#but there is nuance intended

[kingofthewilderwest]

Which fictional character that's not human would you sit down and listen to while they're gabbing?

Answered this as if it's a one-on-one convo instead of a public lecture, etc.

My tolerance for being gabbed at exists because I believe it's respectful. They deserve to feel good about their passions and have those met with attention. It feels amazing to scream about what you love unfettered. On the receiving end, it doesn't always mean I'm enjoying it or that I care about the topic. I also think there are limits... we have to bear in mind who our audience is, detect when we've bored them, or notice when we dominate to the point we're suppressing others and making things, inadvertently or not, focused on oneself.

It's a double wild card when it's a stranger. I've had some of the coolest one-sided conversations with people I encountered at a gas station. And I've had some of the worst. When I think about listening to a fictional character (a stranger) yab on, my instinctive answer is, "None of them? Sounds tedious." Not trying to be mean! I just acknowledge there are imperfect people who believe in being supportive, but don't necessarily relish unfettered monologues.

It's part of what makes me an imperfect friend. 😂😅 It's something I'm over-sensitive to and a hypocrite on. I'm self-conscious about it and trying to work on how I treat others and how to improve my attitude. I talk other peoples' ears off, realize it's selfish and too much, and then might grapple with impatience when I get gabbed at. Not fair when I've just yabbered - I'd rather improve my attitude so I enjoy it more often and can use these as real friendship connections instead of politeness.

(To be clear - there are times I like when friends go off and it depends on the relationship I have with the person.)

Mordin Solus can talk my ears off on any subject. My thoughts don't have any bearing if someone is human or not, so I'll put Newt Geiszler in, too. Newt going off on kaiju would be fun. Part of why I love those characters is their unfettered passion and way they talk. I guess those are my answers!

[benevolenterrancy]

Art prompt of Shen Qingqiu holding the aro flag (fits his color scheme)

the real reason this man doesn't realise he's tripping every romance flag in the story

[foundfamilywhump]

see like the thing with 'carewhumpers' as a concept to me is it just like... i know this is prrrrobably not really how it's meant but something skeeves me out about the idea that kindness or caretaking mixed in with hurting someone can somehow meaningfully complicate or dilute the harm done to the point of making that character no longer a 'whumper' whereas someone doing the same 'bad' things but not ever being gentle or caring for them would just be a straight-out whumper. when like... that's how 90% of irl abuse dynamics work? so i just... don't really get the point, i guess. like to me it implies something about the 'care' provided somehow mitigating or combating the harm done that. i just do not personally appreciate or enjoy.

[avanii]

Magmar's design is derpy, but also kinda cute and cool at the same time? It's grown on me. Had a lot of fun painting this fellow! I used acrylic inks this time.

[thetriggeredhappy]

before pride month ends im gonna take this opportunity to say. if a transfem corrects you for using ‘dude’ or ‘man’ to refer to her, and you reply that ‘actually dude and man are gender neutral’, consider that she knows this. and she’s correcting you because she doesn’t want to be referred to as gender neutral. she wants to be referred to as a woman. and perhaps - really stew on this one - your reluctance to refer to her with traditionally feminine language, and even to incorporate and co-opt traditionally feminine language into your casual gender-neutral usages in everyday life, are indicative of an internal sexist bias. this is not necessarily in itself a condemnation of your character - but if you feel perfectly comfortable calling someone (regardless of gender) ‘bro’ but not ‘sis’, that’s worth a smidge of introspection.

[lorelune]

cringe was fine when it was the peak of the pandemic and there was a new level of uncertainty about our conditions. cringe is now bad and evil and impure because our conditions are sooo much better. did you see that tiktok trend with cucumber recipes? chat, are we cooked? i can’t believe anne rice’s novels include INCEST. do you use retinol? what kind of eye cream do you use? you don’t use one? yikes. have you read that new article i sent you? its paywalled, yeah. if you get this browser extension that may collect all ur data, u can get past it (and don’t worry abt the data collection, google, apple, elon and the united states federal government have been doing that already). yeah, i’m not religious. i don’t really believe in astrology. i feel so much shame about sex because god forbid i feel honest pleasure in the face our conditions not just being certain, but certainly BAD

[shiraishi--kanade]

Another thing I need pjsk fandom to realize:

1) there are literal 10 years old (and younger) children in this fandom;

2) the percentage of these children in the fandom is MUCH, MUCH higher than every single one of you here on tumbrl think it is.

"why do people write so much for popular characters?" "why do people write for kudos only?" aside from the fact that the "write for yourself" is a self-perpetuating issue in every fandom and the fact that every writer deserves engagement with their works, it's because there are kids here. Who want to fit in and get praised for their creativity. Which they can only achieve by writing for popular stuff. So maybe take that into account.

[chailiker]

okay eventually i will stop clogging the tag with my thoughts on d20 fandom behavior but i gotta make another point while I’m at it

broadly i find the woobifying of the dropout cast to be really uncomfortable. there’s a weird gen z tendency to sort of stan twitter-ify every fan space and i don’t think it’s a good way to engage with media or content creators at all, especially because this segment of the fandom is really averse to any criticism whatsoever.

all of that being said i also think the criticism of the ih’s decisions in the finale has been really irritating. there’s a weirdly pervasive idea that the cast like, fundamentally misunderstood the rat grinders and the story and ignoring the cues the brennan set up for them, which is just…not true? they’re not stupid. they point out on screen that kipperlily was just “arable land”, and that it takes incredible bravery to stay dead instead of succumbing to rage. it’s just that the bad kids reaching out in friendship to the rat grinders would have been a really contrived act of benevolence. it simply doesn’t make sense in character for the intrepid heroes to do much about it, and the season/downtime mechanic wasn’t even structured in a way that would have allowed for a redemption arc to fit into the last 3 episodes.

i honestly did feel that the last 2 episodes were weaker relative to the rest of the season. we really needed an extra episode to give the lore drop in ep 17 time to breathe, and it was clear the entire season was rushed for reasons outside their control. i don’t like 5e at all and I think d20 would benefit a lot by doing like, a pathfinder season. BUT i think the disappointment people had when tbk killed the rg was misplaced and silly when a) it was already clear we did not have time for a redemption arc and b) death isn’t even real in fantasy high.

all of this is to say i understand broadly why people feel that d20 often falls short with the stories they want to see told, but i disagree with almost all of the finer points they’re making. but i also do not fall into the “uwu remember to be kind and never say a word of criticism about the cast” camp, so hopefully that gives my response to that discourse some credibility

[boywifesammy]

imagine repressed & closeted transfem dean who never figures it out. imagine the sheer amount of guilt, fear, self-hatred and disgust he’d feel at what he is. big, clunky, dangerous. he takes comfort in his power, but it makes him feel sick. when he looks into the mirror and sees his hard edges, his body feels like it’s trying to rip open from the inside, yet he has no idea why.

dean plays his father’s wife until he dies. he takes care of sam and raises him as if he’s his own son. he’s a housewife in everything but reality. he desperately wants family, desperately wants to nurture, but his body isn’t built for that.

he’s taught by john and the world that he has to be strong. he has to be a man. he can never show emotion, because it’ll only be a weakness, and weakness is deadly. dean can never have a family because his body is wrong and he can never love like a woman because he cannot be weak.

so dean holds tight to those little moments of female connection with sam and his father like a dirty secret. he lays in bed at night and pretends he doesn’t think about being softer and lovelier. he stares at himself in motel mirrors until it makes him sick. he builds muscle and crops his hair short because this thing inside of him terrifies the hell out of him and he has to do anything to keep it at bay.

women comment on his looks a lot. when he’s young, they call him pretty, beautiful, gorgeous. they compliment his soft green eyes and plush lips and spattering of freckles. secretly, dean loves it. it makes that thing inside of him flare up in joy, which is why he knows that this is dangerous, and not something to be indulged. he stays up at night obsessing. shaves every morning and runs his fingers over his soft cheeks, flutters his long eye lashes, tries to find the soft edges of his cheekbones.

this thing is slowly eating away at him. the closer he gets to it the more volatile he feels. he jerks off under the blankets with a hand over his mouth to stifle the gasping, whimpery sounds he makes. the sound of his own voice scares him. his throat chokes up when a guy hits on him and john gives him a glare. one time he puts a finger up his ass and comes so hard that he sees stars, not because of the stimulation, but just from the idea of being wet and slick and pliant between his legs.

dean loves women and it makes him feel sick to the very core. he wishes that he loved women in a normal way. instead, he sees their curvy bodies and an awful, disgusting mixture of greed-lust-jealousy rocks through him. it’s all a strange, roundabout way of wrecking himself, because it’s extremely easy to play the role they want him to play, but god if it doesn’t hurt like hell.

dean loves fucking women. he’s desperate in bed but he’s always sure to be gentle with his thrusts. it makes him feel less disgusting. he likes shoving his face into a chick’s pussy, eating her out until she’s dripping, or nuzzling into the crook of her neck as he fucks her wet cunt. he likes listening to their gasping whines and moans. the feeling of it all makes his teeth clench with guilt; her cunt on his dick, his strong thighs, the way she keeps moaning his name. but it’s so easy to pretend in moments like these.

dean puts his face into her hair, and smells her citrus shampoo as she wails out cries. he doesn’t imagine being her, but he focuses on her noises, on the softness of her body and the wetness of her pussy. he always cums silently, his entire body quivering and shaking, because he’s too scared of the noise that’d come out of his mouth if he opened it.

when rhonda hurley makes him wear her panties, he nearly throws up on her carpet from how hard his heart is beating. they’re silky on his dick. rhonda calls him pretty, beautiful, she strokes at his flaccid penis through the panties and kisses messy lines up his belly. dean is hard and shivering by the end of her teasing, leaking through the panties and flushed from head to toe.

rhonda is both the best fuck that dean ever has and his worst fears coming to life. she calls him good girl as he fucks her. it ends embarrassingly early. when dean cums, it’s with a gasping cry of her name and a girly little keen that haunts his nightmares. he doesn’t remember ever cumming so hard in his life. he shook with aftershocks for minutes after, dazed and disgusted with himself.

rhonda gives dean her number. he never calls her back. after dean leaves that town, he burns the panties and stops shaving his stubble so short. memories of rhonda make him angry. he sinks into hunting and drinks until he’s cross-eyed. dean takes solace in the horror of violence. he bathes himself in that disgust and he feels right at home in the middle of it.

sometimes, dean can’t sleep at night from how sick he feels. he tries to figure out why, but he can’t place the reason. it eats him up inside. makes him feel like a monster. he thinks that he may just be a disgusting freak of a man.

as dean gets older the comments about him getting pretty melt away. he knows he’s objectively extremely attractive, in a male model sort of way, but it doesn’t match up with the images in his head.

the thoughts get more and more humiliating as time goes on. he’s not a twink anymore and he can’t be fantasizing about being fem, but he can’t stop it. he stays up at night itching in his own skin, brutally aware that he’d look hideous and disgusting in anything girly. his body is too big and bulky. he’s a freak for being into that sort of thing.

dean eventually admits to himself that he might be a little gay. he keeps it on the dl, visits gay bars when they hit more liberal cities, and doesn’t ever repeat the same place. he likes being dressed up and bent over. he chalks it all up to a crossdressing fetish, and while that’s humiliating and sickening, it’s easier than having to deal with whatever it is that’s going on with him.

dean aches inside perpetually because he is flawed. he wants to hold his child in his arms and wear dresses and flirt shamelessly with men. he knows he’s a freak for it but he’s accepted that he’s going to perpetually live with this pain.

he gets older and older and the dysphoria gets so fucking bad that he can’t even look in the mirror anymore, but it doesn’t matter at this point. he’s completely disconnected himself from his body. he’s a sick, perverted freak in the body of a man and none of it feels right. he uses his body like a tool, a weapon, and he purposefully keeps it masculine and well-toned to push back any illusions that he’s anything but a man.

and sometimes, he’ll go to gay bars and let himself get railed to incoherence. he’ll drive three towns over while sam’s asleep and put on his makeup in an alleyway nearby. he always looks for men bigger than him. men who’ll call him pretty and beautiful and treat his ass like a cunt.

and if he’s lucky, maybe they’ll let some other words slip. maybe they’ll call him babygirl or darling or play with his pecs like tits as they pound him deep. and sometimes, if he’s really lucky, he’ll get to wear something pink and lacy. sheer panties. a bralet. stockings or a necklace.

he always cums in the first few minutes on those nights. he doesn’t mind being fucked until the other guy finishes, as long as he keeps calling him a good girl for taking it.

dean always throws up in the club bathroom afterwards. he spends hours wiping off all the makeup from his face and sleeps in the impala for the night. he gives himself another wipe the morning after and tells sam that he was out with a one night stand. it technically isn’t a lie.

one time, sam makes a joke about dean being a woman. he pushes. he calls him a pretty lady, and dean is horrified when his eyes wet a bit at it. he can’t take it. he starts the fight, but sam wins it. he pins dean down and starts to yell at him. then he sees that dean is crying. he isn’t making any noise or shaking, but his cheeks are wet.

don’t, is all he says. it hurts like hell to get out. sam seems confused, but he doesn’t question it. he doesn’t make the joke again. dean forgets about the whole thing and pretends he doesn’t feel the weird looks sam sends him sometimes.

dean dies like that, alone and angry, in a body that’s all hard edges and grief and hatred.

he’s the same in heaven. he can’t imagine being any other way. he doesn’t even know what he wants, what would make him happy. most days, he’s happy with driving his impala aimlessly, drinking while watching sunsets and tuning into the world around him. thinking, and thinking, and thinking. about rhonda hurley and her satin panties and his father and the soft, warm thing buried inside of him.

dean doesn’t know why he feels sick inside when he looks at himself, but he’s too broken to ever figure it out. the only thing that he knows is that he doesn’t feel guilt the same in heaven. that means that when he has those strange dreams of warm kisses, strong arms around his tiny waist, and the warm, beating heat of his child’s heart against his own pillowed chest, he can spend some time in bed in the morning trying to recollect the memories without hating himself for it.

[nyxi-pixie]

i feel like when you make a post anticipating a certain response to it and then one person says something that Could Be Interpreted In A Certain Way If You See It In Bad Faith, youre always going to do exactly that. peace and love

[antianakin]

I am BAMBOOZLED by the theory that Anakin was mind-controlled by Palpatine, honestly, and it's literally everywhere. The whole story falls apart if Anakin isn't a selfish, greedy, powerhungry fascist. Like this is literally the CORE of Anakin's story, that he's selfish and greedy and lusts for power over others. Just because he's a sweet 9 year old doesn't mean he can't grow up into a nightmare. How many times have you watched the news after someone commits a terrible crime and their parents are sobbing that they never saw this coming, he was such a sweet little boy, etc etc. People grow up, and kids who have a rosy view of the world grow up to be not such nice people anymore. It happens. Anakin's a piece of shit, so stop taking the fascism out of him, it's essential to the entire franchise.

[rowanthestrange]

Rusty can it be this copy of Spearhead From Space?

Because I kid you not, out of my entire collection, it’s one of the only two full duplicates I own, and daddy would like to make bank

(for the curious)

[thedrotter]

((cw blood, reference to eating a person))

(OC) More Shiba drawings, but these are actually recent! This time I will share a bit about Shiba. A non-goat creature from the Nether (She is a Minecraft OC ww) who now walks with society. She can be briefly described as strange in any angle ww

[rollercoasterwords]

I have, a genuine question for you. Do you acknowledge the racism in the original AYTD or at least know about it? Like how MsKingBean uses slurs and racist stereotypes?

hey, so, i'm a bit apprehensive about answering this because...it doesn't feel like a very geniune question to me, if i'm being honest. "do you acknowledge x thing" is a question that is inherently set up so that i'm meant to answer "yes, i acknowledge that x thing is true," because the alternative is saying "no, i don't acknowledge that x thing is true," which is already framing this interaction as if to disagree with you would be a kind of failure on my part to do some due diligence of engaging critically with a text. and the fact that you say mskingbean89 used slurs in atyd shows me that you haven't even engaged with the text, because that simply...isn't true.

if what you're referring to when you say "slurs" is the anti-romani stereotypes--this is coming from an extra chapter in the bootleg tapes focusing on greyback, where there is a slur used to describe his living situation + he + his family were portrayed as nomadic irish people in a way that was insensitive. people who read that chapter and then went back to the canon story with that characterization in mind rightfully pointed out that it was fucked-up. mskingbean89 addressed those criticisms by adding this note to the beginning of that bootleg chapter:

personally, i think this was a good way to take accountability + acknowledge the mistakes she made with that portrayal. she was a human being who made an ignorant mistake, which then just happened to get absolutely blasted to millions of people--she did not have sensitivity readers or editors looking over her fanfiction, because she did not write it expecting it to reach the level of popularity that it has. to be honest, i am not really sure how she could have better acknowledged her mistake, aside from just....not having made it in the first place. she explains her intentions without acting as though that intent cancels out harm, owns up to the fact that the stereotyping was harmful regardless of intention, and provides resources to learn while also committing to be more mindful + educate herself moving forward. honestly, that's exactly the response i would hope to see from someone who makes a mistake like this one.

i agree with you that people reading atyd should acknowledge + understand the racism regarding romani stereotypes stemming from that bootleg chapter, which is why i think it's great that there is a note literally built into the beginning of that chapter acknowledging it! but i feel as though there's been this like...game of telephone happening online when it comes to atyd, where there are now people who have never even read the story talking about things that quite literally do not appear in the base text itself. i've also seen people acting as though mkb herself did not address these issues when they were raised to her, which is just...patently false.

and so what i'm wondering here is what you're looking for from me when you ask a question like "do you acknowledge the racism in atyd." anyone who actually reads the texts has to acknowledge the racism in that bootleg chapter, because mkb puts that acknowledgment front and center at the beginning. and also like...in the part of the fandom i'm in, in the conversations i've listened to or taken part of regarding atyd, people have acknowledged the issues with that bootleg chapter and the ways it reflects back on the main story. so what do you mean by "acknowledge" when so many people, including mkb herself, have already... acknowledged it? what action are you calling for, and who are you calling for it from?

because like. if what u actually want to say here is that atyd is Irredeemably Problematic and we should all like....shun it? universally agree that it's Bad? then it's just like. it is up to each individual reading the story to decide whether that specific portrayal of greyback in the bootleg chapters is something that ruins the story completely for them or whether they still think the story as a whole holds worth. personally, i feel like i can acknowledge that there are issues with mkb's portrayal of greyback and i need to be mindful of that when reading the story so as not to internalize harmful stereotypes while still finding atyd to be a masterpiece that really beautifully deals with a lot of nuanced issues regarding class and disability and systems of power. this is just part of thinking critically when you read; many famous and beloved works of fiction contain the biases of their authors or have mistakes or issues in the way they portray things that are a product of ignorance. and i know everyone reading marauders fanfiction should understand this, because if u genuinely think that a character being negatively stereotyped means u should throw the entire work in the trash, then none of u would be touching harry potter fanfiction with a five foot pole in the first place.

so, anon - if you have actually read atyd, and there are issues with racism that you have found that i am unaware of, and not just telephone-game twitter posts of people taking shit out of context that you're accepting as truth without bothering to engage with the work yourself--if you want to have a real conversation about it, i would invite you to come to me as an actual person and not an anonymous ghost in my inbox. my dms are open, but when it comes to talking about serious issues, i tend to find it more genuine if the person coming to me actually cares enough and believes in what they're saying enough to say it as themself. and if you haven't read atyd and are just parroting things you've heard other people say online then i would invite you to actually sit down and read the work and form your own opinions on it before getting back to me. i know that might sound harsh, but honestly i'm just completely fed-up at this point with all the bad-faith takes and misinformation that i've seen people spreading about atyd just because they think it's cool to dislike a popular thing.

[decamarks]

The fake game anomalies post is amazing, how did you get the videos to look so convincing as working video games?

AHHH thank you so much!!! ^u^ I think a lot of it comes down to just knowing and keeping the way video games work in mind while animating, as well as being aware of what limitations the 'game' would have.

The games in my post were meant to resemble games with graphics somewhere between the PSX and original Xbox (Playstation 1.5, essentially), so I tried to keep poly counts close to what you'd expect for something of that era, used subdivision sparingly, and composited them with varying levels of pixelation effects to resemble game engine aliasing. Since these nonexistent games are for nonexistent consoles, I didn't try to adhere to what the actual technology would/wouldn't allow, and instead focused on what you might expect to see. Game-like lighting in particular is tricky to nail down and I definitely could've made it more 'accurate' with further adjustments, but overall I thought it was okay. As long as you think it looks visually appealing, I think it's fine. (Also it's kind of hard to be accurate to something that doesn't actually exist, LOL)

That's more about the technical side though, and like I said, you can fudge a lot of that stuff since, y'know—it's not an actual game. I think what really makes something like this more convincing is simply conveying aspects of how the game is played or being played; stuff like seemingly functional UI elements, or a player's actions appearing to influence the game in some way.

Interactivity is what distinguishes games as a medium, so this is the key component to keep in mind. Most media doesn't tend to involve active influence from its observers because the medium simply can't accommodate such a thing; printed ink and paper isn't as infinitely malleable as pixels and bytes. So things should be designed as if they are able to be altered or interacted with, even if an actual 'player' is absent. You don't need to build the engine—you just need to imply that it exists, and operates.

In my little clips, I tried to pay special attention to the supposed 'player' as well. You can't see them directly, but rather through proxy of the character or cursor they're controlling. In the first clip, the player character quickly stutters in movement, shown as a sudden stop and start in their walk cycle. You would never have a character move like this in a normal animation because it's unnatural and nonsensical on its own. But in the context of a video game, this movement is instantly recognizable. The player is pausing, tilting, and flicking the analog stick to get a better look at something—or to get away from it.

The character isn't programmed to stop and squint, and the camera isn't programmed to cut to a shot of their shocked face. The character is only a puppet for the player to interface with the game's world, and the unpredictability of a player cannot be accounted for in a preprogrammed narrative. These movements appear nonsensical and unnatural because they represent something not entirely intended. This is only one manifestation of the infinite movement possibilities within a game engine.

It's something trying to be expressed by someone that does not have the direct means to do so. But even indirectly, you can tell what is being expressed, because nothing would move like this by itself. It implies the existence of certain things beyond what is directly observable: a controller and constraints—the player, and the programming.

I think the moment you assume a player exists is the moment it becomes a game.

[fandomsoda]

Last night someone said something that was somewhat yikesy and it just got blind likes and stuff from everyone else.

This is not a call-out post. This is not here to belittle or shame the person in question and I hope that is understood. I’m currently working on a much larger post to address this issue broadly because it is an issue that is bigger than one person’s bad take and I already have attempted to explain why the take is… wrong and very evident of a lack of understanding of how the topic at hand works because I see it from many people.

but y’all I am pretty disappointed. Because everyone just sat there and accepted that claim. And it shows y’all have a lot of learning to do when it comes to understanding of the caveats of life and social issues and oppression.

For now I will just say this.

A member of a minority making a member of the majority uncomfortable or being rude to them regarding their identity IS NOT EQUAL TO OPPRESSION. Is it nice? Probably not. Should a minority person have to be polite in order to have what they say be valid? Hell no. Are there times where what’s being said is wrong? Yes. Are the majority person’s feelings hurt? Maybe. Is that oppression? No.

There is no heterophobia, there is no cisphoba, to my knowledge y’all seem to understand that. So you should understand it regarding other situations. Because that group has the systematic upper hand, it’s punching up, not punching down.

of course there are always complexities and caveats and exceptions to rules, but broadly that’s how it usually works.

And insinuating that minorities fighting back or being somewhat rude to their oppressors is “oppression” is not only insensitive and offensive, it is downright harmful to that minority. It might hurt their feelings, it might not be nice, hell it might even be too cruel or wrong, but it’s still not oppression. And I know people who hold this take are not intentionally being harmful or cruel and I know you may feel the urge to defend yourself, that’s human, but stop and wait before getting defensive. Understand that you are not under attack. No one is calling you a bad person. And chances are that you aren’t. You are simply being criticized. And I know that can be hard to handle, but in order to grow and become better people and better at understanding the world around us we must be willing to accept that sometimes we are wrong.

That’s all for now but this is just a small, specific part of a wider issue I’m noticing.

Do better, people. I understand you’re gonna make mistakes and mistakes are a part of learning but you’ve gotta be willing to learn and understand the matter. Because if you don’t learn now from someone who is being very gentle about it, you might have to learn it later from someone who is not nearly as patient or nice. Or you may never learn at all. And that’s not good either.

final note- please do not attempt to go looking for and shame the “someone” in question. Do not mention them in the notes either if you know who I may be referring to. They have responded very well to this criticism and should not be attacked for something they are willing to get better on.