#or it could be a bottom thing who knows

[froggarolli]

// I'm like so obsessed with the little heart tattoo on the back of Fizz's neck you don't understand

[letsplaythermalnuclearwar]

Homer!Odysseus and Epic!Odysseus would try to kill each other if they ever met

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[ingravinoveritas]

What do you make of David sayin he’s an ally, not an active participant (in queer subcultures)?

Did he come out as straight? I’m not sure anyone has ever asked him directly, not that he needs to give any explanations, I’m just curious because he gives off such a queer vibe even when he’s been married forever.

https://www.attitude.co.uk/culture/david-tennant-on-the-spice-girls-spiceworld-movie-was-being-developed-before-they-even-released-a-single-459815/

Oh, my Asks/DMs have been blowing up over this one. I did have a chance to read this interview with David (is it me, or is he doing nonstop press lately?) and...wow. Definitely enjoyable, and noticeably more unhinged/queer than most of his other interviews (which makes sense, given that Attitude is an LGBTQ-focused publication). But let's get a screenshot up of the most talked about bit, so we can discuss:

Obviously there is a lot going on here, so I'm just going to go with what stood out to me most. I don't think there is anything in the world less surprising than David naming bears first, given certain preferences of his (which I've discussed several times previously on my blog).

What's really interesting though is that the question was asking about queer subcultures, but all of the ones David listed are used primarily (AFAIK, though someone please do correct me if I am wrong) in mlm/gay male relationships. "Queer" can be many things, after all--gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, ace--and yet when David heard "queer subcultures" he specifically went for the mlm/gay ones, and that definitely feels like an interesting choice.

The second thing that I felt was worth discussing is that a lot of the reactions I've seen to this is people saying how adorably clueless David is, or how "he's a little confused, but he's got the spirit." And I'm sort of perplexed by this because we are talking about an almost 53-year-old man here, and I believe he knows damn well what all of those terms/subcultures are.

It's been brought to my attention (from what I would consider a very trustworthy source) that David is not at all as technologically illiterate as he pretends to be. Instead, it's actually part of a persona that he puts on to avoid dealing with issues that would arise from people knowing he is online. I had an inkling of this just from Georgia saying David was the one who set up all the equipment for when they filmed Staged at home (because why would such a task be put in the hands of someone who is hopeless with technology?). But having this confirmed also aligns with David creating a fake personal assistant in the early days of his career so he wouldn't have to fulfill certain social obligations, and to put a barrier between his real self and the world.

So why, then, wouldn't the same pattern possibly apply here?

I know there also tends to be this image of David as a "bumbling, goofy dad" type, and that's definitely part of him and what makes him so charming. But I don't think he is a fool, either--especially not after listening to him talk about Shakespeare or politics or anything else at length--and I think he certainly knows how to answer these types of questions. I think David is more than clever enough to give answers that are cheeky but not revealing, because he knows the purpose of all this is to promote the BAFTAs, not to be a deep, probing exposé on the life and times of David Tennant.

Which then brings me to the big, gay elephant standing in the middle of the room--a.k.a., "I'm an ally rather than an active participant." (Again...so many interesting word choices going on here, and none of it feels like an accident.)

Going back to what I mentioned about the focus of these interviews, I'd like to point out one notable thing that David himself said in the Radio Times interview earlier this week:

This, I think, sums up what we are seeing in all of these interviews: The version of David that he feels is safe to present to the world. He makes it clear as well that he is not going to reveal areas of his personal life while up on stage, and I would say that the same thing applies to these interviews. (It also speaks volumes that in the year 2024, the version of himself he feels safe presenting in these interviews is one who fully knows what bears and twinks--sorry, twinkies--are.)

So no, I don't think David is coming out as straight. I don't think he's coming out as anything, in fact, because he knows these interviews are not the place for that to happen. And I think that saying he is an ally but not an active participant makes the most sense as an answer for a public interview, but neither that nor being in a straight-passing relationship necessarily makes him any less potentially queer.

To reiterate what I said above, there is no one way to be queer. For some people, being queer absolutely can mean going to leather bars and participating in subcultures. But for other people, "queer" can mean something very different. It can mean being a Kinsey 2 just floating along doing your thing until you meet that one person who changes everything. The person who makes you go, "I've usually been more into this and not as much into this...but I'm definitely into you." It can mean being attracted to/falling for someone--a co-star, maybe?--that you never expected to feel that way about. And if David is queer, maybe that also means not shying away from anything, but at the same time not wanting to take the spotlight off the awards and the nominees celebrating one of the most important nights of their lives.

Those are my thoughts on the Attitude interview and David's answers, at any rate. Happy as always to hear from my followers with your takes. Thank you for writing in! x

[sadrockandwaltzes]

Just some crappy Mikage drawings based on images from the show cause I need practice... I feel like I'm really getting the devianart experience tryna draw him😅😭

He looks much better in the show I assure you...

[writing on top left says 'Mikage Death Pose' since it looks very simpson death esque; writing for glasses (he looks so cool in his prof outfit) says 'stylish professor turned stylish librarian after pick-up attempt' (cause I accidentally gave him lipstick😅); middle left writing says 'shading fail' and 'dude being shady- not blushy; and bottom writing says 'Gah... She kept me waiting again!']

Favorite's definitely the bottom one

[seaweedstarshine]

Thinking about the convolution of Eleventh Doctor's expressions of love for River Song in Season 7B. He does not trust Clara. He is utterly (wrongly) convinced that he and Clara are playing a grand manipulative game together. “What are you, eh?! A trick? A trap?!!”

So naturally, the last thing he should do in this game is to clue his opponent in on something that could be used to hurt him. Something like River, so painfully near the end of their time together, whose data ghost he can always see, who “it would hurt too much” to acknowledge. He can't let Clara know of the loss which constantly floods his senses; (“You are always here to me. And I always listen, and I can always see you,” he professes, once Clara has vanished into his timestream).

And yet. River fills his every moment (irregardless of any sneaking out for dates with increasingly-young Rivers while Clara is asleep like he did while the Ponds slept, which would explain his absence when the TARDIS is hiding Clara's bedroom). Even though it's not strategic, he can’t help but tell Clara about her. The best defense he can manage is to phrase it as if River isn’t as important to him as she is. Not only is avoiding her first name in his grief; he's also completely avoiding pronouns; which seems extreme given that he's still mentioning her as often as: “Oh yeah, of course he has! Professor Song! Sorry, it's just I never realized you were a woman.”

Leave out the emotion — leave out the details — don't show the cracks in the armor — play the part — win the game.

“Well, there's no point now. We're about to die. JUST TELL ME WHO YOU ARE.”

[samarecharm]

geniunely not trying to put words in ur mouth im geniunely asking: what do you actually like about persona 5? from all ur rants im just wondering why you didnt drop the game bc it seems (again, im not trying to put words in ur mouth) that it simply not for you? i geniunely have not felt any of the issues you bring up outside of the writing ones and i cannot tell if i'm just easily pleased and not good at discerning what a good game is or we simply have dif things we enjoy in a video game. i hate getting tone across text but im asking out of geniune curiosity im not trying to attack your opinion (;-;)

Nah, i dont feel like ur attacking me, and I hope u dont feel the same when u see my complaints! Lmao. In my defense, I am replaying the game for the first time after completing my first file back in 2020, so alot of the faults i kinda shrugged off in my first playthrough are now glaringly in my face now that I no longer have the confusion and interest in learning the main story to keep me occupied. The game is clunky all the way through, and at some times, even frustratingly so.

But despite that, i do like this game. Alot! Its probably one of my top games ever if im being honest!

This ended up way longer than I intended, so im putting it under a readmore to keep the post short on dashboards

If i had to describe what I liked about the game in the simplest way imaginable…I think I would say, I like how the game makes me feel :) I like the music. I like the vibe. I like the immersion from city to city, and I like the premise! I like the characters and I like the connections you make with these characters! As im replaying this game, i am most excited to see Akira and his comments about the world :) i like hearing everyones voices, I like their little interactions in Mementos, and I like seeing them fight!

P5 is the first game I played in the series; its the game that introduced me to SMT in the first place! And it (smt) is a series that my longtime best friend LOVES and never thought hed be able to share with me! It is a game i keep very near to my heart; it has influenced me in ways i did not think would happen in the short couple of years since i first finished it. It genuinely keeps me awake some nights thinking about the world this game has created, and I think that is a testament to the impact its had, be it good or bad.

The joke about wishing theyd make a persona game that was Good is that despite all of its numerous flaws, the games manage to snatch your attention and pull you in anyway. Imagine if they made a game that had all of those things that i mentioned I loved, but done Right and executed Properly?? Where I got to have a story that made sense and didnt need to be spoonfed to me (in like an HOUR of dialogue and scenes; an HOUR!), and characters that talked and bonded beyond the tiny snippets of interaction theyre allowed to have in mementos? Combat that let me use PERSONAS i liked instead of BUILDS that stop me from getting instakilled throughout the entirety of the endgame, and a Persona building mechanic that didnt feel like I was shooting in the dark looking for possible fusions that end up not even being useful in the endgame.

Ive mentioned it before, but I complain so much bc I have seen what a good p5 game looks like, and its Strikers almost to a T. Combat is still your typical warriors-esque style combat, but it is at least different from the turn based strategy of the main game. Characters talk to each other freely, they hang out and comfort each other in a way that feels more connected that the base game. Strikers implements the ability to see ALL possible fusions with ALL registered personas, not just the ones in your Stock, so you can fuse easily without having yo consult a guide. The story feels like it makes SENSE with antagonists that feel morally grey and sympathetic. Genuinely, alot of the complaints for p5 I had were almost immediately rectified in this game.

But please also know that the praises I sing for this game is only bc of the groundwork laid by p5 and the world it created. Thats what I like about this game, that it had such a captivating premise and cast of characters, that a DIFFERENT company was able to hit the ground running with them. P5 had alot happening in that game, but i think what it had most was potential. The effort put into this game is astronomical, and the possible connections you can outright MISS if u arent paying attention was worth the money and time to implement; even if it meant that it could be considered a waste of resources to higher ups.

Books and games and part time jobs???!! Silly little cutscenes that add nothing to the game PLOTwise, but define and flesh out the personality of your protagonist. There was alot of love put into this game, and its evident by the fact that we have NOT seen a new persona game released; they bank on existing titles bc they are unwilling to make a game like this from scratch again. They dont want to ‘waste’ resources on good voice acting and a complex, overarching story; they dont want to waste money on scenes a player may never see, on routes a player may never get to experience. Making a game that gives u even the slightest bit of freedom means more money in programming and detailing that freedom. This has been an issue for a WHILE, and its a miracle that the gaming landscape had space for a colossal title like p5!

I complain bc I want better, and I do not think that is inherently at odds with my love of this game. In b4 im told to get good; ive played on hard and tested out merciless (its NOT fun, im making godbuilds again and its boring 😞). Its not the most accessible turnbased rpg; theres no colorblind modes, and the affinity system is convoluted and overwhelming. Combo moves are hard to keep track of and it can be incredibly frustrating to see your turns being skipped or seeing characters take extreme technical damage without understanding WHY it happened. The fact that they KNEW the game was desperate for qol improvements by the time royal came out, and instead of updating the base game to have those improvements too, they just pushed the royal edition out for people to play instead. It sucks! Customers and fans deserve better than being forced to shell out money for a game they already played !

As the gaming climate gets more and more hostile and unbearable, I think it is good to look at your games critically, and understand why products come out subpar. Persona 5 is a fun game that has a nice cast and an interesting premise, but it is ultimately tied down by its refusal to build on existing building blocks regarding its combat, and it insists on having insulting and downright out of character dialogue and scenes to appease the audience its designed to be targeted to. It is easy to forget sometimes that queer ppl are infact NOT the prime target of these games, its cishet gamer bros from aged 16 to 40 who will laugh at homophobic comments, who drool over a 16 yr old girl with a 16 yr old mindset and a grown womans body, who need to be placated with constant sexual comments to deal with a convoluted story that will inevitably make zero sense until its laid out for you before the literal end of the game.

Its bad. Its good. Its so shallow and its unbelievable that they thought having the plot twist make ZERO sense until they showed CUTSCENES of YOUR character discussing Goro and his connections to the metaverse for endgame SHOCK VALUE was more important than just having your team be smart and piece it together over time. Its shit. Its literally amazing. It let you FUCK your teacher ??????????????what the FUCK. They also let me shoot a god in the face w the best looking ult persona in the world so i can ignore that shit. And ultimately that is how i got through the game. Lol.

[lupinshanshin]

[chatdae]

Grace FUMBLED Ryan! BAD parenting to preach respect and then act contrarily (ie saying she wants him to feel safe, then not allowing him any autonomy). She should've let him leave and come back... or at least explained why she didn't want him to leave before deciding (ex: 'Homelander will kidnap you', etc). She needed to let him make the decision for himself... agh. AAAAA.

And now Butcher's no use because he's committed to being evil and can't offer ANYTHING good to Ryan!!! He was so right, they NEEDED to give Ryan more space... I know the external pressures seemed impossible, but dammit, Grace, this was no way to beat the odds!

(this is about The Boys season four)

[termagax]

re: "good girl" i think they say it once randomly as a joke and its just one of those things that gets him wayyy more than they expected it would. so now its their secret weapon and they use it very sparingly and every single time he gets super embarrassed about it but it works ill tell you what.

[bigothteddies]

I think that part of what like. kills me about the whole media literacy and critical thinking aspect of enjoying media these days is that people refuse to like. contextualize that

A. Bad media can still hold significant meaning to people

B. Media made for a demographic you aren’t apart of is not inherently bad media

C. Media made for and consumed by the opposite demographic is not inherently shallow or flawed nor is it above criticism for its media tropes either.

[bisexualamy]

I see people talk about fanfiction and novels being different mediums a lot, and while I don’t necessarily disagree, I don’t feel like I understand either. In your opinion, what makes them different mediums from each other? What decides that two things are separate mediums like in general? It’s totally cool if you don’t wanna answer this btw, I know it’s kind of a lot

No worries I think that's an interesting question! With any categories, the boundaries on this are going to be fuzzy, but the reason I believe they're different mediums is that fundamentally, on a metatextual level, the languages are different. What do I mean by this? Let's use film as an example, a medium that I'd argue is very obviously a different medium than novels, even if we may not be able to articulate all the reasons why.

What are some attributes of film that differentiate it from novels (another storytelling medium) or paintings (another visual medium)? Films and novels are both storytelling mediums, but films have visual and auditory components. They also mainly consist of storytelling through visual cues and dialogue. Exposition is given visually or in media res by characters speaking. In a novel, your omniscient narrator giving you a few paragraphs of background on your main characters is common, and so expected it probably flies over the reader's head. In a film, a narrator doing the exact same thing for all the main characters often comes off clumsy. It takes you out of the story in a film, where it doesn't in a novel.

Film is also a time-based medium. A film unfolds over time, and you cannot experience the entire film in one moment or glance. That's not true of a painting (at least traditionally). With a painting, you can view the whole painting in one look. Now, you can sit with a painting, pick out details, analyze the craft or ponder it for a long time and watch as new aspects jump out at you. Fundamentally, however, if you wanted to view a whole painting in one look, you can, and it would still make sense. You cannot do that with a film. On the other hand, a painting is typically not an auditory experience. To do so would be an experimental use of the form. In modern film-making, the exact opposite is true. Music, dialogue, and environmental sound, all of these things are essential to how a film tells a story. To not use them would be considered experimental or odd.

These are three different mediums with three different "languages" in how they interact with their audience. They may share parts of their languages, like I said above, but they don't speak the same language. What works well for one medium can come off clumsy or strange in another.

I believe fanfic and novels have sufficiently different languages that they should be considered different mediums. Both of them are short or long form written mediums telling some sort of story. But fanfic's relationship to its source material is such an inherent trait that novels do not have. The relationship doesn't have to be positive (it's often, in fact, argumentative or strained or dismissive), but the relationship exists. Even in AU fanfiction. Even in fics full of OCs.

In canon compliant and even canon divergent fics, this relationship is more obvious. These fics are both conversations with the source material as much as they are stories. They're playing in the author's sandbox, or they're wrecking their sandcastle and building something else. They're saying "I like/dislike what you did with this specific story, and I'm going to show you that by rewriting or expanding it." They take large aspects of the author's story whole cloth: the characters, the setting, the magic system, the tech, etc.

These fanfics often have little exposition at the top because they presume a familiarity with the characters, the world, or both. This alone makes them really different from novels. Creatively and seamlessly integrating exposition, immersing your audience in a new world and convincing them to stay, is a really important aspect of a novel that these fics don't have to contend with. This alone fundamentally changes how you'd structure a story.

For AU fics, both fics in AU settings and AU fics full of OCs, the above still applies. These fics are still a conversation with the source material. Something about the source material compelled an author to flip it and remix it and change it around. That conversation might be "in the source material, these characters suffered, and I don't want them to suffer any longer" or it could be "I felt the story had a vacancy that this OC fills" or it could be "if these characters had the time/awareness/ability to grow closer, they would've fallen in love." These are all direct commentaries on the original work.

An exercise that I believe illustrates this point the best is to try and adapt an AU fanfic to an original work. Try to file the serial numbers off. I've done this with some of my fic, and it just doesn't work. You don't realize how much you presume the audience knows until you have to cater to an audience who knows nothing of the source material. That hilarious joke you wrote? Turns out it's only funny because it's a nod to this character's original characterization. This awesome climatic plot point that ties the whole story together? Turns out in relies on a specific bit of lore, a quirk of the magic system, or an aspect of the character's past history or personality. Now that this is a novel, you have to back-fill all of that exposition. And you can try to do that, but watch how your story gets clunky and bloated. You will have to start viciously killing your darlings, as you realize that your favorite scene is beautiful in a fic, but sounds awkward and out of place in a novel. Soon, you're basically just rewriting the whole thing to fit a different medium.

Many fanfic writers are extremely talented. And much of that talent, that wit, that perfect line that you can't get out of your head, is integrally informed by your knowledge of the source material. The irony falls flat without having read the source books. The relationships suddenly feel shallow when you don't have seasons of backstory to deepen them. You do not realize how much of fanfic writing consists of this back and forth until you go looking for it.

And here's the thing: if your fanfic has a totally AU setting and it consists of completely original characters, I'd argue that's just a novel posted to AO3. If all you need to do is change the names to make it work, that's a novel. This is why Clueless is inspired by Jane Austen's Emma and not an AU fanfic of it. If you've never read Emma, if you went into Clueless not knowing that Emma was the inspiration for it, you'd perfectly understand the movie.

In fanfic, the source material is always present. It can be obviously present with canon compliant fic. It can be antagonistically present with canon divergent or AU fic. And it is still present, floating in the background, with totally AU fic. Ultimately, the changes a fanfic author makes to the source material are, themselves, as integral to the fanfic as the words on the page. It is a dialogue with the source material: what it did well, what it could've done better, what this author believes is the essence of the story, or the world pushed to its limit, that even though we're in space or in a coffee shop or 1920s New York, we're still, on some level talking about the source material.

This is an aspect of fanfic I love that novels do not have. Novels have a lot of other great stuff! I love novels! But while novels are often engaged in a dialogue with their present society or their predecessors in a genre, that conversation is much more nebulous than it is with fanfic. You can read Slaughterhouse-Five or Gravity's Rainbow, and while knowing their contexts helps you understand them on a deeper level, that is unnecessary to their enjoyment. They are fundamentally more standalone works than fanfic will ever be.

This is ultimately why I think comparing fanfic and novels is comparing apples to oranges. They're different mediums. They use different languages. They require different skills and they fill different artistic niches. You might as well be comparing a film to a painting just because they're both visual art.

[bikananjarrus]

thinking about how stellan died so elzar didn't have to.....

[anastacialy]

y'know, i keep making a habit of swinging my bat at hornets nests, but i have to say i'm getting so, so tired of people complaining about shows not making perfect sense when they aren't even close to done. we're four episodes into this season of doctor who. we're four episodes into this season of bridgerton. and yet in both fandoms i keep seeing people whine that such and such didn't make sense or it wasn't explained all the way and by god you guys i think maybe explanations might come later in the season. this is something most viewers will recognize as being called a 'plot.'

[lichymograine]

I uploaded my Grommash wip to a WoW fb group and people were literally super mean and transphobic😐 Really kinda disheartening since no one said anything nice at all...

[crossbackpoke-check]

Looks like that video is about a month & a half after The Trade and trevors broken ankle 😣

re: this video… anon 😭 i had suspicions but it is so much worse to have them confirmed that really was like. trevor’s first Public Appearance without jamie AND post-broken ankle which is traumatic in and of itself no wonder every beat reporter was like ‘oh yeah trevor’s just devastated’

wouldn’t you be miserable too if your best friend just got traded and your body betrayed you and what if it was maybe all your fault!!!