#thoughts on The Bullshit

[gravitasfalls]

anyway no one let this fandom gaslight you into thinking they just treat Bill's canon abuse of Ford like a punchline because new materials play up its absurdity (which isn't wrong inherently, how many of us don't ever feel like our humiliation was darkly comedically absurd/outside the normal playbook of reality and our abusers were pathetic losers when you really look at them?) they did this back when The Last Mabelcorn aired and there wasn't a punchline in sight, just the abuse ptsd symptoms and the distrust/self-loathing that trauma causes. fandom so survivor-hating and so illiterate to character/comedy beats they become Bill-coded projecting falling-flat sadistic "jokes" into those pauses they don't get were for shock and sympathy with the sublime abject horror of the character's experience, not laughter

being Ford is being the someone's-comedic-sociopathy-is-your-psychological-drama sitcom wife from Kevin Can F**k Himself

[daincrediblegg]

OK THIS IS NOT A FUCKING DRILL EVERYONE FUCKING REPEAT AFTER ME. THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL DO WHEN YOU WATCH MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL THIS YEAR:

You will navigate to the page on disney plus (and it has to be here. Unless someone has actually uploaded the REAL movie anywhere else you cannot get it elsewhere)

BUT YOU WILL NOT HIT PLAY. You won’t do it. Because it’s NOT THE REAL VERSION OF THE FILM AND DISNEY IS FUCKING LYING TO YOU AS IT ALWAYS DOES

You will scroll down HERE. To EXTRAS instead. You MUST GO HERE. This is non -negotiable

THEN YOU WILL SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE EXTRAS AND YOU WILL THEN HIT PLAY ON THIS BAD BOY: THE FULL LENGTH VERSION

And you will watch it. And you will thank me for having been so blind and led astray by that stupid fucking mouse. You’re welcome.

[gravitasfalls]

when like 99% of Ford's flaws are traceable back to his lifelong deprivation of a support system but this hellsite thinks it's doing something saying for those crimes of trauma-informed behavior patterns he should be punished tm by being deprived of one even further because puritanism alive and well and this is the Bad Place

[entityoffline]

better this way, you say

[gravitasfalls]

Great idea if mine wasn’t run by the equivalent of a Republican majority

Being in a long-term fandom really makes me wish we had like, Fandom Supreme Courts, just so that every time the same stupid discourse rears its ugly head for the umpteenth time in ten years, we can just be like, “Actually this argument was settled in the 2006 Fandom Supreme Court ruling in the case of AngelPotter vs. Xx_goth1c-r0se_xX, so everbody can shut up about it now.” Imagine the wank reduction.

[gravitasfalls]

me when I'm in a media illiteracy (and crazymaking cynicism) contest and my opponent is GF fandom with its bottomless lack of not only basic reading comprehension but common sense for story structure that's famously made for (and better understood by) children

like when they didn't get Ford was set up as a sympathetic character/for reconciliation at the end because Irredeemable™ characters don't get those wholesome family bonding moments (and they twisted him checks notes praising Mabel/reassuring Dipper on insecurities as manipulation isolation backhanded insults make it make sense)

or they theorized™ a beloved main character would die in a fire gruesomely killed by the villain You Know For Kids (then congratulated themselves for "being right", i.e. that the imagery was realized just symbolically like us braincell havers actually got right, when guess what the fuck basic premise of their Death Theory did not happen):

[bonesbonesbones69]

Once and a while I see a piece of tlt fanart where harrow is really wrapped around gideon and I love that a lot. I drew myself a little bit of it as a treat today:

and then got carried away

I was way too ambitious with these poses for drawing with pen and some shitty whiteout tape

[gravitasfalls]

#pov Those posts about ford pines (via @jingledbells)

Analysis so bad you don't even know what it's talking about anymore.

[ratbaby15]

You know what fucks me up the most (among so many other things) about people saying anakin created balance by destroying both the jedi and the sith is that the movie where he brings balance to the force is literally called return of the jedi. The movie where balance is restored is the movie where the JEDI return. the movie where JEDI KNIGHT luke skywalker brings his father back to the light is called return of the fucking jedi. DONT piss me off.

[gravitasfalls]

The plague of Ford Misunderstanding from people who always bring up J.K. Simmons' other roles also just like offends me on his behalf as an actor like mans got the RANGE, when mr MAKE LIFE RUE THE DAY IT THOUGHT IT COULD GIVE CAVE JOHNSON LEMONS gets the role of dark tortured scifi sideburn scientist but (outside scenes with obvious cause for yelling/bitchiness) plays the tenderest softest-voiced guy about it you Listen Up Cocksuckers what he brings to the role/implies about the character's direction with that read YOU FUCKING PATHETIC PANSY-ASS FRUIT FUCK

[lucabyte]

ghost

[technically-human]

How do you think Robotnik would react when he found out that Stone has a 301 IQ and one singular more than him?

I imagine Stone does something smart and Robotnik’s like “Huh. Maybe he isn’t as stupid as the rest is of those buffoons.” Then he pulls up Stone’s file, and is shocked and maybe a little begrudgingly impressed.

He spends the next few weeks laying out “tests” for Stone, which are either the most basic things or extremely convoluted like a mathematical equation for the Wifi password.

Meanwhile, Stone is just very confused by all these random tasks, but he’s having fun.

He's coping

Also lol the Wi-Fi equation, was that a reference to my fic?

ko-fi

And bonus horrified Rob because it made me laugh

[vaguely-concerned]

I understand and agree with a lot of the frustrations about the shortcomings of Inquisition as a story. but sometimes when I hear people complain about the chosen one narrative in it I do want to just be like... you know it's a deconstruction of the concept more than anything, right. the inquisitor isn't actually chosen by anything except stumbling into the wrong (right?) room at the right (wrong?) time because they like, heard a noise or whatever. or if you think they are chosen, as many do in-universe, that's something you have to take on faith, the maker-or-whoever moves in mysterious ways indeed-style. the Inquisitor isn't actually a Destined Chosen One, they're a Just Some Guy in a fancy hat, self-delusions of grandeur to taste as you'd prefer.

a running thread that goes through all of the personal quests of the companions is the concept of a comforting lie vs. an uncomfortable truth, upholding old corrupt structures vs. disrupting them, and the role of faith in navigating that. (blackwall the warden vs. thom rainier the liar and murderer. hissrad vs. the iron bull, or is that the other way around? cassandra and the seekers -- do we tell the truth about what we find, even if it means dismantling the old order of the world? and so on.) and your inquisitor IS at the same time a comforting lie (a necessary one, in dark times? the game seems to ask) and an uncomfortable truth (we are the result of random fickle chance, no protective hand is held over the universe, it's on us to make a better world because the maker sure as hell won't lift a divine finger to help anyone, should he against all odds exist). faith wielded for political power... where's the point that it crosses the line into ugliness? is it before it even begins? what's the alternative? will anyone listen to the truth, if you tell it?

interesting how you also get a mix of companion agency in this -- you have characters like dorian who ALWAYS choose one side of the comforting lie vs. uncomfortable truth dichotomy. he will always make up his own mind to go back to tevinter and try to dismantle the corruption of the old system no matter what you say, or how you try to influence him. meanwhile iron bull is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum -- so psychologically trapped and mangled, caught in an impossible spiritual catch-22, that his sense of identity is left entirely to you and your mercy. you cannot change dorian in any way that matters; you can be his friend or not, support him or not, but he is whole no matter what. you are given incredible and potentially destructive-to-him power over bull's soul. it's really cool (and heartbreaking) to think about.

this is a game about how history will eat you even while you're still alive, and shape you into whatever image it pleases to serve it, and for all your incredible power right now you are powerless in the face of the gravitational force of time -- of more than time, of History. you won't recognize yourself in what History will make of you, because you belong to it now. you don't belong to yourself anymore and you never will again. the further you were from what it needs from you to begin with, the more you will find yourself distorted in its funhouse mirror. (why hello there inquisitor ameridan, same hat!)

and to me this is so much the core of what Dragon Age is about right from the Origins days -- how and by whom history gets written, the inherent unreliable narration of it all. I hope you like stories, Inquisitor. You are one now.

I do think it's probably still the weakest of the games narratively, and it's hampered by its structure and bloated systems. but I also find it disingenous to say that there's nothing deeper or actually interesting going on with it, thematically. if you're willing to engage with it there is Some Real Shit going on under the high fantasy-tinted surface.

[gravitasfalls]

#OH I FEEL ILLLLLLLLL #OHHHH the details of the house ILL I TELL YOU #god to still have the video tapes 40 years later. HE kept them. Took them WITH HIM instead of letting them rot in his family home #and THEN Stanley would have had to keep them safe for the next 30 years. god imagine Stan finding them in the 80s actually. hoooo boy #ANYWAY #god they love eachother so much I'm gonna crryyyyyyy #He loves his family SOOOOOOO much (via @paintedcrows-caws)

#YEAHAHHAHHAHAH #you dont get him like i do!!!!!!! #he loves his family and he always has!!!!!!! (via @5p4ced-0ut)

#i saw this awhile ago it ruined me #ford cares so much Fuck my life (via @dionoussu)

#ford defender for life <3 (via @willow-does-stuff)

#WE LOVE FORD FUCK U (via @muffinmaster4life)

#he loves so much and he feels so much too and he's aslo autistic (via @lucianinsanity)

#where’s the person that said loving Stan is a reflex for Ford and he had to teach himself to hate him #im unwell (via @buckybucananbarnes)

#oughhh he loved his family so much (via @2starsoutof5)

#I really don't understand the ford hate #Nor the marble hate #All four pines twins love their family very much (via @suck-too-hard-on-your-jaskier)

#FORD PINES LOVES HIS FAMILY SO MUCH (via @lordmushroomkat)

#ford LOVES HIS FAMILY !! (via @celestinesky)

#i will defend ford with my life if i need to #haters stay mad (via @willardsmind)

#ford haters stay losing!!! (via @firesofdainix)

I saw this on tiktok and I want to kill myself!! Ford haters stay LOSING!!!!!!!

He loves very deeply!! You guys are just mean to him!!!!!!

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

Names

[gravitasfalls]

God I'm so insane I'm so cooked I'm so gone through every stage of burnout known to man, why is seeing the new nuclear winter of the same Ford takes we debunked in 2015 healing my neglected old wounds about it. Because they just proved me wrong on what I still believed all these 10 years, that anything they said had anything to do with canon outcomes at all. Not having the certainty of a happy ending doesn't excuse the gutter-level illiteracy it takes to not see every character beat/common sense pointing the character to it, or twist everything into confirmation-bias "readings" to support edgy grimdark fantheories™ or whatever, but turns out it was never about that. 10 years of the most ableist possible lectures on empathy responsibility "narcissism" and understanding other people not like yourself while we did all the work to see where they were coming from (they never once attempted to do the same for this character or us) - turns out the answer is directly out of hell. Monkey's paw twisting on their weird fallacy that anyone can be to blame for an abuser's actions but the abuser, like being set in toxic ways makes it somehow not on them anymore so blame shifts onto the victims for not responding perfectly, because they just released me from the "obligation" to internalize anything they say by being the toxic ones to never grow or change. I learned a lesson alright just not the one you wanted to teach. So Ford was right cutting off toxic people is awesome - as long as you know who that is i.e. in this case Couldn't Be Me YTA motherfuckers!! I don't feel any shame I won't apologize, I've got no time for toxic people, me myself I've got nothing to prove and other such song lyrics in my head rent free - this character is loved forgiven supported by family and healing like he damn well earned while fandom fuckups who've been cruel and gaslighting to real people because we "dare" resonate with fiction differently from them have consigned themselves to all die mad :)