#or say something mean! but constructive

[smallpapers]

Yall feel free to send me asks or something, I don’t even know if most of my followers are real or bots LOL

[coquelicoq]

i've been dying for a poll option ever since i saw my followers' answers to that text post from february 2022 asking people whether they pronounce beloved as "be-lov-ed" or "be-loved". many people were emphatic about only using one option, and many others use both but were not always able to articulate when they use 2 syllables vs. 3. so out of the goodness of my heart and my insatiable lust for knowledge i have gone through the notes on that post and written down some likely contenders! you're welcome!!!!

BEFORE YOU ANSWER! think about how you would pronounce beloved in the following syntactic contexts:

noun, talking directly to the beloved: hey there beloved

noun, talking about rather than to the beloved: my beloved lives in a pineapple under the sea

adjective in a noun phrase: my beloved x lives in a pineapple under the sea

verb participle: x is beloved by y

okay poll time! there are no wrong answers!! and apologies in advance if i didn't capture your truth, i only had 10 options and life is a rich tapestry!!

[crownedwille]

I've come to the conclusion that loving young royals doesn't mean I can't be critical about it, maybe especially bc I love the show so much I have such strong feelings about it, good and bad and I can love parts of canon and agree with it and appreciate it but I don't have to love it all. I have accepted that it's okay if I don't accept the ending and I don't have to force myself to support it. It's okay to not agree with all of canon and it's okay to not side with all of the creators' intentions/views. Loving a show doesn't mean you have to take everything the writers say on face value and that's the only version that is allowed to exist. Canon isn't everything and fandom is about curating your own experience that makes you happy and not miserable. You don't have to dismiss canon in every aspect and ignore it entirely, that's certainly not what I want but there is a fine line between being canon respectful, allowing some parts to exist and sometimes, yes, you just have to say "fuck canon" and move on for your own sanity and wellbeing

[fencecollapsed]

I think I can say I've mellowed out on Hey Melissa overtime and come to have a fairly balanced dislike of it, but I will admit some of my residual knee-jerk animosity towards it comes from the fact that I saw people who got legitimately triggered by it be called "pearl-clutchers" because they were upset

like, no I don't think "it's bad Because it's disturbing" is a legitimate or constructive critique! disturbing stuff has just as much merit as anything else, it's literally fine that the main goal was to be disturbing, it does in fact succeed in that area. being disturbing on purpose doesn't make it bad, I do get why people like HM! there's a lot that I like about it, my issues with it just outweigh the stuff I like, personally. it deserves to exist as much as any other story in the series, shouldn't be written off just because it's shocking, etc etc

but the amount of "well it's a HORROR series, maybe you snowflakes can't handle horror" type claims I've seen in retort is also. not particularly constructive! "horror" covers a WIDE spectrum of content and the things that scare, upset, and trigger people are equally varied. it's ridiculously unfair to act like someone should be barred the genre entirely because they *checks notes* were triggered by content they weren't expecting and had no warning for and got upset by it. sure, HM may not be "that intense" in the grand scheme of ALL horror, but I think it does push the envelope a bit in terms of what we had come to expect from Hatchetfield at the time. I think it's fair to say a lot of people watching for the first time weren't expecting what we got

it's fine that it exists, the Langs are well within their right to lean further into the horror side whenever they so choose, it is in fact their series and I would never deny them the right to explore whatever content they please! I respect them for it! but also nobody has to justify their personal reaction to it, especially if it was a trigger! people who hate HM because they were unwarned and triggered by it are in their right to feel that way. just because someone recognized a personal limit after being confronted with it and felt emotions about it doesn't mean they "can't handle" horror

I've been triggered by an episode of The Office, it doesn't mean I "can't handle" comedy lmao

there's some kind of middle ground we can have, is all I'm trying to say

[fragmentedblade]

The "Dan Heng is Dan Feng" dogmatics annoy me a lot. It entirely brushes off one of the most interesting and prevalent questions posed by the game, incarnated by several characters and stories that give the question different hues with different potential answers, and a constant also in HI3, like a thread waving the two games together

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

I am asking this to take my mind off of the update because the anticipation is killing me

where do you get your art inspo from? As in the art style :3

yk this is kind of a question i've been dreading! because a lot of people can answer definitively - they'll give names, urls, blogs.

but uh.. I really don't know? I mean there were some deviantart blogs in elementary/middle school that inspired me then, but since? I couldn't say! My style has evolved from me doing my own thing, I suppose. I'd take little bits from other people's tutorials/advice and then stitch it into my own Frankenstein's Style.

[o-uncle-newt]

I just got a bit more time in my schedule and I'm hoping to get started on a Sayers-and-Jews reading list, if anyone has any suggestions! I just really feel like I've never seen anyone talk about how WEIRD the apparent received wisdom is of "Sayers was in a relationship with a completely secular Jew who tried to convince her to have premarital sex she was religiously uncomfortable with, which NATURALLY made her start writing about Jews, but a totally different kind of basically fetishized ultra-conservative type than Cournos was." There are clearly missing links there- not an obvious or intuitive connection at all- and I have my own ideas of what they are and am so curious if it's already been written about.

[imjustavenuxwithaboomerang]

zed: i have been pretty wound up, worrying about all these little things. what is wrong with me?

eliza: i have been compiling a list. number one—

[wheucto]

so they don't have skin, but do have bones. interesting,

[allthoseotherworlds]

It's honestly pretty frustrating sometimes how I feel like so many people say they love Martha, but mostly what I actually see people saying about Martha is how much she probably does/should hate the Doctor for not returning her crush, or sometimes how much people hate Blink/Family of Blood/Last of the Time Lords because they were hard for her.

And like, the former of those is frustrating because a) Nobody is obligated to return someone's romantic feelings, b) Being oblivious to someone having a crush on you might suck for the other person but is not actually a moral failing and c) Martha was sad about it but like. She didn't leave because she was furious at the Doctor for not returning her crush? She left because she knew her crush wasn't reciprocated and wasn't going to be, but couldn't get over it on her end while travelling with the Doctor. And also because the past year had been pretty traumatizing for everyone, including her and also the Doctor and also everyone else who was on that ship thing.

Anyways

I just wanted to talk for a bit about the things I like about Martha, or that are interesting, that are unrelated to those points above.

I think she's the first companion in New Who to join Unit, and I think still the only one to be a medical doctor with a strong scientific backing. Which is cool!

I think it's interesting that in the first episode she appears in, her family is shown to be kind of messy and kind of frustrating, and it feels like that's something she's a little glad to be getting away from for a bit when she travels with the Doctor (though it's not the reason she travels with them). And then, at the end of the season when her family is in danger she prioritizes their wellbeing enough to snap at the Doctor about it. If I remember correctly their phones were tapped or something and it wound up making things a bit worse, but I appreciate the nuances of her relationship with them and how important they are to her despite the messiness.

Despite all the ado made about her crush on the Doctor, I really loved how she really seemed to get the point of travelling with the Doctor. I think that she nailed both the joy and excitement of the unknown, and the compassion and sense of care that motivates the Doctor's travels, and which I think is vital to all of my favourite companions.

It also contrasts in interesting ways with how her personality shifts after she stops travelling with the Doctor - she still cares about people's wellbeing and seems to value the things she learned while travelling, but working with Unit and Torchwood does make her more military, and then of course doing freelance alien fighting (? or something?) in the End of Time.

I think Martha and the Doctor are an interesting duo because they contrast each other in interesting ways. They're both compassionate, hopeful but practical, and good at what they do, but they reflect those qualities in ways that almost, but don't quite, fit together nicely. They don't conflict, really, but they're not quite sustainable either.

They work well together and care about each other, but they're too similar in some ways and too different in others to ever quite see eye to eye, which is why they end up going in different directions. And I think that's not anyone's fault, or indicative of any deep flaws in either of them. Or even really a tragedy, because Martha seems to be doing new and interesting things every time we see her, with plenty of options available and a decent rapport with the Doctor whenever they show up.

Anyway this got way longer than I meant it to. Tldr: There are so many more interesting things to say about Martha than just "She must hate the Doctor". Here are some of them.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

would you like to elaborate on any gender analysis or headcanons for the bad kids?

I love th way this is worded. what if I wouldn't like to where would we be

[chiropteracupola]

the amount of time I spend on tumblr dot com has given me quite the set of standards when it comes to artworks on the theme of 'Trans Angel', and actual museums are failing to meet those standards quite spectacularly.

[meadowlarkx]

One of my favorite things about the worldbuilding in The Left Hand of Darkness is the "perverts" in Gethenian society—those who are permanently in one of the kemmer forms. The "normal" person on Gethen goes through a kemmer cycle with periods of somer, but that's not every Gethenian. People whose bodies don't work this way get treated with repulsion. Genly compares them to "homosexuals" in his society, and that comparison is really instructive. Gethenians may not have gender roles and identities the way we do, but they do have societal norms, including about bodies and sexuality. And those norms leave people out. They are imperfect and sometimes they are unfair. I think this is part of the point.

In subtle ways, this theme is woven throughout the book's descriptions of Gethenian cultures. To stick to sexuality, something similar can be said about the different norms surrounding incest on Gethen and the empathic treatment of Estraven's past relationship with Arek. There is no taboo about incest between siblings on Gethen, only on siblings vowing kemmering, but if a child is born of it, the parents have to separate (and it seems like Estraven is separated from Sorve because of this). The reason for including this element, in my reading, isn't to impose our own moral standards by "showing" that Estraven's relationship with Arek was "bad" (in fact, we learn fairly little about it, beyond that Estraven cared deeply for him.) Instead, I think it's partly to demonstrate the dissonance between Gethenian mores and our own, and unsettle both. Because, like Genly, we see Gethenian norms as strange, we can notice that they bring about particular situations and cause particular hurts. Even the custom of vowing kemmering monogamously for life, which sounds more familiar, is shown as double-edged. Estraven breaks a taboo by making his "false" vow to Ashe, but was trying to build a new life with Ashe really wrong?

These things are not 1:1 to any "real life" issue, but like everything else in this story, I think they're chosen because they are provocative. It's really meaningful to me that even in terms of gender and sexuality, Gethen isn't painted as a utopia, but as a real place. Le Guin shows us two sets of norms and asks us not just "are our norms arbitrary and/or constructed rather than essential truths?" but also "are norms always socially constructed? Should we question them sometimes? What harm is done to maintain them? Who is being left out?"

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the previous post, I think the way I approach trying to evaluate a piece of art is asking "Do I think the positive things I get out of it outweigh the parts of it that I don't like?" And when I call something a "guilty pleasure" song/show/book/piece of media/etc. it's really more in the sense of, "Given who I am as a person, the flaws I've found in this should be complete dealbreakers for me, but somehow they aren't, and it makes me feel like I'm having an identity crisis."

[hazbinbabbling4ever]

I think purity culture has ruined fandoms: everyone is so ansty to prove how pure they are that they attack and harass people horribly and call it "activism". Be it people attacking teenagers in the Marauders fandom because there's this new rule you can't even write the words Harry Potter without summoning a hoard of naysayers who accuse you of endorsing holocaust or some shit just for liking something linked with Miss Black Mold, or be it people harassing SA victims who still dare say they find solace in their old NCG's fandoms, in the stories they loved and made theirs from their childhoods or as adults. This uglyness that runs into tumblr and is infecting every fandom, every social media actually, is so fucking gross. Putting the blame of the evils of consumerism or rich people onto the single person reeks of late stage activism. No one knows what to do anymore, so we start eating each others, and then purity culture morphs into these extreme forms of harassment, that are becoming more and more normal by the day.

I'm starting to get tired of the internet as a whole.

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

My roommate and I had a conversation last night and I keep rotating it in my brain and I Don’t Like It