#just this particular trend

[usernamesuggestionsarefunny]

I hate you, slash fics whose entire premise is blatantly disrespecting replacing a female character with the male character you want for your other male fave scene by scene super non-creatively.

[sheogayrath]

(blogger voice) of course i understand if you have trouble navigating real life social situations autism website etc etc however if you fail to recognize and play along with my infinite levels of extremely tumblr-specific post-post-irony i will viciously make fun of you but in such a way that it's completely unclear what i'm actually doing to anyone but people in my social circle. hey remember being a child and other children would ask you slightly weird questions that you answer in good faith but then you'd hear them giggling when you turned around and you were never sure why, glad that never happens anymore

[volitioncheck]

does near every single post-canon DE fic out there need to be tagged ‘Sober Harry Du Bois’? i’m getting so tired of it.

do i expect every single piece of fan content to have to fully delve into the often-depressing always-complex topic of addiction? not really. sometimes you just want to write/read a silly fluffy romance one-shot, whatever. i get it. but i think my issue is specifically with the fact that for nearly every sillyfluffy au out there, there almost must be a ‘sober harry du bois’ tag. and it does feel very slapped-on more often than not.

i think to me it is an unconscious statement that nothing *good* can ever happen to harry du bois until he is completely and permanently sober. before solving the next big case, he has to be sober. before quitting the force, he has to be sober. before falling in love with kim, he has to be sober. before accomplishing anything, starting any sort of recovery, making any life improvement, he must first be sober.

sobriety as a goal, as a journey, and honestly as a concept in of itself is not as cut and dry as so many people think it is. and i think it would serve a lot of people well if they did some introspection on the implications of how nearly every single post-canon fic that isn’t dealing directly with harry’s addiction have him as completely sober instead.

if the plot of the fic isn’t going to touch directly on harry’s substance use (and again, i’m not demanding that every single fic should), why does that mean that sober!harry must be the default?

i think i am just tired of reading a casefic, a smutty one-shot, a fantasy au, whatever, where it almost seems that before getting on with the plot, the author feels obligated to first assure us that the harry we’re reading about is a Sober Harry. it’s established with a couple lines in the exposition, probably about his improved appearance, a tag up top, and then never brought up again; a checkmarked box. like the societal image of An Addict has completely prevented people from being able to imagine a person just, continuing to live life, while still struggling with addiction.

life happens, with all of its backslides and achievements, mundanity and changes, to people with drug addictions just as much as people who don’t. is a post-canon harry who isn’t sober not worth writing about?

i think so. i think the game we all played thinks so too. in fact i think that sentiment is woven into the game’s very core. i just wish i saw that reflected in our fan content more.

[howtobecomeadragon]

begging st fanartists to draw dustin with some fuller cheeks........ a cute belly....... a double chin.......

[bookwyrminspiration]

politely, can we please express our differing opinions without being rude/using ad hominem attacks? "you just can't handle [thing]" is so condescending for no reason, and unhelpful/inaccurate to boot. "just say [different point]" is, once again, condescending and dismissive. "how did you even come to [certain conclusion]?" logically, same as you. disagreeing doesn't mean it's senseless or baseless. these are just some common examples; there are others

no, you don't have to agree with everyone else's opinions/theories/characterization/analysis. I certainly don't. but the way a lot of the fandom's been expressing it lately feels so antagonistic and unpleasant.

[svtskneecaps]

oh also also, baghera getting increasingly french at the end of the timer was so fucking funny and i love her so much, like when her and phil fought and phil killed her and her accent thickened until she abandoned words and made french noises CHEF'S KISS reminds me of when she played outlast w cellbit slime and jaiden and got progressively more french as the night wore on, genuinely had a blast hearing her progressively dropping more and more swears in french

also reminds me of something i THINK i remember, think it was her who said during brazil she kept accidentally speaking french to people because of how close she felt to them

[eff-plays]

I love how so much Astarion fic is like "She loved him not because he was beautiful ... She loved him for him. For his ... um. Sense of humor. And his. Skills. And how he um. Picks a lock. And uuuuuh. Shots a bow. And also his um. Uuuuh. For just being him, you know. For how very him he is. He's just so very Astarion haha. Definitely not becuse he's hot though. He's more than that. He's. Um. funny. In a gallows humor way. Haha. Yes she loves his dark humor. They had sooo much in common. Anyway haha here's more smut describing his body in perfect detail btw."

Girl ya whole ass is out!!!

[whiskeyswifty]

in defense of 1989:

the breathless, wailing anguish with which she howls "take me HOOOOOoooooome" as she finally gives in to her vices, her weaknesses, knowingly but willingly. because she's so tired of doing the right thing, the smart thing, so lonely, so hopeful, and soooo horny she's helpless against self destruction. A song so unflinching in its awareness of that while also unapologetic in her choice to fully throw herself into temptation.

and even still the continued breathless, endless questioning in out of the woods. is this it? is it finally over? when it be over? when will someone just love her, and when will she stop doubting that they don't? when will this cycle of searching and heartbreak end? the way the song ends, so desperate is she for guidance that her voices harmonize together in a nearly religious choir, calling to the heavens for an answer. utterly lost, screaming into the forest doubting everything she remembers, was it real? can she even remember herself?

In I wish you would, how she turns a quiet, fleeting moment of laying in bed, watching headlights crawl across her bedroom wall though the gap in her curtains into a bombastic tour through all the regrets and dashed hopes that fly through her head. how you can mentally run through the span of fifty emotions over the course of ten seconds.

wildest dreams where the song is paced using her own heartbeat i mean what a clever way to quite literally let you into her heart

also in wildest dreams, giving into the idea that maybe this is what she deserves maybe, all she deserves. it's all she'll ever be, just a memory to someone and so in that fatalist acceptance, she's determined to at least make sure she's a phenomenal memory. and she asks them to lie to her, just this once. she doesn't ask for anything else, just to be told one time that she's worth remembering. an incredibly vulnerable thing to admit about how you see yourself and how dark of a place to be mentally.

the murky, wobbly synth and wistful whispery voices on this love. the whole song sounding like a fog or like wading in the tide as it ebbs and flows. so tactile in how it renders the feeling of wading through the fog a breakup or dissolution. not sure what the right thing to do is, to turn around and fight for them, to let them go, to move on. a song where she's so lost, she surrenders her fate completely and accepts whatever happens will happen and completely succumbs to the current, wherever it takes her and whatever it brings. she has to believe they'll come back on their own because there's nothing else to do now. she's done everything she could and it's just up to the tides of fate.

i mean clean?? hello??? one of the most apt metaphors for breaking up with someone when the relationship was intense and maybe codependent or manipulative. how addiction can be a person, and all the same trappings apply. how the whole album was her struggling through that. revisiting it over and over, how hard it is to try to live without them, as if it feels like drowning. but ultimately finding a baptism of self in the drowning, being the one to save herself for the first time, realizing she could save herself. revolutionary idea for the person who wrote all 4 prior albums, a monumental moment of growth. while still acknowledging that the itch to return to them will always linger, but recognizing that that's not love or fate or destiny like she once thought it was. it's just her insecurities trying to drag her back into bad habits, ultimately pulling the monster out from under the bed and in the harsh light of day, seeing it for what it is and rendering it unable to fool her anymore. one of the most pivotal moments in her mental and emotional growth as a person that she's ever discussed in her art. Where she completely abandons the fairytale idea of fate and destiny and begins to embrace her autonomy.

bonus of YAIL being one of the quietest, most intimate and mundane stories of love she’s ever written. how poignant for it to come after the bombastic pop and clashing synths of the sweeping and tragic romances regaled on the entire album. as if to say nah, real love, true love is in the quiet, unremarkable moments. the synths and echoes used again here but in a more dreamy, ethereal way, as if it's not happening quite yet but it's a wish for something totally different than she had before, something she should have wished for all along. a beautiful contrast!!

also just i'm sorry but blank space was so clever, maybe you had to be there but for her to come out with this song after the Red era and just.... absolutely destroy the pervading narrative about her with a sledgehammer but in the most tongue and cheek way, the most above it all way. like look how stupid you sound? this is the person you think i am? do you hear how ridiculous this shit is? get a grip! she not only made them into the fool and came off smarter and savvier than anyone else, she made BANK off of their stupidity. slay of the century!!!

basically 1989 is the rawest and most honest depiction of a woman in her 20s at some of the lowest points your 20s can bring. how through that time, as you figure out who you're supposed to be as an adult, you completely lose sight of who you are, and because of that you feel the lowest about yourself you may ever feel in your life. You let yourself get treated horribly and you begin to wonder if this is all there is. and it's awful and it feels endless and so lonely because you feel like the only person going through it, that everyone else knows something you don't, and that you're pathetic and worthless for falling so behind everyone else. but at the same time your 20s are soooooo fun and exciting and liberating because of your first foray into independent adulthood, so to lay unapologetically pop instrumentals over these crushing feelings is genius. it's the whiplash of that time in your life, the oscillation making each feeling of euphoria and devastation that much more potent. And how she emotes on this album is unlike anything else! She’s theatrical with her syllables and delivery as if she might never get the chance to say any of this again!

but also, the perhaps unconscious metaphor she presented that so many people, fans included, seem to fall victim to. the idea that oh, it's just pop music, it's not that deep, it's soulless and vapid. only serious music can actually be emotional, when the words she's saying and the hard truths about herself she's conveying are raw and bleeding open wounds. repetition isn't laziness, but a manifestation of anxiety and building tension. heavy synths and electro-pop stylings aren't soulless compared to guitars, but a way to unground you from reality and give you that atmosphere of disorientation and so as she grapples with losing her bearings, so do you. it's a musical allegory for how in your twenties someone can outwardly be having the time of their life, but inwardly be the lowest they've ever been. it's the eternal duality of your 20s, rendered so beautifully and harnessing musical stylings so masterfully to convey this experience. i'll defend it forever for that reason and implore people to reexamine their view of pop music and pop instrumental compositions as less artistic achievements and less emotional than acoustic ballads. sadness isn't the only vulnerable emotion. confusion, anger, anxiety, frustration are all profound and loud emotions that deserve an electric guitar because sometimes words aren't enough for how much you're feeling, and it's up to a cacophonous soundscape of electric guitars and moog synthesizers and your own cathartic screams to fill in the rest.

[coulson-is-an-avenger]

ok I love Malevolent so much and all the art I see for it is absolutely fucking phenomenal, however I do have to speak my truth and throw in my two hater cents because Arthur Lester, widower who had a midlife crisis after his entire child died and then went headfirst into detective work for fucking years, is not a scrawny 20 year old twink. Some of you are drawing bill cipher😭

[tangledinink]

I'm concerned about your latest post, are you okay????

I'm okay!!! ^^; I'm not in any kind of danger or anything, I'm just having a bad day lol. I've had worse, though, and I will be fine.

[damnable-bell]

Just some disconnected, inchoate and probably defensive thoughts on "HARD," the reaction to "HARD," and where it fits within SHINee's discography (written in bullet-point format, since I'm supposed to be working):

I'm not here to discipline anyone into liking the song; it's perfectly legitimate to feel disappointed by an artist embracing a sound you don't personally enjoy.

Having said that, I also tend to roll my eyes at knee-jerk dismissals of "fourth gen" music. Pop music changes, or else it stagnates. If I'm weighing a piece of music as a critic, and not just as an individual with strongly held generic and aesthetic preferences (which, again, require no defense), I can't begin and end by totaling up the number of chanted choruses and anti-drops—I mean, I can, it would just make me a very conservative and not particularly illuminating critic.

Other than excellent production, what stands out to me about "HARD" in opposition to any number of more po-faced recent boy group releases (cf. Kayla Beardslee on how too many boy groups right now "are obsessed with coming off as really cool") is how much fun the members are having in playing around with goofy fourth gen motifs. There's nothing ironic or parodic about it—they are, as a friend said, sincerely committed to the bit, but also clearly relishing in the ridiculousness of it all. I mean, consider the dick jokes.

Is "HARD" a good song? I think so. Is it a good SHINee song?Putting aside the question of whether "HARD" feels sonically distinct from other recent boy group releases (or how much), the underlying playfulness of it feels distinctly SHINee. In that sense, it reminds me of "LUCIFER," which also embraced a more hard-edged sound/aesthetic already popular in K-Pop at the time, but which still feels/felt distinctly SHINee in its flamboyance (see Occupied Territories' brilliant write-up).

[sunieepo]

i like how everyone on this site agrees nepotism is Bad Actually until it's goro and haya0 miyazaki and then suddenly hayao is a Bad Dad because he didn't automatically want to give goro a directing job because he believed he wasn't ready for it. and then goro proceeded to direct the most mid ass movie.

like i swear to god people online are incapable of being normal about haya0 miyazaki. they either worship the ground he walks on based on misinformation images (ie the "anime was a mistake" pic which he literally did not say) or they absolutely despise the man for... (checks notes) not wanting to be nepotistic?

obviously the way he treats and raised goro wasn't great but the fact that yall expect this man to be supportive of his son's shitty career when he's literally not very good at directing is. funny as fuck. anti-nepotism until it gets dressed up as "parents should be nice to their children" and then suddenly nepotism is Good Actually. if goro were anyone else he wouldn't even have been able to direct earthsea and maybe ursula k le guin's work could have been spared such a shitty adaptation lol.

ftr i neither hate nor love hayao, he is just a dude who makes art to me. i dont mind people disliking or liking him inherently, but i just wish people would be less parasocial about it and also stop basing their opinions off of misinformation and maybe think a little bit critically about the whole goro situation being quite frankly nepotism <_<

[clowningaroundmars]

hey. hey did yall notice smthn interesting about the kane dogs in the show and the mechanical hounds in fahrenheit 451? :)

especially the energy boosted kane dog? especially especially bc it grew an extra set of legs?

ya wanna know what else is interesting?

:)

[theminecraftbee]

okay, so i mean this as kindly as possible, but: a quick rundown on some ask etiquette on tumblr.

the tl;dr here is: if it can be your own post... maybe make your own post?

the slightly longer version is: i don't have the energy to read a lot of stuff, and ultimately, this is my blog, so i'll only post stuff if i read it, either agree with it or can disagree in a polite way, and have some response to make to it that's better than 'cool'. additionally, i have no ability to contact anon askers. therefore, if you send me something that i don't have the energy to read, don't want to post, don't have a good response to, or just vaguely don't agree with, it won't get posted, and you won't know why it didn't get posted.

and the thing is, that's fine, but if you spent more than like, thirty seconds on it... you should probably go ahead and make your own post! if it is For Me for some reason, you can tag me in it! (fanart/fic/etc is a good example of this.) you don't run the risk of me not answering, because it will be your own post, and you can use that post to show it to the world!

if it's something that requires my input or is participating in a conversation with me - well, that's different! that can't be it's own post, because it's either something you want me to respond to or something that is in response to me. i get plenty of asks that can't be their own post. additionally, if it's short/didn't take any effort, cool, send it to me if you want my input! i may or may not respond, but then you and i don't have to feel bad about losing your thing, because it didn't take much effort!

but if you're sending an ask to my ask box (or anyone's ask box) and you really want the world to see it, the best way may be to make your own post instead.

[ifmagicexists]

there's something that bothers me so much whenever i read or see magic reveal concepts that involve "i'm more mad you lied to me than i am about the magic how could you keep such a big secret from me" and i finally realized its because it feels so. dismissive of merlin's struggle? him having to watch people with magic be arrested or executed or burned day after day after day, to listen to the people closest to him so casually refer to it as evil, as though that were an unquestionable fact, having to live every single day less and less sure he could ever be accepted after hiding so long and seeing so much.

like in general but esp as a queer person, seeing these takes that make a magic reveal just about "why didn't you tell me don't you trust me" when actually the characters did not really give merlin much reason to trust they would be accepting (and in fact often in their very reactions demonstrate exactly why he was hesitant), and even if they had he lives!!! in a place where it is literally illegal!!!! like it is so frustrating to constantly see these perspectives where arthur or the knights angrily question why merlin couldn't tell them and merlin just being silent in response, when its so beyond clear how difficult a position merlin was in.

merlin is almost never the main character in his own magic reveal scenarios beyond just worrying about the other person liking him again, and while i get why that is, since its the other person's perspective shifting usually, its still frustrating because its meant to be a culmination of his life's struggle and finally a full realization and acceptance of himself, and i wish we could see more of that: more of merlin's own messy emotions towards having to hide for so long, over fearing his own friends, over suppressing who he is, over getting used to being open about it for the first time in his entire life.

[mirukiamauri]

Uhm ok seems like only special cards (promo, 4 stars) have exclusive hand drawn artworks of the characters wearing the coords. The "normal" cards use the arcade models renders which are still cute anyway.