We could have had it aaallllll- pet peeve fandoms

tfw you find all seven members of the mistmantle fandom at once and are amazed

 

I'm going to quote this here because otherwise I'd have to log into each one of my subaccounts and upvote this. I think it's fair to say that we can apply death of the author here.
(I completely agree with you on the part of "setting god free", that was my interpretation as well. The whole description of god as this frail thing held up as a puppet by this huge... organization, but he himself had very little power left is actually a very interesting spiritual interpretation, and the whole sigh of relief he breathes as he dissolves into dust and returns to the universe he's been separated from for so long -- God being dust, and not abhorred by it. Pullman, you had something really interesting going on there.

The things with puberty I sort of always glossed over because I never shipped Lyra and whatshisface red and because at that point in my life relationships were bluh, but yeah. That could've been handled way better.
Puberty is a time in which the brain changes a lot, and I've always sort of associated with how children are able to see Death in the Discworld series, because their brain doesn't filter him out. The ability to read the alethiometer is, in my mind, linked to lateral thinking, free-form-association, imagination, and thinking with symbols without being constricted by them and your 'knowledge' of the world. In that regard it makes sense that children would have less trouble reading the alethiometer and adults, especially curmudgeonly, crusty, late-1800's, know-it-alls, would have more trouble with it.
In the end, there's suggestion that Lyra regains at least part of her natural ability, and I kind of read that as the part where you grow up enough that you recognize you can still have fun and enjoy things, and that growing up doesn't mean growing old.

... i think i should take this over to either media analysis or to the golden compass thread. do we have a golden compass thread? i think we do...

 

recent red vs blue just said that the time travel arc was fake again, and i'm like... no... the part with the multiple wyomings near the end of season 5 was definitely real.

and church time-travelling, that was real as fuck too, and i have proof!

from season 1, episode 7

from season 3, episode 50

and as we see later in the series, f.i.l.s.s. was sheila's original name and what the director knew her as and what some versions of her are still called

so, church would have had to have time travelled and accidentally renamed her in order for her name to be sheila when caboose activated her. 'cause if he hadn't, her name would have still been f.i.l.s.s.

 

You just described me. Our gifted program made us read it in 7th grade and I was excite because my friends all said it was good but I was bored to tears.

 

Those books are gross in my opinion, but after all the rape and cannibalism and child abuse became so much background noise because they are that fucking pervasive, I hilariously finally lost my shit over the revelation that all Good Women prefer sweaters and leggings above all other clothes, because you have to be Evil to like jewellery and frills.

It's the Problem of Susan, new improved faux Satanist flavour!

 

Tolkien is so your mileage may vary it's ridiculous. Like you either are obsessed with the books and think that Tolkien saved your soul and showed you the truth of reality or you think he wrote boring bullshit and can't make it out of Bree because HOW MANY MORE SONGS ABOUT BATHING DO WE NEED TO HEAR.

 

reluctant agree rating

 

the more yall yell about tolkien the more im tempted to liveblog me reading it

(eta: it's quarter to 10pm and im not sure if correct grammar)

 

join me in this hell

Alternatively learn you can't stand his writing. EITHER OR.

 

As I have mentioned to you before, I had to read the Silmarillion for GM reasons years later, and I found that a little excessively faux-Christian, but very readable. I just can't stand him when he's going on about hobbits and their baths and meals and humility.

I am not fond of the trope that you have to be humble and small to really be good and there are just a lot of conflicts between my worldview and his, but what I really couldn't deal with was pages and pages of quotidian minutiae in which basically nothing happened.

 

That's exactly why I adore Tolkien. My favorite bits of the work tend to be things like the songs, the prologue of LotR, and the literal fucking in-universe essays written by characters in his world about academia in his world.

 

I feel like I might have liked the academic stuff if I had got that far. I liked it in Samuel Delany's Flight from Neveryon and the Ash series by Mary Gentle.

 

time for me to like gay temple even harder then.

like, dude, i get that you have good intentions but... i have reasons for reading temple as gay and shipping temple/biff that aren't "he's an evil, fancy supervillian with a bit of accent sometimes." in fact, i think that whole Gay Supervillan cliche is dumb too. and most of the Gay Supervillans he's referring to aren't even canonically gay. they just have stereotypical gay traits.

and omfg, i really hope tumblr doesn't make Gay Temple and/or Temple Slash problematic now. that would be hell on me.

 

Your Lie in April

Spoiler

My progression through the first couple episodes:

Well, nicely animated but maybe not my thing. But a lot of people apparently like it and I do need more exposure to Japanese language so what the hell. I hear it's sad but I like emotions.

Uh, okay, manic pixie dream girl? I did not know I was signing up for that. Hopefully it's a minor trope or subverted perhaps?

Ugh it's playing it straight and heavy.

Ugh, main character, please stop talking about this girl as if she's an experience for you rather than a person. It's less poetic and romantic than kinda off putting.

I'm now halfway through the third episode and I'm actually unsure whether this show has passed the Bechdel test yet.

For fuck's sake, this is so manic pixie dream girl I feel spiritual pain. If she's fucking dying I will fucking shit myself.

I wanted emotions but I'm having a lot of trouble getting invested in this.

Oh shit. For fuck's sake, she said she wants people to remember her. She's fucking dying isn't she.

Fuuuuuu she fucking collapsed on stage. She's fucking dying. Fuck this. I'm gonna go watch something crappy with less of that fucking trope.

(Also I'm still not sure whether it has passed the Bechdel test.)

There was some genuinely interesting stuff in there I would have liked to see more of, like the main character's thing with his mom, and the ridiculous pressure on young musicians. And even the dramatic music performances. Those are exciting. In other circumstances I'd be totally there for all this, but I had to nope out. I won't say I'll never finish it ever no matter what, but what I saw is not my cup of tea.

 

Has anyone else read Clive Barker's Abarat series that can mourn that godawful final book with me? So so SO disappointing. :(((

 

Is there a final? What's it called?

 

Absolute Midnight. Actually I was wrong, Barker has two more books planned but there hasn't been anything about them in years, so ... Absolute Midnight came out in 2011 and was billed as the finale at the time but idk. I mean if you liked Abarat and Days of Magic, Nights of War, I'd look the 3rd one up at the library anyway buut I wouldn't buy it >u>;
Altho fo course that's all just my own opinion

 

I read it, I just remember hearing at the time that there were supposed to be more, so I was confused. I honestly remember nothing about it at this point, which I guess makes sense considering it was so long ago.

 

Can I rant about Naruto? Because boy I can rant about Naruto, have ranted about Naruto in the Naruto thread but.

Point 1) The Girls. Why go to the trouble of making interesting girls with interesting motivations who grow up and develop and mature and come into their own if they won't play a role in the story beyond being romance and support. Sakura and Hinata deserve better.

Fucking hell, they're both housewives at the end? Like badass ninja when they feel like it, but I wanted Sakura to... I don't know, take over the hospital, be a councilor, do long term strategy, I want to see more of her than being a mom, though moms are great, but its being relegated to that role, and it happened to all the girls...

Point 2) The Hyugas. So, what happened? Do we have a in the fucked up branch/head system? AT the least make the seal mandatory for everyone including main branch, and edit it so it doesn't do the SUDDEN TERRIBLE PAIN ATTACK that was being abused by the main branch?!?!! It makes sense to not want enemies to take the byakugan, and to take measures to counteract it, but they made it into a fucking control system for people in your own clan, which is clearly immoral and also limiting the talented people and creating resentment within the people you want loyalty from?!!! SO WHAT HAPPENED? IS Hinata the head or did Hanabi get it? Did they stop tattoing the seal? What is being done in Neji's memory?! YOU LEFT THIS PLOT HOOK COMPLETELY OPEN AND UNCHANGED

Point 3) The system. What teh fuck, a lot of what we saw in the whole story is that the ninja way is fucked up and provokes conflict. Naruto was all gung ho about "changing the system" finding his own ninja way to share with others, but we never see that revolution! He becomes hokage and apparently becomes entrenched in the same shit he fought so hard against! Children are still being trained as killers! There isn't even a raising of the age to take the chuunin exams, in Boruto they fucking take it at a young age too!!! The fucked up ness is not being recognized! We don't know how the treaties are working!?! What did they agree to, the countries, after there was resentment from fucking Wars.

Point 4) Jinchuruki and the tailed beasts. I just, after the huge question of power balance and also of the immorality of chaining a living being to a different person so you can use the power, is there a system set in place to avoid abuse of that with respect with teh tailed beasts? Is there a system for potential candidates to be vetted by the tailed beast, and for candidates to do it willingly instead of being forced into a role where they were shunned and hated by their own people? WHY NOT A CONTRACT SYSTEM, WE ALREADY HAVE SUMMONING CONTRACTS.

I have so much rage, and I love this fucked up story so much.

 

Came across a tumblr post which reminded me of a thing which really bothered me in Gargoyles. The post was just some screencaps of a scene from the first episode, where Small Child asks two of the gargoyles what their names are, and gets the response "we don't have names, Goliath is the only one who has a name because he's the only one who really interacts with you guys, we just call each other 'friend' and we all look different". And I get that the writers were probably trying to make a point about how Labels Are Bad, or "cultural differences sure can be Wild, can't they" or something positive and educational, but

'we don't have names' always sounded fake, to me. Like. The two gargoyles who give this info are the two I would consider least likely, at the start of the series, to be reliable narrators! Especially if they see a chance to pull what they think would be a funny prank. But this is never corrected - the series rolls with it, and no one except Goliath takes on a name until after the clan is betrayed; even Demona only takes up that name in direct response to being accused of being a demon. So apparently the whole clan just didn't take on names, unless they had to for the purposes of interacting with people outside the clan? But every other set of gargoyles we meet comes already-named and doesn't go "well, this is what the humans call me", they just...have names, like it's a perfectly normal thing.

And. Honestly? The "we don't have names" thing is...I mean, I'm sorry, Gargoyles writers, but do you know how language actually works? Yes, labels can be misused! And cultures are often different from each other! But 'we don't have names' doesn't even work, because no culture I can think of goes with "hey you" as a valid, respectful means of indicating who is being talked about. Language lets us indicate things like "hey, this belongs to me" or "I would like to give this to a specific person" and "that dude over there has wronged someone else who is not currently present", all of which are things which contain concepts the clan pretty obviously does have and hasn't just picked up from contact with humans!

This wouldn't bother me as much if it were explained as "we have use-names for when we interact with people from outside the clan, and personal names that are only used by clan so that we are protected against magic that would harm us through use of those personal names; none of us except Goliath need a use-name often enough for one to stick". You still get Cool Cultural Differences, it explains why none of the clan really has a name except for Goliath at the start, and it explains why they all immediately take up names as soon as possible after the spell is broken. And it doesn't require the gargoyles to be using language in a way that would require them to be incredibly alien, considering that the rest of the series has them going "we're so very similar in a lot of ways, once you look past the surface differences".