one thing that is fascinating to me about merrill's arc is the way narrative manages to convince a big part of the fandom that she's immature and irresponsible and overall stupid. what we know about merrill and what we actually see on screen is that she successfully avoids possession for 6 years while working closely with a demon, almost every time she participates in some magic/spirit-related discourse she acts calm and confident and has some interesting input, she actively uses her knowledge of dalish lore and tradition to reason with her keeper, and that she actually did make progress with fixing and studying an ancient long forgotten artifact no one knows particularly anything about. but then an old woman who's never been shown to be an undeniably wise and reasonable figure, a guy who got willingly possessed with no awareness of possible consequences and whose whole mindset is still deeply andrastian and a bunch of people who know nothing about magic start judging and doubting her and everyone's like. yeah. she's so fucking dumb.

They would have made Xiao Xingchen pull the car over at least once an hour if they ever did a road trip together.

I wasn't sure which version i liked so have bothhhhh woahh

i wrote this as a joke because I wanted to strangle a guy watching tiktoks without headphones on the bus, but im genuinely disturbed that we've gotten to a point where convenience comes first. and it depresses me even more that its used to justify and monetize greed

hey guys remember how jayson ferin would've been like 19 when jay was born and like 16 when ava was born. i don't really. have anything to add to that. just felt like saying it.

Leon Stamatis

from the fiction audio drama podcast i've been listening to non stop on my semester break: @greaterblogston

TG: do you think former president ronald reagan smacks rats

EB: sssmacks…rats?

TG: yah do you reckon he smacks rats

EB: oh yeah he TOTALLY smacks rodents—what in GOD’S NAME are we talking about

its so weird to me how unlike every other young female artist, olivia rodrigo is the only one treated like shes too young. billie eilish is barely older than her and i never see anybody comment on her age but ive seen so many peoples opinions about olivia revolve entirely around her being young. ive seen people ask others if they listen to her and they’ll reply with “im 25” like they’re above listening to music from someone just five years younger than them. its one thing if you just dont like her music, music is subjective, but some people act like shes an immature teenager and not a young woman making incredible art and succeeding in ways that clearly intimidate you.

what a sad boring life you will live if you refuse to accept newer younger artists into your lives and stick with the same people youve been listening to your whole life who’ve been in the industry for decades.

yeah natori is 23 and since matoba is one year younger, he's 22 at the very start of the manga/anime :))) i think it was like around season 3 of natsume when i learned this and went ????????????? and had to go lie down for a while

unacceptable. midorikawa-sensei answer for your crimes. the thing that's killing me currently is i know i learned this information back when i read a bunch of fic after watching the show for the first time - which was less than a year ago - but apparently REPRESSED IT because it was sooo does not compute. and then had to learn it all over again just recently. my poor brain tried so hard to protect me from this knowledge but alas.

FREE THEM they're baby adults they should not have this kind of weight on their shoulders and have like. employees and shit!!! "oh look a dumbass teenager with a heart of gold. how about i protect him with my life" HOW ABOUT YOU WORRY ABOUT YOURSELF YOU MAN-SIZED CATERPILLAR!!! they need to be in their cocoon era not in their head-of-the-family life-and-death-decision-making era. when you're 22 you're legally obligated to make questionable life choices and it seems self-evident you should not have to be forming lifelong contracts with supernatural beings until after you've gotten some of that out of your system but WHAT DO I KNOW, i'm just a thirtysomething with over a decade on natori who still does the modern-day equivalent of unplugging my answering machine so people can't leave me cursed voicemails. i look back on my 23yo self and i want to cry from how much she was learning and how hard she was trying. i love her so much it breaks my heart. stop putting these young men into situations they need to be in situations but maybe ones less fraught with mortal consequences. maybe some situations more along the lines of figuring out the hard way not to buy dryclean-only shirts because who has time to go to the drycleaners? that's just one idea, i've got more of these. midorikawa-sensei are you listening??

The way Gale's history and grooming is handled honestly means so much to me because he really only starts to look back towards the end of the game but in a way he still isn't ready to process. It isn't tied up in a pretty pink bow at the end - it is something he will be living with for the rest of his life.

It's a complex relationship and history that he is so deeply embedded in he can't look at it differently yet but he's learning, he's trying. He's also processing this in his later life which is a completely different process. There are a lot of complexities, especially when you tie in the fact his ex is a literal goddess who holds his life in her hands and controls the very thing he loves more than breathing.

But he's healing, slowly, in his own way whilst still trying to live his life. Mystra is always going to be in his life in some form but he now gets to carve out his own world and learn, truly, what that actually means for the first time since he was first made her chosen. Only now he has the best support network at his side, he won't have to hold himself up in his tower alone anymore.

Have a collection of extremely self indulgent scribbles ft. Good Hunter Lady Ruza and her beloved Arianna lol 💙

getting into podcasts featuring age 35+ people and characters has actually been sooo enriching for my well-being and understanding of life cuz like... the teens and twenties arent that big of a deal, there is so much to still learn, create, be and do beyond them... life is never perfect but has the potential to be cool as shit at every age man

okay but why do they

remind me of them

i will NOT expect anything from hermie tomorrow. i will NOT get my hopes up as a hermie fan. (biweekly affirmations)

Current Events in Silm fandom rlly reinforce my feeling that, despite claiming an ethos of acceptance/tolerance of anything that doesn't hurt ppl, a lot of ppl in the section of Silm fandom I frequent do follow a set of socially-agreed-upon mores about what concepts are "not acceptable" to discuss or propose (or the ways in which certain topics must be discussed to be acceptable), that you all seem to have agreed on despite the things those mores restrict not being harmful to anyone.

And when someone does say smth that violates those mores, the response is disproportionate to the amount of harm done (which is typically none, imo). I know it's tempting to say "but we just want people to be comfortable and safe", but treating ppl badly for the sin of sharing thoughts you dislike is NOT the same as preventing people from doing things that are harmful. The former is much more of a harmful behavior than the sharing of the thoughts that sets it off. Fannish etiquette, people: you shouldn’t act like someone’s meta makes them morally suspect just because you disagree with it; save the “this is morally bad” for things that are ACTUALLY harmful. We're all stuck on this website together & if you want to have any sort of community, you need to ACT like you're in a community, and that means letting other people say things you dislike. Block them if you need to! I block people all the time because i know it's better for me AND for them if we can both blog in peace.

I am not particularly comfortable with the young-queer-on-tumblr silm fandom rn due to this tendency to rebuke things that are uncomfortable rather than harmful. Maybe that's fine with you. But if your goal is to make all fans feel comfortable and accepted, you need to actually do that. If your goal is to make people who share your unwritten rules comfortable in your space, you need to admit that, and write those rules down, and curate your space so it follows them.

Edited 8:10am PST to clarify the specifics of the behavior I find concerning.

the unwilling Accomplice and the Mastermind