#thats being deliberately obtuse

[allgoodthingsflowintothecity]

my Stardew Valley hot take is that I am 100% on Demetrius's side on the tomato debate. Robin asked him for fruit and he got tomatoes, which are a fruit. If she wanted a specific fruit, she should have specified. She could have even just said "ingredients for a fruit salad" and then he would know not to get tomatoes, but she didn't. She said fruit. He got fruit.

[rxttenfish]

while aaravi remains firmly within "yeah miranda has a difficult personality and isn't very easy to get along with + has many rough edges which are slowly being worked on but still going to be an issue" after having been very much so within the camp that miranda is a Vexing Bitch upon first contact/getting to know her, she DOES go from "miranda is unpredictable and dangerous as a merfolk and large macropredator and her emotions are inscrutable and random" to "merfolk aren't very hard to understand or predict and it's very easy to stay on the safe side if you keep basic rules in mind and don't freak out the second something unexpected happens"

[96percentdone]

I do honestly believe that all communication ever would be vastly improved if everyone on earth internalized and understood that the the whole thing is a series of back and forth interpretation of words with a collectively understood haze of potential meanings wildly dependent on context, speaker, and audience, even for even the most basic of sentences.

Like I can say "I like cats" but the degree of intensity to which i like them is just something you're inferring based on prior context (also interpreted) and how my tone is read. I could be sincere, or totally sarcastic, or maybe cat is slang for something else—miscommunication happens because everything is up for grabs, and communication is not an objective science.

It's a fast-paced guessing game played by all.

[batboyblog]

I feel like some people can't be/refuse to be educated, or they're deliberately being obtuse because they're trolls, psyops, or they just fell for the trolls and psyops. But its still good to point out where they're wrong and to give actual, you know, facts, for the benefit of other people reading who might actually be reachable.

yeah, I mean I usually ignore them because usually its bad faith and when a post is getting hundreds even thousands of notes in a day you just can't keep up with the 10-20-ish people who say something, particularly if its in the tags because thats just hard or fighting in the replies which always feels weird

But I was in a bad mood and in general seeing the same either bad faith or straight up don't know comment over and over and over again is very annoying

the "lol Joe Biden didn't do anything about Student loans!" one is pretty annoying since Biden has forgiven well over 100 BILLION dollars worth of student loan debt, so like he has done a lot on student loan debt. I'm not a big deal but I remember I did one of my "what Biden did this week" posts and it had the student loan debt forgiveness for people who got defrauded by the Art Institutes, and a few people added their stories of being defrauded and being in debt to AI for years and the one that'll stay with me was an older guy who went to try to get a new degree to get a job in a different field kinda late in the game, his 50s or 60s and of course didn't get the jobs he hoped for because scam college and saying how he thought he'd die in debt and it was all gone, all forgiven. So just like people flippantly dismissing a very real life changing thing is very annoying

there are a few other very common annoying ones "why didn't he do this when he controlled congress before!" well he was busy passing the biggest climate change bill any government on earth has ever done, investing in our Infrastructure for the first time since before Reagan was President (Reagan 😒) listen Biden passed 4 of the biggest most transformationally progressive bills the US has seen since LBJ

American Rescue Plan

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

CHIPS and Science Act

Inflation Reduction Act

on top of which he passed the first gun control law out of congress in 30 years, and other things, like the Respect for Marriage Act to protect gay marriage, or making Juneteenth a federal holiday (the first new federal holiday since MLK day in 1983)

SO! thats why he didn't do the things he wants to do in his next term he was busy doing equally (and in the case of climate change more important) things and thats why we should all be hopeful if Joe Biden is President with a Democratic Congress he'll get most if not ALL the things on his agenda done, because he's fucking good at this, we haven't had a President this good at pushing bills through Congress and using every switch and lever of the federal government to make major progressive change since LBJ or FDR, I guess his big mistake was naming it something boring like "Inflation Reduction Act" and not something sexy like "New Deal" or "Great Society"

sorry to go off on a tare there, but its just frustrating to see 40 (out of tens of thousands really) posts saying the same dumb shit and having no real way to respond

[lemon-natalia]

Nona the Ninth Reaction - Chapter 22

oh no something about Nona’s braids being cut off makes me incredibly sad

also them teaching Nona how to be Harrow basically amounting to ‘wearing black and being rude’ is comedic gold

awwww Palamedes misses Harrow :( me too buddy she has been remarkably absent from this book

ngl there’s absolutely no way that Ianthe is buying this. i feel like they could maybe fool someone else but Harrow and Ianthe spent an awful lot of time together on the Mithraeum 

hmmm as always the conversations between We Suffer and Pash are quite obtuse but it sounds to me like they’re planning to kill Ianthe. i’m not convinced its going to go the way they hope if that is the case, Ianthe has been remarkably persistent

of course they have to bring Noodle along to the high stakes espionage mission

there’s an interesting dynamic between Pash and Camilla here. there’s clearly not any trust between them, and a lot of tension, but also just a little bit of mutual respect 

and they’re heading into the barracks, which have been repeatedly mentioned as being the centre of House-BoE conflict. i foresee absolutely no way this could go wrong at all 💀

oh jesus Ianthe’s gone all out on the ‘throngs of dead soldiers’ thing. yikes, i’d nearly forgotten how disturbing her specific brand of fucked up necromancy could be 

given Pyrrha knows Nona can read body language i wonder if she deliberately broke her act by crossing her arms to make sure Nona knew it was her. if so thats very sweet

and they couldn’t prep Nona for being called Harry, which isn’t great. hopefully that doesn’t throw her off too much

[docilepillow]

2024 January Media Post Thingy

i dont post on tumblr.com a whole lot i mostly just love to reblog but i wanna see if this novelty thing sticks because for like 2020-2022 i had like a text file i did that i stopped doing in 2023 or so for like video games in particular and i unno it was fun but i got distracted cus half that month i was doing retail anything special happen this year yet? not especially, but since soon ill be very busy with something that IS indeed special, and my bday, i may as well make a post now bc i feel like i will be preoccupied for the first good bit of febuary personally ( exciting life stuff ! ) last disclaimer is that at some point i would want to add movies and shows to this list when i get around to it , but for me december and january've kinda blended in that regard.. me and my friends watched Wonka recently and i was kinda so-so on that just cus' i think the original movies a certain way i guess. oops. i think there were other movies/ shows too and comics as well but once again, december-january blurr for me. Furthermore, any piece of media i pick out for this will also have a completely arbitrary doc-ism secondary title just because i feel like it. Enjoy! VIDEO GAMES! ! MARIO GALAXY 2 < SECOND ROUNDEST MARIO GAME >

I wanna say i spent from the first of january to the third on this game, but my Wii Menu calendar is a little fucked up....

Whoops! Regardless, i do have a bit of a background of not completely " gel-ing " with the original Mario Galaxy gameplay wise in my own friendgroup, to mostly dismayed reactions n junk. In short, i think artistically the game's merits are absolutely fantastic, but since i played it on the switch 3d mario collection some time after sunshine, i do think the control scheme is overall pretty limited, and that does apply to mario galaxy 2, i guess, but methodically, i think playing this game on a wiimote does make the limitation feel i guess more fair in terms of like camera control and deliberacy n stuff... the galaxy games and presentation are completely amazing works of art obviously and theres some good music here but i think between galaxy 1 and 2 i definitely prefer 2 mechanically. i enjoy the level scenarios more thats primarily it, i think. I'm so-and-so on how comets work and how many stars you need to get to get to the end ( I think how comets spawn is a little filler-ey and waiting for them to appear in a level i don't know it'll appear in was a little obtuse to figure out, even if i did eventually manage it and actually enjoy the challenges they offer. its mostly just really annoying comet spawning mechanics that were a drag. a very deliberately- controlling mario i guess and being more familiar with galaxy's control probably was why i was able to enjoy this one more ? Yay! I think i still enjoy 3d world more then this and most other 3D marios, though. It's a good video game and i liked the boss fights in it, theyre surprisingly cool and dynamic for what i'm used to from the mario series. I didn't do the special world, though. i wasn't compelled to go that far past the credits. ( You'd think this game's doc-ism title would come from it being the sequel to mario galaxy, and thus, second roundest, but honestly, i think in terms of the mario series scale, Mario Pinball Land has round mario in it, and galaxy 2's starship mario is definitely, i think, rounder then the comet observatory from galaxy one. That makes Mario Galaxy the third-roundest mario game! )

From around the 6th to the 13th, I ended up playing --- ACTRAISER RENAISSANCE < THE CEREAL-BOX GOD GAME >

actraiser is definitely a mixed video game for me, because i definitely see the merit in it. It's a very unconventional splicing of both sidescrolling and city-development game, a " remake " of a novel SNES/Famicom game with the same premise. You're like a big god of light guy who sends your soul into this little warrior guy who cleanses the land of monsters for around 6 different settlements to florish in with the assistance of a cute little angel friend and whatever area's flavor of local legend the game gives you after a story event or two to hold down the place from encroaching monster dens and such; and, apparently exclusive to this version, there's also little tower-defense segments that come in waves around four or five times per area, which in my opinion are kind of this game's weakest link, but not without like Some kind of merit. At the end of each town segment, there is also a big boss fight, usually tying into the story in some way.

( I think one of the things that genuinely pushed me to give the game a try was the cute angel design in it..... ) (I usually take an excessive number of screenshots whenever i'm playing on switch, just because doing so is very easy and i'm a sentimental freak ( For actraiser R, this is 148 screenshots ) ) ( If i continue doing this next month, i'll try to include the foresight to actually use my capture card for images, instead of taking pictures with my phone.. ) ( I think one of the things that genuinely pushed me to give the game a try was the cute angel design in it..... ) (I usually take an excessive number of screenshots whenever i'm playing on switch, just because doing so is very easy and i'm a sentimental freak ( For actraiser R, this is 148 screenshots ) ) ( If i continue doing this next month, i'll try to include the foresight to actually use my capture card for images, instead of taking pictures with my phone.. ) Some things i like that this game does, alot ---

i think it has a very very cool " world select " map. one very postive thing is that it updates in real time with your progress in the area, so you can watch it all expand from your little sky palace once you've done your buisness there. it's really satisfying and pretty... this game's got really good 2d art, i think. I've heard people be mixed on the sidescroller art in comparison, but i think it's got a charm to it. I think it's cute and while its probably more a budgetary limitation, i do like how everything kind of looks like one of those fantasy stills you can sometimes buy from arts and crafts stores. The framerate on them is like a bit lower then what you'd expect from a modern game but mechanically its still very responsive, which makes me feel like it's a stylistic choice to look more stop-motioney, i guess. Maybe im just a fan of ham, i unno.

In terms of the overhead segments, it's pretty basic and automated, which is fine by me, and perfectly workable for what it is, i think, conceptually ( they build out on your own but you do kind of " guide their hand " when it comes to where paths go, at least. It does lead to a weird meta thing being to zap your own people with holy lightning to destroy stuff you don't want though, which feels flavorfully odd for a benevolent god.... I guess it's fair enough

the main problem with the game is that the tower defense segments, the main major feature and addition of this remake, does kind of take the game's pacing and drop flat in the middle of it. They're usually decently long segments where you can only indirectly fight, and are kind of slow. They also usually need you to protect or have a certain number of buildings left by the end of it ( having all of your farms in tact by the end, defending the main temple, not having every house burned down ) which can be a bit more difficult then it sounds. i dont think the segments are bad or anything, there's just.... entirely too many of them??? like mechanically theyre fine they just happen every other second between story events and it feels kind of padded after like the second one in one area, and there's about 5 per area of increasing difficulty. i definitely think if anything could be reined back, it'd be that. I don't think the story is too special , either, the angel kind of just quips sassily about the story at you from time to time and your followers make requests of you at the temple, usually manifesting in the town segements as " have x number of y " or getting the population to a set threshold, or getting x number of resources. The structure of each area isn't shaken up too much, mostly just " new settlement, find a guy, guy isnt so sure about this lord of light guy but through fighting alongside u and some small character arch, they become a champion of yours or something and you meet the scary boss guy and kill them and weaken the big bad dark lords forces behind it all, but there were two segments i liked, both pretty late-game, with the ice wyvern and this guy named shemall whose only affront to you is having a more popular humanitarian ideology ( who actually becomes the dominant ideology in the segment leaving the church literally empty for a good portion of it , and is only tied into the status quo by the dark lord himself possessing the other temple and shit and starting a really really bad storm of eeevil , who i like a bit ) and a boss in the last area who was implied to once be a force of good but ultimately subservient to the bad guys will, which is basic but i tihnk neat. also they have cool designs. )

Shrug! I think it's neat but it has problems that bog it down! Waah! i dont regret playing it or anything but it's like a 7! ( It's kind of like a game you'd get in one of those cereal boxes, and it's a little cheap, but its endearing to me ? ) TOREE 3D < LEAST-CONSEQUENCIAL SPOILER AWARD >

finished this game the same day i finished actraiser, in one sitting. Ummm... i know this game's like a crowd favorite, and it's, like, solid, but i don't really have all that much to say about it ..... Like, it's an OK platformer, with like really great value for your dollar, but i don't really have all that much to say about it, endearment-wise. I think also that the VHS horror elements are largely unnecessary and are kind of whatever, but I know i'm not really the audience for it. That's the spoiler, i guess. Around the same time, in a date range I don't remember, I basically ended up completely reorganizing my room for Life Stuff, and ended up giving a really cool fan project a try, from a series i've always wanted to try more of, if not for the language barrier, in the form of -- STARFY ORIGINS ( Densetsu no Stafy ) < SPLASHABLE VIDEO GAME >

Waaaaaaaa ! i love starfy ( Stafy? ) You probably wouldn't have the background on it unless you knew me, but i'm a real DS head, and one of my earliest games on the system, one i have vivid memories with, was The Legendary Starfy, an " underwater platformer ", mostly known as being a kirby-like game in style, and being the last entry in a mostly untranslated series of platformers that're japanese-exclusive!

Essentially, what this means for me was that there was , for a very long portion of my kid-years, a bunch of video games out there that i knew i'd be instantly endeared by if ONLY i could play them ( since, even at the time, gba emulation for me was kind of mystical and out of my ability ) ; and , at least in my mind, that meant it'd have just as many lovable characters and such as the the starfy I got to play, anecdotaly meaning the only exposure i'd have to these games beforehand is ferverously looking up stuff on the starfy wiki and watching youtube videos of the final bosses and stuff; basically just lementing for years that " aww,, theres no translation. i guess it's just too obscure " with the rest of the starfy fans i've heard about online, until recently! I emulated this game on Vita and overall i'd just have to say its a cute, decently-novel-but-slightly-padded 2d sidescroller. I'd say it was like ok-levels of worth the wait, but im honestly just floored that a translation of the first game happened at all, and i think its awesome what's been done. It's selfish to want, but i'd really like to try the other DS starfy game sometime, whenever that's translated. It's honestly one of the few loose-end games i can even think of and mechanically that one's a whole lot more out there then this one, which, other then the novelty of playing this game i've only heard murmurs of for over a decade, is just kind of alright. kudos to the fan translators making this game work out!!! I wonder if the team that did this have plans for the others now that this game's been translated....

Wew, halfway down the list, i'm sick of typing, but i'll keep going with ---> DEATHSMILES < SCARY >

Cool bullethell shmup with really tight gameplay my friend endeared me to with a single screenshot and a slightly empassioned ramble i forget the exact context of

idk i think this green girl is neat and the arcade style bullethell gameplay's really fun on steam deck; i just think the girls should be like 7 years older each then what the game says because the loli aspects of this game are kind of uncomfortable and unavoidable and i don't like them at all... the gothic horror halloween aestetic the game has otherwise absolutely rocks and is just up my alley, though. i guess its just part of the style theyre going for, but it's a really unfortunate Japanese quirk you kind of have to just tolerate for the other Very Good aspects the game has gameplay and artisticly wise ( music and art direction is awesome )

the girl's dragon familiar is named booboo by the way. just thought that's important. LITTLE GOODY TWO SHOES < GAME **MOST** RESPONSIBLE FOR SINGLE-HANDEDLY HOME-WRECKING MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY THIS MONTH >

Another game my friend reccomended whicch is completely awwesome and my entire aestetic and i love it alot and i think its my game of the year unless something else comes around and im absolutely floored with it and i went into it completely endeared and its completely wrecked my vernacular and its so pretty and its so artistic and its so different and its so pretty and its so girl and its so gay and im Elise and im in the woods i like being in the woods this game has the best aestetic of any game ive played ever and it feels like no competition and ummmmmmmmmmm

idk just fucking look at it its so so so so good i love this games world so sooso osososoos s oso ososo o os so mcuh its so good it so nice its so charactered genuinely great little slice of life slash horror slash social sim game with admittedly some jank portions of it that piss me off a little bit but holy fucking shit this games aestetic is the best besy best best bersy tbest best thing ever made i think its really really good pelease watch this segment on youtube its so silly

im not gonna type anything else this game Is its narrative and i dont wanna spoil anything but its great its got a lovely dark fable aestetic and i think everyone should play it especially if you like rpg maker horror type games / are gay as hell / love fairytale aestetics like I do

i like ummmm Lebkuchen by the way. if u wanna know what my ending is. there is some fucked up shit that happens in this game though despite how absolutely adorable it looks. everything in this game points to it being one of my favorites of all time or at the very least it will definitely poison my brain forever at the expense of my friends who havent played it yet. Waaah..... no i dont think talking about a fanmade pokemon rom hack after arguably a massive artistic achievement is disrespectful thats just how the month flows POKEMON ROWE < I broke it, oops... >

really cool open-world emerald rom hack, similar to crystal clear and the like. I've technically played it already, but this is the first time i've completed it, though i completely broke the game really early into it that undermined it in a way i didnt realize for about 7 gyms, before i accidentally nuked the overworld with a massive bug that scrambled my player's gender and made the overworld color pallete fuck-ey, which, im not ggoing tto blame the developer on, i'm summing that up to a cosmic ray or something. i think with time and with more polish i could see myself liking this more then crystal clear, but time'll see. ( Team was as below )

MIGHTY GUNVOLT < tie in video game i've ever played >

typing this like an hour ins making me realize this docism thing might not stick but mighty gunvolt is neat i guess i never finished it when i first played gunvolt and obsessed over that when it was new ( Mighty gunvolt came as a free download if you bought the first game digitally, you see ) because of the first boss, but now as a more experienced gamer, that's really just because the fire boss is kind of just a weird difficulty spike at the start that the rest of the game difficulty wise doesnt really match up to. It's a cute, very short ( i beat all 3 character campaigns in two hours , liesurely ) platformer styled like megaman, and that's all it really needed to be at the time. i wouldnt go out of my way to play it these days if it wasnt for my own baggage with the gunvolt series in general, and if it wasnt for my much greater affection for its sequel, mighty gunvolt burst.... I'm just gonna say if this game interests you , you really should just play burst instead. Even if you've played the latter before, you're really not missing out on much more then a moderately ok side scroller. it sure is a tie in demake on the early 3ds ! 6180 THE MOON

Surprisingly, this game's on alot of platforms? I just kind of chose it on a whim 'cus it was on the top of the list of H-SHOP stuff and i was looking for something short to play, but it's pretty artsy.

It's a puzzle-platformer where the gimick is that the ball wraps around the screen when you fall down or up, which works really well with the 3ds in my opinion. with the compression and stuff on the 3ds and how the game was laid out, it affectionately reminds me of a flash game you'd find on coolmath or the such, and its very relaxed ( if a little wonky ) . i dont have anything bad to say on it or anything its just a small little game i played on a whim. it's very minimalistic, if you're into that aestetic, you might like this. That's the last of the wholy " new " stuff i finished this month, and id say overall its a solid start for me, and kind of out of season ( very octobery-feeling game lineup in retrospect..! But that month's always usually crowded with obligations and stuff, so i doubt i'd be in a mood for them even at that time of year.. )

Also, i gave a try to cavestory on wiiware, first time i've played the game in a few years now since the switch rerelease! I think its just as fun as i found it when i first discovered it on 3ds, and, while i have a friend who adamantly disagrees, i actually really do like the OST of this version. It's a cute mutation on the games ost that in my opinion enhances the kind of forelorn vibe the game originally had, and i really like the blown up art of this version of cave story, even if it does have nichalis's hands all up in the matter. since it's unlocked from the start, i played the game on Curly Story till the true ending. I still love this game alot. Sometime i'll trick a certain individual into finishing it, i hope.

That's all i have to say! this is the first time i've made such a big post on any kind of social media period, so, hopefully its not unreadably disjointed or self-absorbed. Whatever!

play little goody two shoes

[viktoriakomova]

all the "how is this different from beatlemania or women throwing themselves at nba stars" comments are deliberately obtuse but the thing that sticks out the most to me about all this is that these guys clearly enjoy making women (not just livvy herself) uncomfortable. they arent expressing genuine admiration. they make an exaggerated show of behaving like slobbering rabid dogs because they think its funny and they like the attention. yes they think livvy is attractive but thats not the point. thinking shes hot or even being obsessively fixated on her doesnt make you harass other women too. "WHERES LIVVY? WE WANT HERRRR" "are you livvy's mom? are you livvy's mom?" "you're not livvy but you'll do, can we get a picture?" loudly chanting her name in the audience when shes not even competing. it goes way beyond how they feel about this girl

it's all a huge joke to them. they revel in objectifying a woman to the point of intimidating every woman around them because they think its funny to sexually harass and intimidate women. its not about how much they want to fuck her

[larrythefloridaman]

through improv and sheer serendipity kerfuffle depicts a more realistic dysfunctional family dynamic than some prestige melodramas with the ciblings. I keep talking about this because it all compels me so much.

Prism is the root. but the way that shes treated them all creates this vicious self-perpetuating dysfunction by, intentionally or not, pitting them against eachother in a way that reflects real abuse tactics- it becomes more difficult to identify the real problem if your victims are too busy infighting to realize their common enemy and band against you.

Cobalt tries to protect Crimson and Chartreuse by making them follow The Rules™️ so prism wont involve herself, but this redirects their resentment of her onto him, especially in circumstances like cpuk white/orange, where Prism enables Crimson by freeing him unconditionally without any strings attached (hes supposed to be the powerful bad guy thats fun to fight, not out of prison on parole on his best behavior to not get put back in, she needs to enable and push him to act his worst,) until Cobalt swoops in with conditions to try to do preemptive damage control by making up some rules for crimson to have to follow, critically that he has to Get Back in his Living Jail Cell (crimsonaut) at the end of the tournament. And i dont think crimson would've tried to kill the poor guy if his existence wasn't Actively A Threat To His Freedom! He clearly likes the little dude, he's didn't do that because he Wanted to he just refused to get stuffed back in the jar. he's just. a pretty ruthless pragmatist about certain things and will absolutely do whatever he feels he needs to to accomplish an endgoal of sufficient importance, even if he doesnt feel great about it.

Which cobalt finds distasteful and shitty, and Crimson trying to trigger an apocalypse of sorts apparently just to spite him and rub his face in his failure to protect Mark's universe of origin (while also, in the process and intentionally or not, demonstrating his own system's strength through stress-testing,) even more so. And a lot of the time he's not even Wrong that things crimson does are morally shitty its just that being a god, especially one who wields their power effectively, is sort of inherently unethical in a way I don't think Cobalt's willing to fully accept, and Crimson may be an asshole but hes the one of these two who can generally come out of the trolley problem having chosen correctly, y'get me. Cobalt provably has allowed many many people to suffer through his refusal or inability to take action to prevent it because it would mean having to get his conscience dirty by making a less than ideal choice, and Crimson hates that he has the gall to judge how Crimson performs his duties when the facts are what they are, and Cobalt IS an irrational idealistic hypocrite who doesn't know what he's talking about! He kind of has to be! because the kinds of expectations and circumstances that are placed on them are fundamentally contradictory because, as i said, its kind of impossible to Ethically Be God, and as such if he has to babysit prism's temper so his siblings don't get hurt by keeping them in line and behaving and being Good, he has to operate by following what he can glean of fundamentally irrational and deliberately obtuse rules to the best of his ability, because child abuse is fundamentally irrational. But Cobalt doesn't get that! This is his normal and he doesnt have enough experience outside his bubble to really get how not normal it is! He doesn't feel he needs to justify any of this rationally because their godhood makes them Exceptional, they get to decide what is and is not rational for someone in their position, at least until Prism pulls his entire identity out from under him like a rug. But Crimson through his rebellion demands he make sense without really putting together why Cobalt, attempting to be obedient and dutiful, Acts Like That and dismisses his challenges to the rules as insubordinate and irresponsible, because he doesn't get that Cobalt's criticism is irrational because Prism's irrational and he has to measure by her standard, which she won't make clear. Neither of them get that neither obedience nor rebellion will get them treated better, until they find out their true purposes and the futility finally clicks. But by now they've built up so much baggage around this dynamic and their roles that Cobalt's default with Crimson is accusatory and judgemental, Crimson is the Problem Child and is treated as such, and Crimson, having enough worldly experience with mortals to have reference for what normal is actually supposed to look like and now knowing all his rebellion was pointless, has taken to rationalizing his abuse as having actually been Uniquely Fine because he was a Bad Kid™️ y'see, the god of treachery, Assigned Problem At Birth, even if he'd never want to see any other kid treated like he was, and not really seeing that for the cognitive dissonance that it is just yet.

Meanwhile Chartreuse has seen ALL of this dynamic for what it is for god knows how long. The Futility and overwhelmingly tangled whole of it all frustrates her and its miserable and she wishes they could just stop fighting and see the truth, but she can't really bridge the gap in understanding between them, because she can't tell them anything without risking Prism coming down on her, so she plays her role as best she can when the rules are made up and make no sense but not following them could get her killed, her only option left knowing all this being to stop caring, and so time blurs together in a miserable featureless repetitive slog of overwhelming pain and nonsense........ until she gets out. And now everything is novel and exciting again, and she has to find her footing in a whole new world when her old life and experiences alienate her, and she has all these new challenges that other people don't have because of the environment she was raised in, but she'd sincerely rather die a normal death after a well-lived life than go back to that unending 'special' hell. And god, good for her

[a-lukewarm-take]

On aging up

A lot of people around here are deliberately obtuse about aging characters up. Obviously sexualizing a minor is fucked up, nobody is arguing otherwise. But a lot of you don't seem to understand what that means. Porn containing aged up characters rarely comes from a desire to fuck an underaged character. (I wont say never because this is the internet and there's always going to be the extreme outlier.)

A lot of times its an exploration of what that character would be like as an adult that just so happens to contain smut. Speculating what kind of house they'd live in, what college degree they would get, what car they would drive, who they would marry and what their kids would look like isn't a crime. And once you're already knee deep into a college/post college AU, the canon age of the characters no longer applies.

People aren't bound to our physical passage of time in fiction. If they were it would be boring as hell. Even if the original creator doesnt age the character, it doesn't make fans evil for being intrested in a reality where they do.

A good example of this in published fiction is Robin Hood. Robin Hood isnt written by one person. It's a thousand stories written by a thousand different people because it came in a time when copyright didn't exist. Folk lore and rhymes were fanfiction before there was any legal need to make that distinction. It's a pretty well understood concept that names, ages, cast members and backstories change signfigantly, with each story having its own unique plot and themes.

In much the same way a Robin Hood written by one author has an entirely different story and background than another authors Robin Hood, Fanfiction works in the same way. Every author can tell their own story and can change the details about a character to fit the themes and narrative they wish to convey. They don't need the blessing of canon to do this.

It doesn't matter if canon never showed a character as an adult because thats what the fanfiction is doing. The college AU explicitly depicts the lived experience of a broke adult grinding their way through an education in hopes of a better future. While the Author is already writing and experiencing the character in their struggles with adulthood, it's not a huge leap to ask what kind of partier they are, whether or not theyd end up in a one night stand, with who, what position.

The strawman defence of "you have to see minors in a sexual way to want to age them up in the first place." Is nonsense. Canon ages don't matter.

Speculation about the future is such a natural thing. One of the most common questions children get is "what do you want to be when you grow up?" And "Mom" or "Dad" is an answer that Ive never in my life heard a parent call inappropriate. There's so many aspects of adulthood to explore and play around in that clearly sexualization isn't a core reason to age a character up, but rather a byproduct of telling a story about adult life.

Anyway. Thanks for reading my poorly structured and fairly distracted rant. Have a nice day, drink some water.

Good vibes to you,

-Luke

[alcorian-cycle]

hey, i just wanna preface this by saying im not sending this in bad faith. like im not trying to be disingenuous at all and im not attempting to be a shit starter. but i feel like its worth checking deeper if heritageposts is actually antisemitic. because idk if its entirely useful to take an anons word for it, or trust that they were blocked for no reason other than simply being jewish. same with believing heritageposts is antisemitic based off secondhand (im assuming? sorry if thats incorrect) accounts of people just sort claiming they are. its just that zionist are throwing that word around with little regard with the whole ‘if you support palestinine/palestinians or are critical of any aspect of Israels existence or even certain actions from it etc etc etc you are antisemitic and support the suffering of jewish ppl’. (and ofc there are people who are being antisemitic on here, antisemitism is *pervasive* online. it is legitimately fucking bad and needs to be called out in people and spoken about. but im specifically talking about the whole deciding all anti-zionist are across the board antisemitic thing).

imo heritageposts has been doing some decent work so far in using their popular gimmick blog of tumblr heritage posts to help people keep themselves informed and reblogging a lot of resource posts and info on there (making some also). i mean if im totally mistaken here and they are actually antisemitic, like if they did block a jewish person for just being a jew, or anything else, thats genuinely my bad and i apologize. that said tho i cant actually find anything on that other than like, hearsay passed around by the gaggle of tumblr zionist or people who just genuinely dont know better but whos knee jerk reaction is to believe it because they dont want to support an antisemite. the latter of which i understand, like no one wants to unknowingly support or reblog from someone who is using this conflict as leverage to be antisemitic without really getting called out on it.

(i will just say because ive seen this called into question with heritageposts and many other blgos, that i truly dont think wishing death on idf soldiers is antisemitic. if someone wishes death on them for being jewish? absolutely, yes, that is 100% antisemitic. but people knowing and seeing what the idf is doing and has been doing and will continue to do if allowed to (which they probably will), coupled with watching these guys joke and tiktok dance over the death and destruction they’ve caused, i feel like its a very human reaction to respond with hoping they die/cheer for their deaths, particularly when idf soldiers already do that indiscriminately to palestinians. to me its such a big jump when people see others horrified and furious and overcome with grief at things the idf does and respond to it in a highly emotional way, and then equate that to them wanting idf soldiers dead because theyre jewish.)

like if that anon was blocked (it seems weird tho to message an anti-zionist pro-palestine blog and ask if its ok to follow simply because youre jewish? even though you agree 100% with them? when its made pretty clear on blogs like those that zionism ≠ judaism and its blatantly antisemitic to confer all jewish people to zionism) im really getting the feeling theyre possibly omitting something else they mightve said, or they were just being deliberately obtuse and aggro with how they said it. like something that genuinely warrants a block, but because theyre on anon they have plausible deniability and can just say literally whatever happened. i know saying this prob seems kinda silly coming from me, person currently sending an ask on anon. so if you ignore this ask for that reason i’ll understand lol

anyway my POINT that i literally couldve wrapped up in a single short paragraph is: i think its really important to know for sure if a big pro-palestinine/anti-zionism blog is antisemitic, or if they just have a very big target on their back for zionists who want them smeared as one because they legitimately believe they are one. because to them anything anti-zionist (and by proxy pro-palestine) is antisemitic.

im so sorry for this long ass ask, i know im a longwinded over-explainer. i dont have an excuse for accosting you with this wall of text other than i was cursed by a witch at birth to be this way.

im leaving behind this thing with heritageposts. i didnt know/follow them before that post, and i dont now. after speaking to MANY people on the topic, its become clear to me that i dont know enough about heritageposts to say anything more. ive asked for sources on any claims made to me that can reasonably be expected to leave evidence, and gotten none, so unfortunately i cant look into it further, at least not without doing some detective work that frankly, i am not equipped to do, especially not right now.

i understand and agree with your points. i would also like to know for certain if heritageposts is antisemitic, because while they seem like a valuable source for news, like i said in my original post i dont want my news filtered through an antisemite. but i just dont think i can determine that. apparently there is a lot of controversy on this particular topic and there have been accusations of antisemitism going back to before oct 7th. thats just too broad and complex of a subject for me, someone who doesnt even follow them, to make a sound judgement on.

i am leaving this situation pretty much the same as i was when i entered it: not following heritageposts. end of story. sorry i couldnt say or do more.

[shkspr]

on the one hand i almost get it bc the terms “reading comprehension” and “critical thinking” are school-coded but on the other hand:

a formal education is not the only way (nor even the best way!) to learn these things. if you know how to read then you should know how to understand what youre reading. sometimes it has to be taught and sometimes it takes practice but it isnt some highly guarded secret of privileged academia.

nobody is saying you have to have a perfectly nuanced interpretation of everything you read. everyone misunderstands things sometimes. the point is you have to look at a post and think “am i sure im getting what op is saying” instead of “im positive op is saying this thing i just made up in my head”

if you dont know what youre talking about theres a hefty chance that youre aware you dont know what youre talking about. in which case i would advise you simply shut the fuck up. you can have the worst reading of a post thats your prerogative but you dont need to comment on anything. you dont need to make your ignorance everyone elses problem.

you really really really dont need to double down on your ignorance when someone points out that you misinterpreted what they said. it is literally so easy to say “oh my bad i misread this” instead of being deliberately obtuse and argumentative when youre wrong!

inb4 “some people have disorders, etc” yeah some of these things are cognitive or social skills that some people struggle with. but that doesnt mean youre not responsible for your behavior and it is disingenuous to pretend that thats your concern when people are literally just saying “think for two seconds before making a comment on a post”

[dreamhot]

hey i was just wondering if you could clarify what the whole discourse was about the horror fanart because i saw some fanart that had nearly 10k likes on twitter and everyone likes it and i saw horror fanart on here that people were thirsting over? which is fine im just getting a bit confused as to what classifies as the discourse because the one on twitter had positive comments so i got very confused

i saw it on the main dream fanart tag and it was genuinely terrifying art thats kind of making me upset (i dont know if its irrational but im kind of getting anxious about it) and im not sure if thats what people were talking about

okay so . this is where the argument has run into issues, because i believe either side is approaching the situation through a different lens. on one hand you have the horror artists, who are completely within their rights to interpret the material as they see fit for their work. i'm not here to say that they shouldn't draw horror art - personally i enjoy a lot of darker work! - but there is a huge issue with not tagging things properly, which understandably causes a lot of upset. additionally, the dreamfanart tag is LOADED with the creepy art rn, presumably as a sort of response to the backlash. thus, the other end has issues with the lack of tagging (both in terms of horror and the rp/dsmp clarification). this seems mostly objective

personal grievances under the cut

one criticism that i agree with (but others have mixed feelings on) is the concept of what makes good character design. obviously we're working with mc skins, and dream's in particular is ... well, you know what it's like. it's why we have so many varied c!dream designs - which is cool as hell! but some of the horror art has scrapped all recognisable features in favour of just making ... a spooky looking guy. no mask, no smile, no... green? idk. just, if you look at a piece of art and can't identify who it's supposed to be, how successful is the design? it's not like you have to go along with fanon, but typically character fanart based upon a piece of media relies upon Some sort of identifiable feature to make the viewer say 'ah yes! this is [x]'. is it a crime to create a design that couldn't be identified as c!dream by any metric? no, but i do have to wonder what the intention is in making him look like that, esp when every other character ... looks about how you'd expect

outside of that, though, the biggest problem arises for me personally when the art errs away from simply unsettling and into almost predatory tones. the people who make c!tommy look like a child and c!dream as some huge, looming monster. the people who push the 'c!dream is obsessed solely with c!tommy in an unhealthy way' narrative. it's all too tadca-adjacent for my tastes, deliberate or not, and the people saying 'well it's a YOU problem for making that association' are being deliberately obtuse. someone else said it better than me before, but once you've been exposed to that group, it's hard not to see this sort of content as a dogwhistle. and it think, consequently, it's not unfair to be unsettled by this style of art ... especially when people are pushing the bounds of the story in order to act like their depictions are canon compliant

[wannaremember]

The thing i love about arts, film, music and literature is that everyone can have different opinions and interpretations of it and thats just a wonderful part of it. What someone else says or thinks about something doesn't say anything about what i will say or think about it. If i like something i like it if i don't i don't, it doesn't matter what opinion someone else has. And me liking or disliking something isnt some objective statement on it. Its my own opinion and i know others will have different opinions. (Sidenote: liking or disliking something doesn't need some justifications of morality or technical perfection or whatever else.)

Anyway all of that to say that other people's thoughts on something are interesting to see but don't mean anything much regarding what my own thoughts will be. And thats the case with reviews. But when reviewers are only trying to stir drama and controversy and not actually even contributing much about the actual movie (which is the case for both dwd and mp) its irritating. And when that speaks on a larger scale about issues in the world like misogyny and queer politics about the closet and "queerbaiting" (a concept that doesnt exist) its aggravating and difficult to deal with personally as well.

Add to that the way the fandom is so selective about it and completely ignores it's role is part of why everything is so frustrating. There was so much great stuff during the mp premiere but it was all overshadowed by the amount of people comparing it to dwd which made absolutely no sense. And with dwd i dont know if people were and are being deliberately obtuse or if they in fact do not know much about what actually happened but the misrepresentation of everything is so gross.

Anyway end of the day dont much care for the reviews anyway but its funny (derogatory) how people in the fandom are being hypocritical. Unfortunately not surprising though.

(At times i just want to leave here because nothing about the fandom itself is keeping me in it and maybe I'm better off liking and enjoying these things without seeing what anyone else is saying about them because it takes away from the joy. If its not discourse its vague posts about it that get me curious. But that's another thing)

[telaraneas]

im still in the process of PROPERLY reading all of Detective Pony because dirk im sorry but i have adhd i cant sit through all of those words at once. its not even that the concepts are too advanced, its just that im p sure he deliberately goes out of his way to be as obtuse and pretentious as he possibly can be (which is pitch perfect characterization sndjej)

ive read it in chunks out of order by skimming and then going back and forth, which is almost definitely cheating but also the only way i can actually digest everything going on here. detective pony is a masterpiece on about 5 different levels, it captures a very specific type of metafiction silly-to-crushingly-serious rabbit hole that i have seen over and over and which i'm struck by and fascinated with each time, even the most shallow and un-self aware of these kinds of works fascinate me (...so yes including stuff like the overbloated disaster mess that are the nostalgia critic movies)

detective pony is just unironically very engaging tho no matter how deep it goes into embarrasing dialectics and struggles with the admission of responsibility about the things you create and about how the entire book IS an extension of his psyche no matter how much he frames it like a struggle against him. the whole thing reads like a microcosm of his whole mental state and especially the fact that as he says. he set out to make a birthday present for jane and ended up just making a whole thing thats about himself and his ego and his struggles with that ego and the terrifying fact that no matter how much he says hes ashamed of it and that no one should read it, he is STILL in the active process of creating it and putting his feelings out there and arguing with himself in the form of socratic dialogue and that, in the end, he DOES end up giving it to jane

and i cant stop thinking about how jane DID READ IT. like i fully 100% believe she read every word

dirk and jane have one of the most interesting relationships in homestuck i think because they honestly care about each other and can be honest with each other in a way they struggle to be with the rest of their friend group, but in a way that's BECAUSE of how emotionally detached they tend to be. like, dirk has his whole mass of issues, but jane's deal is that she tries to be very Nice and conscious of other people's feelings, but because she's, yknow, not a perfect human being, she doesn't ACTUALLY believe everything she says, and she doesn't say most of the things she thinks, because she doesn't want to hurt others and doesn't realize this, too, is a selfish impulse, maybe moreso than actually saying what she feels

i mean. jane was SO committed to only saying what she thought was the most socially nice and appropiate thing to say, that she blew her chance with jake in the dumbest way and then kept digging her hole into the depths of the earth akdnsknd and then she dug in her heels and kept being A Good Friend against her actual wishes until her passiveness turned to passive aggression and then blew up into ACTUAL AGRESSION

I think jane and dirk kind of have similar yet opposite problems in a way, where, like... dirk doesn't want to burden others with his feelings and so tries to hide behind a billion layers of detachment and masks (to the point jake spends the entire story up to entering sburb interacting with dirk without ever actually TALKING to him directly much to his frustration), but despite that stated goal, his feelings and authentic self STILL wind up as the most overtly everpresent fact of the friend group's lives, because moderation just escapes him, so it's like the faucet is at full blast of dirk all over everyone while he stares at it wondering why the fuck he's like this

and then there's jane who is like... she WANTS to connect with others. she WANTS to understand others and be understood in return. she wants to be a good friend and a presence in their lives that they find worthwile. so with her the faucet is closed completely, other than the inescapable droplets that make her support come across as transparently condescending or passive agressive when her heart just isn't in it. jane has SUCH massive trouble expressing her actual, genuine, unironic 100% from the heart Feelings And State Of Mind to other people, and yet she's so miserable when people don't automatically KNOW where she's at

so... i think dirk would write that whole thing, which is esentially a static version of AR in that it's an encapsulation of him that is very much authentically him including the parts of himself he hates the most and never wants anyone else to see, but yet he puts it out into the world ANYWAYS because he can't bring himself to ACTUALLY hide any of himself no matter how much he wants to

and jane would 1000% read the whole thing, from the goofy violent doodly beginnings to the philosophically self-destructive metafictional cathartic end, and she would read it and absorb it and gain a clearer understanding of her friend's issues and what weighs on him, and she would definitely cry while reading it and feel deeply for her friend's situation... and she wouldn't say anything about it

she wouldnt reach out to him like HEY UH ARE YOU OKAY THIS BOOK IS KIND OF UHH CONCERNING, which is ABSOLUTELY what roxy and jake would do... and in my opinion, that's probably WHY dirk went through with it and gave it to her after all that waffling back and forth. because he can't handle honest confrontation about his mental state, but on one level or another, he WANTS to be understood

so like, i think thats why jane and dirk's relationship is so interesting to me. they Understand each other and find comfort in that passive understanding. i think it's also part of why they both went steadily downhill when they... well they never fought over jake, because again these two idiots are too avoidant to have a direct confrontation about it, but they certainly let that whole situation drive a wedge between them which resulted in both of them feeling even more isolated despite roxy's desperate efforts to hold the entire disaster gang together

man.... i just think about the alpha kids a lot........

[oyprongs]

seeing so many people say ppl are calling those who’ve read or written dark!james fics nazi sympathizers en masse and bc of this they’re ignoring the other points or think its blown out of proportion…. no we were saying there were nazi sympathizing themes and undertones and expressing distress at seeing messages like “me loving james despite knowing hes a nazi in this fic” like….if thats what people are getting from ur fic and how theyre reacting…lmao idk what to tell you.

but in fact no one i know is holding a grudge against people who enjoyed these fics and realized why many of these themes are problematic. and those i know who’ve been outspoken about this have continued to say they dont think of those readers as literal nazi sympathizers??? just to unfollow and stop interacting. like. if you arent on the discord and didnt read and have not actually read what some of the most outspoken people have said on tumblr, then why are u even getting into this without understanding?? and if u are on the discord, you either didnt read all the very eloquent and articulate messages, or youre being deliberately obtuse. either way its exhausting and ur diluting the argument to help a strangers victim narrative lmao

[fairycosmos]

☕️ i feel like makeup should really only be used to make yourself look Strange in some way (bold colors, emo makeup, blush cheek hearts, etc) and i cannot get behind the idea of a “natural look” with makeup like a what? a huh???? say that again slowly. ALSO skincare industry is repackaged makeup culture, everybody has acne and thats not an indication of something that needs 15 expensive products to be “fixed”

koraaaaaaaaa !! so true honestly im at my wits end w it these days. not with ppl who wear makeup obviously, i do myself jfkdkzfkddkz. but at the attitude surrounding it. you can’t talk about it with ppl acting deliberately obtuse and getting offended bc they think they’re being attacked when we criticise an aspect of culture they’ve built their identity around. if makeup was used to make us all look like a bunch of artistic freaks/purely for self expression, and if it served no conventional aesthetic purpose, i’d be way more down for it. but as it stands it’s literally just repackaging what the world considers a more attractive face in a bunch of little boxes to get insecure kids to spend all their money on it. to the point where they feel a total disconnect from their natural looks. i know i do - i’ve worn foundation since i was 11/12 and i can’t stand myself without it. and yeah skin care is the same game just a little more covert. acne, wrinkles, discolouration....theyre literally just parts of the human body. unless someone has a very painful skin condition they don’t need a 10 step face routine yk it’s all getting so ridiculous now and it’s all making so much fucking moneyyyyy. also the natural looks nearly always use the most products which really fuckin blurs the line between whats attainable and what isn’t when it comes to the beauty standard uaaaaagh