#none of those things can be real

[defiantly-ageis]

.

[utilitycaster]

I just want to say, that I agree with almost all of your Critical Role takes and you have 1000% better and more nuanced takes than all of Twitter and I greatly appreciate it! The takes over there regarding Liliana and the gods are just wild and you bring some much needed sanity to the content I see

Thanks! I hope you don't mind because I've been thinking about this re: the Twitter takes but the thing about Twitter and Liliana specifically that I've seen is that there's this really bizarre fetishization of like, the fact that she is a (white) southerner (this also weirdly happened for Birdie though to a much lesser extent, and the person who spearheaded that wasn't even American so I have to assume this is a specific corner of Twitter Culture At Large). And like, here's the thing. It's true that fantasy tends to be very British in its accents, and it's also true that accents in a fantasy world are used to convey the same things we'd assume in our world - RP British for educated, southern American for rural, Cockney for rougher types, etc.

It's also true that laying the exact socioeconomic parallels from our world onto, say, Liliana and Orym (who reads to me as non-regional but I, like Liam, am from the Northeast originally) is a recipe for disaster. Or rather, it's not, but it is going to reaffirm your own biases, some of which are dangerous to reaffirm.

There was a popular post on Tumblr a while back, probably not long after Trump was elected, of someone talking about how they were convincing a relative with the confederate flag towards socialism by appealing to the idea of "isn't in unfair how uneven wealth distribution is and how a small group has so much control" and a number of people were rightfully like "uh, maybe you should focus on the racism" or "hey OP ask your relative who they think that small group in control is because I'm getting a really bad feeling they're going to say it's The Jews." And I feel that a lot of the empathy for Liliana from those spaces feels like that OP. Or in other words: I get that you see your relatives in Liliana. Unfortunately, I cannot help but see me and mine in Orym.

You see someone trapped by circumstance and desperation in a dangerous ideology. I see the fact that I haven't gone to a synagogue in easily 6-7 years without there being a security guard present and usually, the doors locked with someone looking through the window to let you in, and then in the sanctuary there's been an installation so that you can quickly bar all the doors in case an alarm goes off or you hear shots in the lobby.

I think there's a great case for seeing yourself in Imogen, who is in a painful struggle with the fact that her mother does love her very much but is in dangerously deep and has done a number of incredibly terrible and harmful things. That latter point is important, incidentally; I get that cult members sometimes rise through the ranks but all but the leader are being manipulated. But the fact remains that a brainwashed person can still commit atrocities, and in this story, they have, many times over. It's especially true because like...sure, plenty of people are like "I lost my relative to a cult and I just want them back and I couldn't harm them," but also, as we've seen, this cult can and will harm Imogen! Plenty of people are also like "yeah I gotta cut them off, it hurts but unfortunately my horribly bigoted and violent relative, while a victim of brainwashing, is a threat to me too." It's not even the full picture of the Temult side of things, let alone the picture that includes the Vanguard's victims.

I also think the Southern gatekeeping is unhinged because it's like. guys there's QAnon members and other cults across the country; the Confederate flag example above was actually notable in that OP wasn't even Southern so you couldn't even write the flag off as deeply misguided heritage but rather was explicitly being used as a hate symbol. It's awfully presumptive to assume all southerners have the same experience (especially since the Temults are portrayed, physically and in accents, as white southerners, not that the experiences of white southerners aren't also incredibly varied). It's awfully presumptive to assume that people find Liliana threatening because they have no personal experience with people like her; often, it's because they have all too real experience with people like her, and it says something even worse about you if you can say "but you guys, I see me and my family in Liliana" when people are telling you that they see them and their families in Orym. I would not, personally, publicly admit that one's empathy extends to the people who remind you of your family but runs out before it reaches their victims. Nor would I publicly admit that I assume everyone who disagrees with me clearly has never had personal experience with this topic.

I should also note that, as I've noted a number of times before, that these are fictional characters and not real people. Twitter seems to be really fucking bad at grasping that. Like, yes, this is the other thing; I do not think that OP should kill their Confederate flag-toting relative, whereas if Imogen did so to Liliana I'd be like "hell yeah." The former is a real person who I do hope gets deprogrammed, just, you know, maybe adjust those priorities; the latter is a fictional character in a story.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

when i was in highschool one o my biggest coping mechanisms was drawing all the kids i hated getting killed and eaten and killed. and well. time is a slowly ascending spiral. you will find patterns.(i work as a blackjack dealer. gamblers are FASCINATING

[aparticularbandit]

i know we talk about the lengths wanda went through to bring billy and tommy back and debate whether or not they were real (they were) and the insanity that may/may not have caused in her.

but.

maybe we should also talk about the vision and how vision literally created two children for himself (viv and vin! debatable whether they were twins; they're supposed to be the same age, so i'd say they are), how when his son died he 1) intended to kill his son's murderer (for JUSTICE) and that was meant to prompt 2) vision killing everyone in the world (re: snapping and fighting the avengers over their part in the death of his son), how when his wife died (after killing their son's murderer so that vision wouldn't snap and could keep being a hero; it's complicated) he literally started rebuilding her, how when his daughter died he literally made another version of her because he could not handle his grief--

like look.

it's literally not just a wanda thing.

they're both like that.

[waywardsalt]

bc its been bouncing around in my head i think another little tiny grievance i had with totk is that i got to the end and just felt a sense of ‘well what the hell was that all for then’

[dreamsy990]

i drew silly gijinkas of my dogs

the dogs in question

[bmpmp3]

dysgraphic artiƨts risɘ UP!!!!!

[aworldofyou]

Performative activism. Loathe it so much. Because people always claim valuing and respecting and wanting to hear indigenous voices until we actually speak and want to discuss them then there’s not a single rats ass given.

[bongjuiceconcentrate]

also last post i’m gonna make about this but any non marginalized person trying desperately to paint themselves as “one of the good ones” is definitely never one of the good ones

[jabberwockprince]

i think what i like the most about luxu is the vagueness of his character

not in the MoM sense of "hehehoho you CANT figure out who tf I am or what i'm up to", but like. you can see firsthand the consequences of luxu's actions throughout the entire saga, but you will never really get to know luxu the same way we might know sora or riku or ansem the wise or xehanort whoever

you just cant do that anymore. the only thing we can do is gleam a sense of a personality through his actions. and that checks out, i CAN understand how this guy has gone body-hopping for centuries or whatever, never getting caught by any of the other reincarnating/semi-immortal for whatever reason/recurring characters because he's so vague

like. look at braig/xigbar. sure, this one has a very strong personality, it's easy to tell this mf apart from the rest of the organization because of the way he gestures and words things. but everything about him is a red fucking flag that makes everyone in the fandom go "!!!!!!" because he's so very clearly imitating MoM's mannerisms. or at the very least, unconsciously inherited them. and this is taking into account the fact that braig/xigbar is luxu's most RECENT identity. if you look at the one that came before braig/luxu (at least that we know of, for now, who fucking knows with the upcoming games) then you get bragi, whose personality seems to stand somewhere between back cover luxu and kh3 braig/xigbar. like he's a bastard, but he absolutely plays it way cooler than braig/xigbar ever did, there is a MUTED aspect to him (and we can't even get into brain bc missing link is not out yet)

and you CAN argue that this muted aspect is entirely because of luxu not wanting to blow his cover. you can fucking argue ANYTHING you want abt this silly fucker. THATS MY WHOLE POINT. THIS GUY CAN BE ANYTHING YOU WANT BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF SOLID INFO ABOUT WHO HE IS. AS A PERSON IN THIS UNIVERSE

luxu can be a perfect ship of theseus, the perfect tragic immortal, the universe's silliest clown, all three at the same time, something else entirely, everything all at once. and the fact that people have their own LUXUSONAS / DESIGNS FOR HIM only adds to this. bc the concept of luxu is only ONE thing, and that is to be MoM's eyes and nothing else. the rest? you can make tf up, fill in the blanks however you like, bc there's rlly nothing else

the master of masters rlly sent ALL SIX of his own disciples to be sacrificial lambs to win an argument and it's the funniest and saddest shit possible, bc it cost the foretellers their entire town, their unions, their friendship and their lives. and then for luxu, it cost his entire sense of self

[blueskittlesart]

Hi! As someone who now kinda wants to check out Trigun because of the hype, do you recommend that I can start with Stampede? Or do I really need to watch the OG anime first to better understand/enjoy it? Thank you! 🙋🏻‍♀️

you can start with stampede! i'd say knowing the context of the original enhances the experience but isn't necessary to enjoy the show. I would consider stampede more viewer-friendly, especially for those of us who are used to modern storytelling conventions (the original suffers the consequences of general writing trends in anime at the time it was produced and of the fact that it was produced long before the manga was finished, so the story is somewhat disjointed and has a lot of filler which makes it REALLY hard to get into.) if you do end up liking stampede, however, I'd suggest trying out watching at least SOME of the original because it adds a lot of cool nuance and context to the story that stampede tells!

[batsplat]

your negative takes on recent tennis rivalries pleaseeee🙏🙏🙏

ps. you’re a treasure

okay so I'll do the copy paste thing from what I did just cut from the initial post, which was my polite 'I'm attempting to write a reasonably neutral post' approach

so, this may come as a shock, but obviously I'm a bit of a fan of rivalries. we do have some bangers in tennis history, rich narrative texts, but... well. the landscape out there hasn't been great for the past decade or so. sometimes you can get invested in match-ups between specific players that are fun to watch and interesting tennis-wise, but it's all very much about the sport rather than the personal relationships between the different players. I enjoy matches between all three or ryba, sabs and iga!! but also. they are coworkers. you do kindaaaa get the sense sabs and iga aren't particularly fond of each of other, but it's all perfectly cordial. again, the tennis is great, I support them in all their endeavours, but it's very much the tennis itself you need to look for for the drama (also they don't play each other as much as I'd like, but that's a conversation for a different day)

you do still sometimes get some fun beef but it's very much isolated dumb stuff like the fritz/rinderknech "have a nice flight home" thing. this isn't going anywhere story-wise but it's fun in the moment

speaking of men. obviously the most important rivalries for the last however many years have been between various big three/four members, and federer/nadal specifically is extremely popular. tennis-wise, I still think federer/djokovic was the most fun match-up, and at least there was a little tension there because federer used to hate djokovic. they've played a lot of matches that are worth watching!! also they've finally mostly retired so it's not super relevant any more, but well tennis fans as a collective are very big three-pilled so you'll hear a lot about these blokes

and now there's alcaraz/sinner. they've only really had one match that was good start to finish (uso 2022), but definitely some fun ones (miami 2023 and wimbledon 2022 are probably the other ones that stand out, their most recent match was very much in the 'long does not equal good' category). plus, they're quite good at producing highlight reel content, like this one point everyone remembers (shown here from every angle... tennistv produces longer videos for single points than the wta releases for most finals). it's an interpersonally warm rivalry between two young guys who are both very successful and will presumably win everything for the next decade. again, I'd suggest trying to become a fan of one of those two

this was the polite way of phrasing it!! everything below here is quite rude and negative, peace and love to all

okay, let's ditch the thin veneer of neutrality, here's what I actually think: it is completely baffling to me how popular quite a few of these rivalries are, I don't get it, I have never understood it, I will never understand it. tennis went 'what if we had rivalries without narrative tension' and everyone just kinda rolled with that? mind you federer/nadal early confrontations were happening at the same time as clijsters/henin, who were like?? dude it got so bad henin said she had never been friends with clijsters so nothing clijsters and her father said could hurt her ("nothing was broken between us because there was nothing to break" ???? ffs). which is obviously not true!! but it's so... she denied the friendship ever existed and called it all pr like that's so SAD! look, this is beside the point, I'm not talking about henin/clijsters here, I do understand why people aren't that into a rivalry that was at its peak like two decades ago and federer/nadal were still playing slam finals in 2k17 (a dark dark time for some fans, federer had already HAD his decline and then he was suddenly winning slams again like tf). and to some extent I go 'well clearly people will just be into anything if you have two successful blokes' but there's clearly quite a lot of genuine passion there? like I'm not denying the passion EXISTS, people do clearly care about these guys, it's not all a psyop by Big Fedal who have suckered people into caring for these two dudes. and I'm not denying the tennis is great! I still personally prefer the match-ups that involve djokovic, and also the match-ups that involve none of those three, but fundamentally I have been watching these matches for like!! so many years! it's part of my childhood, I have enjoyed plenty of these matches, the tennis is obviously otherworldly. I have hot takes on a bunch of their matches, I can have the goat debate with you, I can give you the rundown on surface-specific match-ups and how long since nadal won a set on hard court against djokovic and federer's peak year domination rate and what they all did at madrid and blue clay and yec and golden masters and all that shit, of course it's part of my dna as a tennis viewer too!! I did usually have a slight order of preference in my head when I was watching big three match ups to have someone to root for (it's different now but back when I was a kid it was djokovic > nadal > federer, these days federer's redeemed himself a little bit in my eyes by having the decency to retire and I was radicalised against nadal). but like!! what's the narrative hook! I need somebody to explain to me what the story here is. these guys are all very good at tennis and they are racking up their titles and it's so!! whatever!! no tension no arc no real interpersonal development once federer stopped being so bitchy about djokovic. twenty plus slams who CARES, what are they doing this for! it's all so?? ugh

anyway now that I've taken a potshot at the most popular rivalry in men's tennis, I should quickly back it up by saying I feel almost the exact same way about the second most popular one (at least on tumblr) and also feel nothing for alcaraz/sinner. that one was still like... vaguely palpable? when alcaraz was clearly a way better player but struggled in that match up and also was way more invested in the rivalry than sinner was. but well, sinner is world number one now so THAT'S been ruined. again, sit me down and explain to me what the narrative stakes here are. like, if sinner wins that roland garros match, he'll be fine? alcaraz will be fine? everyone will be fine? their relationship is basically 'friendly coworkers', zero chance of anything more substantial developing there. now, don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna pretend like I'm massively into the current state of the women's game when it comes to rivalries either, but at least I have a base level of fondness there for the top players and am ideologically inclined to hype up any rivalries there whenever they come along. also, quite frankly, it DOES matter viscerally more to them!! iga spends a lot of her time kinda like,,, on the edge, the way she was in tears when getting physio after the naomi match, united cup last year, a bunch of her 2021 matches, like she's so intense and so tightly strung on the court that you do really get the sense that a loss could just cause her to have an existential crisis. there's so many unanswered questions about her ultimate potential off clay, I'm still proper curious about her story develops. and then with aryna, she's obviously ALSO so intense but in a different way, and she feels every single emotion so completely and entirely and iga has beaten her in one of those infamous semifinal chokes and it's kinda... you know, aryna also feels like she has something to prove, and you can tell they both really really want to beat each other. there's something there!! it's something real! I'm always seated whenever we actually get to see them play

that being said, yes, obviously I do think we're not exactly peak rivalry potential in either gender. the men's is more egregious because the way the game has shaken out since like,,,, 2004, is incredible top level domination by just a few guys. and now, yes, I'm aware I'm a fan of another sport where this was also incredibly true. but. the key difference is that the aliens had the decency to not be so fucking boring about it. sure on paper they were as a PACK winning everything, but good lord were they screaming crying throwing up whenever things went mildly wrong for them. like!! they despised each other and they needed to beat each other, which makes ME care!! I'm not saying I NEED rivals to hate each other, though it sure does help for my investment levels, but I need a narrative hook! borg/mcenroe had a narrative hook, evert/navratilova had a narrative hook (unfortunately that narrative hook these days is 'being united in transphobia'), agassi/sampras had one HELL of a narrative hook. noughties wta tennis about fifty million narrative hooks!! when I watch alcaraz/sinner, I just try and enjoy the tennis (though their roland garros match was mid as shit so what's that all about) but like... I don't care? or I care because one of them has pissed me off recently. I do fundamentally watch most of men's tennis as a hater, and admittedly this is accumulated bitterness over way too many years, but I do also think it's frustrating! tennis gets in its own way with this whole gentleman's sport business, the amount of wanking people do over federer/nadal in particular is truly insufferable... this is a sport filled with millionaire tax evaders and they'll have you believe that smashing a racquet is not only not fun (obviously it is) but also some kind of arbiter of morality. congrats to nadal for not smashing a racquet in his career!! could we please get his thoughts on gender equality in prize money? oh... okay. hm. this isn't supposed to be some gotcha, these guys all suck. but ultimately I would prefer not to engage with this sanitising and pearl clutching, given they do all suck, over shit that fundamentally does not matter while giving them a pass over all the stuff that DOES and instead maybe just have some fun. maybe you need to be single-minded and kind of dull to be good at men's tennis these days, maybe it's inevitable, doesn't mean I don't find them boring and pointless. there's some people who just enjoy like,,, watching greatness, endlessly racking up numbers and reaching the pinnacle of the sport or whatever, that's not me, I need there to be a story

thing is, right, obviously I'll still watch these matches (though I have massively turned it down this year, especially on the men's side - I did have a kind of breaking point this january where I was like 'wow I don't think I can ever care about anything any more?' and broadly speaking this has proved to be correct). I've tried hard to like a lot of these men because, god knows, it'd be a way more pleasant experience if I could trick my brain into it, but I can't! I think they're dull! fundamentally I'm too embedded in this world to ever be able to leave it. but I think it's funny when fans go 'oh people who are into drama don't appreciate the actual sport' like buddy I can basically guarantee I know more about the sport than you do. I Just Think that actually interpersonal relationships do also enhance the actual sports, like this shit is a conversation right,,, it has its history, it's a development over time in terms of your tactics and your knowledge of your opponent's tactics and so on, your expectations going into every match. when you have an interesting interpersonal dynamic, the sport also becomes more interesting... it's actually pretty straightforward lol. a lot of tennis is in the head, rivalries are also in the head, you're playing the other guy (gender neutral) as much as you are the actual ball. I get super annoyed by fans who are too busy being nostalgic to actually enjoy the players we have now, and I really don't like it when people call iga boring for instance, but I do also have a little bit of that. love the game, hate a lot of the players, simple as. bring back agassi calling his pet parrot more interesting than sampras in his autobiography, we used to be a proper sport

[mazojo]

Butai ni Sake! chose emotional devastation once again

[lanshappycorner]

Sometimes I look outside my scope of mutuals and I'm like.....I'm glad I'm not them (whole essay in the tags)

[lostandbackagain]

annoying people love telling you it's your fault if a book is confusing and boring

[adelle-ein]

it's embarrassing how long this took to sink in for me but i've finally realized the reason the vast majority of people people are so evil and insane about israel vs palestine is because they fundamentally see neither side as human