#points for the audience for learning

[nephriteknight]

i love that there is an adorable little bird that kills things in such a grotesque way that we just can't stop naming fantasy things after them.

for context, shrikes look like this, and they're also called butcherbirds! :)

they hunt prey such as insects and mice, and they kill them by impaling them on the sharp spines of plants.

[headslikekites]

🐟🔁

[ilions-end]

i've been mulling over the absence of the concept of writing in the homeric epics. it's one of those things that's just fun trying to wrap my head around, especially when these epics are presented to me as text on a page.

the one single potential reference to writing is in the iliad when glaucus mentions "a folded tablet inscribed with many murderous symbols" that made the lycian king know that he should kill bellorophon. i love it as a (possible) attempt to describe a written letter to an audience that is not so much illiterate as pre-literate (?), with no real concept of a common alphabet used to convey meaning. beware this tablet with deadly symbols on it! it reminds me of those early internet infomercials and the challenge of describing a major leap in technology to laypersons ("did you know this gizmo can send an electronic letter to someone's screen on the other side of the world in seconds" type thing)

it's brought to mind in the lot drawing scene too, when the achaeans are deciding who should duel hector. when ajax' lot is picked, the herald doesn't know whose lot it is, because it's not like ajax (or any of the other heroes) have written their names or initials on the stones, because that's not a thing yet! they've drawn personal marks, and ajax' mark is shown to each hero one by one until ajax can see it and claim it as his. (personally i like to think he drew an elongated diamond shape or rectangle to represent his shield :3)

this is also why i roll my eyes whenever someone wants to do a big gotcha on the odyssey by asking "well why didn't odysseus (or menelaus, or someone else) just write penelope a letter at some point". genuinely bold of you to assume that odysseus (or penelope, or any ithacan or argive, or anyone in these stories) knows how to read or write, or even has a concept of a large-scale comprehensible way to convey complex ideas through nonfigurative symbols

[pronouncingitwang]

adam scott says in the "inside the episode" of 2.07 that it allows the audience to "see the magic of gemma and why she immediately took over [mark's] life and his heart" and dichen lachman describes the ep in the severance podcast as "the audience getting to know [gemma] and everyone seeing what mark had that he lost." well, what about gemma? how much do we really get to know her? what did she lose? why did mark take over her heart?

they had 50 minutes for a Gemma Episode and they spent half of it on dead wife tropes and her smiling at mark with come-hither eyes while not giving us a single new fact* about her or a relationship outside of mark and mark's family. a subversion of the dead wife trope is not just scenes later showing they had an imperfect marriage bc mark (or nobody) is the problem in all of those scenes; you need to disrupt the idea that she was the perfect wife, and i don't think we get that. so much of it is explicitly presented through mark's pov. she doesn't hurt him at any point. she's just there being lovely or victimized as he loves or neglects her. everything we learned about her past gives more depth to his current grief but contributes little to our understanding of her current suffering or motivations. that could change with time, but for a first try, i think it's an abysmally bad showing

* that wasn't in mark's 1.07 monologue, his conversations with devon and alexa, or the the you you are pdf, all of which i think did a better job than this episode

[puppppppppy]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[wackywatchdotcom]

i will say im not super invested in the idea of the show giving us too much information on c&a. like itll be super cool if we find out about it! and im sure itll be relevant information if we do but i think the information we get is going to be not super indepth, because im not sure itd match the tone of the show? its less about mystery and like The Lore and more about the characters and examining how different characters respond and have been responding to the environment set up by the show

(it WOULD be fun to learn more details about c&a and i AM curious i just dont think itd actually enhance much abt the show itself, and as such, i dont think its super important writing wise for the audience to learn about it either)

that SAID i do ascribe to the idea that ALL of the cast members worked for c&a before the ended up in the circus, no exceptions. i dont really know how say gangle or zooble wouldve ended up there, but i feel like they all ended up there one way or another. and i think most of the cast doesnt talk about their life in the real world bc its gone and theres no reason to dredge it up (or theyve forgotten it or most aspects of it), but it does make it fascinating that not even pomni, who has the least reason to avoid these topics at least early on, broached the subject of what in the WORLD is c&a UP to. it literally is never brought up ever as of ep 4. which makes me think the company was probably always super shady in some way to the pt that its employees were kinda desensitized to the idea that its c&as fault that horrible things happen

[thefirstknife]

Hi Bel,

I keep seeing comments about people complaining about the quality of destiny’s writing and story in the last few weeks. I haven’t really engaged with destiny since season of defiance, what’s currently gotten everyone so riled up? I thought that people were enjoying Season of the Deep/Witch in terms of narrative, why is Season of the Wish causing people to deride the destiny writing staff again?

I don't know!

Deep and Witch have been absolute bangers in every aspect to me. I've been enjoying all interactions and lore tabs we've received. A lot of them are stuff that we've never had before, a lot of reunions and closures, a lot of development and interactions between characters who you wouldn't really think would have much in common.

Sloane's return and healing from what she's been through has been fantastic, Drifter opening up with her to help her because he also got help from others was fantastic, Sloane reuniting with Aisha and Shayura brought me to tears (Shayura's descent into madness was triggered by immense trauma of Sloane staying on Titan and Titan disappearing), everything with Sloane and Zavala...

Witch was just incredible in every single way; the focus on Eris, the amount of Eris and Ikora content!!!!! Everything about Xivu and Savathun and their interactions together!! Eris finally fulfilling her goal she promised Savathun YEARS ago, getting that closure.

Wish so far has been equally great to me. All the new stuff about Ahamkara is amazing, finally giving us proof for long-standing speculation about Ahamkara and how they aren't universally evil creatures and expanding on them as a species. I love all interactions we've had so far; finally we have Petra back, Mara's singleminded focus on figuring out how to defeat the Witness and her continuous work to improve as a person, ALL SJUR MENTIONS!!!!! I won't talk about the "leak" because we have no context for it so I will wait for the full story to be revealed before I can pass judgment; something that I think should be a lesson to learn from this entire year. Maybe wait for the story to finish before judging the story.

Literally everything this past year that involves Osiris, but especially this season now that he's back in his element with the Vex. And of course every little detail we get of him and Saint. Osiris honestly shaped this year for me with everything that he's done to uncover the biggest mysteries. I think a big reason is that a lot of people just don't like Osiris, which I consider a massive skill issue.

Other than that, I don't know what are the issues people have besides just not being interested in any of these storylines and attributing it to a nebulous "bad writing" claim. I also genuinely believe that way too many people get wrapped up too much in fandom, imagine storylines they want to see and then get disappointed when the actual story doesn't go there. Almost like people forget that this isn't their story and these aren't their characters. A lot of it is also fandom completely warping characters into not what they actually are and then feeling like the canon story is the one that's wrong.

Whatever is the reason, I guess everyone is entitled to their perspective of the story and everyone is free to explore the story in different ways through fanfics and AUs and whatever. I do that too!

But I would definitely ask people to be normal with how they engage in criticism, especially in the current state of affairs. Writers are developers; they experience a ton of harassment and negativity from the community and also from inside the company. And they are online: they can see what we're saying. It's been documented that community commentary has been used to harass writers:

Imprint this into your brain and never forget what these people had to go through. Let's not forget also the way people treated Seth Dickinson on social media when he was active with Destiny fans. "Fans" were actively arguing with him about his own work (telling him that HE is wrong) and were utterly disgusting towards him when he tried explaining what he wrote. His works are now hailed as the best writing in Destiny and people want him back. If I were him, I wouldn't want to come back ngl, not with how he was treated and not with how fans are still treating writers (and hey, Seth wrote LF Collector's Edition! So he was back, technically, this year!). Let's not forget that a lot of writers are members of various marginalised groups. And I'd definitely not want to go back with zero support from leadership.

Which is also an important aspect for all developers, including writers: sometimes they have orders they may not like, but can't argue against. They do the best they can with what they're given, the time they have and directions they receive. And with that in mind, I am enjoying everything we've gotten this year, obviously with some specific complaints about things I didn't particularly enjoy (like the universally mid reception of Defiance; I've spoken about my gripes with it before, a big one being the shafting of Suraya who should've at least been mentioned in a lore tab).

I can tell that there is passion in their work, even if maybe they would prefer to do more with it, but can't. Maybe even if they want to take different routes, but can't. But from what we got, I can feel that they care about this world and these characters. I can tell that someone lovingly wrote about Sloane and her friendships with two grieving women. I can tell that they deeply cared about Sloane's friendship with Zavala and that they loved showing us Saint and Drifter caring about a fellow trauma survivor.

I can tell that the writers are immensely careful and loving towards Eris; everything she went through was crafted with love and passion from both writers and her VA. Eris' story is such a fundamental aspect of Destiny and I can tell that this was important to the writing team and that they gave her everything they could to do justice to her character and her arc and her healing and her release from the cycle she was trapped in for so long.

I can tell that there are writers who care a lot about Osiris and Saint and their relationship. I can tell that someone cared a lot about expanding on Ahamkara and giving them more personalities. I can tell that someone cared DEEPLY about Sjur and Mara and that her repeated mentions are the passionate work of writers who want us to remember her.

I could go on. And I know that not everyone sees it this way, which is fine; we all have different ways of perceiving stories. I enjoy discussing things we in the fandom disagree on and I enjoy hearing different perspectives! Unfortunately, this has recently become rarer and rarer. And for the love of god, please try and treat writers with some respect, especially now, especially those who are still working and doing their best with the shitty situation they're in. None of the cries of "poor devs" ring true to me unless the same is given to writers, instead of treating them like punching bags.

[iniziare]

Fandom: Seele is a lesbian. Her interactions with Bronya prove it, she picks on her all the time, and then also sticks around longer than she has to, yadda yadda... Me: Have you seen her fuss over Luka in his SQ? I'd suggest taking a look at it. You guys ship M/M ships for barely even being in the same trailer.

[telekitnetic-art]

cohost has been a strong alternative to get away from ai scraping. they have no ads, no scraping, and a very similar layout to tumblr (with reblogging, tagging, replying, asks, etc).

so far its felt very much like being on tumblr without the toxicity. the biggest loss is that they dont have statistics- but its nice. it makes it feel cozier, and like the people interacting with your content matter more. ive really been enjoying it.

its worth a shot, anyway!

Thanks for the advice, I’ll do some more digging to see if cohost could be an alternative

I’ve seen other people talk about going to Bluesky and tbh while jumping ship feels like a pretty good plan, I’ve been on Tumblr actively for a little over a year now and I don’t think I really have the energy to try and rebuild on a different platform right now. I’ve already gone through a lot of my art and Nightshaded it, so I’ll definitely keep doing that.

Overall, I’m not really sure what my plan is, even after sleeping on it. I’m still really miserable and frustrated after hearing about this bs. What I might do is keep posting art, but heavily nightshade it and maybe glaze it too for good measure. I’ll probably also stop posting WIPs/previews as frequently. Not really sure. Again, all of this is really frustrating and I can’t think of what the future holds for me in terms of sharing my work without feeling miserable.

[h0neyfreak]

I wrote a paper in college for a children’s fantasy class on how PJO handles disability (specifically ADHD and dyslexia) better than almost any other book for kids that tries to be “about” disability. And rereading it now as more of an adult (I think I was 18 when I took that class) I was worried I’d spend the whole time cringing at my past self but like….I was correct and I’m glad I said it. “Your brain is wired differently and just because it’s a benefit in certain situations (fighting monsters or reading Ancient Greek) doesn’t mean it sucks any less the rest of the time. Especially in a world that doesn’t acknowledge the existence of monsters or write anything in Ancient Greek” is a based take on intellectual disabilities that genuinely meant a lot to me as a kid with (undiagnosed) ADHD.

[crescentfool]

read the splatoon manga... i just think vintage is neat 💙❤️

[fantasticalleigh]

seeing so many videos on YT lately that are like “I read this dark romance book and i’m calling the police” or some condescending put-down derivative

babe if it’s not for you then put it down and find something new to read nobody wants an hour-long video of you yucking someone’s yum

[puppppppppy]

Atla live action 😐

[shinakazami1]

Quick study break rmable

I think it's silly how we loge as a species making everything more humane. But due to that, I try not to make my Stanleys or Narrators actual humans. I try to think how it is not to know typical experience like breathing. That humans are aliens to them.

It's not exactly easy to write your own experience into something. But I love trying to do research in things I could not do. Just to try and imagine an AI trained not on humans - but on something else.

It's human nature to see humans in everything. So why not go against it?

[lebada]

signing me up for debate classes is genuinely one of the best things my parents have ever done to set me up for the future its genuinely crazy how many different situations r so much easier to tackle bc of my debate experience

[westwiiind]

i feel like ppl who don’t like the hidden world because all the dragons left have never experienced grief ever