#popular opinions

[redtoondevils]

I can't stress this enough. I just cannot agree with the idea of Sun willingly turning himself into Moon. If he get's pissed off enough. Because, he is popular opinion from those who say,

And agree he's mentally disturbed, and that's what he (Resort to do.) would do, kind of thing.

Yet, I feel like that's an over statement of what kind of person he is. I have a couple of things to say. That, from the book cannon, he's designed to be an entertainer.

And is a performer for young ages, and older ages. Then after get assigned to be an attendant.

Let's take one at a time, and so he's been moved over. Straight away, that is stressful.

And he felt, an a different atmosphere that would normally change the mood of someone. But for what he's going through, is different.

When he is with kids, I believe he does feel better. But, he'd never come to the point where...If he is feeling angry about something, the right thing to do is to walk away for a while. He takes himself away from the situation, he struggles to keep control.

Just so he can decompress, because he doesn't to do anything horrible. He does this a few times. When he was hiding himself from underneath the table.

When he flew himself away from Cassie, to a further away spot. So that way, he doesn't come close to her. When he tried to intervene from Moon jump scaring her.

For a character who is mentally disturbed, to do something like that. That is actually Selfless! It's minimal, but it is something big!

If he were to use Moon for anything, id think it would be for something dire. If it's a last resort thing. If he really, really needed it. Then maybe.

I typically thought he would threaten that to evil people. Not to people that he doesn't like.

[figuring-it-out17]

People who comment

"Commenting here so someone doesn't comment first"

Are just as bad as the people who comment

"First"

Change my mind

[narryffdreaming]

oh god have soooo many opinions and nothing to do with them 🫠

[juney-blues]

any time a transfem audience takes interest in a character, there is an immediate backlash to any transfeminine interpretations of that character. Suddenly it becomes popular to interpret them as trans in literally any other way than transfem.

while it's not *uncommon* to see an audience call a character an agender any pronouns genderfuck, you see it a lot more the second someone goes "but what if she was a girl"

[astarionancuntnin]

shoutout to sassy traumatized vampires, gotta be one of my favourite genders

astarion + text posts (part 21)

[cosmicdreamgrl]

𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘫𝘬 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴: (114/?)

[goodfellowe]

how we feeling baers

[linkemaus]

Not to be that person, but if Kamala Harris were a white man with the exact same ideals, positions, and beliefs, it wouldn’t have even been a competition. Realising that the worst thing you can apparently be is a woman, is truly devastating.

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

I’m going to take away your media literacy skills

[gatheredfates]

Playerscope, modding and the hunt for aesthetic: why you should be more upset about mods and community expectations than you already are.

I love that this sounds like an academic paper but HONESTLYYYY. I need to put my thoughts to paper in regards to my burnout with xiv, otherwise I think I'll go insane. This is a controversial yet brave post. I am well aware that I partake in some of the things I'm going to be critiquing; aka, "thank you, dinklebottom, we live in a society." I'm also not critiquing mods from a space of offering more accessibility to people and/or facilitating representation not currently offered within the context of the game. There is nuance to every discussion and I'm coming at this from an overarching view around mods and community expectations/standards rather than player joy. I hope this makes sense. I'm also predominately writing from a roleplay perspective, though I'm sure a lot of what I end up saying can reflect in the art party/social space. Just know if I haven't mentioned the latter it's because that's not my scene and I don't pretend to know otherwise.

Anyway. For those who don't know, there's a new mod that's causing some strife in the xiv community called Playerscope. Here is the reddit thread about it. I'm not going to be talking too much about the mod in general because that's not the point of this post, but seeing discussion around it today just made me feel more exhausted than I already am when it comes to modding and the xiv community around it. It made me realise... I'm actually really sick to death of mods. I'm sick to death of what they're doing to the community when it comes to gatekeeping, policing and in general the interactions we have with each other in the community.

Let me explain: I wrote a post about the roleplay mod on bsky that kind of articulates at a surface level what I mean.

I think what makes me sad, which I'm sure is echoed by a lot of people, is that mods feel like the standard now rather than an option and that there's a certain expectation for people to have them if they want to engage with facets of the community—whether intentional or not.

Unlike XIV, WoW has a supported mod scene (within reason) and TRP 2 and the like have been accepted for years now. In a space where people can't slap on an RP tag, having that tool readily identifies you as a writer/roleplayer and you can include as much or as little of your character as you like. The general idea is if you have one of these tools enabled, you're a roleplayer to some capacity. You can dress up the profile to a certain degree, you can add links and supported pictures, but you're mostly reliant on what you put to paper in regards to your character. Even then, I find filling out what my character is doing currently and marking the rest as a WIP doesn't necessarily exclude me from roleplay if I want to find it. A lot of people will do that and a super simple description to incite interest around their oc.

These days in XIV... I don't know. I do think communities have gotten more insular—it's why I'm so pedantic about trying to find them for the Compendium—but I also think mods and, to a certain extent, the 'nightclub' scene have gotten in the way of it as well. My argument is such.

I want to go to an event (for example sake, I'll call it Seascape). In order to fully participate, I may need:

Their discord.

A roleplay addon.

A carrd/google site/etc.

Their synchshell (including mods, mare and everything else)

Potentially a mod of some description so people know I can see theirs (and vice versa).

Also that your mod isn't made by a shitty person.

Appropriate understanding of the scene/social space.

Some luck and a prayer that it's an inclusive space and not a closed rp group advertising as being open and/or a mod showcase advertising itself as something different.

Like??? Holy shit you guys. If you are someone who doesn't want to mod because you're worried about repercussions it really just feels like a big 'fuck you, good luck'.

And let me be clear, not every community is like this. I'm incredibly lucky to have found fantastic roleplay within my own rp event/community, I have great friends who run awesome, inclusive events for people of any skill (writing or otherwise) and I do fully believe you can just enable the rp tag and find fun, fulfilling roleplay. But I've also found the above a lot of times, too. I've had people point-blank get mad at my partner because he won't install mods and try to exclude and/or circumvent him in spaces. It's weird. I've been to events where the only time I felt like I got proper interaction(s) was when I joined the aforementioned, even if I have my character's profile linked in my about. It's weird.

Honestly, no wonder new roleplayers feel overwhelmed. Not only do they have to learn roleplay etiquette, they have to be a mod expert overnight? It feels less about what someone can bring to the table as far as a story but what mods they can install to either look cool or pass an unspoken social barrier. As much as I'm down bad for aesthetic and looking the part, I hate it being at the cost of accessibility and fun for someone else.

Arguably it's the same for gposing and the like as well, which contributes to my exhaustion alongside all the graphical changes and I just. I'm gnawing at the bars of my cage.

I don't think it's going to change and arguably it's more of a Twitter/X issue than a Tumblr, one but Tumblr lets me write mini essays and Twitter will tell me to kms.

Ergo, I'll go with the essay-writing platform.

Anyway, I guess this is just a reminder that you don't need 4596419651 mods to be in the community and that people should be more vigilant on including people who don't have them for whatever reason, provided they operate in good-faith and want to contribute. I think we're careening to a slippery slope of expectation for something unsupported and I don't like it.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

You're anti-antisemitism because you know there are good jews who don't deserve antisemitism. I am anti-antisemitism because I know no jew deserves antisemitism. We are not the same.

(what you also don't know is that you aren't anti-antisemitism)

[atoriv-art]

silly fashion swaps

[oifaaa]

Realising that my idea of what it means to be in a fandom might be a little skewed so help me out here what is your baseline qualification for being part of a fandom

[samipekoe]

You just made me connect so many dots. Ranma was yuri all along. . . . That's why it's compelled me all these years. . . . Thank you for your service.

ranma may look overwhelmingly straight at first but you just need the eyes To See

[ryllen]

Perhaps ... 😯 [x]

[hybbat]

The only thing I've ever wanted to ask a cc about fandom depictions is to find out how Hypno feels about the boob window.