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The thing i like most about tf characters apart from some outliers is that even if they've done some extremely shitty things the vast majority of them are easy to write as people who are trying to get by and have their own biases and grudges but ultimately also have their own hopes and visions for the outcome of the war and that's why I pretty endlessly love expanding on characters interactions with each other and building out their backstories and their affections for their friends, home provinces, frame type. It's all so dang fun and interesting to build out :)

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I'm on a hot streak of reading something of the most promising long fics that end up so unsatisfying. It's bc im reading for a ship that is only a few months old so the writers definitely put out passionate but half baked works and that especially shows in the character writing.

The fics with consistent quality aren't done yet bc the writers know how to pace themselves and not push out something undercooked.

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Im taking the fucking word away. I read a fic with it 80+ times. FIND A NEW WORD. ADD SOME DETAIL.

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Reading a good bit of writing is good for the soul

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Always found people who laugh at their own jokes very endearing bc to me it signals they tell a joke because they genuinely enjoy it, not just to elicit a response out of others

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Despite starscream being my beloved buggyboo of the highest degree, there's no character i like less because of their treatment of him (except maybe megatron) bc honestly most of the time I'm like, yknow, that's fair.

Alls im saying is if we're forgiving/redeeming war criminals i have like 50 suggestions before we get to megsy

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Idw prowl is thee most character of all time and I would have to reread the comic again to coherently explain the 50 layers of how endlessly funny he is

I feel like he's the one idw character who is better off for being in the canon trainwreck because it just makes him more of a psychotic dumpsterfire

Prowl who has strictly associated with evil, lunatic mecha in between committing many, many war crimes: why is everyone else the problem?

My favorite part will always be prowl being like: i murdered our son with my own two hands-

and tarantulas after a hot minute of reflection being like, you dumb whore bitch, you've never done ANY of the dirty work yourself thus our son is alive!!!

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Decided to reread [redacted] webcomic starting on 413 only to find out the site is a steaming heap of broken links, pages, ect that is unreadable and certainly not usable for enjoying the comic as originally intended

I know you can go on github and like download it or set up a browser but I will not touch github unless I'm being paid (I'm a software engineer by trade i mean this literally)

So anyways I am using like 3 different sites to go through it and aside from that madness it's actually very enjoyable. Idk if I just didn't have the attention span when I first was going through it or what but while I still find some dialogues (rose, dave, kanaya) kind of a chore to read and sometimes irritatingly verbose, I suppose it's part of the charm and occasionally has some good payoff lmao.

I was telling my friend I suppose I'm not surprised by the sites state bc everything I've heard from hussie the past few years seems to indicate a bit of contempt for his own fans, but I do sincerely hope there's an actual formal fix in the works that comes out in a timely manner because [redacted] deserves to be preserved as it's obviously of great significance to some huge amount of people and has contributed a lot to internet culture and generally just webcomics/literature online. Hard to believe it's not even 20 years old and has had such prolific influence.

Feel like tons of writers, developers and artists i admire gave roots in [redacted]. Anywho-

After this ill probably get back to idw readthrough and after that probably worm

Also rose is still my favorite kid and the character that made me laugh first

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Comikk boomk

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Its been multiple times I've been in a discord with a writer who is insecure about their abilities so they neg other people's work and bring up fanfics in the tag directly or indirectly to mock and derride.

I find it shitty behavior because I think constructive criticism should be taken directly to an author of a work and be put on the archive comment section if you really have constructive intent.

Not that discord is never the place for passive fandom critique or discussion but it always rankles me when it happens in community servers where the author could join looking for a fun place to engage with others and then find really disingenious cliquey critique or worse, speculation on who they are as a person which I absolutely detest.

The part that gets me is it is often people who aren't insecure about their work, they're insecure about the engagement it receives and even though most of the time the person being a massive asshole is a competent writer, they lack the self confidence to write and post something and continue it even if the people reading it aren't engaging as feverishly as some other writers.

And it really deeply bothers me when said writer finds that external validation theyre seeking by bullying others, discouraging other writers and often times setting this meta of right/wrong ways to explore a works themes and characters.

I never last long in spaces with these kind of people because I'm not going to give you a kindness and good faith you're not showing to others.

Blech

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I just spent 120 on a tts reader for a year so you can bet your ass im writing fic

Love the part where I love everything about writing except the actual writing sometimes

Love: reading the thing i wrote two days ago, wow! It's not shit at all. The stuff i wrote today sure is though

Love: reading people's comments, wow they're so insightful and give me fun ideas to expand the world and characters. Also it feels great to hear what I did well, or peoples different interpretations of my work

Love: reading and getting inspired to write. Love seeing amazing art that drives me to write. Love seeing a cool concept that fits my favorite characters! Love engaging with canon and remembering what I found so great. Love seeing awesome fanon ideas

Love: posting my work, so excited to share with everyone. Love seeing the slow growth of the Google doc

Love: editing my work and hearing it read aloud by tts. Fine tuning word choice, making the flow better, seeing my vision come together. Wow I'm so proud, fulfilled, and I'll enjoy revisiting this fic endlessly

Hate: writing wow everything today was shit, can't possibly publish any of this, looks like the backlog is at 100k again but no single story is even close to publishing

***Screams into the void***

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Mappa removing denji singing a workers rights song in the anime adaptation is still one of the funniest bits of csm lore

Additional context is that mappa allegedly runs their studio like a sweat shop so-

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Basically I have very warm feelings that are not unlike my feelings for the fan favorite, even though some things do infuriate me about both I'm happy they exist and in the case of fan favorite in particular, I think it's exceptional in a lot of ways and part of my frustration with it stems from frustration with the comic industry as a whole but yknow.

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I read Kuang's Babel and didn't like it but man, maybe its because I'm not a big fantasy person, or I dont read enough to be discerning, or what but I found the literary discussion of her work to be a bit brutal.

To start, my exposure to Kuangs work starts with Yellowface, which I adore, I think it's a brilliant book with a lot of really deep facets to it and a surprising amount of heart despite how mean and awful nearly everyone in the book seems to be. And I also found the discussion around that book to be pretty viscous and uncharitable.

I don't care to look into the authors socials to know what her relationship is with the booktok community or twitter mob or whatever, because trying to grasp that is going to give me a headache. So if shes been a rancid tatertot and encouraged and stoked this kind of vitriol, I'm not aware of that and it hasn't explicitly come up in any of the discussions I've read.

So, I'll say this, Babel annoyed me a lot, because I think it really had the potential to be something good, and I think it was really about 5 books worth of material crammed into one with a lack of world building, character depth, half masticated themes that did as some redditors did imo fairly describe, become basically an essay about colonialism shoehorned into the middle of the book. I thought the ending was terrible and it kind of all fell apart at the end, and I did fell actual genuine annoyance at how condescending the book felt with it's footnotes and manifestos. And I did find the prose to tip over into this depth of emotion that I didn't feel was earned, and thus felt melodramatic.

But I don't like... resent the book for existing? I actually really enjoy that babel has fans, even if I'm not one of them. It's not for me and I do think the writer being so young and ham-handed is part of it, but I think having a bit of ham-handedness in the way of progressive social politics in fantasy is actually really promising.

I'm happy for people who can pick up this book and identify with the main characters feeling ostracized and isolated in a dominantly white world where their diversity is only useful so much as it can be used to further strengthen that foreign, hostile empire into raiding and plundering their homes further.

I will say the weirdest thing about the book for me was how the women just weren't well written and I think misogyny was kind of... compared to racism and decidedly confirmed as the lesser of two evils in a really shitty and dismissive way, which was a bit infuriating to me, but hey.

I want more books like Babel, but I definitely would like them to be deeper and more developed. But I am happy Babel gets to be out front having its day in the sunshine and I hope the writers who do adore it go on to emulate what they found valuable because I really think Babel enriches the general community, even if I find it very preachy, condescending, misogynistic, and abrasive.

But then again I write stuff and find myself feeling that same way about my own work (to my own intense shame) so I think its good to be charitable to writers and let them evolve. Idk, it made me sad to see the amount of people calling Babel garbage and trash when I think it is an important step in the evolution of the fantasy and publishing industry becoming more diverse and evolved

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I git to blacksmith and see cherry blossoms in the same day, so the weekends been lovely

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I can either mod a discord server and actively participate in them or write. And well-

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As a general Swansea fan, one popular interpretation I've seen more than once in analysis videos and general fandom sentiment that disagree with is that Swansea was like, destined to be an alcoholic.

Swansea pursues the status quo because it's what is assumed will make most people happy and content. But it doesn't work out for Swansea and he admits that his years drinking himself into a health complication riddled stupor were the happiest moments of his life. But I really disagree that just means alcoholism was Swanseas only path to happiness and rather it was the only one he came across.

I think that is where a lot of Swanseas tenderness and affection for Daisuke comes from. Daisuke isn't the best at his job but he gives it an earnest try and is constantly seeking and open to happiness and fulfillment from a variety of people and sources. I think in him, Swansea sees a potential alternate path his life could have taken.