#or maybe just when i get mad enough

[lyriumsings]

forcing myself to game bc my eyes were going stupid while drawing bc us ive only slept three hours but i cant got to bed yet bc its only 6pm

[claraoswalds]

It's racist, my dear, to be blunt. People come from outside, they think we're all witches and druids. For God's sake, child, you walked into a piece of string!

[smokbeast]

Papyrus sketches from my book the other day!

I like to think papyrus is serious and can become angry when he wants to be, but he’s such a nice and genuine sweet character he wouldn’t want to show that to the character or others.

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

God. The thing abt the uchiha is that. Yes. It was fucked up that no one trusted them and they got pushed further and further from the village center. However. They were also a clan of ninja cops with fucked up magical eyes that they supercharge by getting horrifically traumatized. So like. I also would not fucking trust them.

[fisherrprince]

oh so alisaie’s exaggerated bully behavior is 80% fanon. saying this she casually picks up a large rock

[moeblob]

Deacon loves two things: Ymber and digging himself a grave.

Fulj hates one thing: Deacon.

[sereniv]

anyway 4 alive people doesnt justify over 200 dead

[nexus-nebulae]

me as a kid: i have all these problems

every adult around me: you're not old enough to know what's wrong with you, you're fine

me as an adult: i still have all these problems

my doctors after i finally got the opportunity to choose them myself: oh my fucking god why have you never gotten help for all these problems. you should have seen me 10 years ago

[justacrazylilguy]

To The Metal Gear Fandom

Okay so silly question but i see a lot of yall on here and you say all the homoerotic stuff in mgs is canon right? Especially otasune, bbkaz, bosselot. Not to sound like a hater but the first game came out in 1998. You know what age hideo Kojima was back then? 36 with a wife and kids. So what's his real purpose for making a whole game series about a buncha gay guys? That's what leads me to believe it's unintentional but idk. If he said why then lmk cause I dont get why he would? I've been thinking about this a lot recently because I've been seeing a lot of people saying it's deliberate. Anyone can answer btw my askbox is open because i Need an explanation. More in tags cause im insane.

[sadkachow]

me: so yeah i feel super dizzy and lightheaded when i stand up and also just at random times of the day and also my heart just starts pounding randomly and it skips a beat randomly at least once a day and im also experiencing these other small things that i realized probably arent normal

the cardiologist: yeah, your heart’s beating too fast, but that’s just Normal Teenager Things™️! probably just like dehydration or something lol

[bonefall]

Did you man beam Drizzle? If so, why not just pair up Rustle with Cranberry instead? I get for the amazing ship name but I'm curious about the choice /gen

I totally forgot Drizzle's original gender, but also, I really don't want to overthink it. I'm so tired of overthinking it. I wanted CranberryDrizzle funny ship name and it was getting exhausting to plan out where every pairing in several hundred cats would be getting their kits from

Rustle is going to die at some point after having two QR kittens, and Cranberrydrizzle is going to have 2 important litters (Sunstrike and Emberfoot in the first, Fernstripe in the second). I have done an exhausting amount of work (weeks of planning and hours of work at a time, scouring the wiki and facebook screenshots, redrawing tangles, reading through suggestions, writing out full posts of changes and creating new groups with their own histories) untangling broken fragments of family trees and like... I'm tired. No more shuffling. I deserve Funny Ship Name. is this too much to ask

Boy Drizzle is just the easiest answer. I'd like for Drizzle to just be transfem but I was also told to avoid cats being trans just to have kits, which is ALSO frustrating me at this point, I don't like this weight of "perfect representation" that's being put on me when I'M not even perfect representation as a living human queer.

Do I let Drizzle be transfem and "break a rule," or change them to a boy and "lose" a lesbian pairing? It feels gross to me to have fallen into a mindset where I'm treating queer relationships like quotas or rigid rulesets

I feel like if I 'get something wrong' (like forget the gender of a Missing Kit or a side character, or handwave 'where did these kits come from' with 'trans/queen's rights' without considering a real secret surrogate) I'm going to get smacked upside the head and be forced to hyperfocus on one small part of a massive project when I already have a million other things to work on.

So unfortunately the most honest answer I can probably give is that im tired. I'm really tired. Overthinking minor details before making every single tumblr post is draining me. I forgot the missing kit's original author-assigned gender and didn't scroll to the bottom of Onestar's wiki page to check it before posting. I like the ship name. Cranberrysplash somehow gets pregnant twice, but I was told to avoid trans bioparents, yet doing that is making things even harder after I had to do weeks of work to make a good tree in the first place

I'll figure out Drizzlefall's gender when they become relevant in some context

[alchemiclee]

i know this has been said 473773474833 times by the kavetham/haikaveh shippers and probably even nonshippers, but i'll say it again. I finally finished the genshin summer event and did the little after quest in sumeru and.....every time kaveh is sneaking around trying not to be noticed coming out of alhaithams house it's just such a gay vibe. he's basically screaming "I can't be caught being gay in a homophobic society!" even if that's not what the game writers are *actually* saying. that's just how it comes off and they can't make it come off any other way. with hoyo's gay history, it makes me wonder if it's on purpose and all a cover-up to have a technically different reason for it so they can get away with it lmao but we will never know.

[deus-ex-mona]

monachan haul has arrived ✨safely✨

[silusvesuius]

g*lmar rly has to be the best skajrim character on the real like even if you don't like him he just is . literally The best one i think......... on dat note i also imagine that he and ulfr*c despite being fairydust BFFs for lyfe genuinely have the worst communication skills ever seen

[22degreehalo]

The stereotypical 'harem anime protagonist' revolutionises and disrupts contemporary heterosexual norms in regards to romantic narratives. Rather than envisioning a stereotypically masculine power fantasy, the 'harem anime protagonist' instead cultivates a more realistic perspective, portraying its character as decidedly average in his abilities and looks, if not an outright outsider to normal society. In this way, rather than presenting romance as a quality 'earned' via successful displays of masculine superiority - a one-sided dynamic which all too often relegates women to be nothing more than narrative 'rewards' for the protagonist's achievements, taking the position less of individuals in their own right than of symbolic gatekeepers for hyper-masculine worthiness - it is instead portrayed as the result of burgeoning relationships between persons through quality time spent together.

Instead of expecting said love interests to be 'impressed' by the protagonist's successes (thus putting him on a pedestal above them, and enabling the masculine need to be 'better' than his partner), romantic feelings are nurtured realistically through shared interests and hobbies, and as a result of the protagonist's kindness and interest in helping said women with their life problems. Rather than man as conqueror, and romantic success as signifier of competitive superiority, romantic feelings are naturalised as contextual and mundane - as a normal and everyday fact of life that any person, regardless of social status, may be able to experience through commonplace bonds between relative equals and sincere concern for others' wellbeing.

Likewise, the 'harem anime protagonist' inverts the manic dream girl archetype; rather than existing to kickstart his own character development, the focus is almost entirely on the personalities and circumstances of the female love interest. If the protagonist 'earns' his relationships at all, it is not by displays of dominance or charisma, but through a genuine interest in their lives and willingness to help the women around them achieve their own personal goals. Said goals are often far grander than any the man himself could grasp at, again positioning the men in supportive, even submissive positions; rather than be turned off by this lack of traditional masculinity, the female characters are shown to find these very displays of kindness and supportiveness (typically feminine qualities) attractive, offering a different path for lonely and sensitive young men.

In this essay I w