#tldr there is bad original fiction as well you just don't see it for a variety of reasons

[trucksquared]

Sooo much "original fiction vs fanfiction" discourse would be more bearable if people replaced "original fiction" with "published fiction" and "fanfiction" with "unpublished/self-published fiction". Also distinguishing between "professional writing" and "hobby writing"

So many arguments that "fanfiction is bad" have nothing to do with them being derivative works and everything to do with the fact that there is no quality control on most self-publishing sites

[roadhogsbigbelly]

ok i didn't really want to do this because i deleted the original posts when it had only 70 notes because i was under the assumption noone would see it but t/xttletale ended up reblogging it anyway and now i have people telling me to kill myself in my inbox so i guess i might as well give details

honestly did not know she was trans until people accused me of pedojacking her, for some reason it never registered because i guess i only see her blog when her posts pop up on my feed but you know my bad i guess

2)yes it's true the term "loliporn" never shows up but someone does say "don't say you're pro-kink and nasty gay sex if you're not supportive of ageplay, cnc, or incest shipping" and than she said "yes, and" which like. seems slightly like an endorsement? but i assume that loliporn was just kind of included with the package, because i do have evidence that toonimal would not be against that

3) i never directly called her a pedophile just that it's really fucking bizzare to have that hot take about "wholesome games" when you agreed with a take that said not liking incest porn or ageplay is "anti-kink or whatever

now did initially censor the names in the post because of reasons i'll explain later but i did realize with no context it looks like both posts were from the same person so i did end up mentioning in the tags that there were two different people before later deleting it all together. but i honestly don't feel THAT bad attributing it to her because she did both reblog the post and than also add on to it, which kind of negates the possibility she didn't fully read the post? still i did censor it again for reasons i'll explain later.

4) i kind of went out of my way to not attribute anything to her. when i talked about her weird stardew valley take i still censored them, because after being told to kill myself for having a lukewarm hot take on sex work last year i usually always censor posts when criticizng/making fun of them. i'm honestly surprised she managed to find it because i deleted it when it only had like 60 notes, and the only reason i found out she found it is because one of her followers sent be an ask telling me to kill myself. and out of curiousity i checked her blog.

i deleted this post before i post this just so her follower doesn't get harassed or whatever. but you know. not fun.

and 5) while i insist i didn't directly accuse her of being a pedophile i DID in fact accuse the person she was agreeing with of being a pedohpile. cause they are.

i'm not going to post the entire callout post cause it's honestly really fucking gross but tldr they run a "contact positive paraphilia forum" which is a basicly code for "actually fucking pedophiles" which kind of recontextualizes they entire post right? that's also why i went out of my way to censor txttletale's name and than later specify there were two different people before deleting it. because i assumed she didn't know the person she was agreeing with was an actual pedophile, but accidently agreeing with a pedophile is uh. not good. i think, someone actually informed her that toonimals was a pedophilia and she said this.

now i'm not saying you have to do a background check on every person you reblog from but if that post talks about "how pro-sex freak people need to be more supportive of people who are into incest" than actually yeah you do sort of have an obligation to make sure they aren't an actual fucking pedophile. the entire basis of that post is "people should stop being mean to actual sex freaks" and you not only reblog it but add onto that yeah that's a fucking issue because 99 percent of time the people who make those posts ARE actual fucking pedophiles, so yeah you probably should be a bit wary. because like.

this is my issue, i don't think you're a pedophile because you don't think there's anything wrong with fiction/sex acts that depict immoral things, my issue is that that logic is used and agreed upon by actual pedophiles. pedophiles are agreeing with you! that's not great! there's my issue with your logic!

[lookingfts]

Hi, I'll preface this by saying that I'm a fan of your writing and this is not a rant at you specifically. It's something that I'm growing more and more frustrated with when navigating content/creations in the fandom (and other fandoms on here too tbh). Your posts just happened to be the ones I came across today and they provide a convenient case study into the matter.

I politely appeal for you to insert gif credit and sources in posts like these: https://www.tumblr.com/lookingfts/752534640842211328?source=share and https://www.tumblr.com/lookingfts/752585046132752384/this-ridiculous-little-man-with-his-stupid-little?source=share

From what I can tell (unsure about the s3e1 bedroom one) but the other two come from: https://www.tumblr.com/chenfordsbee/752307297817165824/kanthony-hands?source=share and https://www.tumblr.com/bakerolivia/750875519674892289/anthony-bridgerton-and-benedict?source=share

I think we all know that the inbuilt tumblr feature to embed existing gifs in posts is very broken (where it automatically credits, and links you back to the full set when you click the text/username under it), and it can be very frustrating to find the exact one you want.

But reposting them yourselves without credit is seen as very bad etiquette amongst creators, and a lot of creators will block people for this reason (to avoid said person collecting and reposting their future content), and warn their fellow creator mutuals to do so too.

Also, it makes the user experience quite annoying for some users. i.e. You see a post with a really cool gif; you swore you've seen that exact one before, you may even recognise the very specific style/coloring, OR you've not seen that scene giffed before but you've wanted to, you now really want to like/reblog the full set if you could find it. Either way; you wish you could see the whole thing from the original post. But there's no link or even an indication as to the original creator/blog it came from, so... yeah this sucks.

From your other posts you seem like a reasonable and well intentioned person, so I don't think you're setting out to be deceptive in any way (some will actually fully repost a mish mash of different sets, and caption and tag it as if it's their own creation), you just want to scream about your faves, as you should. And I'm sorry this got so so long but I think I need to make it really clear, because I assume that some of these reasons/povs/repercussions must be unknown for it to keep happening. I could go into how it affects creators in fandoms in more detail but I'm sure you can imagine and I don't want to extend the lecture (just imagine someone copying and pasting excerpts from your fan fiction, and posting it, without any citation of said fan fiction or even mention of the author).

TLDR - Please link back to the original post if you're sharing stand alone gifs, made by someone else, in your own posts. Or better yet, reblog the original post that you're downloading the images from, with your added commentary (we would actually LOVE to see it, but I do also get if you just want to pluck out one specific moment from the set).

An example:

[THAT ONE GIF FROM THAT MOMENT YOU REALLY WANT TO POST ABOUT]

GIF by @tumblrusername

Blue font to illustrate that this is a hyperlink to the original set. I just based this on the way the aforementioned broken inbuilt one is formatted, but as long as you @ the user (this pops a mention into our activity just like the inbuilt feature does so we can come scream along with you) and link the applicable post in some clear way it's all dandy and helps everyone out.

I really hope that this doesn't come across as hostile, and that you answer so it can be shared to make others more aware too.

Thank you for asking this. You're totally right - I have not been thinking about crediting gif creators, and that's something I need to learn!

I'm still very new to Tumblr and learning the ropes. I didn't really intend to post S3 gifs at all - I was keeping Kanthony photos/gifs I liked on my phone to share with friends, and eventually I realized how many I had saved, so I decided to start making posts with them, and I was simply uploading them from my phone at that point.

You see so many gifs floating around here - I didn't think closely about the time and effort that people are going through to create these gifs, and I will do better in giving them the recognition and attention they deserve. (If one of the gifs I've used is yours, please let me know and I will tag you.)

Thank you to everyone in the fandom for contributing their art, and thank you for standing up for creators.

[sofoulandfairaday]

do you think the blacks had sexist beliefs? Do you think Sirius and Regulus did?

This is a very interesting question, especially because purebloods are often portrayed with very Victorian beliefs in fanfiction, which can only be partly inferred from the original books. I think that it was in the author's intentions to create a more equal society: there have been several female Ministers for Magic, for example, and in general magic would naturally be an equalizer, since it does not manifest differently in men and women in the books. However, the single female characters portrayed in the books, especially the adult ones, do not lend themselves well to this interpretation. Most of them exist inside very domestic settings - be it a school or a household - and the books promote Being A Mother as the pinnacle of womanhood.

(Which is coincidentally one of the reasons why I don't really love the existence of Delphi outside fanfiction. Bellatrix's sort of love is portrayed - in most literal, on-the-nose way possible - as the antithesis to maternal love. Making her yet another mother in the story undermines her character to me. But this is a whole other post.)

On top of that, the Blacks are very obviously conservative and aristocratic. So. As for the older Blacks (Walburga, Orion, and that whole generation), yes. Definitely yes. Perhaps in different ways, I think the wizarding world's brand on sexism would very much be interwoven with blood supremacy and seeing witches as the keepers of the blood, and the morals of a household, and that it is their very duty to marry and especially to produce heirs (pureblood babies! especially since those families seem to be fairly infertile). A woman who tries to escape that would be seen very badly, in my opinion.

As for Sirius and Regulus. Regulus' politics - sorry Reggie girlies - were very much conservative. And I refuse to believe that he didn't have mommy issues. I hc him as gay, honestly, and it is for the best because he would realistically be a bad boyfriend/husband. I cannot imagine him ever standing up to defend a possible wife to Walburga (or even Bellatrix) in a family dinner setting or the like - and any wife of his would suffer hell. Imagine marrying into the Black family as a woman and having them as in-laws. You would never be good enough. His wife would be chosen for him - pure of blood, someone worthy of producing heirs, and he probably wanted someone to take care of him in the way mommy never did. This poor hypothetical girl would have an additional child. In general, I think his views on women wouldn't be incredibly backwards but not even progressive. He'd be okay with you as long as you were the right kind of woman.

As for Sirius. He was a man born to an aristocratic british family in 1959. Make of that what you will. Sexism was just another of the prejudices he tried to unlearn during his lifetime - and meeting women like Lily, or his other non-pureblood female friends in Gryffindor, that would have definitely heard of the Women's Rights Movement and would have probably been feminists themselves - would have definitely helped. But it's hard for anyone (women included) to let go of all internal biases. He'd definitely still be the type to call a woman he dislikes a bitch, for example. Did he stand up of the common room table and give feminist rants on reproductive rights? Probably not. Did he fundamentally believe in equality and appreciated/supported strong women? Definitely.

TLDR: yes, in an appropriate way for age & setting. They were complex characters and their views on women probably reflected their overall politics. Regulus is part of a group of people who see society as divided into classes, where everyone gets assigned a role. Sirius was the opposite. Also, most people hold some sexist beliefs nowadays, in 2023, and I don't like imposing that sort of morality on fictional characters living in the 1990s.

[spaceyfeline]

Looking at you with big old sopping wet eyes hey can u talk about diti

(SORRY FOR NOT RESPONDING TO THIS FOR LIKE A WEEK OR SOMETHING I WAS GOING TO AND THEN I FORGOT.)

DEETI. deeti. Deeti my beloved deeti. narrative God. they're my bestest friend @cryptidlatias's oc and i am so unbelievably normal about them.

part of this is going to be me pulling from an infodump doc i have on the displaced bc that has Some deeti information. but. deeti is something called a Heart. (thank you to the funky fresh group for coining these bitches theyve made my life so much more fun.) they (hearts) are gods who reside Above the narrative of all worlds. like they are the final step between the Fictional Universes and us the Real People Authors. (they're obviously fictional and still have their own stories but that's semantics). (think of them like author self inserts)

here's where i begin to pull from the document because that's probably the best summary of Deeti's Entire Deal. And also this is where im going to put a readmore bc i dont want to flood my mutuals' dashboards with my insane rambling. Ok? ok <3

im just going to be copy-pasting stuff i wrote on the document here to make it easier on everyone. this will include Some glitter information but hopefully its nothing that would be like Really confusing without glitter context. (funnily enough this entire infodump was originally done in discord before being moved to google docs so it's come nearly full circle)

lati also left some notes on the doc itself! i'll add those notes in red. it's a good doc if you want the rest of it i can dm it to you

deeti, to put it simply, is A Fucking Freak (Its existence revolves around control and obsession.) theres a lot to deeti but a quick rundown of it was it began as an ai programmed to quote "learn everything there is to learn" and it did! it learned everything there was to learn abt its universe. including how to rewrite the strings of reality itself. so it did. and it ascended! and then it assimilated Every Other Version Of Its Universe. Ever and after that just kept absorbing other universes into its mass deeti's "true body" is a literally spiral-galaxy sized bundle of its wires, its known as a god of a thousand faces bc it can put on any face it wants at any point (thru . what can kind of be described as puppets?), as well as appearing in multiple places. i believe lati explained it as being similar to a fungus of sorts (Like the fruiting bodies (mushrooms) you see on the surface, with the true mycelial network underneath.) the form it assumes most often is one that me and lati joked glitter complimented at one point and deeti went Ah! Friend likes this face I will wear it forever but it is not in anyyyyyy way reduced to just Looking Like That i dont actually think we have any proper Coloured Refs of deeti but tldr white (like ffffff mannequin) or light gray "skin", red hair, i believe the order of colour on its eyes is red/blue/purple but they change based on deeti's mood (i had some outdated information on the original doc, so here's how it works: its eyes start at blue, and add more red (so purple, then red) as its emotions get more intense. Both good and bad emotions have the same effect.) deeti and glitter are besties. absolute dears to each other. very close. which is fun bc deeti originally freed glitter bc it was like huh i wonder what would happen if i did this (it still has its main prerogative of "learn everything there is to learn) but then they became friends :) deeti actually mentored glitter in a lot of things like how strings work and uh how they are above the "stories" and the "characters" within, how said characters are alive (because of course they are) but they're not real like deeti and glitter (and their friends theres other guys not just these two) are. and since theyre not real. well. consequences don't really apply (Glitter was Deeti's first friend! The other Hearts came later.) if its not clear. that's a. really bad mindset for two people who can literally disassemble and reassemble entire universes to have deeti is capable of storing so much data because like. robot-kind-of it has so much capacity for storage bc it just Has so much. so its also capable of bringing that storage up and making simulations or straight up building replicas of universes (including people! including people.) so with its little. well it calls them dolls or puppets or the like but the little guys it puts through the torment nexus. it will do the same things over again with slight tweaks until it learns Everything about how the "character" reacts to a situation (or until it gets bored) deeti prefers psychological torment but it is not afraid (or even unwilling) to inflict physical torture for the sake of Learning i think thats all thats needed to understand deeti? its a "machine" sure but it has learned how to feel emotions like any sapient being, they're extremely fond of their friends (especially glitter), and at This point in time (this being pre-Day, ie before the event that got the displaced their "freedom") believe they are Above Everything and such cannot be wrong. ever it's very controlling to the point where it is referred to as a God of Control . which is . Fun (towards its blorbos. not friends. big difference.) (It gave this title to itself, but… it's not like anyone can prove it wrong.)

deeti doesn't forget. Ever. and it holds grudges for a long, long time. a lot of how it treats dis both pre and post Day is because of dis fighting back in ways that hurt deeti (verbally, at least), so even if dis doesn't remember it, deeti does. and it doesn't forgive easily.

luckily, by the "modern" day deeti and dis have both changed quite a lot! they've both admitted their wrongdoings towards each other and apologized! and they've actually grown to be very close and care about each other a lot. however. Modern day is an extremely long time post-Day, and pre-Day lasted... many, many millenia at the least. deeti had existed long before that, too. the displaced isn't the only one deeti hurt, but at least they managed to get through to them.

theres probably a lot im missing in this infodump . but it's everything i can think of currently! so!

(also i know lati will be looking at this so. hi lati. fix any information i missed. <3)

[eggs-can-draw]

firedemongaming: pretty sure, because of Byakuya, naegirigami doesn't have a closet but a spare house each just for clothes. Byakuya is just extra like that

me: he was just having an Ariana Grande moment "bought a crib just for the closet, both his and hers, I want it, I got it" /paraphrasing and it'll be more embarrassing if I am correct than if I'm wrong

tbh the levels of extra-ness sometimes leave a bad taste in my mouth, being wasteful in a post-apocalyptic setting is not looking good. Just getting stuck up again instead of letting things be fictional ig, but there's this "they don't need a house this big" or "why so many vehicles? when the air is recovering from the Tragedy too? And they usually drive together anyway?" things like that. And Shuichi still being an heir to the Togami corp in the end, like, he's not going in that direction talent wise, I don't think he's going to be involved the way Byakuya is, might stay the owner but won't act as CEO, might sell it and spend the money. I'm wondering about those things, because it just rubs me the wrong way for anyone to have this kind of wealth or power, but they do need it to defeat FF and I don't know...

firedemongaming: the main problem with irl billionaires is they just hoard the wealth. occasionally passing it amongst themselves so even if his financial decisions seem wasteful, it's ultimately healthier for the economy than him just not using it and naegi and kirigiri would definitely make sure that he used some of his money for good as well for every wasteful decision

me: okay, the last bit does make me feel better, bc I know about the issue, but still felt like due to the state of the world he should be putting that money elsewhere, not saying he can't have luxuries, but more like instead of having many extra cars and jets and using his wealth to get access to things others can't for his family he could be investing in rebuilding the world

firedemongaming: as for the pollution bit, udg demonstrates that electric vehicles are the most common post tragedy and, given the environmental situation, I feel that sustainable, renewable clean energies would have been the first to reappear and, as a result, gained the monopoly fossil fuels hold in our world. The source for this bit is the sheer amount of electric cars we encounter. pretty much all the cars are electric (hence their movability with the move bullet) even the already destroyed cars we see are electric. I recon they'd try to enforce a 1 to 1 charity to luxury ratio, Byakuya doesn't quite understand why they do but he knows it makes them happy so he agrees

me: they tell him it's "Investing in Shuichi's future" and he's ready to make the sum double

firedemongaming: he's ready to make it double just because it makes them happy, if they told him that he'd probably tenfold it. He eventually starts making a massive donation on each of their birthdays (probably a month's worth of his salary), he originally started doing this because one of them asked him to make a small donation and fortunately for the charities. his extra-ness with cash applies to that as well XD

Yin: Makoto at a charity that he 100% believes in: I normally don't use my husband's money, but there can be exceptions Kyoko: you are such a house husband Makoto getting flustered: using his money for good things feel nice! and he told me I could do this!

Yeah I have a lot of thoughts on the like. Excessiveness of the spending. I didn’t interject at the time because I was doing stuff (still watching tho, I’m always watching)but tldr the overly excessive spending exists in jokeland in my head. Like. Yeah Togami can be a big spender but he knows how not to go overboard. Yeah the house is a bit big but not like 25 staircases in law suite private jet bug yknow? It puts me off a little too

[astolfofo]

Hey. I just came stumbled accross your blog, out of nowhere and I see you're a yandere writer. I'm not usually a fan of yandere writing, it's usually ehh... unsettling to me, in a way. Well, it's not morally wrong to enjoy it. I know you don't condone it in real life too. But can I ask what your appeal to yanderes is?

I also noticed you often tag a lot of your works as yandere, but most of them only have a mild aspect of that. From what I've actually read, you focus on plot/envoirment much more than yandere. But you still tag all of your works as yandere, most of the time. Can I ask why that is?

Hello Anon. Thanks for this ask :D. I'll give the tldr answers and the explanations. I know no one reads these so, lmao

so here's the TLDR;

The appeal of yanderes for me is about the loss of control, and the suffering that comes with it. This seems weird, but lemme explain down below.

I honestly just? I don't know. I'm not really strong with interaction/dialogue, and I really HATE writing dialogue or writing out thoughts. I like creating environments and seeing how characters would react in those environments. Sort of like movies. I like to describe, not imagine, i guess you could say.

Okay, longer explanations:

If I'm being 100% honest, I don't like sterotypical yanderes that much at all. Honestly, I find the desperate, doormat-type yanderes to be quite annoying, actually. I don't really like clingy/worshipper yandere, nor do I like the "I'd do anything, and everything" part of them. I find it's kind of annoying.

But the aspect I really like about Yandere fictional relationships is the lack of control on both ends. Not in a power imbalance way, but really the lack of control from both parties. The yandere, obviously is very much. Not in control of themselves, to the point where they feel a need to have you all to themselves. And then the person on the recieving end of it too, has their entire life tied around the yandere.

However, there's still a sembalance of control on both ends to completely destroy the other's life. And it's something both parties will hang on top of each other's heads, threatening to cut the rope at any given time, crushing the other. It's really for me, just a dance about control, and the fight and lack of it. And i guess you probably have seen that in a lot of what I've written. The things I usually write about, just contain that lack of control. To have something happen to you so out of the blue that you couldn't stop no matter what.

I don't actually like the lovesick man or woman aspect too much, but I like the lack of power there is to everything inside a yandere relationship. Maybe that's why I only like writing lucid, aware, yet sadistic yanderes, and readers who resist in every sense. I don't know. This is probably a bad explaination. But the lack of control in life is something I've just noticed is the first thing I go towards when writing a story. Even in my own original stories, every character has no control over their lives, and something inevitable against their will, will always happen to them be it death, the death of others, or just being used for the greater purpose unknowingly.

[shatar-aethelwynn]

I think mythology and fiction explained and legends of history are goods channels. They mostly talk about myths (mostly bible stuff in legends case) I keep watching mythology and fiction but I mostly don't watch legends due to the comments on the videos which I should just ignore since they tell stuff in a way i can understand

I can’t say this is a media type/style I usually enjoy (sometimes I can watch 1 or 2 but it depends on the topic), but I watched a couple of the biblical topic videos (because that's a topic I'm familiar with so I can use it as a reasonable baseline) from each of them. I think I would rather watch/listen to Legends of History to be honest. Neither came across as being particularly familiar with the historical and cultural contexts of the material they were dealing with, but Legends did a better job of clearly following the source text for his overview. Mythology did a decent job of explaining the shape of a theme over time but wasn’t very clear about how that range in time doesn’t mean that all the later interpretations and additions are accurate to the intentions of the original author, and he wasn't very clear on which group he meant when he said "Christian" because the further in time you go the more important that actually becomes for some topics. Pretty sure that also applies to "Judaism" for some topics as well. However, both did appear to be trying to show the existence of multiple views and opinions without explicitly saying that one was "correct", which is something I respect.

Overall, I would say they are probably decent at giving a very basic overview of a particular topic, but I would personally like to see either their sources or a “if this topic interests you, here’s a good book to read more” in their video descriptions. Because at times it was hard to tell what source the information was coming from. And when you’re dealing with topics that involve religious beliefs, that source can be very important because not all groups will agree. But if they help introduce you to new topics that you want to go learn more about that’s good! Sometimes its that simple introductory source that makes people go “oh, this is cool, I now need to go learn everything about it.” However, I would advise taking all comments dealing with interpretation with a grain of salt, because that is where opinion between different religious groups most obviously differs, and where a lack of historical & cultural context makes the most difference to how the text should be interpreted.

(In general, the Youtube comments are a place I actively avoided. They are very rarely worth the annoyance that most comments on religious topics causes.)

tldr not my style, but as long as you take any comments about interpretation and authorial-intention with caution, they don't seem like a bad starting point from which to discover new topics to go research and learn about elsewhere. That's just my opinion though, others may disagree.

[janiedean]

Just seen a post like "y r reylos upset? they kissed. I have a ship where they don't even meet" and I was ready to go "I Don't Know How To Explain To You That knowingly shipping a crackship and seeing a ship that's been set up since the beginning get turned into some emotionally manipulative little trick by hacks who dgaf abt the characters and only want to cash in on every single part of the fandom are very different things." But I gave up. Not worth the effort.

it’s not, but... honestly?

this thing is... like... I don’t want to say mildly worrying me, but... it is. (beware the next post won’t probably make much sense but bear with me this thing isn’t sitting well with me lmao)

I mean, like, let’s get it out of the way that I didn’t care for reylo either way until tlj and post-tlj I was like ‘oh okay they’re definitely the romance of the trilogy fine sounds nice I’ll be here being happy for them when they inevitably kiss’, because it’s like.. star... wars. I mean. sw is like the one franchise that until five days ago I’d have cashed in on being the ONE thing that would always end up cheesy/hopeful/not disappointing you know, so... I didn’t even consider that there was another way it could end. because it’s goddamn sw, redemption stories with happy endings are the damned brand.

so like... the fact that the thing was obviously set up and they tore it to shreds along with everything else in the movie is bad. like, bad. but people who didn’t realize how fucking insulting it was just... don’t seem to get that the moment you go watch movies whose brand is making you feel better about things and they turn into calvinism central NO HAPPINESS ALLOWED and they don’t even do it with sense - bc rots made no fucking sense at any point ever and that’s outside reylo - it just... makes you feel betrayed? like, again: in 2015 when I came out of the cinema the only thing I banked on was poe dameron not dying and I couldn’t care either way about kylo ren, but like - tlj made me care. as it was supposed to be. I was supposed to care about kylo ren’s pull to the light and guess what I did because that movie wanted me to, and it wanted me to do 2+2 and realize that he and rey were soulmates and fine I was down with that because I like myself a nice love story.

and then like... you give it to me, like that, and the moment you have the character who has had a shitty life, has been groomed since he was born if not before by Worst Person In The Galaxy if the new canon wants me to buy that - or by snoke but it’s the same -, is an abuse victim and is 100% sure that everyone hates him and no one understands him or wants to understand him, you make that character related to one of the most iconic ones in the franchise to the point that you tried to make han every other member of the trio tbh, you actually have that character taking his life in his hands after talking to han and like embrace what he always wanted to be and show that he’s actually happy with it (like ffs guys it’s also probs because adam driver is an excellent actor but you can see the ben solo vs kylo ren difference in the span of five seconds, and you’re supposed to root for ben solo to win ffs), have him actually win, have him being happy for the first time in the entire canon and then you kill him a second later with rey in tears over it except that then we forget to give him a funeral........... like.......... sorry but I feel robbed because as lowkey as my effort on banking on ben solo’s redemption was because I was sure it was coming and I took it for granted it still felt like they were being unnecessarily cruel. like, they could have killed him in ten other ways that wouldn’t make you feel like someone stabbed you in the kidney as another anon put it. but no, let’s give people the prospect of HEY THEY’LL BE HAPPY just to tear it away from them ten seconds later. like, what the fuck? that’s not what anyone signed up for.

especially when the entire thing was obviously set up for the happy ending. like, if you actually misread the audience so much that you think star wars audience wants grimdark when it’s a movie marketed at children then you don’t deserve the money you’re most likely getting paid.

like, again: as someone who wasn’t even diehard reylo or whatever even if I absolutely shipped it, I felt like these assholes took my money and punched me in the kidney since rey palpatine was a thing and the moment he died I about screamed fuck you out loud... along with most of the entire room which was screaming fuck you, because guess what, not a single person in that room actually was banking on the ben solo redemption to fail and each single person in the room was clapping when they kissed because we were fucking waiting for it already, and like......... obviously ppl shipping it are upset. they were given an unsatisfactory movie up until then that didn’t give the characters justice but which could have still been more or less decent if it saved the spirit of the entire thing... which it didn’t because sw is not fucking calvinist central and hasn’t ever been until now. and then they were given canon after being the target of the vilest shit (guys seriously I unfollowed antireylo people way before shipping reylo myself bc that crap was out of line for shipping fictional stuff)... just to have them take it away by killing the one character that was there to show you that there’s always hope for you to do the right thing?

like, let’s be fucking real: the message is that if you fucked up and want to be better it won’t ever be enough because sorry but you’ll never get another good start and if you care about someone who fucked up and want to help them be better it’s wasted time because people who want to do better can’t actually live and have a chance to keep on doing it.

and sorry but fuck that message with a chainsaw. the beautiful thing about this ship imvho was that in tlj it made it overtly clear how rey helped him out of being a genuinely nice person who listened to someone who thought no one ever would and at the same time kylo/ben couldn’t believe that someone actually said that he wouldn’t be alone either bc the two of them are extremely lonely people and feel that acutely....... and they even threw in the soul bond to make it extra obvious. it was a hopeful story because you had girl who never had anyone who was also innately good who could put her prejudices aside to see that someone who also went dark side because he thought no one loved him and then kept on being abused his entire life actually had good inside them and wanted to help him see that instead of writing him off as a lost cause. like. that was a good romance. nothing exceedingly new under the sun, but in sw it was pretty fresh and a good spin compared to the two other main love stories of the trilogy. also, anakin/padme was what it was and han/leia was immensely better but hey someone decided to kill off the entire original trio so whatever... and if these two ended well they’d have been a constant improvement, never mind the symbolism - you had anakin who was a no one and married a space princess but ended up tragically because he went to the dark side and she could do nothing for him, then anakin’s daughter who was a space princess and married han who is also technically a no one since he didn’t even have a surname on his home planet, and if rey/ben had actually not.. had that ending you’d have closed the circle with space prince descended from both anakin and leia being brought back from the dark side with the help of another no one and finally the damned skywalker line would have gotten one 100% happy ending because it was supposed to be the ending.

like.

that’s something that thematically made so much sense I didn’t even think they wouldn’t do it.

and they did. and guess what of course people are pissed. because this movie about ignored themes, its own canon (from tfa and tlj) and didn’t accomplish one single thing except chewie getting his damned medal.

which, while something we all hoped would happen at some point, is hardly the one thing you should accomplish in a star wars movie supposed to end the goddamned cycle and which eventually ended up being prequel-level if not worse. because I mean, objectively I think the phantom menace was actually a better movie, and I would rewatch this over 2 and 3 just because the cgi in this movie didn’t hurt my eyes, but as bad as lucas got with the prequels, he never did a single character as dirty as disney did all the characters here. no, not even padme, and he did do padme dirty.

tldr: if people don’t get why you’d be pissed at how this movie ended idk what to tell them... but shit if it’s not worrying me that people apparently can’t get that it was a disaster on each single level it could have been. peace.

[luckyjackofdiamonds]

While I don't disagree wholly with any of the above, I think the lines run a little bit deeper than just "skin good, tech bad", while the original message has been filtered down to what we have now, it still makes sense to some degree in their respective worlds.

While the human body is made of minerals found in the earth, the biochemistry and parameters our body has in place doesn't always react positively to certain metals in their raw form (see mercury/most metals) or their refined counterparts, heck even my little brother has had very adverse reactions to metal due to an allergy. Equipment corrodes, metal turns, excess electricity forcing our bodies to do and process things that we were not normally meant to handle, not to mention the inclusion of hacking and jacking directly into a person's mind and being, imagine the implications of what that would do to a person's psyche. Now granted, I still to this day love Robots and agree with its message, something along those lines in a cyberpunk setting would be fantastic, and while the current writing may not be as realistically sound, I can still understand why they still use the humanity system (to a degree, of course).

...that doesn't mean I have to like or love it. Getting off devil's advocate wagon, being corralled into the good playthrough corridor irks me in many games when I know I'd have more fun and more options doing what I want, not necessarily evil, just what *I* think is fun. Why would I not want to short the power in the factory, eliminate a spotter, hack into a man's mind and make him shoot his comrades causing mass panic in the area while detonating and/or hacking security systems to ease my escape? Well because I wouldn't get the good special ending where the protag gets a blue ribbon slapped around his dick and called a good sweet boy cuz he didn't harm a single puppy or even a lil ole ant. I know a lot of that made me sound a bit knife-ready, but why would you not want me to be the big strong security chief who didn't ask for this or the rooftop hopping assassin who can murder you with rats (dieselpunk I know but this is a tangent for a reason)? You give me toys to have fun but then say I'll get a timeout if I touch them. If you turn into a literal brain-in-a-jar cyborg, fuck you. Thanks..??..??.??.&#$! £&÷ Yeah cuz I totally didn't pay $XX to play my super fun, power fantasy fictionally unsound game.

Yeah OK weird tangent, either way.

TLDR: Cyberpunk is further removed from its roots but not completely up its own ass, not yet at least in my opinion.

why are cyberpunk tabletop things so obsessed with decency and personhood being tied to how many surgeries you haven’t had

[winterhalcyon]

Hey so I'm not a Star Wars fan, I haven't watched any of the first six, but I watched the two new ones, and I've always wondered what's with the hate towards Hayden Christensen? Like I've seen that people aren't huge fans of the way Anakin and Padme interacted and everything but I've never understood why the hate towards Hayden and not Natalie Portman if that's all there is to it? So could you explain if you don't mind?

So basically the Star Wars fandom is kind of a big bag of babies. There I said it. They were used to a suave Han Solo, curious little bean sprout Luke, and the sassy and amazing Princess Leia so when they were given a more emotional and confused character in Anakin played by Hayden they basically threw a fit. 

First of all the writing in the prequels was absolute crap, I maintain that you don’t need to watch The Phantom Menace or the first half of Attack of the Clones because they really honestly don’t add much to the story. You can fight me on that fanboys but search your feelings, you know it to be true. Not many people know that George Lucas only wrote and directed A New Hope by himself. The scripts for Episodes IV and V had immense help from critically acclaimed science fiction writers Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasden, and were also directed by Irvin Kershner( IV) and Richard Marquand (V). Lucas had a hand in every thing since it was his creation, but there were more ideas floating around from other heads that helped the originals become the amazing movies they are today.

Flash forward to May 19, 1999 and the release of The Phantom Menace. All three prequel movies were written and directed solely by Lucas save for Attack of the Clones which had Jonathan Hales as a co writer. As a result what we got was a hodge podge of undeveloped conversations and plot points, useless cameos that only serve as fan service, ridiculous monologues, and just plain bad directing. At its core, like the very very very bare bones center, I believe The Phantom Menace to be a genuinely good movie, just with bad execution. Which is where the problem with Hayden Christensen beings.

People were already sort of unhappy with the newest Star Wars movie, but were high on death sticks while riding the Hype Train so they were more than willing to shovel out more money in the hopes of a better movie than what they were given. Queue May 16, 2002, coincidently also the year we were graced with The Two Towers released at the end of the year on December 18 which was arguable the best movie of the year. People were excited to get a bigger and better Star Wars than the one they’d been given three years prior, but when the time came disappointment ran rampant and over half of the movie was spent with the actors doing silly things, essentially wasting their talents especially in the case of Natalie Portman and Ewan McGragor.

This is where the true Anakin/Hayden hate comes in and I can sum it up in one word. SAND. Not only were the sappy-not-so-romantic-and-actually-kind-of-creepy-monologues in the first half of Attack of the Clones written absolutely terrible, but they were also delivered in a way that elevated the creepy awkwardness. He shuffled between being monotone to overly emotional in a split second, then reverted back to a bland and uninterested voice tone the next. Effectively off putting the majority of the viewers and giving way for the love/hate/but mostly hate that now surrounds him for ‘ruining’ the character that would inevitably become the beloved Darth Vader. 

You see Hayden was actually a pretty accomplished actor before he landed the role of Anakin, mostly cast because of a selection process that involved mushing the faces of potential actors and actresses together to see which ones might have been able to birth Luke and Leia and his face and Natalie Portman’s matched the best, so its not like he didn’t know the industry. In fact he continued to act well after Star War, though lets be honest if you’ve seen Shattered Glass the boy wasn’t all that talented in the first place, but I still love him. Which brings me back the the trashy writing of George Lucas. The man just didn’t know how to write a love story. The cumulation of sub par acting and below standard scripts were the ingredients for a slurry of anger that washed over fanboys like the stench of a freshly lightasbered tauntaun. 

But then we must also ask ourselves. Selves, if the writing was so crap how come actors like Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson (cause he’s awesome thats why) and Christopher Lee didn’t suffer from the same ridicule even though they had to regurgitate those terrible lines? Well the answer to that is simple and two pronged. 

1. Most of them were far more accomplished than Hayden. People knew their names and it was almost taboo to hate on them. So they escaped that ridicule. Which meant that Hayden was the fresh meat new comer that people could hate and rip to threads on the forums. They didn’t let the singleminded directions from Lucas to cloud who they thought their characters were and how they would act and deliver lines. They took the lines and worked with them until they found a way for the lines to remain intact while the integrity of the actor was still protected.

2. Anakin was 9 years old when he met a 14 year old Padme, now thats only five years between the two, but for some people they couldn’t believe that those kids could get together. Mostly because they couldn’t even get with a girl in the first place and so they took their frustrations out on a fictional character played by a very real human being.

TLDR; Star Wars fanboys are kind of the worst and George Lucas’s writing + Hayden Christensen’s acting = Angry fans “Darth Vader ruined, Star Wars ruined, childhood ruined, everything ruined.”