#which is really just a subset of

[robertdowneyjjr]

kay!! have you seen the recent bobsai outing?? he looks like a lil frog with a leaf on its head. or a mushroom covered in moss?? dunno, he's just all earthy, cottagecore tones. bobbagecore?? i need your judgment on this!

when it comes to Bobsai our question is never “what is he wearing?” and always “what is he?”

he is a lime tree and he is blooming 🍋🌳

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[mothbeasts]

i miss posting and making and engaging with ieytd content but I will be honest sometimes it feels alienating. as a lesbian.

[fallowtail]

i love when other autistic people throw those of us who do genuinely lack/struggle with empathy and struggle with having/understanding human emotions under the bus because everyone's so fundamentally disgusted by us. maybe they're right to be idk anymore

[n7punk]

i really want to know what it was about beauty youtube that invented a whole other breed of human because like there are a LOT of beauty gurus and i can't name a single normal one without a list of controversies longer than my arm. i know there's a lot of egomaniacs on youtube and i haven't kept up with the beauty side for a while but i was IN it for several years and at this point it seems like the most normal one left is the OG michelle phan and she's in a quantum physics healing magic cult!!

[coquelicoq]

i just saw someone say that "the vast majority of the userbase is complaining" about tumblr's recent layout change. i see this a lot after a change: people complaining about it (sometimes without saying what about it is bad, making it sound like either it's self-evident (it usually is not) or just that it's bad because it's change and change is always bad) and saying that everyone else is complaining about it too. i don't know how to tell you this but a) you don't follow every user on tumblr so how can you possibly know what "everyone" or "the majority of users" thinks about anything and b) ONLY THE PEOPLE WHO FEEL VERY STRONGLY ARE TALKING ABOUT IT!! people who are not bothered are not spending time posting about how unbothered they are! please look up "selection bias" and stop making me read this nonsense with my own eyeballs.

[girlbob-boypants]

X reader fits are truly the $1 dumpster bin of fics

[torchickentacos]

taylor idk who chappell roan is i think that makes me disqualified from being queer forever (←sapphic girl)

She's a musical artist! She's pretty up-and-coming right now and is seen as a wlw queer icon in the music industry, but I've never been able to get into her music even though tons of other sapphics love it. I probably just haven't given it enough of a chance. Casual is a good song though!

[generalnuisance0]

this might be a dumb and highly specific pet peeve but i really hate the (very common) career advice given to stem majors in Canada (especially IT/CompSci and nursing students) that we should all get TN-1 status and live/work in the US for the higher salaries, lower cost of living and lower taxes (which does objectively make it easier to build wealth)

idk i just feel like this kind of career advice really only applies to/helps if you are a (preferably rich) cishet neurotypical ablebodied white man

like yeah sure I, an openly queer woman with adhd should TOTALLY move to the borderline theocracy with a shortage on my meds right next door great idea

[milfygerard]

sometimes i go thru the gaylor tag to see updates or reactions or something and its so funny everytime. You people are insane i respect literally none of you etc etc

[ssaalexblake]

i’m still mad about that dw magazine what the future looks like headline lol 

[ff2-soda-pop]

can my brain stop giving me psmd art ideas when i am not in a position to do art right now-

[orcelito]

ok it's rly stupid but discacc chapter 42 felt so weird writing not for anything in the chapter but bc i wrote it outside of my normal active chapter document. for the most part. LIKE i have this one document that i use for writing all my discacc chapters and HAVE since like way way way early on. like since chapter 2 ish early on? bc things were getting too long it was freaking out the doc & also it's easier to copy-paste new chapters into ao3 if i just have that chapter there. so i have my main fic thing (well, multiple, since discacc is too long to fit into one document lmfaoo) & then i write new chapters in this active chapter doc & then copy paste them into the main thing once im done

EXCEPT

so 42 was originally a part of 41. it was all gonna be chapter 41. and i wrote like 4.6k words of it in active document with chapter 41. then decided it was gonna be its own thing, so i just plopped that bit into its own document to cut it from the active chapter doc. but then. when it came time to continue it in chapter 42. i just. didnt move it back to the active chapter document. i just kept writing in separate document '42'.

and idk there's just smth that feels so WEIRD about that. like it wasn't a normal discacc chapter or smth. which is kinda stupid but idk. like i couldve moved it back over at any point. but i didnt. bc i was already there

anyways im looking forward to writing again in "DA active chapter" doc aka the RIGHT doc for discacc writing. thank you very much

[isekyaaa]

I know it's the point for reader-inserts fics to be romantic, but the way people write them so dripping in unrealistic fantastical puppy love really triggers this innately viscerally repulsed reaction in me.

[eisthenameofme]

So the issue is i have several different blogs and it's resulting in my posting a disproportionate number of text posts to images on here. Is that actually a problem? No. Is it annoying me anyway? Maybe

[reachartwork]

how to write fight scenes

many people have told me that Chum has good fight scenes. a small subset of those people have asked me on advice for how to write fight scenes. i am busy procrastinating, so i have distilled my general ethos on fight scenes into four important points. followed by a homework assignment.

Fight scenes take place on two axii - the physical and the intellectual. For the most interesting fight scenes, neither character should have a full inventory of the other's abilities, equipment, fighting style, etc. This gives you an opportunity to pull out surprises, but, more importantly, turns each fight into a jockeying of minds, as all characters involved have to puzzle out what's going on in real time. This is especially pertinent for settings with power systems. It feels more earned if the characters are trying to deduce the limitations and reach of the opponent's power rather than the opponent simply explaining it to them (like in Bleach. Don't do that). 1a. Have characters be incorrect in their assumptions sometimes, leading to them making mistakes that require them to correct their internal models of an opponent under extreme pressure. 1b. If you really have to have a character explain their powers to someone there should be a damn good reason for it. The best reason is "they are lying". The second best reason is "their power requires it for some reason".

Make sure your blows actually have weight. When characters are wailing at each other for paragraphs and paragraphs and nothing happens, it feels like watching rock 'em sock 'em robots. They beat each other up, and then the fight ends with a decisive blow. Not interesting! Each character has goals that will influence what their victory condition is, and each character has a physical body that takes damage over the course of a fight. If someone is punched in the gut and coughs up blood, that's an injury! It should have an impact on them not just for the fight but long term. Fights that go longer than "fist meets head, head meets floor" typically have a 'break-down' - each character getting sloppier and weaker as they bruise, batter, and break their opponent, until victory is achieved with the last person standing. this keeps things tense and interesting.

I like to actually plan out my fight scenes beat for beat and blow for blow, including a: the thought process of each character leading to that attempted action, b: what they are trying to do, and c: how it succeeds or fails. In fights with more than two people, I like to use graph paper (or an Excel spreadsheet with the rows turned into squares) to keep track of positions and facings over time.

Don't be afraid to give your characters limitations, because that means they can be discovered by the other character and preyed upon, which produces interesting ebbs and flows in the fight. A gunslinger is considerably less useful in a melee with their gun disarmed. A swordsman might not know how to box if their sword is destroyed. If they have powers, consider what they have to do to make them activate, if it exhausts them to use, how they can be turned off, if at all. Consider the practical applications. Example: In Chum, there are many individuals with pyrokinetic superpowers, and none of them have "think something on fire" superpowers. Small-time filler villain Aaron McKinley can ignite anything he's looking at, and suddenly the fight scenes begin constructing themselves, as Aaron's eyes and the direction of his gaze become an incredibly relevant factor.

if you have reached this far in this essay I am giving you homework. Go watch the hallway fight in Oldboy and then novelize it. Then, watch it again every week for the rest of your life, and you will become good at writing fight scenes.

as with all pieces of advice these are not hard and fast rules (except watching the oldboy hallway fight repeatedly) but general guidelines to be considered and then broken when it would produce an interesting outcome to do so.

okay have a good day. and go read chum.