#over actually engaging with the text

[wardensantoineandevka]

I see there's posts floating around directly and blatantly arguing against mine (same wording) by completely misunderstanding what I said. I'm fucking BACK, babey. Should've bought some hay-scented fragrance while I was at Sephora today, because I am once again your strawman!

[pekoeboo]

ugh. some thoughts.

really been trying to find the joy in drawing/writing again and honestly it's been such a challenge. friends have told me it's most likely depression that's making it hard to feel motivated and tbh they're probably right.

hoping to get back into being creative in the way I Want to be at some point tho. I miss it. there's still so much with my stories and characters that I haven't been able to share or explain and I wish I knew how without it feeling like this daunting, impossible task.

I don't know when I'll get around to actually sharing art again (or writing, if ever). was hoping that I'd manage to get some of my mental and physical issues in check recently for just long enough to get back into the swing of being creative, but that hasn't seemed to work. everything feels bad, both artistically and physically. I'm struggling to keep up with the frantic pace at which my brain comes up with story concepts and intriguing character interactions, even tho everything in me wishes I could turn it into tangible artistic expression so I can get it out of my head and share it. it used to be easy. I don't know why it's not now.

I'm just . tired, I guess.

[splickedylit]

excerpting

Domestic Diplomacy II is turning out to be even more "splickedy gratuitously gets caught in the weeds of xenosociology and alien language barriers, the fic sequel" and tbh I'm not mad about it

--

“Oh, your moirail!” says Jade, and bounces upright, ignoring John’s wary little soft human cautionary hiss.  To your vague surprise, she’s apparently learned enough not to do the human holding-out-a-hand gesture they usually do when they’re introduced; she clasps her hands in front of her, nonexistent claws politely folded in, and ducks her head briefly forward and to one side, careful not to jab at him with her nonexistent horns. 

It's a pretty passable greeting—for a social equal, which is its own bizarre issue, considering he’s a highblood.  But relatively non-offensive, for a human, and fortunately for her she’s picked a highblood who isn’t likely to give a shit.  Gamzee laughs out loud and gives his own lazy-ass version of a greeting back, a vague twist of his wrists and dip of his head, condescending to use an equal’s greeting back at her.   When he says “Gamzee Makara,” there’s a hint of a threatening buzz to it, a testing you should know to respect me warning—you could have told him she’d show absolutely no sign of hearing it, which is exactly what happens.

“I’m Jade Harley!  I meet you,” Jade says, a carefully neutral statement-of-fact greeting—not fawning or hostile.  You don’t know if humans are out here just learning neutral address no matter what, or if this human particularly just doesn’t give a shit that your moirail’s a fuck-off mutant-huge highblood with horns that scrape the ceiling of the block—by the expectant way she looks up at Gamzee afterward, she wouldn’t give much of a shit either way.  Out of all of the humans, Jade Harley might actually win the prize for giving the least shits, no matter what Rose and Dave like to pretend.

“Yeah, I meet you too, motherfucker,” says Gamzee, looking incredibly amused, and glances down at you.  “She’s a rude-ass little motherfuckin’ toothful, huh?  I like her.”

“Of course you do,” you say, pained.  “Don’t take it personally, alright?  You’re not a highblood here, they don’t get highbloods.”

“Oh, best friend,” says Gamzee, and kisses your nugbone again, embarrassingly.  “I’m a highblood wherever the fuck I go.  It’s cool though.  Squishy-ass little motherfuckers won’t get any grief from me.”

“<Motherfucker>,” Jade repeats behind you, and switches back to English, in the bright, wide verbal tone you’re starting to learn means ‘smiling and happy’, weird interstitial ‘vowel’ breath-sounds further back in the throat through pulled-back mouth-corners.  “Hmm, <motherfucker>…  Oh, neat!  Is that dialect?  It sounds like, ahh, what’s that other word.  Kk—kkkht—  Uh, dammit.  You guys need to learn how to use vowels—  It sounds like <;brother>.”

“It is like,” you say, surprised despite yourself.  “&lt;Brother> is a troll, and <motherfucker> you put it all spots you want.  It’s a thing, it’s a troll, it’s a, tss, a doing-things word, it’s a name.  It’s bad, it’s good.  Any spot you want.  And he does want, for all those, all the time.”

[meimi-haneoka]

Every time I see the English translation of a certain Clear Card panel with Touyuki appearing on my TL I want to pull my hair because that line was mistranslated so, so badly and people are making speculations and going nuts about it in the tags and it's all based on something that doesn't exists because that's not what Touya says, not at all. Like, not even remotely. It's also so out of character for him to say something like that, I don't know how his fans don't realize something is off in that line.

One day I will compile those translation mistakes in one giant google sheet or something, I need to turn this into a mission because it's honestly so irritating to see how riddled with mistakes this localization is, sometimes to the point of messing with important parts of the plot. I don't see them releasing a decently translated edition in the near future, so it's all I can do to give back some respect to the story. Clamp are aware of the translation mistakes and how they change the perception of the story for the foreign readers, just as they are aware of the posts I've made about them over the years (they talked about this in a Space long time ago, and I still cherish that mention in my heart with pride). But there was basically nothing they could do at the time, if not suggesting the English readers to check the posts mentioning the translation differences. That's great and all, I'm glad I have their blessing but this is also not really how ideally one should read a story. My posts are long and filled with personal comments and maybe that would deter many people from checking out what a certain line actually says, so I need to find a quicker and easier way. Also, I started to do those only from chapter 40 onwards (and in the beginning I was way overzealous, I would need to revise) and this panel I'm mentioning above is part of the butchery they did in the first volumes, which weren't covered by my posts yet.

[daz4i]

i think that unless you're talking about stuff that's like purposely and maliciously created with the goal of endangering people (e.g. nazi propaganda or cult recruiting etc) you should probably retire the term "irredeemable media". like i don't think this cartoon meant for children or niche webcomic or barely known indie game are as dangerous as you think they are

[vickyvicarious]

Frankenstein annotators vs Dracula annotators FIGHT (this Ask brought to you by the Frankenstein weekly annotator takes)

For real, there do seem to be some blisteringly cold takes going on in academic circles.

I think Frankenstein suffers more with people tending to identify harder with either Creature or Victor, and thus skewing everything the other one does in order to demonize them. They get plenty of material to work with either way, because both are extremely flawed individuals. Both are self-absorbed, make bad choices, cause harm to those around them. Both also are extremely depressed/self-hating, do not want to hurt anyone until they're well caught up in a self-perpetuating cycle of hatred, feel trapped and victimized by the other. I think a lot of the power of the book comes from being able to sympathize with both of them and spot so many moments of "if only-" while still feeling that the way things turned out was somehow inevitable. It's just ingredients of a great tragedy!

With Dracula, it feels more like people are trying to distance themselves from the characters. By reducing them to plot points, archetypes, and the like, these people stop engaging with them as characters. And as such, they try to force in negative nuance where it wasn't intended in the original, or view them only as a stereotypical Frigid Victorian Male (Jonathan) or say "this side character didn't do a lot so maybe they were secretly evil" (Quincey), or just get... super, super into horny symbolism everywhere in a way that actually saps away a lot of what makes the characters themselves. In doing so, they miss the heart of the story, which despite being a horror novel actually has some really uplifting stuff.

I haven't read tons and tons of academic takes on both books, but based on what I have read, I think those are the trends that seem to bring about some of the really weird or hostile takeaways. Getting too attached to a particular character in Frankenstein, and trying too hard not to care about the characters in Dracula. Opposite in a way, but both ending up missing a lot of heart/nuance that I think you can find in the original works.

I feel there also is an element of a kind of feedback loop in both cases. Each book has had a major impact on pop culture, but in ways which tend to diverge significantly from book canon. I do feel that some of the simplifications and reversals start out as either derivative of (Dracula must have a sympathetic backstory) or defiant to (actually, Frankenstein is the real monster) the film/pop culture versions. This as well as responding to so many other established lines of criticism and types of takes that have become almost a "standard" and which are somewhat removed from the actual canon of the page.

[ithinkimauggie]

Deleted tiktok, i am finally free lets go gamers

[roaldseth]

All of my fandom OCs can neatly fit into one of two categories: the yappers and doesn’t say shit

Yappers:

Elughllue (WHA)

Clemont (OT2)

Simon (UniLord)

Doesn’t say shit

Hart (PKMN)

Wolffort (TriStrat)

[astramachina]

OC questionnaire !

Tagged by the splendiferous (i say it's a word) @fortunatetragedy!

We're going with Ricky Kronbach for this one because he's freshest on the mind and I really need to finish cleaning up the next chapter of Driving Through Tunnels.

What is something you want to do more than anything else in the world, but can't, and why?

You have to be at level 50 or above to get any deep, personal lore outta me so I'll hit you with a basic answer: design dark rides at Anaheim. Y'know, live the whole Imagineer lifestyle. The one thing standing in my way is that I fucking hate California... and my university having blacklisted me from pursuing any further engineering degrees. Frankly an over-reaction given that one guy had it coming.

2) Say you have to move to another planet. Which one are you moving to and why?

Acheron. It's technically a moon but I'm counting it because it's capable of hosting life. Why? I don't fucking know, but teenage me would've given anything to have been flipped off by Sigourney Weaver. Xenomorphs might be a problem but it's a problem I am willing to put up with.

3) How do you make grilled cheese?

I'm lactose intolerant. But the last time I made one was for my brother, and I put a slice of Velveeta between two slices of stale bread, smashed it until it was thin enough to fit into the toaster and then set it to 6 because Jeremy liked them crispy. I might have over-crisped it and almost set our house on fire.

no pressure tagging: @kairahara, @opaleyedprince, @kaizuart because they're the only peeps off the top of my head that i know have an impressive collection of OCs.

your questions are--

If you can steal any one item in all of history, what would it be and why?

You're meeting with someone important for dinner, and it's super last minute. What clothes currently at your disposal are you wearing?

Name one power or ability you wish to never have. Why?

[viksalos]

i just used SAVED! as a teaching tool with somebody for helping them heal from autistic complex trauma lol

[brothersonahotelbed]

the messages app on your phone is actually so evil did you know thjs

[itspileofgoodthings]

me like ..... am I a bad teacher .......because I make class fun and my students laugh ........ surely this is wrong ........

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

Love how me and my cousin don't really know how to talk to each other so we just play 8ball pool over facebook

[florida3exclamationpoints]

:'( :') they were nice. They're prepared for a husky. They like him. He likes them. He's really gonna be leaving soon.

[maryse127]

Final Fantasy XVI has small text size *cries in small tv*

I hate tiny fonts. I would like to be able to read shit. Fucking need the game tho. Also I survived Xenoblade X which is straight up impossible in terms of small text

[sglilac]

Abandoned Twitter for Bluesky and good god is it such a breath of fresh air. Goodbye Muskrat man 😌