#this is more of a long nitpick than a vent

[fantasygerard2000]

With the Owl House Pilot Animatic leaked and while people be saying how the show could've been different if this version was kept and finalized, half of them say this draft was better than the one they got. That that got me concerned about fandom behavior whenever an early version of a show/movie was revealed, either by the creator themselves or leaked, and that some fans of that work will say stuff like that can be pretty disheartening to hear.

To give a blunt example, you spend way too long working on a project to the point of redoing because it was just not working. And when you finally show it to your viewers/client, they liked it. Until they saw an early version and say they now don't like the one they got and prefer to get the version that you scrapped and therefore all that work was wasted.

Now, i do find early versions of media I like interesting to see them completed, but i don't really necessarily need it because i'm already fine and contempt with what i got. As much as i would prefer Kingdom of the Sun, i'm glad we got Emperor's New Groove. And as much as i would want to see how the tame collar concept was finalized in Zootopia, i'm glad they didn't went with it because it's a bit too much of bummer of an idea and that kind of concept should worked better if it was aimed for a more adult/teen demographic.

I know, not everyone is in total agreement about saying an early unused version was better than the final product, hence i used "some people", but this behavior is the reason why i rarely hang out with some fandoms anymore. They praise a version of a work that doesn't exist. And while there are those in said fandoms like to make headcanons and AU's based on early draft, which i support and encourage, i don't like to engage with them, mainly for my mental sake and rather hang out with the people who like the work for what it is.

[xcherricutie]

➤ Messy

Vegeta x F!Reader

Warnings: None

Word Count - 1.5k

Summary - Vegeta is a clean freak with anger issues and pent up emotions, and decides to take it out on you for fun.

Notes: This is my first time posting here. I am from Wattpad, so I don't know tumblr etiquette, apologies.

“Your habits are disgusting and you’re a mess.”

He would follow you around and criticize you for what felt like hours on end. It was enough to drive anyone mad, and he did it to you on purpose. He was a man on a mission, out to make your life as miserable as possible. That’s just how it was, being acquainted with the prince of all saiyans. It didn’t matter if you tried to avoid him, he would find you, and he would let you know of every flaw in your life. Almost as if he took a sick satisfaction in seeing you wallow in your own misery and insecurities. 

“Vegeta, her house is none of your business,” Bulma scolded with a harsh glare, slapping your discarded napkin out of his hand. You hadn’t had the time to clean up your living space before Bulma and Vegeta dropped by, unannounced. You didn’t mind surprise visitors, but Vegeta was an exception. Every single time he came by, which had become noticeably more frequent, you made absolutely sure that he could not find a single reason to complain or nitpick. You were simply thankful Bulma was there to keep her dog on his leash. 

“Sorry for the mess,” you forced through grit teeth with a smile, before your face relaxed as your eyes landed on Bulma. “What brings you here? You’re not one for random visits.” 

“Right, sorry,” Bulma chuckled, brushing some strands of her azure hair behind her ear, glancing over at Vegeta as he tip-toed through the specks of dirt in your carpet. Bulma rolled her eyes at the dramatic saiyan, sighing. “I need you to keep an eye on him. I don’t really trust him to be alone at Capsule Corp., and my mom and dad are out on vacation. I’ve got a big workload on my hands and can’t deal with him right now. I’ll pay you good, I promise.” 

You wanted to say no. You wanted to tell both of them to get out of your house and never come back. Babysitting Vegeta could have perhaps been Bulma’s most unreasonable request for you. He had not been on Earth for long, and yet had antagonized you more than anyone. You rarely even showed your face at Capsule Corp. anymore because of the man. And Bulma was your best friend that you visited nearly daily for years. She knew how much you hated Vegeta. 

And yet, when she pulled the wad of cash out of her pocket, you immediately found yourself agreeing to the impossible task. Bulma’s payments were usually unreasonable amounts, as if the stack of paper zenni she handed to you was less than allowance money for her. It felt wrong to take, but what could you say? You were living independently in the city - you needed any cash you could get. Even if it meant spending a day with the most annoying being in the universe. 

As soon as Bulma had left, it was not long before Vegeta started to act up. He almost acted like a prepubescent boy at times, unable to properly convey his feelings, resorting to anger to vent. You had even made a point to clean up around the house so he wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable, but some of the things he complained about were unreasonable. 

“The geometry of your living space is poorly designed, woman,” Vegeta commented as he stood in the midst of your living room, looking around at the furniture. You rolled your eyes as you vacuumed the carpet, tuning his voice out. 

“Nobody is stopping you from just leaving. You hate all of us, I don’t understand why you continue to torture yourself on this planet,” you muttered, unsure if he heard you over the vacuum. You didn’t care much if he did or not, barely having the energy to speak to or at him. 

“I’m waiting for Kakarot to come back to this miserable planet. But I’m starting to doubt he will,” Vegeta said as he placed his hands on his hips, searching for more things in your house to nitpick about. You had done a pretty good job hiding things for him to complain about. 

“Maybe he’s avoiding you,” you said with a smirk at the idea. You would not blame Goku one bit if he was avoiding the entire Earth because of Vegeta’s presence. Vegeta did not find your comment very funny as his head whipped to your direction, glaring harshly. 

“Then I would track him down and drag him to this miserable planet to humiliate him in front of his loved ones,” Vegeta sneered, lip raised in a slight snarl, as if the mere assumption were the most offensive thing he’d ever heard. 

“Is it really that hard to accept that somebody doesn’t like you and doesn’t want to see you? I really don’t understand you, Vegeta,” you stood up straight as you turned off the vacuum, turning to glare at him. “You antagonize people on purpose, and then get mad when everyone leaves. What do you want from us? Why won’t you just leave?” 

“My business is none of your concern, woman. I suggest you close your mouth and not utter a single sound from now on, unless you really want to see what antagonistic looks like. I could put you through a world of misery with words alone, I haven’t done anything to you yet.” Vegeta’s harsh eyes stared into your soul, as if knowing you weren’t going to listen. He had been here less than a year, and yet knew you would not stand for such nonsense. 

“This is my house! I suggest you shut up if you know what’s good for you, asshole!” You yelled, leaning closer to his face. His warm breath hit your face as he scoffed, looking down at you as if he were so high and mighty. He was barely three inches taller than you.

“I could destroy you, and this house, and this whole planet in a matter of seconds if I wished. Your empty threats mean nothing to me, human.” Vegeta smirked down at you. That was your breaking point as your hand moved on its own. Even Vegeta found himself shocked by your sudden movement as your hand left its mark across his cheek, its shape searing into his cheek. Head turned from the sudden force, Vegeta stared at you with wide eyes, as if to let his brain process the attack on him. You expected him to blow up. You needed to gain control, fast. You would rather your house remained intact by the time Bulma returned. 

“Wh-What’s with the surprised look? Didn’t think a girl could hit you? Bet you’re completely smitten, huh?” Your face lit up like a lightbulb, cheeks burning as you smirked, watching his every muscle movement. You didn’t even mean for the words to escape your lips, but as they did, you knew you were dead. “You want to kiss me so bad, huh, Vegeta?” 

You saw the blush bloom across his cheek, making your hand mark burn ever brighter. That was the first time you had ever seen an emotion other than anger or pride on his face. But the view did not last long, as you suddenly found your vision obscured, his large frame right in your face, his lips connected to yours. This was an unexpected development, to say the least. 

His touch sent lightning through your nerves as his hands uncharacteristically gently slid up your arms, gloved fingers brushing over your cheeks. His kiss was soft, as if to show you everything he had been unable to get across before, many emotions flowing through one small touch. That one small touch, however, began to grow more desperate as Vegeta grabbed your shoulders, firmly pressing his lips to yours. Your scent was intoxicating, and every little jolt of electricity to his nerves sent him spiraling through his pent-up emotions even more. 

It wasn’t until your palms were pressed to his chest, trying to push him off, that he broke from his much-needed kiss. You stared up at Vegeta in surprise, watching many emotions flow through his dark pupils, before he finally came to his senses. You were pushed away, although much softer than you would have expected, his warmth pulling away from you as he left you standing there. He plopped down onto the sofa, sinking into the cushions as he crossed his arms, avoiding meeting your gaze. Your eyes stayed glued to him for a moment longer, before you let out a silent scoff, smiling in amusement. 

Vegeta had not uttered so much as a word after that. No more comments on her habits or appearance, no more jabs at her life and home. He had sat silently at her side, stealing glances at her every once in a while as she read her book in peace. And perhaps it was the cleaner environment, or just something in him beginning to bloom, but you looked much better than when he had shown up. 

And you weren’t sure if it was just the sunlight hitting him at just the right spot, or if he just looked like this when he wasn’t constantly raging, but Vegeta had a different look about him, almost a glow. Perhaps he wasn’t as bad as you had originally thought.

[genericpuff]

The Kiss Bet Episode 172 - Hot Pot and Venting About How I Want My 70 Cents Back

Okay, look, this isn't a post I was expecting to make today but it's something that just happened and I have to fucking talk about, so let me preface this with some context.

I had to buy coins recently and because I switched to using my iPad for reading comics on, I got a "new reader" type deal from Webtoons for a coin bundle that got me like 100 coins for $5; because technically it was a 'new account' as Webtoons operates their in-game currency model on apps, not on actual emails (meaning if you use the app on an Android phone and then switch to an Apple iOS device, they're technically two separate accounts which you sync the reading data between via the account info linked via the email, therefore they have two separate coin wallets).

So with more coins than I knew what to do with, I decided to start FastPassing The Kiss Bet again, which I had recently stopped FP'ing around the S3 mark, as it's recently devolved back into the "will they won't they" trope, but instead of between Sara-Lin and Joe, it's between Sara-Lin and Joe's younger brother (the "true endgame") Oliver.

Now I don't mind the ship in essence. Joe was definitely not gonna be endgame, it was always gonna be Oliver, anyone who's read any amount of romance before - especially high school romances - knows how this shit tends to go, and The Kiss Bet isn't exactly trying to be groundbreaking or subversive in any way, it knows exactly what it's about and what it's trying to accomplish.

But it's almost become a little too good at this. Because in playing the "will they won't they" game for so long with a character that we know is endgame, it's basically been weeks and weeks and weeks of-

That said, after I caught up on the recent FP episodes, it seemed like stuff was finally moving a little bit. We were finally meeting Oliver's mom and his stepdad who he has a fractured relationship with, Joe was finally getting with his true endgame girl, Vicky (who's totally not an exact genderbent version of Joe lmao) and Sara-Lin was finally realizing she had feelings for Oliver.

And then the newest episode came out, Episode 172 - Hot Pot and Venting.

CAUTION: FASTPASS SPOILERS FOR THE KISS BET OFFICIALLY BEGIN HERE!

Already I was a little petty over the title like "lmao ok clunky title but whatever". I swept it off as not a genuine criticism, just me being a nitpicking asshole over what's essentially Fluff: The Comic.

The episode cost 7 coins, which is about roughly 70 cents, albeit closer to a dollar for Canadian readers (here's something they don't tell you about Canada - our Monopoly game currency is just as fucked as it looks) and that's where I'm gonna get into my second disclaimer that I need to be perfectly clear about (and it'll be what we get more into later on in this post).

I understand the principle of paying for art. I understand fully that many of these webtoons are being produced on tight deadlines by creators who often can only afford 1-2 assistants, if any at all. I understand and fully agree that creators deserve to be paid for their skills, time, and efforts, not just as creators working on the hellsite that is Webtoons, but as artists in general who deserve to make a living the same as anyone else. Anyone who follows my stuff here knows I'm an artist myself so I would never debate the ethical necessity of paying artists for their work.

However.

I can say that, and also agree with the people who have stated in discussion circles such as on /r/webtoons that a lot of the comics that have started charging 7 coins have been suspiciously delivering less comic since. And it's not even so much in the literal panel count, the liquid volume of these comics have remained the same, but the calorie count has dropped significantly. Food metaphors aside, what I mean is that despite many of these comics maintaining their 40-60 minimum panel count requirement, they have in fact reduced the actual amount of content that happens in them, and The Kiss Bet's newest episode is a stark example of what I mean.

I am going to start by posting only post three panels - three panels that literally sum up the entirety of Episode 172 and what it chooses to spend its time on.

That is it. That is literally all that's established in this episode. I'd tell you to go read it yourself, but honestly, this is genuinely one of those rare times I can honestly say that a 40+ panel episode is not worth 70 cents and you'd be better off, and that's saying a LOT when these episodes are only priced at the cost of a gumball. At least Lore Olympus has entertainment in how bad it is most of the time, Episode 172 of The Kiss Bet is just nothing. You will literally get more substance and flavor from an actual gumball.

Literally every other panel in this episode is either repeating the same dialogue (Sara-Lin saying the same thing multiple different times to express how Oliver is holding her hand or how his stepdad is a dick) and then Sara-Lin and Oliver staring at each other. Over. And over. Again.

I am not joking. I did not cut anything out in that sequence. That is where the episode ends. Complete nothingburger, seemingly cut off right as it was just getting started like Cait Corrain's career.

Out of the entire episode, there were 45 panels. So I can safely assume Ingrid's minimum panel requirement is at least 40 per episode, that's me assuming the best that she didn't exactly meet her panel minimum at 45 panels on the dot.

Out of those 45 panels, there were:

Two actual unique backgrounds that weren't gradients or just a single piece of furniture

4 separate panels of Sara-Lin freaking out over Oliver holding her hand and wondering if he even noticed

10 panels of Sara-Lin staring at Oliver either dumbfounded or asking him to repeat himself (or apologizing over nothing)

5 panels of the characters saying nothing

11 panels of Sara-Lin repeating information in different ways that could have been accomplished in half that time

Two separate occasions of Oliver getting Sara's attention from off-panel, literally formatted the exact same way both times (and both followed by reaction panels of Sara-Lin staring at him dumbfounded)

Way too many panels of Sara-Lin blushing in response to Oliver being an asshole tbh like literally this guy's a douchebag, Joe may have been the "out of her league" love interest but at least he was nice and didn't treat Sara-Lin like someone who just bought a Husky as a "starter pet" ???

Again, I don't usually like being a dick about the coin costs, and I definitely don't like being a hypocrite in telling people they should pay artists for their work while simultaneously posting their paywalled content like this, but I think there does come a point where it feels more irresponsible for people to not be aware of what they're about to pay for and how little they're going to be getting. This episode is literally one of the best - and worst - examples of how far the romance genre has fallen on the platform - when it's not being overtaken and oversaturated by problematic series that romanticize abuse and sexual assault, it's being dragged to death with the most boring executions of tropes that everyone has seen before and is only exciting for anyone who's never read a book or watched a romance movie, period.

And here's the thing where I do approach a bit more "hot take" territory, but every time I see this argument come up about episodes not being worth the coin cost, I see others who rightfully argue that 70 cents isn't that much to pay for what you're getting - weekly episodes of work that are usually always delivered on time, with more panels than you would ever typically see in a free to read comic.

But here's where I take issue with that argument, as much as the principle of it is sound, it misses the overall point: readers are paying for entertainment first and foremost, so can anyone who's actually paying for regular refills on their app currency step away from this and truly call it "entertainment"? Nothing was gained. The comic had 45 panels to say something, anything, and managed to not even squeak out so much of a word. Even the silent moments have no substance, they just reiterate information that we already know.

Do we really need another panel of Sara-Lin blushing at Oliver? We've known for weeks now that she has a crush on him. Do we really need another panel of Oliver getting Sara-Lin's attention? What is this actually showing of their chemistry? What is being shown here that hasn't been shown numerous times - with and without dialogue - for weeks now? What does the comic have to show for itself after four seasons?

Another point of the "it's just 70 cents, don't be an asshole" argument that people seem to miss is it's not 70 cents. It's $1. Because if you want to buy a single episode of the Kiss Bet, you can't just pay for the individual episode in isolation, you have to pay for the coins first, and $1 is the absolute bare minimum you have to pay to get 10 coins, which will only pay for one episode of a 7 coin series - of which there are many now, basically any series that's 40 panels or more will cost 7 coins and, shocker, those are the series that WT will tend to promote most, you'll rarely see the 5 coins series in the banner ads, and that's not even getting into how there are more and more series cropping up that have 5+ episodes behind FP rather than the traditional three.

So if you're someone who's (almost definitely) keeping up with more than one series? You can't just pay the $1, you have to pay at least $5 for 50 coins, and that will NOT go far anymore or cut as evenly as it used to when just about every series is now 7 coins. Webtoons knows fully well what kind of game they're playing by making the new coin cost an uneven number while still offering increments of 5/10 in their coin bundles. They undoubtedly want you to be left with an uneven number so that you'll be easily lured into buying more coins so you don't 'waste' the uneven amount you have left that isn't enough to buy the episodes for the series you want to read. Obviously this is more speculation and not fact, but it's a common business model and with the series that have adopted the 7 coin count model (rather than starting off with 7 coins outright) such as The Kiss Bet and Lore Olympus, it's becoming abundantly clear that either the creators or the platform itself is encouraging these series to meet their panel minimums with as little content as possible in order to get more money out of readers who are barely even being drip fed actual entertainment and narrative progression, let alone spoon fed.

And then there's the waiting. The goddamn waiting. So many of these series guilty of siphoning their content off through a hose that they're deliberately standing on are designed intentionally with the most egregious cliffhangers in mind to keep their audience hooked so they'll undoubtedly FP next week. Do you know what that amount of waiting does to a comic? To its readers? First off, it artificially extends the actual pacing of the comic to make it feel longer than it is, when in reality, many of these plotlines are happening in a vacuum of very short bursts of time. Case in point, Lore Olympus is commonly confused for having a plotline that takes place over the course of months, when actually when laid end to end in order of cause and effect, many of its subplots - including the romance of Hades and Persephone - takes place over the course of days. This over-inflates the plotline's actual depth and, even worse so, it makes it harder for readers to keep up with information that's being delivered, as it often takes weeks for that information to actually go anywhere - so by the time it does, many readers have straight up forgotten about it.

It's absolutely not okay that so many of these kinds of series are normalizing literal slow burning for an audience who's paying to be entertained. It's not a "slow burn". It's just slow, and deliberately so. It's absolutely NOT FUN to follow a comic that does not go anywhere week after week. It's frustrating. And before long, it starts to feel like gambler's fallacy, where readers have to essentially gaslight themselves into paying into it more and more convinced that it has to pay off eventually, based on a promise that was never actually made, only assumed in good faith. And readers should not have to fill in the bulk of the content that isn't happening with their own imaginations, which is something that happens a LOT in these series that spend so much time on the characters just staring at each other and saying nothing. It's not 'plot' to just draw characters blushing and have your audience fill in the rest of it entirely on their own. This is certainly a technique in writing, but in the case of The Kiss Bet and other comics like it, it's much less of a valid technique and more just flat out manipulating your audience into falling so hard into the sunk cost fallacy trap that they don't notice they're being robbed blind by the plot that hasn't actually happened - and they've been paying for that financial and emotional robbery out of their own pockets and brains every step of the way.

Again, I do not care about the coin cost in and of itself, seventy cents IS still an incredibly cheap price for weekly updates of a series that has to put out so many panels each week. But as a reader and a customer, I should not be leaving these updates with less information than what I started with. And I'm someone who's incredibly old school by webcomic standards, there are comics that I follow that have updated 1-2 pages a week for over a decade that manage to do more with their limited pages than Lore Olympus and The Kiss Bet manage to do after entire hiatuses filled with pre-production time.

Why does this page of Alfie manage to move both the intrinsic plot of the titular character as well as the external plot that's going on around her in one page made up of 5 panels better than what The Kiss Bet can do in 45?

Why does this page of Tamberlane manage to convey more information about the world's lore and the people in it in a way that's emotionally driven and clearly affecting the characters without outright info-dumping than what Lore Olympus has managed to spit out onto its plate since S3 started over a year ago?

How does Tales from Alderwood manage to be more entertaining and convey more meaningful storytelling through its characters in a single page consisting of zero dialogue than what The Kiss Bet can convey in its silent panels of staring, blushing, and repetitive stuttering?

Why are the creators who are relying entirely on their own efforts, resources, and ability to generate income through community interaction and support putting out better work with less panels and on slower schedules for FREE than what we're seeing from professional creators on a professional publishing platform who are being paid to do this as their job?

There's this saying in the tattooing industry: good work isn't cheap and cheap work isn't good.

At this point, 70 cents is not a 'bargain' as many people like to argue in defense of the creators. And while I do want to have good faith in the creators who don't pull this shit, the creators who clearly go above and beyond to do what they do in the pursuit of storytelling and polishing their craft to be the best piece of work that it can be - the comics that are worth paying 70 cents and beyond for - are not the comics that Webtoons is promoting to people. The creators of the works that genuinely deserve more than 70 cents per update are being left to fend for themselves without support from the platform, while those that aren't worth the price of even a flavorless gumball are consistently winning the Wonka Golden Ticket lottery.

The cost of 70 cents is relative. For some works it's a genuine bargain. For others like the The Kiss Bet and Lore Olympus, 70 cents is not a "bargain", it's not a "good deal", it's exactly the value of what you're paying for - cheap work that isn't good.

[shinakazami1]

TapeMan theory (TSP ramble)

Quick ramble before sleep

In the original Tape Ending, the discussion of the nature of the Narrator is brought in. He says that it's ridiculous we would find him to be just a recording but then...Why is he still in the game post-epilogue?

In my opinion, where TSP shines most is ambiguity. The main source of the information we get is from a man who constantly shows that the game doesn't quite care about.

But - this is supposed to be about the TapeMan, right? Why am I talking about this? You will see in a sec.

One of the important details is that the tape recorder is hidden behind a vent. And you know what else is hidden behind it?

That's right - The Memory Zone. Narrator's safe spot from everybody else but also, his subconsciousness. A storage of good memories.

The Tape too, is in a hidden part of a warehouse, nicely paralleling the Memory Zone. For a moment, let's go to the Bucket - a symbol of confidence, progress and comfort. But also, of madness and obsession. It changes people's psyche - or, more likely, enhances some parts.

TapeMan character shows something we see often in the game:

1) Loss of time concept - on one hand, he says what day it is and we even get the tape number but when we look more into his dialogue, it's visible the time passage is becoming a foreign thing.

2) The need to keep having it with him but also to monetize it - just like the people at the New Content presentation, or Narry with the 3rd swimming pool. But it's THE Bucket - even if there is a replacement one, this single one holds all the power. Interesting.

3) He knows who Gambhorra'ta is. They got only mentioned in the Out Of Bounds, this ending and the Bucket Museum but I will try to not retour too much here - WHY and how would Tape know about a supposed evil wizard from a war a long time ago?

My main headcanon is that - TapeMan is a character, just like the Wife that Narrator is playing.

Think about it - 295 days is less than a year. But in the Parable universe, time is weird and the only real passage we get is Countdown and... the Skip Button. I have my own headcanons as to what happened during the latter but for now, I will spare those details.

However - a detail I will discuss is the name of the tape.

Evidence #252.

TapeMan says it's "tape number", not evidence. And while it's a small nitpick - I think it's an important one. Because between the days and tape numbers, we are missing around 40 days. It's plausible that he first found the Bucket and only later realised that something was up. But also - it is possible that someone else named this tape.

You have to remember that the tape recorder is the same and it still says Narrator on it. For me - the day, while showing that the maddening process took time - it's supposed to also be like "Hey wait a minute, there is time in here???".

Sure - the Narrator himself knows when the first game got released but the passage of time is very wonky in the place. So - for it to be the first thing, to mimic a typical recording...huh. Isn't that something the Narrator already did in a normal version of the ending?

Tapeman to the Narrator is a commentary on how something so cherished gets taken and how greed consumes people. The Bucket here can symbolise many things but here, it might be his game. And that sickening madness, waiting for the Player to come back is what TapeMan might be.

Or maybe it's just another recording. Or it's a man losing his mind over an everyday object that somebody poured their whole heart and being into.

But who am I to judge.

[texturralize]

Writer of my broken soul. What has happened to the svss fics? Are you okay? Who do I need to fight for you cause I rely on those fics more than an online shopper relies on their credit card.

it’s just..kind of a unfortunate timing kinda thing..something just really discouraged me and hit on some social trauma I have and I’ve been in a funk and need to take a break from my sv fanfic. the other night I sat down to write and someone messaged me on twt to join a sj fan server.

I got super excited bc I still hadn’t ever found a sj focused server and he is (obviously) my fave. when I got in, someone mentioned being fan of my fics. so I searched them just bc I was kinda curious. well..there were a few nitpicks things here and there which is fine. but ig one of my fics, because I forgot a tag, showed up in some people’s feed even when they set their filters, and it bothered them. there were some really hurtful things said..stuff like oh you can’t trust this author, can’t believe they did this, it was disingenuous, they wanted to toss themself down the stairs from sheer disgust, it was creepy, people wanted to block me, they felt mad anytime they saw my name…it was bordering on fic/author bashing and I was shocked the conversation just continued like normal and was allowed…so I got uncomfortable and left the server.

I don’t really blame the server itself or the people who talked about me, multiple people have sent me DMs saying they felt bad and like my work and that was really sweet. one of the people who said stuff also apologized for it so it’s not like I hold a grudge. it’s just, stuff like this is kind of hard to deal with for me. it’s not that I’ve never encountered hate comments or anything on the internet, I think I was just blindsided by the situation..no one expects to encounter stuff like that in what should be a safe space for fun and ideas you were invited to. I let myself get excited and wasn’t expecting it so it really affected me.

it’s just unfortunate that it happened in that way because though I’m sure no one specifically meant to hurt me, like I said, this kind of triggered some social trauma for me. as someone who grew up with undiagnosed autism, I’ve often felt hurt and silly when I entered spaces and didn’t realize people didn’t like me until too late. I spent a long time unable to explain why I felt certain ways when these things happened bc I didn’t even understand the way my own brain worked. I also have a very direct way of communicating and don’t say things unless I mean them, so the idea of venting and being aggressive abt something but not ‘really meaning it’ is hard for me; it’s hard to understand that someone could say such cruel stuff but not take it seriously. so my brain catastrophizes and won’t let me forget what happened and there’s dysphoria when I perceive rejection, dislike, aggression, etc. BECAUSE I take those things so seriously. and I also would never bash someone or their fic bc I know fic is made from love and is 100% free so it’s hard for me to get past it y’know?

just to reiterate..I’m not mad at anyone, I don’t think anyone is a bad person. they said they made a mistake speaking like that about someone and will keep in mind what I said when we talked. I’m sure there are plenty of people in that server who like my stuff and don’t want to see me discouraged…

god, it’s just really hard, you know? it’s been a while since something really managed to hurt my feelings. I guess I just felt stupid, and kind of humiliated. it’s that feeling of walking into a room only to realize you’re the punchline…

so..yeah it just kind of has me in a funk, as someone who’s struggled to make friends and connections in fandom too despite how ‘easy’ it’s supposed to be. I’m still kind of disappointed that something I got excited over exploded so much in my face and didn’t work out. but overall I mostly just tripped into a depression spell and it’s making me feel bad to look at my work so..I decided to take a break from it. to people who like my stuff…I’m really sorry. I don’t mean to take anything away from people who really liked it. I just want to feel better.

the last time I felt this bad was a few years ago, when someone did something really horrible to me and it upset me so much and took the joy out of the fandom I was creating content for, because it was something we did together. I’m not really upset over the specifics of what was said, just the experience and how similar it was to things I’ve went through in the past. I’m upset over the fact I don’t feel like it’s fun to write right now, and I don’t want to lose this special interest like I did my last one…so yeah, just kind of sucks overall.

I hope no one feels bad about what happened for a long time. just..unfortunately, I probably will, and maybe taking a break will help..idk

sorry :(

[greenerteacups]

feel free to skip this it's a writing vent but oh my god the last few weeks of writing have been fighting me in the strangest ways

it's not even that I have writer's block — when I sit down to write a scene, the words come, and I can get it on the page, but for a while now I've been staring at the last 5-6 chapters of book 5 and felt this unease that there's an underlying structural problem with them. I've probably ripped them out and rewritten them 3-4 times at this point, my scrap document is about 30,000 words longer than it was before i started it, only now I've been focusing on this one very specific stretch of writing for so long that I've totally lost perspective. and I've been moving back and forth in the timeline so often that I've lost my natural sense of pace and flow, which feels like a writer's equivalent of an inner ear injury. chances are it's fine, and I'm just nitpicking because I've been worrying more about reception — i know that there are a lot of people who are really eager for this specific stretch of the story, and I have this desperate desire to Do It Right — but this plot has been fighting me, man. Order as a book just has so much stuff to set up, and then there's the emotional stuff, and the confounding tonal balance between incipient fascism/Order espionage/personal relationships and the hormonal trials of adolescence.

anyway, I spent this morning writing in a change that recenters the emotional tension of the first act, and hopefully that solves the problem. it feels like the closest thing to a solution so far, so maybe I can finally move on to the next batch of chapters. fingers fuckin' crossed, man.

[lightningarmour]

Last Voyage of the Demeter(spoilers)

This was a movie I was really excited about because I really love the premise for it. Like many people on tumblr I experienced Dracula by Bram Stoker for the first time through the viral phenomenon of "Dracula Daily" so I don't have any kind of long love of the book or any particularly deep, personal feelings towards it or anything, but when I first heard about Last Voyage of the Demeter I thought it was a tremendous idea for a movie, and a pretty interesting and novel approach to a vampire story, generally and a very neat idea to take such a zoomed in look at the events of Dracula.

The way the Log of the Demeter is told in the book is obviously a classic example of a horror story. It's like how in every survival horror game you find some journal entry or email or whatever of someone saying "Has anyone else heard the strange noises coming from the vents? oh well, hope it's nothing!" in a room where there's a streak of blood running down the wall from a torn open air duct. You are being given piece by piece the terror and dread of a crew of sailors you already know are doomed to a horrendous death, seeing little by little how the horrors unfold, knowing they can't stop it, and it's all made the more tragic that they (or at least the captain) never know what it is that is doing this to them.

It's prime territory for a slow burn kind of psychological horror movie, where the mystery slowly unfolds and as more and more of the crew go missing, the tensions amongst those remaining grows and they start to turn on each other and yadda yadda.

While overall, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is a fine movie, it's certainly not the movie I went in expecting. I understand, of course, that adapting a single chapter, written basically in point-form, into a feature length film would require not an insignificant amount of padding. I think, though that this movie ended up a bit overstuffed.

It's an aggressively average film, ultimately. I have no real complaints about the technical aspects. It's shot well, all of the sets and costumes and such look good, the soundtrack really pops, and frankly I think almost all of the performances were really quite good. The problem, broadly is the very banal kind of Hollywoodification of the story. The movie I envisioned this being is definitely in the script somewhere, but the edges get sanded off in rewrites, they want the movie to be more marketable, and gradually it becomes a middling action thriller. Still competently made, but not scary enough to really be a horror movie, or suspenseful enough to really keep you engaged with what's left.

It exists, in my mind, in a similar space as the 2017 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Both period piece movies about mysterious deaths, but neither really feel confident enough in themselves to just be a mystery or a horror movie, so they try and punch it up a bit and throw in some action and spend a lot of time getting to know a colourful cast of characters who ultimately don't matter that much, and it all results in a kind of genre mush where the stakes never feel particularly important and I find myself nitpicking details rather than enjoying the story.

Much of the bloat this movie suffers from comes in the form of 3 characters. The protagonist of the film, Mr. Clemens, Anna the exposition machine, and Toby the precious baby boy who exists solely to inject an emotional hook into the story. I don't want to sound like a reactionary and complain about "wokeness" in movies because that's not a real thing, but it's probably going to sound like I am. From a marketing perspective, a film studio does not feel confident in having a non-franchise, niche-interest kind of movie with a cast of solely white men. Not that this particular movie would even necessarily have to be full of white people. The Demeter is specified as being a russian ship, and there was mention of russian and romanian crewmen but boats were crewed by all kinds of men so it's a simple liberty to take in making the crew multi-ethnic. It could have worked quite well if it were more of an ensemble cast, rather than having a specific protagonist. So much time is spent on Clemens that it makes the rest of the crew feel incredibly dull and one dimensional.

One reason I think in similar ways about this and Murder on the Orient Express is that both suffer from a very modern Hollywood trend of inserting a lot of very liberal values into movies set in the past in a way that does nothing to try and like, sincerely address the issues of sex, race, class, etc. discrimination and prejudice that existed in the time periods they are set in, but honestly as a way to kind of coddle the audience and assure them that while people may have been racist in the past, we, the studio and filmmakers, and whoever do not agree with such prejudices, and everyone can rest easy after seeing the film and not have to feel uncomfortable about any of that.

So Clemens is presented to us as a Doctor who is eager to return to England, and as we find out later, he was the second black man to ever graduate Oxford or wherever with a medical degree, but he couldn't find work anywhere because he's black. This information serves no real purpose to the story, nor to really understanding who he is as a person or anything. He plays the Agent Scully of the movie. It's sort of like he's there to dispel any mystery or suspense the movie might otherwise have. instead of a bunch of superstitious sailors succumbing to fear, Clemens is there to smartly tell them that their instincts are irrational and whatever. The result is that the movie follows all the same tropes and trappings of it's genre but in a way that is deflated by a guy constantly pointing out said tropes while not being genre savvy enough to prevent all of it from occurring.

Anna is in the movie explicitly to explain to the audience who the character of Dracula is, for those who might have missed the last 150 years of vampire fiction. She's introduced as having been stuffed in one of Dracula's boxes of dirt as a little snack for him on his boat ride. She' unconscious for a third of the movie but once she wakes up she just very directly tells everyone that there's an evil demon on board named Dracula and he's going to eat us all. I really hate her inclusion in the film because similar to Clemens, she exists to drain any suspense or mystery out of the story. There's no longer any fear of the unknown because she tells them exactly what's happening. Yet despite this, it still takes them like 3 days to finally get the bright idea to open up the crates in the cargo hold to see if maybe that's where Dracula is hiding. Again it's doing this almost meta narrative thing where now the characters realize what story they're in, but because that story already has a predetermined end, they can't actually use this knowledge to their advantage, the tropes still play out the same anyway.

I don't want to use the term mary sue to describe her but her and Clemens both have Protagonist power. They're seemingly the only ones on this boat who are smart and capable enough to get anything done, and they do quite explicitly just give Anna super powers. She's been fed on by Dracula so she has a special connection that lets her sense his presence and blah blah whatever. It's all very gimmicky, especially for a character we know is not going to survive and has no greater impact on the story of Dracula.

Toby is the grandson of the Demeter's Captain. He's like an eight year old boy or something and I kind of hate him. He's an utterly nothing character who serves no narrative purpose. At some point when going over the script they realized that there's no reason to really give a shit about any of the characters in the movie because pretty much none of them have any depth, and they figured the audience wouldn't be engaged. So they put a kid in it so that people would feel sad at least once during the movie.

There's honestly nothing to the kid. He's like unbelievably plucky and happy-go-lucky, to the point where I think the actor's performance is undermined by how exaggerated his boyishness is played up, but aside from just being happy and cute or whatever there's nothing to him. Again you're supposed to instinctively feel protective for him because he's a child, and then inevitably when he gets his shit sucked by Dracula, it's supposed to be the like, one tragic part of the whole movie, but it's just hollow. And whats more is that any sense of sadness or loss you get from precious little Toby's death is wrung out because they have a fucking scene where they're going to dump his corpse in the ocean but the Captain is like "No wait, he's still alive!" and you get a really shitty jump scare moment where the kid opens his eyes but now he's a vampire and then he immediately goes up in flames in the sunlight and I laughed out loud in the theatre because it was so fucking stupid.

The new characters are just too out of place because they all feel like hollywood blockbuster protagonists haphazardly tacked onto an otherwise kind of low-key horror story, and I think that the movie would have worked much better if you kept the Captain as the focal character. In the movie he's present but kind of as a side character which feels odd. It also really robs him of his agency. The final log entry in the book has him resolutely sacrificing himself for the sake of his ship and his diligent commitment to his duty as the Captain, so he ties his hands to the wheel, ensuring that he will never be derelict even if it means his death, whereas in the movie it's fucking Dracula who ties him to the wheel as a weird flex, but he's dead before the climax so that the characters invented for the movie can have an epic action movie showdown with Dracula.

And given that the whole dang thing roots itself so adamantly as being part of the greater story of Dracula, it then kind of results as this very silly contrivance where all the stuff about a man eating creature, a dude literally bursting into flames, a woman who explicitly told them about Count Dracula being a horrible demon, just gets conveniently left out of the Captain's log.

I feel like there were some more nitpicks and quibbles I had about the movie but none of it is particularly important. Again, as much as I've just spent like 2000 words whining about it, overall I didn't really hate the movie. It's fine! It was a decent enough movie to go see, even if I left feeling a bit disappointed. I'm having strong feelings towards it because it's one of those movies that is worse than just being shitty. A just awful bad movie can be dismissed outright and I could just say yeah it sucks ass. But this one is so close to being good. There's a lot I did like about it, but it's off by such a small margin that all the things keeping it from being really great feel much more pronounced.

Also I kind of love that Clemens just survives and I guess becomes a Dracula hunter? They should have done a post-credits scene where he shows up 5 minutes after the main characters from the book have slain Dracula and been like "god damn it"

[ofeileen]

hi hi ! i'm m (she/her) and i'm super excited to introduce you to eileen roh! she's a new muse but im looking forward to writing with u all and developing her further :') i've got the sparknotes summary of her under the read more but hit the like or msg me if you'd like to plot! i have discord if you prefer plotting there as well

₊˙ ◌ ⁎˚ ﹒﹙kim doyeon. cis female. she/her.﹚guess who was almost late for their shift at barracuda inc again?? that’s right, it was eileen roh! it’s a wonder their job as a tattoo artist isn’t in jeopardy. the 24 year old has been working at sunset galleria for one year, and is well known for their carefree nature. on bad days, they can be rather volatile, though. when the mall is dead at night, they can usually be found playing drunk mini golf with friends at glogolf, but don’t tell their boss!

STATS / WANTED PLOTS / TATTOO WORK REF

EARLY LIFE

born and raised in new york city! feb 8th, 1999 (aquarius sun, scropio moon and capricorn rising)

her childhood was pretty fun for the most part except for her mom's strict parenting style. she was the kind to always nitpick how eileen acted and scolded her for getting hurt instead of comforting her

her parents dreams of raising a family in america were soon crushed when they started arguing and falling out of love. they decided to separate with her dad leaving and filed for divorce when eileen was 12

eileen is fond of her dad but def felt a bit betrayed by him. her mom turned very bitter at her own life and not long after moved them back to her hometown in daegu when eileen was 14

MOVING TO DAEGU & FAMILY (mentions of death tw, verbal abuse tw)

ofc eileen was not happy to be leaving her life in new york and it didn't help that her maternal grandparents were even more conservative than her mom was. they often misunderstood each other and not just cus of the language barrier

adjusting to her life in korea was difficult and she bore resentment towards her mom. she started smoking in highschool and was generally a rebellious kid (which ofc led to more fights w her family)

she played soccer to vent out her frustration but it wasn't until her family agreed to let her do a summer program back in new york that she rly fell into visual art. she was enthralled by the medium and decided that it was something she was going to do

u guessed it, her mom and grandparents were against it and eileen acted out by getting her first tattoo & more piercings. she rly wanted to do uni in the states but just couldn't afford it so she applied to a fine arts program at busan arts college

at this point her relationship w family was very rocky but she started not giving a shit abt what hurtful words they threw at her. however, art school was stressful and it was after her second year of college that she found a love for tattoo artistry. this led her to dropping out and pursuing an apprenticeship at a small shop

dropping out was truly the icing on the cake for her family and at the same time, her grandfather had passed after dealing with some health issues. her life a mess, she started isolating herself from friends. the only solace she found was with her partner at the time that stood with her through the thick of it

CAREER

at first her apprenticeship was going great but soon it became a bit of a disagreement on rates & schedule and she found the studio to be disorganized

after learning about barracuda through someone that she regarded as a mentor, she got the job there and has been working at sunset galleria for a year! they let her do her own thing and the pay is good so she's pretty happy about it

eileen’s art style mainly consists of abstract fine line work, high contrast tattoos, cyber sigilism, and mild horror inspired work. she doesn’t repeat any flashes so each piece is one of a kind and loves doing freehand stuff as well!

she has dreams of travelling and being a guest tattoo artist around the world and opening up her own studio one day but that's a future goal - she's got student debt to pay!

PERSONALILTY

she's pretty easygoing but def the type to rely on friends to set up plans (she most always says yes but lacks the effort to initiate plans/bad at keeping up with friends)

silently affectionate like she'd get you a cake bc it's your fav flavor but you would only find out she's allergic to the green food coloring in it after you're halfway thru eating. def an acts of service gal

pretty opinionated esp when it comes to her family or when someone's very traditional. she's open-minded but will make her opinion heard (def talks back to elders if they're being rude lol)

despite their complicated relationship, she can't bring herself to hate her mom or fully close her off. at times she pities her. after all, having her grandparents as parents? she kinda gets why she is the way she is. her relationship with her dad is distant but she wishes it was better (last she heard he's in a steady new relationship)

bisexual + demiromantic (meaning she rly has to feel a strong connection with someone before developing any romantic feelings)

always listening to music, and always sketching new tattoo flashes. has picked up pottery as a hobby as of late! loves going out drinking with friends. her stats page has some more tidbits about her!

PLOTS

i have some wanted connections up on her page but also love love brainstorming together and doing interconnecting plots (so if ur muse has any imp relationships lmk cus i love hearing about them and interweaving them into their dynamics!) ok im super excited to read abt ur muses & write with you all thank you for reading all this!!!

[alighted-willow]

It's interesting how cultural norms, even subcultural norms, can effect how even the most benign and simultaneously fundamental aspects of the self.

Case and point: a classmate of mine back in an art course two years ago conversed with me briefly while naturalistically observing me (as in, you know, existing in the same area as myself for a short time) and asked me before the end of class if I was Italian (I am).

Everyone else asks me when I'll go to counseling or start taking meds to ‘fix’ my fidgeting.

Now, to make an obvious point, those things can be very helpful! I'm actually starting Adderal tomorrow morning to help with my unspecified sleep disorder, memory issues, and proprioception! But it's such an insult to be told or have it implied to you, constantly, that the way I express myself is a problem because it is “counter to societal norms”.

If they were intrusive or disruptive I would get it, but we're talking about drawing while watching movies with the family or cooking while entertaining guests (the food being for the guests)— I'm talking about swaying when standing, talking with one's hands, or pacing a room when laughing. I love these things! People are always saying that we need to move more and that living a too sedimentary life style is damaging, but then they see someone who does that and suddenly the problem is ‘moving too much’???

Unnervingly often of late, folks have been pointing it out to me. Oh no, I sat forward in my chair again. Oh no, I stopped sitting cross legged because it started hurting my hips. Oh no, I made a "clack" noise instead of saying “eyup”. Whatever will your fragile, insecure self doooooo?

I'm talking about this mostly because I've brought up that I'm seeking treatment for my memory issues (ADHD), proprioception (ASD) and sleep troubles (hiiigh, Long-Covid) to a few friends, family, and medical professionals— and the responses have been staggeringly consistent. My online friends have been absolutely lovely in their support and actively helpful, giving me advice where I needed it and helping me maintain my spirits as time dragged on. In person folks… did not.

The first friend I talked to, while meaning well, could only respond with how much less I'll squirm once I get the proper medication. I love her, but I really wish she phrased things differently. My bio-Mom (long story) has been pretty firm in being against me getting treatment (but I'm an adult so she can go pound sand) and has routinely pointed out little quirks or oddities in my movements (such as the sitting forward thing). The nurse practitioner I saw tried to convince me that my issues were all stemming from anxiety and that all I needed was counseling to help me conceal my hyperactivity and so that I could “learn to live” with all of the issues I had gone to her for. My doctor, thank the stars, vetoed her when I wasn’t around and so I received a call a few hours later telling me to go to the pharmacy in a day or two.

Is there a point? Did I have a reason for writing this all out other than to vent out my frustrations? Not really. I've been waiting for my lentils to boil and then cool so this was just me waiting out the clock. The closest thing to a moral is this: if someone reading this has a problem with one of their friends jittering their leg, ask yourself why.

Why are you so offended by someone standing when your sitting? Why do you find it annoying when someone's drawing instead of watching? Why are you so incensed and offended when someone does something as innocuous and benign as walk from one end of the room to the other and back? Ask yourself that and go fix your problem so that you stop nitpicking and brow beating the people around you.

[onyx-roses]

Aight so this is little overdue since I finished the game awhile ago but I need somewhere to vent lol. So...Bayonetta 3...where to start??

Ok so for starters, even by Bayonetta standards I feel this game's story is a clusterfuck. Like the Bayo series story has always felt confusing to me due to there being time travel and whatnot (or maybe im just a dumb dumb who doesn't get it) but at least I feel Bayo 1 and 2 attempted to have a cohesive story. This one feels because of the whole multiverse thing, they must've felt like they could just retcon shit and do whatever they wanted Idk. I get that with this series, gameplay is the initial concern for the devs, and story is an afterthought but c'mon. The final boss is the wackest by far. Not only design but everything in general. And I felt the other multiverse bayos were wasted potential. They all got done so dirty. The multiverse was built up so much and then you rarely to get to see them and then they all die...like wtf. I'm especially still gagged at how chinese bayo died. In such a stupid fashion. She had more than enough time to react but no she stands there a few seconds too long and dies. This is Bayonetta we're talking about!! Her reaction time and reflexes are pretty much always flawless and she has witch time for fuck's sake! At least kill her in a more believable manner! And then Jeanne....my poor girl Jeanne. I feel killing her was so unnecessary. For what?? For fucking what?? Instead what I would have done was keep her alive and have her mentor Viola.

Now the ending....I admittedly didn't hate it like everyone else but it wasn't really stellar either. The final act of the game was overall pretty sus. Tbh, what I hated more than the ending itself was the fact that it is insinuated that Bayo 1 and Bayo 2 are two separate Bayos. That to me, not only makes things more confusing but makes the journey you take with Bayo 2 a little less meaningful? This whole time I thought we all played the sequel thinking we were seeing more of OG Bayo and her character development and what she had been up to but no. It was a different Bayo the whole time? Idk, I feel that lessens and cheapens everything we saw in Bayo 2. To think there was a direct connection between the two and nope. I will admit tho, it was pretty dope from a gameplay perspective, teaming up with the other two bayos was amazing. Not to mention when you take control over bayo 1, omg the feels. The fact that mysterious destiny is playing and her lifebar and magic mimic that of the first game.....just ugh amazing. I wish they would have let us switch between bayo 1 and 2 in that fight but oh well. At least at the end of the game, I was pleasantly surprised to see they brought back the 'let's dance boys' dance sequence. I rly missed it back in Bayo 2.

Ok so now admittedly imma nitpick some more minor things but they bugged me enough to mention them lol. First off why THE FUCK can't you play as Jeanne in the main story???? Y'all did it in the last two games! Just treat her as a skin/costume like in the previous games! I get her not being playable in Viola chapters but Bayo's? Nah son. Wtf. And they didn't giver her costumes either. Not. One. Like, the egyptian one is right fudging there. I'm not asking for 10 different outfits but c'mon. Or bare minimum they should have let us change her colors. Was also upset Viola got the same treatment too. Would have loved to have seen in her some different outfits or colors. Them getting rid of Umbran elegances made me sad. Nintendo costumes were also absent this time around which is a damn shame since those were a blast to use. This might be dumb but the lack of different taunts was a bit disappointing too. I would always look forward to choosing different weapons and seeing what taunt she had. I guess those got traded in for idle animations this time around. Now moving on to enemies, fights and bosses are bombastic as ever but man, the enemy design in this game is seriously lacking. The angels and demons are so memorable, they have character, they are brimming with originality. These white/green blobs ain't cuttin' it. I felt like I was fighting the same enemy over and over again. I think they may have exhausted all creativity into the demon slaves and masquerades. This next complaint is me being whiny bitch I get it lol but I REALLY don't understand why they changed the sounds for the platinum and pure platinum medals. Those are iconic sounds for the Bayonetta series. So why change them? Like, I'm seriously asking. Cause it seems like a random change to make? Now they are barely noticeable and sound like generic forgettable ass chimes. The camera in this game could get god awful at times too, which considering the high action pace of this game is a big problem.

So I could keep going but this is long enough lmao. Overall, I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy playing through Bayonetta 3. It's just as over the top and chaotic as previous titles. I genuinely had so much fun with this game. I don't really have any complaints of the gameplay mechanics off the top of my head. But everything else...my god, platinum has some 'splaining to do.

[cannoli-reader]

In Defense of "The Acolyte"

I have been seeing a lot of criticism of the new Star Wars streaming show "The Acolyte" and some of it strikes me as unfair or nitpicking.

Details under a cut

"The fire on the hull of the ship is ridiculous, it's in outer space, with no oxygen."

The fire is not burning very high, and it clearly coming from some machinery. It's not a huge leap, it's not demanding the audience do the work of the writers, to assume that oxygen is venting out of the machinery, or else a flammable substance.

"The two twin sisters who have not seen each other in years, have an identical hairdo."

First of all, it is well documented that identical twins, even ones long separated, often make very similar, if not the same, appearance choices, life decisions and so forth. There have been cases with men who lived on opposites coast, who have married very similar-looking women with the same name, of the same age. Furthermore, they are said to have lived in a village before their estrangement, so it could easily have been a customary hairstyle of their community.

"The shadowy mentor figure of May, who speaks in an electronic and clearly male* voice, says that you can't kill a Jedi with steel or laser weapons, and yet, May did just that in the intro."

The person May killed was clearly not a Jedi, but a Matrix avatar given her pathetic Force powers and reliance on martial arts Not-at-all-female mentor figure is clearly speaking figuratively, and/or referring to some greater metaphysical struggle or internal conflict. At least wait to see what they mean. You cannot expect a show to drop all of its lore and philosophy in the pilot. Some people would be whining, if A New Hope was broken up for streaming, about Vader clearly lifting a CGI ship captain, since he did it only one arm, and we have not yet been briefed on the Force, nor had it made explicit that Vader has it.

*By clearly male, of course, we mean obviously female.

Everything else? Dead on balls accurate. The show is pure dogshit. For everything that made me say "Oh, good," there were two to ten contrivances or bits of idiocy stacked around it. And most of those "oh, good" moments were only in comparison to its fellow blatantly mediocre or ineptly written Star Wars shows. E.g., Trinity realizes (absurdly slowly) that May is using the Force in combat, and she pulls out a comlink and immediately calls it in to someone. That was a pleasant surprise, because Star Wars (among many other recent shows and movies, Batwoman being the first that springs to mind) have characters blatantly neglect the most basic security communications protocols so that Plot can happen.

Obi Wan Kenobi was particularly bad at this, such as the Alderaan security guard who encountered Baby Leia being chased by kidnappers who made the comic goon protagonists from "The Ransom of Red Chief" look like a Mossad or Delta Force snatch team. Rather than immediately call in his location and that he had eyes on the Princess, he dithers around and gets shot (BTW, the little shit who caused this to happen, by disobeying her parents to go running in the woods, never evinces the slightest bit of remorse for this man's death, which would not have happened if she had stayed inside, like she was supposed to. And then, when she is returned to the loving custody of her incompetent parents, she has the audacity to demand that changes be made, with the implication that these are changes affording her more agency and freedom. On the other hand, to try something of a compliment sandwich this show really does not deserve, I have to admit her lack of grief for the guard she got killed tracks perfectly, in hindsight, with her New Hope characterization of not showing the slightest bit of grief or mourning for the Jedi Master who rescued her from drug dealers, saved her from turning to street pizza when she ran off the roof of a building, saved her from stormtroopers at a checkpoint, got dragged through hot coals guarding her escape, infiltrated the 'Fortress Inquisitorious' to rescue her from torture, and finally, put his mission of guarding the boy with Darth Vader's last name, whose hiding spot had been exposed to Imperial personnel by her moron of a father, just to fly across the galaxy to return her pet droid).

/rant

Anyway, that's the kind of "oh, good" I had to pull from the first two episodes of this turd burger.

[corporatenpc]

Dear Diary, my corporate angst bullshit has a body count

Log 001 - Feb. 7, 2023

Today I sat at my desk and did nothing the entire day. Not because there isn't anything to do, but because there's a ton to do but everything has been held up on purpose by The Parent Company.

Sure, go ahead, add more processes to my job. Keep adding them. Doesn't stop money from being wasted but go ahead and make my life harder.

This week I've been sworn at, had things demanded of me that I'm not able to provide, treated coldly, walked away from in the middle of my sentence, and it's only Wednesday.

One of my underlings brought up in the most roundabout way they could muster to me after work today that they noticed that our department in particular appear to always be silent and working while everyone else surrounding us actually seem to enjoy talking with each other.

They probably thinks other departments are happy and they're having a much better time at work than we are, but the problem is much more pervasive. After so much time here I've learned that a lot of things aren't as simple as they seem. Things seem to live on a delicate balance of facades and good luck. None of which are particularly stable factors to rest your career on.

As someone that oversees this underling, I'm limited in what I'm allowed to comment on. Did I want to tell them that that other department seems relaxed because they're not motivated to work? And that the source of the lack of motivation stems from the lack of compensation from the last year end? And the lack of compensation comes from the apparently poor performance of their department as a whole as assessed by The Parent Company? And that the reason their assessment was so poor is because their boss is a completely incompetent nincompoop? That pushes the blame to their own department and take the six figure salary for themselves?

Said Nincompoop who likes to overstep and yell and swear at me on a now weekly basis?

Tried to make conversation with the office witch today and all I got was the signal that they wanted me to go away. Fair enough, what was I expecting from a witch? Didn't want me to leave them alone when they were trying to use me to spy on their own direct reports though. Didn't seem all that repulsed by me when I had gossip they wanted to know about. This is the kind of witch that would die and melt into the carpet at this company but won't do it without taking everyone else down with them.

Everyone disappeared for two hour long lunches, yet those very people are the ones that like to turn around and nitpick when other people take a lunch longer than 30 minutes. Funny.

The person I'd thought was my friend at this office, the one I'd braved the rocky beginnings of a new project with for the better part of the last year has shown me their true colors time and time again yet I keep falling for the facade each time. I'm but a person. Said "friend" literally walked away from me in the middle of my sentence a couple days ago. They love to come running to me to vent, complain, talk about non-work related things, share random things they buy, yet when I try to reciprocate and share, I'm met with straight up ignorance or disinterest. Didn't realize how one sided this truly was until they pretended to see someone they needed to talk to and left while I was saying something. Bitch.

Can't wait for another day of this tomorrow. Can't wait for another day of being thought of less than human and treated as some sort of outsider for doing my job. Sorry I don't enjoy chatting about hair and makeup, and sorry I won't date you because you're not a good person, sorry I'm trying to keep things organized while you're all actively trying to make things muddy so it's easier to push the blame. Sorry for it all I guess.

2/10 terrible day

[sunlit-music]

Look, I’m seeing comments from more experienced fanfic writers making barbed comments about inexperienced writers, and...

We all have to start somewhere. That means, a lot of beginning writers are going to sound awkward and clumsy. 

That doesn’t mean you should nitpick them into oblivion until they stop writing. Let them continue writing so they can get better at it. 

I can understand you correcting them if they wrote something offensive or hurtful. But if they didn’t do that, there’s no point in complaining in public that the their story is boring or average. Those writers can see your public comments and that hurts their feelings. 

If you want to vent about how boring or annoying their story is, do it in private. 

Even if they don’t get better at it, let them continue writing fanfiction that they love. As long as they’re enjoying themselves and not harming anyone, who cares if their sentences are awkwardly structured and their writing is less memorable or well written than your stories?

[etiolesokeanu]

Is it entitlement? My annoyances with actions and reactions. My unwillingness to clean at all times. To be productive 24/7. 

My period? Hormone induced rage.

Is she just ADHD overzealous? Nitpicking. Reaching for dopamine from every angle. Refusing medication with the same conviction. 

Am I overloaded? Too busy to notice and keep up with the things she needs help with.

Is she right? To tear down my sister and call it the truth when it only leads away from anything productive, knowing rejection sensitivity is a thing. 

She pisses me off. She’s rude, mean, and. 

The house is dirty.

I need to look at things that lie ahead.

Drive more.

She supports me with everything I do. 

Im reliant. I’m Ungrateful. I acknowledge every action, yet don’t appreciate it. Don’t grasp the weight of every day going by that I don’t practice. Don’t see the time slipping through my fingers, with my future. Art. Falling through. 

What can I do?

Seeth. 

Rot. 

Scream. 

Bring my concerns like gasoline and a stake, to be tied and lit like a sacrifice to the gods proving her worth.

I can start a tattoo shop, a bar, write essays, stories, worlds. Study humans like the art and science they are. Look specifically into their brains and find out what exactly brings us together, while simultaneously separating myself farther than I began with. Become a producer. 

Write shitty poetry. 

Eat some chips and ice cream.

Wear a pretty necklace.

Love.

Piss her off. And make it so she’s completely unreasonable when bringing her emotions in. 

Clean. Do my work. Eat. Love. Sing. Drive. Shower. Love. LOVE. 

Kiss whoever the hell I want. When I want. Not when I think I’m supposed to. Not when im worried about time. Fucking love. And not worry if people want grandchildren. Not worry If Im gonna get married in an economy where I can’t even be sure a dollar is enough for ramen for too long. LOVE. 

Start a Tumblr for myself. Have a spam account with some throwaway email where only my closest few know about. Maybe even none know about. Where I can vent and scroll. And let it pass. knowing someone out there fucking heard me. Someone out there see’s and fucking gets it. Someone out there got out of it. And didn’t look back. 

Or maybe they did. 

They survived. And didn’t just live. They were alive. 

Build a future for myself, and see more than just a fucking swimming pool of the next weekend. 

Love. Love. Love.

[angstywildcats]

lol hey, I know this blog comes off as a “for content/art” blog and I generally intend to keep it that way but this evening the warrior brainworms are back in town and I don’t have many places to share my thoughts for this kinda stuff,

this isn’t an official post or trying to push people to get to agree with me (I am not enough of an elegant speaker).  dfnjsdfn read if you want, but don’t feel inclined. I’m not trying to be groundbreaking or anything.  I think it’s just a lil vent about how I feel about how squirrelflight as a character is approached

CW: I discuss a little bit of the abuse, but not in detail

I AM so very glad we are past the early 2010s of Warriors amvs for sure at least. Back then “Ashfur did nothing wrong” was a common thing to say and everyone just went along with it, not knowing better from being young teens lol. But man the sexism still sticks and it sucks that Squirrelflight and what she went through is still debated. At least its going in the right direction?? But whew. It’s best to ignore and just go along my day, but seeing a random commenter or even someone who has Ashfur apologist as a name still bothers me more than I want LOL It’s hard to figure out how to consume a book series which... is pretty badly written and has many many many loose ends and issues, and I don’t really wanna police or judge on how people consume stuff. (As long as you’re not being a Freak. This is not a proship defense post get out) BUT I GUESS sometimes the way Ashfur is still perceived makes me uneasy? Like don’t get me wrong. he sounds like a pretty cool villain when he possessed Bramble, and while I personally don’t feel its true to his character to have?? Done whatever he did in the later books (I have . only read One chapter of ALITM and done no other warriors reading in a WHILE) it sounds kinda cool as a premise ig. And like many situations its easy to twist characters into their fanon, I think it’s just.. a little. Just a little. upsetting to have Ashfur to be seen as Such a Cool Character (tm) or whatever.

I think it really stems from the fact that. Ashfur’s decisions and actions all start from the fact he was the rejected love interest that went too far after Squirrelflight very maturely told him that she wasn’t interested. Just because of this, he assists in a murder, threatens Squirrel’s family and even after death seeks revenge and Succeeds when he targets Squirrelflight again. 

So far I don’t think there’s been any levity or relief from Squirrelflight having to go through grief or sadness and it really sucks at this point. I think the thing drives me insane is that Squirrel’s situation of getting such a backlash over a rejection is. Something that still constantly happens IRL. And Squirrelflight is almost Never acknowledged as a victim. Not by the other characters, and I don’t think the authors really grasped the weight of her situation they wrote her in either. It’s exhausting, really. I think i should really focus my blame the Warriors writing team for not approaching it better, but as someone who mostly hangs around for the fandom, it does feel like it’s sometimes thrown around too lightly :(

This is probably just a nitpick, and I’m not harshly criticising participants, hosts or artists of any kind who create the content, but a lot of AU or just, general projects and videos I see revolving squirrel is often about the miserable events of her life, either twisting them maybe to be Worse as a bad end or just. Highlighting them. 

I don’t blame anybody tho lol, it’s not like the source material has given much else but then again, we’ve had AUs and explorations of other background characters that end with brighter outcomes, so what’s stopping that from happening to Squirrel? It’s sometimes just a bit sad that there isn’t much chance to give anything else JDNFJNDFN

animal media huh. lets authors write dark things in Childrens books. And get away with poorly writing dark and sensitive topics.

[danganronpaposts]

Hiiii! Could you do V3 boys reacting to, or just headcanons, about being in a relationship with a male s/o whose family is homophobic? Thanks!

Ohhhhh i like this one TW: homophobia

Gonta

- Gonta doesn’t understand the concept of homophobia

- He barely understands the concept of sexuality

- Gonta know male insects often mate, and insect-in-laws don’t care so why is there a problem for humans?

- Well, most insects die before they become in-laws, but that’s beside the point.

- You aren’t out of the closet yet, so you ask him if it was okay that the both of you act like friends while your parents are over.

- Gonta is fine with this, as long as it’s only temporary, he doesn’t show too much PDA anyway, so it’s not too hard.

- Gonta does very well around your parents, he is on his best behavior to be the perfect gentleman.

- “This is my best friend, Gonta!”

- He talks mostly of his bugs, and shows your parents a few butterflies. It works as a great distraction and your parents are quite interested.

Kaito

- Is inexplicably angry

- And doesn’t hide it

- When meeting your parents, he loses himself and goes off on them

- He yells at them for a good ten minutes straight, before pulling you into a kiss to prove a point

- It’s both endearing, and utterly embarrassing

- These are your parents after all

- After, he apologizes, he was blinded by his anger and didn’t think of your thoughts or wishes at the time

- You both agree its best to just stay away from your parents

Ouma

- If you were in the closet, you’ll soon be out

- If you wanted discretion, you shouldn’t be dating Ouma

- He will meet your parents dress extra gay, just to spite them

- He will also act the extra stereotypical flamingly gay

- “Oh. MY. GOD. BABE! ~You are sooooooo CUTE today~”

- PDA turned up 1000%

- He will hold your hand, kiss you, grab your ass, just to make your parents uncomfortable

- They end up leaving early. They have…. An appointment

- Ouma is so proud of himself

- “serves them right

Shuichi

- He will do whatever you want or need of him

- He doesn’t like the idea of covering up your relationship, but at the same time, you don’t share too much PDA or are very public in general so it’s not a big deal.

- It’s more the principle of the situation that bothers him.

- He wont make a big deal though, he knows some people are just set in their ways.

- Even if their ways are wrong.

Korekiyo

- He tries to reason with your parents, in his own… twisted way

- He also brings up religion

- There are worse things than two men being together, liiikeee:

- Korekiyo please don’t

- Incest, bestiality, pedophilia, just to name a few!

- Really, Korekiyo, dear, please stop

- “Your bible doesn’t prohibit a man laying with their sibling’s child, but you draw the moral line at two men laying together. Well…” he goes on for a bit

- As if he is one to scold anyone on morals

- Your parents are honestly shocked into silence, how does one respond to that?

Hoshi

- He will just refuse to associate or even meet them.

- If you insist, he doesn’t talk much and just silent endures their nitpicking.

- Is open to hear you vent about them though, is very supportive of you

- Down to play the best friend if you are still in the closet

Kiibo

- Doesn’t get the concept of homophobia, but looks it up and decides he doesn’t really like your parents

- When they meet though, they are honestly more concerned that you are dating??? a?? robot???

- Kiibo doesn’t appreciate this prejudice against robots!

Amami

- Is very nonchalant

- He refuses to change anything about how he acts and won’t play the friend role

- If you are in the closet, he just won’t meet them.

- He is very firm in his beliefs and wont bend, but is still respectful, if not a bit passive aggressive to your parents.

- It’s mostly akward, but overall survivable. He isn’t as passive as Hoshi, nor as flamboyant as Ouma

- He just is himself, and if they have a problem with that, too bad