#you were so desperate for me to leave

[nilisntgreat]

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

i stand with you in the face of a defensive misunderstanding of what critique is.

i think understanding what a critique actually is is a skill that increasingly is not taught. i remember going through freshman art courses feeling the frustration that all negative, nasty, unhelpful, and missed-the-point-entirely feedback is so commonly conflated with critique, and then critique gets a bad name because everyone remembers the time someone said their painting looked like an asshole (true story, altho now i think i would take it as a compliment) instead of the time a teacher or friend or classmate helped them uncover a hurtful bias or think of new ways to explore the same idea or how to connect it to related ideas or how to look up and understand other people's ideas on the same topic.

anyway i think you're great.

ahhh you're so kind to me!! i appreciate your support, and i think you are great also.

i have experience with giving and receiving critique as a student myself, and i think it was the best part of my degree! i majored in creative writing in college, and critique was just a generally accepted part of learning to become a writer. i don't even remember people being especially worried about receiving critique on their work. we had guidance on what kind of feedback was useful, but we were still at liberty to give it as we saw fit as like messy 19 year olds. the standard was that we gave it both written on printed copies of the work AND aloud in front of the whole class, and the writer receiving it was not permitted to speak during the critique. understanding how people are perceiving your work is important!

i don't have any particularly negative recollections of the critique process, although once in a high school writing class, the boys in the class told me that my male characters touched each other too gently and real boys are more rough with each other. in particular, they took issue with me writing that one boy nudged another. nudging is too soft. nudging is for girls. that was more than 20 years ago, and i still think about it sometimes because it was such an interesting perspective! i did not take their advice, though.

i should dig up that piece and see if it reads queer in any other ways. i think that's what they were getting at. (actually i once had a non-fiction class tell me i was in love with my roommate after reading an essay i wrote about her)(i did not listen to that advice either, but having 12 acquaintances tell you that you're gay in 2006 before you realize it yourself is Truly Something!)

i think people have conflated criticism and critique and think that being more openly analytical is the same thing as being negative. but analysis is so fun to me! analysis is why i joined fandom in the first place, and it's why i write fic! can we trust each other to be respectful and to speak in good faith even when we're not singing each other's praises? for me fandom would be better if we could.

oh i also want to clarify that i don't think it's impossible to demonstrate that you've thought deeply about a piece of fanwork while remaining completely positive. people do it all the time and do it very well!

i know i sometimes have tunnel vision wrt my own perspective. in a lot of situations, i wish it were more acceptable to be more direct, and i know people sometimes find the way i express myself to be kind of shocking. i know a lot of people like to be spoken to more indirectly than comes natural to me, and i don't mean to imply that my perspective is the only correct one or that there's no good reason to err on the side of gentleness/politeness in our responses to amateur art and writing. i just think that at a certain level of circumspection, it feels like we're all holding each other at arm's length.

i think for people who can't bear to feel exposed, making and sharing art is always going to be painful and difficult, and maybe too painful and difficult to enjoy the process unless they're sure of a soft landing. but like. the rewards of being loved only come after the mortifying ordeal of being known, right?

[money-and-dandellions]

Characters pulling their dear ones out of danger but, instead, taking the damage themselves

and smiling because their dear ones are fine and safe and—

why are they crying?

[toytulini]

man everyone complains about snipers in splatoon and dont get me wrong, skilled snipers can, will, and do, wreck my shit, but everytime i see a sniper on the other team i do get a lil excited. enrichment in my enclosure. shiny thing to hunt and harass. sorry to all snipers i am targeting you specifically bc you are sooooo shiny and fun to harass. largely this is not an issue and i dont feel too bad about targeting snipers specifically bc I'm not good enough at the game for it to be some sort of unfairness. like i said. i frequently get my shit wrecked and never learn.

[gracebethartacc]

WAIT WAIT WAIT So was Amaya once an actual person that Magnifico knew and loved but she died so he recreated her and made her into the marionette? Or was she never a person and he invented an entire new person so he wouldn’t be alone?

i think the second one!! like he just straight up created her from scratch

[fictionadventurer]

All the tour groups in Springfield should be very proud of me for how well I refrained from sharing all my fascinating Lincoln facts.

[skrunksthatwunk]

household enemy to the yyh watchthrough number one is the olympics. it's taken us a week to get two episodes into the gamemaster fight

[butchlifeguard]

me and my 2 straight boybesties are so interesting. one has texted me 4 times today none of which im gonna open and is responsible for some of the creepiest shit ive ever had said to me. one isnt insecure so hes actually fine w being platonic friends and we're both posting social distortion on our instagram notes. literally 'please please just text me back' vs 'daddy long dick just landed in la baby'

[pilmyeol]

kinda impressive rotbb passes the bechdel test considering there are only two women

[rivilu]

While we all know about Hawke's character-assasination in inquisition, I personally remain.. preplexed? a morbid kind of impressed? with how that game also managed to butcher my Warden with only about 5 lines of dialogue referring to him and a letter.

[subtlehaz]

I. Loved. LOVED. The end of that episode.

[born-to-lose]

I want to strangle this DJ for playing Reckless Love at an 80s party (not 80s inspired or glam in general, whole ass actual 80s along with ZZ Top, Cinderella etc)

[smitherscreens]

how does christmas saves the year manage to be so incredibly sad

[gloriousmonsters]

watched the moominvalley AND 90s anime takes on the Last Dragon back to back earlier and I'm still so fucked up emotionally

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

sooooo……. there’s some ConversationTM* going around the theology (and adjacent) girlies tonight and it’s got me very intrigued—are there really more options than just Calvinist/Arminian?? bc I’ve always been raised with this idea that those are The Two Options regarding salvation theology and how exactly it all plays out. but apparently that’s…. not the case??

Iwill add that yes, Molinism is a thing that exists, and I know of exactly one guy who’s a theologian and philosopher and who believes in that lol. it’s not exactly a super common alternative to the others. and then I do believe Catholics have a slightly separate view as well, but I’m mainly just talking about soteriology within Protestant theology here anyway.

*(I won’t say ‘DiscourseTM’ bc that seems more antagonistic than what I’m seeing around here rn; everything seems to be in good faith and just for the sake of pointing out minor discrepancies atm)

[monty-glasses-roxy]

Oh ya know, most of my ideas feeling tired and boring is probably because I haven't like. Just chilled and done whatever for a while. Been stressing over this gecko and am not likely to get to stop doing that until after the health check. Thankfully there's not as much to do now, but it still feels like a lot to do.