#and like. treating art as art is one thing but when the entire culture and even the people themselves get wrapped up into that ‘art’

[inkwingsinc]

Darkfluff Outtake #1: bit my gun with my black-gold gums

[ this is a drabble outtake from my ongoing darkfic, still might sneak it into the story somewhere ]

Fandom: Dune

Character Focus: Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x Female OC (established relationship)

Parent Fic Rating: Explicit (written by an adult, for adults)

Drabble tags: domestic "fluff", brief mention of past child abuse, humorous reference to dismemberment, unedited

Word Count: 592

To combat writer's block and darkfic fatigue I write little "fluffy" scenes using the same characters to freshen things up a bit. This is an unedited barebones sample, just for funsies.

Full Story w/ Context:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/54217396/chapters/137290048

Scene: Feyd-Rautha has...an interesting taste in music.

The first time Laera saw him put on music had been the first time he’d engaged with anything cultural that could be considered art. He was fond of moving around; often, he’d pace around his quarters while he read the reports his advisors would bind for him, or he’d take to his pull-up bar, or roll easily to the floor to curl himself into endless, controlled sit-ups. He read voraciously, but the texts were always dry nonfiction. He sharpened his blades. He contorted himself into series of endless stretches, rotated through solo training exercises, and would mutter to himself endlessly. Always moving. Always noisy. Constantly following Laera from room to room, never content to allow her moments to herself.

One morning after breakfast he ordered his attendants to bring in a musician.

The House bard was a small, frightening woman who had entirely blackened eyes and wicked, mangled scars roping over the dome of her pale skull. Her fingers were strange, being completely without fingernails, and she carried an instrument that Laera didn’t have the learning to recognize.

The music of Geidi Prime, Laera soon found out, was horrible.

“What is that, exactly?” Laera asked her warden, cringing at the metallic, shuddering moans the bard coaxed from the strange instrument. The bard wore an odd attachment over one hand, fondled a trio of metal balls, and caressed her other hand overtop with precise, slow movements. Electricity was involved, but Laera was far too disturbed to ask how it worked.

“It’s a hand theremin. Electrical harp,” Feyd-Rautha murmured up at Laera from his post on the floor. He held himself in a horribly rigid plank position, every muscle from his neck to his toes flexed. Beads of sweat gathered in the deep furrows between his shoulder blades and just above the dimples on the small of his narrow back. “Isn’t it lovely?”

Laera struggled not to laugh. “It’s…it’s something, alright. I think the sound is what a spark plug would sound like if it had the ability to scream.”

The bard turned her face to look at Laera sharply for her comment. Laera gave an apologetic shrug.

Feyd-Rautha’s rasping bark of laughter felled him from his plank, and when he hit the floor, he lazily rolled to his back on the cool stones, hard body coiling like a languid snake. He caught one of Laera’s ankles in an idle hand and pulled his foot to his chest, cradling it there. “I was taught to play as a boy. Used to play for the Baron while he bathed.”

Laera pulled her foot back, uncomfortable at mention of the Na-Baron being anywhere near his naked uncle. “Were you any good?” she asked. Good was relative, she guessed. The music still sounded like eerie, haunted-house spookytunes to her unfamiliar ear.

“I was terrible.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Feyd-Rautha rolled to his feet and collapsed on the lounge chair beside Laera, who had abandoned her book to gape at the bard and her alien little instrument. "Sometimes this music is accompanied by singing. Don’t insult my harpist, pet, or I’ll treat you to battle hymns. If you think the melody is bad, just wait until I serenade you.”

Laera snorted, amused. “Battle hymns? I can imagine the lyrics now. I bet Harkonnen lullabies even include references to ritual dismemberment.”

“Only two of them do.”

“I see.”

Unfortunately for Laera, Feyd-Rautha found her distaste for the hand theremin to be amusing. She was treated to many, many renditions of “songs”, for many hours.

She even grew to like a few.

#bmgwmbgg #Dune fanfiction #darkfluff? is that a thing? #Laera Druegelle x Feyd-Rautha #Harkonnen culture? #Drabble outtake #I might still sneak this into the main story but who knows #btw a theremin is a real instrument they're pretty neat

[stardust-falling]

Anyway as much as I do appreciate westerners taking an interest in Chinese culture it sometimes feels like my culture is just viewed as an art piece. Chinese people and culture are not artworks on display for western viewers’ pleasure. We are very real people, with very real culture, and as someone who has been overseas and removed from my culture for a good portion of my life it sometimes hurts when CN culture is just viewed as surface level “pretty” or heaven forbid “aesthetic,” when it’s so much more than that.

#like!!! hanfu & calligraphy and Chinese architecture are undeniably very pretty!!! #it’s just… we get treated with so much exoticism and orientalists #I spent so many years being called ‘exotic’ as like. a compliment. #that when I see that same kind of sentiment it makes me very uncomfy #I get that Chinese culture is foreign to westerners but it’s not always about you #there can be appreciation without orientalism #so treat Chinese fashion on the same level as western fashion #and other arts too! #hanfu is to me like corsetry and petticoats are to my fully western-raised partner #things like comparing and contrasting styles and techniques from an equal standpoint is super neat too! #and like. treating art as art is one thing but when the entire culture and even the people themselves get wrapped up into that ‘art’ #it’s a little bit messed up tbh

[kingdomoftyto]

I'm crying laughing, the DVDs are even worse than I remember... Season 1's menus are silent with a single static jpg of the same key character art they use for everything else, and the episodes on the Season 2 discs don't even match what's listed on the box! Absolutely stunning lack of shits given. Truly unparalleled. But I really shouldn't be surprised given... well... everything about how this series has been treated since the very beginning.

Time for a quick ~✨PHANDOM HISTORY LESSON✨~ to give newer/less hyperfixated folks more context for why the graphic novel being as great as it is is such a HUGE deal:

Danny Phantom was one of Nickelodeon's MAIN cartoons, in its time. It was a central pillar. One of the top three or four of their lineup, which is saying something when the competition includes the cultural juggernaut that is Spongebob.

Despite this, and despite its superhero theming making it perfectly marketable, it got basically ZERO official merch.

What little we did get was often ugly and very, very cheap. The dedication at the start of the graphic novel that jokes about collecting the Burger King toys? That's because it was some of the most notable merch the franchise EVER had. (I sadly do not have any of it. There was no BK in my hometown. Here's a pic from the internet, though, to give you an idea.)

If you think I'm exaggerating about that being the most significant physical merch to come out of the series, consider that the first video game had an entire menu option specifically for the Burger King promotional tie-in:

That video game, by the way, was one of only two ever based on the show. The first was an adaptation of "The Ultimate Enemy" in the style of a short sidescrolling beat-em-up, and the second was themed around "Urban Jungle" and (as far as I can tell--I've only played the first couple levels) was an arcade-style scrolling shooter. Both were for the Gameboy Advance, and both are...... fine, as far as cash-grabby video game tie-ins to kids' shows go. This was pretty normal for the time, so I suppose we did okay in that department, actually. They're not GOOD, but they're playable and have at least a bit of effort put into them.

But besides those two video games (plus a handful of simple, long-defunct Flash games on nick.com)? In the decade and a half since the show ended?

Nothing.

No books, no games, no comics, no web shorts--unless you count mega-crossovers with every other Nicktoon (a la Nicktoons Unite), or soulless promotional material like "Fairly Odd Phantom" (which, trust me, despite being the first new DP animation in over 10 years was not even worth the effort of watching).

...I think there was a limited edition FunkoPop once?

So yeah.

A Glitch in Time is not just the first cool, well-made thing we've seen from the franchise in a while. It's the first THING we've seen since the show. PERIOD. And arguably the first worthwhile supplementary material to EVER come out of the show, depending on how you feel about those GBA games and the Nicktoons crossovers.

This franchise is widely beloved even now, almost 20 years after it first aired, and it feels like that fact is now, finally, FINALLY getting some official recognition.

PLEASE read A Glitch in Time. Tell other people about it. The series--no, the fans--deserve this (and more of this, if the folks in charge see enough of a response and decide to grace us with any followup). It's LONG overdue, but better late than never.

#Danny Phantom #this is why I've been losing my mind repeating ''please buy it'' over and over btw #this is the FIRST and maybe ONLY time we'll ever get to directly show support for the series #it is a uniquely huge deal for this fandom #it's totally fine if you can't (or just still won't) buy it of course but I am begging folks to consider it IF they can. #not for any moral guilting or anything just.... for me. for the fandom. (for yourself because it's a cool story lmao) #long post

[communistkenobi]

genuinely curious, if you think "it's a girl!" and "it's a boy!" categorisations are inherently oppressive, do you believe a world where gender isn't recognized in any meaningful way before the child has means to define it for themself to be the best alternative?

I’m going to use a different abolitionist example to illustrate what I mean: when people advocate for abolishing the nuclear family, they are not saying “get rid of parental relationships” or “get rid of fathers.” They are identifying a specific social relation that is used as a building block of society and advocating for a world where it doesn’t exist, because its existence is the foundation of certain forms of oppression. The western social model where children are raised in private detached housing by a maximum of two parents (and realistically, mostly by their mother - a huge problem in itself!) who have complete control over their material, emotional, and social needs produces a fucking huge amount of adverse outcomes - abuse, trauma, dysfunction, poor health - the list is nearly infinite. And this family model also inherently reproduces class, race, and gender by virtue of the fact that children inherit those things from their parents and are forced to exist in those contexts. And even in individual cases where it doesn’t produce abuse, even if you have very good parents who are not abusive to you in any way, that social relationship is still oppressive, in the same way that having a cool boss doesn’t mean that wage labour is good. A society where children are not entirely dependent on one or two people for all of their needs, where they are free to form meaningful relationships with adults outside of strict categories of family, where children are not legally and socially treated like the property of their parents, where bloodline is not privileged as the dominant mode of intergenerational transfer of knowledge, culture, skill, wealth, etc, is a much better world!

“Gender abolition” is, I think, a poor term for a similar goal, and one that has a lot of reactionary baggage (baggage that is not coincidental - I think its imprecision as a term is useful for terf politics). Abolition of patriarchy is probably more precise - I am advocating for a world where gender is entirely non-coercive, where gender does not produce any oppressive social relations. You can engage in gender as a culture in the same way you can engage with different forms of art, in a way that is purely voluntary. This configuration does not prohibit the possibility of trans people; we would just exist in an entirely different form than the current western, medicalist, patriarchal, white supremacist context we are forced to navigate.

So yes, I think for gender to be truly emancipatory, it needs to be engaged with as a voluntary form of human culture, as a form of art that we do with ourselves and our bodies, and to do this we need to abolish sex distinctions on medical records, gender markers on state documents, gendered facilities, and many, many other things.

#asks #even old new york was once new amsterdam #hope that answers your question!

[quasi-normalcy]

If I could reboot Voyager, here are some of the changes I'd make.

Much more serialization. Still mostly episodic, of course, but things that happen in one episode would have lasting repercussions. If the ship gets damaged, well it's going to stay damaged, or they're going to have to figure out how to effect repairs. Maybe have seasonal "big bads", like Buffy.

Play up the initial conflict with the Maquis for the first few seasons, and give the Maquis actual ideological objections to the Federation (a la Eddington on Deep Space Nine), rather than just making them generically rough and tumble. There would be a whole arc where some of the Maquis talk some of the lower-ranking Starfleet officers around to their side on the grounds that Janeway effectively has a dictatorship over them for their entire lives and she's too hidebound and is squandering opportunities to get onside with possible local allies. There'll be an actual mutiny (or at least an attempted mutiny) in the first few seasons, but it will fail because Chakotay (we'll come to him in a minute) opposes it; but the ship will settle into a much more egalitarian social structure nonetheless

Seska will remain on the ship after being unmasked as a Cardassian spy, claiming asylum under the terms of the Federation-Cardassian treaty that created the De-Militarized Zone. Her presence will be a major source of the friction between the Maquis and Starfleet crews, because it turns out that her espionage actually got some of their comrades killed back in the Alpha Quadrant

Give nuance to the Kazon; play up the generational trauma inherent to their backstory, and maybe make Culluh an ambitious but sympathetic empire-builder, rather than just a violent thug

Present the Kazon as more of an actual culture with their own arts and accomplishments, rather than just as Space Gangbangers.

Two waves of despair will rock the ship for several episodes. The first when they've been stranded for a few months and the reality of their situation hits them; the second when they get in touch with the AQ and find out that the Maquis have been exterminated.

Pick an actual indigenous nation for "Chakotay" to belong to and hire actual consultants from that nation for the writing staff. It will presumably be necessary to rename the character accordingly.

Really flesh out the minor characters on the crew: Carey, Ayala, Tal Celes, Suder, Vorik, Jonas, that cosmology grad student on the lower decks who didn't want to be on the ship in the first place. All of them will make the ship feel more like an actual place with the same nine characters doing everything; and when one of them dies, it will hurt.

Relatedly, all of the people who die in the first episode will have names and friendships with the crew, and their deaths will actually mean something.

Explore the comedic and dramatic potential of Starfleet crewmen having to be roomies with Maquis terrorists. I'm thinking some initial "Odd Couple" shenanigans, growing into friendship, with a sort of hurt-comfort romance emerging after they find out that all of the Maquis back in the AQ are dead.

Give Neelix more of a dangerous streak. The first episode made him out to be a shifty conman and the first season established that he had serious PTSD. I want to see more of that Neelix.

Have it take a full season just to de-Borg Seven of Nine. Her character progress is reflected in how many of her implants she has.

Have Seven of Nine push back more on the narrow canons of "humanity" that she's expected to perform; and have it go both ways; maybe instead of it just treating it like a joke when she proposes, for example, that someone try Borg regeneration, they actually take her up on this, and Janeway is accordingly horrified. You could get a neat plot about bodily autonomy out of this.

Establish that the Borg hivemind has developed a sort of "neurosis" around humanity and Voyager, stemming from the fact that they required Voyager's help to defeat Species 8472. This is the Queen motivation for wanting Seven of Nine back in "Dark Frontier"

Kes still ascends, but she hangs around somewhat longer. And she's doing and trying lots of things, rather than just hanging around sickbay most of the time.

Have Seven spend more time with Tuvok; maybe adopt Vulcan philosophy

There are no holodecks for the first few seasons because they need to conserve power. When they finally get them up and running, it's a big frigging deal. Before that, there's a whole plot where someone (Tom Paris) uses the emergency medical holoprojectors to make Sickbay into a holodeck, much to the Doctor's consternation. Janeway, however, allows it for a few hours a day as a means of building crew morale.

They build alliances and trade networks in the Delta Quadrant, and eventually realise that this is home for them now

#star trek voyager

[joys-of-everyday]

SJ and the Pitfalls of Toxic Masculinity

Liking women wasn’t shameful in the least, but treating a woman as your savior, shrinking into her embrace in search of self-confidence—Shen Qingqiu needed no one to tell him how incredibly shameful that was. So he would rather die than tell anyone, particularly not Yue Qingyuan.

- Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu Extra

Hot take: og!SQQ had toxic ideas about masculinity, and it ruined him.

SVSSS is all about the ✨Toxic Masculinity✨ but this seems to be more associated with SY than SJ??? So yeah, lets talk about SJ (my poor meow meow).

There’s actually some subtlety here, because talking about SJ and masculinity naturally involves an interplay between historical and modern views on masculinity in China, which is something that has developed over time and has influences from other cultures (e.g. the west and our views on masculinity). (Interesting thing if you haven't already come across it) I am… not qualified to read the subtleties here.

To note, SJ is coded as masculine… sort of. He’s the head of the scholarly peak, a master of the Four Arts, which is one facet of ideal masculinity in traditional Chinese values. (Fluttering a fan around was very gentleman-like. Although also, expressing your emotions through poetry and copious amounts of tears was very masculine back in the day. 'Traditional masculinity' has and always will be an elusive ideal.) But I get the feeling nowadays ‘scholarly’ has more feminine connotations than ‘martial’, albeit a slightly weaker one than in the west. Also, on the topic of toxic masculinity, certain groups of people Who Shall Not Be Named would like you to believe that Real Chinese Men are stoic warriors and ‘gayness is a western thing’ (my rage is unreal but we will not talk about that).

Anyway, broad strokes, broad strokes.

Arrogance and Insecurity

A big part of toxic masculinity is a need for social recognition, to be the ‘alpha male’ (not an ABO pun and on a side note I literally cannot take anyone talking about alpha males seriously now, for many reasons, but this is the funniest).

SJ is obsessed with his cultivation, but more pertinently, he is obsessed with his reputation. He demonstrates this in a few ways. Firstly, he works his ass off, which is not bad in itself, but he does this to the extent it is detrimental to his health (that grindset lol). Secondly, he projects a certain image with his actions and mannerisms: reading in order to seem intelligent, looking down at people to seem superior etc. Thirdly, he responds to any perceived slights of his ability with violence. (Fighting with LQG is an example, but also drawing a sword on SQH when he pointed out that he was reading an upside-down book.)

Now interestingly, the unanimous vibe that Cang Qiong seem to get from SQQ is that he is ‘arrogant’. When in truth, all of this is compensating for his insecurity.

Shen Qingqiu was overly suspicious, always feeling as if everyone was talking behind his back about how he was still incapable of forming a core, didn’t accept his position, wanted to sabotage him in secret, and so on and so forth.

- Yue Qingyuan and Shen Qingqiu Extra

Sadly, SJ is justified in being afraid of other people’s opinion. His comfort and security rely entirely on his status, which in turn rely on other people’s opinion of his competence. Of course he wants to get to the top – he’s been under other people’s power before, and suffered terribly as a result. Why should he not desperately defend what he has worked so hard for? Yet ultimately it works against him, because when he’s in serious trouble, he hasn’t been able to build the human connections he needs to get help.

The problem is with the system. The idea that having strength allows you to do whatever you want hurts not only the people regarded as inferior, but also creates a collective sense of anxiety for those who find themselves ‘at the top’. Anyone can be kicked down and treated like scum. Everyone is afraid.

Dominance and Bullying

The phrase ‘toxic masculinity is fragile’ quite often, but to elaborate, these kinds of rigid ideas of masculinity are by nature constantly under threat. Because any crack in the perfect shell is regarded as failure, it requires constant, aggressive maintenance, which takes the form of bullying the weak in order to elevate oneself.

SJ’s treatment of LBH is complicated, but here I want to draw attention to a different character – Ming Fan.

SQQ (SY) would have you know that MF is not a bad kid, other than the fact he’s a huge bully to LBH. And in part that comes from jealousy of NYY’s crush on him, but what allows it to happen is the way SJ runs the peak. It's interesting to note that so much of SJ's bullying of LBH happens through MF, whether it be giving him the faulty cultivation manual, giving him chores or physically assaulting him. In doing this, SJ creates a system that firmly establishes himself at the top, likely in order to give himself some semblance of security.

But ironically, this is the very system that SJ has suffered under his entire life, recreated to it's extreme on the peak that he controls. When he was completely under the power of others (QJL, LBH) he suffered. When other people were under his power, he inflicted suffering. He encouraged other people to do the same. Again, the whole thing is a scam! He is putting all of his energy into things that aren't helping him, things that ultimately bring him down.

Real Men Don’t Cry – the Dangers of Emotional Repression

SJ has many, very justifiable reasons in life to be upset and angry. The things he went through are both terrible and extremely unfair. Being angry at everything is not a healthy outlet for these feelings, but he hasn’t exactly been taught an alternative either. On the streets, tears would have gotten him absolutely nothing. Anger at least gave him energy to fight back.

And this destroys him. He is angry at the fact he had no one in his life who loved him, his talents were wasted because of QJL/WYZ, nobody takes his abilities seriously… and with no healthy way of expressing this, he goes onto bully LBH. LBH then returns to destroy him, literally. More subtly, he is unable to express his fear and anxiety in healthy ways, so acts standoff-ish and aggressive to his those around him. As his relationship with them deteriorates, his fear and anxiety increases. Feedback loops.

SJ puts on a mask of anger and stoicism to the point that everyone around him (including himself) is convinced that he is unrepentant and evil. Suppresses and suppresses until it breaks him, until he has nothing – not his comfort, nor status, nor the one that he truly cared for:

He had single-handedly facilitated Luo Binghe’s today, and now who had single-handedly created this outcome for him? Yue Qingyuan was never supposed to have an end like this. In order to come to a decades-late appointment, to fulfill a completely useless promise. A broken sword and a dead man. It shouldn’t be like this.

A Note on Ambivalent Sexism

It’s funny because I think there’s a fandom vibe that SJ was the secret feminist of SVSSS. Don’t get me wrong, I love this in fanfics. Badass feminist SJ all the way. But my honest opinion is that I don’t think that was the case.

More explicitly, I don’t think SJ took women seriously. NYY, for example. Certainly, SJ valued NYY. But the expression of this care involved doting on her, hiding his treatment of LBH from her, and not particularly pushing her to grow. And PIDW!NYY wasn’t implied to be the most mature of the lot. Okay, while we don’t know a lot about PIDW!NYY (narrator unreliable), it’s probably safe to say some distance from SJ helped her a lot.

Another point – the Qiu massacre. SJ killed the men, but not the women. And while this says more about his distaste for men, it also indicates (possibly - I will float this idea but I won't die on this hill) that he straight up doesn’t see any woman as an enemy, or capable of being a threat. Which is possibly a natural conclusion he’s drawn from his experiences (QHT was not very perceptive, or very threatening) but also inaccurate as a worldview.

And his attitude towards the women he sees as saviours? Has the same vibe as ‘it’s so embarrassing to be protected by a girl’.

Okay, so being doted on and not being killed are positives compared to being abused or murdered, but this kind of attitude is the opposite side of the same coin to ‘women are incompetent and inferior’. And when it comes to raising kids, not allowing them to grow can be extremely harmful as well. See e.g. Ambivalent sexism.

Although I do want to mention that I do not think SJ was like… actively misogynistic. I think he genuinely liked women more than men. The point is you can be sexist without realising it.

Conclusions

To conclude, SJ had ideas of success and self-worth associated with toxic masculinity which were instrumental in his downfall.

Masculinity doesn’t have to be toxic. While the Cang Qiong family aren’t exactly the healthiest bunch, YQY’s calm and patient leadership, LQG’s steadfast loyalty, LBH’s ability to cry like a maiden and still be the strongest… these are all traditionally masculine traits that can be very positive. These are also people who can have feminine traits and explore their gender identity without being prissy or weak.

It's the great tragedy of SJ that he had many positive characteristics. He was talented, intelligent, articulate, perceptive, loyal, and caring… under the right circumstances, he could have grown into a great person.

And maybe he still had that chance, right until the end.

#svsss #shen jiu #original shen qingqiu #svsss meta #having said i would disappear i have things to dislodge from my drafts

[celluloidbroomcloset]

sorry about this, it's been on my mind for a while, relating to your celebrity discourse post.

You're right in pointing out TW has been treated unfairly. He puts his foot in his mouth sometimes (there are times I just wish he wouldn't say anything or at least think it through). HOWEVER, since last year it's become extremely common to take things he says out of context and use them for rage bait clicks. And often when he does get 'criticism' its often for something he either didn't say at all or something that, while not great, has been twisted and overblown to look much worse.

What frustrates me is a lot of people seem to be doing this on purpose. It's like they're watching and waiting for him to step a toe out of line so they can rile people up on Twitter.

I don't think I need to point out a lot of white celebrities have done exactly the same or worse things than him, and don't recieve the same level of backlash.

I dont think you have to be a TW stan or even fan to acknowledge that while he's made mistakes-like literally every human- he's also being treated with more vitriol than is fair.

I'll start out by saying that I'm a veteran of Film Twitter, and I've seen some of the weirdest takes known to God or humankind, from people who purport to both critique and report on film and artists in cinema (I am no longer on Twitter). I'd trace the very weird hatred of Taika Waititi to around Jojo Rabbit, when a cadre of people very loudly proclaimed it to somehow be pro-fascist (it is not, and I'm saying that as someone who has fucking studied propaganda and Nazi-era filmmaking).

There have been other things blown out of proportion in his personal life, about which I do not believe anyone should interfere or discuss in any way because it's none of our fucking business.

My observation of him as a filmmaker and writer is that he's very intelligent, tries to be thoughtful, and also, as you say, often speaks without thinking. He has said things that I do not agree with, and will not try to defend. But many of the things he has said that gained traction on Twitter have either been taken out of context, deliberately misconstrued, or oversimplified. The biggest and least problematic example are his comments about how "no one knows who directed Casablanca," which was made in the context of how he doesn't care or expect his name to be remembered, because the art is the thing (and, TBH, I agree - I know who directed Casablanca, but a lot of people who know the film will have no fucking idea, and why should they?). I am not kidding when I say that this provoked several days of argument on Film Twitter. His most recent comments have been taken entirely out of context (no, I'm not going to start fighting about them, that's not the point). If someone disagrees with him, they should at the very least disagree about what he said, not what they pretend that he said.

Some of this is just the nature of Twitter itself, and celebrity culture. There's just not much nuance and there is an awful lot of - excuse me - dingbats who don't understand media half as well as they think they do. The other element is that there is indeed a rather nasty desire to scrutinize things that are said by...pretty much everyone who is not a straight white cisgender man, and use them as cudgels to beat those people "back into their place."

I do not know Taika Waititi. I do not pretend to know what he thinks, nor do I particularly care. I do know what I see in his art, and I appreciate a lot of it. But, yes, he is being scrutinized and jumped on in a way that a fuck lot of particularly white male filmmakers are not.

#reply #ofmd #taika waititi #i will not be fighting about this because this is not about defending him #trust me i have fought these fights and they are exhausting and i don't have the time for it

[demaparbat-hp]

Hello. I wanted to say that I really like your art style, especially how you do Katara's face. That's awesome.

But every time I read the description of your AUs, it gives me the creeps. You once said you try to stay true to Katara's character, but... your AUs are like "what if I take one of her major character traits and throw it in a trash bin?".

Halfblood AU: no connection to her culture that basically defies everything Katara thinks and feels about her waterbending.

Helping the Fire Nation AU: no hope for the avatar that Katara expressed in the intro of every episode of the original show.

And lowkey less kindness. She's cautious and bitter and wants to help only Zuko.

She seems like a completely different character. Not Katara at all.

Zuko too. I doubt he'll be in the White Lotus, it's not in his character at all. He may use the help of the members, but the original ("The Desert") tells us he will not be one of them, it's just not his style.

You make zutara look shallow, like you think that Zuko and Katara as they are in the show would never work together. As a person who sees appeal in this ship I feel very uneasy seeing your interpretations.

And my god, why do you hate Hakoda so much? Every time you add anything to halfbloodAU he looks more and more disgusting. I cannot believe mister "you and your brother are my entire world" would do what you are saying. And a married man with a child cannot be so naive to think that a woman won't become pregnant after having sex with him. Hakoda would've returned and checked and tried to help.

Sorry. I wish I could enjoy your art, but you're making it so hard.

Hello, and thank you for writing. I'm glad that you enjoy my art, at least to some extent, and I'm sorry if I ever made you uncomfortable with my AUs. However, I find myself in the need of defending them.

Creating AUs is something I take seriously, and one of the core traits of an AU is that it's, inherently, a different world. I can change virtually anything, and that's okay. Haven't we all read a fic and thought, this character wouldn't react like this in canon, but went along with it anyway? Because we know this isn't supposed to be canon. These characters are living in a different context, and react to things differently.

Canon exists for a reason. An AU does, too. They're different concepts and must be treated accordingly. It's a matter of context.

But we're talking about characters, aren't we?

You've pointed out that I've changed Zuko and Hakoda, too. And you're right. I've found that people online are more... defensive of Katara when compared to other characters. And while that may not be important to this specific discussion, I do find it rather curious. It's something to think about.

Anyways, I change characters. And I've gotta confess, I'm not ashamed of it.

My Katara is still Katara, and my Zuko is still Zuko. I'm just playing with how I believe they would react in different scenarios, and with different backgrounds (that's important, too).

You mentioned that my AUs are like "what if I take one of [Katara's] major character traits and throw it in a trash bin?". And I'm sorry that they give you the creeps, truly.

But maybe I want to explore how being a product of two different cultures affects not only Katara, but also Zuko as characters. Halfblood gives me the opportunity to address these sociocultural issues through their personal experiences, and I find that kind of narrative awfully compelling.

And maybe I wanted to change one core trait of Katara's personality and see how that affected both her journey and the general plot. Hunters is a writing experiment, and it has taught me a lot about human nature. Thanks to what you so kindly call "throwing a character trait in a trash bin", I've gained a lot more respect for who Katara is in canon. If anything, I consider Hunters!Katara as a foil for Canon!Katara.

And I don't hate Hakoda. I have a lot of respect for him as a leader and a father. I think he's a great character and role model for others within the ATLA universe. Bashing characters for fun isn't really my thing. The choices I made for Hakoda in the HalfBlood AU (and Aang in Hunters) are a matter of narrative and plot building, not my opinion on his character.

Just think about how different that AU would be if Hakoda made better choices, if he didn't have a wife and a son waiting for him at the South, or if Katara's father was a random Earth Kingdom villager. About 60% of the conflict in the story would disappear. And I could build that conflict with other stuff, I admit it. I could use different plot points or make the characters do other things or give Katara One Big Happy Family.

But it would change the core themes of the story I want to tell.

It's important to me that Katara is a product of two different cultures. It's important that she has no father figure in her life. It's important that Hakoda, who is a great leader and a great man and a great husband and a great father for Sokka, made a huge mistake in his youth that has been weighting on him ever since. It's important that Sokka is suddenly faced with the realization that his father, his idolized role model, is human and has also royally fucked up.

I want to talk about these things.

But I'm able to recognize that they're heavy subjects and, really, most of us are just here for the fluff anyway. So I'm sorry if I've made anyone uncomfortable. I won't hold it against you if you don't like what I do or just ignore whatever lore I set up for my AUs.

This is fiction, this is freedom, and this is the way I express myself. We all do it differently, and that's part of the beauty.

#dema answers #zutara #atla #hunters au #halfblood au #zutara au #avatar the last airbender

[picnokinesis]

thirteenth doctor and spymaster fic recs

all clear by wreckageofstars (8k, 1 chapter, thoschei/gen) summary: London’s on fire, the Doctor’s trapped in her own head, and only her worst enemy can save her. //I know I literally always rec this author in these lists, I know, but like if you've read these fics, you'll know I'm justified because they are all just brilliant. This one is no exception. The doctor and the master are so wonderfully on point, with this antagonistic push and pull between them both, whilst they both desperately try and avoid the fact that they actually still care deeply for one another - but they also hate each other's guts at the same time! And the master is there to cause problems on purpose whilst the doctor is an absolute mess post-Orphan 55 and making everything worse. An absolute joy of a fic.

the gardener by riptheh (6k, 1 chapter, thoschei/gen) summary: The Master kills because it's all he has left. Until it's not. //I had a reaaaally hard time picking fics for this post, because there are so many fics with thirteen and spymaster that I absolutely adore - but I knew from the get go that this one had to be on here, come what may. It's much more of a character study focused on the master than anything else, but of course anything about the master is also about the doctor - and it's such a beautiful exploration of the master and his relationship with death (and then, life). Just absolutely gorgeous - and surprisingly uplifting by the end? Anyway. This fic got me good, so definitely make sure you check it out.

the art of dying by lupescx (10k, 4 chapters, thoschei) summary: The Master resurfaces into the Doctor's life only to die—one burst of regeneration energy and he's back on his feet. And then he dies again. And again. She can't keep doing this. //The title might have clued you in, but this one is angsty. Extremely angsty. But, wow, it's absolutely brilliant! What a fantastic exploration of the doctor and the master pushed to their absolute limits and unable to escape from an awful, inevitable cycle. It is pretty dark in places (actually a lot of these fics are, so always heed the tags!) but if that's your jive then this story is just such a treat. Highly recommend!

The Frayed by luchia (90k, 16 chapters, thoschei, wip) summary: The TARDIS recruits a rescue team for the Doctor after the Judoon take her away, and the Master really shouldn't go. Particularly if it includes having to hang around a freakish temporal monstrosity like Jack Harkness. Then again, what does he have to lose? He could die, sure, but that means nothing when he always (always always always) comes back, whether he wants to or not. //Okay so, in my humble opinion, this fic is some of the best spymaster characterisation that I've ever seen across the entire fandom. It's exceptional - the prose is just so full of character, brilliantly unreliable and just so SO fascinating and painful in equal measure (can you tell that I like angst? I love angst so much). And also just the imaginativeness of the story itself is absolutely incredible? There's some fantastic things in there about gallifreyan as a language and Time Lord culture and TARDISes - and, of course, the doctor and the master are completely awful in the best kind of way. And if the word count looks too much for you - consider just reading chapter 16. Yep. Just that one. Like, that rewrote my brain. I read it three times the day that it posted, and I've lost count of how many times I've read it since then. So, like, please. But also you should really really read the entire thing because it's brilliant

Ust-Kut by yonderdarling (1k, 1 chapter, thoschei) summary: Unfortunately, the Master survived. Unfortunately, he finds her TARDIS. Unfortunately, he wants to talk. //Okay. So, this fic? Is possibly one of my favourite spydoc fics ever. And you might be thinking "but, taka, it's only 1k, how can it be?" - well, trust me, it just can. Short but sweet but an absolute gut-punch at the same time. Such a fascinating look at the relationship between these two, the push and pull and the knife edge that they're both on all the time - and it's so tactile? I think that's what gets me about it, if I'm honest. Anyway, absolutely beautiful writing - succinct, but boy, does every word count. It's just so so good, guys.

and without you (is how i disappear) by empty_of_dust (4k, 1 chapter, thoschei) summary: “It’s simple,” she says, impassive, like she’s not holding their very history at knife-point. “Start talking, or I start cutting.” //So, funny story, this author only started posting spydoc fic about a year ago, but oh my word, my guys, they are insanely good. They just get these two in a way that drives me absolutely feral, and their writing style is such a joy to read. I was extremely torn on which fic of theirs to rec, but I settled on this one in the end. The sheer concept of it is absolutely brilliant and gut-wrenching in the most spydoc way ever: a mid-s12 doctor uses the history between her and the master as a bargaining tool to get him to tell her what he discovered in the matrix, blood and biting including. But, yknow. just do yourself a favour and read this author's entire body of work because it is extremely worth it. You won't regret it, I'm sure.

i only speak in silences by daring_elm (2k, 1 chapter, gen) summary: The Doctor can't just leave the Master behind, so she sends him a hologram. //do you ever get a fic that you forget exists, and then you find it again and go OHHHH THIS ONE??? That was me with this fic (and, honestly, this author, who has a ton of great stuff that you should all check out). We all know that the doctor and the master are awful at communicating, but this fic is such a wonderful exploration of it - of the ways that they refuse to be vulnerable with each other, the ways that they are so angry with each other, but also can't help but be drawn back to each other all at the same time. An absolute cracker!

awake and unafraid (asleep or dead) by SleepyMaddy (5k, 1 chapter, thoschei) summary: The Doctor has trouble sleeping. The Master, in typical fashion, makes it worse. //There are so many fics by this author that I could recommend on a post like this, but a spydoc rec post has got to have at least one fic on there that plays with O/13, because it's just such brilliant, painful angst in the softest way. And there are a great many fics that explore it, but this one just takes the cake. Impeccable s12 angst wrapped up in o/13 softness, complete with thirteen making terrible decisions for literally the entire thing. Absolutely astounding writing, beautifully in character and just so painful in the best kind of way. This one killed me, guys. It killed me.

chaos theory by BlueLillyBlue (61k, 11 chapters, gen, wip) summary: The TARDIS has crash-landed in England, 2019, and the Doctor is acting cagey. Also, spacetime might be collapsing. So... Yaz's week isn't off to a great start. //Ohhhh man ok ok. This fic. Is a goldmine. This author is just absolutely SPOT ON with how they write thirteen, and their plots are just an absolute delight and tick soooo many boxes for me. They always make the world they're writing in feel so rich and real, whether that's a starving community on a frozen moon or a hotel in Cornwall. But this one is just so up my street because the master is in it, and oh my GOODNESS guys, it's just - it's just so, so good. If you haven't been following this one along already, then get going on that, stat!

together, we average out to dry land by hawkeishest (1k, 1 chapter, thoschei) summary: If she thought about it, really, this was all Ryan’s fault. He was the one who’d touched the statue. Though, to be fair to him, she should have known the temple would have some kind of psychic defence system. And now her head felt like it was cracking open. //I feel like most people have read this one because it's such a classic, but for anyone who missed it or is new to the fandom - this one is a must read. Absolutely fantastic exploration of the doctor and the master's psychic abilities and the connection between them, written with the most gorgeous descriptions. Just brilliant. Go check it out!

#doctor who fanfic #doctor who #the doctor #thirteen #best enemies #the master #sacha dhawan #dhawan!master #spymaster #thoschei #spydoc #dw fanfic #dwedit #doctorwhoedit #fic #fic rec #taka edits #AUUUGH GUYS THERE WERE SO MANY AMAZING FICS TO CHOSE FROM THIS WAS HARD!!! #so SO hard!! #but auuuuuugh this was so much fun #i have caught the fic rec edit bug so i might be planning a new one hahaha #but pleaaaaase reblog to share the love!! #and share any fic recs that you have too!! #once again i beg people to read chapter 16 of the frayed SKKSKSKSKS LIKE #WAILS #long post

[indignantlemur]

Larger image (STRONGLY recommended): HERE The resolution on this is painful, so I'm including detail shots below the cut.

This meeting room was furnished many centuries ago by a renowned artisan who could carve stone and shells in stunning detail, and could shape and colour glass in a way that was never seen before and has never been replicated since. He took the secrets of his techniques to the grave, dying at an unexpectedly young age in a duel with a public safety official over the seizure of a rare and extremely toxic pigment imported from a Clan to the far south. His name was Kelenthor, and he was the only Clanless to ever attain such a high level of renown and fortune purely on his artistic talent. He lived during what would eventually be called the Post-Unification Andorian Renaissance. While this artisan was alive, he had a somewhat adversarial relationship with various officials and was known to use his art as a medium to mock and criticize his social betters. He was beloved by the general populace for exclusively taking on students from the lower social classes - almost as much as he was resented by the upper classes for his habit of hiding subversive messages in his commissioned works. Regardless of where one stood with Kelenthor, none could deny his talents. If you wanted the best of the best, Kelenthor was the one to commission. As such, he was eventually commissioned to design and create furnishings for a number of rooms and even entire buildings which are now used exclusively by government officials today or otherwise preserved as precious cultural works.

This particular room is widely regarded as his best work: the walls are conspicuously and almost insultingly plain, barely carved at all. At the centre of the room lies a heavy and imposing table of solid marbled stone - also barely ornamented, save some bevelling along the edges. The surface was treated with a substance which renders the stone almost entirely impervious to damage. No matter how one might rain blows upon it, barely a scratch remains to remember them by - much like many of the politicians who have sat at this table since its creation, which many believe was the subversive message behind the thing in the first place.

The focal points are the throne-like seats arrayed around the blunt instrument of a marble table, intricately carved and inlaid with precious shell and glasswork, iridescent and shining under even the faintest rays of light. Each scatters prisms randomly around the room, illuminating the shadows and often causing quite a few headaches when meetings stretch too long. More importantly, every single one of them was deliberately carved to be as uncomfortable as possible. No one in a position of power, Kelenthor once said, should be comfortable there.

First up, courting and wedding bands! Shral and Dagmar are only courting, so they have simple rings with minimal ornamentation, with Dagmar's being modified to fit as a cuff earring.

Thoris is married, so he has two bands on each antennae. Quite often marriage bands are more decorative and ostentatious than his, but Thoris isn't one for baubles and it's bad enough he has to wear these ridiculous robes. Frankly, if he could get away with just wearing his old Guardsman uniform to these meetings, he'd vastly prefer to. As such, his wedding bands are almost incongruously plain for his rank and status.

Next up, the lady and gentleman in the foreground! These two are Ministers, and high-ranking Andorians besides, so they ornament themselves rather loudly in comparison to our main cast's more sedate preferences. The lady on the left is Minister Zaathi, who we will be meeting in-fic very soon, and she's very fond of gemstones and carved hair beads - and not afraid of losing any, if she sheer number she's wearing are any indications. It's a weighted fashion statement, if nothing else, from a woman whose home province is small and relatively modest otherwise.

By comparison, Minister Bhael - on the right - is much more conservative in his ornamentation, but his robes are heavily embroidered and that is quite a lot of Andorian silk to be toting around. A closer look will reveal that his sleeves are embroidered with an ocean wave pattern, which is particularly interesting given the relationship Andorians have with the sea. Is it some kind of political statement, or just an odd choice of attire?

If those two are making statements with their sartorial choices, then Thoris has them all beat for layered meanings.

The silvery outer robes of office are closer to a cloak than a robe, with an inner layer that is belted around the waist and a loose outer layer that is joined to the inner layer at the shoulders and seams along the upper arms. This permits the maximum range of movement for the wearer. Being made of Andorian silk, which is several times stronger than Terran silk, it is an excellent means of protection against slashing and stabbing weapons. Despite their merits, however, Thoris loathes them. They're lightweight, sure, but they're still long and ostentatious and entirely too liable to get caught on something in a real fight. Sadly, they're also mandatory, or he'd have binned them ages ago.

The vibrant blue mid-layer is a heavy material, durable Andorian silk woven through with tiny filaments of something very similar to a carbon fibre composite, providing a measure of protection against many forms of projectiles, though less so against phase weapons. The innermost tunic is more obviously armoured than the other two layers, with panels mimicking an extensive chitin pattern along the length of the torso and forearms. The sleeves in particular draw attention to a very vibrant yellow flash - much like the chitin of the predatory veeg he is known for hunting in the past.

Next we come to Shral, who is obscured partially by shadow at Ambassador Thoris' right hand - and ready to draw his ushaan-tor at a moment's notice.

This is not standard armour for an Andorian, but rather something one might wear while sparring or training in their personal time. The armour takes the form of layered, almost beetle-shell like layers, layered over a long, cowl-necked tunic. The cowl is an unusual choice for sparring attire, as it provides a potential hand-hold for an opponent - only a very arrogant or a very skilled duelist would wear such a thing while sparring.

In contrast, Dagmar stands in the light on Thoris' left. Her working attire is lightly embroidered, and features large, pearly buttons - but otherwise she's almost conspicuously plainly dressed. Hyper aware of how shockingly pink she is in comparison to everyone else in the room, Dagmar wears muted and neutral colours to try to off-set how glaringly alien she is - which, ironically, only serves to highlight her differences even further.

@the-lady-general  @starrynightgardens  @emilie786  @horta-in-charge  @emochook  @velvet-luvie  @creature-of-the-stars @unknownfacelessfanfictions @auroramagpie

#star trek #emigre by indignantlemur #andorian #andorians #digital art #headcanon #An Eventful Meeting by IndignantLemur #ambassador thoris #Anlenthoris th'Kor #Vilashral of Clan Hrisvalar #Shral #Dagmar Gunnarssen #Kelenthor the Clanless

[lillified]

What’s your thoughts about gender in Transformers specifically because I really love your take on the characters

that’s a good question! I’ve given a few different answers about this in the past, and I guess the simple answer would be I want people to interpret it in whatever way is most meaningful to them. The long answer is it’s complicated!

personally I believe that human gender dichotomy is entirely arbitrary. gender doesn’t preclude a set of behaviors or characteristics, but it affects how people treat you, and, in many cases, how you’re taught to view yourself.

One of my biggest pet peeves with how gender is handled in stuff like Transformers, where you’re dealing with things like sci fi or fantasy non-humans, is how literal and inherent it often is. Because we as people are writing from the perspective of a society where gender is taught as an immutable social framework, a lot of our art reflects this. However, when the issue of gender being arbitrary is brought up, instead of acknowledging its presence as an oversight, or an intentional thematic parallel, the go-to response is usually to codify it into canonical rule.

An example in Transformers would be how “female” Transformers were made into a subclass or subspecies to justify why they existed and why there were so few of them. Though you can argue from that as a technically sound retcon, this obviously does not solve the real life issue of why those creative decisions actually happened. It’s a fantasy excuse to justify a disinterest in engaging with “women” characters (while obviously the transformers are not human women, if it quacks like a duck, yknow?)

there have been other explanations of robot gender in the past, but I’ve never really been a fan of any of them, personally. The one I can think of that is most recent is the explanation that the gender dichotomy came about from the transformers learning about gender binary from other alien species (which they effectively colonized). While I personally think this is a step up, both as a writing decision and from a thematic perspective, my main issue with this is that this explanation says the “male” transformers are the essential “default.” The girls have all opted in/transitioned into their gender (which I think is cool, and should be something that happens more in transformers!). that being said, though, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that masculine and genderless should be inherently synonymous.

Femininity or girlhood (which are not inherently the same either, but I digress) being seen and portrayed as secondary is, surprisingly enough, not a very feminist or gender-abolitionist friendly idea! Of course this isn’t the biggest issue facing the women of the world, but I think it is essentialist in its own way, and is a fine example of the tricky nature of deconstructing gender in something that is fundamentally tied to it. On a side tangent, it also pretty much completely eliminates transmasculine representation, which I feel is unfortunate when having a gender binary in the first place only really serves to symbolize the range of human expression. Point being it’s imperfect and while I’m not claiming to have the perfect solution to this problem, I want to at least open the doors a little more for other people, potentially.

In my work I choose to make the genders as close to human as possible because ultimately they are humanoid robots, and I think if you are going to account for anthropocentric bias at all it wouldn’t hurt for there to be more representation overall. The robots are inherently sexless and their gender is inherently arbitrary, like humans (it is also partially the result of cultural imposition, also like humans), and though they lack many of the issues of a gendered society, it affects them and their social lives in a way people can probably relate to. “Man” and “woman” aren’t the only genders that exist, either, and, like humans, there are a range of different identities they can freely transition between.

I’d honestly rather not care too much about the specifics of why. There are reasons, purely social/societal ones, but I think that’s less important than the fact that they experience the consequences. I want people to be able to see themselves a little where they have not been allowed to previously where “humanoid” aliens and creatures have been concerned. If you exist, a robot can have your gender, I promise :)

Anyway, that was a very long winded response! I hope this answered your question, at least somewhat. Thanks again for submitting!

#transformers #ask #text #text post

[shkika]

Hi! I have a question regarding how close pebbles is to moon! I just finished reading pebbles pearl reading dialogue and in all his dialogue he just refers to moon as his neighbor. And he refers to suns as a close friend so do you think that canon pebbles doesnt feel close with moon while moon feels close with pebbles?

Oh no... do you know how much I love Pebbles and Moon's relationship. How well it's written, how every event makes sense and how much I love them?? Anon... you're sending me into a spiral..

Short answer to your question is yes! Moon thought of Pebbles as closer than he considered her in my opinion.

Incomprehensible ramble incoming! Since I NEED this information for my Moonie blog, I've researched this quite a bit, but I'm scatter brained so I'm sorry if it's hard to read.

We actually know this as a fact even merely from NSH talking about their relationship from him perspective!

Actually Sig and Suns are PERFECT candidates to peer into what Moon and Pebs were like! As they were their close friends from different sides of the coin!

Look at this for example.

Pebbles has always been distant. Moon tried to be a big sister to him and Sigs felt like she was never truly appreciated for it proper.

Suns acknowledges this and gives the reasoning that Pebbles sought independence. He didn't want to be told things. Which combined with Moon's seeing him as a younger sibling, it probably led to him being coddled too much.

Which.. no doubt probably annoyed him!

And how could he NOT seek independence on the other hand! He might sneer to Artificer about the protests concerning his creation, but they NO DOUBT left an impact on him! That's my opinion at least.

Not only was his very existence protested against from both the Shaded Citadel people, but ALSO from the very city that built him to MOVE there!!

WE KNOW that not everyone even MOVED!!!

(Ashy green pearl quote- Pebbles)

They did not want a new iterator!! They wanted Moon. No doubt he was compared to Moon as well. He didn't even get the luxury to have his own grounds of sorts. He and Moon are the only example we and hell maybe even they know of iterators being built so close together.

Which is especially sad when we put into perspective that Moon doesn't even like her citizens or have strong fondness for their art and culture. Unlike he very much does!

His last comfort was a pearl containing their hymn. He shares how he viewed the relationship he had with them as mutually beneficial (Very funny when she compares them to parasites.)

Moon is the one with seething hatred for them, not him which is just... so good. It only deepens as the game goes on by the way. Moon you are such a good character.

Back on track though.

What this entire situation reads to me as. Moon wanted to help and be there in any way she can for her little brother. She had responsibility over him. Pebbles was literally the only iterator out of them with another iterator administrator and it was her. She wanted for him to view her as family not as a boss or direct example.

But they were still attached and compared to one another. And although she tried her best, you can see how being treated as the lesser of the two, led to him wanting to be more distant.

Instead he grew very attached to Suns! Who seems like the opposite of Moon in all ways honestly. EXTREMELY BAD with their words, nihilistic prick!!!

It just makes sense. It's sad. I wouldn't blame anyone for the fact they grew a little distant.

I also don't in any way think Pebbles didn't at all like her or didn't care for her or all of that. His feelings were just complicated. I still think they loved each other.

#ask #anonymous #rain world #kiki rambles #PHEW #hope its readable #back i go to drawing moonies page for today #lore rambles

[heavensmortuary]

what do you think about chainsaw man? I've been looking into it but I just don't know because I've heard some gross things about it

I love it! I think it's brilliant; the art is cool, the world is really neat, but the character interactions are what make the series shine.

I went into it initially really skeptical because 1. I don't like annoying protagonists MUCH less horny ones

2. subject matter is really. dark. and I didn't know if the series makes light of it or not.

but after getting through a few chapters it's pretty easy to see what the series is about. It's different from what I expected.

Boy, Denji, wants to be loved and taken care of after being neglected his entire life, a predatory woman, Makima, takes advantage of these desires and treats him no better than a dog, his strong loyalty and fear of being on his own again keeping him from escaping, even when he sees the warning signs. Denji confuses love with sex, and I think this is what most people see the series as, and I think that's a shame. Denji early on learns that it won't make him happy or fulfill him. The story is about love in a loveless culture, in my opinion.

Denji is seen as a superhero figure, a boy taking on a violent persona in order to keep in favor of Makima, when in reality he's...just a teenager pulled into an endless cycle of hell. I think that's a good way to think about the series as a whole; it's full of violence, sex, and vulgarity on the outside, I won't pretend its not, but it's a ploy. It's the superhero side of things. When in reality, none of this should have happened, and Denji suffers for it. Only when Denji befriends people who DO love him does he realize what terrible things are being done to him

I remember some post that was like "chainsaw man is like a reverse honeypot; people go into it and reveal that they have no media literacy" LMAO

It's an interesting series. Again, I found the protagonists annoying and repulsive at worst, but after sticking with the series I've really grown to love them, and I think it's a fantastic story.

#asks #anon #krakens croaks #chainsaw man

[st-just]

So (asking this in good faith i swear) how do we tell someone or something has problematic views if the author doesn't tell? We can't go just based off feelings. Like, in Saw you have no idea if the writers actually agree with the killer, because nobody ever rebukes his viewpoint and its hammered in. Furthermore, if something isn't shown as bad, how do you know it won't cause problems i.e, movies glorifying war or a movie with a serious age gap treated as romantic? I'm sorry if this is dumb

re:

So I mean to be flippant:

how do we tell someone or something has problematic views if the author doesn't tell?

Just assume the answer's yes and move on, if you're ever wrong it won't be often enough to matter. Nous habitons dans un société, and that includes creators - something problematic is going to leak through in the subtext.

Now to try and give a slightly more useful answer - well I mean it depends, mostly. Like - okay I don't know anything about Saw (there's like seven of them, I watch like 1 horror movie a year), but take American Psycho. It's a close first person narrative from the perspective of a guy who has everything and could not lose it if he tried, lovingly supported and carried along on a cloud of oblivious privilege. But, like, it's not hard to see how the text doesn't agree with Patrick Bateman, right? How it just about overflows with contempt for his entire social class and every aspect of his personality? (Not that the book isn't problematic, but like agreeing with Bateman is not one of its issues).

But yeah mostly it comes down to sitting with a work and trying to figure out like - what was it trying to do? Did it succeed? Who got to have full, realized arcs, and who were basically props (were there any trends in the sort of person there)? What were the things the work took as just obviously self-evident about how the world worked that stuck out? (<- where most actually impactful ideology gets through, imo). Stuff like that.

Though I also tend to think this stuff doesn't super...matter? It can be fun to tease apart! This is the overthinking media website after all. But when a piece of art's actually going to cause problems (Birth of a Nation, say, or like 24's role in Bush Administration torture discourse) it usually isn't hard to tease apart the message to it. Whereas 300 was basically Fascist Imagery: The Movie, but that just makes downstream of the wider culture around it, not sure there's any concrete problems I'd say it's responsible for.

Anyway very rambly and not particular useful answer, sorry.

#reply #anon #culture

[edwinrocks0811]

Explaining the Paradox Pokemon

I've been debating with myself on should this be a video or analysis on here, but after rewatching my older vids I decided the latter would be better.

Anyways Paradox Pokemon are the weirdo "gimmick" pokemon similar to Ultra Beast, and today I want to go in-depth on them and explain why they're the way they are.

Also before I go I start I just need to get this off my chest: YES THE PAST AND FUTURE PARADOX POKEMON ARE JUST DINOSAURS AND ROBOTS. THAT'S THE POINT. They're very obviously based on pop cultures extremist and fantastical take on what the past was like and future will be. This isn't anything new to A. Pokemon(look at Ultra Beast being sci-fi tropes) and B. Entertainment media

I feel like so many people treat them to literally or miss the point, cause they didn't execute them in the exact way they wanted(basically Galar Fossils 2.0). Whether which one is better or worse is at the end of the day subjective and this bloods/crypts ass discourse is like comparing American Girl to Bratz(their both dolls targeted to kids, but appeal to two vastly different demographics).

The Meaning of Scarlet and Violet

Before we can explain the paradox pokemon I feel like explaining why the games are called this is important for understanding the games theme of past and future(also to explain why their not called Pkmn: Past and Future, cause it's a very upfront and doesn't represent the Paradox Mons entirely).

Let's start of with explaining what is Ultraviolet and Infrared

Light and colors are the visible radiation we can see, so in turn UV and IR are the invisible radiations we can't see. The past and future are nothing more than history and speculation; they ultimately exist in our minds and art. This explains Paradox pokemon mysterious and contradictory lore/origins. Another thing to note is the meaning of Ultra and Infra being Beyond(UV) and Below(IR), which perfectly explains how their based on pre-existing pokemon, but made stronger, and live below the region of Paldea in Area Zero.

This also explains why they're in a region with a gimmick based around types and legendary pokemon with a light motif both themed around crystals. Tera is the visible spectrum of colors, while Paradox pokemon are the invisible spectrum of radiation

Next is explaining Red and Purple(and also warm and cool colors)

Starting off with warm/cool tones are descriptors for two groups of color on the opposite ends of the color spectrum. How does this connect to the Paramons? Well next we'll explain what happens to water when warmed and cool to the extreme.

On the left are ice molecules and right vapor molecules. The ice molecules are aligned in columns and rows and fill out the box in an orderly manner. And I'll let this other image explain the vapor.

This explains the essential themes of the paradox pokemon: Chaos(past) and Order(future)... to the XTREME. And that red and purple being the farthest colors on both ends of warm and cool tones are used to exemplify that.

Before moving on I'd like to point out how on a wheel, despite being far apart red and purple are bridged together. This will be important later

Now let's start off by explaining the Past Paradox

The chaotic ancestors fueled by the scorching sun, Ancient Paramons have: yellow eyes, eye markings, sharp teeth, warm red colors, long/messy hair/feathers/etc., and spikes or tail.

Getting the most obvious details out of the way the teeth, hair, and spikes/tail are all to call back to dinosaurs or cavemen. Common creatures constantly portrayed living in the past.

The eye markings could call to punk/rock makeup with them looking like sharp lashes or mascara.

Also something to notice is that the ancient pokemon have a lot of motifs and all the designs incorporate them in a way that's sorta messy and overdesigned. This exemplifies the overall theme of chaos(if that wasn't obvious).

The use of yellow for their eyes could call to yellow's association with hazard. The use of red is similar to yellow as one of red's symbolic meaning is danger; which exemplifies a key part of paradox pokemon lore.

Add-On: Since I explained the names and shinies of the Future I just state, that the past Paramons shinies reference the og pokemon shinies and their names reference how dinosaur name meanings are upfront on their appearance and behaviors (T-Rex- Tyrant Lizard)

Now onto their gimmick involving the sun weather. The sun is a natural resource that a lot of creatures depend on to live, and can be used to fuel technology. But it's also an energy source that cannot be controlled due to space, weather, climate, etc.; furthermore it can cause drought's or wildfires. This line up with the lore of Ancient pokemon drawing their power from a "primal energy"(the sun) and fits with the chaos theme, but also gives us some hints onto the world they come from. That being a harsh climate that involves strength to survive.

Next is the Future Paradox

The orderly descendants powered by electricity, Future Paramons have: y2k fluid, L.E.D eyes, black sclera, and fully mechanical bodies

The fluid, L.E.D, chrome shinies are Y2K AS FUCK. The fluid could reference lava lamps a 60s decoration that had a resurgence in the 90s(when Y2K started)(and also reference the 2000s 60s influence), the L.E.D eyes could allude to I-Pets. Y2K was an aesthetic that referenced the fearmongering phenomenon of the same name. This exemplifies the pokemon being from the future and makes sense when you take into account Scarvio development cycle lining up with Y2K resurgence and Pokemania.

Black has a lot of symbolism that could apply to to the theme of order and their paradox nature like: restraint, power, occult, mystery, bleakness, fear. But the possible main reason is it gives the an emotionless look which amplifies their inorganic designs that contrast with the Ancient Pokemon.

ADD-ON: Originally I didn't go in depth for the shinies meaning as I thought it was because of the Y2K Aesthetic, but i remembered that the base Future mons y2k fluids are a color of the rainbow(Treads- Red, Moth- Orange, Hands- Yellow, Thorns- Green, Bundle- Blue, Jugulis- Indigo/Purple, Valiant- Pink). And then I remembered also that Miraidon shiny is white the metallic texture just fucks it up, plus looking at the home models. the shinies use either gray or white as a base. Gray's notable meanings as a color are control and compromise, and white's meaning is cleanliness, blankness, coldness, emptiness, simplicity, and minimalism. Basically their orderly asf.

Something to note is how simplistic in executing these motifs the future pokemon do. Obviously like the past pokemon this exemplifies the theme of order, as they're more refined than the pokemon they're based on. This could also reference Technological Singularity a theory that states we'd advanced so far technologically that it'll lead to the end of humanity.

Add-On: To expand upon the Technological Singularity(and the whole rainbow Y2K fluid thang among others) the Future Paramons could reference the Singularity, which is the state or condition of being singular(as one). This could reflect the use of iron, and chrome shinies. It also explains the Y2K rainbow, as they basically emphasize how their parts with distinct roles to a greater mechanism. Compared to the past Paramons who are unique individuals.

Speaking of inorganic the use of electric terrain as the Future mons "primal energy" source could contrast the Sun as a natural, since electricity used for energy is produced through man-made/unnatural means. Similarly to the ancients this could allude to the future they originate from: possibly being one that wanted to have the strength of the ancient world, without the harsh environment of the past. Using technology and electric terrain to achieve this, with control over the world.

Now remember when I talked about the color wheel and how their connected and far apart at the same time...

Well the designs of both paradox pokemon also showcase this. Despite being complete opposites they execute certain motifs similarly. Using ST and IB as examples at a glance Scream Tail has more differences to the mon it's based on compared to Iron Bundle; however Iron Bundle does differ from Delibird through it's functionality(IB bag is a water cannon, it's feet are skies and moves through using it cannon as a propeller, and attacks with it's head and elastic neck piece). Compared to Scream tail which attacks and moves like Jigglypuff.

Basically Past pokemon focuses on physical changes, Future pokemon change focus on functional changes(Unless your Iron Fugulis)

Now circling back to explaining how their similar, both paradox groups: have face motifs that have slight variety, but are generally the same, past pokemon all have red in their palette but have execution variety meanwhile future pokemon fluid all looks the same but with color variety, past mons all have messy "hair"(although with slight variety: Sandy Shocks and Brute Bonnet) while future mons robot gimmick is expressed in a variety of ways(although with slight similarities: Iron Hands and Moth) , all paradox pokemon change physically and functionally in some way(Unless your Iron Fugulis); i.e. Walking Wake or Iron Treads.

ADD-ON: If this sounds like confusing word-vomit well that's because I was struggling to put this thought process to text, but after analyzing the future paradox shinies they perfectly embody what I want to say in a simpler way. All past pokemon have unique discernible shinies, yet all share the warm red motif(Unless your Sandy Shocks and Brute Bonnet then it's yellow). Whereas future mons all share chrome/metallic gray or white shinies with unique discernible colored Y2K fluid(excluding Leaves cause the legendary Paramons got their own things going on)(Unless your Fugulis)

TlDr: Paradox mon are similar as they are polar opposites, and living in a world that represents both themes at ounce is ideal(I.e. a world where rules and freedom exist in harmony. Think of diet Shin Megami Tensei). This explains why they're all threats to the present.

I dunno how to end this, so let me say Iron Jugulis is a godawful pokemon design. Bye

#pokemon #pokemon sv #pokemon scarvi #pokemon scarlet and violet #pokemon dlc #the indigo disk #paradox pokemon #pokemon scarvio #pokemon scarlet violet #pokemon analysis #I hope y'all liked this #I actually plan on doing similar explanations for stuff like Team Star and the Teal Mask pokemon

[max1461]

There's an emergent genre of travel YouTubers right now, pioneered I think by pickup artist and objectively bad person (but undeniably genius content creator) "Bald and Bankrupt" Benjamin Rich. These guys are doing a kind of gonzo travelogue thing that is pretty interesting to me. It's a little hard to summarize their ethos in abstract, I recommend you just watch some of their stuff.

Bald and Bankrupt in particular is sort of, his persona is that of like, a brash-yet-surprisingly-cultured asshole? He behaves like an asshole, on camera, all the time. He makes degrading comments about women and not too infrequent racist jokes. At the same time he (his persona, idk) shows a certain amount of... tender humanism? Like he goes to a lot of places that are regarded as dangerous or squalid, and rather than doing the usual "I almost got killed!!!" thing, he's invariably interested in showing that they're not that bad, documenting how life is normal there, showing positive interactions with people. He travels around Eastern Europe a lot and has an abiding appreciation for Soviet architecture and design, which he documents with enthusiasm. He's talked about the value of learning the language of the places you travel to—not in a careful academic way (he advises that one "ignore grammar entirely"), but in a loose way that just allows you to communicate with people. In his videos traveling through India, he makes sure use the right greeting with Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and so on.

Oh, and, right, he's ridiculously extroverted. He immediately behaves in a chummy and objectively over-friendly way with every person he meets.

What I want to say about him is something like... he presents a worldview that I think is basically respect-worthy, and in fact a refreshing antidote to the kinds of attitudes I typically encounter in the "nerd spaces" in which I'm spending a lot of my time lately. But he is, as I said, objectively a bad person. He can be over-friendly like that because he has no respect for anyone's boundaries, and he seems in his personal life to have no qualms about exploiting people (especially women) and treating them like shit. I can't imagine he pays any mind to ethics when he travels to impoverished places and meets and interacts with struggling people.

If you're going to watch his videos, do it with an ad-blocker or something, idk how YouTube revenue works but I don't really want to support this guy. But I admit that I do watch his videos, at least sometimes, when they show up in my recommendations. Because they're a little bit infectious, frankly, and I think that as works a lot of them have value. In fact I'd go farther and say that some of them are among the best content being produced on YouTube right now, period. You just have to engage in some pretty heavy separation of the art from the artist.

#navel gazing