#i just like specific videos and i also. have opinions. bother me about it if you wanna know them idk

[fraudulent-cheese]

where are they 👶

Boy i tell you, when i saw that one of the prompts for gwourtney week was backrooms, i had to make edits for that prompt! There's a little bit of a story to these? It's gwen and courtney making it through the first 5 levels of the backrooms!

@gwourtneyweek2024

[jeonscatalyst]

Damn, after your last few posts with anons, it just became clear to me how much stuff Tae doesn’t know until he finds out in the group chat. And I’m sure it’s not like the other members are hiding it from him specifically (except maybe when JM didn’t ask him to go to Jeju because he thought Tae was too busy with solo promos). I’m sure all 7 have so much going on that it’s hard to keep up with the schedules of each member all the time.

But Tae’s the only one who bothers to show up (or arrange to be included) after finding out about a certain schedule? Whether it’s AYS or Suchwita or a Weverse live? Is it always and exclusively for JK?

I’m not a Tkkr, I promise. I’m very much in the Jikook camp. But I just cannot decide what to make of Tae’s behaviour. I still don’t know if he is a narcissistic attention-seeker and loves to feed the cult or if he is majorly misunderstood and just has intense fomo and JK is his only dongsaeng so he can get away with popping up unannounced.

Every time he went on live for two minutes seemingly just to drop JK’s name makes me think the former.

When he said to Jimin that he was hurt Jimin didn’t tell him about the Jeju trip, it makes me think the latter.

But then when he pops into a random ARMY chat to drop a selfie, it seems like he’s being self-centered again.

I just can’t figure him out.

Hey anon,

“But Tae’s the only one who bothers to show up (or arrange to be included) after finding out about a certain schedule? Whether it’s AYS or Suchwita or a Weverse live? Is it always and exclusively for JK? "

I think one would only come to this conclusion if they limit things to chapter two and this is also a sort of cherry picking or tunnel vision because before chapter two, we never ever really saw Tae show up for anything of Jk’s and he did show up for other members like Jhope and Namjoon when they had their solo shoots.

I think in chapter two, Tae was trying to do things differently. During seasons greeting 2022, he said his gift to members was going to try to spend more time with them more because that is something he didn’t really do before. Before the solo era Tae mostly spent his off time with his friends outside of work and his wooga members so I guess he wanted to do things differently in chapter two and that is why we saw him actually taking the initiative to spend time with members. He invited Jk to hang out with his friends, also invited Hobi to hang out with his friends, went to support Yoongi during his concert, made time to hang out with Jimin and invited him to his fanmeet and also joined Jimin in his video for CTT. I think he also visited Namjoon or something because he posted some shoes that were Namjoon’s or something so in my opinion, Tae was making a concious decision to actually spend time with his members which is something he didn’t do before.

Yea maybe he seemed a little more focused on Jk maybe by chance or design but it clearly doesn’t mean anything more than that he loves and wanted to support his friend because if they were together, he wouldn’t constantly have to find out about Jk’s schedules from the groupchat would he?

“But I just cannot decide what to make of Tae’s behaviour. I still don’t know if he is a narcissistic attention-seeker and loves to feed the cult or if he is majorly misunderstood and just has intense fomo and JK is his only dongsaeng so he can get away with popping up unannounced.”

To be honest with you I can’t say I know either but I don’t think he ever had any alterior motives. Maybe it was just something as simple as him wanting to spend time with Jk or maybe he is just misunderstood. I also think that some of his actions when it came to Jk were intentional but not because he was trying to feed the cult but maybe because he wanted to show that he and Jk were in a much better place. I think Tae cares about how fans perceive his relationship with the members and how fans see him as a person. I mean he admitted to going into a fan group chat, pretending to be a fan and saying bad things about himself to see what the fans would say. He also spends a lot of time within fan spaces as over the years, he has posted memes, pictures and fanarts that he could have only seen by being neck deep in fan spaces so I think it is clear that he is very aware of the things fans say so maybe he wanted fans to know that him and Jk were in a much better place after their talk on ITS. I could be wrong about this but that is how I interpreted some of his actions.

Also if you know Tae, you know that he has moments when he tends to fixate on particular members. There was a time when his fixation was Jimin. He would go on fancafe and talk about Jimin alot, make posts that could be viewed as romantic about Jimin and then immediately delete them, his weverse is packed with pictures and videos of Jimin, he responded to fans who were asking about Jimin etc. What he was doing with Jungkook in the solo era wasn’t new tbh because anyone who has been in the fandom long enough and paid attention to Vmin, knows that Tae used to go crazy lol.

He is an enigma and could be very difficult to read sometimes but I don’t think there is ever any malice behind his actions.

[jenning-fcb]

There's something that really irritates me about the Marauders fandom, I don't know if it's an unpopular opinion or not, but I don't care.

It really bothers me the way y'all talk about fanfic. Sometimes I think some people here forget that fanfics aren't written by professional authors, it's something that someone is writing for fun and that you can read for free. you shouldn't be criticizing them as if they were published books written by professional authors.

You have every right in the world to be reading something and not like it, but do you know what is the right thing to do? Just close the tab and go look for something that you like more. Don't make videos on tik tok talking bad about the story. I'm really impressed by the number of videos talking bad about fanfics, trashing them. Have some shame… I always think that when I go into the comments of this type of video I will find people criticizing this type of stance in the comments, but I never do. The comments are always full of people criticizing other fanfics not mentioned in the video.

just imagine writing a fanfic and posting it for free for others to read, something you wrote just for entertainment, and then opening tik tok and having thousands of people talking bad about you and your writing. and I'm specifically talking about Tik Tok because that's where I see it happening the most and where these videos have the more reach, but I know it also happens on others social media. I don't know if it happens here, but for example on Twitter I know it does.

and I'm speaking as someone who has never experienced this, I've never published any Harry Potter fanfic. lol and I don't see that happening in other fandoms (and also my stories have very little reach, so I don't think it would happen to me).

and another thing that bothers me, which is still within the subject of how this fandom treats fanfic, is that y'all really seem to have lost track of what that word means. the way I see some people talking disdainfully about fanfics that aren't ''very realistic''. buddy, it's FANFIC. Fanfic doesn't have to be realistic. I see a lot of people saying ''Ah, finally a fanfic that treats the 70s in a realistic way'', it's okay if you PREFER the fanfic to be realistic, that's personal taste. But it's not okay to treat fanfics that aren't realistic with disdain. One is not better than the other, being more realistic does not give more merit. Because it's just the author's choice, how they wants the story to be.

I myself prefer fanfics that aren't realistic, because as a lesbian I'm already fed up with homophobia in real life, and this is dealt with in almost every story with LGBTQIA+ people in books, films, etc… at least in fanfic I can pretend it doesn't exist.

again, personal taste is one thing, but thinking that some fanfics are better written than others just because they suit your tastes better its not okay. and treating what you don't like as inferior, with disdain… that's the problem.

Anyway, this outburst ended up getting bigger than I thought it would. lol I don't know if anyone will read this but I just wanted to get it off my chest. and if some parts were confusing, well, im sorry, but english is not my first language. and sometimes it's difficult to express myself.

ah, I'm part of several fandoms, but I only refer to the marauders because it's something I only see happening here. Maybe because it's the biggest fandom I'm part of, as the others are much more niche. but if it happens in other fandoms, have shame too. lol It's not cool for this to happen in any fandom.

[morlock-holmes]

What objections would you actually accept to AI?

Roughly in order of urgency, at least in my opinion:

Problem 1: Curation

The large tech monopolies have essentially abandoned curation and are raking in the dough by monetizing the process of showing you crap you don't want.

The YouTube content farm; the Steam asset flip; SEO spam; drop-shipped crap on Etsy and Amazon.

AI makes these pernicious, user hostile practices even easier.

Problem 2: Economic disruption

This has a bunch of aspects, but key to me is that *all* automation threatens people who have built a living on doing work. If previously difficult, high skill work suddenly becomes low skill, this is economically threatening to the high skill workers. Key to me is that this is true of *all* work, independent of whether the work is drudgery or deeply fulfilling. Go automate an Amazon fulfillment center and the employees will not be thanking you.

There's also just the general threat of existing relationships not accounting for AI, in terms of, like, residuals or whatever.

Problem 3: Opacity

Basically all these AI products are extremely opaque. The companies building them are not at all transparent about the source of their data, how it is used, or how their tools work. Because they view the tools as things they own whose outputs reflect on their company, they mess with the outputs in order to attempt to ensure that the outputs don't reflect badly on their company.

These processes are opaque and not communicated clearly or accurately to end users; in fact, because AI text tools hallucinate, they will happily give you *fake* error messages if you ask why they returned an error.

There's been allegations that Mid journey and Open AI don't comply with European data protection laws, as well.

There is something that does bother me, too, about the use of big data as a profit center. I don't think it's a copyright or theft issue, but it is a fact that these companies are using public data to make a lot of money while being extremely closed off about how exactly they do that. I'm not a huge fan of the closed source model for this stuff when it is so heavily dependent on public data.

Problem 4: Environmental maybe? Related to problem 3, it's just not too clear what kind of impact all this AI stuff is having in terms of power costs. Honestly it all kind of does something, so I'm not hugely concerned, but I do kind of privately think that in the not too distant future a lot of these companies will stop spending money on enormous server farms just so that internet randos can try to get Chat-GPT to write porn.

Problem 5: They kind of don't work

Text programs frequently make stuff up. Actually, a friend pointed out to me that, in pulp scifi, robots will often say something like, "There is an 80% chance the guards will spot you!"

If you point one of those AI assistants at something, and ask them what it is, a lot of times they just confidently say the wrong thing. This same friend pointed out that, under the hood, the image recognition software is working with probabilities. But I saw lots of videos of the Rabbit AI assistant thing confidently being completely wrong about what it was looking at.

Chat-GPT hallucinates. Image generators are unable to consistently produce the same character and it's actually pretty difficult and unintuitive to produce a specific image, rather than a generic one.

This may be fixed in the near future or it might not, I have no idea.

Problem 6: Kinetic sameness.

One of the subtle changes of the last century is that more and more of what we do in life is look at a screen, while either sitting or standing, and making a series of small hand gestures. The process of writing, of producing an image, of getting from place to place are converging on a single physical act. As Marshall Macluhan pointed out, driving a car is very similar to watching TV, and making a movie is now very similar, as a set of physical movements, to watching one.

There is something vaguely unsatisfying about this.

Related, perhaps only in the sense of being extremely vague, is a sense that we may soon be mediating all, or at least many, of our conversations through AI tools. Have it punch up that email when you're too tired to write clearly. There is something I find disturbing about the idea of communication being constantly edited and punched up by a series of unrelated middlemen, *especially* in the current climate, where said middlemen are large impersonal monopolies who are dedicated to opaque, user hostile practices.

Given all of the above, it is baffling and sometimes infuriating to me that the two most popular arguments against AI boil down to "Transformative works are theft and we need to restrict fair use even more!" and "It's bad to use technology to make art, technology is only for boring things!"

[ganondoodle]

this isnt a call out for anyone; i keep getting asked why i even post my opinions on the internet if i dont want to argue whenever i mention how tired i am of people trying to argue with me or proof me wrong

and i just ... for one its bc there are people that have told me they like hearing my opinions bc it makes them feel less alone, its validating to hear that i am not alone and i make them feel less alone (this is a big reason)

then theres the thing .. do you feel good never saying your opinion on anything and just keeping everything to yourself? be it big or small, i tried to do that for years, just trying to crawl deeper and deeper into a hole bc clearly i am the problem and should be able to deal with everything on my own, never say anything, i could be annoying, i could be a burden, and it nearly killed me; i have very few friends and i already spam them enough to feel constantly guilty

and if i did that on some private account ... what use is that, thats the same thing as not saying anything, whats the use of saying anything when no one listens, even to select few, whats the point if others cant find it, there might be people i dont know at all that would find solace in hearing my stupid ramblings about games

its true i lack self control and just tend to talk about stuff when i feel the need of talking, but is that really so bad?

correct me if im wrong but i was never of the impression that posting something on the internet automatically means wanting to debate and argue unless you specifically say or initiate it on someone elses post? like thats why i pretty much always make my own post to complain and dont go on other peoples posts of opposing views, id view the latter as an invitation to argue moreso than the former

when i post some stupid opinion (im talking about harmless personal video game opinions mind you) on my own account who am i bothering, if people agree thats great! if they dont they can just move on- i know people love to discuss and share different opinions but the the ones i most often encounter are ones where its a basically trying to start a fight over whos more right (like theres always one correct opinion to have) or just telling me i am not allowed to feel like i feel-

im aware i cant expect everyone to be able to see a differeing opinion and move on without saying anything, but when i say something, unless its specifically a question, i just do it to vent, to let my thoughts out so they dont slowly gnaw at me, maybe find validation in others also thinking like that (i know i cant also expect everyone to think that way .. i just see it as a form of politeness? sorta?); in all honesty, i dont do it to get told opposing opinions (i know thats maybe a little ... idk, selfish i guess?) bc i usually have seen or heard those already and am saying mine bc i havent seen it before or very very little- what i think is often very much not the majority so the need to say something gets greater the more i see somethign i dont agree with, like an urge to balance it? a call to see if i am alone or not? and much less so to argue or debate over something like that, im tired and exhausted at all times, and have often trouble even getting myself to draw, i dont enjoy fights of any kind, and especialyl so when its about something so completely ignorable like a game opinion i only said bc i wanted it out of my head and bc i have seen that the majority seems to be of a different one

like a sticky note on a wall, not an invitation to a political meeting?

maybe this is something i need to work on and get better at, i havent found a way that lets me get rid of my thoughts in a way that doesnt leave me feeling guilty (like spamming my friends) or to gnaw at me (not saying anything, or somewhere no ones gonna hear it)

i know im incapable of shutting up ever (though at least i got a better control over my emotions by now) and i risk accidentally seeming like im inviting people to a fight but i dont know what else to do

maybe its something i horribly missunderstood about the internet, but its my only outlet for that, i dont have anyone IRL to talk to about my interests, maybe its a flaw that needs work, maybe its just a flaw, i dont know :/

[mystwrites]

hi congrats on 200 followers!! 🥳

May I request Lee! Megumi and ler! Gojo? (JJK) And the sentence starter shall be 🍉! And the activity 🎮 (video games)

Tysm! And be sure to stay hydrated!!

200 Followers Event is still open! (🍉&🎮 are no longer an option now)

With Nobara and Maki both sick, there was no way they all were going to get together for another training day having all been in close contact the day prior. With Yuji and Inumaki also feeling slightly under the weather and no training or classes, the group all decided to check out a new game they heard of.

“Alright! Last Train Out of Wormtown! Let’s go!” Yuji exclaimed.

“Who’s the worm?” Nobara asked.

“Looks like Inumaki and I are the worms.” Maki said.

“Tuna!” Inumaki added.

“Great! Let’s go!” Megumi concluded, the game in full swing.

The graphics were horrible in Megumi’s opinion. It all looked poorly done but he also thought that the overall idea of gathering coal to get the train up and running, blowing up train cars blocking the tracks and trying to survive against sand worms was intriguing.

After fifteen minutes of playing, the game was actually rather fun. Megumi loved the thrill of nearly getting eaten by the sand worms and having to escape if the worm caught his character. The others also were having fun, laughing whenever they juked Maki or Inumaki in the process.

Absorbed in the game, Megumi didn’t comprehend Gojo who had been doing his rounds and checking in on all the students. One of his biggest mistakes had always been not locking his door ever since Yuji and Nobara began to barge in at random hours.

Megumi flinched, realizing someone had put their hands on his shoulders. Letting out a gasp, he took off his headset and whipped around, met with Gojo’s smiling face. Grumbling, Megumi put his headset back on and turned back to his game.

“Guys…I got a problem.” Megumi said into his headset. “I have a SG (Satoru Gojo) over my shoulder.”

“Who ya talking to, Megumiiii?~” Gojo asked, kneeling to look at the computer screen. “Ooh? You playing with the first and second years?”

Megumi grunted and suddenly jerked, Gojo watching as a sand worm suddenly exploded from the sand on the screen.

“WHOAAA!!” Megumi gasped. “Ohhhhh!!! Inumaki almost got me! ITADORI MOVE YOUR ASS!!!”

Gojo hummed, tapping his chin as he tried to figure out the mechanics of this new video game Megumi was playing. He’s certainly never seen this specific game before and was interested in learning how to play. However, he knew Megumi wouldn’t include him. It wouldn’t hurt to ask though.

“Megumiiii! Teach me how to play this game!!!” Gojo pleaded, shaking Megumi’s shoulders.

“Dude! Go away!” Megumi hissed. “Yeah, sorry guys…Gojo sensei is bothering me again!”

“Meguuuumiiii!~” Gojo sang, poking Megumi’s sides. “I’m gonna tickle you until you acknowledge my request.~”

The boy glared. “Don’t you dare!”

Gojo dared and he poked his student in the center of his tummy. A growl escaped from Megumi as Gojo continued poking him and before they knew it, Megumi had forgotten about the game and was cackling, desperately shoving Gojo away as he fell off of his chair and onto the floor.

“S-stop! Ahahaa!!” Megumi cried, his headset tumbling away from him. “Thihihis is childish! Quit this nonsense!! Ahahahaa!!”

Squeezing the teen’s hips, Megumi shrieked, Gojo cackling as he continued to playfully tickle him. “Just agree to teach me how to play and I’ll stop.~”

Being stubborn, Megumi refused. This only worsened his current situation and caused Gojo to continue tickling the life out of him. Screaming, Megumi finally began to fight back, begging and pleading for Gojo to stop in hopes the others would hear what was happening and come to his aid. No such help came and he finally submitted to the tickling, gasping for air as Gojo finally released him.

“So, I’m guessing that’s a yes?” Gojo asked, squeezing Megumi’s sides.

“YES!!” Megumi squealed, laughing harder as Gojo continued to tickle him. “YES!! YES! YEHEHES!! IHIHI’LL TEHEHEACH YOU HOW TO PLAY!! STOHOHOP!!”

With all that said and done, Gojo happily took a seat on Megumi’s chair, ready to learn how to play. Grabbing his headset, Megumi readjusted the mic and began to speak to whoever was still present.

“Sorry about that guys. Gojo wants to learn how to play. Don’t go easy on him, okay?” Megumi said, smirking as Gojo gasped in offense at the comment.

A/N: Thank you for the request! Sorry it’s a little short, the semester is wrapping up now and I’m doing registration. I’ve also been watching a lot of videos of ppl playing The Last Train Out of Wormtown so that’s where this inspiration came from 😆

[crwllys]

‼️ ARCANE FINALE SPOILERS ‼️

i would like to share the only bad (personally for me) part of the second season of arcane: the way they made it look like vi was more in the background than in the main story.

because right now i'm looking at the scenes and i think more and more that they were focused specifically on cait and jinx for the first two acts, and in the finale in general (we'll get to that later)

i would like to see more about her arc, for example, it would be possible to show a little better how she coped with her "breakup" with caitlyn, how she coped with hallucinations about her, jinx, vander, etc. (I don't even remember if he was there, but mostly cait was there, although maybe he was, fuck knows, they didn't show us anything). and they just gave us some kind of music video about how every day goes the same for her.

and in the finale, it generally felt like they gave zero fucks about her grief and just skipped it, not letting us see and understand how she felt after that, it was also possible to at least show how she and ekko grieved together, after all, they were also friends and they both lost loved ones, they both lost powder/jinx, we deserved to at least see it.

i also want to say that this is all purely my opinion, there may be people who do not agree with this and are happy with it, i have nothing against them and I hope you will be understanding too. i absolutely loved season 2, literally everything about it but this was just one thing that bothered me.

[decepticon-nerd]

Transformers: Earthspark - Season 3

Personal thoughts and opinions. Spoilers, obviously

1: Breakdown

I am a bit confused by Breakdown’s character in the series overall.

When we are introduced to him, it isn’t as a loyal to the cause Decepticon, it’s as a friend of Bee’s who seems to want nothing other than the freedom to go racing when and wherever he pleases. However, in the last two seasons we see him betray Bee more than once. In the first episode of this latest season, Bee sneaks into the dome with Mo and Thrash specifically to get Breakdown out, and Breakdown turns on him in favor of the other cons. Repeatedly through the show he’s gone back and forth between loyalty to Bee and loyalty to the cons.

I’m willing to accept that perhaps I’m misunderstanding the character right now, but in my (current) personal opinion, he seems incredibly inconsistently written.

2. Tarantulas

There is still no sign of Tarantulas since his first introduction. I am unsure if the character was cut outright due to budget reasons, but I’m disappointed that he does not reappear. A friend of mine stated that he could be dead, but we see no evidence of this in the show. Furthermore, he does not board Prowl’s ship with the other cons to head back to Cybertron. That being said, if he is alive, he is still on Earth somewhere.

3. Fair Maestro

I'm kicking this man right in the balls. He's annoying and he needs to be arrested with multiple unlawful imprisonment charges.

4. Megatron

I don't really give a shit if people like Earthspark Megatron or not, and I don't really care if he could have done more to stop G.H.O.S.T. All I care about is the fact that this man calls Twitch "Little Bird" multiple times and I am just

He loves these children with all his spark and I am experiencing emotions over it

5. Prowl

First impressions: I want to punch his teeth out. In a way, he kind of reminds me of Knockout - he initially calls the humans 'pets' and refers to them as fleshies multiple times. Due to a misunderstanding, he also physically attacks Megatron.

As episodes progress, he verbally attacks Megatron as well, at last until Megatron saves his ass.

He's blunt, he's relatively rude, and he's rough around the edges, but overall I personally think he's written well, and the show does a good job of keeping him from being a copaganda character.

There's also his side profile which made me physically recoil

Sir you look like a beluga whale why is your forehead so big

6. Starscream

This motherfucker got himself stuck in a baby jail of his own making and when we finally get to hear him speak again he's fucking having tea with Spitfire's corpse propped up in a chair across a table from him. Then Jawbreaker bites him, Hashtag kills him, and Prowl arrests him

7. Terratronus

Now we're getting into one of the big things that bother me the most. There is a whole ass green alien dome in the middle of the city. There is a whole ass titan in the middle of the city. Why isn't getting the dome down and making sure there's no civilians stuck inside with cons and a chaos storm one of the Autobot's biggest priorities?

Follow up question, why are the civilians of Witwicky just going about their day to day like nothing has happened?

In this day and age, someone has likely posted video footage to social media. The government should be fully involved by now, yet the most we see is Schloder tailing a road raging Bumblebee after he's infected with the hate plague.

That aside, we do finally get to see Terratronus in all her glory. And also, apparently, the power of friendship can turn this titan into a Valkyrie that can put TF1 Sentinel Prime to shame.

8. The Maltos

I think this bugs me the most, and I didn't even notice until my friend pointed it out. I think they may have whitewashed Mo and Robbie a bit. Not cool, Hasbro

Other things of note:

Ew, human romance and secondhand embarrassment

Oh, Izzy is a quintesson spy. Interesting. What happened to the real girl, then?

The chaos terrans are not dead

Breakdown get your ass back here you left your son behind

Frenzy and Laserbeak are iconic. Love them

Hasbro stop being homophobic and give us a medic you had the perfect opportunity with a FUCKING DRIVE IN THEATER

[hollowtones]

opinions on yoshis story? imo that game doesnt deserve to have music that good

I haven't played very much of it and I've been meaning to do something about that forever. I've played some of it and I've watched others go through most of it.

I know I've seen a little bit of modern grumbling (I don't know if this was a point of contention when the game came out because I was three at the time. OK I looked up some reviews from the era and it looks like it was also a thing people were mad about back then. LOL) over the fact that the game isn't more like "Yoshi's Island" & that it feels like it's aimed more at younger audiences. I dunno. I've never been bothered much by games with some tie to one another doing something different. (Some of the response reminds me of Transformers fans being upset over Hasbro making toys and shows for very young children sometimes; admittedly maybe I'm off the mark here.)

It's a very easy game if you want it to be. You can just eat any fruits you want forever and it's over in a blink. And it's fine. It's fine if the video game lets you beat it very fast if you want to. You can also try to collect only one single kind of fruit in a level and that makes things take longer and makes them feel like more of a scavenger hunt (especially if you're trying to get all the melons). I think that's neat. There's sort of an interesting design trajectory from "Super Mario World" to "Yoshi's Island" where the levels become a little longer, a little more meandering, a little more exploratory, sometimes (not always, and not massively, but it's still there) a little less linear. No time limit. Going for collectibles instead; making every level about getting a score of 100 (if you want to). You can see that iterated on in "Yoshi's Story"! No singular end point of the level. Bigger rooms to explore (while still keeping levels relatively short). More of a focus on puzzle solving and exploration. Collectibles simplified to one meter that you fill up, but there are multiple things that can fill it & you get rewarded for only collecting one kind. (And also the hearts that let you pick what level you go to next. There's a lot of "opening up more of the game for yourself if you want to go out and look for it" here. Are there other collectibles, actually? I don't really remember...) Secret fruits that give even more points. It makes the levels feel more like puzzle box toys that you roam around in. It's neat that they designed that for younger kids and it's neat that you can make it more difficult if that sounds fun to you. (I would have to play more of it myself to decide if going for all melons is fun for me specifically. But I like it on paper, y'know?)

The pop-up storybook theming is cute and the visual aesthetic of the game overall works really well. It feels like arts & crafts dioramas made by kids (or with kids) so they could play pretend with their toys while reading a storybook. It's got very strong toy feel overall. The music is really fun!!! It does the dynamic soundtrack thing where some parts of the track change depending on your health!!! I'm always clapping my hands like a seal with a game's music changes depending what I'm doing!!! Maybe it's a little silly of me to say this, given that it's a sentiment I've had in the past, but nowadays I scratch my head a bit at "the music in this has no right to go this hard" type comments. It goes hard because the musicians got hired to make it like that. (I'm imagining a guy who thinks the "Yoshi's Story" music is the hardest music ever created and I'm smiling serenely about it. I hope he's real & I hope he's out there somewhere.) I'm glad they let Totaka do something that feels at least a little experimental for the goofy Yoshi babies storybook super happy yay & jumping throwing game soundtrack. It's a fun contrast, isn't it? It feels very of-the-era in a way I'm having trouble externalizing outside of "well it's a little weird and multi-genre". It's neat that they all have a shared melody that they draw on.

Thanks for reading my short essay on a childrens' video game I haven't played a lot of yet. I need to go take a shower now.

[baku-usagi]

I made a post the other a few months back about how nice it is to have a character who wants marriage but doesn't want children via gale and I just want to add on to that because I see so many people who draw him as a dad and it gave me a visceral reaction.. I'd never like comment on their stuff because like people are allowed to make their happy endings be whatever they want obviously but I think it bothers me so much because, (and this is really really rampant in the bg3 community worse then in any other Fandom I'm in)

People really don't like these characters a lot of the time? And it shows really poignantly when they see a character have an opinion they don't like and go "he doesn't mean that lol it's just cause he's afraid he wouldn't be a good parent and We know he would"

But would he? Why does him being a good, kind, loving and warm person immediately mean he'd be a good parent?

People project these weird fantasies onto the characters that just absolutely throw in the trash the way the characters are actually written and what makes them so beautiful.

A better example is with astarion, there has been like a billion tiktok videos unpacking it but it's also some thing me and my sister have talked about a lot.

I'd say like 60%, if not more, of the people who claim to be astarion fans think that ascending him his morally good and project this weird dark romance book bad boy persona onto him. Or rather, they literally never see him for more then the facade he puts up.

Those specific Astarion fans hear the line 'I don't know If I want anyone to see me in a sexual way" and plug their ears because that ruins the hot sexed up fuck me vampire they want him to be.

And it, as silly as I know This is, genuinely triggers me to see it.

Again people can enjoy their Fandom, I just scroll on by im not gonna moral police Someones fun but it's like, so very sad to me to see these characters stripped of their personalities and be so fundamentally misunderstood.

Anyway back to the point specifically, seeing people envisioning him as a dad or with children and with their pregnant characters feels like a weird kind of disrespect to me. He uses dialog that is often used by people who don't want kids when explaining that feeling.. And as someone who doesn't want kids I think it makes me feel like a level of my own personal Choice is being stomped.

People who draw gale with kids even tho he has said he didn't want to be A father feels too close to home for me with people telling me I'll change my mind about not wanting kids and I'll get over it.

Anyway tldr I'm just being a piss baby that fans make gale a have kids💁

[edenfenixblogs]

hope you dont mind me sending an ask being a total stranger and all, i just don't wanna bother op of that post

fd does bring up the fact kendrick is a BHI/hotep briefly, specifically that that's great ammo for a beef because to most people the bhi/hoteps are considered weird and embarrassing and would be insanely easy to make fun of in a beef (at least according to most black people I've spoken with & fd himself), but also he believes that drake probably doesn't even really grasp what they are because he's distanced himself in such a specific way from the black community (and arguably jewish community as well, though i think fd only kinda alludes to it) in a really specific way- BUT, that it was an evolution, he started out in a very odd cultural position where he was ostracized for simultaneously recieving antiblackness from white & jewish communities he was a part of but also seen as "not black enough" by many black people (and it's still a bullshit take people will have)

that desire to fit in is what led him down a shitty road, but also drake already clearly had some clearly terrible behaviors already. he talks about how kendrick was being unhinged too and isnt necessarily one to talk

overall the video is more about the music history behind it and the connection between it and the current culture, and just kinda what led to this climate that could want the downfall of drake

i dont know if i agree on drake not knowing about BHIs, though i could believe he doesnt with how he really weirdly constantly codeswitches even wrt jewishness, but imho fd doesnt like to touch on areas where he really cannot speak to the experience, he's said as much in the past, so he only speaks very briefly of the black perspective of how hoteps are goofy as hell

sorry for rambling, im really into music, think fd did the video well although i dont agree with all his opinions, and just wanted to articulate it correctly that it's really more about the musical climate than anything else :)

I don’t mind this message at all!!! In fact, I’m so grateful for it!

This is all really good info. I would believe that Drake didn’t know about BHI, tbh. I didn’t know about it until a couple years ago when Ice Cube (who I grew up loving 😭😭😭) did some heinous shit awhile ago and I was like “Why did my man come for us Jews what the fuck??”

And then a mutual told me about BHI and I looked up. And found a whole new group of people who hate, dehumanize and erase us. 🙃🙃🙃🙃

I mean, theoretically, maybe Drake may have had more exposure to it as a Black and Jewish man. His mere existence makes him more of a target for people invested in that kind of ideology. But also, I do and always have very much gotten the sense that he was ostracized from much of the black community for his Jewishness and mixed race reasons—not due any specific issue in the black community, but just because people are always dicks to people who don’t neatly fit into social categories in expected ways. I can also see how being a Black rapper in white-passing Jewish circles could have been very uncomfortable if those white-passing Jews were inclined to tokenize or exclude him. So it’s possible to me that his bilateral isolation might have insulated him from BHI discourse.

Tbh I don’t think code switching is weird in almost any circumstance. It’s just a development in reaction to your environment. I have a really multiethnic and multicultural family and code switch all the time. I think if it seems weird when Drake does it, it might just be because he has not developed (and tbh should never have had to develop) a strong sense of what “version” of Drake he is supposed to be. So when he tries to read the room and meet expectations, be just does it badly. But it’s not his fault in the long run. It is fault of people who expect him to fit those expectations in the first place.

I respect the hell outta fd for staying in his lane and only speaking on what he understands. And with this context I’m glad he brings up BHI at all. Because it *is* relevant. Being Black and Jewish ANYWHERE are both identities that permeate every single element of someone’s lived experience. When dealing with a beef between people where one is Black and Jewish and the other is Black and attempts to usurp Jewishness by re-categorizing it historically and racially…the cultural friction at play is absolutely relevant.

I’m sure it isn’t the whole story or even likely to be the most important factor in their beef. But it is definitely A factor and it wouldn’t have been right to leave it undressed. Especially when the beef took off as antisemitism more broadly was on the rise due to current events.

I am glad to know that most people still see BHI as a goody ideology. There’s still wayyy too many people who believe it, though. I’ve lived with the consequences of their hatred for white-passing Jews for several months now and it is…unpleasant. But mostly it’s heartbreaking. I grew up listening to Ice Cube. I used to cite James Baldwin. I adored Alice Walker. And finding out that they hate me one by one was devastating. But the worst part has been OTHER BHI folks using their words to justify their own hatred of me and all Jews like me while simultaneously making me feel like I was harming them in some way just by existing.

I want to be clear that I do not and never have believed that most black people believe BHI bullshit. I’m only saying that it was a shock to me the sheer number of people who DO believe it and how vehemently they hold that belief and direct that vehement *emotion* directly at me. It’s really good for me to know that people who aren’t Jewish are publicly speaking out against BHI bullshit. It restores a lot of hope for me.

So ok. I’m back on the “maybe I’ll watch in a little bit when I’m less raw” train. I also love music, even though I’m certainly not up to date on it. So I’m intrigued to know more about the musical landscape of what’s going on.

Thanks again!

[insanefastone]

it was a lot easier to ask for things for christmas when i was younger. i was five, so if i was shown a toy i probably would say i wanted it. being a five year old, i mostly cared about the receiving part - a stuffed dog, a bucket of tiny horses, a playmobil train, didn’t really matter, it was mine now. a few years later pokemon began airing on tv and anything with pikachu on it was guaranteed to be a hit. im unsure of the occasion but i remember being given literal math practice books at some point and loving doing my additions and multiplications because they were pokemon themed. it was truly so, so easy.

then i got a little older and my desires started to get a little more complex. pikachus were still pretty cool and all but i wasnt happy with just any toy anymore: i cared about my cartoons and the things i saw in commercials, and so i would ask for those things. i knew about super soakers, and nerf guns, and moon shoes, and sock ‘em boppers, but i also knew the difference between, say, a stuffed animal of a brown dog and one of scooby doo. i knew disappointment, too, because i could tell when i was handed something in lieu of the other. at the time i couldnt have possibly understood why the substitutions got made, but i could see when it happened.

then i got a little older and developed hobbies and preferences. i had opinions on things, i had feelings, and i started to learn how to express these ideas. i could articulate why one thing could not be a substitute for another, and how i felt when it was handed to me anyway, and also what i thought about being given a great many things i did not ask for instead of those that i did. i became frustrated with clothes and socks and other such things because i knew that when i needed them we could go get them. they didnt feel special or thoughtful. they seemed like an excuse to have one more box to hand me, one more thing to play coy about, one more thing to ooh and aah at and take photos of when i eventually held it up. and so the ideals of gift-giving began to erode.

of course, i hadnt quite learned of the whys. they were specifically kept from me, and from my sisters, so we could play family (as it were). theyre pretty evident now, knowing what i know as i type this, but at the time things kind of just. crumbled away. there were some nice surprises where the spirit felt alive and real, like the year we received ipod nanos. (3rd gen, i think? they were skinny but still had a touch wheel with the button in the center.) i remember crying incoherently as i held mine, and i also remember my entire family being stunned and confused (they clearly hadnt expected that reaction either). i think i was simply overwhelmed to have been given such a nice thing after coming to expect disappointment.

there was also the year we were given the gamecube, and our game boy advance sps, but they didnt feel as special because we knew it was mostly since an older cousin had given us her super nintendo and our parents wanted us to entertain ourselves. it actually led to a lot of frustration that our parents didnt attempt to understand, because you cannot do ‘similar to’ with a video game unless you actually bother to find out what it is. which really started to highlight what felt weird about the gift-giving all those years: whose thoughts, exactly, have gone into this ‘thoughtful’ gift?

it’s a hard question to answer, and really depends on who you are talking to. this being tumblr, i can assume someone reading is familiar with ‘i see a cool bug/rock/blorbo’ -> ‘i send it to my cool bug/rock/blorbo friend’. it’s kind of ingrained in the culture. but we also (largely) understand that theres variance and specialty within these categories, that not all blorbos are the same, and that most blorbos are very different, actually, to the point where people debate what constitutes an ‘actual’ representation of the ones they care about. but theres also people that dont care that deeply and are mostly only there because their friend is, or because they like the character’s design, or any number of other reasons, and knowing where to meet them on their interest kind of requires knowing more than just ‘oh they like this’.

and so we get disconnects, and misunderstandings, and disappointment, and frustration. and we get not knowing why one thing is ok but another isnt, or why you can interchange two things but this third one is unacceptable, it seems like theres no way of knowing but could you have known? was this there all along? did i skip i question or, more importantly, pass on an answer i was given? and so i think upon such things. and i see where things could have diverged, or evidence thereof. and i consider that to give and receive not only requires two, but also a connection to have been made. ‘oh!’ you might say, ‘that mug has a pikachu and some snowflakes on it! i always send something with a pikachu, this will be that this year!’ and you mail it and it sits on my shelf, unused. collecting dust. i dont even use it to store anything.

and so i began seeing what the thoughts were. i saw that i was given twelve balls of yarn in six different colors because theyre fun and aesthetically pleasing, but the thought did not contain ‘this is not enough of an individual color to make anything larger than hat and scarf’. i saw i was given a shirt that says ‘# serf life’ on it because it was meant as a family joke and i do think it is a funny shirt to wear, but the thought did not contain how i felt about what the joke references at the time it became a ‘joke’. i saw i was given some books i had asked for by title and volume number because i have been trying to get the entire out-of-print series, but the thought did not contain ‘i wonder why candy only ever asks for these specific books’. over several years i saw i was given many books that are similar to but not within the series (or even genre) i was obsessed with because they get sorted together as ‘humorous coffee table nonfiction’ at bookstores, but the thought did not contain what i liked about that series (trivia compilations), why i stopped reading that series (poorly verified), or why i had nothing to say about most of the previously gifted books.

and it goes on. years of this. we even do a grand show of sharing our christmas lists with each other, and fussing about getting under one roof to share them, and making a whole ceremony (complete with photographs) of opening everything, and sharing ‘oh i was at this place and thought of you when i saw it’, and it goes round and round and round and i am always just sitting there wondering if the next thing thats handed to me will actually have me in mind or it will simply be ‘thoughtful’.

i just dont know what to ask for christmas anymore.

[asingleflyingfuck]

Random BSD Headcanons bc I have thoughts and don’t feel like sorting them

ALL SFW & NO TW/CWs

I’m probably not going to elaborate in this post but probably in another or let me know if there are specific ones you want me to elaborate on

I’m starting with my trans headcanons bc of a tiktok and it’s all that’s been on my mind

Transfem Sigma is great and I love it but I raise you

Intersex Sigma

Thank you @/skyj80 on tiktok for this one

Also from video: Transmasc Kunikida

He gives off strong he/they energy

You know who else gives off he/they energy?

POE

Also enby Ranpo

Specifically amab

Will probably elaborate on that one at some point

Also transfem Lucy and Kouyou

I LOVE TRANSFEM KOUYOU

ALSO TRANSMASC FUKUZAWA

GIVE ME MORE OLDER TRANS CHARACTERS PLEASE

Transmasc Chuuya has my heart

Also genderfluid Dazai

Wouldn’t give a fuck about pronouns

I know I said I wouldn’t elaborate but I have to for one part of this

It’s like kind of related but could also not be

Dazai in dresses but can’t wear heels for shit

He’s like a baby deer trying to walk

Y’all see how he’s built

Chuuya on the other hand

Walks like a fucking pro

Moving on

AUTISM

I have it so they must have it

Kunikida (obvi)

Ranpo and Poe (tism4tism but opposite parts of the spectrum)

Speaking of Ranpo

I think Fukuzawa is allistic OR undiagnosed

Super supportive tho and does tons of research and asking Ranpo questions and for his opinion on things

Akutagawa but he masks

Like this man masks so fucking hard

Def elaborating later

Speaking of masking

Dazai

Will also be elaborating

Oda

Probably won’t elaborate

Louisa. May. Alcott.

I cant think of any others rn but if I do they’ll be in an elaborated post

Moving on once again to just some general headcanons

Tecchou has ageusia aka loss of taste

You can’t tell me that man tastes the food combos he makes

Doesn’t explain the way he eats hard boiled eggs tho

Dazai has alexithymia

And chronic pain after Meursault

ALSO uses some sort of mobility aid and is really fucking stubborn about it

Chuuya has chronic pain from using corruption

Kunikida has chronic pain in his hands after getting them back

(psst. can you tell I have chronic pain?)

Fukuzawa acts like a dad to everyone but mainly in small ways

Hirotsu is like a dad to Black Lizard

MORI CAN SUCK MY FUCKING DICK THAT MAN IS NO FATHER FIGURE TO ANYONE

Fukuzawa feeds the local stray cats

They’ll follow him around parts of the city if he’s nearby

Dazai sometimes feeds the cats with him but they don’t tend to follow him

Kunikida helps with ADA budgeting

He also gives math lessons to Kenji & Kyouka

He’ll tutor anyone who needs help, mainly Atsushi

Speaking of Atsushi

I think he likes Pokémon

Please don’t ask me to elaborate for I simply cannot give an explanation of any sort

Ranpo has 2 snack drawers in his desk

One that anyone can take out of with his permission (mainly Kenji, Kyouka, Atsushi, & Yosano. Fukuzawa can as well he just doesn’t)

The second is for him and him only

Dazai knows a shit ton of languages bc he got bored one day and decided to learn

Going off of this, Chuuya knows French so Dazai never bothered to learn it & just had Chuuya translate if it ever came up

Kyouka loves Sanrio & has assigned everyone in the agency a character

She also has everyone’s crepe orders memorized

Dazai & Ranpo do puzzle races to see who can complete them the fastest

Dazai & Junichiro teach Kenji, Atsushi, & Kyouka their favorite video games

That’s all for now bc it’s like 2am and I can’t think of anymore rn. Tho I’ll probably post another one like this when I do think of more.

I will most likely elaborate on the autistic headcanons and fukudad but let me know if there are any others I should elaborate on!!

[velvetvexations]

I'm genuinely trying to not just be constantly negative and starting shit and arguing with people. I feel like even the people I mostly agree with are getting put off by it if they haven't already. I'm very self-conscious about my opinions and how much I talk on a given subject, and I know I do have issues that make my expressed opinions more pointed than necessary.

But like, me jokingly comparing the Bad Kids to the protagonists of 8-Bit Theater is interesting, because I love 8-Bit Theater to death, it's an extremely important work to me, it hurts a lot that I didn't hear about the scriptbook Kickstarter until it was over and I'll always be looking for a pre-owned copy for the rest of my life.

Like, I think the issue isn't that I have a problem with the Bad Kids acting so awfully. That's okay, especially in a comedy. Comedic sociopathy is a totally fine trope and I enjoy it on a regular basis. The issue that gets me is that it's such a hard counter to not only D20's usual tone, but also the way the DM, the players, the narrative itself, and most of all the fandom treat them and their actions.

That's why I soured on Kristen specifically so hard and so fast, because before JY I just thought she was like, A Lot, but not really a big deal and had some good, solid moments in SY (I did not like FY in general for completely unrelated reasons, sadly). But with JY, it was like, right out the gate she's ignoring Cassandra literally half to death, and I wonder if that would have seriously bothered me as much as it did if the fandom wasn't determined to completely excuse her for it in spite of the fact that it was clearly meant to be a personal character flaw and not just "unfortunately mental illness is happening to her".

Even then I was like, hey, I watched those promo videos, this is obviously something that's been planned ahead and will be dealt with. I'm very far from the first person to point out that we're now entering the season finale and chaos has not yet stopped being cute. Partially that in particular may have been hamstrung by the dice rebellion in the mall fight, with the original plan having been for Cassandra to not get separated from Kristen so fast and subsequently unable to have them actively work on their relationship and Kristen's commitment to her. Kristen running for president also likely threw a monkey wrench into decutifying chaos, because there was never any chance of Ally going about that by having Kristen put on a slick suit and say "I need to take this seriously and research school governance and formulate a policy I'll elaborate on in a debate with Kipperlilly". The race for president could only possibly be a bit the second it went to her instead of Riz, not because I don't think Ally could handle that kinna plot if they set their mind to it, Margret Encino would have killed it just as good as Riz, but because it's simply so far from who Kristen Applebees is as a character.

So anyway, I sat there watching this season waiting for Kristen to grow up because I had faith that was going to happen. But lest you think I just hate Kristen and possibly also Ally, these last few weeks they've been the least of the issue.

As hilarious as it was I don't understand how in the good Lord's name we're supposed to care about Oisin "making Adaine think she liked him" by acting a little flustered around her when Fig literally started catfishing Ruben on the first day of school ages before they had any in-character reasons to suspect the Rat Grinders of anything, all so she could...no, really, why the fuck did she do that? What was the impetus for that decision? I cannot emphasize enough how little motivation is given for this course of action:

There is nothing to it except that Emily correctly pegged he'd be an antagonist later. It's like the detectives on Law & Order arresting someone because they recognized the special guest star.

And like, other people, I get it, other people who don't like the direction JY has taken can shrug it off more easily than I can, there are a million reasons to not treat this like the end of the world, but unfortunately my autism gets me stuck on shit and I just cannot reconcile things like this. I cannot take the show seriously and care about the protagonists as people and share joy in their triumphs and sorrow in their failures and ignore something as blatantly breaking the logic as stuff like this.

I'll grant you, okay, Adaine was understandably hurt but neither the Bad Kids nor the Intrepid Heroes were really like "oh now we have to really fucking ruin Oisin for being the worst person alive". The fandom treated it like he Frozen'd her but fandoms are dumb and should not dictate as much of my opinion as they do, I simply cannot fathom the kind of person who'll cry over the deep and traumatic emotional damage Oisin caused Adaine with his missed beer pong shots but doesn't think Fig should be in jail.

That's also not the end of it, though. I could keep going on just about Fig specifically and the fact that she is at least sex crimes-adjacent, not to mention Emily's infantilization of a very autistic-coded character, but I'm trying very hard to not just come off as being like the people who have harassed Emily and Ally over their roleplaying choices in the past. As I keep stressing, I like both of them and especially Emily because I've been a CollegeHumor fan longer than some D20 fans have been alive. I think I actually like Fig more accepting that she kinna canonically sucks and taking her as more a Complicated Woman than someone whose actions I need to reconcile with the expectation of her being better than that, although I know none of it will ever actually be addressed.

So yeah, all the Bad Kids have been fucking weird this season in ways they weren't in SY. Adaine's intense and completely inexplicable loathing of Kipperlilly was funny at first and then increasingly uncomfortable as it fed into the fans wanting to crucify her. Gorgug going full bully was weird but also like, a one line bit, but whatever. Riz stealing Kipperlilly's file was gross and would or SHOULD deeply hurt Jawbone if he ever found out, and you can say they had to do this horribly unethical action in the name of homeland security or whatever, I accept that there were extenuating circumstances, but it's given no thought whatsoever and absolutely no regard is given to the fact that she was trying to address her issues with the closest mental health professional available who Brennan goes out of his way to note is failing her by overcorrecting for his bias towards the BKs.

But as much as I genuinely believe Brennan has been planting seeds the Rat Grinders could be reached, he's not been great here either and like Mice & Murder these things are more on him than any of the players because he's the director here. Like, I'm embarrassed I got snippy with someone who guessed ahead of time that Kipperlilly desecrated the rogue teacher's grave, but nonetheless think it was a weird conclusion to reach and that it's just even more bizarre that it ended up being "right", except the way it's described doesn't even make sense.

Like, the goal was "find the rogue teacher", right? And the rogue teacher is dead. So to me, it certainly seems like bringing a back hoe to the graveyard is one hundred percent the right move! But even if we accept the apparent canonical intent that was Kipperlilly threatening to merely destroy the grave as an act of vandalism rather than retrieve the body, it's like...so what? Literally who cares? As if the Bad Kids or any other adventuring party wouldn't dig up a dead body to cast Speak with Dead or something, as if the foundational Dungeons & Dragons formula wasn't raiding tombs like 19th-century colonial archeologists? And why would any of that be necessary anyway, when Riz found Eugenia by just...walking up to the grave?

But regardless, that, you might say, is a matter of the Rat Grinders being unfairly presented as evil and not the Bad Kids being unfairly presented as good. When it comes to Brennan's part in it, though, these are the same issue, because as the creator and director of every atom of the world outside the PCs, he's just so very willing to go with what the players start to expect. That's fine for a home game, but this is like, a television show that people pay money for, and that's an issue. He'll plant enough seeds of the Rat Grinders being better than they're treated that a chunk of the audience will notice and think the players are being weird about them, but he won't push it further than that and instead just rolls with the players being weird because his first priority is their enjoyment.

Again, fine in a home game, obviously. But it creates this divide between the players and the audience because the world has been crafted in such a way that when the players being weird is noticed it's like, why are they being rewarded for that? Why are they getting zero pushback? Brennan and I both heavily, heavily value collaborative storytelling for good reason, it's why I love TTRPGs and actual plays, but if this were a story told by a single person you could either have the protagonists pick up on those hints, have it be a point that they didn't pick up on them, or just not even include them in the first place.

One of the reasons I really, really like Aabria's DMing, as I've said recently, is that she truly remains firm in her worldbuilding and is not shy about providing realistic consequences or acknowledging PC behavior is dissonant with what's going on around them. And it just makes it super ironic that Kipperlilly's whole deal is correctly identifying the fact that the world is warped around the Bad Kids, and in this season more than ever the DM is like, fully changing reality to accommodate them and giving them plot resolutions on a silver platter, to the point of letting them just full-on take back spells because the target turned out to not be there, which is pretty far beyond the quibble about the climactic move in Calamity's final boss fight.

It's not that I think D20 is 'rigged' exactly, because it's not really a game, or at least it's not really Dungeons & Dragons. This was a revelation I had when I watched Critical Role other than Calamity for the first time and was amazed by how they'd stand around after a battle looting bodies for random magic items. D20 isn't a sandbox TTRPG, it's a very on-rails shooting gallery with roughly as much choice in the narrative as a modern RPG video game, and it has to all wrap within a certain amount of sessions. That's fine, but occasionally it can feel deceptive when we pretend there's much chance of things going radically wrong. One of the reasons I liked the first half of Crown of Candy and all of The Ravening War so much is because they're the only times where failure has really, truly been on the table in an Intrepid Heroes season, but I still liked most of the other Intrepid Hero seasons nonetheless.

This season, I just, I dunno man. I don't believe Ice Feast just accidentally wah wah wah had the effect of completely neutralizing the primary threat of the final boss fight. And Blimeygate, like, I thought it was mostly a fun moment, but it also felt like the most exaggerated-for-marketing-purposes the "got'em!" bits have ever been.

But despite all that, I am still currently capable of enjoying the next season. I'm hoping next week does not make things dramatically worse.

[musicalmoritz]

Idk if you were around during the pitchfork Tsukasa days where even having an au where Tsukasa didn’t get possessed by the entity and therefore was just a normal chaotic piece of shit (so first year him since we know in first year, he was literally just a little asshole) was branded to get you like, immediately persecuted. People made call out threads just cause you shipped Tsukasa with someone his age and told other people they deserved to be in a mental hospital or told to kys because they thought Tsukasa had nuance and when the possession theory was TRUE? People still badgered and hurt others to the point that some people are like, terrified of even admitting they like Tsukasa 😭. I remember being driven away from people my age in the fandom and getting dragged into shit circles because the fandom was like “you ship Tsukasa? You’re an abuse apologist!”

I was not around for those days, I’ve only been in the fandom for about a year but omg that sounds rough😭 I can relate tho, before I got into TBHK I was hyperfixated on Fruits Basket- specifically Shigure, Akito, and their relationship, and let me tell you…oof it was a struggle. Luckily I was able to stay in my own little fandom corner with other Akigure lovers but I had to block ppl every time I looked up edits for them on TikTok. I’m also a Hisoka fan so there’s that

Tbh it bothers me how fandoms moralize liking certain characters. I watched a video essay a few months ago on the Dahmer Netflix series and how people romanticize serial killers, and someone in the comments brought up The Joker as a comparison. Now I’ll be honest, The Joker is one of my least favorite characters ever, but he’s still a fictional character. The fact that it would even cross someone’s mind to put him in the same category as a real life rapist, cannibal, and murder, is genuinely so disturbing to me. This might sound dramatic but I was kinda messed up abt it for a while, it made me realize that this line of thinking with fiction can severely alter people’s empathy

Anyways, I’m sorry you had to deal with that. Fandoms are not very rational when it comes to these subjects and they’re very subject to groupthink. You hear the exact same argument reused to explain why Tsukasa shouldn’t be shipped because most of those people aren’t coming up with that opinion on their own, they’re copying what others have said. That’s why I headcanon him as aroace, I can’t picture him liking anyone romantically but I didn’t want to align myself with the rest of the fandom by saying he would automatically be a domestic abuser no matter who he’s with

He’s also a really cool character and tbh I feel like people are missing out by hating him on sight. So many fans seem baffled at the thought of anyone having positive feelings towards him. He’s not crazy high on my character ranking but I still love him dearly, I’m happy so many people have been asking about him today because it gives me a chance to defend my son (well, not defend his actions but yk, defend him from the fandom police)

[sendmyresignation]

if you wanna indulge me, id love to hear your opinions on sing (all of mine are detractory which i know isnt the complete view of the song)

omg id love too!! sorry this took me a sec to formulate post-work haha. i know we don't agree about sing but honestly that's the beauty of music opinions- I feel like it becomes easier to define what I like about things when faced with legit measured criticism anyway

for me, i want to start with the structure and instrumental since it's usually not mentioned (most of the criticisms of sing are exclusively lyrical or intention-focused). it's so cool. and evocative. and full of tension!! my favorite use of synth on danger days, plus the keys and the drums (man i love the dd studio musician drums lmao), really emphasizes sing as a suspended moment both in the album (necessary bridge, tonally, between bulletproof and planetary imo) and in the track itself- its alllll building up to that bridge and final chorus. but there's all these little pieces- the backing vocals, there's so many hidden guitar parts that riff just under all the noise, that opening like, tambourine. sorry for not having a quote on hand but Ray's said he really loved writing sing and it's so totally obvious to me. especially live- part of the reason I was soooooo excited for sing swarm tour edition is that even during dd ray was like absolutely shredding for sing after the bridge. and everytime time it's so good. part of the reason the lyrics don't bother me is sing could stand alone instrumentally and I'd still want to listen to it. (sing also reminds me of Ray's solo music- the sentiment is more significant that the lyrics and the music is itself a vehicle for storytelling)

also though, i think there's a lot of intention with sing (it's up to the listener to determine if that paid off obv) but within the context of dd the record as a pirate radio station, sing has always read as a trojan horse song. making it a single too, like once a song takes on a life of its own outside the record there's new meaning and circumstance. so both within and outside the killjoy universe sing is a vehicle for not just the bridge but the overall sentiment of dd (how fucking excited was gerard when glenn beck took the glee bait) like, yes, i do agree they could've benefited from another pass over the lyrics (i will always defend keeping "sing it till your nuts" bc its sounds like sing it to your nuts though) but I don't personally get the criticism that sing isn't "specific enough" about what exactly it's against or is too optimistic about "sing it for the world"-- i think there are songs on the album (notably planetary right after it!) which do that job just fine. dd is gerard in arguably top lyrical form so theres a lot of meat in the rest of the record like. sing it for the world is a purposely simplistic art is the weapon. like those are the same sentiments rendered very differently!

also like. i do think there was a very directed target at the younger part of their fan base here (girl/boy) which is sweet. to me. like i did hear sing first when i was a young teen (one of the few dd songs i was familiar with) and it did feel huge and empowering at that moment. my chem are their best when they are navigating the dualities of their specific fame, which includes simultaneously making very serious, adult rock music which is concerned with violence death grief and sex, as well as being a role model for younger people and taking them seriously and neither of these are in rhetorical conflict with each other. so like whatever sing is a little juvenile. but it's still filled with passion! taken as a legitimate project with a creative instrumental and a narratively-driven music video. I like that aspect, it works for me. I'll never call it my favorite my chem song but its certainly not the worst when you add in the bridge (i wanted to prove my point without the bridge but like. damn!! it's a good bridge!!!). that's my spiel.