#setting good examples

[bacchuschucklefuck]

truly this one's just for me. I can do what I want foreverrr

[taraxippos]

I think people tend to assume that any criticism of worldbuilding is ultimately a demand for a story to grind itself to a halt and give the reader 20 paragraphs of exposition, and like. Most of the time good-faith criticism of this nature is coming from a core aspect of the story not being grounded in the setting in a way that outright detracts from the story's quality. You fix it not by Explaining but by Showing it passively in the makeup of the world.

Like the last instance I saw this critique in was like 'you can't expect an author to stop and exposit the nuances of gender roles/Queerness in a fictional society' and it's like yeah I don't, and in fact this is actually one of the easiest things to show in the text without exposition. If a society has gender norms to begin with you'll see aspects of these norms baked into EVERYTHING. You'll see it in its stories, its religion, its taboos, its etiquette, its clothing, its family structures, its language, its insults, its labor, its leadership, etc. It will have massive impacts on how characters interact with one another and how they perceive themselves. It will help Shape your characters.

If you do this legwork to begin with for the core facets of your story, you will find very natural places for these concepts to be demonstrated without derailing the plot and with little to no exposition. THAT sort of thing is what's being asked of you.

[lurkinginnernarrator]

I need Shen Qingqiu, who left for a week-long mission to not return. I need the peak lords to look for him, scouring high and low.

Only, they find him. He's crouched behind bushes, journal in hand fastidiously observing Malevolent Mango-Leopard Birds. He looks crazed. It's the dirtiest they've ever seen him. He has rivers of notes and illustrations.

He shushes them all and tugs them behind the bushes.

"The mating rituals of Malevolent Mango-Leopard Birds haven't ever been documented before. It's believed they only mate once every thousand years."

"Shen-Shixiong was here... watching birds."

"Shen-Shixiong didn't send word because... He was too busy watching birds. Mate."

"...don't say it like that."

[scribefindegil]

As much as I adore conlangs, I really like how the Imperial Radch books handle language. The book is entirely in English but you're constantly aware that you're reading a "translation," both of the Radchaai language Breq speaks as default, and also the various other languages she encounters. We don't hear the words but we hear her fretting about terms of address (the beloathed gendering on Nilt) and concepts that do or don't translate (Awn switching out of Radchaai when she needs a language where "citizen," "civilized," and "Radchaai person" aren't all the same word) and noting people's registers and accents. The snatches of lyrics we hear don't scan or rhyme--even, and this is what sells it to me, the real-world songs with English lyrics, which get the same "literal translation" style as everything else--because we aren't hearing the actual words, we're hearing Breq's understanding of what they mean. I think it's a cool way to acknowledge linguistic complexity and some of the difficulties of multilingual/multicultural communication, which of course becomes a larger theme when we get to the plot with the Presgar Translators.

[sidewalk-cracks]

literally please give Battison a Dick Grayson in the Batman Part II.

The first movie was about Bruce's journey from not wanting to be Bruce Wayne, to realizing that he does in fact need to be Bruce Wayne, and that Bruce Wayne can be a force used for good just like Batman. Logically then, the second movie should explore the next immediate question on the table: okay, he needs to be Bruce Wayne. So who is Bruce Wayne? What kind of man is Bruce Wayne going to be? Bruce still feels defined by his trauma of his parent's death. Bruce Wayne still feels defined by his parents' shadows, by his father's legacy. He still feels defined by his grief. How does he make Bruce Wayne be something different?

Dick Grayson would serve as the PERFECT device for Bruce to discover who he can be. Because Dick Grayson is literally just a young Bruce, and Bruce sees that instantly (it's why he takes him in in the first place). So throughout the movie, as Bruce tries to help Dick process his grief, he's inadvertently processing his OWN grief. Dick Grayson unknowingly helps Bruce process his own trauma, and through their developing relationship shows him that Bruce Wayne can be more than a recluse, a failure, a man drowning in his own head- he can be a protector, a friend, a parent.

When Dick points a gun at Tony Zucco's head, Bruce talks him down, and all the words that he gives him are words he had wanted when he was a kid and his grief was fresh. Even though they're gone, you're not alone. I understand.

BATTISON NEEDS DICK GRAYSON TO BE ABLE TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP OF HIS CHARACTER GROWTH.

[quetzalpapalotl]

*grabs the tf fandom by the shoulders* the people writing for official media are not doing fanfiction, what they are doing is different and in fact, if they approached it like fanfiction that would be bad. Often they are just doing their own take on things according to what works better for the story they're trying to tell, which may or may not be in conversation with previous entries to the franchise. But they have no obligation whatsoever to reference fandom and it is foolish to expect this from them. In fact, most of the writers participated in different spheres of fandom than the ones favored by the tumblr crowd, if they even participated in any fandom at all. When they were hired they were not aware of whatever fanon characterization/lore/ship/etc you think is obvious and universal. Please.

[cool-as-steel]

A selection of Allen & Gintner cigarette cards from the 1888 'Pirates of the Spanish Main' series.

[abd-illustrates]

Going to make a proper promo post later, but wanted to give a quick heads-up that I'm likely going to be opening my Vgen for character art commissions sometime in the next few days!

If you follow my page over there it should notify you when slots open (^^)/

🍁 vgen.co/ABDillustrates

[casscainmainly]

I can’t stop thinking about that moment when Cass took a bullet and when Batman talked to her about it he said “good”. Good????? Yes, she did it to save someone, but good???? I don’t remember him reacting this way to his other protégés when they get injured in the line of duty. Like, at least tell her to be more careful in the future, stop encouraging her death wish smh

Wellll not an expert but Bruce has wacky expectations for most of his protégés 😭😭. But for SURE his 'good' comment did not help her death wish at all, if anything it probably cemented Cass' belief that instinct = identity (and thus what Onyx later calls her 'killer instincts' means she has to die). I will say he was saying 'good' not because of Cass sustaining an injury, he was specifically saying 'good answer' because of the reason Cass did it. To me the sequence is:

Bruce (angry/concerned): Batgirl. It was suicide to rush the gunner like that. Why did you do it?

Cass: instinct...

Bruce (thinking about when David said 'she's like me not like you' and realising that Cass saying 'instinct' means she DOES have the Bat in her): Good answer!!! (Yippee she's like me I love her so much)

Cass (to herself): Batman thinks it's good for me to die

That last part is debatable tbh because I've always thought Bruce's words that seem horrifically offensive to us is exactly the type of thing Cass understands instinctively (their relationship is in a lot of ways built on instinct). So another take on what Cass was thinking:

Cass (to herself): Batman understands that instinct is the core part of who I am and by saying 'good answer' he's affirming that my instinct to save people is a marker that I am good. Also it's good for me to die

Horrible thing for Bruce to say but Cass gets the intention 😭😭

My thoughts on whether Bruce was encouraging Cass' death wish are really complicated actually. In Gotham Knights #2, Bruce tries to stop Cass from dying by saying to be in his family she must choose to live. However, at some point he changes his mind. This is sooo important to my understanding of them and of Bruce in this time period. Initially, like Babs, he is fully (and vocally) against Cass killing herself. But somewhere along the way he realises Cass must die, or at least follow through with the Shiva fight in order to actually live.

And this is so interesting!! What made him change his mind? Did he really think Cass was gonna die? My instincts say he suspected Shiva wouldn't kill Cass forever. He describes the fight as Cass 'working through' the death wish, which doesn't sound like he thinks Cass is gonna die for real! I think he would've been against the fight if he'd thought she really wouldn't return tbh. But of course that's speculation, he's still a bonkers parent for letting her fight at all 😭😭

(This now makes me think of a scenario where Cass actually dies. Bruce grappling with the ensuing avalanche of grief and guilt. That man is coming out with his OWN death wish 😭😭)

[sergle]

oohhh this message came SO CLOSEEEEE to actually successfully feigning concern, until switcharoo right at the end telling me that my I'm-Not-Doing-Well-Posting is actually me encouraging other people to kill themselves. and closing it out with a "heh, anyway! get well soon diva! ✌💋"

[greenleaf4stuff]

TROP x social media text posts (screenshots via cap-that.com) (my other trop memes)

[turtleblogatlast]

One of the earliest examples of Leo’s “I’ll do my own thing to accomplish our goal without discussing it with my team first” is in episode one. It’s super, super quick, and ultimately inconsequential, but it subtly sets up a great precedent that I think is very interesting.

When the boys need to grab the medallion from Splinter without Splinter noticing, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie huddle together with Raph taking the lead in trying to devise a plan to get the mystic device. Meanwhile, Leo slinks away and grabs the device by clocking the situation (by knowing his father well enough to predict his actions - something he does with each family member multiple times in the series) and making a move on his own.

It works out perfectly fine, and is ultimately the best move, and it’s honestly okay that he didn’t consult everyone for something so small when it’s such a non issue to get it, but it nicely sets up how this tends to go in the series, including how it goes in the movie.

To be honest episode one is actually really good at setting up a lot of things for each character in the long run, this is just one example that caught my attention, as small and unassuming as it is.

[whetstonefires]

You know I'm realizing one reason you keep seeing mdzs modern AUs where the Jiang parents are alive mainly so they can dramatically fail and betray Wei Wuxian by cutting him off financially--defaulting on his college tuition or formally disowning him etc--isn't just that people want to translate the Burial Mounds II arc into modern terms while keeping Jiang Cheng clean of it.

(Despite the fact that the internal logic of Jiang Cheng's character is largely built around him being a person who would abandon someone he intensely cared about under these specific circumstances.)

It's because it's hard to set up a modern analogue for the way that Jiang Cheng is responsible for Wei Wuxian, as his Sect Leader.

We live in a highly individualistic society. People are trying to write Wei Wuxian Tragically Wronged, and because there's a normative expectation that people in the position of parents will provide you with resources, and certainly won't withdraw them without warning, but no such assumption that people in the position of siblings necessarily owe each other support, making this work in modern setting with Jiang Cheng in his canon role would require a lot of extra work, just to get a less readily resonant result.

But I keep thinking about it. Because something that's getting lost here is, not just the nuances of character and relationship, but like...it's sort of key to the story that cutting Wei Wuxian off was, in fact, Completely Socially Appropriate.

The level on which it was a betrayal is subtle, and deeply cutting. And intensely tied up in the very different opinions each of Jiang Cheng's parents had about what obligations existed in their family wrt Wei Wuxian, and what these meant.

The level on which it was the obvious, normal course of action is blatant. That is to a huge extent why it happens: because Jiang Cheng's instinct to conform is a survival instinct, reinforced by trauma, and Wei Wuxian's choices meant he had no coherently compelling reason not to obey it, and enormous peer pressure to do so.

The fact is that Jiang Cheng was making a reasonable choice, the actual thing 'anyone would do in that situation,' unlike Wei Wuxian and Jin Guangyao's respective wildly warped ideas about what that is.

Wei Wuxian wasn't betrayed by Jiang Sect like your foster parents cutting you off because you're disobedient. Wei Wuxian was betrayed by Jiang Sect like your brother refusing to drop fifty grand to bail you out of jail.

Of course Wei Wuxian tells him not to. And of course the fact that Jiang Cheng already chose in the moment not to pay a cent because Fuck You Wei Ying still stands there glaring, a precedent that can never be taken back.

And then later he's betrayed by Jiang Cheng like your brother cooperating with a police investigation into a manslaughter you really did commit, that's being handled like domestic terrorism. And then like your brother calling the cops on you. And then like your brother helping the cops find where you're hiding.

I'm personally fascinated by the way Jiang Cheng's lifelong resentment for the way Jiang Fengmian reliably bailed Wei Wuxian out of everything informed those decisions to do the normal thing, the way he's reacting against his dead father as well as against Wei Wuxian and the actual situation.

But even without that daddy issues angle, the fact that the person who made that choice was Jiang Cheng, and that it was simultaneously the reasonable appropriate normal upstanding citizen rational thing to do and so shitty Wei Wuxian would be entitled never to forgive it is sort of. The Point.

Of the scenario, and also to a considerable degree of the entire finely tuned narrative construct that is Jiang Cheng.

[linddzz]

Fandom is stupid and fun and nothing is ever serious, especially shipping opinions.

That being said; I'm standing by Jayce calling Viktor "V" and will fight every single fucking one of you to the DEATH on it. @avelera meet me in the fucking pit. you can bring your detailed analysis and I'll bring a knife

[reineydraws]

had to draw this to understand the way i feel about him now that the manga's ended. 🥲 on that note: if you like hawks and his ending, maybe don't read my tags lol. it's not bashing (imo) but they're not v nice. 😅

bg + unobstructed pose under the cut!

his expression's a lil different 'cuz i only changed the merged layer, all the lighting effects already flattened onto it. 💀 alas.

[beescake]

Sorry for the spam (^o^;) I just really like your blog

no need to apologize ayy!

in this corner we welcome all forms of enjoyment, regardless of whether you're a

happy to have yall here w me,

headin into homestuck 2024 :^)