#discourse hell

[anghraine]

I have quite a bit of sympathy for people with minor pet peeves that actually impact them in some way—you know, fandom hot takes that are trivial annoyances in the grand scheme of things but inescapable, or unpopular food preferences that aren't that important to them but a bit of a pain to access, or that kind of thing. It doesn't have to be a serious and profound objection to be understandable; grumbling about things other people consider trivially unimportant is like, my whole deal.

..........but.

I don't know if it's just getting older or what, but I'm increasingly puzzled by discourse about things that other people are doing away from you and which as far as I can tell, don't concern you in any way.

Like, the poll about people having insufficiently productive hobbies was annoying on a lot of levels, but it was also confusing, because I'm unsure why anyone would even care about other people making things or simply appreciating things with their leisure time. Like, I think the assumption that it's objectively healthier and perhaps even necessary for people to do arts and crafts is weird in itself, but why would anyone expect a bunch of strangers on the Internet to meet their personal standards of leisure productivity, or even care?

I feel kind of similarly about the whole "play a different game" thing people do wrt total strangers bending D&D 5e to suit their story rather than finding the optimal fit for their group's story via a different system. If their DM is pressured into it because the players refuse to learn another system (or 5e itself), that's one thing (though still really a problem for groups to navigate for themselves). But if it's just random strangers having fun with the system, the DM enjoys bending 5e to their will, and someone just happens to mention online that their group is fiddling around with it, why is it such an affront? How is some other group you don't know "playing D&D wrong" your business at all?

In a weird way, it kind of reminds me of how people who don't read fanfic go on rants about what's wrong with fanfic and how bad it is for people to read it (90% of the time their gripes are really just about genre romance tropes, let's be real, but they don't have the guts to go after romance the way they used to). Like, even if anti-fanfic stereotypes were true (and I'd argue that broadly they are not) and people are just being lazy readers, so what? Why do you feel the need to share your opinion about fanfic-reading degenerates you don't actually know and whose habits are none of your concern? Who made you god of hobbies?

I don't know, I do find these kind of pseudo-concerned, vaguely elitist pearl-clutching posts annoying, but mostly I find them puzzling.

[charonsferry]

The whole "queer is/isn't a slur" discourse is so funny to me. Girl we are slurs. We are socially unacceptable and must only be mentioned quietly. That's why we use these words

[satelliteoflove-sys]

"Just trust me bro!" is not valid evidence, especially for something as severe an accusation as race-faking and faking DID.

[anghraine]

It's fine to be influenced by how characters are framed and prefer narratives which suit your preferences. But I wish people were better at drawing a line between "suits my preferences", "inherently good writing", and "inherently morally superior character".

I strongly agree (and the argument the Twitter OP makes is one I find intensely annoying and simplistic tbh). Not every redemption arc has to be Zuko's all over again. Not every redemption arc has to even resemble Zuko's in its structure or goals.

For me, the most obvious character to contrast him with is Catra from the new She-Ra. One of the things I really admired about Catra's arc is that it doesn't completely take the Zuko path.

Zuko, whatever his flaws, is one of the most sympathetic Fire Nation characters in the show, contrasted with much worse people he's linked to or contrasted against, and clearly marked as hero material from early on in ways that make him easy to like. But Catra, for much of her arc, is a more difficult personality. She's surrounded by Team Villain characters who are considerably nicer and arguably better-intentioned than she is (e.g. Scorpia, Entrapta, even Kyle and Rogelio and Lonnie).

Certainly her redemption isn't unexpected, and the narrative does work to build sympathy for her in other ways (see: Shadow Weaver). But once Shadow Weaver leaves the Horde early in the show (to spend the rest of the series cooperating with the heroes), Catra is frequently the most toxic Horde figure around apart from Hordak himself.

And when she turns on the Horde, she suffers for it, but (at least to me) this is less about the narrative punishing her than the mark of what she was willing to risk to do the right thing. The narrative isn't interested in punishing former villains or making them grovel or jump through whatever hoops to earn acceptance or whatnot. That's not better than Zuko's, it's just something I, personally, prefer as a narrative choice.

To pick another obvious example, there's Anakin Skywalker in ROTJ, whose redeemability is tied to his actions/inactions and motives in ESB, but is much less clearly identifiable in ANH/ESB as signs of his future redemption. (And I think the argument that he wasn't really redeemed is very silly.) A lot of the power of his redemption comes from just how terrifyingly evil he seemed to be in the early parts of the trilogy (this is one of the reasons he himself saw redemption as impossible). He's not built up as a heroic figure early on and whatever the flaws in the arc, that makes it all the more affecting and compelling for me when he does turn.

And that's personal preference again! I do like Zuko's arc a lot, too. But I don't like it as the one true structure for all redemption arcs ever and I don't like the flattening of "good writing" into "conforms to my personal narrative preferences."

When Zuko apologized to uncle Iroh in the tent cause he was so ashamed of his actions and what he’d done to the only person who unconditionally believed in his ability to do good >>>>>

[todayisdeadinside]

if you have "cishet men dni" in your bio i, a trans man, will not touch you with a 10 foot pole. i should not be forced to out myself as a trans man just to interact with you. on top of that, cishet men are not inherently evil. stop trying to reinvent bioessentialism with your "girl good, boy bad!" mentality.

[frommybedroom]

pls. let’s be serious now.

you really think alice oseman, aroace alice oseman, alice oseman who has created multiple aspec characters, alice oseman who wrote an entire book where the protagonist comes to terms with the fact that she’s aroace, is going to straight-wash tori spring?

[chainsawlady]

damn our couple of days away from twitter and on tumblr especially combined with how peaceful our existence on twitter usually was, we almost forgot just how vitriolic and hateful twitter discourse gets

we got dragged into a callout post against one of our mutuals for no real reason

-Tayto

[septembermonologues]

i love when i fall behind on bell's hells, see people being incredibly angry at orym with no context, and then when i catch up i find out it's over something like him (33 passive perception) overhearing a conversation that was happening out loud in the same room that he (33 passive perception) was in and him (33 passive perception) finding comfort in his friends (a normal thing for people to do) before he (33 passive perception) tuned out and away from them because he (33 passive perception) wasn't eavesdropping on purpose (he has a 33 passive perception and the conversation was happening in the same room)

[auratale]

Exploding Hammer Car Symbol just dropped.

[crescent-moon-mollymauk]

Ngl, sometimes this site makes me think I’m the only person enjoying the past few episodes of CR. How do you not get excited by the Bells Hells constantly being presented with only options A and B, getting an option C, and then saying “actually fuck this, here’s option D”? I can’t wait to see how this plays out. Will it fix every problem? No. Will it end up causing different problems? Probably. But I’m having a great time watching them come up with an unexpected answer.

[anghraine]

It's true that minimal effort or qualifications in white men go a lot further than for most others, and is absolutely a significant issue worth engaging with. That said, I think the "mediocre white man" catchphrase is often a bit of a trap, because it's so easy for it to devolve into arguments or self-congratulations or anxiety about just how mediocre the man in question is.

IMO the question of mediocrity mostly matters when it comes to the much higher demands for qualifications or abilities or talents placed on everyone else and the smoothing of professional paths for less qualified white men. That absolutely does happen, but most of the time when I see the "mediocre white man" thing, it's about a white man who has done something morally abhorrent and not about some random guy undeservingly getting breaks in his profession.

And the thing is, if you're condemning a man for doing something horribly unethical, it doesn't matter whether or not he's actually good at writing or directing or music or speaking or inventing things or cooking or programming or lifting heavy objects or whatever. Some dreadful moral affront committed by this guy doesn't become somehow more acceptable if he's genuinely talented, nor worse if he's not. And bringing his supposed mediocrity in his profession or hobbies into the argument invites a separate and usually less important debate that dilutes the one about the guy's RL fuckery.

(This may sound like I'm just vagueblogging about Neil Gaiman, but it's not—I've seen it many times and this specific post was actually set off by seeing virtually identical discourse about a completely different, long-dead guy that had one valid criticism buried in a sea of irrelevant and IMO untrue tangents that did nothing to elevate the point worth talking about.)

[charonsferry]

the printing press is destroying people's brains. we cannot allow this newfangled machine to eat away at people's innate, natural and divine ability to make calligraphy. dni if you support the printing press.

[moranamorena]

If I see one more person saying that Jason Todd's fans only like him because they don't read comics I'm gonna lose it

Dude, they're the only ones who actually read his comics, especially his Robin runs. The amount of times I saw Jason's hater making a statement about him that isn't true to most if not any canon is riddiculus And I saw the even higher amount of people arguing and disagreeing with Jason's fans over facts based on actual panels from comics

If you hate Jason for being and angry Robin who disobeyed Bruce and got himself killed you already lost an argument

If you hate Jason for being a stupid brute who stands out only because he kills people and uses guns you already lost an argument

If you hate Jason for "stealing" from other characters and not having story elements unique to his own character you already lost an argument

Jason Todd fanbase is as intense as it is because OTHER COMIC BOOK READERS AND BATFAMILY STANS DON'T READ HIS COMICS

It's really frustrating to have other fans claiming you don't know your favourite (or one of your favourites) characters when you know for a fact that you had read so much more about him. And that you have to witness his character being butchered by both the new comic writers and people in fandom over and over again

[bardicinspired]

Also while I'm on my Vax/Keyleth bullshit. I understand the criticisms that CR3 somehow took away the tradgedy of CR1's ending. But I have to disagree

And while I don't agree that Keyleth should've been Not Coping for 30 years, that was ultimately Marisha's decision and I respect it.

However CR3 didn't change the ultimate ending of Vax and Keyleth's relationship. Keyleth was always going to reunite with Vax, she even remarks upon it herself in CR1 "I'll see you again, Vax." -because while Keyleth is going to live for thousands of years she knows she will eventually die. And she knows that Vax is out there, waiting for that moment, just as in love with her as he was when the matron stole him away.

I mean if you know the love of your life is out there as a quasi-Death god, the afterlife is real, and he is still desperately in love with you wouldn't you find it hard to move on too?

What I'm saying is, the ultimate ending of Vax and Keyleth was always going to be reuniting. It was the time they were seperated that was the tradgedy. All CR3 did was shorten that time.

And you know? 30 years of mutual yearning is still tragic enough. On top of that, they are fundementally very different people than who they were when Vax died. Keyleth has 30 years of confidence, leadership, and life experience under her belt. Vax spent 30 years as the Grim Reaper and has forgotten what it is to be alive. They are different. They don't exactly fit together any more. They have to relearn who they are to each other and there's beauty in that but there's grief and tradgedy as well.

The Vax'ildan Keyleth knew died. The Keyleth Vax'ildan knew grew older & changed. They are strangers to each other and so very much in love. And they are reunited, as they always would've been. It just took several decades instead of several millennia.

[burr-ell]

idk man i think it's telling that two months after the c3 finale, most fans who came in with c1 or c2 are, at their kindest, just enjoying the ride but still saying they hope c4 does [thing c1 and c2 did that c3 did not], and meanwhile fans who loudly defend c3 and bell's hells have been complaining about divergence and wildemount wildlings and ignoring everything else cr is doing because it's not a spigot producing their desired blorbo content

[undead-knick-knack]

You know what, I think enough time has passed and the fandom has calmed down enough, I can finally give my genuine thoughts and feelings about Imogen and Laudna as a ship.

I put it below a keep reading because it got kind of long, and also I'm not super confident about writing meta