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sapphixxx · 4 months

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there's a lot of reasons more people aren't into yuri that are troubling to consider, but equally, I genuinely think it cannot be understated how much of it comes down to most yuri being boring as hell. Like truly. I've been reading the front page of Dynasty Scans like it was the newspaper for 15 years I am not exaggerating I can show you the download file data 15 years.

You know what the complaint about yuri by yuri readers was back in 2009?

"wow that really was just 5 volumes of them blushing at each other and then they don't even kiss"

You know what the complaint about yuri by yuri readers is today in 2023?

"wow that really was just 5 volumes of them blushing at each other and then they don't even kiss"

Don't get me wrong, Yuri has grown a LOT in that time, to the point that most people today wouldn't even understand a Maria-sama reference if it were dropped in front of them (thank God). It's expanded and evolved to encompass more stories about adult women, wider varieties of scenarios, a greater acknowledgement of real life lesbianism, and is more comfortable showing girls kissing with tongue and having sex.

Yuri Manga is maybe the best is it's ever been, and it's also getting the widest readership it's ever had in the English speaking world. The titles we carry at work are always on back order with long queues, and, when I've asked them, most weebs of all gender or sexualities report keeping up with at least a few Yuri series.

At large though? Most of it is still really boring. That's not a bad thing necessarily. I like it because it goes down easy. For the most part any series you pick is gonna be pretty chill. Even shit from Sal Jiang which is PRETTY EDGY for yuri is a pretty breezy read. More serious ones like How Do We Relationship? cover some pretty real subjects about how intimacy is actually quite difficult even when both of you love each other, but it's not like... Exciting. Yuri isn't where you go to pump your fist or get perched on the edge of your seat.

So when the comparison is made to yaoi, well, I mean, have you READ any yaoi? Even in some of the more restrained titles those boys are likely to be sucking and fucking balls and all within the first volume or two. There's gonna be drama, intrigue, shit is gonna get messy, passions are gonna get heated, clothes are gonna be ripped off, people are gonna get sold to One Direction, it's stuff you can sit down with a bowl of popcorn with you know? Stuff you can message your friend and gush Hey Can You BELIEVE? A lot of it is pretty trashy, but that's the appeal. The generic state of yaoi is torrid and exciting and sexy. Ultimately, as a species many of us like to see pretty people fuck. In yaoi you'll get that. In yuri you won't. Nothing wrong with that, but it is gonna be a major contributing factor to their relative popularity.

It's also worth making the comparison to hetero romance manga, which has undergone a renaissance of it's own in recent years. There's now a whole meta around crafting a handful of mean shitty grouchy dysfunctional bully women and flinging them at the protagonist of the day who, unlike in years past, may actually have a face and personality. Most of these are also very trashy and truly scrape the bottom of the bucket in terms of writing.

AND YET?

I would bet money on the fact that you'll have heard of these women and probably even have a good idea what they're like without ever having touched a page of their manga.

I'm sorry but the straights are whipping donuts around the yuri girls in terms of delivering a wide variety of weird compelling fucked up women. How many yuri leading ladies by comparison can you point to as standout recognizable characters even divorced from their story? There's definitely a few, but not many. I'm not talking quality or depth of writing, I'm talking straight up pure recognizability. There are many beautifully written women in yuri, now more than ever. I can't think of many who'd like, get a figure made or have their face splashed on merch, though.

I don't really have a conclusion here. I love Yuri a lot, but at the end of the day this is just kinda the state of things right now.

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skaldish · 3 months

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What would you say to someone that says something like "I'd rather study hard science than believe in myths made by humans"? Obviously it was a conversation about spirituality and religions and this person very clearly has put science in the place of God, but I'm really speechless when something like that happens.

(it might be a bit of a useless question, I apologize)

I guess it depends.

In my experience, most people dig their heels really hard into "science over religion," as a reaction to something that came up inside them.

For people with religious trauma (whether they recognize it as such or not), hearing someone talk about religion can recall the memory of how it felt to have religion overpower them. When someone says something like the statement you mentioned, it's to reinforce their own sense of agency in the face of that bad somatic memory resurfacing.

Even if such statements are intense, they're rarely actually personal; they're a reaction to the memory, not a reaction to the present conversation.

In these situations, I actually reply with something like, "Yeah, I don't blame you. The way Christianity works has major issues." Or say things like, "I mean, whoever believes mythology literally comes from the mouth of the divine clearly doesn't have their head on straight."

I say these things because it helps people get out of that defensive mindset. When it comes down to it, a big reason why a lot of folks are uncomfortable with religious talk is because they've experienced people trying to convert them that way.

But when it becomes clear to them that I'm not wholly uncritical of religion, it opens the door to further discussion about it, especially if the topic moves away from "our individual beliefs" and towards a discussion about the meta of religion and spirituality; how it functions as an anthropological phenomenon.

I've actually had long conversations with atheists about it. Many of them do in fact have thoughts on the matter and will avidly get into it, and it's during these conversations that I'll offer disambiguation about religion and about science as it comes up. And it really just is disambiguation; I'm not actually trying to persuade them of any one thing or another.

Keep in mind though that mileage varies. Even if you were to engage the person you mentioned this way, you may not be able to point out they're just substituting God with science. This would shed light on the fact they're still thinking like a Christian; that even though their thoughts have changed, their pattern of thinking has not. And if they haven't come to terms with the existence of that thought-pattern yet, then the act of pointing this out will only make them mad.

But I think this is where my advice sort of runs dry. It doesn't really feel invalidating of my spirituality for someone to come at me with a hard "science-only" stance. That's because a) I love science, and b) my own spirituality is not based on "having faith" in any way, so challenging my faith doesn't actually do anything because I don't believe in anything without evidence.

When people bank hard into atheism, my reaction is generally, "Well yeah, that's a reasonable response to have to religion kicking the shit out of you." It's only when an atheist is being an asshole to me because I have a spirituality do we have a problem.

#answered

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chaos0pikachu · 2 months

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I am here actually to appreciate your post. I saw a blogger’s post saying The sign would have been ‘successful’ had it got filled with fantasy and romance and limit action to 10%. I wondered why that person, who says BL is all about romance, watched a show whose genre is action. Then I saw your post about people watching many shows to stay in fandom and I agree. Also you are right about dramas with a complex story receiving heavy criticism. Everything (even lack of proper plot or conflict) is exempted in a romance drama. No wonder most BLs are confined to ‘2 boys and their jealous & crying moments, routine conflicts enhanced by Escola or leads explaining how important Nikon printer is for their relationship’

Well damn hit me in the feels with this appreciation I'ma get all shy and shit.

I always wonder if by "successful" people mean in terms of critical acclaim, story telling, or monetarily. When it comes to Thai shows - and some please correct me if I'm wrong - it's difficult to tell how "successful" they are terms of audience reach/monetarily because there's no easily verifiable information. Like, there's Youtube numbers sure, but The Sign as an example, aired on Channel 3 what were it's ratings total on that channel? Idk, does anyone know that? Sincerely asking lol

Personally the way I like to judge a piece of media is what I call the Roger Ebert method; he often judged films based not solely on whether they were "good" or "bad but by how successfully they accomplished their goals.

If you read his review of Space Jam while it's clear Ebert doesn't think the movie is high art, "You can watch the movie on the sports and cartoon levels, and also appreciate the corporate strategy that's involved. [...] It is difficult for an actor to work in movies that combine live action with animation, because much of the time he cannot see the other characters in a scene with him. But Jordan has a natural ease and humor, an unforced charisma, that makes a good fit with the cartoon universe."

Ebert praises that the film, while filled with obvious product placement and banking on both nostalgia for the toons & star power of Jordan, accomplishes it's goal of being a family for that can be enjoyed by adults and children, and also the ability to blend techniques of live action, animation and 3D rendering.

I bring this up specifically b/c when I see "reviews" of shows in BL - the most common form of meta I see in BL fandom as a whole and that's not a knock just an observation - it's usually always about the narrative. Nothing about the filmmaking. And if there is discussion about he filmmaking it's usually misinformed or worse misinforming - no that's not what aperture means, yaoi framing isn't really a thing in film, the t-shirt is really just a t-shirt, etc, etc.

And like I get why. Fandom is more about story, what the words on a page or what the characters on screen are doing and saying. It's easier to talk about the amazing communication two characters have b/c you don't really need a film knowledge to discuss that. Which is a factor in why I think shows with lower stakes, more streamlined and straightforward plots get praised at a higher, less diligent and harsh level, than shows that are a bit more daring. They're less challenging in structure, they take less risks, so there's less to critique, and there's less room for a show to disappoint.

There comfort food, rather than trying something new at the restaurant. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, again, this is just a general observation.

To me, The Sign is miles better than Cooking Crush on a simple technical level. I only watched one episode of Cooking Crush and I found it pretty mediocre at best from all technical points: acting, editing, cinematography, directing, storytelling.

This isn't to say Cooking Crush is "bad" or that even if Cooking Crush was "bad" people shouldn't like it. I don't give a fuck if people like it, good for you chase the things that spark joy! I like lots of "bad" media, have y'all ever watched Jason Takes Manhattan?

For me, The Sign, like Space Jam, accomplishes it's goals and those were ambitious goals. An action fantasy BL that actually lives up to that premise and looks good?? The fight choreography looks great considering the obviously budget??

Like one of my issues with Laws of Attraction - aside from how painfully disinterested those kisses looked - was the fight choreography was bad.

The characters very rarely land hits in a way that looks real, or even marginally real. I can only speculate they didn't hire a stunt coordinator and/or couldn't hire stunt doubles so there was a worry of injury on set (for both reasons).

This isn't a disparagement on the actor(s) either, like stunt work is difficult and it's important to have professionals on set who can walk an actor through the steps so both them and others don't get hurt. Jackie Chan is probably one of the best known actors alive for stunt work, but watch how many times he fumbles and potentially hurts himself to the point where other actors are actively worried for him:

youtube

So yeah I'm going to give The Sign it's fucking gold star stickers b/c aside from some missteps in the gun handling - to many one handed gun fights but even then it wasn't all the time and bullets ran out of ammo! Y'all don't know how exciting for me that was to see - the fight scenes look damn good.

I understand the work that went into them, I understand the pre-production time that it took for the crew and cast to learn that and filming them well is another beast too.

There's a couple scenes with shaky cam that I dislike, but god do I love that first long take in The Sign. I love how good the CGI looks overall again, considering what is probably less budget than Black Christmas (2019).

I'm admittedly, fucking picky about what I watch b/c I'm really lazy and prefer watching films in general. I don't really like TV all that much, but if I am watching a tv show I wanna be impressed with more than just the characters talking to each other. Especially if said show is 12 hours or more.

When I'm looking at a piece of media - a comic, a novel, a film, a tv show - I'm thinking about stuff like "what were it's goals, and did it accomplish them? How was the filmmaking? How was the narrative structure? What is the time/place/culture this was made in?"

I'm not sure if people are arguing if The Sign was "successful" in terms of narratively, monetarily, or critically.

In reality we can only really speculate on how successful a Thai BL is based on data that's not not entirely accurate - social media, youtube stats, awards, etc - and even then most of that is based off international audience.

I can glean that 2gether was successful for gmmtv b/c it got a second season and a film, pretty much skyrocketed Bright and Win's individual careers but again, and created a cross country alliance for activism. But even all that is still speculation not facts (except the alliance that's a real thing that happened lol).

[This is all regardless of my own feelings regarding the show which is not kind. But feelings have nothing to do with individual discussion about how monetarily successful or accomplished a show is or isn't.]

Like it might be valid speculation on both shows but it should always come with a disclaimer of - these are not facts. Also, what is "popular" or "successful" can and will be dependent on individual countries too.

Take Cutie Pie for example, I would argue that it wasn't super "successful" here with American fans, but given how overwhelmingly popular Zee and NuNew are in both Thailand and Korea, I would then argue that the show was a success in Thailand and Korea. So was Cutie Pie "successful" or not? I would say yes!

Because "success" isn't and shouldn't be measured only by how western fans receive a piece of media.

In regards to The Sign, I'd argue it appears to be very successful with only the partial data I have at hand - social media which includes places like twitter, facebook, tumblr, the success of their sold out showing for the finale, a special episode, etc. If people argue it was unsuccessful in terms of narrative, well that's debatable and I have no interest in debating why the show is good except in terms of technical filmmaking and storytelling.

And even then it's a pointless debate like or dislike whatever just don't lie or mislead people regarding film terminology and techniques or harass people because they did like A Thing or clog up the tags with annoying posts about how you didn't like said Thing.

Overall, I don't give "reviews" on things I watch either positive or negative cause, well, I'm lazy lol, I don't believe putting how much I hate a show in it's tags and a thorough rating system would be to much work. I actually like how My Drama List rating system works, I just find most reviews on it to be Annoying lmao. Like giving Kinnporsche a 5 or below is absolutely bonkers to me but whatever es lo que es. But I also don't think my thoughts and opinions on shows are that valuable in terms of discussion.

These are mostly my general thoughts on fandom at large and it's not directly at any particular people its just observations at large across various social media platforms.

I think if you like more squeecore shows that's totally gucci, I just wish didn't proposite that 1) those are the only valid shows in terms of BL/queer media and 2) didn't overhype them to such sky high levels

#the sign the series #chaos pikachu speaks

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boywifesammy · 10 months

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s5e11 sam, interrupted is THE EPISODE. it’s a fucking cinematic pipe bomb. watching it is like chewing on glass and swallowing propane. it is wonderful, it is amazing, it is EXCRUCIATING and i love it. allow me to explain.

(under the cut because i ended up rambling lol)

like, yes… it is extremely ableist. it is extremely offensive. it is an overdone harmful caricature of psych wards and horrific to watch but that is EXACTLY what makes it so good. i’ve never seen spn as a horror show but man this episode?? the psychological distress of it, the unease, the dereality??? it has me frothing at the mouth.

as someone who has tics and PTSD i have first hand experience being labelled as Crazy so that’s the lens i’m coming at this from. this episode is most definitely not a reliable source for mental health info but the way they portrayed martin’s character kinda got me. him stuttering over certain words, his general paranoia, how they clearly address that he went through a deeply traumatic event but that he’s still useful as a hunter even though he can’t do the things he used to before. i don’t think the writers intended for this episode to be viewed the way i did but man i am shaking it around in my cranium like a snow globe.

just the first few minutes of it is insane. dean acknowledging that sam was high on demon blood and that the apocalypse wasn’t his fault. seeing the absolute absurdity of the show in perspective with real life. dean admitting to his psych doctor that he's an insomniac, alcoholic, and incapable of holding long-terms relationships with his usual blase nonchalance, then immediately clamming up when she hits him with the "let's talk about your father." ??!!! i know dean is The daddy issues character but i love when they call him out like that.

and how can i Not point out the blatant assault and objectification… wendy forcefully making out with both sam AND dean. them both getting probed by the fucking monster of the week not even 10 minutes into the episode. SAM BEING TIED DOWN. i cannot explain to you how much i love seeing him restrained. the moment i saw sam tied down and angry i literally vibrated out of my skin that boy must be helpless and restrained more often it is beautiful.

on a sort of related note: high sam. yes. just yes. the little nose boop. him telling dean I Love You. getting all emotional about how much he cares about his brother. the themes of his autonomy being stripped. him being drugged up against his will when he’s a recovering drug addict????? INSANE.

also one thing that really stood out to me was dean being diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic with narcissistic personality disorder and religious delusions. which, yes, is inaccurate, but seems more like a misinterpretation of his PTSD symptoms. dean isn’t schizophrenic but he IS paranoid and he’s trained himself so thoroughly to weaponize his feelings that even to HIMSELF he seems narcissistic, when he’s really just scared and desperate. he externalizes his self-hatred as this overfed bravado but it’s because if he was honest about how he felt about himself the guy would simply fall apart.

expanding on that note… sam&dean meta on how they react to trauma & grief. dean immediately clams up and becomes anxious and terrified. he shrouds himself in so much false confidence but he genuinely hates himself so fucking much. so much that he just sits with his pain because he thinks he deserves it, while sam wants to externalize. he’s angry and that scares him because of what’s in his blood but the truth is that he has every right to be angry. he wants to be gentle but he has so much repressed rage that it bursts out of him and leaves him terrified in the aftermath. dean on the other hand wants to be angry but he’s so scared and critical of himself that he shuts down.

and the ending. my god the ending. dean telling sam to wrap it up and stuff it down. it’s excruciating to watch because dean’s advice is fucking shit but it’s also heart-breaking because it puts into perspective just how much these boys have on their conscience.

they PHYSICALLY cannot deal with their trauma. it is so awful and overwhelming that they could not function if they remembered it, so they forget about it. they push it down. they hide it away, and it’s so fucking refreshing to have an episode that acknowledges that they do that because THAT IS A TRAUMA RESPONSE. it is quite literally a SURVIVAL tactic. people who are severely traumatized will wipe their memory of traumatic events because they cannot function with it in the peripheral. this is a clear manifestation of sam and dean’s PTSD and how when they’re faced with these problems, their emotions take over and they completely lose themselves, whether that’s due to fear or rage.

the horror of this episode isn’t the wraith. it isn’t the silly little monster sucking out people’s brains. it’s the thing inside you. it is the imagery of these people hanging or with slit wrists being passed off as suicidal because they’re mentally ill. it is the ugly truth of trauma and the ways it twists your memory and self-worth. it is the inherent belief that someone is worthless if they are psychotic or paranoid. it’s the way the episode puts that perspective on sam and dean, shows them what it’s like to hallucinate and drags up their own repressed memories and puts them on full display. it is TRULY horrifying and it is GRIM and NASTY because it is about the human psyche and the horrible ways it can be twisted. it’s a fucking phenomenal episode if you can read the subtext and get past the whole “scary psych ward bad” wrapping.

#oc #supernatural #spn meta #episode analysis #spn 5x11 sam interrupted #sam and autonomy #dean winchester #sam winchester #tw ptsd #tw sui talk #tw sa #tw drugs #hello :)#tagging triggers because this one is a bit of a doozy #i went a little bit crazy watching this episode could you tell #i am very sorry to dump my ramblings on your dash but HEAR ME OUT HERE—#anyways. ANYWAYS.

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the-brash-spud · 3 months

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Honestly, if I ever got Isekaied into a DC universe I'd do so much silly stuff.

Start a podcast that swings between 'true heartfelt spoken letters to what makes a hero in my heart and what struggles they may have, but they continue for us' and conspiracy theories that are so incredibly incorrect the heroes publicly beg me to stop. And I mean stuff like claiming aliens aren't real, but Batman is a cryptid. I would do them at random with no way of telling, which is which until you listened in and found out for yourself.

Cause chaos in Gotham by openly talking shit about villains/companies/individuals who deserve it. Start with Joker just to hope mf will track me down just so I can show him the yee old fuck around and find out. If there happens to be one of the Riddlers plans that I remember, imma get my ass purposefully kidnapped and solve the whole bitch before he had any real fun and then if I know that bats can hear me snitch the location. If it happens to be in the current comic time, track Jason's ass down and flirt with him with the most unhinged pickup lines I can think of (he is in my age range, and oh lord, have you seen him? I don’t expect him to actually be interested in any romance back, but I'd still have a good time). Tell Bruce I know his secret then say that lowkey if Batman was my age I'd also sleep with him but don't make enough to be a sugar mama.

Refuse any interviews until the daily planet sends someone and then be like "me no likey that person 🥺👉👈" until they send Clark and then talk really ungodly things about Superman before the real interview, then say something like "honestly of you stood straighter and lost glasses you probably could be him but that would be just silly haha. Imagine if I just said all that right to Superman himself." All casually just to watch him try to laugh it off as he dies inside.

Say to Oliver that his beard reminds me of Green Arrow's beard. How they generally seem to have similar personalities in a way that would make them great bros if they ever got to meet. Tell Flash to stop fucking jumping between universes/timeliness and all other in between because there are Gods and one of them is surely in charge of that shit. Hal happens to flirt with me when I visit his city? Hell yeah time to fuck with him. Write down that "Batman says you have reports to write" and do his disappearing act. Look at all of the exhibision Diana was involved with. See what stuff she likes to work with. If I happen to meet her talk military history, if she knows it.

Avoid Martians at all cost. No offence to them, but I'm not giving them an existential crisis because I happened to think of their world in comic book terms.

If it's the universe in which Billy is homeless, try to adopt him like you would a street cat. Get him close by offering food and shelter. But if he does allow me to be his guardian, I will have to be straight with him that I know about Marvel and then say that I have meta-knowledge and hope he understands it as me being a meta that can just access random information.

The Justice League would probably be on my ass real fucking quick but I'd have a good time while they try to figure out what is up with me.

#dc #dcu #dc universe #dc comics #isekai #just being silly #random thoughts

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factorialsotherfandoms · 5 months

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blip bloop bitching below. keeping this out of the tags as I need to scream but don't want it to travel.

I hate so much that I genuinely dread days when Philza and Tubbo interact. Because they're friends and should be able to just hang and stuff! And it can be fun to watch! But it seems every time they even go near each other the Philza tag becomes full of crap, then people kicking back, and its /worst/ now Sunny is here (I love her, mostly, but it makes it so much worse). The post about Sunny being scared of Philza with the screenshots was at the top of the Philza Tag (by how I access them at least) for 3 days. It always defaults to top before I flip it to most recent. It wasn't tagged as discourse or neg or anything - it was just screenshots after all - but the bitching which came out of that was so much, and every time I saw them it bought the bitching to mind, and half of that wasn't tagged either (on the original posts, in the tags, where I like looking for fic and meta and fanart and check my top 4 tags each morning).

And, yeah, a 30-off year old streamer probably not even on tumblr doesn't need defending online. BUT the shit and the way those posts talk and the things they shit on him for... a) its very much cc!Phil not q!Phil no matter what people say, because he talks in the same way even on the fucking pumpkin carving stream and more importantly b) mirrors very real bullying, discrimination and hate I and a lot of other English people have experienced. (yes of course its worse if you're an ethnic minority or have a Scottish accent or any number of other things, but just because other people have it worse doesn't mean it isn't a genuine axis of discrimination).

And sometimes I need to fucking defend not him but myself, because I feel like I'm going mad.

You might not see it, you might not even know about the north-south divide and English class politics, but its embedded into near every fantasy movie you've watched, accent wise at least!

Just personal shit... I have a southern parent and a northern parent. I grew up in the south-east. As a kid I could switch accents at will. Using my mother's northern accent (slightly more natural to me, as she was home more often) I would get marked down in class for being aggressive and argumentative and other kids would think I was angry with them. My father genuinely suggested I switch which I spoke with, and it was effort but doable, and guess what? My marks went up and I was seen as friendlier than the other children. It still wasn't the accent for the region - where I grew up has a very distinct one even for the south - and yet I was treated better for it.

Which. Could have seriously messed up my future if my grades kept being marked down and I kept getting into trouble for behaviour over stuff in another accent nobody bat an eyelid to.

[I had a section here too about different treatment while getting bra fittings, but given it involved members of staff literally hurting me as a literal child only when speaking one of the two accents, I removed it. Minor hurt, but hurt.]

And that was just personal experience! Of being read as aggressive or scary or like I didn't care for sounding northern.

And of fucking course this is only ever about fucking Tubbo, the southern who logs in regularly, this shit always starts. The southerner, whose accent is on the respectable side of this not-quite-a-class-divide.

And you know how deeply routed the north-south divide is? Sociologists generally date it back to /1066/ and the north being massacred for causing trouble for the new king. Economically and in terms of reputation, the north has never actually recovered from that. Even when it was major industry, even when major ports, its /always/ been behind the south.

Not just in terms of money going around, but things like life expectancy and education expectations. Rich northerners still have a harder time than their southern peers.

(Honestly, Sunny having 'verbalised' being scared of him for his tone of voice and not other adults who treat them older than they are [because yk its impossible to tell with an egg model] also kinda rubs me the wrong way, because of that sort of treatment of me as a kid. If I was aware of more fear towards other adults she doesn't know as well it'd be easier. Yeah he's a bit intense, and he should maybe be more delicate with a kid, but heaven knows he's not the only character that is. Maybe as more people drift back we'll see it more, I don't know, the admin probably isn't English either, but dear god. The daughter of a southerner telling her daddy that the northerner is scary is such a fucking classist trope. And a really offensive one at that. And shit which actually happens irl, which sometimes leads to the police getting involved.)

#fandom neg #discourse #keeping this out of the tags as I need to scream but don't want it to travel

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rimeiii · 6 months

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I know I just made a post about the complaints but what do you fucking mean the new rateup gacha is paywalled. I know PB is new to this sort of gacha game but at this point, I really do think they need to do some more research and look at how other gachas manage their own rateup gachas as well as their game balancing, because this is getting fucking ridiculous.

Several issues I have with this:

(Rant post again, feel free to skip over. I'm tired at this point.)

It's giving Pokemon Unite new character being paywalled vibes. And people complained HARD about Unite because new characters are often busted while shifting the meta greatly, which is like. Really Fucking Bad for Ranked!!! You can make the argument that WHB is a PvE game but still, not a wise decision when PvE meta and viability can change over time. Look at how, in Arknights, the standard DP generator combo became the Flagpipe combo the moment Bagpipe was released, or how people started using GoldenGlow over Eyjafjalla for her global range. You can clear stages with other units, it just becomes much more complicated. And this game's current meta for easy clears is L-rank skill spam, so if this trend keeps up...

The amount of communication regarding patch notes is atrociously low. Early on, there were some ninja patches without any prior notice as to what they're for - the last time I've seen this happen is on Brave Frontier (which is where we used this term most anyways), and they've stopped doing sudden patch fixes without any announcements after their servers have mostly stabilized (which was around Zevalhua or Alfa Dilith arc iirc, this was nearly a decade ago). Even GBF announces major patch notes like the raid instakill after Belial raid implementation exploit, only doing stealth fixes for things like fixing skill descriptions (and EVEN THEN they still announce what they fixed). Some days after launch I've tapped into WHB only to be greeted by a ~400 mb size patch, which is really fucking draining on standard shit SEA net, and often with no discernible reason behind the update at all. Which often leaves me wondering, what the fuck were they fixing to warrant such a huge patch - especially when there wasn't any obvious difference between patches?

Related to the above, one of the things that I feel pissed players off about this current banner is the fact that there was no indication that it was going to be a paid gacha. The prior announcement only mentioned the usage of Solomon's Seals, which people naturally assumed could be purchased using Guilty Gems. Having separate gacha materials for a time limited banner would make sense to most seasoned gacha players - this system is used in many CN games like Honkai Star Rail and Arknights to differentiate between banners. In HSR it's to differentiate between permanent items (Regular Warp) and new/limited items (Event Warp), while in AK it's to differentiate between older units (Kernel Headhunt, up until Suzuran's banner) and newer units (all other Headhunts, including Limited Headhunts). In both of these cases, you could use each game's respective Guilty Gem equivalent (Stellar Jade for HSR, Orundum for AK) to grab these gacha items. Which, again, is not the case in this new banner.

Another thing that pissed players off is the monetization. Now, me and a friend have both voiced out our gripes with this game in our GBF crew server, and it's mostly related to the gacha rates and scarcity of resources. Solomon's Tears, Greater Key and Lesser Key rates, how little Guilty Gems we get? All discussed by us. It got to a point non-players end up getting interested to listen to what we have to say about this game. And recently, after finding out just how expensive the Solomon's Seals packs are (if they're really $30, then they're the same price as a GBF Suptix for a 10-pull, and a Suptix is a 10-pull PLUS a unit of your choice from a given pool of units), it got to a point where we're just not surprised. It's insane how much we've grown tired of the constant bad decisions.

Even though I'm against harassing the devs, it's decisions like these that are VERY worthy of criticism imo, and very understandable for it to be the reason why one might choose to drop the game. I understand that you need money, but the monetization practices and gacha mechanics being introduced are not F2P friendly. In fact, I doubt they're friendly for dolphins, either - only whales and leviathans can reasonably benefit from them. And I've talked extensively about the game design choices that confuse me at best and piss me off at worst. Me personally, I've definitely reached my limit on leniency for the devs, and I've been lenient on other games as well, notably Limbus Company. Look, as much as Project Moon fucked up with how they handled the Vellmori situation, LCB also had a very rocky launch with worse stability issues than WHB (I nearly couldn't beat Kromer bc of them), but I still stuck by it because it was F2P-friendly, had a super engaging world and characters paired with a superb story, and the devs were communicative about everything (roadmap and emergency updates included). It got to a point I was about to willingly drop money for the paid battlepass if Gregor had a paid EGO reward (AEDD Gregor ended up being free but I bought some Google Play credit just in case - which was diverted to Muse Dash in the end) if not for the controversy. The monetization and paid gacha being the rate-up in WHB is definitely the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

As for what I'm going to do with my WHB account? The fan server I'm in was compiling the bugs they've found as well as other concerns regarding the gameplay and gacha mechanics in particular, to send an email to the devs. I might help around with these efforts if still required and see if there are any positive changes (especially in terms of monetization). I've stopped playing regularly for now, and I feel like this is a game I'm likely to drop in the future. Which is a shame, because while I find the premise interesting, to me it isn't enough to justify the shoddy game experience. Especially when I have other games on my plate - chapter 12 H stages are coming in AK, and Lone Trail is next week btw!

I'll just vicariously enjoy the plot through other people's playthroughs, mostly because that's what interested me about this game in the first place. I'm sorry, I just can't force myself to play the damn game at this point.

#rimei rambles #what in hell is bad #i'm. frustrated #depending on how the devs will handle the feedback regarding the new banner #i can't in good faith continue supporting them #“it's a small team” do i have to bring up pm again #one of my friends made a very good point when i was critical about the game early on #“you're not being a hater danchou you just have standards”#just because i played a lot of gachas and am well aware of how they work #doesn't mean i agree with some of their practices like having tons of filler stages #playing gachas with good pacing between battles and story segments while being f2p friendly WILL make you critical abt gacha mechanics

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kidflashimpulse · 1 year

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it's morbidly funny to me that Bart, Tara and Cass Cain are three of the youngest heroes in the show and have been through The Worst Shit of basically all the characters. Cass? abused into being a weapon her whole life. Tara? kidnapped, meta-gene forcibly activated, brainwashed and abused into being a tool for the Shadows, her parents got murdered, her brother did That Shit. Bart? grew up in a apocalypse, been through who knows what, lost MULTIPLE family members. and none of them are even 18 yet

gonna answer this now cause this is exactly what went through my mind yesterday whilst i was putting together their pictures 😭 i was like damn, this sure is a special edition collection of trauma lol and the fact that the whole point was that they’re among the younger generation of heroes? it’s kind of insane

it also really puts things into perspective regarding bart’s background, like it’s not like Court and Steph had a problem free life, but being able to group him with Cass and Tara in comparison so easily based on some trauma scale, like it’s rough lol

seeing tara in phantoms was great cause it’s rlly nice to see her enjoy her new found freedom and life with support, it’s cute. And Cass too in Targets wearing civvies clothes was also sweet, like these girls finally get some type of semblance of peace. It’s the same as Bart in outsiders, just enjoying his life with friends. Like sure trauma is always interesting plot wise/for story telling/character development, but it’s refreshing to see good things going on in these peoples lives.

It’s interesting to note that with Cass and Tara, the Team are somewhat very much involved in their “origin story” and getting them out of there. So they’re quite familiar with what would be needed for them to heal and get settled down into a more stable life (Tara with therapy and Cass being taught how to communicate with ASL/read and write (based on ask greg)). Whilst in both their stories it was about them being given the opportunity of agency and they themselves ultimately making the right choice, the team still was involved in setting it up. Ultimately, it’s a way superior approach to their origin story (at the very least for Tara who’s infamous for hers in comics and for Cass well the agency plays less of a role for her and more for Barbara as to why she became Oracle, i think originally Cass made the decision entirely herself). But ultimately their stories can also be both explained with “oh they’re young, they deserve to be given this opportunity” which is a premise that YJ as a whole is largely based on. Because it’s about the original generation of the Team using their experiences to make the world a better place for future ones.

Whereas with Bart that isn’t the case, it’s almost practically in reverse. Like sure, we know he was enslaved, had to scavenge and got desensitised to death, but that’s all stuff from practically a different world that only he himself really knows of/experienced and no one else, like even we as the audience don’t know much about it. His escape was facilitated with his own agency (with help from Nathaniel) and he practically established the terms in how others got to help by playing the role of a messenger from the future. That’s what makes it so believable that even though time has passed at this point of the series and he’s clearly nicely integrated in the present, there’s still some type of underlying darkness around him, because despite him being a literal refugee from a post-apocalyptic world (which in itself sounds crazy), his backstory is more nuanced which adds to the eery factor. His whole backstory is also worth considering in terms of how important things like the Outsiders and the MHYC might be to him specifically, it’s the same type of reasoning as to why the Team also helped people like Tara and Cass. It’s not only that he wants to play hero, he has personal stakes in the weight of everything because he understands what difference that type of help explicitly does. And it must be the same for Tara in the Outsiders and Cass now in the Team.

i think all this is also a good way to show the weight and importance of agency itself, especially in the context of trauma and also explains why I HC Bart to be easily integrated in daily life without the need of therapy/much help from day 1. It’s not that he isn’t traumatised, but considering his constant exposure to it in growing up in such a world since birth for 13 years (Tara was royalty for most of her life, which must’ve made everything more shocking to her, Cass is more like Bart in that sense with the constant exposure, but had alot of her agency stripped away for so long, with Bart it’s unknown) as well as having control over his own choices in terms of his escape/planning, i think it makes a difference and also establishes why exactly he would have a high threshold of tolerating traumatic situations. This is basically all to explain desensitisation but yeah i wanted to get into the specifics of it lol

this all isn’t to compare traumas and all that, because that’s cheap lol, this is just to say that it’s crazy how all three characters can be considered “dark” using different approaches in both story telling and origins. I just think that’s really cool, because sometimes stories can get a bit repetitive with their development of jaded characters which ironically makes the story lose its edge. That’s why i really enjoy it and makes “reminder” moments like in Phantoms when he confronted the Legion all the more entertaining lol

so yeah, whoever took the time to read my word vomit, i hope u enjoyed it and would love to hear further thoughts on this if y’all have any :D

also thanks anon for sharing ur thoughts with us <3, i love these type of topics sm lol

#YJ asks #young justice #young justice phantoms #renewyoungjustice #tara markov #cassandra cain #bart allen #impulse #kid flash #terra #orphan

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resistanceisfeudal · 3 months

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me in my feelings about trek fandom:

so, that star trek confessional blog that's been going around the last few days? and the mini discourse about possible rage-bait on it? and then the new rule that they won't post anything that feels like it's attacking a specific subgroup of fandom? That whole thing?

Cursed discourse. Rotted, rancid, stupid shit. And not even the top five worst discourses I've seen this week.

I actually kind of am mad at a lot of trek fandom and do have a lot of honest opinions that would read as an attack on people...

I guess the thing that has been rising to the top is this phenomenon where people who are clearly intelligent and thoughtful in terms of how they engage with stuff in general end up having bizarre blindspots when it comes to trek.

People who thoroughly acknowledge cultural biases and the ways in which opinons are shaped by bigotry when it comes to talking about how, say, Voyager was received at the time, will turn around and flatly deny the roles of racism, misogyny and transphobia in the reception of Discovery, insisting that "it's bad because grimdark" - which a) isn't even true and b) a cursory glance through the comments on a stream of a disco episode would prove that "grimdark" is not the thing that audiences are mad about. You might have a good faith criticism (which "grimdark" isn't because it's not accurate, but idk some other good faith criticism) but that's not why the show is less beloved than snw or picard s3.

Or people who constantly reblog posts about how episodic "filler episodes" are so great, and how they build the characters and make up the heart of the shows... and then talk about characters and their relationships in ways that only make sense if you cherry pick random disconnected moments from across seven years of television.

Or someone how can talk articulately about fandom culture, stanning, and conspiracy theories, and shows insight and cynicism into phenomena like those sherlock truthers... and then says that garashιr would have been canon if it weren't for ezri, or that it would've been canon if they'd got an eight season. Like, these are ridiculous opinions that basically rely on you not watching the actual show.

Ok technically the last two were just me bitching about a ship that's popular and therefore sometimes the fans can get obnoxious. I shouldn't complain about that... while we're here, I also find spιrk annoying at this point. This is silly, back to snw.

Fundamentally, a lot of snw's popularlity is the same as picard s3: it's nostalgia heavy and the leads are white men. Overall, taking the entire audience in mind, that is a significant part of what's going on.

Now, obviously, snw is a lot better than s3 of picard (which i will die mad about). It's not a bad show, but I do feel that s2 didn't really improve on s1 and perhaps felt weaker at times. I thought the musical episode was genuinely bad and struggle to even believe people when they say they liked it. To be clear: I love musicals, I love musical episodes, I hated this one.

It's shit like this, the insistance that it's amazing when, as a show, it's just fine, sometimes a little bad, mostly pretty good, occasionally very good - it's shit like this that makes people accuse fans of being inauthentic when they praise it. It's claims that snw is "saving nu trek", when no, no it hasn't. Discovery has been prematurely cancelled, Picard ended in disgrace, and Prodigy was cancelled, then rescued but its future past s2 is unclear. It didn't save anything.

It feels like the future of trek is going to be more naval gazing, more nostalgic pandering, more meta references and a distinct lack of new concepts... possibly even a lack of new characters at this rate.

I made this side blog to post about picard s2, because I genuinely had a lot of feelings and thoughts. I felt like, while there was some annoying shit and bad takes around, it was fun to participate and I was enjoying myself. For the last few months, really since snw s2 aired, I've been having a pretty bad time here. So much of it is petty shit that sounds bizarre to type out: small posts and variously tiny infuriating takes. This entire post is stupid and pointless, when I put it like that.

But, yeah, trek fandom has been making me pretty unhappy recently.

I'll still be here and will watch the new disco when it comes out, and hopefully feel something again. I want to be able to re-enter the headspace I was in back when S2 picard aired, and I felt free to just express my opinions without being hyper aware of everyone else's pre-conceived stuff. We all have loaded opinions and strange baggage with trek, it comes with the territory.

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piracytheorist · 2 years

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@darcynne that’s all I needed as motivation to write my “Yamato as an Astronaut makes no fucking sense” meta so here it goes!

So ever since I found out, as a kid even, that in the 25 years after part, Yamato becomes an astronaut... I've had Questions. I guess I was supposed to go like "Wow he's an astronaut that's so cool wow!" but instead I just can't help thinking how much that clashes with his personality.

Yamato’s alignment is Chaotic.

Probably the most chaotic-inclined of all the original twelve children. Something that is even more clear in the Japanese dialogues, since he's, I think, the only character that never uses name honorifics. He also calls his dad "oyaji" (my old man), being the only character to use such a blunt term for his own father - a form of authority in his life. From a general standpoint, the way he reacts to stuff happening and acts as HE thinks is best and not abiding to social norms, that's the crux of any chaotic character; acting on their own reason and not caring what society expects of them - which is different from not caring whether others see him as emotionally vulnerable; he doesn't care if people think he's rude, but he cares if people think he's vulnerable (at least in the first season; in 02 he is much more in tune with his own emotions but he still doesn't care about following social norms).

But you'll tell me, he depended on being seen as a good older brother for Takeru, and this is a societal expectation he wanted to follow. And I'll tell you, this fucked Yamato up. The one way he pushed himself to follow social norms was by overcompensating for not being a part of Takeru's everyday life by being overly protective and losing his shit every time he lost sight of Takeru for 1.5 seconds. The worst part being how he became almost possessive over Takeru, feeling that anyone who simply becomes close with Takeru will eventually take him away from Yamato, therefore Takeru must not have other friends, Takeru only needs Yamato, Takeru is a helpless little baby that can't do anything on his own... that's all Yamato depended on on the idea that by "social norms" means he has to be a "good older brother". None of his methods showed how much he loved Takeru, because those methods were not him. I mean, he does love his brother, but his dependence on showing a "good big brother" façade pushed him to behaviours that go against his character and his expression. We see it much more clearly in 02, where he acts way more casual and open with his brother, now that he's at peace with his own self and emotions.

He is artistic, not a nerd.

Not that those two cannot combine. But in the show's case, the "nerdy" characters were clear: Koushiro and Jou in the first season, and Iori and Miyako (and Ken?) in the second. Yamato never expresses any curiosity to learn something further, to fully invest himself into reading and studying. He is much more a practical person; he plays music, he cooks, he loves spending free time with the people he cares about... we never see him lose himself in a book or a computer screen, absorbing every piece of information given to him.

Again, not that a person cannot be a book/information nerd and artistic at the same time. But Yamato is clearly only one of those. His passions are his music and his friends. Of course, interests can change from adolescence and into adulthood, but you don't just suddenly gain an interest for going down rabbit holes of research the moment you turn 18.

And most importantly, Yamato is a fictional character. Real people can have changes of heart at any moment, or because of the circumstances they grew up in, maybe they never got the chance to be nerdy until after a certain point in their lives. But Yamato is fictional, with every writing choice being deliberate. It was deliberate to not show him with his nose in a book, to not show him gaining interest in engines, to make him a reactionary pre-teen and teenager whom you cannot imagine ever willingly joining the armed forces.

He was traumatized by his parents' divorce, the separation from his mother and brother, and the limited time he got with his father due to the latter working overtime way too often.

Yamato spent almost the entirety of the first season feeling that if he doesn't act like a good older brother, then he is worthless and doesn't deserve being taken care of. That if he isn't of practical use to someone, then no-one will care about him. And being taken care of is something he longed for - every time his Crest of Friendship glows before the evolution sequence (because there are times that the evolution sequence just starts without the Crest glowing outside of it) is because he variably felt that someone else took him into consideration: Jou saving Takeru and telling Yamato he wasn't mad about Yamato being a Bitch at him; Pumpmon and Gotsumon protecting them from Vamdemon; Gabumon telling him that he'll follow and believe in him no matter what; Taichi saying he believed Yamato would come back for them. It's not just that he cares for his friends, it's that he also treasures others trusting and believing in him. His love language is Quality Time (and a bit of Acts of Service). He's not good with words, or personal gifts, and I'd also say physical touch but this may also be because of cultural differences between my culture and Japan's. In his goodbye to Gabumon, all he can do - after Gabumon requests it, no less - is play the harmonica for him one last time.

And it's that lack of quality time, the lack of confirmation that someone cares about him, that made him as closed-off and emotional as he is for the majority of the first season, that made him even wonder out loud why someone like him got the Crest of Friendship.

So, Yamato is a chaotic-aligned artist that loves spending time with his loved ones, and more often than not allows himself to act solely on his emotions.

Now let's make a small breakdown of what the job of an astronaut is like:

For JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, the requirements are an advanced degree in science as of education, and as of professional experience it's three years of work experiece in science or in the Japanese Self Defence Forces.

NASA requires experience in flying aircrafts, for JAXA it's not mandatory but it's certainly something that would help. Spacecrafts have a shit ton of machinery and technical stuff you need to learn about and be able to handle, especially if something starts going wrong.

From a technical standpoint, an astronaut is a type of soldier. They have to follow orders, have a very strict code that can literally mean life or death during a mission, etc. etc. And as said above, JAXA takes into consideration experience in armed forces. By definition, soldiers are of Lawful alignment, and simply cannot work by any other alignment.

It's a demanding profession, one that someone needs to dedicate a lot of time to, and if/when they are finally chosen for a mission, they could spend entire months in space with only video calls to their loved ones on Earth. There they instead practically live with whatever coworkers their agency chose for them, and the relationship between such coworkers can be only strictly professional because of the high demands of the work they do.

So an astronaut has to be a lawful-aligned science/engineer nerd that doesn't mind being away from loved ones for long periods of time and will NEVER allow their emotions to get the better of them.

... where the FUCK does Yamato fit in all this? The requirements of an astronaut go directly against EVERYTHING Yamato really is.

As I said, Yamato is a fictional character. It was the writers' choice to give him all the traits that make him incompatible for becoming an astronaut, it was their choice to keep those traits as he grew into a teenager, and it was their choice to eventually give him that profession, practically saying that everything Yamato was as a pre-teen and a teen vanished when he became an adult.

In real life, people can "change" or discover things about themselves as they grow up. But fiction almost NEVER portrays such realism, because that's not the point of fiction. The point of fiction is to give us pieces of a puzzle and for us to put them together. Sometimes the pieces are super easy to match; sometimes the Author takes our hands and pieces the puzzle together for us; sometimes it gets a little while for the pieces to reveal the edges so that we can connect them; sometimes we need to find pieces in other sources (behind the scenes material, interviews, etc) in order to complete the puzzle; sometimes the pieces don't fit together and don't make sense; and sometimes the Author breaks apart the pieces so that they can force connection among pieces that don't fit.

And in Yamato as an Astronaut's case, it's plain and clear the last case.

I have seen people trying to justify this writing choice for some reason, and nothing I've ever seen makes sense to me. The most common explanation is that Yamato is a romantic soul and wanted to go to space with Gabumon, and I'm like, he chose a profession that goes against everything he is, dedicated countless time and entire years of his life in preparation to become an astronaut, all because he had a dream of going somewhere SpecialTM with Gabumon? What if JAXA went like "How are we gonna send a Digimon to space we don't know shit about their physiology what purpose is he even gonna serve in the spacecraft what the FUCK Ishida-san"? How about, idk, climbing mount Everest or something?

I mean, I mentioned the fact that he was traumatized by how little time he had to spend with his family when he was young, because by becoming an astronaut he practically did the same with his own children. Do y'all think an astronaut gets more time with their kids than an overworked journalist?!

I am a musician myself, and though I discovered my love for music in my teens, I do not think that anyone who likes music in their teens has to become a musician. People’s interests change, and there’s a shit ton of difference between music as a hobby and music as your job. People who do the mistake of becoming professional musicians without loving being a professional musician come to the sad development of hating both music and their job.

But in any case, as I said, Yamato is a fictional character so it wouldn’t hurt anyone if they had him become a professional musician. It would be much more in harmony with his character traits, it would allow him to be as emotionally expressive as he was in 01 and 02, and depending on what exactly he did as a musician, it would allow him to spend more time with his kids.

I mean, you want something that looks FUCKING AWESOME for Cool Yamato’s very Cool Future Career? Think of this: Yamato is the lead singer/bassist of a famous J-rock group. They have a concert. The crowd is screaming because they know to expect something awesome. The group sans Yamato comes out on stage, start their opening song, and when it’s Yamato’s time to come on stage, he BURSTS THROUGH a paper wall behind the stage, riding on Garurumon’s back. Garurumon blasts blue flames above the crowd as Yamato belts out a scream, signaling the end of their opening number. Now wouldn’t you pay a shit ton of money to see that live? Toei Animation Studios call me.

#Yamato Ishida #Digimon #digimon meta

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arrancxr · 2 years

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You hate the Shinigami side for the most part, yes? Are there any that you hate in particular?

Oooooh, this is a good question! owo

From a story standpoint, most of my dislike for the Shinigami side is directed at the system more than the individual people, honestly. I feel like a LOT of their problems are tied to how their society operates, not the people caught up in it. Most of them, especially the ones who aren't at the very top of the ranks, seem pretty decent! However, from the way they approach the conflict with Hollows to the way they treat the people in their own realm, they're awful.

Turning to a meta standpoint, I would have liked the Shinigami a lot better, I think, if they hadn't been cast as the ultimate good guys. It's not fair to expect anything too deep from a shounen manga, I know, but probably the number one thing that bothers me about the Shinigami side is that they're given an author-granted privilege to do whatever they please and still be the designated "good".

Like, Szayel and Mayuri are pretty equal in terms of moral atrocities and general nastiness. And yet while Szayel's sadistic mad science is portrayed as disturbing and evil, to the point where the horrific death he gets is treated like something he deserved, Mayuri... pretty much gets off scot-free. He's a Captain with active permission from the ruling government to more or less do whatever he wants, the people around him (who are supposed to be the good guys!!) never do much more than complain about the creepy shit he pulls, and the main manga ends with him still doing exactly what he wants, with no more punishment than a brief wound to his ego from losing Nemu.

And that's where it irks me. Shinigami are allowed, if not encouraged to be as cruel as they please when dealing with Hollows. We see them do things every bit as awful as the Arrancars' actions, but the narrative insists that, by the sole virtue of being Shinigami, it's somehow acceptable when they do it. The moment when Zommari questions the Shinigami's right to kill Hollows could have been interesting! It could have opened up a whole discussion about the fairness of the Shinigami system, both to the Hollows they're killing and the souls in the Rukongai they're (supposedly) protecting!

Instead, Byakuya shoots down the moral question with no further answer than "because I'm right," and it never comes up again. There's a recurring theme of Shinigami characters being narratively protected from any wrongdoing... when it's done to anyone else.

When Shinigami (or human, by protagonist extension) characters get hurt, it's a bad thing, and the perpetrator is immediately and inherently a villain. When other characters (most notably, Hollows) get hurt, so long as it was a Shinigami that did it, the action is almost always justified somehow, or at least reduced in "badness". The only real exception is when assigned "villain" characters are involved, and even then, that doesn't always make much of a difference.

For example— the Visored are the results of Aizen's inhumane experiments. They suffer for it, for a while, but in the end, they're accepted into the main cast as important characters and "good guys", and it's widely accepted that what Aizen did to them was fucked up and cruel. And yet, Wonderweiss, who's also a result of Aizen's experiments (and is debatably much worse off from them), is shown none of the same mercy. He's relevant for as long as it takes him to be a living fire extinguisher, and with the sentiment of "I can slaughter you without hesitation," is killed and forgotten.

I could go on for much longer here, but I think I've made my point... >.> Though, since you asked about specific Shinigami I dislike, I'll point out a few of those too.

Mayuri — Where do I even start? I'd probably like him a lot better if he didn't get away with so much (I do tend to enjoy awful anime men...), but his utter lack of consequences for anything, ever, just really puts me off. Since he gets a narrative pass for pretty much everything, he's not fun at all! >:(

Kenpachi — Similar to Mayuri, I'd probably be more fond of him if he was written differently. I'm generally a fan of overpowered characters (when they're well-written), but Kenpachi seems to exist solely to be Kubo's Ass Pull vessel whenever he writes himself into a corner and doesn't know how else to kill off whichever nonsensically impossible to beat villain he's set up this time.

Yamamoto — He's pretty much the face of what's wrong with the entire Shinigami system. On top of that, the "wise, ancient leader who's stuck in his ways and far too strict" trope doesn't appeal to me much. I just don't see anything to like about him...

Byakuya — Tbh, his fight with Zommari made me really not like him. His type of character can work, but the fact that Byakuya single-handedly shut down the most promising moment of maybe putting some actual thought into the Shinigami vs Hollows situation ruined him for me forever.

Those are the ones that I actively dislike the most! There are more who are on my ick list because they're just plain boring, but that's a different matter altogether.

#Meta

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space-blue · 2 years

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Question because I’m lowkey curious, do you believe that Vander’s issues and mistakes are largely overlooked by fans because he’s the “good guy?” And while Silco does have a lot of fans, he also has a good amount of haters in the fandom and do you think that’s “unfair” (for lack of a better term)?

Hello Anon! What a good question, thank you for trusting me with it... although I don't think I can speak for the fandom as a whole, I can certainly tell you what rattles in my skull.

I think mostly the fandom at large is not interested in deep dive analysis, or even capable of it — which is not an insult, plenty of people enjoy shows and fandom content without ever engaging with film critical theory of any sort, or even make their own opinionated meta. Many fans are happy to just be fed theories by meta creators, or have a general perception and don't seek out contrary content.

And then, if you don't spend a lot of time decorticating Vander, Silco, Zaun, reading into the implication of single lines of dialogue later on, discussing the show with other people who might point out stuff you missed, etc. it's hard not to just be satisfied with "Vander is a genuine Good Guytm" because the show certainly is happy to let you get away thinking that.

Media at large condones a LOT of violence. Vander's use of lethal force, threat, and coasting on a killer's reputation is absolutely nothing in the eyes of some "good guy hero shit" we see being pulled by some people.

James Bond? John Wick? Fuck, look at Finn in Star Wars, who gleefully kills a ton of troopers without ever stopping to think—even after it was established they're all poor brainwashed orphans, his colleagues until very recently.

Finn has a higher on-camera body count than Vander does!

And Vander is mostly seen through his children's eyes, for whom he's become a true father figure.

On top of that, he's got those big fat centrist inertia energies about him. He's mister Status Quo. Gotta do nothing in either direction, wait until I got no choice, chose the lesser of two evils, etc.

That makes him feel very measured in a world that revolves around incredible political extremes. On a passive first watch, this may seem like the nice guy thing to do.

All this adds up.

On the other hand Silco LOOKS like a villain, talks like a villain, slow claps like an asshole, condones the killing of kids because they chose to get involved without any visible remorse...

Vander seems brighter next to Silco's shadows.

What baffles me is how people don't start doubting the narrative they're being presented when Silco has his PTSD attack when Vander clamps around his throat. It becomes pretty clear that Vander was once a monster, and his betrayal of Silco is what created, well, the "monster Silco" we meet in act I. [Alexa, play The Monster You Created]

They're both shades of grey, and one might have lightened while the other darkened. It's not even subtext. It's flat out said and shown. That's the point where I think tepid takes like "Silco had it coming" and "Vander was doing everyone a service by drowning him" are dropping the ball and being lazy with their "analysis".

I don't think it's unfair that Silco has haters. I love him for his ideals and goals, because he's a champion of the poor and destitute. He's taking the burden of committing extreme violence against an abusive government that will not yield any other way, and would kill him for it. He sacrifices his entire life to this work. But I also love him for being an asshole, and the sort of man who'll make a mountain of corpses to climb up to his goal. He's flawed and very human, defined by his trauma. He's as yummy as a poptart.

But if you're not into revolutionaries, if you think the ends never excuse the means, if you think him loving Jinx is still detrimental to her and her growing up in a shitty Zaun orphanage would still be better for her, or that #PiltoverDidNothingWrong, then yeah, Silco would have very few redeeming qualities lol

Between his extremism and his appearance, it's very easy to make his final encounter with Vander be very black and white. The show literally pulls the rug from under your feet on the Vander-Silco dichotomy minutes before the stabbing and choking! And you've projected along with the kids and seen Vander as a Good Dad for 3 episodes! Silco killing him while he's defending his one surviving child won't exactly help.

Overall I don't think fandom overlooks Vander's faults because he's painted as a good guy, but rather because fandom doesn't scratch at that paint too much. It's easier to dismiss the shades of grey, and you don't have to think about Vander much in act II or III.

Arcane as a show is also a rather depressing, despite how pretty it looks, so I can see how appealing it would be to cling to any "nice" character. They're few and far between.

I mean, there's literally not a SINGLE named and voiced character who can't be made out to be some shade of asshole, outside of like, Sky (and maybe Thieram)!

But yeah, I'm generally not bothered. I think we'll see a ton more takes on Vander when he shows up as a cursed furry serial killer and potentially breaks Vi's heart and whatever is left of Jinx's sanity. I'm looking forward to *that*.

There are lots of valid good takes for Vander, portraying him in varying shades of grey. I think another reason we don't see a lot of stuff outside Good Guy tm is that he's so "minor" compared to the other main characters, and not exactly involved in any popular ship. (No shade of my fellow Vanco lovers, we're still well into rarepair territory)

So yeah. Waiting on the furry army in season 2 to get started on the real hot Vander discourse ( •̀ ω •́ )✧

#Sorry I realise this is very rambly #vander #silco #vander arcane #warwick #arcane meta #anon ask #thanks anon #I hope you got an answer somewhere in there

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rococospade · 2 years

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Okay i need to bitch a minute. rant about the game with the ring we’re all obsessed with (fandom stuff not canon) under the cut

general warning for violence and mention of consent violations.

caveat: i don’t care which characters you like or hate, i don’t care who you stan: all of this is fiction. my beef is with people acting like two incredibly similar acts from characters in this game are wildly different in terms of harm inflicted while they’re talking meta.

don’t click below the cut if you don’t want to see negative opinions about your potential fav. thanks.

yeah, so. even mostly avoiding The Discourse, i am so fucking tired of reading about how mohg is the worst thing in the lands between. putting aside that it’s performative nonsense — because it is, no one is helping real victims by saying the weird demon guy is irredeemable — it’s also ridiculously myopic. it’s like people cannot recognise violation of bodily autonomy as a problem unless the context is overtly sexual. holy shit

malenia tried to spread her rot to the entire country. do you understand what that means. her army is cool with rotting, yeah, but everyone else? they didn’t consent to that. it’s a painful, debilitating, fatal illness. and yeah she didn’t ask to have it, but she sure was happy to inflict it on everyone else.

you know who else wants the whole world to be sick whether they consent or not? dungeater. not seeing a lot of posts talking about his redeeming points but i guess because he didn’t get an army it’s cool.

like… we all have personal tastes for characters, but seeing mohg put down as the literal worst in a setting where his siblings:

eat their followers with little to no warning

get their followers killed and fuck up DEATH ITSELF, a fate considered to be abhorrent by the characters in the setting, to judge from the dialogue about living in death instead of going back to the erdtree’s roots

pile up bodies outside the city wall

tried to give most of the country a painful, fatal illness

And his parents:

Committed genocide, enslaved other races, were happy to off/betray/dump their loyal companions once they were no longer of use, and dumped their own kids in the sewer… like, marika even betrayed maliketh despite him being totally loyal to her. that last bit is not speculation. that’s lore from maliketh’s remembrance.

even if you take all of this as well-intentioned extremism — how is that different from mohg? how can you write off the level of death and destruction and ”i know better” of every character in this setting except his? why are you comfortable with that? i just genuinely do not get it. i don't need people to think mohg is a good guy, but seeing the difference between how he and his siblings are treated is staggering

i can’t tell if people cannot find female characters to be as horrible as the men, or if it’s just this concept that sexual violence is the worst thing you can do ever, like... i’d argue knowingly inflicting someone with cancer is about as fucked? honestly.

and don’t @ me about how sexual violence is unique and horrible, i’m not saying it isn’t, i’m saying that in a world where ‘fuck up your afterlife’ and ‘make you die of end stage fantasy cancer’ are also options, it isn’t really in its own class.

no matter how strongly you feel about one person, their violation is not on par with fucking up the whole country. just... no. a lot of the arguing honestly feels to me like “it’s okay to violate people if you’re charismatic” and just... no. either it’s wrong when everyone does it or actually we’re okay with it.

edit: malenia’s shit was to deal with the stalemate against radahn and not to make everyone around her sick, apparently. this is fucked up in different ways. the point about being okay with some kinds of bodily autonomy violations and not others still stands. wtf

#rococo rants #i'm not interested in arguing about this #if you're rude in notes or reblogs i'll block you

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handicappedbuenchico · 1 year

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Name: Caitlin-Ashley

Pronouns: She/Her

Preference of communication: Tumblr IM's. Those are 10x more reliable in terms of me seeing them, in comparison to Discord, for some reason.

Most active muse: Spencer.

Experience / how many years: I've been roleplaying for about 8 years now! It's been an on-and-off thing really.

Platforms you use: I use both Tumblr and Discord!

Best experience: Meeting @petpsycho for the very first time, roleplaying John and Carlos's first interaction based off of a meme I sent in, and having Carlos and John fuck at damn near 100 notes in. Truly the best experience because it was not only one of my first, but Mina has been an amazing person to talk to and write with.

Rp pet peeves:

Those group/town/app/appless Discord rp types, that don't even do it on Tumblr from what I can tell, spamming their promo so much in the rp tags to the point where they drown out literally anyone else's. I'm not looking to join a fucking off-platform group to rp in a generic town, I'm looking for singular people to write with ON TUMBLR. STOP SPAMMING YOUR SHIT FOR FUCK'S SAKE! That's what bumping on Disboard is for.

Personal blogs that aren't connected to roleplay ones in any way spam liking my roleplay related shit. Like, I can understand if it's like a meta or a headcanon, but personals (that aren't connected to a roleplay blog) liking my starter calls and my promos are a completely different story. PLEASE DON'T FUCKING DO THAT IF YOU ARE NOT A ROLEPLAYER IN ANY CAPACITY. That goes for reblogging too honestly, like don't reblog my roleplaying material/threads either if you aren't actively involved with it/didn't get my permission to do so.

Formatting that is hard to read. Now, I'm not talking about colored text or small text or anything like that. I'm talking about the formatting that looks like either a pure wall of text, or there are so many paragraph breaks that I have to physically drag a reply into Google Docs to "fix it" for my brain. Full disclosure, I am autistic (an Aspie to be specific), and sometimes my brain has trouble with reading comprehension on normal formatted text. Now imagine my brain when trying to read something with either NO paragraph breaks, OR paragraph breaks after every single sentence. It's not fun, and it makes me want to write with you less and less.

I apologize in advance if anyone feels called out by these, as I'm sure you didn't want to hear this from me in this manner. I am polite and nice to a fault, and I fear judgement/being reprimanded due to my own RL trauma, so I was too anxious to tell you personally.

Fluff, angst, or smut: I would like some Fluff with a side of Smut, you can also put a dash of angst on that if it will enhance the thread's flavor.

Plots or memes: Oh I am mostly a meme person, but if I find/think of a plot that our muses can do, you best believe I'm coming into your DM's and tell you about it.

Long or short replies: Depends on my muse, the time that I have at any given moment, my need to stim, and sometimes the thread itself. On a day where I have a lot of muse and a full day to myself, I can do longer replies, like a couple of long paragraphs. On days where I have little muse and or not a lot of time to spare, I tend to write smaller replies.

Best time to write: If I said any other time of day than between 8 PM - 12 AM I would be lying to you all. Writing at night right before you crash just hits different.

Are you like your muses: Y E S.

Carlos has my fear of punishment/being judged. Along with that, he and I sharing being a people-pleaser/peacemaker type of person, due to having it forced upon us by the adults around us that should fucking know how to act right. We both also grew up poor due to circumstances we couldn't control.

Now, Spencer, you wouldn't think I'd share any similarities with, but you would be very wrong. Spencer and I share a sensitivity to touch, but we both also like to touch anything/anyone we see (not in a creepy/perverted way, I'm talking like hugs and shoulder pats or something like that.) We're both also gay as fuck, and we're neuro-divergent (I'm autistic with an anxiety disorder and he has ADHD with Generalized Anxiety Disorder). We both also got daddy issues, so uh, there's that too.

Ted Lockwood is just my experiences as an autistic person incarnate LMFAO. Bro like, we're both nice to everyone, including people who probably don't deserve it. He and I both are socially awkward sometimes, and we can't read a room sometimes to save our damn lives (literally in Ted's case). We both have our own little special interests, his is engineering and space and mine is art and writing.

Crybaby as a character was someone I could relate to on an emotional level. I was saying for many years that my dysfunctional family almost fit Dollhouse to A FUCKING TEE! I also related the song Crybaby because I too was a very emotional little girl who got made fun and taken advantage of for it. I related to all of Crybaby's failed attempts at love in songs such as Carousel, Soap, and Training Wheels. Out of all my muses, Crybaby is the most like me because I already related to her long before I would even take her up as a muse.

Tagged by: @kurtzbergsiblings

Tagging: @bctclgevse @betterto-die-thanto-crawl @bamsidsuperbitch @scribedhorror @depictedblue @depictedmorada and anyone else who wants to!

#ooc 💭i'm awake now💭#dashboard games

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thelaithlyworm · 1 year

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I posted 2,772 times in 2022

That's 118 more posts than 2021!

301 posts created (11%)

2,471 posts reblogged (89%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@llywela13

@regionalpancake

@procrastinatorproject

@tuibelle

@dduane

I tagged 1,530 of my posts in 2022

Only 45% of my posts had no tags

#dmbj - 178 posts

#cats - 112 posts

#the lost tomb - 77 posts

#podfic - 62 posts

#writing - 56 posts

#star trek picard - 53 posts

#nirvana in fire - 45 posts

#meta - 44 posts

#dracula daily - 41 posts

#star trek - 31 posts

Longest Tag: 110 characters

#sometimes you just need to see a girl in an increasingly ragged dress beat the complete shit out of bad people

My Top Posts in 2022:

I Am Having A Very Bad Day

Any pictures of fluffy animals would be most welcome.

49 notes - Posted January 13, 2022

Love Like The Galaxy is killing me. I’m going to be dead before this is over.

*spoiler*

Okay, so Heroine’s marriage to Cupcake has been cancelled due to external reasons and it wasn’t easy for any of them but Heroine made a, like, sweet and honourable choice and is now getting pilloried in public for it because people are shits. I mean really. Shits. I’m weirdly invested in how Cupcake and his new bride’s life is going to turn out. She was kinda objectionable when introduced but she’s gone through a lot and I hope the pair of them can make things work. (The General gets bonus points for being there, all quietly supportive for Heroine, and saying (even though he desperately wants her to withdraw so he can marry her), ‘I’m not going to advise you. I know whatever choice you make will be the right one.’ and just quietly killing me.)

But!

The General has lost So Much Social Credit of late. First, by pressuring her family to let him marry Heroine - and he had the Emperor right there, pressuring away. (Look, I know, and the Emperor knows, that those two will be a good match. But it’s an inauspicious start which reminds everyone involved that The General is a... Duke? Probably a Duke in European terms and Heroine’s family are minor gentry just recently raised to extremely minor aristocracy and without any damn backing. Or to put it another way, as far as they can see - if The General mistreats their very young daughter, there is sweet eff all they can do about it. And he has an... ominous reputation, well-deserved.)

Second... Oh god, he’s trying, he’s trying so hard, to be respectful and, and nice, but somehow, turning up with a file of troops to invite himself to family breakfast* and stiffly telling a horrible joke, and informing the Heroine she shouldn’t eat so late in the day because it’s bad for the digestion (and I swear, he was trying to talk that out, he expected her to talk back to him and explain her reasons but she’s depressed and intimidated and he comes across as v. overbearing)...

Has now surrounded Heroine’s Family House with armed guards. Purely, I believe, to show respect and to guard them from harm but. Oh god.

He is just so awkward. Never have I seen a man try so hard and fail so badly at Being Nice.

I’m dying.

* Like Darth Vader sitting down with a cup of tea with his little finger crooked out because he read that you should do that in an etiquette guide, earnestly making smalltalk...

51 notes - Posted August 31, 2022

[ID: "A scattering of black and white and sepia photos of women in scanty, Victorian-era dress, most notably a middle-aged woman with a kind face, Big Hat, and stripy stockings. Shuffled into the pile is a policeman in full uniform sitting in a chair for a portrait. Title reads, Owed, by copperbadge, read by Thimblerig" End ID]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Discworld - Terry Pratchett Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Rosemary "Rosie" Palm/Samuel Vimes Characters: Samuel Vimes, Rosie Palm Additional Tags: Drunkenness, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Prostitution, but really it's quite a nice story, Podfic Length: 20-30 Minutes, Podfic, Repod Summary:

Vimes owes Rosie more than money.

Repod of something I did two and a half years ago by @copperbadge because it’s a lovely story and it wasn’t a bad podfic at the time but Jesus H Christ I have learned a lot about projecting from the diaphragm since then.

(My question is, did that relationship between them exist before ‘John Keel’ wrote that letter...?)

62 notes - Posted July 18, 2022

DMBJ Meta: Bai Haotian

So, since I’m in the middle of a Sound of Providence rewatch (I’m up to the murderous puppet theatre), I’m also having thinky thoughts about one of the supporting characters, Bai Haotian, also known as Xiao-Bai (Little Bai).

She’s present in the webnovel as well, incidentally, though she and Warehouse 11 are much less filled out. Anyway. (Some spoilers to follow.)

So Little Bai is a short drink of water, tiny, bright-eyed, who appears when Wu Xie enters W11. She’s extremely helpful, and also extremely mysterious, but after several mini-adventures it’s revealed that the giant flaming crush on him is entirely genuine and also, she’s a third-gen manager of the Warehouse (which is why she knows so much). In season 2, she’s recruited for the Thunder City arc as a diver; in the second half she’s involved in the W11 shenanigans that fill out the season.

She’s adorable in her own right, but what interests me in the narrative sense is how much she is like Wu Xie when he was a Baby Adventurer, Very Staunch. Young, brilliant, family connections to weird shit but also very sheltered, doggedly loyal to the people she admires. She’s got a lot of talent but also needs some teaching and seasoning before she can compete in the big bad world. Does that sound like our Xiao-Xie? And it’s nice to having someone in that ingenue role since he’s thoroughly aged out of it by now, but also.

If we treat Xiao-Bai as an analogue for Young Wu Xie, in that story Old Wu Xie is a mash-up of two different roles - Xiaoge (his long-time crush) and San-shu (uncle, mentor, tricksy manipulative bastard). And I think that Wu Xie, at least, is aware of the parallels.

So when Wu Xie tells her, “You’re young: you don’t understand the difference between love and worship,” is he also talking to his younger self? Is he looking back fifteen years to the young sprat he was and kindly patting that boy on the head for being enormously silly but sweet? Does he think whatever his *waves hand helplessly* Thing with Xiaoge is, it’s stronger than that or does he also worry that after all this time he’s still... the wide-eyed infant to Xiaoge’s tired self. I mean, on the surface level she’s just found out he’s dying and he wants her not to grieve so much so he’s trying to de-escalate her feelings, and that’s a solid bit of story-telling right there. But Xiao-Bai, and Piaopiao for that matter, have a lot of parallels and resonant themes with what’s going on with the Iron Triangle, and I think this is one of them.

And! A large part of drama plot is Wu Xie’s drive to prove that San-shu (the first one, at least, the one before the Xisha Shipwreck Tomb) was a decent man. That whatever bloody deeds he had done, he was forced into it, that he meant well, that he was doing his best.

The point being, this is Wu Xie post-Sand Sea, where he spent most of a decade being tricksy, manipulative, pragmatic, bloody-handed, using his allies as harshly as his enemies. The actor Zhu Yilong made sure we remembered that every morning he spent extra time painting a bloody great scar on his neck. The text reminds us by bringing in Jiang Zisuan and his accusations which are... inaccurate regarding A-Ning’s death but not without weight, either. Wu Xie’s walked in the footsteps of Third Uncle: he’s done some shit. So it’s interesting to me, and sweet, and bittersweet to be honest, in this quest to prove San-shu was a good man, just how much work Old Wu Xie puts into keeping Xiao-Bai, this mirror of his younger self, safe.

Also she’s cute. Did I mention she’s cute? OMG I could just die.

Anyway, back to the show... Run from the clams, my good man! Run!!

62 notes - Posted July 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

other people, intellectuals: *some drollery about cats, so independent and aloof*

my cats: Mother, did you see me? I did a thing, were you watching? Come into the garden, Mother, for the sun shines brighter on the grass when you are there. Mother, if I don’t crack open your chest and sleep nestled inside your ribs tonight I might literally die. Mother. Mother. Did you see me, Mother?

2,204 notes - Posted August 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #my current fixations IN FULL DISPLAY

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