#it still makes no fucking sense

[niniane17]

Since it's the time of the year that I can't help but remember how, in only forty minutes, D&D managed to destroy a multi million franchise that had been on top of the world for a decade, I want to share something that I only recently found out about the infamous episode titled The Bells. Predictably, it's insanely stupid. I realize this is probably old news for everyone, but I can never miss a chance to make fun of those assholes.

So, by now The Bells episode has been dissed to hell and back, and I have watched and read countless mocking of the godawful script. One thing that stuck with me, though, was the idea that the events were inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's poem also titled The Bells, which I hadn't read.

Now, at the time there were still a lot of people trying to make sense of the show by using any possible fancy-sounding reference they could find, so I didn't think much of it. It did, however, have the unfortunate effect of causing me an aversion towards that poem, which was a shame, since I normally love Poe.

Some time ago I finally managed to get around reading it, and it turns out the D&D apologists were right - only not in the way they thought. I strongly advice to read the whole poem because it's beautiful, but the most relevant stanza is the final one, and it's very evident why:

(highlight mine)

And the people—ah, the people—

       They that dwell up in the steeple,

                 All alone,

        And who tolling, tolling, tolling,

          In that muffled monotone,

         Feel a glory in so rolling

          On the human heart a stone—

 They are neither man nor woman—

     They are neither brute nor human—

              They are Ghouls:

        And their king it is who tolls;

        And he rolls, rolls, rolls,

                    Rolls

             A pæan from the bells!

          And his merry bosom swells

             With the pæan of the bells!

          And he dances, and he yells;

          Keeping time, time, time,

          In a sort of Runic rhyme,

             To the pæan of the bells—

 I have no doubt now that those idiots were inspired by this, especially considering that there's no Night King in the books. What I can't really wrap my head around is how in the fucking world they thought that the above line could apply to Daenerys. This isn't even about thematic relevance, which we know they hate, it's just plot description. If asked "who do you think these lines apply to in Game of Thrones?", nobody, not even the most stident of Dany haters or the most passive of watchers, would answer "Daenerys" in good faith. Even Evil Dany is quite different from the above description. Were D&D really that dumb? My answer is yes, but not in the way I thought at first.

To me, this is further proof the original script WAS very different, until they decided to temper with it for some reason. Whatever scene there was with this poem in mind, it wasn't about Daenerys. But in their arrogance they thought they could just switch things up and everything would work just as well, including the "high literature" reference. This is how they see stories, apparently: just a series of cool images and scenes and fuck everything else, they are for book reports or something. The result is embarassing shit like the above, which really seems like a parody. It's also the definitive proof that it was never, ever about the books not being finished. That was a problem, but not an unsolvable one: after all, they had the original writer right there. It's about D&D not understanding how a story works and not giving a fuck about anything but shallow spectacle.

What a fucking waste.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[spirk-trek]

she is to me what leia's gold bikini was to straight boys

[rassebers]

Yeah yeaaah yeah yeah

[egophiliac]

the lovers, reversed

(aka I'm still freaking out about Jou)

[cubbihue]

In the aftermath of Peri's tantrum, the Leisure Court Fairies discovered that nearly every Pixie within close proximity of Poof were completely drained of magic.

Fairies are presumed incapable of stealing magic-- not unless they are a bonded pair, where magic is shared. Therefore, the underlying reasons remain uncertain to this day. Cosmo had been the only Fairy to remain conscious during the blast, but researchers were unable to extract much information from him.

Thankfully, all Pixies, including Timmy, made a full recovery- with all their magic intact.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

Instability: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[bacchuschucklefuck]

doing chibi is a good design exercise bc it forces u to think on shapes n essential details, essentially thumbnailing ur designs. its also a terrible design exercise bc it ends up looking cute no matter what

[athina-blaine]

It's interesting how Laios struggles to remember Kabru's name right away, yet is able to recall the feeling of his grip well enough to immediately understand that something isn't right (Kabru being cuffed)

[bogdreamz]

korvo lost and farting 0 stars for you my boy

[aardvaark]

the leverage team would have had a games night… once. everyone cheated so much and in such increasingly extreme ways that all mentions of monopoly are banned in their headquarters (this makes talking about marks who monopolize the market very confusing)

[inkskinned]

one of the things that i think we should pay attention to, socially, about the disney v. desantis thing is that it is really highlighting the importance of remembering nuance.

in a purely neutral sense, if you engage in something problematic, that does not mean you are necessarily agreeing with what makes it problematic. and i am worried that we have become... so afraid of any form of nuance.

disney isn't my friend, they're a corporate monopoly that bastardized copyright laws for their own benefit, ruin the environment, and abuse their workers (... and many other things). this isn't a hypothetical for me - i grew up in florida. i also worked for the actual Walt Disney World; like, in the parks. i am keenly aware of the ways they hurt people, because they hurt me. i fully believe that part of the reason florida is so conservative is because it's been an "open secret" for years now that disney lobbies the government to keep minimum wage down, and i know they worked hard to keep the parks unmasked and open during the worst parts of Covid. they purposefully keep their employees in poverty. they are in part responsible for the way the floridian government works.

desantis is still, by a margin that is frankly daunting, way worse. the alternative here isn't just "republicans win", it's actual fascism.

in a case like this, where the alternative is to allow actual fascism into united states legislation - where, if desantis wins, there are huge and legal ramifications - it's tempting to minimize the harm disney is also doing, because... well, it's not fascism. but disney isn't the good guy, either, which means republicans are having a field day asking activists oh, so you think their treatment of their employees is okay?

we have been trained there is a right answer. you're right! you're in the good group, and you're winning at having an opinion.

except i have the Internet Prophecy that in 2-3 months, even left-wing people will be ripping apart activists for having "taken disney's side". aren't i an anti-capitalist? aren't i pro-union? aren't i one of the good ones? removed from context and nuance (that in this particular situation i am forced to side with disney, until an other option reveals itself), my act of being like "i hope they have goofy rip his throat out onstage, shaking his lifeless body like a dog toy" - how quickly does that seem like i actually do support disney?

and what about you! at home, reading this. are you experiencing the Thought Crime of... actually liking some of the things disney has made? your memories of days at the parks, or of good movies, or of your favorite show growing up. maybe you are also evil, if you ever enjoyed anything, ever, at all.

to some degree, the binary idealization/vilification of individual motive and meaning already exists in the desantis case. i have seen people saying not to go to the disney pride events because they're cash grabs (they are). i've seen people saying you have to go because they're a way to protest. there isn't a lot of internet understanding of nuance. instead it's just "good show of support" or "evil bootlicking."

this binary understanding is how you can become radicalized. when we fear nuance and disorder, we're allowing ourselves the safety of assuming that the world must exist in binary - good or bad, problematic or "not" problematic. and unfortunately, bigots want you to see the world in this binary ideal. they want you to get mad at me because "disney is taking a risk for our community but you won't sing their praises" and they want me to get mad at you for not respecting the legit personal trauma that disney forced me through.

in a grander scheme outside of disney: what happens is a horrific splintering within activist groups. we bicker with each other about minimal-harm minimal-impact ideologies, like which depiction of bisexuality is the most-true. we gratuitously analyze the personal lives of activists for any sign they might be "problematic". we get spooked because someone was in a dog collar at pride. we wring our hands about setting an empty shopping mall on fire. we tell each other what words we may identify ourselves by. we get fuckin steven universe disk horse when in reality it is a waste of our collective time.

the bigots want you to spend all your time focusing on how pristine and pretty you and your interests are. they want us at each other's throats instead of hand in hand. they want to say see? nothing is ever fucking good enough for these people.

and they want their followers to think in binary as well - a binary that's much easier to follow. see, in our spaces, we attack each other over "proper" behavior. but in bigoted groups? they attack outwards. they have someone they hate, and it is us. they hate you, specifically, and you are why they have problems - not the other people in their group. and that's a part of how they fucking keep winning.

some of the things that are beloved to you have a backbone in something terrible. the music industry is a wasteland. the publishing industry is a bastion of white supremacy. video games run off of unpaid labor and abuse.

the point of activism was always to bring to light that abuse and try to stop it from happening, not to condemn those who engage in the content that comes from those industries. "there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism" also applies to media. your childhood (and maybe current!) love of the little mermaid isn't something you should now flinch from, worried you'll be a "disney adult". wanting the music industry to change for the better does not require that you reject all popular music until that change occurs. you can acknowledge the harm something might cause - and celebrate the love that it has brought into your life.

we must detach an acknowledgment of nuance from a sense of shame and disgust. we must. punishing individual people for their harmless passions is not doing good work. encouraging more thoughtful, empathetic consumption does not mean people should feel ashamed of their basic human capacities and desires. it should never have even been about the individual when the corporation is so obviously the actual evil. this sense that we must live in shame and dread of our personal nuances - it just makes people bitter and hopeless. do you have any idea how scared i am to post this? to just acknowledge the idea of nuance? that i might like something nuanced, and engage in it joyfully? and, at the same time, that i'm brutally aware of the harm that they're doing?

"so what do i do?" ... well, often there isn't a right answer. i mean in this case, i hope mickey chops off ron's head and then does a little giggle. but truth be told, often our opinions on nuanced subjects will differ. you might be able to engage in things that i can't because the nuance doesn't sit right with me. i might think taylor swift is a great performer and a lot of fun, and you might be like "raquel, the jet fuel emissions". we are both correct; neither of us have any actual sway in this. and i think it's important to remember that - the actual scope of individual responsibility. like, i also love going to the parks. Thunder Mountain is so fun. you (just a person) are not responsible for the harm that Disney (the billion dollar corporation) caused me. i don't know. i think it's possible to both enjoy your memories and interrogate the current state of their employment policies.

there is no right way to interrogate or engage with nuance - i just hope you embrace it readily.

[cc-kote]

Nine people I'd like to get to know better

WOOPS I did not have time to do this for the past like, week but I've been wanting to bc I love silly little memes like this. Tytyty @ithillia for the tag :3

Last song: All Our Bruised Bodies And The Whole Heart Shrinks by La Dispute (It makes me think about Fives and it hurts so fucking much) 

Favorite colour: GREEN!! and also blue 

Last movie/TV Show: TCW of course, I had a Bad Autism Time™️ and my gf put on the fucking Umbara Arc to calm me down. It worked like a charm what the fuck is wrong w me lmfaooo. 

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: All of the above but spice hurts me. I do it anyway tho, mama raised a little bitch but she didn't raise a quitter lmfaoo. 

Relationship status: So fuckin down bad for my girlfriend hhh 

Last thing you googled: fuckjgn AO3 LMAOOO 

Current obsession: clonesclonesclonesclones forever. I haven't had a special interest/hyperfixation this deep since I was like 12-14 so like this is one of the most important things in my life tbh. Specifically like thinking about how their culture would work, and their solidarity, internal conflicts, shared trauma and how that would relate to those things. Their ideas about personal and cultural identity and how that would vary individually. Things like how their upbringing must have felt, how that affected them and who they became later in life, the things they're taught vs what they truly come to believe once they're out on the field, the psychological effects of O66 on the clones who survived and the devastating impact it must have had- Bro stop me or I'll keep going forever like. I'm in deep and tbh? I wouldn't change it for the world. 

NPT: LMFAO bold of this title to assume that I know 9 people on this site, or am brave enough to tag ppl I haven't talked to often fhsjdmksmf SO if you see this consider yourself tagged. Yes, You. idc if we've never talked It's probably bc I'm too baby, so (unless u don't feel like it) do it 👀 also @mamuzzy and @whatislifewithoutangst if y'all haven't already and wanna do this here u go! 

[crazymecjc]

half baked thought bc I’m actually chewing drywall abt this trailer rn but I’m really interested to see if and how bachelor route leans into film as the vessel for performance rather than theatre- I think it’s a fascinating narrative shift that really articulates the difference between the haruspex and bachelor routes. “any choice is right as long as it’s willed” really reflects the ever changing and in-the-moment presence of live theatre whereas with “there is only one truth,” the film has been made. the events have already come to pass. they are preserved in time ad infinitum. which also adds to the tragedy of daniil dankovsky i think :)) idk i just think its Neat and i am so so incredibly excited about this game cannot wait to see the sillies again :))

[vypridae]

my au's sun and moon after their first day/night out without the other. posting these because i have major art block and wanna post at least SOMETHING for yall BFGJHFGHKJF

(context for au below cut)

so in my au, sun and moon were originally two separate animatronics. they performed together at the theatre for a while. at some point, around the time bonnie was suddenly replaced, fazbear ent. LLC.'s profits went down. so, the company's ceo (who shant be named) provided the techs with a few ideas to save the company money, or make them more money to make up for the loss with bonnie's disappearance. one of those was scrapping sun and moon.

sun and moon were the techs' pride and joy at the time. but, with losing money (and being threatened to be replaced if they couldn't get profits up somehow), the techs decided that sun & moon's theatre performances weren't working. so, they put them in the superstar daycare instead of the theatre; a lot of adults kept being fired from the daycare and that was also losing the company money, so why not get rid of the human daycare staffing altogether? along with that, they had come to the realization that having two animatronics in one small area like this would be cause for costly monthly repairs. so, they decided to redo the attendant altogether and put both ai's in the same body. used old parts from their other bodies to build this one, so as to save money. spent a lot of time on them, since they were the tech's pride & joy, but couldn't get the transition and ai bugs smoothed out in efficient time, so they gave up. threw the attendant into the daycare and started focusing on the glamrocks and DJMM, the ones that actually made a lot of money for the company.

the art takes place that first night sun and moon come into consciousness, neither of them realizing they can speak to the other in their joint headspace, nor realizing how. this is that first day/night without the other.

[ratatatastic]

maffhew who refuses to say runebergin torttu because he knows hes gonna butcher it so bad he might be kicked out of the country the second he tries and staunchly avoids that by going "the one dessert that barky is going to have to explain 😃"

sasha who gets faced with the most generic description of everything hes ever eaten in his life so far because of maffhew and going "???... oh you mean runebergin torttu!"

"he did good he liked the food and he likes the finland so far so its good" sasha says with so much pride now that all the anxiety has left his system that his husband teammate is enjoying his country and doesnt hate it

media availability | 10.29.24 (x)(x)

the smile of a man who knowlingly doomed his husband and said husband using all his brain power to context clues his way to whatever the fuck he just got asked that his brain is running hotter than a mid 2012 macbook air thats somehow still alive in the year of the lord 2024 but girl does she chug along shes louder than a fighter jet

[a-most-beloved-fool]

love the idea of spock with slit pupils like a cat Exclusively because then every time he looked at kirk they would get comically round