes to construe there's really no evidence in IDW1 that Autobots and Decepticons are different "races" or "types" of Cybertronians, so Pharma hating Decepticons really isn't a bigotry/robot racism thing. And instead probably has something to do with, idk, the 4 million year long galaxy-spanning blood feud war, or maybe being blackmailed and tortured into insanity by the Biggest and Most Decepticon-y of Decepticons.

Tyrest treated Pharma like trash, the other Decepticons working for Tyrest (how come no one ever brings that up btw) also hated him, so if anything it seems that Pharma was more of a rogue element only staying with Tyrest bc he was his best option and probably had no way to even escape.

I'm glad that at least in recent years the fandom has acquired a keen reading eye and good taste to finally recognize Pharma as the (accidentally) complex character he is instead of making him some posh, racist Starscream clone SHSJDGSGDH

[easilyentertained99]

chat, i need to be honest. that was not good

[snixx]

people who make uncalled for comments about their opinion on my physical appearance I hope you trip on your own foot and fall flat on your face:)

[gregoftom]

pretty sure i’ve seen romance movies with scenes like this

[immortalsins]

im so so tired jsjdhbj an engineering employers panel just scared me half to death with their startups and innovation and investment and passion commitment linkedin networking etc etc etc i hate it here

[azatas]

this is definitely an unpopular opinion if the current discourse is anything to go by but i actually like that astarion loses the ability to walk in the sun if he remains a spawn. i think it makes his decision not to ascend more meaningful

sacrificing the power he wants without gaining anything for it, and in fact losing something, is a huge choice for astarion and if the game pulled a deus ex machina at the end and gave him some magic fix it would have cheapened that choice for me

[aho-dapa]

This fandom is honestly...

Like, there is something to be said about fandoms in general and how they've changed as a whole generally but

There's also something about how the acotar fandom is especially toxic like

The idea that a post is surprised a murder hasn't happened yet and I found myself agreeing??? Is honestly telling

Like, also. A massive part of this is shipping and maybe it's because I have my corner of this fandom, but even then shipping the "wrong" thing in general has become something I honestly have to take in consideration when thinking of my mental health and if I can personally be prepared for any backlash??

This fandom at large doesn't feel safe and that's majorly concerning tbh

Maybe instead of saying shippers as a group are doing harm, we should just disavow harmful actions in general and not be complicit in it idk???

[lightbulb-warning]

this is getting ridiculous there's so much stuff i wanna draw i need to clone myself immediately

[matamorose]

I've tried to kickstart a TP rewatch a few times recently, and I've ended up watching the pilot like thrice in a month. Something that's really been standing out to me is the way that Sarah Palmer is straight up abandoned right out the gate.

Mrs. Briggs isn't necessarily dismissive of her when she calls looking for Laura, but she very much downplays how worried Sarah is. This, to be fair, is a normal response-- she had no reason to think that being with Bobby or Leland wasn't the most likely answer, and she was being kind.

But still, the first conversation Sarah has, and it's someone telling her to relax, that nothing is wrong while, elsewhere, her daughter's corpse is being rolled over.

When they discover that it's Laura on the beach, neither Harry nor Doc Hayward-- men who know the family well-- express any sentiment about her mother. This could make sense, if they're keeping it brisk and professional and trying to hold it together. But there are plenty of asides about Laura, or other deaths occurring, or gently scolding Andy. But the man who delivered Laura doesn't say even a TV-stereotype "God, her poor mother!"

(And, really, the big takeaway there is that these guys aren't prepared for a murder investigation, much less that of poor Laura)

Neither of these points is particularly heavy-handed, and one can certainly point to good reasons for them, but then they go get Leland. No officer is sent to the Palmer house. Harry doesn't tell Lucy to call Sarah, or even make an offer to Leland to retrieve her. She's the first one to look for Laura, and is briskly clipped out of the developments.

She doesn't even get to hear it proper, as Leland muffles the phone in his chest. (And I think that there's something there: Sarah knows but doesn't know, and actively has her line to the truth of it muffled in his sweater. Leland hides the receiver and makes a scene: Sarah may as well not exist, except for her tinny, distant pleas.)

The last we see of Sarah for a long while is her screaming, eyes closed and a hand pressed to her head. Phone cord dangling pointlessly down to the floor-- nobody on the other side of it was telling her anything anyway.

The next time we see her is when Harry and company need something from her. She's violently, physically grieving and then they drug her up so they can ask her questions. Leland gets a hug and several expressions of sympathy, and Sarah is left for hours wailing, driving herself mad, alone in that house with the fan while her daughter's murderer identifies the body, and receives comfort and compassion. Sarah gets a needle.

I don't think that they were making too splashy of a point with it, but the return absolutely hammers in that Sarah has been left to rot in her grief-- I think that even in the pilot, there was a certain intentionality to how she's sidelined and only picked back up when the cops need to question her, or a point needs to be made with Donna/Maddy.

Tremendous attention is paid to Leland and his grief, his violence, his antics, and very little is paid to Sarah. After her husband is revealed to have raped and murdered their daughter, he kills himself brutally: the funeral scene after may as well have come from a different show for how little they mention it.

There's a lot more to be said-- and that has been said--of Sarah as a representation of passive evil/enablement/self-delusion, but the way that she's abandoned with so little fanfare has really stuck with me of late. It feels very much intentional-- she can scream, right, mothers do that, but what else is she going to do? Throw herself into the open grave too?

Trick question: she is the open grave.