#still might do that sometime tbh

[ehlnofay]

tagged by @wispstalk to list five songs that remind me of my characters. this is a query that is perfect for me and also cruel and spiteful, because I have so many songs for all of my characters, complete with detailed analysis of which elements of their story the song is about and a video that plays in my head while I listen. the process of narrowing it down to five is the most harrowing thing I’ve experienced in all my life. and in the end the selection was not perfect. (there are other songs and bands I would have liked to include. alas.) in any case:

1. Metaphor by The Crane Wives

if arabella had a theme song, this would be it. the whole air of it is so perfect for her, the relationship it describes to language and communicating with people in general... it’s so. ugh. she DOES cut her teeth on secondhand sentiments. all these words ARE sweet and meaningless. you CAN’T trust a single thing she says!!

2. Second Child, Restless Child by The Oh Hellos

I love the oh hellos but it is not common for their music to make me think of my fictional medias; I am not sure why. this song however is the exception because it makes me think SO fully and completely of efri. so very and utterly. like she is restless and in my head her nickname is a nordic word alluding to being a younger child. it’s right there in the title before you even get to the lyrics about running far from all you’ve ever known. besides the song is the same age as her, which is neat, and also every time I listen to it I can see her dancing in my head. (she’s not a very good dancer, but she is enthusiastic!)

3: Dlora Yelps by Don’t

the music that reminds me of caelestis is unusually varied, which is very fun and also made picking one of zir songs very difficult. I chose this one because it was a musical niche that I didn’t have elsewhere on the list. this one to me is about caelestis and nerevar and the interplay between them; the dynamic between a guy and his maybe-partially-probably reincarnation is bound to be a weird one, metaphysically and emotionally, so that’s very interesting to me, and how ELSE am I supposed to interpret “I’m born once more / watered by the dewy dawns / and ankle deep in coupled thought”?

4: Secret Worlds by The Amazing Devil

there’s a number of TAD songs that make me think of pax, but this one has got to be the strongest. (martin’s there too, in the conversation of this song, and in the mind video. as a treat.) it so powerfully makes me think of them and their attitude to their role, and eventually the gorgeous way it all crashed and burned, that I incorporated it into an artwork I did some time ago (and have loose plans on doing it again.)

5: Ask Me Anything by S.J. Tucker

this isn’t technically my character... but, yes, it is. this song reminds me of my reimagining of sheogorath and how it relates to people to such a ludicrous extent that it in some small part inspired my short story Comfort. (the idea for that story lurked in my head for months, with several false starts playing around with different angles, before one day I was walking home listening to that song and it captured the sense of sheogorath’s attitude to its most favouritest random people so well that I started drafting stuff as soon as I got to my laptop. I get a lot of my story ideas listening to songs that make me think of them. it’s a delight.)

[cornertheculprit]

Athena: Hee hee hee. You were so cute! ...And who's THAT fine-looking young man?

Apollo: That's Nahyuta, back when he used to smile.

[...]

Apollo: These pictures sure bring back memories. Nahyuta is cheerfully smiling in this one. That quiet smile he gives in court now seems almost fake by comparison.

[...]

Apollo: [...] (Before he goes, I'm going to turn back time by righting the wrongs that have been done. I'm going to restore Dhurke's freedom... ...and return a real smile to Nahyuta's face! I'm going to win this case. I just have to!)

[...]

Apollo: ......... (Dhurke, I hope you're watching. I proved your innocence... ...Nahyuta's smiling again... ...and that revolution you've always dreamed of... is finally happening.)

apollo's repeated reflections on nahyuta's smile throughout turnabout revolution and his desire to bring a real one back to his face instead of the fake one he's used up until then......augh. it's so fun to me

[plushie-lovey]

FINALLY!! At long last, I've gotten my hands on a Pumpkin Kitty, after a whole year of wanting and waiting.

Her name is Latte! (Short for Miss Pumpkin Spice Latte) You can also call her Miss Spice!

[cold-neon-ocean]

Remember when I drew everyone as horses lolol??? I should bring that back tbh that was fun. I can't believe these are 3 years old (yeah i can sheesh) I kinda want to bring this AU back though, it was fun and evoked happiness for me ;; my silly horsies

[godtier]

can we talk about the fandom term "word of god?"

i feel like this term has gotten incredibly muddied over the years and its definition seems to be considered as the following by the majority of people in fandom:

"word of god" means that anything that anyone who has worked on a given piece of media should be considered canon. e.g.: "the voice actor of my favorite character thinks he's asexual, therefore this is word of god information that should be considered canon!"

in actuality, the term is defined as such:

The creator(s) of a media franchise and/or their extradiegetic revelations about plot, characters, etc. A statement regarding some ambiguous or undefined aspect of a work, the Word of God comes from someone considered to be the ultimate authority, such as the creator, director or producer.

the important part is the fact that an "ultimate authority" is defined as someone who had a significant measure of creative pull in the production being questioned.

in large productions, this almost always excludes things such as actors or voice actors and can even extend to writers. while writers are obviously creating the granular details of the media, they still have to get approval for the scripts they write from the person in charge. note that this does not mean that actors/other staff and their input/feedback are always disregarded 100% of the time; there are plenty of cases where an actor speaks up about a line read, provides feedback during production, and makes a strong enough case to where the people in charge actually like the suggestion and go with it.

for example, an actor could suggest that they feel their character would feel more guilty during a scene due to events or actions from a past episode. the director might assess the situation, calculate how much a change like that would disrupt the writing of the rest of the episode, then approve or deny the suggestion accordingly.

but let's say the suggestion is approved. even though that suggestion originated from an actor, what makes it "word of god" is that the director or creator accepted it. that's the key.

actors make statements about their own characters a lot these days. they're much more free to speak about their own feelings and interpretations, what maybe inspired their performances, etc. and these thoughts are more accessible when those actors are either very active on the promotional circuit or they routinely post on places like twitter. this is not a bad thing, of course, as they should be able to do that and not be forced to shut their traps about how they feel about any given character or performance. it's a healthy thing overall.

but when it comes to the act of interpreting media, their statements and ideas are white noise at best. they're hired to perform a character as written by someone else. any statements they make that are not backed up either by the material itself or a producer/director on the material should always be interpreted as headcanon, not word of god. it doesn't help that there's a heavy conspiratorial attitude online anymore, where everyone tries to find the "hidden meanings" in otherwise innocuous personal posts by a staff member who has no decision-making ability. but that's another issue entirely.

now, this isn't to say that i condemn people for adopting those headcanons as their own because i've done that myself for fanfiction and rp purposes. my issue comes in when people parrot the headcanons of these actors and then label them as "word of god."

on its head, it might be difficult to see the issue. but where it gets dicey is when it leads to people bullying others for not following these headcanons as "word of god."

i'll use a very silly example to explain.

let's say that during an interview, an actor makes the statement that they think their character is afraid of snakes. let's also say that there is no evidence of this in the source material, nor is it corroborated by anyone else with authority on the project (remember: this means the creator, director, and/or producer of a project). it doesn't matter why they said it, just that they did.

but let's say someone in the fandom runs with this, saying it's "word of god" that this character is afraid of snakes.

then let's say someone else in the fandom, who has never seen this interview, draws this character petting a snake for whatever reason. again, it doesn't matter why.

what i have seen happen in these cases is that the person who drew the art will inevitably get people commenting saying things like "this is cute, but he's canonically afraid of snakes, just FYI :)"

now imagine instead of "afraid of snakes" it's something more charged. you can probably imagine how it could quickly devolve into bullying or claims of "fake fans" etc. this phenomenon has run creators out of fandoms or at the very least turned them off from creating fanworks of it or engaging with it publicly. this is, of course, not a "win" for the fandom.

i'm not saying all of this to imply it's "wrong" to adopt what an actor says and incorporate it into how you decide to create or interact with the fandom. i really don't care what people create for themselves or friends.

what i take umbrage with is the push to spread something an actor probably spent no more than two seconds thinking about as infallible evidence of their specific perspective being canon and therefore intrinsic to any further interpretation of that character in fandom works. you must acknowledge this throw-away idea the actor had about their character because it's lore, you see, and not doing so means you're either uninformed at best, or are actively disparaging the canon and a "fake fan" at worst.

it also of course interferes with the theory crafting side of things. someone can theory craft only to have someone bust in saying "BUT ACTOR SAID THIS AND YOUR THEORY CONTRADICTS IT." this is despite whatever the actor had said not being reflected in any manner whatsoever in the source material.

this behavior damages media literacy and disrupts the flow of analysis. to include every single thing an actor may say about their character is inherently untenable, because actors are (generally) not involved with the writing process and are not writers themselves. they may often say things that outright contradict canon material, multiple times. you can say "well those are mistakes" but if one is a mistake, what makes anything else they say more credible? it's best to simply discard what an actor might say as, again, white noise when you're analyzing media. you can infer certain things, at most, such as an actor saying about their process "i envisioned these two as reincarnated lovers to get the chemistry down correctly." that may inform the meta reasoning as to why two characters behave a certain way around each other. but that statement taken at face-value does not mean that the characters themselves are canonically reincarnated lovers.

of course, since this is tumblr, some may poke their heads in and point their fingers with "whataboutisms" with regards to things like small, indie productions. if your indie production is three people, then canon may be more malleable by design, sure. but even in the smallest of projects, if there are directors and creators working with actors, the directors and creators still have final say. and if the creator or director/producer agrees that what the actors says is valid, then see what i had mentioned above: it's the person with the most creative agency or authority in the hierarchy of the production that has the final say and are what makes any given fact "word of god."

there's, of course, the purist route where you disregard anything that anyone, creator included, may say outside of the media itself: if it's not in the book, then you don't take it into consideration. but that's "death of the author" and is yet another argument for another day.

bottom line when it comes to fanworks, though: do whatever the hell you want. it doesn't fucking matter. the important thing is that you're respectful to each other and not trying to strong-arm someone into changing what they're making to fit what you want canon to be based on the word of an actor in a 7 second interview clip. if someone draws something you don't like, writes something that goes against your interpretation of the characters, just... block them. it's not debate club.

the only space wherein browbeating debate should be anticipated is in the theory crafting and literary analysis space, where the point is to discuss the canon material itself. but if you come in hot, don't expect to always be received well with someone who has experience analyzing media. just be respectful, that's all i want.

[salty-software-engineer]

Man I just finished Babel and I was excited to read discussions online because there's so much going on in it with so many little things and just....angry white people. Everywhere. Truly a dead dove moment.

[ifindus]

✨"Meet the Artist" ✨

Name: Findus Age: 26 (29.03) Zodiac: Aries Nationality: Norwegian Orientation: Bi/Asexual Gender: Non-Binary (they/them) Education: Masters degree in Archaeology

[gay-artificer]

Okay I might not have anyone here whos able to contribute to this question but, in the past, I have used 'Hermaphrodite" as a purely scientific word, with heavy stressing that it is not to be confused with the definition of intersex or used to describe actual human beings under any circumstances. This is in part because I've never actually found a good term to replace it, as a lot of suggested terms are... unfitting or somewhat mismatched in a strictly scientific/biological sense. A lot of the suggested terms from more worldbuilding-focused individuals are used more (or strictly) for plants, or at least in 99% of contexts tend to be used for plants or describe slightly more specific things than just "Animal with both sexual systems at once." Plants as a whole have like... god, like ten different terms for various sexual setups because they can be stupidly complicated in a way that you just aren't likely to see with most animals, which tend to be more simplistic (at least slightly, lmao). There's also the slightly more niche issue that a lot of suggested alternatives address the topic from the strict goal of 'replace the word' and thus haven't yet spread to cover some of the specific forms that can apply too, although this would probably be a pretty easy fix if everyone can agree on a term, but at least as it is I still seems like everyone is split 5 different ways on which to use. In terms of fiction/casual use I've generally been defaulting to duel-sexed, which isn't an actual used term as far as I know, just because its pretty self descriptive and also wouldn't have some fringe specific scientific use- which is an issue I'd think you'd only really be bothered by if you were dipped in a lot of discussions about fringe animal biology- which is where I think a lot of suggestions from individuals more on the intersex activism side tend to fall when the terms they raise clash against niche situational biology things. Ive also used non-gonochoristic which is both clunkier and less easily picked up by less familiar individuals, but is also basically strictly 'animal' in use. Recently I've seen cosexual, which admittedly I seemed to have missed because yet again its a term where 99% of its use is isolated to plants, although it seems like there is a handful of uses cases that applied it specifically to animals (But still ultimately fall back on the other term in order to clarify the specifics). At least in terms of recent suggestions its probably the one I think would be most likely to pick up traction as a replacement, but its definitely still mired in the problematic terminology (In that basically everything I've seen use it only commits to using it alongside the other term, rather than attempt to replace it) and also still heavily plant related. Although not to the degrees of some of the popular suggestions like 'monoecious' which is a fairly common and well known word- but its specific relationship with other plant terminology makes it feel ill-fitted for the role when its not going to mixed with plant bullshit. Seriously look at this:

I've also seen bigenital suggested recently, which I frankly think is a much worse/weaker word both in terms of just, terminology and also its finer application. And then a handful of terms that just very blatantly have too much crossover with other things. Also a dozen other words that I've seen floating around over the years, but they definitely exist as mostly peoples personal suggestions/solutions and not ones with any real traction. It's a problem I've seen repeatedly brought up, but have yet to actually see any sort of formal correction take hold. And I think part of that is almost certainly a bit of a clash between nerds trying to maintain the specific definitions of things in an area where theres already a lot of confusing overlap, Activists who rightfully want get things changed but aren't clued in as hard to more niche scientific terminology concerns like "This is specifically for plants who have a specific type of reproduction system organization with their flowers, and thus doesn't quiet work for something that doesn't have multiple sets of genitals in different arrangements as most animals do" and well meaning scientists who want to avoid the word and try using alternatives but ultimately fall back on the one people know and that they know scientifically describes the thing they want to describe even if it also carries a historically negative connotation with it. Which is where I'm realizing I've kinda been sitting, because things really haven't shifted once you sit down and read the stuff that gets put out, and unlike some... other words its specific use case is a bit less easily swapped out with synonyms. So you just fall back in on the less ideal but accepted within the bubble youre working in term. So I guess the question is, has anyone here actually seen something make some ground past just sort of 'this would be a nice replacement'? I'd frankly love if I've just somehow missed a big shift in language in the scientific community, but so often I just see people claim that one term is the new standard when its like... standard in that its used heavily in botany, and there generally is a split between botany and zoology in terms of terminology that people would want to maintain. (God don't let anyone tell you 'male and female' are the only options or bring up that stupid 'its 1st grade biology' bullshit. The world is so stupidly complicated and this would not be an issue if it was so simple but unfortunately we need terminology for all the weird shit exclusively found in three species of cactus) Anyway, I typed this whole thing up kinda just to see if anyone else had yet more terms they've seen around or even used actually properly in a scientific paper, and its a whole mess thats been bothering me with specbio for years and at the end of typing this I'm honestly just hoping more that cosexed/cosexual catches on. I think it forms a nice trifecta with perisexed/intersexed/cosexed. And hey, maybe it has caught on more in the sex and gender side of things (let me know if so, if you happen to be more familiar with that) cause I certainly am more clued in to the non-human biology stuff which is where you get weird things one single species of rose has decided to do we now have to name. On a lighter note. God I hate plants. They give me headaches.

[reticent-fate]

part 11/26ish

anyone remember those scales with the springs in 'em? all i ever see these days are digital scales but those things made the best noises. i think i've seen some kitchen scales that still use spring mechanisms, but it's been a while.

technology is weird.

from the beginning

[tariah23]

Noooo…… first it’s Yuuta and Shoko, now they’re yo-yoing back around to Megumi.

[theha1rarch]

quick little affiliates call? i’m planning on editing once i get on later & i figured i’d put a call up since i will be anyways & i’ve been thinking abt it :) <3

[moe-broey]

Ooufhgh.

[vice-like]

now that the new chapter is out, the official translation has an inconsistency that the fantranslation didn't in omibashira arc

official on the left here, says tanuma's dad is a single father instead of midorikawa's very purposefully vague way of saying it's "just him and his dad" that i'm gonna assume the fantranslation nailed (since it's the same for the crunchy subs in the anime)

and honestly that's my main problem with the official tbh, overall they make characters sound more natural and word sentences better but i feel like they don't notice midorikawa's subtlety in some cases (prob bc the team translating it might not have been familiar with the series at this time), something the fantranslation might not miss as much bc (besides being familiar with the series) most of the time they care more about accuracy than wording and adaptation

even tho i like the official (and prefer it in many cases) i really hope the same translator can keep working on it bc the more familiar they get with working with the series the less this will happen i think, and honeslty it's sooo nice to have both options i just get worried abt ppl who only read one version sometimes lol

of course the reader can just see this as natsume assuming he's a single father bc he doesn't know instead of seeing it as an inconsistency, but it's kinda sad a purposeful hint from the author got lost in translation

[bmpmp3]

fffffffffuuuuuuccccccccccck i was always meant to become a mascot character designer

[chaddicus]

sorry lol I just agreed with that post so much and it got me thinking tbh. I think a lot of us have gotten into a habit of looking at a story so critically, trying to sniff out plot holes and 'bad writing' in a way that misses the fact that the point of a story is to tell a story. I feel like people forget about suspension of disbelief in their mission to analyze a work sometimes. I do think there is a place for in-depth meta analysis of a work, I think it's just as much a worthy fandom experience as any, and maybe that post wasn't even meant to criticize people doing that sort of thing at all, but I just. I think a lot these days about how much more enjoyment I get out of a thing when I decide to watch or read or play it with the intention of just letting it be what it is and not trying to fucking grade its quality or something. you don't have to rate and review everything you do. sometimes you can go 'oh they could have written this differently. but this isn't that version of the story' and then just carry on and not let that other version of how things could have gone haunt your experience. sometimes you have to go 'wow that was kind of dumb' and then just integrate the understanding that the thing you're watching/playing/reading is gonna be kind of dumb sometimes and keep going anyway. and it won't always work out this way, but sometimes you're gonna get a lot more entertainment and joy out of a thing by doing that than by keeping score in your head of the things it's doing 'wrong' or whatever, and I think enjoying a thing for what it is can be a much better use of your time than criticizing it for what it isn't, you know? we're not all film critics. we're not all book reviewers. we don't always need to give a measurement of the quality of everything we experience. you can just experience it. you know?

[mushed-kid]

.