*slowly reaches for the popcorn*

Ok new game. What's the thing you're a fan of that you're the most pretentious about. NOT the most pretentious thing you're a fan of, I mean the thing that makes *you* act like one of those "oh yeah? Name five of their albums" people. There is a difference

Bad news: everyone who has said some variation of "umm actually I don't do that 🙏 I'm a good person" is more annoying than the rest of us confessing to our nerd crimes. Yes you do. I guarantee it you do. You're saying Um, Actually right now

#sigh# So "avoid the general Mouthwashing tag there be puritan monsters", got it. Shipping Jimmy and Curly is literally giving the enabler to the monster he so was happily helping when he was hurting the woman, how can these people miss the glorious karma of it? Like not that you need karma to justify the ship but??? like, by puriteen condemning-evil-men standards????

I feel you SO MUCH on being bad at directions in video games!!

It's one of the reasons I can't play most 3D games - they're always disorienting. I once got into a tiny circular room with two exits facing each other and somehow circled back to go out right through the way I came in one minute earlier OTL (Also camera movements make me sick, with either a headache or nausea, whichever comes first.)

Going in circles is exhausting, you're braver than I am, haha.

Something I need to be reminded of often. Yes, I'm very lazy and also have executive problems up the wazoo (the difference? laziness is fun), but the cultural expectation of being productive every waking moment isn't healthy either. And the business of feeding ourselves is especially fraught these days.

This is the same topic and screenshot that gave some of my chudliest chud haters such a meltdown after I posted it myself once, they raged at me for days and one by one dropped off of Tumblr forever. This subject kills idiots.

...are we all gonna ignore the huge-ass elephant in the room of gendered labor?

Like, yes it's sexist to force women to be the ones to stay at home and do the inside labor, but at least it works from the idea that you can either go have a job outside or do the inside work of maintaining a house feeding everyone and raising kids.

It's one of the historical blind spots of feminism: for rich women who can hire house help, getting a job is freeing, but for working class women, it means getting a double shift, one at their outside job and another at their traditional gendered house work.

Also, for a lot of human history, societies weren't structured like the modern nuclear family. For cooking in general, this changes a lot of things (see the point in the original about communal meals): from experience, if you're gonna spend the time cooking, the amount of labor doesn't scale linearly with the amount of portions. Read: it's a lot more efficient to cook in large quantities for a large group of people than to divide the group into small subgroups and have each one cook for themselves. (Pretty sure it's also less wasteful energy-wise but that's another topic.)

And another standard that is quite modern is the expectation that you will eat a different dish every meal. This adds a lot of labor actually. Remember how cooking large quantities of food doesn't take that much more labor than cooking a small batch? If you're cool with eating the same dish for many days in a row, you can cook a large batch and re-heat it (modern appliances allow to do this with modern hygiene, too). But if you have to change meals every day, you'd need to cook a dozen large batches to alternate, and even that might count as "too repetitive". Hence the ridiculous workload of cooking a full meal twice a day.

we need a cuteness aggression equivalent term for when you see art of your favorite character you like so much that you sincerely cannot think of anything to put in the tags that isnt "im going to start biting off my own fingers"

OFF/Mortis Ghost tribute sketchbook drawings. Did these to commemorate replaying the game after a very long time. Last time was probably when it got popular during the Homestuck gigapause. Think of these as a drawthrough (drawing + playthrough) of the game. They are all in A5 with Nº2 graphite pencils and 0.5 and 0.05 archival ink pens, plus digital coloring through limited color palettes in Aseprite. Just as with the Yume Nikki post, I'd love to know: What's your favorite?

@ people who carry bags everywhere what do you put in them what is there to bring other than chapstick, keys, phone and maybe a tampon why are you packing a suitcase to be outside for 5 hours

MY FIC NOTEBOOK AND/OR MY SKETCHBOOK, DUH PLUS MY BIG ASS PENCIL BAG FULL OF ART SUPPLIES

also boring stuff like a water bottle, a fan, sunscreen, aloe vera gel, a box with bandaids and paracetamol, one or two ankle support sport sock thingies, medical tape, nail clippers with a nail file on them, totes bags and fabric produce bags for groceries, reusable straw and wooden spoon /spork, and a jacket or sweater if I'm going out while it's hot and expect to be coming home late...

and just, you know, the comfort of a backpack so if i have to carry something home I can keep my hands free and also carry heavy stuff in the middle of my back and not pull one shoulder or the other?

please do look it up if you dont know the date bc there may be at least an approximate answer and otherwise the last option will completely dominate and this poll will be boring.

and dont be like 'but i cant sing'... just answer the earliest tune you know well enough that you COULD sing it

periods of western classical music provided only for reference

Every single American voting in this poll should be getting at LEAST 19th century. I know you motherfuckers can sing at least PART of the national anthem.

"Happy birthday to you" is 19th century too by the way.

(repost cause I reblogged with the wrong blog like an idiot)

Goddamn it, I clicked 18th century, but the actual answer is a couple centuries older??? I never realized how old a lot of the traditional French folk songs I learnt as a kid are...

Sur le pont d'Avignon, maybe 15th century

A la claire fontaine, 15th or 16th century

En passant par la Lorraine, 1535 Mon beau sapin (the German original, O Tannenbaum, dates back to 1550)

Il était une bergère, 17th century Loup y es-tu, 17th century

Une souris verte, 17 or 18th century

Cadet Rousselle, 18th century Frère Jacques, 18th century C'est la mère Michel, 1721 J'ai du bon tabac, 1733

J'aime la galette, 1820 Il court il court, le furet, at least 1843 Le bon roi Dagobert, 1787

And that's ignoring the conundrum that is dating songs like Il était un petit navire (twice modernized variant of an old sailor song), and La jument de Michao (mash-up of two old songs, at least one of which is a type song that had variants in pretty much all regions of France, thanks for this one Try Ann)

Final batch of Artfight attacks for this year.

I slacked off a little bit but I’m happy with these!

Thank you again for the attack!

Look at that card and mirror symbolism people jsnsdbvksjb this was perfect I love it ~

Some tips for using a few words to describe voices:

1. Tone Words: Use tone words to convey the emotional quality of a voice. For example, you can describe a voice as "melodic," "soothing," "sharp," "gentle," or "commanding" to give readers a sense of the tone.

2. Pitch and Range: Mention the pitch and range of the voice. Is it "deep," "high-pitched," "raspy," or "full-bodied"? This can provide insight into the character's age, gender, or emotional state.

3. Accent and Diction: Describe the character's accent or diction briefly to give a sense of their background or cultural influences. For instance, "British-accented," "Southern drawl," or "formal."

4. Volume: Mention the volume of the voice, whether it's "whispering," "booming," "murmuring," or "hushed."

5. Quality: Use terms like "velvet," "silken," "gravelly," "honeyed," or "crisp" to convey the texture or quality of the voice.

6. Rate of Speech: Describe how fast or slow the character speaks, using words like "rapid," "slurred," "measured," or "rambling."

7. Mood or Emotion: Indicate the mood or emotion carried by the voice. For example, a "quivering" voice may convey fear or anxiety, while a "warm" voice may express comfort and reassurance.

8. Resonance: Describe the resonance of the voice, such as "echoing," "nasal," "booming," or "tinny."

9. Timbre: Mention the timbre of the voice, using words like "rich," "thin," "clear," or "smoky."

10. Cadence: Highlight the rhythm or cadence of speech with descriptors like "staccato," "lilting," "rhythmic," or "halting."

11. Intonation: Convey the character's intonation by saying their voice is "sarcastic," "apologetic," "confident," or "questioning."

12. Vocal Characteristics: If applicable, mention unique vocal characteristics, like a "lisp," "stutter," "drawl," or "accented 'r'."

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

Do you have any suggestions for letting go and improving WITH your weird shit? I'm in university for Creative Writing and I haven't been taught SHIT other than how to engage with a text and how to continue to write at my highschool base-line level. No teaching, no instruction, only critiques of mine and my peers work that doesn't inform us of much in the long run.

I'm desperate for help, if you have Anything it's much appreciated. I'm asking because I felt seen in this post

If you speak another language than English? Read literature in that language.

And if it's a language from a former colonial empire, read literature in that language from different countries / cultures.

Then find sources from / about the culture that explain the sense of style in that culture.

What constitutes good style is absolutely not universal. The aggressive prioritizing of "lowering-the-reading-level-of-your-writing" is a USAmerican thing. And like all USAmerican things it is spread across the world blablabla cultural imperialism.

Even if you don't speak a foreign language, you might get something from reading translated foreign literature.

Also, read old stuff. Cultural norms do not just change with place, they change with time. Especially since modern globalization tends to standardize cultural norms. Read classical literature! But from as many countries, languages, cultures as you can. And then try to find videos, podcasts, blogs, books if you're really brave, that explain the literature to you.

And don't be afraid of copying a style element or even the entire style of a book for a piece of writing. It's an excellent tool for learning. One of the really rad things about the fanfic scene is that it doesn't have a taboo on style pastiche.

When Jason starts building his crime lord career, people start inexplicably comparing him to Matches Malone. They have the same mannerisms, the same fighting styles and a similar build. Some rogues even have theories that they're the same guy.

So when ever Matches is mentioned, red hood mutters "fuck that guy" under his breath and since Bruce puts his whole batussy into his personas, he's starts reciprocating that energy. All the rogues are scrambling to find out what happened to cause this beef. The entire Gotham underground now has to pick a side between one of their own who they've worked with and gotten to know over the years versus the new up and coming crime lord that's offering jobs and improving their lives. While Jason is wondering what he can do to stop being compared to Bruce, Bruce is trying to be a supportive parent (which means making sure the rogues don't turn on J) while protecting his persona he's been curating for years.

Then, a goon hears part of an argument between Hood and Matches. Specifically, they hear Hood call Matches "Old Man". And Matches sighs and says that Hood is missed at family dinner.

This gets around the entire underworld in hours. The beef between the two is teenage rebellion. Now, no one is sure if this makes Hood more or less scary.

Aaaaand then eventually someone is stupid enough to call the Red Hood a brat having a teenage tantrum within hearing range, and it ends in another duffel bag full of heads.

J'en peux plus du terme "extrême gauche". Ça n'existe plus l'extrême gauche, ce terme renvoie la gauche qui a l'affront d'être plus que socdem dos à dos avec l'extrême droite, qui elle est bien réelle. Et bordel, LFI n'est PAS l'extrême gauche. Demandez à n'importe quel gaucho qui a déjà fait plus que voter et aller en manif, LFI c'est tiède. Mais le baromètre capitaliste est tellement à droite que toute opposition, toute menace à la sacrosainte économie de marché est perçue comme extrêmiste, comme tout aussi violente que le fascisme et ses victimes physiques.

Lol ces clowns de plateaux qui n'ont jamais parlé à un trotskyste révolutionnaire de leur vie.

"The best part of being fat is being soft and comfy to cuddle with" "The best part of being fat is knowing people like you for your personality and not your looks" Wrong. The best part of being fat is getting to swim in ice-cold water for FAR longer than my peers. My skinny friends can barely last 10 minutes in the pacific ocean without losing feeling in their fingers meanwhile i can be in there for HOURS. I was born to swim in glacial lakes and icemelt streams. Also I float.

Re- French Elections stuff

Yo, les gens qui désespèrent de la dernière fils de puterie de l'ignoble banquier.

SAMEDI, PARTOUT EN FRANCE S'ORGANISENT DES MANIFS ANTI RN.

Alors allez googler le nom de votre ville et les horaires de la manif de votre coin, et par pitié déplacez-vous. J'ose espérer qu'ils auront la cervelle de ne pas mettre ça aux mêmes horaires que la Pride. Touchons du bois.

Je n'ai malheureusement trouvé nulle part une liste pré-faite de tous les rendez-vous. Le site de la LFI a une section "créer/rejoindre un événement" avec une carte, où une partie des événements sont indiqués. Si la grande ville proche de chez vous n'est pas indiquée, googlez [nom de votre ville] manifestation 15 juin. UPDATE: LE SITE DE LA CGT A UNE CARTE DES RENDEZ-VOUS

Rameutez les darons les daronnes les frères les sœurs les potes les collègues les mutuals tout ce que vous pouvez traîner avec vous ! Beaucoup de gens (moi la première je juge pas, ok?) n'osent pas aller en manif seuls ! Lancer le sujet en demandant qui se sent d'y aller en groupe peut leur permettre de venir ! Si vous avez un véhicule, vous pourriez être la personne qui permet à d'autres de participer ! Et comme ça vous pouvez faire un déjeuner / un café / thé / etc de célébration/réconfort en fin de manif !

CONSEILS POUR CEUX QUI NE VONT PAS SOUVENT EN MANIF SOUS LE CUT

BTW rendons à Rome ce qui est à Rome et aux Lorrains qui résiiiiistent à l'électorat RN d'Alsace avec lequel on les a parqués ce qui leur est dû MES TAGS SONT TOTALEMENT INSPIRES DU PANNEAU DE LA DAME A GAUCHE (Manifestation anti RN à Nancy, 12 juin, source)

Sauf que je suis trop vieille pour dire que je suis la jeunesse scrogneugneu y'a pas d'âge pour emmerder le Front National