#which also is a good narrative but

[ssaalexblake]

and if i see One more comment that 13′s era was Badly Written actively because it’s optimistic and everybody ends up fine at the end i will chew through your walls and ask why you think pessimism and misery is high art and the lack of human suffering is boring. 

[fluentisonus]

I've said this before but valjean's view of the bishop throughout the book gets me so bad because like. he knew him for what, a day maybe? and it absolutely had a vast & profound & positive impact on him. but then he goes on to spend the whole book comparing himself to his idealized vision of the bishop & finding himself wanting & feeling guilty and miserable about every petty or selfish thought that crosses his mind. but it's so fucked up because like we as the readers know the bishop better! we've read the whole first book and we know he came from a privileged & wealthy background, that he was a rake when he was young, it wasn't til he was in his 40s or 50s to have some sort of change of heart & become a priest (a similar age to valjean when he met him!), that he has moments that seriously shake him, that he has some dubious politics left over, that he still has moments of pettiness he has to work through on the page (his initial approach to the member of the convention, e.g.). and also he's just kind of a weird old guy (affectionate). and like this is not to criticize the bishop, I think he's a genuinely really good guy, just that while the bishop has a realistic view of himself & his past ("he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner,"), valjean is not getting any of this except maybe like. what would be mentioned in the newspaper when the bishop died. so his whole view of him is of this one shining moment where he changed his life and he feels he doesn't live up to that. which is sad! because the bishop understood him more than he realized & wouldn't have wanted him to feel that way

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[deerspherestudios]

Helloooooo!

I'm a bit new to the Mushroom Oasis fandom and I just wanted to say that I love the game! :D

I just played through day 3 and all I have to ask is- CHEEA WHY AND HOW DID YOU MAKE THE BAD ENDING IN DAY 3 SO MUCH WORST THAN THE FIRST TWO I FEEL SO BAD NOW

Aw I'm glad you enjoyed the game!!! Happy to have you here ::-D!

Hhgsd people have been wanting a bad ending since I released Day 2 so I delivered ❤️ Having built newly found trust with Mychael it'd take something pretty major to trigger a bad ending, which is why it's only achievable by selecting all suspicious choices.

I intended the bad ending to be much more difficult to find but people caught on real quick!! You guys really just wanna break his heart huh /lh

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[citroncynique]

bad dreams in the night

[sopuu]

what a lonely victory.

[devilsskettle]

The X trilogy + "psycho-biddy" influences

[brainrot-jikan]

im not the biggest alhaitham/kaveh shipper (because im a rare pair ho) but it seems to me that in alhaitham/kaveh getting-together fics tend to be... unequal.

the beautiful thing about alhaitham and kaveh is that they're both equally right and equally wrong and equally dicks about it. but the writers for alhaitham/kaveh much more frequently seem to give alhaitham the burden change (the burden of the character flaw) instead of kaveh.

in any good character arc, the main character has a fatal flaw or misconception, and by the end of that arc they have addressed that flaw in some definitive way. scrooge was a scrooge and learned that being that way was detrimental; merlin from finding nemo was overprotective to a fault and had to learn that he couldn't (and shouldn't) control everything and to let go; the wolf from little red riding hood learns that you should stop while you're ahead.

stories centering around romance tend to lean heavily on character arcs, which makes sense. and since romance generally requires two individuals to be vulnerable and open and emotional with each other, it makes double sense that alhaitham/kaveh authors zoom straight into alhaitham's lack of emotional vulnerability.

this bothers me.

in society, individuals are expected to experience and present emotions in a specific way. if someone dies, you cry. if someone smiles at you, you smile back. if you're at a party, you're supposed to be having fun. if you don't do these things, you're seen as impolite at best and a inhuman freak at worst. when these behaviors are frequent it's often viewed as emotional immaturity, or a lack of ability to feel at all. the inability or lack of willingness to conform to societies emotional expectations of you is seen as a flaw and a reason for exclusion.

alhaitham is canonically disliked and avoided for being the way he is. he prefers it this way, but that doesn't mean the people perpetuating this avoidance are in the right. they are the societal pressure to conform that alhaitham blows off. alhaitham could be the way he is for a lot of reasons: avoidant attachment style, trauma, following someone else's example (eg. his grandmother), or just his base personality. it doesn't MATTER. he is the way he is. kaveh having to accept that should be part of the story.

putting the burden of the fatal flaw on alhaitham, making the way alhaitham treats kaveh and the people around him the problem, feels invalidating. it implies heavily that alhaitham's way of interfacing with the world, alhaitham's very SELF, is incorrect. my suggestion is to flip a larger portion of that burden onto kaveh. kaveh 👏 character 👏 arcs 👏

some examples/recommendations:

- make kaveh project his insecurities onto other people but especially onto alhaitham; he's overly reliant on other people for his own self worth, and he perceives alhaitham's lack of positive feedback as a direct reflection of how alhaitham feels about him. but learns along the way that alhaitham doesn't hate him, kaveh's actual struggle is with hating himself and being unable to his own self as worthy of love. maybe throw in how you are responsible for your own recovery, other people can help but you can't rely on them to carry you through self actualization.

- or, kaveh tries to make alhaitham behave more like a "normal" person, to be more pleasant and emotive and forthcoming, and then realizes he's in the wrong for trying to make alhaitham into something he's not, possibly for all the wrong reasons (not because he likes alhaitham better like that, but bc society says that's healthier and a better/more conforming way to be)

- or you could go ahead make alhaitham's issues the main problem but they're too complicated to overcome in a short period of time, so kaveh has to accept alhaitham is doing his best in his own way and not push for unrealistic and unhealthy changes. he could alter his own behavior to give alhaitham space and time and a safe place to land.

that got sappy so it's past time for me to dip out. go forth and ship things; but maybe consider letting alhaitham be a rude stone-faced bastard if he wants to be.

[dumping-ideas]

I was sad that they cut the "stop it or I'll fall in love with all of you!" scene (it's an adorable scene), but I'm glad the anime shows how highly Subaru's allies think of him post arc 3, even if it's a short scene.

Like, really short, super short (also Subaru looks confused and not happy by the assurance either)

I see people seeing this scene as unnecessary or hamfisted, but I think this scene is important to show how much people expect things from Subaru now? Especially with how much Subaru's self-esteem and self-love is ALWAYS the B-side of Subaru's plotline since forever (even the narration in LN 1 and LN 2 blindsided me by how low Subaru's opinions of himself are sometimes, like boy he has issues). And this also ties in with arc 6 until arc 8, (and most likely consequent arcs). It's important for Subaru to know how highly others think of him and how much they expect things from him.

This expectation of others is good, but just compare how Julius in the end accepts Al leaving their party to search for his missing master, while everyone hopes Subaru to leave his kidnapped master alone with her kidnapper for who-knows-how-long because they think he's knowledgeable about the witch cult (even though currently he has the same information as them). But he can't just say that because everyone expects him to have information they don't have.

Also, I think a lot of (most, I think) people forget that this scene is why they assure Subaru that he's not a deadweight, that he's worth a hundred men, and that his presence is reassuring.

Natsuki Subaru is their weakest man, he's very fragile, he's unarmed, everyone involved with the Royal Selection sees his defeat and how powerless he is, and yet he doesn't give up. If their weakest man hasn't given up, how can they kneel on the ground in despair?

That's why Subaru is worth a hundred men. By looking at Subaru's relentless spirit, everyone can find the strength within themselves to stand and fight again. That's what Crusch, Ricardo, Wilhelm, Julius, basically everyone in the White Whale and Sloth battles think of him.

Yet before they retake the city hall (and before the famous speech scene), Subaru hasn't realised how empowering it is for everyone to have him standing by their side and just be himself. Sure, others may rely on him for his knowledge and creative thinking, but Subaru is first and foremost the emotional support of any battle he's in.

Tl;dr: I think the praise is not 'too much' actually, they just say it as they see it.

[anghraine]

jenndoesnotcare replied to this post:

Every time LDS kids come to my neighborhood I am so so nice to them. I hope they remember the blue haired lady who was kind, when people try to convince them the outside world is bad and scary. (Also they are always so young! I want to feed them cookies and give them Diana Wynne Jones books or something)

Thank you! Honestly, this sort of kindness can go a really long way, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.

LDS children and missionaries (and the majority of the latter are barely of age) are often the people who interact the most with non-Mormons on a daily basis, and thus are kind of the "face" of the Church to non-Mormons a lot of the time. As a result, they're frequently the ones who actually experience the brunt of antagonism towards the Church, which only reinforces the distrust they've already been taught to feel towards the rest of the world.

It's not that the Church doesn't deserve this antagonism, but a lot of people seem to take this enormous pride in showing up Mormon teenagers who have spent most of their lives under intense social pressure, instruction, expectation, and close observation from both their peers and from older authorities in the Church (it largely operates on seniority, so young unmarried people in particular tend to have very little power within its hierarchies). Being "owned" for clout by non-Mormons doesn't prove anything to most of them except that their leaders and parents are right and they can't trust people outside the Church.

The fact that the Church usually does provide a tightly-knit community, a distinct and familiar culture, and a well-developed infrastructure for supporting its members' needs as long as they do [xyz] means that there can be very concrete benefits to staying in the Church, staying closeted, whatever. So if, additionally, a Mormon kid has every reason to think that nobody outside the Church is going to extend compassion or kindness towards them, that the rest of the world really is as hostile and dangerous as they've been told, the stakes for leaving are all the higher, despite the costs of staying.

So people from "outside" who disrupt this narrative of a hostile, threatening world that cannot conceivably understand their experiences or perspectives can be really important. It's important for them to know that there are communities and reliable support systems outside the Church, that leaving the Church does not have to mean being a pariah in every context, that there are concrete resources outside the Church, that compassion and decency in ordinary day-to-day life is not the province of any particular religion or sect and can be found anywhere. This kind of information can be really important evidence for people to have when they are deciding how much they're willing to risk losing.

So yeah, all of this is to say that you're doing a good thing that may well provide a lifeline for very vulnerable people, even if you don't personally see results at the time.

[kc5rings]

I’m prone to rolling my eyes at a “church bad actually” storyline in games, not because that can’t be a good story or anything but because often that’s just it. The church is nebulously evil with a few Big Atrocities to point at so the player knows it. Thats fine and all, but it’s often not that interesting to me

Metaphor Refantazio has me invested though, because while it is a Church Evil story in part and BOY are they not shy about doing atrocities, it takes the time to show the more mundane, realistic ways that organized religion can take advantage of people and become rotted from corruption. The subtle ways it speaks about the people it’s conquered to lay claim to all that they have and state that those things in fact ALWAYS belonged to the church

A big part of the narrative is about the logistics of governance, both good and bad, and that comes through in most aspects of the story, the church storyline included

It’s not groundbreaking or anything like that, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised a few times now where things play out slightly to the left of what I’d expect

[danwhobrowses]

Since I have some free time on the weekend, Downfall is next week and it's Missing Bells Hells hours for me, I'd like to share with everyone my vision for when the Hells return to table

[shithowdy]

realized a drawing i'm doing rn is almost identically posed to one i did 8.5 years ago of a different oc, except the old drawing was instantly tainted by one of the players featured messaging me asking if i could take it down because their abusive, possessive rp partner saw it and got jealous of them "roleplaying behind their back" and i said "nah" and it became a whole Thing that i should have walked away from at that exact moment but didn't and the 6 months that followed contained some of the most truly condensed batshit i have ever witnessed in an rp community already well-known for its batshittery.

... anyway i love my friends. so happy to accidentally redeem the pose.

[lotus-pear]

i love causing discourse so i want EVERYONE who sees this to comment which bsd character has the best character design and WHY. i want to see some analysis in the tags or simply why u think ur blorbo is on top in terms of fashion taste

[spacedlexi]

maybe if i just put these screenshots together youll understand why i think their relationship just Works so well as it pertains to the characters and themes of S4 in general

neither of them know what theyre doing, but theyre figuring it out Together. the old ways are dead. and together theyll build a new future thats worth fighting for