#havin thinky thoughts

[roachliquid]

Reading manhwa centered around video game mechanics (only occasionally involving actual video games) hasn't taught me much about Korean gaming, but it's taught me an awful lot about what the average manhwa writer thinks gaming is like, and hoo buddy. These folks are full of shit.

It's not that these stories are inaccurate in the usual way that you've probably come to expect of writers - with beeps and boops playing over games with advanced graphics, kids angrily yelling "DIE! DIE! DIE!" at their screens, or an insistence that first-person shooters or shmups are the only genre in existence. (Although some of the misconceptions feel fueled by a similar philosophy - an adherence to the idea that video games are an inherently violent and hostile platform.)

Many of these writers seem utterly incognizant of the fact that gaming - particularly when it comes to MMORPGs - is a social activity. They treat everything as if it's hypercompetitive, a stage where only the elitest of players matter, and the remaining majority consists of useless, generic pseudo-NPCs who will never make it to the higher levels. The average game world is a brutal, war-driven dark fantasy, an unholy mashup of World of Warcraft and Dark Souls where this absurd hierarchy is not only considered right, but perfectly natural, because despite this being a cooperation-driven game, only the most gifted individuals could have what it takes to make it to the top.

The absurdity of this is that the story's protagonist is frequently someone that this system has failed - but rather than address the inherent inequality, the authors simply award him a special cheat power that allows him to game the system for his own sake, then send him along on his meteoric ascension to greatness. And in practice, many of these protagonists are just as bad as the jerks that were already in power, treating fellow players as useless if not downright disposable because they lack the blessing of author fiat that promoted the protagonist to Main Character status. Occasionally they might condescend to show kindness, but only inasmuch as it doesn't prevent them from being a Rugged Loner or Genius Strategist (the latter of which typically understands the value of sacrificing those who aren't immediately useful more than that of forming a strong community).

Rather than saying anything in particular about video games, these stories seem to reflect a kind of toxic underbelly to South Korean culture - an undercurrent of belief that while capitalism and poverty are harmful, they are somehow inescapably fair, and that if you resent the wealthy and elite for their smug privilege, you should focus your energy on joining their ranks. When it happens to come up, the idea of changing the system is almost inevitably limited to the removal of a few cartoonishly exploitative individuals - who, unlike the elites, tend to be framed as cowards or as sickly parasites whose biggest crime, rather than exploiting others, is seizing power they didn't earn.

("But Roach," I hear you say, "how can you be sure that doesn't reflect the state of South Korean gaming?" And the answer is, I know a guy. A guy with South Korean gamer friends. Don't even worry about it.)

And what of building a community based on mutual cooperation that can withstand the harms inflicted by this system? Well, if the author deigns to consider it in the first place, this idea is typically dismissed as a lesser strategy - a form of coping for those who aren't "good enough" to simply Make It by themselves. In some cases, cooperation is outright decried as a tactic that keeps people weak, as if guaranteeing their basic needs is depriving them of the fundamental learning experience of going it alone - the same tactic that the hero employs not because he suddenly had an epiphany about the power of single-player gaming, but because he was granted a boon by the author that literally no one else shares.

The end result, I would say, is not a story that doesn't appeal to gamers. Instead, it's something much worse: a story that will only appeal to the worst, most toxic types of gamer out there. The ones who view video games as a crucial form of self-betterment that one must suffer through in order to build their character. "Hard times make hard men", except hard games make hard men, and anyone who succeeds through means other than the most masochistic, individualist approach available is robbing themselves of the possibility of true greatness.

You know. Morons.

[bearotonin-international]

When you havin a Thinky Thoughts Thursday and you don’t like it one bit

[dumtranskitty-2]

Yep, no need to think. Cute catgirls don't need to think, that'd be silly wouldn't it? Imagine, a cute dumb little catgirl thinking? Havin thoughts? That sounds like too much stress for a little silly girl like you, doesnt it? -miss Dee

Stress..>< stress icky...>< Wanna hav no stress brainy! :3 jus um.. hard thinky and lil thinky thingy.. -w-

[hneyteacup]

its 6am and im havin thinky thoughts about azula

[blindmagdalena]

you said……… VAMPLANDER.?!?? 🙈👀👀👀

👁️👄👁️

I have a mighty need and I would literally ascend if you did write something for that ngl

I'M HAVIN.... THINKY THOUGHTS ABOUT IT........ it would run largely the boys canon compliant but the basis of their superpowers would be vampirism. years spent studying the affliction and engineering super soldiers out of it. soldiers that require... human blood. compound v being this universe's equivalent to tru blood. something that sustains them, but does not satisfy them... i'm thinking very hard about something that is definitely just an excuse for sexy bloody vampire homelander

[weidli]

[ID: four black and white stills of Vincent (in first two in profile) wearing a dark shirt with the collar unbuttoned, the ring necklace visible. /end ID]

Vincent Ross being absurdly beautiful - photoset 22 / ?

[dorkydiaz]

i keep thinking about who put the photo of daniel in maddie's box?

why did it get put there in the first place? was it put there by accident and forgotten? or was it put there on purpose as a way of keeping it safe? so that there would be some record of daniel's life? because it seems to be made out to be that there is little left of him.

[incineraryperiphery]

reading the year’s best science fiction series as a kid made me queer

[funeral-clown]

Me, minding my own GODDAMN business: heh I wonder if I should go steal the x box from dad

The Observer, piping up for the first time in a while: your escapism storyline of being trapped in a cellar at stalemate with a murderer who wants to groom you as their apprentice stems directly from your ignored repressed trauma from being constantly locked in the basement by the guy who groomed you sexually and the fact that you never truly escape that cellar speaks of your current stalemate in the healing process.

Me, falling off the bed: dude when the FUCK did you get here also SHUT UP

[bucket-fucker]

i can appreciate that malfoy never got a redemption arc because sometimes in life your high school bully never gets some huge moment of “wow, gosh I shouldn’t have done that!” Sometimes people just go on with their lives and maybe they change and maybe they don’t.

but Snape should NEVER have gotten a redemption arc. Snape SHOULD have been held accountable for his disgusting mistreatment of children, as ALL child abusers should be, because it’s a moral issue. The fact that he got a redemption arc and was NEVER made accountable is probably my hugest grievance with the Harry Potter series. Dumbledore was abusive and manipulative toward Harry, and put Snape in a position where he could be the same, and Harry was brainwashed into thinking both men were only doing what’s best for them and proceeded to put them on a pedestal, and J.K. wants us to think this is a good and just thing. And I’m constantly disgusted by this thought.

[roachliquid]

Unpacking the Pokemon Universe: dealing with the silly ideas I've internalized over the years

Every once in a while, I get the urge to create some kind of Pokemon fanfiction. I sit at my computer and think about all the details: where to set it, who it should be about, what it should be about. And inevitably, I end up stymied and depressed and writing nothing.

At first I was asking myself: Is this because Pokemon is a kids' universe? And well, to an extent, yeah. As an adult, trying to come up with anything in the setting can feel like deliberately trying to play with Duplos when you have more age appropriate toys right there. "Why am I doing this?" I end up asking myself. "This fandom is 90% kids, maybe I'm trying to force myself where I don't belong? Maybe I should just leave them to it?"

That's silly, though. Pokemon doesn't belong to any one demographic, not strictly. And participating in a fandom isn't forcing yourself into any one space - there are loads of outlets, which all attract different age groups.

(Also, there really aren't any more "mature" settings that can take the place of Pokemon. It's a very unique setup.)

Then I thought about it a bit more. Asking myself what details, specifically, were bothering me about the setting. And that's when I started to realize - I didn't have problems, I had assumptions. Things I'd come up with over the years, things I'd internalized as a teenager from other writers, that really don't hold up under scrutiny but make the universe feel a lot less sensible and usable. And after hashing them out, I've realized that they mostly come down to two extremely silly ideas that I'd just never gotten around to unpacking.

So let's dive into those!

Assumption #1: The world of the Pokemon games and anime is "dumbed down" compared to what it would really be like.

To some extent, I feel this is true. And by that I mean, a lot of things that take place in the Pokemon universe are simplified for the benefit its audience. Real eggs take more work to hatch than just throwing them in your backpack and riding around, and of course real fossils don't always come in single complementary pairs.

But then I got thinking about other questions, like "Why don't evil teams pull guns on children who come after them?" and "Why isn't the world covered in unethical Eevee breeding mills?" and I realized that in most cases, the answer is right there, I just missed them because I was assuming that the Pokemon world looks like ours behind the scenes. And it doesn't. The reason bad guys don't carry guns is because they were never invented. And Pokemon societies are both noncapitalist and fairly ethics-oriented, so of course there aren't dozens of assholes breeding as many rare Pokemon as they can hawk to kids.

Basically, any kind of evil that you might assume would be everywhere, is actually rare enough that you could make an arc villain out of it.

Assumption #2: Everything in the setting revolves around kids.

For a long time, it was believed by the fandom that Pokemon protagonists' experiences represented the norm. You get a Pokemon at age ten, you go on a journey to take on the Gyms, etc etc. And looking at it from that perspective, it seemed like things would be really boring for adults. After all, who cares if you can revive ancient Pokemon from fossils if they're all getting handed off to kids who will just use them for competitive battles? Why even go to the universe when you've already aged out of its main source of appeal?

Then, while playing Heart Gold, it clicked: the experiences of a Pokemon protagonist aren't meant to be universal. In Gen 2 specifically, the only reason you're taking on a Pokemon journey at the tender age of ten is because Mr. Pokemon realizes that you're some kind of Pokemon prodigy - the same reason you end up moonlighting as Professor Elm's research assistant. The fact that this isn't normal is made even more obvious in later games, where people are shown starting Pokemon journeys well into their teens or even adulthood.

Likewise, one can guess that world events (or even significant ones) don't usually revolve around One Plucky Trainer who just happens to be having a journey right now. The games don't show it, because streamlining, but if you look at the characters you meet during the story, a lot of them are adults who are presumably getting into all kinds of exciting shit in their line of work - professors discovering new species, archaeologists unearthing ancient cultures, all kinds of people hunting down alleged cryptids that may or may not be new Pokemon. Not only is the main adventure not exclusive to ten-year-olds, but it's far from the only interesting thing that a character could be doing.

(Similarly, not everything in the universe revolves around Pokemon professors, Gym Leaders, legendary Pokemon, and major villains. They are of course fun to read and write about, but there's still plenty of wiggle room if you want to do something original.)

So... yeah! I think the big takeaway from this is that I need to be more careful when assessing the setting, and try to take it on its own terms instead of reading a lot of real-world ideas into it.

[gayspock]

oh star trek ds9 lil thinky think

am havin focus issues tonight so omg sorry if this is all sloppy (i also keep pausing this ep... eek but also omg as if i dont always talk sloppy<3) but hmmmm O_O im wonderin if i'll feel better abt klingon stories in ds9 like

i did not care for a lot of klingon-centric eps in tng :/ and its such a SHAME bc i do love bestie worf, but its like... personally i think worf was best utilised (in tng) in his interactions with the rest of the crew - they had a good dynamic - and so often the tng episodes would involve him being removed from the enterprise, and engaging instead with klingons off world. and more often than not, THAT would also involve characters who... i just didnt care for? and there's a few reasons i just. OMG HARD to truly unpack it bc 1) my memory is sooo fuzzy on tng and 2) also again im a lil loopy rn but

hmm. i think with ds9 they'll give the opportunity for klingon storylines to be more integrated into the plot and sustained properly, involving the others so... hopeuflly that might help? bc like i said- before it would literally just be... worf. sometimes with picard slapped on, by himself, which was even WORSE TBH. (sorry picard but like its highkey annoying when u do fuck all in a story but be, like, a pint of milk in the corner until the final 5 minutes when u handle the resolution like. godddd whatever it ruins it fr STOP it >:() but yah i think tht might make it easier

but also. also also also. in general, i jsut feel like... ok so like. tbh instead? in ds9, the ferengi-centric eps have literally always been. the worst for me. at first i thought it was quark-centric eps & him just not being able to carry an ep plot by himself, in combination with the humour just not appealing to me (and thats still the case, sort of- but i really did like house of quark) which is SORT of similar to worf, sans the humour aspect. but then i realised... its more ferengi eps. bc quark eps involve quark being removed from the cast, and put into a plot involving a) the Nagus and b) a revolving cast of nameless ferengi who are usually inconsequential or one-time shows. and like... i just dont care! bc idc abt any of them?

bc its like... the show does not take the ferengi seriously.and uhm. not to mentino: there's lots of aspects of the depiction of ferengi that make me go 😐😑tbh. (which im not glossing over here bc thts inconsequential but thts just. a lot to unpack HERE in this readmore ramble help.) and idk theres... i get tht a lot of quark/ferengi eps are humours and i find nothing wrong with more lighthearted eps but 1) the humour does not align with what i find funny a lot of the time and 2) that... can still only take it so far, imo? like.

its the same with stuff tht ppl regard as fanservice- which im getting FAAARRR from my point i dont even remember where i was lalala but im rambling here anyways. but yah, ik some ppl decry, like, more "fun" stuff in media, dismissing it as fanwanky and whatever or like. pandering. but idk i dont think thats always the case- so long as its earned. i think... THIS IS SO DUMB. but u kno how ppl REALLY hate 10's regeneration from dw? bc they say its fanservicey bc of the whole, like, goodbye parade? or don't like journey's end (the ep) bc it panders to fans by, like, including all the companions in it? LIKE- PERSONALLY? i get if u feel like tht, but i dont think its THAT cheap to be indulgent in stuff like that sometimes in media, bc media doesnt always have to be some . insane artistic expressino and a lot of it is engaged with the intent to entertain and- THATS A WHOLE OTHER THING . MY FUCKING POINT IS THAT, LIKE, i like it in the dw case bc its well earned fun do u know what i mean. these companions are all such well established characters and we've all been given so much of them by the story so i dont think its, like, milking anything by just takin the time to genuinely send them off nicely and stuff. and-

thats so so so off topic bv my point is like. in order to do that... i jsut feel like a lot of the time you need to actually build a foundation. to have SOME substance. and the ferengi... i jsut feel like they dont offer that a lot of the time, and theyre just there as jokes. and it just gets a lil irritating to me. again- ok, hard to avoid: a lot of that is bc of the not so fantastic concepts of them - but lllike. i just feel like... the humour MIGHT not be so grating, if u built them up A LOT more bc so much of them is ... horribly one dimensional, and the show doesnt rlly treat them with much respect.

and i think. the same SOMETIMES happens with klingons. not at all to the same degree, but like it feels like the show reduces each character to [insert core traits] here unless they're, like, worf or alexander's mam (uhm. sorry i forget her name). and- HONESTLY? U KNO? theres other races they do that with, too. and its jsut so frustrating man like- bc i want more depth to them and whilst i KNOW not every side character can offer , like, all of that but i still jsut wish.. there were more depictions tht were actually varied . do u kno wht i mean. help. and i think thts hwhy, as well, i also lose myself on a LOT of these stories- bc i jsut... CANNOT care abt these characters that are just riffs on the same stock klingon or ferengi like. so what bestie so what jsust half worf walk into the holosuit and talk to ppl its the SAME conseque0nce in the end

meanwhile i feel like the bajorans have been genuinely QUITE diverse but i think thats BECAUSE of kira's role in the story and the fact that bajor is obviously. in such political conflict that all the characters introduced generally have some sort of developed opniino on whats going on and

ok brains shutting off im gonna shut up here omg maybe i'll yammer on again later

[loversandantiheroes]

hi guys i can’t wrangle my brain into anything productive so I’m just sitting here havin thinky thoughts about music and resonance in the Control universe what are y’all up to

[honeyedsunlight]

Havin a lot of thinky thoughts

[dstinyislnds]

oh I am havin some ungood thinky thoughts

[kjmsupremacist]

Just sittin here havin thinky thoughts abt the fact that someone probably had to put together a prospectus about why letting an extreme sports loving, street dancing twink have access to the entire Chanel couture catalog wouldn’t dilute the brand and having a real good time with it tbh. The footnote like “tldr I’m going to level with you, he’s basically feral, but he cleans up nice and we’re trying to be respectable here. He’s usually pretty quiet though so we typically ignore the fact that we’re never 100% sure what’s going to come out of his mouth when he does open it. Also, he has said the word fashion in someone’s presence at least once so we’re pretty sure he’s trying to make a statement with the number of Thrasher tees he owns, even if we aren’t sure what the statement is exactly.” The Chanel people just there like “oh wow sold we do love a gremlin that is definitely what we, one of the hardest brands for celebrities to get permission to wear, are definitely known for. Drape him in boucle and roll him in pearls kids, he’s a keeper!!!” 🤖

i am assuming this is about yibo LMAO given the everything about this ask. it is pretty funny though omfg. i think that's just pretty privilege, honestly.