Actually I'm like going insane about Tenna and how they might be executed in the story bc like. They're gonna have to either make him EXTREMELY charismatic to the point whatever crimes they committed can be overlooked or they're gonna have to be like Actually Big Shot Spamton Wasn't So Okay like. There's... So much weight to the actions of a character we haven't even met it's hard to not be like Damn This Tenna Guy Sucks. But what if he DOESN'T suck? Like literally anything could happen. It makes me so excited.

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

There's something about reading really great writing that's so relaxing. You can just sit back and let the words wash over you, knowing that you can trust the writer.

It's really depressing that the only real Jedi centric and Jedi positive show in existence is written for preschoolers, while many of the more "adult" shows are edgy and about morally ambiguous or straight-up evil characters. As if lessons about being kind and selfless are somehow not important or relevant to adults just as much if not more than they are to children.

It feels like characters who are unambiguously good are seen as only enjoyable by the very young and adult viewers will only actually appreciate characters who are cruel and selfish (and the requisite "tragic backstory" that always goes with it to help excuse their cruel and selfish choices).

It's just really sad and disappointing.

"It's normal for siblings to fight" Okay well it's not normal to be extremely classist and look down on your sister for being non-conforming. Or to go to the woman who ordered the death of your pet to tell her about your father's plans, when he specifically warned you against doing so, because you want to marry the boy you saw attack your sister and her friend (contributing partially to said father's death and your sister being unable to escape on the ship he chartered). Or to think of your sibling as unsatisfactory in comparison to another when you believe her to be dead. I notice that none of the "Sansa and Arya are going to reunite and instantly have no issues" crowd ever acknowledge any of this, which makes it seem like they don't actually believe what they say about their relationship being normal and easily reconciled. People wanting them to have no issues simply because they're siblings is another example of how fandom likes to flatten complex characters and relationships. They get reduced to being bickering siblings when their conflict runs deeper than that. If the author is telling you that they have "deep issues" to work out [X], I don't understand being so adamant about ignoring said issues. I also get the sense it's about ignoring the capacity for a certain character to be flawed, but that isn't going to change the fact that her "slip of the tongue" is very likely to be revealed and a source of further conflict 🤷🏾‍♀️

I just want to say, that I agree with almost all of your Critical Role takes and you have 1000% better and more nuanced takes than all of Twitter and I greatly appreciate it! The takes over there regarding Liliana and the gods are just wild and you bring some much needed sanity to the content I see

Thanks! I hope you don't mind because I've been thinking about this re: the Twitter takes but the thing about Twitter and Liliana specifically that I've seen is that there's this really bizarre fetishization of like, the fact that she is a (white) southerner (this also weirdly happened for Birdie though to a much lesser extent, and the person who spearheaded that wasn't even American so I have to assume this is a specific corner of Twitter Culture At Large). And like, here's the thing. It's true that fantasy tends to be very British in its accents, and it's also true that accents in a fantasy world are used to convey the same things we'd assume in our world - RP British for educated, southern American for rural, Cockney for rougher types, etc.

It's also true that laying the exact socioeconomic parallels from our world onto, say, Liliana and Orym (who reads to me as non-regional but I, like Liam, am from the Northeast originally) is a recipe for disaster. Or rather, it's not, but it is going to reaffirm your own biases, some of which are dangerous to reaffirm.

There was a popular post on Tumblr a while back, probably not long after Trump was elected, of someone talking about how they were convincing a relative with the confederate flag towards socialism by appealing to the idea of "isn't in unfair how uneven wealth distribution is and how a small group has so much control" and a number of people were rightfully like "uh, maybe you should focus on the racism" or "hey OP ask your relative who they think that small group in control is because I'm getting a really bad feeling they're going to say it's The Jews." And I feel that a lot of the empathy for Liliana from those spaces feels like that OP. Or in other words: I get that you see your relatives in Liliana. Unfortunately, I cannot help but see me and mine in Orym.

You see someone trapped by circumstance and desperation in a dangerous ideology. I see the fact that I haven't gone to a synagogue in easily 6-7 years without there being a security guard present and usually, the doors locked with someone looking through the window to let you in, and then in the sanctuary there's been an installation so that you can quickly bar all the doors in case an alarm goes off or you hear shots in the lobby.

I think there's a great case for seeing yourself in Imogen, who is in a painful struggle with the fact that her mother does love her very much but is in dangerously deep and has done a number of incredibly terrible and harmful things. That latter point is important, incidentally; I get that cult members sometimes rise through the ranks but all but the leader are being manipulated. But the fact remains that a brainwashed person can still commit atrocities, and in this story, they have, many times over. It's especially true because like...sure, plenty of people are like "I lost my relative to a cult and I just want them back and I couldn't harm them," but also, as we've seen, this cult can and will harm Imogen! Plenty of people are also like "yeah I gotta cut them off, it hurts but unfortunately my horribly bigoted and violent relative, while a victim of brainwashing, is a threat to me too." It's not even the full picture of the Temult side of things, let alone the picture that includes the Vanguard's victims.

I also think the Southern gatekeeping is unhinged because it's like. guys there's QAnon members and other cults across the country; the Confederate flag example above was actually notable in that OP wasn't even Southern so you couldn't even write the flag off as deeply misguided heritage but rather was explicitly being used as a hate symbol. It's awfully presumptive to assume all southerners have the same experience (especially since the Temults are portrayed, physically and in accents, as white southerners, not that the experiences of white southerners aren't also incredibly varied). It's awfully presumptive to assume that people find Liliana threatening because they have no personal experience with people like her; often, it's because they have all too real experience with people like her, and it says something even worse about you if you can say "but you guys, I see me and my family in Liliana" when people are telling you that they see them and their families in Orym. I would not, personally, publicly admit that one's empathy extends to the people who remind you of your family but runs out before it reaches their victims. Nor would I publicly admit that I assume everyone who disagrees with me clearly has never had personal experience with this topic.

I should also note that, as I've noted a number of times before, that these are fictional characters and not real people. Twitter seems to be really fucking bad at grasping that. Like, yes, this is the other thing; I do not think that OP should kill their Confederate flag-toting relative, whereas if Imogen did so to Liliana I'd be like "hell yeah." The former is a real person who I do hope gets deprogrammed, just, you know, maybe adjust those priorities; the latter is a fictional character in a story.

What do you think about how most people summarize orv's themes as love. I saw one of your reblogs about how it's too simplified for other works?

my general opinion is that saying "x is about love" is usually too damn vague as an analysis. while love is not a universal emotion (shoutout to loveless aros,) it's a common enough human experience that I really think that you need to specify what ABOUT love is being explored. is this a work about the depths of love? is it about the transformative potential of love? there are a thousand different ways love can manifest, and about a billion different ways a story can offer insight on the nature of love. I think it doesn't do justice to a story if you're not specifying what exactly it has to say about love.

all that out of the way, yes. many of orv's major themes are about love. specifically, it relates the love a reader has for a story to the love that a person can have for another human being. a story, like a person, can contain depths unknown to both author and reader - it is impossible to ever reach a complete understanding. there is always some element that will be impossible to communicate. something left hidden behind a wall.

but you can love that story, that person, anyway. you can offer your own interpretations, and try to understand as best you can. and the love and effort you put in matters deeply. the way that you can affect other human beings, specifically, matters deeply. even if it seems like your efforts will never reach that person, even if they are justifiably hurt by your efforts, even if your interpretations are wrong, even if you are the sole reader of a story. it matters that you were there and tried to love it as best you could.

orv also has a lot to say about love, self-sacrifice, and salvation. kim dokja's love of the story and his companions is a major motivator to why he destroys himself over and over. it's paralleled to his own mother, who sacrificed herself for his sake, and who he resented all his life and yet can't stop making the same choice when it comes to the safety of others. that sort of love and salvation hurts as much as it saves. it's as selfish as it is selfless. it's the same choice his companions make in order to get him back. they love him. they would be able to live with his resentment and guilt if it meant he would survive.

kim dokja's love for yoo joonghyuk, specifically, is both selfish and selfless. it is his love for yoo joonghyuk that was (unintentionally) responsible for much of yoo joonghyuk's suffering. the choices kim dokja makes out of love are what mitigate yoo joonghyuk's suffering, and eventually are what allows him to free himself from his eternal cycle. again, it is the love a reader has for a story, and the way that a reader both craves conflict and craves for the characters they love to overcome it.

it is the same love that drives yoo joonghyuk and han sooyoung to repeat the cycle again, as a choice this time. selfishly and selflessly. han sooyoung damns the world to apocalypse because she wished to save kim dokja's life. yoo joonghyuk chooses both regressions and his time in space to grasp at the chance to keep kim dokja alive. neither of their choices is guaranteed to save him. they know that. love alone isn't enough to save someone. but they make this choice because they love him, knowing that he would hate the choice. they create the story together because they want their sole reader to be understood by it.

and that's the end theme of orv's meditations on love and the nature of stories. if you love a story enough that it saves you... well, perhaps it's possible that the story, too, loves you back.

none of this is easy to describe in a sentence. I agree that it's probably easier to just say "orv is about love?" but I wish more people identified it further beyond that, since that usually is where the discussion just stops. I find orv's discussions on love to be some of the most compelling presentations on the topic that I've ever seen in fiction, and I like discussing it! i want to treat it with the complexity that it deserves.

look i know yall don’t want to hear or acknowledge this but tumblr’s existing tools for visibility are godawful for the smaller artists/devs/writers/podcasters/etc trying to move over here after gaining most of their following on twitter, and not being sure how much of that following will jump to a different site. even blaze sucks now because a lot of peoples’ kneejerk reaction is to scroll past or leave a rude comment. i don’t think staff’s solutions to this are right or even that there is a right solution it just sucks all around tbh

losers playing ttrpgs... losers playing ttrpgs save me...

mike is running a multi-year homebrew ttrpg campaign that is basically just a combination of any rulebook the losers can get their hands on + anything they come up with. i know it to be true. the campaign started as a call of cuthulu campaign but it is now a terrifying mix of call of cuthulu, dungeons & dragons, and cyberpunk with elements from a dozen other games including star wars: the roleplaying game, warhammer, harnmaster and somehow alma mater(??? idk how. but i know this happened). richie was like. "mike man, i love you forever, you're great at this. but why don't i have magic powers?" and he pointed at ben's collection of d&d rulebooks he'd been browsing through and he sounded so earnest and excited that mike knew in that moment he was going to sacrifice the integrity of his cool mystery campaign so richie could cast vicious mockery (99% sure vicious mockery didn't exist yet... don't quote me on that but it doesn't matter because the idea of richie using it constantly is hilarious)

they've all been playing the same characters for years and they keep convincing mike to add more stuff so they're all like super powerful and mike keeps having to come up with more and more powerful enemies.

mike's dice collection is so so so cool he has so many dice, and whenever he introduces a new important character he goes out and gets dice that fit their theme and it is such a moneysink but it's worth it because ooooh pretty dice

after four occasions where the losers decided to adopt a random npc mike hadn't planned anything for, mike has started planning every single npc out down to the specifics of their childhood education. he has endless character sheets hanging out in his room with characters he's created that populate his game world.

okay hanbrough agenda time: bill is the most oblivious guy in the entire world. i know this. (he is the guy who looks at brokeback mountain and goes "what do you mean it was gay? why can't men be friends anymore?" this is based on that one passage at the beginning of the book where he goes on one of those "why can't the curtains just be blue because they're fucking blue" rants lol. he does not know what media literacy is. to me) and mike is. increasingly frustrated and feels like he's losing his mind. he is like head in hands because he asked bill to go to prom with him and bill was like "yeah sure man! sounds great, you're my bestie forever!", and he has no idea what to do, because how is this man this dense, so he just starts having all of his NPCs fall head over heels for bill's character and flirt like madmen. it is painful for everyone involved. except bill. who still has no idea what is going on. that is a very unfortunate month.

mike and ben hang out a lot and ben helps mike brainstorm for the campaign so ben has all this insider knowledge and mike will just look at him before something insane happens in the campaign. they'll like make eye contact and ben will be like holy shit holy shit holy shit :0 and mike just drops some insane new lore. it's very special to me.

i think it's very symbolic and ironic how mew rises from the water since water (i'm using the ocean as a better metaphor for this) is deep and mysterious. what we see on the surface is only 1% of what is really down there. so i think it's a very smart scene composition, as well as a change of momentum for mew's character as his real personality, emerges after that cathartic moment.

so what we're about to see in the next few weeks is the mew that has always been hiding underneath, the 'devils' that he keeps at bay. in a twisted way, i think this reflects top's personality as well— an eye for an eye, top has always been. he's nice to people who are nice to him and vice versa. so mew will be this way too. but i think the scariest part about mew is we don't know what to expect since he's full of surprises as well.

i've always known mew is something else and i'm glad episode 6 is the headstart of his transformation. i can't wait to see more shades of mew delicately and thoroughly executed by p'book. for me, this is stellar acting, indeed.

angry at the oscars barbie nominations but in an annoyinger way (i think nominating ryan reynolds makes sense but the best picture and best supporting actress noms are ridiculous)

2024 reads / storygraph

Stuck In Her Head

short contemporary YA coming-of-age set in Hong Kong, following two teen girls who are friends

one is a musical prodigy but has lost her passion and wants to explore different possibilities for her future

the other is passionate about music but dealing with mental health & family issues

the latter develops a crush on the former, who is aroace, and they have to re-navigate their friendship, while working on a music/coding competition project together and dealing with their own issues

glad i muted the knight post because there are so many tags that i want to argue with, which would not be productive for me to argue with, and which it's better for me not to be seeing continually

for example: "it's exactly the same as cops". no. it's similar, but it's not exactly the same, and for us as a modern audience as opposed to the contemporary audience, it's wildly different because it's not a part of our society any more (and i was mostly talking about it all from the pov of modern textual reception). it will be more similar to how the police might be perceived in 600 years if the institution has disappeared but i still think there would be differences in terms of scale, aspirational aspects of storytelling, number of people likely to regularly interact with that institution, and the specific nuances of nobility and class that we've got going on with knights

(the person who suggested it might be similar to secret agents i think was closer to the mark. theoretically you MIGHT run into a secret agent and it MIGHT upend your life and you MIGHT get fucked over by the violence they enable but for the most part you're not that likely to cross paths with them unless you belong to a particular class of people (other types of gov agent, certain brands of criminal, person married to secret agent, etc) and the absence of the everyday reality for most people means they belong much more to the realm of "cool fictionalised thing that is sexy to make films about" despite theoretically existing and being a tool of the government. but even there, there are some key differences)

People need to practice minding their own damn business

Don't come into people's inboxes giving unsolicited advice or criticizing their personal stuff. Don't reblog somebody's posts saying how much you hate it and their opinions.

Don't like somebody's characterisation, AUs or the kind of art they post? It might even annoy you?

Okay, cool. Go make your own post. Block them. Be a little hater about it to your friends. It's good for your soul!

But don't be goddamn rude to people. Don't make it their problem.

"I don't like what this artist likes mah mah mah"

Here's a wild idea;

Artists...don't need to cater to you. You are not entitles to their work. Nobody on the internet should coddle you and post only stuff you like.

Shocker, I know.

Second, in your opinion, are Luke and Mara one of the couples who receive or give advice?

Hi anon, thank you for the ask!

I think they are both very private when it comes to their relationship. I really only see them sharing things about it or themselves with a very select group of people. That said, I see them more of the type that would be open to receive certain nuggets of advice than the type to sound off to other couples. And by that I mean I can definitely see Han telling Luke to "take it slow, kid", but not so much the other way around? 😆

Anyway, that's my take at it, what do you all think?

So, I’ve noticed, a lot, that ppl comment about how ‘demons didn’t have the concept of friends before Iruma’.

Except, that’s *clearly* not true, if only because, for a civilized race you would have to have the concept of ‘person I like/get along with/enjoy spending time with’ cause like. That’s kind of the first step to making babies and not going extinct lol You kind of need to get along with people to fuck to make and raise kids(since the other option is that everyone is produced by rape which is uh, really dark and clearly not the case). And like, just looking at adults like, Balam and Kalego, or Dali and Suzie, it’s pretty clear that they DO in fact understand the concept of getting along with each other, or having a person that you enjoy spending time with/getting along with.

It was the WORD “friends” that tripped up Azz and Clara and, well everyone else.

But then it gets confusing b/c also hear characters who either had not met Iruma or before they met Iruma, using the word friends(like Gaap talking about wanting to ‘make 100 friends’). So I did some digging and well. Ironically this is a case of stuff being lost in translation, much like Iruma using the word ‘friends’ to Azz and Clara.

See. In Japanese the word Iruma used was 友達 (tomodachi). Which does indeed mean ‘friend’, which is the one we see other characters tripping over and saying slowly as if they’ve never heard it before. Meanwhile, the word we see/hear other characters using is 仲間 (nakama)-when Gaap was taking about making ‘100 friends’ he used the word nakama, お仲間100). Which ALSO is frequently translated as “friend”. Except, it doesn’t mean that, not always.

From doing some digging, ‘nakama’ has a different connotation than ‘tomodachi’. Nakama (as best as my research can find) is someone with a shared goal or someone you do something with. You can be a nakama without being a friend.

For example, your coworker could be a 仲間, you are doing things together and, depending on the job, may have the same goal (an example I saw used was buddy cop movies/shows), but you don’t necessarily have to be *friends* with that person.

I worked together on group projects with classmates in college, that would make them my nakama. But I wouldn’t really have considered them friends, they were not my tomodachi.

They’re similar words but with different meanings. There is for sure an overlap between the two no doubt, if you made a venn diagram with nakama on one side and tomodachi on the other they would overlap, but they wouldn’t be a circle.

友達 is 'friend,' with many of the ambiguities that accompany the English word 'friend.' People wonder what true friendship is (真の友情), the line between just a friend and a bff (友達と親友) or the line between the friendzone and boyfriend/girlfriend (お友達と恋人).

仲間 is a relationship to people in the same group that has a shared goal or do something together. You can be 仲間 with a person who isn't a friend. 仲間 is often defined by common enemies and/or outsiders.

Source [X]

But, since both of these words are often translated as “friends” it lends to, a LOT of confusion (in this instance, allies or companions would as a better translation for 仲間, to help remove some confusion). It doesn’t help that ‘friends’ is itself, a fairly vague word and can mean anything from ‘this person whom i like/get along with’ to ‘this person that i’ve known for years and trust with my life’.

Also like,just cause one does not have the word for something, doesn’t meant hat they don’t have/understand the concept of it. It happens all the time irl where one language has a word for a specific thing, while another language does not but still understand the concept of it. Which is clearly what’s happening here. They don’t know the word ‘tomodachi’, but they DO understand the concept to a degree and know what a ‘nakama’ is.

It’s quite entertaining to me that, much like how ‘tomodachi’ is lost in translation between Iruma and his friends, the tomodachi/nakama distinction is lost in translation from Japanese to English.

And then Nishi decided to really make it confusing by throwing in 親友 (shinyu) and making translators scream lmao.

edit to add: ALSO, we DO have to r3emember that the two people he first explained the concept of ‘tomodachi’ to were Clara and Azz, who definitely did not have any tomodachi or nakama before Iruma so it makes sense that would be very confused by what he was explaining.