#livingflame

As an Ashkenazic Jew with roots in Russia and Poland, I look forward to the day you and I can discuss Jewish food. (A predilection for debate is also a quintessentially Jewish personality trait - see Abraham and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.)

This is what is occasionally so maddening, I’m not educated enough to argue! :D 

livingflame replied to your post “Hey, so I was thinking about how I give Kudos on AO3 and I'm really...”

kudos are supposed to be a like, just as on twitter or tumblr, but for some reason people can't comprehend that and turn it into an 'i was here'. which is like, look they already knew you were here just from the hits stat. and then we're told to comment we liked it which IS WHAT THE KUDO WAS ALREADY DOING. so yeah, people are weird, and for some reason disregard what kudos were meant to be in the first place, and force everyone to comment even if all they have time for/are comfortable doing is saying 'i liked this' by kudoing

The thing is, as with fandom, just vocalizing what a thing is meant to be doesn’t mean that’s how fandom will use it, or how individuals will interpret it, and there’s no real authority because even if there was, not everyone would listen. I mean, I don’t use likes to say I liked a thing! I use them to save a thing for more thorough examination later. Likewise, I don’t think of Kudo as “I was here”, but I do think of it as “this is a statistic about liking something, not actually something that compliments the author”. Probably because I work with data points and statistics a lot at work. 

I know some people who do assume a kudo means “I liked this” but also assume a kudo means “but not enough to leave a comment.” I know people who are sensitive enough to this -- and they aren’t wrong, they just have a different view than others -- that they have to reskin their AO3 so that they don’t see kudos, because they find the ratio of kudos to comments hurtful. They don’t want gushing -- they just want that extra moment of time it takes to comment as an indicator they’ve done well. Or they’d rather have nothing (some people would like “leave a kudos on this” to be something they can turn off altogether). 

I’m 100% sure nobody actually intends to hurt someone when they leave a kudo but not a comment. And I don’t think leaving a kudo instead of a comment is inherently wrong! For some people kudos is as much as they can manage or are willing to offer. But that doesn’t invalidate the person who can’t deal with kudos because they’ve dealt with damnation by faint praise all their life and don’t want it in their hobby as well. That’s not people being weird or disregarding what kudos mean -- it’s just that the concept of the kudo varies by person, and in an economy like fandom, which is based on transactional praise, levels of praise can be really important. 

It doesn’t mean you’re wrong either if you think a Kudo is all you need to leave, but what you’re saying is one of many viewpoints -- as valid, but not more so, than theirs. That doesn’t mean you should feel bad for not commenting! Just that I want people who want comments not to feel bad either for rejecting the kudo as praise. And I have the spoons generally speaking to comment, so I do. 

voyageboots replied to your post “Sam! Beto announced his candidacy for president! Does your mum have...”

Oh man never let her find out you're a BNF

As someone who headcanons McCree as bi, I’m...

yeah, he’s the american cowboy style chivalrous, the sort that hollywood writes as taking off their hat around ladies and calling them ma'am. and as ana has said, he’s a charmer. whether affectation or natural personality or both, it’s like his aesthetic ^^;

having a major challenge to your immune system like that is really very draining, it can take awhile to get all your energy back. definitely been there, done that. be a bit patient with yourself, mental tasks especially creative ones can take just as much out of you as physical

this reminds me of the under wear with crabs print on them that got gifted between my grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles when i was young. i don’t know who gave them first, but they got regifted to a different person each christmas

Oh my god, that is amazing.

it’s odd, everyone says that fandom prefers top jesse and bottom hanzo, but i swear on ao3 it’s almost always top hanzo and bottom jesse. like i can go for days if not longer finding a bottom hanzo fic. and the few that are, are so often problematic. on the art side, it seems more balanced, more an even split, but I swear ficwise it’s very heavily top hanzo bottom jesse. early fandom was more bottom hanzo, but it really isn’t now.

that being said, bless your attitude about both. for your reasons, but also for the fact that every other fandom i've been in has had significant amounts of fanworks with versatility/switching, and this fandom has almost none. which seems very strange.

On Tumblr the preference for bottom!Hanzo and feminine!Hanzo is pretty stark--Hanzo is feminized pretty regularly, which would be fine if it were an expression of gender fluidity or challenging the gender binary, but it’s usually either to force the pairing into heteronormativity or to emasculate him for myriad reasons--I don’t trust feminine!Hanzo unless Jesse or someone else is similarly feminine in the same piece to help signal that it’s the former scenario rather than the latter. 

In A/B/O fics he’s usually an omega, which, nuff said. 

And it’s especially apparent in Young McHanzo scenarios, where Hanzo’s long hair makes it even “easier” to put him into the submissive, receiving, waifish, “feminine” role just because, hey, someone’s gotta be, right?!

It is somewhat different on AO3--I kinda feel like it’s a reaction to Tumblr, but also to the gradually evolving characterization of Hanzo as more proactive, but I still feel like there’s more bottom!Hanzo in the fandom overall.

been playing orisa more, and it drives me nuts, no one on my team, even my friends, helps watch my back. like orisa is so vulnerable once people get behind the shield, especially when it’s sneak attacks? it’s like i’m supposed to be pushing forward and guarding our front, clearing pharahs out of the sky, and defending my own flank, all at the same time. like HOW. lot of times i get pissed and switch to d.va or a dps hero

Right?? Like people forget she only has 400HP when she’s not using Fortify AND she’s huge and slow and if someone flanks her it’s over. I hate Pharahs and Junkrats when as I play as her, too, because it’s super hard to get them even when you’re DPS and for poor Orisa it’s even harder.