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my-gf-is-kazuichi-soda · 3 months

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Some people in the MLAATR fandom act like Sheldon is irredeemably creepy or gross or manipulative, and then uses examples of behavior that happens with all of the characters because it's an exaggerated children's cartoon.

Exhibit A:

youtube

To me, this is the same logic as saying "Jon Arbuckle is an animal abuser" because he lets Garfield drink coffee and sometimes puts him on a diet of a single lettuce leaf (I read the Jon Arbuckle hateblog for a laugh sometimes). Yes, obviously irl this would make someone an animal abuser, but in the silly world of Garfield these are just signifiers that the human reader, who might drink coffee or be on a diet that they hate, is supposed to relate to Garfield. Neither of these actually foods hurt him in the comic. Garfield eats entire trays of lasagna for crying out loud! Jim Davis even describes Garfield as being more like "a person in a cat suit" than a real cat. If we put the actions back in the context of the comic strip, Jon Arbuckle is just a pet owner who sometimes acts as a parent to a child, other times acts as Garfield's friend or roommate, and is kind of a dork but generally a good guy. Garfield and Odie's family.

Likewise, the world of MLAATR operates on cartoon/sitcom logic. Very often the characters will resort to lying, trickery, disguises, being aggressively friendly, etc. as ways to keep the plot and jokes rolling. I'm pretty sure every character has done this at some point, because of the humor potential. These are not meant to be looked at as abusive behaviors. You can usually judge how harsh the actions were based on other characters' reactions and how quick they are to forgive at the end rather than applying real-world relationship logic.

This is not to say that the writing is infallible or unable to be criticized because "it's just a kid's cartoon!" (I hate that argument, it's usually meant to silence people and that's not what I'm trying to do). Yes, cartoons can screw up in their messages, and you might be able to argue that maybe this writing style makes all of the characters bad role models for children. But if this is how you judge Sheldon, it's only fair to hold all the other characters in the same standards, including Jenny herself.

It bothers me that Sheldon gets the bad rep in the fandom because as an autistic person, especially when I was an autistic child, I related to both Jenny and Sheldon and their struggles in communicating/socializing in a world that glorifies popularity and being "normal" and hurts the weirdos to get them to conform. So it hurts on a personal level to see Sheldon get hated to such a high degree, and to hear people say Sheldon and Jenny would be an inherently unhealthy relationship, just because Sheldon can have some boundary issues and lack of social skills. I know people aren't saying this to villainize autistic traits, but that's how it can feel to me.

I could also get into how the show hinted that Jenny was at least a little curious about a relationship with Sheldon and that she might have gone for it if not for her fatal flaw in trying to seek popularity, but I'll save that for another post. This isn't meant to shame those who dont like the Jenny and Sheldon ship, but to give an alternative perspective to the whole "Sheldon is creepy!" thing I keep seeing in the fandom.

#mlaatr #my life as a teenage robot #sheldon lee #jenny wakeman #sheldon x jenny #garfield #actually autistic #Youtube #non-dangan related but this is also how I feel about kazuichi and sonia even though I dont ship them together

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rappaccini · 10 months

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..... had to reread sitting in a tree for gwenfic research and wow i still hate it! this is a sitting in a tree hateblog! all respect for gwiles shippers but this comic was everyone's introduction to them, and boy does it still suck! it is singlehandedly the worst thing gwen's ever been in! it poisons the concept of them as a couple! i went into reading it the first time excited to ship them, and closed the issue like 'they should never hook up anywhere in any context ever' and even after the spiderverse movies broke their backs to try and redeem this ship i still want to hiss at it every time i see it!

gonna number out all the things i hate about this shipping crossover here in a very incoherent, bitter, salty fashion because that's just how i get when i have to reread siat:

they have no chemistry. it's subjective, i know, but reading those issues, the vibe is just so fucking strange. the writers clearly think these two are into each other and the entire time you're like... oookay. they only met and interacted a few times before this and barely know each other too, so them being so touchy-feely is just... strange. especially when you consider--

the age gap. miles is 15/16, and gwen is 19/20. so, high school/teen and college/young adult. it is creepy seeing them canoodle and kiss. especially when you consider that miles is drawn to look so much older than he canonically is in those panels where they made out (and that they keep insisting that he's 'almost seventeen and she's barely two years older' but only in this issue), probably to downplay that he's a minor and she's a young adult. there's literally a subplot in siat where gwen infiltrates a nightclub that miles is too young for, so he sits outside texting her like a kid waiting for his mom to get done grocery shopping. and... okay. a 4-5 yr age gap is nothing, but not at this point, and given how slow marvel's internal time progression is, miles and gwen can't logistically get together without it being too weird until he's out of college, when they're 25ish and 30ish respectively. which won't be for another irl 10-15 years. it's simply not worth putting them both on a shelf (or let's be real, putting gwen on a shelf, bc miles is the far more popular character) and making them wait that much irl time, denying them other potential couplings and probably a lot of crucial development that'd take them further apart, and all for the possibility of a romance arc that does none of them any favors.

the fate meddling. the whole shoehorning of earth-8 ruins it beyond the point of no return. maybe the chemistry could've come later. maybe once the age gap became negligible they could've had something. but them only making out because they suddenly, randomly discover an alternate future world where they are a happily married celebrity supercouple who lead their equivalent of the avengers, are fabulously wealthy and beloved by the public, and have two superpowered spider-kids who keep. showing. up. to be all 'hi alternate mom and dad! we love you! let's team up!' is so fucking creepy. dangling two delightful spiderkids in front of a teenage boy and a 20yr old girl who barely know each other and are under a lot of stress and heavily implying 'you'd better kiss or these sweet kids won't exist and you'll never be happy' is gross. and it makes any idea of them hooking up feel like they're giving in to the pressure of adhering to someone else's narrative and surrendering to an arranged spidermarriage rather than trying to forge a sincere emotional connection of their own.

the sexism. specifically making gwen, the girl who is defined by standing in the shadow of her mainstream self being Spider-Man's Dead Girlfriend, finally get to have her own story where she gets to survive her peter parker, be the hero, and have a narrative about trying to keep her agency and find her place in a world trying to chew her up and spit her out, and for her characterization to be that of an antiauthority cop-cynical grungy musician girl with no desires for a domestic life, who is currently hated by the public and hunted by the cops in her world....... and then having her be informed by the equivalents of the gods of destiny that she will only ever be accepted or tolerated if she marries some boy (literally, a teenager. a boy.) she barely knows, abandons her world and everyone in it that she loves for him, has babies with him and becomes a hyperfeminine celebrity supercop, as all her musical ambitions seem to have evaporated in favor of her being a family-centered girlboss.... rancid. absolutely rancid. god no please no. run gwen stacy run. don't get kataang'd.

the comphet. it's a given to everyone who reads her comics-- and even most of the people making them-- that spider-gwen is not straight. she's unmotivated by sex and romance (or domesticity in general: this girl does not want kids), she turns down male love interest after male love interest, she has tension with her bandmates and much of her female supporting cast (though they seem more interested in her than she is in them). alternate versions of her have had even more overt queercoded vibes with her interactions with female characters (even spiderverse gwen is trans-coded). gwen is queer. she might not be gay but she's definitely not straight, and it's just the disney-marvel homophobia that won't let them say it. with that in mind... a queer girl being told by what basically counts as a god that the only way she'll ever be happy or accepted is if she marries a boy she isn't that interested in and has a nuclear family with him, and hey, it'll make sense eventually... fuuuuuck that. even the kiss reeks of comphet: gwen only does it because it's what she feels like she's supposed to do. with all this in mind, if they get together... man that's a bad vibe.

the shallowness: reading the miles issues of sitting in a tree, the way he talks about her is... weird. it's him bragging to his high school bros about how he met this super hot, super powerful older spider-woman and totally made out with her, and dude, she's gonna have my kids someday. and the gwen issues are just like 'so this boy showed up and god made me make out with him. anyway.' basically the vibe is that miles is into gwen because she's hot, she also has spider powers (and at this point given that he was being thrown peter's leftovers, that she's a version of peter's girlfriend, and he wants to be like peter.) and gwen is into miles because she sees hiding behind a relationship with him as an easy fix to her problems. that's it. that's what keeps them together. that's the depth of their connection. that, and that they look pretty when they stand next to each other. if they get together, good god they're gonna hamstring each other's growth.

anyway i'm just staring down the barrel of these two getting together in btsv. no matter how earned the payoff is in the movie, the consequences are that they'll likely be paired off in the comics then too, which almost certainly means that gwen, whose solo was cancelled and only appears in team-ups and crappy minis now, will be sent to be miles's supporting cast to largely exist as His Girlfriend for potentially years, and that the fundamental cornerstone of her character ('gwen stacy gets to be the superpowered protagonist of her own story without being any spider-man's girlfriend, regardless of whether she dies or lives to motivate him') will have been betrayed. that's the Big Fear, and it all started here, with fucking sitting-in-a-tree.

#gwen stacy #spider gwen #arachnophobia fic #miles morales #spider gwen salt

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maipareshaan · 7 months

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Again its not like i support harrassment and most of the blogs getting targeted by the hateblogs were being targeted for being proship, but its very obvious how weird D*sticule is, like its such a weird echo chamber self masturbatory braindead cult, i have literally seen the same people making callouts and saying they want to kill wincesties and adjacents aka anyone not furthering their cult being like omg don't make hate blogs i feel so sick i am so anxious pls tell me if they say my name omg poor me omg this environment of harrassment

Fuck off canabalise yourself braindead 16 year olds lmao. They deserve to always feel uncomfortable and scared because that is what they have done for anyone who doesn't ship D*stiel like a fanatic who doesn't go around heaving about how spn is and should be about that narrative.

#Fandom wank

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morhath · 2 years

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okay listen so re: this post I did go and look at that person's blog again*

and apparently they got an ask from someone else commiserating about me! very exciting, very dramatic, the convos people are having are VERY funny

"did this person even watch the first three seasons" oh believe me I did, in fact I'm getting a feeling this isn't even my first rewatch "obviously they only care about Cas's intro" very much focusing on my joke about skipping ahead to the exclusion of everything else

but the BEST one is that their friend seems to have gone through my blog to see how I feel about Jared because I guess caring about destiel makes me dislike Jared Specifically (???) (cannot overstate how much I was an OBSESSIVE SAM GIRL back in the day. it was a RUNNING JOKE in the fandom community I was in. it was like one of my most notable characteristics) and their friend has decided I am anti-Jared because of this post I reblogged. in 2015. where it talks about alleged** failings of multiple members of the main cast, not just him, but they only mention him when talking about me.

anyway. I would be pissed off and probably trying to start ill-thought-out fights if they were actually mad about accurate things, but as it stands it's very funny. "ooh they don't care about spn at all" I have just written so many lengthy text posts about every ep I have watched so far I care A Great Deal About Supernatural. also I thought we were all??? in agreement??? that it's deeply flawed??? this truly feels like finding a super rare species in the wild to find someone who is mad that I am pointing out sexism, etc.

*promise I wasn't Dwelling, it was because I got a reply to my post that I could NOT fucking view and it was driving me nuts b/c I didn't know if it was a weird glitch or what, and I realized oh maybe they replied to that person's reblog of my post, so I went and looked (and was correct). but well now that I looked to try and figure out that mystery I might as WELL read the hateblogging about me

**it's from 2015 I have no fucking idea what the context is lmaooo it's very possible I was being an insufferable [does math] teenager

#they r mad I don't care about the chemistry between the leads. you know. the brothers. who are related.#anyway if anyone knows what the hell the 2015 post is referring to I would LOVE to know because I have no idea #I would not be surprised! celebs gonna celeb! but who knows what it's about #cannot believe my spn liveblog has already generated drama. it comes with lore. incredible #anyway!!! no more drama allowed unless someone decides to like. Attack Me.#this is a rule I am making for myself no more engaging about this it is very silly #supernatural #life #unfortunately: supernatural liveblog

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duhragonball · 4 months

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Janwum IV Update: 2808

I think this has been going well. The goal is 25k by 1/15, but I purposely set aside the first five days for 5000 words of plotting. I've barely managed half of that, but I still feel like I've made a lot of progress figuring out what I want to do. I knew it would probably be this way, and 5000 was a shot in the dark, so I'm just gonna forge ahead and not worry about hitting that target by Friday night. That just means I'll need to pad out my wordcounts a bit from Jan 6-14, but I don't expect that to be an issue.

The harder part will be nailing 2500 words a day for... wait, I should only need eight days for that. Why did I schedule nine? Oh well, it doesn't matter. I added the 15th as a makeup day, so now I get two makeup days. Anyway, the hard part will be maintaining that pace. I mean, I managed similar numbers in November, but then I had the luxury of being able to jump from one project to another when I got stuck.

If you're bored, you can head on over to my main blog @sodiumlamp , where I have improbably begun hateblogging Star Trek: Picard because they had the temerity to put random present-day labware in a scene set 375 years in the future. Sure, that may sound crazy, but it's a pet peeve of mine when TV shows half-ass laboratory scenes by just putting flasks of colored liquid and acting like that makes it science-y. It's bad enough in police procedural, but this is some hoity-toity big shot production that should know better.

To be fair, Picard only committed this transgression in a single episode, but that episode was really, really terrible, and so are all of the others, so I'm just watching them all and complaining about them to cope.

I bring this up because I was looking up YouTube reviews to see if anyone else hated the show as much as I do, and this has led me to the unfortunate discovery that a lot of the criticism of Picard comes from internet chuds who are just mad because it's "woke" or there are too many women in the cast. You know the type, they're mad at Kathleen Kennedy for existing. Let me assure you, I only hate Picard because it's extremely badly written and slow-paced. I actually feel bad for the actors, because they all seem quite talented, and they're just trying to make the best of the lines they're given.

The important thing is that Star Trek: Picard is a lousy, rotten TV show, and props departments should think twice and do some research before they just order a bunch of graduated cylinder and fill them with Kool-Aid.

#janwum iv

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leejihoonownsmyheart · 11 months

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Oh no, Brie ☹️ What is bothering you at work? (if you want to say it, of course). I hope things get better soon!

I have just 4 days left of vacation, so I'm kinda getting depressed, because I don't want it to be over 😭

-beebee

I like want to talk about it more but I don’t want this to be a hateblog 😂 the tdr (???) of it is just that i’ve been feeling like a really inadequate leader and i’ve had to have a lot of crucial conversations with people who haven’t taken it well? Which is causing me a lot of stress, which is thinning my patience and making me really mad at stupid things and getting really stressed or really mad is making me get really dizzy to the point i feel like I’m about to pass out </3 I’m sure it will get better though! I just had a manager feedback meeting and it went well which made me feel a little better

Oh god I’m so sorry your vacation is almost over 😭 Do you have any plans for the rest of it??

#i can’t wait for a vacation #You were watching dramas a bunch right #i think that was you my memory is really bad i’m so sorry if it wasn’t #b: beebee

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lenatea · 11 months

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After a hard 1st day of pride month, I understand I need to keep the fuck off twitter, Facebook and even the news. Straight terfs, gay and lesbian terfs, JKR and Norway's own proud terf-homophobe-racist-ableist-covid denier-pro russia-pro life-MAGA-Karen. Oh and fucking incels??? Coming after whoever is perceived to be remotely positive about Pride.

After the terrorist attack in Oslo targeting the LGBTQ+ community last year, the vocal online hate and active seeking out LGBTQ+ people and allies in order to harass us has severely amplified. Yesterday, a Christian couple had put a printed paper in my mailbox, damning all humans who refused to stop "whoring" and turn to God, to eternal hell - which is starting to sound like a pretty nice place, compared to the constant online surge of unmasked hate and threats of violence I've seen in the weeks leading up to pride month and then the significant ramp-up from yesterday. A children's event had to cancel because they recieved serious threats from ADULTS who thinks threatening harm to literal children is justified in order to *reads notes* protect children from the gays and trans-peeps.? I don't want this to make sense. I don't want it to be real. Two years ago, I joined the comment sections, I didn't want the terfs and anti-pride movement to win. That resulted in an online extremist hateblog doxxing me and calling their followers to harass me on Facebook. I had to change my name on Facebook in order to protect my family, and still haven't changed it back. The entire month of June, plus the rest of the summer, I had constant anxiety. The next year I put up my pride flag on our house and had to work hard to calm my anxiety for the entire month because I was scared. I managed to have fun at pride but the online hate was getting less conceiled. This year I'm not even putting up my flag and I'm having to severely restrict the news and social media I'm using because I'm already experiencing anxiety attacks very frequently because of this.

Work has been really stressful lately, but it doesn't involve hate crimes, at least. I feel safe with my colleagues.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to take my family to the local pride parade but I'm struggling. I should probably just go and have fun, but all the stress from work plus the insane stress I've experienced because of the online hate and threats that's literally anywhere I turn my head, I feel exhausted just thinking about going. This is bullshit.

Browsing the Happy Pride tag on tumblr gives me life, though. It's so comforting because on here, theres so much POSITIVE and just reminding of how much I enjoy the celebration part of pride month!

#diary entry

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monstermaster13 · 1 year

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Dan Aykroyd Room:

You decide that you want to uncover the secret of the door with the glowing 'no ghost' emblem on it and you decide that you should investigate it personally, carefully you make your down the hallway until you get to the door, as if by supernatural magic it opens up automatically and you are transported into what looks like a hi-tech lab with ghost-busting equipment and you see a green, chubby ghost eating some slices of pizza. That's when you see a collection of police badges and you recognize the name on one of them…'Dan Aykroyd?', yes…that is Aykroyd's collection and you are in his room, which excites you. You have always been somewhat similar to him, certain people always view you as deranged and bizarre because of your obsessions and you feel that there's nothing wrong with that, you like being odd and you like it a lot. You can't help being a simp for Aykroyd, after all it wasn't like you were one originally since like with a deadly virus it was spread from another person to you, making you an Aykroyd fan too and now your followers on Tumblr worship you as a master of Aykroydian knowledge. You are an expert in Aykroyd and proud, you're weird but you don't care…you wear your weirdness on your sleeve. You are essentially more interesting than people claim that you are, no matter how many crappy Deviantart hateblogs there are and how many forum threads talk about it, you're still proud to be different, being the werecreature guy doesn't seem like a bad thing to be typecast as. They were also putting you down, said you came from the wrong side of town. You are an Aykroyd Maniac, and your followers are in love with you and all look forward to your wisdom. Those other guys on those hate-blogs told their friends that you were bad, but your friends knew that you were sad, and that's why you're the leader of the pack and why they fell for…the Aykroyd Maniac.

You look around and are amazed at what you see, and that's when you see all the mystical items on display including a Crystal Head vodka bottle, you carefully approach the bottle and rub it, unleashing a spirit, the spirit takes on the form of the man himself Dan Aykroyd. You are awe-struck by this, but you know this was meant to be since Aykroyd is your kindred spirit and your twin, you love him…you see yourself in him, you've always wanted to meet him and unlike with Chevy Chase, you have heard wonderful things about him. You dream about him at night, and although you are embarrassed to admit it…you actually want to become him, in all of those dreams you have you turn into him or his characters and your crazily quasi-year-long attraction to him can't be denied, you try to deny it but you know you love him. 'Hi.' 'Thank you for freeing me.' 'No problem, you are my hero.' 'For being so kind, I will help you by granting you a wish.'

"Isn't this basically like a genie scenario?"

"Yes, it is…but it's one that ghosts can do as well."

"Do you think you ever could grant my wish?"

"Certainly…name it."

You think hard for a second about what that wish is, because you don't want it to backfire and you don't want to cause anything bad to happen so you think carefully until you begin to think of those dreams…maybe it's supposed to happen, maybe Aykroyd is your twin, like your mirror universe clone and you want to be like him, don't be shy now, it's alright. You sigh as you look over at Dan and give him your answer. 'I have had dreams about becoming you and I wish it really would happen. I feel that you and I are similar.' 'Your wish is my command.' He snaps his fingers for a few second before taking on a transparent form and entering your mouth, diving down your throat and possessing you in the process. Your stomach gurgles for a few seconds as your skin clears itself up, becoming healthy and aging itself up to 67 years as your stomach slowly plumps up, your chest and torso also broaden and give you a larger upperbody which causes your grey button up shirt to get a little bit tight but it doesn't rip, that's because it is growing to fit your frame just like in your dreams.Your arms broaden as your hands enlarge, you scratch yourself as hairs slowly coat your arms and also a few develop on the top half of your chest, but not too many hairs though…you look at your body and you can't believe your eyes, your back broadens while your legs contort and undergo the same changes as your arms, you look from behind and see your rear plumping up. You feel your behind with your hands and can't believe just how big….and…uhhhhh…gorgeous you're becoming, you've been developing this attraction to Aykroyd for a year and ever since you first got your craving for it, you've wanted more…all those dreams were telling you something, that this was meant to happen and this is the start of many things to come. You look down at your feet as they enlarge a little but then you notice two of the toes on each foot contorting to have a sort of webbed appearance, as your shoulders broaden along with your back and you slowly grow in height to 6'1 as you are now the same height as Dan himself.

In addition to this you can't help but geek out over the fact you're turning into Dan, and more than that…you're clearly enjoying it, even as your hair darkens and changes to a different style while your neckline alters, you look in wide-eyed wonder as your eyes widen, one turns green while the other remains brown and you start getting some thoughts a lot like Dan's ones, you start getting his memories. You've always been weird, you've always been bizzarre, you can't help it, ever since you were born in Ottawa…yes, that's right, Ottawa, you were born in Canada, you are a Canadian after all and no you don't look like how they look on South Park. Your nose broadens as a small cleft materializes in the middle of it, you twitch it around a little as your brow and eyebrows alter, you accidentally let out a sneeze but you remember to use a tissue since you don't want to end up spreading your germs onto others. Your features slowly plump up as the glasses you are wearing change into a different pair that resembles the ones Dan wears, your features slowly contorting into a perfect replication of Dan's features, you feel a scratchy sensation in your throat as your voice deepens and matures, harmonizing and contorting into a copy of his voice complete with Canadian accent and mannerisms that are uniquely his, instinctively you speak in fluent techno-babble as if you've naturally been able to all your life, and you don't question this. You just instinctively start singing and dancing along.

"Oooh, this is wonderful. Thank you."

"You're most certainly welcome."

Mentally you feel like you are him, everything prior to this has been a test to see if you are worthy and you have clearly shown that you have. Normally you would be freaking out but why freak out when you are used to transforming and when you are used to being like this, you look, sound and feel Aykroydian as you start to develop more of his quirks and you realize that this is what it means to truly live out your own dream and this is natural, you've always been like this…you remember everything he does including the movies he has been in and you feel like that you were always like this. You feel a bit confused as you try to resist but ultimately you give up because once it's started you can't stop it, and the best thing would to be just unleash your inner Aykroyd as your mind and personality merges with his, completing the transformation and turning you completely into Dan Aykroyd. You look at yourself and you can't believe that you are him, but of course…you've always been him, so lovable, oddly huggable/attractive and also you…totally Aykroyd, that's you. Dan speaks to you telepathically in your mind and tells you that there is a bonus to this.

"What kind of bonus?"

"Well my Aykroydian aura fused with yours and gave you were-celeb powers, you are a Were-Aykroyd now."

"A Were-Aykroyd? Okay that's awesome."

That's right, due to Dan's aura merging with yours, you are a Were-Aykroyd now. But you totally don't mind that, even though your Aykroyian powers and instincts are difficult to control at first, you don't mind them. You are exactly like your hero and you didn't need to 'drink his blood' or 'drink Crystal Head' in order to get that way, and that's when he explains to you that there is a whole universe of Aykroyd characters and he needs your help to bring them together. He gives you something very special to help locate them all and he gives you the instructions. After listening to the instructions you set off to begin your new mission, eventually you meet up with Elwood, Ray Stantz, Louis Winthorpe III, Sgt Tree and Clifford Skridlow and form a team of Aykroyds and then you hear of a green haired koala-woman named Madam Eucalyptus, Madam Eukie is the woman who you need to consult to contact all the others and so that is what you do, sometimes dreams come true in the strangest ways, perfect for a wonderful and strange person such as you. Now you live your life as a Were-Aykroyd, a fun-loving, adorkable paranormal obsessed were-Aykroyd who much like you did as your normal self, loves horror movies and monsters and is totally okay with who they are.

You don't need to fit on or be popular to be loved, especially not when you already have your own legion of followers and people who appreciate you for who you are, being a were-celebrity isn't such a bad curse to be honest and you can't understand why others think of you as a bad influence but you don't care to be honest, you are a true soul man now and you're on a mission. You are an Aykroyd and proud and you live a live that you've always dreamed of and you couldn't be happier.

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lokiarsene · 4 years

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Unused Goro Third Awakening scene.

This is my translation of the unused version of Goro’s Third Awakening, which you can watch here. The subtitles missed a few things, and I wanted to try my hand at translating again anyway, so here we go~

Goro: How nostalgic. It’s been some time since I last spoke to you.

[Ren’s dialog]

Goro: Reminiscing, huh? Hah, we can do that. Though it is a bit bitter for me.

Goro: First things first--you have my thanks for making the deal back on the ship.

Goro: According to you, in the true reality, Shido’s heart was changed and he was arrested, yes?

[Flashback happens] [Ren’s dialog]

Goro, remembering and in response to Ren back on the ship saying he still has Goro’s glove: You truly are... naively honest, huh?

Goro: Originally I wanted to settle the score with Shido on my own. That was the only way (lit., It was the only path). Sorry to say it, but I don’t owe you for what you did. You’re the one who owes me; I lost my chance at revenge because of you.

[Ren’s dialog]

Goro: Even if its logical, perhaps I’m just not convinced? …I know, I’m the crazy one. But I can’t help it. This is how I truly feel.***

Goro: Maruki distorted reality in an attempt to fulfill people’s wishes. But such a reality is a paradise only in his eyes. It’s no different from what Shido did.

Goro: It’s not worth living in a reality made to satisfy someone else.

[Ren’s dialog]

Goro: I truly do envy you. You’re so uncomfortably straight-forward. I can’t understand how you can live that way.

Goro: Talking with you now about this has made me make up my mind (lit., Taking with you has made me realize this). I do not accept this reality. I’ve had enough of living like a puppet on a string.

Goro: Let’s go back home, to our reality.

[Third Awakening]

Goro: Hah, this is... What a rush! I won’t hold back anything anymore! (lit., I feel high! I’ll run wild as much as I please!)

Goro: You still have it--my glove. I haven’t forgotten about all that. I will never lose to you. Bye.

---

***: Correction provided by @koisuru-mijinko. Thank you!!

Hey remember when I made that post saying that Shido and Maruki are similar and a Maruki stan jumped on my dick and made a hateblog about me to tell me how wrong I was? Well, the devs agree that Shido and Maruki are similar too lmao

Anyway, I think this conversation is fantastic. I’m not sure if I’d prefer it in place of what we get on 2/2, which is far more emotional, in a more intimate setting, and centers both Goro and Ren’s feelings, but I do rather like the discussion. It comes off more like a normal Jazz Club convo in the third semester, so I’m glad that they decided the Third Awakening required a more pivotal scene. Pity it had to come so late in the game, though...

It was so nice hearing Goro talk again. Is it odd to say that I’ve missed the guy?

#shuake #akeshu #persona 5 royal #goro akechi #ren amamiya #mod krist translates #it's almost like i know how to analyze a narrative

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maipareshaan · 11 months

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I feel like i wank about this every week but ppl who are hung up on 'narratives' of the show whining about positivity because they do media right by hating the narrative and wanting the correct narrative and hating anyone who doesn't want what they want and hate what they hate then being all #positivity and #silenced and #domediaright when they are vocal pro censorship and harrassers, idiotic, to have no self-awareness about it when whining about how a creator needs to think about and create for your poor mental health bcz the 'narrative' hurts you and only what is good and healthy to you is allowed and how you can't show something and be about something and must be about thing you want.

Literally my problem is the whole positive uwu schtick, nausea inducing idiotic hateblogs who don't even know that's what they are.

And they are so obsessed with how other people are not having positive and supportive feelings for their hurt feelings. It is literally how they fully conduct themselves after the finale. I am not saying the dean crit thing isn't idiotic at times and also you aren't obligated to care, the reactionary whining is just obviously coming from a place of narrative obsession, has nothing to do with fandom when somehow the rules are that character must be decent, like Dean, bcz you can't at all be a bad character stan, you can't like the brother's dynamic, you must want their narrative which is how Dean DESERVES better by breaking free of his duty to Sam to be idek happy free most likely via Destiel.

I mean if i just talk about Destiel, like why are you whining about people too into Castiel's positive independent narrative or Sam's, when all you do is whine about your narrative want, somehow these people get so offended at any s9 wank but will not cannot stop finale wanking, is it not the same thing? Narrative wank? Also can't stop s8 homophobe Sam finale wanking, weird, what a weird way to conduct yourself in fandom and be so not aware of being a wanker with negative feelings who whines about being above the wankers with negative feelings.

#fandom wank #no the obsession with hate #wahh ppl hate lisa they hate blah i dont hate ever guys i joke #noone allowed to hate #its so weird #and also clearly idc if you hate sam or whatever you are allowed to #as long as you get its your problem #but then again most ppl are going to have interpretations #and that is the problem?#bcz u r right?#idek the gymanastics going on in running an ironic dont feed the stans blog #while being a stan who should not be fed

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docholligay · 3 years

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LIVESTREAM WINNERS AND TOP POINT COMMENTS

THose of you who read the schedule already know this but the winners are:

HOLLIGAY INVOKES THE SPIRIT OF CLOSET GHOST

and

WE COOK FOR DINNER IN THE APOCALYPSE

Please join me for both! It’ should be a terrifying, thrilling time.

AND NOW, THOSE OF YOU WHO MADE ME FEEL THE WARMEST. Thank you to all who answered--I know this was super self indulgent and it means a lot to me that you took the time. So, literally 12 out of the 13 of you got at least one point (One person did not give any details, or even a quote) MAZEL.

Point allocations are below!!

One point winners:

4(?)ish years ago, you sent Jet a series of letters/cards/funeral lilies, from different Sailor Moon characters. The lilies were for Mako. One card was from Michiru, after Haruka's death. I have never been able to find them again, but I just loved the care you put into them--how they were all written specifically from the character, the fact that you even put tear stains and perfume on the cards. It was just so creative and touching, and it felt like the characters were real for an instant, mourning and living and giving you a peek at their lives. --- @kumeko (That was A Little Letter, and Mako’s was actually a separate thing for the same contest!)

“Before you get yourselves killed I want to go on record as saying this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.” Rei stood with her hands on her hips at the front of the garage- from that short story about Mina and Haruka strapping an engine to a shopping cart. You can really feel how rei must feel, the resigned exasperation mixed with genuine, but hidden, concern for Mina and haruka’s safety. I think i have said the exactsame thing before people i know do stupid shit. --- BeefSalad33 (oh ma, an oldie but, I think, a goodie)

OH MAN. I am always thinking nonstop about that piece where Minako confronts Seiya about bullying Haruka, specifically for the line where Mina spits out "you think she'll love you for this?" and UGH that LINE. it HAUNTS me, I want to BITE DOWN ON IT AND NEVER LET GO, I WANT TO PUT IT EVERYWHERE EVER BECAUSE IT HURTS SO GOOD, AND I DON'T EVEN CARE ABOUT SEIYA. --- @wouldntyoulichentoknow (I’m so glad that I’ve managed to make both you and jetty grit your teeth and care about Seiya at some point ahahah)

"*But flowers grow from death and decay, don’t they? That has always been true, you know that, Mako. You are a rose of perfect beauty, grown in the rich fertilizer of your loss.*

She threw the stress ball across the room, knocking over the cup on the sink, spilling the ice down the drain."

The contrast between reminding herself of how life works, and then still being bitter about it, and knowing what she is and being frustrated about it. It's a lot, when sorting out various issues- i have trauma, and that makes me better at empathizing with people, i'm adaptable long-term, and that means i can put up with some bullshit, that kind of thing, but that doesn't mean those are wholly good things. It's nice to see it put into words, and so plainly, and with such a strong reaction of it.

Roses can still grow wild, as pretentious as that sounds with how your passage resonates to me, but it's still nice to feel that. ---- @katrani (I’m so glad it resonates with you! I liked that line a lot! )

2 point answers:

Christmas Carol, Stave 1 - “You are a terrible person,” she jutted out her chin, feigning strength. “Fareeha deserved much better than you. But,” she took a deep breath. “I still hope she forgives you, someday. Someday, I hope you will deserve it.” It feels like cheating to use the most recent thing you’ve written, but nonetheless this section conveys so much about your take on Mercy, so quickly. She may be an idealist, the peacekeeper and builder, and she may want Pharah to have a relationship with her mother that’s not this disaster, but that doesn’t stop her from acknowledging that Ana’s been the primary factor in making it what it is and telling Ana that directly. I love how you write Mercy (and Tracer for that matter) as very warm characters who try to see the best in their situations but won’t gloss over the fact that sometimes, someone does have to be shot in the fucking face. “Good” doesn’t mean “hopelessly naive”, even with a pacifist, and I appreciate that you have characters who show that.

Bonus, and a fringe case as technically part of the Fushigi Yuigi hateblog: “She was still trying to get home, had been unable to get Tamahome to let her poison him, and then Nakago had hugged her into his chest until she had been forced to flatten him with a punch to the nads. She was tired, she was hungry, and she was trying to have a moonlight bath to consider her options and wash the stink of a man off of her.

And then, Tamahome, again.” - Haruka-gets-dumped-into-Fushigi-Yuugi-as-Yui was a delight that entire episode, but this post was one of the best. Is it really just narrativizing your frustrations with the many, many writing choices that were made here? Absolutely. But it’s a fun little bit of comedic pacing here, especially with the utter exhaustion of Haruka that this bullshit isn’t over yet. (“Fuck my life” to the moon wondering if Usagi could help and regretting how hard it would be to drown herself are close runners-up on that front.) --- Regalli

(Mercy is, in many ways, my attempt to write someone who is MOSTLY a pacifist that I can respect. It’s not easy for me! I often find pacifism to be cowardice, because so often in life the people I know who are pacifists are, well, not the folks in the street. So i thought, could you write someone who is very hesitant to kill, who believes that even Doomfist, even Reaper, even whoever, deserve care if they are hurt, who believes that a sword will not leave her hand free to uplift the fallen, and make her brave? And make her strong? And so was born, Mercy, who proved that, yeah that person, at least in my mind, can exist.)

I think one of my favorite passages from your writing is from "The Rest is Commentary". Particularly the part that starts with "I am a doer. " That entire paragraph is wonderfully written, with mix of beautifully descriptive language to describe *why* you don't trust words. It's slightly paradoxical, but it also fits with the rest of the essay (?) so well. And even beyond that, I love reading when you write about your faith. You are deeply devout woman, and a personal aspiration to me. When you write about your faith, it reminds me that there is work that needs to be done to live it, and not easy work either. But it is very much worth every bead of sweat, and every drop of blood. --- @shavedjudomonkey

(Thank you so much! I love that people have connected so much with my Jewish writing)

3 point answers:

From Requiem for the Great Consummation, I adore the word play with "compose." Ie, in the line, "Michiru folded her hands in her lap and composed herself." Why? I'm a musician. So, Michiru, with her music, holds a special place in my heart. (Why Ami gets the music attacks is beyond me. WTF?) I don't think the writers ever really understood what it takes to be a musician, and while fanfic writers often include Michiru's music, I've never really seen it done well. (I'm sure it has been. I just haven't seen it.) Music is all about structure. It has to feel free and soaring, but it can only be that because of the intense amounts of tension and structure underneath. A kite without a string plummets. When I reach for high, soaring notes, that's when I have to be most conscious of having a solid base. Making music Is constant tension. So, often when I see writers portray musicians, it's all "she never felt so free and untethered as when she sang/played the,violin/piano/whatever." And I think, "wow, really? She must have been Crap." So, back to compose/compose. This wordplay shows that tension. The "I have rehearsed this 5,000 times and am still working so hard I'm sweating standing still in this freezing auditorium so that it can look and sound completely free and easy." This is Michiru's entire life. She is composing herself. She is outlining complex rhythms and tensions and resolutions that even though you hear when the piece is played, you don't fully take in or understand, and all you consciously comprehend is 'wow, pretty.' Because that's how music works. Organs have keys that can't be heard by the human ear, and composers include them in their pieces. Why? We can't hear them! But we feel them. If you look at the score for an orchestral piece, it contains So. Many. Notes. So much going on. But when you listen, all you hear is that melodic theme. But if you take out anything underneath, things change and cam fall apart. Michiru lives her life like that. She creates herself, composes herself, and it looks elegant and free and easy, but it is so so very tightly controlled and rehearsed, and that particular wordplay showed off that side of Michiru's music, which is one I don't get to see explored much. --- @incorrecttact

(Thank you so much for this!! I am NOT a musician, but so much of Michiru and music speaks to me, the structure of it, the discipline, the way it allows you to express yourself while hiding behind something else. And yes! I think of that double meaning so much!)

I want you to know... that this was very, very difficult. I made a notepad and collected shit I'd pulled out from your work where I could find comments where I did such, and then I AGONIZED. Here is where I landed but know it's so close with other things god.

"Winston worked in earnest at his inventions, and Emily went back to teaching, and the two of them began to cook for each other again. Family dinners once a week resumed, grew with some of the new recruits that were being folded into their family. Pharah and Mercy’s daughter took them to the zoo, the park, out into the world. Dva had continued the game they had all been playing before Tracer died, their party picking up after the terrible and well-done loss of their beloved rogue. ***Life did not return, but it grew forward. It bloomed again.***" — A Clock's Fading Chime

I ended up choosing this one because I hate it a little when I read it. Not because it's not good but because it's SO PAINFUL. I love so much about the way you talk about love, and I think grief is all a part of that. We grieve because we loved. The idea of the grief period, especially for those in a close circle of a lost person, being like the cycle of the seasons where a flower may die but life blossoms in the soil it left behind is so evocative and perfect and everything leading up to that last line is the soil for which that line got to bloom. The slow, simple way life returns to them, that they adjust to the heavy rock in their pack (A piece of yours I revisited for this and a metaphor I will always carry with me) and start growing stronger together. And that they find it WITH EACH OTHER too just god, it kills me. But would I rather wish it wasn't necessary? YUP. FOR SURE. It hurts to think about someone who plays Lena's role dying in our own lives and trying to mend the rift between those left behind. But it brings all those possibilities and who may have gone already before to mind because it feels so grounded in the reality of what these experiences are like and shit it's just a great sampling of everything I love about your work. Beautiful prose, saying so much with so little, grounded in stuff that feels read, and ending on a banger, transfixing line. ---- @thoughtfulfangirling

(Thank you so much! I LOVED that whole series of fics around that, as it is in the way that I often like to toy with the nature of grief, and the way that we go on. Things aren’t ever the same, but we go on. And I’m so glad you gt into it too! It’s very self-indulgent for me, basically everything with OW, so I love when other poepl like it)

4 point answers:

Given that I am not Jewish, I hope this isn't overstepping my bounds, but your passover Seder speech really spoke to me this year. Specifically the bits about the relationship between cowardice and metaphorical bondage:

"This is a celebration of our freedom from bondage, but it is a also a reminder, a call that we must ensure we do not, in cowardice, return ourselves to bondage. "

Without explaining too much, and risking the kind of parasocial oversharing that you lamented the other day in a post, this particular push and pull has been at the forefront of my mind this year. The intense gravity that the familiar, the easy, the safe, can have, versus the genuine terror of pressing out into the unknown in search of something better.

Trying to change, and to do better, and to press on, is fucking terrifying, and hard. But, that is not an excuse. And I appreciated the reminder. --- @blastoise-m

(Not overstepping at all! I am so glad that it speaks to you, I really, really love this kind of writing, and I really should get back to doing more of my Jewish writing. My rabbi is leaving, because we apparently don’t have the money to have a rabbi! And he’s readying people to be lay leaders, and called on me to be someone who could give Divrei Torah (sort of like our sermons) because of my tendency to do stuff like this, and it’s very scary! But really exciting as that’s the kind of stuff that had me interested in being a rabbi, is picking this stuff apart and applying it to our own lives HI YOU ASKED FOR NONE OF THIS SORRY)

"There are no beautiful deaths in this world, and am sorry that you must know it. Rei never was allowed to say goodbye. I watched Haruka grow weaker and more ill every single day. We each have been jealous of the other, at turns, but I tell you this truth now: Our lives mean much more than our deaths. You and Seiya had a wonderful love story, and you raised a wonderful daughter, and unfortunately it is very often difficult to finish a story in a satisfying sort of way. It is not the end of your story, simply of hers. For you, it is a new chapter"

I think this is still one of my top 5 fav fics that you've ever written. I still think of it randomly once in a while. It's such a small moment but it sold me Usagi and Seiya in a way never would have expected. It's such a moment of growth for both Usagi and Muchiru. A small moment of connection for two people who are so different.

This is wrapped up in the entire MaS series, which I could never separate from this work let alone this quote. The entire series is a series about love and all its many permutations. About finding meaning in a world when you think your meaning has been taken away. About carrying on when you think there's no reason to do so. And I think this quote really encapsulates all of that.

This story, this entire series, is one the favorite things I've ever read and I'm so glad that you decided to share it. --- @madegeeky

(I truly and in all ways love how much you love this fic, it cheers em and makes me so happy every time I am reminded of it. And thank you for loving that line! I FEEL that line. It’s been true for every death that has come to me, so I love when it has meaning for others. )

The 5 point answer:

"God separated the sky and the sea, and that’s true, but there will always be the horizon where they blend."

I'm not much of a quote person. I'll often remember the feeling or the takeaway but rarely the words themselves. This, though, has stuck with me.

There is so much in this world, and so many people, who see everything as absolutes. Black and white. Good or bad. Right or wrong. And as I've grown and changed, that has come to bother me more and more.

This quote is such an elegant and accessible way to express how that oh-so-common point of view is a fallacy. And really it's just a lovely line that invokes both lovely imagery and feeling. ---- @seolh

I FORGOT I WROTE THIS, and like the completely arrogant piece of shit I am, when I read it was I was like, “Oh fuck, that’s a solid line.” And yes I am with you on getting older and relizing that the horizon line can be so fuzzy out there, sometimes, and this quote WEIRDLY came back to me when I needed it, a lot, and so thank you!

#names for thing

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brainrotmeta · 3 years

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hi same anon as before. i feel that response is extrapolating on your already-existing incest reading. which is like, a valid reading for you to have in that context? but um to be clear i don’t really care to discuss that for many reasons but partly because the analysis of it like that isn’t interesting for me specifically. your previous responses and then that one are.. okay let me explain further.

they’re confusing to me because within the framework of the episode. it’s made clear the siren doesn’t always seek to replace a sexual/romantic relationship. the second victim is emphasized as deeply infatuated with the siren who, to him, has the appearance of a beautiful stripper. he’s also emphasized to be caring for his elderly and implied to be ailing mother, with several shots before he is influenced into killing her meant to convey that she is important to him and he loves her very much. it’s also meant to show sirens target anyone the victim is close to.

i don’t wanna get into dean is bi analysis in the anon askbox of a wincest hateblog, so i’m going to try and avoid working with what to you are suppositions here (in that normally i’d engage with this episode from a dean-is-bi lens to be clear.) the episode makes it absolutely clear that 1. sirens don’t just target romantic/sexual relationships, with some emphasis specifically on familial relations. and 2. the episode never sets the same precedent for sirens. you could maybe call this bit an extrapolation but i’m running with it rn. Nick says a bunch of lines about i’ll be ur little brother, i’ll never leave you like he did, etc etc. Personally I think this works really well with a bi reading of dean, most especially when viewed in pairing with later episodes wrt queer dean readings. i don’t wanna get into it too much on anon but i hope you get what i’m saying?

anyway, with the 2nd victim the same siren feeds him lines about not letting his mother keep them apart, that she’ll fulfill him and he doesn’t need her. which are key emotional beats nick feeds to dean, too. (also what i wrote just above, just realized i didn’t go into what my point wrt the nick lines. but i don’t wanna like, do that unprompted on anon so.. ask me to elaborate if you want i think it’ll make my reasoning make more sense to you?) okay tldr what i’m saying is the siren episode goes to pains to show that sirens don’t just influence victims into killing their spouses & seek to appeal to their victims need for companionship, but it doesn’t do the same for saying sirens don’t have to appear as sexually attractive to their victims. you can remove the killing sam bits from an incest narrative, but it’s difficult to take the nick as deans siren aspect out of a ‘sirens sexually attract their victims’ framework the episode had been building. the only thing the episode does to take it out of that context is make Nick a dude, which... okay. uh this is maybe you should consider your own reading comprehension manifesto

they’re confusing to me because within the framework of the episode. it’s made clear the siren doesn’t always seek to replace a sexual/romantic relationship

Yes. Which is why my primary reading is that the siren was trying to fulfill Dean's deepest desire: to have a devoted little brother who hero worshiped him. But, it's also in an episode literally titled Sex and Violence and the siren targeted its victims by appearing as sexually desirable. I think it makes sense for the siren to choose a different route with Dean: he's a very beautiful man who can get plenty of pussy so why go through the effort of taunting him with something he can already have when it would be so much easier to go down the Ideal Baby Brother Angle?

But, here's the thing. The episode is also dripped with incestous subtext. Intentionally. Because season four is about breaking down Sam and Dean's relationship and showcasing their bond in the most destructive and ugly way possible. Adding an element of incest is in the same ball park as Dean nearly killing Sam with his detox and Sam nearly strangling him in their fight. This is them at their lowest point, and their lowest points have Uncomfortable Implications.

i don’t wanna get into dean is bi analysis in the anon askbox of a wincest hateblog

You might as well. Be complaining about bad interpretations is the reason this blog exists.

(in that normally i’d engage with this episode from a dean-is-bi lens to be clear.)

Nick says a bunch of lines about i’ll be ur little brother, i’ll never leave you like he did, etc etc. Personally I think this works really well with a bi reading of dean, most especially when viewed in pairing with later episodes wrt queer dean readings.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you think Dean harbors a desire to fuck a man who gives him what he wants from Sam?

i don’t wanna get into it too much on anon but i hope you get what i’m saying?

Dean->Sam to a Dean->Cas pipeline is meta I would gladly read in very good faith.

you can remove the killing sam bits from an incest narrative

You're ruining my fun :(

but it’s difficult to take the nick as deans siren aspect out of a ‘sirens sexually attract their victims’ framework the episode had been building

Nick tells the brothers he gave Dean what he wanted. Not sexy lady, but a submissive and agreeable little brother who is completely devoted to Dean.

the only thing the episode does to take it out of that context is make Nick a dude, which... okay

Nick picks to play a version of Sam, that, at Dean's lowest point in the narrative so far, craves. Dean WANTS a little brother who'll never challenge and never leave him, but what he NEEDS is to accept that Sam's a grown up and to let him go. Sex and violence is brilliant foreshadowing for Swan Song.

Cherry picking details and divorcing them from the context of the narrative is what so much of the Destiel-is-canon crowd does. Which is why they were wrong. They take little things out of context and create their own full blown version of Dean that has nothing to do with Dean in canon.

Which is fine! That's part of the fun of fandom. But convincing yourself that your cherry picked fanon is a legitimate interpretation of canon is why an angry crowd of shippers are upset and pretending to be traumatized by A Show About Brothers remaining A Show About Brothers.

#supernatural #wincest #dean winchester

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duhragonball · 3 years

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Disinterpretation

I finally finished the Sarah Z video about “pro vs. anti”. It’s pretty long, and I ended up watching it in chunks over several days, but I think it’s worth watching, especially if you’re sort of partially connected to online fandom, but not enough to be aware of all the lingo.

As I expected, the whole thing was vague and confusing because the people involved in the conflict made it vague and confusing. In theory, the full terms would be “pro-shipping” and “anti-shipping”, but it seems like it’s more about particular kinds of ships that could be considered controversial. But that’s a slippery slope, and apparently the whole conflict mutated into both sides deciding that every hypothetical relationship between fictional characters is either equally valid or equally dangerous.

Long story short, it’s just purity culture, which was what everyone on Tumblr was calling it around 2012. But now, if you’re a sane person who genuinely asks: “Who gives a fuck about Voltron?”, these people will jump your ass and accuse you of being on the side of their enemies. “Children have died over the importance of Lotor/Hagger! Your callous indifference proves that you yourself must have murdered children!”

I think what Sarah Z really hit upon in this video was that media consumption has become so ingrained in our culture that people feel like it has to go hand-in-hand with our morality. That is, it’s not enough for me to watch Star Trek, I have to justify Star Trek as evidence that I’m a good person. Maybe this is where the expression “guilty pleasure” comes from. Conversely, it’s not enough for me to not watch Dr. Who, I have to somehow convince everyone that Dr. Who was invented by the devil.

I’m pretty sure the Reylo ship has a lot to do with this, since it’s kind of understood to be a dark, problematic concept, and fans either embrace its flaws or recoil in horror because of them. Star Wars itself is a dumb story about space wizards, so people try to give the debate more weight by linking it to freedom of self expression and/or enabling real world harm. Suddenly it’s not enough to just think two actors would look cute making out instead of fighting. Now it’s this battlefield for the soul of civilization or something.

I grew up in the 80′s, when “concerned parents” and grifters would accuse the Smurfs and metal bands of promoting satanism and witchcraft. I used to hear stories of teens going out into the woods in the middle of the night to do occult stuff, and all I could ever think about was: “Why would anyone bother wandering out in the woods in the middle of the night?” Which is why “concerned parents” turned their attention to things that were closer to home, like Saturday morning cartoons. It had nothing to do with the content; it was just about finding a safe, accessible target for their hysteria. Some people want to go on a crusade without leaving the house, so they pick a fight with Papa Smurf instead of confronting the real evils in the world. Even as a kid, I knew this was a con, because I’d watched the show for myself and knew it was too saccharine to be threat to anyone.

The pro/anti folks have tried to disguise this with a lot of terminology. I wondered why they seemed to reluctant to use the full terms “pro-shipper” and “anti-shipper”, and it’s probably a couple of things. First, the word “shipper” is basically an admission that this is pointless bullshit that doesn’t matter, and they’d like to avoid that connotation. Second, they seem to have decided that this goes beyond shipping itself, into practically anything else they want it to involve. It’s all part of the con, which is to make you believe that it’s “us vs. them”, and you can be part of “us” by curating specific attitudes about Steven Universe.

Seriously, “about Steven Universe” is such an incredible punchline. You can make anything funnier by adding those three words to the end of a sentence. “Do not interact if you blog about Steven Universe.” “Hey, what’s up, YouTube, this is SSJ3RyokoLover69, and this is going to be kind of a serious video about Steven Universe.” “Mrs. Johnson, the results of your biopsy are in, and I have some bad news about Steven Universe.” It’s a fucking kids show. “Oh no, all the characters look like the characters in all the other kids shows!” Yeah, that’s because it’s a kids show. Marvin looks like Garfield, this isn’t new.

The common denominator here seems to be that both sides try to wrap themselves in the flag of vulnerable groups: impressionable minors, trauma survivors, harassment victims, etc. The “pros” want to protect those people so that they can feel free to explore weird subject matter on their own terms, and the “antis” want to protect the same people from being exposed to weird subject matter that they might not want to see. It’s all about establishing a moral high ground. Back in the day, it was called “sanctimony”.

But people get roped into this, because at their core, people want approval, and this stupid conflict offers them a sense of community. As long as you support the cause, whatever it may be, you’ll have this online friend network that appears to support anything you do. But if you deviate from their norm, you’ll be cast out. Does this sound familiar?

To use a more familiar example, I still sometimes find people clamoring about Gochi vs. Vegebul. I’ve never understood this, because both ships were canon, and I never saw much direct evidence of a war between them, but people would still talk about how crazy the Vegebul shippers were, and how crazy the Gochi shippers were, and it was like some huge thing going on just over the hills. It’s the same idea, since the idea that you could like both or neither never seems to occur to anyone involved. I never gave a shit, because I used to see the same dumb agendas in the Harry Potter fandom.

Okay, so let me take you back. It’s 2005 through 2011, and I’m hateblogging all seven Harry Potter novels, because fuck you, that’s why. The funny thing I encountered was that occasionally fans seemed to want to pretend like my bashing of certain characters was proving them right somehow. They were like “See? He hates Ron Weasley too! That proves that Seamus Finnegan is the coolest guy ever.” The Slytherin stans would do this all the time, because I would constantly take the piss out of the Gryffindor characters for being self-important dopes. I think they just liked hearing it from an outside perspective. But I had to keep reminding them all that I hated all of them. Every character from Harry Potter sucks ass. Voldemort was my favorite, but only because he was the one guy who wanted to kill all of the others. But he sucks too because he failed.

And the shippers were the same way. I’d say something shitty about Ron, because Ron sucks, and some smartass Joss Whedon fan would be like “Yes! Boost the signal! That is why Harry/Hermione is the best ship!” And I’d be like “No, Harry and Hermione suck at least as bad as Ron does. They’re all terrible and I hate them.” I really do think there was some sort of Stockholm Syndrome going on with Harry Potter books, where everyone secretly knows they suck, but the fans sort of latch on to one or two characters and go like “Well, he’s not as shitty as the rest.” Like finding spaghetti in the trash and picking out the meatball with the least amount of lint on it. Then you’d go and start a flamewar with some other starving person over whether your meatball is shittier than theirs. This is what people mean when they say to read another book.

Anyway, the big thing I picked up from Sarah Z’s video is “disinterpretation”, a term coined by MSNBC columnis Zeeshan Aleem. The Twitter thread is worth a read, but the short version is that he once remarked that a Julia Louis-Dreyfus routine wasn’t very good, and someone got mad at him for insinuating that women are incapable of being funny. They just took his dissatisfaction with one performance by one comedian as being a universal condemnation of women comedians in general. And this sort of thing is all over the internet. Everyone sees what they want to see and then they take it as permission to overreact.

I ran into this myself a while back, because someone saw who I interacted with on Twitter and decided that they’re all bad guys and if I have any interaction with them, then that makes me a bad guy too. At the time I tried to play it cool, but the more I think about it, the more it ticks me off. And over the course of that conversation, it was said that I don’t talk about myself much, and that’s kind of funny, because all I ever do on social media is write long-ass blog posts like this one. I don’t expect anyone to memorize them, or even read them all the way through, but when I write all this stuff and someone goes out of their way to say they don’t know anything about me, the message is that they just didn’t pay attention to what I was saying, and they didn’t bother to try.

So I’m a little jaded from that, because I got called out for a bunch of stuff I didn’t even do or say, and apparently that’s just a thing that happens. People will reject you for completely arbitrary reasons, not because of anything you actually said or did, and you’re left thinking you made some terrible mistake. Except, no, I’ve seen it happen to other people, people a lore more conscientious than I am, and if they can’t satisfy the bullshit purity standards, then I never stood a chance. If the game is rigged so I can’t win, then I’m not going to play.

And it’s that same condition that probably draws people into these online holy wars, because if you declare yourself for the pro or anti side, at least then you’ll have a posse backing you up. Only they don’t support you, they support your willingness to support them. Once your commitment to their agenda wavers, even in the slightest, they will turn against you.

Sarah Z suggests that both sides of the war drop the pro and anti terms, since they lost all meaning long ago. But that just invites a new set of useless terms to perpetuate the same cycle. Her more useful advice is for fandom people to broaden their horizons. She got a lot of flak for tweeting “Go outside” once, but the ironic thing is that it’s sound advice. I had lunch with my mom yesterday and it was just nice getting away from things for a while. People need to do that more often, and unfortunately it feels like it’s harder to do than ever before.

But “go outside” isn’t just a literal thing. It can mean going beyond your usual haunts, reading the same books, watching the same shows, rehashing the same conversations. I think the reason this stuff always revolves around “shipping” is because there seems to be this deep-seated compulsion to pair fictional characters off like this, and for a lot of folks it’s the only way they can consume a story, so they do. And they do it lot, and there’s a lot of them, and they do it the same way every time, and lo and behold the same old conflicts start up. So maybe “go outside” should mean “go outside of that cycle once in a while.” Just a thought.

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