#idk!!! thinking and mulling

[wickmitz]

big believer in rocky being an extremely angry person actually! so much of it is internalized and he very much channels it into specific things ( like wick, or more recently, marigold ) but this doesn’t negate the fact that he is angry and resentful. sometimes being mad is more than just punching people and threats of violence! sometimes it’s quiet seething and forced joy. sometimes awful things happen to you and you letting them happen doesn’t mean you won’t become angry about it. sometimes your anger is fear, and sometimes it’s another thing, and actually maybe it’s always coming from some other emotion but it feels like anger and that’s what sticks. and i’ll also just say that his head trauma won’t be helping him with any of these problems in the future either <3

[velvet-games]

I am absolutely overthinking fun fandom stuff again but I think what's so important to me about radiostatic is the reconcilliation part. like whether or not it makes sense, I have such a serious emotional need to see two people try to kill each other and be able to recover and become friends again anyway.

spending a bunch of time with someone I have a very complicated relationship with recently has brought up a lot of feelings, and I just. want there to be some hope I guess? it's too painful to think about reconciling with this person in real life, but it's so comforting to think the pain might go away for someone.

something I really want to write about is the feeling of betrayal when you're both very close to and also hate someone; every time they make you laugh or you share something you love with them, every time you enjoy their company, it's like you're betraying the version of yourself that hated them so much. how can someone who's hurt you so badly share a face with someone you so desperately want to make happy?

I actually have gotten over it with some people (that I hated less intensely). honestly, I think it just came down to us becoming different people (a little amnesia helped too lol); still us, but matured enough to apologize and not hurt each other again. it felt too good to be true at first, but sometimes you just need some time apart to become the right people for each other.

I want that for alastor and vox. I want them to come to their own realizations that they want to change, then meet with they have that willingness. I think that would lend itself to a fun (terrible) dynamic where they both want to make the relationship better but are worried the other person isn't. I want them to waste a lot of time testing each other and anticipating betrayal before they're both so fucking sick of it that they jump into the deep end together. I want what they interpret as a honeymoon phase when they first try making up to just be what their relationship will become when they finally communicate. I want them to spend time together and enjoy it and realize they miss each other so much that they're forced to admit they'd do anything to be friends again. I want them to make each other so happy that they're glad they're in hell for eternity because it means eternity together.

[flame-shadow]

being a kid obsessed with dinosaurs while being raised christian fundamentalist (i think?) made for some very interesting moments.

books would say that dinosaurs lived hundreds of millions of years ago. my parents would say the earth was created 6000 years ago. so for a while, i thought dinosaurs were fake like dragons. and for a long while after that, i never paid attention to the estimated years because they were all clearly false.

books would say that dinosaurs evolved over their millions of years of existence, at some point some developed feathers, and that birds probably came from dinosaurs. the pastors and sunday school teachers would say that evolution wasn't real and that god created the birds as they are. i was confused and disappointed, because evolution made a lot of sense and sounded really cool to boot.

documentaries would show fossil sites and talk about how the rock can be dated. one time, i heard that god left dinosaur fossils for us to find as enrichment. another time, i was told that satan planted the fossils to sow doubt among god's followers. i thought it odd that some people thought god would want to trick his people with such an elaborate hoax.

years later, i heard someone say that god created the universe to look like it had always existed even though it was created relatively recently, and that's why the light from stars further than 6,000 light years have already reached us. i was reminded of the explanation of god putting apparently millions of years old fossils in the ground.

more recently (within the past decade and therefore i was no longer a kid nor a christian), i've heard the people who raised me to believe the things above reciting new "facts" that people have since come up with to explain away more recent scientific discoveries and conclusions. a few years ago, my grandmother had someone speak at her church, and afterwards she bought some of the books they were selling and shipped them to me. whereas twenty years ago, she'd have told me dinosaurs couldn't have existed, now she had sent me books about how actually dinosaurs were created 6000 years ago along with humans and all the other animals. these "facts" were corroborated by some other relatives next time i shared a meal with them.

they can't even keep their false facts straight because the old stories don't make sense anymore, even though the new stories aren't any better!

and i keep coming back to my early interest in dinosaurs.

the one that my mom was reluctant to allow me to pursue because of the perceived falseness of their existence. the one that i felt i had to carefully regulate what facts i expressed interest in lest my mom decide that dinosaurs were banned from being talked about the way pokemon was. and i was so so deliberate to pepper in the occasional qualifiers like "even though the bible says that's not possible, 150 millions years is a long time ago!" or "i know they're not actually going to turn into birds and this is just a drawing, but this one with the feathers does really look like it could become a bird someday."

thank god for dinosaurs (haha), because im not sure how long i would've been mired in such a closed-minded worldview otherwise. even though satan didn't sow the fossils in the earth, they did cause me to doubt the veracity of what i was taught.

[ineed-to-sleep]

Ok since I've already started expressing An Opinion about the whole Larian fanart inspiration thing, let me just make my own post so I don't derail op's point any further.

While I understand you can't monetize fan creations, I don't think people understand that the creators of the ip also don't have a right to use fanart freely in their works. The artist can't monetize fanart but the original creator can't either unless the artist is paid. And on the Larian issue, I want to ask, do you think it's fair for a studio to treat their creation as a "collaborative effort", taking ideas from fandom to add to their content while being the only ones receiving any compensation or notoriety for it? Genuine question. Because it's one thing to take criticism and improve, while it's another to add completely new things based on fan ideas.

And while I do agree that inspiration doesn't necessarily warrant direct compensation nor does it need approval to be used, they did directly tag the artist that inspired the scene, they didn't credit the whole fandom, they pointed out that artist specifically, and acted like it's fair and right and commendable for them, as a studio, to take someone's idea and put it into their fully released, 60 dollar game, without even talking to the artist. The company sets an example and when I see this, it becomes clearer to me why my own fanart has often been reposted and edited in fandom without my permission and why the fans don't generally understand that this is unethical.

Right now I'm undecided on whether or not I think it was fair for them to use that creation as inspiration, but the way they went about the whole situation just doesn't sit right with me.

[queenlucythevaliant]

Here's what I'll say regarding choice of worship music (and I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with this, so bear with me): I think it's very easy to get burned out on specific kinds of worship, no matter what they are. And that kind of burn-out is hard.

I grew up at a church that did 95% CCM for worship, and after a while it either (a) exhausted me emotionally or (b) bored me. By the time I hit high school, I really really struggled with corporate worship because it felt as though I wasn't responding as I was supposed to. Getting to sing mostly hymns at the church I attended at college was a huge breath of fresh air, and it helped me immensely in terms of re-orienting my heart towards Christ-centered worship (as opposed to me-centered worship.) For the first time in my life, I found myself listening to Christian music on my own time during the week.

I watched the recent Jesus Revolution movie with mom over the summer. Her family started attending Calvary Chapel (then-nascent hippy church in Orange County) midway through her childhood, and she got really excited talking about the difference between the hymns she remembered from early elementary school ("we sang the whole hymnal rather than selecting for the really good ones like they do at your church") and the much more dynamic music that came out of Maranatha and other early "contemporary" Christian groups. She actually played me a whole bunch of the songs she grew up with the next morning. They sounded horrifically cheesy to me, but she got real joy out of it and even ended up texting a few songs to my aunt.

And yet, my mom has remarked a whole bunch of times to me that she really can't stand current CCM; that she desperately misses singing the old hymns. I look at myself and my own experience and I can totally see myself coming back to some of the CCM songs I grew up with and encountering Christ through them all new again. As recently as last month, I had a really beautiful experience driving back from a concert crazy late at night with my sister and listening to some of the old Chris Tomlin and Hillsong stuff that I hadn't heard in a while. It brought me back to a sense of incredible comfort and safety nestled up against God like a baby chick. Do I want to worship with that sort of music every week right now? No, definitely not. But it has its place.

Obviously worship transcends something as incidental as music genre. It's an expression of why we were created: glorifying God and enjoying him forever --- and yet, because of the fall, it's really easy to get burned out on specific expressions of worship. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing so much as just a symptom of the fall. I also think that people who are really burned out on a particular kind of worship can be really, really obnoxious about it. I know I was for a while, and I still definitely have my hangups with CCM.

But like- I don't think it's so much about judgement or superiority towards the kind of worship music that you're burnt out on as it is just the overwhelming sense that that kind of worship music felt exhausting and this kind of music actually feels like I'm able to worship again. I know when I started singing hymns at church, it just felt like I'd found the Rosetta Stone. I was suddenly so much less in my own head on Sunday mornings and oh my goodness singing to God was a joy again and I can't remember but I don't think it's ever been a joy like this before has it?? It was almost like my head was spinning with some great new revelation and when I was obnoxious about it it was mostly a manifestation of my being like Why didn't anyone ever tell me it could be like this? Why isn't everyone singing hymns? It's just so much better this way!

Mostly, it just feels like saying "don't be overly critical of how other Christians like to worship" kind of. Misses the trees for the forest, if that makes sense? Like, it's accurate to the big picture, it's absolutely a true and worthwhile thing to say. But at the same time it kind of rankles for me because it misses how it feels to be truly and deeply alienated by the kind of worship you're exposed to.

For better and for worse, worship is (I think) the spiritual discipline that engages the emotions most directly. The feeling of being in a group of people all worshipping together, and your heart just isn't responding right no matter how you try to re-focus and orient it? It's one of the loneliest feelings I know.

[yorulel]

• 🗒️🧪🍹 •

DW YALL I STILL LIKE CRK!! I thought it would be kinda cute to draw these two cuz yk they’re both mechanics lel

[starheirxero]

yk. i mean. how much does KC actually need to look like Moon?? Like, from a "your worst flaws personified" perspective, KC looking like a twisted and monstrous version of Moon is extremely fun!! But I feel like during its "just some guy" arc, it doesn't really need to resemble Moon anymore, yk?

I always think a good moment for tsams characters like this is a moment where they realize they're allowed to build their own identity and not feel intrinsically tied to Sun and/or Moon. So, although I don't know what exactly KC would look like once it starts to build more of its own identity, I think it'd be cool if there was more changed to its silhouette n stuff that clearly sets it apart from Moon.

[fonulyn]

i tried to avoid the discourse lol but tumblr keeps 'recommending' me posts from each side so i'm gonna get this off my chest so i can stop thinking about it :'D

i find it annoying how somehow a lot of people seem to have decided that Leon hitting on Shen May in ID has to either be 1. completely and utterly platonic or 2. completely and utterly sleazy, and there's no options in between. and both sides act as if their reading of the scene is foolproof and the other side is ridiculous for even entertaining the opposite. as if things are ever so black and white lol.

personally, my very subjective reading on the scene is that yes he hits on her but once she turns him down he not-so-very-smoothly turns it joking. there's nothing in his expressions or bodylanguage that, to me, suggests that he's being serious about it in the end.

and I genuinely don't see a character who has such strong convictions and morals in other aspects of his character merrily adultering away like some have suggested. if that's how you want to see him, go for it :'D but personally I don't think it fits the rest we know about him. at all.

but that doesn't mean he didn't go into the conversation with the intention of hitting on her, either. he craves human connection, he's lonely as fuck, so if her response had been different then i have no problems seeing him wanting to take it further.

(i genuinely don't know if tumblr's just throwing super old posts at me and if this is an active ~discourse at all, but i kept getting takes thrown at me so here, have mine lol)

[averlym]

@remylong :

[sorathecookie]

I made another funny comic

Reference: Parks and Recreation

[humanradiojmp]

working on a Kinger design and I am faced with many decisions on how I can go about it

Do I go with something out of my comfort zone that could be potentially interesting? or something more familiar but still interesting? a combination of the two?

decisions, decisions....

[friesian]

it's 7 am, i haven't slept yet, but here i am nodding my head... might be identifying with some more gender. or rather. lack there-of.

[byanyan]

byan disappears for two days but instead of emerging strung out and skittish like usual, their hands and arms are covered in paint and ink stains and they're a little distant but hungry as hell

[lazy-toad]

I think I might be transgender

[oooohno]

You're such a muse to so many people, constantly bringing forth and encouraging their ideas. Truly your are a blessed and beloved figure 💛💛

Thank you so much for always being so sweet to me! You give me too much credit though chfjdn I just try to cultivate the vibes I wanna see on my dash 💓

[raayllum]

This might be because I’ve been working on the same story idea for close to 12 years, but I’ll never understand the “This wasn’t worth the 3 year wait” complaint about S4, because it’s a muddled complaint and an inherently emotional one. Having issues with the pacing, or characterization, or progression? Those are also subjective, yes, but they’re structural. They can be debated, discussed, explained, etc. But saying “this wasn’t worth the wait” is an emotional complaint. Which is also fine! But it’s entirely subjective. It’s saying your enjoyment of the season (a story that is separate as a concept out of time) is dependent on the time you spent waiting for it, something that means nothing to the story’s structure, because it was never built to take that into account from a Plot standpoint, never mind a narrative one

How I structure and write the plot progression of my novels does not change depending on how many years there are between books, or how long it takes even to write them. Particularly for something that’s long form and developed/created the way something as time consuming as an animated story is. 

I also think separating emotions from analysis is sometimes an important part of understanding and analyzing something, i.e. season three of Trollhunters left me absolutely devastated. I was so upset about a story decision they made I had to take a day just to process and think about it. But I also knew in my heart it was the best decision not only for the characters, even if it wasn’t what I was expecting or hoping for, but also because it worked best thematically and therefore for the story as a whole. My emotional reaction didn’t matter, and now it’s probably my all time favourite thing the show ever did. 

This is also informed by my personal experiences watching Steven Universe. I watched a couple episodes a day and made my way through the show like that from start to finish until SU: Future came out and I think that’s the strongest, story wise, way to consume the show, because I could fully enjoy each peace of filler while also not having to wait forever between drops and/or for lore. 

All of this to say:

S4 didn’t work for you pacing/plot wise is a subjective reading about structure. S4 wasn’t worth the wait after the season three hiatus isn’t grounded in anything other than emotion. Saying “how S4 was plotted/progressed wasn’t worth the 3 year wait” is still saying the structure is dependent on how it makes you feel; it’s an emotional complaint dressed up as a structural one. It’s not grounded in analysis. And you can evaluate stories wholly on how they make you feel, if you want to. That’s entirely within your and anyone else’s right. It’s just not very interesting to me, and doesn’t really do anything from an analytical perspective, which is my own prerogative.