#work-related rant

[spinaart]

hey leader!!!

[bumblingbabooshka]

Tuvok is not as autistic coded in-narrative compared to what I've seen of Spock or T'Pol where they're othered heavily by those around them and have themes and arcs about struggling/striving to fit in BUT I do think he provides the vital autistic representation of not really angsting about your differences from other people because you're too busy and unaware and then even when you ARE made aware you mostly just think 'glad that's not me'. I think it's vital to have that sort of totally unbothered rep. I love that Tuvok is completely satisfied and proud of being Vulcan, doesn't long to experience emotion or struggle with a desire to express himself in a way his crewmates will understand, to be closer to them. I love that he has a long time and close friend that respects who he is and doesn't try to change him and that how close they are isn't framed as being in spite of his Vulcan nature. I love that being Vulcan isn't framed as a hindrance to him, like a roadblock to living a full and rich life. He has a wife and four kids and is a devoted husband and father. He's getting into gay horror scenarios. Tuvok was born on autism planet and he's thriving.

[instarsanddyke]

hector working retail for my amusement

[mejomonster]

Okay FINALLY saw fangs of fortune episode 1:

Fantastic. Fucking amazing.

It was underhyped if anything. And you guys loved it so it was pretty hyped in my mind.

I watched without subs to make life hard for myself. Still great. I love Wen Qiao. I love her dearly. I loved her and the other girl who died. I want to know who Wen Qiao's dead shifu is and I hope its another girl. I got a taste of what having dramatic intense xianxia baihe in a show could be and now i wannnttttttt itttt (Eternal Love actually also gave tastes of that, despite how much i hated the later writing portion it had a LOT to ship if you just went into it thinking everyones bi until proven otherwise)

Wen Qiao i'm just totally thrilled by. I liked her actress in other stuff, but I feel this role is going to let her shine broadly, in a way her shows playing a side character did not.

I'm also thrilled there's no annoyingly innocent high pitched girls of a particular trope here (yet). More like the Word of Honor women characters, who kick ass and have their own agenda, which I really enjoy.

Zhu Yan sure is something. He's hot. He's a demon I presume (yao). He walks up like Sephiroth, untouchable and plaguing the big eyed hero type. He can simply escape. He cant die. He's there because he wants to be, and who knows why he wants to be (maybe he said it amd i just couldnt understand though). I love his character type. I love when shows let a demon boy/lead be one of the main focus points (thats why Love and Redemption got so much love from me partly... Xuanji IS the biggest scariest devil, and her boyfriend is the most talented demon who wants to help people). I felt like I imagine Thousand Autumns feels? Isnt that novel about a big scary demon sect leader and a noble well intentioned guy? Anyway I'm getting distracted.

The music? LOVE IT.

Loved the battle music with Zhu Yan, i usually LOVE a cdrama when i hear music like that. If i fall for the music, its pretty much guaranteed i'll love the show.

I loved Wen Qiao's music scenes. I loved all of her parts though.

Zhu Yan's actor being who he is, I can't imagine he'll actually be evil. Since that actor always plays a hero good guy in everything I've seen. I do love him playing a Sephiroth like presence in this though, along with the moments of comedy like when he walked himself back to his cell that was fucking hilarious.

The show also just. Generally has a lot of my favorite things in a story - demons I want to root for, cool women, lovely costumes, lovely sets, amazing costumes, solid music, gets right INTO the story and will tell us more later - no 10 minute prologue set up exposition dump, no slow scenes, just establishing the vibe and the key players and then ramping up into cool fights! Love that.

The end credits where the cast gets to dance? So cute! I love when shows do something fun for the credits. Ultimate Note would play scene outtakes/bloopers on their end credits.

[angel-derangement]

this is a general psa that enamel pins and other metal frame enamel paint fill items are generally not more expensive to produce because they’re bigger, but because they have more paint colours and detail. it’s the paint colours and detail. you think it’s the size but it’s not because the process is identical regardless of the fucking size but hey you gotta buy eight paint colours instead of three, yeah that’s fucking expensive okay. And they’re hand filled (ALL OF THEM) so more detail means more careful means more time means more errors means more wasted product. Tiny fucking little pin with ten colours and small detail and printing is gonna cost TWICE as much AT LEAST as a massive fucking thing with block areas and three colours. You would not believe how much easier my life would be if people knew this.

[bi-bi-buckleys]

Made the mistake of looking at the ratings for the episode over on IMDB. Yikes.

I don’t even think some of them actually watch the show??? One person said that Tommy had no right to be pallbearer because he has NO CONNECTION to Bobby??? He was there when Bobby started, he saved Bobby and Athena from the cruise ship, Bobby LITERALLY CALLED TOMMY GOOD PEOPLE, and in the beginning of this very episode we got a flashback of Tommy saving Bobby’s life. But sure. No connection.

Also, the few reviews I could stomach scanning mentioned Bvddie so like, what else can one expect. Sorry the episode about Bobby’s funeral didn’t include your ship.

I have no doubt that they’ll address Eddie’s grief in the next two episodes, especially since he mentioned wishing he had been there. Just because it’s not gone over in detail in one episode doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I so far have not seen one person flip out over the lack of Bucktommy in the ep, in fact most are happy we didn’t get anything because it would have felt shoehorned in.

This episode focused on the two people who were most directly affected by Bobby’s death: his widow and the man he essentially died for. We are going to see more of the others in the next two episodes. It’ll happen.

[wheel-of-time80]

Me going to bed early trying not to think about how the Wheel of Time show cancellation really hit home how art and foreshadowing and slow builds (and slow burns) are leaving TV:

[maddragonfruit]

In my mind the original Creativity and a Roman/Remus fusion would be entirely different sides

[imerian]

My (very old) loscar brooch (?) that i just now made doodles for

More pictures under cut

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

Got a new sketchbook and also changed up my John design a bit. So ofc I had to draw "oh. I was hardly gone." Again

(+ assorted other doodles, below the cut)

[geeky-nightphilosopher]

Okay- but...

Has anyone else noticed that at least with Dean Devlin- Christian Kanes characters all have some sort of ties to each other?

I mean:

Eliot Spencer; A military bred, mercenary trained, with multiple aliases- with a specific skill set, con-artist.

Jacob Stone; An art historian, with multiple aliases, genius brain, eidetic memory (?), librarian.

Alex Walker; con-artist, with multiple aliases, an eye for detail, retired giftshop owner.

The characters might not be the same but there still enough for them to be long lost triplets or something.

[rhaenin-time]

No, House Targaryen is not inherently "doomed" by the very same flaws (and themes) that doomed the civilization that they left.

No, they're not fated to succumb to the Doom that they survived specifically because of the foresight that set them apart from everyone else who perished. Not only would it be terrible, simplistic writing, it would also endorse a terrible, simplistic worldview.

People choosing to make House Targaryen a representation of and thematic successor to not just the civilization that they differentiated themselves from, but the power structure that they chose to leave, literally divested from, and actively worked to prevent from rising again in another form... really rubs me the wrong way.

Why isn't this projection and generalization done for any of the families that come from the cultures that are not coded as other? Why is it only the family that's been separated from their cultural context? Why do the other families each get to be unique, complex manifestations not just of different aspects of their cultures, but of their own specific histories?

Why is the foreign degenerate family both a representation of everything wrong with the culture they come from, and a scapegoat for everything wrong with the system they assimilated into? How is it they represent everything bad about what they left behind, and also everything bad about the land they came to? Even though all those flaws are not only shared by the system as a whole, but are flaws that predate their arrival, that they were punished for resisting, and that they are demonstrated to be incompatible with. Why is it always both?

It just rings so familiar to the way so many people view the other in real life. Because the Targaryens are overtly, and intentionally written as the other. It's the reason so many people identify with them, and it's the very same reason that other people vilify them. They're not just the in-universe other to the 'default' culture established in the text, but they're also given characteristics that we, the reader and audience, can recognize as other and even sometimes anathema to Western Christian culture.

Perhaps the old tales were true, and Dragonstone was built with the stones of hell

A Storm of Swords, Chapter 25, Davos III

I want you to ask yourself: Why is the idea of "fire and brimstone" evil?

To paraphrase the annoying people that love to cite Ramsay when they feel like it: If you look at a morally complex family surrounded by other morally complex families in a morally complex world in a story that's famed for seeking to challenge your underlying assumptions, and think that their association with fire and brimstone is meant to signify their singular satanic evilness, rather than say... challenge that very Eurocentric assumption, you haven't been paying attention.

This vilification mindset where the Targaryens are the singular evil of Westeros is so common to people who seem to want to consume ASoIaF without engaging with the criticisms of the Eurocentric worldview of history at the heart of it. And they end up using the convenient “others” to project all the wrongs of that world onto so they don't need to examine it any deeper.

This is the part where I so often get crucified!

This is the take that so often gets me crucified for "trivializing real world bigotry" in an attempt to "moralize interpretations of fiction" by an onslaught of people with troubling ideologies who then ironically steer the onslaught to moralizing their interpretations of fiction in a way that seeks to either mask or justify their troubling ideologies.

The worldbuilding of ASoIaF is an almost unparalleled projection of the Eurocentric worldview. That's what makes the world feel so rich. That's why GRRM and even the readers and audience are able to craft so many details that feel intuitive. But that also means that how you choose to interpret that world is often driven by underlying biases and ideologies that relate to that worldview — especially if you're not willing to challenge them the way George RR Martin does and encourages you to do.

It means that certain potential biases and ideologies people might balk at outwardly expressing in the real world are recontextualized in a way that feels more comfortable to indulge in.

There are countless examples from countless parts of the narrative. Honestly, you could fill books on the matter. But the one I'll point to right now is how the vilification I pointed out earlier is so emblematic of how the Eurocentric worldview often seeks to project their own flaws onto the other or choose scapegoats for systemic issues.

It comes from the same place with how someone pointed out that the baffling bastardphobia that would have medieval peasants giving the side eye is so often people jumping at the chance to “cosplay” as bigots who base their arguments in misogyny and bio-essentialism. Because it's an acceptable channel to indulge in that mindset in a way that they'd often otherwise question, or at least hold back from expressing out of caution.

And there I go again. "Moralizing fandom" for pointing out that fandom is so often used as a 'safe space' to build communities that share and spread troubling ideologies that you're not allowed to criticize because those ideologies have been 'appropriately' decontextualized from their real-world parallels, even though those parallels are still very much there.

But the problem is that it's impossible to simply 'channel' bigotry and leave it in an 'acceptable' space, because bigotry doesn't work like that. It's not a static object you can carry around in your pocket to play with when you think it's safe to do so. It's a blight. A living poison that feeds and grows and spreads. And if you give it a 'safe space' and continue to feed it with 'acceptable' fuel, it will always find its way out.

[ryuusei-boi]

Inazuma Eleven Ending 7 - "Mata ne... no Kisetsu"

Taken from TODOS LOS ENDINGS del ANIME de INAZUMA ELEVEN 4K by Angelico and edited by me

[mejomonster]

Dracula AU, a drabble from an old Silent Reading post I made (part of the meta collection on ao3 I'm reformating) that still makes me laugh. I still want to play with this idea more:

It’s fucking Hilarious to me to imagine how zhoudu’s particular Daddy kink would factor into a vampire au:

Fei Du, on Luo Wenzhou’s lap, pinning him down, leaning down to bite, thinking he’s got this whole flirting thing down since Luo Wenzhou feels turned on as fuck and his heart is racing and he’s staring, lost in Fei Du’s eyes

Then Luo Wenzhou flips them (because even Vampire Fei Du is too rich and classy to Practice Fighting), he’s handcuffed, stuck between Luo Wenzhou’s legs face down in the cushions, shouting indignantly but it’s coming out muffled. “!!!!”

Luo Wenzhou saying, “Now, boy, I don’t know what you intended to do, but I need commitment before letting you touch me like that. Take it a little slower, darling. Why don’t you cool down.” Reaching out and readjusting Fei Du, still screaming incomprehensibly, noticing his forehead is cold as a corpse.

“Actually, let’s warm you up. You’re cold as death, sweetie.”

Then lifting him up and wrapping him (still handcuffed) nice and snug in a blanket. Fei Du is glaring dully, trying not to shout the thought in his mind, “You idiot! I was going to kiss you to death! Drink you! I wasn’t making a move! Even if I WAS being indecent, taking advantage of you, you’d have been dead at the end! Why do you even have handcuffs on you!!! Let me go!!” Alas, he’d only say it in his mind, hoping the glare confers adequate rage to his target.

Luo Wenzhou making his mad little vampire some warm milk with honey, Fei Du politely letting Luo Wenzhou pour small sips into his lips, insisting: “Drink up, it’ll help you sleep. And with any luck stop your wicked thoughts.” And Fei Du would be in between trying not to GAG at the drink suited for humans but not him, and trying not to scream at the fact milk can’t do shit to stop horniness! Where’s he even pulling that nonsense from?! But he’d cooperatively drink it, because Luo Wenzhou looks ‘friendly’ despite Fei Du’s assault, but if he’s competent enough to subdue him then Fei Du will have to play nice until he’s released. Also he is truly wrapped so tight in that blanket it’s like a cocoon. Despite miserably being unable to feed, he is actually nearly as warm as a living person thanks to Luo Wenzhou’s most generous 'efforts.’

Fei Du is silently seething, even more so when he tries to graze his lips across Luo Wenzhou’s hand holding the glass rim, and in response gets a whack on the head. “You’re the one assaulting me!” Fei Du would whine, the crankiness settling in from lack of blood for too long.

And Luo Wenzhou, the bastard, would just reply, “You’re barely even marrying age, and you’re going around trying to seduce men. A virgin like you should really be a little more modest.”

At which point Fei Du can’t take it anymore and snaps: “homosexual relations don’t have a fucking thing to do with marriage! And who said I’m a virgin!”

“Well with moves like yours, I figured.”

“An old man like you has no game, of course you can’t tell when someone is more talented than you.”

“If you were talented, darling,” Luo Wenzhou couldn’t help leaning forward, affording Fei Du the luck of hearing his racing heartbeat betraying his collected exterior mask as a lie, “you’d have me naked already, instead of being indisposed.”

“I have no idea why that didn’t happen, you didn’t have any reason to restrain me.” The whining just increasing with the lateness of the night.

Luo Wenzhou, quietly mulling around and cleaning up the now empty glasses and figuring out where to put Fei Du to 'sleep,’ not mentioning he really stopped Fei Du because he did suspect Fei Du was trying to bite him. And what with rumors of a vampire on the loose, he didn’t want to let that play out and find out. At least not yet. Master Fei is so cute, and arrogant, and unknown, and Luo Wenzhou would like to enjoy opening up the man a little more before condemning him to the mobs looking for a monster in the city. Even if there’s a pit in his stomach sinking with the unpleasant intuition that it’s less likely Fei Du would be a scapegoat, and more likely he really might be…

He’d pull a pillow over and tuck it behind Fei Du, then pull down his legs until he’s laying across the couch, still nicely bundled up. Still colder than a human should be, when Luo Wenzhou’s hand casually slips across his neck while readjusting him.

Fei Du laughed quietly to it. “Playing so hard to get, despite wanting me.”

“Get some rest, Master Fei.”

[dafpork]

my master plan is i'm going to draw so much Dafpork that it makes everyone sick and then i'm going to post it on all accounts on all social media platforms and reblog it constantly and spam tags, and i'm going to keep doing this so much that any time you try to look up Daffy, anything at all, maybe even anything Looney Tunes related, it's all going to be Dafpork. google search will just be flooded with Dafpork. it's all going to be Dafpork. and then humanity will be saved.

[eri-pl]

wait was anyone (eg the guy doing the lecture series) going to tell me Boethius was proclaimed a saint or was I meant to learn that from Wikipedia

yea apparently I was meant to learn it from wikipedia

anyway now to the proper post that I intended to write

So I am having a quite niche problem (ok maybe it's not a problem. a question to ponder at least). So. "The consolation of philosophy". Is very cool. But Lady Philosophy has a particular vibe that … idk why but I feel a strong urge to assign this vibe to one of the Ainur, ideally one of the Valar and initially I thought Nienna, but no.

She (Philosophy) had this almost-agressive anti-despair "stop talking bs" attitude that reminds me of Gandalf. But also at some points she's like "You ask why bad things happen to good people? The answer is simple: they don't." and he would not say that. And yea, Nienna very much would not say that.

I can imagine Námo (esp with his relationship to time*) being like "No, I've never seen bad things happen to good people, you're simply mistaken" and generally going a similar route of argumentation. But I already have a strong HC for his personality. But also, it may fit together… I need to rotate it more in my brain.

(To be clear: she's not being cruel or very dismissive. There's some context. But she is being a little, how to call that, Gandalf-like. Snarky? A little bit.)

BTW I can absolutely see pre-Exile Finrod unironically claiming that suffering is an illusion etc (but in a very compassionate way) and driving his half-uncle into a rage by this.

(oh and ofc the text has soo much Númenorean vibes, I mean the Faithful in late Númenor. I'm surprised that I haven't thought of this earlier but... if we change Plato and similar guys to some Elves and change the geographical names and maaaybe some astronomical details (round earth) and make the personifications ambigiously "maybe I imagined it maybe it was a Maia" etc... without any change to the theology I can see it as a text originating in there. and I'm sure Tolkien would agree. Like… It removes exactly the right amount--- I know it was because he wanted it to make sense to the pagan Greeks--- anyway aaaargh I will simply HC it there it fits so very very well)

edit: I found the video that made me rant on the philosophers&Greeks, & probably on Boethius for choice of words. (It's in Polish)