#and no amount of backstory makes certain terrible actions good

[geeneelee]

Judit’s Backstory, or: Why She Supports Harry

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, especially since it’s apparently not common knowledge in the fandom, but Judit has a developed backstory with Harry that can only be put together through reading one of the case files (so perhaps it’s not that surprising that people don’t know).

We start with Joseph Mills: an idiot and a terrible person.

No, he was awful. Awful sense of humour too. The worst jokes you've ever heard. Really rapey.

Harry can find out about him from reading MURDER IN THE HOOKAH PARLOR from his case files. Long story short, Mills mistook an accidental death for a murder and wasted months on it, only for Harry to identify it as a dumb accident in less than a minute.

What’s more relevant to the present-day is this:

Beaten to death by a throng of Villalobos gang-members when him and his partner J. M. (only initials mentioned) answered a call one night. It's a sad story and it isn't really represented in *your* case files. Stop stalling and get to the MURDER AT THE HOOKAH PARLOUR.

Judit’s partner was beaten to death by gangsters, presumably while she watched. Technically, J.M. could be anyone, but basic narrative rules + a few other hints make me certain that it’s Judit. Most importantly, what she says about Harry after his disastrous call to the Precinct.

"We must help him." Minot looks down at her neatly polished black shoes. There is a quiet firmness to her voice when she speaks. 

"I just know we can't give up on him when he's at his weakest. He wouldn't..." The crowd in the room has started fidgeting uncomfortably. Someone's trying to slip out unnoticed.

I’m presuming here that what she’s going to say is “He wouldn’t give up on one of us”. (Side note: judging by the reactions of everyone else, they agree. Pre-canon Harry had his good moments and his bad with the squad).

Judit might be speaking from experience - we know that she’s only been with C-Wing for two months, but why did she transfer? Given how C-wing has been hemorrhaging members, it seems odd. If she was speaking from experience, then the most likely answer is that Harry helped her out after Mills’ death (first on the scene? Provided support? who knows) and Judit, who was now without a partner, decided to follow him to C-wing.

Between her gratitude to Harry and (probably) low standards for coworkers, she’s willing to give him the benefit of the doubt more than anyone else who knows him, although depending on your actions you can burn through the good will - calling her the Horse-Faced Woman and asking if you’ve had sex will make her cold towards you.

She’s also aware of Harry’s drinking problem, but has more hope than Jean does - Jean will shoot down any hint that Harry’s changed, but if he’s stayed sober, Judit will hold onto hope that it’ll stick this time

You haven't been drinking, she thinks. So maybe this time...

(Perhaps it’s just because she’s known him for the least amount of time, but it’s still more hope than anyone else in his unit has for Harry).

It’s easy to miss Judit’s implied past with Harry, and assume her patience is naivety or because she’s a mom (which might be the case in a story written by lesser writers) but it’s something more complex than that, and a tiny hint at the better side of pre-canon Harry.

#harry du bois #judit minot #harrier du bois #disco elysium #disco elysium meta #i love how many icebergs of lore there are in this game

[irenespring]

Rewatching both House and ER and I have been thinking about why I find House to be a far more sympathetic character than Robert Romano.

To be clear: I know House's behavior is horrible. He should have been fired. There is no moral justification for his actions. However, as my favorite history professor constantly says: "context is not justification."

Words vs. deeds: House says a lot of terrible things, but his actions paint a different picture. He says antisemitic nonsense, but it never alters his attitudes towards Taub, Wilson, and Cuddy. He says he will sexually harass Cameron and Chase, and definitely does sexually harass Cuddy--but he never touches them without permission, and doesn't want to date an employee even when Cameron really wants to date him. Romano, on the hand, engages in verbal sexual harassment, and then does act on it. He tries to get Elizabeth deported because she won't sleep with him. He tries to get any out lesbian fired.

Backstory: House is the main character of the show titled House. As such, though we don't learn a lot about him, we are provided insights into his past. A big part of helping viewers empathize with a character is helping them understand why he is like this. You get a sense of House's tragic backstory, and how that backstory forged him into the kind of person he is. Romano, on the hand, is never fully expanded on. All we really know about him is that he has a good relationship with his mother. There isn't enough data to understand, and thus connect, with his overall character. He was intended to be a villain, rather than an anti-hero.

Self-reflection: House is a terrible person, and he knows it. He hates it. When he talks about the world with patients (I've noticed this particularly in season 1) he sounds really fucking sad. He wants the world to be better, he wants to be better, but this is how the world works and therefore he can only present himself one way and stay safe. This self-knowledge makes him a more conflicted character, and shows he has empathy. He wants to change, but doesn't think he can. On the other hand, Romano is deeply arrogant, not superficially arrogant. He thinks he's the shit. He truly believes he is the world's greatest man and entitled to act however he wants to the "little people" as he calls them. This removes a certain depth from his character.

Show tone: House is a show about terrible people. Everyone is crazy in their own unique ways. The show is about looking at the good in those terrible people. In order to enjoy the show, you have to stop yourself from analyzing the morality of the characters' actions. ER, on the other hand, is at least supposed to be about good people (don't get me started about how the protagonists treat Kerry, and whether that actually makes them good people). People are supposed to be heroic. The characters face deep ethical dilemmas the audience is supposed to consider. This makes Romano's heinous actions stand out and force the viewer to analyze them.

Pain: House is in pain. He is in pain all the fucking time. When people are in pain, they are less patient, more likely to snap. There's a standard view that when people are in a huge amount of pain, they say things they don't mean. They try to hit people where it hurts because of how much they hurt. This doesn't excuse his actions, but does create further separation between House's words and his innate character.

Anyway both ER and House are good shows, but suffer from being from the early 2000s (or mid-late 1990s in ER's case). You should watch them! But yeah, Romano bothers me way more than House, who I think would be an interesting foil for Kerry.

#house md #hatecrimes md #er tv show #er #gregory house #robert romano #character analysis #television analysis #character comparison #This is not to say anyone who likes Romano should feel bad about it #People are allowed to like immoral characters!!! #I know he has a following of people who sometimes find him amusing and that's all good #He definitely has his moments #I always laugh when Dr Greene gets into a fistfight and Romano enters and addresses him with “The lean Greene fighting machine!!!” #I'm just analyzing my personal character feelings

[justatalkingface]

The Dabi Benchmark of Insanity: A Helpful Guide

What is it? Why won't I shut up about it whenever I talk about villains?

Yeah; this is largely a reference post, for the people who haven't seen this term before... which makes sense, since I made it the fuck up awhile ago and then never really clarified it again, even though I kept using it. I do that a lot whenever I feel the need, but I think this is the only term I've kept using consistently, and I usually explain what I mean in those posts when I make something up, so the DBI is a bit of an anomaly in that sense. I like to think it's self explanatory, really, so it probably doesn't need explanation, but... eh. I talk a lot. One more post won't hurt.

Fundamentally, the DBI is the idea that there's a... limit to how crazy a character can be and still be sympathetic; after a certain point, it doesn't matter how bad their backstory was, no one is going to like the guy eating babies. Authors can (and often do) try to make a truly fucked up character sympathetic anyways, but once they pass that point the response generally isn't sympathy but, 'JFC, can this guy shut up about how we should all like The Masked Baby-Eater already? That guy's an asshole'.

I say 'crazy' for a reason, BTW. The sheer factual amount of evil deeds a character does only has a limited effect on how readers will consider them; how the character is presented, and how they act as they do these deeds effect that reception as well. An easy example is how in something like Gundam, a character who does something objectively horrible (kill someone, start a war, etc etc), but because of how they're developed, and way they act as they do it, we will still sympathize with them. Meanwhile, if there's a school story, a character who is just rude and cruel can be absolutely loathed, by everyone, even if what they did can't possibly be compared to the Gundam character.

It's not that you can't make a good character if you go beyond this point, it's the opposite really: there's plenty of good, memorable characters who are festering shitholes devoid of positive character traits, but we're not expected to find them sympathetic, just really cool or iconic in some way. Making them sympathetic imposes limits on how out there that character can be.

I call it the 'Dabi' benchmark because I feel like Dabi is the perfect example of an edge case, a person who is horrific and broken, but you can still just feel for him why he's like this. It's core to his fundamental design as a character, from his traumatic backstory, to how he's broken and scarred and barely held together by his sheer will, so that while he's an objectively terrible person, cruel, sadistic, who kills easily and wants only to destroy, the reason he's like that is something intrinsically understandable and thus easy to sympathize with.

(Of course, the problem with Dabi is that, as MHA went on, Hori kept changing Endeavour to try and make him sympathetic, while at times intentionally making Dabi seem more at fault for his situation to mitigate Endeavour's blame, which damaged Dabi's characterization on a fundamental level and makes him less sympathetic... but that's not Dabi's fault, that's inconsistent writing)

At the same time, though, I must repeat that he is a terrible human being who does horrible things, and which puts him at that very edge of sympathy, only being accepted by people by how good his backstory is, how fucked up yet human is motivations ultimately are. If his actions had pushed beyond that point, if, for example, instead of just killing people he cold bloodedly tortured them for no real reason, his reception would have been less positive than it was.

In short? The farther a character goes past the Dabi Benchmark of Insanity, that is to say, the more a character is crazier than Dabi, the more people are going to look at you like you're crazy when you try to make them seem sympathetic to the audience.

#the dabi benchmark of insanity #that feeling when you have to explain your alien homebrew logic to normal people #reference post

[rei-caldombra]

Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic Anime Episodes 4-9 Review - Rose is a 10/10.

Back for another post about Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic anime, covering episodes 4-9. I’m still loving this show and wanna talk about it more without waiting until the end. Spoiler warning. I edited the image used for the thumbnail, feel free to use it fellow Rose simps. 

The greatness in episode 8 and 9 is the main reason I am writing a new post now and will be the bulk of the post, but I’ll talk a bit about the earlier episodes. Watching the three main characters slowly grow and come into their own has been nice to watch. I still enjoy seeing them have slightly different outlooks while still connecting on the basis of the crazy situation they were thrust in. They all needed different amounts of time and experiences to process things and make up their mind. Hopefully we will get some more great stuff from seeing them be together again for the big battle. We got some solid new characters

I didn’t mention how I feel about the OP in the first post, I think it’s really great. The music really gets you hyped. The art is great, everyone looks awesome and has very detailed and expressive looks. I don’t have too much to say about the ED, it’s fine but nothing notable to me. It does remind you of the life Suzu had before coming here, which at least gives some relevant purpose to the visuals. 

A minor gripe is that as of now I really don’t see the purpose of the future vision that Usato was shown. I don’t really feel like it changed his way of thinking or his actions. I did not feel like he was especially cocky or not taking the situation seriously, and he already had Rose instilling in him (and us as the viewer) that war is terrible and that he will be responsible for keeping people alive. Maybe there will be more to it later but I do not think this did anything for me as of now. It may have just had the purpose to drive up tension but I do not think forcing it with something dramatic like this was needed. 

Now onto the highlight of the middle section of the anime, episodes 8 and 9 which cover Rose’s backstory. Hearing my favorite voice actress Konomi Kohara in episode 8 was a welcome surprise. Her voice for Aul is probably the hardest to recognize out of anything I've heard from her as the tone is very different. I immediately thought about it upon hearing her talk but was not certain until her crying when she got punched convinced me. I’d know her yelling and crying noises anywhere. Kohara excels at bringing cute, cheerful energy that immediately makes you endear for the character. 

I think the time we got with Rose’s original squad was well done. It gave us enough time to let us feel the bond, but not so long that we felt we were wasting time with characters we knew would be dying. Aul is the only one who gets proper focus, but for the purpose of the unit focus on all of them was not needed. We also did get a nice moment that helped us feel that the other members were all people with names and lives. The scene where Rose talks to the parents of Josh hits hard and got me genuinely emotional. It's great for the world to have the events of that fight have an impact on more than just Rose. Hearing such a positive spin on the death of a soldier really hit hard. I hope most parents of fallen soldiers can reach the point of healthy acceptance that these two did. This scene both helps Rose and for the point of this blurb, reminds us that even though the other members like Josh did not get focus, they have some more substance than just extra soldiers. 

A criticism I have seen levied was that it took too long to get the war content that it’s been building up to. It did take quite a while to get some proper action, but the action delivers. It is by no means at the top level of anime action that we have gotten in recent times, but it is good. The art is pretty great while being fun and engaging, with one of the best moments of the show being her chucking trees. There was solid pacing too, with the action not being stopped for too long by exposition. I enjoyed this fight and hope the upcoming fights are up to its caliber at least. 

I really appreciate the show bringing up how losing her eye in the battle made a big difference in the moment. A pet peeve of mine is how often shows degrade the impact and weight of a character losing an eye. Most of the time they just keep fighting the same as normal or acclimate way too fast. I love her mentioning specifically that her depth perception is off because of losing her eye. In a proper battle that would make a massive difference. And while losing an eye only takes away about 30% of your vision, that could also mean the difference between life and death when you have arrows and magical blasts aimed at you. Characters barely changing from losing an eye sabotages dramatic weight and breaks my immersion in combat. I appreciate that this show gave her losing her eye the gravity it deserves in the moment even if it was just a bit of dialogue. Just the proper acknowledgement of the issues losing an eye brings means a lot to me. 

The battle ending with the demon commander being saved is also an interesting one. They’re clearly setting up here that the demons are not meant to just be evil adversaries. It also shows the strength of Rose’s character by not having her fall into a blind rage and completely flipping as a character. Even after seeing her friends be killed, she still saw the meaning in her adversary wanting to save someone dying on the battlefield. This hits Rose at the core of who she is. Both humans and demons have people they care about and want to save. Up to this point I honestly didn’t have anything to say about the demons as they seemed like your standard demonic adversaries, but this makes me feel positive that we will get solid substance from them.

I think Rose’s fall into depression and recovery is well done. I like how we got a variety of her thoughts rather than jumping straight to a strong reaction. She did contemplate suicide, but she is engaging in self-punishment and doesn’t believe she has the right to die. But what should she do with this life? She thought about going on a demon murder rampage and getting revenge, but she already recognized that is not the right thing to do. She spent over a month stuck in her depression rather than going back so we can infer she considered quitting altogether. Another great aspect of Rose’s emotional side of things is how she gave herself the pep talk based on her memories, rather than getting a stereotypical pep talk from someone else. It’s important to show how support from others is important for emotional processing, but getting over every emotional hump doesn’t come from someone telling you how great you are, and sometimes you do need to work through things yourself internally. The king and other knight checking up on her likely helped but this is clearly not written the same as a pep talk. Sometimes people can work through things on their own with enough time to process. And this isn’t from negative behavior like her not accepting help or having a bloated ego. The problem was all internal and there is no way anyone else could have properly related to her as no one else has the capabilities she does. I love that it took a long time for her to reach this. It’s important to note how long it takes to cope with your emotions. And to return to the pep talk point, sometimes those pep talks that make a person’s emotional state do a complete 180 make it seem like overcoming bad emotions is easy. I really like her growth comes from her thinking about their lives rather than about their deaths. It’s obvious that after a horrific event like she experienced, she would hyperfixate on their deaths. She already had the answer as Aul was dying, that she should not hate herself and to continue being the strong and kind person she is. 

She was also told by Josh's parents that she should not be ashamed of herself and what she has done. But the severity of the moment muted the positive impact of those words. When she is able to think about what came before that terrible event, she realizes the proper way to think. By remembering what her squad said while they were alive, she was able to put her own life into perspective and find a goal. Knowing everything that happens, it feels like a logical conclusion for Rose to focus entirely on saving lives. As a character within the archetype of the tough brutal teacher, Rose feels far above the rest as a dynamic and fleshed out character who does not exist just to be hated. She does the usual drill sergeant type of thing while having proper motivation and emotional reasoning behind it. She’s not brutal just so the main character has to struggle, she is brutal because of her backstory that stands entirely on its own. Rose really is a fantastic character by all metrics and she alone makes this show worth the watch. 

This show continues to have great characters and excellent execution. We did have to wait a little too long for some great action with overall slow pacing, but it was still enjoyable, and I see some value in the slow buildup. The buildup was very successful for Rose’s side of things, so I feel confident that the buildup will have been worth it for Usato’s side as well. Hopefully this anime will continue on strong through to its conclusion. Thanks for reading!

#anime #review #blog #winter 2024 anime #the wrong way to use healing magic #Chiyu Mahou no Machigatta Tsukaikata

[utilitycaster]

I’m just pulling out a few things I’ve said a lot about multiclassing and putting them here for reference, in no particular order:

Multiclassing is almost always a compromise. There are a fraction of cases (eg: hexadin) where it does make for something truly far more than the sum of its parts, and a number of others where it adds a huge amount of benefit for a relatively small investment (pretty much every martial class pairs nicely with fighter; wizards taking L1 cleric can get huge benefits) but even then it’s a tradeoff - you will not get certain features, you will get other features later than you otherwise would, you might miss out on a feat/ASI level, etc. You do not have to multiclass to have a well-built character.

If you are multiclassing purely for story reasons, then mechanics opinions aren’t relevant. That said: be aware that you shouldn’t have to multiclass to support a story if you don’t want to. You can be a musician without being a bard, for example. If you’re dipping into a level to support a specific backstory and you’re not genuinely excited about the build? Ask yourself (and your DM) if you can achieve the same narrative with a specific background, feat, skill, subclass change, or other option.

Barbarians nearly always conflict with spellcasters: you cannot cast while raging, and barbarians have pretty intense stat requirements, being heavily dependent on all three physical stats. The exceptions are paladins (divine smite expends spell slots but isn’t casting, lay on hands can be done while raging) and druids (rage works in wild shape and wild shape assumes you’re not casting much of the time anyway) but even then “isn’t terrible” =/= “is good”.

Using the same stat is usually better than requiring multiple stats. This is what the SAD (single attribute dependent) and MAD (multiple attribute dependent) abbreviations in crunchy discussions are referring to. This is also why hexadin is famously good - it actually takes a class that is inherently based on two stats (paladin, on charisma and strength) and turns it into a class only reliant on one stat (charisma). It’s why most battle classes benefit from a fighter level or two - all of them are already reliant on strength or dex - or why mixing and matching the charisma casters is pretty foolproof.

Think action economy: if you have a highly used feature that requires a bonus action (eg: inspiration), you may not want to multiclass into something that also relies heavily on having a lot of open bonus actions. This is also why a single fighter level works for basically everyone; action surge is always good.

There are some good online guides for pure mechanical considerations that I recommend you check out, although they do not account for subclasses in depth since that would take forever, but finally: I am not at your table. I will not come into your house and rip up your character sheets. You do not need my approval, and I hold opinions that you might not agree with and that’s okay! But there are things that are better mechanically than others.

#d&d mechanics

[matt-the-radar-techncian]

If people are feeling more sympathetic towards the people who hurt pink/rose, who's supposed to be the victim and the people in question are the diamonds and her abusers, whose fault is it exactly for that whole thinking? The fans and critics for not getting it or not liking actions that happened with rose/pink or the writing of how it went about rose that kind of made her seem even less sympathetic than the diamonds?

Maybe sympathetic is not the right word for the diamonds but then at the same time people give me the impression that what blue was "right". Feel like I am seriously not understanding something I do kind of feel like the backstory being told backwards probably didn't do wonders but I'm just still wondering how are they more sympathetic then pink when they are heavily part of the reason why she left them?

I think at a certain point it’s just people misinterpreting it. Sure the show could’ve had more episodes about Rose’s and the Diamonds’ past but that only accounts for so much. The story is complete and all the information is there about Rose and the Diamonds. People thinking “the Diamonds are more sympathetic than Rose” seem like they’re either forgetting major parts of the plot or are just angry at the show for not going the way they wanted it to

It probably also comes from an inability to accept that the creators of your favorite media aren’t omnipotent, and that they’re subject to outside forces. It’s a lot harder to admit “the shows I love are made based around business deals that are sometimes unfair and that hurt the artistic merit of the final product” than the kneejerk “Rebecca Sugar wrote a terrible ending because she’s stupid and evil”

I feel like it also ties into some of these people’s politics somewhat. I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the people saying that the show’s ending was bad because the Diamonds didn’t face enough consequences are also the type of person to view real life politics that way too. The type of people who think “if we can just get kill all the bad people (billionaires, racists, pedophiles, etc.), the world will be perfect!” The people who think that it’s not enough that people stop doing bad and start doing good, but that they must suffer also. These types of people usually have good intentions (ending inequality, racism, pedophilia, etc.) but if you let that desire for revenge against society taint the way you watch media, it’s gonna lead to you unironically saying shit like “Steven Universe is nazi propaganda”

Bringing this back to SU, this reminds me of when I recently saw a piece of fanart from “Gem Harvest” (from back when the episode first came out in 2016) and it was tagged something like “the theme of the episode was wack, they introduce a bigoted character and the moral is to FORGIVE HIM???!?” Yes, that is the moral. Making human connections will always be better for your mental health (and more helpful in actually stopping people from being hateful and bitter) than any amount of vitriol or righteous anger

It seems Steven Universe is simply cursed with fans who are forever unwilling or unable to accept its basic tenets of forgiveness and self-love

#steven universe is nazi propaganda #steven universe #su #rose quartz #diamonds

[bottlepiecemuses]

Why I Prefer Luffy Over Naruto When It Comes To Main Villains

I see a parallel between Luffy and Naruto when it comes to handling people who had their dreams and how easily the hero could end up like them if something potentially happened. We all know the infamous talk no jutsu and it’s become a meme. But if you remember the reason why it became a meme is because of the fact it was tone deaf for the hero to convince the bad guy what they were doing was wrong because of a few words and show sympathy after showing their sad backstory and dreams. However, this is in contrast with Luffy who doesn’t give a fuck about what your dreams were because it’s what you are doing now that matters. You might have had your dreams shattered but that’s no excuse for the tragedies caused because of your cynicism. 

I know what Naruto was trying to show is to bring sympathy in a world that encourages cruelty. In the beginning it did make sense, especially with cases like Gaara where the execution was good. However, in many other cases like Obito who has caused wars, genocide (including on his own clan), and an attempt to trap the world in a lotus machine state this comes off as too unrealistically optimistic. This isn’t a case of a bad guy doing some minor crimes Obito has really made so many people suffer for his dream to see Rin live again and never faces the consequences. And that’s the emphasis consequences of their actions because Obito escapes it through death and we are meant to see a guy who just recently was the biggest threat in the world be seen as a hero. And as said before that comes off as tone deaf to the amount of suffering they caused. 

Both series talks about how corrupt systems churn out monsters how easy it could be for the heroes to become like the villains. While in Naruto they are treated as pure victims, One Piece treats them as victims who now have become the victimizers and while have a reason for why they became that way they still chose to do so. In this case, One Piece gets it that Naruto doesn’t is that people still can choose to as terrible as the system them out. While it’s good to be able to forgive some people, on the other hand not everyone should be offered redemption that easily because once you cross a certain path then you really can’t go back from it. One trope that I emphasize is Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse because your status as a victim doesn’t erase the crap you have done to people in the name your dreams or goals. 

I think one thing is consistent is that Luffy never makes it his goal to make people see the light or anything because again that is part of their own choice to do so. He can influence people like Katakuri to respect him as an opponent, but no he is not going to give you a speech about how you need to change but just punch for being a bastard in the current time. Again this is what Naruto’s problem has which is selling characters as sympathetic but being outweighed by the horrible actions they do. And even if they sacrifice themselves to help the hero, it really doesn’t absolve their crimes as well. What I feel One Piece does is treat the gravity of their crimes more seriously than Naruto does. As a result, I feel One Piece tackles complex villains better because it shows no amount of your sad backstory can account for your horrible behavior and that you have to own up to it through being knocked down hard. 

#one piece 1041 spoilers #naruto #obito #kaido #wano #pirates ninja

[crusherthedoctor]

Can you list anything you unironically like in the games (and cartoons and comics) that you don't like?

I won't bother mentioning music, since that goes without saying and is to be expected for a Sonic game... unless you're Chronicles.

Sonic Adventure 2 (mixed gameplay-wise, annoying story-wise) - While I prefer Sonic's SA1 levels for a number of reasons, I still think his and Shadow's gameplay in SA2 is fun on its own merit. I also don't mind the treasure hunting gameplay returning or how big the levels are this time around, since Knuckles and Rouge are still fast and not '06 levels of slow. It's mainly the gimped radar that creates the unfortunate domino effect of making them a problem.

- Introduced Rouge, one of my favourite characters for how playful she is and how she's a lot more nuanced and intelligent than you'd expect.

- Some genuinely good scenes, like Eggman's trap on the A.R.K and Sonic escaping from the G.U.N. helicopter.

- Had some good ideas going for it, like the Pyramid Base and the Biolizard as a scientific monster instead of an ancient one.

- Despite my thoughts on the backstory itself (or rather, its execution), Shadow has enough depth and subtle qualities and occasional unintended hilarity to stand out from the typical dark rival characters you see in media.

- The Last Scene's music in particular is one of my favourite cutscene tracks in the series.

Sonic Heroes (mixed gameplay-wise, loathed story-wise) - The gameplay is fun when you're not being screwed over by repetitive combat, overly long levels and/or ice physics.

- Boasts some of the most consistently Genesis-worthy environments in the 3D games, up there with SA1's and Colours'.

- The in-game dialogue that isn't the same tutorial drivel repeated ad nauseam can be interesting, funny, etc.

- Reintroduced the Chaotix, which provided me with another character I quite like in the form of Vector.

- Bringing Metal Sonic back in full force and front and center in the plot after a long absence (not counting cameos and the like) is a perfectly fine idea. Just... not like this.

Sonic Battle (decent yet repetitive gameplay, mixed story-wise) - Emerl's arc is compelling, and it earns the emotional weight of having to put him down at the end.

- While some characters are iffy (read: Amy), other characters are extremely well-handled. Shadow is probably the prime example.

- Gamma's belly dance healing animation is fucking hilarious.

- When I was young, and the game was first announced, I was really excited about being able to play as Chaos. This proved to be my downfall when it turned out he was arguably one of the worst characters in the game due to being slower than me during the writing process, but I still recall that excitement fondly.

Shadow the Hedgehog (comedy classic) - The sheer amount of legendary stupidity this game has going for it makes it practically impossible to actually hate. It helps that it's not quite as white-knighted on the same level as '06... usually. You know you're in for a unique experience when you hear a gunshot every time you click something in the menu.

- By extension, Black Doom never gained an unironic fanbase like Mephiles/Scourge/Eggman Nega did, which means I'm a lot more willing to take Doom's dumbass brand of villainy in stride. He even has a unique design... a terrible one that rips off Wizeman granted, but alas, even that is a step-up from Fridge Shadow and Bumblebee Eggman.

- Despite being... well, Shadow the Hedgehog, some of the environments would fit right in with any other Sonic game, like with Circus Park, Lava Shelter, and Digital Circuit. Even the Black Comet levels look pretty cool.

- This game understands amnesia better than IDW does.

Sonic '06 (what do you think?) - The obvious one: Shadow's character was handled pretty well, even if it came at the cost of everyone else being a dummy and being forced to interact with Mephiles.

- Like SA2, there are some good moments, like the Last Story ending sequence with Sonic and Elise.

- In the greatest form of irony ever, I like Solaris as a concept and design(s), and its backstory has potential to serve as a parallel with Chaos without being a complete ripoff. Iblis sucks, Mephiles sucks, but I'm fine with Solaris.

- Introduced legendary characters like Sonic Man, Pele the Beloved Dog, Hatsun the Pigeon, and Pacha from The Emperor's New Groove.

The Rivals duology (apathetic outside of Nega-related grumbling) - There were some cool zone ideas in both games that were sadly let down by the restrictive and limiting gameplay. I particularly like Colosseum Highway for thus far being the only full-on Roman level in the series instead of merely having a couple minor hints of Roman, and Meteor Base for the unique scenario of the space station being built into an asteroid. These level concepts and others deserve a second chance IMO. (At least Frontier Canyon got a second chance in the form of Mirage Saloon, amirite?)

- Ifrit has a better design than Iblis. Not saying it's amazing, but the Firebird motif it has going on is a lot more interesting for a fire monster than the Not-Chaos schtick they had with Iblis.

Sonic and the Secret Rings (a very frustrating gaming experience) - Erazor Djinn, A.K.A. Qui-Gon Djinn, A.K.A. Dr. N. Djinn, A.K.A. I'll Take It On The Djinn, A.K.A. Not From The Hairs On My Djinny Djinn Djinn, is one of the best villains not associated with Eggman in the series. He's a Mephiles-type character done right, and there's actual weight and reason to his actions, however sinister or petty.

- I don't have strong opinions either way on Shahra as a character, but the Sonic/Shahra friendship is sweet and well-handled.

- The ending is one of Sonic's greatest moments. The sheer contrast between how ruthlessly he deals with Erazor and how comforting he is towards Shahra speaks volumes... Still gonna make fun of the mountain of handkerchiefs though. (Before anyone lectures me, I understand the significance of it and can even appreciate it from that angle... doesn't mean I'm not allowed to poke fun at it. :P)

- Another game with some redeeming environments. I love the aesthetic of Night Palace, and Sand Oasis looks gorgeous too.

Sonic Chronicles (my personal least favourite game in the series) - Uh...

- Um...

- Er...

- I like Shade's design?

Sonic Unleashed (overrated game and story IMO) - The obvious two: the opening sequence and the Egg Dragoon fight deserve all the praise they get.

- Seeing Eggmanland come to life was an impressive moment to be sure. While part of me does feel it didn't quite measure up to what I had in mind (ironically, the Interstellar Amusement Park ended up being closer to what I had in mind), it still looks badass and works well for what it is. I also don't mind the idea of it being a one-level gauntlet... key word being idea.

- Obviously, the game looks great. Not a fan of the real world focus (real world inspiration is fine, but copy-pasting the real world and shoving loops in it is just unimaginative), but it can't be denied that the environments look good.

- This game pulled off dialogue options a lot better than Chronicles did, since they didn't rely on making Sonic OoC.

Sonic and the Black Knight (just kind of boring all around) - Despite my gripes with the story (Merlina wasn't nearly as fleshed out as her unique anti-villain status deserved, which ends up severely undermining the ambition of the plot in more ways than one, and the other characters go from being useless yes men for King Arthur to being useless yes men for Sonic), I will admit it provides interesting insight into Sonic's character.

- Like '06 and Secret Rings, the ending is very nice... well, aside from Amy being an unreasonable bitch ala Sonic X at the very end.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (apathetic) - The admittedly few new concepts sprinkled within had promise. They may not have been as fleshed out as they could have been, but level concepts like Sylvania Castle and White Park, bosses like Egg Serpentleaf and the Egg Heart, and story beats like the Death Egg mk.II being powered by Little Planet, all could have been brilliant had they been better executed.

SatAM (apathetic outside of SatAM Robotnik-related grumbling) - I'm not a fan of the environments on the whole due to them looking too bland or samey, but there are some exceptions that look pleasant or interesting, like the Void.

Sonic Underground (apathetic) - The character designs make me feel better about myself.

- Does "large quantities of unintentional meme material" count as a positive?

Sonic X (mostly apathetic outside of Eggman's handling) - Helen was a better human character and audience surrogate in her one focus episode than Chris was throughout his entire runtime.

- Actually, most of the human characters not named Chris were legitimately likable. Including everyone in Chris' own family not named Chris. Hilarious.

- Despite arguably having the most Chris in it, I actually don't mind the first season that much, partly due to slight nostalgia from seeing it on TV when it was new, but mostly because Eggman actually acted like a villain for the most part, and certain other characters weren't quite as flanderized yet. It's season 2 and onwards where things started going off the rails IMO. (Incidentally, Helen's episode was part of season 1...)

The Boom franchise (apathetic) - Along with Chronicles, the games provide yet more proof that just because someone isn't SEGA/Sonic Team, that doesn't mean they're automatically more qualified to handle the series.

- The show had some good episodes here and there, and Tails' characterization was probably the most consistently on-point out of the cast.

- Despite not exactly being favourite portrayals for either character, even I'll admit that many of Knuckles and Eggman's lines in the show on their own were genuinely funny.

Archie Sonic (pre-reboot is mostly terrible, post-reboot is mostly... bland) - Whenever I doubt myself as a writer, I think back to Ken Penders, and suddenly I'm filled with a lot more confidence.

Sonic the Comic (apathetic) - Fleetway isn't a comic I tend to recall much of aside from how much of a loathesome cunt Sonic is, but IIRC, Robotnik's portrayal is pretty good. Different, but good.

IDW Sonic (stop pissing me off, comic) - Putting their handling aside (and being too obviously "inspired" by MGS in the latter's case), Tangle and Whisper are good characters IMO.

- Same goes for Starline, before he was killed off-screen and replaced with Toothpaste Snively.

- Execution aside (noticing a pattern?), the zombot virus was a fine concept on its own and an interesting new scheme for Eggman.

- I get to remind myself that I've never drawn scat edits and posted them publicly on Twitter.

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic Adventure 2 #Sonic Battle #Shadow the Hedgehog #Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 #Sonic Rivals #Sonic and the Secret Rings #Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood #Sonic Unleashed #Sonic and the Black Knight #Sonic the Hedgehog 4 #Sonic SatAM #Sonic Underground #Sonic X #Sonic Boom #Archie Sonic #Sonic the Comic #IDW Sonic

[misssakurapetal28]

#Sabrina Raincomprix Deserves WAY Better...

You know...

I find it SO FUNNY how this fandom preaches about “peace and tolerance” or “let these bullies learn and grow” or “They are are just misunderstood!” when it comes to characters like Chloe and Lila. It doesn’t matter what they did or always do, people have faith in them no matter what. However, when it comes to Sabrina, ANOTHER mistreated and misunderstood girl (in my opinion), just because she’s no “important” or “one-dimensional” or “not developed enough”, no one bats an eye, no one doesn’t care, no one gives a shit, NO ONE SEES HER mistreatment and potential and completely turns their backs on her. Even when a small handful of people DO care, it’s suddenly “not that serious” because she’s not that important, it’s a kids show, or people will try to make it about Chloe in some way.

It makes me mad because...most of us have been bullied and mistreated in school. Some of us been manipulated, intimidated and belittled by people that we once loved, cared about or saw as our friends and I’m sure of it. Some of us, we were kids once and sometimes we did things that we didn’t want to do, but we DID do in fear that we would get bullied or have something be taken from us. Sometimes, we were misunderstood or wronged for things that could of been or should of been at least understandable. Sometimes, we did wrong things to keep toxic things or friendships.

Now, of course you can say that some of this COULD apply to Chloe and Lila too. It VERY likely and possible, but in my opinion this fits Sabrina’s situation a more than Chloe and Lila’s. Also, I would have been a lot more fine with this applying to Chloe and Lila IF Sabrina gotten the same amount of sympathy, empathy and compassion for that too. You see, I bet A LOT of people dealt MORE with people like Chloe and Lila in school. And I know at least 1 person AT LEAST saw people like Sabrina too. 

My point is...when I see all this passion, controversial opinions, constructive criticism and even hate when it comes to Chloe and Lila, people always say that “their children, let them grow and learn” or sayings like that all them time. They want to defend them, no matter what they do because “they had it hard”, “they’re relatable” or “because they’re children”. However, Sabrina??? It’s always the same kind of answers:

“She’s undeveloped” 

“She contributes nothing to the story”

“She knows what she’s doing but doesn’t care”

“She WANTS to do bad things”

“She’s spineless”

“She one-dimensional”

“Chloe is better than her”

“She’ll be terrible with a miraculous”

“She doesn’t feel sorry for what she does”

“She only uses Chloe’s friendship to benefit from being friends with a rich girl”

“She’s not important”

Like, even if ANY of that was true (which I admit it might be to a CERTAIN DEGREE), not only people don’t look at the subtext of the situation, but where are you guys compassion, sympathy and empathy for HER though??? As teens???? AS ADULTS????? Not Chloe, not Lila, SABRINA? Why does Chloe and Lila deserve 78 chances when you can’t even give Sabrina even 1!?!? It means she’s undeveloped, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have potential! She does bad and questionable things sure, but that’s what happens when you have bad influences in your life and no real responsible adults -___-. 

Is Sabrina competely innocent? Of course not! Sabrina is responsible for her own actions and she owes everyone SHE has personally hurt an apology, but I still believe she has a chance to gain confidence, grow a backbone and change for the good. I don’t think Sabrina is a bad kid, just misguided. Maybe she doesn’t deserve a miraculous at this point of time neither, but neither does Chloe. I’m so sick of the double standards when it comes to Sabrina and other bully characters in the show.

And you know what??? 

Even though I do feel sorry for Chloe to a degree, even though I DO stand of Chloe over Hawkmoth/Gabriel/her creator (Thomas) now, even though I DO think Chloe had potential to be great and developed, I really don’t like Chloe as a character. 

Never did. 

I don’t think she deserves a miraculous and I personally don’t think she deserves more attention or better in general than Sabrina. I’m not afraid to say it anymore. If you want to go after me for that, fine, but I don’t care anymore. I like Sabrina, I relate to her and I think she deserves MUCH better than the show and the fans give her. 

Regardless of you like or dislike Chloe, you can’t deny that she has shown time and time again that Sabrina isn’t truly her friend outside of what Sabrina can do for HER or if it boost her ego in someway. Sure, they might have their nice moments every now and then, but come on??? She basically admits to her mom that not only she’s using Sabrina (Queen Wasp), but she also has said that Sabrina would be NOTHING without her (Evillustrator). 

“BUT WAAAA! SHE CAN GROW!!!” 

And OK! I’ll give that to you! She CAN grow, but that does NOT mean that people don’t have the right to say anything about her behavior or be irritated/disappointed/angry when she does something wrong! YES, her actions do have UNDERSTANBLE REASONS, but they aren’t JUSTIFLIEABLE REASONS. It means it’s understandable why she’s this way (mom issues, absent mother, spoiled, her dad is a bad influence, fear of being bullied so she does it first etc), that doesn’t mean she gets to get off scot free and keep doing/acting the way she wants (the show won’t do anything about, so fans do, which is why I sometimes understand the Chloe hate). 

Also, what are the chances of ANYBODY (let alone Chloe) having any development at this point??? 

It really baffles and annoys me how much attention this fandom gives to these girls (Chloe and Lila) because of “redemption/reformation”, “what they’ve went through” or because “it’s much more interesting”, but then gives SO MUCH LESS attention to an very underrated character who can have just as much as a good redemption story as Chloe and Lila can. It’s even you like Chloe over Sabrina or you equality dislike both of them. I NEVER hear more than a handful of people liking Sabrina more than Chloe. 

Also, we barely know anything about Sabrina outside Chloe. How about we try to ask for some development for her? Some development? Some backstory? SOMETHING for Sabrina??? 

So basically the “let the children grow” argument only implies to characters that you like and are interested in apparently and you ignore their “followers/friends”, even though they themselves have potential and understandable reasons to THEIR actions too 🤷‍♀️ People only care about Sabrina when it comes to shipping or if it has anything to do with Chloe’s development, and it’s not fair.

Seriously, you have people still having faith in Chloe and Lila, who HAS arguably done more harm than Sabrina, with or without Hawkmoth’s influence, but then dislike Sabrina MORE for what? Just being someone’s sidekick because they don’t have a spine yet? Because she’s just simply bland or undeveloped? YES, Sabrina has done some messed up stuff too, but she NEVER did that stuff without Chloe specifically telling her to. And if she does seem mean? It’s just to blow smoke up Chloe’s chimney. 

I don’t think she does mean things because she’s a toxic and mean person, she does it for Chloe’s approval. Sabrina just has a twisted mindset on how friendship works. It doesn’t make it anymore right, but can you at least TRY to understand where Sabrina comes from instead of focusing on Chloe and Lila all the time???  God, as much as I do like it when people notice/don’t ignore/callout the bad writting in MLB, this fandom when it comes to Sabrina REALLY pisses me off...

And before you say “why are you so serious about a nothing character from a show for children????”

1). Why are YOU when it comes to Chloe and Lila???

2). If None of you are going to defend Sabrina, who will???

As for Lila, I’ve already said my reasons on why I don’t like her as a character/person neither in the past, but I’ll just make a separate post about her in the future. My point being in this post is that Sabrina really isn’t that bad like people make her out to be. At least not as worse as Chloe. I belive that both girls have the possibly of growing and changing for the better (now Lila is a different story, but I digress), but I just think Sabrina deserves more attention and love. In short:

#SabrinaRaincomprixDeservesBetter

P.S. I am looking forward to see her with the dog miraculous, but I know it’s probably not going to be good...

#sabrina raincomprix #Sabrina deserves better 2021 #Sabrina Deserves Better #sabrina raincomprix deserves better #sabrina #anti chloe bourgeois #anti chloe #anti lila rossi #ml salt #ml #mlb #miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #miraculous tales of ladybug and cat noir #pollen deserves better too #pollen deserves better #you can't change my mind #amethystqueen25 #amethystqueens25 #big rant #big mood #anti ml fandom #ml fandom critical

[whetstonefires]

Hi Whetstonefire. I have a question about the comic where Nightwing cheats on Starfire with Barbara: What happens directly after that? Does Starfire find out that Nightwing cheated on her? And, if so, how does she react? I've read online that (according to Marv Wolfman) Starfire is the opposite of everything Batman taught Nightwing to be and that Batman taught Nightwing to be repressed and cold. What did Nightwing contribute (emotionally) to the relationship between him and Starfire? (Cont.)

(Cont.) From what I can tell, from online, Nightwing was adamant about standards of mercy and monogamy - how do you think, if Starfire were to be written as her own character and not written around Nightwing and his emotional needs, she would handle and react to that? (This bit is an FYI for other readers: this is just speculation, not hate. Sorry about that.) Sorry about the questions! Have a nice day! 

Okay there are so many separate questions packed in here! I may miss some of them lol and I do not want to put in the hours it would take to produce an orderly response to all this, so this post is going to be a mess.

Initial query and important point: the cheating story was out of continuity. Like, literally, not just by ‘being rejected by the fanbase,’ it was just this weird retcon oneshot that seems to have been some sort of fuck-you to Nightwing or his fans or something. So no, it had no in-setting fallout lol. It, in more ways than most comics, didn't exactly happen.

It was just this weird thing where Dick hooks up with Babs before giving her a wedding invitation, which is both out of character for him in general and out of step with where he was leading up to the wedding--he was desperate to get married so they could have some Normal Stable Adulthood Happiness; the choice to recharacterize him as a fuckboy who regards it as a loss of freedom isn’t congruent, on much more than the level of principle.

As far as how Kori would feel about it, if she had learned...that is very hard to say. Apart from how it would require her to reinterpret everything about where their relationship stood at that point, the data is very unclear, and I don’t even have all of it. Gonna back up to cover some of the rest of the ask, get some context here.

So this actually brings up two of my biggest gripes with Wolfman’s NTT--weird Kori characterization and the weirdly negative interpretation of Batman as parent that backwashed heavily into other titles and influenced the character for the worse, in ways we're very much still dealing with today. 😩

The latter is pretty self-explanatory, though Wolfman’s take that the main thing Bruce taught Dick was repression does shed light on some writing choices and make others funnier. But Kori. Oh my lands.

So, item one, I wouldn't say that Kori is overall opposite Bruce, or even of his philosophy? There are just some very major points of opposition. She isn’t emotionally buttoned-down like at all, especially about positive feelings, although considered realistically with all the bullshit they’ve piled into her backstory she absolutely leans on repression to cope and stay positive, which makes her a lot like Dick actually.

To an extent, she was clearly written around foiling Dick’s Batman-derived traits in the same way that Robin was written to foil Batman, bright and glad and aerial. A Flamebird to his Nightwing in theme if not in name.

You could do some interesting stuff with that, and the bildungsroman aspects of this period of Dick’s life, like he has two roads forward in terms of how he’s going to define ‘adulthood’--does it necessarily require becoming more like his mentor-father, for good and ill, or can he make Kori in part a destination, as it were, and create an adult self that is derived from who he has always been as well as the man he’s modeled himself after?

To an extent I think this even was one of the things going on in ntt but like. Only a little bit.

(Given how much like Bruce Babs is in most of the ways Kori isn’t, especially once she’s Oracle, you could make a case for her as love interest being like. Symbolic of his not being in a rebellious phase? That gets weird and oedipal really fast tho lol.)

Okay stepping down one meta level lol, the thing about answering the 'what would kori' question here is that her character is deeply bound up in her culture, about which we are told and shown a great many contradictory things. Any attempt to read her as an independent character has to tackle not only the gender stuff you allude to and these inconsistencies, but how much of the sheer mess of her is rooted in racism.

'Fantastic' racism, technically, because Tamaraneans aren't real, but the 'taming the savage' narrative that kept surfacing between them and the language used in reference to it is just. The existing racism of presumably the writers, placed in Dick's mouth, and it's super gross. I hate it so much.

(I had a faint hope when they cast her for live action it was with a deliberate intent to directly tackle and better that history, but lollllllll nah. At least they didn’t double down in it tho! Can you imagine, with a black actress, in this day and age....)

So to predict and comprehend Kori, you have to make a lot of calls about Tamaran as a civilization. I like to slightly privilege stuff established earlier if there's no good reason not to, so while much is made over time of her inappropriate rage and the violence she was raised to normalize, I think what she says in her first appearance is good to keep in mind: in her culture, kindness is for friends and cruelty is for enemies. She doesn't understand why the Titans seem to have this backwards.

Kori is not a merciless person. She’s very empathetic, as a rule. With people she loves, she is self-destructively forgiving. That's not a trait only Dick benefits from--her family keeps betraying her in new exciting ways, and she keeps letting them.

Her arc of growing away from that habit is however greatly crippled by centering Dick in the narrative and by the awful 'civilizing' overtones that keep coming into it. When she comes back after the 1986 breakup, still married to Karras, she brings with her a commitment to doing things the Earth way--to eschew lethal force as more than a compromise with her friends’ values, but as a deliberate choice.

This deserved a lot more space and time than it got, and the fact that it didn’t get it is only somewhat due to her being subordinated to Dick and to general writing fail; a lot of it’s just the team book problems of everything happening to everybody all at once.

I mean, Dick’s journey later on to deciding he loves her enough to date her even though she’s married and it’s technically against his principles was packed into this absolutely heinous issue where he was inspired by a woman refusing to separate from her husband who’d just threatened to kill her and their kid with a knife, until being stopped by Nightwing. Because he’s apologizing for what he did.

This is his inspiration for accepting Kori’s marital status! It’s supposed to be heartwarming, as far as I can tell! Not heavyhanded messaging that this is a self-destructive terrible choice in which Kori will inevitably harm him somehow! This issue is pro ‘consensual open relationships under certain circumstances’ and also ‘giving abusers another chance’ as expressions of love. Welcome to the 80s ig.

(Notable is that the wife in this issue was black and the husband and son both looked very white, so it’s probably her stepkid and she probably wouldn’t get to keep him if they separated; this is not even vaguely treated as a factor.)

Point is, everyone was getting too little space to actually go through the amount of development they were getting, and it was clumsily handled; it’s not just her.

In an overlapping period Gar processed his issues with his adoptive father with whom he constantly fought and their shared trauma over the rest of their family (the Doom Patrol) having died violently not long ago via a batshit several-issue storyline where Mento went crazy, created supermutants, and abusively mind-controlled them to attack the Titans. It is literally all like this.

Back to the infidelity thing, now. So much to unpack. So like I mentioned above, their first big breakup, while partially driven by Dick’s existing conflicted feelings about their different ideas about things like ‘killing in battle’ and ‘her identity and loyalties being tied up with her home planet,’ is explicitly over different takes on monogamy.

When Dick is breaking up with her, Kori makes it clear she thinks it’s totally reasonable to have both a husband and a love, since Karras also has someone he loves and they’re both fine with it, but the story doesn't really explain how nonmonogamy works on Tamaran, or even if it's practiced outside the context of political marriage. They do do a sort of...soulbond fusion dance...thing, as part of the ceremony, so marriage is definitely serious business. There are so many levels of cultural difference that get poor to no development.

But to return to the weird ooc retcon cheating story: because of this context, no matter what her personal norms are, Dick specifically casually sleeping with someone else would be something for Kori to be mad about, because of the hypocrisy.

Then there’s the Mirage Incident, which I haven’t read through properly and which was very poorly handled by the writers. Kori is upset about Dick having slept with someone impersonating her and there’s a general vibe of this being treated by Dick’s social circle as unfaithfulness even though he was in fact sexually violated by deceit; it famously sucks.

We still don’t learn a lot here about Kori’s ideas about monogamy, from what I have seen, because her focus is mostly on feeling like Dick doesn’t care about her enough or in the right way since he couldn’t tell the difference. Which is an understandable feeling, even if it’s not an appropriate reaction to have at him at this time.

What Nightwing contributed emotionally........hm. This is a mess, honestly; he was all over the map, and not just because of having Brother Blood in his head. I cannot speak definitively on this, it’s too inconsistent.

For most of their relationship, Kori was the more intensely invested one, the one to initiate and the one who was shown at length to be excited to come home at the end of the day to their shared apartment because her boyfriend was there to see and talk to. If we set aside his more egregious white male bullshit, Dick was pretty emotionally available most of the time, though? They were cute.

Since they split up a lot of ink has been spilled making him less into her in retrospect, but he was pretty invested--leaving her coincided with mental breakdowns both times, and it wasn’t even mostly because she was doing his emotional processing for him, because she wasn’t, although it’s fair to say he often fell into using the relationship as an emotional crutch. Kori was definitely doing the same thing though so...it wasn’t the most balanced relationship in fiction history, but apart from slight codependency and the racism, it was decent enough.

She gets more evenhanded development than most superhero love interests, honestly, because she was costarring in a team book. She had her own storylines. She had other friends.

Mostly both of them just needed some space to finish growing up and stop being retraumatized long enough to process some of the existing trauma better, and I think they could have gone on being good for each other for a long time.

#long post #this did in fact take me about two hours #ask #a nonny mouse #dickkori #koriand'r #dick grayson #nightwing #hoc est meum #teen titans #new teen titans #wolfman and perez #sexism #racism #relationships #monogamy #drama #shipping #lol nonny if you're sorry why do it #do you mean sorry to inconvenience me? #do you mean 'sorry to activate your compulsive question answering?'

[ghoultyrant]

Craftworld Context stuff

I first got into 40k primarily via Dawn of War, the relevancy to this post being that I was initially not even aware Warhammer Fantasy was a thing at all. Furthermore, even when I did become aware of Warhammer Fantasy being a thing and in fact 40k is first and foremost Warhammer In Space, I wasn't terribly interested in digging into it, as the things I found most striking about 40k had no chance of being replicated in a more traditional fantasy context.

More recently, however, Total War: Warhammer caused me to become fairly significantly familiar with Warhammer Fantasy as a setting. (Among other points, the Total War framework made certain aspects of the setting really obvious from right off the bat, like that Warhammer Fantasy is very directly fantasticalizing the real world, including much of the geography paralleling reality and assorted political entities being Real Nation But Wacky Fantasy Version)

This has, in turn, caused me to see what the root cause of an element in 40k that's bothered me basically the whole time: the way Craftworld Eldar tend to be written by secondary and tertiary materials. (ie novels, video games, fanfic, etc; basically anything that isn't a Codex)

See, I've always seen people broadly describe Craftworld Eldar as High Elves In Space, in the same way they describe Orks as Orcs/Greenskins In Space, or Tyranids as Lizardmen In Space. (And Crossed With The Starship Troopers Bugs) Before I had relatively direct exposure to Warhammer Fantasy lore, this seemed reasonably natural and logical, and the handful of times I bothered to look up factoids about the High Elves this seemed to be born out, such as how High Elves and Craftworld Eldar both have much of their fighting force as essentially reservists rather than professional soldiers. This, in turn, made it difficult to pin down exactly why it bothered me that Craftworld Eldar tended to be written as, well, fairly close to High Elves. (Or more precisely as a very specific subset of High Elves, but that's a whole other thing)

With more direct, significant exposure to Warhammer Fantasy, it's become obvious to me that this is... more or less completely missing the point, in a manner that suggests to me that the majority of people writing Craftworld Eldar are either entirely unfamiliar with Warhammer Fantasy or are technically familiar with the relevant bits but completely failed to contextualize the implications of drawing these connections to Craftworld Eldar.

First of all, the Craftworld concept is, itself, Black Arks In Space. That's a Dark Elf-proprietary concept, note, not a High Elf one, and even more glaring is that Eldar Corsairs are a thing, using the same terminology as Black Ark Corsairs and associated with Craftworld Eldar. This is some strong meta-signaling right there that Craftworld Eldar aren't High Elves In Space at all, so I'm genuinely baffled why I've never seen it pointed out.

Second of all, Khaine. Playing Dawn of War and reading up on Eldar lore made him sound like the overall Eldar god of war, and when I saw references to him existing in Warhammer Fantasy as well they tended to also make it sound like he was the overall Elf god of war.

Um, no. Khaine is a god of murder. Like, that's not me going 'war is murder' or something, I mean that it's literally the case that Khaine is all about killing people in general. Killing in combat is an option, the one we see lore on most heavily, but that's because Warhammer Fantasy is a wargame, not because it's a particular focus of Khaine's.

Furthermore, he's one of the 'Cytharai'; in Warhammer Fantasy, Elven gods come in two sets, with the other being the Cadai. The Cadai are the Good Pantheon, worshipped by High Elves. The Cytharai are the Evil Pantheon, known to exist by High Elves but only openly worshipped by Dark Elves. (Also Wood Elves in later editions, but shhh)

Put another way, Khaine is an Elf Satan figure, literally an evil fiery god in charge of the underworld pantheon.

Warhammer 40k doesn't do anything to signal that its Khaine is particularly different from Fantasy's Khaine, either, and indeed explicitly retains major backstory moments of being a terrible person, like murdering a fellow god, blood eternally dripping from one hand as not-even-a-metaphor blood on his hands.

Which means Craftworld Eldar worshipping Khaine, using him as the basis of literally their entire warrior system, is a clear meta-signal that Craftworld Eldar approach war in a deeply concerning way, and is also consistent with the broader undertone of Craftworld Eldar codices that they are a people driven to desperation by their circumstances, which is to say they're doing terrible things because they feel they have no other choice.

This all makes blood sacrifice to summon Avatars of Khaine a pretty concerning thing to be part of Craftworld Eldar toolkit, but it gets even worse if you dig into the details. The 40k backstory for Avatars of Khaine is that back in the day Khaine got beat up so bad him and his sword -Widowmaker- exploded into a bazillion itty-bitty pieces, where a fragment is used as the basis of summoning an Avatar. Back in Warhammer Fantasy, Khaine's sword is an actual physical object within the setting that is credibly believed to be capable of destroying the world if drawn, and there's this whole thing where an Elf by the name of Aenarion wielded it for a bit back in the day so now his entire lineage is cursed for, apparently, eternity. So, uh, Craftworld Eldar periodically summon a literal murder god's avatar using, in part, his cursed sword of the apocalypse.

That's very metal, but it also makes it pretty clear Craftworld Eldar are not a good and gentle people who do their utmost to be moral or the like. They clearly have a distressing amount in common with Warhammer Fantasy's Dark Elves.

This kind of thing also puts a whole different spin on the Exodite Eldar really, really disliking Craftworld Eldar. I'd been given the impression, historically, that this was more like 'take your technology away from our Amish community'. Now I'm pretty sure it's more like 'The only reason we're not killing you Satan-worshippers on sight is because our people are already so few... but if you give me an excuse I'm getting my shotgun regardless.'

Notably, when you dig into the army lists themselves, the Craftworld Eldar-Dark Elf connection continues to exist. For example, Howling Banshees are basically Witch Elves In Space, in terms of female (-presenting, in 40k's case) melee berserkers worshipping Khaine. (Less blood-drinking and whatnot, admittedly) There's not a clearly equivalent unit on High Elf lists.

Third of all, an element of Craftworld Eldar that tends to be downplayed or ignored by secondary materials (Again, including fanfic) is that using Soulstones to run their war machines is considered to be an act of necromancy, basically calling the dead back from their slumber. Broadly speaking it makes sense to me this doesn't tend to get people villainizing Craftworld Eldar -it's viscerally less repellent than conventional necromancy, for starters- but Warhammer Fantasy is quite consistent that necromancy is Very Bad, and every time 40k deliberately invokes the comparison it's once again treated as Very Bad.

This is, of course, another example of Craftworld Eldar driven to terrible actions by how desperate they feel their situation is, which certainly sets a different tone than Dark Elves revelling in suffering for its own sake and all...

... but for one thing 'driven to desperation' is more a part of Dark Elf character than I usually see people acknowledge, with their lands being a miserable hellhole filled with monsters and not a lot of arable land and so on, among other issues.

More importantly, this ties fairly directly into my point about why I've long been frustrated by secondary materials depicting Craftworld Eldar: everything the codices tells us, explicitly and more implicitly via callbacks to Warhammer Fantasy, is that Craftworld Eldar are, as a collective people, driven to a dark edge by deep desperation, with an extra layer of miserable to the whole thing from the fact that they have to stoically control their emotions because if they vent about how much everything sucks this may literally get their soul eaten.

Which is thematically consistent with 40k as a whole! There's a reason 'grimdark' can be traced to 40k; it's supposed to be pretty widely a darker, more terrible place than Warhammer Fantasy.

Nonetheless, secondary materials are strangely prone to writing Craftworld Eldar as more like rich dilettantes, their lives secure and the most stressful thing they have to deal with being a feeling of aimlessness. Which. What?

Even when I’ve seen fanfic that hated Craftworld Eldar, they’ve stuck with Snooty Bored Dilettante Eldar!

It’s not like the bored dilettante angle makes for more interesting societies or characters...

#wh 40k #Craftworld Eldar

[gffa]

Always love your recs and appreciate the amount of time you have to put into them on top of all your normal, insanely detailed posts! I was wondering if you had any good starting places for getting into the non-film/video game/TV side of the fandom. Like what books are good? comics? There are so many!

Hi!  I’m glad you’re enjoying the fic recs!  There’s a ton out there to read, so if I can help point out some gems, I’m very glad to do so!With books and comics, a lot will depend on what you’re interested in (like my favorite era is the prequels, but I’ll read anything good, because I enjoy almost everything of SW), and you can pretty much pick up anything from the last five years or so and it’ll at least not be terrible!  Though, I have to admit, the comics have been phenomenal, while the books can’t quite reach the same heights for me.But my favorite places to start are usually:COMICS:

The 2015 Star Wars main comic title by Jason Aaron + the 2015 Darth Vader comic series by Kieron Gillen.  They’re meant to be read concurrently (at least for the first dozen issues or so) and they really kicked off an incredible era of SW comics.  The explore the time between ANH and ESB, getting into the characters’ heads and having some phenomenal moments.  Vader discovering the name of the pilot that blew up the Death Star is an iconic moment for a reason.

The 2017 Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith comic by Charles Soul, which is an intense and beautifully done look at the transition from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader in the aftermath of Revenge of the Sith and really goes hard on showing his sunken cost fallacy and how terrible his choices were that he could never admit to, that he’s absolutely a terrifying nightmare while also being entirely human and almost pitiable.

Kanan: The Last Padawan is only 12 issues, but it’s gorgeously drawn and adds so much to Kanan’s story and is great if you’re interested in seeing what the Jedi were like inside their own Temple a bit more.  We get to see Caleb Dume become a Padawan, we get some stellar Depa Billaba moments, and a lot of heartbreak as we see Order 66 through Caleb’s eyes, as well as Kanan figuring out his way in the galaxy after all that.

The Age of Republic series (I think there’s 8 or 9 in total?) by Jody Houser are really great.  They’re single issue stories, so don’t expect big complex plots, but the character moments in each one of them, including a lot of themes that echo from one issue to another, are absolutely stellar.

Obi-Wan & Anakin by Charles Soule, which is a stunningly beautiful comic (I HAVE NEVER SEEN A PRETTIER COMIC IN MY LIFE) and seems somewhat simple on the first read--Anakin intends to leave the Jedi Order, but goes on one last mission with Obi-Wan, then changes his mind--has a surprising amount of layers and details that you can read into it, making it one I’ve reread like three times now and I’ve loved it more each time.

The Poe Dameron comics by Charles Soule are absolutely incredible.  They’re the Poe character exploration for me, the one that really set the foundation imo, as well as they capture Poe’s character and Oscar Isaac’s portrayal of him brilliantly, making him absolutely charming to read.  I still think they’re the best sequels tie-in material yet, even when I love love love other stuff, too.

Shattered Empire by Greg Rucka is also a gorgeously illustrated comic and does a lot to explore what happened after the Empire fell and the aftermath and clean up/last days of the war and was just really solidly good.

BOOKS:

From a Certain Point of View by various authors is a series of short stories about the A New Hope characters that really give a lot of cool depths to them or are just funny little moments.  While it can be hit-or-miss, the ones I would recommend reading are “Master & Apprentice” (Qui-Gon POV), “Time of Death” (Obi-Wan POV), “There is Another” (Yoda POV), and “An Incident Report” (Motti, and it is the funniest thing I’ve ever read) as they provide some stellar character moments.

Bloodline by Claudia Gray is probably the best book for giving you a sense of how the sequel trilogy happened/what the politics of it are, and it’s a solidly fun Leia book and I think easily Gray’s best work for Star Wars.

Star Wars Propaganda by Pablo Hidalgo is an incredible read if you don’t mind that it’s sort of a reference book and sort of a proper novel, as it’s an in-universe reference book, which tells the story of the politics of the galaxy far, far away as shown through art history and its use for propaganda.  It’s an amazing overview of the bigger SW story and how one war flowed into the next and really nails how the governments’ actions (or inactions) lead to so much unrest.

I haven’t finished A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller, but I’ve heard nothing but good about this Kanan backstory (the early days of his and Hera’s first getting to really know each other/working together, as well as Kanan slowly starting to find himself and his path again, or at least think about doing so) that’s interspersed with flashbacks to his time as a Jedi Padawan.

Thrawn by Timothy Zahn is actually a really great book, it introduces the perfect character to be the Watson to Thrawn’s Holmes, where they balance each other really well, so it takes the edges off Thrawn’s more obnoxious behaviors, while also winding it all together with showing what it was like inside the Empire’s earlier days and how the characters all came to be in the places they were in Rebels.

I haven’t finished Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemp yet, but what I’ve read of it so far has been really good!  It’s an intense one (as would be expected of a Vader-heavy book) but also it has moments of showing the Twi’lek’s pain at all that’s been heaped on them from their point of view, and some really EXTRA AS FUCK moments from Vader, so I’m enjoying it a lot.

If you’re interested in the sequels, I really loved Phasma by Delilah S. Dawson and Cobalt Squadron by Elizabeth Wein, I thought they both did amazing jobs at showing the backstories for Phasma and Rose Tico respectively, that Phasma is utterly batshit Star Wars at its best, that Cobalt Squadron really gave me a ton of Rose and Tico Sisters feelings.

#fic recs #not really #but that's my tag! #winking-owl

[moltenhair]

You know, Cassandra has ALWAYS had tendencies to be violent and a desire to kill others even before she she became a villain. In “Rapunzel and the Great Tree” she threw Hector down a cliff in a fit of rage. She was willing to end a life right then and there. One could argue he attacked them (to protect the moonstone from being stolen from people just like Cassandra, haha) but even if somebody attacks you, regardless of their reasons, you should never try to take a life.

I will say... Yes absolutely she’s always had the CAPACITY for it. But even in those moments where she was ready to take a life, she did it in the name of self defense and protecting her friends. Other lives were in danger when she did those things in the past. She had to choose whose life was more important. Cass didn’t know Hector’s backstory or what damage the moonstone was capable of. She didn’t care. He was trying to kill Rapunzel and had to be stopped. Whatever HIS reasons were also he was also prepared to kill every single one of them without hesitation from the moment he saw them. Hector was no less violent than Cass and she had to make a choice any soldier would have to make. And that’s what Cass sees herself as. A soldier. 

Which is why I get so “UGGGHHH” over her behavior in season 3. Because it doubles down on all the bad things she was always capable of, but takes away anything that made those actions redeemable, relatable or understandable. Yes, she was always gung-ho over violence and was a pretty rude person in general... But never for NO REASON. I didn’t ENJOY it when she was a huge bully at times but at least previous seasons made an effort to give us insight into why she was acting that way. Season 3 magified all her negative traits and didn’t give enough of an explanation or motive to warrant that behavior and just... made her terrible. Yeah she was “hurting” but emotional hurt doesn’t warrant many murder attempts. Or destruction of an entire kingdom. Being abused as a child isn’t an excuse to hurt others. There is NO excuse. She didn’t even have a goal she was working towards. She was just being terrible to all of her friends for... nothing! There was no deep internal conflict that we were ever allowed to see. It was just her being a bad person and getting forgiven because “friendship”. 

After 2 seasons of having her actions make a certain amount of sense even if they weren’t always choices I agreed with. I always saw her capacity to become a villain because of her behavior as well. But she always struck me as the type where, if she DID make that change, she’d have a pretty damn good reason to do it before she ever made that choice. Or come up with a plan at some point. But there just.... wasn’t that for her in Season 3. It was just her bad behaviors and not of her cold but calculated rationale that she’s been known for. 

#negative #Anonymous

[soyouareandrewdobson]

The first comic: Maturity or rather the lack thereoff.

Something I commonly saw within the last decade was people arguing that animation has reached a new peak by the amount of quality in storywriting put into them and some even claiming cartoons have become more mature, particularly compared to shows of the 80s and 90s. Dobson too joined the trend and as such made this little comic in 2015 titled “Mature”, in which he argues that cartoons for children are more mature and handle serious subjects better than any media tagged with an r-rating or not following the format of animation.

  While I admit that the comic is not the most offensive and insulting thing Dobson has ever created when soapboxing about nerd/american culture, I do think “Mature”  actually in composes quite a good insight in how Dobson does not understand concepts of storytelling and overhypes the achievements and merits of children entertainment to a degree that is hurting the “cause”. Which greatly annoys me as a fan of storytelling and animation in general and paints Dobson as incompetent in the field of work (cartoonist, comic writer/artist) he tries to engage in. And I can bring this lack of understanding by Dobson down by just one simple question:

What exactly counts as a mature subject here?

 Dobson randomly accuses any form of fiction that is not a children’s cartoon or comic to have no idea how to approach a “mature” subject, but he can’t even give an example of what he defines by this term.

See, for me a mature subject is e.g. an social, emotional or political issue we as humans can correlate to in the real world. Either as a result of personal experience or a bigger picture in our history and culture (such as racism, poverty, existential dreed, personal/emotional growth, any form of oppression etc.) Something that does not only drive a story forward as a source of conflict or a character’s backstory/arc for the sake of entertainment, but may even make us think afterwards.

 And as much as I like cartoons, I do not think this is something children cartoons do most of the time.

 And before I get accused of thinking cartoons are only something for kids or that a thoughtful story can not be told via the medium of animation, let me put a few things into perspective.

Unlike Dobson, I do not have an educational background in animation. However, I grew up with a lot of cartoons, animated movies and comics from all over the world and thanks to the wonders of the internet read up here and there on the different ages of animation and certain tidbits in what went into the making of certain works of fiction and why they may have been a huge thing in the time periods they emerged in.

As such I know that the medium of animation can be used to not only create “child appropriate” content, but also movies like Barefoot Gen, Fritz the Cat, Felidae, Animal Farm and so on, which tackled themes of social issues, political worldviews and personal/historical tragedies.

 Then there is the fact, that depending on the culture, there are very different interpretations in what can be considered “child appropriate” in certain parts of the world and therefore what themes a cartoon may tackle. Like how in European children cartoons such as Alfred J. Quack there was a story arc resembling the rise of Adolf Hitler in power, to tell about the heroes of the show working in the underground against an obvious fascist regime. Or how in certain Japanese children shows the subject of death can be rather common, while in American cartoons just mentioning the word “die” seems a red flag to some studio executives. Lastly, a lot of early animation, (particularly western animation) did not even start off as something targeted primarily at children. Animation started off as a technique to tell a story through “moving pictures” and some of the first animated shorts ever had a huge fanbase of adults and children. “Snow White”, Disney’s first animated movie back in 1933 was a technical marvel at the time. A movie we nowadays mostly consider a children’s movie with a slightly dull story compared to other Disney outings, was back then a risk that earned Disney multiple Oscars and was appreciated more by adults than it was by children, despite being based on a fairy tale. A type of story mostly considered “appropriate” for kids.  

 What I am trying to say is, that I am aware of how not all children cartoons are the same and can vary in terms of “maturity”. Something I think Dobson can’t, because he also can’t see that there is a huge variety of “children” cartoons.

 Despite his background and claims to consider animation an art, Dobson has shown a huge lack of knowledge or admiration for shows/movies that do not fit into the specific mold of “western animation primarily targeted for children and airing on american television”.

And that is not a claim I make half-heartedly. I have done research on the guy, I know how he likes to brag when he considers he found a great cartoon or something interesting. So I find it telling that aside of nostalgia for certain 80s and 90s cartoons we all know, Dobson’s recommendations and taste in shows seems to be primarily focused on just the most recent stuff everybody else likes/a very small pool of rather generic shows. I am not saying he should be contrarian on principal and e.g. dislike Gravity Falls, but he lacks initiative to look out for new and old stuff himself.

I in fact remember when he asked twitter first if he should give Wander over Yonder, one of the best cartoons of the last decade, a chance, cause it seemed he was too chicken to have an opinion on his own.

Then again, weirdly enough, Dobson actually tends to be contrarian for the sake of it, till someone he respects or sucks up to tends to have a different opinion on a show/movie. For example, while he acts like Frozen is a great movie franchise and defends the second movie to the point he becomes anti-feministic when a woman has a different opinion than him on it, he actually gave the first movie a terrible review on deviantart back in 2014. Accusing it of “same face syndrome” and a shame to the name of Disney. Obviously that was also before the hashtag #GiveElsaaGirlfriend became popular and he went so far as to hint he thinks an incest ship with Anna was great. And Legend of Korra? According to first deviantart posts by him garbage. Which was an opinion swiftly changed the moment Korrasami became popular in the fandom by season 3.

 The point I want to make with this digression is, that there are a lot of past actions by him hinting on the fact that Dobson kinda despises animation, when it does not fit within a very narrow niche of things he likes. Further indicated by his disdain for “adult” animated shows or hostility towards foreign animation, except the occasional movie by Studio Ghibli for example.

 Because of this lack of a bigger picture, I do not think Dobson is aware how in terms of story, cartoons can heavily vary. And when it comes to mature subjects, you can’t really engage with them if you lack a story carrying them in turn. Let’s look again at the comic. What cartoon characters do you see in it, when Dobson talks about how he believes children cartoons “treat these (non-defined) mature subjects with FAR more respect than the hardest “dark, grim and gritty” stories”?

Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony, three main characters of Spongebob, Steven Universe, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Blossom from the Powerpuff Girls and Mickey Mouse. You want my opinion on them? None of them are from any cartoons tackling mature subjects in a huge manner.

 However, they are from great shows. (Well, everyone but Steven, but I explain that later.)

See, this is where putting cartoons into perspective within the vast history of animation, comes in handy. Cause looking at them it is undeniable that people put effort into these shows. Effort in the animation and the writing in order to create an entertaining product, decent enough that not only little kids can enjoy it as a mindless distraction, but even older people can find merit in it, thanks to characters with decent personality, good humor, world building and even an engaging story. But all of that doesn’t make these shows or any story necessarily tackle a “mature subject”. Sure, the latest incarnation of My little pony was not as saccharine as its predecessor but rather cartoony as a good 90s show, but that doesn’t mean the new version is the Schindler’s List of animation (excuse the hyperbole). Same for the other cartoons, with Dobson also not acknowledging the fact that Spongebob e.g. had quite some dips in quality over the years (and even made pretty awful jokes about serious subjects such as suicide) or that Steven Universe, while tending to tackle mature subjects for its story (like trauma, war, abuse, self esteem issues, racism, rape and homosexuality) has failed multiple times over its run (even back when this comic was made) to treat these subjects not just as plot and drama points, but also with enough respect within the narrative, to the point a lot of former fans of the show turned their back on it, cause they had enough of the issues they could relate to being simplified and resolved in a cookie cutter manner so Rebeca Sugar could tell a whimsical story about gay space rocks and forgiveness.

 Let us not even forget the fact, that while there is a huge number of cartoons with decent writing and value to them (and that those were not only created within the last 10 years or so), there is also just a lot of garbage out there that counts as “kids animation”. Cartoons and movies that were written with not a care in the world and at times outright more mean spirited as some of the stuff Dobson likely hates in life action. Are you telling me those toilet humor driven garbage piles of creativity are mature?

 The point I try to make is, Dobson’s GENERAL statement that kids cartoons tackle mature subjects better than other form of media, is factually wrong, because a lot of shows don’t even try to be mature in the first place. Which however does not mean, there aren’t attempts made at being mature or tackle a mature subject.

 Growing up with cartoons since the 90s, I saw quite a few cartoons once in a while having episodes with themes to them that were surprisingly “dark”, dramatic or related to issues I and other kids could also see and relate to in the real world. Bullying going out of control, eating disorders, school violence (even school shootings), dealing with the passing of a loved one, to name a few basic ones. Gargoyles and Hey Arnold were two very important cartoons for me in that regard, with Gargoyles showing me how dramatic a good action cartoon could be when compared to other action cartoons at the time (like Ninja Turtles) and Hey Arnold episodes like “Helga on the Couch” giving me a rather somber look into what “therapy” looks like closer to reality, while normally being a show with the slice of life adventures of a kid in the big city.

And I do highly appreciate that nowadays there are more cartoons doing ongoing storyarcs and as a result of actually having more drama to them, adding tension and character development to their plots. Things we did not quite have to the degree we have nowadays back then in the average show. But it is debatable if those things are equal to “mature subjects” such as racism, abuse or trauma. Cause at the end of the day, a lot of kids cartoons tend to only scratch the surface of those things in order to flesh out a plot, instead of making the plot about those issues. Which at times is even for the best if you ask me. Cause we should not forget, these shows and movies are made for kids. And because of their age, a lot of kids lack at times the knowledge and experience in life to properly understand the themes and subjects some people may try to convey with their work. Particularly when you want to tackle subjects such as trauma, abuse and war which lets be honest, a lot of people can’t even comprehend in their complexity as adults. So how are kids supposed to comprehend them? One way, in my opinion, is by simplifying them and turning them into part of a narrative instead of the main focus of the narrative. But that in itself doesn’t always work and can have negative consequences in multiple ways. For example by making the story suddenly non engaging, delivering the subject in such a manner that people can get the wrong message of what you are trying to say or (at worst) simplifying it to such a degree, it becomes outright offensive to others.

A good example that comes to my mind for that would be how Captain Planet back in the 90s tried to tackle the subject of AIDS in one episode. On one hand, considering how the disease was a big deal back then but no one openly talked about it, you kinda have to give credit to Captain Planet to tackle it. On the other hand, is a subject such as a deadly disease that back then was barely researched and killed millions, really something you want to tackle on an overly preachy (but considering whose company produced it, also very hypocritical) kids show, where most of the time the solution to a problem was not even grounded in reality? And spoilers, the episode treated AIDS not even as the big deal it was, but as something the villain would exploit to spread a rumor on the ill kid, because that somehow equaled a chance to pollute the world more. Not really mature, if you ask me.

 What all of this ranting is boiling down to, is that Dobson failed to make a case for how kids animation is able to tackle mature subjects, by not putting his opinion in the bigger context of what animation is/can be and what he means by the term “mature theme”. All he did was just indirectly soapbox that he thinks every other form of media is incapable of being about a serious issue, in doing so also insulting the art of storytelling in itself by disregarding anything not expressed in funny pictures specifically made for children or manchildren on tumblr who want to act they are the big boys, cause a cartoon horse made them feel sad.

He did so by making a very weak argument, not being able to present it in a manner that was hard to debunk and by drawing a comic in which everything looks surprisingly lifeless and like the least amount of quality and effort (things I argued can make a great cartoon) was put into it.

 Which ironically, is the total opposite, of being mature.

And lastly, can’t believe I have to say that, but Dobson, the Pokemon’s name is Butterfree, not Butterfry. Butterfry is what you get when you make a statue of a Futurama character made out of something you put on your bread.

#comic #my little pony #adobsonartworks #maturity #western animation #steven universe #syac

[kyndaris]

“If I Ever Were to Lose You...”

As a huge fan of Naughty Dog, it should come as no surprise that I bought The Last of Us Part II on day one. It mattered not that the plot had been leaked a month or so ago. Nor did I care how divisive the game was among the gaming community (honestly, I’m not sure what the exact reason is for the vitriol. The reasons are numerous, ranging from the fact that many believes Naughty Dog was pushing an agenda - if you played the Left Behind DLC, you would have known that Ellie was gay - or that Abby was not painted as a moustache-twirling villain). I loved the first game and I knew that I would appreciate the morally grey narrative that The Last of Us Part II promised. So, with the work day over, I journeyed once again through a post-apocalyptic United States of America.

The Last of Us Part II begins with Joel returning to the town of Jackson. After a fraught conversation with his brother, Tommy, about what had happened at the end of the first game, he brings back a peace offering for Ellie: a guitar. From there, the game jumps forward in time by five years with Ellie waking up late and gently teased by her friend Jesse as they prepared for the day ahead.

I quite liked the first few moments of the game as I took in Jackson. It reminded me of the old west, what with a saloon, blacksmith and horses. But it also painted a more positive picture of the apocalypse, with children playing in the snow and building snowmen. Jackson was a flourishing community. Yes, it had its issues with Infected roving around the countryside, but there was a sense of camaraderie that the first game lacked.

It wasn’t long, however that the game switched to an unknown character: Abby. She had made her way down to Jackson with a group of her friends. It wasn’t made entirely clear what her objective was, initially, but it was revealed in her conversations with Owen that she was looking for someone.

The first part of the game played well - jumping from Ellie to Abby and back again during the course of the day. It all culminated when Abby runs into Joel and Tommy (stationed at the ski lodge) as she tries to dodge a horde of Infected. Joel and Tommy save her, but are too far away to make it to Jackson. Abby offers them shelter in the mansion that she is staying at with her friends. But once within, it is revealed that the person that Abby and her friends were searching for was Joel and that they were seeking revenge for what happened to the head surgeon that was killed at the end of The Last of Us. 

As Joel is being brutally tortured, Ellie learns that both Joel and Tommy have not checked in. With Dina and Jesse, she goes in search for them. Finally, she stumbles upon the mansion that Abby and her friends are residing in. Before she can rescue Joel, she is wrestled to the ground and witnesses Abby smashing Joel’s head in with a golf club -  leaving Ellie devastated and suffering from PTSD.

Thus, begins her quest for revenge as she heads to Seattle.

The initial moments of the game made it very easy to hate Abby. After all, most of us that picked up the title had played through the original and felt a tight connection with Joel and Ellie. While their actions throughout the first game bordered on morally questionable, they were the protagonists and who the players were able to control. In the world of the post-apocalypse with fungus zombies, it made a certain amount of sense that it was a dog-eat-dog world out in the wilderness. With Abby killing Joel, however, it felt like a line was crossed - making it very easy to slip into Ellie’s mindset of seeking revenge for the loss of her father-figure.

After Ellie arrives in Seattle, finding Abby was no easy task. With the Seraphites and the WLF roaming the streets, Ellie was hard-pressed to find a non-violent solution. Particularly when many of the WLF and Seraphites were of the ‘shoot first, ask questions’ later mentality when it came to trespassers. It wasn’t long before Ellie started tracking down Tommy and the members of Abby’s party. But after an encounter at the Seattle Aquarium, Ellie decided to abandon her quest due to Dina’s declining health. As Ellie and her team prepared to go home, Abby manages to track them down at the theatre that they were staying in and ambushes them.

It was here that many players felt dismayed as the game jumped back again to the start of the three days in Seattle to explain Abby’s side of the story. Through flashbacks, the game revealed that her father was the head-surgeon that was killed by Joel. Years afterwards, Abby continued to suffer nightmares from what had happened. Seeing her story also shed light on how many of her team were suffering from guilt after what had happened in Jackson. This was particularly evident in Abby’s interactions with Mel.

Also, her relationship with Owen was both endearing and troubling. The flashbacks helped paint a picture of their relationship and the troubles that came from Abby’s devotion to training and Owen’s more hesitant approach to working with the WLF. Let’s also not forget how that at the end of Seattle Day One, Abby then slept again with her ex-lover. I mean really?  His current girlfriend is pregnant and the two you broke up more than a year ago. At least Abby was able to respect Mel’s wishes and decline Owen’s offer of going to Santa Barbara together.

I liked how it built up a complicated backstory for Abby and helped emphasise that she was not a cut-out copy of the mindless AI enemies that I often faced. It also helped me understand more of the WLF, though I found their compound in one of the old stadiums Seattle less impressive than the city that was built in Jackson.

Her quest to help her friend and then, two young Seraphites also placed in perspective that the world of The Last of Us carried very much an ‘us versus them’ mentality. Considering the fact that I was watching The 100 while playing only cemented the fact that everyone was looking out for ‘their people’ and screw everyone else. And while Yara and Lev helped break some of the prejudice Abby held against the Seraphites, there was also a sense that she was only helping them to alleviate the guilt that she had for her previous actions.

But after discovering the bodies of Owen and Mel, her anger resurfaces and she decides to hunt down those responsible. The fight with Ellie was difficult. Mostly because these were two young women who had many similarities and both were filled with hatred and loathing for the other. In the end, Abby won their first encounter and would have likely killed both Ellie and Dina had not Lev stepped in.

By the time the ending rolled around, however, it was easy to see how much Abby had changed as a prisoner of the Rattlers. She had lost weight and her hair was now a lot shorter than it had been. The confidence she had during the ten or so hours I played as her was gone. Instead, she seemed exhausted. It wasn’t much of a fight as an ongoing struggle between committing to the cycle of hatred or breaking away. After nearly successfully drowning Abby, Ellie decides to let both her and Lev go.

Some might have thought that Ellie forgave Abby for what she did to Joel. I don’t. Rather, it seemed that Ellie came to the conclusion that taking an eye for an eye was not worth it. Particularly after she gave up the safe and happy lifestyle of living with Dina and JJ. This was also true for Abby. In fact, she did not want to fight and only did so when Ellie threatened to hurt Lev. Even then, the battle was half-hearted at best with Abby throwing haymakers that were far too easy to dodge.

The narrative of The Last of Us Part II is a poignant study into the human condition, hidden beneath a traditional tale of revenge. Like The Count of Monte Cristo, which was referenced in dialogue in Abby’s story, it demonstrates the devastating consequences of a person’s need to right the wrongs that were inflicted on the people involved. What many seemed to misunderstand about the game was the fact that there were no ‘good sides’ or ‘bad sides.’ Abby is not the monster that she was first portrayed as. Nor is Ellie like the heroines in the comics she liked to read and the trading cards she collected. 

They are all people, looking to survive. And that, perhaps, is what I liked about The Last of Us Part II. 

What I also liked about The Last of Part II was the setting. Having visited Seattle in the past, I was excited to see the aquarium - which I visited four years ago. While it didn’t seem to match up exactly with my memories of the place, I still found it exciting to recognise some of the landmarks - such as the Ferris Wheel.

Then there were the flashbacks to simpler times. I loved exploring the Natural History Museum of Wyoming and climbing atop the replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Ellie’s enthusiasm about astronauts also proved to be incredibly touching as she divulged everything she knew to Joel. 

And though some might consider that Naughty Dog was pushing an agenda by including Lev as a transgender male, I didn’t mind. In fact, it seemed very refreshing that people referred to Lev with the correct pronouns. Even if they were terrible slavers with Infected chained up as pets.

The gameplay also helped to heighten many aspects of the story-telling. This was particularly evident when it came to Abby and her fear of heights. I was fascinated at how just by looking down from a towering structure, Abby would begin to breathe more heavily as her fear took hold.

Other than that, the combat systems were reminiscent of the first game. Stealth was key to surviving, although I much preferred controlling Ellie when it came to fighting the Infected. Mostly because of her unbreakable knife and the fact that she was able to craft Molotov cocktails. When playing as Abby, however, I was much more aggressive.

Overall, The Last of Us Part II wove an interesting narrative of revenge, justice and forgiveness. It might not have been what many fans wanted, but it was what we got. In our current times, it’s easy for people to construct a dichotomy between two opposing forces, but in life, that is hardly ever the case. While Naughty Dog did not break the mould when it came to the combat, it was still serviceable. The Last of Us Part II was fraught with moments of terror as I was being chased by Infected, but managed to soothe them with the humanising aspects of the characters. I suppose that was what made the game for me. The character development and the ability to explore a ravaged world while learning about the people that lived in it.

Now let’s just hope that COVID-19 won’t have the nasty side-effect of making all those that contracted it zombies.

On a side note: why was Abby so swole? I mean, there was nothing wrong with it, but I found myself distracted by her biceps and triceps.

#the last of us part 2 #video games

[howtofightwrite]

Q&A: Welcome to Writing

my imagination (when it works) tends to conjure up scenes fully formed and devoid of context, and trying to put them to words – let alone make a story out of them – is really tough. it’s like i’m trying to write a movie that’s already been filmed and i’ve only seen bits and pieces of it.               

Welcome to writing.

I’m not going to say this is what writing is like for everyone, but it is for most people. At the very least, your experience is true for me. I see my stories in scenes filmed in my head and patchwork them together into a narrative after lengthy consideration. Plots come together in fits and starts, and often change. What I envision in my head rarely ends up on the page, often I get something different than what I intended. Learning not to be disappointed by that was a process, and something I still struggle with. Learning how to bring what I imagined to life for others to enjoy was also a process, one I’ve worked at for a very long time.

What most people won’t tell you about writing is that it’s a skill. Anyone can write, anyone can learn how to write, but the good storytellers are those who’ve worked very hard. Developing any skill takes time, it takes practice. You’ll fall down a lot. You’ll face disappointment. You’ll fail. This is true of every novelist and every book you pick up. They’ve all failed at certain points in their lives. They all felt they were terrible. They all wanted to tear their hair out over their characters, their plots, their descriptions, their backstory, their setting not working quite the way it was supposed to. The only difference between a success and a failure is the willingness to pick yourself up and try again.

There’s a great quote from the manga Black Clover, which is a sentiment that’s been paraphrased many different ways but one I think is important to remember when you’re getting down on yourself.

“Being weak is nothing to be ashamed of. Staying weak is,” Fuegoleon Vermillion tells Noelle.

What Fuegoleon means is choosing self-pity over self-improvement is weakness, but there is nothing weak about a person who is trying to improve. They may be struggling, they may not be where they want to be yet, the skills they want to acquire may not come easily, but they aren’t weak.

You may have difficulty crafting characters, context, and plot for the sequences you imagine right now but it’ll get easier and easier if you keep working at it. The only way to improve is through practice. Devote yourself to writing for a certain period every day, or every few days. I personally really like Terry Pratchett’s 400 words a day rule. (You can set any metric you like.) The 400 is the right amount for me that is easy to reach, and if I surpass it? Great. If I don’t, well? I got some writing done. Sometimes, I have to take breaks to work on other projects when I’ve exhausted myself but, in between the point I stop working on one book and start on another, I’m still writing. I’m keeping my skills sharp, and through working with a different narrative may come around the piece I need to move forward with the other one. Following this rule, I’ve written over 60,000 words so far this year. I wrote over 200,000 last year in for various fictional projects, not counting the work I did for this blog. I write a lot, and I follow the basic tenants set down by Ernie Reyes’ Black Belt Code. The Code felt silly when I recited it at thirteen, but means a lot now as a reference point. There are ten steps, but the first five are the only ones I remember.

Set a goal.

Take action.

Pay attention to detail.

Practice, Practice, Practice.

Change if it’s not working.

Rinse, lather, repeat. These steps will eventually lead to mastery.

There are going to be plenty of times where the idea you have isn’t going to work or will require change. You’ll go back to the drawing board multiple times. You’ll realize you don’t have the skills needed either in description, or dialogue, or character building to craft what you want; which means you need to go out and acquire those skills. Then, come back and try again.

Identify your weaknesses. Study works by those whose writing is strong where yours is weak, figure out the techniques they used and try applying them to your own work. You can turn anywhere for this, so don’t let people fool you into thinking it can only be fictional novels. You can learn a lot about world building from strategy games, from pencil and paper RPGs, from video games, history, sociology, political science, and plenty other sources. You can study television and film for to learn about different sorts of dialogue beats, episodic structure, learning how to describe human interaction and facial expressions. You can people watch, then experiment with conversations you heard later. In order to improve my skills writing dialogue, I used to listen to video game dialogue snippets on YouTube over and over and over. I could’ve read a transcript of the dialogue, but I wanted to familiarize myself with the tone, cadence, and vocal patterns of the actors in order to translate that into my writing. So the character sounded like the character, even when their dialogue was read. I do this even now where I’ll pick a film or television show with a character I like to put on as background noise so I can get into the right frame of mind for what I’m writing. There are plenty of writers who do this with music, I have whole libraries and playlists for different characters.

If you don’t know how to do something then work on learning. A large part of writing is taking what you see and what you know and applying it into a specific format. Nothing is off limits, everything is a reference for you. You want to work on character development? You can read lots of books with characters you like, paying attention to how they changed. You can also then go read breakdowns and character analyses to see what others took from the same material. There’s so much information freely available today, many barriers to what was once secret knowledge have been removed. You just have to start taking advantage of your local library and your internet connection.

To be a writer is to be a lifelong student, a jack of all trades, knowledgeable about many things but a master of none. If you want to write myths, epics, and mythic characters then you should be reading myths but I also recommend reading Joseph Campbell. I don’t just mean A Hero With A Thousand Faces and patterning your narrative on “The Hero’s Journey”, but understanding how myths worked, what they meant to the cultures of the people who created them, and the resonant narrative themes which are found in many cultures worldwide.

There’s copying and there’s understanding, copying can bridge into understanding but only if you take the time to really evaluate why a specific narrative technique works the way it does. Learning how something works gives you the freedom to apply it how you want to your own narrative instead of trying to force fit someone else’s vision into your own. This is how you can build your work, your own vision while looking to others for guidance and advice.

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Give yourself permission to suck.

Remember, everything you read is the work of months, often years. You don’t see all the author’s failures, their previous bad writing, when they sucked, their points of depression, and (in some cases) their drug fueled benders. You don’t see the endless edits, the previous drafts, the subplots begun and abandoned. You don’t see where the characters began in the finished product, just where they ended up. You don’t see their previous attempts. You might be reading their latest work written in their late fifties rather than the one they wrote in their mid-twenties, early thirties. You’re probably not reading the works they produced at ten years old.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to write and write and write until you start writing well. Physical exercise is like that too. You keep at it until something clicks, you get over the hump, you adjust and it gets easier. Do the best you can right now. Work on surpassing those limits. Once you get over the hump, once it gets easier and you’ve gotten comfortable, set your next goal and work passing those limits. It may feel impossible at times, the mountain insurmountable. When you’re getting down on yourself, you can always go back and read what you wrote in the past. You’ll see where you improved, and realize you weren’t nearly as terrible as you thought.

As Fuegoleon Vermillion said, “Being weak is nothing to be ashamed of. Staying weak is.”

Overcoming adversity is about building character and, when it comes to life getting you down, not taking “no” for an answer. It takes courage to face yourself, and acknowledge you’ve got flaws. Review your failure. Acknowledge your strengths, identify your weaknesses, and work on turning those weaknesses into your strength. The non-dominant hand/side is the most technically proficient in martial arts because you struggle when learning to control it. While the power hand, the dominant hand, is important, the non-dominant hand does the technical things.

You haven’t failed until you’ve truly given up. There’s no better time than now to start building your foundation.

-Michi

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Q&A: Welcome to Writing was originally published on How to Fight Write.

#Michi is an English Major #writing advice #writing reference #writing tips