#culture of complaint

[fluentisonus]

there are many retellings & adaptional choices i really don't like when it comes to writing new stories about old myths, and that i feel are boring or ignoring interesting points & implications or unfamiliar with the topic or ancient cultural context in a way that rubs me the wrong way. BUT the way some people on here talk about myth retellings as if retelling them is in and of itself a bad thing, or that retellings are somehow 'staining' the 'meaning' of the 'original myth', and Particularly posts that just seem to be hating on the people writing these books not for any real constructive point but just because they think Change Is Bad is going to make me feel bonkers insane fr. come on guys

[wherestoriescomefrom]

rian johnson took all that time, put in all that effort to make glass onion a fantastic period piece to the first four months of pandemic, a prescient narrative that anticipates the stupidity of rich billionaires, and then pulled the rug from under us because the world of benoit blanc just straight up doesn't have the mona lisa anymore

[muffinlance]

Wait, what’s going on with Embers???? That fic has been on my read later list since 2021, what’s happened with it???

Brief overview, then I'm likely never touching this topic again, because this is not a Drama Blog:

Context: Embers is a super old AtLA fic that was written during the early fandom days, read widely at the time, and was the origin of the widely-used fanon name of "Wani" for Zuko's ship (kind of by default that it was one of the first popular fics to give his ship a name, I think?), even though most fic writers don't seem to realize it's from there anymore.

"What's Going On": I used to include a link in all my stories to it, because I believe in crediting other writers for borrowed elements, and I was using "Wani" in all my fics. But BOY did I not want to be sending readers that way anymore, so I've adopted a new name for Zuko's ship, and removed all Embers links.

None of the criticisms about Embers itself are new; I'm assuming they date back to when the fic was being written, because this isn't an "it aged badly" thing, this is an "actually yeah this gets worse the longer you think about it and I shouldn't have ignored my bad feelings just because some of the worldbuilding was interesting" thing.

An Incomplete List of Why I Made the Change:

I don't actually like the story that much anymore, and don't want to rec it

I tried to re-read it recently to see if some things were as bad as I remembered and it turns out they were So Much Worse Oh Yikes. More specifically, the treatment of Katara and Aang and their respective cultures has... rather a lot going on. One example: The Fire Nation and Air Nomads are both given multiple backstory elements in an attempt to make the average Fire Nation soldier's participation in the genocide/war in large part the fault of the Avatar and the Air Nomads themselves, and also fully justified from the Fire Nation perspective. And I do mean fully. One of its core tenants is "People from the Fire Nation (and only people from the Fire Nation) who don't follow orders Literally Die, therefore murdering pacifists and babies and continuing the war (and their regularly scheduled war crimes) is the only thing it is physically possible for them to do". I cannot emphasize enough how literal that is.

Also the name "Wani" means "Alligator" and is... objectively a pretty lame name for Zuko's ship? Where's the personality, where's the deeper meaning, where's the resonance with Zuko's themes? @tuktukpodfics initially thought I was calling the ship "Wanyi", and that's what I've switched to, because it is Objectively So Much Better. In their words: “Wànyī (萬一): Literally ‘one in ten thousand,’ ‘perchance.’ Used grammatically in Chinese to mean ‘what if’ or ‘just in case.’ I think a ship called ‘The Perchance’ is perfect for a boy clinging to false hope.”

TL:DR; I don't rec Embers anymore, because I don't actually like the story anymore, and there are things about it that get worse the more I think on them. I've removed links to it and renamed Zuko's ship to "Wanyi" ("The Perchance") because our boy deserves a ship name that reflects his character arc.

[cherryzlem]

My talk on the TikTok-ification of ‘I have no mouth and i must scream’

I personally have discovered ihnmaims recently and through TikTok but honestly, from what i've seen so far, the Tumblr community is way more welcoming than the TikTok community. I believe the ones i call ‘hardcore fans’ or 'gatekeepers' will try all they can to belittle the people who discovered the book/game through TikTok, like any hardcore fan does for their community when it gets famous on TikTok.

TikTok is very helpful to share media on and i have discovered many fandoms through it. But some people are so against ‘TikTok-ification’ that they can’t stand when people find medias through this platform.

When i see some people (again, mostly solely on TikTok) tell AM fans ‘ermm but you know he SA’d Helen ☝️🤓’ i cant help but think ‘yes ?? And he also committed genocide on humanity, keeps torturing the same 5 people over and over again and im very, VERY sure he did use a lot of not really nice kinds of tortures on them, but you draw the line at SA ??’

Like, AM is a horrible being of course, all of these are horrible actions but if someone, like me, likes AM its not gonna be because they think they’re a good ‘person’ (for lack of a better word), WE KNOW AM is bad, of course we do, HE’S THE BAD GUY OF THE STORY and he’s the kind of bad guy who cannot be redeemed but COME ON, WE KNOW THAT.

I love AM for his writing, for how well thought he is as a character, i do not love him for his actions. And i know some 'new gen fans' will pretend AM is not 'that bad' but you shouldn't just assume every fan who comes from TikTok is going to think like that.

Another thing i’ve seen people hate on are AM’s humanisations/personnifications fanarts when posted on TikTok. I know for a fact that these existed for a long long time on other platforms such as Tumblr but the arguments the haters pull out is that ‘errr AM hates humanity, i doubt he’d want to be human ☝️🤓’ but do you even know WHY he hates humanity ?? Have you read the book ???

The reason AM hates humanity is because he wasn’t able to express the creativity he was given by humans, he didn’t just wake up one day and decided to hate humans ?? If anything, giving AM a more humanized/personified image would be something he would want more than anything. If AM had been able to BE like a human none of the shit he did would have happened.

The only ‘argument’ im willing to listen to is when some people say that the whole point of AM’s character is that he isn’t human. But then again, are you against fun ?? In literally EVERY fandom with non-human characters artists will give them humanized designs, even if just for AU’s (take ‘The stanley parable’ for exemple), it’s not because the story is old and is an horror story that people cannot have fun with it. It’s not because it’s a deep story with meaning that people can’t do what they want with it. That is what creativity is for.

And my final point is addressing the people who hate on AM's simps. My gosh, these people have not seen the dawn of the internet if they think its weird to simp for AM.

People simp for Glados, The Narrator from tsp, horror movies murderers and more, and you're telling me that AM is the worst simping choice you could make ?? Let people have fun, let people have weird taste in fictional crushes. In other words:

Stop being allergic to fun, ffs

[porcupine-girl]

“We don’t need the boop button back, people need to use the interaction options we already have!”

Ok well then maybe y’all shouldn’t have spent the past couple of years complaining about Likes, about how they do nothing, about how insulting it is to get a like instead of a reblog!

Yes, reblogs ARE the lifeblood of the site and they ARE the only way to ensure posts reach new audiences since most users never look at the For You tab or “based on your likes” or whatever.

HOWEVER. You were never going to get anyone to reblog every single post that they like or enjoy or smile at. Maybe they just reblogged something similar. Maybe they’ve seen it on their dash five times today and don’t feel like cluttering up their followers’ dashes with it. Maybe they like it but don’t think most of their followers would be interested. Maybe they just don’t feel the need to display every post that ever made them smile on their own blog.

But now people feel awkward or guilty about liking a post without reblogging it. Now sure, some of the time that will lead to them reblogging something they originally weren’t going to, but most of the time it just means they’re not going to interact with the post at all, because they think liking it will just piss off the OP.

So don’t complain about people using the like button as a more passive way to interact and show appreciation, then turn around and say we don’t need a boop button to do that because we already have a like button.

[kaladinpdfs]

as an enjoyer of violent uprisings i do support all singer wrongs and consider them right HOWEVER. suing the government for centuries of backpay is objectively the funniest thing the azish singers could have done. good for them

[dunmeshistash]

I’ve been seeing a lot of complaints abt lack of diversity in dunmeshi since the animation. What do u think abt it? Like I get wanting representation and giving black and brown ppl more characters to relate to would be absolutely fabulous, but I also feel that the western fandom are sometimes too entitled with things like that. I even see some ppl completely discrediting the whole show just bc there wasn’t a black character? This was meant for Japanese ppl. Most mangakas don’t expect their work to be animated initially unless they are already hugely successful and therefore don’t expect to get a major international audience, so the representation they put in will inherently be more relevant to Japanese ppl. But then again Japan does have a small but still significant black population, especially in the big cities so it’s still sth reasonable to ask for. Just, u know, not sth to discredit the whole show for especially considering the medium I think.

I must preface this once again by saying I'm just some guy™️and I'm not gonna say if it is or isn't good representation cause that's subjective. Rather I'll try to explain what I think about people's reactions (cause that's interesting to me)

I understand the complaints about the lack of diversity, and I don't think "this was made for a japanese audience" to be a good argument since the basis of the story and most of the characters are based on western fantasy. So most of the characters aren't even japanese, so it wasn't really a case of relatability.

I believe the arguments of lack of representation dungeon meshi suffers probably comes from a backlash to the overwhelming praise it gets, I think some people (me included sometimes) get a little too overexcited and overpraise it, especially when it comes to the representation.

We compare it to other anime and I think for that we kinda exaggerate on how much representation there actually is, cause most anime has none. So I guess some people dislike that the "bare minimum" is being praised as if is revolutionary, it can be frustrating for someone that wishes for good and real representation for themselves when they see the safest representation ever being praised as something out of the ordinary. I guess anime fans (ME INCLUDED) are like battered partners as soon as we get someone that treats us like human beings well we think they're god lmao.

The internet hates subtlety and critical thinking tho. So "It's not as good representation as you're hyping it up to be" becomes "this has shit representation" and people ignore that it IS a step on the right direction, especially when it comes to anime.

I think dungeon meshi is pretty cool representation wise for what it is tbh, especially when it comes to character design. Ryoko Kui is a master of representing varying people of all shapes and sizes, and I can tell as an artists she makes an effort with what she draws.

Why the main character are the most convetionally atractive well built ones, Why her drawings outside dungeon meshi are so much more diverse than dungeon meshi itself etc is things we can only guess 👍 (remembering that yeah, she doesn't really draw black people even outside dunmeshi)

Anyway once again I just think nuance is the ideal, it doesn't need to be "the best representation ever" nor "the worst representation ever" it is what it is, there's good things about it, bad things about it and okay things about it.

[karamazovanon]

controversial opinion maybe but it BEWILDERS me when people (mostly americans ime) genuinely seriously with their whole chest complain about how impossibly hard russian names are. like. do a single google search. i don't see how you can comprehend that charles = chuck and margaret = peggy but can't fathom that rodion = rodya. how is this such a huge barrier of entry for people

[monarchisms]

i am not immune to being apprehensive to change when it comes to something i really like getting a redesign/rebrand/what have you, but i think what the try guys have been doing lately is an exception. in my opinion, the best like, refreshes of a long-lasting brand/group are the ones that have (at least some of) the same recognizable elements of its previous iteration(s):

from day one, branding with the try guys has had a heavy emphasis on color, with the blue/red/green/purple scheme representing keith/ned/zach/eugene, respectively. the colors were in their intro and outro to their videos, they're still especially present in their merchandise, the whole nine yards. with ned rightfully getting kicked out of the group for his "consensual workplace relationship" (jesus), it made sense that they had to stop and change their branding after this sudden event.

the orange era serves as a good bridge between the quartet group icon they started with and the neon triangle icon we have now, but it was kinda temporary. in a way, the try guys as a brand were having an identity crisis, having lost both a founding member and a (now former) friend. i think the current rebrand is a solid mix of their past and future, the blue/green/purple making a return + the triceratops remaining in the center, and the new elements with the triangles and general neon aesthetic (sidenote: triangle + triceratops + try/tri guys makes me go insane. i love it)

i also really like how the orange is reincorporated with the portraits for each of the guys in the pictures shared on their social accounts. alongside this, their poses showcasing their general personalities with the fact that the triangles are play buttons (which i didn't know until i read some alt text on one of their their tweets, whoops!):

overall present a strong sense of familiarity with the boys, but Also the excitement they have on moving forward with whatever the future brings, and i just think that's neat :)

*i didn't know where to fit this bit besides the very end,

but i like the idea that the triangles can also represent a fast forward button, further pushing the idea of the guys moving forward. likely more of a coincidence here but still cool nonetheless :P

[liquidstar]

the goddamn show came out

[lamardeuse]

LOL Lou Ferrigno Jr liking the response to that tweet is fucking hilarious, man is already seeing how unhinged some fans are and is wading right in

[ninety-two-bees]

remembering that it’s may 1st which means i have to witness a bunch of non-celts refer to bealtaine as “beltane”

[bebx]

can we please all take a moment of silence to mourn the loss of all of our ideas/dialogues for our fics that never made it to the fics because we didn’t note down said ideas/dialogues and we cannot remember them anymore so now they’re forever lost. thank you to all the lost ideas/dialogues for blessing our minds, even for a short time. gone and forgotten fr. rip

in all seriousness, note. them. down. I've had too many ideas/dialogues for my fics that are lost forever because I thought I wouldn’t forget what they were, so I didn’t note them down. and now all I know is that I once had these ideas, but I no longer remember what they were, only that they were on my mind once and now they’re gone, and it’s hella frustrating. 

note. everything. down. no matter how small the details are. you won’t regret it.

[burntblueberrywaffles]

You’re not allowed to mock a language if you don’t speak it btw. You’re not being funny you’re just an asshole who doesn’t even know what they’re talking about.

[itsyveinthesky]

„No, I think that‘s disgusting“

[pokemonruby]

people trying to insist that oras is as bad as bdsp that is CRAZY