#negativity for ts

[merrilark]

being a people pleaser and learning that another person's feelings aren't always your responsibility to "fix" or "soothe" is very hard.

but unfortunately necessary. :/

#merri grumbles #negativity for ts #sort of #this is also a reminder to myself bc i will inevitably feel bad for something that is not my fault again skflskfd

[oryms-braincell]

I loved Doctor Who (at least until it transitioned into a Stephen-Moffat-jerks-himself-off show) but this encapsulates my gripe with it so much.

#negativity for ts #Youtube

[dyed-red]

there was a post on my dash a few days ago about an interview with jensen about the prequel. he talks about casting, and about how the actor they hired for john had both sam (1) and dean (1) in him, and the actress they hired for mary had dean (2) energy (that none of the other actresses were serving, apparently). and the post rightfully pointed out that dean himself is there (3). so three deans to one sam, they noticed.

(edit: here is the link for anyone interested)

-

and looking at the reviews about how bland the pilot is, i can’t help but think that’s part of why? 

the thing that is magic about supernatural is the gravitational push and pull between sam and dean and the forces that are so much bigger than them.

you could have that in the prequel. the gravitational push and pull between john and mary and the forces that are so much bigger than them. 

it’s literally the canon backstory! 

the first time they met, they bumped into each other and (presumably on trained instincts) mary laid john on his ass then apologized, and he was smitten. but he was only smitten because of cupid’s arrow. the cupid we meet in canon tells sam and dean that their parents weren’t a good match, that they didn’t (wouldn’t?) get along, and that their relationship was ordained and the love was manufactured.

so you have the gravity, right there. the push and the pull. the fighting and the mismatch despite the passion and the love they literally cannot help but feel. and it lends itself so well to telling an unhinged story where two people meet and fall in some kind of love at first sight and are weird about each other! 

(in the way that sam and dean are weird about each other. breaking in in the middle of the night and fighting your brother is weird! disappearing out the door with someone you haven’t seen in two years while lying to your partner about why is weird! it’s all unhinged and so it compels the audience!)

to make that work on screen, you need to set up opposing dynamics so you get the push and pull, and you need chemistry. like, a lot of chemistry. the other magic of spn is the insane off the charts on screen chemistry that J2 have. lightning in a bottle, right?

the thing that made me ultimately decide not to watch the prequel was mary’s casting and character styling. despite being one of the few people actually excited about the story conceit (i love john and mary as characters!! i’m genuinely interested to see how the lying and hunting and vietnam trauma and the personality clash all played out!!), as soon as i saw the first promotional photos, the tentative hope i’d been harbouring for the show died a quiet death.

not only did this version not look much like either of the other two marys we had met in terms of face and height, but she had thick eyeliner and straight hair and a black leather jacket and a hard look and scowl. none of that jives at all with the mary we know and not just because she was sanctified in the memory of winchester men. we met young mary and she was dressed in bright tones with bright eyes! she was full of smiles (and lies), full of dreams for her own future, with bouncy curly hair and emotional frustrations and vulnerabilities. 

she was bringing sam, not dean. 

mary campbell is a rebel. she is like both her sons in different ways, much the same as john. there are parallels on both sides and i think it’s fruitless to say who is paralleled more to whom in the (main) show, who has more of who’s personality. but in that arc, in her youth, mary campbell wanting to leave the hunting life and have a civilian life with her partner john winchester was absolutely a parallel to sam’s similar yearning for freedom, for safety and simplicity. 

so we know already -- mary’s rebellion looks like sam’s rebellion. it’s not the devil may care attitude of dean, it’s a more serious and anxious rebellion against her upbringing. she’s tense but soft. easily annoyed but not sarcastic, possibly too earnest (in itself a perfect lie, something that makes her interesting because she’s anything but honest with john). doe-eyed so that when she drops you on your ass, you’re shocked. this small woman with her sweet smile is kicking your ass? what in the - ? 

casting a mary that is bringing forward features of dean, styling her in such a way as to look harsh and ‘badass’ instead of downright preppy, giving her that look and attitude and all of it? misses the point. 

there is no dean without sam. or at least no story about dean worth watching. because there is no gravitational push-pull between dean and ... dean. meaning that if both the prequel leads are bringing dean’s energy to their role, there is no chemistry. 

electricity isn’t formed without opposing charged ions. there’s no lightning in a bottle when everything is the same.

(there is no sense of pull between them to prompt a push. and when it comes time to write the push in anyway, without the pull? it will feel discordant and unconvincing to the audience’s eye. it will rankle.)

this issue sits as central, to me, even before any retconning of the original story. before the complete lack of 1970s vibe, and before what i’ve seen about them possibly(idk???) getting mary’s age wrong, and what i’ve heard about them making john bumbling or boring despite being a literal marine (who are...extreme) who quite literally just came back from vietnam, likely traumatized and intense. before the fact that they literally copy+pasted the plot of spn to the prequel with mary’s dad going missing. 

all of these features, alongside the casting issues, the styling issues, all of it right down to the original prequelgate itself, speak to the same fundamental issue - 

the prequel is missing heart. 

the lack of sam (not even in presence so much as in essence) functions like a hole in the heart of the show from which it is bleeding inward. the lack of love letter to time era, to the stylings and setting reads like a lack of love to the story itself. the lack of care put in to re-introducing us to the version of mary that we knew, those changes to her style and personality and story, read like an insult to those of us who loved her already, as if she was not worthy of a place in the heart of the creators as she already was.

i wanted to love this show. desperately, i really did. the day it leaked, before i’d heard about the rest of the ensuing prequelgate nonsense, i wrote a post in defense of the concept (since deleted). i wanted so badly to love it. i can’t. because i feel like the people creating it don’t love it. 

many will take this as a critique of jensen ackles and to some extent, it is, but mostly just a critique of trying to create a new show half-cocked while splitting his time acting on a handful of other projects instead of dedicating himself to the time and energy this show needed in order to be a success. i have no idea what his vision was for this story, and i’m not convinced he had a core vision. 

(for whatever else you might critique about kripke’s era of spn, it had a vision and it knew what it was. that vision was central to its resonance.)

more than that though, it’s a critique of all the producers and creators involved who thought that they could build off of what we already loved while gutting the core pieces we loved in the first place, while replacing these elements with their own versions instead, versions seemingly uninterested in the emotional foundations on which they were building. 

i can’t help but feel they were arrogant enough to think that making us love it would be as simple as checking boxes on a list and slapping a shine over it, thinking we’d be satisfied with the empty shell they deigned to put together. that they didn’t need to push each other, challenge the story, question the character favoritism or biases the team members were bringing to the table.

it’s the dean story with dean producers and writers and no one thought to question if they needed more balance? if the story needed more heart? if john was intense enough, if mary was sweet enough, if the characters had dimensions? 

was it ignorance? arrogance? were they all too up their own asses that they dismissed legitimate concerns as fandom wank because of prequelgate and fandom bullshit until it was too late? 

i’m sorry, that got more charged than i intended. bottom line, this isn’t a love letter to supernatural or its fans. love takes effort and dedication and care and heart. i’m not convinced the prequel has any.

#anti spn prequel #anti prequel #negativity for ts #wank for ts #i honestly did not want to say anything #especially until i watched for myself #but i'm not sure i can bring myself to lmao #sorry for anyone who actually watched and enjoyed #and i would genuinely and sincerely be interested in hearing what you enjoyed about it if so #even in anon in my inbox #and if you think this long-ass complaint post is too biased that's fair but like... it's honest too #i don't dislike jensen like literally the opposite #but i can't help but feel that he did not have someone balancing him out and challenging him #and did not hire people who would accomplish that and instead sort of the opposite #and that that is part of the critical difference between being part of a team and creating the team and selecting its members #for what it's worth i have similar if milder complaints about walker but that's also a genre thing and i gather is improving #anyway #phyn rambles #phyn rants

[screechthemighty]

Badly written YA lit and fanfic has produced a generation of people who think that any kind of chemistry is by default romantic and this is creating a feedback loop of increasingly worse content on both a fandom and non-fandom level. In this essay I will

#this has been a post #negativity for ts

[saawek]

Twt is exhausting for real

- 16yo does a bullshit callout thread against a public person (calling them things that are diffamatory, wrong, and without proofs)

- Public person qrt saying "lol whatever"

- 16yo cries that ppl want them dead or idk

Idk for you man, but back in my days we used to say don't dish out if you can't take it. And better to learn early the weight of your actions and words I guess

#saawek rambling #rant #negativity for ts

[fieldsofbone]

the phd is literally the hardest thing i’ve ever had to do and lately i feel so defeated. i have a dissertation idea and i’m having weekly meetings about my prospectus (basically a 10-20 page outline of your dissertation that you have to defend before advancing to candidacy) with one of my advisors, but he’s limited in how much he can help because he isn’t an expert in the literature like my other advisor / mentor (ben) is, but ben is super hands off so i have to ask every time i need help rather than him checking in with me (even semi-regularly!) and asking what i need. he’s super helpful when i do reach out but when i’m constantly the one who has to do so i end up minimizing it to myself or thinking that i don’t actually need his help and i can figure it out myself which i can’t! because i’ve never done this before!

and whatever maybe someone would see that as an exercise in learning to advocate for myself, but it’s frustrating when i’ve literally had to fight for myself since i got here. i had to fight to take up space and be heard in classes and to be respected by my peers and professors and to be fucking believed about being assaulted and to be given time off when i had to recover from the trauma and to be employed when the department fucked it up etc. etc. and then i see this other friend who defended her diss and earned her phd the other day and she’s engaged and beautiful and smart and that feels so far off and impossible for me when i’m still in these early stages of the process. and i know it’s a marathon and it ebbs and flows but right now i just feel super demoralized and sad

#negativity for ts #sorry for the long vent post i just feel. bad

[notbecauseofvictories]

have you seen 1899 on netflix yet? i feel like it would be up your street re: existential horror, smart prickly women, men looking like sad little wet cats, general cosmic mindfuckery

I want to give you credit, anon---for the first couple episodes, this show is absolutely my jam. Gorgeous period drama, multilingual cast, and who am I to resist damp Aneurin Barnard in a trench coat?

Somewhere around the halfway point of episode four though, I realized---this has to be the slowest television show I've ever tried to watch. I can take a lot of close-up reaction shots and Meaningful Pauses, lingering over an object or image which will clearly become important at some point. But after three and a half hours, it feels like the story is taking a back seat in order for the show to justify its runtime. 

Even more unfortunately, I got so bored that I looked up the ending. (I had been told it was departure from everything leading up to it, but not how.) At that point, I lost any interest I might have had.

Look, it's very beautiful! That one actor who plays the second officer (or something, he’s got a mustache and a jaunty cap) looks like a greyhound and I’m into that!  But I think I’d have to watch it at 2x speed to even think about finishing, and life’s too short.

#I simply do not have the requisite patience for drawn-out mysteries #you gotta either wrap that shit up in a tight 120 or make zero attempt to explain what's going on #in order to comment on the inexplicability of life itself #......yes I mean the leftovers #those are the only two options. #negativity for ts

[thepoisonroom]

when other trans people are wildly fatphobic for no reason it's such a needle scratch to me like who do you think is gonna give you a little prize for sucking bodily surveillance's dick bro

#when people are like actually i think it is good that the medical establishment deputizes us to police each other's bodies and #torment one another for perceived transgressions in ways both individual and systemic #and i like it because it lets me feel like a powerful little cop unleashed against people for whom i express unjustified rage and disgust #.....like okay have you ever considered working on yourself instead of being freak of the week about it??? #i know every community has people who suck and are on a power trip #but like. to what end. #personal nonsense #negativity for ts

[immortalled]

cryin' internally because i want to write nathan but wow he seems so far away and i don't know what to dooo about it!

wake up, you little gremlin!

#although in fairness all of my muses feel very far away lately #i get big brief bursts of inspiration for them and then it fizzles out again as soon as i sit down to try to write them :( #i know it's likely just burn out but it does occasionally make me worry that i'm losing the ability to write them #out of immortality [ooc]; #negativity for ts

[hypermania]

I can't tell if you liked Shadow and Bone or not and it's killing me lol

i also can't tell if i liked it! i know for sure i liked s1 a lot better than s2. s1 was an interesting viewing experience because i had to adjust to the fact that they really weren't following the books and i wasn't prepared for that. i think what they did with the grisha trilogy worked really well. pretty much every change was for the better. it made the characters more likable which serves the plot a lot better. the crows stuff, however, was more jarring both because i'm far more invested in them and because the changes were bigger and without any obvious payoff. but once i got over the hesitancy of the story being changed it was mostly fine. there were still a few things i didn't like but overall it was like okay i get it. we're moving chess pieces around because we're setting stuff up.

going into s2 i knew they weren't following the books closely so i went in with the mindset of "hey this is its own thing and you should judge it based on what it is, and not what it isn't." and then... they just shoehorned in a bunch of big Moments(tm) from the books that... have no relevancy in the story they're telling?

like what was the point of kaz bringing pekka to his knees begging? pekka still has a crap ton of people loyal to him. he's still running shit from hellgate. there was no emotional catharsis to it. and kaz hasn't built up the reputation of "When everyone knows you're a monster, you needn't waste time doing every monstrous thing" yet soooooooo it kinda just feels like kaz showed that yeah he can figure out what is most important to someone and push that button (figuratively, because he won't actually do the horrible thing) but it ultimately doesn't even matter because... ??? like i don't know why that mattered in the context of the story they're actually telling. it was just a big moment from the book plopped into the show. if they wanted to rearrange the pieces so that pekka would be in hellgate with matthias, they could have done that without using the alby storyline in a place where not only does it not fit, it completely undermines the point.

same with the "i will have you without armor" interaction. i'm not a big fan of that line in the books to begin with. it's fine. i just think there are way more *scream into my pillow about it* moments but i know it's a fan favorite and it feels like that's the only reason they included it. when it happens in the book, it's because kaz hasn't offered inej anything, really. he's asked her to stay in ketterdam but that's the most vulnerable he's allowed himself to be with her. so it serves as like a linchpin for him to do better, sort of? but in the show... he's already told her about jordie. he's already given her freedom from the menagerie and a lead on her family. he's already given her everything except physical skin to skin contact, and so that line just comes across as "you're not good enough because you're traumatized" instead of "we're both traumatized but i want to get better and i won't let you hold me back from that. you have to at least try" so it's... kinda gross?

the jesper and wylan changes are mostly fine but their relationship feels very rushed and i don't really understand what the point of doing that is. like jesper watching wylan play piano and having a moment about it felt like... nothing? because wlyan is just a guy he had a one night stand with. what new light is it shedding on a guy jesper doesn't really have any mis-formed preconceived notions on? and why are they already basically married? maybe this is just a personal preference but that's not fun to me. i am much more interested in watching them awkwardly fall for each other over time than having immediate confirmation that they're a couple.

(also i have a pretty big gripe with the way jesper being grisha is handled. but that's a whole other discussion.)

idk i guess the point i'm making is that s2 felt like a marvel movie. it had a lot of quippy one-liners and Big Emotional Beats that we knew were Big Emotional Beats because there was swelling music and lingering shots but there was no substance to any of it?? none of it mattered in the context of the story they were actually telling. it only matters if you already have a built-in connection to the story via the source material.

that being said: kaz bar brawl and nina spy competence = very sexy. and as much as i just talked a bunch of shit about jesper, he really is amazing. kit young continues to be an inspired stroke of jesper genius. almost everyone was perfectly cast, actually.

there were other things i liked and disliked about it but this is the general gist of where i'm at, i guess.

#replies #anonymous #sab #negativity for ts

[merrilark]

man. lol

i think tech support is trying to give me the run around.

#negativity for ts #sorry for so much of this recently #i made a request (politely!) bc i'm getting tired of the poor quality control (this will be the third device i've sent back with issues) #was left unread for hours. got an automated reply and a return confirmation email that didn't say if my request was accepted or denied. #politely messages back just to make sure i understand before i agree to anything bc i want to know what i need to do #and don't feel comfortable agreeing to something before i understand it. gets another automated message that says the same thing. #i would think this is normal except before i made my request i was getting replies within minutes from real people. :/ #i do not want to make some poor worker's life harder by bugging them so much but also my ereader was over $160. #that's a lot of money for me and i would really like a device that works as it should. :(

[oryms-braincell]

The only Aziraphale hate I see is when people complain about alleged Aziraphale hate. And it makes me just as miffed as seeing actual hate, so kindly stop tagging that shit or tag it with "negativity for ts" or something

#good omens #good omens spoilers #go spoilers #go2 spoilers #negativity for ts

[dyed-red]

okay very short mini rant time but -

not having emotions isn’t a thing. or at the very very least, it’s not a thing for soulless!sam. the writers hand-waved “soulless doesn’t feel” but that makes no sense and they’re wrong and it falls apart if we so much as poke it with a twig, let alone a proper stick.

emotions are information that act as input into decision-making. the very limited cases of human beings lacking the ability to feel fear or any other particular emotion, or lacking emotional input into their decisions? yeah, it’s not good. either wander into danger they can’t handle because there is no input into the decision-making process that says No, Don’t Do That, or at the extreme end, they can’t make decisions because they have no insight into what they might prefer or want or desire, or even not prefer or not want or not desire, so each minor choice is paralyzing because the part of the brain dedicated to do the choosing doesn’t exist.

if soulless really didn’t have emotions, he wouldn’t be doing much at all.

you can say “he’s making choices based on physiological stimulus” and that desire (like a desire for sex, or a desire to get a hunt completed and kill the monster) isn’t a feeling, but i promise you that it is, and that we can’t fully or truly disentangle physiology from emotion either.

in fact soulless!sam seems to have no issue whatsoever experiencing positive emotions like desire, enjoyment, contentment, satisfaction, pride, etc. He seems capable of vexation and irritation too. We don’t really see him angry in the same way sam would be, but he does sort of go into a violent rage and beat someone with his bare fists in a flashback, right? i promise that without emotion, exerting that kind of energy on a task just... wouldn’t happen. because you’re incapable of caring about the outcome of the task, no matter how ‘rational’ or ‘logical’ that outcome may seem (because what’s rational and logical depend on what we care about and what goals we have selected, which again, occurs in the context of having emotions to guide us toward what those desired end states might look like).

soulless!sam seems, as far as i can tell, to lack two things: 1) the ability to experience bonds with others, and 2) the ability to intuit or experience conscious insight into his own emotions.

on the first, his lack of connection to dean despite understanding he prefers to have him around, his willingness to kill bobby, his complete and utter lack of care for lisa and ben despite knowing on some level that he should care about them, or would if he were his usual self, even if only as an extension of who and what dean cares about. soulless just... doesn’t experience that deeply human need for social connection nor the automatic way it manifests nor any bonding toward others. some failure of oxytocin going on there (the soul is stored in the oxytocin receptor site?).

on the second, sam doesn’t know what he’s feeling when he hasn’t got a soul. he equates that with not really feeling anything, or at least that what we’re told as shorthand pretty quickly, because what he actually says when asked what he’s feeling is “i don’t know”. because - he doesn’t. but that doesn’t mean he’s not actually feeling anything, it means he has no conscious insight into it.

his feelings are just feelings to him, just information. they are understood in terms of how they impact his end state aims (i want to finish this hunt, i want to have sex with this hippie chick, i don’t want to put up with this fairy lady, i don’t want to suffer by having my soul put back in) but are not understood in and of themselves (i don’t know if i feel angry or sad or happy in response to setbacks or steps forward toward these desired ends. at most i know i experience a sense of satisfaction when my aims are accomplished, but this is understood mostly through checking that aim off the list and being able to direct my attention and resources toward new goals. i don’t know why i do this, i just do).

the lack of bonding means he doesn’t feel interpersonal guilt or remorse for hurt and harm he has caused, nor a sense of loss or grief based on his connections (or lack thereof) with others, nor an anticipatory sense of guilt, remorse, grief, or regret at pursuing interpersonal harm, so long as the harm is deemed as needed or even just helpful in furthering one of his desired end goals. this increases our perception that he doesn’t have feelings at all, when what he’s really missing are mostly a subset of social emotions, and that’s not even unique to soulless people! (and look, i don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of how fucked up i think it is that the writers, intentionally or not (but i suspect intentionally) more or less equated sam’s soullessness with some clinical features of psychopathy.)

anyway that’s more or less my rant. the concept of soullessness and how it manifests bothers the shit out of me, the explanations for it in-universe are misleading (though understandable in-universe even if i’d expect cas to provide a clearer explanation tbh), soulless!sam feels a lot, and i still haven’t managed to do a proper/full s6 rewatch as a result of my vexation.

#canon critical #wank for ts #phyn rants #negativity for ts #sorry my ted talk is a ted rant #i both adore soulless!sam an cannot stand the soulless!sam storyline #the duality of the gamble era for me in a nutshell

[queermania]

You said the finale was almost perfect. What weren't you happy with?

i'm not really happy with john and mary ending up together (and a montage of the *checks timeline* several months at most that they've spent together was stupid). i feel like we just watched an entire season's worth of content telling us that they shouldn't be together and that they bring out the worst in each other, so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ in my heart i know that they will break up two weeks into their little road trip. mary's a lesbian and john is gonna end up with lata <3

#replies #anonymous #spnwin #spnwin spoilers #negativity for ts

[screechthemighty]

Hi I just wanted to say I am also a heimdall hater. Idk why ppl seem to like him to much. Freyr is right there. Where are the birgir stans.

You know what's so sad is I don't even count myself as a HATER per say (I mean. I do hate him, but in the way that the writers want me to hate him). Heimdall is very much a Code Heisenberg where I do appreciate the character in a vacuum for being a nasty little shithead who's fun to drop kick (and a little funny I won't lie), but the Stans(T)(R)(C) are so. So deeply annoying. Annoying enough to ruin the character a bit for me. (Not entirely, though, blocking people IS free and good for your mental health)

Also Freyr is definitely hotter, that is 100% true. Birgir gets to stay for deradicalizing himself and joining the good guys. I was unironically really happy he made it.

#asks #anon #cheap shots at heimdall #negativity for ts #I'm personally in the ''kratos is right there'' camp which I get is a popular opinion but #he's!! right there!!!!!!!

[therealvinelle]

Opinion on Pirates of the Caribbean franchise?

Kill it with fire.

#anti pirates of the Caribbean #negativity for ts