#may they be voted out

[asocial-skye]

no but Hindutva is so fucking stupid, because it’s a bunch of old men going around imposing a religion whose main thing is that it’s not a religion; it’s a way of life. a way of life where the gods don’t give a shit if you aren’t a believer and non-believers aren’t going to burn for their sins. a religion that preaches tolerance, the importance of doing good deeds even through you are trapped in a cycle of life, death and suffering. seriously, to break from the cycle, you just have to lead a good life doing good deeds and to help others. nowhere in hindu scriptures does it say that you will not attain moksha if you aren't a hindu; just do the good deeds, and you will become one with God. hinduism is like ‘let live and do good’ it says nowhere that you are a bad person if you aren’t a Hindu in doctrine; that’s what abrahamic religions do. I’m not even sure BJP understand what Hinduism is. fucking idiots.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for voting in the poll to decide who was going to be the leader of the band! It turned out to be such a close race!

[egophiliac]

final character for the justice rides is kr jigen, who is most definitely a g3 homage, and so far, feels like all of them have a theme of being based on existing krs with a strong sense of justice

honestly at this point the biggest surprise is that he actually did turn out to be G3 and not some other absolutely wild choice (I had harbored some little hope that maybe the blue/red might be for Meteor, alas) (m-maybe if we hit enough preregs they'll give us a Fourze rider...)

I'm definitely enjoying all the justice boys though! they look like they're going to have a really delightful dynamic; can't wait to see them in action :D

but now we gotta get ready for a weekend of TOUGH BOYS! I have a couple of guesses based on those silhouettes, but uh. well. we'll see who they actually turn out to be. :')

[dimension-20-every-introduction]

Everyone Introduced in Dimension 20's Fantasy High: Junior Year episode 17

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[onefey]

so now that tears of the kingdom has been out for a month, it's time to take this one again! this time i'm SURE i didn't forget anyone or make any minor wording errors. have fun!

anyway,

[adipostsstuff]

The 'Es is Mikoto's younger sister' crack-but-not-really theory post

@74n5n don't say I don't do things for you.

This is mainly a joke theory I thought of randomly but when I thought about it more there was actually a lot of evidence for it so I'm going to compile a list of it here.

They have similar appearances, doen to their ahoges. I reblogged a post earlier about this one.

Es is a similar age to what Mikoto claims his sister to be (early high school age)

Mikoto calls his younger sister brilliant. I don't know about you but I consider memorising large sections of law, psychology and philosophy to be pretty brilliant. They canonically "have a thirst for knowledge" and enjoy learning about new things and may possibly be the most learned person here despite having thr least amount of lived experience.

Es refers to themself as 'uchi' in his second voice drama, which a less formal and more childish pronoun rather than 'boku' like they usually do, which may indicate dropping their guard in front of him and becoming more comfortable around him. This is the only time they refer to themselves as that. (Credits to @/somokoto for pointing this out.) (Side note: it is somewhat amusing to me that the characters Es seems to be closest to are the ones voted guilty trial 1.)

The rest of this is mainly behavioural similarities which isn't actually evidence and more so parallels but I'm going to list them anyways.

5. Both are prone to overworking themselves.

6. Both are a lot stronger than they appear to be. Mikoto is "a normal man with average build" yet he is the 3rd strongest prisoner out of the lot. Es and Kotoko both point out that their physique is not very strong yet they fucking knocked Kazui off of his chair. Sure, he was taken by surprise, and they were quite panicked, but Kazui is heavy and Es is tiny. They should not have the muscle to do that from their appearance alone but they do. They could probably vault half of the prisoners across the room and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

7. Onto the last point, both (well, John more so than Mikoto, but he is just a different aspect of him) have violent instincts, which is something they share with many others and is likely the result of forgotten trauma.

8. Both have identity issues and dissociate.

9. Also I believe in the "Es committed a murder in the past" theory so that in this context is very funny. Siblings who kill and then forget about it entirely separately.

Like, I do not believe thus will actually happen because I'm not sure where to fit that in narratively and it seems like a pretty big reveal to just gloss over, and also you would think Mikoto would recognise his own younger sister (unless he's been away from home for that long and hasn't been able to return, which, given his work situation, isn't entirely implausible), but it would be wild if it were to come true.

[v4visms]

if it doesnt have a ship name in the brackets, then i'm unaware of it (or maybe it just doesn't have one). if it does have one, feel free to tell me. i can't edit the poll, but now i know

if you voted "none of these," i'd like to hear in the reblogs/tags what i missed!

[weebsinstash]

Sigh but like ok, ATSV spoilers but, that scene where Miguel is chokeslammimg and saying all that awful mean shit, which is kinda justified because from his perspective what Miles wants to do could, as far as he knows, destroy an entire universe. Well I'm such a sucker for "ok you burned me and betrayed me and now that you want my help or forgiveness, you don't get it" as a trope, so

imagine Reader being in a similar situation and of course Miguel is even starting to kind of catch feelings. You get introduced to him and the society and everything is hunky dory for a few months but, the Bad Thing Happening now has to happen to you, and, you feel hurt, you feel betrayed, you feel like all semblance of choice has been ripped away from you. Wait, you mean this super cool but massive responsibility that took you from a zero to hero... was never supposed to happen to you? You're a mistake? Like imagine you're actually doing an amazing job at being a hero and then running away from the Society, an above average gifted spider, maybe even potentially a mutant, but Miguel pins you down and says those things to you to try and get you to stop and it. Breaks you. Suddenly nothing you have ever done has ever even mattered. Wait, so they preach this horrible thing about to happen to you, that you're forcing you to not stop, THAT'S preordained, but you becoming a hero, you trying to make something of yourself, THAT'S a huge fuck up, a mistake, not supposed to happen? You don't BELONG there?

Miguel eventually comes to your cell and tries to speak to you, but you're just quietly crying and refuse to look at him. You won't talk to Peter or Gwen or anyone else, and they can't even get you to eat until you're practically vomiting from hunger and even then, it's just small, untrusting bites. They try to apologize and cheer you up but you reject any and all forms of communication and especially touch, if any of them tries to hug you, you shove them back, suddenly furious like you're about to throw punches.

You break down sobbing when you're told The Bad Thing happened, and you're asking, can you go home now? You look right at Miguel, look right in his eyes, "so you guys are going to leave me alone now, right? I get to go home and never see any of you ever again?"

That's... not quite what they wanted? You're a talented hero, just a little green! Just because you're kind of, an anomaly, doesn't mean they hate you! This wasn't personal! They realize a little too late that this didn't "forge you in the fires of adversity" or some poetic shit like that, it RUINED YOU. You hate them, you hate yourself, you hate ever donning this costume and risking your life for others only to be told it was all a mistake. You did this because you thought you were making a choice, but how is this any different than being some kind of slave, expected to burn yourself out and suffer for others?

But unlucky for you, there's some canon events Miguel will need your help with in the future, and if that means he has to atone by sticking to you like glue and forcing you to accept his mentorship as he basically drags you around forcing you to be Spiderman, then that's just what he's going to have to do. And if you turn out to be some kind of special mutant or other such creature that isn't affected by canon or shifting dimensions like they are, then, clearly there's no consequence if he wants to scoop you up for himself, right? And that will just be another reason he can have the Spider Society hunt you down with him if you ever escape his clutches

But also imagine you were destined to do something like lowkey amazing like cure cancer or develop groundbreaking tech or become one of the greatest spiders who ever lived and they check back in on you and you've like. Sold a vial of your blood to Osborne or something and you get royalties from whatever drugs he uses it for and you're just. Living a millionaire lifestyle refusing to care about anyone ever again and dont even own your spider costume anymore. Just the punishment and pain and manipulation of them realizing that they should've done things differently and they might have doomed your world in a different way altogether but also feeling guilt because they changed who you were, they don't have that person that was their friend anymore, you look at them with either hatred or indifference and just want to be left alone, and Miguel decides, ok, fixing you all up nice and better is going to become a little passion project of his

[buddie-or-tevan]

There are so many different ship names going around and I think you can tell what a person thinks about the ship by what ship name they use. Thus:

[quaranmine]

pick a book for me to take on work travel

Ends of the World by Peter Brannen - nonfiction geology book about earth's previous mass extinction events. The author is also the writer of one of my favorite climate history Atlantic articles I read for a college assignments.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer - nonfiction true story of Chris Mccandless, who decided to leave society to live in the Alaskan wilderness and was later found dead. I want to read Into Thin Air too but I don't have a copy (my mom probably does but that won't help me for this trip)

Dune by Frank Herbert - do i have to describe what Dune is about at this point? I've never read it and I also refused to see the movies 'caues I wanted to read the book before doing so

A Song for the River by Philip Connors - nonfiction/memoir by the same author who wrote my beloved fire lookout book Fire Season. This book also has to do that, as well as a massive fire he witnessed in his national forest, but I think it's a lot more about grief and death.

What the Eyes Don't See by Mona Hanna-Attisha - nonfiction/memoir by one of the doctors who discovered the Flint water crisis. I'm actually already 90 pages into it but got distracted and haven't picked it up for like a year. It's very good and highly relevant to my work (though I don't do lead in tap water but you know it's great information to have)

[cozycabineer]

gens Z and A have to come to terms with that our lifetimes will almost certainly contribute only damage control, minimizing losses rather than making wins. we should strive for wins, but Project 2025 and similar, less visible strategies have been piecemealed per existing policy for decades and will proceed in parts and wholes, only easier and more difficult to subdue in those parts and wholes per officals elected.

[dark-night-star-light]

Thinking about running a best character, best ship, or best quote bracket. Here's how each would hypothetically work (and vote in the poll at the bottom, please!):

The issue with characters would be that I’d have to go through all eighteen and a half books to find all the characters, or the other option is I only take characters that get submitted by the seven of us chilling here together in this hot tub (because like for Conor against Tepin, who the hell’s gonna vote for Tepin, right?). I would also allow you to submit propaganda to get your fav as far as possible and anti-paganda if you want a certain character to lose (as long as you keep it light-hearted and don't try to bash anyone that actually votes for that character etc. etc. etc.).

For ships, I will definitely only take submitted ships, because there are an infinite amount of ships that could happen otherwise. But I'll take anything no matter how crackship-y or rarepair-y it is (within limits, obviously no pedo/incest ships). Tentatively saying I will again allow propaganda and (light-hearted) anti-paganda, since I'm hoping we as a fandom are mature enough to let this be a chill experience and not devolve into ship bashing (I'm pretty sure we are, we're not the a/t/l/a fandom, so).

And for quotes, again, I'd only make a bracket out of quotes that get submitted. I'm not sure if I will allow propaganda for this one, because it seems kind of self-explanatory. But maybe, if people want it. If you submit a quote, you'd have to be able to tell me which book it was from, the page or chapter number, and who said it for it to be allowed into the bracket, although if you're not sure of one of those things, you could just tell me and I'd try to find it (I own all the books, so it wouldn't be a problem). I may or may not allow you to submit context or background for the quote (in some cases that can ruin the quote, or give it an unfair advantage). Quotes would be allowed to be as unserious or serious as you want, there will be no restrictions on it whatsoever (just don't make your quote, like, a single word or something).

In any case, you’d be allowed to submit as many characters/ships/quotes as you want. I would not reveal who submitted what character/ship/quote if that's something you choose to reveal to me, unless you want me to. I’m not sure how submissions will work, either through my ask box (don't worry, anon asks would be on) or through an anonymous Google form. Of course, my DMs are always open, too, if you want to submit something through there.

Your propaganda would be allowed to be anonymous or not (if you want the credit). It would also be allowed to be as short or as long as you want, and as unserious or serious as you want (you could literally submit, like, "Vote for Rollan, he's so funny and he needs a hug" as propaganda and I would accept it, or you can go deep and start talking about his parallels and arc and motifs and backstory and personality and hardcore analysis stuff, and that would also be fine). If multiple people submit propaganda for the same character/ship/quote, I’ll keep them all, and you are allowed to submit propaganda or anti-propaganda for as many characters/ships/quotes as you would like. When we're approaching the start of the bracket, I'll also say how many pieces of propaganda and anti-poganda were submitted for each character/ship/quote. That way, if a character/ship/quote has no propaganda or anti-paganda, it would be giving everyone a warning that that's the case and that it's the last chance to submit for them. Your propaganda also doesn't have to have any basis in canon. You could make up headcanons about a character and submit them as propaganda and that would be entirely fair game. You would not be allowed to submit links to analysis posts as propaganda, though, even if it's yours. Everything submitted needs to be something you wrote specifically for the bracket.

I would be the judge of whether the anti-propaganda crosses the line into bashing (no hard feelings, sometimes tone can be weird over text), and if it does I'd delete it but let whoever submitted it know that I did, so that they could try to submit something milder. Also, keep in mind that propaganda is subjective. Something you submit as anti-propaganda might actually resonate as propaganda with other people (like saying "Meilin was a racist and a classist" as anti-propaganda might just register as "Oh, she had such fantastic character development!" with some people, completely ruining what you were trying to do). Seems counterproductive, but if you have mixed feelings, I'd allow you to submit propaganda and anti-propaganda for the same character/ship/quote (I don't think anyone will actually do this, but it's an option).

If you have something else you want to add, put it in the tags. I’m also going to open up my ask box soon, so if you want to yell at me anonymously, that’ll be the place to go.

Hate to be that person, but reblog for sample size, please.

[lesbianjodie]

Ok folks here's a game:

The black organization is having a secret santa... what little gifts are our dear codenamed agents getting, and from whom?

Send me an ask and in some time (depends on like how many I'm getting at once) I will pick the best ones for each character and draw them with it!! Then a poll may be made for people to guess which agent made the gift 👀

[tenowls]

thinking of possibly opening an online merch shop.... it'd prob be mostly prints and stickers at this stage :0

(note i will be shipping from australia)