#i'm an old man yelling at the cloud

[gatheredfates]

@tsukinoxiv Tumblr is NOT being kind in letting me tag you in the replies to the Compendium, but I wanted you to know I saw this comment! 🥺 Thank you for your lovely words, I hope you get a lot of use out of it!

[raylangivins]

i am Locked In.

[horreurscopes]

omfg found the catch with spotify audiobooks being included in your subscription and it is that at some point you are out of "listening hours" (unlike other audiobook apps, it does not tell you how many hours you've listened to and it definitely doesn't tell you how many hours you have left, or even how many audiobook hours total you have been granted unless you go looking for it)(it is 15 hours) and when you hit the 15 hour paywall they graciously inform you that you can "top off" your account and buy extra audiobook listening hours (no you are not warned this would happen. when you start listening to audiobooks it seems by all accounts that it is unlimited)

and i was like okay, fine, for convenience's sake i'll fall prey to their scheme this ONE time so i can finish this damn book, thinking it'd be like, $5, considering the monthly subscription is $10.99+tax. but

you have to pay THIRTEEN DOLLARS! FOR TEN HOURS OF AUDIOBOOK! that will get you one full airport paperback novel or self-help book. most of everything worth listening to is longer than that

for that price you're much better getting a scribd $11.99 subscription which although it comes with its own faults, it will at least let you listen to a handful of complete books before it starts getting choosy

or better yet, get your audiobooks from your local library app. libby my best friend libby and her girlfriend overdrive would never do this to me

[chronologicalimplosion]

Thinking a lot about pendulums in fan culture and the number of "he WOULD NOT say that no one here would ever go to therapy" posts I see these days.

Listen, I've clicked out of fics for "he would not fucking say that" so many times. I also find fics with too much sanitized care over a certain sanctioned kind of communication a little uncanny and offputting. (So I use the back button, it's okay to not like things, dldr, etc)

But I don't think it's fair to characterize the people writing these fics as puritanical thought police unless they're actually trying to say their fic is more virtuous.

Sometimes you see a situation so messy that you want to see what would have to change to get them through it. Sometimes it's an art form to carve through all of the muck a canon presents and ask how they, too, could be redeemed. Sometimes the author has just learned about these interpersonal concepts and it feels less cringe to practice using those tools and scripts with your blorbos. Sometimes you want to make him worse, and sometimes you *do just want to fix him*. Sometimes your life sucks and you want to read a story where everybody makes the right choices and communicates and it all works out!

Sometimes the self-indulgence is whump and sex and pissing on the poor communication skills in a safe playground. Sometimes it's Blorbos Practice Active Listening Together.

[michelleaneousart]

Hey everyone!

I'm still (somewhat) alive!! 🥳

I did this way back in 2020 actually, but it was meant for a zine (which, to my knowledge, never saw the light of day) and since I've been going through my computer and saw this, I figured I might as well post it now. At least it might fit the summer vibe (not where I'm at though, here it's only rain all day long...)

Hope you guys are all doing well x

[yupitsmekat]

Random thought at 1am but if anyone is still in the Assassination Classroom fandom, wasn't it kind of fucked up how ppl kept showing Nagisa in feminine outfits despite him being as on the nose allegory for transness as possible. Or how Kaede was villified for being the "love interest", when her main story was about getting revenge? And that it both happened mostly for shipping?

[americankimchi]

god i wish they hadn't retconned maul's death. i get wanting to explore more of his character because he was, objectively, one of the coolest star wars characters to ever hit the big screen and didn't get much screentime prior to his death, but also his role was fulfilled perfectly within those constraints so i wasn't too upset by it.

but by retconning it and making it so he never died it's like. okay. what now? the whole point (well, to me, ymmv of course) of the theed generator fight was that it was the first ever fight between the jedi and the sith in thousands of years, and that in the end even though the jedi (obi-wan) won the fight, a jedi (qui-gon) and a sith (maul) still died. a master and an apprentice dying together to herald the start of a new age/the return of the sith. perfectly paralleling the way in rotj a master (palps) and an apprentice (anakin/vader) died together to herald the return of the jedi. in both instances, a father figure (qui-gon/vader) dies in the arms of their son (obi-wan/luke) as a sith (palps/maul) is cast down into the abyss to their deaths. (palps being alive in the ST and retconning his death in rotj is also annoying for this reason)

i mean i like maul. don't get me wrong. he's an incredibly compelling character and i enjoy seeing more of him... but there's always the thought hovering in my mind like "he should be dead though. he should 100% be dead. this wouldn't be happening if he was dead, but i honestly would rather it not if it meant that maul was dead."

like the tpm fight just doesn't hit the same knowing that canonically he's just. going to become a robot octopus at some point. (shoutout to palps becoming sith glados in the ST) it cheapens the moment for me. it was supposed to be a moment of triumph marred by the deep and soul-crushing loss of a loved one and it's just... not, anymore. or at least not to the same extent. AUGH i'm just. frustrated. wish star wars as a whole wasn't constantly reframing/retconning what's been established. just puts a bad taste in my mouth.

[beth-purcell]

The Ink Demonth: Regret

The consequences of one's actions are rarely affecting just themselves, so it's often a source of regret when the chaos happens, and your options are limited to just bearing witness to it...

Beth ranting and rambling ahead, so I'll put it under a cut so you can ignore, but this one has thoughts and feels regarding the fandom.

I got to admit that it's incredibly frustrating as a fan of this series to not only witness the tomfoolery of the Dev Team, but also the tomfoolery of the fan base who despite being given every opportunity to stop while their ahead and told point-blank the consequences of continuing with their goals, they seemed bound and determined to play chicken with companies that are well within their right to smite them and have done so multiple times before. And the bigger issue is that it won't just be the individual that gets affected when the consequences come around, and we all have to suffer, whether it be through harsher fan content policies, a change in what's considered canon, or just deciding that Bendy as an IP is not worth the monetary risk and scrap it all, among many other nasty possibilities.

And I also know that this problem is only going to get worse as newer games come out and the team keeps flip-flopping on what they want Bendy to be. Because I can lay money that if Bendy: The Cage does even the tiniest bit poorly, there will be such a pivot, you'd think we were at a dance studio instead of an animation one.

[kausijuoppo]

More undie experiments

[radiomurdeer]

I see people asking a lot about affiliates and if anyone wants to be affiliates and figured I'd just make a post. I know people use terms interchangably but they're not actually interchangable. The terms refer to specific things and I think a lot of people are new to the Tumblr rpc and just making guesses on how things work based on what they're seeing. There's also less rp helper blogs in general so some of this stuff fell out of common knowledge / people don't have the context on why the terms are such.

Mains: people you prioritize when doing replies. This is usually discussed between muns, and often is something that develops naturally. Sometimes they may be referenced in other replies or asks but not always.

Exclusive: I will only write that character with you. So it would be like me, an Alastor, only interacted with one Vox blog and did not interact with other Vox. As with mains, it's usually something discussed between muns and develops naturally.

Affiliates: a closed rp group. These are NOT mains but it's what people often get it mixed up with. Affiliates means that you are sharing your main verse with this group. That the events that happen on their blogs influence your own and vice versa. That these other blogs are INTEGRAL to your blog's main verse. That when you get an ask about a character, you will reply referencing the blog within the group. The term is from when there were two kinds of blogs in the rpc community, independent and affiliated. Affiliated blogs went down in popularity as Discord rose, since the groups just moved to servers instead. Generally to get on with an affiliated group you have to apply, and keep up a level of activity. There are often events for only that group, and they don't often allow duplicates.

Bonus:

Group verse: the independent's answer to affiliates. This may or may not be closed. An example of a closed verse would be the war on heaven one that I think cast-you-dxwn and hellsirenqueen are running. Single muse slots, by invitation only not everyone can participate. An example of an open one would be staticintone's RAM one. A group verse may or may not be the blog's main verse, and is usually only listed on their verses page and tagged with the verse tag when used.

Even if people don't quite know the reasoning for it, labeling people as affiliates when you mean mains tends to ostracize since the assumption is 'oh they they are already rping with my character, no point in interacting'. If that's your intent with affiliates, go for it. Otherwise maybe rethink the terminology you're using. As writers, we know how important word choice and accuracy is. Hopefully having a little context helps!

[glorious-spoon]

i cannot express enough how much i fucking hate that i cannot plug a pair of headphones into any mobile device i own right now. one phone ago i could charge my phone and listen to music at the same time, but not now!

[raylangivins]

my local council is doing 10% discounts on courses at the adult education centre and i'm here like "should i learn to weld?"

[haystarlight]

Hey am I the only one who thinks the Bat Queen can't be the Titan's palisman because of the simple fact that we have no evidence that Titans used palismen at all?

Like, hear me out. I think palismen are only a witch thing. We have no evidence of Titans using palismen too.

If the Titan's magic is like the stuff Titan Luz was doing, then it's mostly glyph based and it seems each individual Titan has their own glyph language unique to them but they can also learn each other's glyphs (seen as how King learned his dad's glyph language).

So like, what's the point of a Titan having a palisman?

Witches mostly need their palismen to fly and, son of a gun, Titans have wings!! They can fly by themselves!! They don't need palismen to fly!!

And like, the Bat Queen is big but she's not THAT big. I don't think she's big enough to have been the Titan's palisman.

I will die on this hill. The only one that can change my mind is Dana.

Palismen are a witch invention!!! Titans did not use them!!!

[clothedinblack]

It is INSANE to me how yall (referring to the media and a large swath of mainstream public opinion, not my beautiful mutuals) are blaming Jill Biden for Joe's disastrous debate last week and his ongoing candidacy. First of all, for all we know, she could be urging him to drop out behind closed doors, but of course they have to put up a united front publicly even if they're having those conversations in private. Secondly, when has the media ever given a First Lady credit when the President does something good? Or is acknowledging the First Lady's relevance only reserved for when something goes wrong? It's amazing how many people are putting this all on her rather than Joe himself and his entire campaign team.

[bread-tab]

All of a sudden I'm being metaphorically displaced in time—back to approximately 15 years ago—to when "likes" were a new concept on the internet, associated only with Facebook and Youtube (idk which had it first) and looked at with disdain.

"Doing it for likes" was so cringe, you guys. It wasn't just not based, it was not normal. Everything has likes and votes and ratings now, it's legitimized, it's a business model... this wasn't always the norm! Sometimes I come across a comments section somewhere on the internet that doesn't have any little buttons to press and I'm left reeling for a second, jolted out of the hazy semiconscious cycle of consumption and shallow acknowledgement.

It's all being turned into a game. All of human communication, knowledge and creativity slowly being simmered down into a sea of shitty mobile games. With microtransactions.

[mandatory-blog-stop-asking]

Star Trek Is A Failing Theme Park

Much like many others I used to be a bonafide Star Trek Discovery hater, and even though I thoroughly enjoy it now, I honestly don't regret that time in my life.

I think Discovery season 1 and most of season 2 were a little ashamed of having to be an old sci-fi show, so they kept trying to be a show about violent, impulsive, very special unique people that happened to go to space every once in a while. Which Star Trek has been, on occasion, but never in a way I personally find better than what it usually is -- philosophizing and talking about real world or allegorical drama for 40-50 minutes until a solution arises that doesn't really make anyone super happy and not everyone comes out unscathed, but the compromise means there's hope for a better solution tomorrow, and the day after that, until it works.

The personal dramas usually related to their reactions to storylines, but were ultimately secondary to the bigger pictures, and acted as bows you tie the narrative with at the end. If Kirk did not make it through the episode unscathed, that's cool, but the episode was rarely only about his demons. It could heavily relate to his demons but that wasn't the whole source of the spectacle. The Naked Time works as a way to examine characters in crisis, not necessarily as a Kirk episode where it's all about him.

Because of that, I was basically the audience for seasons 3 and 4. While Season 3's ultimate plot wasn't the most interesting thing in the world, the idea that they were now dealing with their "own version" of the galaxy, writing their own plots that didn't have to come before everything else and figuring out their own threats that didn't have to eventually connect back to Star Trek canon was a massive improvement.

The decision to interweave character drama into storylines as opposed to making the storylines about the character drama also greatly expanded upon people's roles in the ship, and you finally got to see people like Detmer or Owosekun doing shit and being useful, instead of just being on the bridge nearly unnamed. I genuinely think Season 4 of Discovery is one of the best seasons in modern Star Trek; even if it trips and falls sometimes, I think it's well worth the creative risk and I was left very satisfied after watching it.

So when Discovery season 5 turns around and tells me it's about an episode of TNG I watched once, and then they start going to a planet from an episode of TNG I watched once, and then here comes another episode where they go to an episode of DS9 I watched once, and there's more 24th century-specific stuff that's gonna happen, it's...

It's very hard to feel like we're not regressing? I realize at this point the show is very, very cancelled -- they weren't even told it was happening until they were filming the finale, but at the same time, is this really what the plan was? To not boldly go into something original, instead picking up threads from episodic shows released decades ago? What are we, Star Trek: Picard?

Now for the sake of transparency, I feel like this is might be more of a personality problem than a media consumption problem for me, because I am genuinely allergic to nostalgia. I have no respect or attachment for media whose only mission is to remind me of things that existed, and franchises that have made that their entire MO have basically died for me. Like, I can't watch Star Wars anymore. It stopped mattering how good or bad it is for me because all I see in stuff like Mandalorian season 2 is pilots for shows I'm not gonna watch, and cameos from characters I don't want to see right now. The stories are no longer the point, the point is the brand and how easily recognizable it is.

So when Discovery tells me that their last hurrah is going through the Star Trek theme park, pointing at rides I've already gone to and saying "Isn't it cool we get to say these words again? That we get to see this thing again?" I'm left cold. I don't want to see the Progenitors again. I don't want to see the Promellians again. I like seeing the Trills again, it's one of my favorite species in the franchise, but we have seen so much of the Trills between DS9 and DIS, I really feel like this is... not the way forward. This theme park is not the reason why I think about Star Trek.

It reminds me of why I stopped caring about Star Trek Online. The practical reason was me not liking the minibuys and the combat, and the game's only mode of operation being to attack -- it's a fine ship combat game and a mediocre but working third person shooter, I just don't care enough to play it forever. But the secondary reason, and the reason I think about the most, is because every single storyline is less a story and more a Star Trek reference.

It's always someone coming back, or an alt universe version of a character being introduced, or picking up on a random episode that I already watched, making the action figures fight instead of anything else. Instead of using fanservice to broaden the appeal, the only appeal is the fanservice; there is very little to Star Trek Online that isn't just the equivalent of going to Star Trek Land and looking at the Harry Kim bust again.

I keep looking at Burnham, a character I have come to like in spite of her place in the franchise, in spite of the fact that her entire conception was made to connect her to Spock, and to Sarek, and to Pike, and to all these characters I already know, in spite of the shortcomings of her original character arc -- I look at her and I see a character who has built her own path after being allowed to exist separate from the others, after being given the same chance everyone else was to be more than a Star Trek reference, and then she just knows to go to the planet of the Booby Trap aliens because that's Star Trek, we're going on the ride.

I'm so sick of going on the same rides. Specifically, I'm sick of going on rides after they just proved that they can do something different, that doesn't need Star Trek references to exist. Please I am begging you stop showing me Picard's face, I get it, I like TNG too. But I tuned in to watch Discovery. I am not into this brand because I am into the brand, I am into this brand because it's fucking good, stop acting like I'm here for nostalgia's sake.

"Hey, what about Lower Decks? You love that show!" eh Lower Decks can do it, don't worry about it.