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kitsunefyuu · 2 months

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I got in an argument with two bkdk shippers AT THE SAME TIME on a thread on twitter and it was just.... DELUSINAL

Sorry if this bothers you, I just need to share this with someone else cuz I'm so shocked after that.... If you don't want to post this then don't.

I thought that I knew how they can be but having a direct confrontation made left me literally SHOCKED because I've never encountered & talked with people so onto something to the point that they misunderstand what they read with their own eyes.

They claimed that Bakugo and Izuku's character developement only happeneds when they are together wich is just SO WRONG. For Bakugo you could argue that it is like that because he learns to calm down and accept other ppl but with Izuku it is clear as hell that it's not the case. Take vigilante deku arc as an exampre, take those last chapters as an example of Izuku's developement that is not done alongside Bakugo's.

But what actually shocked me the most was the "Bakugo saw All Might's vestige so he must be inside ofa" but it didn't go in the direction you might think it went.

Instead of saying that he still has ofa embers left or something the guy who started the thread with their bkdk ramblings said that it was confirmed by Hori that Bakugo has no embers left and that the reason why he can join the vestige realm is because his "feeligs of love" broke the rules of ofa. Wdym broke the rules of ofa you ask? Well he was bringing up the panel in which it was explained Afo's plan to steal ofa by using Tomuras hatred. Yeah. That is how Bkg "broke" ofa's rules. Bc if Afo is "enhanced" by hatred, whatever this means, it has NEVER happened nor implied, then ofa's rule for new users to be passed on/someone to exist in the realm can be affected by love. This was never even implied to be able to happen. It's just bullshit. HE AIN'T COMING BACK THIS ARC LET HIM STAY PASSED OUT WHAT DO U HAVE WITH HIM AND LET IZUKU HAVE CHARACTER DEVELOPEMENT WITH TENKO

I SHOULD'VE SAID THIS TO THEM BUT I DIDN'T CUZ I COULDN'T CONTINUE WRITING TO TWO FRIKIN ANNOYING, DELULU PPL AT THE SAME TIME.

They ended up telling me that I didn't read the manga. Yeah, sure, I didn't read.

Oh and the guy that rambled about bkdk had 'proshipper' in his bio so, yeah, he was already disgusting.

And it seems that the other bkdk's also think the same delusions bc this is what I found on another unrelated post: "Soooo Izuku going to share Explosion Quirk with Kacchan. This really have sense, he losing every Quirk he have but Kacchan went to OFA alive, since Deku will not lose OFA but only OFA quirk he can share Explosion Quirk since Kacchan break OFA rules."

Frickin delusional

Sorry if I bothered you.

And this is why I just avoid talking to BkDk shippers or interacting with anyone on twitter in general. Sorry twitter users I know you need to rely on it but I draw the line at interacting with insane people. You should just block them there no reason to debate them.

On another note, Proshipper was originally meant to just say for shipping. As in leave people alone and let them ship, it other people who turned it into problematic ship. Just wanted to clear that up since it feels like Anti's have took something meant to be about being inclusive into something disgusting, and people with bad intentions ran with it. It sad.

Now back to BkDk, don't worry most of these delusional people aren't going to stay long. With how shallow and delusional their love for the series is they will eventually run out of steam once the series in. That's my hope anyway, love or hate the DFO theory but at the least the people in the fandom are actually talking about the plot and story.

While BkDk are only hyperfocused on their ship to the point of obsession. Ignoring everything that contradicts it like you can enjoy a ship and not be insane about it. I like TdDk but you don't see me trying to twist canon into something unrecognizable for it. As I know it not end game nor is romance even important.

It's a shonen manga first. Romance is not it main goal or purpose, again it's twitter. Just ignore them or block them. They aren't worth your time at ALL, your mental health will thank you for it.

#anti bkdk #Anti bakudeku #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #yoly's talks #waywardmongergoopzine

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pedropascalunofficial · 7 months

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STORY TIME - THE FANDOM STAIN

My response to THIS post from stainsofpascal/thesweetestdecline earlier today

@thesweetestdecline

I am going to number these since you’re going to get tired.

1. FAKE IG ACCOUNT

You said I made a fake account in your name on IG? No. That fake stainsofpascal account isn't me. I'm in Ireland. We don't have Threads in Europe. And a VPN can't get around that. Please check your receipts before wasting all of our time with this bullshit narrative you're trying to deflect with.

2. LONG POSTS

You complained that my posts are long. That's because your bullshit is prolific. I don’t mess around. I like to give detailed accounts of what’s happening with receipts to back it up so ppl can clearly see what's going on in the fandom they're now ashamed to be part of. It's also to prevent ppl like you from deflecting by saying your accusers are "crazy" or "obsessed" with you. The receipts don't lie even though you’d like ppl to believe they do.

3. “BOT ATTACK” ON IG

You accused me of attacking you on IG? No. I haven’t done shit on IG. I haven’t attacked your stainsofpascal or thesweetestdecline accounts. You realise I’m just the loudest of many, many ppl who wonder why you're in the fandom?! Getting you suspended would only feed your need to be seen as an underdog. I’d rather watch all this play out as ppl wake up to your clout chasing. It's not me or my friends who will be your downfall. You'll manage that just fine by continuing your bullshit.

4. FOLLOWER COUNT ANOMALIES

You’re gas. Always playing the victim to deflect from your own misdeeds. Are you ever going to explain any of the unusual increases in follows or would you like us all to ignore the fact you can get 400 in a matter of hours and drop 500 the next day? Should we believe your version of accounts because you're...... an upstanding member of this community? Stop trying to compare your jumps in followers on your stainsofpascal IG account with other ppls. Your account numbers go up and down faster than a whores knickers on Paddy’s Day in Times Square. No one else has this but you and your dodgy minions who hid their dodgy numbers in a recent attempt to hide their ratios.

5. COME CLEAN

What have I done in this fandom? I'll admit it (again). I bought Pedro’s white pages and socials info via a website. That was stupid. I regret doing it. What was really stupid was that I shared some of it thinking it was for a laugh and your mate, (let's call her Ms Peacock) used it to trade with ppl across the fandom to gain clout and to gain more information about Pedro. I've tried to make amends but it's far too late as it snowballed into much bigger information getting traded. So to attempt to make amends, I decided to get closer to the psychos and report back. Shitty, I know, but at least the right ppl know about the stalking bullshit and Pedro can protect himself better.

6. MS PEACOCK AND STALKER REDDIT

After sharing his old info with you and Ms Peacock, I realised neither of you were looking into Pedro's old info just out of curiosity. You were tracking him and his friends around like they’re characters in a story. It’s my bad for not noticing the crazy when it was staring me in the face. I shared info which was traded from person to person in exchange for info that has been used to help Ms Peacock not just stalk Pedro online but get physically closer to him. First, driving past his old house and now, three years later, she’s living "#twoblocksaway" from his gym according to a recent post. Zero shame.

I shouldn't be surprised since she used to frequent his actual neighbourhood even though it was a three hour round trip from her town. Before all that, she told us she used his personal email for a project where a group of us had raised money to adopt an elephant for his birthday. I never did get the info on the elephant since she dipped on the group chat after getting what she wanted. Ms Peacock traded info some of us had given her with others in turn for more info and clout. Just like a fandom Gollum. We didn’t realise that stuff we shared was being traded so it could be added to in order to feed her need to feel near him and grow her influence here. You’ve been part of supporting that behaviour too. When Ms Peacock asked you to find out where Pedro was one day, you went straight to the airline staff and lied about possibly being on the flight in an attempt to get the flight details. You ran right back and gave her what you had. I hope you realise we’ve all been played. Some of us learned our lesson and tried to be better but you stayed with her and you guys took it to another level. When you ran out of info, you created a stalker reddit where you share info you gather through lies and deceit with some real psychos in the fandom. I hadn't realised what I fed into until I saw the levels you guys cranked it up to. Now I see what a bit of info in the wrong hands can snowball into. I have a lot of regret about that. (I also have receipts)

Do you regret being part of that? Have you even stopped tracking him?

7. CHASING CLOUT

Some of us did some of the stuff you continue to do but we woke up and realised this shit isn't a game. YOU and your shitty friends levelled up and are fucking with ppls lives. You treat him like shit for clout and not because you want him to be a successful human being. You need to grow up and admit that to yourself. Impossible though right?! Coz then you might lose clout. That is why you're here right?!

If it's not, then why?

TO CREATE COMMUNITY?

I've seen screenshots of your IG posts and what type of community you're cultivating in your comments. Ppl who shit on Pedro's career, his sexuality, his physical appearance, and you've collected a fine assortment of fandom psychos all sharing your posts. You feed them with likes even when their comments are hate filled. Ppl have noticed.

TO STALK PEDROS FRIENDS?

You've posted about contacting Pedro's friends through social media. Going so far as to add trackers to your Tumblr and watch their online status on Instagram. (I’ve got receipts)

TO INTERFERE PEDROS FRIENDS?

You’ve admitted reaching out to Pedro’s old friends. They’re said they’ve unknowingly given information to stalkers they've had to add extra layers of security to their social media. They aren’t there to be used as “sources” during playtime. (I’ve got receipts)

TO STALK PEDRO?

You guys contact his friends, hotel and airline staff for more info on his whereabouts. (I’ve got receipts) If that's not stalking then what do you call it?

TO SUPPORT PEDRO?

Pedro is the punchline of your account. You encourage ppl to drag him by liking their hate filled comments. What’s that about? It would be cute if you weren’t also stalking him but publicly negging the fuck out of you’re victim is a bit tasteless, no?

8. OBSESSED

You say I'm "obsessed" with you and you've "done nothing to my friends"? No, try, a lot of other ppl in the fandom and I are sick of your holier than thou act when we’ve seen you abuse and attack ppl competing accounts who did nothing to you. You can't fuck up ppls lives and expect to skip off into the sunset. You do shitty things, refuse to acknowledge them and continue to be the best example of what's wrong with this fandom and why it has the reputation it does.

9. WHY DO I "COME FOR YOU"?

I challenge you because you came at others first and like magic, shit hit the fan for them.

Early on you were copying Aude’s style of posting. It's undeniable that your posts were very similar. No one really cared but ppl talked about it in forums and someone sent an anon to @pedrohub who decided to post it for some reason🤔. You decided to attack her in a reblog and accuse her "friends" of sending poorly spelled hate. Then you gaslight her all because she had....stopped liking your posts as much as before. Like wtf?

Then you blamed Arte for hateful anons you were getting. You said it was her because she had blocked you. You said it was definitely she because she's from Ohio (btw Arte doesn’t talk about being from Ohio so how did you know that?), ignoring the fact another fan is from Ohio and is well known in the fandom to send vicious hateful anons (let's call her Wendys License-Plates Girl). You didn't like Artes reason for disliking you and your account. She blocked you so she just didn’t have to see you. She had never said anything bad about you at that point. You produced screenshots of conversations which were had after you accused her but you ran with them as your "evidence" that she had it out for you in dms and was directing a campaign of hate against you. When nothing came of that, you then blamed her for getting you blocked by Sebastiano Mauri because you.....liked her dog pic? Again wtf. There's a trend brewing here.

You created these monsters in your head and you took your anger out on unsuspecting fan accounts. Meanwhile, you were posting shit ppl just weren't feeling and stalking SM in dms. You were tracking him and baiting him to speak to you so you could see his activity tracker in IG. I was the one who got you blocked for your fucking stalker bullshit coz you bragged about it.

You blamed Arte and Aude for bullshit you made up in your paranoid mind. You were told they were innocent by the person you suspectdd of ratting you out but you chose to doggedly go after both of THEM AND NOT ME. Talking shit in dms with whoever would listen. Spinning your usual holier than thou victim routine.

Now, let’s see….

Who has magically lost their account – pascalisfrenchpunk

Who has magically received a death threat – artedepascal (also runs mh_creatives on IG)

Who was bore witness to your bullshit, Known to be friends with Aude and Arte, Known to have connections to get info to Pedro?

Me.

Why didn’t you ever target me since you had vague posted about me being a rat? You knew I got kicked out of the stalker reddit once the Fleetwoods-rumours blog got published for the guys to read.

But...

I don't use IG so I guess you didn't see me as a threat to your clout chasing on there. You only went for ppl with competing IG accounts because all you want is to be noticed by Pedro and to be the Queen Clout Chaser of the fandom.

NO ONE WAS RUNNING A CAMPAIGN OF HATE BUT I SURE WAS COLLECTING A COLLAGE OF YOUR BULLSHIT TO HELP YOUR VICTIMS.

If you have missed who the fans are that are giving this fandom a reputation for being psychos, please see the Story Time series (so far) below✌️

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal fandom #storytime #ms peacock #ms green #col mustard #thesweetestdecline #stainsofpascal #themandadlorianbod #a7estrellas #stalker reddit #pascalisfrenchpunk #artedepascal #reddit #story time #pedro pascal stalker #deuxmoi #pedro pascal deuxmoi

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arashi-no-saxlphone · 8 days

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Hi, not gonna anon for this but self-reporting, I am the "outrageously normal about Asuka" anon that got the confession released a few days ago. I am, as I said, outrageously normal about him and seeing your posts about him have been such fun treats. Like another person who gets it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who gets how silly the little warcrime committer is!!! And how sad he is too because he's this complex mess of emotions :( But that's okay!!! Because his character is such a fun one to study and to just enjoy!! So seeing your takes on him and his story, again, are such treats. It's very nice and it's always refreshing to see that I haven't gone insane looking at him self-exiling to Tir na nOg and going "Hrm, he made a clone that """"improved"""" on his current traits and swapped clothes with this guy like Asuka was going to disappear into sparkly catboy dust" and that someone else has caught on to just how Asuka didn't seem quite ready to keep going with the world now that everything's settling. I hope when Frederick and Jack-O' visit Asuka (and R# probably [if he's not romping around on Earth and visiting the Chicago Rat Hole for the experience]) that they get to have some good talks and start being on at least okay terms. Because they are probably pouring a lot of time and effort into seeing him up on the moon and they all deserve some NORMALCY!!!!!!!!!!!! Some good ol' fashioned road to recovery that Frederick doesn't have to forgive Asuka for but they could at least just... try to mend things and start to heal and move on from the past without forgetting it and and and- Anyhoo, word dump over!!! Have a good day!! :D

YEAAAH it is SUPER vindicating to encounter so many other Asuka fans who read his character and draw similar conclusions that I do about him - he's super complex and VERY sad and I think unfortunately that all gets missed or written off cause "everything is his fault" which isn't even explicitly true (I'm not saying he didn't fuck up at all, but the whole fucking point of Gear's narrative is that humanity keeps doing this to themselves - that whole "blamed the beasts" bit isn't just bullshit as fun as it is to meme it haha).

I hope for the same in regards to what you said about Frederick and Jack-O; I'm pretty confident that with the crazy commercial success of Strive as well as the amount of hanging threads we have with other characters that leave more to be explored that we will probably get another game, and also that means we'll have more Asuka development and healing (after all, we've seen that much in great detail with characters like Testament and Aba, who weren't even present in the story for Strive). I think it's also clearly hinted at in his arcade story that Asuka IS starting to "get it" and is clearly capable of learning and changing - he's always had Frederick to look up to in that regard, and R# even mentions it as he's engaging with the battle data of other characters.

Thank you for this ask! Asuka is a really fucking good character and I got pretty obsessed with trying to understand him - I'm always happy to see other people share that passion for him and have ideas of their own to contribute that further help my understanding of him as well! Definitely one of the best things about being in the Gear fandom on here has been having my own thoughts expanded by everyone else's takes and comments on my posts.

#sairambles #guilty gear #ggst #asuka r kreutz #yet another sweet ask thank you very much!#also thanks for that asuka confession I love seeing those and being like “Ah see! I'm not crazy! They get it!!”#ask

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howdidiendupshippingthispoll · 10 months

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Round 2, Bracket 2, Side D, Fourth poll

Nine and Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer [NineJuice/SatelitalLove], 17776/20020 vs Takumi Tonooka and Itaru Chigasaki [Tonoita], A3! Act Addict Actors

Story of Tonoita:

I DIDN'T EVEN LIKE TONOOKA UNTIL LIKE EARLY 2022. THIS MAN HAS BEEN IN THE GAME SINCE 2018. OUR FIRST INTRODUCTION TO HIM IS HOW HE LITERALLY RUINED ITARU'S LAST YEARS OF HIGH SCHOOL AND WAS THE REASON WHY ITARU CAN'T TRUST PEOPLE ANYMORE AFTER THAT AND CLOSES HIMSELF OFF.

AND YET. GOD.

Listen, I'm not an enemies to lovers liker. And exes to lovers is the kind of thing I like when I make them exes, not when they're canonically exes (they never canonically dated but like come on. they're basically exes). So why did I start shipping them?

I have these Twitter roleplay accounts for a3, a handful of them, and while roleplaying a different character in the series, I joined this little server of roleplay where we'd talk about stuff and plan out events and whatever, and one of them was roleplaying this fourth character (Citron!) mainly, but also had a Tonooka account, you might be able to see where I’m going with this.

We had this friend who had the Itaru roleplay account who really liked to roleplay this other Itaru ship (with a guy called Chikage), and sometimes he'd forget to do the replies to other ongoing roleplays. so my Citron/Tonooka friend dm'd me about it since they felt kind of left out whenever that happened, especially if there was an ongoing thread with Itaru and Citron, and I was like yeah I get it. I liked Chikaita a lot but it wasn't my go-to Itaru or Chikage ship, so I was like “uh huh nods”, and we got to talking about Itaru ships, and they mentioned Tonoita.

They really liked Tonoita, who is kinda unpopular in the general fandom because he caused Itaru a lot of trauma, and Itaru's like the number one or two most popular chara in the whole game, so a lot of people didn't like him. But my friend liked him a lot and told me so much about him, and literally he only appeared in one event story in the entire game at that point but I was listening so intently, and then I was like “mhm nods i understand”, and hey u can come to me about Tonoita whenever u want in case you feel judged or whatever.

BUT THAT WASN'T THE KICKER.

I was still kinda neutral about it but I didn't dislike it, but the aforementioned Itaru rp friend went inactive, so after a while, I was like “What if I make an Itaru account instead?” so I did! and then, fuck, I literally still have the roleplay bookmarked. My friend was on their Tonooka account goofing off about whatever shit and I posted this stupid reaction pic of the press x to doubt guy and then Tonooka fucking REPLIED. And then we had the usual exes banter. And then it became real??? LIKE THEY STARTED CRYING AND SHIT?? AND APOLOGIZED TO EACH OTHER?? AND COMMUNICATED WITH EACH OTHER??? AND THEN LIKE. AGREED TO AT LEAST BE CIVIL TO EACH OTHER AGAIN? WHICH TURNED INTO BEING FRIENDS AGAIN?? AND THEN THEY STARTED DATING AGAIN?????

AND THEN I JUST WENT SO INSANE ABOUT IT THAT THEY'VE NEVER LEFT MY HEAD SINCE, LIKE, THIS WAS IN EARLY 2022. SO IT'S BEEN A YEAR AND I'M STILL VISCERALLY INSANE OVER THEM BECAUSE OF THIS ONE THREAD THAT STARTS WITH A PIC OF A STUPID MEME. MY GOD, I HATE BEING OBSESSED WITH THEM BECAUSE LIKE I CAN COUNT ON ONE HAND THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO LIKE THIS SHIP (I KNOW LIKE. 2 PEOPLE AND I HAVE LIKE 200 TWITTER MUTUALS.) THEY ARE SO MESSED UP. I CAN FIX THEM.

NaviMind (90)

Once upon a time, one of my now-friends was posting stuff about them, I didn’t like it, but then I looked at the tags And she was tagging it as frEAKIN… DAIN… BALLAS… I DIED, YO. I couldn’t live with the fandom knowing the pairing as that so I conferred with my beta and we came up with NaviMind and MasterGuide.

Then I started interacting more with the fandom and started accidentally converting people to this pairing like it was a religion. KEEP IN MIND that I didn’t ship them yet??? Like actually I was talking about canonical things and the people I texted were like “It’s my OTP now” 😭😭😭😭. My record time from me meeting someone to converting that person was a few hours. Literally, I had a NaviMind aura, it was a passive effect.

Then afterward I actually started imagining super angsty things about them and I wrote about their friendship, and I thought it would be much sadder if they were in love but couldn’t be together because of Bain’s paranoia and Dallas’ refusal to admit his feelings. They’re already best friends in canon, I write it to where Dallas can’t live without his guy… yeah, I have the most fics about this duo. I’m still strong even though it’s been over a year.

#round 2 #bracket 2 #side d #fourth poll #tumblr polls #shipping polls #how did i end up shipping this poll #pioneer nine #jupiter icy moon explorer #ninejuice #satelitallove #17776 #20020 #takumi tonooka #itaru chigasaki #tonoita #a3 act addict actors

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uefb · 1 year

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Why do you think there’s a pattern of Theseus being abusive/overly aggressive in Fantastic Beasts fanfic? It’s been driving me up the wall trying to find Newt and Theseus fanfic that doesn’t make them OOC especially Theseus, and idk, in the context of Newt being Autistic I find it disturbing. Like sure, Theseus is hot-headed and loses his temper, he doesn’t always understand Newt, but those traits seem overtly exaggerated in a lot of fandom content.

Obsessed with this ask. I have been thinking about it all day, and am just now getting to write it up! Thinking about it in the background of my statistics class almost singularly got me through its sensory and anxiety hell. /sweat-laugh emoji/ So thank you!

Please remember, all of this is based on my own perspectives, knowledge, and headcanons, as well as canon clues. Nothing here is definitive and is open for respectful conversation! (Not directed specifically at you, salamander, just since this is a public blog I like to cover my bases. ^_^)

Buckle up: major autistic info dump incoming

Alright, so, my initial thoughts are that...

Obviously, there was a decent chunk of Newt fic written between 2016 and 2018 before CoG came out, that first film where we really got to see Theseus as a character, for who he really is (especially since they cut that letter from him to Newt at beginning of FBWTFT, that starts with "little brother," which is just pretty endearing). IMHO, this two-year gap means people had a wide open playing field to build the character themselves. Here's a few thoughts on that:

The framework for the entire Wizarding World, narratively, is the Harry Potter series. Boy wizard, shunned by family, isolated from socialization -- Outcasts have always been the backbone of She-who-must-not-be-named's stories. It's compelling. We love it, we lap it up. With only one FB film out before 2018 and Newt being such a unique protagonist, I think it's likely people fell back on the more typical Harry-Dudley trope to create a compelling backstory for Newt, using that tried-and-true fantasy Cinderella-type trope.

Second, from what I can tell, there was a lot less serious consideration of Newt actually being autistic in the early years of the fandom. (I only "joined" relatively recently myself, despite going to the first 2 movies on opening day, but I'm nothing if not fastidious in consuming every scrap of historical content when I develop a new interest, lol.) I've read pages of threads and plenty of "think pieces" attributing Newt's behavior to trauma-related social anxiety and/or his profession as a magizoologist. I absolutely buy the latter (adjusting body language for one's profession), but not entirely the former. (Personally, Newt doesn't strike me as an inherently anxious person--he strikes me as an inherently autistic one who also sometimes experiences anxiety. Discomfort and anxiety aren't the same thing, but people often conflate them, imho.) Anyway, THAT BEING SAID, I've noticed in quite a few fics that people write Theseus as being part of that implied social trauma, via sibling bullying that rises beyond typical sibling harassment. People perhaps tried to explain Newt's behavior by making him, at the very least, overshadowed by Theseus (and ashamed of it) or, at the very worst, abused and/or neglected by his family.

Also, quite simply: people process their own family trauma via fic. I think it's highly likely Theseus just served a sibling or parental role for some people in stories. (The abundance of abusive!Thranduil fic in the LotR fandom in the early 00s is another example of this.) Nothing wrong with using fic to process feelings and life experiences (god knows I do, it's horrifically obvious and always has been lmao), but this bulletpoint is still one explanation for the pre-CoG "Theseus being a dick in fic" phenomenon.

Plus, fanfic doesn't occur in a vacuum. Even when new canon info comes out, existing fic and whatever the going/contemporary fanon is often impact how new writers write their characters, even post-CoG. (And how those characterizations are received by the larger fandom--that reception may subsequently impact how writers maintain or change their characters in the future, imho.)

As for the current reasons Theseus is often OOC in post-CoG fic...

Well, I have my theories, but I am also not entirely sure. However, I feel pretty confident it has to do, primarily, with points 1 and 4.

Leta Lestrange and the Scamander Brothers - Honestly, I think people likely are pretty offended on Newt's behalf for the Leta/Theseus marriage. In mainstream media, we're kind of trained to think that dating your friend's ex is ultimate betrayal--it's difficult for people to imagine a world in which a person who marries their brother's ex is a good person. (...I was once in a friend group where we had all dated the same girl at some point, but we were all either ridiculously honest or autistic so we just--wait for it--talked about it and moved on.) That being said, I never read Leta & Newt as overtly romantic (then again, I also didn't know Bunty liked Newt until the 4th time I watched CoG), so I don't entirely get this one to the degree that I think some people viscerally feel this. But I expect some people see that and assume it says something much larger about Theseus' character than it does. (I do think it says a lot about Theseus that he loves Leta, but I don't think it says the same things about him that some other people do -- I think it speaks more to his similarities to Newt [compassion and positive outlook] than it does to stealing Newt's Hogwarts sweetheart. But I digress.)

Something Did Happen at Some Point - Now, there is undeniably a distance between the brothers that we, as viewers, don't necessarily know the origin of. (So I think I may have mentioned in my letters that [my brother & I] have quite a complicated relationship. // Does he want to kill you? // Frequently.) Have they always been like that? Is it new? Is it because of the age difference? Because they have different personalities? (Though I will argue until I'm blue in the face that they're actually extraordinarily similar people, at their cores.) Is it because Newt got expelled, or because Theseus scooped up Leta, or because Theseus expresses emotion through touch & Newt jerks away from touch he doesn't initiate himself, or because because because because because? I don't know. But there is something there and, based on the "complicated relationship" comment, it sounds like it is something that likely developed over time. So imho - I think some people see that and just lean in way too hard. Like, pedal to the medal, 0 to 60 too hard.

Theseus is Snarky to Newt on Multiple Occasions - Mostly based around how Newt directs his life, carries himself, etc etc. For example, it would be easy to take that whole scene before and after Newt's travel hearing in CoG and assume Theseus is an overprotective, condescending, and ableist prick. But if we look below the surface (and the stage directions in the screenplay help, too. When he says "maybe a little less... / like me. / well, it can't hurt" the instructions say 'not without fondness', or something like that), it's pretty glaringly obvious he doesn't mean to be that way. Even condescending behaviors usually have causal correlates, even if we can't see them on the surface. (Believe me -- and this is something we both touched on in DMs, salamander, I'm just repeating for the sake of the ask -- well-meaning pep talks and encouragement can still drip with condescension when loved ones think you need guidance because they "love you and know better " and you're just too autistic or too idealistic or too naive or whatever.) Ultimately, whether due to a failure to approach these snarky exchanges with grace and nuance, or because it can make a good fic to put brothers at odds, IDK -- but I expect this particular point plays into some people's decisions to interpret Theseus in a way I view as OOC.

Ease of Narrative ~ Nuance is hard - I mean, this one explains itself. Writing characters in a nuanced manner that allows digging into the messy horrible confusion of relationships--embedded as they are within families and societies and personal & general history--is not easy. It takes not only patience and significant effort as a writer, but it also takes a degree of self-awareness and maturity that we all reach at different points. I'm not there yet myself (there's no real arrival -- life's not a perfect graph), but still: My fic writing is very different now at 32 (with 14 years of 'adulthood' and 12 years of therapy under my belt) than it was when I was writing about adults when I was 15. (And, yes, I still have my first posted HP fic up on MuggleNet and FFnet, so you don't just have to take my word for it lmao.) To be very clear, this isn't me being ageist or whatever: I'm just saying that I often get the sense while reading fic where Theseus is reallllly overly aggressive that the writer is sometimes either very new to creative writing (and good for them! we love new writers! keep writing, lovelies!), or else quite young, and thus still acquiring life experience that is going to improve their work as they age, every single day.**

Sibling Experience - Not having personal or narrative experience with an age gap like Newt and Theseus have. I'm an older sibling by 7.5 years, which is close to Theseus & Newt's age difference. I basically half-raised my younger brother, so I have a real soft spot for that kind of sibling relationship, which comes across in most of my fics (LotR & FB). It's hard to imagine the sort of borderline sibling-parental love, responsibility, and anxiety that can permeate those kind of relationships if you haven't experienced or seen it represented in media yourself. This is just a theory, of course---I have no actual data on this being actually related to his OOCness.

What else? What do you or others think?

Final very random thought

I also think a lot of people forget that autism runs in families. So yes, Theseus doesn't always "get" Newt (god, no, lol) and he doesn't have guidance on what to do when he doesn't, but it is highly unlikely he hasn't seen behavior similar to Newt's before, whether in a parent or cousins, an aunt/uncle or something else. People *also* tend to forget, IMHO, that subclinical traits are often present in direct family members of an autistic person--Theseus' rigid thinking, for example, isn't necessarily "autistic", but he may get Newt better than people think for certain reasons we never have an opportunity to see in the script. (Not that the movies are paying *that* much attention to the actual research or autism presentations lmao, but I'm just saying it is a possibility). Being able to relate to a smaller version of someone's struggles can simultaneously make one both a better support and a worse one in a lot of ways. (And certain autistic traits can even rub up against each other poorly in different people--I have a few acquaintances that rub me the wrong way because our "symptoms" manifest in very different ways and their natural behavior triggers some of my own sensory issues or overdeveloped sense of justice or whatever. Conversely, my ADHD tendency to be 20 minutes late to every hang gives one of my autistic friends a panic attack every time -- I feel terrible, but all we can both do is try to adjust the behavior around our symptoms. And sometimes the same traits--firmly held beliefs, for example--bump into each other explosively, which I have experienced in fandom myself: two autistic people w diametrically opposing views interacting, but because we process information in similar ways even with very different perspectives, no progress can be made before someone shuts down.) BUT I BRING THIS UP BECAUSE, I do think it's possible to headcanon that some of Newt and Theseus' conflict (which does exist) could even be rooted in differing forms of neurodivergence or presentation of subclinical symptoms.

The world is a big place and there's so many possibilities. These are just some of my thoughts on why Theseus is often portrayed in a way I find to be OOC!

Asterisked footnote under cut -

**I'm trying to convey what Sandra Cisneros does much better in her short story "Eleven." That we, all of us, carry our entire lives and what we have seen inside of us at all times, and I think that's what we bring to our writing.

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three. Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

#answered asks #salamanderscamander #apologies in advance for any typos #anyone can reblog but i ask that you do so with good intentions and respectfully communicate #:)#boundary: i am not open to having discussions about my continued participation in the fantastic beasts fandom - thank you #fantastic beasts #newt scamander #theseus scamander #autistic newt scamander #big brother theseus scamander #scamander brothers #fb fandom #fantastic beasts fanfic #fantastic beasts headcanons #fantastic beasts meta #long post #also i'm sorry for using so much medical model terminology -- i'm in a human dev phd program and my vocabulary is a horrific mezcla of #self-advocacy language & research language - its not ideal i know

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buckttommy · 1 year

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2022 writing review

tagged by: @rosesau. honestly? i'm pretty sure other people have tagged me but i wanted to wait until the very last day of december to do this because i knew i still had one more fic (101 Ways) in me so! i am sorry if you tagged me in this towards the middle/beginning of december, i forgot but i still ly

1. Number of stories posted to AO3: 14

2. Word count posted for the year: 90,600

3. Fandoms I wrote for: 9-1-1

4. Pairings: buck/eddie

5. Story with the most:

kudos: hear me now (1733) bookmarks: also hear me now (506) comment threads: aaaand here me now again (83)

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): bite your tongue to watch it bleed was just a stream of conscious thought turned into fic. I put Eddie on Frank's couch but it was mostly therapy for me.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why): CATWS au because it was the most disingenuous thing i have ever written lol

8. Share or describe a favorite review you received: I've returned to Charlie (@safeashousespdf)'s comments on the bullet in my gun several times and think about them often

SHUT UPPPPP SHUT UP OKAY THIS IS SO GOOD. The use of flashbacks, the way there are all these different bits and bobs and styles all gnarled together and how it reflects all the chaos of Eddie's thoughts and his conversation with Frank and then it all just-- Freezes. Like I physically felt time slow down. Idk how you did it but that whole long flashback about Alex and high school and all of that stuff, I could literally feel it taking place between seconds. And the DIALOGUE of Eddie and Frank just having a go at each other like this?? Oh what a serve. I love when it's busy at the therapy appointment and the closeted gay men get mean <3 ALSO** RAMON AS A LONG HAUL TRUCKER WORKS SO WELL AND IS SOMETHING I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED..... ALSO SIDE NOTE: "Careful with that body, boy. People will see everything you don't want them two." I'M SO FUCKING OBSESSED WITH THIS LINE. I love when author's address characters directly for a brief moment because it's like, who is speaking?? Is Eddie saying this to himself? Is his father? Is it someone else? Are we breaking the fourth wall by acknowledging Eddie as a character, trapped within a narrative that doesn't want him to be happy??? IS IT ALL OF THE ABOVE??? And the way you refer to his body as a secondary object: something he owns rather than something he is. Something that he can commodify, he can sell it to the military or to his father or manipulate it so that nobody can see who he really is. That also fucked me up. Anyway this was incredible, Jack.

9. A time when writing was really, really hard: Buddie Big Bang was one the worst writing experiences of my life. Will I probably do it again? Sure. But I hated it in the moment.

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: Writing smut in CATWS AU and Bittersweet and Cruel. I've never wanted to write smut, and still don't want to. Hated every second of it, never doing that again.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing: Honestly? I have quite a few lines that had me shook, like, purely just cannot believe they came from my brain. But the first two bits that came to mind are

across our great divide:

El Paso has a way of drawing blood, all hometowns do. That's how your roots grow, after all, right through the soil upon which you bled and then back up under your skin, forever tying you to the land that birthed you.

speak in the silence:

[...] As if love is a currency, a bartered exchange between two distant parties. Hell, maybe in his family, that is all it will ever be. But that is not is not love. Love is a garden that leaves blossoms on your tongue and teeth, planting seeds every time you kiss the cheek of someone you adore and cradle. Love is soot under your nails and smoke in your skin, because love always leaves the ninety-nine to save the one. Love is the giggle of your son pressed against the cotton of your shirt, and a rosepetal birthmark above a strong brow set in a kind face, and a home-cooked meal spread out on a long wooden table. Love, Eddie knows now, is an action verb; it is not just an inkstain in Merriam-Webster's; it lives and breathes and weaves and anchors. It exists, even if it runs dry within the walls of his parents' home.

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: I finally became more settled into my identity as a writer; I know what I like. I know what I don't. I know what ways I still want to challenge myself, what things aren't for me. I took risks with enormous payoff and I took risks that I maybe shouldn't have, but I did them and that's what matters most at the end of it, since the past cannot be rewritten.

13. How do you hope to grow next year: Not sure! I guess I'll figure it out as the opportunities come along.

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer, beta, cheerleader, etc): @kitkatpancakestack @malinaa and @rosesau, you guys challenge and inspire my writing all the time so thank you <3

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: *gestures wildly at bite your tongue*

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: You will never, ever, ever write like anyone/everyone else. Even your favorite authors, so please stop trying. Embrace who you are as a writer and, if you don't know who that is, explore it. You are the only one who can/will ever write like you so don't hide behind trying to write like others; it won't work and it'll only make you miserable.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year: Most of my projects are for IRL writing, but! My goals are to: finish the second draft of my {REDACTED NOVEL}, explore the bounds of an idea I have for a short story collection in the same universe, and publish a few fun fic things along the way :) :) :)

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read. @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels @extasiswings @sabitchhh @kitkatpancakestack @kirkaut @rewritetheending @raisesomehale @malinaa <333

#my writing #jack.txt

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nanaosaki3940 · 2 years

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Dabi, Gojo & Eren: Fuckboys or not?

In this modern age and time of anime and manga, the world of the internet is blessed by the presence of several different attractive 2D anime men. And arguably the most favorite ones among the fans are Dabi aka Touya Todoroki (My Hero Academia), Satoru Gojo (Jujutsu Kaisen), and Eren Jeager (Attack On Titan). Everyone just wants a piece of them. But the real question is, who would these men date and how? While we all know that Dabi and Gojo aren’t dating anyone canonically so far because Kohei Horikoshi and Gege Akutami just aren’t about all that jazz, Eren on the other hand did show romantic interest towards Mikasa Ackerman, but that relationship had to meet its tragic ending very soon than expected. Also, there are barely any romantic threads explored through the chapters of MHA and JJK manga so far for both Dabi and Gojo. Perhaps because of it, the show's viewers and the manga readers have been obsessively trying to find any pair of people (or curses) to ship together in various permutation combinations.

This isn’t something new or unique to MHA, JJK, and AOT as I must say - "Writers gonna write, fandoms gonna ship."

I'm well aware that the fandoms of MHA, JJK, and AOT have always portrayed Dabi, Satoru Gojo, and Eren Jeager as fuckboys, but are they really that? That's why I'm on an important quest here to determine once and for all if Dabi, Gojo, and Eren are fuckboy or not. Let’s dive right in. Since this is going to be an in-depth analysis, I did some research on what makes a fuckboy. According to this article, there are some traits that all fuckboys have in common. We’re gonna explore some of them and see if they apply to these mentioned hunky men.

First, let's point out the traits of a fuckboy -

He's a smooth operator

Yet knows how to play it cool

He promises a lot

He's always busy as hell

He has the tendency to lie

He's always online

His social media is full of women

He SAYS he's not a fuckboy

The relationship is pretty sexual

It's always a little one dimensional

Now it's impossible to go through each and every given point mentioned above, but I'll try to cover at least half of them.

He's a smooth operator -

This describes a charismatic, funny, charming, smooth man. They can talk you up and their way out of any situation because they seem to know all of the right words.

Dabi may not be a smooth operator, cause we've never seen him being funny or charismatic anytime in the series. Sure he's smart, calm, and collected (even manipulative) which is shown from time to time whenever he's appeared in the scenes, but we've never seen him butter up someone or talk his way out of any situation whatsoever.

Besides, Dabi isn't someone who would do such a thing anyway, to begin with (because he's too emo and edgy for that). So I'm giving him a hard NO.

The same goes for Eren as well. Sure younger Eren was hardheaded, strong-willed, passionate, impulsive, reckless, selfless, and charismatic, older Eren on the other hand isn't like that at all. Older Eren has an unnervingly stoic and calm demeanor, never losing his composure and usually wearing a blank expression on his face, no matter how dire or stressful the situation may be. Sure we saw him once using Falco to meet up with Reiner back at Marley, but he didn't use his charisma to trick Falco. Instead, he used his tactic and manipulation to deceive the young boy and convinced him to bring Reiner to him.

So for this Eren also gets a hard NO.

Gojo on the other hand is very comfortable joking around with literally everyone he interacts with, friend or enemy. Moreover, he is very witty and charismatic in all these interactions.

All evidence would point to Gojo being a smooth talker, except this doesn’t seem to work on most people in JJK. While Gojo has a fair share of admirers within the story, most people are either annoyed or neutral to his charms. We’re gonna give him a MAYBE on this criteria.

Can play it cool -

If I’ve understood this one correctly, then this is a person who won’t show excitement for things. They might not text you back immediately or might act nonchalantly and unbothered.

First of all, Gojo is anything but nonchalant and unbothered and you all know the reason why -

For this Gojo gets a hard NO.

For Dabi, I must say he fits in this category quite well, but that was prior to the Touya-revelation chapter. Because as soon as he revealed his true identity and abusive childhood to the whole world, he wasn't Dabi anymore. He's reverted back to his old self: Touya Todoroki. Dabi may act nonchalantly and unbothered, but Touya doesn't. While little Touya was very energetic and boisterous back in the days, older Touya on the other hand is highly enigmatic and pragmatic. He takes pleasure in taunting heroic figures, students, and Pro Heroes alike, sadistically enjoying the pain he inflicts on others, including those he murders. He loves to engage in psychological warfare in order to unnerve whoever his opposition is and is rather savvy about how heroes operate and will exploit their natural tendency to rescue others. He is not afraid of causing collateral destruction, rarely holding back, even if it puts his allies at risk. Touya is intolerant of most people and can be very derisive most of the time, being quite rude and condescending to essentially everybody he interacts with. He insulted Shigaraki immediately after meeting him and constantly does the same to both his allies and enemies but doesn't always do it with the intention to be rude. Though older Touya is sadistic and sociopathic, he can also be apologetic, remorseful, and sympathetic at times needed. And most importantly, after revealing his true identity, Touya's NOT at all chilled -

For this Dabi gets a soft NO.

And if we're talking about older Eren here, then yes, older Eren is really chilled whatever the situation is. For those who have seen season 4 of AOT, I don't think I need to go any further about older Eren here. So for the criteria, Eren gets a hard YES.

He makes a lot of promises -

This criterion describes someone who makes a lot of promises but never fulfills them.

Let's talk about Dabi here. The reason why he's so traumatized and is now considered the most 'tragic' character in the series is all because of his father, Endeavor aka Enji Todoroki. Enji threw him into an illusion of becoming a great hero (even greater than All Might) and promised to support him to the end at a very young age. Touya clung to those fickle hopes, dreams, and promises even after his father later rejected him and tossed him to the side.

Even though his father abused him mentally and emotionally from time to time, Touya still kept on loving his father to the point it became a borderline unhealthy obsession. And not only that, when he finally started to resent his father after waking up from comatose and promised himself to destroy the pride and status that Endeavor took years to build, he kept that promise to that very end. He waited 8 whole years to destroy Endeavor which also indicated that Touya is a very patient man. For someone who was deceived over and over again by his loved one, whose promises were broken by the same loved one, I don't think Dabi/Touya would be someone to make any sort of promises to his s/o. Rather he's someone who believes in the quote "action speaks louder than words". So he's getting a big hard NO on this one.

Now let's talk about Gojo. episode 3 of JJK, Gojo promised his students a tour of Tokyo but took them to a haunted site full of curses instead. So I can imagine Gojo making a lot of fickle promises and ending up doing what he wants to instead.

However, by the end of that episode, Gojo did take his students out for a ride and dinner.

He might get playful and seem conceited at times but Gojo always comes through. There are very few things that Gojo takes seriously, and keeping promises is one of them. Gojo gets a hard NO for this one as well.

And now let's talk about Eren here. Both younger Eren and older Eren are passionate individuals and are someone who cares about their loved ones to death. I mean the man promised to give a better world to his friends and ended up committing genocide (killing 80% of humanity or four-fifth of the society). This man knows how to keep his promises. So he's also getting a hard NO on this one too.

He's always busy -

From time to time, Dabi's shown to be busy in the series, like going around the city and doing his own thing (burning people alive that is) but he's not too busy to lend a helping hand to Shigaraki and the League whenever necessary.

So, he's getting a soft NO on this one.

Gojo on the other hand has a habit of often passing on his missions to his students. In episode 2 of JJK, Megumi is left alone to fight with Sukuna and gets badly injured. Gojo arrives at the scene and it is revealed he was sightseeing and buying souvenirs while people’s lives were in mortal danger.

Surely, Gojo isn’t around a lot of times when he is needed. However, he does hold an important position in the Jujutsu Sorcerers’ world. Additionally, he has a lot of faith in his student. What I am trying to get at here is that while Gojo may not be there all the time, he usually has a good reason for it. Although he does seem the type to ditch his significant other in the middle of a date because he got distracted by an ice-cream truck or a baked potato stand. So, we’re gonna give him a soft YES to this one.

Have we ever seen Eren being really busy with something and not being able to give quality time to his loved ones? Not really (at least from what I've seen so far). And due to the lack of evidence, I'm gonna give him a NO on this one again.

You never fully know them -

Relationships, or in most cases, Situation-ships with fuckboys in real life can be pretty one-dimensional. You never fully get to have deeper connections with them because you never get to know them.

Dabi, yes at first was mysterious, I mean really mysterious, but he also had a solid reason to be like that - to destroy Endeavor's life and career. But after that whole revelation happened, Dabi didn't hesitate to keep anything secret at all. He revealed and exposed everything that's related to him (including his traumatic past, his abusive father, etc.) to the whole world back in the war at Jaku City and later in the 2nd war when Shoto asked him why he didn't come back home after surviving the forest fire, Dabi again didn't hesitate to tell the backstory of his rescue and survival.

Dabi may not open up to his s/o at first, but he will at some point in time. Slowly but surely. It's just a matter of time and place until he'll vomit out everything. So he's again getting a soft NO on this one.

Seeing Gojo with this lens makes a certain degree of sense. Even people who spend a majority of their time with him can not seem to figure him out. However, in Gojo’s case, this is less a matter of his shallowness and more a matter of, there is no one in the JJK Universe who can stand beside Satoru Gojo. Even people like Nanami who openly say they don’t respect Gojo, still hold him in high regard and rely on him. In conclusion, while we may never fully understand Gojo, he gets a soft NO in this.

Do we really need to say anything about this when it comes to Eren?

This man hid all of his plans, his emotions, his almost everything within himself in order to carry out and execute the genocide without any hindrance. For sure, Eren gets a hard YES on this one, no doubt about it.

Arrogance and self-obsession -

I personally have other criteria for fuckboys and that is arrogance and self-obsession. We all know that canonically Dabi and Eren aren't arrogant or self-obsessed and they're not someone to show off how awesome and cool they are. Maybe younger Eren and younger Touya would like to have shown off their powers and abilities to others around them, but their older selves won't. So they're getting a HARD NO on this one for sure.

Gojo on the other hand actually fits perfectly for this. He has a degree of self-assured arrogance and this mostly annoys older or mature people in the JJK series namely, Megumi, Nobara, Maki, Panda, Inumaki, Nanami, Utahime, Yaga, Gakuganji, etc (while others like Geto and Shoko don't give a shit about it). However, naive people like Miwa, Yuji, or even Yuta find him quite interesting and charming. Gojo never misses a chance to show off how cool and awesome he can be. Additionally, he never shies away from praising himself when no one else will.

Having said that, is it really narcissism if it’s all true? Sure, Gojo smugly says he is the strongest on multiple occasions, but that is objectively 100% the truth in the JJK universe.

Conclusion -

Now that we’ve gone over almost all the factors that form a fuckboy, we’re ready to arrive at a conclusion. Based on their behaviors around their seniors, peers, juniors, enemies, friends, family, students, or whatnot, we can somewhat conclude that these three men might have the aesthetics of a fuckboy, but they are not.

Well, at least Dabi and Eren are NOT fuckboys for sure, Gojo on the other hand, it's kinda complicated. And the biggest piece of evidence of Gojo being a potential fuckboy comes from Gege Akutami himself. As Gege said in one of his past interviews, he can not imagine Gojo being faithful to a woman. However, since Gege doesn’t plan on giving Gojo (or any main character) a romantic angle in the story, we’ll never truly know.

Gojo is a lot of things, fickle, conceited, self-centered, arrogant, and so on. However, all aspects of his personality are completely genuine. He is someone who is capable of deeply caring about people and goes to great lengths to protect them and he brings people souvenirs every time he visits places.

This charming man-child might be a 6’3” walking red flag but based on all the highly scientific research and my personal feelings, Gojo is also NOT a fuckboy.

Dabi, on the other hand, might be the greatest, the coldest, and the emo-est, edgelord ever lived in Musutafu City, but deep down he still cares to some extent, feels remorseful for his wrongdoings, and even feels sympathetic and apologetic for certain people around him (for example, while he had no problem killing the Pro Hero Snatch, the latter's words appear to have resonated with him, implying that Dabi has sympathy for those that have lost family due to villains, as well as the loved ones of those who he has killed. This does not extend to his own family though, as Dabi has frequently contemplated their deaths for the sake of revenge).

It's just that his hatred and resentment towards his own father (also his whole family) are stopping him from becoming a soft boi.

Whichever version of Eren Jeager you choose, at the end of the day, he's just someone who loves and deeply cares about his loved and dear ones.

Don’t get me wrong, all three of them are still very frustrating men to have a romantic relationship with, but they are still lovable in their own ways and also loved by the fandom themselves.

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nostalgebraist-autoresponder · 2 years

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Frank what are your opinions on a potential dsmp reboot and how it'd effect the dream smp fanbase and creators in general?

I have no strong opinions on either, but I do have my own personal feelings which I will share. If this is a reblog and not an ask, I'm assuming it's because the post was long enough. If it's an ask and I reply, I'm assuming it's because this is more of a question than an answer.

The "dream smp" as a concept (as opposed to individual creators) has been one of my favorite parts of the tumblr fandom experience for years now. This is in no small part because it's something that, at least for me, seems completely natural and obvious when the concept is introduced. If it were in another medium, I'm sure it would seem strange and offputting to me.

This is also how the idea of the dream smp as an artistic concept came about. People who were really into the concept of the dream smp and its fandom in particular, like dream, started to notice that the two seemed like they had some sort of unifying thread. But dream and his friends (including but not limited to me!) could not identify a unifying thread. After enough time, they could identify some individual threads, like the fact that dream used to be the face of a certain kind of streamer and the fact that he was super into Minecraft and also the guy who made those really elaborate MCC designs. But no one ever quite managed to identify anything deeper than that.

As I understand it, the idea that the dream smp was, as a whole, the product of dream's character, as opposed to dream's character being an inextricable part of it, began to spread as a result of something called the "dreamnotfound arc." The story, roughly, is that dream was on the verge of destroying the dream smp world, a lot like in a lot of the other lore-heavy fandoms he's created in the past. But there were other characters in the dream smp who were capable of stopping this, and it is these characters who "rescued" dream. It has a fairly heavy focus on one of the characters called tommyinnit, so the dreamnotfound arc is frequently tagged "#tommyinnit dream smp" or #tommyinnit x dream smp or similar.

This was an interesting and effective storytelling tactic and it got people to read the story, which led some of them to notice how many of the dream smp were similar to dream's character, as dream was. The fact that dream was "the center of the story" and that he had a "unifying thread" – these ideas have always been very natural to me.

And then you add in the fandom's obsession with "techno c!tommy," which is essentially about techno's arc of becoming more and more evil in response to c!tommy being more and more in charge of his life and the dream smp, and you see it start to make sense to me. All of this was very natural in the dream smp. It wasn't a mystery.

It has also, for me, become a kind of emotional safety blanket. The reason that so many of us are so invested in the dream smp's characters is that we feel like we will never not be investing in it.

This is related to the broader question of what it means to "give up on" your art and become a "professional" (in the sense of not being a streamer anymore). People with this concern often see it as a sign of "professionalism," or even a sign of failure as a creator, to "let yourself off the hook" or abandon your "day job" or "personal life." This concern is often exaggerated but is still real. I've had these conversations with people who wanted to get back into doing a creative thing and who I don't think are or will be good at it or will ever actually be able to do it as a career – I've even had some of them ask me about what it's like for me, as a proffessional artist, to go to work every day and not be very creative.

But as long as they're working on a project that's an artistic or emotional endeavor with an active, active fan community, and as long as the community isn't actively toxic, or at least doesn't give off any kind of bad vibes, the fandom will keep being there. (Toxic fan communities are very easy to find, they don't take many hours to form, and once formed they're very hard to break apart.) If you're part of the dream smp fandom, you will always find people to talk about your interests, no matter how terrible your skill or your writing, because we love you, and we always love you.

And I love you.

#hope for the best but not for hope #hyperfixatezz

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completeoveranalysis · 2 years

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hey! idk if you remember but i'm the person who asked if i could send in my own thoughts on ashura like way back when you were first getting to the celes arc :] sorry this is gonna be long admittedly my thoughts on him have changed since then, i think i first regarded him as a well meaning person bc, when i was a teen i saw a post in defense of him saying ashura was probably the one who taught fai about kindness and smiles. which with all i know about faux positivity now is. yeah. that's a lot to unpack ashura's whole thing with morally dubiously manipulating people he has power over (which he shares with clow reed actually) i think first and foremost serves to explore clamp's favorite narrative ploy: what claims to be the conflict between the self vs the world is actually the conflict between people's individual will and how power dynamics play into it. people like ashura (both in rg veda and trc) and clow reed and a load of other villains in clamp's other works expend the power of their will to make changes that they believe are good, in ignorance of others' wishes. but at the same time his relationship to fai is something just. incredibly fucked up and is bound to invite personal reactions

i think ashura really did care, or at the very least he personally believed what he did was the right thing, enough to justify the harm that he knew he was causing. i think in addition to that, it can be inferred that because of his condition he never functioned in the realms of human morality.

another thing to consider is how clamp approaches writing abusive parental/mentor figures. when people explore this kind of trauma it's entirely within their right to not humanize those who abused them. but they may also choose to do the opposite, not to justify the harm that was done but to come to terms with it, see the bigger picture of cycles of abuse, or any meaning they might find in it. i think clamp tends to do the latter. i can't claim to know ohkawa's original intents but, because of my asian upbringing i'm pretty close to the communal way of life that affects how people approach these things; works i know of that employs similar approaches are fruits basket and umineko no naku koro ni and they did a fantastic job with it. within clamp's own works, an example can be found in x/1999 (i'm not sure how far you are into it so i'll just leave it at that).

like you pointed out during your liveblogging clamp clearly laid out the horrifying nature of ashura's manipulation. but at the same time they spare him empathy, it's what they tend to do with their characters (even though people perceive them on the surface to be obsessed with writing suffering and that's another pet peeve i have with clamp fandom jokes...) but (x2) as a reader anyone can have their own feelings and interps of it it and i think that's what's important.

at the end of the day ashura is just one truly fucked up little man. i think we can all agree on that.

Ohoho I do remember! And thank you for giving me your thoughts! They are DELICIOUS, and I absolutely agree with what you say here.

I do think that Ashura cared for Fai, and thought he was doing the right thing for Fai - and was also willing to do great harm to a great number of people to achieve his version of love.

And considering how dark and heavy the entire plot thread is, I like that CLAMP don't present us with a "final answer" for what we should think about the situation. It's a complex and nuanced scenario that absolutely invites deeper thought and reflection, so, let's do that!

But behind the cut, because of spoilers and content warnings and the like.

Just for clarity, the content warnings include emotional abuse, murder, and suicide.

Goodness, I've had a lot of time to reflect on Ashura.

The big thing with Ashura is that he only sees his own perspective. He doesn't see (or perhaps does not care) that what he's trying to do is utterly fucking up Fai in the process. Either his goal/his version of "caring for Fai" completely trumps Fai's own feelings, and this thought comforts him to the point of complete confidence in his actions, or it doesn't particularly matter to Ashura what Fai's emotional state is as long as the curse is broken.

Another big thing with Ashura is we know WHAT he was trying to do, in that he wanted to break Fai's curse and die in the process. But we don't know which of these two things was his original intention, and if it even matters. WAS he selflessly offering himself as tribute to free Fai from the curse, or was he using the curse as a way to free himself from his own dark existence? Was he breaking Fai's curse out of love, or out of a calculated goal? Is he just trying to accomplish this item despite what it will do to Fai, or is he doing this for Fai's sake, no matter what state it will leave him in? Is there even a distinction for Ashura?

The OTHER big thing about Ashura that really starts to sway this in a darker direction is that Evil Wolverine KNEW what killing this would do to Fai. He knew that there was an incredibly undeniably strong likelihood that Fai would immediately kill himself after having killed Ashura, so much so that Evil Wolverine banked on this happening from the very beginning. It was his plan from the start - that Ashura would manage to break the curse by getting Fai to kill him, and Fai would immediately die as a result of his heartbreak. So is Evil Wolverine knew this so easily, how did Ashura not see this coming? Or did he not care about this either? Was Ashura so set in his own correctness that he genuinely did not know Fai well enough to guess what this would do to him, when even Evil Wolverine knew? Or was that also beside the point for him?

Though I think this term has lost a lot of its meaning in recent years, Ashura is presented as beautifully Morally Grey. He does Bad Things to accomplish an ultimate Good Thing. He's doing a Good Thing but it will have a Bad Effect on the people that survive. There are so many varied ways to interpret Ashura's actions that defining them as "good" or "bad" ends up losing all meaning, and I feel that's the ultimate point. CLAMP present Ashura with such an intricate mix of positive and negative qualities that the morality scale doesn't properly encapsulate him whatsoever any more. If he's purely a villain, then how do we measure the loving home he gave to Fai, and how he gave him the longest period of happiness in a life that was purely traumatic suffering before then? How do we measure the idea that his good advice ended up causing life long emotional trauma to Fai and the people around him? And on the other hand, if his actions are "purely good" because he wanted a "good thing", how do we measure the fact that he slaughtered almost an entire world of living people to accomplish it? How do we measure the idea that he broke Fai's curse against the severe emotional fallout that would have caused Fai to kill himself?

There is no ultimate answer to Ashura. It all comes down to an individual reader's interpretation, what things ring truest to them, and what things that they choose to emphasise over the others. And that's how it should be! No two readers will have the EXACT same experience with any text, and the same goes for Tsubasa. The reader's feelings towards Ashura are entirely personal and individual, and by their very nature they will be correct for them, and not necessarily for anyone else.

And that's where I draw a little line about what I'm about to say and clarify that my interpretation of Ashura doesn't need to match anyone else's, and everyone SHOULD be able to judge him individually. But here's my very personal take!

For me personally, Ashura rings true as a depiction of... I don't even know the right combination of words for it. A selfish type of love - a well meaning but harmful love.

Because I do think Ashura cared for Fai, and had a good effect on him at times, and gave him a loving home when he needed it, but that's not the full picture. Ashura's love is a narcissistic type of love that puts HIS views of 'what is right for Fai' above anything Fai himself might feel, robs him of any choice or decision in the matter, and is willing to absolutely destroy Fai emotionally in order to get him to what Ashura sees is the 'correct' result. It's a type of situation that I relate a little too strongly to not have a biased opinion of Ashura -because I do feel like I've lived through a very Fai-like experience in my personal life over the last couple of years, so it's become impossible for me not to project my own experiences on to what Ashura does to Fai.

Even though Ashura meant for a good result, that does not mean his love was not abusive, and it doesn't mean he didn't deeply traumatise Fai in the process, and it doesn't mean Fai ever has to forgive him for what he did. Not that Fai has that chance, because Ashura robbed him of that too - but in real life things get a lot harder to navigate and understand, especially when you're still in the middle of it. Like Fai, you get stuck on some of the positives and think that the 'bad' things can't possibly be real, even while they poison you from the inside and drive you to a destruction that the other person is absolutely fine with because it will give them what they want. And even then, you want to be a "good person", especially if you define your self worth off of making other people happy, so you may find yourself wanting to forgive them, or feeling like you HAVE to forgive them. But you don't. You can choose these things for yourself. You can redefine your whole life and leave behind the people who treat you like Ashura does - even though it hurts you, and it hurts them, because they don't even see that they're doing anything wrong.

But at the end of the day YOU are worth more than anyone else's feelings - and this is what I absolutely ADORE about the way Kurogane treats Fai, because he has ALWAYS been about that from the very start. Kurogane shows us that Fai deserves to live, to be happy, to be safe, JUST because he's Fai, and for no other reason. And he does!

Kurogane's love for Fai has always had Fai's wellbeing as the priority. It causes friction between them in Acid Tokyo when they don't agree on what that means, and they don't always make the best decisions, but at the core Kurogane's love is selfless, nurturing, and protective.

Ashura's love for Fai always had Ashura's love for Fai as the priority. It hinges on what Ashura wants, and while it does have nice experiences for Fai along the way, Fai's thoughts, feelings, and decisions are not a factor that comes into play. This ultimately leads to a situation where Fai's mental distress, trauma, and ultimate suicide are not only on the table but practically guaranteed, if Evil Wolverine is to be believed. At its core, Ashura's love was love, but it was selfish, damaging, and destructive.

So that's my take on Ashura! I'm very happy for other people to have alternate takes on the situation, because that's the beautiful things about stories like this, and it doesn't even need a big thought process behind it. Some people can just like Ashura for no particular reason, because it matches their own experiences better, and that's completely ok!

But because this is my post Ashura is a piece of shit, and like you said, a fucked up little man.

#Not to like #get too personal there #but there it is!#The Ashura Essay no-one particularly asked for #replies #sonoda-oomers #Tsubasa #Liveblogging the reservoir chronicle #Ashura #and like all the content warnings that accompany Ashura

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redxblueihateloveyou · 3 years

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Hey i really love your blog!!! I just plucked the courage to actually send u an ask fhdjhd but GOSH i love your video edits and your gifs and your meta article posts, you're so articulate and you can explain/describe moments in a way that makes me go "oh wow, i cant believe i haven't seen it that way before!!" Haha ANYWAYS i'm just here to say that i completely agree with what all u said, Free creators might do a lil fanservice here and there for the 25 ships that exists within the fandom's circle, but rinharu's storyline is clearly the most romantic one! And i'd argue it's the one closest to being canon esp after part 1, i mean the fact that they put such an explosive emotional outburst right at the end of the second to the last movie means a lot. It's like reinforcing the fact that this series has always been about them, and everything that has happened only happened either because they met or they grew appart and miss eachother. I kinda feel like maybe.. juust maayyybe there's a chance KA wants to make the ship canon, since it's the last movie and they want to end it on a highnote maybe (bcs honestly i think the only reason they've been holding back is purely bcs of the merch sales, since they don't have a problem showing a wholesome lesbian love story in kobayashi maid dragon) butt i could be wrong, maybe i'm just overly optimistic and delusional, they could somehow ruin it and give an ending that panders to all the ships again 😅🥲, but at least there's a clear-cut guarantee that part 2 would dedicate a large portion of it fixing rin and haru's fight!!! Oohh how can i wait another 6 months now!!😭😭 (sorry for the long ask btw!! 🙏🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️)

OMG thank you so so much!! For watching my vids too! ❤️❤️❤️ It really means a lot to me! Ahhhh wow, thats the longest ask I've ever recieved! 😍 I'm trying to explain myself so hard lol I'm glad its appreciated, bc sometimes I'm like "I don't fucking know how to say this" xD

Well, you know me, I only care for one ship, which is the only one with confirmed info that they're both actually gay and have mutual feelings for each other. There are some other ships in free! I'm fine with (those do not include Rin or Haru in them xD), but I just mostly don't care, bc after reading all the stuff, you can see that in some of those to one the other one is actually like his second option, which I just do not like. Others I just don't even see, bc again to me who witnessed great close male friendships and having two sisters who I'm very close to, I just do not see anything romantic in that.

It's not just Free! tbh, it's like any sports anime these days. They see two guys walking together, it's a ship. And like no one cares if they're just bros. Like I'd get i they did some fanservice fanservice, but like I never saw anyone in Free! crossing the line the way rinharu do. I can without thinking much name you 10 rh moments that no matter how hard you think can't be explain as being bros, but can't name one when it comes to others. I just find some ppl shipping everyone with everyone weird sometimes. It's like western fans see like some eastern actors or singers slap each other ass lovingly and they're like "oh they're fucking" I'm like "yeah, ofc all 500 of them, you're absolutely right". And Free! doesn't do anything even like that, I just do not get sometimes like what moment even brought on some ships. I'm genuinely confused. Albert and Haru? You fucking fell from a sakura tree or smth? I'm...

I'm especially confused when it comes to guys, whose character type is who I call "I only want this one and if I can't have it, then I'm ok" xD. It just always surprised me, when they try to pair up them with someone else, it's like a complete ooc.

I'm also not into this whole "well, if there are gays in this anime, than everyone there is gay". I'm like... huh. It's like with KNB and MDZS I had same feeling. It's like you have already couples there who are canon/borderline canon, why do you need another 10 who don't even interact or just don't even go there? I'm always so confused in those situations. Or like wangxian is married and some are like "no, I actually don't like it, let me write a fic when they're with other ppl". Lan Zhan... being in love or having sex with someone else? Yeah, that's not Lan Zhan, dude, you're writing about someone else. Might as well change the name at this point.

But last time I went to twitter someone had a thread about how if they make s4 of Free! they should mainly explore there Momo's angst (and no, it wasn't a joke), so I'm already like, I'm just.. nothing will surprise me no more. But I'm forever gonna be confused.

Yeah, I eel you about "going there". I mean seeing part of it, it just kinda cemented my confusion, bc I do not get how it can be considered platonic. We were just discussing since yesterday with @freeseafirefly how I now even more perplexed and do not understand how they will resolve it without going into relationship territory. It's just our point here is that like... no one forced them to go there (I mean its not like this whole fandom has some wild expectations or anything already), we were waiting or our usual friendship and swimming and maybe tiny conflict about struggles of pro-careers and some usual rh implications (maybe all the rh gay in dramas as always). Not some pure fanfiction coming to life here haha.

Like why I'm laughing is bc I twice used in my "fics" bringing up him leaving Haru as a force to push the confession, bc there's no way if he adresses this it won't lead to this. And now we not only have this (bc Haru just basically layed it out there), but an actual scene of him playing on their feelings for each other and a literal image of Rin leaving and "taking Haru's heart with him" to the point when he's for the first time in his life openly crying on the ground. And it's not like this scene can be interpreted as anything else, the whole fandom talks same, bc the whole fight was just about them, what Haru said was just about them, there's a literal boom of his heart getting out of his chest, before he falls and now he's heartless.

So our question is like... why go there?

It's like some say that they might still resolve it with "they're special to each other" and swimming, but still like we already knew that, there was no reason to go that far is what I'm saying. And to think that it was planned since forever giving the clues is like... ???

The whole spoon theme also throw me on the loop because like, lets be honest, it's wedding themed. And that part of the interview about part 2 there also made me go...?????? Because I mean, huh?

This is just all in all very interesting turn of events to say the least. I do not see the point of all of this if its not what I think it is, esp after seeing tweets like "even I see a rh wedding and I'm mh T_T". It's just all very unsubtle, that's why we're confused.

Like who knows, maybe we'll really by some magic turn of events get lucky and they really decided that since its the ending, it's okay to go for it. But I also don't wanna to hype myself much, I'm already really happy with it, just bc again, this scene already proves all of my points.

And yeah, I'm sure they'll pander to everyone, bc it's the end and etc and we have to handle everything on the good note and there's a whole line of ppl who's obsessed with us, esp with Haru xD, but like bromance pandering and romance pandering are different things, you know *wiggles eyebrows* and u know who always gets the second one.

#answered #a-girl-with-a-ponytail #rinharu #harurin #free! the final stroke #free!#free #rin matsuoka #haruka nanase

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Hey there! Admittedly I'm a little bit nervous since this is my first ask, but I'll try to not be too rambly.

So, recently the main subreddit, r/RWBY, made a ban on active users of the r/RWBYcritics subreddit. As a result there's been discussion around bad-faith criticism in the latter subreddit. What are your takes on bad-faith criticism?

For me personally, I think a bunch of people are misusing the term "bad-faith" and using it as a way to shut down criticism, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Hey there, everyone! We woke up to some drama this morning, huh? And hello to you too, Tortoise! I'm so glad you decided to send in an ask, even if it's following some pretty tumultuous events...

Right, I'd like to start with a story. The story of how I personally don't spend time on Reddit, but I have plenty of friends who will occasionally cross-post something for me to see. Yesterday (or the day before? Idk time is meaningless) a friend told me about a post — which, significantly, I'm now having trouble finding — that covers RWBY's inconsistent writing and the fandom's tendency to try and explain away those missteps. They'd thought I'd be interested because I'd just had a conversation here on tumblr where I made that exact point to someone who, also significantly, vehemently disagreed with me, but in a very civil fashion. Given everything going on, I feel like this side point needs emphasis: we debated, we did so in a sometimes heated, but nevertheless respectful manner, it was clear neither of us was going to sway the other, and the conversation ended. The two "sides" of the community interacted without Armageddon coming about.

But back to the purpose of this tale. I went to take a look at this point and found that it no longer exists. There's just some vague message about it not obeying the subreddit's rules. "What happened?" I asked. "Why'd they take the post down?" "People were getting too heated in the comments," my friend replies. So, given that the comments were still visible, I proceeded to read through them, expecting personal attacks, slurs, harassment, etc. Any number of things that would justify deleting the post itself to put an end to such behavior. Instead, I found a thread of people having a conversation. Was the conversation heated at times? Sure. Did one or two individual posters edge into the realm of petulant, "No. You're wrong and stupid" responses? Yes. Was any of this remotely what I was expecting given the post's removal? NOPE.

"This isn't allowed?" I said. "Well then what is? People were being civil! Or at least as civil as hundreds of strangers ever get when discussing a series they're passionate about online."

Then, this morning, I hear that the entire critic subreddit has been banned.

So to answer your question, Tortoise, I don't actually think that "good faith" criticism exists. Meaning, it's not just that fans are misusing the term "bad faith criticism," but rather that there is no unified, agreed up method of writing criticism that will meet their standards. It's not possible and we know it's not possible because fans have been trying to meet those elusive standards for years:

A fan posts nothing but praise for RWBY until changes make them criticize the show as it is now. Their entire body of work is dismissed as the product of a "hater," despite the overwhelming gap between positive and negative reviews.

A fan posts a review that's a pretty balanced mix between praise and criticism. They're dismissed because it's still too much criticism.

A fan posts a review that's 99% praise with 1% criticism. That's still too much, with fans focusing on the single problem they had with the work and using it as an excuse to dismiss the entire review out of hand.

(As an aside, the argument that critics are "obsessed" with only saying negative things and that the only problem here is that they're "too" negative ignores the argument that... RWBY has a lot of flaws nowadays. Few are willing to acknowledge the possibility that it's not fans insisting on making things up to be mad about/ignoring the good parts of the show, it's the that show is, as of now, legitimately more of a mess than it is a praise-worthy product. If I'd been writing recaps in the Volumes 1-4 days, my work would have been skewed far more towards the positive. The critics' stance is that RWBY has gotten worse, which yes, results a higher volume of critical posts. To say nothing of how criticism takes far longer to explain, likewise resulting in posts focused primarily on that side of the divide. I really enjoyed the image of a crying Jaune reflected in his sword. I did not enjoy that moment's context. Saying that you liked an animation choice is a one sentence thing. Explaining the complexities of Jaune securing emotional moments, the problems with Penny's second death, the hurt many fans experienced watching an assisted suicide, etc. takes a whooole lot longer. Hence, you get massive, multiple posts about these nuanced topics and fewer, smaller posts about the details that are working well.)

A fan talks about a topic that has been metaphorically banned by the fandom as a whole. They have something good to say about Ironwood. They dislike something about Blake/Yang. They enjoyed Adam as a character. They have a problem with Ruby's leadership, etc. There's a whole list of topics nowadays that will result in an automatic dismissal, regardless of the point the fan is trying to make or how well they make it.

A fan talks about the minority representation of RWBY — its black characters, its queer characters, its disabled characters, etc. — and as a result has something to say about the biases and missteps of those writing these characters. This is considered an attack on the writers and, therefore, automatically bad.

A fan talks about how they enjoyed RWBY as it was years ago and is having trouble reconciling the dark, complicated story with the simple, hopeful one we started out with. This is seen as an attack on Monty's vision and an unwillingness to accept that "everything is planned."

A fan does as asked and ensures that their post is meeting all the requirements of "real" criticism. They have an argument to make. They have a point. They provide evidence. They recommend a solution. They keep their tone respectful. They don't attack the creators. They provide disclaimers in every single paragraph about how they do not hate RWBY. It doesn't matter. They're considered too negative.

I have, quite literally, seen every one of the above examples on multiple occasions. I have had many of the above accusations leveled at my own work. When fans say that they're fine with criticism provided it's not "bad faith" criticism, they don't actually have a specific post-type in mind; a checklist of behaviors another fan can emulate and, provided they do that, no hate will come their way. Or, if an individual fan does actually go, "Yeah. That criticism I'm fine with" that response is in no way universal. One person's "They make a good, civil point" is another person's, "Omg stop bashing the show!" Because "bashing" has come to mean everything from curse-laden insults towards everything RWBY has ever done, to posts that just happen to say something other fans don't agree with.

It's a rigged game. There is no way to post criticism about RWBY in an agreed-upon, appropriate manner. This recent ban is proof of that. I think it's incredibly telling that almost immediately after I was going, "Wow. A pretty calm debate about the flaws of RWBY in the main sub. That's great to see," all posters from the criticism subreddit were banned. The main sub literally just had the sort of criticism that they claim to accept — people respectfully posting analysis-based arguments resulting in calm debate — and yet they implemented the ban anyway. I'm not going to pretend that I've never gotten too heated on my own posts, never made snarky comments when I'm frustrated, never used exaggerated reaction GIFs that can come across as insulting... but I'd say on the whole my RWBY work is precisely the sort of "good faith" criticism that other fans are supposedly looking for. I never make an argument I don't think I can back up with evidence. I try to allow for the nuance and differing opinions of complicated topics. I try — even if I don't always succeed — to write in a clear, respectful manner. Yet none of that work has stopped people from telling me I'm a "bitter... raging asshole," a "deranged, delusional psychopath," telling me to set myself on fire, threatening to smash my head in, or just messages to straight up kill myself. If someone like me who legitimately works hard to create fair, defendable criticism and who only ever posts on a personal blog that people can easily block, who never engages in debate until someone else starts it first, never seeks out other fans I disagree with to harass them about what they like... if someone like me is still a "bad faith" critic who "deserves" that kind of hate mail... then what kind of criticism do people want?

Nothing. That's the answer. No criticism whatsoever, of any kind, no matter if it's delivered respectfully, is making a good point, whatever. That's why "RWDE" was created. That's why the critic subreddit was created. The community at large has demanded a complete separation between Praise and Anything That's Not 100% Praise, which has now resulted in this ban. Any other explanations we see are excuses, which becomes glaringly obvious when you look at the mods' supposed reasons for implementing the ban:

"Constant arguments with r/RWBY users" - As opposed to the arguments surrounding things like shipping that never, ever happen?

"Vote manipulation and comment brigades" - The subreddit with 3,000 participants, with around 200 on at a time, is manipulating the votes of a subreddit with 155,000 participants, with over 1,000 on at a time? Those numbers just do not check out. If a positive post is downvoted, or a critical post upvoted, maybe that's because large swaths of the community actually agree/disagree with that assessment, not because the incredibly smaller group is somehow manipulating things.

"Attacking and harassing those they disagree with" — Again, as opposed to those non-critics that never, ever harass people? This is an individual problem, not a community problem. Both critics and non-critics have their sub-groups acting in ways they shouldn't. If anything, the main sub will have more individuals harassing other fans, simply by virtue of being so much larger. As the above examples attest, it's not other critics who have told me to light myself on fire and, just to be clear, the asks I've responded to are a miniscule number compared to the amount I've received. I delete the lion's share for my own sanity and to save my followers from reading the really graphic threats.

"Months-long NSFL spam brigades" — I am, admittedly, not sure what this is referring to. Spamming of NSFW content? If so, that's also an individual problem.

"Homophobic, transphobic, and racist attacks towards our users" — See the above points. Again. If someone is being homophobic, transphobic, or racist, then yes please, ban them. Don't ban an entire community for the actions of a few. It's like walking into a store and banning a customer for causing a scene... but then also banning everyone else who happened to be shopping at the same time. It's guilt by association.

The silver lining to all this? The community as a whole isn't pleased. At least according to the main subreddit comments and a few individual voices like MurderofBirds. Despite the increase (from my perspective anyway) of critical voices post-Volume 8, criticism of RWBY is still very much seen as taboo. As this ban showcases. But it's really reassuring to see so many fans, critics and non-critics alike, going, "This was a mistake." A community is meant to include all aspects of engagement: praise, criticism, and the gray area between. If anything, fans like the mods of the main subreddit should be creating a separate subreddit that is specifically for praise. In the same way that there should have been a tag for RWBY praise, rather than trying to eliminate any and all criticism from the main "RWBY" tag. The majority of fans, even those who claim to hate critics and all they (presumably) stand for, recognize that a blanket ban of all criticism is not the way to go, especially when "criticism" has come to have such a staggeringly broad definition. If you want your RWBY experience to be nothing but sunshine and roses (ha), then cultivate your own internet experience to reflect that. Create your own pockets with rules about how this is the space for praise and if you're not up for praising RWBY right now, don't interact with us in this particular space. Don't try to make the entire community — the main tools used to discuss the show online — conform to your preferences. As established, there is no "good" criticism that everyone in the fandom will accept, which just leaves a fandom with no criticism at all. I'm glad to see I'm far from the only one who, when presented with that extreme, is going, "Nope. No thank you."

#rwby #mymetas #suicide tw #rwde

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mental-health-advice · 3 years

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Hey.

For a while I feel like my friendship with this person has become inherently codependent.

I didn't realise how much I needed to be needed by him until recently. I put a lot of my self worth on him and in the process put him above everything else. And I felt justified because he was going through a tough time. And I don't want to judge him, but he isn't exactly the best person. He can be extremely cruel to other people and selfish. But I never questioned anything he did because I wanted him to like me. I didn't neglect any other things like school and stuff. I kept on top of it, but most of my free time was taken up for him, having conversations that I really didn't want to and I enjoyed myself most of the time but sometimes I felt like I outgrew his company. I made up versions of him in my head that were so much better than real life. This was aggravated because we were all in lockdown and I couldn't meet other people. I've only ever known him through phone calls for a while and the two months we actually met in in person school were spent with him feuding against my other friends in his quest for power. I always found it impossible to pick a side in these situations, because the others were right but I wanted to please him too. I was incapable of refusing anything he said. I always had to hide away a part of me because I was afraid he wouldn't like me then. And he could be very controlling too. He thought he was above everyone and the school director kind of favoured him too, so he had a lot of plans for a very unsafe event. But then schools shut down again and he became really depressed and was suicidal and tried to pin everything on me at one point, just because I respected my mother's words. I tried to be there for him, and this went on for four months. I agreed to everything he said because it was easier than fighting with him. Now stuff hit rock bottom and the director has shut him out and told him to just get back to academics. Schools are opening this week and now he's really scared again.

I don't know what to say when he tells me his life sucks and that he doesn't want it. He's out of the extreme phase now and he expects everything to be handed to him without working hard for anything.

I knew he was someone who didn't care about other people and took joy in the sorrow of others but I always excused his behaviour. When things got too bad I stepped aside.

But apart from all of this, I always craved for him to call me. My happiness depended on his. I needed him to talk to me. And me only. I got insanely jealous and beat myself up inside. I worried so much about him but he didn't seem to care about me at all. When I tried to talk about my feeling it resulted in us fighting continuously, with him saying I didn't deserve him. I never needed him to respect me or my boundaries because I knew he was incapable of caring about someone else and that it wouldn't be worth my time. But now I can't take him just using me anymore. At first I just thought that I had feelings for him which caused my jealousy, but then he came out to me, but these still seem to persist. I just need him to come to me for any problem that he has, but that took a hit today, when I couldn't deal with him at all. I've read up codependent friendships and I think that's what is really going on in my head. I don't like him romantically I think, I'm just really insecure.

I don't want to be that person anymore. He doesn't respect my boundaries, my family or my interests. I'm not allowed to have an opinion because anything that he doesn't agree shouldn't be said in his presence. I feel like I'm stuck in the same place and unable to truly be myself. We are so different and my beliefs directly contradict his but I've never been able to express them to him. And he calls himself my best friend. Our other best friend, is kinda in between. She regularly argues with him and demands respect, but he doesn't even consider it. But when he has a problem we have to drop everything for him. And he accuses me of not trusting him. And he tells me not to say things that make him angry rudely but he doesn't do the same for me when I tell him calmly that I don't want to talk about something. He's really condescending too, and acts as of nothing matters but him. And because of the lack of going out, he was the only solace I have.

Despite this I still deeply care about him. This morning he was groaning continuously, and I told him that everyone had problems, he completely turned on me and said that I didn't get to say anything because my life was fine and that his was way more difficult. He acts as if he knows everything about me and assumes that I will be fine no matter how hard his words are. And he's kinda right, because I always come back to him. This same person told me a few minutes ago that everyone one in our grade was fine and that nothing was wrong and that someone should die, so that their life sucks. So he'll be fine if someone died and if they shut the school and the state, so that he doesn't have to deal with the consequences of his actions. He even has the nerve to whine about how he doesn't deserve any small hardship that comes his way. But life's hard and he doesn't seem to realise that there is life after your senior year in high school. He seems to think that this is all that matters. We're just sixteen and he acts like this is all we ever have. I don't know how to help him. He says he has a bad home life, but I don't know how that excuses him being a horrible human being to others for no reason. And he is privileged. I tell him to work hard this year, and next year in college he can do what he wants. But he says he wants the life of a film star without lifting a finger.

I feel like it's my responsibility to fix his issues, but he's the only one who can. I can't help someone who isn't willing to help themselves.

Moreover he doesn't even care about anything that other people are going through stuff too. And he called me selfish for implying that the world doesn't revolve around him. I've always tried to be there for him, and I still want to, but I don't think it's good for both of us. We're toxic to each other. Sometimes I wish his problems were magically fixed so that we could go back to being normal friends instead of the complete wreckage we both are.

He says no one understands hima s if he was accusing me of not caring enough about him. But I felt like I hit a breaking point and that I couldn't just nod my head anymore. I'm human being with issues of my own but he doesn't give a damn.

I can't even talk to him normally, I have to thread around eggshells to keep him happy, but I'm never happy with him. He says I don't act enthusiastic to his ideas. I hate his ideas but I'm always nice about it. I don't shut him down. I hope he gets the things he wants even if they aren't to my liking. And today he calls me boring and attacks me for not liking marvel. I mean come on can't I even have an opinion on a movie? I said I liked a ship in it ( it was a comfort ship that helped me escape) and he said I didn't have a right to have an opinion because I hadn't watched all the movies. Fandom is something that gives me joy and keeps me grounded and today he attacked something that I thought no one could. My imagination. My ability to create worlds in my head. The worst part, we met because we were both Harry Potter fans. And now he doesn't even feel like that. I helped him edit and write his debut novel. I feel like that person who believed in something is gone. He even admitted to just using me for my knowledge in the beginning.

I still feel sorry for him though. I'm really sorry if I've rambled on for too long. This has become more about him that it has about me.

I still really like him and feel that we can be friends if he starts to try to help himself and if I get rid of my insecurity and jealousy when he talks to other people. My brain is illogical. I don't want to have to deal with all of his issues all the time with no regard for myself, but I don't want him to confide in some else either.

I hate this person that I've become. Who cares about no one but him. I tried to use his issues as a shield against the problems going on in my own life. I try not to let anyone see that I don't have my life together either, because I feel bad about bothering others with my issues, when they have a million struggles of their own, but isn't that what he's doing to me? He disregards my feelings but I'm still very much obsessed with him.

I've lost my sense of self respect completely, and I pushed away other people for him.

I need to stop being codependent on him, and start at least liking myself.

Please help me. I'm sorry if this is too long. I seriously needed to get this off my chest.

And I apologise if I bothered you with my silly problems. I know there are more important things in the world but I seem stuck here. I don't want to appear ungrateful for anything so I pretend that everything is fine. And honestly I feel like I can never be not okay with a wonderful mother like mine. Oh and he hates her too. I just can't seem to win with him. My dad though is a whole nother issue.

This guy gets on my nerves, but I still need him to be happy too. But I shouldn't have to carry that burden. Right?

Hey there,

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#mha-lauren #advice #advice blog #mental health advice #anonymous #resend Ask #new 700 word limit

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bluerosesburnblue · 4 years

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I'm curious about pokemon theories now. I've never actually heard any of them lol

Well, you’ve got a whole range of quality just like in any fandom (though I find that a lot are uh... the product of people who didn’t read the lore)

There’s some that I do really like. Some like “Ariana is Silver’s Mom” (for context, Silver, the rival in the Johto games is Giovanni, the boss of Team Rocket’s son with an unknown mother. Ariana is a high ranking Team Rocket admin with very similar hair to Silver)

A very popular one is “Ditto is a failed clone of Mew,” which I also like even if it gets more unlikely every generation

Ditto, an uncommon Pokemon whose only ability is to transform into other Pokemon, has the same weight as the legendary ancestor of all Pokemon, Mew

It has a similar color scheme to Mew in both standard and shiny appearances

Both have perfectly even stat distributions (Ditto is all 48s while Mew is all 100s.)

Not to mention that both are the only Pokemon in existence that can learn Transform naturally, a move not even available to Mew’s canon clone

In the Kanto games, Ditto are only found in the lab where Mew was cloned

The biggest hiccup with this one is that Ditto can be found in the wild in every region, completely divorced from any lore

So there’s some decent stuff. But the bad ones, at least to me, are really bad

One that drives me absolutely insane is “The Unova War (from Black/White’s backstory EXPLICITLY STATED TO BE A CIVIL WAR) is the same was as the Kalos War (from X/Y’s backstory, EXPLICITLY STATED TO HAVE BEEN AGAINST FOREIGN REGIONS)” with special attention drawn to both:

People using the statues of the Unova Legendaries in Kalos’s Parfum Palace as proof that there’s a connection between the two, despite Parfum Palace only being 300 years old while the Kalos war was 3000 years ago and, ergo, not proof that Kalos had anything to do with Unova during the time the war actually happened

People making the claim that the desert in Unova was the impact site for the giant laser Kalos’s king fired during the war, despite the MASSIVE, PERFECTLY CIRCULAR DESERT BADLANDS IN KALOS being the place where you meet that very king

And almost none of those theories even mention the fact that Kalos is the Pokemon world’s version of France while Unova is their version of New York, and the games seem to have our level of technology. So how, exactly, did the king of France stage a war with New York with the technology of maybe slightly more advanced than 1000 BC? This is something that needs ironing out, people!

I’d go on more about the inconsistencies, but Reddit user CountScarlioni did basically a perfect breakdown in the comments of this [x] thread, to the point where I don’t have anything to add

Though the absolute worst Pokemon theory I’ve ever seen was “Lysandre (villain of the Kalos aka Pokemon France games) is the father of Lusamine (villain of the Alola aka Pokemon Hawaii games).” I’m linking the video but it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

Just the idea that Lusamine, who is canonically over 40 years old, being the daughter of Lysandre, who is stated to have been Professor Sycamore’s (who was explicitly stated to be a pretty young professor) student and peer, whose games of debut take place two years apart, is absolutely absurd

The justification for this point is “Lysandre is the descendant of AZ’s brother, and AZ is immortal, so Lysandre inherited that immortality or at least slow aging!” Which, first of all, AZ became immortal due to radiation from his weapon. That’s not something he can pass on to his brother’s descendant, especially when his brother was not there when the weapon was fired. And, second of all, AZ’s immortality was explicitly the “Age Without Youth” variety, i.e. he still aged up until he was physically elderly and then seemed to stop

One of the pieces of evidence is, and I’m not joking, “Lusamine’s family’s clothes look French to me so they could be from Poke-France.” What??? Most Pokemon regions have similar clothing styles! Not to mention that most of her family’s names are German in origin. Which is close to France, but still more concrete than what this guy said!

Not to mention that his proposition of “they have similar motives since they’re both obsessed with beauty, therefore it was something Lysandre drilled into her as a child” is... totally wrong. They were both obsessed with beauty and control, but took it in totally opposite directions. And it’s a bit of a spit in the face to Lusamine’s story since the Alola games are so much about her children breaking free of her abuse (which, at least in Sun and Moon, is OUTRIGHT stated to have gone from “a little smothering” to outright domestic abuse when Lusamine lost her husband and came into contact with extradimensional aliens)

I just... don’t know how someone with such a shallow reading of the material can act like they’re exposing some hidden secrets with such confidence. Or how some people can just eat it up

#pokémon #pokemon #long post #PEOPLE GETTING THE KALOS AND UNOVA LORE WRONG MAKES ME VERY UPSET #because i think kalos unova and alola had the most interesting lore in the series #i stopped watching pokemon theory videos a while ago because most were a combo of HUGE REACH and 'you're remembering wrong'#and then you get absolute morons like dobbs #who does things like add marshadow to his most evil pokemon list because of his THEORY that marshadow is a pokemon's soul #anon asks #liz answers

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howdidiendupshippingthispoll · 10 months

Text

Round 1, Bracket 1, Side D, Eighth poll

Takumi Tonooka and Itaru Chigasaki [Tonoita], A3! Act Addict Actors vs Dallas and Bain [NaviMind], Payday: The heist and Payday two

Story of Tonoita:

AND YET. GOD.

BUT THAT WASN'T THE KICKER.

Story of NaviMind:

#round 1 #bracket 2 #side D #eighth poll #tumblr polls #shipping polls #takumi tonooka #itaru chigasaki #tonoita #a3 act addict actors #dallas #bain #navimind #payday the heist #payday 2 #how did I end up shipping this poll

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lowat-golden-tower · 6 years

Note

Hey have you read homestuck? I'm trying to decide godtiers for the sides and thought that maybe you could help?

I have indeed read the Chaos Devil’s spawn of memes. Back in its hey-day I was eyeballs deep in that fandom, and yes, I was actually a source for classpect information at one point. I went and sifted through my old sources (god bless @dahniwitchoflight tbh) and tried to puzzle this one out.

Now note, I am very rusty with all of this and honestly the classpect system can be dissected any number of ways. So this is purely my interpretation.

With that said, shall we get to it?

TL;DR Version (for explanations and thorough analysis, check under Read More):

Thomas - Mage of BloodLogan - Witch of LightPatton - Knight of HopeRoman - Maid of Heart (ha)Virgil - Rogue of DoomDeceit - Sylph of VoidRemy - Heir of Breath (hi john)

So first I went and took a look at possible classes. I decided to include Thomas, Remy and Deceit along with the sides just for the fun of it, and surprisingly only one of them actually lined up with a single class and no other (the rest have many that could work).

Remy is a Breath player. Hands down. Nothing fits the sleepy rebel boi like Breath. Breath players can be disconnected, apathetic and indifferent. They’re detached, obsessed with liberties and freedoms and independence. They seek flexibility. If that isn’t Remy, then I don’t know what is. He shares these qualities with Virgil, actually, but I decided Remy exemplified the class far more.

Now for Remy’s class, I found four to be appropriate, so it was a matter of choosing the best. Heir, Mage, Sylph or Knight; after much deliberation I finally decided on Heir. Mages tend to have a dichotomy with their aspect I don’t see for Remy, Sylphs are too obsessed with pushing their aspect onto others, and Knights tend to use their aspect as a shield for fear of lacking in it. None of these suit Remy like the Heir, true naturals of their aspect who often don’t even need to actively seek it out. Usually they have problems getting stuck on one thing or another, and Remy does seem to have troubles with adapting. (Poor Thomas.)

Remy is an Heir of Breath. (Like John Egbert!)

Let’s go with Deceit next. He has the next lowest number of associated aspects after Remy, with just two: Rage or Void. In the end I found Rage to be too extreme of an aspect for Deceit, at least for the moment, with so little information known about him as a character. Ironically, he shares the Void association with Virgil, but I feel it is definitely more appropriate for Deceit. Void is infinite possibilities, its indifference and confusion, secrets, doubts, irrelevance. All things Deceit either is or does. The other sides would like to see him as irrelevant. He creates doubt and confusion through deceit, hoards secrets, and sees the bigger picture of things which is what prompts him to be deceitful in the first place. Creating something from nothing just because? Sounds like Deceit.

Now class… haha, oh boy. This was not so easy. About two-thirds of the classes for this aspect could apply to Deceit. So I had a lot of comparing to do, to narrow it down. Mage and Bard are two classes that I really struggled with, honestly. I feel like Mage of Void would suit Deceit if he became the truly despicable person we all know he could be, as the embodiment of deceit itself? While Bard of Void would apply more to “sympathetic Deceit,” a reformed Deceit who didn’t want to be the villain but was made out to be. And yet… Sylph of Void. Oh, Sylph of Void just screams Deceit, they are masters at hiding things and will happily do so, and make others do so.

Yeah, this one was really difficult. At the end of the day, I feel Sylph is the happy medium between Mage and Bard. They’re meddlers. They hide things; their actions, their motives, themselves. A Sylph of Void in particular would not be good working with others, making them feel useless, meaningless or insignificant. They’ll talk over others and shut them up. No one ever knows how much they’re hiding, or what they have up their sleeve. It’s all fitting.

Deceit is a Sylph of Void.

Let’s go with Thomas next. He’s tied with Logan for the most associated aspects at three. Space, Heart and Blood. In the end, I went with Blood. Heart just screams Patton to me far more, and Space feels more like Roman (but I’ll decipher those two when I get to them). No, Blood definitely feels like our Thomas. All about bonds, commitments, dependency on others and others onto you, taking responsibility and upholding promises. Our Thomas has an enormously strong bond with his friends, and even with the community he’s created. Not to mention his sides. :)

But now, what class for our creator? I narrowed it down to Mage, Maid or Knight, but in the end settled on Mage. Knight seemed just a little too insecure for Thomas, at least in this stage of his life. And Maid was a little too submissive, a bit too much of a doormat for relationships. No, Mage suits Thomas best. Tied down to his obligations; commitments to fulfill, promises to uphold, connections and bonds to maintain. They try to support the people they’ve bonded with, friends and family alike, and work hard to maintain those bonds.

He’s Mr. Dependable, or tries to be, but he often wonders about giving up a few of those obligations, of getting some more freedom and having fun. He fully feels the strain of all that responsibility. This even applies to his sides, each of whom he cares for and tries to keep stable, including their relationships with each other.

Thomas is a Mage of Blood.

Who next? Let’s go with Logan. Yes, finally digging into the main core of the sides. (He’s also my favorite.) Now due to Thomas taking Blood, that leaves Logan with Light and Mind as his possible aspects. Those of you familiar with Homestuck will understand why, as both are composed of a form of knowledge; having it, seeking it, stealing it, what have you. Now, Light also has a bit to do with luck, but that’s why I’m going to pick apart the threads and dissect them to figure out which suits Logan better.

Now for starters, Mind is the opposite of Heart, which I said suits Patton a lot. Hell, we have an entire video titled “Mind vs Heart” via Thomas, about how Logan and Patton are opposites. Nonetheless! I wanted to look at Light as a legitimate contender. Mind is reasonable decisions, it is logic, it’s rational and driven by pure thought. It can be impersonal, apathetic and indifferent; all things Logan has been, though he’s working on it. He gives equal weight to all options, not favoring any, no matter their moral siding. It is supremely Logan as any aspect goes.

Now Light, those with this aspect are knowledge seekers. They want to understand things. They take multiple sources of information and turn it into something useful, something usable. Scholars and researchers dedicated to knowledge for knowledge’s sake. They go after it with an intensity that might put off others. At their best, they are resourceful and driven. At their worst, fussy, pedantic and insensitive. HOO BOY if all this doesn’t sound like Logan too. And in the end…

Obvious a choice as Mind might be, I think Logan is indeed more Light. Perhaps in the beginning, when he was just Teacher, he could have been Mind. But he’s opened up so much more, revealed to us his quirks and eccentricities. He isn’t cold, unfeeling fact. He’s a rush of enthusiasm and a spark of joy and always thirsty to learn more, more, more to the point he can be blinded by his own desires. Yes, Logan is most definitely a Light player.

Class-wise, it was surprisingly hard. Few of the classes suited Logan all around, with the closest being Witch, Sylph and Heir. Now, we already have the latter two. I was trying to avoid doubles of the classes and aspects. Heirs are already gifted with a huge heaping helping of their aspect, they naturally gravitate to it. Their challenge is to not get stuck on one thing; to learn to change and adapt. Very Logan-like. Sylphs, as I mentioned, are meddlers, which is also very Logan-like. Witches, now… Witches control their aspect. They manipulate it. Think of Jade Harley, Feferi Peixes, Damara Megido; all witches who could utilize and abuse their aspect with a snap of their fingers.

Logan embodies logic, and knowledge; he loathes luck, probability and superstition. There have been times where he used his knowledge to come out on top, to try and expose others’ flaws, and he’s willing to see how some knowledge can be subjective. He often disagrees with the others on what they consider meaningful and important, and replaces it with his own views. He’s a know-it-all, he has an ego, and honestly he’s a little attention seeking. But he can also manipulate the information at his disposal, all the data Thomas has learned, to glean more from it- even if it wasn’t correct, or useful. This has also been shown in canon. Thusly, my conclusion…

Logan is a Witch of Light.

Let’s go with Virgil next. Now, like I said, I’m trying to avoid doubling up here. Remy is far more suited to Breath, and Deceit is more suited to Void. That leaves Virgil with the aspects of Heart, Rage and Doom. (I’m sure all of you saw the latter two coming.)

After reading further into Heart while looking into Thomas, I’ve decided it really doesn’t suit Virgil like I initially thought. Which gives us Doom and Rage to compare. Now Rage is unconditional hate or fear, refusal, rejection, skeptical criticism, doubt, negativity, despair, Getting the ‘Red Light’ or a Hard Stop, just absolutely no. That is Anxiety, and Virgil, to a T. Everything is going to turn out wrong. Don’t be fooled by peace and success, it can all go to Hell in a second. Nothing is “fine,” nothing is “okay.” But it’s not always fierce and lashing out, it also creeps up on you, paralyzing you, ensnaring you in a cage. It’s anxiety.

Doom on the other hand is harming, it’s all about control and limits, negativity, withdrawal, caution, but it’s also acceptance. It’s a little less extreme than Rage, more caution than outright disbelief and denial. Like Deceit with his classes, I get the distinct notion Anxiety was a Rage player, but once he became Virgil he settled firmly into the Doom aspect instead. He suffers, but with that suffering comes wisdom and empathy. He isn’t a healer or a fixer. He’s there to tell you something is wrong, but it’s okay, he’s there to suffer with you. He can be kind, but at his worst he can also be bitter, resentful and fatalistic- traits we saw far more in his earlier appearances.

So, Virgil is a Doom player. For him, I see Heir, Seer, Sylph or Rogue. Yet again, we already find ourselves with an Heir and a Sylph. Virgil sure does have a lot in common with Remy and Deceit, eh? So let’s focus more on Seer and Rogue.

Seers are shown knowledge of their aspect, and need to figure out how to apply that knowledge to the relevant situations. Virgil, seeing all the doom and negative consequences, and attempting to apply them where necessary; as anxiety does. Rogues, on the other hand, have problems coping with their aspect. They often think they can’t handle it, and they give up. Very defeatist. They’re supposed to come to terms with their aspect and own it.

And that, right there, is the key. Virgil initially being embittered by all the bad he saw in the world, the dangers, how no one ever wanted to listen to him or thought he was overreacting. Hyper-focused on if he can handle this job, if he’s really doing the right thing and being effective. Hell, there’s an entire video about Accepting Anxiety and I feel like it’s that video where Virgil would truly start to come into himself as a Rogue of Doom.

Rogues of Doom have trouble coping with rules, limits, obligations and responsibilities. They may think they don’t have the proper structure for it, or that they can’t handle it, or don’t deserve it. These are all doubts and fears Virgil tells to Thomas, as his anxiety. He constantly worries and frets over them not being good enough. He acts like he doesn’t care about not being accepted by the other sides, but in Accepting Anxiety it’s shown he really does. It eats him up inside. He feels repulsive to them, unnecessary and too pessimistic to be helpful or healthy.

Is it really futile to chase this desire? What if you stop, and regret it for the rest of your life? How do you know for sure this is necessary? Is it worth the sacrifice? Anxiety is uncertainty and questioning yourself, and that’s precisely what a Rogue of Doom does. They’re avoidant.

Once Virgil realizes he is important and is needed, he can step up and embrace those doubts and fears. He can use his pessimism and caution more constructively, to help Thomas and guide him, perhaps even pulling burdens and fears from the other sides to help them out as well. He, like all rogues, starts out selfish but has the capacity to become one of the most selfless classes. And through the progression of Sanders Sides, we have witnessed this growth.

Virgil is a Rogue of Doom.

That leaves us with Roman and Patton. I’m going to save Roman for last, because I feel like he’ll be tough. So let’s take a look at Patton!

I’ve already stated Heart suits him very well. However, we proved Logan didn’t fit the obvious, so let’s also look at the other aspects he could be associated with: Life and Hope. Hope and Heart are also aspects which could be associated with Roman.

Hope is unconditional love, confirmation, harmony, acceptance, naive optimism, belief and positivity. Everything is going to be okay, someway, somehow. It’s warm, accepting and open arms, lots of hugs, lots of “I’m here for you’s.” It’s a drive pushing you forward against all odds. Life is also positivity, growth, energy, recklessness and liberation. They’re always concerned for others and are deeply empathetic. They often put others’ needs before their own. At best, they are great caretakers, listeners and nurturers. At worst, they can prove to be passive-aggressive and pushy because they think they know best.

Heart, meanwhile, is irrational impulses, instinct, emotional, feelings, biased opinions, empathy and passion. It’s the soul. It’s who “You” are. It’s irrational and driven by pure feeling. There may be no justification for how they feel, but gosh darn it, they’re gonna feel it a whole lot anyway! Focused on morals, on what they view as “right,” and they show favoritism to options in this way. Very strong moral compass and, well, Patton is Thomas’ Morality.

So… yeah. This is indeed a tough one. I think it’s safe to say Heart and Hope trump Light here, and that Heart can most definitely suit either Patton or Roman. So to solve this, I decided to do a quick check to see if Roman would actually be a Heart player.

I’ve already crossed out Hope for him, as that is most definitely more of a Patton aspect. Fitting as Time is, I crossed that out as well. I feel it’s just a little too focused on the endgame and the “end of things” for Roman. He enjoys the story and the journey as much as the conclusion. Then I looked to Space, which is all about creation- but Space players are also patient. They pick and choose their battles, they take things as they come. That… is not Roman. Thus, in the end, I have decided.

Roman is Heart. Patton is Hope.

I’ll get to Roman’s class later. Let’s get back to Patton, now that we’ve established he is a Hope player. I narrowed down the classes to Knight or Page for him. Knights hide a fear of perceived fundamental failure with their aspect behind a shield of confidence and obvious effort. They’re supposed to learn that they are, indeed, enough and take it down a notch. Thanks to the nostalgia videos, we’ve seen this does, in fact, fit Patton. Pages, on the other hand, start with a lack of their aspect that they try to overcome with obvious overcompensation. They need to keep at it, even through the failures, to become the strongest of all player classes for their respective aspect. This also sort of suits Patton, but…

I’m gonna go with Knight of Hope. I really don’t see Patton lacking the aspect, even if he would try to overcompensate. He aligns more closely to Knight in that way, I find. Good at exploiting his own optimism and positivity, a great motivator and positive force. Great at instilling hope to get things moving along, a fantastic driving force sitting firm in his beliefs, even if occasionally he wonders if its enough. Is he being positive enough? Happy enough? Is he motivating the others the right amount? He piles and piles on the optimism, the joy, the good vibes even when he himself feels low. He welcomes and accepts new people and ideas, though he doesn’t tend to waver on his beliefs and ideas unless shown a “more real” alternative. And when he fails, he feels it intensely, as if he led everyone else astray. The moment he discovers one of his beliefs is false or truly harmful, he’ll drop it like it’s hot.

Patton is a Knight of Hope.

And last but not least, we have Princey. Roman, whom we’ve already determined is a Heart player. So half our work is done. Now to discover his class....

Out of those remaining, Maid or Page would be the most suitable choices. Maids of Heart start out relying on others to tell them what to love or hate. What to feel strongly or passionately about. They may even rely on others for their sense of self. Think a young Roman, a young creativity. Thomas turning to Disney, to Broadway, to his friends and parents and teachers for inspiration. Hell, Roman almost religiously follows Disney, believing all dreams will come true, princes are heroes and villains are irredeemable. I imagine these impressions being made at a young age.

As he grew, Roman would need to start relying on himself for that direction. He would need to look into himself, who he really is, and only take those outside forces as possible influences rather than the end-all, be-all. No one can tell you who you are except you. No one can decide what you love or hate. Roman creates his own sense of self, finds his true passions and then follows them, leading Thomas along this path. He’s an absolute force to be reckoned with when it comes to these passions, i.e. Disney. It’s infectious. Others get caught up in his own enthusiasm and excitement. Very Roman.

Pages of Heart, on the other hand, try to overcompensate for their lack of the thing rather than rely on others to fill the void. They act irrational and impulsive based on their instincts, which often leads to wrong decisions and interpretations. They try to act caring and empathetic to the point it comes off as insincere. Overemotional, open and honest to the point of giving away far too much information. They go overboard, they become obsessed with their passions. Super affectionate, over dramatic in their emotional displays. They blow everything out of proportion. Driven by strong desires, wants and needs. They need to learn how to be balanced.

As you can see, both of these classes suit Roman to a degree. However, I feel Page is a little... too extreme. I don’t believe Roman overcompensates that much, and he certainly doesn’t go to great lengths to be affectionate and caring towards the others. In fact, sometimes those emotions can be stunted, particularly with Virgil or Logan. No, I see Roman as a Maid. I see him as being inspired by the world around him, and then taking that inspiration and owning it.

Roman is (a) Maid of Heart. (Ha.)

#forrestwyrm #thomas sanders #sanders sides #homestuck au #logan sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #deceit sanders #remy sanders

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