@spiderdreamer-blog replied to your post “This rattles around in my head whenever we meet a...”:

Wait, what about Vax in TLOVM?

​Nothing major but I saw a few people mad he turned down Keyleth's request for a dance and it's like. did you miss that he just saw another vision of the Raven Queen, he's been fucking haunted for days, and he wasn't rude or unkind about it. Like, it's valid for Keyleth to be disappointed, and it's also valid for Vax to be like look I'm sorry but I'm beset by cursed visions right now. (And once he resolves that, the Vaxleth gears start up again and it's great!)

@spiderdreamer-blog said:

I liked the main trio at first when I thought the story was going somewhere, then it jumped into weird baby's-first-romance stuff that felt designed to get people to make gifsets, and Ezran was the perfect unchallenged moral center.

yeah, i mean early callum/rayla/ezran were fine. early on in like season 1, there’s a huge question mark of potential above their heads. you’re still kind of sketching the type of person they maybe are. why is callum so calm in the face of danger, thinking about cycles of violence even when an elf assassin has a knife to his neck? who is rayla, really? how has being raised an assassin affected her? and ezran is a cute kid, what challenges will he face as king?

anyways as the story went on the answers were “lmao.” they stayed in that potential stage and kind of got worse. meanwhile soren and claudia were faced with pretty serious dilemmas and really tangibly changed throughout the series in a way none of the main 3 have. when the side characters are faced with the big questions and the main characters aren’t allowed to have any feelings, you sort of end up with that.

but like. the baby’s-first-romance is a symptom that they don’t actually know what to do with the 3 mains. it was completely unplanned, and it really kind of shows. even though callum and rayla just.... didn’t really have that level of emotional connection, they sort of wrote it in because, uh, i guess girls and boys can’t be friends. and it wasn’t a small write-in, either. so much time is spent on this romance.

Happy day of birth!

THANK U

Came for the gobs of meta, stayed for yet more gobs of meta. You have a particularly good eye for character analysis, and I like when you do things like stop and think about something that at first might feel dissatisfying (I'm thinking of your analysis of the Thoreau conversation). That tells me how seriously you take this kind of work in a very literary sense.

Man, if this meme has shown me anything it’s that I have a VERY clear brand around here.  Which is not a bad thing :)

I’m glad you notice/appreciate that, the pausing and thinking thing.  Even aside from any grand literary morals and shouldn’ts/shoulds, it is in general so much more interesting to me to explore why I react certain ways to stories--or why other people react certain ways!--than just to be angry or upset or unhappy about them.  What’s actually going on?  What am I bringing to this experience that’s coloring my reactions?  Or, what did I want from this story that it isn’t giving me (and where else can I go and find it)?  I really like that the CR fandom in general seems appreciative of that perspective--I think it’s one the internet as a whole could probably use a little more of, tbh.

Thanks for coming around!

Came for the insight, stayed for yet more insight and fellow old-for-Tumblr synergy! You're great at D&D/actual play show analysis and I hope you continue to be so.

There are dozens of us, ha-ha! 

Thanks for the kind words :)

spiderdreamer-blog

  Speaking of Ripcord, if he ever appears in the...

FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD CAN GET….THESE HANDS

spiderdreamer-blog replied to your post: Sorry guys I gotta gush about the Darkwing episode...

Drake Mallard actually ISN’T Cummings, it’s Chris Diamantopolous, who’s also Storkules and Mickey Mouse in the current shorts.

Wait he isn’t? I thought I read in the credits he was. I guess I was just skimming too hard.

Dang, he did a good impression. I literally thought it was just Jim Cummings’s voice just going in and out of Darkwing mode lamo

So recently I've been growing kind of disillusioned with the larger wrestling community 'cause I tend to just focus on the stories and characters within, less on the meta-narrative (although sometimes I do). And it feels like a frequently rallying cry is "THEY DON'T DO WHAT THE FANS WANT, WHICH IS WHY ROMAN REIGNS KEEPS GETTING BOOED!" And it feels frustrating because while I understand some complaints, it also feels like they'd boo Roman no matter WHAT at this point. Any thoughts on this?

I definitely understand your frustration! It’s always annoying when it feels like people are letting their negativity distract them from the cool stuff that’s happening right in front of them!

I think there will always be some people who boo Roman no matter what WWE does with him (kind of like John Cena)? Like it started as a way to express frustration with booking (and sometimes that’s still what it’s about for sure), but it’s also just A Thing now, like chanting ECW when Rhino is in the ring. Half the people who chant that have never seen ECW, but it’s A Thing so they do it. I do think the booking can still be involved tho? In the months before mania I really felt like there had been a shift in the reaction to Roman, but then mania was so bad and we’re back where we started.

I was thinking about it and what I think would help, both with managing the boo-ers, and making my life as a non-boo-er easier, is if WWE let Roman interact with the audience in a way that acknowledges the mixed response during promos?

Cause okay, the crowd is one of the characters in any wrestling story, so a crowd at a wrestling show is a performer in a play, but they don’t know their lines and they don’t know what will happen in the play. and part of wrestling is getting that the crowd to feel what they need to feel to say the lines that were written for them in the play.

And when part of the crowd recognizes what their lines are but hates them and decides to do the opposite it creates this discord for those watching at home where suddenly these two characters who are supposed to be friends are on stage but one of the actors is yelling and throwing things, and the other actor is still reading their lines about how they’re such great friends like nothing is happening!

Roman acknowledges the crowd’s response sometimes and I always really like it, because it incorporates the audience’s reaction into the story and the character, and I think it also makes the booing part of the audience feel seen in a way that’s important? (i highly rec mithen’s essay of seeing and being seen in professional wrestling)

as opposed to like, when Roman came out and apologized for the greatest rumble fiasco but the audience had already turned so it just made Roman’s promo sound fucking insane and made the crowd even angrier because they felt railroaded.

Tess and I were talking about this and she said a good thing: “i feel like even the complaints that are worded “THEY DON’T WRITE WHAT THE FANS WANT” are really saying “WE BOO WHATEVER THE WRITING IS BECAUSE WE FEEL IGNORED””

But that’s a difficult needle to thread…including the whole crowd without letting them take over, letting the boo-ers feel seen without ignoring the cheer-ers...

piderdreamer-blog replied to your post: Hmm. Still torn between understanding where Gyro...

The thing that made it work for me is that he’s clearly projecting his own failure and doubt onto Boyd, which is still not, wonderful? But I think it’s obvious everything he’s saying about Boyd, he’s really saying about HIMSELF. thus his reconciliation with Boyd is not merely ABOUT Boyd, but realizing that he had always been in the right and that both he and his creations were worthwhile.

A very fair point, though I am still prickly about how he goes about it, and ESPECIALLY prickly over ‘IT doesn’t have feelings’. Like excuse me, Sad Man, I don’t care how much you’re self-projecting, you need to back up a second.

for the ask party: Keith.

The knife wasn’t the only thing Keith had from his childhood- he had several other things, including a blanket, but one well-meaning foster family threw the blanket away (it was pretty ratty) and insisted on buying him a new one. It left him with a refusal to throw away almost anything and he gets incredibly defensive if other people touch his stuff.

This is one of several reasons why he tends to keep his stuff compressed into a small area and all together. He just kind of never unpacks any more than he needs to. The Castle is a rare experience where he’s actually started to spread out into the rest of his room though his stuff retreated around s2e6 and stayed folded away neatly until he and Allura made up, and now it’s slowly starting to venture into the rest of the room again.

Hypersensitive to annoying noises. He can hear the sound of someone snapping gum across the room with headphones on and it makes him contemplate murder.

One time in elementary school he gave himself a terrible haircut with safety scissors because he didn’t want someone else to do it. He refused to regret it that entire year.

His general response to parties is to pick either 1. the food 2. the host’s pets or 3. a friend and stick there until it’s time to leave.

Growth spurts are always awkward for him. Without fail, his entire life, he has been noticeably the tallest or shortest person in his age group.

Shiro taught him a bunch of breathing exercises. They aren’t really for managing his temper, but for managing his stress levels.

He loves being touched, held, cuddled, etc. by people as long as he trusts them. He can be practically lulled to sleep by someone touching his head/hair. In general as long as he’s decided you’re all right his boundaries are very lax. 

@spiderdreamer-blog replied to your post “The problem with a lot of discussion of actual...”:

ooo I DEFINITELY want to see that TLOVM post.

​That was sort of a joke because I can best sum up all of what I feel with this:

Imagine, if you will, watching an animated series for which you are unfamiliar with the source material. The animated series has a F/F relationship that you really love. You go to the much longer source material, which is part of an ongoing story. It depicts both of these women exclusively in relationships with men, including the wedding of one of those women to a man, and a depiction of her 30 years later still happily married to him.

Q: How long and loud do you scream in frustration?

Anyway, I think it's reasonable to expect, for example, streamlining or re-ordering (moving the Feywild arc to before Umbrasyl, moving the Slayer's Take stuff to after the Briarwoods arc and combining it with the visit to Osysa re: the vestiges, combining Keyleth's Aramente with sealing the riff rather than Thordak foreshadowing, most likely having Kaylie first show up in Westruun rather than Emon).

We also may see the elimination of some minor plots, and even changes to some more significant details that were determined by real life restrictions or dice rolls changing to be more logical/dramatic (see: Keyleth rather than Vex being knocked out by Delilah in S1; I also expect that Pike will be present for more of the story in S2 than she was in the campaign).

I do not expect significant changes to the general vibe of interpersonal relationships or key plot points/character arcs, even if the exact details change. We might see a slightly different progression of, for example, Keyleth's growth as a leader of the Ashari, or Scanlan's relationship with Kaylie, due to re-ordering or the different requirements of the much shorter time frame! But we are still going to be moving to the same approximate end points as existed in C1 in terms of plot and character (which includes, among many other things, the romances), even if the journey is a little different.

@spiderdreamer-blog said:

One of the reasons I slowly drifted away from She-Ra is because the animation/expressiveness was just so clearly inferior to Mir-driven shows like this.

Like i WATCHED all of She-Ra, but I have not ever felt compelled to revisit it because of that; the charming art style is very much let down by the actual execution

it’s interesting you make the comparison to she-ra, because it feels similar in a lot of ways, right down to the art style and even a lot of the world elements. voltron’s universe definitely feels a lot more concrete in a way that she-ra’s never did.

some of that is just because the writing does a good job of situating everything, but also the animation has an oomf to it. like the fights are really nice and fluid, more so than even later mir releases (the dota 2 anime), and it even helps land small, humorous moments.

zmtn replied to your post

“OMGG dude my Twitter feed is in revolt because Studio Ghibli is...”

doesnt disney have the rights to the dubs at least? disney always complicates things

oh yeah right i forgot about that

spiderdreamer-blog replied to your post  

“OMGG dude my Twitter feed is in revolt because Studio Ghibli is...”

It's because the U.S. rights are on another platform, HBO MAX                  

OOPS

So I actually blew through Galavant in a day because I enjoyed your recaps immensely. I haven't had a purely fantastic time with a show like that in AGES and you point out basically everything that makes it great. Just wanted to thank you for more fully pointing me towards it.

This is so wonderful, I love that I could help introduce you to the show. And that you loved it! Isn’t Madelena the best? SHE’S SO THE BEST

spiderdreamer-blog replied to your post: I just ran the first session of a Tal’Dorei...

Oh that’s LOVELY! What kind of characters did they play/what sort of adventure did you send them on?

I have a Halfling Monk from the Air Ashari, a Half-Elf Ranger who lived in the woods outside Whitestone, and an Elf Bard from Syngorn. The great thing about having the campaign guide and knowing Exandria so well was that I got to explain the world (or what they’d know of it) to each of them during character creation and really feel confident in what I was saying.

I started them in Stilben and used the story hook that the Clasp have lost some goods they were trying to move through the swamp. They fought some bandits, and, when I realized I balanced the encounter slightly wrong, got assistance from one of my old Cleric characters (proud of myself for introducing her in dialogue during their investigation of the area earlier).

Everyone had a ton of fun and totally caught the D&D bug! We’re already struggling to plan another time to meet :)

spiderdreamer-blog replied to your post:

Ok the blistering hot take that being happy about...

I kind of understand the impulse to overcorrect because it’s hard to see an actual positive in a situation like this when so many people are scared and panicking.

Yeah, that’s why I’m so angry. This quarantine is terrifying, for a lot of good reasons, but people don’t need more reasons to be terrified  People should be worried about their health and their families, not worrying about whether liking pictures of clean water makes them an ecofascist. So, are a lot of these 'you’re an ecofascist’ people are looking for ways to feel in control of the situation by criticizing something simple and harmless? If so, they need to retarget that energy to something that doesn’t shut down useful conversations with blatant condemnation of people who, as far as they know, reblogged a picture of a clean river.

The changing environment during quarantine provides some great arguments for more environmentally conscious living and proves that we can live without excessive consumption, even if only temporarily. People re-branding this as ecofascism garner more suspicion from me than understanding.