#this is a probably incomprehensible rant

[mister13eyond]

discussing fanfiction when i am a pretentious bitch is so hard for me to do bc i feel like there's this general presumption that if you're info fanfiction you must like a lot of the Popular Trappings Of Fanfiction

but my problem is that i go looking for things Specifically related to the character or the story or the setting first and foremost and Tropey things are often at the bottom of my list

it's kind of what gets me about the whole 'people are reading ai written fic omg we're going to be replaced' thing, like

an ai can probably write a competent formulaic romance full of commonly used tropes and then plug character names in, sure

but it's never going to be, like. specific in the way that i want my fic to be. like. an ai is not going to go "i want to write 10k words about this character being traumatized because the text kind of scratches the surface of that possibility but never really Gets Into It the way I want it to" or "i want to see how these two characters with an extremely specific dynamic would play off each other in this circumstance". that's what fic is about to me. i don't really care for the Big Tropes for the most part because like... they're tropes because they're shorthand and broadly applicable. I want hyperspecific, obsesive and chewing on the source material in a way where if you changed the names and tried to make the story original or unrelated to canon it would make absolutely 0 fucking sense and it cannot be repackaged as something else?

and that's not to say that no fic that CONTAINS any major tropes is inherently NOT that. I think a trope is a good jumping off point and I have read some fucking incredible takes on common tropes because the author had a really clear vision of how the characters and world would WORK in that framework. i'm more saying like... i don't look for trope first, character second. i look for fics by character first and the common fandom tropes it may or may not use are unimportant to me. i just want to see something about THIS specific character that comes from someone else who has A Lot of thoughts about This Specific Character?

[neuroticboyfriend]

save me california rocket fuel

[duncanor]

Unpopular opinion but Legato should not have been introduced in season 1 of Stampede.

[stickwalk]

everyone talking about how holo’s going to the dumps is kinda crazy like. yeah fauna is graduating due to disagreements with management. gura has complained about projects getting cancelled. altre has had issues with supplies. but that’s expected they just switched to public! there are going to be issues while restructuring and testing the limits of their shareholders. would it be preferable if they just didn’t have shareholders? yeah but this obviously the direction the higher ups want to go so whatev. it was literally announced to everyone that holo is changing and wants to take over the world and wants to do more idol activities. those aren’t bad things they’re just different! of course idols that joined earlier are gonna have opinions on the changes! some aren’t going to like whatever new requirements they have and they’ll leave, but that’s fine. they are going to find success out of holo in a way that more closely aligns with what they want to do. people don’t stay at the same job forever! especially in entertainment! holo going public is not going to mean they’re suddenly going to start abusing the shit out of their employees, it just means they’re changing. holo is a corporation and i feel that people forget that!

also comparing a company that tried to lead a smear campaign against a women they practically drove to kill herself to one that’s just been kinda stupid lately is crazy

[deathwish-mp3]

btw whats up with pete wentz

ok let me *pulls out a whole list*

he dated a teenager (she was 17 he was like 23-24 ish? I think) he met her when she was 15 and he was in his twenties which I'd already super fucking weird but wtv and then he started dating her when she was 17

also he possibly groomed ryan ross? ik you probably don't know who that is but he was the guitarist of panic! at the disco before they split up, he was a huge fan of pete and whenever panic! started getting big pete GOT RYANS NUMBER when ryan was like 17 or smth and started talking to him on like aim chat boards or wtv. then when ryan got older him and pete ALLEGEDLY had a romantic/sexual thing going on but IDK (theres a lot that goes onto this part but I'm trying to keep this short)

also his lyrics are very very misogynistic and creepy. like he broke up with a girl and then wrote the song "tell that mick he just made my list on things to do today", which had the line let's play this game/called when you catch fire/I wouldn't piss to put you out. the whole album (take this to your grave) just consists of pete telling this girl to go die and to go drive off an bridge and crash her car and shit. like what 😀

so yeah I dont like pete wentz 💗

and literally no one in the fandom talks about this at all!! and I think it's so weird!!!!

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Something I've been considering recently: the big storytelling difference between Hideo Kojima and Yoko Taro.

There's an obvious reason I've been thinking about this, I feel: both these guys are, on the surface, exceedingly similar. They're both well-known Japanese video game creators*, they're both known for their eccentricities, they both tell stories that run the razor-thin line between 'Violence is corrupting and immoral' and 'Okay, but that bit of violence was pretty sick, right?' really well, as well as throwing in some really funny 'Hey, what the fuck did I just watch?' energy, hell they even both had a game in their series directed by Platinum Games, I don't especially think this is an overreach, here.

But they are different creators, and I've been thinking about their differences (specifically in storytelling - obviously one makes Action-RPGs and one makes Stealth Games and Baby Postman Simulators) as I play MGS3 and Nier Replicant, and I think I've come down to this: it's in how they condemn violence, and especially war.

Kojima bases all of his stories in reality - a heightened reality, perhaps, but there's a reason multiple MGS games end with long lists of dates and events, Kojima's made-up ones slipped in-between the actual history. Kojima bases his critiques on things that are real and tangible - MGS3 itself, more than any bee-wielding supervillain or photosynthetic sniper, is about the Cold War, and it's no accident that the Boss' speech at the end isn't about the Philosophers, or Volgin, or Metal Gear (METAL GEAR?) it's about soldiers, their fates and their traumas. Kojima lives in the world of... not exactly reality, but allegory-through-reality, and it makes his games pretty explicit in their messaging - which in my mind is a good thing, because it means that people who fundamentally misunderstand MGS aren't just wrong, they're obviously wrong - show me an MGS fan who thinks they're pro-America and pro-military, and I'll show you someone who did not pay attention to MGS.

Yoko Taro, on the other hand, is entirely a creature of allegory. Yoko himself has said in interviews that he tells stories primarily as a way to get people to feel something, and all other things like connections to the other games or even internal consistency comes as a secondary concern (as someone who's tried multiple times to tie everything Drakenier related together - that's believable.) As an inevitable result of this, his stories aren't really 1:1 parallels to history or the modern day, they're very general conflicts that speak to a wide range of topics.

Put it this way: in MGS4, Kojima describes in great detail a situation that is the natural endpoint of the geo-political situation (especially re: America) during most of the early 21st Century, especially The War on Terror - instead of war being a means of obtaining resources to generate income for big corporations, now war is the means of income, and all the inherent flaws of American late-stage capitalism have been applied to it - to the point that soldiers have to pay extra to use someone else's gun. It's a heightened, at times absurd version of reality, but it focuses on specific issues and flaws with the subject matter - The War on Terror, and through them highlights issues with our current world - hell, Kojima may have predicted some of the issue we currently face with capitalism.

In Nier Automata, however, Yoko doesn't present an exaggeration of a real-world conflict to portray it's flaws and its hopelessness. Instead, he constructs an entirely hopeless war, a war that is literally pointless on every side, and explores how people react to that. As opposed to Kojima's slight exaggeration of the War on Terror, by the end of Automata Yoko has presented a proxy war fought on behalf of two races that died off millennia ago, between two groups that are, at their core, exactly the same, made from the same components, fought on one side because of a poorly worded instruction from their creators that necessitates eternal total war as a basic fact of their evolutionary cycle but also inevitably results in their evolutions being violently purged because any form of passivity is betrayal, and on the other as a grand Machiavellian scheme to kill off their own troops, thereby concealing the deaths of their creators – a scheme, it’s worth noting, conceived of by an android that no longer remembers conceiving it, because his own scheme necessitates his constant assassination by the person he cares about the most to prevent him from discovering his own plan. Kojima's wars in MGS4 are absurd and pointless for us because we know what the results of the War on Terror were, Yoko's war in Automata is kinda like an onion - every layer you peel back on it, you discover a new way that it's pointless, and every time you do, you're crying a little bit more.

So, wrapping this up before people realise I just used the ultimate cliche of poorly-worded food metaphors, if you were to ask me what the big difference between Yoko Taro and Hideo Kojima was... well, I'd still go with the gameplay genres, but I'd also say that it's a slight, but really interesting, difference in how they go about their metaphors. As for which is better... neither, obviously. They're both really talented creators, this is just a style thing. You seriously expect me to choose between a series that includes 'a man pretended to be possessed by the ghost of his crush's son because he grafted his arm onto him and everyone bought it' and a series that includes 'at some point the Earth stopped spinning. This has never been explained in any of the games'? What are you, a cop?

*albeit if Yoko ever heard someone compare him to Kojima he'd probably simultaneously die of embarrassment and make a joke about being a younger, hotter Kojima.

[deanwinchester-baby]

Being Dean girl who doesn’t really ship either of the two main ships who also happens to enjoys hanging out in anti-tags of things/ships/characters I dislike/am annoyed by at the moment/have negative opinions of even if I like bc spite is a form of enjoyment and catharsis really is like: Can’t go into the Dean tag bc most of the posts are making everything he is about some other character, can’t go into the anti-sam/anti wincest tag because it’s like, hellers to the brim (y’all enjoy, just not my personal cup of tea), can’t go into the anti cas/destiel tags because it’s a weird combination of homophobes and incest, can’t even visit positive tags such as Dean x Lisa coz I always have to be like “… Do you really enjoy this or is the thinly veiled homophobia extra thinly tonite”

[tenpixelsusie]

i've probably talked about noelle at least a couple times on my blog before i effectively got dragged into ykw by the ankles but i really wanna talk ab her again because she is sincerely, honest to god, one of the characters in deltarune i saw myself in the most when i was playing chapter 2.

and one of the traits that hit me the hardest was her inability to stand up for herself emotionally for the majority of the chapter, before standing up to queen at the end, and queen apologizes.

in snowgrave, this never happens.

you, the player, the soul puppeting around kris' little pixelized body as if they were a mere plaything, are putting noelle in this position of "fight or nothing", asking her to do bigger and bigger things. it starts off with her ice powers, defeating enemies, disguising it as this "saving the world" bit, and she goes along with at first, because it's kris! she trusts them, right? they'd never intentionally hurt her, just poke fun a bit, right? haha.

...right?

it gets bigger. you get to the addison. she insists you don;t have enough money to get the ring! of course, we just don't have enough! besides, it's not that important, right?

you persist. and she gets it. just not in the conventional way.

and you keep going, keep going, keep going...

and you get to berdly.

and you still persist.

and she caves, once again.

in snowgrave, you make her a party member, but at what cost?

her freedom?

her voice?

all of the above?

perhaps so.

i find that chapter 2 really fleshes out noelle in a really bonkers way, and it intrigues me on how toby and his team handles her character in such a way that you get both a horrifying and interesting watch of seeing her cave in and give in like a good little party member, and you see how much she's capable of in both settings, in battle and out, and when you do the game as "normal" you see her wander cyber city in fascination and wonder, and you see her talk about her sister, and you see her have fun, and you see her talk to susie, and you see... so much of her. and she is SUCH a fun and wonderful character.

[misery-has-no-company-now]

(Horribly written rant ahead, ignore me over here if you want to)

Don't you just love it when your brother complains of pain in his leg once and he gets taken to the hospital for a full health check-up, meanwhile you wake up every day choosing whether to roll out of bed or push yourself up first based on which will hurt less because your entire body is always paining all the time but the two times you've complained of it you get yelled at for seeking attention alongside threats of being shown what actual pain is and whenever you appear to look even the slightest bit in pain with a grimace on your face you get told how it's all your fault, your fault, your fault, and nobody else's; even though you never blamed anyone for it and one of the few friends that you have told you that their parent with a medical background believes it's chronic, and your friends' parents believe you more than your own even when you've been walking on shards of broken glass your whole life just to ensure your parents are happy with you - even if they're never proud - and to make sure that you never give them an actual reason not to trust you and yet despite all that you're never believed when you talk about your pain, you're never the receiver of so much as the scrape of an understanding look, and you're never told anything except how it's all in your head, how it's because of you and your actions alone; and your problems are always cast aside with the simplest of comments of how it's because you don't drink enough water (but you're trying to quench your never ending thirst all the time, and they shout if they see you 'wasting' water by drinking a lot of it), don't eat enough (but otherwise it's that you eat too much and they hate to see you anywhere near the kitchen), don't sleep enough (but how can you possibly sleep in such pain?), don't exercise enough (but how can you, when it hurts so much that even the act of blinking feels like it will hurt every bone and muscle in your body?) and it's always you never doing enough, you never being enough, you never being satisfied with the life you live, you never being content with what you have, you being greedy and selfish and mean and attention-seeking and troublesome and burdening when all you want is for the pain in your body to go away?

I'm not hating on the fact that they were concerned for my brother over here, but I just wish that they won't make it so obvious that they didn't want me there. I thought they were finally happy with my existence once they stopped telling me that I was just an accident that upturned their lives unnecessarily and was a burden to deal with, instead just forgetting that I was even there, but looks like it turns out that they just found different ways of telling me know that, I guess.

[moreaujeans]

does anyone have book recs similar to iwwv like either just dark (or light?) academia recs outside of tsh nh & ta6 OR books that have a focus on theatre or music (ik music isn’t a focus in iwwv but it also Very much works)

[jadeddays]

the fact "dingo ate my baby" became like a silly international joke about australia, to the point when my uncle travelled overseas in the early 00s people would just say that at him and yet people don't seem to know that a dingo really did take and eat a baby 😭

[bambiraptorx]

*sigh* thinking about the Servant of Two Masters again. Truffaldino would do numbers on tumblr i know it

[fionnaskyborn]

ah fuck me running lads the "can a monster be loved" paradox strikes again only this time it came knocking at my door and hit me square in the face personally

[szkicel]

I’m working on a pinned post, where I want to include a short description for each of my major project so it’ll be easier to navigate my characters, bc a big shock - I also have projects that aren’t about bugs lol (tho you know damm well that I will try to implement them somehow anyway jhbdjhbd)

I thought about also mentioning minor projects that I have in the background and which aren’t that well developed yet, but ngl the list is literally like „a hamster metroidvania” or „dystopian central europe” bc they’re THAT underdeveloped, so I decided I’m not gonna bother unless you ppl will ask me to talk about it lol

[impulsivesuperrobin]

small-ish personal rant

sent 2 of my college friends a text before going on break bc i’ve been like a little paranoid they don’t view me as a friend anymore (i self isolated during a bad mental health spiral and they only checked up on me like 2 months into it just to see if they were good to complain at me about 1. something i can’t fix and 2. doing the dishes AND each of the few times we hung out/interacted briefly during it they were a little weird and distant) and they have not responded 🙃

it’s been half a day and i know for a fact they’ve been on their phones

atp i don’t even care! like i will be fine with either outcome because i’m capable of being mature about amicably ended relationships, but i would like to know so i don’t have to keep feeling weird in my own house! one of them lives with me and the other is literally over every single day! if they’re not my friends then i don’t have to keep worrying about it and feeling like somehow i’ve don’t something wrong! and if they do still want to be friends then great we can move on from this!

it just feels like they’re doing to me the thing they do right before they cut someone off and it’s pissing me off mostly. especially!!! bc they know i get paranoid sometimes!!!

actually, at first i isolated bc i was declining mental health wise, but then when i tried to get back to socializing they were kinda weird about it! and (imo) they’ve always kinda treated me like an auxiliary friend. i can count on one hand how many times one of them has invited me to do something with them and they’re so much worse at sticking to plans with me than they are with each other

to be fair, when they asked if i was okay (after two months of not) i lied and said i was bc they said they wanted to have an important conversation and i didn’t want to steer away from that but the conversation was literally the two of them being like “the room smells and we can’t tell where it’s coming from, you should do smth about that.” i had a bit of a breakdown in my own bedroom after that (idk if they heard any of it through the door/wall or wtv but they weren’t meant to). but then i tried to continue as normal and they’ve been ignoring me (so has another one of our mutual friends kinda and ik the three of them have been hanging out so idk)

i’m hoping to transfer next semester so it’s not like i’m going to see them much after this anyway but i really thought they were cool and i was hoping to keep some friends from this place (esp after we lost a lot of friends to various bullshit) so it’s kinda a bummer

[revelboo]

sometimes i think this is how some of the bots think about humans

lowkey don't know how to feel about that myself, i actually put myself in some of the human's shoes and wow it's no easy task to deal with their situation and having to keep themselves calm

That’s probably how a lot of them unconsciously view humans because of the size difference.

A Lifeless Ordinary Pt 4

Scavengers x Reader

• By virtue of Swindle’s reputation as a crook, Misfire voted Crankcase to use the language file and everyone else agreed. Most likely the con wouldn’t intentionally off a customer he can scam again, but still. Now Crankcase leans over where the human is sitting on a crate, little legs dangling and heels thumping against the side, and he spouts gibberish at you. Your head comes up, eyes widening as you say something back and get to your feet. “Do you understand it?” Krok demands, right as your little shoulders slump, hands gesturing.

• When the one with the chunk out of his head starts talking and you recognize human language, you lunge to your feet. Asking if he knew your language, because while the sounds are familiar, it’s still nonsense to you. And he’s just staring back at you in incomprehension. It’s the wrong language and you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry. Or scream. You’re still stuck at square one playing charades with giant, alien robots.

• “Still gibberish,” Crankcase growls, leaning back as the human goes on a rant, little hands flapping about and gesturing before you flop back down in frustration. Reaching out he nudges your shoulder with a servo and you immediately swat him. Those eyes glowering when he uses that same servo to tip your chin up. Because he gets it, to be so small and trapped somewhere? Unable to communicate? You must be terrified even if you hide it well. And that’s something he understands. What happened to him left more scars than just the chunk missing from his head. Sometimes the other Scavengers come up on his bad side and he almost swears it’s Thunderwing looming up behind him, that old nightmare digging it’s claws in.

• “Of course it is,” Krok sighs, slumping back on the bench in the cargo hold. Doesn’t even realize when he starts clicking the device in his hand because it’s become a nervous habit by this point. Whenever something goes sideways, he plays with it and now you look up at the noise and meet his optics. As he watches, you hold up your fist, thumb moving to mime him until he stops. “Signal that crook.”

• “I told you,” Misfire growls, wings flaring as he watches you stop copying Krok and look up at him. Unable to understand, but trying. Those intelligent eyes alert. As he watches, Spinister finds that stuffed animal as big as you are and pushes it firmly at you, knocking you flat on your back as you wrap your arms around it in self defense just to get him to stop. “I mean, his name is Swindle,” he mutters as he stalks off.

• Arm looped around the stuffed bear, you crane your neck to watch the one with wings stalk off. They’re obviously all unhappy and it hurts to get your hopes up only to have them crushed again. If you can’t communicate, you can’t ask to go home. You’ve tried mimicking some of the sounds they make, but they always just look at you funny. Expressions giving away that they can’t even tell you’re trying so hard. That your attempts are just nonsense to them. Anxiety lifting through you, you’re aware of the biggest one, the one that had found you and ran you down, still staring at you. He’d scared you nearly to death then, but if he hadn’t spotted you that day? You’d have probably starved on that barren world, scared and alone. He saved you whether or not he realizes it.

• “Think they really were a pet taken after the war?” Fulcrum asks as you chatter at Spinister, trying to get back up only for him to keep pushing you back over with a servo. He’d stop him, but you’re laughing instead of angry. “Why abandon them out here?” Because you haven’t been that much trouble except for the handful of times they’d accidentally poisoned you trying to keep you alive. Swindle’s food at least had been legitimate, though whatever those black and white discs are, you’d tried to devour the entire package as soon as they weren’t paying attention to you. And he’s almost positive you had been swearing at him when he had to take the package away to ration them out slowly. Like now as you manage to get away from Spinister and move as close to him as you can get, big eyes imploring as you hold out a hand. Aware of the others watching as he produces the little package and holds it out, holding up a servo of the other hand in warning. And huffing at him, you take only one instead of trying to snatch them all, reaching out as soon as you pop it in your mouth to pat his servo and mumble nonsense at him.

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