Gridania vs the Elementals

Had a bit of a grouse on Twitter after seeing a decent take with a buncha of real not decent replies. Transcript of the tweets:

ARR inherited the mess in Gridania from the 1.0 team, no idea how to fix it, so ignore it.

It's also clear it's mostly a People problem, not the utterly alien blue-orange morality Elementals the folks who live in the Shroud adapt to living with (& corrupt folks use as excuses).

The Elementals are obviously not policing every detail of folks' lives & barely comprehend mortals as seen several times. When they lash out it's cuz they sense a threat they don't understand. Hence the need for Padjal & Hearers. Who are people & make mistakes or are corruptible.

Assuming the Elementals are evil or cruel for the hell of it is grossly misunderstanding the alien horror aspect of the Shroud & the druidic story of the Padjal. Nature isn't all kind & fluffy. The Elementals aren't even personified nature; they're aspects of it that can react.

The trouble in Gridania always comes from people mistreating each other, & sometimes that includes making claims about the Elementals. It's the same as corrupt priests in Ishgard or Monetarists in Ul'dah. Using authority for personal gain. It's explicit in the StB LTW quest.

I'd love to see Gridania get a glowup the way the other city-states have. I don't expect it to happen. Mostly I wish for it so maybe a fraction of folks would grasp slightly better the concepts of corrupt authorities vs alien nature elements.

I also once wrote a lot more about "why doesn't Kan-E just fix it?" as if it's that easy. https://autumnslance.tumblr.com/post/625180125899669504/the-seedseers-privilege

What happened in the EW Tank quest was cuz the Elementals couldn't tell who was at fault or why. They do not understand mortals or their reasons. They just knew something was happening. Removing padjal aspects instead of killing the boy too likely was their idea of mercy.

Meanwhile I'd side-eye any Hearer who claims "your kid specifically can't be cured cuz the Elementals say so."

If you don't trust an Ishgard priest making such claims of Halone telling him the same Herself, you shouldn't believe that Hearer, either. Why would they care or not?

Anyway. Not everything's a nice neat black & white easily understood & fixed situation. And the Elementals don't actually need fixing. Gridania does, but that's gonna take longer & isn't necessarily the WoL's job, but it's peoples'.

I always try to mentally justify my oc’s things because of my own insecurities, like “oh aliens think knitting is impressive but also the human they see knitting is actually really really good at knitting” and I think it’s about time I outgrew that

Aliens seeing Humans knit a really basic scarf and losing their minds and thinking it’s really impressive and sexy of those Humans, and they’re right, it is sexy and amazing of those Humans to be able to make a simple scarf, that’s a handmade thing that they made!!! with their hands!! an item they created!!!

Thinking about IDW Optimus again and the fandom's aversion to even acknowledging he exists bc he's a cop or whatever and like. Most of the time people literally just replace him in fic with some white bread knockoff archivist/librarian, not even bothering to keep in IDW OP's personality (which just bolsters my theory that the problem isn't him being a cop the problem is that he's too multifaceted but I digress).

And it's annoying because you could totally write IDW Optimus as not a cop while still keeping his canon personality. You just have to realize that the reason IDW OP became a cop in the first place is because his formative experiences when he was young shaped him to basically have two priorities: 1. To help people and 2. To do it by being on the ground actively doing something about the bad things happening to people.

IDW OP would not be a fucking librarian or archivist because even though those are noble pursuits that can help people and change the world, and Optimus is educated/smart enough for the profession, he wouldn't be satisfied just teaching people or spreading information about activism or social-historical studies or whatever. He's a mech of action: he needs to be doing things right now, in front of him, to people he sees/interacts with in his own eyes, improving society with concrete actions rather than indirect action or abstract inspiration.

So basically the alternate job ideas I can think of for IDW Optimus are something like being a firefighter (or any first responder really) or even whatever the equivalent would be to international charity organizations, those ones that send volunteers across the world to do stuff like build housing/infrastructure or distribute food or whatnot. I mean I can't imagine that the equivalents to these things would be exactly the same in IDW Cybertron, so you'd have to get a little creative with it, but these are just some ideas of jobs that would fit IDW Optimus' personality while still filling the niche of "not a cop" for people who are just that opposed to it.

Though I think the revulsion against coptimus is annoying in general tbh because IDW is already a continuity that rejects the idea of easily defined good/evil people or groups. It feels like people really want Optimus to be a good person in a very sanitized and academically approved way, so he has to be nice and squeaky clean but also like, a perfect leftist who knows theory and holds the most progressive opinions on every single issue....

There is no room for the idea that good people join bad institutions, there's no room for the idea that the reason people think cops are good guys who help people is bc of the government propaganda everything is saturated with. Hell there's even later issues of the Optimus Prime series by John Barber where Optimus like, MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES, is shown in flashbacks grappling with the fact that he as a cop/Zeta's regime that he works for might not actually be improving society like they say they are, and dealing with the fact that he feels more like a lesser evil compared to the Decepticons (perhaps not "lesser" at all).

It's like there's this idea in fandom of like, fictional media and opinions on media having to strictly adhere to progressive ideals at all times. So people just go "cops bad, this character is a cop, therefore they suck" without being willing to engage with the idea of like. IDW OP is born wanting to fight injustice and protect people -> a good way to protect people is to fight the people who are hurting them and committing crimes -> surely following the law is a reliable moral code to guide him in this -> becomes a cop because he's been indoctrinated into a society (much like our own) where he was told that the state/the law exist to protect the people and being a cop means you get to fight bad guys that hurt people. There's really so many interesting concepts there that could be (and CANONICALLY IS) explored about how good, well-intentioned people can be led to harmful actions simply because they have been fed the idea that the things they're doing are good/helpful/noble. Which is especially important for a character like Optimus, I think, who has a cultural icon status as The Irrefutable and Perfect Good, so it's really important actually to use IDW Optimus as an example of how even the most noble people you know have held problematic beliefs or done bad things at some point in their life. You know, because no one is born perfect and ideologically pure, and in fact society is constructed in exactly a manner to make people drink the kool-aid and believe that the systems designed to hurt them/others are just a normal, if flawed, society.

I mean the writing in IDW literally has Optimus deal directly and indirectly with the harm he's done as a cop and how people don't/didn't trust him because of that. I don't know what the fuck else this fandom wants if the source material literally saying "OP realizes that cops suck and he hurt people and earned their disdain by doing the things he did" doesn't stop them from going EW cop bastard sucks and is the worst Optimus. Like the narrative barely stops short of outright saying ACAB and Optimus himself would agree with this sentiment.

At that point, the collective fandom beef with IDW OP isn't because he's a cop and the narrative didn't do enough to condemn that. The problem is literally just that people don't read and don't care

TLDR: Consider the fact that good people can do bad things sometimes especially when living from birth in a corrupt society that thoroughly disguises its vices/oppressive structures as completely normal parts of existence

making big strides now that I'm not crippled by pain and wanting to shout it from the rooftops but somehow feeling awful about it because I'm not doing it fast enough. #livelaughlove

every once in a while, i see posts about including the sex stripe in the rainbow flag and it's like... i know not having sex is supposed to be included in that, but i still wouldn't use it myself because i never feel represented/included in that way by the wider queer community; it feels like outside of aspec spaces ppl always equate queerness with having sex and it's quite alienating

oh BOY do i hate the way gilbert baker sex stripe discourse goes down around here. getting this out of the way first: it's incredibly well-documented that the stripe was removed because it was difficult to get that shade of pink. people who try to obliquely blame aspecs for its removal as part of the ol' "asexuals are homophobic" narrative are straight up wrong.

...anyway. yeah, the equation of queerness with sex is a MESSY-ass thing. is sex historically and personally important to a lot of queer people? yes. does mainstream society's oversexualization of queerness fuel a lot of bigotry and stigma? also yes. does the emphasis on sexuality within queer spaces alienate people who lack that connection with sex? also ALSO yes. it's a complicated thing, and i just wish people would acknowledge that as queer as sex can be, NOT having sex is absolutely queer as well.

the way i see it, there isn't (or shouldn't be) one monolithic "queer community" - a queer space that centers sexuality and a queer space that avoids it are both equally "queer," and the existence of one does not cancel out the other. a lot of queer circles do seem to focus on sex, and people like you and i will likely always feel alienated in those communities... but it shouldn't matter, since the people in those groups don't represent "real" queerness any more than we do. that's the mindset i try to stick to whenever i find myself feeling disconnected from "mainstream" queer culture - yeah, we might be very different when it comes to some things, but our experiences are both different expressions of queerness that are (to use a somewhat trite phrase) equally valid.

Y'all will go vent to a person with no standards and be surprised, shocked even when they don't understand and can't respond.

Sometimes it's not even about *standards*, sometimes they just have different values or practices. Don't get upset with them bc they cant give you what you need!

If you and your friend are not aligned… they probably can't help and/or don't want to hear about it. If you are lucky enough to find a friend with major differences who still takes the time to study YOUR world… appreciate them ❤️

+ Don't fight me because I know that's your friend and you love them but really just think about it… If you HAVE to vent that bad, try starting a private video diary or a journal… sometimes you just need to let it all out!

@spookyagentfmulder // x

It wasn't every day that Vash went into bars for anything other than plant maintenance checks. Yeah, maybe he'll have a drink or two every now and then -- but, just as he'd always done, his first instinct when arriving to any new place is to scout the shadiest bar out. The one furthest from the cops, or normal civilians -- anyone who would turn him in.

Or, at least .. that's what he had been doing for as long as he can remember. Visit a town, check their water supply, fix their plants. Spend a day scouting out the shops, avoid the people so they don't get hurt. Leave. Find a new town. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. The endless deserts of Gunsmoke had been familiar to him for one hundred forty nine years. it's all he'd ever known since the great crash, too. And anything he knew about Earth, about plant life -- he either knew it from Luida or Rem, and he was always told that Earth had become a wasteland.

So, then --

Why now had he awoken on a planet so similar to Earth? Where was he? He can't even remember how he got here, or why there's so many people, or why the city streets are .. decidedly less higher tech than he's used to; if he didn't know any better, he'd almost say this WAS Earth. But, that wasn't possible -- it was supposed to be gone, wasn't it?

Then again, he knows more than anything that despite the weird vibes he's getting, and how out of place he feels, he must stay calm. Irrationality leads to dark places, and though it was tempting to freak out, he'd only JUST gotten here. He needs to familiarize himself with his surroundings, keep a keen, observant eye on everything going on. Maybe it was just a new place he'd never seen before on Gunsmoke, where they just HAPPENED to not have any sand or worms or endless bloody red oceans from where he could see. Then, it was time to do what he always did. Check out the nearest bar, and get the low down on just where he was. Shouldn't prove all THAT difficult, right?

... Ultimately, it took longer than Vash would like to admit to find a bar. There was no real clear cut signs, and this place was so colorful and vibrant that it almost felt overwhelming. The place wasn't made of the typical Gunsmoke building materials; nothing here felt as rustic. It looked kind of retro to him, with patrons all in equally bright clothings and chattering away to each other.

The thing that was sounding alarm bells more and more, though, was the fact that nobody really turned to look at him. Granted, he was still kind of condensed, as to not freak out the other humans in the bar -- but even so, he stood at a hefty six foot five in said form. And yet, while he was pretty tall, there seemed to be other humans his size, too? Usually, he'd stick out like a sore thumb from that alone, and from his signature bright red coat, but here .. that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

How.. very, very strange.

Well, alright. Might as well try to find a seat.

So, that he does. After gazing all around the establishment, he sees one open seat -- with a man sitting in one side of the booth, and the other completely empty. He seemed to be drinking alone -- and though Vash couldn't tell you why, he felt drawn to him. Keeping his head hung a little low, Vash weaved his way through people with inhuman fluidity -- and once he got to Mulder's table, he knocked gently.

"Auhhhmmm..." Vash sheepishly smiled, brows knit upwards ever so slightly. Scritching the back of his neck, and with a slightly nervous laugh, he shoots his shot. Hopefully, his smile was gentle enough to not be offputting in any kind of way.. "Excuse me, is this seat taken? I can't find anywhere else to sit, so ..."

You know a world where your ability to carry something is determined by quantity rather than size or weight is very easy to accept in a video game, because of mechanical convenience, but would probably be so strange in a story in any other medium, and I think a few more books and shows could stand to get a little funkier with the fundamentals of their reality like that.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 ✌️💖🛸👽 #affirmations #ufo #thetruthisoutthere #affirmation #affirmationquotes #mindfulness #dailyaffirmations #inspiration #growthmindset #magical #ufos #aliens #cosmic #cosmicconsciousness #cosmicconnection #innerpeace #love #mindset #alignment #positivevibes #mindfulliving https://www.instagram.com/p/CqWdeFkM-Lx/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

everyone in the pt fandom is making fake peppino so pure and good and wholesome, and here I am, coming up with a multitude of ways he's going to be a living detriment to peppino's mental health

.

I'm just going to put this here and hide:

You died again, and now your stuck with Lawrence...

Sexual content and implied cannibalism.

there is so much wrong (entirely purposefully) about Yellowface and the way it’s character’s function—how much can you hate and envy everything about the world that the feeling of being praised and showered in accolades for something that isn’t your work gives you a feeling of accomplishment? How can you care to be a writer if you feel nothing but disappointment and hollow dread whenever you look at your own work? Why would you choose to continue doing that to yourself? Why not escape that and find something that treats you kinder?

the term “femcel” is so frustrating to me because it’s nearly impossible to explain to men that that is an entirely online phenomenon of young women (often teenagers) who are expressing frustration towards men because of their experiences of sexism that also blends into venting about mental health issues, which has turned onto an aestheticized online identity (coquette/femcel/etc). and they’re not literally the female equivalent of incels in terms of real life social identity/threat to women’s safety. it’s like trying to explain why misandry is not at the same level as misogyny except they get stuck on the word “femcel” because it literally stands for “female incel” so of course it’s the exact same thing. stupid women!! double standards!! etc etc etc. but it’s not like women complaining about men on the internet is the same as men feeling entitled to women’s bodies and attention and hurting and killing women for not being attracted to them

a little sad and frustrated again over HFY. I used to love all these stories, and I’ll admit I haven’t been involved in it lately so I could be completely wrong, but are there any... good stories anymore?

(ngl this is just a vent post about nothing important bc I love to complain, but hey if you have any recommendations... ;_;)

It feels like so many of them steal ideas from one another, and- fine. It IS a fandom, after all. That’s kind of the point. But it seems like so many stories out there are just really wonky (barely there) science facts without any real overarching story. Or stories with interesting ideas but NO drive to explore them. It’s just “woooa humans have this funny organ/bio-chemical and it makes them WAY BETTER than these weak silly aliens who have the personality of a wet napkin haha!” (which is its own problem too ngl)

(and some of them are like, ‘posted 8 hrs ago’ and blatantly rips off a 5m youtube video that just came out about the exact same super niche trivia knowledge... like... cmon)

And then there are the... pro-war, weirdly eugenics-y ones out there that make you raise your brow at the moral. Like all the stories where humans (or whoever) have to prove their personhood, and then... they do. They prove it, as if they needed to in the first place. Or the ones like “fuck with humanity and find out” and then the aliens fuck around and they find out, and there’s SO MANY of those, why are there so many...?

And like I’m not saying there can’t be stories with complex and flawed societies! I’ve read great stories out there like that! It just doesn’t feel like those are being written anymore, and any sense of nuance has been lost, exchanged for this sense of genetic or mental superiority, and it’s so off-putting...

And I think it’s frustrating ‘cause I have read super amazing stories that frankly, baffling that they’re free?? Like, published-book-quality stories I would’ve been glad to pay for.  I remember Prey, an unfinished story where humans were one of two of the only predatory species in the galaxy - and sure, it wasn’t perfect, the enemy was genetically evil. But, as the human race was being shown in its complexities within the story, and their predatory-nature was mostly political and they directly acknowledge the more nuanced hunter-gatherer type of background humanity has had, maybe there would’ve eventually been something like that for the other species too. Sad it ended, but it was showing a lot of promise for unraveling more nuanced ideas along the way.

And then there’s Betty Adam’s short stories! Where, yes, the humans are wacky but their alien counterparts are just as wacky, too! And, not only are the alien cultures unique, but so are the individuals within the cultures as well! And they’re not all just drab fucking dry and salty fucking white-coat scientists! (Just god how much I have come to loath that character sub-type) (I should just be reading those ones honestly, like can I tell you how fucking refreshing it was that, instead of reading another adrenaline-story ((you know the ones they’re ALL the same)) I read a short story where a cleaner wouldn’t start cleaning cause someone moved his favorite broom, and an insectoid person was like ‘what does it matter lol also you have a favorite broom???’)

And then the shorter stories that actually had heart to them, stories that were smaller in scale but just as passionate as the galaxy-wide stories. I remember this one where a man crashes onto a planet, and is rescued by the aliens living there, only they don’t live as long as he does... he ages so slow in comparison that he becomes a sort of living historian/weather predictor for them, and when he finally dies at the end, its like such a profound shift, like this man who has seen generations after generations of this species live and grow and thrive, and he’s just... gone, too. Like everything else that came before.

I dunno. I just needed to vent about it I guess. I miss those stories. Maybe they still exist and I just can’t find them because the sites they’re posted to aren’t really meant for story-archiving and they become buried and lost, but if they’re there then I cannot find them, and I get sad thinking about that too.