#fandom related question

[infinite-beginnings]

My George video!!!

In case you were curious about the latest book he has read and his go to hype song.

Also DBDA Fandom, we have a job to do now 😅

I also shared with him that I lost my grandfather to Parkinson's Disease recently and he had some really really sweet words to share (I didn't include that part of the video but I just wanted everyone to know how kind and thoughtful he is)

[ocmakerofcanada]

Has anyone else in the tmnt fandom ever talked about these warriors who first banished away the Krang many years ago in the ROTTMNT movie?

They had to have been part of the Hamato clan. I mean, they share the same colors of those masks that our turtle bros wear in the show. And why else would Splinter would already have the warriors weapons?

Maybe we can learn more if the creators of ROTTMNT do anything more along with that upcoming comic that everyone in the fandom is getting so hyped up about.

[always-a-joyful-note]

Welp. Tag tagged by @justplaggin for the game

rules: spell out your name or url with songs

I couldn't resist, and thank you very much for it, Jay/Plagg!

To challenge myself, I'm gonna see if I can stick to songs from anime East Asian shows/stories

A - All-in (Alien Stage)

L - Last Dimension (TRIGGER)

W - wi(l)d-screen baroque (Revue Starlight)

A - Artistic Partisan (ALKALOID x Valkyrie)

Y - Yumemiru Architecture (Kagehira Mika; Enstars)

S - STRONGER & STRONGER (Zool)

A - Ame (MEZZO)

J - Joker Flag (IDOLiSH7)

O - OMEGA (STEREO DRIVE FOUNDATION; Yuukoku no Moriarty)

Y - Yume Shizuku (Re:vale)

F - Forever Note (MEZZO)

U - Until it Dies (覃云; Link Click)

L - Lily (Luck Life; Bungo Stray Dogs)

N - Now and Then (Re:vale)

O - Or the Beautiful Golden Drop (Knights; complete version out on May 22, so have the game version)

T - THE POLiCY (IDOLiSH7)

E - Eccentric Party Night!! (Five Eccentrics)

19 songs...and I tried to find ones that I genuinely enjoy right now (RIP to me making this challenge harder), so hence, the above mostly-Japanese-dominated list.

No pressure tags: @bobisnolongerhere @lizzieonka @rosencrantzsguildenstern @msperfectsheep-posts @mahounonbinary @praise-the-lord-im-dead @nitunio @akitchenknife @teslathelame @koi0boi @mihai-florescu @forebodinglight @imissthembutitwasntadisaster and anyone else seeing this because i am now incredibly curious about what songs you will choose (im so sorry if I forgot someone)

[saysflora]

David Moscow as David Jacobs (Newsies 1992)

[24blogs]

So Kairi was sleep for a year. She has her heart and is in the realm of light so.....

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Errors, “Errors,” and Animorphs

So in a different post I ranted about how a tiny non-distracting unfixable difference between two shirts is not an error in Jurassic Park.  IMHO, a continuity gap is only an error if:

It draws attention to itself and distracts the audience

It could’ve been fixed pretty easily in-story

It makes character, plot, or setting nonsensical

Animorphs has continuity gaps of its own.  And I have opinions about what we readers do and do not count as “error.”  First, an example that’s clearly an error:

I wondered if Tobias had heard my thought. I concentrated. Tobias, can     you hear me?

«Yeah,» he said, «I hear you.»

“Did you hear my thoughts before that?” I asked.

«No, I don’t think it works that way.  You have to think at me for me to     hear.»

—#1: The Invasion

Tobias briefly hearing Jake thought-speak in #1 breaks the rules of the setting; several other books (#2, #23, #31, #33, #46) clearly state that it’s impossible to thought-speak if one is human and not in morph.  It’s an easy fix; the re-releases and audiobooks delete this moment, and the graphic novel makes Tobias unable to hear Jake.  It distracts the audience; I’ve gotten 5 or 6 separate asks over the years of people going “I was rereading #1, and the weirdest thing...” It’s an error.  I can’t say what happened behind the scenes — K.A. Applegate toyed with a thread that was later dropped, or decided to introduce a limitation for plot fuel at a later time.  But it’s an error.

Second, an example that I don’t think counts as an error:

I returned to my life, feeling strange and out of place. That night Jake came over. We went outside.

"I tried morphing the Tyrannosaurus," he said. "Nothing. Didn't work."

"You could ask Ax. He may know why."

Jake laughed. "Yeah, but even if he explains it, I still won't understand it."

—MM2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs [Cassie’s narration]

The kids not being able to morph dinosaurs outside of the Cretaceous Era makes a lot of sense in context.  The whole book series would fundamentally change if they could use T. rex — that would become heavily a favored morph for many of them.  It kicks off all kinds of plot questions that demand answers: Where do the controllers think the “andalite bandits” got dino DNA? What anti-dinosaur measures would they be forced to adopt? Would the Animorphs’ whole strategy change around having those morphs? How would Rachel feel about everyone but Tobias suddenly having a much stronger morph than her? Would they even bother with contemporary animal morphs afterward?

If the kids are morphing dinosaurs all the time after ~#18, then the series loses a lot of its uniqueness.  Applegate has said that most of the inspiration for the series was about trying to help kids understand what it would really be like to be inside an animal mind, with as many animals as possible.  That’s part of why so many of the plots hinge on giving the Animorphs an excuse to learn a new morph (e.g. #4, #17, #27, #47, #52) so that we can experience the coolness right along with them.  That’s why the war is explicitly about fighting for Earth, nonhumans and all (#7, #23, #53).  If it’s not a menagerie of six different critters — including one immigrant from space — rolling up to battle, then it’s not Animorphs. No, it makes no dang sense that sario rip morphs stop working once the rip gets unripped.  But the series acknowledges it, and it allows us both to have a unique animal-based story (dinosaurs! Heckin dinosaurs!) without ruining its own premise.

Third, one that I find fascinating because it’s kind of right on the margin:

"What I don't get is why I have to be a girl wolf," Marco grumbled.

"We had one male and one female," Cassie explained for the tenth time. "If two of us morphed into the male, we'd have two males. Two male wolves might decide they had to fight for dominance."

"I could control it," Marco said.

"Marco, you and Jake already fight for dominance, and you're just ordinary guys," Rachel pointed out.

—#3: The Encounter

Later, Tobias’s narration uses the word “alpha” to describe Jake’s morphed behavior — howling and peeing to mark territory, challenging another wolf pack to protect his own.

There is scientific consensus right now, as of the 2020s, that the term “alpha” is an inaccurate descriptor of pack-lead behavior, and that dominance fights between adult males are almost nonexistent.  That although wolves usually run in a phalanx-like shape with one middle-aged male and female at the point, this isn’t the result of dominance fights but rather an effort to have the physically strongest wolves absorb blows from rogue prey animals or rival predators.  That the dominance fights observed in captive wolves in the 1970s were the result of an ecology error, putting wolves from rival packs into single enclosures.  Fox (1972, 1973) gave a reasonably accurate description of how wolves behave if you put a bunch of adult strangers in a zoo together: the young adult males fight, the winner of that fight wins first access to food, and the mate of the winner gets the most resources for her puppies.

However, time rolls forward, and advances like hidden cameras (and the resurgence of wild wolf populations) allow us to watch wolves without needing to capture them first.  Mech (1999) follows some such wolves around, and quickly realizes that dominance and submission aren’t nearly as important among wolves who chose to make a pack.  Stahler et al. (2002) figure out a better way to introduce stranger wolves in captivity, and get full cooperation among young adult males.  Nowadays drones and radio collars get 1000s of times the wolf data Fox had to work with, and reveal intense cooperation with little more than play-fighting among puppies.

The Encounter comes out 1997.  Mech publishes the first big takedown of the alpha concept 1999.

Did an error occur anywhere in this process?

No, in that Applegate presumably doesn’t own a Time Matrix and published a book based on the scientific consensus at the time about how wolf social dynamics worked.

Yes, in that the error is pretty distracting — I get drawn up short by it every time I reread #3, and I know others have too.

No, in that the error was corrected in the graphic novel adaptation.

Yes, in that the error is still present in the audiobook, and Michael Crouch delivers the moment about Jake being backed into a dominance fight with all of Tobias’s exasperated humor.

No, in that the error allows for some character moments, both silly (Jake peeing on trees) and sweet (Jake being ready to take on an entire rival pack alone, over a rabbit he doesn’t want).

Yes, in that the error takes away from one of the series’ most fundamental purposes, to educate kids about animals.

Anyway, books are great, science is imperfect, and I think the more we all engage with amateur criticism the more we’re all going to learn about what counts as an error in fiction writing with inspiration in scientific reality.

[maybe-arts]

To Chiffon, have you ever seen any weird looking butterflies?

"...Then again, now that I think about it, I did once heard Dad talking to a butterf-" "-CHIFFY!! I know you have an interview thing going on, but I did ask you to keep an eye on your sister while I'm getting snacks!!" "Oop, sorry! Are they okay?" "She's good, I caught up to her in time. Just was about to wander off chasing bugs again. Anyways, what were you talking about?" "...Eh. Some butterfly nonsense. It's probably nothing."

I guess it was nothing :)

sidenote about Nova's pronouns - they actually respond to any! Kirby, Mona and Gooey use they/them for Nova since Astrali, being genderless, pick their gender as they grow up, and using neutral for children is more or less a tradition. Tiff and Tuff use she/her for Nova because they think she's a girl. Polari and Hoodie use he/him for Nova for the same reason. Chiffon uses she/they for Nova since she's learned from Kirby and the Poppy siblings.

Asks are open! @kirbyoctournament

[atariakana]

Unsure if this has been cross-posted here by anyone yet! But George Rexstrew will be on Cameo* until Sunday, August 18th to raise money for charity in honor of his dad. For anyone interested, here is a link to his instagram post, and here is the link to his Cameo. Go forth and ask your DBD questions!

*for those unfamiliar, Cameo is a website where you can pay to have actors/celebrities/whoever send you a video message or answer a question.

Image description and caption transcription under the cut:

[Image description: a screenshot of an instagram post from George Rexstrew showing him, his father, and what are presumably two of his siblings as young children. They are sitting on a white bench in front of a low wall painted pale yellow, with bushes covered in pink flowers spilling over the top of the wall and taking up the rest of the background. One of the children is sitting in their father's lap, the other two are sitting next to him. The ground is covered in pink flower petals. End description.]

[Caption from George's post:

A year ago today I lost my wonderful Dad.

He bravely fought both Parkinson's Disease and Dementia with a smile on his face and a great sense of humour. But with these two illnesses still waiting for a cure, he passed away on 10th August 2023.

I miss him everyday.

In his memory, I've decided to try and raise some money for him. This might fail spectacularly, but for one week (until next Sunday), I'm going to be on Cameo. So for any DBD fans out there, if you have any burning questions about the show, or a scene, or an episode, or an upcoming birthday or whatever these things are used for, now is the time. I'll answer as much as I can. And 100% of proceeds will go to charity (link in bio).

For my lovely dad.

🌸🌸🌸

End caption.]

[starry-miki]

Saw someone on twitter did a fan wallet set for twisted wonder land character themed and I was like yeah, I’m do that for 5 of the obey me casts so cast your votes and the top lucky 5 are going to have a wallet character themed design, it will be the next posts once the top 5 are decided 😚

Thirteen, mephisto, and Raphael are also included just ran out of space for them in the poll 😗

I just need something to restart my creative juices 🫠

Edit 1: the poll votes will be decided this Monday afternoon, I know the poll is supposed to be up for a full week but uhh I kinda wanna work on it soon, so after this Monday at 12:00 (pm), I’ll will pick the top 5 characters with most votes to start on their wallet themes. But you may continue voting, if the votes change in favor of another character then what it showed on Monday when the voting official close I might make a part 2 for that character(s) 😗

[morangoowada]

If the only remarks you have to say about Mondo are things related to his trauma, specially if it's treating him like he's guilty of it, you should probably shut the fuck up. /srs

[ningadudexx]

commissions opening soon!!

ill try to open comms this weekend!!

things have been a bit overwhelming for me this summer since i havent been feeling the best, so i haven't been able to open comms that much, but i wanted to try and open comms again before the next school semester starts! (*_*;)

I'll have 5 slots open, and may open a 6th if people are interested :)

thank you for reading, i hope everyone has a good week!!

[tens-girl]

Good Omens fandom… does anyone know if we’ve ever been told the date on which the 1941 scenes take place?

I can’t find any info about it. Obviously it was during the Blitz and the amount of stuff that happens in that one night suggests the depths of winter (for a long period of darkness!) so I’m thinking Jan/Feb? However I’ve also seen it mentioned that the church Neil had in mind was St Dunstan-in-the-East which was bombed in May 1941, right at the end of the Blitz.

This is (as all my random researches are) for my fic! Since Who Omens crosses over GO and Doctor Who, I’m marrying up the ineffable timeline with Jack Harkness. January 1941 would be interesting…

[samarecharm]

i love makoto so much but fanon does her so much better (the good parts of the fandom) because in the game her character is so lack luster. they butchered her confidant it is so borning and not even about her. they made her a cop. A COP. they pushed this "canon waifu" role onto her (before sumire came along and did it Even Worse). and it SUCKS because SHE IS SO MUCH MORE!!! SHE IS SO MUCH BETTER!!!! SHE COULD'VE BEEN SO MUCH BETTER!!! the way i feel about canon makoto is the same way i feel about the canon ryuji events post komoshida where he's horribly mistreated and used purely as comic relief: i ignore them <3 my game now <3 never happened <3 my ocs <3

You are so right. I generally apply this to all characters in p5 bc the game does such a shit job of staying consistent with character arcs and personalities. Theres a desperate need to throw in perverse jokes at the expense of female characters and a need to show that the police (as a whole) are reliable people who are not influenced by things like money and power; only the BAD cops do that. Not to mention this obvious fatphobia and homophobia but i feel likes thats a given.

But back to Makoto. Shes a victim of bad writing just like everyone else. Ryuji during the kamoshida arc was fighting with self loathing and genuine anxiety, and aside from the like. One comment on Panthers outfit in the metaverse, hes more than well behaved. All of that is shelved as soon as Kamoshida is gone and replaced with him being weird comic relief (and the focus of alot of sexual jokes that were nonexistent in the beginning of the game). Anns arc about self love and empowerment is completely dropped as soon as the nasty bad guy is put away (so that its good to be weird about her w the Good Guys). Makoto loses her a chunk of her personality to be the mature waifu which is INSANE to me bc shes like. Not okay or normal at all 😭😭😭 she THINKS shes responsible and so does everyone else on her team, but its an act! She doesnt know shit! And she doesnt know that she doesnt know shit bc shes respectful and adults dont care about anything as long as u respect them!

Its very telling that for literally every single thief (and goro), you can see the exact moment the writers gave up on adding anything of worth to their characters outside of the social links. Its like they didnt know what to even do w the characters at their disposal after their main arcs were complete. No mention of friends hanging out without you, no mention of having group hangouts. Everyone is treated as a core, important member of the friend group DURING their arc, but outside of it, they are acquaintances at best. Theres nothing in the game that convinces you that these guys are legitimately friends who care for each other and do Friend Things. And i describe it like that bc there IS a game that treats them all as friends, and its strikers! Strikers/Scramble genuinely feels like the game p5 wanted to be; a road trip w your team where they stay up at night talking to each other and hanging out and doing things together that dont necessarily include you, the player. Its refreshing and lovely but it sucks that u get that kind of attention to detail in a ‘spinoff’ title

[fromtheseventhhell]

I've noticed that Stansas take criticisms towards themselves as "hate" towards Sansa, they're really never beating the self-insert allegations 😭

[lovelytayforce]

@playful-level4366 Hey sorry I didn't reply like normal but I knew this wouldn't fit down there, considering how long I thought about this question and how to word it. It's kind of a weird dynamic to explain because it's not just about Tai Lung because he's intrically linked to Shifu and Tigress as an abuser, and in a sense I don't think the fandom wants to go over that with him at all. They believe him to be a victim and nothing else. It's true he's a victim, trust me I agree with a lot of Tai fans on that aspect (Hell, I relate to his need to prove himself and also hating who he is, hoping some magical spell will change all our imperfections but I know it won't...) but also he's a terrible abuser to his own Father and Tigress. And that ruins a lot of their fluffy hcs of a soft family learning to come together because that's too realistic for the fandom perspective and view on him. God, I don't wanna be mean but it always seems like when I see discussions on the character its as if we see two very different sides of a burnt piece of toast and see two different types of images, one skewed more by the lighting than anything. Listen, this isn't me telling other Tai fans they can't have their soft hcs for him go ahead but remember you need to stop blaming other characters for who he is, he choose his path. A person even said I was "too harsh" on Tai Lung after explaining all the horrible things HE DECIDED TO DO, that's not harsh. That's the truth and no one wants to go over it because its uncomfortable and I get it to a point but you all also picked the most uncomfortable characters who mirror our very dreary reality when we close our laptops and see the imperfections of our loved ones and ourselves. Tai Lung is a personification of the favored son in many Kung Fu flicks of the past and even the present, how the Father uplifts them to the light of heaven themselves before they ultimately go too far and let them down whilst ignoring the daughter. aka Sexism in the fam. Neat. You latched onto the man that was not only neglected by his own father but the man who abused his father back, both physically and emotionally TWICE to gain what he wanted because he knew Shifu would never hurt him.

Like I had a whole Tai stan block me for daring to remember this scene of a father with a broken hip crawling to his son and mourning what he allowed him to become. Shifu could have died but he still loved that boy despite everything he did to him and what he would continue to do to him. Like if we wanted real redemption arcs of Tai Lung we would go over how he haunted Shifu's consciousness and led him to close himself off to his next child, Tigress, whom is always left out of the conversation cause no one wants to talk about the woman neglected and abused by her father and older brother. A popular fic even admitted to not even wanting to touch Shifu and Tigress' dynamic, do you see the problem here???? I know many of you may not know or even care but I write fanfic for this fandom focusing on that aspect of Tigress' character along with Shifu, its not always fun and I've probably stumbled and made mistakes but its a story worth telling. Because in the end, Tigress is still alive and so is Shifu! Tai Lung isn't he had his chance and ruined it. Most Tai redemption fics are easily consumable because they don't want to go over the unsavory aspects of Tai Lung's character; The fraud, the continued abuse of his own father because everything he does is to hurt Shifu personally so he can get what he wanted in the end. Po was just another piece to hurt him (Shifu) as stated on the bridge. No, in the end, they want to go over how Shifu hurt him as a child and try to lure Tigress to his side, despite the fact he belittled her when they first met. But you know, how else are we supposed to get hehe bickering siblings. Cause that's easier to consume than realizing she'd want nothing to do with him after hurting her friends and her father. There's just an overall lack of autonomy given to the characters that the movies relish in. The fandom is too scared to allow them to be themselves because pointing the finger at Oogway who allows people to grow at their own pace is easier than realizing; Tai lung and Shifu never listened to him. Like think of a person this week who did exactly what you told em to do? and did they do it? Probably not, people are fucking stubborn. Me, included. People love learning the hard way, that's just the truth! Even toddlers take a min to listen to one task! So, I wouldn't even call it whitewashing, it's this desire to ignore canon to support their own hcs because if they told his actual story all of their concepts would fall apart to the wayside to see, the only true victim in the end, was a woman. Tigress. No one wants to go over that, that's a lot of work, that's a touchy subject but it's why I love these characters, there so raw and horrible which makes their stories compelling enough to stand beside the likes of Seven Samurai. It's that good!! So, to end this all, no they don't. Even Traces of Spring which I still follow because I love the art falls into this safe way of going about telling his story and sidelining the character who mirrors who he could have been, Tigress. Because she's not that cool to them despite the fact she controls herself better than he does. And had the opportunity to be a hero as great as she was if he set aside his selfish, obsession, and toxic views. But you know he's hot to some people, so he's a good boy deep down.

Yup. Uh huh.

[atlantis-just-drowned]

He couldn’t hold his tears back. His hand laid on their cheek – they looked at him almost the same way they always looked, their expression cold, neutral, if it wasn’t for the discrete, practically unnoticeable tension of their features. Sorriness. They were sorry. He could feel it as if it was his own heart tightening in his chest.

Oh, how bad he wished to tell them they didn’t have to be sorry. That it wasn’t their fault. But he couldn’t let his mind linger on the feeling without addressing every other hurt. There was so much to say. And no words to describe the loneliness and despair stabbing at every part of his body and mind. It was cryogenic liquid burning his insides. Pressing against his lungs until he would choke. And it was imprisoned in his core, chained to his soul and wrapped in satin-like silence.

What was there to do, except to shed every tear he possessed? He couldn’t imagine any single way to describe it. He could only cry and scream for all of eternity in a desperate attempt to relieve the monster clawing at his heart. But even then, his eyes would dry up and his breath would go missing before the ache would subside. And it would never be enough.

He wondered when did they stop crying. He wished he has known. He wished he has been here for them sooner; before they grew used to it. But he knew even then, he couldn’t have fixed it. Just like he couldn’t now. There was no escaping it.

“You’re…” He started before choking up a sob. Looking up at them and to the ground again as he felt himself tremble and struggled to articulate the words. “You’re in… so… much… pain…!”

Two hands came up to cup his face and tilt it up as he kept crying and crying. He couldn’t stand so much sorrow. How could they? How had they been able to keep going when their chest weighted heavier than a cold star?

When he looked at them again, a smile lit up weakly on their face, and inside of him, he felt the tiniest warmth spark – so small compared to the cold and the darkness that tried to engulf it, but so, so powerful. His gaze was frantic, desperately searching for a way to keep this relief – or was it love? – alive. For a way to make it grow big enough to eclipse the hurt forever. But there wasn’t such thing. There would never be.

His face twisted into a pained frown as he felt both of their thumbs wipe away his tears – trying to reassure him, trying to keep the misery at bay, to hide it away from him – and their eyes bore into his.

“Hush.” They smiled gently. “No reasons to cry. There will be brightness forward.”

They said it with this distant, hesitating hope that they were right. Like they refused to believe it too much. In case they would be wrong.

With all the grief and ache of their pierced heart, they looked at him like they were going to make things better, and they whispered.

“The past is behind us. We need to keep moving. Otherwise we won’t see the beauty ahead.”

And oh. He loved them. More than ever, he loved them.