#I want to be charitable with this

[thebibliosphere]

Nothing more disappointing than people recc’ing a book to you because it has “disability rep” and you get hopeful because the author also has the same disability as you and it just ends up tipping over into inspiration porn.

[commsroom]

it's true that sometimes people will soften eiffel, forget that he's kind of a dick, and play up the more good-natured, goofier aspects of his personality while downplaying how self-centered he is and the amount of undeniable Cis Guy Behavior he is known to display. but his character arc only works the way it does because he is, despite everything, very lovable - it's there in how minkowski's reaction to eiffel's conviction is set up to mirror the expected audience reaction, and desire to believe the best in him. wolf 359 captures something very real in eiffel that i've never seen as authentically represented anywhere else: a sincere, kindhearted man who still perceives himself as the default type of person, who wants to do right by people, but perpetuates harm through selfishness and ignorance. he's held to account for it, but isn't condemned. it matters that he improves because the people holding him to account are doing it out of care for him, because they want him to be better, and to be in their lives.

[ouroborosorder]

Hades 2 is a significantly better game than Hades 1 entirely because it feels like a Supergiant narrative in a way that Hades never did. It's concerned about the murkiness of vengeance and the ways that moving to the future is often just striving to return to the past. Which feels WAY more Supergiant as a thematic core, as opposed to Hades 1's "maybe you're permanently bound to your abusive family actually"

[askblueandviolet]

What made you decide to attempt fixing the podium up?

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[apotelesmaa]

Too many people want tsukasa to be viewed as socially cool. I think we need to accept that the only kind of cool wxs member is emu who befriends idols joined like 400 clubs and knows almost everyone. Emu has a million friends & most of the lines other characters have abt her are like “emu :)” meanwhile the lines abt tsukasa are all like “he is so weird.” & you want to pretend he’s cooler than her… be so serious…

Nene is also Lame & Rui is only cool to other nerds (gestures at pandemonium npcs). Crucially Tsukasa is an annoying theater kid. No annoying theater kid is popular or cool in highschool. It is central to his character and him being a weirdo who (canonically!) gets no bitches & yet somehow knows major celebrities is one of the funniest and most endearing things about him. Guy who in canon goes to school and people are like “it’s this weirdo again (sees he’s with rui) oh fuck oh no.”An (friends with everyone) & Akito (guy on sports teams) are the only cool characters at Kamiyama.

[arctic-hands]

It's all "Kids Need To Be Back In School!!" until city schools are so underfunded that multiple schools have to close for multiple days because there's no air condition and it's still hot out, or in winter there's no heat (while the former governor and centrist darling uses state funds to install a heated driveway at the governor's mansion)

[maybeiwasjustjade]

The Tragedy that is the Vanserra family

*I just want to preface this by saying that I’m well aware that this might be a controversial opinion. My issue is simply with how that particular pairing was written, because clearly not a lot of thought was put into it when SJM changed canon to fit this pairing in. This was also not written with the intention of victim blaming. Only that this plot genuinely sucks ass because it makes everyone out as uglier than need be.

For such minor characters (sans Lucien, and Eris to an extent), the dynamics SJM has blessed us with paints such an interesting family coated in absolute tragedy. It also doesn’t help that almost all of it was seen through Feyre’s pov—who’s not exactly reliable nor capable of introspection most times.

All we know so far of Beron and his relationship with his children amounts to:

Aside from Helion and Rhysand, Beron’s the only HL that was active during the war 500 years ago.

He abuses his wife, though when it started is still ???

He routinely tortures Eris, and more than likely all his remaining children

He LOATHES Lucien

And it’s so easy to paint Beron as this needlessly cruel, manipulative 2D bastard who only exists to cause pain and carnage over everyone that breathes near him. The male tortures his children and sentenced one of them to death for falling in love with someone ‘lesser’—that alone makes him the worst male to come out of acotar by a landslide.

But there’s an art to Beron’s cruelty that SJM could have fun with. Routinely siccing and manipulating his children against each other, forever ensuring that they’d be too busy fighting and hating each other over him so that they’d be unable to overthrow him. And maybe he does have his reasons. Maybe he thinks that this is the only way possible to raise an heir that would be ruthless and merciless enough to overthrow him and destroy his competitors—probably the same thing Beron did to claim his throne. And if the children are too busy with each other to go after him…all the better.

Show them no compassion. Torture all the disobedience out of them to make them strong. Pit them against each other to please him. Heinous tactics, but evidently it works when Eris and Lucien are the results of it.

But this dynamic only works if that was who Beron is, and how he was raised to be. I don’t suppose we’ll ever really know, not unless a large chunk of Lucien’s future storyline revolves around his roots in Autumn. But knowing sjm and how dirty she did Spring, Lucien’s arc will be about Day.

But back to Beron and the LoA:

Curious how the LoA is still nameless, but SJM purposely and canonically provided a timeline to show how much of a poor victim the LoA is. I want to make it clear that I am not condoning the abuse the LoA is facing from Beron. I don’t think anyone deserves to be abused or tortured the way Berons does his family, nor will anything justify it.

However, I am side-eyeing the way she WROTE Helion and LoA’s affair. I think what she little she wrote yet specifically gave painted them both as absolute fucking morons.

Canonically, we have no idea if Beron knows without doubt that Lucien isn’t his. Hell, we have no proof that he even knew about Helion at all; only that Helion certainly believes so, and what Feyre perceives as the truth. And that truth is ugly.

My opinion is that for the story to work, Beron can’t have known about Helion specifically. An affair perhaps, but not specifically who. Why? Because I wouldn’t doubt Beron would have killed Helion for it the moment he found out. Helion wasn’t High Lord until <50 years pre-Acotar. If Beron wanted Helion dead for having an affair with his wife, I doubt even the previous HL would have stopped Beron from lobbing of Helion’s head. Now assuming Beron knew about the affair specifically, but not about Lucien, I can see canon coming to fruition.

The only issue is Lucien’s features. He needs to look very, very similar to the LoA and not at all Helion. If Beron knew it was Helion, he’d be paying double attention on Lucien’s features to see who sired him. But say he doesn’t care who did it, only that it did. Lucien was screwed from the getgo as a possible affair baby. But that’s hardly the biggest issue with how the affair was written.

According to Helion’s recount of his affair, it started during the war when he rescued the LoA. Sure, rumor has it they met before her marriage, but it wasn’t until then that it became an actual affair. And it lasted decades. We don’t know how old Lucien is. Most have guessed that he can’t be older than ~400 at series starts. Following the timeline provided by Helion, there’s about 130 years age gap between Eris and Lucien, and five sons between. The LoA had at least two more kids born before the war started, leaving three sans Lucien to be born after.

See where I’m going with this?

If the affair only ended because Beron found out, preferably before Lucien was born or he’d be dead at birth, then on-off or no, that affair lasted a century. My question is: did Beron begin tormenting his wife before or after he found out about the affair? And was he already torturing his children before he found out, or was that punishment for what their mother did?

If Beron only began abusing and assaulting the LoA after Helion, then there’s a chance he only started hurting his sons around that time too. It also begs the question on whether or not Helion sired more than one Vanserra child. Even if the answer was no, it’s not like Beron would believe the LoA. Not after she cuckolded him. So he hurts her as punishment, doubling that pain by going after all their children too.

Lucien especially, for being mama’s favorite. I doubt Beron ever had to do much to encourage the torment Lucien faced from his brothers. He never had to; she did it to him all on her own by loving him best. And in a household where everything is a competition and love a weakness, Lucien was weakest by being the most loved. Oh, how they must’ve loathed him for it. His birth was the reason their lives became a living hell. A mother that perhaps loved them, but not enough if she outright favored the youngest, knowing his existence was their punishment.

But that’s the kinder story, if you can believe it. A female who was never happy, who found happiness outside her wedded husband, and was punished for it terribly. Her cold husband turned cruel bastard, who punished her for the crime of finding joy outside of him and their children. She didn’t know this was going to be her future.

Yet, the alternative is so much worse.

Because it implies that Beron already was a cruel and abusive bastard, who already hurt his wife and children immensely, and the LoA went and had an affair anyway. I can’t blame her for wanting to escape from Beron. Perhaps she was actually happy with Helion. But she did it knowing that the punishment would be so much worse if Beron found out, and he did.

Helion couldn’t have protected her. Claiming Lucien as his son would’ve been a death sentence to both from Beron’s wrath. And with a century long affair, there was no proof that Lucien was the only one that wasn’t Beron’s child. Not unless most of the Vanserras look like their father more, and we don’t even know that because they have no names or features described. And even then, the LoA was lucky that Lucien’s skin tone and features favored her instead.

I don’t care that a woman cheated on her abusive husband repeatedly. You do you, and all that. I care that the LoA is written as knowing what an absolute monster her husband already was to their living children, and clearly not thinking of what he’d do to them if she’s caught. This is Beron—he could’ve killed all their children as punishment. The man tortures his son bloody—I wouldn’t put it past him to kill them all and start fresh. She put them in so much danger by having Lucien.

I don’t like the way Helion knows what a bastard Beron is, yet not caring when he had a century long affair with a HL’s wife, knowing that she might be killed if found out. And he would be powerless to stop it.

I don’t like how neither of them even considered that she might’ve gotten pregnant from their affair, especially knowing that the LoA already had SIX CHILDREN.

I hate how their affair is going to be spun into some kind of romance of the ages, mates who were forcibly separated by a monster, when in reality it’s more like the love story of two morons who didn’t spare a single braincell to actually think before going back to each other often enough to have a whole ass CHILD.

Jfc, SJM definitely didn’t think through enough when she decided to add this into the story. Too many plot holes, and not enough sense to justify the absolute stupidity of cuckolding a High Lord with someone who couldn’t even protect her if they were caught. She wanted drama but spared no thought to logic, per usual.

[roadtripwitch]

Dream telling Hob about all his names when they meet again is sweet, but I think it would be funnier if he just didn't. Showed up 33 years late, immediately admitted they're friends, sits down, asks Hob about what he's been up to, forwards absolutely no information of his own until Hob tentatively asks him what happened, and the Stranger just goes "oh I was detained. It wasn't because of you that I didn't show up. I'm sorry" and doesn't elaborate. Hob thinks the friendship isn't actually solid enough to pry past the guy's very much too guarded eyes, so they keep on this charade of Hob Gadling and his Very Strange Friend. Dream doesn't even tell him he's not the one allowing him to keep living.

I have feelings about this I don't actually think the persevering anonimity is funnier, I think Dream cherishing Hob's willingness to call him friend just because he wants to and not because he knows him as Dream of the Endless with Hob actually just liking him as the Stranger and being distraught he didn't show up and then happy he did, is actually the sweetest scenario.

[coldresolve]

rambling

i think there's a dunning kruger effect sorta thing happening with a lot of people in circles like the one ive cultivated here, but specifically relating to the characteristic of "being fucked up" as opposed to competence

it sucks because, yknow, i really feel at home with other fucked up people. there's a mutual understanding there that neither of us are holy, so you don't judge me, and i don't judge you. there are no taboos, there is no moral indignation, you don't have to censor your thoughts, there's a solid understanding of the difference between thought and action, neither of you are your past, etc. it's genuinely freeing not having to deal with the usual social rules that get you shunned for being a weirdo lol

and then hardcore george walks in and signals desperately with every fiber of his person that he, too, is fucked up. so you sort of take him at his word, because you have no reason not to - but oh snap, you're being lured into a false sense of security. because the moment you say anything remotely out of the ordinary, or behave in a way that's slightly eccentric, hardcore george starts blurting the same moral indignation you'd expect from a nun, and immediately decides you're too degenerate and probably dangerous. so you ask him in what way he is fucked up, and he says he eats cereal with water instead of milk. and while that is atypical, it's not exactly the sort of lifestyle that recontextualizes your view of what counts as "extreme" or "out there" - he just dipped his toes lightly into something unusual, and now thinks he's a maverick. this is hyperbole, but i hope you get what i mean. it's dunning kruger for being fucked up, right

a lot of people who market themselves as hardcore and fucked up are, to put it very bluntly, very average people, who despite their constant show of apathy will treat outcasts with the same disgust shown by everybody else - while somehow having convinced themselves, in their tiny little noodle brains, that they themselves are the outcasts. and i know it's not a competition, it's not a race to be the most fucked up or whatever, that's not the point. i'm just being pissy about how "being fucked up" has somehow been aesthetisized to the point where two thirds of the people you think are gonna be cool about stuff thats a bit out there, are not actually cool about it whatsoever

[flower-boi16]

All the known nonwhite characters in hazbin are: Alastor is mixed and he’s a cannibal killer, Velvette is black and she’s friends with an abusive rapist, Vaggie is salvadoran but is treated as butt monkey and a leak shows her as the first to die, Sera is nonwhite coded and she turns out to be the main evil villain because heaven is bad

............💀💀💀💀💀

[david-talks-sw]

Picture a sculptor.

He sculpts an animal... and it was meant to be an elephant for a kids zoo, but because of the limits of his tools at the time, he stopped at the skeleton only.

And it's a great fucking skeleton! It's got that old feel to it, like a Rodin sculpture, but with a modern vibe.

The skeleton even has fans and stuff, and the fans go "we love this badass mammoth skeleton you sculpted!"

And this sort of bothers the sculptor. Because he was going for an elephant, not a mammoth, right?

So when he finally has the right tools, he completes the sculpture, so the next generation of fans can enjoy the elephant...

... and the previous generation of fans, who grew up reading and dreaming about a mammoth for 30 years, they go "wtf". They hate it.

Now, the sculptor takes on an apprentice, who is also a fan.

The apprentice learns the technique, learns how to look at the clay, how to get the right texture... and is able to do all this without going "wtf" because he looks at this elephant sculpture through an anti-establishment lens.

"Yes, it has shorter tusks and almost no hair, but the purpose of the sculpture is to say that it should be hairier, taller and with longer tusks. The whole point is that this elephant is failing to be the mammoth it's meant to be!"

And y'know, it's art! If that’s what this elephant means to him, great.

But once the tools are passed down to him, the apprentice (along with other sculptors) takes some clay and makes the tusks longer, adds some fur, shortens the ears, etc.

Overtime, he makes it a mammoth again.

Of course, most fans are happy again, including many who were introduced to the elephant as kids, because the transition was a slow one, done carefully.

And, hey, it's a nice mammoth!

My only issue is that I grew up loving the elephant, just as it was. I think the elephant was friggin’ great.

But nowadays, whenever the elephant is brought up, it's always through the lens of "it's failing to be a mammoth" rather than what the sculptor said it's supposed to be: just an elephant.

[agnesandhilda]

do you think jujutsu battles having to be settled via domain expansion challenges is viewed like a match going to penalty kicks in-universe

[sharkface]

what do you hate about Legends Arceus? I've seen it received pretty much universally positive so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it

I have plans to make like an in depth post (or maybe video idk whatever but it'll happen eventually) but the TLDR

1. It's boring as an open world game, environments feel empty and indistinct and while I really like the Idea of an open world pokemon game I don't think it was a great plan to have their first in that category be set in a past version of Sinnoh that's mostly unpopulated so you have like, three very small towns to visit within this game which has been made very long through Tedium (see point 3)

2. I have 0 attachment to the characters or town mechanics, I personally am very capable of getting attached to boring characters if there's SOMETHING for me to work with but I found the overwhelming majority of character interactions very boring within this hollowed out world. IMO the only characters that Id say I like in PLA are Volo and Melli and admittedly that's just because I have kind of a thing for smug effeminate men

3. The aforementioned Tedium. While I do think the gameplay loop and mechanics are some of the most dynamic and enjoyable in the entire franchise (also a rare instance of a crafting mechanic in a series that doesn't usually need one that I liked), the fun I had started to wear veeeerrrryyyy thin when I realized how much extra work was needed to complete the pokedex (the one thing there really is to Do in this game) beyond catching one of everything. I also don't think you should need to catch one of everything to finish the game's story but that is a slightly lesser gripe. The bad map leaves me unable to see why there was a need for the wisp collection mission. Most quests are just "find this specific pokemon for me" which means you have to do a lot of roaming in the Bad Map. Really I think if the map was good I would have way leas ire for all of this, but it doesn't feel like I'm completing a game, it feels like I'm doing chores.

PLA to me feels like the beta version of a better game and this is because it literally is a beta version of scarvi's mechanics with a story loosely laid on top they charged you for. It's totally possible I just failed to connect with it initially, but I've played it a few times since it first came out and it's still fallen really flat for me. I see the appeal for other people, I do think there's a strong enough framework that I believe people genuinely enjoyed it, but I also feel I can't really justify its failures wrt its price point and decades of prestige. If they'd charged even just like 40 bucks for it I don't think I'd be nearly as frustrated with it

[thebibblebobb]

"Vote blue no matter what" posts would be more tolerable if they didn't tend to also include "and never criticise blue for anything, not even for supporting literal genocide".

As it is, I think it's quite logical that people who think genocide is bad, look at posts telling them it's wrong to say "supporting genocide is bad", and conclude the people writing those posts having nothing of value to say.

[irenespring]

Time for one of my favorite TV traditions, "watch the new episodes of Selling Sunset and argue with the screen like the people can hear me."

[stansavvy]

t4t transactional relationship where I'm your dumb idiot boyfriend and you dump gallons of glue into a bin with me so we can make a gaint paper mache statue of the mortal kombat character