#and i want to use that as a lens to then discuss how humans would then interact with an entirely different sapient species | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sy-on-boy · 2 months

Text

My 2 cents on the plot / thematic relevance of Ch 95

This is not about advancing Plot B or showing Anya's school life (which is still true but has been discussed), but rather the overall theme of education and war. There was an excellent post about how Eden is at the frontline of the cold war and it is subtly shown through the innocent lens of the first graders (I can't find it now, would link it if I could). And I think that perfectly applies to Ch 95.

Quick recap on some references about education/students/war throughout the series (that I remember at the moment):

Sylvia gravely condemning the Berlint University Student Terrorists during the Doggy Crisis arc (Ch 20) and saying "did you learn nothing about war at your university?"

Henderson talking about his experience as a history teacher (Ch 27.5, Short Mission 4) and quote: "Yes, well, I have always maintained that there is nothing to be learned from the memorization of time lines. From the grand efforts with which our forefathers crafted society to the foolish notions that sent them racing to war, to not study the human element at history's root is to not understand history at all"

Note that Damian's best subject has been established to be history, and his family (father) has been involved in war, at least Donovan was PM during most of the war (established by Melinda in Ch 91). Donovan is also a graduated Imperial Scholar (Ch 64).

The Red Circus group started out as a peaceful student demonstration "advocating for peace and quality" (Ch 72) and "speaking out to protect the weakest members of our society". And Billy Squire said, "We were a respectable movement that fought for our cause with respectable means. It was the state that turned violent against us. So I'm not taking criticism from a member of the establishment (referring to Henderson, an educator). I'm gonna see to it that they reap what they've sown." Billy's daughter Biddy was killed by the state at a protest.

Less of a point, but Becky is the daughter of the CEO of a major military manufacturer. Despite their very likely involvement in military conflicts because they sell arms, the Blackbell cohort has been depicted positively so far: Becky being a kind, wonderful friend to Anya, Becky's father doting on her, and Martha again being kind and dignified (and also being an ex-soldier and acquainted with Henderson).

Eden Academy is a major setting for SxF and the themes of politics, education, and war are embedded in it. The students involved in protests/groups are older (the university students, Billy's daughter), but the political implications remain even among the youngest of the students— the first graders.

Hence, Ch 95. When mere first graders are shown to fight to gain connections, which can be political as pointed out by Henderson: "In the world of politics, dances serve as major social events". But of course, they are kids, so they see it more playfully and innocently, especially Becky with her shipper lens on.

Of course, there is also the aspect of getting to know other people better out of interest (the boys asking Anya and Becky to dance because they were impressed after the bus hijacking). But as people have mentioned, nobody mentions this to Damian despite him being equally involved in saving the class (all three of them got a star). The girls aren't interested in Damian as a person, they're interested in him as an asset because of his family and their power.

And I can see the teachers trying to diffuse the tension and create camaraderie with their friendly competition. To me, this reads as the teachers fully realizing "the battlefield of political maneuvering", and they want to remind the kids to have fun, to show good sportsmanship, to unite the kids, to operate as a class and be friendly with one another, and overall make it more lighthearted. It's nice to see the classes work together and get excited / win as a unit, especially compared to the more "individual" bits of fighting for a dance partner later.

We get a bit of comparison between Bill and Damian, with Bill showing good sportsmanship while Damian scoffs at him. But Damian ends up becoming ultra competitive and telling his classmates to not screw it up.

Like the Dodgeball chapter, Damian is clumsily attempting to lead the class by doing good in his quiz, while getting stressed and yelling at his peers when they don't succeed like he did. So he's not really a good leader. Like how him being good at history does not necessarily mean he is good at being peaceful (Short Mission 4 ends with Henderson staring in exasperation at Damian + Anya bickering with each other). But obviously, he is merely a child, and he is naturally immature.

At first Loid is all for advancing Plan B and analysed Anya's suitors in a rational (reductionist?) way by ranking them in terms of gaining intelligence, but he remembers this is just a dance, Anya is a kid, and she should do whatever she wants. Loid (and the adults) are very aware of the political side of the gala, but ultimately they want the kids to have fun and not worry / worry less about politics.

Because they're kids! They'll grow up and learn more and be politically active later, but right now, they're just kids. Kids who don't know much about the world but are eager to make the world a better place.

In the end, we get a panel of Anya and Loid "teaming up" to win Damian's hand for Plan B / world peace. The Damian-Anya dynamic is cushioned with the silly crushy feelings, but underneath it, Operation Strix continues to be a core motivation.

I find it interesting that Endo chooses to focus on the first graders and their innocent view of the world / politics. It's embedded everywhere and especially in a prominent school like Eden, but the kids don't really realise it / realise the severity of it. Heirs and heiresses are educated at Eden and grow up to have incredible influence and the power to shape the world. Our protagonist's best friend comes from a family that manufactures arms. Henderson mentions the importance of learning history to avoid making the same mistakes (ie. war).

So Ch 95 is a cute prom chapter. But I think it also helps to show the themes underneath the fun, bubbly interactions.

#spy x family spoilers #spy x family #spy x family manga #sxf analysis #meta #idk #what do i tag #long post

210 notes · View notes

lordmushroomkat · 1 year

Text

《The strong association of PCOS with cis womanhood, the defining of it as a disorder or syndrome, and its framing as a “women’s health issue” obscures the fact that PCOS is a natural hormonal variation, an endocrine difference that is illustrated through secondary sex characteristics.

During my initial search for resources and community, I also learned that PCOS, given its characterization as a hormonal variance, falls under the intersex umbrella. This intersex umbrella covers a wide range of “individuals born with a hormonal, chromosomal, gonadal or genital variation which is considered outside of the male and female norms,” and PCOS meets that definition.

This is not an attempt to sway every person who has PCOS to identify themselves as intersex—though it is an acknowledgment that we have the option and the right to do so if it rings true to us. Rather, this is to say that shifting my perspective on PCOS and viewing it through an intersex lens allowed me to better understand it as a natural human variation rather than an affliction causing my body to do the “wrong” thing.

“I believe that someone with PCOS has every right to use the term intersex for themselves if they want, but I also understand it if they don’t,” said writer and intersex advocate Amanda Saenz.

“As an advocate and an intersex person, I opt to use a definition of intersex that is open ended and expansive,” Saenz explains. “The experiences that a term like ‘intersex’ hopes to define include differences in hormonal production and hormone reception, and the phenotypic effects these differences have on the body. To me, this is inclusive of things like PCOS.”

Discussing PCOS in this way is often met with indignation and resistance. Our society has a hard time separating gender from sex. This has resulted in a widespread misunderstanding of intersex identity as equivalent to transgender identity. Many who vehemently resist the idea of PCOS being under the intersex umbrella do so because they categorically link “female” with “woman,” and therefore misinterpret any acceptance of intersex identity as a denial of womanhood. Moreover, the stigma around and marginalization of intersex communities prevents many people from feeling comfortable with embracing it.

“You can be intersex and cisgender, transgender, or nonbinary. The ‘opposite’ of intersex is endosex, not cisgender,” explained Eshe Kiama Zuri, founder of U.K. Mutual Aid. As a nonbinary intersex person, Zuri approaches these ideas with a clear understanding of how the bodies of intersex individuals as well as many people with PCOS interrupt binary thinking about both sex and gender.

“The resistance to PCOS falling under the intersex umbrella is due to a white supremacist society’s desperation to cling to binary genders, which we know [have been] used as a colonial tool of control,” they offer.

The same medical and surgical interventions that legislators seek to ban trans and nonbinary people from accessing—which would be gender-affirming, life-saving care for them—are often forced on intersex infants and children who are unable to consent. This is done in efforts to align intersex bodies with social expectations of female and male, man and woman; the same logic undergirds the societal and medical pressure to “feminize” the female-assigned bodies of PCOS patients.

PCOS is “shockingly common [and] the most frequently occurring hormone-related disorder.” However, according to Medical News Today, “up to 75% of [people] with PCOS do not receive a diagnosis for their condition.” If we were to understand and accept something like PCOS as intersex, considering how “shockingly common” it is, the dominant idea of binary sex, with intersex being thought of as nothing more than a fringe occurrence, would be shattered.

“PCOS is only one of many conditions that could fall under the intersex umbrella, and care for people with PCOS would be considerably better if it wasn’t for the forced gendering and resistance to providing actual support for people with PCOS, even if it challenges society’s ideas of gender,” says Zuri.

Combating myths built around the gender and sex binaries would create more space to understand PCOS traits as part of normal human variation, rather than inherent problems to be fixed, symptoms to be eradicated. As Zuri so beautifully put it, “When we start to accept that this is not a body behaving ‘wrong’ and it is just a body, we stop blaming and punishing people for how their bodies work and start challenging societal expectations.”》

I was fucking right!

#PCOS #Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome #polycystic ovary syndrome #Intersex #female-assigned intersex #afab intersex #polycystic ovarian syndrome

689 notes · View notes

roo-bastmoon · 10 months

Text

IMPORTANT INFO: issues around Jimin’s album

I have an ARMY friend (who shall remain safely anonymous) who works in film production for the music and entertainment industry here in the US. They offered me some valuable insights today into production limitations and possible issues related to Jimin’s solo album.

Below the cut is a transcript of their messages to me. I share this in the hopes it better informs our discussions around fair treatment of BTS members’ releases. It is by no means a definitive account of Jimin’s situation—simply an insider’s ideas on what likely happened around a few things.

I understand there are very big feelings about this topic, especially with the apparent differences around JK’s single, and I appreciate everyone’s viewpoints. However, if you choose to interact with this post, you will be respectful to others (including members) or you will be blocked. You are always welcome to DM me privately if you need to vent—we are all human and we all need a bit of grace, so you’ll always have that with me.

Sending you guys so much love, Roo

Anonymous Insider

Some “light reading” while you’re resting up and recovering, lol. This is all just based on what I’ve been watching and seen. Of course, I don’t have access to their production budget sheet and Korea works very differently than the US when it comes to production, but this what I’ve been seeing when it comes to their videos and particularly the promotions for FACE.

(I’m sending in sections, lol)

Alrighty - I’m still like deep in edit-land (still am two days later 😭) but I started typing this on the train between meetings, ha ha. (And am still on the train doing this, lol.) Also this rambles a bit I’m sorry! So the first thing I did was go back to the interview where Jimin talked about the music videos — it was a Japanese TV show and he’s talking with a host in Korean.

He’s talking about “wanting to do it all,” laughs and says, “I wanted all the music videos” and that “they” (the company assuming) said “무리다” which has its roots in the word 무리 which means a herd, a party, a group — basically “it’s too much,” “it’s unreasonable,” and “it’s impossible” are decent translations as it refers to something or an idea being “too much” — then the host and Jimin burst out laughing and the host goes “서리와 무리다” which I read as “sorry (in konglish) but we can’t” and they continue to laugh. So based on that —it sounds very understandable.

We can imagine Jimin sitting down with his team and planning out SMFP2 and LC videos, with the 30 dancers and all the party scene extras, and then Jimin saying he wants to do the music shows with 6 different sets in rented locations so they could have total control. And if Jimin in that process went “what if we made official music videos for all of them?” the team would understandably go “that’s just not reasonable!” 1) because it would give Jimin a budget no other member had gotten and 2) there aren’t that many production houses in Korea. It’s a very small scene — it may just logistically not been possible. There aren’t enough DPs and crew and editors. Sometimes, as a producer, you have to tell your creative talent “I’m sorry, but no.” — I say it every week!

So what about the music videos? Well, here’s what I know from meticulously watching all the behind the scenes for BTS videos over the years. They work with a small team. They likely own a good deal of the gear — they shoot mainly on RED cameras and heavy expensive Cooke lenses (which you can’t get this stuff easily in Korea. I lost a lens cap for a Canon CINÉ Lens in Seoul and it was like this whole big deal because getting gear there is an import challenge but anyways) they use MOVI and Ronin gimbal stabilizers and Jimmy Rigs a lot.

Recently they’ve been using technocranes but I wonder how many technocranes there are in Seoul. As I said, they likely own a lot of this gear which can help with costs. But we’ve also been told — and I’ve heard through my industry friends — that Hybe PAYS. And in Korea there’s no unions in the entertainment world, and often the rates are shit (hence Netflix investing so much there - blerg) their standard work week is also already 12 hours longer than the US. It’s a whole thing. and they spend so much money on sets. It’s incredible.

They rent these huge spaces outside Seoul and BUILD — I mean the build out for SMFP2 was astounding. They easily dropped 1million on that video. The rigging, the build-out, the custom set and the custom camera rigs to achieve the 360 shots - the drone shots. They’re astounding videos. No US label is spending that money on videos these day. Absolutely none of them are — my friend recently produced a video for John Legend. They were trying to pull the whole thing off for $100K which is ridiculous. It’s really almost impossible.

But on the Big videos they spend a lot of money, but they also produce a lot of other stuff too (and these are often looked at as Performance Videos vs all-caps MUSIC VIDEOS) -— like RM’s video shoot at DIA Beacon… that was a much smaller, fairly single camera shoot — all shot on drones or a MOVI handheld rig. No set, they also didn’t like pay for the set because DIA: Beacon is an art museum — and similar a little bit to Letter for Jimin, which was much smaller set and easy in-house gear.

(And it was also released on Bangtan TV channel vs Hybe Labels Channel, which is a good indicator of how they categorize these shoots.) But the big videos, they go for broke. I mean they spend so much money and again they may own a lot of the equipment but there’s still so much people-power and labor involved. Take the dancers’ rehearsals. You have to pay people for all that — you have to pay them for the weeks of rehearsal, you have to pay them to be in a video. It is so expensive — like, I would not be able to budget that video for under 1 million, that’s how much it costs.

So then Jimin wanted to do music shows —- and so because he’s Jimin and it’s BTS, Hybe rented larger venues and locations for all of the shoots. None of them use the actual Broadcast spaces or were provided by the broadcast studios. The smaller companies do though — remember when BTS first started out they went to SBS to film on the day? — but they don’t do that anymore. They rent huge facilities so that they could be a mini concerts for ARMYs to visit with Jimin and see him.

They also have to do this kind of outside of the city and they built huge sets because they’re going to want to show off if they’re gonna be on TV but that is so expensive. (I don’t think you were an ARMY then, but when ON was released, at the time it was the “biggest broadcast performance ever” and they keep upping that ante for sure!) It’s possible the broadcast companies spend some money but what BTS is doing is so outside the usual budget and given the tension with the broadcasters and HYBE — they (Hybe) wants control of their products, and so I think they pay for that control.

I can’t imagine they got out of any of those days for under $500K; I mean, there were two different sets, all the crew; they’re paying for all of it. We add it up and they probably spent close to $3-5 million between Jimin’s music videos and his music show performances, and I would be understandably like: “That’s it!” Like, that’s the budget for an EP, you know.

I don’t think Jimin could have it all because that wasn’t the case for the other members. RM got to lead videos and J Hope had pyrotechnics, which definitely costs money and safety and insurance. You know he had visual effects his first video (a lotta visual effects) and again a lot of challenging technocrane work, but I haven’t really seen them build something on the scale of what they built for SMFP2 in a very long time (or ever?).

We heard from the Art Dept that Jimin did not want to shoot on blue screen, so they built the set for him. This cannot be the same label that is shafting him — that allows him to spend that amount of money just because the artist said “I want to shoot in a real space!” because I’m gonna be completely honest— he could’ve done that on a blue screen — I’m glad they built a real world because BTS almost always shoots on Blue/Green Screen. They build him a huge set like that. It’s absolutely incredible.

I was also reminded this morning that people are talking about radio for Like Crazy and not supporting the song — and I just keep thinking that they did exact rollout for Butter, Dynamite, and Permission to Dance. They released Like Crazy. It had both a Korean version and English version. (Obviously that wasn’t the case for the English BTS songs.) They released two additional remixes. Then they kept releasing, like, alternate cover versions — alternate covers of the main remix, alternate cover the other remix. They were trying to maximize the direct-to-consumer store and exact same way they had tried to maximize it with Dynamite and Butter and Permission to Dance.

The way you were buying Like Crazy was the same process I took on Dynamite. They did the exact same playbook. So the fact that they were unable to get the kind of radio play they wanted or maybe they weren’t prioritizing radio because they knew that they were gonna have a better chance at direct to consumer sales... Maybe they didn’t want to fight radio. Maybe Geffen was like “We don’t have the right ‘Ins’ yet!” — I’m not sure, but the fact that they got completely screwed over by Billboard doesn’t mean that they weren’t actually rolling it out in that way, because as soon as they started doing the whole alternate cover thing, I was like: “Well, they clearly want us to try to go for number one!” You know, “They clearly think that they are going to be able to get number one on the hot 100 and we’re gonna use these sales to do that!” And clearly that’s all changed now.

They keep changing the rules on us, so — with JK, they’re obviously trying to, you know, use whatever tools they have available to them at this point.

Finally, when it comes to restocking the digital single CD. There are still albums available in the store. So why would they manufacture and ship more (likely thrown away) plastic that’s just for one song, when those CD singles only serve to raise sales for the charts? All of the other member’s CD singles are out of stock except The Astronaut, which they treated more like a proper album a bit (kinda like the Butter CD releases). Because they still have both versions of his full albums in stock, so if I were Hybe, I’d be like “No,you need to buy the album, we still have albums, we’re not going to sell you a single song when you can buy the album!” That makes more sense to me. The albums cost more.

TL:DR, haha — so I feel like this narrative around Jimin’s release has been ramped up because, from my professional opinion, he’s had the most expensive release so far (by far) and if we want to compare him to, say, Beyoncé — well she owns her own production company (Parkwood Entertainment), so she can funnel her own money into a Visual Album, I don’t know if Jimin has considered that at this point in his career, but in the future, he might!

((Not including costs for Suga’s tour because that’s a whole other thing, and the tour probably made money I would expect to balance out the cost of the tour itself))

Anonymous Insider

This isn’t to say that the other things, the part where he didn’t get the cake celebration, or the posts, the issues with the linking and this general feeling that Jimin was short-changed in these things isn’t valid and understandable. I think Hybe relied too much on D2C sales and I don’t think they leveraged their might as much as could have for JM. They could have risked more for him.

{This is an end of Anonymous Insider’s messages to me. They noted that they are an intermediate non-native Korean speaker so please excuse any translation errors. They translated things themselves using Naver tools that aligned with the video subtitles.}

So, listen, I still don’t think Like Crazy was sent/promoted to radio (which was a mistake and still is a mistake) and I am furious at the shady articles and lack of celebration for Jimin…

But after reading the way the members approach their work in the Beyond the Story book and now hearing from someone who produces these works for a living, I have to wonder if the company was doing everything they knew how to do for Jimin, but the second it didn’t work out because of the western music industry culling streams and sales, they pulled back all their resources and pivoted for Yoongi and JK. (I also wonder if leadership shut up about it all due to liability issues, or not to cause bad blood with the music industry for future releases.)

Again, I’ll never forgive the lack of celebration and the split streams (not without a great explanation), but at least now I think there’s a good chance no one was actively trying to sabotage Jimin on purpose. They seemed to have wanted that #1 and then it all went to shit because Billboard and radio want to get paid. Maybe leadership decided not to put any more resources into Face but instead pivot for all the future music coming out (including PJM2.)

Perhaps I'm a cockeyed optimist. I’m just hoping like hell they never engage in payola. I want all our boys to win, but I want us to win fairly. And even if everyone cannot have the same investment every time on every project, I hope when they come back together in 2025 that everyone feels good about their solo works and each other. This is my prayer. Love, Roo

#jimin #jungkook #jikook #bts #face by jimin #set me free pt 2 #like crazy by jimin

250 notes · View notes

bulletsgirl · 5 months

Text

I thought i was done with talking about my chemical romance fandoms crazy gender essentialism and transmisogyny and misogyny in general but i have one more thing. actually two. because i have yet to discuss why this is so personal to me.

number one: i really, really hope you people don’t talk to trans women like that in real life.

number two and in relation to that: the way people (you know who they are, or you don’t, in which case consider this a general statement.) are about trans people, trans women specifically i should say, and have been talking about trans people on here in general, has been deeply concerning to me because what they’re doing has happened to me.

when someone is dealing with their gender identity, you dont just tell them what they are. You can make it a safe place for someone to come out WHEN THEY ARE READY just by being openly supportive and in arms with transness and the transgender community. unless a person is going through immense obvious suffering and cannot understand why that’s the case you should NOT fucking walk up to people and just tell them what they are because 1 you are not them and therefore can’t be sure 2 that isn’t your place and 3 everyone deserves to be able to figure out to what extent they would like to address their gender dysphoria and what their desired timeline for doing so is.

you can say IF THE SITUATION CALLS FOR IT “hey, it seems like you might be struggling with issues related to gender. have you heard of transgender people? if so, do you feel like addressing your problems through this lens might help alleviate your suffering?” <- or similar. of course, i figured this should be obvious to trans people, who typically (bar conservative “transmedicalists” who make for an entirely different conversation that i don’t want to have) know exactly how harmful the inherent association of physiological and sociological traits in human beings with gender identity (and, by extension, gender dysphoria) is.

but really just making sure a person knows it’s cool and awesome and most of all OKAY to be transgender openly if they want to is the most important. you don’t do this by telling them who they are but by exhibiting public love for and solidarity with trans people. it’s always supposed to be on their terms, not yours. if you realized you were gay or trans because someone told you you were, that’s okay. i’m ecstatic that you were able to discover that about yourself and i’m glad it did you more good than harm. but almost never does the situation call for that; as you should know, you are not the transgender monolith; there is no monolith; there is no straightforward path.

there is only support and solidarity, which is not the same as declaring that someone is x when they themselves have not clarified it or rather need drastic intervention for their mental wellbeing and are genuinely blatantly clueless. i promise you most people struggling with gender identity aren’t clueless and know they’re uncomfortable with the box they’ve been put in, so don’t feel like you should just go ahead and pick a different box.

now on the personal side: it was really harmful for me when someone who wasn’t even transmasc told me i was a transgender man and that i should just accept that. my gender identity was more complex than that and i was addressing it on my own terms at the time internally because it wasn’t the business of others. publicly, i told people i was okay with using any pronouns and i disclosed the name i went by, as well as telling people i felt kinship with transness, but that was it. (if you’re reading this as someone that is aware of the celebrity-stranger central to the discussion at hand, you may be familiar with their own similar public disclosures.)

the way that maleness was foisted onto me by (well meaning) others made me collapse in on myself. they used he/him pronouns for me and barraged me with questions about my comfort with she/they/etc, as if i did not know better than them.

in the end, i just wasn’t good at being a man. pursuing maleness made me feel worse about myself because it was incongruent with my internal experience. not always, of course, because i am mostly a masculine/gnc person, but there were key aspects of being a trans man i exhibited because people told me i was one that made me uncomfortable, and i, just wanting relief, chose to pursue that angle seeing as it was other members of the lgbt community that pointed me there. im from a small town in the bible belt deep south and i’d never seen the world, because my family was poor and conservative and there was nothing for them otherwise. my new college friends were from big cities and had seen much more of the world than i had.

in truth, i should have been allowed to figure it out as i would have liked to. these people were aware that i knew about transgenderism and related to it, and i had told them what pronouns i wanted them to use, but they continued to apply pressure onto me. to this day, years later, i am devastated that i was robbed of my path to self discovery as it might have come about naturally. i would have made some choices the exact same, such as hrt and top surgery, but the emotional gravity of what i experienced will always stay with me, and the insecurities that came with it are still being shaken off.

this is my personal experience, but i know other people have felt similar pressure to conform to what they’ve been identified as by outsiders who were flat out transvestigating them.

i’m trans; i love being trans; i love my transgender brothers and sisters, i love trans men and women, and i love gnc people and the nonbinary identity, which has more or less fit like a glove and allowed for self expression that has ultimately been the most comfortable for me.

i am not saying i am going to be the leading example of all trans people, but i am an example of the consequences of these kinds of invasive claims.

if you’ve made the conversation at hand a “we the gerard way transgender believers and knowers vs the deniers who claim gerard is male” you have lost, because that is not what people believe. I would say most of us are very comfortable associating gerard with transness because they themself have expressed kinship and solidarity with us.

i hope if you took the time to read this you take all i say in good faith and understand why this conversation has hit home for me so personally. i hope you were able to understand why i am so distressed by those standing on a soapbox preaching harmful rhetoric and practices. and i hope that people who have engaged in said practices perhaps discover that they are hurting a lot of trans people, out or not, and i hope that they express love for out trans women more than pursue what they appear to believe are “closet cases” or “flagging”. i hope we all learn from this as a community online and choose to engage only with gerard’s gender to the extent that they’ve verbally signaled they are comfortable with, which includes not assigning them labels, whether that be female, male, trans woman, cisgender, or otherwise, and at least when talking about them seriously, using their pronouns (no, i don’t think you lovingly calling gerard your girlfriend is the crime here. it’s why you do it that’s the issue; you aren’t doing it with solely affection but rather with a motive as well.)

just let them, as well as other people, especially those you might encounter in your day to day life, be themselves without argument or unnecessary investigation. just leave people alone about their gender identity, please.

#that’s all.

110 notes · View notes

acotarfrustrations · 6 months

Text

It's so on brand that feyre, rhys, and amren immediately become the most obnoxious people ever when they step foot in the summer court as they're no longer in their fantasy soho echo chamber where everyone thinks the sun shines out of their ass bc it's the one place rhys bothered to protect during aramantha's reign. They're so used to having everything their way that when people question them even a little, they immediately start being #Edgy and threatening people and thinking that quippy Riverdale-esque one liners solve anything. Like Feyre saying she doesn't mind stealing from them just because Cresseida ASKED ABOUT TAMLIN??? Girl be so fucking for real right now.

They do all this whining about how Feyre's relationship w/ Tamlin is none of their business and to a certain extent, yeah sure. BUT A FEW PAGES EARLIER THEY LITERALLY ALL DISCUSSED WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE IT WOULD SEND IF FEYRE WENT WITH THEM AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE NC. OBVIOUSLY they would be concerned about being cause in the middle of a war w/ feysand and tamlin's drama when THEY LITERALLY JUST GOT FREE FROM ARAMANTHA.

They're literally the worst at diplomacy that I've ever seen and I'm supposed to think they should be good rulers. All the """"""humanizing""""" they've done to rhys' character is immediately thrown out of the window as Rhys IMEDIATELY starts talking about feyre's tits to tarquin and treating her like a sexual object. Then we have that whole idiotic conversation where she's talking about seducing tarquin to get the book when he had no interest in her at all and knew very well that rhys is only there cause he's up to something.

Why does sjm think that having a strong female character means that literally every man on the planet wants to fuck them? Why do we always have to see these women through the lens of attractiveness and male sexuality to think that they're worthy protagonists? Oh I forgot, because she's not interesting in writing good characters that actually further women's representation, she's only interested in writing shitty self-insert fairy porn

#anti sarah j maas #anti acotar #anti rhysand #anti sjm #anti ic #anti feysand #anti inner circle

91 notes · View notes

felidrae · 4 months

Text

With the recent released episode I went back & binge watched the previous episodes. There are many things I could talk about that I want to see more of (example if Penny introduced her daughter to the rest of the crew- I feel Steve would be utterly devoted to her since he’s a clown & has a soft spot for kids as seen from that one customer interaction)

BUT I’m bias and have a fascination in examining possibly veiled relationships & going into the speculative deeper details/interpretations. So I’ll start w/ that.

The topic: Cesare & Doctor (Allen)

Cesare & Doctor seem to have a deeper relationship than how Cesare has one w/ the rest of the employees.

Firstly, from what we’ve seen Cesare seems to only see his employees as just that- employees. He has no inclination to form a bond since we haven’t seen him hang out w/ them outside of work nor use their real names (unlike Steve) but instead uses their costume titles; this is so he doesn’t get attached. Cesare is a man on the job & once the job is done he will finally rest- no need to get attached when he’s dead already.

While Cesare is full of energy, theatrics & is just all over the place in general he doesn’t really seem to take nonsense from his employees nor engage in peer discussions; when he DOES interact it’s limited & mainly snapping:

- Frances asking him to try the bad food & he immediately shuts it down by saying he doesn’t eat food. While I understand where he’s coming from as a zombie there’s no real reason to not at least try it- Not eating something thats no longer needed doesn’t mean he can’t humor her.

- Conrad asking him how old he is. He could’ve lied but instead tells him to never ask him that; then again this could’ve been a “asking someone how old they are is rude” type of thing

- Conrad asking if he’s been to a FTC before & he says “no, I’m a virgin around here” then immediately goes straight back to business “I’m sure my reputation proceeds me however”

- Conrad asking to take lens off is immediately shut down cause Zombie man needs to stay hidden

(Notably, the only time Cesare snaps at Doctor is when he tries to negotiate w/ Cesare over the costumes.)

As stated his interactions with them are mainly orders or stopping them from revealing “ brand secrets” / asking questions. Even they (Conrad & Frances) have no internal familiarity w/ him since they call him “Boss”. It’s all strictly business.

The only people we have seen him fully interact w/ that isn’t a quick remake is Steve & Doctor; Steve makes sense- he’s a long term target who’s foiled his attempted captures time & time again. They got history/beef. Doctor however is just a regular human who’s employed by him- there shouldn’t be any history between the two that would establish the amount of interaction that aren’t simply orders (then again the interactions they do have is also related to business.) as well as treat Doctor more fairly from the rest YET Casare uses a nickname for him which is something we haven’t seen him do w/ the others, dramatically worries about Doctor when he’s down, is more abrasive towards him and counts on him w/ tasks such as gathering information whilst being impressed by him; Doctor is his right hand man.

Doctor in turn does something the rest don’t do- he calls Cesare by his name. This is significant. Why script it to where Frances/Conrad only call him “Boss” but Doctor frequently uses his actual name; this is a personal/friendly undertone. Cesare seems to have no issues with this either which if you go based on Cesare’s character & view on his employees would seem unusual. The only time we see him calling Cesare “Boss” is when he’s shocked/unsure about him.

Overall Cesare displays traits that would suggest he’s slightly more fond towards Doctor (I believe he enjoyed his time with the other employees- he’s just a blockhead & wants no strings attached) & Doctor in return reciprocates. Heck, Doctor is listed as a “Morality Pet” trope though it’s downplayed in the series- so far.

Secondly, the question is why is this specific relationship different from the rest? Well, another thing that’s good to note is the parallel between the two Foodtrucks:

- both have extravagant themes to hide the identities of the employers

-both have three employees that are human

-both sell bad burgers

- both are employers who came out of the ground & aren’t human

From what we’ve seen from the latest episode Steve was in the Earth’s core unconscious until he woke up & dug himself out; causing Tim to be the first to find him. Tim is also arguably Steve’s right hand man since he wears a chef’s hat & in “Down” he is the only one from Bigtop that exclaims a sentence of shock when everything is revealed.

Now this is where the speculation(or delulu) comes into play: both Tim/Doctor are right hand men & both exclaimed in shock at the revelation; so what if like Tim, Doctor was the first to find Cesare? We don’t know exactly how the recruitment happened but Cesare is aware they are all theatre majors (interestingly he specifically mentions puppets when saying this- marionettes are puppets) so either he went out of his way to a theatre group & found them OR Doctor was his first employee who brought his friends along since the pay is nice whilst they get to perform.

If Doctor was the first to find Cesare he took enough interest to make the proposal. This could be for many reasons however given the context of the story it would make more sense if Doctor reminded him of when Cesare was alive- Cesare is a performer & it would make sense he would reminisce about it causing it to make decisions for him.

Personally I would find it fitting if like Cesare, Doctor enjoys puppets- his voice would be perfect for it. (But that is a headcannon & not speculation.)

In conclusion, the relationship between the two is noticeable different from the rest for a Zombie who was using them as a means to an end & learning more on the why would be desirable to see as well as flashbacks about how Zomburger & the relationship dynamics began; seeing how they’re all (Bigtop & Zomburger) handling the revelation that their bosses weren’t human is definitely something we will be seeing.

That’s mainly it- it’s a bit of a rant but I’d like to hear your thoughts/headcannons

Bonus photo:

#bigtop burger #bigtop burger cesare #bigtop burger doctor #bigtop burger conrad #bigtop burger frances #bigtop burger steve #bigtop burger spoilers #bigtop burger tim #bigtop burger theory #bigtop burger billie #bigtop burger penny

51 notes · View notes

nateconnolly · 2 months

Text

I made a Patreon lol.

Here's the free sample post:

THE CREATION MYTH OF KILL 6 BILLION DEMONS

INTRODUCTION

I love fantasy religions. I love it when fictional humans try to understand worlds like Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere and Tolkein’s Middle Earth through a religious lens—especially because in those books and in many others, the fantasy religions are somewhat true, and somewhat false. It’s really fun to look at a fictional universe through the eyes of a character who might not see things objectively. Religion usually plays a role in that. But, if I’m being honest, a lot of fantasy religions are just Christianity wearing a fun hat. Don’t get me wrong, I am fascinated by Chrisitianity, and I really enjoy a lot of fantasy versions of Christianity. But it’s a great special treat when a fantasy story goes the extra mile and portrays another concept of the divine. That’s one of many reasons that I love the webcomic Kill 6 Billion Demons. The webcomic’s fictional religion Atru has parallels to Taoism, Gnosticism, Advaita Vedanta, theothanatology, Biblical divine nomenclature, the list goes on. I just threw a lot of big scary words at you, but I promise, this is a beginner level essay. I’ll break everything down into bite-sized pieces. I just wanted to list out some of K6BD’s religious influences to show that they are complicated, and diverse.

This is specifically a essay about the creation narratives. K6BD is an amazing comic—later on, it tackles questions about time, free will, and optimistic nihilism, but I won’t dig into that stuff here. Those things would require their own essays. Here, I’m going to try to explain how the seven-part world came to be. More specifically, I’ll examine the stories that White Chain, Cio, Michael, and the old devil’s tale tell us; then I’ll look at fictional holy texts found in the Concordance.

I’ll also compare and contrast with a lot of real world religion and philosophy. I want to be clear that the creator Abaddon and I have never spoken. I don’t know where he got most of his inspiration. I’m not revealing any information that wasn’t already available, I’m just compiling it and offering my own thoughts. Unless I specifically quote Abaddon, assume that I’m not even talking about his inspirations. I’m drawing parallels because it’s fun, even though it probably won’t give us new insight into how the text was created.

I promise I’m not trying to convert you! I genuinely don’t want to make other people believe the religion that I believe—or any religion at all. I’m just trying to show you how understanding some real world religious and philosophical concepts can deepen your appreciation of K6BD. Obviously, there will be tons of spoilers, so go read the webcomic if you haven’t already. It’s absolutely genius.

Lastly, I want to say I will discuss suicide and murder.

Ok, let’s get started.

PART ONE: THE FIRST AND GREATEST DIVISION

Let There Be No Genesis

White Chain begins the history of the universe with the words, “Let there be no Genesis,” closely echoing the in-universe fictional Psalm I. “For indeed, there was [no Genesis]. God has always existed and has never existed.” As White Chain tells her story, we are shown the god YISUN. This figure is sometimes described with it/its or she/her pronouns, but for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to follow the example of the fictional Psalm I, and use he/him. I might call him “YISUN” or “God” with a capital G depending on the context.

YISUN was eternal, and the “undisputed master of the entire omniverse.” He predates everything else, and without him, nothing would exist.

YISUN has at least twelve bodies, probably more. Some are smiling, some look mad; some resemble insects or animals; most hold weapons; and all are different colors. The central white body has four arms. Abaddon has said that YISUN’s appearance is directly inspired by the Hindu god Vishvarupa. Hindu gods are frequently depicted with multiple body parts, an artistic tradition that Doris Srinivasan calls “the multiplicity convention.” She explains some of the religious and artistic reasons that many Indian gods have multiple body parts in her book “Many Heads, Arms, and Eyes: Origin, Meaning, and Form of Multiplicity in Indian Art.” The tradition of Hinduism is long, and diverse, so the multiple limbs in one text can mean something very different from the multiple limbs elsewhere. Srinivasan closely examines a vast expanse of Indian history, and I don’t have time to present all her ideas. I would like to specifically focus on the interpretation that multiple limbs represent the manifestations of a singular godhead.

Srinivasan writes that “Multiple versions of a myth are facilitated by the idea that there exists multiple aspects or manifestations of a godhead.” Think of the difference between Greek and Hindu goddesses. Bruno Snell suggests “that these four women signalize the four aspects of all womanhood,” but Srinivasan qualifies his interpretation. The Olympian women “are not multiple forms of [one] Divine Woman, as is the case in Hinduism.” Artemis and Athena are different people who are both women, plural. Parvati, Sati, and Uma together are Woman, singular. Zeus, Demeter, and Poseidon are gods, plural. Shiva, Vishnu, and Krishna are God, singular. That’s not how all Hindus see things, but it is one Hindu perspective that I find especially comparable to K6BD.

Similarly, the multiple bodies are only manifestations of a single God: YISUN. All of his bodies are a single person. In Hinduism, the plurality of the divine can be seen as empowering and liberating. Multiple body parts signify that the god is a well-rounded entity. But Abaddon makes it look like a curse. He turns the artistic convention around. Using the same symbolism and metaphysics, he tells a radically different story. As White Chain says, “Being was only circular.” “YISUN had no equal… It was a wretched life, without meaning or perception. Imagine infinite stories to tell… and nobody to tell them to.” Perfection is lonely. At this point, YISUN is the only thing that exists, and that can’t be fun. All those arms and heads cannot satisfy YISUN’s need for companionship. It’s fascinating to me that when White Chain says YISUN had no one to whom it could tell its stories, Abaddon chose to illustrate multiple heads right next to each other. Even if those heads told each other stories, the speaker and the listener would still be the same person. Dissatisfaction with isolation is why YISUN created the world.

Although not all Hindus follow the school of Advaita Vedanta, in this case, I think it will be helpful to compare and contrast with Advaita. As Ram Shanker Misra writes in “The Integral Advaitism of Sri Aurobindo,” “Brahman [ is] perfect, absolute, infinite, need[s] nothing, [and] desir[es] nothing…” Brahman is full of all perfections. And to say that Brahman has some purpose in creating the world will mean that [Brahman] wants to attain through the process of creation something which it has not. And that is impossible.”

But that’s exactly why YISUN created this world. He wants to gain something that he does not have: companionship.The universe is God’s escape from himself. There was no Genesis, but there was “the first and greatest division: division of self”: “God committed holy suicide.”

2. The Divine Suicide

White Chain’s story is similar to Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous claim that “God is dead,” but Nietzsche did not mean God was a real entity that had literally died. He meant that intellectually, it was impossible to continue believing in God, and that all intellectual achievements founded on belief in Him had to be abandoned. Nietzsche’s claim is a famous example of a philosophical school of thought called death of God theology, also called “theothanatology,” which means “the study of God’s death” in Greek.

“Death” can mean a lot of different things in this context. Sometimes it’s metaphorical, sometimes it’s literal, and usually, it’s a very confusing mixture of both.

Nietzsche proposed the death of God as a social claim about humans. He’s talking about what we can believe, what we should do, and what we need to accept. God never really existed, but as religion loses followers and influence, even the idea of God has begun to “die” because it no longer has power over the real world.

“Death” can also mean God exists, but in a way radically different from what people usually mean when they say “God.” The Rabbi and philosopher Richard L. Rubenstein thought God exists as a “ground of being,” but not as a supernatural entity that made a covenant with Abraham. Rubenstein proposed the death of God as an intellectual change in what humans think the word “God” means.

And, finally, “death” can just literally mean “death.” The Protestant theologian Thomas J.J. Altizer wrote “we shall understand the death of God as an historical event: God has died in our time, in

our history, in our existence.” This isn’t a social claim about humans—it’s a metaphysical claim about God.

Death of God theologians usually mean more than one thing when they say God is dead. Nietzsche wasn’t just trying to convince Christians to become atheists; he was also trying to convince many atheists that they disbelieved in God in the wrong way. Altizer had radical thoughts about what human beings are able to believe.

White Chain means that God is dead in the literal sense. She is proposing a metaphysical belief that God, as a historical figure, chose to actually kill himself. White Chain is not rejecting or critiquing religion—she’s asserting that her religion, in which God has died, is fact.

You can see slight parallels to Nietzsche, Rubenstein, Altizer, Hegel, Zizek, and Blake in White Chain’s version of the fictional religion Atru. But there is no better comparison than the king of sad philosophers Philipp Mainlander.

Mainlander was an atheist—but not in the sense that people usually mean when they say “atheist.” Mainlander believed that there was a God at some time, but that time is now over. There isn’t a God anymore. Mainlander is pretty unique among death of God theologians because he explicitly describes God’s death as a suicide. Whittaker explains that Mainlander thought “[a]ll things have their origin in what may be called… the ‘will’ of the absolute being… to annihilate itself.” Essentially, the cause of the universe is God’s suicidal desires.

God was a “real unity,” but his death caused a “collective unity”—that’s the universe where we live now. God had been a total and undivided One, but now the universe is made of distinct parts. God cut himself apart into the pieces of the universe. God created the world by becoming it, and he became the world by dying.

Mainlander said “the knowledge that life is worthless is the flower of all human knowledge.” He thought suicide was desirable, and ultimately, he put his money where his mouth was. The biggest difference between Mainlander and White Chain is that she doesn’t seem to think ordinary people such as herself should follow God’s suicidal example. Even beyond the views of a specific character, the story of Kill 6 Billion Demons reads as an affirmation of life’s beauty and value.

But the webcomic clearly argues that making a better world is a bloody project. So it should come as no surprise that making the world itself involved bloodshed. First and foremost, the blood of God. What’s so interesting to me is that both White Chain and Mainlander equate God’s suicide to the creation of the world. Our life comes from God’s death. Creation and destruction aren’t opposites—they’re different ways of looking at the same process. At the end of Book 2, Allison destroys Mottom’s evil tree and a lot of her palace—but this destruction is also part of the creation of a more just and free world.

So, what did God’s destruction create? What came after YISUN?

3. The Duality of Un and Yis

The destruction of the total unity creates duality. I know that’s a little confusing because YISUN had many faces, but remember that behind all of those faces was one God, and only one. Not anymore. “From division was birthed duality. White Un, Lord of empty and still places, master of all that is not. Black Yis, infinite mother of the rampant flame. Master of all that is''

I cannot avoid comparing the White and Black gods to the Yin and Yang—a spinning black and white symbol usually associated with the religion Taoism. Yin and Yang represent a cosmic duality. Yin is associated with femininity, darkness, passivity, and even numbers, among other things. Yang is associated with masculinity, light, activity, and odd numbers, among other things. Mainstream Taoist philosophy asserts that the universe can be understood through duality. So, why are these pairs important? And why do things get paired together in the first place?

As is written in the foundational Taoist text the Tao Te Ching, “Being and non-being create each other. Difficult and easy support each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other.” What’s so interesting about the pairs is they “create,” “support,” “define,” and “depend on” each other. Black can’t exist without white, and white cannot exist without black.

As the Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, “...yinyang is emblematic of valuational equality rooted in the unified, dynamic, and harmonized structure of the cosmos. As such, it has served as a heuristic mechanism for formulating a coherent view of the world…” Essentially, neither of these opposites are “dominant” or “truer.” Choosing one side won’t help you understand the universe because the universe is their partnership. Their equality gives “structure to the cosmos.” That structure is order, not chaos, but it is differentiated. There are two different things: Yin and Yang. They contradict each other, but at the same time, they make the universe. Yin and Yang are a productive paradox.

I’d like to return to the notion that “being and non-being create each other.” At this stage of creation in K6BD, UN and YIS could not exist without each other. Their very existence is the fact that they are not a unity. If there was only one of them, then there wouldn’t have been a division—and they are nothing more than the product of division. Just like how being and non-being create each other, the Master of All That Is and the Master of All That Is Not create each other. YISUN was characterized by his totality—he was the total sum of the omniverse, there was nothing else. After the division, Un and Yis experience otherness. The first otherness in the omniverse. It’s difficult for them to find balance—in fact, they immediately went to war for seven years. At the end of their seven-year war, Un and Yis made love for seven days.

I want to be very clear that this is not a depiction of actual Taoism. Yin and Yang are not gods with faces and minds. Notably, the Tao Te Ching asserts that yin and yang are “older than God.” so make of that what you will. But I think Taoism is thematically relevant to this era. Two opposites have to come into balance with each other. The whole universe is a duality of interconnected forces.

K6BD repeatedly emphasizes the need for community. As Allison says at the end of King of Swords, “I couldn’t have done this without any of you… We make mistakes. We learn from each other. We all still have so much to learn. Once I saw that as a weakness, now I’m certain it’s not. Someone who lives still thinking like that… struggling to do everything themselves… I can’t help but think how alone they must be.”

YISUN had to do everything all by himself, and we saw that Allison was right—isolation was a struggle, even for God. But the struggle is over, and in its place is duality. Partnership. The first community.

These are the first four parts of a fourteen-part critical essay. You can read the rest here.

Bibliography is on the free Patreon post.

#patreon #nate's writing #original post

30 notes · View notes

a-town-called-hometown · 1 month

Note

hi!! i loved your post about deltarune's metafiction and its (not) escapist themes, and it got my brain jogging, like... i guess ive just been thinking "why"? like ive heard that take before and i think its valid, but also like. why ? its obvious enough to me that deltarune uses the lightner/darkner relationship as a reflection of the player/game relationship and both of these things are addressed critically, but i can't help but wonder if there's a driving force for it all, outside of deltarune. like i can accept diegetically the darkners are not, or shouldn't be, subject only to the whims of lightners, but with any good story if you break it down to its core is ultimately saying something about humanity or the world and such. i mean i seriously doubt the people who seem to think that Toby Fox intends to induce *actual* guilt into the people who fund his life's work and career by purchasing his videogames, like, it's obvious that "you are a bad person because you play this videogame" isn't the intended message, nor was it in undertale. but then, what is? what is the purpose of a story that invites us to think of toys and game characters as "real"? not to trash my beloveds but i mean, literally speaking, their lives DONT matter, they r not real. it just feels like ive seen a lot of discussion about 'what' toby is doing with the narrative but i feel like that's only half the ordeal, the other half would be the reason why. my first thought was that the implicit 3rd thing being compared to the light-dark, player-game thing is actual social hierarchy IRL in which people are oppressed by another group that doesnt see them as human, bc iirc toby talked a bit about feeling powerless and wanting to do more to change the real world on real issues in an interview in 2020ish and of course there's the snarky gag about the fedora plugboy who doesn't like politics, so he doesn't care that an evil ruler is taking over the world. im not sure if that sits right with me as what the intention is (esp because the latter is a darkner talking about another darkner) but i couldnt think of much else although i do feel like a fallacy people get themselves into a lot in the fandom is the assumption that toby fox is this Impeccable Writing Machine and not just like A Guy. people make weird or flawed art sometimes, it doesn't *have* to adhere to standards. maybe deltarune is meaningless (or the meaning IS that it's meaningless, as though to complete the metaphor of it being a "real" fictional world, because if it is 'real' then like our world there is no "answer" or "purpose", it simply *is*.) dunno! im not expecting it to boil down to a simplistic fairytale moral like "dont bully people!!" or something, mr. fox tends to write more convoluted than that, but i feel like if there's something to be gained from this particular part of the game's story then i'm not sure i see the vision. what do u think? do u think this question is even answerable with only two chapters?

respectfully, I do heavily disagree with the notion that good stories necessarily have to say anything about the world or about humanity. one of the reasons I like metafiction is that it usually says something about how stories are constructed, and that's enough for me. there's plenty of stories that have bigger themes that aren't really all that much about human nature, at least, not directly. a story can comment on one specific thing without necessarily making a broader statement about people, you know? not every story has an easily explained moral lesson.

that being said, yes, this plot element is in service of deltarune's larger themes! which are about agency, control, fate, and identity.

deltarune's fate theming and its metafiction elements are a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation given how interlocked they are, but I've found it helpful to describe deltarune as a "person vs. fate narrative that uses a metafictional lens to characterize fate." rather than the three fates of greek mythology or whatever dictating its characters' lives, it is instead the structure of the rpg their world was made to be. they are player characters. they are npcs. they play specific roles in the narrative. no one can choose who they are in this world.

control is emphasized in this story. there's the control we have over kris, of course, and in a much subtler way the control we have over the world through them. there's the darkner-lightner hierarchy, which parallels our dynamic with kris. i would argue that there are even social forces in hometown which also serve to place the lightner characters into specific roles. under this level of control, it's hard for characters to push back and determine their own identities.

all these forces combine to mean that deltarune's characters are fighting back against the narrative itself! which says stuff about people's agency, and the way rpgs are written, and how we interact with all that...

ultimately, you can apply this to real life. even if there aren't things like "fictional people who are actually real," hierarchies of control do exist in real life. narratives that erase the agency and internality of certain types of people exist in real life. it's admittedly a rather general statement, but like with any narrative about fate, seeing characters resist rules that are seemingly written into the fabric of their existence can make you feel inspired to also define your own identity! and to be transgender. don't forget to be transgender

#deltarune #deltarune analysis #im not kidding deltarune really did make me transgender.

28 notes · View notes

anotherghoul666 · 1 year

Note

Okay so the thought:

Alkaline is about Sleep.

In the song, Vessel sings about how the subject of the song has changed him (this one's pretty obvious, Vessel was presumably just A Normal Dude before Sleep came to him and chose him), how the subject is undefinable (like how it's been said that Sleep is a very reductive name for what the deity is), and there's also how the song discusses the subject in contrasting terms, like how Sleep gives humans both dreams but also nightmares.

It's less a theory and more just like jumbled thoughts, but a lot of their songs too can easily be read as either love songs or songs about Vessel and his relationship with Sleep.

And we are back with another “AnotherGhoul goes fucking overboard about Sleep Token” essay once again!!! Under the cut: pronoun use in songs, the heteronormativity of the music industry, and a full lyric analysis and break down of the song “Distraction”!

I agree 100% with your “Alkaline is about Sleep” theory. In fact, I personally interpret a lot of Sleep Token's songs as being about Sleep, or about Vessel's relationship with Sleep, or their history through the years. Probably more songs than people would think. It's just my opinion of course, I don't know the guys, I don't know everything, people are gonna have wildly different interpretations of their lyrics I'm sure. There's a lot of "Vessel talks about an real life abusive relationship he's been through / someone he pined for" floating around and that's completely valid! Interpretations are just that, they are subjective to our own lenses and biases and they are wholly personal. I tend to have a big bias of religious trauma, the damages of out of control zealotry and religious mania, and I read Sleep Token's lyrics through that lens. I don't disagree with the abusive relationship interpretation for instance, I just see it as an abusive relationship with your god / your church, while people see it as an abusive relationship with a woman / partner. Both are totally valid.

And when I say most, if not all, Sleep Token songs could be about Sleep, yes I mean even the ones that use she/her pronouns for the subject. In fact, the use of she/her pronouns seems very on purpose to me.

Clearly the band knows how to play the pronouns game in terms of lyrics. Because in interviews and official texts, they do refer to Sleep using he/him pronouns. But I also believe they know how to play the commercial game so damn well (I'd be SHOCKED if Sleep Token was any of these musicians' first band, especially Vessel and II. There is no fucking way you have this level of skill raw on a first project. And I'm not saying this because of technical skill; you can develop excellent technical skill just practicing at home, without any live music experience. I say that because of how confidently Vessel displays voice faults and cracks and the raw jagged edges of his vulnerability; because of how confidently II shits on conventional drumming conventions and techniques for the benefit of his organic flow. Imo, and I say that as a drummer, confidence to mess up and fail while keeping completely in style? You can't get that from playing for yourself alone. Anyway, I digress.)

My point was about commercial sales of music and maintaining the "sellability" of a band. I believe the team at Sleep Token are aware of how male-coded Vessel's voice is, how he'll automatically be assumed to be a man, and thus he'll also be assumed to be straight. So for the intensity and the visceral nature of the lyrics to land with the wider audience, using he/him as pronouns to sing your undying love to and desperation for when you're a male-coded singer? Unfortunately still not possible in today's culture, at least without turning the entire focus of the band into who is Vessel, is he gay, and who is he singing about. Since it's extremely obvious Vessel and the numbers do not want the band to be about them in any way, as stated by their efforts to maintain perfect anonymity and also how they flat out said it in interviews, it would be counterproductive for their mission to have all of the listeners’ attention on Vessel as a man and on his possible relationships. Plus, they also need to make sure their music is commercially viable and reaches the widest numbers possible, because the more numbers, the more worshipers for Sleep. While a male-coded vocalist using he/him pronouns in those heavily romantic / co-dependent lyrics would make them a sensation in the greater LBGTQ+ community, the sad truth is it would alienate a non-negligible portion of the white-cis-straight-men that unfortunately make up most of the fan base for genres like metal, rock, prog, etc, AKA very male dominated genres.

All of that to say: Sleep is She in some songs, Sleep is You in some songs, and there's even an argument to be made for Sleep being I in some songs too. Sleep is the omnipresent prism from which to evaluate and interpret Sleep Token's lyrics.

Which leads me to! Another interesting example of this “Sleep is She” theory. Distraction.

Distraction is the 8th track in Sleep Token’s 2nd full length album, and 4th release overall, This Place Will Be Your Tomb in 2021. This places the lyrics fairly far in Sleep Token’s journey. I view it as a sort of “here we go again, getting even further into the cult than we anticipated” type of song. So I do view it heavily through the religious / devotional lens, and that leads to a good example of Sleep being spoken about with she/her pronouns.

Oh, and I know I can tell I'm falling further again But I won't turn away, it's far too late for me

I assume, given song writing being credited to Vessel and II, that the I in these lyrics represents Vessel himself and/or the numbers / vessels as a whole entity. I will use the term Vessel from now on but if you want to read it as “the whole band” it will be coherent too. Vessel’s indoctrination to Sleep is getting stronger and stronger. It’s now been five years since the beginning of the band (and presumably Sleep’s visit to his dreams). His life likely has completely changed in those five years, and it shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. He’s falling further into the rapture of Sleep, into his worship, into this cult of his, giving the deity more and more space in his life. He can’t stop it or back away either. Not anymore. Not after he’s made his whole life revolve around this band and their god. He’s gone too far. A sort of sunk cost fallacy he’s trapped himself into: can’t back out when you’ve been this transformed by a deity, when you’ been this engulfed and consumed by feelings and emotions for your new god. That’s why people stay in abusive relationships for decades (another nod to the “Vessel is in a metaphorical abusive relationship with Sleep” thing I have firm belief in). That’s why people stay in churches or organized religions or cults for their entire lives. It’s so much harder to disentangle yourself and back out from something if you’ve not been in long. The longer you’re in, the more you’ll feel it’s too late to save yourself.

'Cause I am broken into fractions

Now, the fans of the “the she/her pronouns songs are about a woman in Vessel’s life” interpretation will probably take this like as meaning Vessel’s heartbroken. He’s into pieces after this relationship fell apart or got hurtful. Which, valid interpretation, as I said. But. I also see this as religious and related to Sleep. A core tactic that is used in organized religions and cults is thought reform. To super simplify a complex process performed over months to years of a person’s life, to reform someone, essentially, is to break what the person was initially, and rebuild it as the religion / cult wants. Reform. Re-form. New form, new shape. Reformation, to be reshaped and assume a new form as intended. Sleep breaks the human and reshapes it into the vessel that he needs. This echoes the “Vessel was just a normal dude before Sleep chose him” thought from the initial ask. Vessel has been broken down into fractions over the last five years. Potentially physically, transformed into a non-human creature as the fandom likes to riff on. But at the very least mentally. He is little percentages of himself reassembles and put in new sequences, fractions to make bigger, new equations he can’t even begin to understand. He is numbers to the mathematician that is Sleep. Moving parts, broken pieces to move around at will, tools. Vessel is a tool for Sleep. Sleep holds his pieces together. If he moves away from Sleep, what’s left? Pieces, fractions, not a human. He will never be able to go back to who he was before Sleep. Without Sleep he’s a pile of jumbled numbers without meaning. Then, because I am in deep deep love with Lovecraftian horror, and I see Sleep as a cosmic horror / eldritch old god type of creature, I also have to mention the mind breaks. In Lovecraft, when a human lays eyes on an Old One, or obtains knowledge of these cosmic deity’s existence, it shatters their minds. It’s something that happens in almost every eldritch creature encounter, or when forbidden knowledge is attained, because the human mind, the brain, is too feeble to understand and contain such knowledge. The human mind doesn’t know what to do when faced with something so unfathomable, so unnamable, so truly profoundly insane, as an eldritch god, so the mind breaks. Shatters. Becomes pieces. Fractions. When Vessel saw Sleep in his dreams the first time, his mind probably broke. Which is partly why he’s so unhinged and feral on some of his lyrics. Human morality and what is “normal” doesn’t have a hold on him anymore. His mind is unchained, yes, but shattered.

Oh, and I am driven to distraction

I especially love the word play in this line, because with the way Vessel accentuates and pronounces “distraction”, it sounds like “destruction” too. Distraction, because Sleep has taken and will take, foreseeably forever, the entirety of Vessel’s brain space. He is distracted from normal life, normal human responsibilities. Distracted from the mundane. Because what could be more important than the deity you’ve dedicated yourself to. Everything pales next to Sleep’s will, his strength, his mission. Vessel’s mission. Of course he’s distracted from everything else. He hasn’t been able to concentrate on “normal” life since Sleep appeared to him. Destruction echoes what I’ve touched on before. Whoever Vessel was before Sleep has been destroyed. There are some parts left, but they’re jumbled and glued together wrong. They’re Other. He was destroyed and rebuilt by Sleep. I just really enjoy how this lines plays on both fronts, a seemingly innocent one, and a much deeper, darked permeation of Sleep in Vessel’s core.

Which finally leads to the she/her pronouns lines: Oh, and I swear she is not like any other, no Something much more than I could ask for (It's too late for me)

That’s Sleep he’s talking about. Like the original ask said about Alkaline. This is about Sleep. Sleep is not like any other. Not like any other god or deity Vessel might have encountered in his human life before. To worship Sleep is unlike anything he’s been taught or potentially forced to worship before, in his youth, etc. Sleep is a whole different breed of god. Of creature. Of living being. And Sleep is too much. Maybe he was too much from the get-go, as I touched upon before with the Lovecraftian mind break theory. Maybe he became too much as Vessel got closer. Maybe he demanded too much and pushed Vessel part his limits. Whatever ways it manifested, it’s clear Sleep is Too Much for a human to handle or comprehend, so for to be chosen by him, to bear his scepter, to wield his words, to lead a now world-wide church in Worship, that has so be so incredibly heavy to bear. No wonder Vessel says it was more than he asked for.

And then the lyrics repeat safe for this one line that differs once: Oh, and I am driven to distraction With each and every interaction (it's too late for me)

Which still hints at the same idea, that every time he interacts with Sleep, he falls further and further in. He becomes less and less human. He breaks a little more every time.

Tl;dr the “she” in this song is so clearly Sleep in my opinion, the walls are lined with religious/cult and devotional references.

#asks #sleep token #one more Sleep Token essay down the hatch guys XD I will never stop hahahahaha #thank you so much for the ask Agent and for the super interesting thought thumble you've sent me down on! I loved it! I appreciate you!!

148 notes · View notes

emeryleewho · 3 months

Text

My post about quality critiquing is still going around and it's reached a whole new group of people who seem to think it's a flop, not because it's "too nice" as many of the early critiques said, but because it's "not nice enough".

I don't know how to tell y'all this, but the point of critique is not to be nice nor is it to scathing. It's to be *informative*.

A review that says "this book is trash and the author never deserves to write again" isn't trash because it's mean (though it IS mean, and unwarranted). It's trash because it literally says nothing. I know nothing more about this book than I did an hour ago. I know more about the reviewer (and the general asshole energy they have) than the thing that they're reviewing.

A review that says "This book does nothing more than tie a bunch of corny tropes together with weak prose and poor grammar that couldn't pass a second grade English class through the lens of cardboard cutout characters with the emotional maturity of Teletubbies" is a FAR more scathing review, but at least it TELLS us something. If I'm the type of reader who actively seeks out the tropiest of stories, I can read this review and gauge that this actually might be an okay read for me because it sounds like this person is mostly frustrated with the elements of this story not being super original, and guess what, that's exactly what I'm looking for! On the other hand, if I HATE tropes or weak grammar, I can probably assume this won't be for me. This review is still eviscerating the novel, but it does so in a way that allows other people to draw conclusions from it.

And guess what, it's also written in a way that allows others to disagree with it! "Oh, you think the characters are emotionally immature? Well, in chapter 12, they discuss the complexities of blah blah..." Now, we can have a discussion among fellow readers and critics, which also leaves room for potential readers to see the discussion and say, "Oh, now I get why they felt that way. Sounds like I would agree. Or maybe sounds like I wouldn't."

The idea that every critique needs to be nice OR mean to a work completely misses the point. Sometimes you love something. Sometimes you hate it. Both of these are fine. The point is that if you're going to try your hand at writing professional (or even semi-professional) critique, you need to understand that critique is *also* its own written art that serves an actual purpose. If you just want to go be snarky on the internet because a book pissed you off, than this isn't about you, but too many people throughout publishing & education seem to think that critique is about people's feelings, and while feelings will always be a part of it (we're human after all), it's not *the point*.

And frankly, reviews are meant to be interpreted just the same as books are. There have been *scathing* reviews that actually convinced me to pick up a book because I knew the reviewer and I clearly had opposite tastes based on what they said made the book suck, and that's exactly how reviews are supposed to work. They're not meant to coddle an author's feelings OR lash out at them for writing something you hated. They're meant to give enough info that other readers can draw conclusions.

#media analysis #critique #reviews #books #novels

20 notes · View notes

theunmappedstar · 1 year

Note

Do you have any analysis or thoughts about the scene chapter 40 (Sophie sees the drawing green journal and that awkward conversation) sorry I just haven’t seen anyone discuss it yet

at first i didn't think this needed an analysis because it was a given what was going on - but i knew better than to let it slide and decided to give the scene a reread.

and oh boy.

if you yourself need a refresher, sophie has just come home from foxfire. keefe is under the panakes drawing after a training session with grady. sophie and keefe exchange their thoughts about their classes, the current stellarlune situation, and what keefe is drawing. keefe shows sophie that he drew ethan and eleanor's graves. during the discussion, keefe becomes frustrated and pushes the journals off his lap - flipping the green one open to the page where he had drawn sophie and fitz performing a cognate exercise.

sophie sees it as she is going to clean up the mess for him. she mentions that her and fitz's gazes are intense, but that's not what she's interested in: she's interested in how keefe drew her.

"Her hair was slightly messy, and her tunic was a little crooked, and she was slouching the way her human mom used to tell her would turn her spine into a twisty pretzel if she didn't work on better posture. But mostly, she looked like her. A little awkward. A whole lot nervous. Definitely not perfect. And... she kinda loved that about it."

this is all we get to hear from her before keefe snatches the journal away, feeling awkward that she discovered it. but this set of inner monologue holds a lot more weight than you think.

a) i want to focus really quick on the 'definitely not perfect' line. this is a direct tie-in to fitz.

only a handful of pages later, fitz and sophie complete their "cognate inquisition". during this, sophie enters fitz's 'core of verity' which is supposed to hold no defense mechanisms or barriers. it is a true reflection of one's self. sophie, on her journey to this place, sees herself in the center of fitz's mind. but unlike the drawing keefe created, this sophie is polished. she's posing, flashing a smile, looking undefeated... and perfect, as she mentions. but while fitz means well with the image, this pedestal and the woman on top of it is not her. it's not accurate to who she is in real life.

so, for sophie to witness the difference between how the two boys view her is huge. they both do have deep affection for her, but the lens they view her from is different. keefe has a camera; fitz has a microscope.

b) most people would cringe to be drawn in such an accurate, "flawed" light. sophie isn't gazing into the sunset looking blissfully aloof. she's not posing for the camera. she's caught in what most would considering an unflattering position. she's hunched, she looks 'awkward' and 'nervous'. her hair is messy, her clothes are crooked...

i can tell you little to no one who would want to be caught like that by their crush. but sophie doesn't shy from having keefe not only seen her that way, but record it - no, she enjoys it. she feels happy to share that side of herself with him. she's glad he gets to see the imperfect person she is.

that right there just proves multiple things to me: how long this love has run without her really knowing it, how ready she is to be open in a relationship, and how real this connection is to her.

sophie doesn't desire something movie-worthy with him. she wants something real.

bored? send me an ask!

#kotlc #sokeefe #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #asks #ask me anything #kotlc asks #stellarlune spoilers

217 notes · View notes

aspoonofsugar · 1 year

Note

Hey Spoon, as someone with highly detailed, well-thought-out metas about RWBY, I would like to ask for your thoughts about two recent trends I have seen about Volume 9. Specifically, about Ruby and her breakdown.

First, there seems to be discussion about Ruby being a huntress as a bad thing? That the hunter system is toxic because it put Ruby in this situation in the first place, with a burden and stress on her shoulders? I don't agree, especially when WBY all triumphantly stated they were Huntress' to their past selves.

Second of all, people seem to have it out for the pep talks that Ruby has been given over the series? That the support and encouragement that Ruby has received over the series has done nothing but make her want to hide her trauma and bottle up her emotions, because people gave her pep talks, instead of directly saying 'Yeah its fine to feel bad'? Like, some of the comments they make is intriguing. Such as Ozpin's statement to Ruby - and from her to Jaune - about how a leader must always be their best self and put their teammates first basically, leading to them eventually breaking down as they are...

But its a bit unfair to say that every attempt to support and encourage Ruby over the show up until this point was worthless and meaningless, isn't it?

Note: I wrote half of this answer before episode 8. I honestly think this still all applies, so I have not changed it. Still, consider I am not discussing that much what happens there. That will have its own meta.

Hi!

Personally, I agree with your thoughts. I understand these takes and tbh I think several people are expressing them in different ways, framings and degrees.

That said, in this answer I am gonna consider them in their most extreme and simplistic form :)

Before I address them, though, here comes a short introduction on character arcs. Skip it if you already know these ideas.

CHARACTER ARCS AND THEME

There are different ways to discuss characters and their arcs. Here I am looking at them specifically from a narrative lens by using theme to classify and analyze them.

Many of these ideas come from @septembercfawkes great posts. Here they are if you wanna read more on the topic:

In short, there are 2 types of character arcs:

The character makes a 180 degree change when it comes to the theme > change arc

The character doesn't change idea about the theme > steadfast arc

If the theme the character believes in by the end of the story is the narrative truth, then the arc is positive, while if it isn't then it's negative.

Some examples:

Ilia starts the story by believing violence is the only way for Faunus to gain freedom, but ends her personal arc by learning this isn't true. "Hate is not the answer". > This is the theme the story supports hence Ilia went through a positive change arc.

Adam starts the story by believing the violence done to him justifies his own violence on others. Blake keeps telling him this is wrong and gives him the chance to change. He refuses and keeps believing the false thematic statement. This is why he is defeated by Blake and Yang, who know trauma and violence do not define who you are (the true thematic statement). > Adam is a steadfast negative character.

Ironwood starts the Atlas Arc by wanting to trust (true thematic statement), but he ends it by giving in to control (false thematic statement). Similarly, he has a good heart and believes in humans, but by the end he refuses his own humanity. > He goes through a negative change arc

Pyrrha starts the story by believing destiny is one's final goal. She thinks hers is to become a hero. She ends her personal arc by dying a hero and choosing her own destiny. > The thematic statement she believes in is the one the story supports hence Pyrrha is a positive steadfast character.

This is the short version >

If you believe something false in the beginning, you have a positive arc only if you change.

If you believe something true in the beginning, you have a positive arc if you hold on to that truth.

This means the narrative is gonna challenge the change characters and steadfast characters in opposite ways:

If you need to change, the story is gonna test you to see if you can change and will punish you, if you don't

If you need to be steadfast, the story is gonna test you to see if you can keep believing into something even when everything goes wrong

Now, guess which kind of character Ruby is?

RUBY IS A STEADFAST CHARACTER

Ruby believes the true thematic statement since the beginning:

"The world can be dark, but there is beauty in it and people should fight to protect it and make it better"

I don't think there is any doubt about this being true in the show. After all, the other MCs grow positively by starting to embrace this viewpoint.

What about Ruby, then?

She is steadfast, so for her the challenge is to keep believing in it even when everything goes wrong. Like at Beacon. Like in Atlas.

But wait! Ruby's viewpoint is flawed and she is breaking because of her unhealthy coping mechanism!

Yes, but this doesn't mean she isn't steadfast. Steadfast characters actually do grow a lot. Sometimes even moreso than change arc characters.

Do you remember Simba from the Liong King? Well, he is a steadfast character.

The Lion King's main theme is the Circle of Life > everyone has a role to play in this cycle

Simba believes this in the beginning and can't wait to be king!

Simba believes Mufasa is dead because of him, so he runs away and gives up the theme. He starts living with Timon and Pumba, 2 outcasts and he even eats insects (aka goes against nature) > he stops believing in the Circle of Life

Nala, Rafiki and Mufasa's ghost remind Simba of his role, so Simba starts believing in the true theme again

Simba defeats Scar and becomes King taking his place in the Circle of Life

As you can see, Simba grows a lot, but he is still steadfast because he knows the true theme since the beginning. It is just that he loses sight of it and needs to re-learn it.

This isn't all, though. What Simba does is more than just remember the theme. By the end he acquires a stronger understanding of it. This is because of 2 reasons:

He adheres to it despite all the obstacles, which makes the theme stronger and deeper.

He has a change arc when it comes to a secondary theme > responsibility.

Simba is initially irresponsible, but by the end he becomes responsible. This secondary theme feeds the main one > Simba's role in the Circle of Life is to be King, but this doesn't mean he will be able to do whatever he wants. Quite the opposite, being King means you have responsibilities. Simba learns this and so he gets to understand the Circle and his role in it better.

Well, something similar is going to happen with our Little Red Riding Hood.

BEING A HUNTRESS

Ruby used to be the embodyment of a Huntress:

Yang: I'm not like Ruby, she's always wanted to be a Huntress. It's like she said, ever since she was a kid, she'd dreamt about being the heroes in the books. Helping people and saving the day, and never asking for anything else in return.

Still, she has right now forgotten what being a Huntress means:

Ruby: Fight… monsters, I guess? I’m sorry, I don’t understand why this matters.

Being a Huntress means to help others, but Ruby answers Herb confusely and mentions "killing monsters" instead. Now, it is not that Ruby doesn't know what being a true Huntress means, but rather it is she has forgotten it.

Why is that so?

It is because the Shadows have slowly been eating at her to the point she can't ignore them anymore. All the stress, the horrors and the grief Ruby has been repressing have engulfed her. She literally can't see anything else anymore. She is so focused on Salem, on how monstruous and scary she is, she can't really see the witch is just a person. Not only that, she is forgetting that the point isn't to destroy Salem, but rather to protect lives:

Blake: Huntresses are heroes. We protect those who can’t protect themselves.

If she stays in the shadows she is gonna turn like Ozpin, like Ironwood and like Salem herself (symbolically). Still, how can she come out?

I think that when it comes to Ruby, she has to learn a secondary theme:

Maria: Interesting… Perhaps there was something that you just weren't seeing?

SILVER EYES - IDEALISM AND EMPATHY

Ruby's main attribute is her Silver Eyes, which are metaphors for themes and inner attributes. So far, I think the Silver Eyes mean 2 things:

Idealism > Ever heard of Wide Eyed Idealists? Yep, those are the Silver Eyed Warriors in a nutshell. The way the eyes work is literally that they reflect the light of the world (like the Moon mirrors the Sun). The SEW can use them only if they believe life is beautiful and worth protecting. This is why the way things are now Ruby is gonna have a hard time using them again.

Empathy > Ever heard of looking at the world through shades of gray? Maybe shades of silver is more accurate here :P But yeah, the Silver Eyes are probably gonna reveal new power and strength once the theme of empathy is gonna be explored more. After all, what does it mean to see the light in the darkness, if not to look at the most monstruous people and realize they are well... people? Isn't it like seeing the person (light) behind the monster (darkness)?

Let's highlight idealism and empathy are 2 secondary themes linked to Atlas (Creation > the Shallow Sea) and Vacuo (Destruction > the Judgement of the Faunus).

Atlas explores trust, which is a declination of faith (Trust Love)

Vacuo is set up to explore empathy - Shade references the shadow, Coco needs to take off her shades to see others properly and Vacuan students throws shades at the Beacon/Haven newcomers

What does it mean for Ruby?

Ruby has been using her eyes by relying on her child-like optimism and hopeful self. Still, this mechanism can't keep on working forever. It is too psychological vexing and simplistic. I honestly think the way forward for her is to develop a new found idealism, which is more rooted into a more mature empathy.

You don't need to ignore the shadows to see the light. Rather, the light found in shadows is brighter than ever.

This is the secondary theme Ruby needs to learn in order to gain a deeper understanding on the main one she already knows, but has forgotten. This is where she needs to go if she wants to re-affirm the main theme.

OTHERS HELPING RUBY

Well, I think the topic is already addressed this last episode:

Weiss: Maybe she didn't feel like she could... Ruby has always been the one to get us through the hard times. We say things like "We believe in you!" "We can count on you!" I know we mean well, but..."

I don't think what Weiss says in the episode means all the encouragement they have offered Ruby was wrong to begin with tbh. It is just that the right words for a specific situation might be wrong for another.

Ruby has been helped and loved by her teammates. Weiss's encouragement helped her becoming a good leader. Yang's love supported her. Blake and Jaune's admiration and loyalty helped her push through in difficult times. It is just that the Ruby right now doesn't need it anymore.

Her own coping mechanism is not functional anymore, which means she needs to develop another one and others need to realize it.

Which leads us to some generic thoughts on coping mechanisms...

COPING MECHANISMS

Coping mechanisms are neither good nor bad really. They are simply mechanisms we come up with in order to survive and push through. They can be functional or dysfunctional. Even better... they can be functional for a while and then they can start not fitting anymore.

RWBY as a story makes full use of this to the point characters' main flaws turn out to be their major strengths and vice versa. This is pretty well conveyed through semblances:

Weiss's semblance initially represents her dependance on her family name. As she grows, though, it becomes symbolic of her own individuality:

And right now, she has discovered a new found strength in her family (team RWBY plus her siblings). The idea that Weiss's strength comes from her bonds with others was never wrong, but initially it is applied in a dysfunctional way. As she grows, she gains a deeper understanding of this part of herself and she gets to shine.

2 Blake's semblance represents her tendency to tun away. Still, as she grows, she realizes that it also represents her ability not to break despite the abuse and the violence:

Not only that, but even her own coping mechanism to run away from an abuser is re-framed. She did the right thing by running away from Adam... it is just she should not let this tendency of hers to control her life completely. Sometimes running is fine, while other times it is better to stand your ground and fight.

3 Yang's semblance represents her tendency to use her losses, her wounds and defeats to grow stronger. It also represents her recklessness and her self-sacrificial tendencies. This is why its use is toned down, as she grows. In exchange, she gains a better understanding of what growing up despite one's losses means:

Yang: No. My losses, my failures. Those more than anything are what have shaped me into who I am, showed me how I need to grow.

It is also probable we will see this new-found wisdom reflected into her semblance eventually:

Ruby is the same... it is just we see her strengths rather than her flaws initially:

She is fast, so fast she even skips grades. She is smart and a quick-thinker.

She is flexible and resourceful and pushes through obstacles.

She is a leader able to carry everyone else...

And yet, she is also running away from her feelings...

And she is also spreading herself too thin for others...

Until she can't anymore...

Ruby, like everybody, is a mix of positive and negative traits. Not only that, but her most positive traits are her flaws and her weakness is her strengths.

She needs to do what the others have done with her help. She needs to gain a deeper understanding of herself and of who she wants to become. Only in this way she can re-affirm herself with a deeper awareness, so not to break down again.

#rwby #ruby rose #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 9 #asksfullofsugar #stormmodblog

83 notes · View notes

dotterelly · 2 months

Text

I'm going to say something because I know a number of people have followed me recently because of QSMP content and I feel it would be neglectful not to at Ieast once acknowledge what's going on.

I am following the qsmp tag and I don't filter out discourse because I don't want to create too much of an echo chamber around myself and then be ignorant of problems. However I don't intend to post much of anything about any of the discourse.

For the small fandom drama, I'm an internet granny. I've been in fandoms before and I know there's always people in any community who's passion outweighs their tolerance and ability to understand other points of view. I'll vent about it to friends directly sometimes but I don't intend to get dragged into pointless discussions.

For the bigger issues, I see them. I tend to give it a few days to a week to allow at least a little time for full details to come out before deciding how it will impact my personal interaction with the content I love. I take what actions I judge to be appropriate according to the specific circumstances. But these days I tend to avoid reblogging or posting about things myself. This is because I - a. Usually have nothing useful to add to the conversation. I do not have related experiences to give my opinions weight, and I don't feel I have the right to talk for others, particularly others that know what they're talking about far better than I. And b. I've had a rough few years with my own mental health so for my own sanity I just have to focus on the things that make me feel happy, like good art and kind people and stuff.

That's my baseline rule for reblogging. I prefer to mostly be spreading things that are funny, friendly, kind, and to express my admiration for people. Some negative does slip through the cracks from time to time because I'm only human. I'm just a human being trying to exist.

I guess if you take anything away from this post, that's it. Don't forget that most of the people you interact with are only human. We aren't omniscient, we aren't telepathic, we aren't angelically good or devilishly evil. We will always continue to see the world through the lens of our personal life experiences and brain chemistry and that will always make some things obvious and other things hard for us to notice or understand. And because of that the most important thing you can practice doing is to be kind to others, particularly to strangers.

OK I ended up rambling a bit there. Tl,dr - I will mostly keep this blog discourse free but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of the discourse.

#qsmp #qsmp discourse

16 notes · View notes

bestworstcase · 8 months

Note

It’s fascinating to me to read the anon you got (and your extremely well-thought-out response) about Penny’s transformation being distasteful, because I’ve always had an instinctually viscerally negative response to that particular critique of the scene. My issue isn’t with your analysis, which I think stands up, but specifically the complaint that “Penny’s transformation is bad writing/symbolically hurtful, because it takes away the thing that makes her unique/means she no longer has to struggle to be perceived as real.”

I don’t think the text supports the idea that Penny disliked her transformation, or was more comfortable in her robotic body than in her new human one. Her finally getting to feel hugs is probably the single purest moment of joy in all of RWBY. I agree with you that it may have been disconcerting for her to have to re-learn how to fight as a human, but I think it’s entirely possible that Penny herself would say it was worth it—in those moments, she’s as happy as we’ve ever seen her.

Through that lens, the critique of her transformation is pretty distasteful, at least to me—Penny has always longed to be a “real girl.” Is the argument that she (or you or I, if we were given the choice) should have rejected the opportunity to get something she’d always wanted, because then she would no longer be unique? Is it morally better for her to remain a robot even if being a real girl is what she wants? This is probably just me pitting my own projection against someone else’s, so feel free to ignore it if you don’t feel like it adds any value to the discussion. But this has been one of my biggest RWBY pet peeves going back 2+ years, so I felt like I had to write this out.

tbh i think where a lot of folks get tripped up is with expecting rwby to handle the 'sapient robot' character in the typical way of that character's foremost concern being do i count as a Real Person?

but, like. penny raises that question once in a context where she a) clearly expects ruby to freak out, and b) is clearly trying to preempt the freak out by explaining what she is in the simplest, most straightforward terms. "you're my friend, right? you promise you're my friend?" / "you wouldn't understand" / "i'm not real" — but look at how she responds when ruby goes what? of course you're real, you've got a soul! "you're taking this extraordinarily well." and then "you're the best friend anyone could ever have!!"

<- to me that does not read like penny genuinely thinks she isn't a 'real person' so much as that is what she is primed to expect ruby to think, and she's terrified her new (only!) friend is going to reject her, so she tries to sort of... soften the blow by saying it first.

only ruby does not think that. at all. and that's the last time penny describes herself as "not real" and she generally seems to be quite comfortable in her skin as a robot. after that point the only time it's ever a pain point is when she reacts to other people treating her like a Thing instead of a Person. and like i said, that's very wrapped up in the broader narrative of dehumanization and authoritarianism going on with atlas, hence why this arc for penny is so intertwined with winter's.

all that to say, i don't really buy into the interpretation that penny ever had a problem with Being A Robot so much as she had a problem with the way people Treat Her As A Robot (and i think cinder is used narratively to make the point that obviously penny receiving this new flesh body does not make the people who saw her as a Thing before suddenly realize that she's a Person instead).

& that's why personally i see her loss of the robotic body as loosely equivalent to yang losing her original arm. it's acutely traumatic not so much because the new flesh body is weaker but because that's her body and she loses it in a pretty horrible way, and in an ideal scenario where the evacuation went off without a hitch and penny made it to vacuo in one piece, i imagine there would have been a major period of adjustment, both physically and emotionally, as she processed that loss.

her new flesh body is more akin to yang's prosthetic arm—it's not bad, per se, and certainly there are things she can find to love about it, but i would expect for her to have complicated feelings about simply because the way she got it is rooted in this traumatic event. and then just in terms of the before/after on her physical capabilities, objectively surviving the virus in this way is disabling, and that's a big thing to adjust to.

is that better than dying? yeah absolutely. and penny isn't the type who would resent her own survival simply because it came with some unpleasant consequences and big changes to adjust to—absolutely, she would think this was worth it to have a chance to live her life freely. same as yang chose not to regrow her arm in V9.

and there's no moral value to put on robot body over flesh body or vice versa; i think applying the 'robot vs real girl' lens to a story that so emphatically rejected that dichotomy right out of the gate and then went 'the real problem is this exploitative, dehumanizing military state that treats everybody like an expendable tool' is a bit disingenuous overall. what makes a person a real person in rwby is whether they have a soul, and it's stated upfront in no uncertain terms that penny has a soul. she's never not been a real girl. my read on her is that what she always wanted was to have her personhood respected moreso than she wanted to be 'real'.

35 notes · View notes

locklylenerd77 · 9 months

Text

There is nothing more amusing to me than homophobes trying to pretend Neil made aziracrow gay in season 2. Like, where have you been for the last 6000 years? What have you been watching?

They've always been "gay". The kiss wasn't a change in or a development of anything. It wasn't even romantic in the slightest, it was a desperate attempt to convince Aziraphale to stay through a human demonstration of affection that Crowley hoped Aziraphale would understand because humans have specific ways of showing different types of love and attraction, whereas angels and demons don't. Aziraphale understands how humans show romantic and sexual attraction, so Crowley attempted to appeal to this knowledge and use it as a tool to explain how he defines their relationship.

But they aren't human, and relationships don't have to be physical, and they've always been ineffably in love. Nobody "made them gay". I find it so strange that people lack basic understanding of love and relationships outside of societal norms. Love is very specific to the people involved.

Also, the fact that neither of them are "gay" destroys the whole argument against making their relationship homosexual. They're angels, they existed before the concept of gender was even constructed. They don't have sexes, either, because they don't reproduce. They just appear as what we recognize as "male" on earth. So, not only are they themselves not gay, but they're also completely outside of human understandings of relationships and love. People trying to look at them through a human lens will ultimately fail to see anything except friendship and a "woke" kiss.

If you can't grasp the concept of love by itself, regardless of gender, sex, species, societal norms, and social cultures then not only can you fail to understand Good Omens, but you'll ultimately miss out on a lot of things in life. You'll melt into the crowd of people who define things as a "situationship" just because two people have a unique connection or feel no desire to label their love. You'll miss out on self-discovery and experiencing new things, opening yourself to meeting new people, and exploring your own identity. Such fixed mindsets only limit us and how we interact with others.

While labels can help us better understand things and feel more comfortable with our identities, people are also equally within their rights to reject them and simply get on with their lives. Aziraphel and Crowley are in love. They aren't gay or male or human.

If you go looking for a "woke" TV show with too many gays, you're going to find it. But Good omens is about love, and we as an audience enjoyed that love before it was made physically intimate. While some people wanted a kiss, others were fine with them as they were, and those differences in where we wanted the relationship to go represent the wonderfully diverse range of human perspectives on love, proving that we all view it slightly differently. If we open ourselves to relationships like Aziraphale and Crowley's and discussing them to try and understand (I feel we are beginning to understand them as characters and a couple as a fandom), we open ourselves to love.

That means friends, partners, soulmates, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, family, pets, a love for the world around us, and more.

Love isn't "gay". Period.

#good omens #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #good omens spoilers #idk what im talking about #love #ineffable idiots #aziraphale and crowley #aziracrow

28 notes · View notes