#I can never actually talk to ppl abt fandom which is very lonely bc like how else would I talk to people

[sickgraymeat]

when we agree on smth for once 😩

[vanyaliful]

what are u mad abt in the mandolorian finale? u mentioned it in the tags

having slept on it doesn't mean i can manage to make it more articulate in english im sorry lmao also ppl in the fandom have talked about this probably way more clearly than i will, but ill give it a try

- the more and more the season went on, the less din felt like a main character, and it was ever more obvious in the finale. i felt like stuff happened to him, instead of him actually deciding to act. it felt less and less about Din’s story and more and more about everyone else’s mess. and as emotional as the last scene was, between the dark saber drama, moff's and bo's bitching, luke's dramatic entrance, beepoop im R2 the funny robot, i felt like din and grogu were a sideplot.

- maybe it has to do w/ how we consume media on tumblr but i feel like they hyped us for that baby yoda and din reunion and the payoff was meh. i would have LOVED to see din on a rampage in the ship like he did in The Prisoner. i feel like the way they approached the rescue was very subdued compared to the big menacing message din sent just before. where's the crazy feral dad ready to do anything to save his kid??? also there wasn't a real reunion scene (was din worried about the baby, his well being, what they did to him??? could you tell about the scene he got him back?? i couldn't), and while i enjoyed the duel between moff and din a lot, i think it could've been longer and higher stakes than it was

- and now the Luke Problem:  relying to much on canon and nostalgia. what made the appeal of the mandalorian to me is that it was different from the shitshow of the sequels, that we got to explore unknown corners  of this galaxy, away from the skywalkers' story, that it was about this lonely dude (that knows nothing about what happened in the galaxy btw and that says a lot) and his kid. the writing was innovative in terms that it was unexpected and fresh, that it didn't feel like rehashing the same story and characters over and over. bringing back the main character of the film series did exactly the opposite, and i feel like they're going in a direction thats tying back the big events, and losing the identity of the show and what made it so popular. 

also the sheer number of cameos this season definitely contributed to the feeling of din being send to the background, and luke's arrival, in all it's theatricality, was the cherry on top. i mean the climax of the episode should have been about grogu and din but instead i feel the spotlight was kinda. all over the place.

- the helmet/armor/creed problem. the fact is, since the beginning of the show they've built on this, that the helmet should never come off or else he could never put it back on. events in s2 surely made din question this, especially after the scene in the imperial base. but we never actually got to see the evolution of his mindset about his creed regarding his attachement to the kid. like it didn't seem to me like he suddenly had a big reveal that his life rule was wrong and that he should forsaken his creed?? at all??? the two times he had to break it before the finale was against his will, in frankly traumatic moments and it wouldn't have made sense to him after those to go "oh yeah i removed it twice so i guess it doesn't matter anymore" no!! to me the logical thought was "he had to remove his helmet bc he put himself in dire circumstances for this kid, which means he can finally recognize him as family, which means he can be vulnerable in front of him" not a full room of people + his worst enemy + a complete stranger!!! what i mean is that it would have made more sense to me that he reveals himself to the kid  in a more intimate scene, away from everyone, as a real act of "i care about YOU so i can show YOU my face". what i mean is that i don't see the point of din revealing his face to everyone when it should have been about revealing his face to grogu bc he cares about grogu specifically. it's what the narration pointed towards this whole time.

- maybe a bit mad abt the cgi. in my wildest dreams i didn't even imagine they would bring luke back, bc this technology wasn't really a success in rogue one and i really did not want to see it again; but maybe im just picky

as i said im always happy to see luke, that mark got to play him again. his entrance  was rly cool, i got goosebumps. im not mad that luke took the baby, grogu chose to go with him, narratively it made sense and star wars is about letting go of things for the better (not that it doesn't break my heart). but all of this... just felt off to me.

i guess it all hinges on what they'll do with din in the next season. will we know more of what he thought of breaking his creed, how will he approach the whole mandalore mess, and how he'll grieve his lost kid/get him back

[ugokushiro]

i was tagged by @senjo thank you!! it was actually pretty fun to fill in

i’m tagging my best tumblr buds @sukerokus​ and @elriccs​ <3

Why did you choose your url?

howl’s moving castle is one of my favorite ghibli movies and it’s just part of the japanese title

Any side blogs?

a few actually, but @animeramblings (literally what the url says) and @theinfamouslast (gaming) are the main ones i use

How long have you been on tumblr?

since around 2013, but this account is from 2017

Do you have a queue tag?

i don’t, but i really should bc i do queue posts often

Why did you start your blog in the first place?

i joined originally bc i liked the whole ✨pretty aesthetic✨ and then stayed for the chance to have a space to talk abt random stuff and enjoy fandom content. i was also pretty lonely for a period of time in my life and i  think making friends on here really helped. tumblr really is the most comfortable place on the internet for me

Why did you choose your icon?

because miyazaki is my most favorite cynical old man

Why did you choose your header?

it’s just a pretty screencap from future boy conan (also by miyazaki, can u see the pattern here)

What’s your post with the most notes?

this code geass post which i’m mildly proud abt

How many followers do you have?

a billion followers. i have in fact the most popular tumblr blog, something most ppl don’t know about unfortunately ://

How many people do you follow?

209

Have you ever made a shitpost?

who hasn’t

How often do you use Tumblr?

i go through phases, but let’s be honest we’re all married to this website whether we like it or not

Did you have a fight/argument with a blog once?

considering i tend to avoid conflict at all costs, no c:

How do you feel about “you need to reblog this post”?

no ❤️

Do you like tag games? Do you like ask games?

i used to enjoy them a lot more in the past, but then i realized that no one really cares about whether you prefer coffee over tea. they are still fun to fill in tho! as for ask games i’ve never been very into them, i’d rather just shout my opinions into the void than interact with the ppl who follow me i guess

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

they are all actual celebrities. tumblr stardom is inescapable

Do you have a crush on a mutual?

they are all lovely people, but unfortunately no. i’m already confused enough abt irl crushes

[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.

[flyingcookierambles]

so i finished reading the northern caves

hey its a book ramble! after uuhhhhhh.. a year. anyways the northern caves! (https://archiveofourown.org/works/3659997/chapters/8088522)

i binged it in a whole day. and i have feelings. i think?

so ppl hyped it as a lovecraft-ish/otherworldly horror story and i think i got a bit sucked into that and let down a bit because to me the horror story wasn’t the implied dark magic connections the author had with uh. the Mundum. it was the unreliable narration and betrayal of friends. spoilers below!

so, if you’ve read the northern caves, you know what the Mundum is. it was just kinda introduced as some mystical thing in the universe that the author believed in. whether or not it was real was kinda left open ended i think.

if you for some reason haven’t read the northern caves (which will just be either the caves or tnc for typing speed’s sake), it’s about a group of online friends in a 2004 internet forum dedicated to a children’s book series called Chesscourt by Leonard Selby. the author died before he could publish his final book, The Northern Caves. thankfully, one of the ppl in the forums, metamarsh, is actually distantly related to the author, and in the event of leonard selby’s death and then marsh’s aunt’s death (i think she was selby’s sister or something), marsh’s family got all the belongings of leonard selby. all his journals, notes, and unpublished works left behind. TNC was one of them. marsh (or his aunt or some other relative) scanned the pages and released it online ig sometime before the story. and so the events of Spelunk 04! starts, in which the friend group of this forum plans an irl meet up at marsh’s house so they can go over the author’s belongings and try to make sense of tnc. tnc is, to put simply, a mess. there’s lucid parts and non-lucid parts, by which i mean that there’s entire pages of nonsense and also it’s mentioned that there are 3 entire pages that are just the letter “a.” this can easily be dismissed as the writings of a senile old man, until the revelation of the Mundum (mentioned above) comes up. 

then things so super wrong. 

so, the entire story is a “report” by a man on the forums named Paul. his handle is GlassWave. he is a person who went to Spelunk 04! and is part of the reason why the meeting went so wrong. around the part where the journals abt the Mundum come up, he totally gets into it. the narration around this part gets uh. kinda creepy. it also definitely doesnt help that there were drugs involved - adderall.

so uh. basically. paul and another guy, Arron/Errent Knight, get the Mundum. they dont understand why their friends dont understand it. the solution according to paul? put adderall into the coffee and stay up for 60 hours straight reading tnc in a group circle.

yeahhhhh.

so i personally wasnt super scared abt the entire lovecraft-ish/other worldly implications of mundum being real or not. it was the paul’s state of mind when he spiked the coffee with drugs. it was the entire betrayal thing. 

i personally haven’t really had the entire internet friends experience bc im p shy irl and online. i dont usually go talk to strangers in chatrooms/discord or anything. also stranger danger lol.

but i hear a bunch of stories abt that kind of stuff, the early 2000′s internet experience before ppl had more awareness of internet stranger danger. also i’ve been watching and reading abt a lot of internet drama thru commentary channels i watch nowadays (therightopinion is p good), and uh the whole parasocial relationship thing (so ive seen it be described as) is on my mind a lot now. since we view ppl as relatable and feel like we know them. now, of course, there’s a difference in the personal experience one can have between a youtuber or internet celeb and a person on an interactive forum/social media platform. i would think that more interactive platforms like forums or discourd would feel more personal to some than a celebrity but still. 

the entire narration of paul’s during the spiking the coffee scene was so rational-seeming to him. and then the betrayal that his friends, the ones at Spelunk 04! and online felt hit me. like, i’ve never personally experienced that kind of betrayal since i dont have internet/stranger friends, but still i think it’s really relevant now. on the 26th chapter (2nd to last), the forum comments of JimWind and Sally’s Lil Sis hit especially hard. 

JimWind:

Wow. Wowwowow. I just finished reading the whole thing through the latest bit GW's posted. I had heard things about Spelunk 04 having something to do with restaurant workers dying, but I just figured that was a baseless rumor because it seemed so hard to understand how that could have happened. But what really shocks me here isn't even that, it's the fact that GlassWave dosed his/our friends with hard drugs. (Adderall is just prescription amphetamine, AKA speed! WTF!!!) "GlassHole" indeed! TBH it really makes me uncomfortable with GW and getting this whole story from him. Of course when I first read this

“maybe not even the other forum members, not even the best among them, not even Jim, say”

I was flattered, especially cause GW's always seemed like one of the sharpest and nicest posters around these parts (until now!!). But now it kinda makes me sick to my stomach. I don't want this guy to think I'm one of the "best" Cafe people. And I'm holding back judgment on all this Spelunk nonsense until I hear about it from someone WHO ISN'T GLASSWAVE. (Plus, this is stupid, but there's something that makes it even worse about the fact that the diner has my name :P) No matter how you slice it, it's a sad day for the Cafe. D:

Sally:

Yeah me too JimWind. I'm literally crying rn. First Spelunk went wrong, then we have to wait to hear about what happened, then we finally get the report but it's from this jerk! I'm really sad bc this forum has meant a lot to me over the last year (its been a really tough year for me) and now I'm worried that everyone here might be some sort of drug-pushing creep :( :( :(

before this, everyone felt connected in some way w/ chesscourt and safe. and paul/glasswave was a decent person in the community! he talked to other ppl. ppl trusted him enough to invite him to this thing and meet up irl. and then he just. spikes coffee with adderall.

idk, maybe its just me since i was too young to be on fandom spaces in 2004 and be on chatrooms and stuff, but i feel like when the internet first came out everyone felt safe on it to some degree and the internet and real life were seperate spaces. now, esp with social media like facebook, real life and the internet are super connected. 

the fact that paul caused harm to his friends by spiking their drinks without consent is horrible. but like i feel like to ppl from 2004 who might not have experienced this kind of closely tied internet/real life drama before and also might not have the same sense of internet stranger danger that ppl have today, the idea of a person from the internet harming you in real life could be terrifying. today, i think that horror stories of ppl meeting online and then things going wrong is so common and in the news that we don’t bat an eye to it. but i guess maybe to 2004 ppl, this is like the ultimate nightmare.

when i finished the book, i felt a bit let down by the ending and stuff. it felt a bit anti-climatic. but after thinking about this from (what i think is) a 2004 person’s perspective, this is p awful. and the whole unreliable narration thing was very good.

i thought of midsommar a bit when i was thinking abt the ending. like, sure a bunch of horrible gory stuff happened and ppl died. but the real horror sets in afterwards when you realize that the movie is abt a vulnerable lonely woman in a neglectful relationship being indoctrinated into a cult thru drugs, isolation, and love bombing, and it was kinda shown as a “good thing” bc the protag finally found a place she belonged. when really, she was being further trapped in life, this time in a cult.

idk, but i guess that’s my ramble on the northern caves.

tl;dr - i read an original story from AO3 that was kinda hyped up for a lovecraft-ish horror, but i ended up interpreting the horror aspect differently and didn’t really get the mundum/lovecraft-ish part i think?