#i'm just frustrated and sad

[suffersinfandom]

I feel for the Izzy fans, I really do. It sucks to have your favorite character killed off, especially when you feel like their death serves no narrative purpose. It genuinely hurts to lose a character that you identify closely with, and it's okay to be sad and grieve. The character might not be real, but the grief is. Let people mourn. Don't be rude to the ones who are just being sad in their little corners of the internet, yeah?

That said.

Some of the stuff I've seen in the OFMD fandom today? Worst shit I've seen in a fandom that I love and care about, and grief is no excuse. I know I'm a no one in this fandom and I'm mostly typing into a void, but I've got to get some things out:

The show doesn't deserve to be canceled. None of the creators, producers, or writers deserve to be canceled. Nothing queerphobic, homophobic, or ableist happened.

Izzy's death was not an insult or a cruelty or a targeted attack.

David Jenkins and the rest of the writers did not gaslight and abuse anyone (yeah, those are take I've seen).

It wasn't "objectively" a cheap or meaningless or badly-written death. You can hate it and that's okay, but that's still subjective!

Izzy was not the main character or the "heart" of the show. The heart of the show -- the show itself -- is Ed and Stede's relationship. We have been told as much.

"Ed hasn't faced any consequences for his actions." He has though? He didn't gaslight girlboss his way back into everyone's hearts. Izzy is not Ed's hapless and helpless victim. He was almost beaten to death and ran around in a penitence onesie with a catbell on; I think those were consequences.

"How do you feel when gay characters are randomly killed off to help a straight couple progress their narrative? Not good, huh? That's how disabled fans feel." It's okay to feel that way, but don't make any sweeping assumptions about disabled fans. I'm disabled and I'm gonna say that's not what happened here.

"How dare you kill off this character who's abused, flawed, suicidal, disabled, and queer!" Ed is still right over there, yeah? Check, check, check, check, and check. (Little note: I've seen a lot of "he's not disabled!" Even if you don't buy the kneebrace ((Ed Teach with bad joints is so important to me, shhh)), what about invisible disabilities? What about mental health issues? I'm not here to diagnose a fictional character, but it's clear to me that Ed has mental health problems that dramatically impact his life.)

"It's sick that Izzy died in the arms of his abuser apologizing to him." I don't even know where to start with this one, but I get the feeling that some parts of the fandom only consider physical abuse valid. Mental, verbal, and emotional abuse are pretty fucking damaging and I think it's sick that some folks think they aren't actually abuse.

People who enjoyed the last episode of season two aren't media illiterate. People who love Gentlebeard aren't abusive narcissists.

I just.

I really, truly feel for Izzy fans for I too have lost a blorbo. I'm giving a huge hug to the Izzy enjoyers who aren't out there making threats and calling everyone abusers and being outright hostile to anyone who had the nerve to enjoy this season. Like, I genuinely hope you guys are doing okay, and if you need an ear, I'm game.

[pine-needle-shuffle]

i think my soul hurts a little bit

[kuuhaiyu]

i really can't emphasize how heartbreaking it is that the recent harassment campaign against @/90-ghost (among others; see: 1, 2, 3) has led to well-meaning people telling others not to listen to him. he is one of the most visible survivors of the genocide here on tumblr. his entire journey of escape is so well documented! and yet, it only took a few people confidently pointing fingers to create an entire witch hunt accusing him and other palestinians of being disreputable scammers and liars.

i can't help but feel like the reason why people were SO eager to believe those accusations, is because it was uncomfortable to see posts from palestinians every day asking for our time, attention, money, and support; so when someone presented the perfect excuse to ignore all those posts and asks while also taking the high ground, people just LEAPED onto it. they wanted to believe it, because it would be more comfortable.

honestly, i understand feeling overwhelmed by bad news, by the number of asks and messages in your inbox, and so on and so forth. i understand needing to set boundaries for yourself so you don't get burned out. i think this is really when you have to have a set of principles to fall back on, even when you're tired, uncomfortable, angry, and/or sad. so here's the one i suggest, which has been working for me best: don't make your discomfort with this situation into someone else's problem, and for god's sake don't make it a public problem.

if you hate seeing fundraiser posts or news about gaza, i can't emphasize this enough, JUST MOVE ON. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND SCROLL PAST! all you have to do is absolutely nothing. which is what you were doing anyway, so it shouldn't be hard. if you don't have the heart to read, or reblog, or share, or donate, or support in other ways, at the very least, don't obstruct the efforts of people who ARE trying to make a difference. this is, quite literally, the least you can do.

[buttercupshands]

MHA didn't create some miracle way of helping others. It was never promised to be this way. And when it came to villains...

Spoilers for manga all the way to chapter 423.

The only way to get anything in life in MHA was to be born "normal" like everyone else and that way of thinking never left Izuku with Toga getting the same treatment she did before from everyone from her family to her "normal" classmates. It was Ochako who helped Toga even if just a little by lifting the weight of all the feelings that Toga had.

She couldn't save Toga the way one could save a civilian by saving them from harm. If it worked that way Dabi would've saved Toga even before Ochako could apologize for failing to notice Toga. She was so lazer focused on saving everyone else, that she was just another villain to stop, not a human.

Even if by the end of it Ochako helped Toga to deal with her grief, acceptance as it was wasn't something possible when a quirk makes you want to drink someone's blood from jealousy.

We got a bittersweet ending with Toga, in which she probably died from blood loss just like her double did in MVA. If it wasn't for Twice she would've died back then.

Giving away her blood for Ochako wasn't a redemption or a way to save Toga in the end, more as it was her being true to herself until the very end.

Just like Twice chose to stay with the League even if Hawks offered him a way to survive that battle. He refused and died protecting his friends who accepted him instead of choosing to betray them and accept Hawks' offer.

After Twice's death... It was a matter of time that more 'active' LoV members would join him as well. As sad as it is, we now can return to Izuku.

Who, after his time OFA-AFO quirk space, now wanted to help a "crying boy" he saw in Tenko just as before with Katsuki in chapter 1. He didn't forgive Tomura and didn't excuse the way he chose to solve his problems.

It didn't mean that Tomura would survive in their battle, even if Izuku didn't see killing others as a way to solve problems. He didn't understand Tomura, but he still wanted to try, and try he did.

The rest of this post was nothing more than a contextual prologue to understand that it's not the first time a hero failed to save a villain and in Twice's case we know that he died and his death was the reason Toga started thinking about her own possible death and Dabi finally revealed himself as Toya.

The goal of saving a "crying boy" never was an end-goal for Izuku in the Final arc, since helping Tomura deal with his feelings just left him hollow with a goal that clashed with Izuku's. As being a hero for villains meant destroying the world for them to help them live freely.

But that was before AFO resurfaced.

Sadly after that Tomura who was talking about making his own choices for a while now stopped doing that. Even if he still had a goal of helping villains and only villains, Tomura was almost gone. And his goals were now unreachable.

Izuku helped Nana who in turn kept Tomura from fading away entirely. In MHA there were countless situations where Izuku's help affected people by helping a different person to keep hope, All-Might being the first one and Nana being the last one at the moment.

Hollow after Izuku helped him to get rid of his hatred Tomura could do the only thing he did - accept the situation as it was.

Accepting AFO as his Sensei, accepting Stain's ideals and Overhaul's deal was the way he solved his problems. Just like Izuku had a problem of understanding something outside of his norm, Tomura was accepting too many things, which lead to his downfall after accepting AFO's quirk.

Just like Twice could've given up everything that he had for his friends so did Tomura.

With Izuku helping as much as he could let Tomura to finally rest as he wasn't really living ever since waking up in the hospital. With his body now affected by AFO's wishes instead of his own until the end.

In a way Izuku didn't succeed in his wish for Tomura to stop ever since PLF war arc. As he "kept fighting to destroy" no matter how hard Izuku tried to stop him.

The only thing he succeeded in was changing Tomura's mind about himself, instead of viewing himself as a monster he accepted that he was a human just like Izuku said. A "crying boy" who couldn't really destroy Izuku's hands in the end.

For a group of Villains who weren't supposed to get profiles of their own at the start of the series, League is slowly fading as the most memorable group that there was in MHA, getting backstories, their own Villain themed arc all the while being as human as anyone else.

As sad as their story is they were not "unlucky", they didn't need a happy false ending where they would need to change to be normal - they chose to live this way and they lived it to it's fullest.

[fandomunsexyman]

SVSSS is a novel with a fandom.

[ID: A Scum Villain edit of the "missing the point" meme. A bullet arcs from velinxi art of child Shen Jiu kneeling while furiously glaring. The bullet says, "People are not entirely one thing or the other and holding them to these extremes ignores the complexities that come with their humanity." It arcs over the head of a person across from it, who ignores the bullet and exclaims: "Wow!! Shen Jiu's only crime was being mean and was wrongly hated!" End ID]

[hurtcomforted]

imagine that, in the first avenger, before pre-serum steve's training montage, we get a flashback with sarah rogers to explain his perseverance. imagine that when he goes to save bucky and after losing him, we get flashbacks to them as kids.

imagine that, in civil war, instead of (or along with if that's what it takes) more of tony's daddy issues we also get to see little steve with sarah to also understand him better.

imagine we get more of steve's backstory.

[fisheito]

collab #2 with @xenole i was given a chibi yakumo and i.. i...... turned it into thiS

[tearlessrain]

I'm so tired of performative social justice that doesn't actually do anything. stop worshiping the concept of a glorious revolution that will fix everything and make an actionable plan while you push for incremental local change. trump winning isn't going to kickstart some YA novel bullshit and save the day it will destroy us and kill any chance we had of stopping the genocide you're claiming to care about so much. just swallow your pride and fucking vote so we have a chance in hell to work toward a better world and achieve any degree of progress/harm reduction. for fucks sake.

[manasurge]

Just a bit of lore relevant vent art (with terrible proportions bc apparently I mess that up horribly when I'm tired ugh. Watch me regret posting this tomorrow. The head size is already driving me mad bc it's too big, and I can feel myself wanting to abort this mission already) of Mourynn just, lying down on top of one of those large elevated Pale Tree roots far above the Grove (and far away from everyone else), and during the time between the early years and before the Personal story. Caithe is gone (Destiny's Edge), Wynne is gone (bc well, y'know...), even Faolain is gone (bc of Caithe in DE), and she's just feeling miserable, lost, and alone. (Her hair is in between her sapling hair and the Zhaitan hair, so it's grown out a bit bc she's depressed, and she's meant to be in the new outfit she designed, but I'm in the process of redesigning it a bit, so I've made a few tentative changes for now. Her collar is now just an extension of her clavicle leaves which can be put up like a collar, or can be draped down over her shoulders or back)

[hacked-by-jake]

I'm sitting outside. It's slightly windy. Not much. Perfect amount for me. And it gives fresh and clear air. I have music. And my thoughts are circling about moonvale of course. So I just want to leave a couple of spontaneous words. Just letting out what I think and feel at the moment.

I'm sorry, Everbyte. I'm sorry for all the hate. And I'm sorry for the amount of people being disappointed in your work. Because, well, there's still this little sprikle of hope in me. Of hope and disbelief. I'm thinking about Duskwood and what you created with it. I'm thinking about all the love we felt through Duskwood. You could see the effort you put into it. We saw the improvements and amazing ideas. Good plots over and over again. New ideas every single time. The quality was already amazing, in my eyes. Sure, some little bugs here and there, but nothing huge. Nothing bothering.

But all this. All things we saw in Duskwood. It made us believe you care about the fans. It made us feel like you hear us, as you said once. It made us feel so happy because it looked as if you're really doing this game for us.

And this.. My brain refuses to believe you really just want our money. My brain refuses to believe that you did, what you did in Moonvale, on purpose. My brain wants to believe that you never meant to make us feel this way.

My brain wants to believe that it all made sense to you, and that there was nothing wrong with it, that it was harmless in your eyes. In your world.

And because my head wants to believe in the good, my heart hurts to see how much negativity you get. My heart hurts to see the hate. And the critism.

But sadly, even if it hurts, sadly it's necessary at the moment to share constructive feedback about it.

But even that must be incredibly stressful, because there are thousands, tens of thousands of people who are currently pointing their fingers at you. And that must be hard. Even horrible. Awful.

As I said, my brain refuses to believe all this only happened because you didn't care about your community and you only cared about and wanted our money. I still have hopes.

And I want to belive you had the same love for Moonvale as you had for Duskwood. If I imagine.. You let your new baby out into the world with the hope of making people happy... And as answers there's nothing but negativity in any way. I have no idea how this must be. And I'm incredibly sorry for it.

And even if I'm completely wrong. Even if you really just wanted money, even then I still feel bad for you about the amount of people looking at you. Even then, although you would deserve it in this case, even then I would still feel bad for you. Empathy is an interesting thing. And parasocial "relationships" as well.

We see what we want to see. But I'm sure, in Duskwood, during Duskwood, we saw who you really are. Because there was no hint of what we saw in Moonvale. How could you fake what we saw in Duskwood?

I wish it wouldn't be the case. But you deserve critism for it. Normal criticism, of course. No hate or insultings. But feedback is needed. In our eyes.

And I just hope that there will be a solution. I hope the situation will improve. I hope so, so much.

Duskwood saved me in so many ways. And it's the truth. Not just a saying or anything. It did. And it gave me so much.

Maybe we completely got everything wrong. Maybe we understood some things wrong.

I just hope that a lot of criticism will be noticed and reflected and that you will find a solution. Because I simply think.. I'm sure we all want to play Moonvale. We all want another amazing game from you. Because Duskwood was an incredible game. A game we loved. And we also want to love Moonvale.

In my eyes, there's so much potential. And I really hope in the next episodes we will see more of it. And less worrying about money.

Of course it's your game. Do whatever you want. And if that's the path you want to take, go for it.

But I really want to say, you have an amazing Community behind you. And if there will be improvements and some changes, I'm sure we all will still be by your side. And we all will support you. This time, gladly. And not because we had to in order to play.

I'm sad. I'm desperate. I'm confused and overwhelmed. And..

I'm sorry.

For everyone. For Everbyte. And for all of us.

I'm sorry about this situation...

[goblin-king-jay]

"If this book should ever reach Mina before I do, let it bring my good-bye. Here comes the coach!"

LOSING IT over how foreboding and morbid this sentence is followed by the cheerful energy of "Here comes the coach! ^_^" I'm dying

[srtruth]

I still don't know how to improve the quality of my illustrations ksksksks

[lixenn]

OCtober 2024 day 18: Swap

Swapping Dan and Dave's sense of style 🫡 Have a Chief that actually puts an effort in his appearance.

Btw I also swapped the tattoo placement, the vine is actually on his foot (at least I have it there for now I might change placement in the future, Dan's ink isn't fully established yet) but for this design I wanted it somewhere visible. It's supposed to imitate a choker like thing that I was too lazy to draw lmao. Otherwise his hair is actually supposed to be black with purple highlights but it kinda... turned fully purple in my rendering so he just went full on Dave 👍

[a-lonely-dunedain]

ok question! related to this post by @gwynbleiddyn that I see resonated with the folks here on lotro tumblr:

the devs have given you permission to add 1 (one) quest of your design into the game, specifically doing something fun/low-stakes with one or more Rangers post-war. What are you doing and with which Ranger(s)?

I'll go first: (under the cut bc it got longer than intended)

Corunir has been enlisted to help do repairs in the lower circles of Minas Tirith. And by "enlisted" I mean "Corunir Does Not Know How to Take A Break and needs to be constantly helping people, so he showed up wouldn't leave until the foreman gave him something to do"

Now, as this quest would have to be located in Minas Tirith Midsummer, the foreman is not particularly comfortable saddling this war-hero with busywork when he should be celebrating the end of the war he helped bring about! nevermind that that's what literally every other quest in midsummer is making the PC do shh don't worry about it

ANYWAY, he's got a plan, but he needs your help with it. Around dusk, he wants you to tell Corunir that there's some repairs that need done on the top of the wall at east side of the 2rd circle, which coincidentally just so happens to be where the best view of the fireworks they're setting off at the gates is. Also be sure to bring along this plate of snacks and some comfy pillows to sit on.

so when Corunir gets up there he's like "that's weird, I don't see any damage up here-" and then he sees the fireworks starting to go off, that you brought snacks, and puts two and two together and is like "oh darn, it looks like I've been tricked into watching a fireworks show, you devious trickster you (affectionate)"

so you guys get to hang out and watch the fireworks for a bit, and afterwards Corunir laughs at the fact that you literally had to trick him into relaxing and having a good time. Perhaps you have a point, he should allow himself some time to actually enjoy the peace they fought so hard for. He recalls Radanir had proposed the Rangers should do a pub-crawl later, and now thinks he should take him up on the offer. (and, of course, the PC should be allowed to join in, but alas I'm only allowed to add One quest as per my own rules lol)

[deoidesign]

.

[here-there-be-fics]

I'm still so sad but now also quite frustrated verging on angry. What are they going to do now, circle back to the start of another relationship hunt?!

They'll have a scene of him baking with Jee, obsessively cooking in another and then what Eddie is finding his joy and Buck is going back to 1.0 and they do a rehash of the bachelor party scene or something where Buck makes out with a girl and then a boy, and maybe another boy for good measure. These are grown men in their 30s but can't get their shit together once again. It'll be done in half an episode because nothing is given enough actual scene time for people to care or fully grasp, which is what is happening this season for all the stories. Then the firefam are worried for half a scene and the other half is Bobby or Hen providing him with sage advice about how only he can find the answer and then it's dropped entirely after we watch buck stare wistfully at the roof or something.

Then 8b he's lamenting that he wants to find love and to settle down while he watches Maddie have her baby in 2.5 episodes time. By the end of season 8 he's dating someone new, most likely a woman to make sure we are switching out genders enough and then they leave again so that Buck can start the cycle again in Season 9 if it even gets renewed. 'See you around, Buck'.

Everything is so rushed or dropped entirely this season, there is so much great potential in these stories and it just doesn't get utilised - Ortiz, Gerrard, Mara, budget cuts, Tommy. Even the Madney baby, they couldn't let it simmer for a hot minute to actually see them go through the decision making and trying to get pregnant etc?...nope Maddie's pregnant.

I don't feel it is worth watching at this stage, I was already not watching week by week from like season 5. I only came back when it looked like the switch to ABC might have actually shaken things up and they were adding new characters and actually progressing the main characters a but further. I feel as soon as we hear the show is cancelled we'll be lumped with a season 6 ending for Buck and probably Eddie as well that is unstaisfying. (I have a feeling we're going to be seeing the end of the show after next season, maybe a shortened 10th - I have a lot of reasons why but maybe that's for another post)

Sorry this is just a long rant but I feel my frustration is only ramping up and not dying down at all. I've never cared about shows like this before but this was important to me and so many other people and its just becoming a hodgepodge of ideas and scenes slapped together with no or badly done shock factor.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading.