#alas. i wish it wasn’t so

[messiahzzz]

I agree with you about the increasing hostility of some Wyll fans. I'm not saying that they are not right to feel bitter about Wyll's lack of content from fans and Larian, but some of them are just as toxic as the toxic Astarion fans.

Gale also receives a lot of hate from the wider BG3 fandom, but I was pretty much told that it doesn’t matter because he is like the 4th most popular character. And I had to block the wyllstarion tag due to the hostility of some members of the fandom towards Bloodweave.

I once saw someone say Bladeweave made more sense than Wyllstarion, and they got shut down as being racist. About Bladeweave.

I just don't engage with Wyll or Astarion content anymore, sadly.

i have said this so many times by now, but i’ll repeat it again: people have every right to be upset and criticize larian for their treatment of [insert any character here that isn’t a*tar*on]. no one is stopping you, no one is urging you towards inaction, neither is anyone claiming that racial biases don’t exist in this game. be as bitter as you want, have discussions about race in the d&d universe and how this also extends to wyll. dissect each snippet of wyll’s dialogue, write thorough analyses, and vent about it on your blog to your heart’s content. in that sense: it’s perfectly fine to address the continuous mistreatment other characters face at the same time. don’t be discouraged, this doesn’t take anything away from wyll.

it is about the means of achieving said goal (i.e. more/higher quality content for wyll) that is alienating a big part of the fandom in the process. deeming public pressure and demands directed at the devs an appropriate course of action in an attempt to get wyll the content he very much deserves. which, in the end, is doing more harm than good. it is putting more negative focus on the wyll fandom as a whole, which in turn sadly also affects how other fans engage with said character. the inevitable result being that fans choose to stay in their own small, curated fandom corners and are now even less likely to create new content with him than they were in the first place. this is truly unfortunate. tirelessly perpetuating the “it’s them vs. us” mentality (which i believe is also what you were referring to in your ask) only further discourages fandom from engaging in any sort of discussion around wyll that might actually be worthwhile. this includes discussions about racism, racial bias and stereotypes. basically anything that addresses wyll outside of his romance and his role as a narrative stepping-stone. these dialogs and exchanges are incredibly important, and contrary to what some might believe: not blindly agreeing to every point mentioned doesn’t automatically make you the problem.

i personally believe this whole approach to be effectively counterproductive. it is not “spreading the wyll love”, so to speak. for instance, i highly doubt that demanding a public note app apology from larian will result in them granting wyll’s story the resources & care it deserves. (note: i did notice that wyll’s petition has been edited and the wording/content has been largely adjusted after i made my og post. so several of those goals aren’t listed anymore as of now)

now, this is just my own personal estimate on the situation, mind you. so take it with a grain of salt: i don’t believe petitions like these will actually provide the desired results. there are petitions for almost every npc at this point (one for raphael’s romance included) that have a higher amount of signatures and still remain largely ignored by fandom and larian alike. which i think perfectly illustrates just how much fandom truly cares about these specific issues once direct action and organization are required.

sending larian continuous feedback containing constructive, direct criticism and specific examples with data to back it up is way more likely to get them to notice and actually bring about the changes you want, instead of making nebulous claims that contain half-truths which likely won't ever enter larian's peripheral vision. don’t stop sending in reports even if you don’t get a reply the first few dozen times. provide an overview, tell them what specific scenes and what lines of dialogue need to be changed. yes, i know this is tedious and tiring.

i personally can’t add much on the shipping discourse front. that’s a part of fandom i systematically avoid. i do hope that you’re curating your online experience to your tastes and don’t seek out discourse that actively distresses you. stay safe pls 💕

[colinfeatherington]

speaking my truth I thought the mirror scene was going to be more about her boobs

[croc-odette]

the way it took less episodes for tng to begin to humanize the borg the most inhuman trek villains who were actively built up as literally like faceless drones there wasnt much of an ethical implication about killing but literally their second appearance in best of both worlds already trying to imagine what it would be like to be a borg drone from picards perspective and next they show up in i borg where its like ok we take the normal star trek approach of seeing every living being as worthwhile and not inherently monstrous and so on that was fewer episodes than what theyre doing with the gorn its like crazy

Even just from a style perspective, the borg spent a few episodes like ‘oh no, scary!’ And then bc that would have been boring to just keep doing, they started to do eps like ‘what if we captured a borg, could we ethically send it back with a disease to kill all of them’ or even just some pure drama of ‘what if captain picard…. BECAME a borg???’ And then an episode following up on the guilt of that. And even then, I was surprised how few tng episodes were about the borg. Snw is hamstrung by having half the eps in a season, but instead of really packing new stuff in, they keep wasting time on ‘what if we had cool guns to kill gorn monsters with’. Which while fun or silly in its own self-aware genre, feels really out of place and boring in Star Trek.

I think it also is just an incoherent view of the gorn as a species. They’re instinct-driven violent predators with no intelligence; but they’re also smart enough to build ships and space suits? They’re cannibalistic, but they’re also able to work together to command ships. They’re animals who are just trying to eat; but actually they’re intelligent enough to be ‘pure evil’. It’s whatever is convenient in the moment to justify unexamined thrill in murdering them.

If they were animals with instinctive behavior, then I think the Star Trek precedent would be: let’s defend ourselves and get the fuck out of here, but also these are just animals trying to survive and reproduce (ie: picard wouldn’t develop a bloodthirsty vengeful hatred against all bears if a bear killed a crew member). There is no ethical behavior behind animals eating and surviving. A wasp is kind of gross when it reproduces by injecting its eggs into another insect, but it’s not ‘evil’.

But that would mean the gorn wouldn’t be intelligent enough to have spaceships, which creates the convenient problem that our brave heroes HAVE to keep killing them without debate bc the gorn are able to pursue them! So somehow the gorn are smart enough to build spaceships capable of pursuing starfleet ships. They are smart enough for their actions to be considered ‘evil’. But not smart enough to be considered a race with a culture or intellect.

I’ve already talked about how the ep where they say the gorn block telepathy, meaning spock can’t talk to them, is a deliberate way of writing off diplomacy as a possibility. Those nasty gorn are just so mean and violent (and capable enough) that they block telepathy! It’s their fault! Which prevents a devil in the dark Horta solution, and allows the show to shrug and keep using guns as a solution.

I say all of this crap not because I really care about the integrity of the gorn. Who cares, it’s a fun alien. But in a franchise that wants to claim political awareness and goodness, its unsettling to dissect repeated writing choices over and over again (not just about the gorn) that support classic conservative and jingoistic talking points. “The enemy isn’t human or even intelligent, it’s an animal operating on base instincts; except when it’s so smart it can outwit our brave soldiers. And when you kill them, you can ENJOY killing them, because it’s one more dead enemy.”

The borg, changelings, jem hedar, Klingons, romulans— they were handled, some more than others, in ways that should invite criticism and skepticism about the intentions of the show. But they were humanized and explored further than ‘excuse to hand everyone an assault rifle and swat armor.’ A new show would ideally be improving or challenging past shows’ failures or missteps, not taking a huge step back. The gorn problem is even more glaring because it’s a sharp and bleak turn from the themes of trek shows that precede SNW, and from the actual episode the gorn come from.

[ohgaylor]

Taylor Swift’s 10th studio album Midnights redesigned in the style of The Weeknd’s first EP My Dear Melancholy,

[track list version below]

[sleepgarden]

some sample/prototypes that I made of new notepads for my shop are listed for sale at a discount ^^ they’re perfectly usable, the final notepads will just have more pages (the muse designs were also mounted on cardstock and they will be on chipboard) they’re available in my shop! Sorry for the rush post, I’m not sure when I’ll finish the pads but I’m going to make a few before listing them. In the meantime these are available ^^

[designernishiki]

I just remembered that mine drives a fucking sports car. of course he fucking does. venture capitalist lookin ass

[ormymarius]

orm going from slicked back hair to messy hair, character development

[sunsetandthemoon]

lmao thank you for your service on the earthmix post, whether its a somewhat pr guided story or simply how they are, they are at the very least entertaining and honestly if only all fighting co-workers/friends would vague tweet melodramatic heartbreak lyrics the world would be a better place :') hopefully we'll get to see them in another show at some point

Yeah, it’s always tricky to know what’s actually real in the sea of fan service and PR (almost nothing is lbr) but EarthMix’s love language seems to be constant bickering and they did genuinely look like they were going through it, so it’s not that far-fetched to believe that one of their quarrels went a bit too far and resulted in this messy fight.

I don’t think any of it was fabricated, they’re really just that dramatic and had to make it everyone’s problem lmao like pls the drama of it all 😭

EarthMix’s crash course on how to deal with getting into a fight with your bestie:

sit down and talk it out with them (like the adults that you’re supposed to be) ❌

start being melodramatic on main and post vague tweets about them (and continue doing it for months on end until your poor manager finally has enough, locks you in a room, and forces you two to talk) ✅

All jokes aside, they never once let their fight affect their work and they remained strictly professional and delivered stellar performances, so I think they should’ve been allowed to be as messy as they wanted on Twitter dsfhjsdkf

[futo-m0m0]

sometimes I impress myself. how did I become obsessed w daredevil and finished the series in like 3 weeks then already go through all relevant FF that I would be interested in… truly girlbossed too close to the sun

[soft-serve-soymilk]

Adventures in writing my English SAC, also known as 550 words of Theon being an angsty bitch,,

[micamicster]

We have a new supervising resident today halfway through the day he goes oh shit I forgot to take my adhd meds this morning. WE CAN TELL

[deityofhearts]

It sucks being so full of love to a point where it feels overwhelming and like a burden to others

[raypakorn]

so...heartbreak weather by niall horan sandray pov ray song or heartbreak weather by niall horan sandray pov ray song? 😊😊👀

gonna be honest never heard this song so had to give it a listen on my way into work. after hearing it…i instantly added it to my ofts playlist (really needs to separate it out for the couples but i also never pictured finding 400 songs that fit the vibes of the show 🙈) because YES this is so sandray coded from ray’s pov!

like…

all of my life I've been sleep-walk living

running around the same bars I've been in

it can be so lonely in this city

but it feels different when you're with me

the perfection 🤌🏽

[mokacheer]

The obsession took over hard today and I forgot I had a tumblr til these weeeee hours

[gregmarriage]

trying to be quiet in your house when you’re disabled and have to use a walker: impossible

[missmouse25]

I hate doing things last minute