#basic perception

[cheesenchalk]

i never know how to phrase it but something about the way beatles biographers and people in general view paul's reflexive placating persona and determination to smooth things over as manipulative or duplicitous and john's reflexive barbed persona and habit of lashing out as brave and subversive despite both being equally defensive mechanisms to shield themselves from the world that resulted in them saying things that weren't true says more about how we culturally view kindness or friendliness as inherently untrustworthy or flimsy and anger and carelessness as more believable as someone's true nature than it says about either of them in actuality

[idolomantises]

I was replaying BOTW for the third time to play the DLC but I got bored halfway and decided to boot up Skyward Sword and play it for the first time…

I didn’t know Link was this expressive 😭

[briskchips]

Do you ship Purelily?

Sort of? Not really? I view their relationship through a very specific lens:

I think they mutually liked each other when they were young, maybe even had an actual relationship. But when Lily started to pursue her ideals of the origins of cookies, the witches' motivations, increasing the survivability of their species, etc, more and more, PV got worried. He dreaded who she was becoming, and his feelings for her began to wane. He didn't feel like this was "the lily he knew".

But PV is nothing if not forgiving. He convinced himself this was a phase she was going through, that she'd eventually figure out that this pursuit of strength and knowledge was fruitless and dangerous, and messing with dark moon magic was doubly so. But when Lily received her soul jam of freedom, her determination to learn more and be more only got stronger. She was (metaphorically) a new cookie now, but PV was still attached to the Lily he first fell in love with. He told himself that Lily was fine, just exploring things she shouldn't be for a little while, and then she'd get back to being the sweet, curious girl he thought he knew.

And then she died. Her pursuits led her to fall into the ultimate dough, and even then, PV refused to admit to himself that maybe Lily had changed before that.

When Lily was half brought back to life in the faerie kingdom, PV assumed she'd be herself again. She'd learn her lesson after dying at the hands of the witches, and everything could just be normal. But she still held her beliefs, and was still too different for PV. In an ideal world, they would've gotten the chance to talk through this, but some blue guy just crawled out of a tree to terrorize everyone's minds and that kind of takes precedent unfortunately!

Even now, with her being back, he yearns for who she used to be. He ignores the traits of hers that he finds undesirable, because he doesn't like that someone he loved so much has become someone who so adamantly craves something he disagrees with. I also think PV has a bit of a saviour complex as a subconscious defence mechanism against his own insecurities. He probably isn't aware of this specific feeling he has, but he doesn't like that Lily is so much more independent now. He liked being someone who could provide for her, who could protect her and guide her, and make her feel welcome when other cookies didn't, but she just doesn't need that anymore. She doesn't need him. And that makes him panic. Who is he if he is not needed? What's the point of him if he can't be useful? How can he possibly be of any worth to Lily if she doesn't feel the need to rely on him in some way?

He wants to be a benevolent, strong, kind leader; the kind of leader who loves all of his friends, no matter how they grow and change, but he just feels too differently about Lily to love her in the same way he once did. He's in denial. And he knows he is. Lily does too. That's the basis of their separation at the spire of deceit's entrance.

Their paths don't align in a literal sense, wherein they both have important physical goals that need to be achieved before the war kicks off, but their paths also don't align in a mental sense. They aren't partners anymore. They want different things. They care about different things. Neither wants to admit that they've both become cookies who aren't compatible anymore, but neither wants to change for the sake of the other, either. They still cherish each other, but not in the same way they used to.

So TLDR, no, I don't ship purelily. BUT I do think it was canon behind-the-scenes at some point in their past, and their feelings for each other is a critical part of both of their characters (and I think a lot of fan works are really sweet, I understand the appeal of the ship).

[danadiadea]

Basically my whole deal with the pretty/ugly/normal Snape discourse is the fact that people behave like Harry is flattering Snape for some reason, build fanon assumptions on that belief, and then behave like those are book canon and the only correct interpretation forever and ever amen.

if Harry calls Snape's nose hooked and prominent – it probably doesn't mean it takes up 70% of his face (people behaving like "hooked" and "huge" are the same word make me kinda tired), if Harry says Snape's greasy hair hangs in curtains around his face – it probably doesn't clump in icicles, if Harry calls his teeth uneven and yellowish – they probably aren't extra crooked and rotten and of a bright yellow colour, if Harry points out his skin is sallow and pallid and white – it probably isn't of greenish shade and with acne, if Harry tells us Snape is thin and haggard – it probably doesn't mean he looks 25kg underweight. Believe it or not, but Harry doesn't actively try to embellish the man he hates! He rarely uses any extreme language to describe Snape – and that's what bugs me when people insist he must have extremely unusual features, because even a pretty lookist boy who hates the guts of him and is ready to misinterpret him at any given chance, is actually being relatively mild. If Harry could debase Snape more – he would!

Harry calls Pancy ugly too, but Rita, for example, thinks she's pretty and vivasious, and I know it's assumed Rita is exaggerating because she and Pancy are both awful people, but Rita wouldn't publically call a girl that objectively had a face very unfitting to beauty standards pretty, especially when it's so uncalled for! Pancy must've looked at least somewhat cute so that it doesn't sound like a mockery.

Severus probably "wasn't pretty" to Harry's taste – just like Eileen, whom he greatly resembled, but he also didn't look extremely out of the ordinary and wasn't repulsive to look at, just tired, a bit unkempt and with intense traits (which can be handled in a whole lot of different ways of course). Enough so that people who hate him can make some derogatory comments on him, but honestly, go to any visual based social media and look at people who receive derogatory comments on their appearance out there and tell me that all of them (if any) are unbearably ugly and barely human looking.

So basically erasing Snape's traits and giving him a straight nose or full lips or rosy skin is misinterpretation just as much as exaggerating every feature of his to the extent that never was even remotely mentioned in canon (and especially since we know we have a negatively biased perspective almost at every instance) is. And it's fine, especially if we talk about art, when artist's style would naturally enhance certain aspects and try to deliver different messages. Some prefer to draw more standardized faces or softer appearances, while others tend to give their characters strong, stylized features and make them visually challenging – and this is all great and good and valuable. It's also fully okay to headcanon different traits for the character, both recognised as attractive or unattractive, depending on how each person wants to interact with the fandom. My problem is exclusively with people misinterpreting the book text, claiming it as canon and saying what people can or can't do with characters based on those misinterpretations.

[incomingawn]

My blorbos…my babygirls…my pookies…their nuances, their layered characters and motivations…I can’t protect them…

[anghraine]

I know it's well-understood at this point that Kirk/Spock is much more of a nerd4nerd ship than a nerd/jock thing, but it's just been kind of percolating around my mind that both of them aren't just space nerds but space nerds who were personally bullied.

Like, 18-year-old Kirk was targeted by an older bully who combines "total asshole" with "the most grating man in existence":

MCCOY: Well, yeah, I'm beginning to feel a little bit picked-on, if that's what you mean. KIRK: I know the feeling very well. I had it at the Academy. An upperclassman there. One practical joke after another, and always on me. My own personal devil. A guy by the name of Finnegan. MCCOY: And you being the very serious young— KIRK: Serious? I'll make a confession, Bones. I was absolutely grim, which delighted Finnegan no end.

This was five years after Kirk survived a genocide, btw, and likely well before his stint as an Academy instructor known to be strict and demanding (which is the period the "stack of books with legs" description of him comes from). By the time he's 33, fifteen years after all this, it turns out one of his deepest fantasies is just beating the shit out of his bully, but only if he can do it According To The Rules (the replica of Finnegan sneers, "Always fight fair, don't you? True officer and gentleman, you").

Spock, meanwhile, is viciously targeted by his Vulcan peers for being biracial from at least age 5; he's described as being tormented by other boys by that age, and "at home nowhere except Starfleet." I think he'd have been 18 or 19 when he left for Starfleet and it's... the least bad of his options, but he seems to have spent his entire career among humans and being persistently subjected to raw racism and profound disrespect for his culture at every turn.

Like, their histories of being metaphorically shoved into lockers are not identical or anything, but I think it's interesting that they both have them.

[farshootergotme]

Batman 'firing' Robin will never sit well with me because having the authority to fire someone implies they applied for a job, and a job includes payment.

So, Batman firing Robin is like saying he's paying Robin for doing his job. Except, is he paying? The simple answer would be no, but then the next logical option is assuming that the payment comes with everything he does for a Robin.

Since Batman provides the equipment he has the right to take it back and that's not the part that bothers me. What bothers me is that there's another crucial thing that Batman does for Robin: provide a home.

And while, yes, Batman's intention isn't to take away the safe space of Robin or to make him believe he's making him leave his house, intentions don't matter in miscommunication.

Firing Robin means not 'paying' him anymore. It means taking away what he's giving him because he isn't doing his job correctly.

For Robin, it means losing his home.

[akhillaous]

Thinking about Chiron as a parental figure to both Achilles and Patroclus makes me so upset especially in the versions in which Achilles was basically raised by Chiron. That’s their FATHER!!

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

Nothing has done more damage to romance-favourable aromantics than the way fandom uses us as a ‘gotcha’ to dismiss canon aromantic characters. Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but I truly do think it has done a lot of harm to how people view us, and our ‘validity’ as aromantics.

We do not exist as a concept to some people, until we serve a purpose. Aromantic is typically only understood as ‘lack of romantic attraction’ to these people, which obviously can be the case, but the only time they bother to acknowledge the spectrum is when it benefits their idea of typical romance. It is not done out of care for variety in representation, as if it were, it would be understood that even romance-favourable aromantics have a complicated relationship with romantic attraction, and it is different for all of us.

We are used to erase the aromantic identity of characters, and in the process our own aromantic identity is erased and misunderstood.

[kalpalatas]

ok see the thing. that thing about sasamiya/hirakagi. harusono knows her tropes. she's a fujoshi and a writer and she knows her way around bl/yaoi. so she takes these tropes and kicks them in the nuts for her own joy and amusement. and that's the fun of the ride

[lambmotifz]

dean canonically objectifies sam almost every chance he gets, genuinely believes sam is his bitch and goes unhinged every time sam tries to get away from him. yet the fandom somehow manages to come to the conclusion that “they’re equally insane about each other” and “there’s mutual attraction between them”

[petitepatateuwu]

It's way too hot and I am way too tired to do any more efforts, so excuse the critical lack of quality here.

If you didn't know, Cole is my favourite Power Ranger :D

And while I was binge watching Ninjago I had the pleasant surprise to see him physically and mentally traumatized in season 5 😈

And since I'm a huge sucker for angst, my brain immediately thought of developing that idea in order to hurt my beautiful baby boy some more. That and also the fact that my brain immediately looks for logic in the laws of cartoon physics (I really shouldn't do that...)

So I bring you the "Cole is a Ghost Kind-of-Saga". I still have a few more ideas to exploit, notably adressing the ways the other ninjas will help him cope with his new condition :3

And maaaaybeeeee a small comic too 😇

Anyways, I will let my brain rest a bit for now and sleep.

[king-lena]

i just wrote a whole post on how david and roger’s perception of each other ultimately led to their downfall and it started off as like a paragraph of surface level observations and somehow morphed into an essay length analysis that i can’t possibly justify posting 😭 i did kind of cook tho ngl i’m proud of her

[ventrantvens]

[moonlit-tulip]

A gimmick which I think would be interesting in a visual novel: small variation in the visual designs of the sprites and backgrounds based on who's narrating a given scene. Not large variations, mostly—buildings are going to have generally the same architecture, people are going to have generally the same outfits, et cetera—but lots of details shifting around on the margins, showing the texture of the characters' thought-processes through the visual design of the world as they see it, rather than only through the text of their narration.

So, for example, one could have one viewpoint character be unusually faceblind, and portray this by having all the sprites have Same-Face Syndrome when viewed from their perspective, even as they hold onto more variation face-wise in everyone else's perspectives. One could have one viewpoint character who's unusually conscious of the fine details of their physical environment, and portray this by drawing the environment-art with much more fiddly detail when in their perspective, showing wood-grain and electrical wiring and other such things which are abstracted away in others' perspectives of the same areas. Et cetera.

[perilegs]

i know astrology is fake but i'm not too keen on how a lot of people on this website seem to be clowning on it as a hobby a bit too hard. i swear the woman who thinks it's neat how she and her friends with the same sun sign are all similar isn't trying to say that you are who you are born as and there is nothing you can do to change it. it's a hobby. an interest. what happened to finding meaning and joy in the small things. does it affect you if someone enjoys tarot reading or crystals. does it make you upset someone has interests that they enjoy.