#always the same dilemma

[beabnormal24]

Oh sweetheart, we know.

[ghcstcd]

Marketing team of bands, stop being giant fucking assholes.

[dnangelic]

i'm a horror writer at heart but i like shoujo and big feelings which is why i'm here in gothic vkei central with daisuke

[chirpsythismorning]

🎨📝☎️🛼🌈🚪⏪️💡🫀

Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?) by Buzzcocks

previous ⏮️ now playing ⏭️ next back to playlist

[kyoupann]

To all my neurodivergent besties out there, here's the situation :

So I've been in therapy for about two months now and a couple sessions ago I told my therapist how when people recommend stuff to me like books and shows, to me it feels like I'm getting to know the person. I'm learning about them through media they like; and that if I feel said media is gonna teach me something new about the other person, then I engage with that media. In my mind, it's a scale "will I learn anything new about them? Yes/no"

I rarely ever have interest in new stuff, but when my friends get into something new I like to ask the why's and how's first because I'd love to understand. In a way, it's something I do out of interest for my friends. And yeah, sometimes I've felt like I'm being more annoying than anything else but—that's besides the point; I like to watch new things to understand people, I watch things with people in mind. I read and I like finding a scene that makes me understand why this person recommended this story. My love language some would say lmao.

Anyways,

[roobylavender]

i missed that class what dont you like about starlins rendition of their relationship?

(and also like, DID you think he did something in particular well or was it all…meh

the crux of my issues in this regard stems from batman #416. in the post-crisis era you began to see this way more lopsided depiction of bruce and dick's relationship wherein the former was portrayed to be almost.. bitter that dick had moved on to establish his own life. and it stood in great, great contrast to the bruce of the pre-crisis era, who was certainly devastated at the realization that dick was growing up, but also very intent for him to find his own happiness and way in life. they would have their disagreements on occasion (e.g., bruce initially disapproving of dick dropping out of college, bruce immediately taking leadership of a situation where the titans were involved when dick was better equipped to handle it, etc.) but the outcome of those situations was never outright bad yknow. bruce was very much capable of recognizing where he might have overstepped and subsequently stepped back to let dick have his own space. and i think initially max allan collins expanded on that dynamic in the post-crisis era in interesting ways by juxtaposing bruce's desire to see dick flourish against his own constant fear for dick's life. so instead of mike w. barr's comedic and lighthearted backup stories in early 80s tec where bruce disguised himself to keep an eye on dick's shenanigans and assure himself everything was going alright, you got this more serious confrontation within bruce with regards to his position as a parent. i don't think a lot of people read it that deeply but i've always viewed batman #408 as one of the most sensible depictions of that dilemma. the general complaints tend to be that this issue robbed dick of his pre-crisis decision to retire robin on his own, and i'll concede that as a worthwhile concern. but i don't think it's esp damning what with the implication that bruce no longer wants to be the person indirectly making the decision for dick to continue to be in this line of work. their moment at dick's bedside is less about bruce robbing him of the decision and more about him saying, if i let you still be robin, that's a direct reflection on me, bc i'm the one who got you to do all of this originally. i'm the one who put you directly in harm's way. if you're going to do this from now on, you need to do it on your own terms. you need to decide for yourself that this is who you want to be, without your relationship with me even being a factor.

it's a moment contributive to that delicious dynamic between them wherein every decision bruce takes to service dick's agency is inevitably read the wrong way by the latter to imply that he's not valued or not worthy of being seen as bruce's equal (and before the hounds pounce on me this obv does not include the increasingly abusive depiction of their relationship as the 90s progressed). that is an unavoidable dilemma when you're simultaneously someone's ward/adopted son and also their partner-in-crime! dick wants to be bruce's son and to be entitled to all of the love and care and protection that that entails but he also wants to be bruce's brother, his equal, his confidante, the one person he trusts more than anyone else in the world, etc. it's a tough place to be! it is paradoxical! and i'm so, so open to seeing that explored and think the way collins attempted to approach it in #408 was marvelous. but the way starlin (and other writers as well) totally swerved right in #416 to create this sudden resentment in bruce that dick had grown out of needing him was.. so utterly bizarre. like completely out of left field in a way i don't understand why people don't question it anymore bc in light of everything in the immediate fifteen years prior to the crisis it makes so little sense. their relationship with each other was so valued, bruce was so anxious to see dick establish himself while nonetheless maintaining a protectiveness over him, but it was all very much in good will even if he could overstep on occasion. it had all of the potential to allow for a very nuanced, empathetic exploration into the dilemmas of parenthood and esp when you are someone like bruce who has to forever live and contend with the crime of taking kids with him out onto the streets. bc he has to feel guilty! there is no escaping it. this is history, done and dusted forever, can't go back in time, so on and so forth. whatever harm comes any robin's way he has to live with as in some part being traceable back to his own actions. and i frankly believe that would be far more likely to evoke grief and anxiousness and concern than it would be bitterness that his son is charting out his own life

[rosykims]

i cannot believe im saying this but ive been thinking about my cousland and sten all morning and theyre making me insane

[guiltyidealist]

Tumblr mobile experience these days is like hmm did that person deactivate/get removed or did they block me

[eggchjf]

One thing that really bugs me about criticisms regarding The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is that I see lots of people assume it’s only the rich and powerful citizens of the town benefiting from the kid’s misery, and thus go “Oh I’d just save the kid and run!! Destroy the city!! Eat the rich!!!1″ when... no.

It’s not just the rich and powerful Omelas residents benefiting from it; it’s EVERY SINGLE RESIDENT WHO ISN’T THE KID. ALL of them live in a perfect paradise in exchange for the sacrifice of the single child.

And yes, this comes with the unspoken inclusion of me, my friends, my family, your friends and family, and yes, even YOU. All of us, if we lived in the town, would get to live in a heavenly utopia for all our lives... at the cost of that one kid.

It’s one thing to reject that and run if it only benefits you specifically, but when a person realizes the perfect, complete happiness of their friends and loved ones ALSO rides on the miserable kid... well, rejecting it becomes MUCH harder.

[defloey]

here’s your daily reminder:

take care of the people who take care of you it comes as second nature to them, looking after the people around them. taking care of themselves in the last thing on their mind, if the thought even ever occurs

[cparti-mkiki]

an interesting portorriqueño portrait… after the mysterious model (chronologically between silver philip and fraga philip) that might or might not be the half body portrait in vienna.. when it was not half body lol

[randomnameless]

I don't think the message with Hyzant was "religion bad", but that religious zealotry is bad and that some people will use religion to justify bigotry.

Maybe you didn't notice it when you typed the ask anon, but why mentioning "religious zealotry" being bad when we agree that "zealotry/bigotry" in general is bad?

Hyzante is thrown to the wolves because people are apparently mindlessly listening to the Oracle...

But never is it said that Aesfrostians are "mindless" for buying Gustadolf's propaganda and shouting "Aesfrost Aesfrost" when Roland knocks at their door, promising not to sack the city and to spare everyone.

(and idk if it was just my file, but in the last chapter from Roland's route, people were literally walking on lava tiles to target my units! Were they showing their "determination" to kill us, the invaders, even if Svarog already confessed that the city becoming Pompei is his fault - or just a bug?)

Just like it's thinly adressed how the old Glenbrookian "system" relied on nobles and doing what they want, and everyone has to accept it even if it sucks

(tbf Glennbrook is destroyed through the course of the game lol).

Classicism, nationalism, religion, all can be used to justify or to create bigotry, but Hyzante, in the game, has no "redeeming" qualities save for having a "Woman who is a Mother" as a named character of relative importance.

Compared to this, we have Svarog for Aesfrost, and Sycras with the over the top cutscene where he says goodbye to his wife and kids to defend the country - something we don't see for any Hyzante general or soldier (Kamsell had no wife? No kids or parents?).

And Glennbrook, well, some playable characters are from there, and if Roland enough tores through his country's ideology, because he is a protagonist and playable character, Glennbrook is seen more favorably than Aesfrost, and of course, Hyzante.

And of course, the golden ending.

Who is the "final boss"?

While the game's ultimate answer is "you cannot deal in absolutes" and follow only one path, the final boss isn't a mix of "bootstraps + nobility bad + religion bad" but just one of those three - with battle quotes coming from traditional JRPGs.

[yume-fanfare]

torikasa.

[demento-mori]

On one hand i think it would be a good idea to make a pinned post specifying the kind of stuff i post about, since im into horror and gore and people following me from fandoms like isat mayyyybeeee dont wanna see that kinda stuff, and i know a lot of people (myself included) dont always check bios before they follow and i dont wanna catch anyone off guard with untagged gore like that.

.......but on the other hand, I would have to replace noo noo girlboss moment :((

[facetsofthecloset]

i think one of my biggest hurdles as a writer (especially original fiction, but it also affects my fanfiction) is that i have an incredibly American/British-centric idea of what Fiction Books are supposed to be like, even though my personal lived experience is tangential to those things at best.

(rambly weird personal essay under the cut lol)

when i was a kid, i mostly read Doctor Dolittle and Narnia books, and when i got older i read HP, Septimus Heap, Artemis Fowl, Fablehaven, Sherlock Holmes, etc.

pretty standard kid's fantasy/fiction (i mean not Holmes but y'know). it definitely informed what i thought Fiction was supposed to be, and all of it is incredibly Western.

i've wanted to be a fantasy author since i was really young, but i could never really get anywhere because i was trying to copy what i read. and the problem with that is...well, i'm Japanese American, but i grew up going back and forth between Hawaii and Japan.

i have no personal connection to the environments the books i loved grew out of, so copying it was impossible to do organically. i didn't have the background lived experience to seep naturally into my writing in order to recreate these atmospheres and cultures.

from the language, to the culture, to the ecosystems and climate, none of it was what i knew was right outside my window. i couldn't write what i knew, because as far as i knew, you just...weren't supposed to.

you weren't supposed to write about the tropics except as some distant hypothetical. you weren't supposed to mention jungles outside of metaphors. winter and snow was a given. you're not writing a fantasy book without winter, you fool. no one knows what a japan is. no one knows what a hawaii is either. no one knows you, you're not supposed to exist in these books.

i think part of that is what appealed to me, actually, in wanting escapism, but when it comes to writing, it's a big hurdle. i'm a lot more comfortable writing from my own experiences now, but i still find myself wanting to ape the style and aesthetics of what i loved growing up.

it really doesn't help that i hesitate to claim any singular cultural identity for myself because i don't feel like an authority on either. if you pressed me, i'd say i'm American, but i'm still so far removed from what 99% of America (as in, the mainland) is.

i don't think of deer or squirrels or redwoods or prairie dogs or blue jays when i think about the "America" i'm from. i think of centipedes and green sea turtles and peacocks and jackson chameleons and myna birds (most of those are nonnative to hawaii but they were what i saw commonly growing up)

so there's just a huge disconnect between What I Know and the stories i want to write. which is annoying, why don't i want to write more stories about the beautiful world i knew and grew up in? there's magic there. there's potential for fantasy and adventure there. of course there is.

but no. i keep trying to recreate Narnia, or draw on European folk and fae, because i feel like i have none of my own. nothing that's allowed to appear in print.

i once read half of Julie Kagawa's The Iron King. i only read half because i hated it, part of which is probably because i was just too old for it.

but the other part, when i think about it is...i picked that book initially because i read that the author grew up in Hawaii, and she's Japanese. not first gen like me, but i thought, hey, maybe she'll get it.

but The Iron King is like a weird Midsummer Night's Dream thing, it's very old-Europe-filtered-and-strained-through-centuries-of-American. it's very temperate zone. i saw no trace of home or kin in those words and i think that disappointment is what turned me off it so virulently.

i wonder if my writing is as empty when i use fairies and satyrs and other mainstays of Western fantasy. if it comes across as a string of hollow tropes; words and ideas copied without heart or belief or connection into a story simply because that's what you're supposed to use.

i wonder why i use those things.

(part of it is because i'm definitely not native hawaiian and would feel weird about just lifting stuff bc i don't know if it'd be disrespectful or not and would have to do research on it. at this point, fairies are public domain, but menehune...ehhh, i don't think so.)

i think it's because i have so many examples and blueprints to work off of if i take ideas from the mainstream. whatever i try to do using me and what i know, and what is real and home to me...i don't know how to do that. i've never been shown a way.

(part of that is definitely that i just need to read more but i have a hard time starting new media of any kind, especially books. and i'm super picky with books especially so it makes it worse, but urgh i'm trying)

anyway i'm only thinking about this because i realized that trying to design a character that is the embodiment of Deer in Summer Forest is really hard when i've only seen a deer irl a handful of times and all the colors and leaf shapes are wrong for deer when i think of a Summer Forest. i'm designing a god by peering through a cloudy stained glass window into a room that only exists through stories and words. i can make a heart but there's no blood in it.

[thelightthatruins]

Sometimes I wish I didn't have two seperate blogs for my stuff because I confuse myself on where to put art reblogs

Cause on one hand I want my art blog to grow more than my misc one → I want people in the future to be able to see these wonderful artworks via my art blog. But at the moment I have not been making art and my misc blog is growing more so everytime I want to share art I'm like,,

"Do I share for the future or for the present... thinking emoji"