saw a take so fucking rancid on twitter i almost deleted the entire app from my phone jesus fucking christ
first of all ao3 is an archive site. this is like going to the library and saying "oh i dont like this" on every piece of media you find that you dislike and thinking they should be stamped with some sort of a marker just cause you didnt like it
you can always click back and leave. fic writers owe you nothing to explain themselves and their creations. if they have mistagged or miscategorized fics, then i understand, however there are report tools for that instead of yelling at the artist tbh
im not saying free works arent necessarily above criticism. but this is just. fucking wild. its common courtesy to just enjoy stuff (or fucking leave if you dont, the back button is free) and if the artist specifically asks for critiques, then give one - constructive that is, shitting all over someones work is not proper criticism, mind you
i just find it fucking wild people are treating art and archive sites as social media these days like this and everything needs to be policed and ~catered to the algorithm~ like. no. ao3 doesnt have an algorithm. you should be able to fucking tell what you like and what you dont like and steer away from that kind of content and let people fucking be with their art. they dont owe you anything (except trigger warnings i'd argue, but i know some people disagree with that as well for some reason), and imagine how much more energy you'd have if you only engaged with things you liked and spent time looking at instead of going to places where you dont enjoy yourself. let alone spending time telling other people you dont enjoy what they enjoy. what a fucking life
I'm glad more of Tumblr is becoming more accepting of objectums + a lot of people are realizing that they're objectum themselves, but it really does feel like the current "in" thing right now so I hope this support for us continues even when people get tired of the eroticism of the machine
i Still don't understand the urge to label oneself anti endo and then act confused when no one is willing to listen to you. like be for real. If you saw someone call themself Anti [Your Identity Label] would you immediately invite them to a civil debate with you and seriously consider their opinion or would you immediately get defensive and assume they're a bad faith troll or bigot. genuinely.
if you saw someone call themself "anti-traumagenic" would you react poorly? I know i probably would. would you think it's acceptable if they clarified "oh i think theyre real, i just call myself that because i think their COMMUNITY is HARMFUL" would you be any less put off??? would you even accept that reasoning or would you say "no you're just ableist"???
so can we at least agree to stop acting Shocked when a group of people is angry at a community of people labeled "anti-[group]" because it just makes you look silly. im not saying you cant be critical of endos, im not even saying dont call yourself anti-endo. Im saying that if you DO willingly identify with that label and apply it to yourself, you look kind of silly when you then go "um? Why wont you LISTEN to me? Clearly you're in an echo chamber" as if youre not basically wearing a big graphic tee that says "I Don't Respect You"
(Im aware some people get called anti endo when they really arent, this post is not about you, on account of specifically being about self-identification, so please don't start. and if you id as anti endo out of SPITE, i have to ask.. do you do that with other labels? ... like, do you unironically start identifying as homophobic when people accuse you of homophobia for example? Do you think that's a compassionate or rational response?)
xingqiu and chongyun have insanely good potential for angst my god. xingqiu in particular is so fun to think about in the context of chongyun. what do YOU know about chivalry boy
thinking about how he and hu tao kinda operate on similar notions of justice and all that shmick except hu tao is more strictly averse to disrupting the Natural Order (incredibly vague and generalized concept rn sorry) whilst xingqiu sets his principles more arbitrarily. chongyun's presence somehow foils a lot of his notable character traits. gestures hands vaguely in the air but sth sth hu tao would not approve of xq's moral infractions
perhaps im just reading too deep into this but shrugs ill admit something's changed in Me the last 2 years and coming back to xq and cy has me like. scratches head now hold on im not entirely sure if i even like the way xq treats cy. its kinda one of the main points of their dynamic- the whole.. pranking this oblivious guy who i really adore etc. but its deeper implications leave me a little unsatisfied and a little troubled (?).. in the long run i personally dont really see anything substantially appealing about their (leaning towards romantic in this context) relationship other than like ?? the tropes that mhy imposed upon them. they were created as a compatible Duo ykwim. they reference each other a lot in their lore and even in-game but.. idk maybe i just view them separately instead of a joint unit that anaylzing them individually revealed a lot of crevices and cracks in their ship that's built upon their mainstream appeal
but anyway i've thought a lot about them as a duo and is it nuts to say i like them as a romantic ship but if they were unrequited. i can see them working out but it necessitates a complete subversion and reconstruction of xingqiu (chara development basically LOL) on my part that i would totally invest myself in but im not entirely sure how to execute it
i like xingqiu a LOT as a flawed character. i wouldnt go as far as to say hes toxic, just very conflicted and insecure. hes a fun character to think about. re: the hu tao bit i mentioned above, i think they would have a really fun, witty, and transformative friendship
but anyway. yes i like xq and i still like xy. theyre just a bit more complicated now aha. im still capable of enjoying fluffy ship dynamics but lately ive been in a Character Study Mood ... mmm.. ive yet to organize my chongming thoughts
One of my least favorite parts of how JRO wrote Optimus is that he wanted so badly to continue his dark and gritty world building making the Autobots problematic, but evidently couldn't reconcile this with Optimus being a Heroic Paragon, so instead he leaned way too hard into "oh Prowl was the one who did this and it was behind Optimus' back" which if anything I think makes Optimus look worse, not better. Because then it's like, okay I know Optimus trusted Prowl a lot as his friend but you CANNOT TELL ME that over the course of 4 million years, Optimus as the leader of the Autobot army who literally would have access to 99.9% of all the records they produce, would never notice or question where some of these odd/inconsistent details were pointing. It just seems really inconsistent with how a real military would actually function, especially regarding Optimus' character, who is incredibly thorough and responsible and wouldn't neglect to keep up with all the details of his army.
Hell, Optimus knows who the Wreckers are and had them on call for tricky operations when he needed them (Stormbringer) so he's literally not at all ignorant of/averse to the use of special wartime units composed of dubious individuals. He's the fucking commander of an entire army, of course he knows that War Is Hell (TM) and no one's hands are clean. That's not even getting into all the stuff he got up to in phase 2/3, I mean everything from the annexation of Earth to OP breaking humans out of prison against Council orders shows that Optimus is no stranger to immoral and/or unlawful means.
It also leads to a lot of annoying fanon where people write Optimus (sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not) as like some sort of ignorant fool who's unaware of the machinations of his own army or has some sort of naiveté of "b-but we can't use bad tactics against the enemy! I would never condone the use of morally gray means in war!" No, IDW Optimus knows perfectly well all of the bullshit he's enacted/condoned for the sake of trying to win the war. Some stuff is definitely out of character for him and was only machinated because of Prowl, but I think this fandom REALLY underestimates Optimus' personal agency/responsibility as the commander of a whole ass army and ESPECIALLY underestimates Optimus' capacity to condone morally gray Bullshit Of War while still being a good person individually as well as, comparatively, the lesser evil compared to Megatron/the Decepticons.
Anyways what I'm saying is JRO may be a good writer but he's really hesitant to make Optimus morally gray and does some asspulls sometimes to justify most of the bad things the Autobots did as "Optimus just didn't know," and since the majority of the IDW1 fandom only reads JRO's stuff they go running with this premise of ignorant/uninformed Optimus when there's evidence elsewhere in canon to show that Optimus is, in fact, very highly aware of the bullshit he's allowed "for the greater good" and the only stuff he was "unaware of" was the stuff he would literally never agree to the ethics of, like bombing innocent neutrals disguised as Decepticons to get them to join the Autobots.
some advice i see a lot regarding how to tell if someone is a fictive or just a character that the person is imagining is to try to imagine them doing something they wouldn't and see if it feels wrong or if they flat out refuse but i was wondering is there any way to tell if you've just imagined them refusing? like, if it's more in character for them to do so is that not simply where your mind would go? how can you tell whether there's a person behind it or whether it's just that your mind itself doesn't want to cooperate??
Honestly, I'm not sure how to answer that. BUT, it does remind me of when our old host met Jaiden (not a fictive) and they read that a way to check if someone is really sentient, you do this specific exercise about balancing a feather on their noise or something. Honestly none of us remember the point of it or how it would have worked, but what happened was, Jaiden was already Real. He split real, Jamie just wasn't sure (thank you denial). Because Jaiden cared about Jamie, he indulged him and did the exercises. But it would go on for DAYS to the point where Jaiden literally told Jamie to just "stop". "I'm real!" and even if Jamie told him to do these exercises, it was annoying him.
So yes, having them do something they'd like is an option. But have you considered annoying them to the point where they snap at you?? SKDFJS
OF COURSE DONT like. put yourselves on bad terms. but its something to think about. A lot of the time when we're in denial, the person we/the current front is in denial about, starts getting annoyed, and then we feel bad about hurting their feelings.
So I'm not your therapist and I can't tell you what's what- but I guess you could also think.. "If I annoyed them, and they react badly to me annoying them, and that feeling of them scolding me makes me feel bad.. why would I ever make that up?"
Also give it some time. Sometimes if a split is new (or you think someone just split) it'll be hard to tell. Denial is a BITCH. If you already are used to having alters or system members in general, The fictive who just split WILL eventually be comfortable enough to be "concrete enough" with you, if they already even know who they are. maybe your brain itself is still figuring things out. We talk about splitting as a community a lot--where spliting is usually depicted as like this FAST thing. but sometimes its slow! which DOESNT help if youre trying to figure out if you have someone or not!
as this continues to be relevant yeah idk I just think this whole RiverClan nonsense conflict would have been less annoying for me to read if RiverClan had actually descended into true chaos. a situation like Redscar’s field guide story where several cats try to claim authority. but in this case, it goes beyond just two cats fighting and the clan starts splitting into mini factions supporting one self-appointed candidate or the other. the problem being presented as “we all forgot how to do chores without a teacher permission slip :(” is so weird and lame. give me blood shed eat each other alive so i believe your plight ffs!!!