#so basically op you're valid

[jimingyue]

Cat Tumblr Dashboard Simulator

🖋️ meowful-musings Follow

🕊️ birdwatching Follow

what's wrong with dry food??? my humans feed me it all the time and i think it's fine

💀 elusivehider-deactivated948204

op wheres the natural feeding option

🌲 outdoorsy Follow

you guys are getting fed?

#im a barn cat so maybe im missing something here #meowtthew don't look

7,192 notes

☀️ pawsitive-affurmations Follow

ITS OKAY TO BE A MOGGIE

ITS OKAY TO BE A MOGGIE

YOU ARE NOT LESS VALID IF YOU ARE NOT A SPECIFIC PEDIGREE!!!!!

☀️ pawsitive-affurmations Follow

extra special shout out to cats who have "common" coat colors. grey tabbies and black cats i am rubbing against your head affectionately <3

🪤 m0usetrap01 Follow

as a grey tabby i really needed to hear this :"3

#i feel like i never see positivity posts for moggies even tho we're the most common type of cat....

154,688 notes

🎵 rage-against-the-meowchine Follow

i cant believe there are cats ACTUALLY advocating for kittens to be separated from their mothers before 12 weeks??? kittens still need to learn how to interact with other cats before being placed into their furever home omg you guys know you're advocating for undersocialized and aggressive cats right

❤️ loving-paws284 Follow

um op some of us??? matured early??????? i was separated from my mother at 7 weeks and i turned out fine... interesting how you assume that kittens being separated from their mothers at a younger age will lead to the degeneracy of the next generation...hmm i wonder where i've heard that before...

🐈 fluffy-the-cat Follow

OP got bit too hard during a play-fight as a kitten and it shows XD

🐟 tunafeesh Follow

also op have you ever considered that just because somecat is kind of scared and unable to deal with strange cats or humans, it doesn't mean they don't deserve to be adopted?? you sound like a vet psyop honestly

🎵 rage-against-the-meowchine Follow

oh meow god saying that kittens should be fully weaned before leaving their mother is NOT veterinarian rhetoric and i never said that they deserve to be euthanized!!! my mother literally died when i was 3 weeks old and it seriously messed up my development so stop putting words in my mouth, thanks

anyway friendly reminder that underweaned kittens are prone to illness and often struggle with basic cat behaviors like litterbox usage, and in some nyavinces it's even considered kitten abuse

#discourse #cant believe "kitten abuse is bad" is controversial now

32,456 notes

🍃 naturalliving Follow

BORN TO DIE

WORLD IS A FUCK

猫神 Kill Em All 1989

I am trash cat

410,757,864,530 DEAD BIRDS

#outdoorliving #outdoorcats please interact #outdoorcat friendly

48,971 notes

🎣 salmonpurina Follow

can't believe cats are uncritically reblogging that born to die world is a fuck post. i know it's funny but op is literally an outdoor cat truther

#like cmon now you just have to go to their blog #lulu speaks

34 notes

💀 tabbystripes-deactivated098712

gentle reminder that pushing cups off the table is not cute and can cause a lot of distress in your human!!!! gentle reminder that our teeth and claws can easily hurt them more than they can hurt us!!!!

🐰 evil-tabbystripes Follow

evil reminder that the cup should always be pushed off the table. evil reminder that you should always bite and claw at your human no matter what. you can do whatever you want forever

💀 tabbystripes-deactivated098712

make your own pawst

💀 laser-point-deactivated8574721

umm i know a tomcat who did that and his human ended up putting him down so...

👬🏻 nyasunaruenjoyer Follow

Nyaverage shelter cat behavior

#not nyaruto #re-nyab #pickles shut up

545,460 notes

🌈 nyaoi-warrior Follow

saw two male cats sleeping together on the porch today. homeow behavior imo

💡 discourse-meows Follow

hey um what the fuck??? it's really not okay of you to go assuming other cat's sexualities, especially cats you don't even know???? as a queer cat i'm VERYY uncomfortable. real-ass cats didn't consent to your nyaoi fetish, thanks

🌈 nyaoi-warrior Follow

1. i was making. a joak

2. i'm literally gay???

#literally what's your pawblem

7 notes

🎩 amazingcatshow12 Follow

reblog if you've ever caught the laser pointer

🎩 amazingcatshow12 Follow

i know you fuckers are lying

🍭 gaykittens Follow

this tom hasn't caught the laser pointer

🎩 amazingcatshow12 Follow

shut the heull up

988,653 notes

🐾 b-e-a-n-t-o-e-s Follow

grey toebeans >>>>>>>>> pink toebeans and don't let the haters make you believe otherwise

🐁 ladymouser Follow

op shut the fuck up ALL toebeans are beautiful!!! just bc you're miserable and insecure doesn't mean you can bring others down based on things they can't control

🐾 b-e-a-n-t-o-e-s Follow

oh so the cat-human separationist wants to preach to us

#long post #cat #fake dashboard #unreality #dashboard simulator

[reading-comp-posting]

Have you ever considered using AI tools to assist with writing your responses?

Well no, because I'm doing this blog for fun. I'm enjoying writing out reading comprehension questions for posts, so why would I automate that away?

But let's say that I saw myself as some sort of arbitor of reading comprehension who needs to post as much as possible to enlighten the lowly tumblr masses. Let's say that I'm interested in upping my output of questions by any means necessary.

I opened up chatgpt and input a certain request, which would hopefully make it write questions about the last post I responded to:

Write reading comprehension questions about a Tumblr post, written by a user named "echoeyee," that reads as folows: "my take on shipping aromantic characters is that if you're aro you get to do whatever you want and if you're not you have to write me a three page essay 12 pt font times new roman double spaced explaining in detail why you believe entering a romantic relationship would be an interesting and worthwhile storyline for the character and how you believe their aromanticism would affect the way they experience said relationship"

And it certainly did write a lot of questions about it. Let's go through them, one by one.

1. What is the primary stance expressed by the Tumblr user "echoeyee" regarding shipping aromantic characters?

This one is good. If you look at the set I wrote, my first one is basically the same, just with different words and a less formal tone.

2. According to the post, what conditions must non-aromantic individuals fulfill if they wish to advocate for romantic storylines involving aromantic characters?

Again, this one is good. It's basically my 3rd question but, yet again, more formal.

3. Describe the format and specifications outined for the essay mentioned in the post.

This is the part where the questions get bad. The exact details of the essay are irrelevant, other than the fact that they imply a formal, academic setting.

4. In your own words, explain the user's perspective on the autonomy of aromantic individuals in contrast to non-aromantic individuals when it comes to shipping characters.

This question seems to genuinely be a product of chatgpt pissing on the poor. The purpose of the post (and specifically the essay within) is to ask people who ship aromantic characters without being aromantic themself to consider said character's aromanticism instead of erasing it.

Meanwhile, chatgpt seems to think that the OP thinks that people who aren't aromantic should be forced by law or something to write an essay if they want to ship an aromantic character.

5. How does the Tumblr post reflect the user's views on representation and storytelling in relation to aromantic characters?

I think that this one is a bit too speculative, but it does actually relate to the OP's intended takeaway.

6. Discuss the potential implications of the requirements set forth in the post for writers and creators in the realm of fiction and fanworks.

This one is just a bit confusing. Chatgpt seems to be going off the assumption that OP is issuing a decree as the emperor of the world.

7. Reflect on whether you agree or disagree with the sentiments expressed in the post and provide reasons to support your viewpoint.

This could have been a "discuss with a mutual" question, and I actually did initially write a question like this one, but I ended up removing it.

Aromantiscism is already controversial enough and I fear that a discussion of whether OP's take on shipping aromantic characters is valid could quickly devolve into discussion on whether aromanticism itself is valid.

8. How might the user's approach impact discussions and representations of aromanticism in media and popular culture?

Yet again, chatgpt is taking the essay thing way too literally. Yes, forcing every single writer who isn't aromantic but wants to ship an aromantic character to write an essay about it would most likely lead to a decrease in people erasing their identities, but the essay isn't the point.

9. Consider the broader societal and cultural context in which this post is situated. How might prevailing attitudes towards romantic relationships influence reactions to the user's perspective?

Obviously historical context is important to keep in mind when you're reading/listening to/watching/whatever a text, but this question has almost nothing to do with reading comprehension. You need to understand the post to imagine how people would react, sure, but understanding how people would react to the post doesn't help you understand this post very much.

10. What insights can be gleaned from this post regarding the importance of diverse and inclusive storytelling in media and creative works?

This could be a discuss with a mutual question. The issue is that it's a bit to broad of a topic.

#not reading comprehension questions #ask #self post

[poetry-protest-pornography]

There's been a lot of "this character is so selfish" (mostly about Ray, but I already tried about that), and like. That's the point.

They're all selfish in their own way.

They're 22, they're all financially comfortable, they're emotionally illiterate.

Cheum and Mew have cast themselves as superior to the rest of their friends, and treat them all accordingly.

Cheum sees herself as a good friend, as a caretaker, as the one with their shit together; the rest of them are useless fuck ups. She can't even not complain about April-- who is basically perfect, because April wants validation for her movies, and Cheum doesn't get them, so she's annoyed at having to watch. She's constantly talking shit about her friends.

Mew thinks his not chasing sex and relationships makes him superior to his friends. He introduced them all in unflattering ways, while holding himself above them. He doesn't really see them as people, they're characters in his life, and that means he can't see them for who they are. And all this is before his revenge fantasy kicked off and he actively manipulated and used Ray.

Ray's addiction makes him selfish. He wants to be loved so he goes where he thinks he'll get it, even if it's not good for him. When you spend so much of your time trying to numb yourself, it's hard to see anything beyond that. He's still generous with his care and his money, but he doesn't share a lot of himself with most people in his life.

Sand let his need for revenge on Top drive him to do something that he knew would hurt Ray, and used Ray's feelings against him to do it. He lied to Nick and went through his phone.

Boston can't see much beyond his dick, and where his next orgasm is coming from, and even though he isn't particularly fond of anyone in his friend group, he plays the part while purposely doing things to hurt and work against them. He uses Nick's feelings to string him along so he has someone who will provide all the trappings of a relationship without having to commit to someone.

Nick went through Boston's phone multiple times, including before they knew each other for jerk off material. He was so focused on getting Boston to be his that he recorded him and Top, and then told Sand about it, which led to that whole confrontation -- Nick knew about Sand and Ray, and about Ray knowing Boston and Mew at this point, he had to know that that wasn't staying secret. Also, I think it's possible-to-likely that Nick is at least subconsciously manipulating Boston into moving his commitment line every time Nick mentions he might start seeing other people (a friend read this theory and I'm obsessed with it, going to rewatch with this in mind. If you're op of this idea, please lmk!)

Top... Top let petty jealousy over something that Boston-- who he doesn't trust -- told him happened convince him that having sex with Boston again was fine. And then he lied about it, and he consistently used the same "I win you lose" type of language about Mew that Boston does. (I know Top feels bad now, but I don't think he really realized that he loved Mew until Mew dumped him)

They're all dicks in certain ways and circumstances. They're all selfish and self involved and messy.

That's the show, friends. None of your faves are unproblematic. They've all got something that makes them sympathetic to varying degrees, too, but this is about a group of messy bitches who are struggling to keep themselves together, and to hold onto what appear to be the only relationships any of them have without destroying each other (which means lying, or hiding, or ignoring important things).

This is literally just a group of college kids, y'all. And they're here to hurt our feelings and entertain us.

(And maybe let's especially stop calling out the addict with mental health issues for being irredeemable and bad, eh?)

#only friends the series #only friends

[elvenbeard]

Exposing myself here a little and sharing the current rule-set for my CP2077 Discord I'm the process of setting up below the cut! Below the cut, cause this post it's a lot of text as is.

I think I got all channels set up how I want them for starters, but there will always be room for improvement :D First and foremost I want this to become a place of encouragement and sharing and fun... I really just want it to be an extension of my fandom corner on tumblr here and have a room to chat with everyone I love in one spacereally, that's the whole point XD

Still though, I think some basic rules are good, especially if I decide to open this up to more people down the line - but also, some might find a strict ruleset (or my specific ruleset) not to their taste, hence, before sending out invites, I wanted to put this here.

If we're mutuals, or if you're following me and like what I post, original content and reblogs alike, AND if you wanna be part of this server under the prerequisite of accepting the rules below the cut... Like this post or DM me or leave a reply etc. And I might send you an invite.

(I want to open this up specifically also to people I'm not mutuals with, since I don't always follow back for a variety of reasons. But I have a good memory for user-handles and will recognize you if you interact with my posts on a regular basis!) Important: If I don't send you an invite, please don't take it personally. I might not know you or your vibe well enough yet. Especially if we're new mutuals, or if I'm not following you. But I will check out everyone I don't recognize or don't follow who reacts to this post. I want to keep the server somewhat small in general and especially to begin with, but if all goes well, I might come back to this post here somewhere later down the line and send some more invites! I love you all lots, and especially with my semi-forced hiatus recently I missed interacting with everyone. Being welcomed back so warmly repeatedly by so many people in your tags and replies and all really meant so much <3

So yeah! Server-rules below, react to this post or get in touch with me if you're interested to join based on these prerequesites, invites will go out during the weekend most likely! :D

1. Don't be a dick and use common sense. Be kind to each other. Assume ignorance over ill intentions first and foremost, and when in doubt, stay civil and ask a mod or admin for help via DM.

2. Homophobia, Transphobia, Queerphobia in general, Racism and Hatespeech towards other server members will not be tolerated. Report any talk of this sort to a mod or admin asap if you notice it.

3. This is an adult/NSFW server. You need to be at least 18 years of age to participate and can expect respective content. This is not to exclude anyone younger than 18, but for legal reasons.

4. No 18+ content needs to be spoilered ||like this|| by default. If you choose to spoiler something, which you are always free to do especially in general channels, use a label/indicator describing the content you're spoilering (e.g. [explicit sexual content], [nsfw], [blood/gore], [xyz kink], [tmi]). No kinkshaming please, but also, note rule 5.

5. If someone asks you to spoiler a specific type of niche/extreme content (e.g. extreme kinks, dark and disturbing topics, (mental) health themes like self-harm or terminal illnesses, or any content that could fall under 4) please do so. Be mindful of each other's comfort levels with being exposed to certain darker topics. Being asked to spoiler content does not equal being kinkshamed.

6. Everyone's boundaries are valid and you are free to set them. Simultaneously, nobody should have to censor themselves or their creations either. Spoilering (extreme) content on someone else's request does not equal censorship but is part of being a community.

7. If someone forgets to spoiler a topic that has been previously asked to be spoilered, do not assume the worst and kindly remind the op to spoiler. If the same person keeps forgetting the same things though and you feel like it is on purpose or targeted, let a mod/admin know.

8. If a topic that makes you personally uncomfortable is being discussed in a group setting, stepping away from the conversation temporarily is an alternative to asking to spoiler something (also applies to rule 6). Simultaneously though, due to no blacklisting options on Discord, be mindful of what you post especially if others whose comfort levels you don't know are there with you.

9. Please keep discussions on the server civil. If you've messed up, apologize. If discussions get personal or touch upon server-external issues, please resort to DMs to resolve them. If you need a neutral party to listen, @elvenbeard is always happy to.

10. Do not post content that isn't yours without the explicit permission of the original creator (be it mods, VP, art, writing, etc.). This includes posting links to external works that aren't yours.

11. Start no arguments or spread negativity by discussing non-server-members and their activities.

12. Keep shippy content to the respective channels. Respect each other's ships and headcanons (exceptions: see 13), but also respect the source material(s).

13. If you notice headcanons that are queer-phobic, transphobic, racist, hateful or something similar, especially if they are being framed or discussed as positive, inform a mod or admin asap. Everyone is entitled to their own headcanons, but any falling under these categories will not be tolerated.

#I will not put this in the main tag on purpose #please read carefully!! #personal stuff #will rebump this post a handful of times tomorrow and friday but yess #here goes nothing aaaaahhhh

[hisui-dreamer]

ah !! I see request are open and I wanna try one ! but ofc feel free to ignore and delete if it’s breaking any rules or if it’s it’s too much c:

may I ask for some hcs with Ruggie , Kalim and Idia with an gn!s/o who tends to mirror them ? wether it be their laugh or the way they pose ! bc ngl I do the same thing pff— it’s

Characters: Kalim, Ruggie, Idia

Synopsis: How would they react if you have a habit of mirroring them?

Tags: fluff, crack, bot proofread

Word count: 463

Notes: thanks for asking! i do hope you meant mirroring with good intentions hahaha

Masterlist

he's a bit confused at first but once he gets used to it, he finds you so endearing and enjoyable

i mean you're basically enacting his unique magic without him casting it

this is entertainment

he sees it as flattery and it makes make him feel validated and appreciated

might make use of your mirroring to engage in playful pranks together or making you work for him

if you're mirroring him in sports, he might think you're trying to one-up him, which could turn into a rivalry of sorts

as long as you have good intentions and talk it out with him though, he's incredibly chill

"Shishishi!" Ruggie lets out his signature laughter. "I'm not even usin' my unique magic on you, you're so interesting!" He throws his head back in laughter when he hears you mimic his laugh, wiping the tears away from his eyes.

Kalim finds you very fun!

he won't notice you're mirroring him at first, and even when he does, he thinks it's a game

when you explain that no, it's just a thing you do, he thinks you're super fun!

he's flattered you pay so much attention to him

he starts mirroring people around him for fun

when the two of you are together, it's just trying to see who can mirror each other first

usually it's him because he's so excited to see you he's jumping up and down and screaming your name

it becomes an inside joke between the two of you

you remind him of his siblings back home and how he would always play with them

spending time with you is always so much fun!

"Oh!" Kalim turns his head towards you and asks, "You're always mirroring me right? Can you tell me why you do that? I'm curious about it, ahaha!" He stares at you earnestly.

you definitely gave this man an anxiety attack

why are you mirroring him??? are you mocking him??

he sees it as a personal attack

he's already uncomfortable in social situations, and now his withdrawal tendencies are a bit stronger

even once the misunderstanding is cleared, which somehow you managed to do given he's avoiding you every chance he gets, he's still a bit uncomfortable

but if you're talking his gamer lingo, he'll be more at ease with you

it's just like talking to his online friends

he will start talking enthusiastically about his hobbies or interests in public more

he'll feel more comfortable with you then

"Yo, it's actually kinda funny how you're always mirroring me! Feels like we're in sync, just like in a co-op video game," Idia murmurs under his breath, but you've long learned to adjust your to catch his mutters. "It's kinda cool how you get me like that... thanks... I guess..."

Masterlist

if you liked this post, don't forget to reblog!

#twstnexus #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #disney twisted wonderland #twst imagines #ruggie bucchi #ruggie bucchi x reader #kalim al asim #kalim al asim x reader #idia shroud #idia shroud x reader

[redditreceipts]

Can I just say that after years of being in queer/TRA circles and being constantly bombarded with "OP's a TERF; their opinion is invalid," "hmm this [basic statement about misogyny existing] seems like radfem rhetoric," "how could you say that? That's so bigoted!" and just constant variations of "think this, you're bad if you think otherwise" after all of that it is so refreshing to come to radfem spaces and to see people very firmly state their opinions but also be very clear about differences of opinions being "allowed." I've seen you and several other radfems talk about how radfem ideology isn't a religion and that's so refreshing. I have internally for years thought trans ideology sounded like a religion but I could never say that aloud.

It's kind of funny in that among TRA circles, they regularly talk about TERFs indoctrinating people and radfem ideology being "cult-like," but I haven't see that yet. I see that all the time in TRA spaces instead. I certainly don't agree with everything I see in radfem spaces, but whereas in TRA spaces I feel like I'd be ostracized for my differing viewpoints and even suicide baited in radfem spaces I so far feel like disagreement is allowed. Vehement and passionate disagreement perhaps but nothing that would devolve into a complete lack of respect or care.

thank you!!!

and yes, you don't have to agree with everything on my blog (or maybe you don't even agree with anything lol).

I actually think it's so weird that people can be very convinced of something, and still completely unwilling to defend that position. I mean, I understand that there are positions that people don't want to discuss all of the time, like whether the Holocaust actually happened or whether slavery should be legal. I personally wouldn't want to have this discussion every day, but I could defend my position - and I also don't think that the Holocaust and slavery are comparable to the question of whether biological males can be women.

I also don't understand the accusation of gender criticals being cultist. I mean, there is a huge spectrum of opinion, from people saying that some trans women are women, to people saying that trans women are women in some sense but not in the other, to people saying that no trans women are women but they're also not men, but a third category... all of these opinions would be labelled as "TERF"-opinions. on the other hand, in TRA circles, there is exactly one opinion you are allowed to have, and it's "trans women are women".

also, I am completely open to changing my mind. If anyone gave me an actual valid argument as to why self-identification should determine one's sex category, this will become a TRA blog in next to no time. Issue is just that I haven't heard one yet lmao

and the entire suicide-threat thing reminds me of Mahatma Gandhi, who would just go on hunger strike any time anyone did something he didn't like. you might argue that he had good goals or that he secured peace, but marginalised groups in India are still to this day angry with him because he prevented some of their movements by going on hunger strike. It's just so manipulative.

anyways, cool that you're here :)

[bonearenaofmyskull]

The OP has turned off reblogs at the time I'm posting this, so it seemed wise to move this discussion about the authenticity of Hannibal's love for Will over here. I want to give it its due, and the open invitation to discuss was out, so here is some context and my response.

The original ask went:

Hi! I've wanted to write about this for a long time, and your blog seems like a safe space. Let me give you a heads up—I am not against shipping at all. I am aware of the antis in your ask box, but I promise I am not affiliated with them. This is just a friendly direction. So, if you are truly open to discussion, I want you to view Hannibal as a selfish, manipulative, and extremely violent person. Notice how he is power-hungry and wanted to keep Will in his chokehold, never viewing them as equals. Hannibal created this delusional image of Will in his mind and inserted himself into Will's delusional world. Look at his actions again in season 3. Can you point out one scene where you can write, "Oh yes, Hannibal loves Will"? The problem with the antis is that they are questioning Will's feelings for Hannibal when they should question Hannibal's feelings for Will. Hannibal only liked Will when Will behaved like Hannibal—notice that in season 2. Does it change your view on them now?

OP didn't have anything to say to this, and my response was critical of anon's choice to bring this to OP's inbox, but the relevant part of what I said to the current discussion included the following:

...the basic rule [of writing discourse] is--if you're the one to posit the claim, then it is your job to support it.... You can't possibly do the leg work needed here to give your side its due. This is such a hefty claim that you've posed--that Hannibal's worst personality defects negate any authenticity/sincerity in his emotional response to Will--that the support it needs is probably running in the 6k words range. Or more.

To which @melancholymournia responded:

Let's start a discussion then --

I believe Anon has a valid perspective. They were seeking opinions and I believe it's within their right to do so. Anon's main argument is that Crimson should view Hannibal as an antagonist, as he embodies a sinister role in the narrative. Hannibal's love for Will is portrayed as selfish, driven by desperation for understanding. Anon points out Hannibal's creation of a false image of Will in his mind, particularly evident in Season 1's exploitative and abusive behavior. Anon contends that Hannibal only appreciates Will when he mirrors Hannibal's actions,evident in s2 and Will's attachment stems from trauma and a sense of justice. Will attempted to kill Hannibal numerous times and even succeeded, but Hannibal's plot armor consistently saved him. Despite this, according to Bryan, it's "Will Graham's story," implying that Hannibal's eventual demise was always a possibility. Hannibal maintained manipulation over Will even in Season 3, from start to finish. People's justification of the Dolce scene and romanticizing the gallery scene surprises me, considering both instances involved plans for mutual harm. Despite Will expressing fatigue with the chase, questions about why he fell for Hannibal linger. After discussions, it became clear to me that his attachment wasn't love but a trauma response to his abuser. In Season 3, even when Will urged Hannibal to leave, Hannibal surrendered, manipulating the situation rather than acting out of genuine love. Hannibal caged himself to ensnare Will, who later moved on with a family, but the fandom struggled to accept it, mirroring Will's Stockholm syndrome-like attachment to Hannibal. Hannibal continued harming Will, sending the Dragon to kill Will's family to manipulate him into a meeting. Ultimately, Will chose death to escape both Hannibal and himself, feeling a resemblance to Hannibal in his mind. Throughout the seasons, Hannibal's actions show a lack of genuine love, portraying him as a greedy figure taking relentlessly from Will and ultimately causing his destruction.

I think this is a teachable moment about meta and what it needs to be successful. So this is my response--partially aimed at the content of what you've said here, and partially aimed at talking about meta itself and what it needs and how to do it justice.

I think when we're thinking about writing meta that is successful, we need to be thinking about what it is we're trying to achieve. Personally, I ascribe to the belief that "the aim of argument, or of discussion, should be progress, not victory." This doesn't mean I or anyone else won't fall victim to being petty once in a while--we're all human here, I think--but that if we're doing our jobs the best we could be doing them, then we should be focused on getting to a shared deeper understanding of the text, rather than on trying to "win." Above that, I think our fandom has lost a sense of this in its discourse in the past couple months.

In pursuit of that, I don't think how you opened, with defense of anon, was wise. This argument, if it needs to be made, needs to be made for the perusal of the fandom, not specifically for one person. Crimson neither needed nor wanted to be a target. "They were seeking opinions" and having a "main argument is that Crimson should view Hannibal as [anything]" are essentially exclusive statements. Anon was not trying to get Crimson's opinion: they were trying to sway it. You stepping in to defend anon when more people than just myself have recognized the troll-y or even malicious aspects of the ask puts your argument in a bad light, which honestly doesn't serve you well. If your primary purpose is to make the argument (and actually sway opinions yourself) rather than to defend anon (create teams/advance fandom drama/"win"), then it would be better delivered if you maintained an air of neutrality by at minimum, avoiding commentary on anon themself.

That could be done by starting your own post and tagging the interested parties and just focusing on the topic at hand and ignoring anon. Or this could be done in your response by saying something along the lines of just "This is an interesting idea that I haven't seen discussed enough. I think..." and then proceed to say what you think. That then shifts the conversation to the claims being made rather than the people who make them, and how they made them. (Note my primary objection to the original ask is exactly about anon's behavior and choices rather than to the points themselves.)

So setting the issue of anon's choices aside, we next need to look at who the audience is (the broader fandom) and how they can be swayed. Because isn't that the goal, here, ultimately? It sounds like what you and your friends want is to shift general fandom attitude away from the merry-murder-husbands interpretation and into something more cognizant of the fucked up nature of the show.

And this is not in and of itself a bad goal overall, depending on how far you take it. But whether you succeed in this goal or just end up driving people out of the fandom because of the drama or because they become disillusioned with the ship itself is a very fine line to walk, and I'm not sure the people who have been walking it lately realize just how delicately they need to step (not necessarily you specifically--I don't remember seeing your name around before this tbh). It's not progress unless people come around to your way of thinking without becoming fed up and hurt and leaving.

(Obligatory reminder to my own follower base here: I don't condone people going around to anyone's inbox or comments specifically to harass them, regardless of what their opinions are. I am fully of the opinion that we can all play in the same sandbox together without throwing sand in each other's eyes, even if we think the other sand castles are ugly.)

One troubling fact of the whole-fandom-as-audience as it exists currently is that people have differing notions about what the fandom believes on the whole. To sum up, there seems to be three camps: "merry-murder-husbands," "Hannigram-BAD," and "Wtf happened to my peaceful fandom."

If you haven't deduced it already, I belong to the third group.

Merry-murder-husbands and Hannigram-BAD both seem to largely think that everyone who doesn't belong to their own group belongs to the opposing group. But I don't think that's a useful place to write meta from. Tonally, it's going to be off-putting from the very start to anyone who isn't in your own camp, even if their camp is just "Wtf." Getting your point across is also going to be extra difficult if people are from the opposing group--they're going to feel attacked or at the very least, condescended to.

For starters, your (and anon's) talking points aren't going to be focused on what matters to the Wtf crowd. Where this comes up in this particular discussion is with these points here:

Hannibal as a selfish, manipulative, and extremely violent person.

He is power-hungry and wanted to keep Will in his chokehold.

Hannibal as an antagonist, as he embodies a sinister role in the narrative.

Hannibal's love for Will is portrayed as selfish, driven by desperation for understanding.

Hannibal maintained manipulation over Will even in Season 3, from start to finish.

People's justification of the Dolce scene and romanticizing the gallery scene surprises me, considering both instances involved plans for mutual harm.

Hannibal continued harming Will, sending the Dragon to kill Will's family to manipulate him into a meeting.

Hannibal caged himself to ensnare Will.

To the Wtf crowd, this is sort of like arguing that water is wet. Is Hannibal, the biggest pile of dicks that ever existed, actually a big pile of dicks? Well, iunno...you tell me? Nobody from this crowd is arguing that Hannibal isn't a big pile of dicks. So this is basically spinning your wheels.

As to the merry-murder-husbands crowd, this is all justified because deep down, Will is just as big a pile of dicks as Hannibal, and Hannibal being a big pile of dicks to Will just uncovers Will's true dick pile qualities so they can go off and live as merry-piles-o'-dicks together. Now, personally, I think this particular response is full of circular logic and just plain wrong, but the point here is that you're never going to win against it by writing points that play into it. This crowd will move the goalposts on this discussion to a discussion about Will's character, and then you'll be dealing with that instead of the points you want to be making about Hannibal.

This also sets aside that some of these points could be argued against on their own specific merits. Does Hannibal really want to keep Will in his chokehold, or does the real excitement for Hannibal come when Will turns the tables on him? That's a whole meta post by itself, frankly, and more than we can discuss here feasibly. But it does highlight another problem with these points: some of them are interpretations and conclusions in and of themselves, not actual points of evidence.

There's an additional problem in the overall argument with multiple points being about Will rather than Hannibal:

Ultimately, Will chose death to escape both Hannibal and himself, feeling a resemblance to Hannibal in his mind.

Despite Will expressing fatigue with the chase, questions about why he fell for Hannibal linger. After discussions, it became clear to me that his attachment wasn't love but a trauma response to his abuser.

Will's attachment stems from trauma and a sense of justice. Will attempted to kill Hannibal numerous times and even succeeded, but Hannibal's plot armor consistently saved him.

Will…later moved on with a family, but the fandom struggled to accept it, mirroring Will's Stockholm syndrome-like attachment to Hannibal.

Despite this, according to Bryan, it's "Will Graham's story," implying that Hannibal's eventual demise was always a possibility.

The original anon defined this problem as "The problem with the antis is that they are questioning Will's feelings for Hannibal when they should question Hannibal's feelings for Will," but these all shift the discussion back onto Will, into places that serve your opposition rather than serving you. So even if you "won" this part of the argument--which is easier said than done--you still wouldn't have proven your point about Hannibal, you will have just made observations about Will.

Again, this is all beside the point for the Wtf crowd, and playing into the hands of the merry-murder-husbanders.

So what do we have left? These are the rest of the statements:

Hannibal surrendered, manipulating the situation rather than acting out of genuine love.

Hannibal's actions show a lack of genuine love, portraying him as a greedy figure taking relentlessly from Will and ultimately causing his destruction.

and

Hannibal created this delusional image of Will in his mind and inserted himself into Will's delusional world.

Hannibal only liked Will when Will behaved like Hannibal—notice that in season 2.

Anon points out Hannibal's creation of a false image of Will in his mind, particularly evident in Season 1's exploitative and abusive behavior. Anon contends that Hannibal only appreciates Will when he mirrors Hannibal's actions,evident in s2.

I've grouped them like this because they are each united by theme: one, that, as I put it in my original reblog, Hannibal's worst personality defects (his selfishness, manipulation, and sadism) negate any authenticity/sincerity in his emotional response to Will; and two, that Hannibal's image of Will in his mind is incorrect enough that it means that he's fallen in love with his idea of Will, rather than with the man himself.

I think we can all see that the second of these--although perhaps the more accurate one--is going to be plagued by the moving goalposts I mentioned above. In order to prove it, you've got to prove that Will isn't the person Hannibal perceives him to be. That might be doable with the Wtf crowd (probably why I see it as a more accurate concept, since I'm in this crowd), but it's going to be MONUMENTAL to try to get the merry-murder-husbands to see it this way. If you're willing to fight those off, well, you might make some headway with people who are more open-minded.

But it's going to be complicated by the fact that you're going to have to also prove the first claim in order to make the second stick, because the problems with the first one will set up problems with the second. And that first claim is going to be real difficult to prove.

Here's why: the basic presumption of the first claim--Hannibal's worst personality defects (his selfishness, manipulation, and sadism) negate any authenticity/sincerity in his emotional response to Will--is that it defines love in the kind of platitudes people use when they're teaching their children not to allow others to mistreat them. It's syllogistic.

A. Hannibal is greedy and manipulative and destructive with Will.

B. Love is not greedy, not manipulative, and not destructive.

C. Therefore Hannibal's feelings for Will are not love.

But we all know the problem with a syllogism: if either of the premises are false, the conclusion is also false.

In real life, premise in B. may or may not be a useful way to look at love, but that's beside the point here. The question is, Is the premise in B. the way the show Hannibal presents and defines love?

Fortunately for us, the show has given us two explicit statements on love and what it is and what it means, one in "Shiizakana" and one in "Secondo."

In "Secondo," the conversation is between Hannibal and Bedelia:

B: What your sister made you feel was beyond your conscious ability to control or predict. H: Or negotiate. B: I would suggest what Will Graham makes you feel is not dissimilar. A force of mind and circumstance. H: Love. He pays you a visit or he doesn't.

This view of love is that it is outside of the control of the one who experiences it. In order to support that Hannibal does experience this kind of love when it comes to Will Graham, then all you have to prove is that he had super strong feelings toward Will that caused him to be out of control, to badly predict his own behavior, and that he did stupid shit rather than negotiate his choices well. I think...well, these are all fairly easy to prove. Hannibal set his whole neatly curated world on fire for Will, all the while thinking he was in control when he was totally out of control. This would be the "Did you think you could change me, the way I changed you?" problem. Up until the moment that Will points out that he already did change Hannibal, Hannibal really thinks he's negotiating this force of mind and circumstance just fine. Meanwhile, he makes himself sad by getting Will incarcerated and mad at him, he plays his get-out-of-jail-free card with Miriam Lass, and then this loses him his very favorite murder identity of the Chesapeake Ripper, and eventually his home, practice, ability to live under his own identity and ultimately his freedom. The fact that he tries to control something that is very much out of his control is evidence for, not evidence against, defining his actions as motivated by love. At least by this definition.

The other definition presented in "Shiizakana" is probably the more damning one:

H (in Will's mind): No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them. By that love we see potential in our beloved. Through that love, we allow our beloved to see their potential. Expressing that love, our beloved's potential comes true.

If we stop after the first statement ("No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them") then it might seem like we have something workable with regards to the idea that Hannibal is in love with an idea of Will rather than the man himself. By this reasoning, because he's focused on his image of Will--his imago--then his love is less than fully aware of who Will really is. So maybe it's not really love.

But unfortunately that isn't the end of the statement. Seeing that person's potential (Hannibal's idea of Will) is part of being fully aware of them, by this definition. Will then coming to see that same potential in himself--the cause of him throwing them both off the cliff instead of just Hannibal--happens through Hannibal's love for him. And if Will does go full dark murder husband (the jury's still out on this, obviously, and will probably be out forever), then that would be because Hannibal expressed his love, in all those selfish and destructive and manipulative ways. Even if Will doesn't go full dark, where he has expressed his darkness--with Chiyoh and her prisoner, with touching Frederick Chilton's shoulder, with attempting to kill Hannibal himself, with his deceptions and manipulations and obvious enjoyment of terrorizing Freddie Lounds, etc, etc, whatever--is still that potential coming true.

This is going to be a really difficult point to argue past, especially because the show is largely concerned with transformation as an expression of love, all the way back to Garrett Jacob Hobbs and most of the murders of the first season. It may not be the way one should view love in the real world, but it's the way love is defined in the murderworld of Hannibal.

And that even leaves aside numerous other points, including but not limited to:

violence as an expression of love and/or sex

Bedelia--who herself disagrees with Hannibal's assessment of Will's character--nonetheless defining Hannibal's feelings as "in love"

the imago as an image of a loved one carried by the unconscious during a person's entire life, which is still defined as love even though it idealizes that person

the fact that Will planted Hannibal's imago himself

So if this is something that you really want to pursue, all this is what you're up against. It's a tall order, and that's probably why no one has really broached the issue much in the past except as a sort of moral judgment against shippers.

The limits of what I've laid out here include the interpretation of the cliffening being Will's rejection of going full dark. That's got some room to move, but it's problematic because if he fully rejected the concept of that being his potential, then he doesn't actually need to throw himself off the cliff, and additionally, it's undermined by the Bedelia leg-eating scene which suggests Will's involvement. Ultimately, it's also fully speculative--you only have those two scenes to work with, and everything else that falls under the general umbrella of speculations about S4 and beyond are just that--speculations. Not evidence.

There's probably an argument somewhere that the show draws a distinction between wholesome love (like Jack and Bella) and Hannibal's kind of love, but I don't know if that distinction is strong enough that Hannibal's love is not love at all, in the show's terms. Especially because Jack and Bella's love is partially defined through how her coping with death changes them both. But you still have the problem of it being about different types of love, not one thing being called love and another thing not. Overall, this would be hard to find all the pieces of and would require a lot of studying the stories about love that are outside of Hannibal and Will, and this would be challenging even to me, but it might be worth a look if someone wants to do that massive amount of homework.

I guess that's kind of where all this ultimately leads me, and back to the original point I made about why this kind of discussion doesn't belong in any one person's inbox. These are big questions: they can't be fully argued in a couple paragraphs. At least not well. The fandom is sorely missing meta writers at the moment who are willing to take the trouble to do the full amount of homework and effort that is required to really say something insightful. Mostly it just seems like people want to toss off a couple paragraphs and "win."

That's always been a problem with meta in fandom. It isn't a problem we're newly inventing. Everyone has opinions, regardless of the amount of thought they've put into them--but for the Hannibal fandom specifically there used to be more people who were willing to really dedicate themselves to getting to the bottom of things, to making progress understanding the show be the purpose of discussion and analysis, rather than achieving victory over a perceived group of people who are understanding the show "wrong." Right now there's...maybe one?

To be clear, I don't count myself as in that group of one person who is willing to work that hard. At least not for the most part. There's nothing wrong with opting out of that effort.

But there is something wrong with pursuing that "win," if it comes at the expense of people's peace of mind, the fandom family's unity, and deeper understanding of the show.

So if you want to have these discussions, please have them, but have them at the level that they deserve to be had. If there has to be a call to action at the end of the post, I suppose I'm asking people to do the homework--to watch the show ten more times, start to finish, to have the episodes ready to go at a moment's notice during a discussion, research existentialism and Christianity and Revelations and the original books and films and what Bryan Fuller and the cast have said and what the other meta writers said over the past eleven years.

But at the very least, let's stop letting our annoyance with each other dictate our understandings of the show itself. Yes, some interpretations and some people can be super annoying (believe me, I've been there!), but that has no place in generating bias over what the show itself has to say.

#hannibal meta #hannibal #bear replies #hannibal lecter #hannigram #will graham #hannibal fandom meta #what is love #oh baby don't hurt me #don't hurt me #no more

[catboyrichardkarinsky]

zombie saga tumblr dash simulator!!

🌅 peshtigo4ever follow

i honestly have no idea why i keep going. my life is basically over. everyone i love is dead. and a lot of it is my fault. i should just die honestly

📖 writinganddreaming follow

no don't kill yourself your so sexy ahaha

🌅 peshtigo4ever

ok

🌅 peshtigo4ever

update we're dating now

35 notes

🌹scienceandlesbianism follow

🏳️‍⚧️ its-super-dope Follow

anyone who voted for the third option unfollow me right now fuck you fuck you fuck you how is it sweeping i hate you all

#zombie pride #zombie rights #tw zombphobia #zomblr

1,038 notes

🏳️‍⚧️ its-super-dope Follow

i don't know what zombie out there needs to hear this, but you are valid, you didn't choose to be this way, you're not evil for hurting people, it's not your fault. i see you and i support you

📚 greendales-lesbian-queen follow

Fuck this post, fuck you op, I lost all my friends to zombies only of you go turn around and make a stupid post like this saying that zombies aren't evil. I can't believe people can be so insensitive

🏳️‍⚧️ its-super-dope

@.greendales-lesbian-queen tried to kill me in real life guys don't try to debate her just block and move on

🏳️‍⚧️ its-super-dope

i never said go harass her this doesn't make any of you better people. by the way there's no point sending her angry anons now, she died like right in front of me and she did apologize. I'm going to delete this post soon but i didn't change my mind on zombies, even though I've lost a lot of people to them, i also literally was a zombie so i see both sides

8,983 notes

🦅 eagle-greetings follow

i love divorce so much reblog to divorce the person you reblogged this from!

🌅 peshtigo4ever follow

i legitimately don't know how to feel about Del's last ever post being this and that he posted this on his company's official tumblr account. rip i guess?

75 notes

💙 francois-dubois Follow

it's the middle of the apocalypse and we're all still on tumblr blogging i love this site honestly

🐶 little-guy-fifi Follow

this didn't age well rip Frankie

🐶 little-guy-fifi

I JUST REALIZEF RIP WAS THE WEONG CHOUCE OF WORD FUCK FUCK FUCK

125 notes

#live laugh love zombie saga

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Hi! What is the average recovery timeline for top surgery? One of my best friends is getting married a couple weeks after my surgery date (17 days to be exact) and I'm invited to the wedding! He's also had top surgery and said from his experience I should be okay after 2 weeks. I'll have to fly, but my partner will be with me just in case I can't lift my bags or anything. But any advice? I'll be flying out there pretty much 15 days after my surgery date. Thanks!!!

Lee says:

I had my top surgery when I was 18 and bounced back pretty quickly, but my younger age, lack of physical disabilities or chronic illnesses, and relatively good health (semi-athletic, non-smoker) made it easier for me to recover than many.

For context, I had inverted-T incision top surgery (double incision plus two extra incisions) and drains.

I was exploring the city I had my top surgery in within the first 2 weeks post-op and going to libraries, museums, candy factories, etc and taking public transportation for all of it.

You'll need to speak with your surgeon about what they expect your recovery timeline to be like as it can vary depending on your medical conditions, and whether you develop post-op complications (something that can't always be predicted when you're still pre-op).

That being said, if you are in good health and a young adult, it's likely that you would be able to go to a wedding 17 days post-op, especially because it's an event that's important to you (one of your best friends) and you'll have the support you need (a partner who can do all of the heavy luggage lifting). You'll probably be more tired than usual, but it's probably worth it to you to be present for the wedding.

This is what my top surgeon told me about post-top surgery general activity limitations:

5-7 days: may engage in ADL’s (“activities of daily living”; light housework, etc, provided not lifting more than 20-30 pounds)

7-10 days: may consider RTW (“return to work”, again with the above lifting limitations x 4-6 weeks)

2-4 weeks: may engage in light exercise/extra activity (dog-walking, etc)

4-6 weeks: may engage in moderate exercise (bicycle or treadmill, but no full exertion)

6+ weeks: full activity (including heavy lifting/jogging) generally OK

Generally, most people are back to their normal routine by 2-4 weeks. Overall, it generally takes 3 months for significant swelling to go down and 6-12 months for scars to mature/fade.

Whatever you decide to do regarding the wedding is ultimately up to you (after you have your surgeon's clearance to attend); it's valid if you don't feel comfortable going because you're concerned about being away from your surgeon and developing a possible complication.

But people do travel for gender-affirming surgeries, and it's pretty common to only stay in the area for ~2 weeks after top surgery before flying home, which is what I did.

So if you do not develop any major complications early on, it likely would be fine to leave the town that your surgeon is located in and take a flight to the wedding at ~2 weeks post-op.

Good luck with the surgery!

Followers, any additional advice or personal experiences to share with anon?

Followers say:

sequintial said: I was NOT ready to do anything like a wedding 2 weeks after top surgery. I had double incision and I'm fat, so I had a much larger area to heal, and one that interfered more with my mobility

bdw531 said: I basically slept all day for the first 1.5 weeks and couldn't even lift a glass of water to my face. Went back to work after 2 weeks. At 4 weeks, I hiked 75 miles of the PCT and at 6 weeks I was bouldering again. As with any surgery, everyone heals differently. I probably would have been up for attending a laid-back wedding ~17 days so long as I could sit and didn't dance.

happysadyoyo said: I was 29 when I had top surgery, and it took me about two weeks to stop sleeping so much. I was able to move around and do things, but especially when I had the drains in I pretty much did nothing but sleep and watch TV. The drains I feel are the most limiting factor. If you still have them, they're gonna be annoying, but even with them, so long as you're able to pace yourself (and at a wedding it should be fine) and there's no major complications, it should be fine.

#Lee says #top surgery recovery #top surgery #surgery

[bungoustraypups]

@daught3rsofcain i made a separate post for this, btw, to respect creantzy and (try to) keep any more unnecessary fighting off of their posts, however i feel this needs to be addressed given how it caused issues over on twitter and i wanna make my stance clear as well as make it clear that this kind of comment is unacceptable

tl;dr for anyone who doesn't wanna/can't/doesn't have time to read my whole rant/already agrees with me and doesn't need to be convinced on why you should shut the fuck up if you see fanart/fanfic/other fan shit you dislike or that mildly bothers you but is otherwise harming no one online: curate your online spaces, block liberally and without question, do whatever you need to do to be comfortable, but never demand that other people bend to your will just because you personally think something is disrespectful to you

i'm gonna keep it brief: don't say this shit on someone's art.

you might think it's disrespectful and "disgusting", but that doesn't actually make it so. i implore you to do a little googling into the history of romantic jesus depictions, because if you do, you'll quickly find that people have been doing this very thing for literal centuries.

yes, they had pushback even back then, as most artists who make any kind of art esp religious art often do no matter what they're depicting, but obviously the fact that people continuously do it and that most christians either don't give a fuck or at the very least ignore it and move on.

if you were truly so incensed upon seeing silly fanart of bsd fyodor dostoevsky and a very historically inaccurate depiction of jesus christ based off of leonardo da vinci's gay lover (yes, that is where this very popular depiction of jesus comes from, while there's some debate over who exactly was the muse as leo had a few gay lovers, most people agree the depictions of white or fair-skinned jesus today that are similar to the ones da vinci made are based off of someone he was in love with whether they were in a relationship officially yet or not) you simply could have blocked OP or the post or simply ignored it, and yet you chose instead to do this, which is why i bothered responding

people threatened creantzy on twitter and sent death threats to them over this, for much the same reason as you claim to have left this thoughtless, hurtful comment. even if creantzy doesn't care and can brush it off, which is a fair and valid response, the way people online feel entitled to force everyone they interact with to only produce material they personally agree with is childish, immature, cruel, entitled, and quite frankly, shitty behavior.

it would be one thing if this artwork depicted, for example, a marginalized religious figure, but considering Christianity is not just a major global religion, but is the current dominant global religion with approximately 2.4 billion followers worldwide, and most countries have no discriminatory laws against the practice of christianity or against christians themselves, when the same cannot be said for literally every other religion on the planet right now to varying degrees (if you live in the USA, for example, we may not explicitly forbid the practice of other religions, but hate crimes are rising, especially antisemitic and islamophobic hate crimes, and the perpetrators of those crimes are largely either atheists who were formerly christian, or current christians; and almost all of our major holidays are centered around christian religious holidays, even if the marketing no longer reflects this, that doesn't make it less true)...

basically you're causing a fuss over a non-issue. my grandma is very christian and thinks this art is pretty and even though she doesn't get it, has no real issue with it considering christians themselves have been doing this for... almost since christianity began, arguably. your opinions don't dictate what people should or shouldn't post online.

block, move on, and live your life. stop harassing artists.

#me #my voice #discourse #harassment #fandom discourse #fandom #cio.txt #cio.org

[anti-dazai-blog]

opinions on Atsushi and Fukuchi ? BTW feel free to ignore this ask, since ik you're primarily a Dazai analysis blog. Idk, I feel like the concept of Atsushi as a character had AMAZING potential, but somehow he's given (imo) less fleshing - out than Dazai and the others. The other characters get interesting little quirks and opinions, Atsushi gets none. I just wish BSD would develop its protagonist better. I really wanna like Atsushi but he's just written so MEH at times.

Oh and, why do you think Atsushi was chosen as the protagonist? No, I'm not saying any other character would make a better one. But I'm curious about Atsushi's significance to the story's themes. For example, do you think Sigma, Ango, Akutagawa or Yosano could have been the protag instead ? They tend to fit the common protag archetypes more I guess.

Also I see a lot of fandom gate for Fukuchi, which I think is dumb because a former nationalist getting PTSD from the atrocities he committed for his country, and then vowing to destroy the concept of national boundaries, is awesome and metal as fuck. Yeah of course Asagiri gives him that dumb flatulence schtick and some loony OP gimmicks cuz burnout / anime idiosyncrasies, but he's a character who deserves much more appreciation cuz he's so INTERESTING. I'm not saying he's a poor meow meow. He's morally grey but he makes some valid points, and he's a great exploration of fascism, guilt and the dark side of man - made boundaries.

As far as I could tell, Atsushi is actually the standard protagonist archetype for his genre. He’s a filled-in blueprint of what a fantasy protagonist usually is. 

The basic formula for a fantasy genre protagonist is, first and foremost; somebody who’s an outsider. Someone who’s unfamiliar with how the magic system works, so that the story has an excuse to explain it to them—and through that, explain it to the audience, who are outsiders to the magical system as well. 

The second step to the make-a-protagonist formula is to make them bland—or at least bland relative to the characters they’re surrounded by. You want the audience to be able to project themselves onto the protagonist, so making them overly-gimmicky or with too much of a unique personality may turn people away. You want them to be someone the audience could picture themselves as. You want them to have the highest possible relatability. Atsushi’s the guy with the fewest gimmicks, so. He’d be the LOP of the show. Least Objectionable Protagonist. (yeah I do think I’m funny and I’m hoping all media students find me funny as well) (I’m leaving this joke in for the one person who gets it and finds it funny)

Step three is to make them overpowered. It doesn’t have to be overpowered by that world’s power standards, but they have to have a surefire way to succeed often, and to be potentially seen as a threat by others (<-that’s the thing that usually makes conflict happen). They often start out rather weak so that they have room to learn and grow, but it becomes apparent quickly that they could potentially be the strongest once they learn how to use their abilities properly.

Atsushi checks all these boxes perfectly.

All other BSD characters don’t fit into that mold. Atsushi didn’t know about abilities and didn’t know about the agency/mafia/guild, and so it all had to be explain to him (and simultaneously, to us). All characters listed other than Sigma would be disqualified from the start, for being within these systems from a much younger age and therefore unable to learn about them for the first time during the course of the show (and age is a pretty common factor in the Blueprint for Fantasy Protagonists too). 

As for Sigma, I’m not saying he’s designed to be similar to Atsushi, but. If the mangaka decided to explicitly have characters in canon say “hey you remind me of my coworker,” then who am I to argue with that. Sigma was designed to resemble Atsushi (in personality, at least). He was designed to have a convenient ability to be used when needed. I have no doubt that he’ll be returning to the story, on the basis that his ability is too convenient to lose. But a guy designed to resemble the story’s protagonist is not the most likely candidate for the protagonist role. 

Funnily enough, we do get to see what other BSD characters would be like in the role of protagonist thanks to the light novels. Ranpo/Fukuzawa, Chuuya, Dazai, etc. etc. have all had their chance to be in the spotlight. But notice how their quirks from the main series have been toned down through rationalizing them via a first person POV—in 15, we don’t view Chuuya as short tempered or easily annoyable because we see what’s really going on—he’s working towards his own goal on the side. So when Dazai goads him into a stupid bet, we don’t see him as easily-provokable for accepting, but rather someone who’s trying to figure out how much this mafia guy really knows about the case they’re working on—the one where, as we later find out, he has a personal connection to. 

And with this added insight into the thought behind his actions, we can see him as a rational and cautious person—cancelling out his seemingly impulsive actions, and taking away his primary “gimmick.” 

Removing a gimmick turns a character from a caricature to a human, and as audience members, we’d love to see humanized versions of all the characters—but for the writer, the gimmicks make them stand out and differentiate them from each other. Now that we’re so much farther into the story, both us and Asagiri know all the characters much better now, and there’s definitely a higher chance of characters becoming more humanized in the future (note how a few characters have lost their gimmicks as the story progressed—Dazai became less focused on suicide, Ranpo became more competent and willing to do his job..). So I have high hopes that, while we probably will continue BSD with Atsushi getting meh character development, we will most likely see a few more light novels with other fan-favorites in the protagonist role.

NOW onto Fukuchi.

Fukuchi doesn’t deserve the hate he gets. His entire character is very Fullmetal Alchemist-esque. And we all love Fullmetal Alchemist. I truly don’t understand why we love the cast of FMAB and understand the story it’s trying to tell, but cannot understand Fukuchi. Yes, sometimes people go to war. And sometimes people to awful, horrible things. And then come to regret it. And want to make a change, and want to fix things, no matter what the cost may be. Why can we all root for Roy Mustang but draw the line at Fukuchi. Is the primary difference that Fukuchi is more powerful and therefore capable of and the cause of more destruction? Is it because Roy is a 20-something year old attractive guy and Fukuchi is an old man? Who knows, I think Roy with Fukuchi’s level of power might have been about the same as him.  

But why fandom circles choose to hate specific characters will always be a mystery to me. (even I, a professional hater, am baffled by a lot of what I see here)

Regardless, this is longer than I intended it to be. I hope I covered the topics properly, thanks for the ask!!

#Not proofreading this no way not gonna happen I’m gonna go eat food instead #Gonna eat supper #Anti dazai asks #Atsushi #fukuchi #bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs

[gxrlcinema]

a message for new users:

tumblr isn't like a lot of sites you're used to. if you're younger than i am (and it seems like a good deal of you are) you're probably used to social media sites that throw anything at you to get your attention. sites with algorithms that show you stuff they think you want to see. sites with verification and visible follower counts, so that you can see who is important. sites where you're expected to consume content, and not necessarily to create it. those sites are fun, and it's totally valid that you've learned to engage with them in the ways that you have. but it's not like that here.

a lot of you might be too young to remember when blogs were a mainstay of the internet. basically, people had their own little website where they posted stuff they made (usually writing), often centered around a specific topic or theme. so like, cooking blogs, poetry blogs, parenting blogs, etc. tumblr came about as a way to combine the individual expression of a blog with some of the more social aspects of social media. this way, you could post your own stuff to your blog, but you could also collect cool stuff you liked by reblogging. and then your blog was this cool hybrid of stuff you made and stuff you liked. and you could go find the cool stuff again, because it was on your blog.

you see, tumblr wasn't built for users to be audience members. tumblr was built for creators, and eventually became really well known for the way it cultivated communities. especially fan communities. part of why this worked well is because almost everyone participated. people shared their thoughts and cool stuff they made, they reblogged stuff they liked, maybe even added on to it or talked about why they liked it so much. when we talk about 2014 tumblr and how cool it was, (it wasn't but, y'know, nostalgia), part of that was how a lot of us were teenagers and young people on a site that let us make friends and build communities, where we could completely cultivate our own experience.

being on tumblr without participating in tumblr is kind of like having your camera and microphone off on a zoom call. yeah, we see that you're here. maybe you like a post sometimes, sort of like using the zoom thumbs up. but you're basically a ghost. and it's sad, because we want to hang out in cool little communities, but it feels like we're talking to a sea of faceless voids who don't respond.

when current users say that they want to scare off twitter and tiktok users, or people who make stuff complain about the lack of reblogs or comments, this is why. we're losing the communal aspect of tumblr that made it so great. more and more, users have no profile picture, blank blog titles, and are private or have no posts. they like posts instead of reblogging them. they don't engage. they're audience members. they're blank zoom squares. you feel like you're talking to no one, and it's sad.

so i beg of you, please engage. please reblog that story you liked, and tell the author the one line that made you squeal in the text of the reblog. please reblog that cool gifset you saw, and tell op that the colors are pretty. please reblog that cool art and let the artist know that you wish you could get it tattooed. and, above all, please make your own posts. talk about the weather today, write that story that's been in your head for a few weeks, make fan art of characters from two different shows making out, say something so weird it ends up screenshotted in a "cryptid vibes"pinterest board. send an ask to a user who's been around a while and ask them about the skeleton wars.

this is one of the only spaces left that isn't selling you something, that isn't trying to keep your eyes on it by any means necessary. this is one of the only spaces left that doesn't want you to be an audience member. so please, don't kill this space by refusing to take part in it.

welcome to tumblr. i hope you get the most out of being here that you can.

#how to tumblr #new to tumblr #new account #new user #hello tumblr #twitterpocalypse #long post #sorry but nobody will read it if i add a cut

[optiwashere]

So I saw someone on reddit (probably not wise to read that subreddit) say that Shadowheart is the trope "Born again Yesterday". I don't see it but the OP of that post really seems to dislike Shadowheart anyway.

Saying she only wants validation from the PC and doesn't actually care about them etc

Yeah the subreddit is whatever, but it's still reddit. Always kinda weird about certain things (certain things being women lmao)

I saw the post you're talking about. Everyone's entitled to their opinions, and I'm not the arbiter of BG3 Thoughts, but I think "she always makes everything about herself" is a bit incurious. You basically have to read Shadowheart in the most uncharitable light possible to reach the conclusion even though the immediate text does have her reference herself often (not all the time) when speaking positively of others.

It's like... OK. Women can't lean on others for support because it's too "weak," but they also can't be in need of emotional validation because it's what? Manipulative? Insensitive to others now? Means you don't care? There's REAL subtext to read her as having BPD from the brain scrambling, and this is one of those traits that pops up to me. But I don't have the time to get into it lol. IDK I ignore the meta style posts there and stick to memes and making fun of that one guy with a poorly disguised cuck and/or humiliation fetish complaining about Halsin.

#hey you can ask me things!

[penultimate-step]

@greatwyrmgold

continued from previous reblog, replying to you in a new post rather than reblogging bc I don't want to derail the OP with my rant about shield hero, haha.

Would you believe I actually didn't mind that part as much? If only because I have a high tolerance for bs, especially if introduced as part of the premise. However, if you did get squicked out by the slavery nonsense and dropped it immediately, I'm happy for you, because it means you dropped it before it could get to the royal execution/punishment arc, which is straight up one of the most embarrassing scenes I've ever seen in fiction.

Protagonist dude gets the villain's own mother to legally rename her to "slut," while all the characters around him can't stop talking about how much of a kind and generous man he is for not killing, torturing, or raping her instead. The newly named "slut" is then forced to bow down and thank him for making her a "slut" and "whore", while all the audience cheers.

Just. Come the fuck on. Beyond the completely juvenile middle school level of revenge nonsense, beyond the fact that this is just the series doing a PG-13 version of revenge rape fantasy, beyond all the dozen reasons I can't stand this scene - it's just the most pathetically obvious "we'll have our protagonist fulfil his most base desires, but then somehow turn that around and make that be praiseworthy and have the narrative validate and morally justify him" crap that makes it impossible for me to regard the story with any amount of respect.

That was the final straw getting me to drop the series, but honestly it's more emblematic of the flaws of the series as a whole, and the terrible writing of the protagonist that undermines the whole thing.

I think the concept of the series - the basic premise - is actually quite interesting. An isekai'd hero where the focus is on how by being transported, he no longer has the social connections and safety net of the world he knows, who is immediately othered, ostracized, and betrayed by the new world around him, until his sense of trust in others is shattered. this pushes him to moral rock bottom, engaging in slavery and mistreating even his closest companions out of lingering trauma. To succeed, he must confront his own issues and grow as a person, building a place in this new world and making up for his mistakes.

I'm not embarrassed to admit that if this concept was executed even half competently, I probably would have greatly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, a concept like that inherently requires mature handling of moral wrongs done both by and towards the protagonist - and do you really think a writer who would make the capstone moment of a character arc be "you suck so badly that even your mother chose me over you, and also everybody around you says that you're sexually promiscuous and morally bankrupt" has the maturity to write anything close to what would be required?

Whatever promise the initial premise had doesn't even last ten chapters. After the introductory arcs, the writing loses all sense of ambition - it becomes too afraid to actually have the protagonist be in the wrong, and therefore has to frame everything he does as unambiguously sympathetic, that he is a nice guy, and also say he is somehow "deserving" of the power fantasy that the series becomes. This directly contradicts the character arc he's set up to have - It's difficult to simultaneously have a character be an edgy antihero making poor choices, and also have them be always in the right, and so the series bends over backwards to say all his decisions must actually be morally correct, regardless if they actually are. Which was the type of character writing that OP of the original post was complaining about, and also why I can't stand this series.

I don't know. I have friends who tell me the worldbuilding and plot gets really interesting later on. but I don't have any interest in trying again. I think I gave the series a fair shot and it just made me both angry and uncomfortable. If I wanted a progression fantasy with cool worldbuilding, and sometimes I do, there are plenty of those online to choose from.

(Again, I don't have anything against people who like this series, everybody has different tolerances for certain writing flaws and I don't think it makes one evil or dumb or actually accepting of slavery to like the series.)

#not going to tag this as shield hero bc i don't want to put a long rant about the series in a tag for fans #step.animanga

[fluffypotatey]

Rewatched "The Sword in the Stone" and God, Tristan and Isolde are just so.....

Aside from the rare display of balls from BBC, to completely do away with their tragic love story and make them both bicons and full criminals, damn, it's so rare for a TV het couple to be so Valid, and yet. Them. Crime-married, running a smuggling op, they get swept up into a Clusterfuck by the very king they are stealing from, and Tristan still brings the bae flowers just 'cause and straight-up says he don't give even half a fuck that he lost cargo as long as Isolde is safe. Like. Damn. Respect.

Also, Isolde is just fine, she passed out from pain, Gaius and Merlin fixed her right up, and now her and Tristan are running a Vaguely Legal Business in which now they just smuggle stuff from other kingdoms, which Arthur politely ignores in exchange for nitty-gritty details on the state of trade, like the strangest, most well-meant form of political corruption ever.

Arthur: Tristan, Isolde, good to see you both again, I trust you're staying out of trouble......and not illegally transporting those three crates of Mercian spices I see in your wagon.

Tristan: *pulls an oilcloth over the crates* Spices? I don't see any spices here, do you, Isolde?

Isolde: *holds up a sheaf of trade details from Mercia, Essetir, and Gwynedd* No, Tristan, I certainly don't.

Arthur: .........

Arthur: *takes the papers* You have got to stop doing this.

Tristan and Isolde: Doing what?

Arthur: *leaves*

(Also, no, I'm not having Crime Ring AU thoughts, pfft, no way.)

*sighs* *cracks knuckles* how dare you somehow know all of my weaknesses when it comes to headcanons

listen,

Tristan and Isolde are Arthur's unofficial spies. they created the camelot spy network. they weaved those webs like Arachne herself. the trade papers? just the beginning.

sure, sure, Tristan always tells Isolde that their business with camelot is a short one, that they'll only stay here for a little bit then get back to what they do best, that he only agreed to another month because Arthur turns a blind eye to their dirty money.

Isolde only rolls her eyes because she knows better. this is her husband we're talking about, someone she knows inside and out. Isolde has memorized his mannerisms until she could see them without even looking at him. Isolde could time how long her husband will deny ever caring about the "foolish king" and admit that he had grown fond of the young man.

Tristan as he is arranging a bouquet for his wife: "All I'm saying is that the kid needs a better system for information. He relies on us too much despite our stay being temporary."

Isolde mapping out Essetir's new trade details: "Maybe he enjoys the company."

Tristan: "He's a blue blood, darling. I highly doubt that we would be someone he'd loved to hang out with. Now, daffodils or lillies?"

also: Tristan called Arthur son once, and Arthur just about cried on the spot ("it's the DUST!"). Tristan begins to realize that he has basically adopted Arthur and realizes that he quite likes parenting the kid.

#tristen did the 'calls them kid ironically -> they are MY kid unironically' pipeline #anyway tristan and isolde being bi icons is correct #they walked so arwen as a bi royal couple could run #isolde is someone tristan would gift flowers and tiny daggers for #his engagement ring was actually a knife #isolde also gives tristan flowers but like in an indirect way #'oh honey i accidentally made one too many flower crowns sooooooo' #'sweetheart! i can't just go to the summer fest with you if we don't match!' *places daisey behind his ear* #also she bought him a book about herbology when they were dating and THAT is the moment tristan knew he'd marry her (he also saw her gut #someone but that was when he realized he loved her; a very clear distinction) #bbc merlin #headcanons #tristan and isolde #oh course isolde okay your honor #see she's doing just fine after being checked up by gaius #hm? de nial? don't be silly! it's called the Nile River your honor

[prancingintheshadows]

Time Dilation

I just feel like talking about it since I've been slowly gathering thoughts on it over time. Why has Weiss' Time Dilation glyph just disappeared after V2 and a brief mention in V3? It's a question that plagues many as it's a fan favorite glyph despite the fact it has only shown up twice. I've been trying to figure it out and I've come up with plausible theories. There's actually quite a lot of points about why Time Dilation is one of the various abilities that were dropped after the show toned down the rule of cool for more consistent abilities (Which is valid. I constantly think about Yang getting blown into the stratosphere during a food fight but gets knocked out after hitting the roof of a train)

I can technically split this into two major points, but each point has more meat I want to dig into. Those two points are:

Super Speed and Buffs

Let's start with one at a time, but knowing the other point will be helpful. Speed first. Time Dilation, in simple terms, is a speed buff. As someone who did a lot of physics in college and for jobs, I could go deeper and talk about the name origin of time dilation and why Speedsters seeing things in slow motion is a lie, but that's not important.

What is important is that Time Dilation applies a speed buff. This is actually a terrible thing to provide a buff too. Why?

Speed is OP

Speed controls a lot in a fight: Rate of attacks, ability to close the distance, ability to run away, evasion, reaction speed (though scientifically speaking a dilation of time would actually worsen this aspect). It's the complete package. Which is a problem when you give it to a character who's semblance is a swiss army knife. There is no situation where Time Dilation is a wrong answer. Not only that, it can often be the best answer. It doesn't conflict with Weiss' other glyphs. We see her use it then use a bunch of standard glyphs. If the answer was use fire dust, now the answer is time dilate then use fire dust. If the answer was summon an Arma Gigas, the answer is now summon then dilate the Arma Gigas. It's not even that speed has no downsides, it's that speed always has an upside.

I know people complain about Weiss focusing too hard on semblance usage and basically being a mage at times, but if you want over centralization, this would be it. At least, in terms of fighting smart and power scaling. There's oddly a reverse problem when it comes to super speed that I only realized during the thinking process of this

Super Speed is bad at Choreography

Now, I hear what you're saying. Those two times Time Dilation were used were great! Yeah, they were. Because they were used smartly. You can only animate super speed so many ways. It's actually very restrictive if you think about it.

Here's the thing about animation. Animation works because your brain can connect the dots between each frame of the animation. Animators who understand that principle can make movements seem extremely fast by cutting out in-betweens. The problem is, there is a limit. This is the problem with Super speed. Super speed wants to be a blur of motions, a flurry of events that happen in the blink of an eye, a character blitzing another at the speed of sound they can hardly react, but you still have to have it be legible to the audience, limiting the ways you can utilize it.

You can slow down time, but then you lose the sense of speed. It retains all the little details and there's little issue in making sense of what's happening, but it lacks the energy of showing it in real time.

Real time super speed has the problem of needing to keep motions simple. No complex combos. You can't pull off a light, medium, heavy into special into super. There's no way you'd be able to parse all that if you go too fast. Try watching any fight at 2 or 3 times speed and you'll see how much of a mess it is. So a lot of speedsters just spam rapid punches and kicks or showing off their speed with needlessly dashing all over the place so it stays visually clean and digestable. Look at Harriet. Instead of barraging Ruby with punches in V7E12, she does a lot of running strikes so that it's clear she's fast, but you don't lose the action in a blur of fists. I've never seen a speedster do a complicated combo before. The Flash's most memorable attacks involve him running really fast before a punch

Well, what if we slow down a little? This is actually how Time Dilation manages its speed. When Blake spams blade beams, notably, the first few blade beams come out one at a time and the camera focuses on individual missiles being cut before Blake really lets loose, because Monty definitely understood that going fast right away would be visual noise without the regular speed blade beams telling you what is actually happening. But that's a workaround, not a solution. In order to truly look fast, Blake has to devolve into a barely visible blur spitting out brightly colored attacks. Weiss' utilization follows similarly, one fully demonstrated thrust followed by several thrusts at faster pace. No actually complicated choreography is shown, just repetition after you've been properly informed about what's going to happen. The characters need to be going a sufficient speed to look like they've sped up, otherwise our brain's auto correct won't clock it correctly

Buffing Complications

Have you been keeping in mind this is a buff? Good. This shouldn't take too long then. What Time Dilation does is both over powered and over centralizing to be put into Weiss' versatile powerset and is too limited in the ways you can animate it to be used too often. Now apply that to the main cast and you can see why it hasn't really returned.

Okay, let's actually dive a bit deeper. If the problem was just super speed, Time Dilation could maybe stay in, as both Ruby and Harriet have speed based semblances (though Ruby's doesn't enhance attacking speed). But there's a problem with it being one of Weiss' Glyphs, as its essentially outshines both her other glyphs and Ruby as well. What's so special about Ruby or Harriet's speed when Weiss can just buff someone else to keep up? Sure, they might still be faster, but it doesn't change the fact that their semblances come off worse when Weiss can easily copy it

The other big problem is the ease of use. There are other semblances that buff: Jaune's Aura Amp buffs semblances, Yang's Burn increases her strength, Nora's lightning absorption can make her really strong. Thing is, these all have limitations that prevent them from being used constantly or right away. Jaune has to be in touch distance, Yang's works best on low aura, Nora needs a specific element. Weiss' doesn't really have a restriction, not when she's constantly carrying around full revolver of dust at least. This leads to the problem of fights essentially having to balance for a buffed main party whenever Weiss is around. Fights in story are mostly about the narrative, but they do try to keep overall strengths and skills in mind. If Weiss constantly had the ability to increase people's speeds, you suddenly have a problem where party's power shoots up drastically and then you'd have to balance the enemies they face to compensate. Harriet is reasonably faster than Ruby, but if Ruby got Time Dilated, what then? Would they be even or would you make Harriet's speed even faster to keep narrative tension in the fight?

Those are probably my big take aways. Time Dilation is too strong, too easily used, and too hard to animate to be around for a long period of time.

But knowing that Time Dilation is just Haste due to Monty's Dead Fantasy does make it make sense why this thing is dumb busted. It's the premier FF spell and is meant for an RPG where characters take turns. Putting it into a series with combat that was already fast paced was always going to be a problem when the series tried smoothing out the strengths of the characters.

#rwby #weiss schnee #I wrote this at 4 am #So that explains why I'm unhinged #Anyways now I can finally stop thinking about this