#and of getting it from a soapbox

[crewdlydrawn]

I think medical professionals should have to pay a fine every time they tell a person with fibromyalgia or similar chronic pain issues to “avoid everything but Tylenol” to deal with it.

[lazylittledragon]

y'know every time i feel guilty about bothering someone by singing along when i'm listening to music, i just remember that i have to tolerate my dirtbag brother screaming at his ps5 for hours every day so listening to muffled off-key fall out boy is probably preferable

[jessaerys]

sun visits the moon at spk headquarters and gets so so so sleepy

[sgtprophet]

Helter n Jörgen doodles bc im swedish and idk i like it when i see swedish ppl in media

[incognitoduck11]

okay, personally, i want as little of the og cast as possible in the buffy reboot so i don't feel obligated to watch it at all, (purely because i get attached to the characters and not the intellectual property of most fandoms i'm in and therefore am meh about reboots in general,) but there is one single, plausibly realistic thing i am kind of hoping to see with this one.

i am SO here for wisdom-bearing buffy showing up solo for a few eps and then happily fucking off into the land of vague endgame theories. i am also rooting for an explicitly queer take on her character, but not betting on it in the slightest. i also don't care if she does get a confirmed endgame and it happens to be with one of her vamp boys, because i like both spike and angel well enough to accept either (and ignoring canonical heteronormative agendas in any fandom is like breathing to me as a femslash shipper, okay, i'll live), but if that does happen, which i feel like it very well might, i'd love to at least get some unproblematic bi rep in that context.

again, not betting on it, and forever shooting major stink eye at the comics for not letting her be, but, like, if the new gen has a queer main character, which is something i fully actually expect, i think it'd be neat to see buffy commiserate with them. and when it's pointed out with some confusion that she's in a straight (passing) relationship and doesn't really get it, even if her best friend is gay, i want the show to let her shrug and smile wistfully and say something like, "well, actually, i'm not so picky myself."

she super does not need to be sucking face with anyone at all. i do not need a confirmed endgame one way or another. just let her be happy with herself and still a badass and a little more consciously fruity, as a treat.

[magmavox]

Unpopular opinion it seems like, but I think fighting with sasusaku/naruhina fans as an sns shipper is pathetic behavior. It just makes all of us look bad and further makes you look insecure about our ship when we have NO reason to be. You aren't going to change their minds and you WILL reinforce their opinions of sns fans/fujoshis. It's lose/lose.

Whether you were embroiled in the twitter drama or you found it on your AO3 tag feed, for the love of god, please leave that cheating fic alone. Don't comment on the fic, don't harass anyone (though I know it's tempting since some people already have). But this is your chance to step away and not perpetuate this gross behavior. If you see it on your feed just mute the author, it's not hard. The more attention you give it the more people will jump on that bandwagon and we will have to deal with it again.

Even more unpopular opinion-they have a point about the tags. I understand why they would be petty when SO MANY sns fics tag NaruHina and SasuSaku in ship tags when it is very clearly not a fic intended for those fans. That's just bad tagging and terrible etiquette and it would annoy me too if I were on the other side of it, like I was today. Use the additional tags to note background ships to spare people's ship tag feeds. You can still write Sakura bashing or whatever it is that brings you joy, but its just tacky and mean to tag the ship when doing it.

Yeah, the fic is dumb and tasteless, but it is also so clearly bait. I know practicing the "don't like, don't read" philosophy can be hard, but I promise it's worth it and we are all better off if you don't take the bait. Just block/mute and move on instead of associating this ship with pettiness and drama. Coping with things we don't like without throwing a tantrum is a valuable life skill.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, honestly I love that for you! Keep it up! Staying on our own lanes and focusing on the things we love is big dick energy.

[toxooz]

That last post is so real. Httyd is my favorite movie and I haaaate live action remakes.

duuude i remember when the 1st one came out my 11 year old brain quite literally never recovered and the 2nd one managed to be just as good LIKE Core pillars of my soul i aint gon talk on the 3rd one i have some Words lmfao but seeing the movie now quite literally 'just worse and soulless' is striking my offensive nerve bad making the mistake of seeing the live action lion king was my joker origin story i already knew they were all going to be empty money scams banking off of nostalgia but fuck they already at httyd??? i hate this

[whinlatter]

sorry if you've discussed this before, but do you think ginny's quidditch talent came out of nowhere? it's a common criticism I see about her but I feel like that kind of overstates how much of a quidditch "star" she was at the beginning, like she was consistently described as good but not great until partway into hbp and I also think it makes sense she'd keep it a secret from her teasing brothers. but maybe they're right and I'm just biased towards defending ginny

thank you for the question, anon!

the short answer is - no, i think it's (just about) plausibly rendered in the books. i think the series gets away with it because:

the story is told from the perspective of a teenage boy aka peak obliviousness in corporeal form, so we see what harry sees (and harry notices big fat nothing)

there is an entirely adequate narrative explanation for ginny's sporting skills that most readers not operating in bad faith* can put together, as you suggest: ginny comes from a sporty family who are all good at quidditch; she is of middling-to-good seeking ability when she first joins the team in ootp; she then has a good few months flying several times a week where she would necessarily grow in confidence and experience, leaving her perfectly able to blossom in hbp in a high school sport where she is competing against other children. fine and dandy in my book.

also quidditch is a broadly dumb and pointless plot so ginny being good at it is just a fun extra that we don't need to deep too much because - let's be real - quidditch is a waste of page space.

*i say this because, most of the time, these takes come from those who don't like hinny as a pairing. which is entirely their right and prerogative! it personally doesn't float my boat to spend my days doing worst faith readings of the text in order to make the case against canon ships i don't like, but as this is a race to the bottom - we are all adults dissecting children's books written by a nasty spiteful woman rotting in her mouldy castle spouting slurs, after all - who am i to judge.

(i also suspect the 'ginny is good at quidditch out of nowhere' takes have enjoyed such a long shelf-life on eg. reddit because the films are still most people's primary reference for HP takes so complaints about them then get cast back on the books - and, in the films, ginny does in fact rock up in film 6 like she's mbappé, if mbappé had the charisma of an extraordinarily soggy bath mat.)

with that said... could it have done with a bit more foreshadowing? yes, probably. people who don't like hinny as a pairing and prefer another are never going to be convinced - that's fine! but here i am, a paid-up hinny supporter, and even i think ginny's character development is sometimes wanting, to a frustrating and problematic extent. good writing (usually) means showing not telling, and it's weird and lazy of jkr to be so slapdash about revealing this and other character details about ginny and other (often female) characters. i think it's particularly striking that jkr underserves characters (again, usually women) who exist to serve the emotional development of characters (usually men), rather than the mystery plot(s) that drive hp as a series. (wanted! tonks' personality! last seen making fake pig noses and being the only auror mad eye moody mentored as his successor, for no plot reason!)

while i'm not a die-hard adherent to the chekhov's gun principle, i think one of the strengths of many novels du jour - especially the nothing really happens postmodern novel that crowds the bookshop shelves these days - is that their conventions allow authors to add colour to characters without each tiny detail being pregnant with meaning and in service of a driving plot that must be marched forward at all times. that can be really nice! as readers, we like to get a sense of characters as well-rounded living breathing people who go for a wee and take the bins out and stick on an album because it slaps every now and then; in these novels, we're also happier with the idea that things can happen to characters beyond the protagonist that don't directly impact the plot or demand the protagonist knows more than their own very limited vantage point. you have more room to play with character as a result.

jkr, ofc, isn't that kind of author. jkr is in fact an author for whom everything about her characters serves the plot. this, after all, is the brain that brought you 'remus lupin' the werewolf, and named the bad-guy-turned-good-guy in a book using a big black dog as a red herring omen of death 'sirius black'. jkr wants her audience to notice clues and remember little details about characters because they might be significant later on. this is entirely her wont and - lupin and sirius aside - she's often very good at it. the hp books are all standalone mysteries, and, when they land, those mysteries slap. ginny being the culprit in CoS is a genuinely satisfying resolution to the whodunit plot: this was reflected in critical reception at the time and was part of the reason why hp was able to be marketed as a children's book adults would also enjoy thereafter. there are also very satisfying foreshadowing and mystery plots that straddle the entire series and that reward the reader with reasonably good pay-off at the series end. (my favourite is the foreshadow within the foreshadow - e.g. regulus black barrelling back from ootp in DH, but then regulus' plot turning out to ultimately exist to foreshadow snape's own double agent status... delicious).

for my part, it's also what i want out of the fiction i read and the stories i try to write. i want everything to mean something. i want the weather, clothing, setting, body language etc to all do heavy lifting. i want character work to do work. it makes it fun for me to write and (i hope) it can it a bit more fun for the reader.

the problem is that while jkr is good setting up some mysteries, she is bad at others, and the romantic plot is one she falls down (a bit) on. she sets herself up for this: she wants to be a plot-centred mystery writer, so she does have an obligation to do better in how she deploys character details. jkr does to try to write the harry/ginny romance like a mystery, with little hints throughout the series up to the reveal of harry's feelings for ginny in HBP. (even ginny's full name is nominative determinism, finally revealed in DH once the reader has been told her place in the plot - ginevra, so guinnevre, the hero's queen). and while i will never not tire of pointing out to all of reddit that harry/ginny didn't come out of nowhere, and there is some satisfying foreshadowing knocking about here and there, i think it's fair to say that the harry/ginny build-up is not as satisfying as it could have been because jkr is basically lazier about the clues that ginny is the character harry will ultimately fall for, while she is much better at dropping clues for the series' central plot. that ginny ends the series with no real resolution of the primary tensions that motivate her other than her love of harry is probably the most acute example of this. but there's lots about her character where jkr phones it in a bit in fleshing her out or taking it to any logical conclusions or interesting plot directions. a smattering of examples:

ginny is the character who spends the entire series demanding to be included and not underestimated ends the series... with no real major role in the battle other than causing harry panic, while all other central characters receive a satisfying narrative arc that speaks to their central motivators across the series as a whole. (for an interesting discussion of what should have happened with ginny and the horcruxes, see here. i didn't even pay @saintsenara to write this!)

there are lots of shades of colour to ginny's character that are introduced pointlessly. i have previously talked about my beef with arnold the pygmy puff. we know ginny is popular but we know nothing of her friends who are all faceless plotless nobodies. we know ginny supports the all-womens quidditch team in a way that implies a nascent feminist politics after a childhood being excluded from playing a sport she loves by her brothers - yet we know nothing of it. we know ginny loves the one wizarding band that seems to exist because she has a poster of them on her wall and it just.... is something we just get told about her. now, all of these suggest ginny is a good time gal and a right laugh at the pub. and that's nice! i too am fun at the pub! but why does it matter? it wouldn't, in another series. but in a series where Everything Matters, it really stands out.

now..... i don't think all of this is an unsolveable problem for those of us writing fanfiction about ginny or harry and ginny as a couple. i don't think this makes ginny an inherently bad character. i hope the amount of life i have wasted thinking about this character is testament to this (...) and i personally find trying to cook up some fleshed-out characterisation and a satisfying arc for ginny, and for female characters more generally, from the crumbs of the original source material to be a very rewarding way to pass the time and a fuck you to a woman who thinks she can gatekeep womanhood while writing some astonishingly antifeminist fiction. i think harry and ginny are a deeply compelling and eminently plausible couple, and i think i return to writing about them as much as i do because i think they have a ton of potential as narrative mirrors and as characters with a rich well of tension but also devotion between them. as i say a lot, i think one of the things the harry/ginny pairing does refreshingly well compared to other romantic lead couples in YA fiction is show a couple that, at heart, genuinely get on very well, have a laugh together and enjoy each other's company in completely mundane lovely day-to-day ways (laundry and taxes u know). i think that's a striking and refreshing dynamic that i like to spend time fleshing out and playing with and writing about. but i can also see that there is an inconsistency in jkr's character work here, particularly her character work writing female characters, of which ginny is among the most acute examples.

[immobiliter]

people who refuse to entertain rarepairs are weak and won't survive the winter. people who refuse to entertain m/f and f/f dynamics with a basis in canon in favour of the popular fanon mlm ship are even weaker

[textfromthelookout]

I know you're a big Bejita/Vegeta stan, but I do wonder. Is there any moments in the series where you were not on his side and thought he had made a mistake or was in the wrong?

Let me preface my real answer by saying: I am not trying to be a dickhead. I'm reasonably sure that this is a genuine question from someone who just wants to know, and that you're not trying to imply anything about me. But since I have a platform, meager as it is, I'm going to use it briefly to say: y'all NEED to understand that liking a character and believing that a character can do no wrong are TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS. None of this is real. It doesn't really matter. You cannot equate fiction and real life. Please, please do not fall for the trap of thinking that liking the purpose that an action serves in a given narrative is identical to liking the action itself in every context. Because there is no such thing. As a writer, I am begging you not to get lost in the sauce.

To give you an actual answer now: yeah, most of them. Like, almost all of them up until his self-destruct against Buu. Vegeta is really not that great of a person! Even afterwards in Super, he's making an effort, but you don't undo decades of living a certain way overnight. He is, at his core, a prideful, pugnacious, standoffish man who has had possibly the worst socialization that someone can have short of being raised in the woods by man-eating wolves.

If you want me to be more specific please say so, like I can point to just about any thing he does and give you both why this makes sense for him to do and why it's pretty fucked up of him to do that.

[beneath-the-willow-tree]

It has become increasingly apparent to me that many misunderstandings of Armand’s character come from people being uncomfortable engaging with the fact that he grew up in a time period and culture that they cannot fully understand or map onto their own experiences. And I don’t mean that in a “his relationship with Marius was fine because things were different in Renaissance Italy!” way, I mean it in a “there is a very very specific historical precedent for the abuse Amadeo experiences that is not really comparable to the way most people contextualize abuse in a modern setting” way.

[codypunk]

idk if there's even an audience for this besides like 2 mutuals but also I feel like I should actually put this down instead of vaguely alluding to it all the time. the movementverse is my au where it's basically just what if the messiah gimmick actually worked and I changed murph and the aop for people I actually care about (sorry).

nathan (frazer) also made a tweet back in 2021 about how if seth ever needed an actually loyal disciple instead of murphy, he was available so that was what made my gay little gears turn

its essentially a seth and roman role swap with roman being a far more mentally stable version of himself and seth as a tyrannical leader of a faction bc it's kind of funny to think about. also seth loses his eye at extreme rules instead of rey which to me is what would have been the last proverbial straw that would put him full force into that persona, since in canon he seemingly has some kind of remorse (or he just thinks it's gross, either way he throws up)

its also in canon already very heavy handed on the authority callbacks, seth word for word parrots things hunter once said to him back to murph so I always really kind of wished they did more with that because it does a lot for seths character that his idea of a villain is using hunters words and tactics and using his sledgehammer

[lapdogchase]

the "nonconsensual drug use" discourse is so irritating Like as someone who has kind of been actually non-consensually-drug-use-d Someone smoking around you-- while occasionally annoying or actively harmful (specifically for people with like. medical issues.)-- is not "forcing nonconsensual drug use" on you oh my god

[leviathans-watching]

how do you feel about om! ending?

lololol frankly i think it should have ended a long time ago...

its obvious that i haven't really interacted with obey me in a long time and honestly it's because i didn't care for where the story went. not only do i not like nightbringer and thought it was a poor choice from the beginning, i also think the main story didn't need as many seasons as it got, especially because the characters got assassinated and flanderized, story lines were messy, dropped, or irrelevant, and overall, it was just never as interesting as the original story arc.

it's easy to point out flaws in each season, including season one, but at least it had heart and intention. season two has merit to me simply because i think the human realm part was interesting, but overall, i think it peaked in the original 20 lessons and just kind of tapered off from there. there are some exceptions where things got interesting again, like the addition of thirteen, mephisto, and raphael, but overall, i much preferred the limited story we were originally given.

i think also the limited gameplay mechanics really harmed the game in the long run (hence why they kept adding things and even made completely new ones in nightbringer), but as an og player (seriously, og, i began playing it the month it was released) it got boring. another part of being an og is that it was frustrating watching the devs get greedy especially as quality plateaued (or even went down) and players concerns (like the racism and whitewashing) weren't addressed well

additionally, as the story went on, i lost interest in the characters because they weren't developed in any meaningful way. i've stated before that the characters i write for are almost separate entities from the canon ones and that's because i based them off of the original season one versions and they've changed soooo much since then, especially considering nightbringer (but also i didn't play nightbringer so i could totally be talking out of my ass but i feel like the premise itself inherently changes the characters since it's a different version of the ones we know and love from the og game)

it may seem like i'm being a little harsh, and honestly i am since i do have a genuine love for the game even if a lot of my passion has faded, but i'm very very bitter about where the game went and greatly mourn what we could have gotten if things were different. i still am fond of the original arc and characters but so much time has passed since then and so much has changed with the game and the fandom that i don't think i'll ever love it like i used to. anyway rant over, mammon is the loml, and it's touching to see so many current fans mourn the game because i love that people still love it and see so much magic in it <3

(obligatory if you like the later seasons/nightbringer/where the story went/etc all the power to you it just wasn't my cup of tea in the end)

[thissying]

post-race paddock walk silliness, GP Canada, 2024

[whatisshelties]

Some jumping + conditioning resources for @wyrddogs

The Truth About Jumping by Carolyn McIntyre

This one doesn't get specific, but the last paragraph does explain the concepts behind conditioning for jumping and why it's important. She does mention that you need to target the front limbs, rear limbs, and core. That message I got there was conditioning all over will help, lol. From what I grasp, strengthening the front end helps with the forces from landing, while strengthening the rear will help add power to the take off. The core holds everything together.

Canine Conditioning Coach Video Library

You can sort the videos by using the tags. There are videos behind a paywall, but you can sort to find the free videos only. I think a lot of the beginner/foundation exercises are free. You can also sort by the body region the exercise targets as well. I feel like I need to make an obligatory mention of the FB group Canine Conditioning and Body Awareness. CCC owner is also an admin on this group and sometimes will review videos. You could also search the group for discussion about jumping related exercises. What I think is really cool about her site is that if another program has an exercise your dog is struggling with, you can see if there's a foundation level video available on CCC that might help you build up to that other exercise.

Movement Puzzles

Not specifically jump related, but I do think Mud had a lot of fun with this concept and I did notice his coordination improved while working on them. I need to get back into it. I think there are videos on her FB page that can give you ideas. The foundation 2 Bowl Game is free. I paid for the class (after she changed it to lifetime access, lol) and never worked through it it as written. I just sort of got the concept and ran with it.

Focus on Jumping by Bobbie Lyons on Clean Run

This appears to be a purely conditioning based self study course on Clean Run. Just the list of skills the class says it will address gives you an areas and movements you can work on. I think I actually had this class bookmarked at one point for Mud when it was only on Bobbie's website. I believe that was a working class with no audit option, so it cost more and I didn't see myself following along when I didn't know if Mud was sound. Now it's on my radar again.

I follow a good chunk of canine fitness or rehab pros on FB and other dog sport people sometimes share stuff. I saw this two part webinar series shared a couple weeks ago. Like I said in my comment, I was having a hard time thinking of things that weren't behind a paywall. There seem to be plenty of those. I'm going to guess that's partially the fitness trainers protecting themselves. They don't want people saying they found this exercise plan on the internet and then it injured their dog. Most of them will only work with sound dogs. I think some of the conditioning pros might have a video or post here and there that get a little more specific on their FB, but trying to track them down would be challenging.

Edit: I also feel like I should mentioned that you shouldn't feel like you need to buy all kinds of inflatable equipment. I honestly use board like items the most. I actually picked up a couple of these things (not this exact brand, but same item) after someone posted about them and they get used the most. They happen to be wide enough for Mud to sit on, but not really long enough, so I really should make boards, but we've been making due with what I've got. Any exercise is better than nothing.