Brain rats on the fandom wheel @ramblingruminations - Tumblr Blog

it's interesting to me to see like. within queer communities the thing where if you said "things are really fucking stressful and awful for us right now and it's giving us a lot of really terrible feelings that don't have an outlet" ppl are like "yes, true" and then if you're like "it's far easier and safer to vent that frustration and fear on accessible members of your own community than it is to try to vent it on the people who are actually in power" they would be like "yes, true" and if you said "it feels better to justify venting that frustration and fear and anger if you can frame it in head as very important and righteous, rather than admitting that it's a coping mechanism being utilized by a fallible human being undergoing very difficult circumstances" they'd say "yes that's also true"

but if you're like "this is relevant to your own current behavior" with the implication that the intracommunity thing they're currently big mad about is actually not as important and righteous as they're casting it in their head, it's like "no no. not MY behavior. mine is rational and I am correct. the issue I am fighting with other queer people about like rats in a sack IS actually the most important issue to be addressing right now"

and like

this is stuff I have to constantly watch out for in my own behavior! it is absolutely absolutely a thing, and absolutely something we ALL deal with and are capable of engaging in. it's ramped up in intensity the last year or two and I don't think that is a coincidence. I wish we were more capable of this level of analysis of this stuff without getting defensive.

and like, again, it isn't like it's evil. I don't think it's GOOD to do, but as I said, it's the completely understandable behavior of a human being under considerable stress. we need to cut ourselves a break in order to be able to be honest about what we are doing sometimes.

lizardsfromspace

Out of control Edwardian youths refuse to clap at production of Peter Pan, force distraught J.M Barrie to pull out rarely seen "Tinkerbell Fucking Dies" ending

julianova44

You probably know this but shitpost ruining fun fact for anybody who doesn’t:

When the play first was performed, JM Barrie et al were so concerned this might happen that they instructed the orchestra to drop their instruments and clap at this point, just in case

lizardsfromspace

I did not know this and I'm grateful for being informed

sisaloofafump

Peter Pan edited by Anne Hiebert Alton (2011)

(sorry to interrupt joke post but) this is true!

Children not clapping did happen too, (and some were even expected to have hissed, which was later written into the 1928 playscript and 1911 novel). But my all time favourite anecdote about it is from Pauline Chase (who played Peter)'s intro to Peter Pan's Post Bag 1909:

Children love to clap their hands at the play because then they feel that they are really part of it, and you can see them holding their hands poised ready to seize an opportunity. Their great chance is when I ask them to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, and so save Tink's life. But they are very wrathful if any one claps who has the reputation of being a cynic, and once there was quite an uproar in the front row of the dress circle because of a girl who clapped. Those about her pulled down her arms angrily. "How dare you clap," they cried, "when you know you don't believe in fairies!" There was one dreadfully hard-hearted little boy who came to the theatre not to clap. That was his object for coming, and he came round "behind" to tell me so in the middle of the play. His teeth were firm set. "I won't clap," he said doggedly; "I'm not going to clap." And when the time came he didn't clap; above the clapping of all the others I could hear him shouting from a box, "Peter, I'm not clapping."

(Tink was revived each time anyway)

softieskywalker

i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.

david-talks-sw

I have been looking for this post for years after I came across it and it’s finally here and I need to reblog this because it is absolutely and entirely accurate.

comebackali

#as I always say: lucas was making a samurai film and a ww2 flying ace film and a western film and adding laser swords#because he fundamentally LIKED samurai films and dambusters films and westerns and 40’s adventure serials#but disney are making a ‘star wars film’ and adding nothing because it already had laser swords and they have nothing else to say#xerox of a xerox baybeeeee (via harrietvane)

vexwerewolf

As I get older, the entire moral arc of Return of the Jedi irks me more and more, even without getting to see Anakin's actual atrocities in the prequels or the fact that his act of defiance barely even mattered in the sequels.

I remember an Expanded Universe comic set immediately after RotJ where Leia tells Luke words to the effect of "Vader literally had me tortured and blew up my homeworld. What, am I supposed to feel kinship with him just because I discovered he's my dad yesterday?"

The important thing that happens in Return of the Jedi is that the Emperor dies and the planet-killing superweapon gets blown up. Vader spent the last two hours of his life doing something good after 25 years of genocide, mass murder and torture, and even then, it was partly out of vengeful hatred. Vader fucking hated Palpatine for a quarter century and never had the spine to do anything about it. It was only after his own son was being tortured to death in front of him that he chose to act - and he'd cut off the kid's hand like two years before that! That's not a fucking redemption arc.

Darth Vader the fucking child-killing planet-murderer gets to stand there with Yoda and Obi-Wan as a Force Ghost, give me a fucking break.

vexwerewolf

"My father's name was Bail Organa, actually."

jukashi

I have a whole other post I did about the original Star Wars trilogy that is relevant to this, but I'll try condense it:

So one, yes, absolutely it is entirely correct to take issue with Darth Vader's apparent forgiveness by the Force, there is no need for Leia to accept him as her father or to feel anything for him besides hate and contempt, redemption takes more than turning back for a couple of hours and then getting out of culpability by dying, all fair.

That said: the original trilogy is Luke Skywalker's story and the story of Luke Skywalker, on a meta level, is about being a young adult in the 60s and 70s who did not experience WWII or the depths of fascism personally, but who grew up with gaping familial wounds - family members who you never knew but who older people refer to or talk around, people they compare you to, figures who other children had in their lives but you didn't. Someone who as a child was given fantasies of heroes fighting daring battles, who was told it was all about nationhood and fighting for your people and the course of civilization, someone who internalized those principles as guiding lights for their own morality and who they want to be... and THEN finding out when you become an adult, and are permitted to know about the horrors, that it is not just honor and glory in your heritage, that you, 70s white boy, may have evil and darkness and the corruption of all your values as a potential to fall into just as your father did, the temptation to hate and cruelty and domination and atrocity. And the absences in your family are maybe not just because of death, of noble sacrifice, but perhaps instead because those people who shared your blood became monsters, severed from their family because of their terrible actions, and still live as awful hateful versions of themselves, enslaved to evil, and that could be you.

And what do you do with that? Will you strike your father down with all of your hatred, when the thing that corrupted him by his hate for its own ends is sitting there grinning and laughing, waiting to do the same to you? Is violence the answer against that creature, infinitely better at taking advantage from violence than you are? Or will you just die - and even just walking away here means death, sooner or later - and let the evil persist?

Or will you, privileged young person with ideals and hopes, with a family member who has done terrible unforgivable things but who still holds affection for you, make use of that affection to tempt them to just turn their back on that evil for a moment, the thing it will never expect from the person it made its slave for longer than you've been alive? Neither you nor he can pay back the crimes of those years, but perhaps you can stop the evil, here and now, from going on.

So you do that. And what is your reward? Is it appropriate for Luke, whose whole story has been about becoming the ideal he grew up admiring and defeating the evil that ideal had the potential to become, both halves of it embodied in the being of his father, to come back to his friends and then have the universe say to him 'your father was unredeemable, and had nothing good enough in him to deserve peace in death'? Or to say there was a darkness lifted from him, and a light restored?

The whole purpose of Darth Vader in the story of the original trilogy is to represent who Luke could be, and through Luke, the audience. He wasn't really supposed to have a character arc of his own, his redemption isn't for his own sake, the story isn't about him - or wasn't meant to be originally, in any case. How you depict the fate of Darth Vader is something that sends a very strong message, and there's a reason why it was chosen as the final message of the original movies, in the context of the world in which those movies were made and who they were intended to be speaking to. If you change that, you change the message. Which you can do! And you can take issue with the original message! But like, there was a message, that was chosen purposefully, and you have to lose the original message to add a new one.

tallon-underworld

This rebuttal is really good, but I actually think it also works as the culmination of Anakin/Vader’s arc… when you understand the message ISN’T “one good deed absolves years of atrocities”: It’s that it’s never too late to do the right thing, and be a better person.

It doesn’t mean people will forgive you - hell no. The things Vader did were unforgivable, and he knew that. But because of that, he believed the only path left was to keep committing atrocities, to wallow in self-hatred and anger for decades and take it out on the galaxy. He says it himself: “It’s too late for me, son”.

But what Luke shows Vader is that we ALWAYS have a choice: To be a better person, and to choose compassion. Anakin doesn’t kill the Emperor out of hatred, or even because he thinks it’ll make up for anything he did: He knows nothing ever will. He chooses to save Luke, and break the cycle of violence because it’s the right, kind thing to do.

Vader/Anakin isn’t fully redeemed by the end of Return of the Jedi: He simply takes his first step back into the light. Obi-Wan and Yoda chose to give him that second chance, but that was their decision to make. The people you hurt are by NO means obligated to forgive you - but you should still strive to be better regardless.

And I think that’s the message of Anakin’s sacrifice: No matter what we’ve done, we always have a choice to break the cycle and be better, with no expectation of forgiveness.

elucubrare

i was on the way to the movies & i saw an old guy with a piece of wood over his shoulders. it was huge -- a pole several feet long with a kind of wide fan at the end of it. and i said "what the hell is that?" and he looked at me and had this kind of ear to ear grin, and he said "what do you mean 'what the hell is that'?" and he sat back on his heels, still with that big smile like the sun spilling from the underside of a cloud and waited for me to answer and i said "i mean i don't know why you're walking around with that thing, whatever it is." and he laughed and put down his pole and kinda clapped me on the shoulder. "can i get you a drink?" he said. and i said "no, the show's in ten minutes," and he said "oh? what are you seeing?" and i said "christopher nolan's odyssey, i'm pretty excited," and he sighed and picked up his oar and kept walking.

ruthvsreality

I don’t get the joke :( someone help me

elucubrare

in some versions of the Odysseus legend, Odysseus leaves Ithaca and is supposed to wander the world carrying a ship's oar until he finds a place where no one knows what it is. here, he encounters someone who doesn't recognize it, but since the narrator is going to see a movie version of the Odyssey, that anonymity can't last & he has to keep wandering.

thevulturesquadron

halo-lll-odst

i think more robots should be disabled actually. robots whose bodies keep falling apart and need much more consistent repairs. robots whose bodily upkeep is hard and laborious and exhausting. robots who physically cant do things without help from another individual. robots who are imperfect and dont fit the bill of a flawless machine. i want more of this waiter please bring me more disabled robots

ferrous-princess

Ok, so, a realistically depicted robot, in my opinion, would HAVE to be disabled. Anyone with any robotic/mechanical parts could tell you that.

So, backing up, many people say that they suddenly "feel their age" around 30 because their body, if they keep using it like they're 20, will stop healing faster than they can hurt it. Many chronically ill folks deal with this slowed recovery starting at a much earlier age, and more dramatically. When we die of 'old age' that's in large part due to your healing factor being slowed down so much, the act of being alive wears you down faster than your body can heal.

Robots can not heal.

Sure, they can have parts replaced, but all mechanical parts are installed with an expected number of uses and hours of operation, not even accounting for any traumatic damage.

These legs are rated for three years of use, or 20,000 miles of walking. I'm one year and 3,000 miles over, and can no longer hit my top speed, and tend to veer left if I'm not careful.

These eyes were supposed to be good for 5 years, but the bright lights of the desert and the frequent sand storm mean that after two years in, some of the sensors are burnt out, and the lenses are scratched and difficult to replace, and the same thing is just going to happen to the next pair, so is it really worth it?

My oil tank is cracked, and until I get a new one, I need to drink a new bottle every morning instead of every two months, and I can't bend over forward without spilling some.

This heart has 3 million beats in it. At 60 bpm, that will last me over 11 years. At 120 bpm, it won't last six, until I need a new one.

My CPU was made to last for 5 years with average use. At 3 years, I can think at 65% of the speed I started with. How slow do I have to be before it's worth it to replace that? Every robot is built dying in a way that a healthy able bodied person cannot fully understand. The idea that every part of your body is ticking down, that taking a rest day only delays the inevitable, that once something is broken, it stays that way until you can get it fixed.

Sure, some cars are brand new, owned by someone with a garage and nearly infinite money to pour into upkeep. Some of them are old beaters that are just trying their best to get their 20-something owners to class and back, desperately hoping that it can hold its timing belt together until they can afford to replace it, but please drive slow until then?

Do you think that old beater car might also be worried about the day it becomes cheaper to replace than maintain? That "being bale to afford it" might refer to a new car, not a new belt?

Who among us know the fear that me might be easier to replace than to maintain?

marithlizard

Yes, this makes perfect sense. And robots would also share a fear that I think many disabled humans live with - what happens when the company that makes the technology keeping you functional goes out of business? Or decides to stop making the parts you need because it's not profitable enough?

trentcrimminallybeautiful

🤨

trentcrimminallybeautiful

trent crimm & colin hughes + dancing at PRIK

↳ bonus:

turquoisedata

How very depressing that Neil Gaiman had trended not even a tiny bit for demonstrating what a fucking horrific person he is.

As a reminder, he's suing Caroline Wallner, one of his accusers, for breaking her NDA. Not for libel. He's saying she shouldn't have told anyone about it, not that she lied.

The author says Wallner broke her NDA by sharing her story with the media, including with New York Magazine.

He doesn't need the money. He's risking the Streisand effect. He is punishing Caroline, he's trying to intimidate other victims who have signed NDAs to scare them into continued silence.

He is no friend to women, to the LGBTQIA+ community, to anyone quite frankly unless he thinks they are of value to him.

Share the story. Put it on Facebook and bluesky and whatever else you're on. Make it clear what a horrifying person he is. Tell your friends. He's paying Edendale a fortune to try and cover this up. Make this hard for him. Make it cost him money.

a-lamppost-in-winter

I know the entire JJC thing with forgiveness and chess in the last episode is emotional and touching, but I can't look pass how John, who had been held captive for weeks, just sat in his dirty clothes and started a chess game. My guy, you need to be sitting in a bath, not across the chess board

jamiesfootball

Huge shout out to all the people who read fics. Who actually take the time out of their busy days to open a fic and read it

Before I started writing in earnest, I did not understand how much writing was going to eat into my fic reading time. We joke about having too many tabs open, but I have a different problem: the amount of tabs I have open on new fics is way smaller than it used to be. My ao3 wrapped would be a sad affair. Unless I’ve subscribed to an author or come across something on my dash, I basically don’t see it

Which has really driven home for me how much fandom cannot just be creators. You have to have people who want to read fic and meta discussions and joke posts. You have to have people who want to look at art and gifs. It has to be mutual.

Community thrives on flow. You have to have that movement of people sharing things with each other for a community to exist

Thank you fic readers. You keep things flowing

thegoldenhoof

Considering the comments I read that John has a satisfactory ending I was thinking what could be the worst end that from there view could be excused/imagined as satisfying (my lack of faith is loud)

So here is me putting the cursed thought out there.

- John dying to save Jamie in some dramatic intentionally self sacrificial way so that Jamie can finally acknowledge that what John felt for him was love .

ramblingruminations

My expectations were pretty low.. and yet the show managed to dig deeper to find the bottom

#john grey #outlander

beefsteakclub

8x9 spoilers

Claire: "Tell me you don't love that man and I'll never say his name again."

Jamie : "Dammit woman." You got me there. Immediately goes to talk to John.

Me: screaming crying throwing up

I love Claire so much!!!!!

visit-ba-sing-se

I am running a marathon with a twisted ankle and it hurts but some pain is normal, right? Everyone says it's supposed to be hard. It is a marathon after all. I am running a marathon with a twisted ankle but honestly it could be worse, right? I heard someone once finished with a broken leg. The ankle is nothing compared to that. I am running a marathon with a twisted ankle but you can get used to pain, right? The body can endure almost anything. The problem is always the mind. I am running a marathon with a twisted ankle but I made it this far, that means I can keep going, right? Everyone says it's supposed to be hard. It is a marathon after all.

cheesenames

also idk if it's a generational gap or a more general shift but i feel like people used to frame it as "i'm in x fandom and my otp is [ship name]" and now i see a lot more "i'm in [ship name] fandom"

cheesenames

adding @grumfy 's expert insights

cheesenames

#theres something in there that when you have people just in “ship”fandom these ships get so isolated and myopic#that they lose all distinction...the ideal breeding ground for migratory slash fandom#like in most media the relationship to other characters and the settings is. important. to whatever the ship is#but if youre just like “im in here with the ship!” it doesnt really matter#plug in fanfic trope number 3 and youre good

interesting points from @ireallyamabear too

fangirlsovertoomanythings

The way that most of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories’ most horrible villains are rich dudes that are abusive to women, in a time such as the 1880’s, compels me.

gardnerhill

There’s a whole subset of Sherlock Holmes stories that could be labeled Asshole Guys Try to Control Women’s Money.

three--rings

Yup, there’s a huge number of times where Sherlock Holmes is the ONLY person to take a young woman’s complaint or worry seriously and finds out someone is up to some serious evil. Holmes also shows a lot of compassion and empathy with the victims over and over again. (This is why I find “Secretly a woman” or “Trans” Holmes headcanons much more convincing than “sociopath” Holmes.)

waterhobbit

I am never going to shut up about how much I specifically love The Adventure of The Copper Beeches because it is literally Sherlock Holmes listening to a young lady he does not know except as a potential client, agreeing with her that a potential job she has interviewed for that she thinks is SUPER SKETCHY is, indeed, sketchy as fuck and when she says she’s probably gonna take the job anyways because the money is good and she needs it going “OKAY I GUESS but for the love of god please write to us so we know you’re okay we will literally drop everything and jump on a train if you want us to”.

The job turns out to indeed be sketchy as fuck, she writes to them, Holmes and Watson drop everything and jump on a train when she asks them to. I read this story for the first time when I was twelve and it made a HUGE impression.

three--rings

This is also the basis for a lot of speculation about Holmes’ family life. The idea that he has been a victim of abuse, or his mother was abused (or even murdered by his father.) There’s definitely SOMETHING that makes him very aware of how dangerous isolated families can be, and the dark things that can happen behind closed doors. Plus, of course, the motivation to devote himself to stopping crime. And yes, so much of it is of the personal type.

volkswagonblues

dude see this is one aspect of the original books i NEVER understand why modern remakes (cough cough) don’t go all in on. Like, in the 21th c we HAVE all the dumb forensic shit that made Victorian Holmes stand out, but we STILL DON’T HAVE uh….you know, compassion for women and minorities, or the willingness to believe them, adequate community support for domestic violence or hate crimes, etc. etc. which you’d think is exactly where a renegade consulting detective would come in handy. A good modern day Sherlock Holmes remake, instead of trying to convince us that Holmes is some super genius for being better than fingerprint analysis or whatever, could have him just be…a good person who helps out people the police can’t and won’t help. There you go. That’s how to write a relevant modern Holmes.

fahbee

One thing that annoys me is how much the BBC version of Sherlock (and the fandom around it) focus on police cases or cold cases. In the stories, Holmes’ bread and butter cases had fuck-all to do with the police and in a few stories, he actively works around/against them, or outright lies to them. Of the many, many things I wish that show had done differently, this is one is particularly obnoxious since it’s such a gimme.

tiger-in-the-flightdeck

There were very few actual murder cases in the Canon, and Holmes handled them either one of two ways:

Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)

Option two: The victim was murdered to protect someone that the victim was abusing, or for vengeance, see Boscombe Valley, Devil’s Foot, Abbey Grange. Conclusion, Oops, I don’t know who the killer is, I am suddenly incompetent, oh look a pheasant.

faejilly

#my favorite murder in holmes canon#is when they straight up witness a lady murder her blackmailer#do nothing except destroy his other blackmail material#and then straight up lie to lestrade about it#sherlock holmes#more of this in modern adaptations pls (via @cactusspatz )

muffinworry

Let’s not forget the time Holmes helps a young woman who’s being catfished by her own stepfather to steal her inheritance, and when the villain sneers that the law can’t touch him, Holmes grabs a horsewhip out of sheerest chivalry.

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