Tumgik
#this is not targeted at a specific person or post btw this is just something i’ve been seeing a lot recently
fiveminuterice · 4 months
Text
controversial take i think but i don’t like when artists say “don’t like without reblogging” on their posts or say they’ll block people who like their art without reblogging. i say this as an artist, if you feel upset often enough by people who like without reblogging then that’s not on them that’s on you. and i say this is gently as possible. you are not owed engagement.
35 notes · View notes
iintervallum · 2 months
Text
.
#vague post i guess about something very insular that for some reason i keep looking at#with these i guess two specific circles of people that for various reasons i dislike#and it's like very much an unspotable force vs immovable object situation#of two groups that refuse to accept they have blindspots and have made mistakes and instead double down#I'm not going to say which group is worse because they both suck for different reasons#all I'm going to say is when your arguments about racism and transmisogny do not seem include twoc in the convo then it rings hollow#because I'm curious i can't help but drop in on both sides and rolling my eyes because neither group seems to get it#this has seemingly been going on for the past two years as well like maybe just let it go??#that person is no longer even on tumblr why does she matter so much#due to Tumblr being Tumblr the whole inciting incident is wrapped up in he said she said because some blogs have been deleted#so all we have is the final “you can't call that a genocide”outburst that happened 2 years ago#not much info leading upto it so it's unclear who is really telling the truth because i looked into it and all i could find was that#not defending her btw but i think it solidified one groups resolve to continue what they've been doing because they happended to be right#the 1 time--as if it makes the targeted harrasment in the following years and guilt by association okay#and the other groups constant down playing and continued ignorance over why what she said was wrong isn't okay either#all I'm saying is people are not going to change their minds easily and arguing senselessly with stubborn people isn't going to work#I'm debating just blocking all of them but I'm still just curious to see the trainwreck of how they keep beating a dead horse#aster.txt
0 notes
piosplayhouse · 12 days
Note
I don't know if you'll answer but I need to know the lore behind sexy times with Wangxian, like is it a fanfic? why do people hate the author??
It was the longest mdzs fic posted during its time in 2021 and gained extreme notoriety for its absurdly long tag list, frequent update schedule that consistently forced anyone scrolling any of its tags to see it at the top of their page, and escalating poor, racist, and trolling authorial behavior that ultimately culminated in the author virtual1979 being suspended from ao3 for a month because she posting an author's note saying she hoped that all her haters would contract covid and die. She deleted the fic from ao3 a little while after this happened, ig bc she wasn't getting enough attention anymore, but allegedly the thing's still up on dreamwidth under strict friendslock. The fan lore article goes pretty in depth about it:
The best summary for why it pissed people off so much is really just showing you these screenshots of what the fic looked like towards the end of its life on desktop and mobile (be warned opening the full image):
Tumblr media
From my personal experience:
from 2019 up until around 2021 the fic really was just a normal-ish, if very strangely written and kinky, wangxian porn fic about them basically just fucking around post canon and enjoying day to day life. It updated pretty frequently and had a fair amount of tags because the author was literally just tagging anything that she wrote. But like the first few hundred, maybe even a thousand tags were pretty accurate to what the fic was because of that, and were relatively manageable for the first few years that it didn't pick up any attention really.
At some point in 2021 when cql was really starting to blow up online and the tag count was starting to pile up to the point of annoyance, the fic started receiving some comments that were just like "hey can you try to cut down on tags, I don't think it's necessary to be so specific as to tag 'Korean food' or 'eggs' or whatnot". The author did not share this idea, evidently, and instead built a grudge against commenters who would tell her to delete tags, subsequently adding more and more as time went on.
As the tag count and updates increased, the content of the fic did too-- it got a lot, lot weirder. I'm sure someone's saved it all somewhere but for reference it spun out into what I can only describe as like if Rick and Morty's plot was cut to be just the parts of the show with underage/incest plotlines with All Tomorrows level sex dystopian world building exclusively to elicit the most visceral audience reaction possible. Around this time is when more people started to notice the fic and its escalating tag issues, leading them to leaving more comments complaining about it, leading to the attention seeking author spitefully adding more tags. Around this time is when she also started adding fake tags that didn't apply to the story whatsoever (sorry to disappoint, "talking vagina" was one of those. I did check) just to boost the count, take up more space on people's screens, and bait people into commenting hate for attention.
By this time, it had become a fandom-wide annoyance as she had begun to tag entirely unrelated ships, therefore putting the near-daily updating titanic of a fic at the top of any mdzs-related tag. People were outraged about this, and calls came for ao3 to step in. Ao3 waffled around for a bit as there was no official rule at the time that imposed a tag limit, so there wasn't established ground to ban virtual1979 (who btw many people suspected of being 40 whole years old due to the username and allegedly some other internet sleuthing on Facebook or something). Meanwhile, she began to tag other fandoms-- tgcf, svsss, BTS, basically anything that would get a lot of attention and draw hate with the advent of The Monstrosity suddenly drowning out all other recently updated fics of the targeted fandoms.
People had been trying to retaliate without ao3 action, though, by coding their own themes/skins that would allow someone to block a user or work and other fic writers made their own parody, the "bland times with wangxian" collection, which were minimally tagged sfw shortfics typically featuring wangxian just doing laundry or things like that. A good amount of them were actually like just fics where wwx would explain to lwj how to install custom ao3 themes and block fics that were taking up too much space on his screen. Imo it was pretty funny, but these also sparked some controversy as people disagreed with fighting annoyance with more annoyance to people trying to find content.
Either shortly before or after ao3 staff said they'd step in due to an insane amount of reports and backlash, I forgot which atp, virtual1979 began perhaps the worst tagging spree of the fic's life by changing the title, many of the tags, and the summary to a slew of racial slurs, sexually explicit imagery, and other generally offensive statements. I'm pretty sure this came after the fic was temporarily hidden once, as this update gained considerably less attention than the rest of the tagging saga, but people were still rightfully pissed about it. Ultimately, like I mentioned before, the author was then suspended for a month for wishing covid and death on her haters, and attention seemed to die down during this time to the point where she didn't really fight much more when her suspension ended and deleted her account and the work shortly after. Again she seems to have moved to dreamwidth, but most have forgotten her and I'm not sure if her presence is public at all on there. But that's the story of the worst mdzs fic ever written
Tumblr media
113 notes · View notes
dnalt-d2 · 3 months
Text
(TW for racism/xenophobia, as well as what's going on with Cellbit right now. For anyone who wants to know about that, I put the documents he put out in the replies for the post, as well as TWs for what it contains)
You know, I gotta say I'm really glad I'm hardly on twitter and BARELY know how to navigate it. Because I never actually SEE any of the drama going on over there, I just hear it from tumblr people coming here from over there, and that's definitely the case here as well as well
And I know I haven't really talked much about QSMP Drama before, but what's going on right now is hitting me a little harder than I would've thought, so I do wanna give my two cents on it
For starters, I read through the entire document that Cellbit put out and I feel absolutely horrible for what he's going through right now, and for what he went through in the past. Especially since I've been through something similar to one of the things he mentioned. Not to mention the fact that I'm also most likely asexual as well. (This is kinda why I wanted to talk about it at all, if I'm being honest) I really hope things get better for him, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart
And as for the apparently rampant xenophobia that's been targeted towards the Brazilian community, I honestly feel absolutely terrible that this has been happening. And I really hope that people can come here and find a better part of the community to interact with, if they choose to stay at all. Which I can certainly understand anyone choosing to leave, however unfortunate that is. Either way, I'm really sorry this has been happening to you guys, and it never should have happened in the first place (And anyone else who's experienced this, you have my sympathy as well, even if I know it isn't really gonna help much)
For anyone that stays, I'm really sorry things have been so shitty. Obviously there's not gonna be any place that's completely safe and tolerant, but I certainly hope things over here are better than on twitter
QSMP has been an amazing experience for me, and the fact that I've learned so much about so many different cultures has been absolutely incredible. I'm not the kind of person who can just learn this kind of stuff by reading up on it, so this has really been a great way to learn about things that I either never thought to look into, or just wasn't able to understand for whatever reason
Anyone that sees this sort of project, which has been connecting so many different communities and cultures, and decides to still be so intolerant and hateful, are just a special kind of awful. And frankly, they're the ones losing out on something incredible
(Btw I'm not sure what all to tag this as, since again, I don't really talk about drama stuff all that often, so if anyone wants me to tag a specific trigger or anything else, please let me know)
56 notes · View notes
dragongirltongue · 5 months
Text
New Pinned post <3
Hi there, the name is Zelda, or one of like, 20 other names that may or may not be listed somewhere around here. If you know a name I go by that isn't findable here don't use it. <3
I'm bigender which is made up of girl and fem6oy, as such I use she/her and sometimes he/him pronouns when I'm feeling fem6oy enough <3
I'm in my 30s, not getting more specific than that until I decide it's not true enough to change it, don't try to find my exact age as I don't like sharing that information publicly, I don't even update it on my birthday <3
I'm a polyamorous bisexual voraphile freak and if you're over 18 you're welcome to talk to me about how much of a freak I am. I love to flirt and encourage it. Also happy to share my Other Blog with anyone interested, again as long as you're of age. <3
I'm a film graduate and currently working on doing something with that experience as well as working on a superhero comic and a 2D zelda style game. Feel free to bug me about any of those I love to discuss writing and media and want to encourage media literacy. <3
I'm also an ex-jehovahs witness and as a result I'm hugely into the holiday season in a very against my old god kinda way. Also big into sinning <3
Also I'm like, a dragon in probably an otherkin/thetadelta kinda way, like, it's core to who I am and how I understand myself so yeah. Despite this my fursona is a fox, the dragon in my icon is literally me <3
I also draw sometimes and when I do it'll be posted to @dragongirldrawings but always reblogged here too.
Also I'm a member of a plural system, feel free to check out the rest of the system over here @haven-sys <3
Further on the identity weirdness I'm an imaginary friend for the person who used to inhabit this body, they've been gone for like, over 20 years so it's not really relevant but I have started embracing my nature as a fictional creation, it's comforting.
Btw, if one of my posts containing my typing quirk ends up on your dash I take no responsibility for it. I use it in posts that are for me only and if they happen to resonate with others that's their choice to reblog.
So yeah that's me, hiii I love you all <3
Tumblr media
this post is specifically a6out tum6lr user Zelda dragongirltongue
DNI list under the read more.
lmao imagine if I actually made one of those finally, that's how you'd know I've been replaced with an evil clone or something.
That being said if you're looking at my blog to send me an ask or dm about what someone gets off to please understand unless they're actively hurting someone I rly don't care. I have a lot of ignored and blocked anons about this.
This goes double if the person you're trying to alert me to is trans femme, we don't play that game here, especially given that I know I've been targetted for things as simple as engaging in vore the wrong way for some people or whatever.
Like, I just want to make it clear I rly don't give a fuck what another adult does in the bedroom, I rly don't care if the bedroom happens to include their blog and I rly don't care if they like to flirt about it with other adults on this website.
Also if your pinned post is a callout for anyone about anything it's likely to set off my paranoia around you, which is to say I will not be able to trust you if this is the case even if it's for someone who's actually a danger to a community, like, actively.
Like, this ain't a moral stance or anything, it's a mental health thing. I see that you want to make your first point of contact into a crosshair on someone else I'm gonna be scared you're gonna aim at me next even if it's completely reasonable that you'd never find anything objectionable with me. It scares me and I'm gonna spend every interaction walking on egg shells around you cos what if you're digging for dirt, like, I got no way of knowing.
Anyway as the opening joke implies I don't see any worth in having a list of things to not interact with me over cos the lived experience on this planet is so full of nuance and I've formed deem friendships with people who'd probably have avoided me if I had a DNI and they cared about it.
I think DNIs are dumb but this feels like a space to talk about some general limits on what I'm gonna put up with on this website. I'm just here for a good time with other freaks, anything else is optional. If you want to drag me into your discourse at this point then I guess this is whre I ask you to Do Not Interact. To anyone else, I love yall <3
If you've been directed here after sending an ask my way please apologize for wasting my time [here]
tl;dr DNIs are dumb but don't drag me into your personal grievances with others.
Tumblr media
this post is still specifically a6out tum6lr user Zelda dragongirltongue
67 notes · View notes
boyfridged · 11 months
Note
pls expand more on the rehabilitationist v abolitionist dispute comment!
as a preface of sorts: this post is written with marxist theory of criminology in mind, and i relate to many concepts that stem from it. i consider batman as a series to be one of the most politically inclined texts when it comes to superhero comics as a whole, so imo it is imperative that it introduces many different outlooks on the topic of jurisprudence. and it is an approach that used to be pretty popular.
btw. if anything is unclear in terms of theory –– ask.
okay so, to answer the question: there's so much that contributed to this stray thought, and i think i hinted at a lot of it before on this blog, but let me just dump some of my thoughts in a disorganized manner... (maybe one day i will write about it in a more coherent way):
batman as the title needs an actual genuine counterweight to bruce's worldview, one that does not target the no-kill rule. enough with the no-kill discourse, really, i think in many ways it's almost... a detail, and i think the fixation on that detail leads to watering down the whole dilemma. (especially that bruce did not always treat is as a complete dogma and i preferred it that way.) what is more interesting i believe, is that bruce is a rehabilitationist – despite his vigilante work, he is dedicated to the idea of the legal system being a viable solution to crime. and, what is even more important, in his mind, crime is equal to a moral failure. i talked about it at length in my post about eoc, but let me just copy the relevant fragment in here:
bruce, while obviously caring, is still bound by his belief in the legal system and deontological norms. he is benevolent, but he is also ultimately morally committed to the idea of a legal system and thus frames criminals as failing to meet these moral (legal-adjacent) standards (even when he recognizes it is a result of their circumstances). in other words, he might think that a criminal is a good person despite leading a life of crime.
and of course, criminals need to be "corrected" and rehabilitated in order to be able to function in society again. the deviant behavior has to be eliminated.
i don't doubt that at the time when it was introduced, bruce's rehabilitationist philosophy was a radical one when compared with the prevailing popularity of the concept of retributive justice. but in the year of our lord 2023? the view that you can simply "fix" the system by aiding it in some ways is not radical at all. the system in question was mostly built around sustaining that corruption as a goal. and there are (or used to be) some characters, like leslie, who are “vigilante-critical” (among others) because of that reason.
enter jay. jay is very much in a position that makes it clear that the law is not usually on the side of the poor and marginalized. of course, he is only an ~11 year old, so of course he has no language to express most of these worries; he probably does not know anything about the rehabilitationist vs retributive vs reperative justice in a theoretical sense anyway. i doubt he knows that abolition exists as a concept; he might be well-read, but probably not in these categories. but he has certain intuitions; intuitions that i already talked about in the earlier mentioned eoc post. and these intuitions are that crime does not define morality. he does not consider himself wrong for stealing; he is not conflicted about willis being a criminal and grieves him easily; there’s no word of him being resentful to dealers. he has his own idea of justice that seems to be very much affected by his trouble with authority, the intention behind the crime, and perceived harm (this is imo one of the reasons he takes issue with ma gunn specifically). i think this setup is something that could lead to him taking an abolitionist point of view later on, since he seems frustrated with the label of “crime.”
obviously, at this point, jason’s disinterest in crime as something to contempt is seen as a problem (both by the editorial and in-universe); a problem that has to be fixed. and within his tenure of robin, we see him “learning” to ascribe to bruce’s moral code; which makes sense, because he is a kid, and because he trusts bruce. and so, i think his perception in this period does shift to accommodate the rehabilitationist outlook.
the garzonas’ incident, jay’s growing cynicism at the end of his robin run, and the red hood era altogether might suggest that jason, disappointed in the limits of this approach actively takes to the retributive standpoint instead. it’s def true insofar that the writers are not politically educated enough to understand the nuance that (imo) should naturally arise in his storyline. for example: the particular caveat in garzonas’ case is the position of power that felipe occupies and that grants him immunity. bruce, naturally, looks for the ways to bring justice by exploring other legal paths to solve the issue. jay goes with it despite being visibly unhappy. and i think this gets us to the core of the issue which is power and the system– the fact that the system is simply built to make it difficult to incarnate the higher-ups. diplomatic immunity exists for a reason, sure, but the fact that it allows people to get away with wrong-doing is not a side-effect; it's the goal. and so, felipe garzonas cannot be deemed a criminal, but willis and even jay at age of 11 were. the pattern repeats when it comes to the joker, who later uses diplomatic immunity to exploit the role to continue fucking with bruce. so the issue is not that the system does not work. the issue is that the system was built not to work.
another tangent: of course, you may note that the concept of the separation of powers (the judge, the jury, and the executioner) that bruce is so fond of is supposed to remedy the problem of the abuse of power. and it is, without a doubt, something necessary within the democratic system. still, i believe jason quoting arendt explains why he doesn't care for it in the slightest; in the man who stopped laughing #8 jay says: “you familiar with hannah arendt’s concept of schreibtischtäter? desk murderers? it’s people who use the state to kill for them, so they don’t have to get their hands dirty. you should read up on it. i think you’d find it very relatable.” arendt's work emerged in a very specific context, but jay makes it into something more definitive; a trait of the penal system as a whole; you can bring as many people into the workings of the justice system as you want to; but ultimately, most of them will act in the interest of authority, without a second thought (this also explains why he considers that making decisions on who lives and dies yourself is better than blindly following the rule of law.) (<- btw it links very well with the idea of autonomy as a predisposition to be moral since you need it to be an active member of the society. anarchists such as wolff have written lots of that.)
i'd say all of this leads us to the point where jason has great potential to come to the conclusion that abolition is the way to go. the ones in power will not get punished within that framework anyway, and the ones at the "bottom" of the socioeconomic ladder remain victims of it. months, months ago i had anons arguing with me, saying that comicbook characters don't have to be so socially aware and that even people irl rarely are; and i am also willing to indulge the narrative and say that jason is terribly confused regarding it all for now, because of how his childhood went and as a result of his personal trauma. nevertheless, characters are often vessels for ideas, especially in titles like batman; and bruce, for example, is allowed to have a developed a sound ideology on jurisprudence. why not jason? especially that all the motivations are there; the setup is there too. that's just another great incentive to actually make use of his origin story.
an extra disclaimer is that abolition is not the answer to all and that it requires so many reforms on all levels... and i don't think jay would be satiated with the mere idea of restorative justice that usually accompanies it, because that still leaves us with the problem of those in power maintaining it and (in the fictional context) supervillains (who very often do occupy those spaces) prevailing... but you know. abolition is very compatible with general revolutionary principles. who says he can't kill in that name if retiring is not a way to go (though my preferred timeline would include retirement for jay at least for a while... but i digress!)
to conclude, i think it's a conflict much needed not just for the sake of any progression of batman in terms of philosophy, but also because the ways jason was initially introduced (even pre-crisis) suggested that he was supposed to grow to be critical of bruce even as robin, while being on good terms with him too. and that's definitely a kind of dispute that is much more productive and nuanced than just going back to the no-kill rule over and over and over again when the source of it is much more interesting.
i hope you got anything out of my rambling. i rest my case for now:)
143 notes · View notes
theslowesthnery · 2 years
Text
btw my 'it's okay to write/draw about things just because you find them hot, you don't need a "deeper" reason than that' post has started getting comments/tags where people agree but then go "this absolutely does not apply to [problematic™ fictional thing] btw so don't even try it!!" and i'm tired. it absolutely does apply to those things too but i don't have the energy to fight with people about it, or to make myself a target for harassment by responding and clarifying. people going "you're only allowed to write about these certain problematic things if you want to explore the depths of the human psyche or something, not because you find them hot!!" is specifically why i made that post in the first place
and also it is not actually anybody's business why people draw/write about certain things? maybe they just find it hot, maybe they're doing it to cope with trauma, maybe they're "exploring the depths of the human psyche", maybe it's all of them at the same time (because guess what: trauma are can still be sexy and sexual!)! and this "you're only allowed to draw/write about this if i personally approve of your reasons" shit is just going to lead to people demanding to know people's private trauma like they're entitled to that information, and to accusing survivors of horrible things and invalidating their experiences because their trauma art doesn't fit someone's idea of trauma art
477 notes · View notes
Text
My Personal Shadow Magic Headcanons - "Shadow Sickness"
I'm so autistic and lazy so here's another weirdly-worded headcanons post from me at 4 AM (lmk if I need to tag this as anything specific btw
What I'm personally calling "Shadow Sickness" is the official, prolonged version of Backlash - adverse effects that target the practitioner even outside of the duel circle and in their everyday lives. While "Backlash" refers to the immediate and spontaneous barrage of attacks that takes place after a Shadow spell, "Shadow Sickness" is the gradual deterioration of the practitioner's mind, body, and soul. True to the name, this effect likens more to an illness, a virus; something that's alive and slowly takes over until there is nothing healthy left behind. The symptoms are emotional, physical, mental, and even spiritual.
While regular Magic has life force within it, Shadow Magic is the only type of magic that can be considered "sentient". Not a thinking being with goals and plans, but something living and breathing with the most basic instincts. It's what's considered "Chaotic" and dangerous about it - the Wizard bends and controls regular Magic, but Shadow Magic can bend and control the Wizard. It is the only type of magic that can "fight back" in its own way.
This sentience is what allows for Shadow Sickness and Backlash to happen - these are purely just the results of it "fighting back". The Shadow Magic is reacting to the practitioner. It's acting by its nature by rearing its head back and snapping the hand that controls it. If the practitioner is NOT sound and secure in their mental, physical, and spiritual health, then Backlash and Shadow Sickness can cause even more adverse effects within the Wizard and as a result can suffer more severely.
Symptoms of Shadow Sickness
Symptoms of Shadow Sickness can vary between physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. The "virus" affects every single aspect of the being, down to their very life. The severity of these symptoms can also vary depending on certain variables. Unlike a true virus, Shadow Sickness has no "incubation period" and can flare up at any time during which the Wizard is practicing Shadow Magic. These symptoms include:
Physical scarring (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual) - one of the only symptoms that comprise of all four categories. Scars may appear on the Wizard's body that take various shapes and forms: most commonly taken after that individual's unsolved trauma. This includes old grudges, previous serious injuries that have not healed correctly, repressed memories, obsessions and delusions, etc. No two scars look the same (i.e. two different wizards who have a fear of spiders will have scars that look entirely different from the other). Depending on the severity these scars can cause physical discomfort (tingling, numbness, pain, leathery skin, decay/cellular deterioration) and can greatly impact how the Wizard looks to others to how the Wizard can move around.
Involuntary movements (physical, mental, spiritual) - the Wizard may begin suffering from accidental and spontaneous gestures and movement that is either randomized or triggered. This can include loss of coordination, disorientation, mini seizures, jerks and spasms, etc. Other than being physically affected, the Wizard is not suffering from any medical emergencies. The individual is fully conscious and aware when this happens and depending on the severity, can recover seconds after. This is one of the only symptoms where others could be harmed due to a wayward hand that comes flying out by accident. There is also a magical version of this, where involuntary spells or bursts of magic can be cast spontaneously (hence the 'spiritual' aspects of this symptom as mana comes from the soul). Usually these magical bursts are Shadow Magic and not the Wizard's primary or secondary Magic abilities. (Another involuntary trait recorded is the Wizard suddenly switching to an ancient "Shadow Language" in mid-speech.)
Hallucinations (physical, mental) - the Wizard may begin to experience things that cannot be detected by any other individual. Usually these hallucinations start out as smells or taste first, but there are reports of the Wizard hearing, sensing, and even seeing things to start out with. Contrary to popular belief not all hallucinations are violent or even turn out to be that way, some reports even describe them as pleasant. Hallucinations vary from each Wizard even with those who share the same traumas or fears. Depending on the severity of the symptoms, the Wizard can either be fully aware or completely immersed within them. Since these are only hallucinations they cannot harm the Wizard but can cause further deterioration to the mind.
Depleted energy/"Mana Loss" (physical, spiritual) - as the Shadow Sickness takes hold, eventually the Wizard will be slowly sapped of strength and magical energy. THIS IS DIFFERENT FROM IF THE WIZARD IS SKILLED IN SHADOW MAGIC. A Wizard can practice Shadow Magic and still NOT be affected by this. Since Shadow Magic "takes", Shadow Sickness does the same and gradually depletes the Wizard's energy. Like how Backlash takes health in a duel, Shadow Sickness takes your life. This is the only symptom that is constant in all cases of Shadow Sickness. Not only will the ability to cast spells be taken away, but overall physical health will suffer as well and the individual is more susceptible to regular diseases due to a compromised immune system. This symptom only appears in the very last stages of Shadow Sickness and is the last symptom of the individual experiences in their lifetime.
Tulpas (emotional, mental, spiritual) - contrasting hallucinations, Tulpas are the Wizard's visions made real. A Tulpa (from Shadow Sickness) is a physical and magical manifestation of the Wizard suffering from the Shadow "virus". Although it is born from the subconscious of another being, it is a separate entity all its own and has the ability to make decisions and have feelings and desires. However, these feelings and desires are not really of their own and reflect the Wizard's subconscious fears and threat responses. (i.e. our Azteca Tulpa in Khrysalis that formed due to unresolved survivor's guilt. Its "goal" was to destroy us and fully consume us within itself, similar to how guilt behaves in reality). Tulpas can either be created from visions, nightmares, intense and obsessive thoughts, or even previous hallucinations.
Can Shadow Sickness be reversed, or cured?
Shadow Sickness can be reversed, yes, or more commonly halted. Unless the Wizard is fully submersed in their mental and spiritual anguish ((Malistaire even though he wasn't using shadow magic; Morganthe even though that wasn't what killed her)) Shadow Sickness can be stopped. The road to recovery varies wildly from each person so there is no set "recovery time" in which you are expected to be fully healed. It is your own journey and it is ultimately your say whether or not you are better. Clinically, recovery can be sorted between these categories
HALTED: In which the Shadow Sickness is no longer infecting the individual but the symptoms may still persist. These symptoms do not get worse or better, but the Wizard's mind is clear and their soul is at peace. Wizards may either learn to live comfortably and adapt with their Halted condition or could continue to strive for partial or full recovery.
PARTIAL RECOVERY: In which the Shadow Sickness is reversed slightly or moderately. The effects are not all the way gone but are measured to be better than when the Wizard was still infected. In this state any severe symptoms the Wizard is experiencing are now moderate or slight, or less frequent. Just like in the Halted category, the Wizard is sound of mind, body, and soul.
FULL RECOVERY: In which Shadow Sickness is totally reversed and there are no more symptoms that persist. Full, 100% recovery is actually quite rare in the Spiral and a lot of scholars consider the Full Recovery to count as "70% or more reduced" - meaning the symptoms are very slight and few and far in between. Technically this is still a Partial Recovery but due to the above fact and how difficult it is to reverse Shadow Sickness, 'Full Recovery' is an umbrella term. Some individuals even claim Full Recovery even if their symptoms are moderate, because their mind and soul are no longer diseased.
ONE LAST FACT TO LEAVE OFF WITH: Not every Wizard who practices Shadow Magic suffers from Shadow Sickness, and alternatively even the most skilled Shadowmage can develop Shadow Sickness.
okay this took days. bye hope you liked this
#btw tagging some of these symptoms jic theyre triggering to some#tw seizures#tw hallucinations#lmk if i need to tag anything else#BUT YEAH THIS IS IT#i got lazy at the end but i def wanna expand on this#a few things i wanna talk about more in depth: the 'shadow language' thing and the 'mana comes from the soul' thing#BUT THIS WAS SUPER FUN TO MAKE#giving holly even MORE trauma#due to canon reasons and because i love suffering holly isnt even in the “halted” category#theyre still suffering from ongoing shadow sickness. its progressing a hell of a lot slower than others but shes def feeling it#due to ambrose's thinky veiled threat of always being watched and everyone else unintentionally-#-brushing aside holly's health the shadow sickness remains undetected#except for velma. she sees that shit#but since holly is the master of bottling things up theyre like “ahaha what virus” (throws up black blood)#holly has the scarring as the worst symptom and has a few specific scars i wanna talk about in another post#but they also suffer from hallucinations and the shadow language thing#since holly is unintentionally holding off the worst of the Sickness she doesnt have the mana depletion yet#i think i forgot like maybe one or two symptoms but im so tired ugh. this is all yall are getting for now LMAO#idk if this is even a good post. im proud of it#one symptom i forgot to mention is madness. or i think thats the end result same as depletion#its what morganthe suffered dueing the end of her life as a giant apider creature she just fully succumbed to the madness#wizard101#w101#wiz101#text posts
34 notes · View notes
the-s1lly-corner · 5 months
Text
Temporary rule regarding character-type readers⚠️⚠️
(Not targetted and not mad btw!!/gen)
I know I made the announcement yesterday but I wish to stress it again; for the time being please do not send in character-based readers without giving a brief explanation of their character! The mobile fandom wiki is hell and I'm kinda stuck on mobile for the foreseeable future; on top of that the fandom wiki is not the most reliable source
Any requests sent before the initial post are likely going to be answered eventually, they're just on a brief pause! Any character-reader requests sent in without a brief rundown of the canon characters basic run down, at this current moment, will not be answered.. unless I already know the character, however given that I'm not into much popular/classic media theres a slim chance <\3
I am not not trying to be rude in making this announcement and I truly apologize if I come off as such; but I am firm on my stance and I dont want anyone to send in something and have to wait for something that wont come
I know there will still be people sending stuff in that goes against my boundaries and personal rules regardless, but that's on them; I've already stated terms and stuff yk?
That being said I hope you all have a wonderful day, I'll work on requests tonight
**should note readers that are like "angel!reader" or really any reader as a specific personality type or hobby are 100% fine! This is not what this post is about! I'm talking about readers that are based/are similar to already existing character! (Example: tiffany valentine type!reader) (not an actual request, btw!! I'm not gonna single anyone out!)
Using the usual tags so more of my followers/usual requesters see it!
29 notes · View notes
Note
You said "which is a tragedy in its own right as far as my tastes are concerned, but I digress", but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. I hope it's okay to ask, but what kind of fics/pairings would you like/prefer to see emerge from the fandom?
Tumblr media
Of course it's okay to ask, dear anon!
Personally? I'd love to see more variety. One of the chief reasons why I enjoy reading fan fiction is finding new things I like - perhaps some pairing I hadn't considered before, some batshit premise or crossover that turns out to be actually brilliant, or maybe a cool genfic that explores previously unseen sides of a character or character dynamic that people don't write about very often. I'm not really the kind of person who seeks out fic based on specific tropes. Once I've read a story with a certain trope in a fandom, it's pretty unlikely that I'll go and read another one with a very similar premise, unless I really enjoy the author's writing.
So what I'd be excited about seeing in the AO3 tag would honestly just be: something new. For instance, a sapphic Sibylla/OC fic would be such a fascinating read (as would be anything at all that explores Sibylla's character a bit more). Or a Saladin-centric fic - sign me the hell up. I'd adore finding something for Godfrey or Imad, and we all know a new Tiberias fic would have me foaming at the mouth. I'd also love an interesting and/or wacky AU (and I'd write one myself if I had the time). Make it Jane Austen and let Baldwin have a gentleman suitor, while Sibylla elopes Lydia-Bennett style with Guy, and Godfrey and Raymond grump about in the Navy. Write a daemon AU (as in His Dark Materials) in the canonical universe. Or throw them all into the 21st century and let Reynald send Saladin threatening messages via fax.
I know the KoH fandom is much too small to engender the sort of variety I'd ideally like to see, and it's only reasonable for writers to sort of double down upon the fic premises and tropes that have done well in terms of hits and comments in the past and write more of the stuff the majority enjoys. As far as taste goes, I'm aware I'm the complete outlier here, and I really don't mean to antagonise anybody with this post or insult their writing or reading preferences. I'm glad your fics are doing well, folks, I truly am - it's only that I'm very likely not the target audience for them. Sometimes I just wish I weren't the only freak in the circus, lol.
(The post anon is referring to is this one btw.)
14 notes · View notes
johnconstantinesdick · 2 months
Note
Op your post and tags about Artemis doing damage control is absolutely delightful.
I mean, from Titan's curse we know Artemis was trying to get the council to prepare for the war, recognizing what was happening, even before the war gods actively acted.
Also Apollo getting a ping when a new possible child of the prophecy gets born actually makes sense. He knew how old Thalia was, he's also a god of truth besides just prophecy and during the years of the Hunt functioning I doubt the only big three kids to join are Bianca and Thalia. The chances are really small for that to happen.
It could also be Roman demigods, since literally anyone can join and it's better to be safe than sorry. And since it was 'child of the eldest gods' and not specifically the big three, she might have even counted in children of Demeter, since Hestia and Hera don't have (in Hera's case demigod) children.
About anon that Artemis acted predatory: bestie do you want the prophecy to happen? Do you want to risk Olympus falling?
And the average life expectancy of a Greek demigod is like 13 years old, were it not for them, the squad at Westover would have little chances of survival at the age they were at. Also statistically, the Hunt even helps to get demigods the chance to reach the camp by killing the monsters.
In conclusion: was it sketchy? Sure. Was she lying tho? Not at all.
From the few Hunters we got the chance to meet, sure, Bianca was really young when she died, but Phoebe and Zoë were thousands of years old. Let's do the math. If Zoë had been with the Hunt for let's say 3 000 years, and Phoebe for 2 500. Bianca died at 13 I think? Even these three on their own puts the average life expectancy of a Hunter to 1 838 years. And that's a bit higher than the chances of Greek demigods.
Artemis literally is doing the absolute most of a damage control.
(also personal headcanon that Artemis sends the Hunters to the camp instead of being on their own so they were safe from Orion since he usually targets them when they're alone, and being without Artemis who even got stolen and physically cannot help would be quite a chance to miss)
I love your username!
It always interests me how out of all of the gods Artemis is the most involved in the everyday lives of demigods. Mr. D helps run the camp, but she spends her time with her hunters, fighting with them and forging relationships. She’s notable in TTC because when the gang is fighting Atlas with her, she feels like a comrade more than a capricious god.
She’s not above criticism, but even taking my Great Prophecy Damage Control read out of the situation, she does more to directly help demigods than like. Any other god. So when I see wild criticism of her like “if Artemis hadn’t recruited the girl who admitted she might have destroyed Olympus if allowed to age then Hera wouldn’t have targeted Thalia so much. She was really just mad Thalia foreswore her only family in Jason. Isn’t Artemis so bad and evil???” It’s kind of like. Why are you bending over backwards to vilify one of the only gods consistently fighting and advocating for our heroes.
(Btw yes that is an actual take I saw in a fic.)
And you’re right on the Hunters ages!! Like we have several girls that have been around for thousands of years!!!! We have like five named Greek demigods that have lived to the age of eighteen in the original series, and over half of them proceeded to die anyway. Artemis is obviously doing something right to keep her girls alive this long.
With the fic idea… I may just have to write it when I get a chance. If I remember right, I don’t think the Romans were in line for the first Great Prophecy anyway, but it would be so funny if Artemis was like… fuck that. If I have to keep cleaning up my dad and uncle’s messes then I’m going to clean up all of them and get more hunters out of it.
Anyway thank you for the ask! I had fun making the post but then the anons I got kind of soured it :\ so I’m glad you like my thoughts!
9 notes · View notes
vergess · 6 months
Note
Hey, um, that last reply you did to someone complaining about Harry Potter fans you reblogged seems a bit off for the context of what's in the actual post.
I believe what they were meaning was just that giving traction and attention to something that a terf is still alive and actively making money off is upsetting, no matter your orientation, and that's it.
I don't see anything that would give the context of that person actively meaning harm on queer people, unless I somehow missed something on their main blog
Just seemed out of nowhere and concerning.
Link to the post in question.
That'll be where the "I'm so exhausted by this shit" is relevant.
Not one time, ever, have I seen someone outright target trans fans of Harry Potter directly, and then been actually chill or decent about trans people in general.
Instead, it's always a tightrope, where as soon as you don't conform adequately to their beliefs, then your transness becomes secondary to their belief that you are a TERF.
As that post literally does.
There is nothing "supporting TERFs" about a trans person writing trans fanfic on ao3. It doesn't benefit the goddamn bitch in any way. As evidenced by the fact that JKR literally wants us to stop doing it TOO.
Like.
I just.
How the fuck are you and a TERF gonna be shouting the same "stop making art" at trans people, and then say actually you're not on the TERF's side, it was the nasty trans artists all along.
The first half of the post was fine, BTW, it was a whatever. A nonissue.
The ISSUE is when the fucking OP turns around to SPECIFICALLY TARGET TRANS PEOPLE and then pretend that's a normal fucking thing to do in the supposed "defense" of the selfsame trans people attacked
Just. I know you want to assume I'm being an over reactive little cunt who needs to take a deep breath and put on its big boy pants. I know that temptation is real, even if you're probably phrasing it more kindly in your head right now.
The thing about a tumblr post is, you're totally allowed to give in to that temptation and just block me! You don't have to listen to me. But if you're willing:
The OP literally specifies trans people and other marginalized groups attacked by JKR, such as fat people and POC. The OP brought us up all on their own.
And then specifically cast us as being secretly in line with 'the enemy' and fighting for our own destruction
Setting aside the obvious bigotry inherent in calling trans people sneaky little traitors?
It's just outright fucking insulting to be told that your art is bad actually because you made it trans but not in a way the OP likes enough
12 notes · View notes
s0lar-ch3ri · 5 months
Text
i make a new theory post on a frog (psoilers ahead)
with theories such as felipe is evil and/or working with niklaus:
Tumblr media
(post from aethlingg, his post can be found here! note: after research they no longer do jrwi content but rather qsmp content [specifically q!bbh and q!forever from what i noticed! theyre still very cool so go follow him [heres to hoping ik how he/they pronouns works btw])
Tumblr media
(post from redcloverf3y, their post can be found here! i cannot find if they still do post jrwi and just talk about other fandoms rn, but nonetheless go follow them!)
Tumblr media
(post from razberrypuck, its post can be found here! they def are still into jrwi from their lil bio and shit, but theres also others things they post, like q!charlie [or qsmp in general] and stuff, follow it too!)
to theories of what demon actually got felipe:
Tumblr media
(post by pulchrasilva, their post [correct the pronouns if im wrong, i couldnt find anything on the blog] can be found here! considering how five or so minutes ago they made a jrwi post, they def still talk about it, as well as other things, go follow them!)
to even some on felipe BEING niklaus (which i reblogged and stuff):
Tumblr media
(post is from aethlingg again, this one can be found here! for once i cant get a full image because its a long one but ill be talking bout my tags on it too)
theres been 2 posts on how felipe wasnt the culprit (heres one by wrinklemcdinkle) (heres another by ralexsol) ive seen, so im throwing my own theory into the mix: the demon is kuba kenta and kk (or mr. kenta) has relations to both niklaus hendrix AND the compass. lets get into it!
Tumblr media
lets start with the tags i wanted to use (i found they werent actually on the felipe is nk post, but rather on the second felipe is being framed post i linked)! theres a couple details here i mention but why do i say kuba in particular?
the only person who could actually have something against gillion straight up is jayson ferin, mainly cause he got stabbed by him twice, but jayson isnt a demon! you know who is a demon though? kuba kenta. so for jayson, mr kenta was the perfect way.
as for felipe's escape, the rope was burnt, correct? who has fire powers again? mr ferin. when felipe was being investigated or whatever, kuba contacted jayson and he got him out of there, leaving there be reason to assume felipe was dragged to hell.
yes i do think felipe was controlled by kuba to hurt gillion, it plugs up some plot holes thats for sure. so how would felipe been target if he only pulled the card the next day? because felipe probably was a target since he was born.
Tumblr media
its important to point out the compass not only having effects like kk's scratches do (give nightmares, cause physical reactions/changes, etc), but a similar color pattern to both niklaus and felipe. (pointed out by several people before me, like aethlingg in his actual essay about evil felipe working with niklaus shown above) another interesting detail is the nk tattoo is used with a moon attached, felipe's choice of goddess to worship. he immediately finds a friendship with chip when about 4 eps ago, niklaus had been given a stick by chip (important cause of how it was harder to spy on niklaus since the stick was in his room and stuff before, i think itd also add in an idea of "greater connection with the person" and stuff). i could go on and on abotu their connections.
Tumblr media
lets get back to the connection of niklaus and kuba. how would they even have met? probably something like chip did for his deal. as the quote above shows (found from the post by redcloverf3y, heres another link to it), people who have that desire for their goals will find him, not those who look for it. why would kuba need to strike a deal with desire daddy? because how else would he be able to use felipe. theres no way the curse would change the free will of felipe (it didnt do that for chip or gillion), so if he wants felipe to be a better puppet, he needs something to interfer with that. niklaus and kuba cut that deal, and felipe doesnt lose that curse on him, well to the others. kuba wouldnt have been able to give felipe the nightmares, anytime we see him hes with the three, so someone would have seen him get scratched! even if he got scratched in the couple months before they met him (cause felipe was six months old, not a couple days), the scars dont fade, rather theres the black ooze to them that burns, making it not a forgetable thing.
speaking of that, lets move onto the daggers situation. why the fuck would a tour guide have such dangerous daggers, poisonous ones to be exact (i heard it had poison effects somewhere, but sadly cannot find any info about that)? felipe has no need for poison daggers! he literally can spit acid! that means its only being used for its forgetfulness, which doesnt make too much sense to me since its not like being stabbed isnt just something you remember but theres the fucking pain of it too (example being, when i was younger and we were in the car getting ready to leave some place, there was this like tightness on my foot and i look at the door and [because it was one of those automatic doors and shit] it was closing on my foot. i didnt remember getting my foot in there and i still dont know how it happened, i do remember though how much of a bitch the pain was. not close to the pain of stabbing im sure, but you still remember the pain even without the memory of how it got there). that leaves one last usage: actually stabbing. again, hes a tour guide, he has no reason to need to stab people, no reason he should have a dagger that damaging, let along access to one like it. you know what has good weapons, ones with magic and shit? the navy. hell, theyre building a mechicanical leviathin! they of course have magic weapons for combat and such. and being a vice admiral, kk would have access to all of them. he gets a dagger for felipe, uses his deal to make sure felipe does whats needed, there.
so why would pulling the card get kuba as his enemy? its the magic of the cards! why would felipe hate gill? why would gillion dissappear only able to be brought back by powerful magic (whole can of worms for niklaus's abilities btw, needed to point that out)? the cards! theres also how felipe did reveal what his plans with gill were gonna be, but its probably just the cards.
i do also think the compass is related to kenta cause of their abilities being matched and it kinda fits him, a man driven even beyond the grave to reach a goal, even if that goal is only known by him...but this is long enough!
i hope i fed someones wants and if theres any contradiciting (or even more proving) evidence, lmk and ill try to counter it, bye and ill see you probably in a writing thing ive been putting off since this morning to write this
11 notes · View notes
mushiewrites · 9 months
Note
CONRGRATS!!!! 300 followers is so cool I’m so happy for you! :D
for the fics, what inspired rise & shine and what possessed you to write Round One and The short(s) Struggle
from this milestone post / rise & shine / round one / the short(s) struggle
I am excited about explaining all of these, they are all so special to me omg elliot thank u for sending them in <3
also loving that you asked what possessed me, bc honestly I have no idea :D but whatever it was, it needs to do it again right now
rise & shine was written purely out of spite and 1000000% towards summer bc she was being a little shit and I was feeling evil.
exhibit A:
Tumblr media
once summer told me she thought george was the meanest, I went with sap with the lee bc I hc both of them with horribly sensitive thighs, so it was always gonna be between snf since the target spot I had in mind....was thighs (gee I wonder why???????)
after that I kind of blacked out and wrote it. It was done pretty quickly, like I've mentioned before I'm way more motivated to finish something when it's targeted at someone else! (: it's just more fun and it doesn't really feel like I'm pressured to finish it or anything bc I want to sooooo bad anyways! and like I did with my other fics targeted at summer (yes there are multiple! :D) I just included things I knew got to her, and bam, good reactions!
exhibit B & C:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
so yeah, this is why rise & shine was made! there was no planning in advance, nothing leading up to writing the fic, it was simply bc summer was being a little shit and I was feeling evil enough to write a reaaaaaally mean fic at her <3
I do it purely for the "MUSHIE", which I have sooooo many screenshots saved of <3
- - - - - - - -
okay......round one. okay. look. this was also for lee!george week, and it was born bc I NEEDED to do an intense tk day. it's just my branding, I needed them to destroy poor lil georgie ):
it's a litttttttttle bit self indulgent Im not gonna lie. a lot of what was written was from possibly personal experience, and I really just tried to write a lot of what I thought would be super intense tks for george (I also added in lil digs at someone but I will not be naming who <3)
I wanted to explore things that I hadn't publicly posted yet, like oil and some specific tools. I actually had a lot more plans for this fic, a lot more spots and tools and techniques, but I was running out of time, and left it off so I could revisit it as a sequel (which I absolutely am, I already have some plans written out)
but uh....mostly this one was self indulgent. I can't even lie about it, it was definitely written for me (and a few other people) more than anything 🫠
that's all I'm saying about round one (: <333333
- - - - - - - -
short struggle!!!! my tiny sap in his tiny shorts!!!!! literally was inspired by the tiny shorts he was wearing when he streamed a clothing haul when he was in LA <3 my brain chemistry has never been the same since <3
like….look at him???????
Tumblr media
I have been saying this for half of my fics but like….I really was just mindless when I wrote this? I saw sap thighs and immediately got the idea for dream and george to latch on and never ever EVERRRRRRRR let go <3
sap is so tiny and small and a baby panda, and normally I love when people are sweet to him, but I just needed him to get his shit absolutely ROCKED in this, I have no explanation really, just that my brain went insane and I made dnf do what I wanna do to him :3
this was cals reaction in the middle of me writing the fic btw:
Tumblr media
“why me!?” is one of my favorite lil dialogues I’ve written for sap just bc I can hear it so clearly in his lil raspy voice through his lil raspy giggles with his lil nose scrunch <3
short(s) struggle was purely bc sap couldn’t help but show off his thighs on stream, and i couldn’t help but destroy them <3333333
10 notes · View notes
shihalyfie · 1 year
Note
Hi! recently I read your post about differences you had spotted in the japanese fandom and you mentioned how some people said that tamers wasn't female audience friendly. I don't know if you know why?
(Also I love your blog btw)
Thank you so much! I hope I didn't give the wrong idea (I can't find the specific post but I'm hoping I didn't word it wrong) but it was just one comment I saw that made me think about it a lot; I don't think this is necessarily an opinion beyond just that person, it's just that when I saw it it really stuck out to me and made me really spend time pondering why someone would think that way.
To be more specific, the situation was that an Adventure fan who'd gotten back into it and 02 because of Kizuna brought up Tamers and said they were interested in it, and the commenter said that it was a good series (they were still recommending it, they weren't trying to dissuade!) but warned that it was "more obviously oriented towards a male audience" than the Adventure series (the exact word was 一層男向け).
So I think some specific context about this incident also helps to explain further; it's rather significant that it was said to be potentially less female audience friendly than Adventure-branded works, which were used as a comparison point because the explanation was originally for someone who had never seen anything else besides that. In this case, I think it's less so that Tamers is that female audience-unfriendly as much as the Adventure series is actually considered to be surprisingly female audience friendly for a shounen series of its kind; of course, it still is ultimately made and marketed more for young boys, but it ended up infamously getting a much larger female audience than you'd have expected. The girls having their feelings fleshed out in detail and not constantly having a red arrow on them as The Girls�� of the Group (I think you know what I mean by this) -- something really not very common in shounen anime from 1999-2001 (even now it's not that common) -- made them very relatable to the female audience. And on top of that, you had things like Yamato or Ken infamously being a lot of girls' first love.
And then, well, let's put it this way: it is generally understood that most adult anime fans who made gay fan comics and fanart at the time were female, and so naturally Taichi/Yamato and Takeru/Daisuke got very popular among this crowd. Note the reason why it's Takeru/Daisuke in particular: Ken didn't join the group as an ally or even have a particularly deep interaction with Daisuke (other than episode 8) until halfway into the series, but by that time there were already people enthusiastically churning out gay fanwork with Daisuke and Takeru before anything significant in the series had happened because they were ready for them to be the next Taichi and Yamato. (Obviously, you know how the series actually went, but hindsight is 20/20.) So you had doujinshi artists making and selling gay comics at events, and magazines like Animage and Animedia (generally considered to have a high female reader population) were flooded with subtext-filled gay fanart submissions.
Even now, you can see the subtle acknowledgment that they know Adventure has a ton of adult female fans, given tri. stuff being in the female audience-oriented magazine Otomedia, as well as the tri. stage play even existing at all. (Anime tie-in stage plays are very associated with female audiences, and in fact the actors for the Digimon one even pointed out they had an unusually gender-neutral audience compared to what they were used to.)
So when you look at Tamers in comparison, it's not that it's necessarily giving a cold middle finger to its female audience as much as it's clearly got a lot fewer of the above factors and is more concerned about appealing to the main target of boys, hence the description "more obviously oriented towards a male audience". For instance, fundamentally speaking, Ruki was made to be a "strong" character because they wanted her to appeal to boys (presumably to include ones that wouldn't like "girly-girls"). Now, the good thing is that Ruki ended up becoming important representation for girls who also felt similarly out of place with being pigeonholed as "girls", and I'm not saying Adventure and 02 couldn't have also used some of that too, but keep in mind that the entire development of Ruki's state of mind in this respect has been credited to female writer Yoshimura Genki. I think it's very possible that, in the hands of a different writer, Ruki could have easily fallen into the trap of what I call the "Strong Female Character" Fallacy, which is when you make a female character who's good at violently beating things up but is portrayed more like an object to be cool and hot for the boys than she is a human being because they don't actually bother to pay any respect to her own feelings. (Unfortunately very common with male-oriented works.)
I'm getting off-track here, but my point is that while Adventure and 02 were fundamentally made for boys first, they did have a lot of elements that easily appealed to the female audience and seem to have been outright conscious of the female periphery demographic, perhaps unusually so for shounen anime at the time, whereas Tamers was much less conscious of that and focused more on elements that boys would like, such as plotlines about strength and less on more sentimental things (and there probably really could be something to be said about that kind of attitude's relationship with toxic masculinity, but I don't think we're ready for that conversation, nor do I think the final product went so far in that direction it has nothing sentimental going for it at all or anything).
That said, I can't emphasize enough that this was ultimately one fan's opinion on the Internet, and the reason I ended up resonating with it a bit is that I did at least notice that Adventure and 02 do seem to have a much higher ratio of female fans than Tamers does and thought it would be worth considering why (in fact, even Frontier has come off to me as having a larger ratio of female fans than I've noticed with Tamers). While this might be a bit provocative of a thing to say, I also do get the impression that most of my bad experiences with a certain type of Tamers fan that gets super condescending about its superiority over every other series also does seem to have a suspicious amount of overlap with a certain kind of toxic dudebro fan. However, and I'll put this in bold because it's important, I do not personally believe Tamers being more oriented towards a male audience inherently makes it unfriendly to a female audience. There are a lot of female Tamers fans, including people who are likely reading this post, and ones who found deep connection and meaning with many of the elements in Tamers, and in fact it's a fallacy to conclude that a girl or boy would necessarily like or dislike something (that would be exactly the kind of sentiment that Ruki was trying so hard to work against, after all). Digimon is a shounen series, but at the time Adventure through Frontier originally aired, they aired on the same day as magical girl anime Ojamajo Doremi, so there were a lot of girls (and boys!) who would watch both. Female audience-oriented, male audience-oriented, that's all subjective, and in fact it probably only really matters when it comes to toy sales and capitalism, but that ship's sailed a long time ago. And meanwhile, here I am, as a female fan who likes Tamers myself, so it certainly hasn't turned me off!
43 notes · View notes
boyfridged · 1 year
Text
i’ve been thinking a lot about what is so unique and appealing about 80s robin jay’s moral standing that got completely lost in plot later on. and i think a huge part of it is that in a genre so focused on crime-fighting, his motivations and approach don’t focus on the category of crime at all. in fact, he doesn’t seem to believe in any moral dogma; and it’s not motivated by nihilism, but rather his open-heartedness and relational ethical outlook.
we first meet (post-crisis) jay when he is stealing. when confronted about his actions by bruce he’s confident that he didn’t do anything wrong – he’s not apologetic, he doesn’t seem to think that he has morally failed on any account. later on, when confronted by batman again, jay says that he’s no “crook.” at this point, the reader might assume that jay has no concept of wrong-doing, or that stealing is just not one of the deeds that he considers wrong-doing. yet, later on we see jay so intent on stopping ma gunn and her students, refusing to be implicit in their actions. there are, of course, lots of reasons for which we can assume he was against stealing in this specific instance (an authority figure being involved, the target, the motivations, the school itself being an abusive environment etc.), but what we gather is that jay has an extremely strong sense of justice and is committed to moral duty. that's all typical for characters in superhero comics, isn't it? however, what remains distinctive is that this moral duty is not dictated by any dogma – he trusts his moral instincts. this attitude – his distrust toward power structures, confidence in his moral compass, and situational approach, is something that is maintained throughout his robin run. it is also evident in how he evaluates other people – we never see him condemning his parents, for example, and that includes willis, who was a petty criminal. i think from there arises the potential for a rift between bruce and jay that could be, have jay lived, far more utilised in batman comics than it was within his short robin run.
after all, while bruce’s approach is often called a ‘philosophy of love and care,’ he doesn’t ascribe to the ethics of care [eoc] (as defined in modern scholarship btw) in the same way that jay does. ethics of care ‘deny that morality consists in obedience to a universal law’ and focus on the ideals of caring for other people and non-institutionalized justice. bruce, while obviously caring, is still bound by his belief in the legal system and deontological norms. he is benevolent, but he is also ultimately morally committed to the idea of a legal system and thus frames criminals as failing to meet these moral (legal-adjacent) standards (even when he recognizes it is a result of their circumstances). in other words, he might think that a criminal is a good person despite leading a life of crime. meanwhile, for jay there is no despite; jay doesn't think that engaging in crime says anything about a person's moral personality at all. morality, for him, is more of an emotional practice, grounded in empathy and the question of what he can do for people ‘here and now.’ he doesn’t ascribe to maxims nor utilitarian calculations. for jay, in morality, there’s no place for impartiality that bruce believes in; moral decisions are embedded within a net of interpersonal relationships and social structures that cannot be generalised like the law or even a “moral code” does it. it’s all about responsiveness. 
to sum up, jay's moral compass is relative and passionate in a way that doesn't fit batman's philosophy. this is mostly because bruce wants to avoid the sort of arbitrariness that seems to guide eoc. also, both for vigilantism, and jay, eoc poses a challenge in the sense that it doesn't create a certain 'intellectualised' distance from both the victims and the perpetrators; there's no proximity in the judgment; it's emotional.
all of this is of course hardly relevant post-2004. there might be minimal space for accommodating some of it within the canon progression (for example, the fact that eoc typically emphasises the responsibility that comes with pre-existing familial relationships and allows for prioritizing them, as well as the flexibility regarding moral deliberations), but the utilitarian framework and the question of stopping the crime vs controlling the underworld is not something that can be easily reconciled with jay’s previous lack of interest in labeling crime. 
#fyi i'm ignoring a single panel in which jay says 'evil wins. he chose the life of crime' because i think there's much more nuance to that#as in: choosing a life of crime to deliberately cause harm is a whole another matter#also: inb4 this post is not bruce slander. please do not read it as such#as i said eoc is highly criticised for being arbitrary which is something that bruce seeks to avoid#also ethics of care are highly controversial esp that their early iterations are gender essentialist and ascribe this attitude to women#wow look at me accidentally girl-coding jay#but also on the topic of post-res jay.#it's typically assumed that ethics of care take a family model and extend it into morality as a whole#'the ethics of care considers the family as the primary sphere in which to understand ethical behavior'#so#an over-simplification: you are allowed to care for your family over everything else#re: jay's lack of understanding of bruce's conflict in duty as batman vs father#for jay there's no dilemma. how you conduct yourself in the familial context determines who you are as a person#also if you are interested in eoc feel free to ask because googling will only confuse you...#as a term it's used in many weird ways. but i'm thinking about a general line of thought that evolves into slote's philosophy#look at me giving in and bringing philosophy into comics. sorry. i tried to simplify it as much as possible#i didn't even say anything on criminology and the label and the strain theories.#i'm so brave for not info-dumping#i said even though i just info-dumped#jay.zip#jay.txt#dc#fatal flaw#core texts#robin days
203 notes · View notes