#at the word count in acceptance

[izzystizzys]

TW: discussion of something approximating suicidal tendencies but with the usual crack programming of this blog

“Ah, High General Windu”, says Fox, pleasantly. “So we meet again.”

High General Windu raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him, Fox thinks, though it’s getting hard to tell with all the blood rushing to his head. “If I let you go, will you try to throw yourself out of another window?”

Fox makes a vague shrugging motion - or tries to, anyways. It’s hard to tell where any of his limbs are going, hanging upside down in the air as he is. “I am willing to discuss terms.” A bridge will do just fine.

Impossibly, the High General’s eyebrows climb even further up his forehead. “A compromise, then, esteemed Commander.” And so, he righths Fox the head way up in the air, but leaves him floating just above the ground, at which point several painted shells come skidding around the corner followed by billowing robes and screeches.

“WHAT”, says Kote, calmly, “THE BANTHA-KARKED, FORCE-LOVING KRIFF, FOX.”

“You’ll short out your helmet mic”, Fox advises him, sagely. Fondly, he thinks back to decimating his own on only his second time in the newly-christened official Coruscant Guard Scream Closet. He’d just received the comm about the Zillo Beast being transported to 000, and made sure to take his bucket off thereafter to improve the quality of his closet time.

High General Windu’s face does something complicated between sympathy and constipation.

Because the Galaxy doesn’t hate Fox enough already and Cody wasn’t enough on his own, Wolffe elbows his way through their batch to plant himself in front of him, shoulders squared and shaking with repressed rage. “If you try that again, dickhead”, he begins, in a low growl that quite frankly sounds more cringe that intimidating, “I’m going to resurrect you and then kill you again.”

“Ah, Wolffe”, Plo Koon says, in his deep, shivery timbre, “Remember our conversations about effective conflict resolution and communication of needs?”

Wolffe’s eyes narrow at Fox, because all non-Guard are sweet summer children who walk around buckets off on 000 like absolute lunatics. Fox prays they never have to find out why that’s a bad idea. “I feel”, his ori’vod presses out between clenched teeth, “that if you make me watch you throw yourself out of another window, I’m going to jump after you and strangle you on the way down, you little bitch.”

“That’s fair”, says Fox, and watches High General Kenobi bury his face in his hands. Wolffe twitches in place and makes an aborted groaning noise, the hypocrite.

“Excuse me, High Marshall Commander Fox, but I fail to see what’s so dire about this situation that the Jedi High Council and your brothers cannot help you solve”, says Windu, the only sane one left on this Force-forsaken bloated corpse of a planet. Behind the gaggle of Jedi and ori’vode already gathered in front of Fox, the rest of them come veering around the corner in a commotion that’s quite frankly embarrassing. High General Yoda is mounted on Skywalker’s back like he’s a race-Eopie, which is Fox’ only consolation.

He got up this morning at 0300, bleary-eyed and with a pounding headache as always, and all was right in the world. And then Fox got called into the Jedi High Council’s chambers and was ceremoniously informed that in the wake of Chancellor Palpatine’s unfortunate demise (hah), and through the emergency state of the Senate, as well as several invented promotions foisted on Fox to make the delegation of any and all paperwork less shady, he was now next in the chain of command and-

Well, Fox is the acting Chancellor, in short.

Haha, he had said, and been meet with several seconds of silence, until it got both awkward and exceedingly painful. Wait, he’d said. You’re kriffing serious.

Kriffing serious, we are, had said High General Yoda, and thus Fox launched himself out the first best window with a maniacal cackle of, you’ll have to catch me first!

And catch him, High General Windu sure did.

“The will of the Force this is”, Yoda interrupts Fox’ train of thought. He scans him thoughtfully from beneath his wizened brow, and hems to himself. “Shake things up, this will. Determine the fate of the Galaxy, this shall. A feeling, I have, that a good Chancellor you will make. A better one, hmmm.”

“That’d be high praise, if not for the fact that a dead lemming would make for a better Chancellor than the last one”, says Fox, drawing and indignant gasp from Skywalker. He doesn’t bother with either that or the green goblin’s cackle, lost in the deep sense of resignation that settles over his shoulders like a suffocating blanket.

“Alright, then, get me Thorn on the comm. As my first act in office, I’m firing all the Jedi. No offense, but you’re kind of a disaster. Then, someone get me to the Chancellor’s office, I’m calling Dooku to let him know the war’s off. And please get me Judicial, they’ll be up all night working on my datafolders - I’m having the Senate arrested.”

“Who - is - arresting - “, Bly pants, hands on his knees from where he’s just come sprinting around the corner with his Jedi.

Underneath his bucket, Fox smiles a smile that’s all teeth. “The Senate”, he says, sweetly, wondering if he’s just imagined the shiver that’s gone through the room. “I’m suing the Senate, and taking them all into temporary custody for abuse of sentient rights.”

[whetstonefires]

Underrated element of where Jiang Cheng is re: wwx after everything is that they always had a sort of dual relationship. Two different relationship premises, superimposed on one another.

There's the one where they grew up together, as close as brothers, beating each other up and complaining and being one another's closest companions, sharing a bedroom as kids and eating at the same family dinner table, actively encouraged by Jiang Fengmian to interact as equals.

And then there's the one where Wei Wuxian was in service to Jiang Cheng's family. Not as a servant--Jiang Fengmian absolutely refused to do that, even if he couldn't adopt him. But as a disciple of Jiang Cheng's father and recipient of his charity, as Jiang Cheng's future right hand and most trusted subordinate.

It's a vertical relationship, intimate in its own way but with very strict expectations about what obligations flow in what directions; they are not identical and reciprocal as between friends and equals.

(It's my opinion that Jiang Fengmian's core deal was a deep-seated discontent with the hierarchies he was at the top of, without access to any way to actually deconstruct them or even coherently articulate his opposition. Wei Changze was his dear friend, and no one thinks that's a good enough reason for him to treat Wei Changze's son like his own, because Wei Changze was also his servant, and you can't make that circle square. That's not a way you're allowed to love.)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were like brothers; Wei Wuxian served Jiang Cheng.

The personal relationship was always the most important one. To them, in their hearts. But it was the other one that was real, that had weight in the world.

And it's important to understand that neither can be held up as more factual than the other, even though they conflict. Both relationships existed, and had power.

So then when Jiang Cheng chose to hate Wei Wuxian and articulate his grudge against him, he chose to do it in the language of fealty. Because as far as he knew, his case there was secure, watertight, and it wouldn't expose him emotionally or politically.

And those are the terms in which he's been condemning him all this time: for abandoning the Sect, for ingratitude, for lack of loyalty.

For fuckups, too, and poor judgment, but some of that now turns out to have been justified and some of it was mostly the fault of enemies behaving badly, or even Jiang Cheng himself allowing himself to be pushed into making unworthy choices.

And it was all for his sake.

The thing, the thing in my opinion, about what Wei Wuxian did, about the core transfer and his silent self-destruction around keeping it secret, is that that is a hideous thing to have done between two people who love each other, as an act of love. Beautiful, but awful. As the man who was like a brother to him, Jiang Cheng has a great deal of standing to object to it.

But as an act of vassalage, it's basically perfect.

If Wei Wuxian were only what he formally was to Jiang Cheng, if he is interpreted through a lens of fealty and obligation, he did exactly what he should have done, and went beyond what duty actually required. And went to his death silently, allowing himself to be judged, taking all the burden on himself rather than let harm come to his lord.

Like, obviously Jiang Cheng was harmed by the part where Jin Zixuan got manslaughtered and Jiang Yanli walked into the line of fire in situations where Wei Wuxian was resorting to violence and probably shouldn't have, but those are one step removed from the core issue. In terms of Wei Wuxian's intentional choices around Jiang Cheng himself, at the times he was feeling betrayed and abandoned Wei Wuxian was in fact being impossibly, poetically loyal, an absolute cliche about it.

But only in terms of the hierarchical form of their relationship.

Which means that even though Jiang Cheng has a lot of reasons to still be mad at Wei Wuxian, his actual complaints that he's centered for thirteen years are basically wiped out by the revelation of Wei Wuxian's sacrifice.

Wei Wuxian was in fact doing the tragic hero loyal vassal thing, which very much includes being misunderstood and slandered by the world. (Chenqing as a name choice absolutely references this expectation, and the idea that Jiang Cheng specifically will never understand that Wei Wuxian was trying to help him first and foremost all along; he is not subtle.)

The debts Jiang Cheng has been spitefully calling in and considering defaulted were already long paid.

So if at this point Jiang Cheng keeps pursuing that same line of rhetorical attack, now that he knows, he'll be putting himself morally in the wrong, and he knows it. But if he pivots to something else, he'll both be signalling the shape of that secret to the entire world and looking like a prize idiot.

Which is already how he feels.

To actually address the remaining grievances between them, which are considerable, would require releasing those safe, open grudges to Wei Wuxian's face and then reclaiming him as a loved one. Which is, one could fairly say, more than anyone could expect.

Which is why Wei Wuxian told him he didn't have to.

Which leaves Jiang Cheng at something of an impasse.

[nyxofdemons]

this was going to be like a mile long essay but i just realized the most concise way to say it is that "it feels like a retcon that blitz has been so resentful and hostile towards fizz all this time since he was supposed to feel guilty" is simply not a good criticism when we have been shown, time and time again, that blitz's number one defense mechanism when he feels guilty or judged or attacked is to lash out, to deflect and ignore all his responsibility, and to shift the blame to someone else. that's like. his defining character flaw

[scribefindegil]

I mean this in the ace-est possible way but Dimple-in-Reigen's-body is really hot. sorry.

[lexalovesbooks]

checking in how's it going. u okay?

I think this might actually be my favorite fantasy series I’ve ever read

[existencebringsonlypain]

I don't know if my elementary and middle school education was just leagues above some other schools or what, but sometimes I'm amazed at how much basic knowledge high-schoolers don't know

[starchaserdreams]

Regulus Black is a fucking Leo, regardless of what that nonsense site in Google's search results says. His birthday has to be July 25, 1961. I will not be taking any further questions and I am putting this date in my calendar. It is resolved and that is his birthday now.

[metaleras-lair]

We've been robbed of Zuko's honour and somehow got that compensated with Aang's responsibility.

[prosebushpatch]

I rewrote my thesis and it's under 120k words bay-beeeeeeeee!!!!!!! Let's goooooo!!!!!!

[nostalgia-tblr]

The dark world thought. Loki keeps calling thor brother (mostly to annoy him) in the movie. idk why but i was hoping at least once thor would scream at him and say "STOP CALLING ME THAT"

Note to self: watch Thor 2: The Dark World. See, I think it's the other way round, and my answer involves thoughts I had about the thorki fic I inisist I will never write so fair warning for that BUT of the two it's Loki who's far more likely to insist they're not really brothers and shouldn't call each other that. A thought I had from the first film and then failed to post (I don't post ALL my thoughts on tumblr! Just most of them!) was that the 'worthy' aspect of Mjolnir is very vague and Loki would spend hours and hours trying to pin down 'what does worthy mean,' and utterly convinced that even if he isn't going to fit the criteria there must be a loophole somewhere in the wording that he can use. Whereas Thor probably hasn't spent much time worrying about that - either you're worthy or you're not and the magic hammer just knows which it is. Somehow.

Similarly I don't think Thor cares much about whether he and Loki were technically born to the same parents or even if they're the same species, because they are brothers, they've always been brothers, how can they not be brothers? Meanwhile Loki's upended life largely revolves around the fact that pedantically, legally, whateverly, they aren't really brothers and they never were. Which is why he's open to things getting incestuous now while Thor is still repulsed by his own unbrotherly yearnings. Don't be daft, Thor, we're obviously not brothers, stop calling me that it's not true you're just repeating someone else's lie! But what else would Thor call his brother? It may have been a lie to begin with, and it still might be a lie to other people, but having spent centuries thinking they were brothers and acting like they were then how is that relationship not them being brothers? Had Loki actually been his brother by blood it wouldn't have made a difference so in practical terms how are they suddenly not brothers just because Loki turned out to be a Frost Giant?

Thor wants Loki to stop causing problems and to stop being a dick, but he doesn't want him to stop being his brother (were such a thing even possible in his mind). Whereas Loki's life of crime or even just life on the run would be a lot easier if he didn't have a brother to worry about and who insists on worrying about him.

tl;dr: I got lost about halfway through my answer, sorry. I have more thoughts on this matter than my usually flippant comments might suggest D: D:

[girlscience]

I HATE GRAD SCHOOL APPLICATIONS

[bloodtwin]

so close... kinda ?

DAMN... if only one or two things got switched around 😔

[caddeter]

Skimming through the RWDE tag after the Volume 9 final aired reminds me of how the FNDM will defend the show by saying ‘people make mistakes’ and ‘the writers are only human’ because now the show seems to be sending that message.  It also reminded me that I wrote over 1000 words explaining why I think that’s terrible.

‘People make mistakes’ is the absolute worst argument in defense of something that I have every heard. I find it even more insulting than the infamous ‘don’t like, don’t watch,’ because it implies that putting effort into your craft is optional.  What this argument says is that I am in the wrong for expecting anything more than garbage. You are legitimately saying, ‘It could have been better, but you’re wrong for saying so.’  Yes, I realize that nobody is perfect and that they are going to screw up every now and again.  That’s why I’m criticizing it.  I mean, when was the last time you heard people get criticized for doing something right.

This argument of ‘people make mistakes so you can’t complain’ also ignores the moment after, where they look back on what they did wrong and learn from it.  That’s why we make mistakes, so that we can grow as people.   Why should we try to improve ourselves if we’re already ‘good enough.’ ‘People make mistakes,’ is a fact of life, but that does not mean we should throw up our hands and give up all attempts to get better and it certainly doesn’t mean we should accepting bad stories.

But enough about my philosophy on mistakes, let’s talk about this one, specifically how situational it is:

Twilight is recognized across the globe as one of the worst books ever written.  Even ignoring the way it bastardizes the concept of Vampires, it’s a story that reads less like a romance and more like a drug addiction. The lead characters have all the chemistry of a brick and a dead rat.  The relationship it tries to push as beautiful and grand is downright abusive at points.  And this isn’t even getting into all the misogyny and racism and pedophilia in those books.  But people make mistakes, so I guess we shouldn’t hold it against Myers.

Sword Art Online is one of the most infamous anime there is.  Despite its large following, whenever someone looks over it with a critical lens, they come to the conclusion that it’s utter crap.  The plot and worldbuilding are inconsistent. The characters (Kirito especially) exist more to fill out roles in a fantasy than as actual people.  It’s all about making Kirito look good and ensuring he comes out better than when he came in, no matter what.  It goes out of its way to include some kind of sexual assault of the lead female character in a given arc with no respect for the subject matter, to the point where it’s hard to tell if Reki Kawahara thinks rape is the worst crime a man could commit or if he has a fetish for it.  But people make mistakes, so the critics are more in the wrong for making videos on it.

In spite of (Or rather, because of) its troubled production, Sonic 06 is one of the worst video games in existence.  It’s so glitchy, it borders on unplayable.  The story is bland at best, flat out terrible at worst.  The new characters it introduced were all unlikable for one reason or another.  Level design was horrendous and boring.  People have made numerous videos and blogposts explaining why it is one of Sonic’s worst games, if not one of the worst games period.  But people make mistakes, so we should stop complaining.

Post season 4, Spongebob Squarepants took a downward dive.  Characters became little more than one unlikable trait.  It crossed the line from mischief to malice, so good characters suffered while the bad ones triumphed.  It was extremely evident that they had already run out of ideas, because they kept rehashing the same episode plot over and over again and needed to pad out some episodes.  But people make mistakes, so they should never have tried to fix this.

Lucy is the most boring movie I ever sat through.  It’s just ‘This girl gains reality altering powers, be amazed at how easy everything is for her.’ There is never any point where she is in any sort of real danger or anything actually threatens her.  She loses all empathy for her fellow man and has no problem throwing them away like broken toys (In an Asian country when our main character is white, mind you), yet it expects you to see her as the good guy throughout. Instead of being terrified by her rampage, it expects you to be amazed.  And maybe that would have worked if it used said reality altering powers in more creative ways.  But people make mistakes, so I guess it’s a good movie.

I could go on for ages and never run out of examples for any given form of media.  And this is all ignoring examples that are actively malicious, like stories that are intentionally sexist, racist, or homophobic.

And then there’s that other group of people this argument conveniently doesn’t apply to:  The critics.  If people make mistakes and you think we should just ignore that, then you can’t challenge the critics on any ground, because they made a mistake by talking about the writer’s mistakes.  If we are not allowed to judge your writer, then why are you allowed to judge ours?

Not to mention how this logic is almost self-refuting. When you say this, what you are saying is that the only thing wrong with the criticism is that it is criticism.

Furthermore, this argument also somewhat undermines the effort other artists and writers will put into their craft in order to make something as best as they possibly could. If we should all just accept when someone fails to make something good, then why should we recognize how Fictional Games ensured that Amnesia The Dark Descent had an atmosphere which on its own could leave you terrified rather than relying on cheap jumpscares?  Why should we praise Tatsuya Endo’s writing for blending heartfelt, humorous, and action-packed when he wrote SpyXFamily? Why should we celebrate Avatar the Last Airbender not just for its amazing story of multiple cultures coming together and strengthening one another, but also for its fully realized and fantastical world?

By saying that we should accept mistakes and that it’s wrong to criticize bad writing, you wind up saying that all of their effort was pointless.  Why bother trying to make something as best you can when people will accept anything?  If we’re not going to pay attention to what a story or writer did wrong, why should we pay attention to what a story or writer did right?

‘People make mistakes,’ means just that, that people make mistakes.  So how about we treat those mistakes as mistakes and hold people accountable for them, rather than act like everyone and everything is perfect and infallible?

[theladycarpathia]

[livelaughlovesubs]

Holy shit day two isn’t even done yet and I have 3.6k words 😭😭 is that one going to end up with 5k or what? Aint no way…..

[acaciapines]

at 49k words, the nimona daemon au is DONE!!!!

yes i originally wanted it to be less than 15k. yes it is more than double that. we are not gonna mention it <3

the first chapter will be posted saturday!! im literally so happy with this one yall. nimona <3