#tumblr failson

[letsgetreadytotumble]

WOW! Doofenshmirtz is now OFFICIALLY THE Littlest Meow Meow! I know it was a bit sportadic but I honestly had a lot of fun and am excited to use what I've learned for our next bracket: THE ULTIMATE FAIL SON

Just like last time we have used 332423 specialized AI to select the 32 most interesting pair offs of fail sons and fail daughters from Tumblr tags (and Rose and i's own personal biases) to construct this bracket

Now some reminders/ground rules:

All polls will be set to a 24 hr time limit

Masterposts will be updated and organized to show all polls per round

Master posts will be linked to brackets

Current brackets will be pinned to the top of the blog

"Tumblr Failson" "Tumblr Failson round X" and appropriate poll/character tags will be used for organization

Redemption polls will be held when convenient for poster

GO VOTE NOW

[90scully]

JACK CHAMPION as ETHAN LANDRY in Scream VI (2023) dir. Tyler Gillett & Matt Bettinelli-Olpin

[fuckermcfucker]

I love all the organisation of the brackets for the contests. Submitting and considering and figuring out the details, making our thing , being serious unserious about it genuinely love it so fucking much its so fun

[bitchboynasty]

This is where I started scrolling faster

[acrocanth]

Sigh, guess I’m combing through my twitter follows looking for tumblr/whatever links. The flashbacks to doing the reverse back in like 2018 are relentless lol… and I have significantly more people to go through this time 😔

[smartsmears]

Peri and his family go through childhood memories.

Do people on Tumblr fw failson (affectionate) Peri memes

[ranticore]

20, 31, and 55 for jean-baptiste

J-B SWEEP!!!!

I had to switch to mobile because tumblr on desktop shat the bed so let's hope this works

20: Who do they like as a person but hate their work? Vice versa, whose work do they like but don’t like the person?

Jean literally only values or likes people for their work and what he considers work is SUCH a narrow definition that to him work = that person's contributions to the natural sciences (specifically physics). So I mean... I guess Bowman is the only person he likes who has made no contributions whatsoever to the natural sciences (not even some basic journal articles.. smh).

On the flipside, the reverse is true. Jean has a list of physicists whom he idolises like crazy, engineers and astronomers he'd worship if he ever met them irl. He wants more than anything to be counted among them as a great physicist. Unfortunately if any of them actually met him, I don't think they would ever get along well. He would not enjoy any aspect of a friendship with them.

31: When do they feel the most guilt? How do they respond to it?

Guilt is something experienced only by the weak and overemotional. You must always have conviction in your decisions, and make them with ruthless efficiency, without room for doubt or guilt over the consequences. He doesn't seem to experience guilt and he thinks it's because he's just so fucking smart (it's not)

I mean, he might feel that way about guilt... right until the [fog horn noise] near the end of TVM. But ya know

55: What’s something they’re expected to enjoy based on their hobbies / profession that they actually dislike / hate?

Well his profession is "richboy failson" and he doesn't enjoy most of the stuff that comes part and parcel with that - the hunts, the religion, betting on horses, big fancy parties, ladder-climbing etc. But those who know him are painfully aware of what his hobbies are and they might build their own expectations based on that. But he will admit, with some pushing, that he doesn't really like circuitry all that much, and messing with wires is kind of boring to him. He likes using electricity as a means to an end, rather than the end itself.

[felixcloud6288]

Tumblr dialogue is starting to bleed into my normal vocabulary. I almost called something a failson during my office hours.

[wanderersrest]

A Spoilery Rant About Iron-Blooded Orphans

I came across a take on Reddit today pertaining to one of my favorite Gundam series in the franchise, Iron-Blooded Orphans. It's a fairly common take, and one that is, in my mind, just flat out wrong.

Spoilers below, and also content warning for pedophilia, genocide, and media literacy.

Also, fun fact: Tumblr's gif keyboard has a lot of Ein Dalton gifs. So that's cool.

ORGA AND McGILLIS ARE NOT THE BAD GUYS

If you can somehow look at Orga Itsuka, a character who leads a group of child soldiers that are struggling to make a living for themselves, and McGillis Fareed, a character who fights to change the world due to being a victim of child sexual assault by his own adopted father, I can't. I can kind of understand saying that about McGillis, especially since he's a classic Char Clone (backstabbing for self-gain included), but to be fair, McGillis really needs therapy. And IBO wouldn't be interesting if he solved his issues by being rational.

Orga's only crime, on the other hand, is being a dumbass. And this isn't an issue that only arises in season 2. It's present in season 1 as well, it's just that for the majority of season 1 he has Biscuit to play the voice of reason. Even then, Orga's goals are pretty noble if misguided, as all he really wants to do is guide the other kids of Tekkadan to a future where they have a place they belong. Because, you know, they're all expendable child soldiers. The first episode of the series has a moment where their previous employers use them as fodder while they escape with all of their money and capital.

And this is really what gets my goat with this take. People will talk about how Orga and McGillis are the real bad guys, but it's almost as if one person is kind of a well-meaning if hotheaded kid who only knows how to solve problems by using brute force and luck, and the other is an insane man who believes that having the original Gundam (this being the ASW-G-01 Bael, not the RX-78-2 Gundam) will be the key to solving all of the world's problems. This isn't even touching on the fact that this take whitewashes the actions of the actual antagonists of the show, Rustal Elion and Nobliss Gordon. Reminder that Rustal is a war criminal who commits multiple false flag operations to incriminate Tekkadan, and Nobliss is a war profiteer who benefits from all of this conflict no matter what.

I get not liking the ending of this series. It's bleak as all spark, and it's the culmination of a series of episodes that's basically the viewer getting kicked in the crotch repeatedly like they're Aki from Chainsaw Man. I get that people are probably sick of the whole "media literacy is dead" discourse. I am too. I especially hate when people use media literacy as a cudgel to bash people for making takes that others don't agree with. But I'm *this* close to turning into Ein Dalton and screaming "KUDELIA AINA BURNSTEIN" Isao Ota because of this take. Because the idea that "Orga and McGillis are the bad guys, ackshually" ignores both character's backstories while absolving actual evil characters like Rustal, Nobliss, and everyone's favorite failson Iok Kujan of their wrongdoing. One day, I'll talk about Iron-Blooded Orphans in earnest. I just needed to get this off of my chest because of how often this take turns up in online discussion. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going finish my transformation into Isao Ota post about Patlabor.

[dztalon]

Tumblr selling data to AI is yet another part of the failson tech bro sponsored enshittification of everything.

[letsgetreadytotumble]

2023 Tumblr Ultimate Fail Son Competition Round 3: Bombshell Blonde (Dee Reynolds vs. Stede Bonnet)

THEY'RE DYNAMITE! THEY'RE ON FIRE --- NO REALLY! SHIT PUT IT OUT PUT IT OUT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[ambassadorquark]

my character in our d&d campaign is like a privileged dipshit failson with no job who has a genuinely angsty little backstory but none of that is as important as the fact that he spend our first effective campaign arc getting called gay by his evil dad every session and failing to emotionally manipulate a teenager and also all our jokes about him on the discord are like “i am caramelizing him rn and he is getting stuck to the pan” and “what if everyone got so into braiding his hair that it was irreparably matted and they had to shear him like a sheep”. i have created the ultimate tumblr sexyman

[condraws]

my pathetic failson medic whitewater and his gaslight gatekeep girlgroup of fellow takers (it's another red markets game of course)

other characters belong to @/cino-checker, @/poinsettiya and non-tumblr people

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 12 - Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Vol. 1 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

So, like everyone on tumblr, I was at least peripherally aware of The Untamed, if only as ‘the C-drama with the impossibly pretty men everyone loves shipping about necromancy or something.’ (Also the one crossover porn fanfic with so many tags that it broke AO3.) So I wasn’t quite coming into this blind, but I think I came pretty close. It sure as hell wasn’t anywhere close to my vague expectations.

Anyway, this was fun! Also absolutely let me cross off reading something from an entirely unfamiliar literary subculture off my metaphorical bingo card for the year. Just reams of assumed context I absolutely did not possess. Kind of loved it (but the occasional clarifying footnotes were very much necessary and appreciated.)

Which is to say – there was so much more slapstick and physical comedy than I expected from the vague intimations of feudal politics and magical warfare I got? Not usually my sort of humour but it got a laugh out of me once or twice. My favourite character is Wei Wuxian’s donkey.

The conceit of the first story – reviled and abused failson destroys his own soul and offers up his body as a host to the spirit of a legendary evil wizard to wreak bloody vengeance for him, but fucks up the bit of the ritual that tells the spirit who to take revenge on. Also the whole ‘legendary evil wizard’ reputation was at least partially and vaguely due to a propaganda campaign by his enemies and he’s not particular enthusiastic about the ‘murder a whole family’ thing – is also just incredible. I kind of wish it had been more drawn out, before the whole ‘gotta collect them [chunks of a specific super cursed corpse] all!’ plot became the main justifying connective tissue.

Not that the overarching plot is really the story’s strong point – it’s basically just the excuse to keep Wei Wuxian and Wang Lanji together and having adventures. The actual selling points are the backstories and character interactions and to a lesser extent the monster of the week stuff. All of which are pretty well done!

Though as far as monster of the week stuff goes – I’m vaguely aware that cultivation fantasy is a whole, like, genre, with about as many weirdly specific shared assumptions as ‘generic’ western fantasy written by people swimming in a sea of Tolkien/Conan-as-interpreted-by-Warcraft-and-D&D, but I’ve really got zero clue whatsoever to what degree the worldbuilding of this is typical of the genre? Not that it particularly matters, beyond some of the reveals making much more sense if they’re building off an assumed awareness of how the world’s expected to work, all more or less new (though more or less intuitive) to me either way. Fun to see so much magic based around music.

Anyways – obviously I’m going in with a biased perspective but my god can you see how this ended up with a massive shipping fandom. The entire story is nothing but impossibly beautiful men flirting/pranking/sexually harassing each other while being utterly and entirely capable to even understand let along communicate their feelings. The two lead’s entire relationship in this volume is like a dated mid-2000s comedy sketch about two ostensibly straight guys playing gay chicken and both being so competitive that they just end up fucking. Author really knew what they were doing with the fanfic bait.

(Though honestly I’m legitimately unsure if it’s just a matter of narrative choice to not dwell on motivations or Wei Wuxian really is the single most unselfaware asshole in the entire universe. He legitimately seems incapable of understanding his own motivations most of the time.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the art, which really is very lovely. Though I will be entirely honest that there’s only so many handsome black-haired men in flowing robes I can keep apart in my head.

But yeah, fun read overall. Don’t exactly feel compelled to go seek out the next volume, but don’t regret having read this one, damn sight better than some other things I’ve read this year.

[sage-the-unwise]

I wanna hear some thoughts on my pathetic baby loser failson (beloved) five pebbles

oh hell yeah i love hate love this guy and i have SO many thoughts

so, some fun hcs for starters (only one and a half of which pertain to him in canon, the others are just vague sketches of what his vibe is like):

he would like tame impala but only partially in a male manipulator way

if he were a smoker i think he'd vape and then switch to menthols (something tells me he'd be the kind of guy to start smoking because he thinks it looks cool)

hes transmasc coded. real he/they energy

his construction suffered pretty extreme budget cuts due to the political controversy surrounding his placement over the Anointed Citadel (there was a defund five pebbles campaign led by the spiritual leaders there lmao) and thus he is noticeably smaller than the other iterators

he'd be a pretty great poet, and would make a killing in clout off posting poetry to instagram if that existed in rain world lmao (if his iterator comrades appreciated it, he'd post poetry to one of their global message boards, but not many of them care for artistic pursuits. he'd get a temp ban for wasting space)

if you dug through enough pearls in garbage wastes you'd find the equivalent of amateur tumblr poetry from 2012, all written (and some partially scrambled) by pebs himself. before moon's collapse, NSH made it a project to get their hands on some of it so they could make fun of him by reading it aloud in vc. that never panned out

pebs and NSH would've collabed to produce shitty soundcloud rap, but they'd have a falling out over the duo's artistic direction and they'd split up. pebs would try to produce his own backing tracks, fail at it, and give up, and NSH would go on to make insane 120 bpm hyperpop you could mosh to and open for 100 gecs

and now for some sad character analysis:

i think pebs has like, very big feelings and not a great grip on how to handle them. he isn't maliciously selfish but he experiences his own pain as so all consuming that he forgets that his actions affect other people and simply follows his impulses without much thought. this obviously doesn't excuse his actions - he's harmed his friends in some very real, tangible and painful ways and they should hold him accountable for that (were i to write a 5p recovery arc he would definitely get taken to task by the others, who are also Messy. it would perhaps be a very dramatic fight, but i think if their heads were clear enough and moon had some means of communicating with them you could get a good approximation of what restorative justice might look like for a bunch of alien supercomputers).

it's also implied that he's like the baby of the group, or is at least younger, and therefore has had less time to get to know everyone else and establish himself as part of the local group's regular social dynamic, so i would imagine he has insecurities about that which might fuel his impulse to isolate when he feels Bad. which was, of course, disastrous on one particular occasion. i think he feels deep guilt over that and it's eating him (like the rot), but he has no idea how to express his remorse, or that the person he killed has been revived and can be talked to directly (if only via slugcat messenger). i've always read moon as someone who, in pursuit of being the group big sister/mom friend, learned to repress her feelings in order to preserve group cohesion at all costs. i think a conversation between the two of them would either be really explosively messy (timeline where moon learns to let herself feel things and be angry) or it would have the longest silences you've ever heard (timeline where moon does not learn to stop repressing her emotions). either way it would take a while for them to make peace with each other, but i think they could pull it off. neither of them want to spend the rest of eternity lonely and bitter.

[fandom-oracle]

I love Augustine because if any other author in any other political intersection has written him, he would’ve become a Tumblr sexyman. He has the entire package.

But instead he’s like. An aging failson. Don’t get me wrong he’s competent and incredibly devious but he still always fails on a fundamental level at everything. And he’s extremely horny - but in a way that never really amounts to any wish-fulfillment on the part of the audience because the threesome with Jod was less some kind of cunning sexual manipulation and more like a desperate plea for intimacy. He’s one of the most blatantly vulnerable of the Saints and no one ever takes this seriously because he’s Augustine the First, and very, very dangerous but we never get payoff for that so it makes his entire role in the narrative poignant but anticlimactic. He’s a failson. He’s pathetic. He is not a Dark Fuck Prince.