#just why be so condescending about it
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konohamaru-sensei · 10 months ago
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🔪 🥐 🧩
🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?
oh I wish I had a very cool answer for this because I know some fic writers have wild shit, but I dont think I ever looked up something weird? Pretty much only outlines of cities or plot points I had forgotten, very non spectacular.
🥐 ⇢ name one internet reference that will always make you laugh 
I AM AT SOUP!
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU ARE AT SOUP?
I MEAN I AM AT SOUP!!
(honorable mention to "sell their houses to whom ben?! FUCKING AQUAMAN?)
🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?
omegaverse, characters being ooc (judged by me), when a male characters personality is reduced to "bottom" in a smut fic, character bashing
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dreamhot · 2 months ago
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i keep stumbling across tweets making fun of various dsmp/mcyt art from 2020/21 and they're always like 'omg this was all so dramatic and for what' PASSION!! it was passion! sorry that you've grown bitter and cynical over the past few years but personally i think it's healthier to celebrate the joy of creation, even if it might seem a bit corny or overdramatic in retrospect. learn to cherish your past interests lest you get stuck in an endless cycle of happily fixating followed by cringing at yourself (and others). you'll be happier overall for it!! i promise !!!!
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the-way-astray · 2 months ago
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i've seen a fair amount of people that have a take that's something along the lines of "alden isn't abusive/toxic/a bad parent but i like exploring that in fic, so i often characterize him like that anyway" and i'm so curious as to why these people are not extending this same purposeful character assassination to other parents, like grady, or even kesler, and why it seems to be an only alden thing /gen
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galactic-rhea · 2 months ago
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do you think your empress padme (or maybe padme in general?) is the jealous type? 😈😈
Evil Padmé and Vader, jealous??? Naahhhhhhhhh. Lmao, of course they are, yes.
I mean, they both are possesive and obssesive, and only works because their kind-of-damage fits well with the other's kind-of-damage (like a puzzle!), Padmé's desire to see Palpatine dead came more from angry possesive rage than...seizing over the galaxy (how dare he! to treat her husband like that! no one should get to order him like that! except her)
But, tbh there's very little that could trigger their jealousy, like who's out there wanting to shake Vader's bones? (In universe, not here in tumblr(?))
Maybe Boba, idk, that would funny "Could you not hire THAT Bounty Hunter?"
"Why?"
"I don't like how he looks at you"
"....He...wears a helmet...?"
And Vader is a good dog, I mean, good obedient dark lord general husband, he won't kill someone that looks at Padmé unless she asks (or that someone is being actively harmful).
Empress Padmé's possesiveness shines through her orders, she likes to keep him close like her bodyguard instead out there in the galaxy and she likes that she's one of the few that sees him behind the mask, she likes to keep a minimal staff so they can be as intimate and private as they can, and that kind of thing
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fromtheseventhhell · 9 months ago
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"It's normal for siblings to fight" Okay well it's not normal to be extremely classist and look down on your sister for being non-conforming. Or to go to the woman who ordered the death of your pet to tell her about your father's plans, when he specifically warned you against doing so, because you want to marry the boy you saw attack your sister and her friend (contributing partially to said father's death and your sister being unable to escape on the ship he chartered). Or to think of your sibling as unsatisfactory in comparison to another when you believe her to be dead. I notice that none of the "Sansa and Arya are going to reunite and instantly have no issues" crowd ever acknowledge any of this, which makes it seem like they don't actually believe what they say about their relationship being normal and easily reconciled. People wanting them to have no issues simply because they're siblings is another example of how fandom likes to flatten complex characters and relationships. They get reduced to being bickering siblings when their conflict runs deeper than that. If the author is telling you that they have "deep issues" to work out [X], I don't understand being so adamant about ignoring said issues. I also get the sense it's about ignoring the capacity for a certain character to be flawed, but that isn't going to change the fact that her "slip of the tongue" is very likely to be revealed and a source of further conflict 🤷🏾‍♀️
#arya stark#sansa stark#house stark#asoiaf#also if it's so normal for siblings to fight then why are you guys losing your minds over us theorizing they won't get along??#the amount of condescending /that's just how siblings act/ takes I see 🙄#sorry I guess? that we read the book and don't just delete parts of the story because we find it convenient?#it's not even like takes about them being enemies is widespread the most I see is that they aren't instantly bffs when they reunite 😭#some people theorize they'll never be close but guess what? that's a completely fair and valid assumption based on their relationship!#personally I think they'll have a sweet reunion before the issues they have inevitably surface again because while they've been through#a lot they haven't fundamentally changed as people or the values they hold#and I think that's going to be very interesting to read about!#I can't figure out why people always take the most boring bland route for how things will play out#mostly because people seem to be unable to swallow the concept that Sansa is a flawed character who isn't perfectly sweet all the time#and the fact that their conflict is instigated by Sansa's classism#which is funny cause in the grand scheme of things her being mean to Arya is such a mild thing that opens the door to a ton of growth#never seen anybody but stansas equating her being a bully to her sister to her being evil/a villain#all we do is point out that it exists in the story...people in this fandom have no concept of nuance I stg 😭#anyways they're both complex characters and their conflict is interesting and I hope we get to see how it plays out#cause it's definitely going to be better then that trash d&d came up with 🙏🏾
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valtsv · 2 years ago
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okay fine i'll read homestuck. whatever. i've cracked i can't take it anymore i need to fuck around and find out.
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rxttenfish · 7 months ago
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Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series
I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened
sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.
as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.
for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.
no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.
this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.
to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.
(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)
all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.
montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.
yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.
and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.
which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.
but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.
and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.
but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.
this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.
the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.
this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.
like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.
but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.
even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.
the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.
this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.
stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.
which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.
if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.
and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.
more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.
#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#monster prom#asks#vanillabeenflower#this is. so long i am so sorry.#and its still not my entire thoughts because i have so many thoughts#this is an unedited ramble tbh and im very sorry for that#i have more complaints like#how fucking snide and condescending the narration is to its own characters#which it already had but gets even worse in the later games#which is why despite loving aaravi i dont want to play moncamp at all#where a character says they like something or feel something and the narration has to be so. sarcastic about it?#like how i mentioned about how it feels like how its looking down on them as people#instead of whats probably the intended read which is#more jokingly calling them dumb in an affectionate way like how you might do with friends#and ofc theres the whole miranda rant#i hate what theyve done with the merkingdom and i HATE adrien as a concept i wont lie#just. cool. this female character is too stupid to count as a lore character. we obviously need a MALE character to fill in instead#we cant just have miranda talk about this or center any of the other female characters#and how they feel about this and whats going on for them#no we need to make up a new man to talk to instead#im. im still really bitter about it i wont lie.#like i said i could go on and get way more specific about it#i just feel like any and all emotional weight to this has died and the characters are more and more obviously actors on a stage#for your own self gratification rather than their own people living their own lives#this is so bitter and i really shouldnt put this in the main tag#i am so sorry everyone who will see my rant. but my peace must be made.#dont worry im already asking myself if im just making all this shit up myself#what if some of us liked that the characters were so mean to the player and had no qualms about aggressively rejecting us#because it gave some illusion of them being able to make their own choices and decisions in what they wanted
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Tumblr is infuriating. Ive seen multiple posts with the worst possible takes on stuff, that are so obviously ilogical or misinformed, over the last few hours.
I cant stop thinking about it and it makes me mad, and i want to respond to it to kind of vent so i can stop thinking about it. But its too exhausting using words and i get too tired, just thinking about how i could formulate it without it not making sense.
So i cant stop thinking about it, and i cant do anything about it and i keep seeing more of it and tumblr reminds me of it.
Maybe i should just close tumblr and do smth else for distraction bc my brain is about to break and if i see one more stupid position on something, i might just start screaming.
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novella-november · 3 months ago
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Is this fanfic friendly? I feel like an outlier.
I guess this is my sign it's time to throw together a FAQ post to link to lol.
Yes, every event for this blog is fanfic friendly :D
Though as I mentioned on my Ominous October post, for events that include multiple short stories, I encourage everyone to flex their creativity and take one of their planned short story fanfics, and at least *attempt* to turn one of them into something entirely original; rebuilding a character and story from the ground up to stand on its own two legs is no easy feat, and that is what makes it so fun!
It really gets your creative gears turning, to make an "au of an existing material" to be something entirely original, and you can be pleasantly surprised about the things you come up with!
As a few people say, its not just a matter of "filing the serial numbers off" -- you have to add in just as much *or more* as what you take out when you are turning a fanfiction into something that is original and completely divorced from its original source material / inspiration, and that is a hard, but very rewarding challenge!
Obviously, this is not a requirement (there's no hard requirements for any of the challenges, other than no cheating, including no using AI),
but if you would like an extra challenge for the short story events and you're planning on doing entirely fan-fiction, I highly recommend trying it out at least once, and seeing where it leads you--
you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by what you find down that rabbit hole!
#replies#novella november#long rambly tags to follow lol#including anti royalist / anti billionaire shit#ominous october#this is what my novella november is going to be#something that WAS a huge earth-shattering fanfic AU#but before I even got past a WIP Oneshot I'd already realized that what I was planning was going to turn canon so far on its head it would#be unrecognizable and it would be much better off and more coherent if I made it entirely original#so now it is!#not only does this involve changing every single characters name#everyone is now a completely different species other than human because thats always fun#and of course we're also tackling all the issues that had annoyed me in omega verse fics since I was like 14 and liked the#creature aspects but hated the biological essentialism and misogny / caste systems#if your fantasy people have an enforced caste system you gotta actually treat that like the horror and systemic oppression it is#not just say 'biological = right' like dude what do you think people have been saying about real women this whole time????#people literally insist women are biologically inferior to men do you really think supporting that idea is going to make you sound#progressive just because your main character is a tomboy independant woman?#also like she lost all her independence as soon as she found a man to marry so uhhhhh#what happened to being ready and willing to hit the bricks if people kept talking down to you and condescending you for being a woman????#why did you go from independant badass tomboy to fainting damsel who spends all her time worrying about failing to produce an heir#so her husband can take power#instead of just straight up telling your husband#'hey I don't want to deal with the bullshit from your father how about we do the-#- socially acceptable thing and just go off to make our own independant settlement with some of the villagers who are on your side'#like your husband would literally be escstatic about this idea of finally getting out from under his dad's tyrannical thumb#and its more like way more than half the villagers would go with you not just a handful#theyve been sick of the kings shit for years and only your husband's potential rise to rule kept them in check#cus he actually cares about the villagers and goes among them#while still clearly having some biases to work through when it comes to class and gender equality
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breakandbuildfiction · 8 months ago
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Guardian Spirit Meets Guardian Angels
Danny finds himself being accosted by three weird baby things with wings claiming to be part of an organization of guardian angels from Heaven called CHERUB asking for his help to go home. Apparently, they heard about him and thought that even if he was a pagan form of protector he could still plead their case to their bosses up in Heaven. Danny, having not known that Heaven was even real before they showed up, is a bit overwhelmed.
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astrobei · 4 months ago
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your post about karma has me lol-ing like i have no idea the context but i'm so excited for you
HELPP thank you so much i have been on cloud 9 all week 🥳🥳🥳 the context is just a lot of irl work drama but to summarize: i’ve worked in my current lab for the last 2.5 years and back in may a spot opened up for the role above me and i was encouraged to apply bc i had just graduated a couple months prior but they went w someone else instead bc he had a master’s and more experience. and i was offered a temporary full time position through mid october which i’m currently at and it turns out the new guy (who started mid july) is a mega condescending category 10 idiot and i immediately didn’t like him and i was getting really pissed off bc i was the one training him on everything and he was keeping me from doing my work by asking one million concerningly stupid questions but i was like oh maybe im just subconsciously petty bc he got the job and not me. BUT!! it turns out he literally flat out lied on his resume ??? and he has been catastrophically messing up every experiment he has been assigned for the last month so no one else is happy w him either (sweet vindication) so now they’re firing him and offering me his job and i am extremely happy about it. LOL and TEEHEE also
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longagoitwastuesday · 5 months ago
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I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha
I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.
I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.
It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.
Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?
And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.
The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.
These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?
Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.
The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.
After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.
#It's not that I think everything has to be character driven or take a lot of care about dynamics#Death Note for instance works well without it. There's juice in the dynamic between Light and his father and the role of Matsuda there#and it works well with Light's views and their evolution and the whole Kira situation. It isn't much. It doesn't need more#But Death Note doesn't truly drop something as big as Gojo and Megumi to then do barely nothing about it#('But L and Watari' not the same at all. That was deepened in the anime and besides Watari is not one of the main characters)#Or Megumi and his sister. If we see barely nothing of Megumi and his sister other than shiny flashbacks of her#how am I to feel moved by it all beyond superficial emotions? I don't know. It just feels so like cardboard to me#And it annoys me! It annoys me a lot! Because Jujutsu Kaisen has amazing potential! The dynamics and characters could be amazing!#But I don't trust they'll live to their full potential and the potential existing for nothing is ruining this for me xD#Jujutsu Kaisen#Sorry this time I'm tagging it. I want to find this and see if I was right when I'm finished. I think I'll read the manga too#The condescending filler breakfast comment by my friend was ironic considering the Kramer vs. Kramer breakfast scenes exist#Breakfast can be so telling. And besides he loves the Chainsaw Man coffee scene so I don't get why not breakfast#But truly some small daily life moments can tell us a lot about a character that we could recognise later on in high stakes scenes#such as how they deal in tense situations‚ what makes them snap#how they go about dealing with a problem.#Sometimes it could be smaller moments or conversations what makes characters reconsider things‚ not just having Sukuna rip their heart out#In Pandora Hearts the conversation between Elliot and Oz about the book series they love and their favourite characters becomes key#Oz's development and how he regards things‚ his own person‚ and how he deals with situations will be shaped later on by this conversation#till the very end. The entire main character's development is shaped by a 'filler' conversation.It's not filler. It's just not a fight scen#Shonen manga readers find everything filler except for fights which is ironic considering that many fights in shonen feel unnecessary#Breakfast is unnecessary. Just filler. Fighting thirty seven secondary monsters or chapter after chapter of physical training is not. Okay#Things can be small but plot relevant. If it shapes and fleshes out and deepens a character or a relationship it is not filler#And mainly MAINLY for the love of everything good if you're going to make a fucked up or Meaningful Beyond Everything dynamic#give it time and care. Actually write it. Don't give me two panels and one conversation after some life and death situation. It's not enoug#Especially if I'm to believe they are important. Make me believe they actually are#I don't know... This issue with not trusting the development of very well set potential in Jujutsu Kaisen#has not only been keeping me from thoroughly enjoying the series‚ but actively keeping me from watching for weeks#It makes me doubt if I want to spend my time in this at all since after all time is limited and we can but spend it in a handful of things#A pity. I really love some things and I really think Megumi and Gojo could be everything to me haha the Heathcliff/Hareton vibe gets me
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my-thoughts-and-junk · 3 months ago
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my 1 (one) stardew opinion is shane should not have won the bachelor poll
#stardew valley#like i love shane but his storyline is not improved by him being a marriage canidate#if anything his bland post-marriage dialogue and 14 heart event dampen the message#and clint would have been a GREAT bachelor#linus not so much because he would have suffered from the same post-marriage dialogue dampening as shane#and he's too much of a free spirit to be tied down to your farm#like maybe he'd have a similar romance path as krobus? like you don't get MARRIED married but you have a commitment ceremony!!!#and the wizard... need to be in a love square with the witch and caroline...#his hidden dialogue. the situation with abigail. his adulterous past. his condescending behavior towards the player.#i also don't think he'd marry the player though. would probably make you soul bonded or something#maybe it increases your health or smth? and if you get divorced your health gets cut in half for like a week while you slowly recover#idk i really like the idea of him cursing you if you divorce him. 'not a very mature way to express anger' my ass#clint... i need to marry him...#there's a mod which makes his storyline WAYYY too similar to shane for my liking#with him going to therapy and stuff#but it DID make him realize being around emily makes him uncomfortable which i really like#i think a good route for him to go down would be him recognizing that what he feels for emily is not love or even desire#it's anxiety. emily is nice to him which makes him uncomfortable because no one is nice to him#which he confuses for attraction and he confuses her kindness for reciprocation#i think if emily ever asked him out he would turn her down#like emily would come up to you and be like 'hey i realize clint has a crush on me and i think it's really sweet so i'm gonna ask him out'#and then she does and he just goes 'O-O erm... no thank you...'#which confuses emily but she accepts being turned down and later on#clint talks to you about it like 'i thought that was what i wanted but her asking me out made me really uncomfortable and i don't know why'#and in a romance route he gets with you specifically because you make him feel calm :)#originally i wanted to say this was my most controversial stardew opinion but a LOT of people hate shane. so#also emily shouldn't have won the poll either!!!#sandy would have been a MUCH better option to flesh out her character and the desert more#marnie would have been interesting considering her relationship with mayor lewis#and i hate penny so i would fuck her mom out of spite lmaoooo
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irenespring · 5 months ago
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Is there a Tumblr social convention where if someone says they are asking a question in good faith they are actually not asking that question because they want an answer, and instead are trying to make a statement, even though that would mean the exact opposite of what they said (like how most fic authors would absolutely not want constructive criticism even when they ask for it)? Is this convention known enough that people can understandably get angry with you if you fail to pick up on it? I really wish websites came with an "Are you autistic? Here is what people actually mean when they say words" guide. /gen
In related news: I may have gotten myself into my first ever real Tumblr political argument. Shit.
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crimeronan · 2 years ago
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i downloaded finch a couple days ago, which is a self-care gamification app with built-in white noise and gentle exercise and breathing routines. you have a little virtual bird friend who goes on adventures and learns things and chats with you & you can buy them outfits and decorate their room with the rewards earned by doing the self-care things. overall i've found it cute and helpful for hacking some of my executive dysfunction, especially because a lot of the tasks are like, move ONE thing, do ONE dish, stand for TEN seconds, etc.
but anyway when the app did an emotional check-in tonight, i clicked the worst feeling for the first time (because i fucked up my hip and have been crying in pain for ~2 hours). i didn't realize your emotional state affects the app's suggested tasks, but then my homepage immediately gave me:
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and when i scrolled down i discovered that the reward for doing my daily goals had gone up from usual & my pet was coming home sooner from her adventure (at which point i could pet her & talk to her), which.
well. i immediately fucking Dissolved.
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we should have gotten a scene of todo bending his powerful head over a desk and tutoring yuji. their calloused hands affectionately brushing over pencils, etc. in the process accidentally catching ryomen sukuna, greatest of demons, king on the blood throne, he-who-eats-his-enemies-hearts up to date on the last fun and funky 1000 years of japanese history.
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