Opinion Freedom

Say what you want and fear not the consequences.

[gasterofficial]

[writing-prompt-s]

A demon has cursed you with the inability to have children or form a family, and as soon as you learn of this you went to tell the witch who you promised your firstborn child, as this clearly will prevent you from fulfilling your side of the deal.

[mothnem]

The witch just nods and calls her lawyer Fae. Even demons need to learn to not infringe on deals.

[madeofmanyfandoms]

Lawer fae: "After reviewing all of the documentation, I'm happy to inform you that there is a very simple solution!" 😀

Witch: And that is?

Lawer fae: While we can't remove the curse ourselves, your deal predates it by a significant margin. And since the curse interferes with the deal maker's ability to fulfill their end of the agreement through no fault of their own, you would be well within your rights to demand that the Demon either remove the curse or pay the price instead!

[anoonzee]

Coming up next on "UNSEELIE COURT"...

[nobodyfamousposts]

I think we need a show like this. Either serious court drama or Ace Attorney shenanigans showcasing civil cases involving magical or supernatural beings and the deals or curses they make.

[fancyfade]

feels like how bruce being a shit parent differs when it comes to his various kids is that him being abusive to dick, jason and tim is catgeorized as dick, jason and tim struggling to deal with their parent figure being shitty but bruce being horrible to damian is categorized as bruce struggling to bond with his son and almost never as damian struggling to deal with his parent being shitty to him.

for an example when bruce tells damian alfred's death is his fault, it's bruce's struggle with grieving and blaming his kid and saying the wrong thing at the forefront, not damian's devastation and self-blame at hearing that. when damian walks out at the funeral after he gets blamed again and bruce does not defend him or even say anything, it's bruce's grief over alfred that is rendering him unable to react that is centred, not the kid leaving in tears even as babs yells at bruce for not saying anything.

it's not that dick, jason and tim's perspectives always get centred in comics where bruce is displaying such behaviour but that they at least get that in their own comics where their perspectives get centred and they are allowed introspection or mental monologues. their comics where bruce is written to be an asshole just to create angst for them (dixon's nw, rhato, can't really think of an example for tim in regards to bruce atm but the sentiment stands) at least get to exist. with damian this rarely happens in comics even where he is centred. this is even more blatant in the fandom.

Yeah it's like... I feel like Dick is allowed to get justifiedly angry at Bruce a lot more than Damian without being demonized for it. Even when Bruce isn't being abusive but is being kind of a loser.

Jaosn has a bunch of angst in rhato i can't bring myself to care about b/c it's written terribly and by scott lobdell

WRT Tim I don't think Bruce is generally portrayed as consistently abusive to Tim. Like there was that stupid Tom King plot point I've heard of but haven't read* but that's all that's popping up.

Overall its frustrating b/c just... the way fraction is writing Damian is so much like he has to apologize for existing, for being 'a hard kid' which. is a terrible message to send and also doesn't really fit damian (he wouldn't be apologetic, he might angst about it but he reacts by withdrawing or in ways that are unpalatable to whoever he wants the approval of often). and it's interesting b/c you go back to 2009 era batfam and this is present there as well, just with less angst about it... like everyone acts like it's hard to put up with damian, like he's just a kid you deal with, more focus on how he annoys the adult characters than how he feels.

I cannot remember if I was going anywhere with this anon... but anyway! thank you for sharing the observations!

*Bruce communicating in punch-code

[sinoffalsejudgement]

Yeah, really sucks how dick (and technically steph but they'll never acknowledge it to it's fullest) is the only one right now who has somewhat in character whump material from batman, and that's from decades ago.

Jason fans only have badly written or out of character bruce to utilize and its both from poorly written events or moments. rhato, in THAT scene (rooftop confrontation) that even they acknowledge is so ridiculously ooc, even for bad dad bruce. and the fear chip from Gotham war, which EVERYONE HATED, storywise and plot device wise, cause they did nothing with it, and it's so disproportionately punishing to him in comparison that people naturally felt the tim favoritism from a mile away.

Tim fans have to make up their bruce whump material cause it doesn't really exist in Canon. Most whump is stuff taken out of the necessary context or just making him more pathetic than he should be. I think there's like a couple minor scenes that could count, but then they have the narrative and him justify it as needed for the mission and all part of the plan anyway. So not whump if he never breaks. RR2009 don't really count since a lot of it is self inflicted, which is just general whump. Not bruce whump.

Damian should have a lot of whump material right now, but a good chunk of it is constantly being excused by the narrative and the fans or is being outright ignored for less interesting plot lines. Even more sad is it's often fans who are only just learning about the character, are misinformed/only base it on the new52 movies/bad fandom simplification, and don't know to look and research deeper to see where the potential is.

Almost all of the bats have a ton of story material that's just, not being used. Everyone of the above characters, besides dick obviously, could have seriously interesting bruce conflicts right now, but they are never utilized. It sucks.

[fancyfade]

I'll be honest if the in character whump is Devin graysons nightwing... that was not in character it was so insanely ooc. I know it's popular among dick fans for whump but that doesn't make it good.

(Also like dick doesnt need Bruce whump. He's fine as an independent adult vigilante who's got his own problems that aren't daddy issues)

I'll confess lots of fandom whump also seems kind of... bad to me. Like yeah damian has been treated unfairly by the narrative and Bruce but I don't want to see him have a conventional fandom crying jag and being comforted by some boring older brother figure. Hes going to react how he does in canon.

I didnt realize the ask would become whump when I answered it bc honestly like. Child neglect and unsatisfying narratives do not strike me as whump, ooc stuff like Devin graysons nightwing and tim drake poor little meow meow fics is what I think of when I hear whump. It seems like you're using whump to mean angst about Bruce being an ashole to them and while I want fandom and canon to be consistent in how characters are treated i don't want damian to turn into a conventional sad fandom character who's constantly being oppressed by everyone around him. I guess me mentioning the batfam treating him like an inconvenience could have read as that, but like. Jeez even in an it sucks for damian thing I also don't think hes going to like have a crisis about it, its just an unfair thing that happened at a time when everyone was going thru it

[sinoffalsejudgement]

Sorry, should have been more specific. I used whump moreso as an umbrella term for general canon angst.

But to clarify, I'm talking about at least unique conflicts that stem from their relationship with bruce/batman. Like, when I say dick's drama. I was talking about like when he first became nw or when he and bruce are initially mourning jason. Like conflicts that would naturally occur because of this progressive sequence of events.

It's why tower of babel is probably one of my favorite stories and why I'm so pissed everyone took the wrong lesson from it. Jason from utrh as a meta commentary and a naturally frustrated son who was promised violence from his father at one point and wasn't given it. That's a natural conflict to come from Jason's resurrection, just done with a lot more drama and theatrical energy.

I feel like I'm stumbling through my thoughts right now, sorry.

[fancyfade]

feels like how bruce being a shit parent differs when it comes to his various kids is that him being abusive to dick, jason and tim is catgeorized as dick, jason and tim struggling to deal with their parent figure being shitty but bruce being horrible to damian is categorized as bruce struggling to bond with his son and almost never as damian struggling to deal with his parent being shitty to him.

for an example when bruce tells damian alfred's death is his fault, it's bruce's struggle with grieving and blaming his kid and saying the wrong thing at the forefront, not damian's devastation and self-blame at hearing that. when damian walks out at the funeral after he gets blamed again and bruce does not defend him or even say anything, it's bruce's grief over alfred that is rendering him unable to react that is centred, not the kid leaving in tears even as babs yells at bruce for not saying anything.

it's not that dick, jason and tim's perspectives always get centred in comics where bruce is displaying such behaviour but that they at least get that in their own comics where their perspectives get centred and they are allowed introspection or mental monologues. their comics where bruce is written to be an asshole just to create angst for them (dixon's nw, rhato, can't really think of an example for tim in regards to bruce atm but the sentiment stands) at least get to exist. with damian this rarely happens in comics even where he is centred. this is even more blatant in the fandom.

Yeah it's like... I feel like Dick is allowed to get justifiedly angry at Bruce a lot more than Damian without being demonized for it. Even when Bruce isn't being abusive but is being kind of a loser.

Jaosn has a bunch of angst in rhato i can't bring myself to care about b/c it's written terribly and by scott lobdell

WRT Tim I don't think Bruce is generally portrayed as consistently abusive to Tim. Like there was that stupid Tom King plot point I've heard of but haven't read* but that's all that's popping up.

Overall its frustrating b/c just... the way fraction is writing Damian is so much like he has to apologize for existing, for being 'a hard kid' which. is a terrible message to send and also doesn't really fit damian (he wouldn't be apologetic, he might angst about it but he reacts by withdrawing or in ways that are unpalatable to whoever he wants the approval of often). and it's interesting b/c you go back to 2009 era batfam and this is present there as well, just with less angst about it... like everyone acts like it's hard to put up with damian, like he's just a kid you deal with, more focus on how he annoys the adult characters than how he feels.

I cannot remember if I was going anywhere with this anon... but anyway! thank you for sharing the observations!

*Bruce communicating in punch-code

[sinoffalsejudgement]

Yeah, really sucks how dick (and technically steph but they'll never acknowledge it to it's fullest) is the only one right now who has somewhat in character whump material from batman, and that's from decades ago.

Jason fans only have badly written or out of character bruce to utilize and its both from poorly written events or moments. rhato, in THAT scene (rooftop confrontation) that even they acknowledge is so ridiculously ooc, even for bad dad bruce. and the fear chip from Gotham war, which EVERYONE HATED, storywise and plot device wise, cause they did nothing with it, and it's so disproportionately punishing to him in comparison that people naturally felt the tim favoritism from a mile away.

Tim fans have to make up their bruce whump material cause it doesn't really exist in Canon. Most whump is stuff taken out of the necessary context or just making him more pathetic than he should be. I think there's like a couple minor scenes that could count, but then they have the narrative and him justify it as needed for the mission and all part of the plan anyway. So not whump if he never breaks. RR2009 don't really count since a lot of it is self inflicted, which is just general whump. Not bruce whump.

Damian should have a lot of whump material right now, but a good chunk of it is constantly being excused by the narrative and the fans or is being outright ignored for less interesting plot lines. Even more sad is it's often fans who are only just learning about the character, are misinformed/only base it on the new52 movies/bad fandom simplification, and don't know to look and research deeper to see where the potential is.

Almost all of the bats have a ton of story material that's just, not being used. Everyone of the above characters, besides dick obviously, could have seriously interesting bruce conflicts right now, but they are never utilized. It sucks.

[curlsandstems]

Have you ever seen a violinist going APESHIT?!

Be sure to check out IAmDSharp!

[thegreynightsky]

GO OFFF

[babydollbucky]

Ok so I’ve been playing for 18 years and i’m a string teacher. Can i just say how IMPORTANT it is for young kids to see a BLACK, MALE-PRESENTING PERSON playing, nae, SHREDDING on a violin? I’ve know maybe 5 black people who played stringed instruments throughout my schooling and teaching (predumably because i’m an upper middle class white woman). In districts where the population is predominantly black, funding is always low, so the instruments are crappy. Kids quit, or the program is dismantled. I’ve seen very few professional string players who are black.

Obviously there are black string players. We just don’t see them because they “don’t look like” string players.

This person is the real deal. They were clearly classically trained, and seems to have some fiddle training as well. How cool is that?

[lil-tumbles]

But also… RAD PLAYING MY DUDEEEE

[ladyofspoons]

this is the coolest guy alive actually

[creepymutelilbugger]

I think this might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life that involves a violin

[nocturnaltigerrevelation]

[bananatwinky]

I've waited years to draw this

[beardedmrbean]

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[animentality]

[wesavegotham]

Not comic related, but I'm so excited to see more of Laufey in that new God of War game. I always wished to see more of her after she started God of War 2018 being dead. And the losers whining about a middle aged looking woman being the protagonist can simply cry themselve to sleep.

[hacvek]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[olyia-stories]

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

[dragonpyre]

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

[serinos-kitt]

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

[dragonpyre]

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

[serinos-kitt]

So what is a rain shadow?

[lethalbutterfly]

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

[roach-works]

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

[beatrice-otter]

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

[whetstonefires]

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

[beatrice-otter]

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

[maryellencarter]

I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:

Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?

I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.

There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.

Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.

(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)

[sunflowergardens-world]

Amazing work by the LoTR fandom, as always.

[mysteryteacup]

This also serves as an excellent example of why worldbuilding needs - more than realism - to be cohesive and work with the themes of your story.

[sidsinning]

I honestly despise when people say "You know what? Screw the female lead, the two dudes should just get with each other!"- as the solution to a love triangle like that is not the progressive W you think it is

[sidsinning]

I'm not super into polycule shipping tbh but I'll take that any day over leaving behind the FL for some slop yaoi

She is what interests me in either of you

Like why are you even here if not for her story bro

Also revealing I usually dgaf about side couples in romances LMAO

[nobodyfamousposts]

It’s because the two guys involved have a more interesting dynamic. Through their infighting and jealousy, we tend to find more entertainment watching them interact and butt heads than we do in their interactions with the girl they’re fighting over. It’s more overt and obvious than the subtle hints and slow building romantic relationships either of them are building with her. There’s more attention given to each guy’s attempts at trying to “win” her and prove that they’re “better” for her than them actually just supporting her and showing how they would be equal partners in a long term relationship. This puts the focus on the guys and THEIR efforts a feelings over her and gives the often incorrect narrative that they’re trying more than she is and thus “deserve” more—whether the more in question is her as a trophy or just more than she can give.

This leads to a triple reasoning of 1) more dynamic, 2) more “deserving”, and 3) forbidden homosexual relationship to have the two guys leave the boring unworthy hetero female lead for each other just to subvert expectations.

That’s not to say that the resulting relationship between them would actually be healthy. Or last. Or even feasible. But people tend to choose to see sexual tension in anything—even or perhaps ESPECIALLY guys who clearly hate each other and would have a toxic or even abusive relationship if they DID get together.

[dogpuppy]

[squirrelly-13]

they got married btw

[visit-me-here-in-wonderland]

oh you’re not kidding

[warrior-of-storms]

oh also?? they gotta stop treating Stephanie like an inexperienced rookie. She's been around about as long as JPV and proven herself several times over, they cannot keep acting like she's incompetent. She's skilled, she's clever, she's smart, she carried a baby to term and lived with supervillains for months and has dedication and tenacity in spades. She's not some newbie crimefighter who doesn't know what she's doing and I'm going to blow them all up if they don't start treating her with the respect she deserves

[teathattast]

[drangel76]

WE FOUND MEXICO!!!!!

[teathattast]

[viralfrog]

[dragongirlbunny]

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]