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theslowesthnery · 3 years

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i don’t rly understand what you mean by problematic.. like you enjoy something in fiction but not when it’s real, but what exactly is it??

i would like to know why exactly you feel entitled to that information. like you want me to list every single thing that i like that contains things that are not good or acceptable in real life?

fine, okay

- naruto. i don't approve of child soldiers.

- fullmetal alchemist. again, child soldiers.

- gunsmith cats. not a fan of the author's clear love for lolis - "legal" (read: over 18) or otherwise.

- hades. i don't approve of abusive parents, and there are many things in greek mythology that are not okay in real life: incest, rape, pedophilia, bestiality and infanticide to name a few

- tekken and soul calibur. i don't actually like real-life violence, and i'm not a huge fan of the ridiculous, over-sexualized outfits of the female characters.

- dead by daylight. do i even have to say what all in this game is not okay in real life?

- marvel comics. ...actually beta ray bill is perfect and has done nothing wrong in his life.

- legend of korra book 1. terrorism is not actually good, and neither is oppression and brushing aside the concerns of oppressed minorities because they dared to criticize you. cheating on your significant other and then acting like none of it was your fault and not even apologizing is not good. telling your brother to not be interested in a girl because you're interested in her but have no intention of actually dating her (because you already have a girlfriend) is shitty. threatening to burn someone's face off is really bad actually. literally everything that mako does in book 1 is shown in either positive or neutral light and i agree with none of it lmao.

- transformers MTMTE. there's violence, there's characters making questionable decisions and generally not being black-and-white good or evil.

- manifest destiny (comic series by image comics). colonizing a continent is not good. murdering an entire tribe (and possibly species) of sentient bird-people is not okay. conspiring to sacrifice an infant to some sort of evil god is not okay.

- shigurui. i don't approve of literally anything in this manga lol don't read it it's horrible and soul-crushing.

- blade of the immortal. the author has a thing for torturing (fictional) women, and it becomes apparent as the series goes on.

- fatal frame games. i don't support sacrificing people, even though the characters in these games had very good reasons for it, it's not like they were doing it for laughs.

- silent hill 2 & 3. please don't make me list everything in these games that is not okay in real life.

- outlast 1 & whistleblower. bro

- final fantasy 9. i'm getting tired.

- undertale. besides the things that are obviously bad and shown in a bad light? idk my brain's not working anymore.

- deltarune. ditto.

- soul reaver 1, 2 and legacy of kain: defiance. all the characters in these games have very grey morality and do questionable things sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unknowingly). a character who's presented as a villain in one game is presented as an ally in the next, and a character who acts as your ally in one point might be an enemy later. you have to confront the fact that the past self you idolized was actually a piece of shit and kill them, and not in a metaphorical sense.

- bloodborne. i don't approve of using the blood of some random "god" you discovered in a labyrinth underground to start a religion. don't murder entire villages. don't do human experiments.

- okami. i really don't like the lecher character type, so i'm not a huge fan of issun. but amaterasu is a perfect protagonist that does nothing wrong.

- tera. i like the elin race (they're so fucking adorable), but i don't like the sexualization of them. the game also suffers from a VERY bad case of bikini-armour for female characters (the castanic race has it particularly bad), and i think it's kinda gross.

i know there are more things that i like (tv shows and movies for example) but i can't be arsed to list anymore.

for tropes and stuff, i like hurt/comfort and whump A LOT. i like drawing my favourite characters hurt, bruised and bleeding, i don't know why. i like angst. i like the BDSM aesthetic, and like drawing (or just thinking of) my favourite characters in bondage, and since a lot of the anti rhetoric comes from radfems and swerfs, they think that those things - and kink stuff in general - are Normalizing and Romanticizing abuse and rape.

oh yeah, and i like M/M ships even though i'm not MLM myself, which means i'm a fetishizer. also i have M/F ships, which means i'm homophobic.

i like ships with size differences: deunan and briareos, sans and toriel, cyclonus and tailgate, asterius and theseus have the biggest size differences, and some antis say that that's normalizing and romanticizing pedophilia. some of my ships also have age gaps: deunan and briareos have one of 9 years, sans and toriel's is not officially known but i headcanon it to be decades if not centuries, kakuzu and hidan have an age difference of about sixty years if i remember correctly (can't be arsed to check), cyclonus and tailgate have a practical age difference of a million years, and asterius and theseus have this interesting situation where most people (myself included) headcanon them as having been about the same age when theseus killed asterius, after which theseus went on to live for at least a few decades more before dying, so in the afterlife theseus is quite a bit older than asterius. and again, age gaps of more than like three years are pedophilia according to antis.

also asterius and theseus are like. the quintessential enemies-to-lovers ship - theseus killed asterius for crying out loud! kakuzu and hidan kinda hate each other (though they do, on some level, also care about each other). cyclonus and tailgate did NOT have a good start. amon bloodbent the lieutenant in the finale of legend of korra book 1. so sometimes i like messy ships, or ships that didn't have the best start. which, y'know, is normalizing and romanticizing abuse.

is that good enough?

#fandom discourse cw #shipping discourse cw #anti discourse cw #fucking spanish inquisition over fandom stuff and fictional interests

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woodrokiro · 6 years

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Hollowed (fic) Part One

Fandom: Bleach

Pairing: IchiRuki

Summary: They call her a miracle, but he looks at her as if she’s normal. It scares her. Fantasy/Futuristic/Zombie kinda?AU

A/N: Oh you know just looking at @ichirukimonth AU themes and getting started on ideas and thought HEY what about this combination of three of them and try to make it a oneshot?? Too late, here I am with a probable multi-chap pic that idk what I’m doing with because I’m a piece of shit.

In an Old book she snuck out of Master Yamamoto's quarters, she reads about a child goddess.

It's like reading a fairy tale. Not so long ago, in a place not so far away (maybe, perhaps: how would she know?), there was a country that believed a goddess of some kind would leap into a lovely young girl, inhabiting her body until she first bleeds, menstrual or otherwise. The goddess' spirit then flees to another child, leaving the young girl confused and no longer considered immortal by her people. But until then: the girls lived lavishly, eating whatever they wished, wearing only the finest of jewelry and silks upon their skin and commanding whoever they wanted.

Rukia cannot keep her eyes off one little goddess' picture who can't be older than ten; how beneath the heavy, spiritually metaphorical makeup and gown she looks so convinced, so sure of her position in the world. She truly believes she is her people's salvation. There is so much in common between the two of them it hurts, but moreso: she envies the girl. Faith was such a luxury in the Old World. A whimsy to pick and choose a random child as their deity. To not worry that they got it wrong, because in a few years they'll have another chance.

Rukia has no such leisure, because while the ones around her may consider her a miracle sent from Heaven, the very fate of civilization lies (somewhere) in her blood.

-- He comes to the gates on a cold day, gritting his teeth as he leads a group of five others.

The mist common to the mountain enclosure covers the hills like a blanket, so thick you can only see maybe five feet in front of you. It is a wonder the guards did not mistake him for a Hollow One, seeing how dirty and disheveled he and the others are. Luckily for them all, he is loud, boisterous, yammering on to open the fucking gates, he and his people are tired from climbing all this way, goddamn it! The guards are startled, because 1. To shout unless in emergency is forbidden within any village (even in the mainland), 2. It has been a long, long time since anyone Living tried to come up to the gates, and 3. Who does this man think he is to be just ushered in without issue, when so many before him were turned away?

Master Yamamoto, the soldiers and doctors usher her into the greeting room, where she is heavily veiled and sits directly behind Renji and Ikkaku with Master Yamamoto at the forefront. While he claims it is an act of mercy to let them within the gates, Rukia knows it was in fact only that he was afraid of what the man's shouts might bring.

It had been quite a while since they had seen a swarm of Hollow Ones, but who knows?

They are all lead in, and Rukia is able to scan each of them for herself: three men, one woman and two girls. The men and woman seem about her age, teenagers just on the cusp of adulthood. She tries not to pity the two younger girls, how they clutch each others' hands like a lifeline.

They will not be here long, she knows. Nobody has in a long time.

Master Yamamoto clears his throat. "Good comrades," he starts, eyeing each of them with what seems to be a gentle old man's smile, but Rukia knows it better to be calculating. "We welcome you to our haven, if for just a short time. We hear you have caused quite an uproar outside of our gates.... Frankly, I can't help but think that quite rude, considering what dangers we all know to lie out there. Did you not consider a Hollow One could still follow? Or five? Or twenty?"

A man of the group with glasses steps in front, bowing slightly. "Sir, I apologize for my... Friend next to me, of course he exclaimed without realizing the complication of his actions, we are simply afraid, weary, and hungry--"

"We need jobs." A boy with orange hair steps in front of his friend, and it is here that Rukia truly allows herself to notice these strangers, at least this one, because she pales and shakes and thinks Master Yamamoto's fiction stories are real: ghosts are real, there's one in front of me right there--

She is shaken out of her haunting with Master Yamamoto's scoff. "Clearly you are not from the mainland parts, my son. If you were, you would know that we have no positions available. We are always sure to come down the mountain when we do."

"You haven't come down the mountain in years--"

"Because we have been blessed enough to not need replacement. Now, I will forgive the trespassing, the commotion too for your youth if you would kindly go back to where you came from--"

"We were attacked. There is no village left to return to."

There is an audible gasp from within the room, and a few frightened sobs echo from a few servants. Some were blessed to have a couple of family members to live up here with them, but most of the newer members--all servants and maids, never the soldiers or doctors--had been providing for their loved ones in the mainland until spots could be open. No longer, Rukia thinks silently as she watches Yamamoto's face remain stoic in the face of yet another tragedy.

He lifts his hand for silence. "My heart mourns for you, comrades. If you are from Karakura, you must know that many of our members here are from your village. We will grieve for their family and friends alike. But there is simply no room, we are short enough on crops and trust alike given the last attack from Hueco Mundo for our Prized One. What we have here is sacred, and we cannot logistically afford another potential betrayal. I am sorry, but you must seek refuge elsewhere. Perhaps Rukongai will take you in."

The leader seems unsurprised, even as the people in his group look disheartened and angry alike. Instead, he pulls a sword from his back, lowering it carefully to the ground at the hostile reaction of the soldiers. He meets Yamamoto's stare the whole way as he rises to his full height again.

"Isshin--my father--sends his regards."

An audible murmer flickers through the room, but Rukia is not paying attention to that: her eyes are on Master Yamamoto's slightly paled expression.

Finally, he clears his throat. "You are Isshin's boy?"

"I am. My sisters are with me as well."

"Then I presume Isshin is...?"

"I don't know. I've been able to come all this way because I don't allow myself to think about it. As the attack was happening he told me to take this up the mountain with a grin on his face, said 'Old Man Yama owes me a debt,' or something. He was fighting them off the last I saw, but I took my friends and sisters and ran and never looked back."

Yamamoto nods slowly throughout, as if he cares. "I see. And do you have fighting capabilities, boy?"

"I've been training and fighting with this sword since before I knew what it meant."

"And the others? Are they of any use?" He looks at them all carefully.

"They are all versatile in their own ways, which I will only reveal if you give your word to let us stay. All of us."

The men stare hard at one another, until finally--to Rukia's surprise--Yamamoto gets up from his seat with a quick nod. "Very well. You and I will discuss this further in my library. Hinamori, if you would be so kind as to lead our new guests into the west wing. I believe there may be one or two rooms available to rest, however it may need some cleaning and dusting on the way in..."

The guards help Rukia up from her seat and turn her to the direction of her own quarters, but not before she sees the golden haired boy looking at her.

It's a gaze of curiosity, of searching for... Something, but.... It's a look of normalcy, too. Like he's wondering what's so special about her to be wearing the lavish robes and veils she does.

Nobody has really looked that long at her before, either.

Her shoulder throbs.

#ichiruki #bleach #ichigo kurosaki #rukia kuchiki #my stuff

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gothic-fiction-in-space · 7 years

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~ THE ROOTS OF HORROR SCI-FI: FRANKEINSTEIN ~

Mary Shelley’s “FRANKEINSTEIN” (at the beginning called also “The Modern PROMETHEUS”) is considered the first science fiction (an horror sci-fi, a gothic fiction). The first Alien movie was an horror science fiction too, and this prequel saga seems to bring us back in time, at the time of the Frankeinstein’s monster. That’s not a new topic in sci-fi movies, not a new topic for Ridley Scott himself: Blade Runner (for example), already has some references to Mary Shelley’s novel. What connections can we find between the story that unfolds in Prometheus and Alien Covenant and the story of Frankeinstein? The novel is about a young university student, Victor Frankeinstein, that has always wanted to discover “how nature works”. He’s no “mad scientist”, he’s no mad man. He’s so brilliant and passionate in his studies, that suddenly finds himself with an incredible power in his hands: the power to create life from death (David is pretty obsessed with the connection life-death, destruction-creation too, and he creates the fagehuggers with Elizabeth’s dead body). Frankeinstein decides to use his power to accomplish the most difficult and glorious goal, building a man (not a more simple animal). Frankeinstein is moved by scientific curiosity, by the desire to solve the problems that afflicts mankind (death, illness… ) and by the desire to make creatures that would have rejoiced him as their creator, a good creator. That makes us think a bit about Weyland, because he solved lots of the problems of mankind and because he built a man (David) that could call him his creator. That makes us think a bit about David too: David created the Xenomorph because he wanted to give life to some creatures that would have considered him their “father”. We already have two “scientists” in this story. But David is also Weyland’s monster. In Mary Shelley’s novel, all the problems begin because Victor, soon after he has given life to his creature, rejects him because he’s an hideous wretch. The story is the tragedy of the monster who is so ugly that all men fear him and force him into solitude. The monster is forced to learn how to live by himself, because his father abandoned him. The monster then turns his creator life’s into a nightmare, killing all his beloved ones for revenge. Weyland knows the story of Frankenstein. Weyland thinks to be far better than Victor: he didn’t created a monster, he created David, a very handsome android, and he gave him all the gifts he could (David doesn’t age, he can’t die, he can’t “feel the heat of the stars or the cold of the moon”). Weyland is a creator who did all he could do for his creature. Weyland is a “winner”, he built “better worlds”, so, he also creates “better men”. But that doesn’t change the crucial problem of the “monster”: Weyland doesn’t love David. He wants to be called “father”, he says that David is the most similar thing to a son to him, but yet, David feels, right from the start, that he’s no really a “son” to him, as a son should be, as a son generally is.

David: “Am I?” Weyland: “Perfect?” David: “Your son”

As soon as David is “born”, Weyland is satisfied to see that he’s perfect, his “living” Michelangelo’s David statue is no Frankeinstein’s monster. But David is interested in something else: he wants to know if he’s really a son to him. He soon realizes that he’s not. He’s not loved. David is the symbol of Weyland’s godly status, he’s the piece of finest art that makes Weyland a creator, that makes him worthy to “enters to Walhalla”.

Weyland (to the Engineer, in a deleted scene of Prometheus): “Do you see this man? My company built him from nothing. I made him, and I made him in my own image, so he would be perfect, so he would never fail. I deserve this, ‘cause you and I… we are superior… we are creators… we are Gods. And Gods never die”

The most important question of humanity: where did we came from? It’s the question that permeates all Prometheus movie and that opens Alien Covenant. Weyland asks that question when David is born. David makes that question himself, inside of him. But David finds the answer in few minutes. David has his creator in front of him. “Where did I came from”, “who I am”, “where am I going” are the questions that give meaning to human life; mankind looks for an answer to these questions. In Mary Shelley’s novel, the monster asks these questions to himself a lot of times, because at the beginning he doesn’t know who he is or who created him. He really wants to know. The novel shows us that the question “where did I came from” is connected to another extremely important question that is basically the other face of the medal: “WAS I LOVED?” Weyland explains David that without an answer to the question “where did I came from” life is meaningless, all the works of art are meaningless. Unfortunately, David already has the answer: he comes from Weyland. And here’s the next question connected to the first one: “was I loved?” No. David is not loved by the man who brought him to life. All the answers David gets are extremely disappointing. David’s life is meaningless. Few minutes after his birth, David learns that he’s born to serve Weyland. He’s Weyland’s work of art and his key to find his creators, and no more. During his life, David see how humans have no kindness towards him, because he’s a robot, a machine in human shape. David is no “monster”, he’s handsome, but people are scared by him because his humanity is unnatural. He’s like the David of Michelangelo “so human but not really human”. He’s too similar to them. They find that resemblance creepy. That’s a huge frustration: what’s the purpose to be so handsome and clever if David can’t be treated by humans as an equal? But David is disillusioned. He knows the truth right from the start.

Frankeinstein’s monster: “You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing?”

The monster has been rejected by the one who created him, he wasn’t loved by him, so, he can’t hope to be loved by people not related to him. That’s also David’s situation. That’s the problem of Prometheus movie: humans look for their creators, for different reasons, the creators can make them happy, that’s what they hope. When Holloway starts to fear that he will never manage to talk to the Engineers, he gets drunk. Holloway wats to ask to the Engineers why they created mankind. David already has the answer in the answer his creators gave him: “we made you because we could”. Stop. No love. No meaning of life (Alien universe is a very dark and sad universe). Victor Frankeinstein made his creature for the same reason too: he finds the power to do it, he does it, without a second thought. David hates both humans and Engineers because they both create with irresponsibility. The monster of Frankeinstein decided to identifies himself with Satan against his God (Victor), even if he should have been his Adam. David identifies with Satan too in Alien Covenant. They both red Paradise Lost and got inspired by that poem. They both are lonely, even if Milton’s Satan has his fellows devils. So, David is a true mix of Lucifer and Frankeinstein’s monster, because he’s really evil deep inside him, but at the same time, he truly feel the need to be loved, (even if maybe he can’t fully acknowledge that, always for pride. Frankeinstein’s monster is ready to leave all his evil thoughts in exchange of love, but I think David isn’t interested in accepting love alone, at all, it seems to me that David wants to go on on his way no matter what). This Alien prequel saga is FULL OF FRANKEINSTEIN’S MONSTERS: David is Weyland’s monster, but humans are the monsters created by the Engineers: mankind too looks for the creators but he’s sadly rejected by them. Weyland searches immortality as a gift from his creators, Elizabeth searches answers.

Elizabeth: “I need to know why!”

That’s something that Frankeinstein’s monster too could have said.

What David choses to do in this situation?? His life has no meaning, and he’s superior to every other creature in the galaxy. When Weyland dies, David decides to become an “artist”, and to fill the void of his existence becoming a creator himself. A better creator, a better father than the previous ones. To create is a way to say to the universe you truly existed. David is built fearless. David can’t get tired. David has all the time he needs to try to accomplish his goals. David decides to basically START ALL OVER AGAIN. David decides to reset the entire universe and write something new… also because “nothing is written”, not “for some men”, the ones who are “the dreamers of the day”, that are “dangerous men” (David doesn’t sleep and ends up believing to be able to dream, to metaphorically dream, so, he literally dreams with his eyes open… ) At first, he decides to do that with the “cooperation” and the company of Elizabeth (Elizabeth is also the name of Victor Frankeinstein’s girlfriend, and she’s killed by the monster), the only human that showed him kindness, the woman he truly loves in his amoral and flawed way, but she refuses to be part of David’s “second Eden” and David ends up killing her to prevent her leaving him (one of the crucial problem of Frankeinstein’s monster was finding a way to have a female companion). David “moves forward”, David decides to become “the new Engineer” and to erase the previous “dying species” to substitutes them with his creations. His sons. The ones who “trust him”. The alien monsters who will never suffer because they are ready to survive no matter what (a bit like David himself), monsters that maybe are “perfect” because they don’t ask fundamental questions anymore, because they are “unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusion of morality”.

(Sorry for the long post ☺️)

(Table of Contents:

https://gothic-fiction-in-space.tumblr.com/post/164533391538/table-of-contents-1-the-romanticism-of-alien

)

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