Reblogged
Björk
Reblogged crynwr-drwg
if ur gonna be pressed into service by your liege lord, u want to be the swiftest rider. get good at horses, because they're always sending the swiftest rider off to do some other shit that is, crucially, away from the battlefield. I'm telling u. when ur forces are outnumbered and the enemy legions show up with some unexpected advantage, someone in command is gonna say, "send the swiftest rider to alert the queen!!!" that's u. u want to be that guy
Reblogged cymraegandconfused
Credits: Moakley
Source: reddit.com
Reblogged justjustbeth
Okay, here’s an interesting one.
Before seeing your content, I’d basically only ever heard the term “power fantasy” used as a derogatory term to describe over-the-top protagonists who are strong and cool, but also boringly devoid of personality so the audience can project onto them. But then some of your League videos talked about skins letting characters like Gragas “inhabit more interesting power fantasies.”
So… when are power fantasies a good thing? The best I’ve got is that it only works in interactive media like video games so that the audience can more directly engage with the fantasy (essentially: Dante from DMC works, Kirito from SAO does not)
I mean, power fantasies are just endemic to storytelling as a whole. There isn't really a hard "this is when they're good, this is when they're bad," they are core to several genres of media and can't be extracted from them. Most video games are power fantasies, just by nature of their mechanics.
Power fantasy isn't a genre (usually), it is just a tool, same as any other trope or convention. It is a means to engage the audience with a story.
An RPG where you level up and become stronger to defeat more difficult enemies? That's a power fantasy. Undertale where you get the best ending by finding some way to spare absolutely every monster and end every fight mercifully? Power fantasy. The Tomb Raider reboot games that take an almost sadistic glee in putting Lara Croft through absolute hell both physically and emotionally? Those are power fantasies about overcoming and surviving those impossible challenges.
They're not just power fantasies, they have lots of other stuff going on, but power fantasy is an inherent part of them. Romance stories also often include power fantasies, specifically about the power of love. "He's broody, dark and broken, but my love can fix him" is a power fantasy, for example, as is "an unjust society keeps us apart, but we will defy everything to be together!"
Even being The Final Girl who beats the horror monster and walks away at the end of the movie can be a power fantasy, if a rather grim one.
If there is a general case where power fantasies become "bad," I think it is when the power fantasy is all there is, and it subsumes all other parts of the story. Shonen manga often runs into this as they get longer, and the power system and escalating battles against ever more powerful foes become the overriding driving force of the story, to the exclusion of everything else. Shaman King comes to mind for me as a particularly egregious example, or Bleach.
Isekai is also riven with this. You can't walk two steps these days without tripping on a "TRANSPORTED TO ANOTHER WORLD WITH MY SUPER OP CHEAT SKILL" premise, where the entire purpose of the story is simply to act out unchallenged wish fulfilment with no friction or tension or character development. Those stories get boring very very fast... unless of course the power fantasy being played out is your specific power fantasy. Yes, OP protagonists winning everything with no challenge is boring, but this OP protagonist is building a sapphic cottagecore witch polycule with an ever-expanding harem of emotionally damaged lesbians, so... y'know. Maybe I'll give it a pass.
It's generally less interesting and useful to observe THAT something is a power fantasy, than it is to observe WHAT KIND of power is being fantasized about. Zombie apocalypse stories are often power fantasies, for example, but there's a pretty noticeable difference between stories where the power fantasy is banding together and building a life with a found family in horrible circumstances, stealing joy from the end of the world in spite of everything... and stories where the zombie apocalypse is an excuse to enact paranoid right-wing prepper fantasies where the hero protects their property (home, land and women) against the verminous hordes of the monstrous Other, and is reified and uplifted by the employment of brutal violence.
Reblogged crynwr-drwg
someone on twitter is trying to claim that use of an em-dash is an indication of AI-generated writing because it’s “relatively rare” for actual humans to use it. skill issue
I concur.
Twitter theory about em dashes usage grossly untrue: the average author uses an excessive abundance of em dashes.
Scarcity is manufactured by editors who are forced to confiscate em dash usage because that run on sentence now requires its own zip code and they are begging you to use any other form of punctuation.
That, and Word and LibreOffice Writer both automatically replace dashes with em dashes. (Google Docs, AO3, and the Tumblr post editor don't appear to.)
Reblogged akindplace
Every steps counts. No matter how small it may seem. Please don't discredit the progress you've made.
Reblogged dessa-banks
PETER CAPALDI as ANGUS FLINT the lair of the white worm (1988), dir. ken russell.
...... oh my God, that's Peter Capaldi.
Reblogged cymraegandconfused
when i was a kid i got a 90% on my kindergarten "what are your favorite things?" test because for the question "what is your favorite animal?" i wrote down "puma" and it got marked wrong because my teacher said a puma isnt even an animal its a kind of shoe
when i was in third grade we were studying fractions on the floor and i went up to solve a fraction at the board and after i solved it my teacher was like "HOW COULD YOU EVER DO THAT. GO SIT AT YOUR DESK." and i was like. what did i do. i didnt do anything. and she was like "YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID." so i had to go sit at my desk with my head down for an hour straight because she made me stay in for recess too. i asked her what she thought i did the next day and she was like what? i dont remember making you do that
in my senior year government class my history teacher was asking on what basis is the united states government legally allowed to discriminate. and i raised my hand and said the united states government discriminates in law based on sex. and my teacher laughed and he said "isnt that such a classic teenage boy thing. always thinking about sex." and then he was like "the united states government discriminates based on gender." the textbook we were reading from used the term sex.
this thread has been "times teachers thought they were smarter than me but they were stupid and pissed me off" thank you
Reblogged crynwr-drwg
why is france called the hexagon when its abundantly clear that it’s a pentagon
aratakichiban
what
mmm i guess i see it i was definitely seeing 1 and 2 as one side plus the left and right sides slope out more
aratakichiban
yeah tbh i see how you can see 1 and 2 as one side
actually its a decagon
careful apollo might hear you
ok but if we r being really pedantic it’s a triacontakaipentagon (35 sides)
beingcuteismything
Tumblr accidentally rediscovers the coastline paradox
Reblogged becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys
not to be a killjoy but it's still crazy to me that it's considered mean to be like "maybe you should read / play / watch the source material before creating fanworks and diving into the fandom" bc every time i see somebody going "i havent played disco elysium or know anything about it tbh but uwu here's harry and kim kissing" idk maybe you should engage with it. maybe you should play the anti-capitalist surrealist game where you investigate the murder of a mercenary who led the gang rape of a foreign girl and process that for a bit? and then you can do cutesy mlm or whatever idc. but like at the absolute bare minimum you should understand what the source material involves otherwise we get the phenomenon of people joining a dragon age server and wanting content warnings for like, mage racism. like it's fine to ship and transform the genre into whatever but if you arent comfortable with discussions of the actual source content itself then maybe the fandom isnt for you and a different one is. peace and love.
actual peace and love would involve letting anyone who wants to do things do them, without judgment.
I don't think there is anything unreasonable about the idea that if someone isn't comfortable with actual discussions of the source material they should probably not insert themselves into the fandom. And I struggle to see how this has anything to do with ableism as per your tags.
Well, when you demand a certain amount of effort to be input before you consider someone's creative work valid, that's ableist.
The issue at hand isn't one of the validity of transformative works (and I agree with you there that art doesn't derive meaning or validity from the amount of "effort" poured into it) but of fandom social dynamics and the very simple fact that people involved in a fandom will find people who have not engaged with the source material yet insist on inserting themselves into the fandom annoying. This user articulated it well imo and I'm tired right now:
Unfortunately it's still gatekeeping and still ableist.
I genuinely think it's neither of those things.
i show up to the Planes Enjoyer Convention to talk about how pretty planes are. to my shock i learn planes fly which is awful because i'm scared of heights.
despite me being very passionate, nobody wants to hear about my novel where i imagine planes as types of burrowing creatures. instead people tell me i don't seem very interested in planes or the Planes Enjoyer Convention. this is very mean and judgemental.
eventually i strike up a conversation with someone and they reveal that planes are sometimes used for wars, and they actually like historical "war planes". my heart sinks.
they seem surprised and suggest that i read up about planes. that's just unacceptable. i call them an ableist gatekeeper and protest as i mime being forcibly escorted out of the convention by the security guards i made up in my head.
We seem to be talking about two different phenomena here:
"Person who likes the designs but doesn't know the source material produces a work that betrays their lack of knowledge of the source material."
"Person who likes the designs but doesn't now the source material complains when people talk about the source material."
Reblogged justjustbeth
None of this is derogatory btw I actually love this dynamic for us. Keep up the good work everybody 👍
it's the other way around in 40k in my experience
Seconded. In 40K fandom, there seems to be an inverse relationship between "knows the lore" and "hung up on the lore".
Fun Story to Share.
I got my (now 18-year-old) daughter into Ao3 back in 2021. I taught her she should always comment - even if the fic looks old or abandoned or whatever. She did.
Well - she got this email this morning:
The fic was written in 2014 and essentially abandoned.
Bethy read and reviewed in 2021 (and was actually the only person who had commented at all).
Today in 2025 - the final chapter was posted by the author and this was her reply to Bethy’s comment.
———
Never question whether a fic is too old to comment on.
Got tagged by @llyfrenfys !
Last Song: "Up Where We Belong", Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes
Fave Colour: I'm always torn between black and purple, with red as a close third.
Last Book: "Arrows of the Queen", Mercedes Lackey
Last Movie: "Xanadu" (1980)
Last Show: "Midsomer Murders"
Sweet/Spicy/Savoury: Savoury with some sweet? Only occasionaly spicy, for punctuation.
Relationship Status: Partnered!
Last Things I Googled: fnord
Current Obsession: I've been on a big Magical Girls kick lately
Looking Forward To: My trip to Wales in like... a week.
tagging (only if you feel like doing this) @unfuckmyhead, @harukami, and anyone else who fancies a go
Reblogged dessa-banks
I was trying to find out if Kermit was eligible to be pope and I found a blog that says he's the perfect example of a catholic priest
What do you expect? He's a man of the cloth
Why were you trying to find out if Kermit was eligible to be a catholic priest ?
Usual reasons