#which blorbo is misunderstood the most

[surprisearson]

If you aren't familiar with the term, flanderization is when you exaggerate a character's personality trait to where an aspect of their character is turned into a central part of their personality, often leaving out important nuance and other details. This does NOT mean these traits are inaccurate but rather that these get magnified at the loss of other parts of the character.

[noraigo]

some days ago, i started watching we are the series, since a friend of mine tried to convince me for a long time to tune in. we are isn’t exactly the type of series i would watch. not disregarding its charm, i must admit it’s even endearing, i’m just more keen on the angsty, adult queer love. however, there’s a certain couple that’s been running nonstop in my mind ever since i started the series and, of course, it’s no other than tan and fang.

tan is certainly unique as a whole, because if anything — i think it’s the first time i see such a loud but not annoying character, and that’s hard to portray. his excitement seems genuine all the time and i feel his happiness is shared through the screen. that doesn’t brush off his emotional intelligence and i think people underestimate this trait of his: just because he seems silly and party-loving doesn’t mean that he is insensible. he can be serious if it’s needed and he cares for the people around him. it’s safe to say that cheerful characters are often overlooked because of it and, as viewers, we shouldn’t take it for granted.

fang, on the other side, is the total opposite of him, yet it doesn’t make him less interesting. his background is implied to be unstable, which made both phum and fang be more closed off emotionally speaking. even so, fang is trying his best to be on the same page as tan, though tan adores him when he’s serene and quiet. most of the time, characters like fang are misunderstood and it’s a little saddening. he is kind and tough, but it’s not hard to love him. something tan understood from the very beginning.

their dynamics keep me pushing watching the series. now that fang has been softening more and more, their scenes became even lovelier to watch, if that was ever possible; their kisses, clear eyes of infatuation, playful banters and words of love show it. i’m not a fan of sex scenes, they underwhelm me a little (might be the acespec in me), but tanfang’s was just perfect. not too much, not too little. just enough to show that these two desire each other. possibly, it could be not their first time as a couple, which is refreshing and new in thai queer shows as far as i've seen. (aouboom definitely enjoyed kissing and touching each other a little too much but, didn't the same happen with hidden agenda? just saying.)

people like them could be too much for others, but for each other, they are an absolute match. fang knows tan loves him unconditionally and so does tan. tan tries to push him for the better without overstepping his boundaries whilst fang apologizes if his behavior might be irrational when he’s angry and accidentally lashes out on tan. that’s actual respect and patience in a relationship. none of them are trying to change the other to fit their own personality, they have already changed once they realized they were into each other back then when they were problematic teens. ain’t that sweet?

just look at these sweet two blorbos, just in their own world, happy and in love.

on another note, though, i’ve gotten to know aouboom since viceversa era and i could already smell the cute chemistry between both, yet it’s very sad to know they suffer from secondary couple syndrome. how many series have they starred in as a second or even third couple? very unfair, gmmtv, you better give them a nice series, regardless of its length. as long as they don’t keep acting in college settings, i would give my entire scholarship for a coffee shop or any other ordinary plot. they are just THAT good and i will never get tired of their chemistry. they have a kind of spark i see very rarely and if gmm doesn’t give them a shot, they’re losing a potential gem.

please, give us more tanfang content and especially, an aouboom series. thank you very much.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Spoiler for Jujutsu Kaisen

I'm sorry it's so long and looks like a vent post. I'm sorry for those of you who had great luck in avoiding Jujutsu Kaisen until now. With that, let me give some context before the assholery.

Jujutsu Kaisen has a breakout character, Gojo, he is unique, flawed, well written, well loved, overpowered, and the most misunderstood character in this series. He recently met his end in the most infuriating way possible. It was an unceremonious death, off screened, after the biggest most violent battle in the series. Before he was brutally offed with just meaningless exposition detailing how he was killed and him uncharacteristically justifying the death in an afterlife scene that's written to appease a large part of the fandom (shippers- he's gay coded, no waifu here). His death completely destroyed his legacy and the future of this manga.

Problem: This is a popular series with disproportionate numbers of haters, casual fans, fans who get their information from tiktok or fanworks instead of the manga, fans who did a surface level reading of it, opinionated fans who didn't read after a certain point but discuss every new chapter like they're experts, people who hate it because they compared it to their favorite series and Jujutsu Kaisen didn't go that way, people who harass the readers and wish bodily harm on the author for not conforming to FANON, the works.

Gojo was MIA for almost 3 years which made fanon takeover the fandom, when he came back the author was accused of mischaracterization and bad writing because he didn't match 3 years of fanon. Reiterating, I mean fanon not headcanon, the headcanons here are almost all fanon based too and you will get nasty anons if you say you dislike FANON or praise CANON but I believe in people's right to headcanon.

My relationship with this: I've been a fan since 2019, this character of Gojo resonated with me like no one did in my 20+ years in fandom, he is my specialest blorbo, his relationship with his best friend has moved me etc. I'm autistic and this is my special interest as well. Needless to say depression has hit me like a freight train.

MY problem: My friend of 7 years who's currently deeply into yuri and danmei, who shared many fandoms with me, has been through the thick and thins with me, has decided to make me an enemy. When the chapter came out he chatted with me sent his condolences. Then he in his own social medias started talking about how he knew it was going to be a bad series, how he's glad he quit after struggling through 50 chapters, made all the jokes in the world about this death, discussed every little thing he hated and mocked this with his other weeb friends who are like the people I mentioned in the Problem section, validated all their complaints based on their reading of the FANON. He has had many discussions with me about this manga and very rarely did he express any of this negativity.

My assholery: I got frustrated, it was like he wanted me to see how much he could hurt me. I messaged him saying, "Hey what are you saying here, that's not how this character is written. The chapter is bad but this criticism is baseless and in bad faith" He laughed it off, "It's not that deep, this is fiction." I argued that's a shallow thing to say, he said it should have been like FANON since that makes more sense. I said that's conventional writing I thought we wanted different things than the same old nice characters in found family and such.

Then I said something about his favorites and hypocrisy, he said he's not so into it that he couldn't take criticism. I said that was a lie he's always writing essays about those characters. I also said criticize it for the right reasons damn it. He kept denying his own love for his fave so he could keep criticizing mine, because he at least had the sense to not fall for a shounen series. I asked if he was enjoying hurting me. He said are you for real, get a grip and stop justifying your behavior for fiction, they won't giving you cookies for defending them, if you can't bear to see negativity then feel free to mute or block. I snapped and said this is why no one likes casual fans, you can't keep your mouth shut about things you don't know. Have fun with being a two faced friend to everyone. Then I blocked him everywhere.

Some of my friends said I should have muted him long ago, I said this was inevitable if he was just going to validate everyone in vicinity, he had to pick a side. Others said I was right to tell him off. I regret some of the comments I made now.

AITA for the way I handled it? He is right, I could have muted him, I could have not spent my time doomscrolling and seeing all the bad takes he agreed with. I could have waited it out and not dropped an old friend over fiction. I could have done many things.

Please don't comment about touching grass, that's the least helpful thing anyone can say on blorbo the website. It's not a real advice we all know that. Therapy is also there for the depression and it will take years for me to get over the death, you don't need to remind me.

What are these acronyms?

[gffa]

Can I ask your opinion on something? It's about Jason and the way hes written in a lot of batfamily comics, because I can't shake the feeling that in a lot of stories he's in theres is this rather... condescending attitude towards Jason. They are always writing him as this angry impulsive idiot who can't deal with a case or have plan of his own and basically needs Bruce and the others to save him.

For example, take Cheer, a lot of people been calling the best story Jason had, but it still repeats so much of the annoying tropes that Jason gets: He's written tob e really impulsive and dumb and prone to mistakes that the others would never make, and who Bruce to explain him to not attack drug addicts, and them you have to flashbacks that are there to retroactively insert instances of him being a "bad robin" who would torture a random person for no reason and killed someone before he even became robin. And whole story gives the idea that the only reason Jason can be good in anyway is because Bruce stopped from going bad.

then In the failsafe arc when Bruce is praising Tim he has to make a mention about how Jason hated training as a robin, which is not the first time Bruce has compared Jason negatively to prop Tim.

And now in The Gotham War, Jason gets brainwashed by Bruce with that failsafe thing. And it's treated as this big awful thing... until one issue has passed, and then Jason's already resisting the symptons long enough to try to save someone but not enough to actually succeed at by himself, and Bruce saves him by giving him a piggyback ride that treats Jason like child. And Bruce leaves without fixing what he did.

Like compare Jason now with the way he was before the New52 in stories like Under the Hood or the Lost Days. Jason back them as more often than not a villain, but he was a good villain, he was intelligent and competent in a way he is simply not anymore, and makes so mad that nonee these modern stories seem to actually respect him as a character and just make really made and it just ruins most Batfam media for me.

Take this for what it is--someone who is not as deeply into Jason's character as others are and who is more of a general fan (and specifically a fan of my own Blorbo)--but my feeling with Jason's character is that DC doesn't really know what they want to do with his character and so he gets written as incredibly inconsistently by various comics because of it. So often when I look at the bigger scope of his appearances, it's not clear if he's supposed to be a villain, a villain on the way to being reformed, an antihero, a misunderstood hero, or what. And that also tends to influence his relationship with Bruce on a narrative level, how much Bruce is "right" or "wrong" about Jason or even often how he acts around the other Batfam members, especially if he gets an author who is a fan or if he's just there to be the impulsive hothead who needs others to step in. To some degree, that's just how comics are--every character is written as the dumb idiot sometimes when they're not in their own book. I often Suffer as a Dick Grayson fan or a Tim Drake fan or a Barbara Gordon fan, when I pick up another character's book for them. There can be great appearances in non-titular characters' books! But a lot of the time, when I'm reading, I have to look at the title and go, okay, Blorbo's not going to be treated as well as they should because this isn't their book. And I think that's a big chunk of what happens with Jason, one that gets exacerbated because it's not really clear what his role in the group is meant to be.

(Like, there is a VERY noticeable difference in the way Jason is written in Task Force Z--a book designed to center around him--versus when he shows up in a cameo in another book. Or there is a VERY noticeable difference in the way Dick is written when he cameos in a Batgirls book versus who he's written in his own central title. Comics, you know?) So, you're not wrong that Jason gets written weirdly a lot, but I don't see it as totally unique to his character, because it's somewhat just kind of part of the landscape of comics and somewhat just that Jason gets it more intensely than other characters because he never really had the solidification of who/what he was supposed to be in the comics, like even when Tim is written really badly and they refuse to let him evolve, at least you understand what his role is in the family, so a lot of authors have a baseline for how he should be treated. (And I don't know how well he actually does/doesn't sell comics, which is often a big influence in how a character will get treated in stories they appear in, like Bruce is probably DC's single biggest seller, so he's always going to have a baseline of being intended to be cool and heroic--mileages vary on how that comes off, but I think the intention is there, even when writing him as fucking up sometimes--like Jason is tremendously popular in fandom, but does that actually translate to selling comics? I have no idea.) I think it's fair to say that, look at almost any character in the Batfam, and they'll have a period where a lot of fans feel like they're being written the way you're describing Jason being written right now--I could probably find you people who would say similar things about Dick, Tim, Damian, and Babs right now, too, that they're being written as incompetent and like they need someone to hold their hand just to cross the street without messing it up. But also that you're not wrong that Jason is probably getting the worst of it and it's one of those things that I often have just had to learn to roll with when it comes to comics or else just walk away. (Sooooo many times I had to nearly walk away from comics because I dislike what's happening at a certain point and, often times, I have had to walk away. I walked away from DC because of it. I walked away from X-Men comics because of it. I walked away from Thor comics because of it. It's only recently that I came back to DC to give them another chance and, honestly, I'm only staying because I'm getting what I want for my Blorbo. That's kinda how comics often are, if you're here for a Blorbo, rather than here for the entire roster. /says without judgement, as I know what I am too)

[zmwrites]

Hi ghosty

It's Leap Day, so tell me about a leap (a big decision, an impulsive action, a change in life circumstances, etc.) that your blorbo(s) have taken?

Oh!! I thought of something for this!!

Guess what Sleepy, you’re getting more Indigo Wars info.

Indigo Wars opens with the protagonist Violet making two leaps: one a leap of logic, and one a giant change in life circumstances.

First, she sees a note handed off in the city market and immediately jumps to the conclusion that the two people involved are foreign spies. She does have some reasons to make this leap (a recent warning about foreign spies in the city, and one of the people has a heavy accent from the country they’re at war with) but it’s still not a normal leap to make. Regardless, she steals the note and leads the one who received said note on a chase across the city rooftops. It ends with some banter and then she breaks his nose.

Needless to say, he is NOT a foreign spy. He is a member of the royal family of her country, who her older brother is in charge of protecting. Oops.

And then the second leap! She’s 19 years old and has been living at a safe house for her type of magic user. She and her sisters (Rose and Poppy) are aging out of the orphanage side of the safe house and are trying to find means to support themselves and gain independence. They (along with Violet’s BFF Elliott and another girl named Myra) are chosen to leave the safe house and move to the Royal Keep to use their magic to advise the king. It’s mostly a PR move bc their magic is misunderstood and feared by the general public, so the king can go “look they’re just like us,” but they can actually help the war effort in different ways.

So she goes from living in a very relaxed orphanage full of children where she’s one of the oldest, one of the most experienced, one of the most trusted people there, to living in the royal household where she knows like 5 people (including the guy whose nose she broke), she never knows what’s going on, and no one believes what she tells them. She also has to start dressing like a proper lady and learn how to navigate the social politics of upper society, which are both entirely new to her, so it’s a lot of changes at once and she hates it.

Anyways, thank you for the ask! I’ve missed rambling about Indigo Wars.

[novafire-is-thinking]

hey there!! respect for your species, anything else, and holy grail?

Respect For Your Species: Which human character from the Transformers franchise do you like or respect?

Anna Baranova from Rescue Bots. I admire her ability to think outside the box and act independently within her field. I would love to be mentored by her or just talk with her about our respective fields of interest.

Anything Else?: Besides Transformers, what else are you a fan of?

This one’s difficult since TF is quite literally my life now. lol

But I have spent some time in the Sonic fandom (mostly because of the ball of “misunderstood” angst called Shadow haha).

Big Hero 6: The Series is another show I was really into, but I just kind of kidnapped adopted one of the main villains as a blorbo and left. 😂 I think he would love to hang around Cybertronians and study them as much as I do. He and TFP Soundwave both have a creepy face thing going on. 😎

Holy Grail: Which figure do you want the most?

I can’t just list one!

My actual holy grails don’t exist, which would be series-accurate, non-transforming figures of IDW Perceptor and Drift (both MTMTE/LL designs).

But realistically, my current holy grails are Mastermind Creations Reformatted Aero Alpha (Wing) and GCreation Rebel (Prowl):

[thebaffledcaptain]

Can you give an example (not name-and-shaming, just something vague or generic) to illustrate what you mean about people blorbo-ifying historical figures? I'm wondering how much of what you're interpreting as that is people intentionally stepping off the path of history to have fun with obviously-fictionalized copies of those characters - versus, for example, those people saying "Hamilton was autistic" because they want to relate to him/take three small misunderstood details and run with it.

I'm leading this with the disclaimer that obviously one post on this topic does not represent my entire view on a subject as nuanced as this, and the disclaimer that I have never and will never specifically go in and call particular people out on it because that's just an asshole move and ultimately not a respectful or effective way to confront stuff like this (not that I thought you were implying either of those things, anon).

The biggest specification I can make is that I'm not talking about already fictionalized versions of these historical figures when I complain about this kind of thing: I am of the belief that a fandom side of history can exist and that is not inherently a bad thing. The problem occurs when the lines between "fandom" and "history" become blurred, often unintentionally, and frequently as a result of people's genuine interest in these (fictionalized representations of) historical figures. History-inspired and history-based media, as well as interactions with it, are not inherently wrong as long as they're not claiming to be actual history. Like, as much as most of us cringe to look at it, I think if Miku Binder Thomas Jefferson could exist solely in the contextual void of the Hamilton musical, that's honestly not the worst thing in the world. (Honestly, I can't know for sure the artist's true views on the subject, but I feel like something that exaggerated could be indicative that they're not talking about the historical figure Thomas Jefferson himself, but specifically this fictional Hamilton musical version.)

But as I said, I think there does result a lot of genuine interest (which is great!) in the history and the figures behind the fandom stuff, which often leads to the blurring of these lines—people learning more, becoming passionate, but mistakenly and probably unintentionally equating these historical figures with their fictional representations and treating them like they would any fictional character. I don't, like, personally hold a hatred for these people because I think most of the time it goes unrecognized. It's more of a result of ignorance or misunderstanding of historiography than it is a genuine disrespect for learning history.

So anyway, to provide an actual example like you asked, I'll say writing fanfiction about characters while claiming they are the actual historical figures. Writing fanfiction for a history-based fandom, or creating fictional characters inspired by them, is one thing, but doing it for the actual genuine figures from history is another. I recognize that this might be partly a result of my personal philosophy on the whole RPF issue, but the idea of treating real people like characters without their consent has never sat right with me. I suppose you could debate the ethics of them already being dead, but still, as a principle, I am of the philosophy that one should treat other people as people, and I find it very weird to treat them as characters when they are still people, however long dead they are. I don't love certain types of historical fiction for this same reason, so I hope it doesn't exclusively come off as a fandom thing. I think this is one of those places where these figures' relatability is indeed an important perspective, because it reminds us of the fact that they were just like you and me, and thus I see it as important to treat them as such: not with blind respect and reverence, but also not with a disregard for their real human existence.

Other stuff has the same sorts of issues: making headcanons, certain fanart, slapping labels on people without leaving room for nuance (I can't put everything under a blanket statement, obviously). It's because of how close I feel to history that I take issue with this stuff—because I always, always want to recognize that above all, these people were people, and I need to acknowledge them as people. In a certain sense I aim to treat them the way I want to be treated, like I'd do for any of my fellow humans (with the obvious nuance that comes from academic perspectives and such), because again, they're people too.

On the issue of relatabilty, I certainly don't think it's wrong to assess evidence through the perspective a modern lens, nor do I think it's wrong to want to relate to these figures. I simply think that we need to be able to acknowledge that great truth of historiography, which is that there are so many things we just can't know. In researching history our goal is essentially to develop assumptions based on the evidence available to us—I hesitate to even use the phrase "draw conclusions" because that suggests arriving at a level of certainty we will unfortunately never be able to have. So, you know, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to say that, like, the real Alexander Hamilton was likely what we would consider bisexual nowadays, or something like that. But I also wouldn't say that we could claim with 100% certainty that he was or that he wasn't. As for the fictional interpretation of him from the musical, yeah, whatever, that's a character, you're free to interpret him how you wish as long as you're not equating him with the actual figure. We can't necessarily, for example, impose headcanons from the musical onto our perceptions of the real people.

On a tangentially related note I also feel that we tend to have an obsession with "relatability" in characters, and historical figures as an extension of that. As a whole we could stand to learn more about how to love both characters and people without having to relate to them. Which is not to say you can't love them for that, but... we also don't need to be going out of our ways to interpret them as being relatable to us in order to love them, which is where the problem lies. That's where this problematic lack of actual history comes from. In the same ways that you don't need to, and probably shouldn't, endorse all their opinions, you don't need to relate to them in every way in order to love them as a historical figure. Love is a complicated thing and I am frankly thankful that it is.

Anyway, this is getting very long. My main point is that history and fandom can coexist, but they call for different treatments and shouldn't ever be equated. I'm not specifically condemning anyone—as I said, I think most of it is well-intentioned interest that gets a little out of hand. I've been guilty of it myself before and I don't want anyone to assume that I think I'm "above" it; I just try to be hyper-aware of it. I love that people discover interests in history through fandom, I just think being mindful is absolutely imperative when you're engaging with it. You can, and should, love history—just be careful that you're not bending the truth in order to do that.

[seek--rest]

1, 6, 7, 12 for the choose violence game?

1. the character everyone gets wrong

Tony Stark I’m so sorry what your fans have done to you. Peter is a VERY close second but Tony fans are on another plane of existence for delusion literally I lose brain cells reading their shit.

6. which ship fans are the most annoying?

Irondad because so very few can be fucking normal about two white men.

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

Harley fucking Keener. He is a literal child in tje only time he has a speaking part and then an Easter egg people had to Google. He’s a nothing, nobody character used for the plot of IM3 and yet insufferable white (mostly female identifying) people everywhere decided to make the most vomit inducing and horrifying fics about him that almost surgically erase Ned and MJ to a frightening degree. In my time in fandom, I’ve seen:

MJ made into a mean lesbian

MJ made into a lesbian who likes Gwen and her only personality is Sarcasm

MJ is fucking dead

MJ is fucking dead AFTER giving birth to a kid that Harley and Peter can raise

MJ is a bitch

MJ is jealous and mean

MJ is controlling and possessive

Much less the arguments by parkner for why Harley is a better fit for Peter because they “have more chemistry” despite literally never fucking meeting, “he’s more interesting” despite his entire fandom presence accounting for shit people made up, or “because I wanna make it gay” despite there literally being two other male characters that Peter actually knows and interacts with— but they’re brown and God forbid a white queer write anyone other than a white man right?

Every single argument, reason, defense and explanation for liking parkner can be directly traced to racism, sexism, or both. “It’s just creativity” or “I love multi-shipping” doesn’t hold up when the entire fandom lives, breathes and exists on tearing down or erasing the canonical POC in Peter’s life for the sake of this white guy he’s literally never fucking met, has literal ZERO history or ties to in any comics because he’s a fucking original character AND based on the ACTUAL canonical facts we know about them, would literally never fucking get along.

I never cared about Harley till fandom but fuck him and parkners.

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

Flash Thompson is deplored in fandom and it’s just racism. He is my blorbo and just misunderstood you racist fucks.

Choose violence asks

[ranseur]

i think it's tough to talk about "romantic" vs "platonic" relationships because generally in our society romantic relationships Are (considered to be) the most important relationship other than some blood family ties. like, The Most Important Person/people to you Can Only Be your child/ren, or if they're not related to you (and really it "Shouldn't" be any other family member/s) your relationship Is Romantic in a tautological way. and the ideas of kissing/etc are tied along with that (along with other things like living together etc) in our general concept but they don't Actually have to be, but it's a matter of definitions so i think sometimes arguments about whether characters relationships or whatever are platonic or romantic kind of go in circles because some people are using "romantic" to mean "this is the most important person to this character" and some people are using it to mean "this is a person that this character wants to kiss on the mouth" SO ‘there’s no platonic explanation for this’ doesn't Have to mean "there's no explanation for this other than character A wanting to kiss character B on the mouth", it Could mean "there's no explanation for this other than character B being The Most Important Person to character A:

as a disclaimer, i might be talking about different context to what you're thinking. let me know if i've lost the plot and misunderstood you

i do agree that society generally puts an emphasis on romantic relationships and blood ties within family. and how this puts 'platonic' on a lower pedestal by default. i also agree that fan discussions on whether a ship is 'romantic' and 'platonic' can spin in circles forever- and my stance on that is 'porque no los dos'. but I don't know if i have come across instances where the jokey meme 'there's no platonic explanation for this' had room for interpretation

to be fair, in my rambling tags i painted a false dichotomy by making the conversation about 'kiss' vs 'connection', which is on me and not fair, because those things aren't mutually exclusive. i love it when my blorbos kiss too!

i mostly think that a significant relationship, either platonic and romantic, can be built on the idea that they are each other's most important person. when discussing specific fandom ships, the idea that they're important to each other is a given. i think the point i meant to make is that a platonic relationship can be just as important as a romantic one, and a platonic explanation can be that character B is the most important person to character A

[leohtttbriar]

Choose violence 8, 10, 24 for Tolkien? :)

<3 when i saw you had sent me an ask, i blushed so hard i'm pretty sure i gave myself a mild fever. omg hi <3

also, so sorry but i def employed some tolkien-esque verbose-ness in answering these lol. especially the last one, whew. like, im embarrassed.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

what’s funny with the tolkien fandom is that the movie fans and the book fans have whole different spheres of bugaboos and Annoying Habits so it’s easy to vacillate between either camp when you keep encountering the Nonsense.

that being said, i one hundred percent consider myself a “book fan” and think movie fans are more annoying than all of us literates. like, they can’t help it—the movies are the source of most their ills— but as a rule movie fans are wrong about like all of the characters. as in, legolas isn’t mister stoic badass, sam isn’t More Heroic, aragorn isn’t pathetically reluctant, elrond is much prettier than hugo weaving, and denethor is not nutso (to name a few).

i would say, though, that book fans are generally really bad at figuring out what parts of the movies to pick on. like for years i’ve been so baffled by people still being angry over glorfindel’s exclusion in the fellowship movie and no offense to people who have read the silmarillion and the fellowship…but that was not only the best adaptational change but it also improves on the book. in that, sending arwen to guide them to rivendell and to physically hold frodo to her as she defended the last homely house with water horses, is an genuine story improvement—not just because lotr is a sausage fest and that Sucks but because it foreshadows arwen giving frodo her passage west, via a flight east, it lets arwen actually parallel luthien riding across middle earth on huan, which in turn gives arwen an equal sort of challenge in living up to a legacy, something that can thematically help aragorn live up to his, doing that thing tolkien does best and telling the same story over and over until the song finally scans and the rhyme resolves and the Big Story ends.

of course, the movies left out the arwen-giving-frodo-the-evenstar-gem thing so in terms of Sexism both media are equivalent.

i think book fans in general are wayyyyy too like faithful monk readers of the bible. and not even like medieval monk readers, where there’s a clear delineation between various interpretive approaches, going from the literal to the poetic in degree. no, tolkien fans i think have mistaken a rich creative world for something near perfection, to the point where they don’t really know how to explain why the amazon series is bad beyond “amazon is bad” and what makes tolkien’s fantasy unique. tolkien fans, in terms of pedantry, are worse than dune fans.

but yeah. everyone is wrong about glorfindel in fellowship. he is Not as interesting as arwen as a character and does Not really fit in the story.

10. worst part of fanon

definitely the freaks who treat genuine baddies as misunderstood kittens. like, i don’t feel very sorry for maedhros? also, why is the elrond-considers-maedhros-and-maglor-as-dads caucus in the tolkien fandom so loud??? look, there’s no arguing these are tragic and pathetic blorbos, and i personally love stories in which they seek atonement, but elrond had a dad. if i were elrond or elros, i wouldn’t even be considering letting someone else slot into that position. especially not with my dad constantly being in the sky, like a particularly unfair reminder. maedhros can be complicated and alluring, but i hate the fanon of him or maglor genuinely adopting the baby half-elves out of untainted goodwill. it softens them in a way that makes me like them less.

also, the fanon of people being like “tolkien wasn’t sexist. look at melian.” does that count as fanon? if so, i hate that too.

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

i feel like this goes for all fandoms, but by far any sort of accusation of racism in the work or in fan works is the most grenade-like kind of accusation one can lob.

with tolkien, i see a lot of people often focused on tolkien’s own opinions on “allegory,” and to be quite honest, anyone who uses that to say tolkien isn’t as racist as you might assume, is dumb as a rock.

tolkien’s frustration with "allegory" is the concept of 1 to 1 relationships. he didn't like when people were like "rohan is anglo saxon england" or "aragorn is [insert historical figure]" or any sort of reductive comparisons of lotr to real life figures and struggles in world war ii. (interestingly, however, he has said that dwarves were very inspired by jewish people. like, to the point that saying tolkien's dwarves are jewish is as accurate as saying shylock in merchant of venice is jewish--in that, they are characters in a story written by a christian who didn't really understand a whole heckuva lot about judaism. but that's a whole other topic.) and while that might tempt you to think that he therefore was not trying to represent any person or civilization from the real world in his books, unfortunately the core tenet of analytical reading is to assume deliberation over every single detail. you do in fact have to choose an idea before you write it down. and tolkien wrote the word "swarthy" one too many times for any of us to assume good-faith.

of course, there's also the claim of lotr not being as racist as the man (tolkien) likely was because art and the artist are not the same thing. and yeah. but again. "swarthy."

there is no easy answer to the whole death-of-the-author debate and questions over how much biography should be allowed in critical readings--at least no easy answer that doesn't just boil down to the simple demand to "think critically" (which isn't all that simple, in the end)--so i'm definitely not going to try to arrive at one now. but when it comes to tolkien's little made-up world, there are certain tropes in the fan interaction with it that make me somewhat queasy? like tolkien was so demonstrably inspired by real-world mythos and folklore that it is so easy to fit some of his characters and stories into real-world folk art and aesthetic. and to me there's a sliding scale of acceptable inspiration to maybe-we-shouldn't(?) inspiration. like when i see fan art that is labeled "indigenous tolkien," with no tribe or even geographic region specified, i find that weird.

and the reason i find that weird is the fundamental reason that i think discourse in fan circles over racial biases can get so rancid (unlike the discourse in non fan circles! just kidding, fandom discourse has nothing on a medievalist conference with a panel on white supremacy in the field, lol), and that reason is: tolkien's made-up world is not as made-up as the immersiveness of his world suggests. it is very rooted, and deliberately so, in the histories and folklore of western-european people (in particular) and thus the stories, the characters, the aesthetics, the ethics, and the themes are all off-shoots of these traditions. there is a missing element of material recognition in the interpretations of tolkien as really one thing or the other. material culture plays a much bigger role in the whole of all his arda-tales than is immediately obvious.

people want to give fantasy a pass when it comes to certain biases and they use that annoying allegory quote to do it with tolkien's work. because they are enlightened and do not project white supremacy and other legacies of colonialism onto a "made-up world." but tolkien would probably be the first to say that his work was built off fairy-stories, as a contribution to the genre.

he even goes on this relevant tangent at the beginning of "on fairy stories":

It is perhaps not unnatural that in England, the land where the love of the delicate and fine has often reappeared in art, fancy should in this matter turn towards the dainty and diminutive, as in France it went to court and put on powder and diamonds.

whether or not he's right about this distinction between english fairies and french fairies, this still shows that he considers the fantastical an expression of real and observable culture. therefore, despite the fact that it is bad-faith to read anything in tolkien as 1 to 1, he was trying to represent our world with his because he doesn't see the fairy/monstrous/supernatural as entirely separate from the physical/metaphysical or the human imagination. he was just trying to tell the same story that has always been told, from creation and onward.

so yeah. it is entirely valid to call aragorn's Specialness as a Special Sort of Human kind of fascist.

(and just as the rooted-ness of tolkien's fantasy world means that his work cannot escape accusations of bias, the rooted-ness also opens the way for a specific kind of progressive reading that is less about plugging one's ears to the bias but leaning into it. the real-world is more complex than one man can imagine it and when that one man is trying his hardest to represent the world, as any good writer would do regardless of genre, things will slip in to the story that the man chose but may not have understood. eowyn's speech about staying in the burning house is feminist thought even if tolkien would probably never have claimed it as such. the love between legolas and gimli is canonically transgressive and metaphysically-challenging--aspects of a love that tolkien probably would have assumed of gay love, in his time. if that makes sense. his biases don't define the art, even if they are present. especially since he was a very good writer and reader.)

[beevean]

1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25 for Sonic <3

On one hand, thank you so much for asking me about Sonic, it's like everyone forgot about my main fandom :(

On the other... why tho.

the character everyone gets wrong

Shadow, easy. Sonic and Eggman too... and Amy... and Tails... yeah pretty much everyone... but poor Shadow is the unfortunate victim of being hugely popular and hugely misunderstood due to inane takes that spread like wildfire.

Shadow is not an edgy boy (okay his game pushes it). Shadow is not a poow widdle blorbo who only needs to cry. Shadow did not suffer like a dog on the ARK. Shadow is not "Vegeta". Shadow does not monologue about who he is and what he thinks (neither does Sonic btw, coughcoughidwcough). There should be a law that you cannot analyze Shadow's character if you haven't at least read his script in Sonic Battle.

3) screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

How am I supposed to choose????? Have you seen this fandom D: (no, you haven't, lucky you. well i did.)

Among all, I get the urge to stab myself in the spleen every time I read something about Muh Mandates and Sonic Should Be Allowed to Cry and Eggman is Such A Good Dad to Sage. Or the majority of posts gushing about IDW, especially if the topic is Sonic's Principles :^)

6) which ship fans are the most annoying?

Sonadow, one of the main reasons it annoys me so much. Although some Sonamy fans push it, and I like that ship.

7) what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

hahahaha

Well, I used to dislike Shadow precisely due to his popularity, but nowadays I've warmed up to the guy. He's cool. Just... I don't get the hype.

I guess Surge is a better example. She's very annoying in canon, but what really ruins her is the amount of adoration she garnered. Y'all like her simply for the aesthetic, I checked, because she has a pitiful amount of fanfictions that actual star her as a character. (one of them is mine, and I don't even like her. Just sayin'.)

Oh, and I will never be objective about Sage. Sorry. She's bland and on her own inoffensive, but her association with Eggdad ruined her for me.

8) common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

That ShTH is a bad game >:( it's funny y'all are just mean.

Again, I can't choose. This fandom has just... so many Takes. I guess I'll go with "Shadow was turned into Vegeta", which is... factually untrue, outside of the Boom series.

9) worst part of canon

Can't choose, honestly. Maybe splitting Classic Sonic into a different character, instead of simply keeping him an older design for Sonic. Boy, the discourse that it caused...

12) the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

Hmm. To be fair I mostly like popular characters. I'd say that now I like Elise much more than I used to, but then again she's becoming more popular. So... Infinite, maybe? I like the dude, he's both cool and pathetic and I have no idea how he manages to do that. Sick theme too. And he's voiced by Liam O'Brien and his horniness for violence shows :'D

And you know what? Zor. Zor is the funniest of the Deadly Six. He's self aware and that elevates him. Y'all are too mean to the Deadly Six in general, but Zor is the one who deserves it less.

13) worst blorboficiation

Shadow, again. This poor dude just isn't seen for who he is.

15) that one thing you see in fanart all the time

Can't think of anything, because I'm not stupid and I don't go look for fanart :'D I dunno, worst thing I'm seeing recently is Eggdad content.

16) you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Why do you need Sonic and Shadow to be crybabies. Emotions aren't only expressed through tears. Don't blame SEGA for a perfectly normal writing choice. You don't need to shove angst up their asses to fulfill what's essentially your preference.

18) it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

KNUXAMY. THEY'RE SO CUTE. THEY HAVE LESS THAN 30 FICS ON AO3. WHY.

19) you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

Sonegg, except I've been liking it for so long that the shame has simply become resignation. I know why it's a common nOTP and I absolutely respect the people who think it's vomit-inducing, but I will defend it to my grave as being not as bad as commonly thought.

... does being an unironic ShTH enjoyer count, too?

20) part of canon you found tedious or boring

Frontiers. I swear that that story is completely useless, nothing happens except getting beaten over the face with pointless references and Ian Flynn self-sucking over how better he is than Pontaff, no I'm still not over "then I'm wildly inconsistent" :') and while '06's story is better because at least shit happens (until the game erases itself from existence), it's still a dull, boring, confusing mess to sit through, especially in English because they all sound bored out of their skull.

21) part of canon you think is overhyped

Frontiers :') at least, even though I don't like SA2, I can understand why it's so popular. I can even understand why people nowadays are warming up to '06. With the exception of some cute Sonic/Knuckles interactions, I can't find a thing to like about Frontiers' story.

22) your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Some of the endings of ShTH, especially the Dark ones. I think they brim with potential :)

23) ship you've unwillingly come around to

Knuxamy. A friend of mine started shipping it, then I was sucked in. (it helps that Knuckles/Amy in SAd3 kicks ass :D) look, they're cute and they have a fun dynamic going on.

24) topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

WAAAAAAAAH WHY DO YOU WANT SONIC TO KILL VILLAINS????

shut up. shut your entire fuck up. i am so sick of this. it was never our argument. idw is the plague of the fandom.

25) common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

MUH

MANDATES

no. You go and actually listen to Flynn's words. Even he's sick of this discourse. (also, yes he confirms that Shadow comes with many notes, but also dude just. doesn't understand him. "can you hear the fatigue in my voice" my entire ass)

[ragecndybars]

🥝🍐🍈 for the ask game! <33

HIII JACKS SORRY FOR THE LATENESS, I WROTE MY ANSWERS OUT, LOST THEM TO A TUMBLR GLITCH, WROTE THEM ALL OUT AGAIN, AND THEN MY WIFI WENT DOWN FOR MULTIPLE DAYS SO I COULDN'T ACTUALLY PUBLISH THIS ASK UNTIL I HAD A DAY OFF TO GET MY HOTSPOT WORKING... THIS ANSWER HAS JUST BEEN OPEN IN FIREFOX STARING ME DOWN UNABLE TO BE PUBLISHED BC IT WAS ON MY LAPTOP AND NOT MY PHONE HSLJSDFHLFDKSHJ.... THANKS FOR THE ASK EVEN THOUGH GOD CONSPIRED AGAINST ME ANSWERING IT, ENJOY

🥝 What’s your favorite trope/AO3 tag to write?

Last time I did this ask game, I went with a cop-out answer and said angst, but that's really more a genre than a trope imo, and as an AO3 tag it's verrrry broad. The funny thing is that, since I'm not letting myself say angst, I think I'm instead going to have to say Time Travel, which is very funny because I haven't posted very much time travel, lmao. The reason for that, though, is that every time I start a fic which involves time travel, it spirals massively out of control and ends up becoming such a large project that I never finish enough of it to post... 😭 But god I just love time travel so much, it's so juicy, there's such wide potential for both angst and comfort, fixing things and making them worse. Someday one of the many time travel fics rotting away on my computer will come to fruition... I swear it...

🍐 Is there anything in canon that you absolutely hate and love to fix in fics? A wrong choice made, a fuck-up in characterization, a misunderstanding never cleared up, a conversation never shown onscreen, etc…

Oof. Uh. Yeah... 😅 There's usually at least one of these in every fandom I get really into, and depending on what it is, I go back and forth on whether I subscribe to the "canon isn't real it can't hurt me" philosophy, where I just pretend it never happened, or the "canon is real but I came with a hammer" philosophy, where I acknowledge the event as canon but then explore whatever the problems are with it in my writing. Sometimes it just depends on the tone of the fic, too, haha. As a good example of this, I love Kanji from Persona 4, and depending on the fic, I'll either choose to explore the way he continues to reject his sexuality and the homophobia he suffers from the rest of the cast..... orrrr I'll just quietly sweep canon under the rug and write both him and the rest of the cast the way I think they should've been written to begin with. (I do the same with Naoto, lmao, he's my special little trans man)

🍈 Who’s your blorbo and what are some of your favorite headcanons/ideas about them that repeatedly show up in your fics? Free pass to rant about blorbo opinions.

I've ranted at GREAT length about my Minato headcanons before, so I'll just pick one I haven't really focused as much on which I've been thinking about more while playing Reload. My god Minato is so autistic and I love him so much. I basically always write him as having an extremely limited understanding of social cues, and, in an effort to make up for this, he kind of just defaults to being a passive yes-man since that's what's gotten him the least negative results in the past. This is how I understand him through the lens of his most criticized social links (such as Kenji, Kazushi, and Hidetoshi) where the "correct" answers tend to be just agreeing with people and letting them do as they please. The way I see it, he's just... so tired of trying to interact with people earnestly only to be misunderstood and accused of being an asshole just because he can't pick up on the silly little social dance that everyone expects him to know instinctively. It's only as he experiences his character development over the course of the year that he begins to hit his stride as a leader and therefore learns to step outside of his comfort zone a little and speak up for himself with the understanding that he might still be misunderstood sometimes and that's something he's willing to risk.

[powerpolyculeshowdown]

Kim Dokja is not actually unattractive , this is a lie. He’s not pathetic either , don’t let those weirdos’ words get to you. His face is blurred because he has a skill called “ a forth wall”. When people in the novel get asked to describe his appearance , they can’t do it! Because it’s censored! But they don’t know it! He has pale skin , dark hair and eyes glimmering like stars. Everything that was written in the novel should lead you to a conclusion that no one (few can see it actually but that’s a long story) can see his face properly. Bro is ethereal and no one knows ! BlackBox (the official novel artist) did him justice. Yoo Joonghyuk is the most attractive man on earth. Han Sooyoung doesn’t have anything that prevents people from seeing her face, but she still got called ugly in the novel. Her birthday is also on a 1st of April LMAO. How pathetic is that? She’s literally a joke. She’s cringe. She has a foul mouth and she’s annoying to most people. She’s also a malnutritioned shortass. Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyuk can be described as “ a god and his favorite” . Han Sooyoung is just some girl that had rich parents that didn’t love her. Truth be told, the absolute majority the fandom don’t ship her with Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyuk. They ship her with Yoo Sangah- an amazing woman that can put her in her place and make her shut up if she wants

i appreciate ur passion for ur ships and the clarification that kim dokja is not ugly but ill have to step in and say we're not here to break polyships apart in favor of pairings. its the power polycule showdown. now if u want to talk about how han sooyoung is dating the guys and this other lady at the same time and convert ppl to a bigger polycule im happy to advocate idk who yoo sangah is but i keep sayin the more the merrier!

it also didnt sit well w me the way u lifted the two guys up and put hsy down like that, but its fully possible you meant it in an affectionate way and i misread your tone in which case im sorry (we all got a blorbo we talk shit about mine is izaya from durarara hes absolute garbage and i love him)

i didnt want to leave you hanging and i mightve misunderstood your tone, so i chose to reply, but, as a general warning: if ppl try to start any shipping discourse in my inbox its most likely getting deleted.

[katatonicimpression]

Choose violence - 9, 10, 18, 19

9. worst part of canon

Pahahaha

Dunno there's a lot of it. We're coming close to a century of bad writing decisions at this point lol. Some honourable mentions that have been on my mind recently:

Hank's current villain era.

Sexy nazi teenage girl (sin)

Sexy nazi teenage girl, redeemable (?) edition (jet)

Laura as a tween and like... all of that

The lourdes retcon. Maybe it's weird to rank it as low as these others but genuinely. The backwards understanding of what makes a story work, and the relentless misogyny in the guise of being empowering. It makes me so mad.

10. worst part of fanon

Hmm... most of the stuff that bothers me is like "this one person said something ridiculous but it would equally dumb of me to engage with it." So I don't know if there's one big specific fanon thing...

Hydra trash party.

Like, on principle I support people who want to write horror and stuff but, as fanon? No. Doesn't even make sense with the canon for a start and is just so, so, so not my thing to read and it is fucking everywhere.

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

Let's say Shinobi, for old times sake.

He's literally fandom bait before there was fandom bait. Sad, misunderstood, pretty, queer young man with a traumatic childhood? Where are the screaming hordes of fans? Where is the wholesome shipping between him and Christian? Where is the problematic shipping between him and Fitzroy and the subsequent fandom discourse over whether or not that is technically incest? Where are the blorbos? Where is the love?

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

Ah. Um. Well.. oh fuck it.

I'm enjoying the betsy series so far.

I usually can't do excalibur at all in no small part because I live here lol. But idk maybe it's the tabloid spoof thing that's making it feel less out of touch with reality? And I'm actually enjoying the betsy/Rachel romance to my surprise. They've added just a sliver of toxicity to it which has made it finally interesting, and exploits the fact that betsy canonically is not the best person which idk I appreciate

From a fandomy perspective, it would be so much easier if it was irredeemable awful but it's just not. I do agree that it's a shame Rachel's first official canon gay relationship is this and not kitty, and I genuinely do believe that they should have put betsy on the back-burner for a few years when they brought kwannon back. But given that they didn't do that, idk I can't be mad at this. It's Tini Howard's third shot at the concept lol but so far I think it's her best one.

[shivrcys]

I've never heard of Hürrem, gimme a spiel about why I should watch it

The show is Magnificent Century. And Hürrem is my favourite character and blorbo.

The show is a very long Turkish drama (139 episodes of approximately 1h30-2h length) and the spinoff is also quite long (60 episodes approximately 2h30 long). It's about the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent and a lot of it focuses on the court and the harem intrigues.

The politics and the themes of the show can be inconsistent and quite oversimplified. But most of the major characters are very complex and well rounded with motivations that make sense. Particularly Hürrem and Mahidevran. Both of whom want to protect their children and keep them safe in an environment where they either take the throne or they die (there is a literal fratricide law). Even though these women are rivals and on the face of it seem to make for a stereotypical 'Madonna Whore' dichotomy, there is far more complexity to it than that.

Hürrem's characterisation and psychology in particular are fascinating to me since after all she is my blorbo. A lot of people try to turn villainous characters into 'misunderstood antiheroes' but THAT IS LITERALLY WHO SHE IS. She IS the misunderstood antihero. And she's given scenes like this for a reason. Which doesn't excuse her actions, but it makes her a subversion of a villainous archetype that I would argue was shaped by characters like Livia in I Claudius (who was an influence for example on Cersei Lannister as well). I went into the show expecting her to be a villain because with the accusations (that to be fair don't have much evidence) that are made against her historical counterpart it would have been very easy to do so. Yet she is one of the most human characters in the series with her flaws (cruelty, immaturity, vindictiveness, selfishness) and her redeeming qualities (empathy, kindness, protectiveness, compassion). At various points she can be endearing, terrifying, hilarious, heartbreaking, annoying and just awesome to watch.

This show is also great if you want to watch some morally grey girbosses being iconic and it definitely isn't just her but I love her.

[zwoelffarben]

A question actually addressed to me (i think based on context: @iwillgotoheavenforyou correct me if I'm wrong), so I guess I now have to take the time to answer it because "It's the autism," is entirely too pithy an accurate response to be useful.

How do you know so much

The first caveat to say is that I don't actually know all that much: I'm fond of saying, "I pretend to know things," and that's not really true because I do know things, but I generally give off the vibe that I know more stuff to a more indepth mastery than I actually do. This is cause of three four things.

I'm a knowledge generalist: I don't know a lot about most subjects but I pick up a little bit about everything.

I'm autistic and for me that manifests in being very good at connecting dots to draw beautifyl patterns, even given a small number of data points.

I'm autistic and I'm very particular about how I phrase things, with nuance and depth, such to avoid being misunderstood.

I was taught how to do basic research, and I try to make a habit of doing it before speaking when unsure about something.

I typically only know enough about something to be dangerous; often I need to look things up to remember exact details but I also try to make a habit checking my position on the dunning-kruger graph before speaking by looking shit up: You will however semi-regularly find me called out for having misjudged where exactly on that curve I am enrealis; and one whoopsie-daisy of a conversation with some actual expert later I'll admit that to being wrong on the internet out-loud for the world to read. It's never a pleasant experience but I assure you, I'm always so very brave about it. That's how I maintain the illusion of knowing so much™.

Now as for how I actually go about knowing things, well the things I know a lot about were either special interests of mine or things I specifically learned about in school and college. I went to the liberal arts school ███████ where I learned a shit tonne of information and then my autistic brain started connecting dots and forming opinions about things I have no business having opinions about. I have never filed my taxes (on account of not making enough to be legally required to file taxes) and yet, I have opinions about W2 forms which I won't be sharing here because they're not relevant.

My actual areas of expertise are quite limited in scope to 400 creative writing, 250s math, (english) literature, 200s chemistry, biology, physics, psychology, economics, art theory, painting, computers and coding, 100s of many miscellanious disciplines, blorbo from shows, shows, minecraft, and my lived experiences as an left-handed autistic queer white dude whose shoelaces deep into tumblr. This is a normal amount of things to know stuff about.

I know just about as much as anyone else who is my age and has had my level of education, but my autism might make me marginally better at connecting threads across multiple disciplines to apply knowledges in synasthetic ways, but mostly I'm practiced in the art of appearing to know what I'm talking about (not because I want to seem smart but because as a baby autistic being labelled 'smart' made surviving K-12 easier for me.)

How do you have time to write in such details

I'm fortunate enough that my living situation is stable such that I don't need to hold down a job nor make a living and can spend most of my time shitposting, seriousposting, and playing minedcraft.

I do type faster than most people because I'm a left-handed person both because I type a lot and because I'm using a DAVORK-L instead of QWERTY. I actually can type fast enough to cause minor-major sprains in my right wrist. I don't tend to do that, but it's happened and will continue to happen in the future.

But mostly, I just start a post and type until it's finished. I enter a fugue state and exit it hours later +1 reblog. (This matches my general approach to creative pursuits like writing and painting.)

How do you remember all of this

Most of the time I don't. There are two relevant modes of memory (there are a bunch of others) recall and recognition: I'm good at exactly one of those things; and well, my brain is not a well-ordered library of facts that I can look things up in.

It is a mireous bayou that swallows knowledge to rest beneath its murky waters; and if I'm looking for a specific factoid I need to navigate through the generally unmarked trees until I find a vaguely familar spot or happen upon the information randomly.

The thing you don't see is all the memory aids I have when posting about topics I'm less sure about. I have a folder on my computer called knowledge I put inforgraphics in. I have a folder in my browser book marks (sorely in need of organization) called use where I keep my citable links to stuff. When I need to know a specific fact and I can't find it in the bayou of my mind, I open 2-6 tabs on wikipedia to search for it, some of which I link in the post, and some of which I don't because I'm lazy or I actually did.

I don't remember all of it all of the time: I've recently started systematizing the tools and strategies I developed over the years to help me find my way back to specific information so that theyr better at helping me navigate the murky waters of my mindswamp, but most of the time anything I techincally know is completely forgotten about until it's needed again and dredged from the muck.