It's So Fucking Snover

@inktog

MTG Wiki admin, frogdad analyst, fanvidder with shit hardware Rejected URLs: anne-boonchuys-incest-kink, dyranarya-dumbledore

3,752 posts

the thing that bewilders me about a lot of fantasy readers is that they read about settings and plots featuring imperialism, war, and slavery and then call the inclusion of violence, abuse, and sexual exploitation "edgy" and "gratuitous" and it's like what did you think was happening. why were you under the impression that you were going to get a cozy story about fascism or something. far be it from me to criticize anyone for not wanting to read about torture in their spare time, and there are certainly cases where heavy subjects are poorly executed, but is it not equally insulting to sanitize them for a feel-good adventure.. like no one put a gun to your head and forced you to give your fantasy novel an enslaved protagonist. sometimes writing is supposed to make you feel bad

My incredibly bleak philosophy of compassion is that we should all pity each other horribly and practice an according amount of kindness.

I asked for a pastry at the coffee shop. When I raised my card up to pay, he simply said "you're good." and waved it away. I wondered why. I wondered what made him think I deserved to have my order be free. Sparing me those two dollars.

Sitting down at the table, I remembered the scars on my arm. The universal signifier of "This Kid Needs Help." Maybe his kindness was only out of pity. He saw those and assumed there was some great misery and wanted to offer me some relief. It's generally good to be kind to people who are hurting. But I wasn't hurting that bad.

The thing is, there is some great misery. People generally aren't doing that great. There is a great misery within me and within him and within everyone, and some people notice the pain, some people express it, others don't. But we all suffer from something.

It doesn't matter if someone seems to deserve some relief. Everyone needs it. Everyone is suffering constantly. Some more than others, but still. This Kid Needs Help applies to everyone.

Thirty minutes later, I went to get a second pastry, intending to pay and leave a tip this time. It was the same cashier. As he reached to grab it for me, I saw scars on his arm.

But it doesn't really matter. He'd deserve a tip anyway. Because it's never just us hurting.

Put in the tags the completely finished (whether cancelled or wrapped up on its own terms) TV series that has YOUR perfect ending, however you define that

Please don’t include huge spoilers for the specifics of the endings, and it would also make me happy if people don’t use this to talk about the shows whose endings they hated

#probably bojack horseman #only TV show i like that i can't muster literally any complaints about the ending

k-simplex-deactivated20241001

Happy Pride

“I don’t like this expression “First World problems.” It is false and it is condescending. Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn’t disappear just because you’re black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations. Here’s a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.”

— Teju Cole (via feminizt)

gay meth

Bad things happening to the economy does, in fact, directly translate to real human suffering, and it's disingenuous to the extreme to pretend that it doesn't mean anything.

So we all talk about being in fandoms for things that are charmingly bad, and being able to acknowledge that they’re charmingly bad. But of course some people are in fandoms for things that are Actually Amazing. There are people out there who write fanfiction for The Best Science Fiction Novel Of The Twentieth Century. Or who draw fanart exclusively of The Best Movie of All Time. And there are even more people who are in fandoms for things that are Actually Pretty Good, which is not quite amazing but is closer to it than to Charmingly Bad.

And sometimes, you have a string of fandoms that are Actually Pretty Good. And the danger of this—the very great danger—is that when you have a string of Actually Pretty Good and even Actually Amazing obsessions, you start to believe that maybe you have taste. Perhaps you are now immune to the indignities of losing it over something mostly bad.

And then it is shattering to discover that no, bad things can still stick a fork in your brain. 😔

So I understand why the “transformative fandom gathers around things that are not good because there being a problem makes people desire to fix it” model is popular. I even agree that it’s accurate in many if not most cases. However it is not what this post is about. Plenty of people do transformative and creative fandom activities for things that are very, very good. Simplified models do not encompass everything.

And frankly, it’s starting to really get on my nerves when people read “I think this thing is good. I wouldn’t change a thing about it and frankly I don’t even think there should be more canon added to it, but I am still going to write thousands of words of fic, make a cosplay, and draw fanart” and then completely misunderstand and respond with “yes I agree—I like things that are good too. But I never feel the transformative/creative fandom instinct for them because they are too good.”

Some people do not feel it. Other people do. Stop misreading me to avoid having to adjust your mental model of how fandom works.

one of the ways a Canon work can be fandom bait is by missing something that fans want to fix, i.e. "it's bad", but i think this is only one way out of multiple that something can be fandom bait.

compelling worldbuilding (invites interaction with the setting)

interesting gimmick (see: daemons, drift compatibility. subcategory of compelling worldbuilding)

shipping bait (duh)

original character bait (in-universe categories/factions and design elements that make it fun for people to create their own characters)

compelling narrative (invites interaction and tweaks to the storyline: AUs and fixits and so on)

basically anything that invites interaction and recombination. but fandom also has a sort of multiplying effect: the larger the interactive audience of fandom is, the more likely it is to generate ideas and works that draw in more participants. so:

network effect (the larger the established fandom, the more likely it has subfandoms and infrastructure that appeals to niche audiences)

Yes this exactly, thank you bless.

Things that have space to play in are fandom bait, but space to play in does not equal holes.

derinthescarletpescatarian

My favourite part of Bismuth's first episode is when Amethyst and Steven aren't sure how to feel about her and she does the "mean Bismuth" pun a second time and Amethyst is like "I don't know, the same joke twice?" and Steven, wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt and secure in his understanding of the rules of humour, is like "well it'll be really funny if she does it a third time" and then later she does it a third time and uh

Well you were fuckin wrong there, weren't you Steven. It wasn't really funny the third time.

Best part of the episode I love meta jokes.

#this gets me every time #su

Important to remember that social media doesn't need an engagement-optimization algorithm in order to serve you ragebait. Bumping shoulders with thousands of random strangers will naturally connect you with dozens of loud, rude, attention-grabbing voices. Even Tumblr can make me worse.

Sneezing is not normal.

Important to remember that social media doesn't need an engagement-optimization algorithm in order to serve you ragebait. Bumping shoulders with thousands of random strangers will naturally connect you with dozens of loud, rude, attention-grabbing voices. Even Tumblr can make me worse.

if you were to wormpower the amphibia girls w/ corresponding triggers events and/or put them in the wormiverse, how would you do it and would they live past the amphibia ending/golden morning?

I don't think I'm deep enough in the capeshit trenches to have an interesting take on this, sorry.

#anon #i've never even read a comic book

productofaritual

Love character relationships that can only be described as "whatever the fuck these two have going on"

#reveraelposting

Like yeah sometimes i do want media that's a little more complex, and the lack of curiosity some people show about more mature things is annoying, but also like being a person who only watches kids media isn't like corrosive to the soul or anything. It's all just toys in the end. You can't really be on your high horse about it.

#endorsed #christ

hometoursandotherstuff

twig---verginix

Magic: The Gathering

oh god. okay so I know it's Cards. I know there's like, a Disney version also. I know there is a Disney card game and I think it’s adjacent to mtg.

I Think there’s some aspect of lore and established characters and worldbuilding et al, but I don’t know how extensive it is and how much it applies to the card game. But I’m pretty sure there’s like, books and shit. like star wars. There’s some magic people with crazy names. Am I close

Also, whenever I see “mtg,” it turns into “tmg” in my brain, and then I’m mildly disappointed that I’m not reading a post about The Mountain Goats.

Cards: ✅ It sure is.

Disney: 🤷 That's a different card game, Disney Lorcana. I guess it is "adjacent" to Magic in the sense that many of the rules are similar—they're more like each other than like Yugioh or the Pokemon TCG. But they're not like run by the same company or anything.

Lore and established characters and worldbuilding et al: ✅ Yep, the game's been around since 1993 and built up a sizeable cast of characters and an expansive multiverse of a setting.

Books and shit: ✅ Books, comics, D&D setting guides. The main vehicle for storyline content right now is serialized web fiction with standalone short stories.

Like Star Wars: 🤷 Sure.

Magic people with crazy names: ✅ I have no idea what you're talking about.

#mtg #the mountain goats is frankly better than Marjorie Taylor Greene

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