#participant observer

[ruthlesslistener]

Unpopular opinion but I actually deeply fucking love games where the protagonist is silent and relatively passive when it comes to interacting with other characters, even if that means watching them go down paths that end in their destruction. Sure its likely done as a 'blank slate'/self-insert sorta thing but quiet, stoic, nonverbal people also exist and the perceived lack of a personality =/= no characterization whatsoever

[not-poignant]

Me, reading this : "Like, my intention in amongst the hurt/comfort isn’t for things to feel easy or nice all the time, I am absolutely challenging the reader by introducing things that feel uncomfortable.". AH... I see. Here's Pia's dom personality XD Much love! Please keep challenging us forever!

Aha, it is weird sometimes to think that like, this is something that all writers are generally doing, and then it's like 'yeah no that's... introducing conflict means ideally you feel it too, that's... that's what makes the resolution feel so good' - like that's the job.

Tbh, this is why when folks are like 'omg I can't believe they KILLED that character' or 'I can't believe THIS HORRIBLE THING HAPPENED WHY' it's like well, they wanted you to feel this way. That's why. They did it on purpose. Outside of shitty tropes like 'burying your gays' etc. when folks are genuinely bemoaning why a show has made them miserable the answer is nearly 100% of the time - they wanted you to feel miserable.

They wanted you to have the awful experience of a tragic ending. They wanted you to feel the conflict at the end of a season so that you'd be driven to the catharsis of resolution in the next season. It's an intentional move to create emotional response, catharsis, expression, frustration and resonance, to lead you through a journey that is more than just cerebral.

And when it works, it's incredible, and it's my favourite part of storytelling.

[citizenerased77]

okay okay things are getting WILD over by the song polls section. since everyone's up in arms about it i figured i'd share some of my pwopaganda

*before i continue i'd just like to make it clear that i mean no disrespect towards anyone and if it comes across that way please let me know. i'm just rambling because i have nothing better to do atm

i was looking through the polls and for the most part those with an older muse song pitted against a more recent one results in the older one winning. by a long shot. why is that?

the old "___'s music gets progressively worse as they age/continue" is rearing its ugly head. now it's one thing to say that you don't like a band's most recent work or something along the lines of that. but it;s another thing entirely to say that a band's music gets worse over the years.

bands don't reach a peak and then decline. or plateau. it's simply not how it works. muse didn't stop getting better after a specific album, you just stopped liking their music after a specific album. to say that their music declined after T2L (just an example) would be like saying that all of the star wars movies after empire suck. sure that's your opinion, but someone else could come along and argue that the franchise peaked at the force awakens. and you have to respect their opinion even if you don't agree with it.

i guess what i'm trying to get at is that drones is just as good of an album as BHAR. and that get up and fight is equal to glorious. or that coma and eternally missed are both amazing b-sides. because you could ask a million different people, and you'll get a whole hodgepodge of answers.

just because the song is newer doesn't mean it's worse. just because you don't like the direction a band is going in sound-wise doesn't make it bad.

since the polls are all randomized, some of them contain songs of different styles. at the end of the day it's which song gives the voter the better feels lmao

[tinkkles]

I wish destiny were not a video game tbh. The world and characters are so fascinating and it really loses out narratively by being distilled through the eyes of a nameless and often voiceless third party (the player guardian).

[moongothic]

I know people often speculate about Crocodile and if that is his "real name", either implying he has a deadname or his name is another one of those Hidden Ds (much like Roger and Law)

And like. This is just me but personally I would prefer it if he didn't have a deadname at all. It already grinds my gears when people use Sanji's "real name" when he himself hates it and doesn't want to be called by it, and so god knows if Crocodile is trans then the fandom misgendering is going to be obnoxious enough, you don't need to add a """real name""" into that mix

So. Personally, I would prefer it if Crocodile really was his birthname. It would just help us avoid some toxicity, ya feel me? Like people can't deadname him if he has no deadname to begin with?

That said.

I do find it interesting how Crocodile never actually introduces himself during the story to like. Anyone. Like we never see him go "yes hello you may call me Sir Crocodile" or anything

In fact, like, very specifically, when we finally get Crocodile's face reveal in Chapter 155, he explicitly says

"Call me what you will"

Of course, the citizens of Nanohana had just been calling him a 'hero', 'desert king' and 'the Guardian Deity of Alabasta' in the previous page, so his comment is mostly just in reference to the various titles people were shouting out rather than his actual name

And to be fair, the dude is Extremely Famous, he doesn't have to introduce himself because everybody already knows who he is

But it's still an interesting detail, isn't it?

(Also tangentially related, but Crocodile never seems to object to people calling him by cutesy nicknames either? Like to be fair, he probably couldn't object to Ivankov calling him "Crocoboy" to begin with, but he never seemed to mind Bon-chan calling him "Zero-chan" repeatedly either, nor did he object to Buggy's "Cro-chan" 🤔)

If nothing else though, considdering even his former bounty was associated with the name we know him by, it's possible that even if he had a deadname, "Crocodile" could be his "pirate nickname" that he chose to roll with. Kind of like "Strawhat" or "Blackbeard" or "Hawkeyes" etc, a title people use so often you kind of forget the person's actual name

Or he might have that Hidden D. Which, if he did, I'd be more inclined to believe would be more like with Law (where he might've been told as a child to keep it a secret). Instead of the whole "names being merged into one to hide the D" like with Roger, since that one was a specific, intentional move from the World Government

The only thing about the Hidden D is that. I just. I think it'd be a little silly. Like. Crocodile doesn't have to be a part of the D clan in my mind. Like I don't need that twist. But to be fair, there is an argument to be made for Crocodile being a D. Like if his goal is to destroy the WG and the World Nobles (that being the reason he wanted military force and Pluton to begin with) then ARGUABLY it would be fitting for him to be a D, since the D clan are the "Natural Enemies of the Gods". Also, there's the whole trend of D clan members always dying with a smile on their face. Like sure Crocodile hasn't died (yet) but he definitely went to Impel Down (hell) with a big ol' smirk on his mugshot (chapter 413 cover), which is close enough. So there is an argument to be made for Crocodile having a fullname with a D that's been kept a secret

I dunno, these details are interesting to me

[cult-of-the-eye]

I know the unethical psychological experiment/psychological experiment gone wrong has sort of been done to death but it would be so insanely cool to see how it would be handled in the tmagp universe as an incident

[callmehopeless]

I don't believe in [producing Hogwarts Legacy content] or [interacting with Hogwarts Legacy content], I believe in [talking about producing Hogwarts Legacy content] and [discussing not participating in Hogwarts Legacy content], which my brain equates to [producing Hogwarts Legacy content] which feels like productivity

[yusiyomogi]

being a tumblr dweller is nice, because for some reason people are less likely to share truly shitty opinions about your favourite characters here. but if you go on twitter you suddenly have a horrifying knowledge what some popular artists/writers in the fandom think and you wish you hadn't

[employee052]

skdjfhksjdhf ok i think i finally caught up in reblogging all the posts for the road trip thread (i hope)

sorry for all the rambly n gushy reblogs this morning gamers :3

[frogatz]

smth to be said about stories where the computer falls in love with humanity

[brinnanza]

the fact that the genetic lottery rolled sensory processing issues severe enough that just regular chilling hanging out existing in my physical human body can be so overwhelming I am too exhausted to do basic tasks is a real fuckin snake eyes situation there is a lot about autism that I truly love and am genuinely grateful for but ripping all the labels off the sensory knobs and givin em a random spin is not fucking one of them

[gendrsoup]

just so yall know i will be SO not normal about dead boy detectives when it comes out next week like FUCK

[runaway-dreamers]

I wonder if Eddies Big Lift was the exposure to the So Below. If that is where the mold we see in the workshop unleashed itself. Maybe it started all because of him.

[tibialtybalt]

Hmmm you know how I sat on the banks and watched other people speedrunning for a long time before finally getting brave enough to try it out myself...

What if I did that but with voice acting .

[mushroomsie224]

What if I listened to my mother and actually did sit with the adults next time at a dinner party and listen to their conversations, but for the purpose of getting better at writing adults in stories?