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gch1995 · 3 years

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No one hates OUAT more than those of us in the fandom who actually watched it and/or followed it long enough to fully realize just how disappointingly awful, hopeless, and ridiculous the writing became in the piss poor excuse for canon the show devolved into the longer it went on, even though it was supposed to “be fun” and “give us hope.” At least all of its beautiful wasted potential became an outlet for far superior writing in our headcanons and fanfiction, though, no matter how shitty the actual show got.

I always feel so bad for newbies in the fandom who haven’t yet uncovered the horrific clusterfuck of bad writing this show ultimately devolved into. A part of me always feels like telling new fans to just spare themselves the pain, and to just quit watching after the Neverland arc. The majority of those of us in the OUAT fandom agree that the show’s writing ultimately devolved into a painfully biased, cheaply shocking, cheesy, wildly inconsistent, melodramatic, nonsensical, pandering, repetitive, and wildly ooc unsalvageable mess of bad writing that made us feel angry, betrayed, bored, and disgusted more often than not after that.

However, even after the show’s writing went completely off the rails beyond all salvaging, there were still those gold nuggets of wasted potential for characters, relationships, and storylines that could have and should have been amazing, if Kitsowitz and these writers actually had been able to be consistently competent and professional at their jobs. Particularly when looking back at the first two-and-a-half seasons of OUAT, I feel a great sense of disappointment at just how much beautiful and interesting potential they ultimately wasted in these characters and relationships in favor of blatantly biased, cheaply shocking, contrived, nonsensical, mutually toxic, wildly ooc, repetitive, and thus, character destroying magical soap opera melodrama.

There’s always this deep sense of disappointment in me over the amazing show that canon OUAT ultimately could have and should have been whenever I see all of those golden nuggets of tragically wasted potential Kitsowitz and these writers showed us in those moments when they were actually being competent show-runners and writers, particularly in S1-2A before they show got too distracted by the next big contrived magical thing to actually let the characters slow down, talk to each other, hang out with each other, and grow and react like in-character and relatable human beings. If only they were able to ultimately write and stick to a consistent, relatable, gradual, realistic, and organic course of character development that actually would have ultimately made these characters, happy endings, redemption arcs, and/or regression arcs actually feel well-earned and satisfying in the end.

Instead, they ended up erasing, minimizing, and/or outright romanticizing certain bad behaviors and choices of their characters at certain points and the negative consequences and/or effects they had in regards to those they hurt and/or victimized.

Instead, they ended up outright derailing most of their characters normally and/or consistently previously established complex, intelligent, and sympathetic characterizations and/or positive development at one point or another in order to rerail them over and over and over again more and more post S3 in increasingly abrupt, cheaply shocking, contrived, disappointing, flanderdized, horrifying, melodramatically toxic, and nonsensical ways that made them suddenly come across as uncharacteristically unsympathetic and stupid out of nowhere.

Instead, they created absurdities out of nowhere to inorganically force the characters to regress in ways that contradicted all previously established canon characterization, continuity, and previously established logic on the show.

Instead, they selectively bent, broke, and contradicted their own rules of magic with less and less fairness, rhyme, or reason as every season passed the first.

If only they had consistently and fairly stuck to their own rules and limitations of what magic could and couldn’t do. If only they treated their characters as complex and relatable human beings and equals with compelling, consistent, and realistic personalities, flaws, conflicts, regressions, redemptions, and resolutions that drove their stories consistently, gradually, organically, and realistically because of who they were and/or developed into as people, rather than because nonsensical asspulled twists and/or magical macguffins demanded that these characters suddenly become whatever they needed them to become a certain way to create cheap shock value, suspense, drama, and repetitive storytelling, regardless of all previously established characterization, continuity, development, and logic in their own canon.

Instead, they decided to cherry pick favorite characters and/or ships to frame as “redeemed” in the narrative, even though they may not have actually done anything to earn it and/or regressed without any negative consequences for doing so, just because Emma and the Charmings accepted them as “family.”

Instead, they ended up slapping increasingly biased, petty, meaningless, and shallow “hero” and “villain” labels on all of their characters, regardless of how objectively and needlessly harmful their choices, behaviors, and reactions may have been to others, in spite of being on the “right” side.

But we all ultimately sustained ourselves in the OUAT fandom by imagining just how amazing these characters, their relationships, and their storylines could have and should have been, trying to disregard the character assassinating bad writing in the piss poor excuse for canon that OUAT ultimately devolved into, taking Kitsowitz and these writers golden nuggets of tragically wasted potential for these characters, their relationships, and creating far superior works of art with those golden nuggests of wasted potential in canon with our headcanons and fan fiction.

OUAT isn’t a show that stuck with most of us because we were impressed by its writing in canon. In fact, most of us are fully aware that there were writing choices in the piss poor excuse of canon OUAT our favorite characters and relationships on the show that were inexcusably awful, biased, cheesy, cheaply shocking, gross, offensive, inconsistent, nonsensical, tone-deaf, wildly ooc, and/or repetitive at one point or another. Honestly, if the main character and/or relationship lasted past S3 in the main cast, then Kitsowitz and the writers destroyed your favorite character and/or ship with bad writing at one point or another.

After the writers unceremoniously killed off Bae/Neal, and resurrected Rumple from the show’s most consistently relatable, realistic, sympathetic, and well-earned two-and-a-half season redemption arc from S1-3A, it became clear thet they ran out of story to tell after wrapping up the Neverland arc, and had no idea where else they were supposed to go with Emma, Regina, Hook, Rumple, Belle, Snow, David, and even Henry’s individual characters or relationships anymore.

We know canon OUAT became a shitshow of inexcusably bad writing. We know it became horrifying and stupid. However, most of us didn’t actually remain in this fandom because we agreed with the writing on the show. We latched onto it so strongly because of its amazing main cast. We latched on to it so deeply because it showed us how to not completely fuck up amazing, relatable, and compelling individual characters, their relationships, and their storylines with biased, hypocritical, ableist, classist, homophobic, racist, sexist, petty, cheaply shocking, gross, wildly ooc, flanderdized, melodramatic, pandering, repetitive, and nonsensical lazy plot-driven writing. Granted, these problems were starting to show up in canon OUAT’s writing as early on as S1. However, after 3A, the show’s writing completely went off the rails for everyone in the remaining main cast that lasted past S3, and these characters and their relationships never fully recovered what made them at all coherent, compelling, magical, relatable, and enjoyable to watch and get invested in in canon from S1-S3, in spite of their obvious flaws.

Most of us have remained in the OUAT fandom because the show’s shitty writing choices and wasted potential inspired most of us to tell far better stories than Kitsowitz and their team of hacks ultimately did.

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immortalconclusions · 3 years

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I need to rant about rock band biopics.

Today I watched the biopic about Joan Jett and the Runaways. It had the EXACT SAME cookie cutter plot arc as the Motley crue biopic, the Queen biopic, the Doors biopic, hell even the Bowie biopic (I mean Velvet Goldmine - although that one gets a pass for being awesome).

Typical moralistic band story: young kids down on their luck get together and form a band with an abusive manager, work real hard in the beginning, go on tour, get famous, crack under pressure, do a LOT of cocaine and heroin, someone gets hospitalized, someone quits, then the band breaks up and everyone has to go back home, make up with their conservative parents, and re-learn to find happiness in the small things in life BLEHHHH

Rock and roll is not your morality play, that is just so asinine. I mean, do we really need to hear how a life of sin and excess will lead to misery?? Yeah no shit, that story’s been told a million times before and there’s NOTHING novel or progressive about it. Don’t get me wrong, I love stealth-moralism, but this is just SO OBVIOUS and on the nose it doesn’t mean anything at all

Can’t we celebrate even a little bit that these people had some courage and grit? how they challenged gender binarism and uplifted common people? The machine chews up EVERYONE, no exceptions, that much is obvious. Actually that would be an interesting angle to take, especially since the film industry is no better than the music biz, but there’s no sign of self awareness in this films at all.

I was talking to my friend who posed the idea that the people who are profiting off of these industries deliberately produce stories like this to discourage people from critique of the industry as an industry, and their workers from asking for better conditions. It places all the moral load and the inevitable decline on the individual, the product, instead of the people behind the scenes. On another level, it panders to middle class suburban America by assuring the audience that they're not Missing Out, and gives the illusion that they're not cogs in the same fucking machine.

And what pissed me off even more in The Runaways? There’s a line where their creepy sexual predator manager tells them “rock ’n’ roll is a blood sport, a sport for men. It’s for the people in the dark, the death cats, the masturbators, the outcasts who have no way of saying - I hate this world, fuck you, fuck authority, I want an orgasm!” Yeah maybe for YOU, you incel pedophile freak. Which, ok, no surprise somebody like that would think that way, but there’s literally never anything in the movie after that which contradicts it? On any level whatsoever? GOD

And the very last scene shows Cherie Currie a year after she quit the band, folding linens in a pink dress and and a lace apron and smiling. First of all, historically inaccurate, second of all, what tf kinda symbolism is that?? Fuck off.

On the bright side, Dakota Fanning was hot, the Joan Jett wig was good, soundtrack was fire, and they made it canonically a bit gay which was nice ig although honestly bare minimum given the subject matter.

#rock music #the runaways #joan jett #rant

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cher-writes · 3 years

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Silver Screen / Silver Pole | Robert Sheehan x Reader (18+)

Summary: A night of celebration in a LA strip club takes an interesting and unexpected turn when a contrarian actor winds up offending the wrong stripper. But night is long and the possibilities are endless, where will it take them?

Word Count: 7.3k

CW: Mention of sexual harassment, Consensual slapping, NSFW smut

A/N: This one is surprisingly not bloody at all and the smut isn't wild either so like most everyone can read it. Although it's emotionally very heavy. So, get ready to feel some shit. Hopefully you'll enjoy.

Special thanks to @crisis-of-joy for being there for me the whole month I took to complete this emotionally taxing fic and also for being my kind beta reader & editor.

Burning on it’s way down, the third glass of whiskey finally gave her some life she desperately needed. Deafening music throbbed throughout her veins, drowning the club in the background. She wanted to drown with it too but she couldn’t, she was there to work and rent for the month was already due. The fourth glass was on the verge of meeting with her bitter mouth when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t drink so much, you’ll trip on the stage,” Coco practically shouted in her ear. Coco was the only friend she had in that goddamn place and It wasn’t a very rare occurrence that Coco had to drag her blackout drunk body out of the club. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say she had a problem. Considering that she was already on her third strike of the month and the third drink of the night, Coco knew better than to let her get drunk this early.

“I can’t stay here and be sober at the same time,” she shouted back at Coco, “especially after...nevermind,” but decided against talking about it and instead focused her energy on finishing the fourth glass, which was gone just as quickly as the words stopped coming out of her mouth.

She could read the concern on Coco's face and sense the questions brewing behind it as Coco spoke up, “I want to know what the fuck is up with you but I have to go now, Caleb came home from school hours ago, it’s pretty late and I have to cook him dinner.”

“What happened to Larry? Can’t he take care of the kid? He’s fucking jobless anyway.”

“He got in a bad fight again. I can barely afford Caleb’s school fees and now the medical bills.”

“If only you had divorced him, you wouldn’t need to worry about it.”

“And if only you had been less violent towards customers, you wouldn’t be on the verge of getting fired. But, here we are.”

She furrowed her brows at this sudden sharp stab of truth by Coco and dealt with it the only way she knew how to, by ordering another drink. Coco crossed her arms letting out a deep sigh and said, “Look, I'm only trying to help you, (y/n). Sam wanted me to go up. You see that group seating in the fifth VIP booth? Up there. They are celebs and celebrating something so, ya know, good money. I said no cause, as I said I gotta go home, but I convinced him to let you go up there. It was hard given your recent less-than-favorable behavior, but I managed to.” Coco snatched the already empty glass from her hand and continued, “So stop drinking, go up there and get that money. And for the love of God, behave yourself or this might be your last night here.”

Giving her hand a quick but tight squeeze, Coco got up then soon after disappeared into the crowd. She thought to herself about how a last night there wouldn’t be so bad if she could afford it, and wanted another drink immediately to kill that thought, but Coco's words haunted her ears. She looked over her shoulder to see three men sitting in the booth, laughing.

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Her head was in a violent swirl, vision blurry. She was way too drunk to be spinning around the pole, but she had an audience to entertain and had no one but herself to blame.

When you walked around your house wearin' my sky blue Lacoste, the song was thudding against her skull. Pulling herself together, she counted every second, waiting for the song to end. She could feel the eyes on her, sticking to every bit of her, just as invasive as it was the very first day yet, she couldn’t care less. She had to live through it if she wanted the money and she needed the money if she wanted to live. The room was dancing circles around her as the tips came flying in, she kept counting the seconds, sliding down the pole, and your knee socks.

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She was swaying dangerously on her way down from the stage. If the song didn’t end when it did, she would have thrown up without a shadow of a doubt. At that point, she didn’t even know how or what she danced, only the awful sickness in her stomach let her know that it was more than she could take.

She needed to chat up the men, try and convince them to buy a champagne room before the next song came on, which she feared was way too soon for her liking. Nevertheless she tried to steady herself but the big glass platforms messed with her earnest efforts, nausea kicking her in the stomach once again, letting her know of her limits.

She didn’t ever really look at the men who sat in front of her, leering at her, they all looked the same, smelt the same and talked the same. So she followed the same old routine, bending down just enough to give them a view up her tits. Pressing her arms closer, she slurred, “What are we celebrating, gentlemen?”

She absolutely hated how she sounded pandering to men, two pitches higher. “My friend over here landed a role in a Spielberg film!” the middle one spoke up and pointed to the one sitting on the right side. The one in question grinned in response and repulsion licked the back of her neck at the sight of that. Yet she needed to please him, “That’s amazing! I’m sure I’ll be seeing your face on the billboards everyday now while driving,” she said and fantasized about having enough money to burn down all the billboards in LA and maybe LA with it too.

“Hell yeah you will!” the one in the middle spoke up and broke her reverie so she pretended he was supporting her fantasy instead. “Oh please! Speak for yourself!” the one on the right perked up in his seat and continued, “He’s literally working with Fincher AND he got engaged!”. The one in the middle gave a revolting smirk at the very humble revelation of his accomplishment and it was enough to turn her stomach or maybe it was the alcohol, she couldn’t really decipher.

“Oh really?” she looked at the man, tilted her head and said, “And you came to a stripclub to celebrate your engagement?”, her face deadpan. Notes of contempt stuck out like thorns from her voice, making her sound way more intense than she intended to.

He tensed up visibly at her sudden razor-edged tone and, even though she didn't want to, she had to ease the situation. I can’t piss off these bastards again, she kept repeating to herself like a mantra. “Boys will be boys!” she said, not being able to think of something better that wasn’t inherently insulting, and laughed the most disgusting laugh of her life. If she could she would pour gasoline down her throat just for uttering those words.

She couldn’t bear to linger at that conversation point anymore so she turned her attention to the man sitting on the far left. He looked distant and foreign, staring but not really looking at her. There was a peculiar absence behind his distinct green eyes, which she would even call beautiful under different circumstances. And that, something about that absence, made her want to zero in on him.

“And what about you? Did you win an Oscar or something?” mockery ringed clear in her voice, which brought his attention back to the presence. Startled slightly, he straightened his posture while saying, “No, not really... not yet at least,” he smiled sheepishly and continued, “I’m just here with them”.

“Come to think about it, I’ve never really seen you anywhere,” she said without thinking too much. In fact, she didn’t really pay enough attention to how he looked to recognize him even if she did.

Something intense flashed his eyes for a brief second. She couldn’t quite put her fingers on what it was but she could feel the energy shift very quickly between them.

“Oh I’ve been in things but I’d be surprised if you did see any of them,” his voice now stripped of the delicacy it previously held. She could feel the air between them getting unusually heavy, his words penetrating through her skin a bit too effortlessly, a bit too swiftly that it was unsettling.

“And why exactly would you be surprised?”

“You know...cause people like you don’t usually watch the kind of films I do.”

“What do you mean by ‘people like me?’”

“You know...people of your...stature,” he trailed off. Blood rushed the back of her neck as soon as the words hit her ears. She could feel her vision burning, a hot wave washed the crown of her skull, something unruly building at the base of her being. Clenching her jaw so as not to let it take over her, she said, “Stature huh? Fancy! I reckon from your accent that, wherever the hell you’re from, people get a kick out of looking down on others with such wispy language.”

She could sense the same unruly substance dancing behind his chest, but he was far better at keeping it on a leash.

“I wasn’t looking down upon you. What I was merely getting at is that some people aren’t cut for apprehending particular types of films,” he sounded snarky but calm, the type of calm that’s tainted with scorn, which only sent ripples of rage down her ribs.

“Oh so you think just because I’m a stripper by profession that I wouldn’t understand your low-budget dumb indie movies?” she was getting visibly worked up now. Traces of her seductive posture vanished long ago but there was a new hostile energy flowing through her stance.

“I didn’t say that -”

“No, of course you didn’t say that, you only meant that. You meant what you think and every one of you think that we aren’t people with brains and emotions. No, no, we’re just sacks of meat to ogle at in exchange of money, and then grope when you can’t keep it in your pants.”

“I think you're trying to put words in my mouth, this is -”

“God! you think you’re fucking better than me, don’t you? You contrarian little shit!” she could feel it in her bones. She knew what was coming. There were people behind, or maybe beside, her, trying to talk to her, probably. She could hear no one, not even the previously unbearable blaring music. She had tunnel vision and it was fixed on him. The air she breathed chafed her nose. Her nerves thumped as her heart leapt at irregular rapid intervals.

“Excuse me! but i neve -” he said as his body went alert. Posture anticipating something violent, flight or fight.

“You think you're better than me because I'm a stripper and you got enough money to buy me?” her voice was icy as she spoke, “You LA people are all the fucking same. You get a little money in your pockets and you think you own the world and anyone who isn’t jerking off to your pretentious bullshit isn’t worthy enough to deserve basic fucking decency. Huh is that it?” she quickly jumped on top of him, straddling him.

He was frozen under her as she leaned in and murmured, “Well then allow me to show you”, she pulled away, her left hand clutching his shoulder as right fist rose the air, “HOW FUCKING BETTER THAN ME YOU ARE!” then her fist crashed on the side of his mouth with all the force she could muster, releasing a knot built in her chest since she checked in with the manager in the evening. Hot, sweltering adrenaline was coursing through her veins.

The impact resulted in him burying his face in his right shoulder so she grabbed a fistful of his hair and forced him to face her. His lips were starting to swell up so she decided to help it. His eyes went blank as her fist met his face once more.

Involuntarily, her hand was raising in the air again when she felt a strong pull from behind. The security guard, twice her size, yanked her away from him. People gathered around them staring at her, the music stopped to her relief. The guard twisted her arms behind her back, enough to leave bruises that’ll sting for days to come. She couldn't move, her sight went hazy yet she felt this strange cool serenity soothe her tensed muscles. His friends were crowding him, probably consoling him. She could neither hear them nor make out their faces from her almost closed eyelids. She was pretty sure she was falling asleep in the guard’s painful hold until she heard a certain voice and the hair at the back of her neck stood up.

“What the fuck! She’s at it AGAIN? Sir, I'm so sorry -” Sam, the manager’s voice pierced her ears as he rushed into the booth. As he was talking to them, commotion rose in the background. She could feel blind rage beating with every thump of her heart. If it wasn’t for the guard holding her in place, she would have skinned him alive by now. She was struggling to free herself when Sam turned to her and said, “You! That’s it!” pointing his left index at her. “I’ve had just about enough of your drunkass assaulting fine gentlemen. You’re fired. Get out right now! And be grateful we’re not reporting you to the police.”

Suddenly everything went quiet in her head. She smiled, nothing behind her gaze. Grinning ear to ear like a maniac, she said, “I’m fired? Aww what’s gonna happen to you now Sam?”. She cooed, ''Whose tits and ass are you gonna grab from now on? Stella? I wonder if she’ll compare to me though.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sam almost hissed at her.

“Ohhh right! Of course, you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she said while still tussling with whatever little strength she had left to loosen herself from the guard’s excruciating grip. “You don’t know anything about how you sexually harassed me day after day, how your disgusting, slimy little hands grabbed my body against my will at every chance that you got. You knew how much I need the money from this job and you used that against me to keep me silent, threatening to fire me every time I made even a sound. But guess what fucker? I’m fired now! And I’m gonna tell everyone about HOW YOU TRIED TO -”

“Take her to the staff room!” Sam cut her off, “NOW!” And, as soon as the words left Sam's mouth, the guard put his palm over her mouth and started dragging her back. The hand over her mouth muffled her screams and she glanced at the man, now with swollen lips, looking at her with eyes filled with, what looked like, concern.

As she was getting dragged, she finally managed to sink her teeth into the guard’s palm resulting in him withdrawing his hand just enough to give her a small window of time to scream at Sam: “YOU MOTHERFUCKER I’LL BE BACK AND I’LL PEEL THE SKIN OFF OF YOUR SCALP FUCKING SON OF A BITCH I’LL -” Before she could finish, her voice got cut off again and she faded into the dimly lit passageway at the back of the floor.

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The cherry of her fifth cigarette shone brightly in the shivering cold as the smoke drifted up in the air and sluggishly faded away. Mouth agape, her eyes meticulously followed the faint trails left after their disappearance. She wondered where they went, where she’ll go. If it wasn’t this late, and the water wasn’t so cold, maybe she could have gone for a swim in the ocean. If the water wasn’t so cold maybe she would have let it swallow her even. She was calculating the probable temperature of the hypothetical water she’d marry someday when the sound of slow approaching footsteps entered her field of perception. She would have preferred to ignore it but the, somehow already familiar, voice spoke up, “Hey erm...” and left her no choice but to look. And there he was, the foreign man with the swollen lip, looking culpable. There were distinct imprints of guilt in his voice as he continued, “I saw you across the parking lot…um I was actually just leaving with my friends,” he pointed at a black Mercedes parked at the far end of the lot. “They’re waiting in the car anyway so I decided -”

“So you decided now that she’s fired from being a stripper, she's probably a hooker! Lemme go ask the price she’s selling at,” her gestures and voice was comical, “you know, dude if you’ve got a kink of getting beaten up non-consensually then you’re really good at getting it cause I might just be up for round two.”

He stared at her for a good few seconds with a perplexed face, as if trying to process her stream of logic. When he started speaking, he sounded genuinely hurt, “No! Jesus Christ I came to apologize. Can you just not be defensive for one second? I’m not a monster ya know!”

His sincerity caught her off guard. She had about five thousand ways of dealing with assholes prepared and ready to go but an actually decent person? Now that was rocky territory for her.

“Well, uh, that’s a first. Go ahead I guess?” she shrugged her shoulders.

“I apologize for saying what I said back in the club. I shouldn’t have insinuated that you aren’t intelligent enough to understand my films just because of your choice of profession. It was really shitty of me to say that, and nothing can justify it either. And I feel like I caused you to be fired, that’s also weighing heavily on my soul and I don't know how to make it up to you. Just, I hope that you can forgive me and, again, I apologize, earnestly. Please tell me how I can make it up to you,” he said and looked at her with a rueful expression.

She was at a loss of words. It had been years since anyone apologized to her, let alone that sincerely. After a considerable amount of silence, she gathered her fragmented thoughts and spoke up, “Whoa, whoa man, chill. You didn’t murder my family or anything so calm down,” she held up her open palms, the cigarette almost at it’s end. “Apology accepted, okay? And don’t feel bad, I would have been fired sooner or later given my questionable behavior ever since I joined, so it’s not on your conscience. And I’m sorry too,” her index and middle finger holding the cigarette gestured at his lips, “for, um, punching you so let’s call it an even.”

“Okay,” he nodded, “yeah okay,” sounding clearly more relaxed than before.

“You know it’s a miracle how long it took for me to get fired,” she mused, “oh no it wasn’t a miracle it was sexual harassment, ah I see now. Wonder what Sam saw in me though that was worth not firing me for this long even though I pulled so much shit,” she took a long drag of her weary cigarette. “Maybe I've got a talent for getting harassed or something...who knows?”

His face tensed up again as he said, “That’s...not right,” eyes pooling with the same worried look as before.

“I was joking, chill. Humor is an excellent way to deal with most everything really, especially trauma.”

“I am sorry for what you had to go through, it’s gut-wrenching. Can’t you lodge a complaint to the police?”

“Going to the pigs? As a sex worker? Who just got fired for being drunk and punching a man in front of many eye witnesses? Now that was humor, you’re quite good at it actually.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Besides, that’s like one of the first things you gotta learn to put up with if you’re working in this business. As unfair and grim as it is, men, no actually, people don’t see sex workers as human beings and I’m just too obstinate to accept that simple fact, or maybe too much of a pussy, depending on where one’s priorities lie.”

“I…don’t know what to say.”

“There is nothing to say.”

It was just setting in for her how beautiful he actually was. His crestfallen face was graced by two stunning green eyes, lush unruly curls sticking to his forehead, sharp jawline kissed with a scruffy goatee and the swollen lip throwing off the symmetry just right to make him look captivating, to say the least. In the chilly December ambience his face was a soothing sight to her eyes, his sweet voice kind to her drudging ears, his presence warm to her existence. And she wanted to hold onto the warmth, just for a bit longer.

“You said you wanted to make it up to me, right?” she said as the cigarette fell on the ground then died out under the crushing embrace of her cruel heels.

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“Well I'm Ro -” he said leaning against the passenger seat window, sitting half facing her.

“If you’re trying to say your name then don’t,” she cut him off quickly without averting her gaze from the road.

“Why?” he asked, staring at her intently yet without any emotion in particular.

“‘Cause it doesn’t matter. It’s better if we don’t know each other’s name. Names individualize people and that’s not necessary for tonight,” she answered nonchalantly as the neon lights of a passing by road sign illuminated her face and then faded into the past just as nonchalantly.

“Okay.”

She could feel his eyes on her, but it didn’t bother her, it wasn’t tainted. There was this unusual tranquility in the atmosphere of the car, this obscure but consistent serene rhythm. She felt a bizarre comfort in his presence and she could drive like this forever, on a never-ending road spiraling towards heaven or winding down pandemonium or just dissolving into the ether, with him sitting lazily on the side.

“Do you ever feel like that?” he spoke up absentmindedly, breaking into her almost fever dream.

“Huh?”

“The song, I feel like that often.”

She didn’t realize the radio was on, playing at quite a significant volume. She wondered if he had turned it on at some point and how long she was driving for without being present mentally.

This place will be the end of me. Take me out, LA. Take me out of LA, the voice from the radio filled the car to the brim.

“I don’t feel like that, I know that. I know I'll die here, kinda intrinsically...do you hate this place?”

“No, not hate. I just feel like I don't fit in here. It’s the way of life, it’s quite significantly different to what I was used to. The people and the city, it all feels hollow sometimes and every now and then i catch myself yearning for what I left behind me.”

“I see. Beautiful people and their beautiful problems.”

Silence fell in the car again. Except for the voice through the radio, Well this place is never what it seems.

“You don’t have to make small talk, you know. I'm fine with silence,” she said, finally looking at him for a brief second.

“Oh I know,” he was looking right into her eyes, unruffled. “I wasn’t making small talk, I just wanted to talk to you. That’s all.”

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The bleak fluorescent tube above buzzed in solidarity as the fatigued clock on the chipped convenience store wall dragged its hands and finally managed to tick at 2 am. The attendant was leaning on the counter, trying not to fall asleep when her voice echoed in the store: “$20 on pump 2.”

“I’ll pay”, he cut in, reaching for his wallet. “Okayyy...” she replied, narrowing her eyes at his benevolence and looked around the store which was significantly emptier that other nights. She closed her eyes for a second and the memories flashed behind her lids. She used to come here frequently, around this time, with someone when everything in her world was right, just right enough for her to not to seek out falling stars every night and wish for death over and over again. When she opened her eyes a shiny pack of Parliaments caught her gaze and she quickly gestured behind the counter, “Since you’re paying, can I get a pack of those also?”

“Sure”

“I remember surviving on those alone while writing my thesis papers,” she said wistfully, “good times.”

“You went to college?”

“University actually, but yeah.”

“Good lord.”

“But I had to drop out so I couldn’t complete my Master’s in Biochemistry.”

“Why?”

“Life.”

“I flunked out my first year of college so you did way more than I did in that regard.”

“Welp, look where that got me.”

“Don’t say that!”

“What?” she scoffed.

“Anything else?” the attendant interjected, visibly tired and clearly annoyed at their conversation.

She swiftly grabbed a lighter, “Can I get this too?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

“That’ll be all,” she tossed the lighter towards the attendant and continued, “You’re clearly doing way better than me in life.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” he replied, raising an eyebrow.

“No. I meant that seriously. I’m the one who fucked up my life and that’s a fact. Say, how did you know what you wanted to do?”

“That’ll be $30”, the attendant interjected again.

“I don’t know. I started acting as a kid and it just seemed right. It’s all I've known really and I can't see myself as anything else,” he said as he passed the money to the attendant.

“I envy that.”

“I do sometimes ponder what I would have been if not an actor.”

“Wondering too much isn’t good,” she grabbed the goods and shoved them in her coat pocket, “It might make someone into me.”

She stopped right before the glass door, pulled the lighter out and flicked it on, “I’ll use it later,” she leaned in close to him with a frivolous smirk and whispered, “to burn this city down.”

He chuckled at her sudden gaiety, “I’d gladly assist.”

Pushing the door open, she continued as he followed behind her, “Did you see the way that dude rolled his eyes to you? He definitely thought you were with a blabbering hooker and to be honest, my make up probably didn’t help either. Oh well it's not like -” her voice slowly evaporated into the gloomy gas-station lights.

------------

“So beautiful,” he said with awe looking over the vast and apparently endless ocean which the full, eternal moon bathed with its silver glory.

She clutched at her coat sleeves as the chilly wind sent shivers down her body and said, “I know right? I’ve always found the sea to be peaceful during this time of the night.”

“It’s lovely, I’ve never been to this beach before.”

“It’s my favorite spot actually, I used to come here pretty often,” melancholia dripping from her voice. She paused for a little while as if going over a mental checklist and said, “let’s go sit down there,” and pointed towards a vague place in the distance.

They walked down the beach for a bit side by side, knuckles occasionally brushing against each other’s, making them want to hold hands, feel the warmth of another being. But the hesitance of the yet to be known, the uncertainty of a nameless stranger clouded their minds and prevented them from reaching out.

She stopped, sat down and gestured to him to do the same by tapping the cold sand beside her. He sat a bit too far for her liking so she huddled up closer to him saying, “You blaze right?”

“Sure.”

“Cool,” she said, taking out a small bag from an inside pocket of her coat, “keep an eye out for me while I roll it.”

They sat in silence as she rolled a joint meticulously. The waves kept crashing on the shore as if fulfilling some ancient duty. Wind rustled through the empty beach. Sand glimmered sporadically under the warm light of the moon, creating a transcendental atmosphere.

He sighed and thought out loud, interrupting the intoxicating stillness of the night, “Where do we go from here?”

“Other than plotting the murder of Sam, I don’t know about me,” she replied without looking up from the task at hand, “Don’t really wanna think about it tonight. That’s why I took you along with me. I wanted someone to keep me distracted from my thoughts and I had no one to go to...then you came to apologize, like my knight in shining armor.”

He smiled wryly and said, “I see.”

“What about you? What are you gonna do about your not fitting in or what was it?”

“I don’t know either. I just miss my people. I’m not meant for here, I think.”

“So can’t you go back there? To your home I assume?”

“I can...”

“Then go. Why the fuck would you stick around if you had the option to go back?”

“Maybe.”

“Huh! I wish I had a home to go back to too.”

She could see him from the corner of her eyes, clenching his knees tight with his fingers at her words, bringing them closer to his chest. She looked up to see him staring at her with his big, beautiful, hurt-puppy eyes.

“Did that make you sad or something?” she asked, almost amused.

“Yeah...yeah it did.”

His apparent empathy for a literal stranger who also punched him not so long ago struck her as odd and oddly enticing. He looked unreal to her in the strange moonlight, as if a remote but vivid memory. She felt as though if she reached out and touched him, he’d turn to dust and drift off with the wind. Those intense eyes and his fey beauty were getting too much for her to bear so she averted her gaze towards the ocean and said, “There’s no use for your or anyone’s sadness. You see, sadness changes nothing. Unless you can start a capital R revolution tomorrow, everything will be the same. It’ll be the same day with slight variations over and over again, things will repeat and go on and on and on until one day humanity just goes poof somehow and then the universe will go on as if we never even happened. There’s no significance of our lives, there’s no point in feeling sad about anything in this set up. One must always imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“That’s quite pessimistic, isn’t it?”

“Kinda absurdist actually, but It’s hard not to be pessimistic or defensive, when you have to lead a life like mine.”

“I understand.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do, “Glamour Boy,’” she said, licking the rolling paper.

He put his hand over his chest and feigned being hurt which made her laugh; a clear, hearty laughter. The beach echoed with a faint sound of the laughter of two stray souls as he joined in.

The joint hanged from her lips, sensual and reckless like an erotic magazine model, burning bright as she took a long drawn-out drag.

“Say, do you think the water is cold?” she said, passing the joint to him.

He took in a drag, inhaling some of her used up smoke with it too, tasting her cheap but obscenely sweet fruity lip gloss at the filter tip, “Yeah...very much so”.

She huddled up even closer to feel the heat of his body as he passed the joint back to her. Taking in another drag, she leisurely put her head on his shoulder.

The sedating smoke sank into their lungs as the sand anchored them from floating off in the elating static of the enveloping darkness.

------------

“Is this it?” she said, pulling up to a posh apartment complex, something she wouldn’t be able to afford even after paying off her debts.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he replied absently and unbuckled his seatbelt.

She was looking ahead at the road, expecting him to get out of the car, but he sat in silence. She looked at him and saw him laid back on the seat as if being consumed by it, tracing the edge of the left air vent softly with his fingers. He sighed and said, still looking at his busy fingers: “I feel strange and fucking awful.”

“It happens sometimes after coming down a high.”

“It’ll be a pain in the arse going to bed feeling like this.”

“I know,” her eyes travelled down the flow of his posture, giving birth to an urge of some aboriginal origin in her loins, “but you don’t have to.”

He turned his head towards her slowly, lethargy clear in his slow breathing pattern, “What do you mean?”

“Push your seat back.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

He furrowed his brows, alarmed by her sudden gratuitous command. He looked at her; motionless as if not even breathing awaiting his compliance and her eyes glinted with expectancy. He pushed his seat back, as far as it could go then parted his lips to say something but before the words could get out, she virtually jumped on top then sat astride him.

A deathly stillness engrossed the car as her previous bellicose energy returned to the atmosphere, only this time rather ardent in nature. His heart, instantaneously racing, almost audible to her.

“You know,” she said taking off her top, “dopamine is a hormone and neurotransmitter that’s an important part of your brain’s reward system, and it can elevate your mood and make you feel really good.”

Eyes wide with surprise, he struggled to keep his gaze fixed on her face as she unbuttoned his shirt. Her fingertips snaked up and down his smooth chest as if caressing a sumptuous painting one is not allowed to touch. She felt his taut muscle tighten at her touch, veins kindled with a hot rush pulsing under. Burying her face in the hollow of his neck, she felt the heat of his body as she pressed her chest against his. His breathing picked up it’s pace even more at the contact with her flushed skin.

“Do you ever get lonely?” she spoke up letting her lips skim over his bare shoulder.

“Terribly,” his voice breathy as he placed his hands on her hips hesitantly, not possessively, but affectionately.

“I do too.”

“What do we do about it?”

“Maybe we don’t do anything.”

“Maybe.” he said resting his right cheek against her head, “or maybe we keep each other company.”

“But for how long?”

“However long we need to.”

A mirthless laugh rippled from her lips then through his skin. She pulled back to look him in the eyes, curious green mixed with an unfamiliar kind of sorrow, a sorrow too costly for her. “Lust and attraction shut off the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which includes rational behavior,” she said, knocking softly on his temple.

“Makes sense.”

Cupping his face, she stroked his swollen lips with her rough thumbs, making him wince in response. The purple bruise steadily forming on the side of his mouth marred his flawless complexion yet his allure only enhanced. Her thumb rubbed on the bruise with reckless abandon, his flinches testifying to that. Withdrawing her hands from his face, she left a light peck on the bruise and said, “Slap me.”

“What?”

“Slap me, come on, I'm giving you a chance to get back at me for earlier.”

“No!”

“Prude!”

“Hey! I just don’t want to hurt you, especially not as revenge or what not,” he sounded genuinely offended.

She leaned in, “But I want to get hurt, silly,” her lips ghosting over his as she whispered, “Endorphins are our body’s natural pain reducer and it so happens to increase when we engage in reward-producing activities, such as eating, working out, or having sex.” She pulled away and continued, “So hit me. Hard.” His adam’s apple bobbed up then down as he searched at her face, as if trying to find some sort of sign. His fingers dug in her hips, indicating the upcoming crude impact. Her palms laid flat against his chest as his left hand rose then crashed against her face. Her fingers curled in response as she gasped weakly, eyes shut closed but the tensity clear in the lines on her eyelids and forehead.

“Ah... that was good,” she said as if talking to herself, caressing her cheek. When she opened her eyes, she found him staring with uncertain eyes, the doubt readable in the way he bit his lips.

“Just like that, once more,” her firm voice ringed in the vehicle. His hand cruelly collided once again with her face, leaving her face warm and red.

“Good boy,” she cooed as the sharp sting eddied on her cheek and then through her whole body, easing her off some unknown yet intrinsic discomfort. Her chest pounded in sync to his as she spoke up, “Do it for me once again, won’t you?”

Pressing his teeth even deeper into his lips, he struck her once again, with as much strength as he had. A white light flashed before her eyes, her ears ringed as she sat in silence for a bit. When her vision became clear, she held his face between her palms. Leaning closer, she rested her temple against his and murmured, “Such a good boy.”

Sweat dripped down as her nose grazed up the side of his neck, she could feel him growing hard through his pants. She buried her face in his curls and breathed in. He smelt sugary, sweet to the extent of almost making her nauseous. She whispered against his ear, “You’ve got a boner...it turned you on this much to hurt me?”

“It’s, um, n-not really that part it’s the -” he stammered in embarrassment.

“Ugh men,” she cut him off and rolled her eyes playfully. “But since we’ve got a situation at hand, and you’ve been so good to me, I think you deserve some relief for yourself,” she said, tugging at his waistband. To which he responded eagerly, elevating his hips just enough so she could slip his pants off as much as possible. His head sank back into the headrest as her hands wrapped around his cock. Her hand gilded up and down his length as her other hand ran through his hair, pulling lightly. Resting his forehead on her shoulder, he quivered and moaned softly as she lovingly yet mercilessly worked on him. His breath hitched sharply as she stroked the tip of his cock with her thumb, making him groan and twitch under her touch. She was about to pick up the pace when he grabbed her wrist abruptly. “Wait!” he rasped, “I wanna...feel you.”

He panted, trying to catch his breath and said, “Let’s take this inside, there might be people around.”

“Why? Are you afraid of getting photographed with a hooker by the paparazzi, Mr. Actor?"

“No”, he answered, the same hurt as earlier could be heard in his voice, the type of hurt when one is misunderstood by someone they love, “I just - I just want it to be nice.”

“Let’s not make it too nice lest you fall in love with me,” she said sternly. “Besides, you should be more concerned about getting STDs. There should be some condoms in the glove box and also tissues for later.”

He brought his face closer to hers, looked at her lips and said, “You’ve got such a mean mouth, you know that?”

“And you like it?”

“Perhaps”, he replied then kissed her, deeply. Holding her face in his head, he bit her lips which made her moan in his mouth. After running out of breath she pulled away, still tasting his saliva on her tongue as he reached behind her and rifled through the glove compartment. Having found what he wanted, he turned on the radio then returned his focus to her; she was hiking up her dress and awkwardly slipping off her panties in the short space.

Heavy bass filled the car, I wanna be your vacuum cleaner breathing in your dust, as the sky started to light up with shades of azure and tangerine. Her tongue blended with his as she took his cock in her. Their bodies pressed and flushed against each other as a steady rhythm flowed through them. Her nails scratched his nape, as he kissed her neck, nibbling at her collarbone. Her head shot back as he thrust up into her, frantic and keen. His groans muffled in her chest, her moans melting into his hair as their hips clashed against one another.

Maybe I just wanna be yours.

I wanna be yours.

------------

The sparkling rays of the breaking dawn illuminated his face as he cleaned himself off and got dressed. She marveled from the driver’s seat at the magnificence of the sight of him in afterglow. There was something in him, something innate, that made him stand out from anyone she ever came across. He was made for the screen, he was made to shine, and she wondered whether or not he’ll remember her afterwards. It was for the better if he didn’t, she thought to herself, as this was probably one of the lowest points in his life, while that night was most definitely one of the highlights of hers. The sheer dichotomy was glaring at her soul when he spoke up, bringing her attention back to the present, “I was wondering if you’d like to -”

“Look if you want my name or number, then that’s just not gonna happen,” she said with a sigh, “It’s the oxytocin flooding your brain. Increased levels of oxytocin facilitate attachment and bonding and shit so, like, don’t be fooled.”

“But it’s not that, I feel a connection between us...something I haven’t felt with anyone here before.”

He averted his eyes from her and looked out the window. His hand lingered on the door handle for a second before he stepped out of the car. Turning his back towards the car, he walked into the apartment complex, without saying anything further. Her foot pressed on the accelerator, as the car drove past the buildings. A Parliament washed out the leftover taste of him in her mouth as she rolled down the window to let the nauseously sweet scent dissipate into the cold morning air.

“It is that. Believe me, I know. There is nothing between us. Whatever connection you feel is your hormones doing bullshit things.”

“You’re just evading me”

“I’m not. I do actually know. Okay, for instance you feel really tired and sleepy right now, right?”

“Yeah”

“That’s the parasympathetic nervous system down-regulating your body and a shit load of vasopressin coursing through you”

“But that could also be because we stayed up all night and got high and just had sex”

“Why don’t you understand? It’s all chemicals, everything! There is nothing called love and whatever the fuck people feel is just their chemicals doing somersaults. There is nothing between us, we don’t know each other. There can be nothing either, look at the circumstances. People like you shouldn’t have to do anything with people like me unless it requires a monetary transaction.”

“But i can help, with whatever you’re dealing with”, he said reaching to place his hand over hers, “we can help each other”

“and what exactly do you think i’m dealing with?, she asked, withdrawing her hand, eyes narrowed at him.

“I don’t know yet”

“Exactly. You don’t know anything. I’m not some sad little girl who went to college then got depressed but in a sexy way so maybe she did drugs or whatever and dropped out and now strips for fucking aesthetic reasons probably. No honey, I’m involved with shit that can drag you down faster than a meth withdrawal and my life is a living testimony of that, take my word for it. So, go get some rest. Sleep out your saviour complex and live out your promising life when you wake up.”

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avatar216 · 2 years

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I know people really like Laurits Seier from Netflix's Ragnarok, but I just don't. This is kind of expansion on my last post.

Laurits is irksome to me. I wanted to like him. I really did, but I do not. I think it's because they tried to make him different, quirky, and weird but it just came off as pretentious and later pandering. I've seen the I'm different/an outcast, so I'm not like those other mere mortals trope so many times that I think it's overrated. Made all the worst by him being the reincarnation of a god. A god who a lot of people don't understand very well at that. Them making him gender-fluid or whatever for me is just continuing on the misconception about the god, which is not helping. Loki changes his sex for a reason, usually to aid in completing a task. It's not because he just wants to do it. Also, something I forgot to mention in my previous post on this is that Loki seemingly has nigh-on complete control over when he changes his sex and form. From what I understand, gender-fluid/NB people really don't have control over how they feel in relation to their sex. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Back to Laurits and Co. Laurits and Magne's relationship is indeed different from how Thor and Loki's relationship is in the myths, but it's not handled very well. I think it's probably partly due to only having 6 episodes per season and the show's pacing issues. I found Laurits finding out his father was not his real father to be rather contrived. It's just another stupid take on something like the Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe and I am not your father tropes, which I hate. I'm also sick of seeing characters having daddy issues because it's usually just used as a cheap and easy way to create drama and angst. This series is no exception. Laurits and Wotan's whole dynamic pissed me off to no fucks end because Wotan is basically using biological essentialism/determinism to justify being a dick. Also, the name Wotan is a known racist dog-whistle, so that's great. I know they obviously chose it based on Wagner's Ring Opera but still.

i guess why I don't quite like these things much is because most of the time I see them, they're being used on/in connection to a version of Loki. I love myth Loki, but a lot of things I've seen with a version of him strip him of most of his original core motivations, many of his personality traits, reactions, opinions, likes, and dislikes. I can guess at what people are going to say. Shit like, it's only a character, he's a trickster so that explains why he does bad things and why he should be the villain besides his part in Ragnarok. I would have no problem with him trying to start Ragnarok/being a villain in stories if the writer didn't insist on no one trusting him ever and him betraying everyone every ten minutes. Loki never kills humans in the myths, so I can of course understand why an author/creator might want to make him eager and willing to kill humans and start wars with them because a god with reservations about how humans are or should be treated in certain contexts doesn't exactly make for the best villain. Usually it's done by making him deeply insecure accompanied with an identity crisis or a mental breakdown. Sometimes both. Laurits is all over the place. People say he's like that because he's Loki and Loki's a trickster, but I disagree because Loki had obligations which he took seriously. Loki was a grown adult who had children and a wife. He took Asgard's and the gods safety seriously enough to compel Thor into putting on a dress. Laurits is a human teenager who doesn't have those obligations. Thor trusts Loki to do things for him without him betraying him. The gods like him enough or think he's useful to keep around at the very least. They benefit from what he does, and they only seem to care when it doesn't benefit them or he starts questioning them.

Loki's loyalties don't change every other day. Loki is not that selfish either. Odin is arguably more selfish given the fact that Odin literally kills humans to save himself. Why do you think the Einherjar exist?

#netflix ragnarok #laurits seier #tropes i hate #loki deity #anti laurits seier

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thattimdrakeguy · 4 years

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Pennyworth R.I.P. REVIEW!

The biggest flaw of Pennyworth R.I.P. is that it’s trying to be a character study without understanding the characters.

Character studies that suck at being character studies massively annoy me, because they can ruin the perception of the characters for lots of people that don’t know better, and that’s pretty much what this is.

Tim wouldn’t be happy to get a call to a funeral.

They ignore the disconnect between Jason and the Bat-Family when he still uses guns.

Alfred didn’t baby Damian.

And they might as well not have included Ric if he wasn’t gonna be Dick.

But I’d expect no less from James Tynion and Peter Tomasi. It went pretty much how I figured, because they always ignore Jason’s actual relationship with the Bat-Family, Tynion never understood Tim, and loves melodrama to seem like his work has substance, while Tomasi just babies Damian to pander to people, and forcing sympathy, just to force some likability out of cheap places for him.

This is shown best in this moment:

I just don’t feel like Jason Todd would do this. He’s not a jerk like this. He murders, he’d probably torture, he wanted revenge, but inside his heart is still that of a heroes (ignoring those ooc comics where Jason’s just a generic villain anyway), he cares about people as people, he should understand rushing in of all people. He isn’t a petty pisspants. Jason’s actually quite calm most of the time. He’s angry in very specific situations. Yelling at people like this, doesn’t feel like Jason’s style.

This reeks of Tomasi’s typical style of “Aww feel bad for Damian” in general as well as just making character’s be jerk to Damian randomly to make them look bad for Damian’s sake, and Tynion’s useless melodrama to at least seem like he can write drama, when it’s just cheap and over the top instead.

Damian being the only one there when Alfred died is already a traumatic experience. They didn’t have to make Jason out to be this unrepentant ass to show that. It reminds me all to well when Tomasi did the same thing to Tim to make Damian seem more in the right to beat him up. Except this just makes Jason all the more crueler given the context.

For some reason as well, Tim’s Red Robin when he should be Robin in a flashback.

So did they retcon that away AGAIN?

This is like-- the, hmm, 1, 2, 3, 4,-- 5th time they took Robin away from Tim in some manner.

This is ridiculous at this point.

It’s trying so desperately to be deep, but since no one really acts like themselves, it’s just forced. It can’t be actually deep in regards to the characters when the characters don’t act like the characters.

This comic follows the trope of remembering the best memory of the one that passed, and it just feels like a parody at some points, because of how ridiculous or forced it gets. That trope is a trope because it’s a natural thing people do, but they just tell these mostly random stories that don’t feel right because half of them are out of character anyways.

It is also completely ridiculous how it follows the trope of everyone acting out, because they get so pissed so fast it’s just idiotic. It’s so rushed, like the writers felt they had to get to these moments and raced to it.

I think Damian’s flashback is the worst when it comes to really forcing sentimentality, almost purely because it’s set in the beginning of Damian’s time as Robin with Bruce, and they just have Damian and Alfred act out of character to give them these cutesy moments that would be out of character no matter where in Damian’s character history.

But especially back when Damian was still barely not murdering people all the time.

Like can Tomasi stop ruining Damian’s character? He’s the most overrated writer Damian ever had, because he’s constantly just using pandering to hide that he isn’t that great. Damian is still learning to not be crazy here given the time in the flashback. Why is Tomasi acting otherwise?

Damian isn’t a normal kid and that’s the point.

What’s the point of his character growth when they act more and more like he didn’t need it? They always do that or have everyone ignore Damian’s actions half the time which makes him avoid proper growth. It’s tiring.

Tim’s is idiotic because it focuses on something so random when Tim and Alfred actually had sweet moments quite often. They played video games together,

Alfred helped convince Bruce to buy (Tim’s then girlfriend) Ariana’s Family business so she could stay in town,

he even looked after Tim when Tim was forced to go to a boarding school by his dad Jack Drake,

Alfred freaking drove Tim around in a van to fight crime when Bruce was away even.

They had lots of sweet moments already seen, but they focus on something so less personal, and more just random.

Continuing some idea Tim isn’t that involved with the Bat-Family that much ever, an outcast he was even called once. When he used to be the Bat-Family’s heart.

Jason’s is the same way with it’s choice of story sort-of. His story is so random, short, and unemotional that I feel like it was just an excuse to have Alfred crash into a building with the Batmobile rather than tell a story with a lot of meaning besides a quick “aw” and “ha”.

Barbara’s is the best. It doesn’t feel too forced, mostly just figuring out where Alfred got the time is the only reason id feel that way, but it actually focuses on a sentiment that feel legitimate, like these characters would actually do this.

It actually feels like a story that she would bring up. Something the previous stories were lacking. This feels like a natural story to tell, and it makes it the best part of the whole comic. It’s emotional, sweet, and sentimental, in all the right ways.

Dick’s doesn’t really have a lot to do with Dick, but it’s nice. Not too much to say about it unless I missed something.

Most importantly of all Alfred’s death feels meaningless because DC’s habit of shock value takes away any emotion, and it shouldn’t have ever happened.

Alfred been a character that everyone recognizes as part of Batman for decades and decades. So loyal and iconic. A character everyone can write, and killed for a story that no one likes, and all he gets is a crappy one-shot that seems like it didn’t have the right thoughts put into it.

I would’ve rather have read an extended version of Barbara’s flashback, because it had class.

This is contrived mediocrity that tries so hard to convince you it understands the characters and that it’s deep, emotional, with all this substance, but without the tools it needed to make it work.

With such an unneeded death, this was never going to feel emotional or deep, but a lack of understanding of the characters only makes it worse.

Closest they get is Tim trying to step up and help Bruce, but it’s done in that typical Tynion style of “Look at how great Tim is”, and it just gets soiled cuz it feels pretentious. Tim’s a boy doing his best, but he doesn’t come off that way the way he gets written here. It’s a veil of past Tim, but it doesn’t have the right heart.

Alfred deserved better.

#Tim Drake #Robin #Alfred Pennyworth #Bruce Wayne #Batman #Barbara Gordon #Batgirl #Jason Todd #Red Hood #DC Comics #Bat-Family #Batfamily #Batfam #Bat-fam #Pennyworth R.I.P.#James Tynion IV #Peter Tomasi #Dick Grayson #Ric Grayson

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m3r1m4r5u333 · 3 years

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This is basically a super long rant on gay slurs, skip it if you like. This post hasn't even got all that much to do with Nolan Patrick, I'm just tagging it because this tag is where the discussion is since recently it came up that NP tweeted a f-slur when he was a teen. Anyway this is just my experience and I do not know if this has anything at all to do with why NP used the f slur back when he was a teen.

I just feel like this is an important topic and it just may help someone understand why SOME people say the hurtful words they say and actually help realise that the people around them are not necessarily as closeminded as they seem to be even if they use gay slurs. Now, the slurs may still hurt to hear, and they may feel ignorant and cruel but I think it helps to realise that even if you hear a gay slur it doesn't automatically mean that you've entered a place that's hostile towards you, yk? Because Merlin knows that anxiety is like a duckling that thinks you're their mom.

So, usage of gay slurs! Always bad, right? All it does is hurt, right? Why would anyone use a gay slur! Enforces systemic violence, right?!

Well not necessarily, not in my experience. I'm pansexual by the way. I feel like that's relevant since the slur relates to me and there's always that "they're/we're talking about me and my people" - feeling present.

So, why have I occasionally used gay slurs even after I got out of that gay-is-bad mindset that many kids adopt in a homophobic environment? Well, BECAUSE I was and am queer. Some (okay, most) of my friends were and are queer.

"HOW COULD YOU?!!" and "then you especially should know not to!" You scream. Well here's why.

First it was the adults. They pissed me off. They didn't get it. They were trying to teach us not to use those slurs and they didn't even understand WHY that was important. All they had been taught was that f-slurs were bad because you can use them to bully others.

"But why can you use them to bully others, my dear englightened adult, my moral compass, my guide?"

And here's what they didn't tell you but you could tell thought:

"Well because being gay is just a horrible, awful thing and nobody should attempt to ruin someone's reputation by saying they're gay!!! The horror!!!" And it was pretty clear that not only were the slurs forbidden, but even the word gay was a huge taboo.

Cue teenager rebellion! Because as it turns out, many of the teens were actually way ahead of the adults and already understood why the slurs hurt. They didn't necessarily hurt because you, the gay kid, or you, a straight kid, thought gayness is awful. They hurt because the slurs were used as an attempt to exclude, to imply bad things about you.

So telling us not to use slurs basically made us use them even more. We were trying to take those words back. Show that gay is not taboo. Show that it's not a good insult because it isn't bad to be gay. Power to the people! (And you know, it has happened before. The word queer used to be super homophobic, how it's used has changed, a lot. Queers took it back, made it their own. We said you know what, I am queer and I am fine with it. And now it's way more neutral a word than it used to be.)

Anyway, for a while, everyone in my class was using f slurs, both the gayest of the gay and the straightest of the straight. Not everyone understood why and some people were using them as an insult but still, our tiny rebellion sort of worked. When someone uses a slur towards the cool jock in your class and all they do is smile and say "thanks" or ask "why are you trying to use that as an insult, it's not a bad thing."... it has certain power you know? When the cool kids in your class use the f slur as an endearment towards their friends and nobody flips their shit because it isn't really an insult? Has a certain power, you know.

Of course after a while it pandered down. Hurling slurs can actually be pretty challenging social behavior and the risk of missunderstandings and hurt feelings was still quite big. The Straights realised that it can be pretty problematic for them to use gay slurs since they are the majority, people were growing older and they were swearing less etc.

Culture changed from people using f slurs in a classroom to me and my very rainbow friends using them in private as our inside jokes. And I still think as long as you're really certain that nobody minds in your friend group, that can be fine. There will always be someone coming in who'll tell you you can't and you shouldn't but really, telling an oppressed group how they are allowed to address each other is... Blergh. Gay slurs are tricky though because gays can be ninjas and if you use them in a public place there's a chance that people just think you're a bunch of straight people trying to insult each other. So beware.

Anyway, back to story time! Sometime later, like a decade later (I'm a real adult!), I was in a group chat of people who played pokemon go. It was a very diverse group of very random people where pretty much the only common thing was that game. I knew some of the folks better, I knew there were other LGBTQ+ people besides me in the group. I doubt that The Straights knew that, we were sort of lowkey, because all we ever talked about was the game, the whole group didn't really know each other on a personal level.

In comes this tiny human (10 years old? Something like that?) complaining that another tiny human in the group called them THE F SLUR. That of course meant that instantly there were several potentially hurt parties in the drama. The kid who was bullied, all the queer folks I knew, potentially other queer people I didn't know. This time I was an adult though and it was my responsibility to calm things down. I wasn't the admin though. Now, to their credit the admin was horrified at the situation. Many other people were horrified too. In fact, almost... TOO horrified. They acted like the kid had been called a serial killer or something, the Worst Imaginable Insult ever, like the bullied child had been accused of torturing animals, setting things on fire. It felt like an overreaction to a word that in essence should not mean anything bad.

One group of people was very, very quiet. Me and my queer friends watching silently at people freaking out because THE slur had been used. Because the child had been ACCUSED of being gay. And that made me sad. And mad. And I felt conflicted.

Ended up speaking out, saying something like yeah it's not nice to use slurs but also, gayness isn't bad, so you don't need to be offended. Maybe that was a wrong reaction, I don't know. I'm not great with kids. All I know is that while people got pissed off at me for downplaying a slur and downplaying bullying, and downplaying homophobic behavior, there were some people who finally spoke up. My gay friends. Who agreed with me.

So here's my rant. Slurs are bad. But it's not black and white. Sometimes we react to them too strongly. That can, too, be offensive.

And we shouldn't be too hard on kids. Kids are little monkeys who will act and react like they've been raised to act and react.

#nolan patrick #slurs #gay rights

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soyouareandrewdobson · 3 years

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Marvel’s Dobson: Infinity PTSD

In case you wonder why I personally think Dobson is an idiot, here is one (of many) reason(s): Dobson takes the wrong things way more serious than he should.

On one hand, he will belittle people e.g. to think about the new Pokemon starters more than about current events in real life…

But then he will also throw fits at something like a silly add slogan by Burger King, calling it sexist crap and that the company should be ashamed of it.

Belittle lesbian teenagers for not taking “KorraSami” as something serious and progressive as he does…

Or in case of Marvels “Infinity War”, believe that the movies ending would be ptsd inducing.

I am not kidding. What you see here is a tumblr post Dobson made up shortly after he watched Infinity War in May of 2018, making it known that he is scared that the movie could be traumatic for people on a global scale.

Which was laughable back then and is even more so in the year 2021, when we actually go through a global trauma in form of Covid-19. Making me also believe, that Dobson, despite claims of suffering from depression and his own form of PTSD, has absolutely no idea what a trauma really is and that despite all his whining over the years, he must have one of the most privileged and easiest lives on the planet, if he thinks a superhero movie is going to be as traumatizing as certain real world events. At least the way the post is worded implies, that Dobson seriously believes seeing Spiderman and other Marvel heroes bite the dust (so to speak) has the same effect as e.g. witnessing 9/11 play out live or being involved in an actual war.

Don’t get me wrong, I know of the reactions people had at Infinity War and the infamous Snap scene. I myself was in a theater where a bunch of kids started to cry when Starlord died. And I do understand that reaction. Because unlike Dobson, I am not just using my brain to whine about things not pandering to my fetishes.

I know, that the MCU and its characters have grown on people over the years, myself included. So when we as an audience watch the world and characters we care about get destroyed as Thanos does to Knowhere, Gamora and so many more, we have an emotional reaction to it. I myself was not distraught, but genuinely surprised that when Thanos snapped his fingers, as many heroes died as we saw on screen. Sure, knowing the comics and that Infinity War was just part one of a two part Avengers Finale of phase 3, I knew the snap would happen. In fact, I even hoped for it to happen, cause I love badass villain moments and Thanos was a favorite of mine long before the movie. Not because I am a space fascist, but because I enjoy threatening villains and stakes in my stories, unlike certain people.

I just didn’t expect that after all the hype Marvel created for certain heroes over phase 2 and 3, especially Black Panther, they would do something as “radical” and kill as good as 95% of all heroes introduced in phase 2 and 3 off. Wakanda forever? Not according to this movie.

But I digress. Point is, I will give Dobson the following: Yes, the movie’s ending has obviously caused people to have a sad emotional reaction to it, because at the end of the day, we will react with sadness when we see someone we care about die. But guess what: So have many other movies over the course of cinematic history.

Do I really need to remind people (and by people I mean braindead idiots) of stuff like Jack dying at the end of Titanic and watching the ship sink, Mufasa being thrown off a cliff, that one horse from Never Ending Story in the swamp, certain scenes of “Who framed Roger Rabbit”, that scene of the dog put down in “Marley and &Me” and so on? You know, stuff most of us remember as having watched in our childhood only for us as adults to joke how this shit traumatized us?

Okay, it may have at least to some degree in so far as that we remember those movies in parts because of those scenes. I think there have been a few kids not wanting to go into the water to swim for quite some time after watching Jaws. But guess what: Most people get over stuff like that, because somewhere down the line they realize it is just a movie or that those sad/scary parts are actually in their own way “fun”/good and helped us appreciate the story we watched even more. And all Infinity War is, is just another movie in a long line of such flics, while also being the culmination of a decade long multipart movie project by Disney to get the most profits out of superhero movies possible.

Furthermore, I doubt there is or ever was going to be everlasting damage, seeing how “Endgame” was going to happen anyway and has been out for almost two years. Meaning all the “drama” of Infinity War in 2018? Dealt with. All the people that turned into dust are alive again and well thanks to the Dragon Balls- I mean Infinity Stones, which is more than can e.g. be said about Bambi’s mom. So if your kid starts crying because Thanos won when you let them watch Infinity War? Make sure to put Endgame in almost immediately to show them their heroes are not dead. Just hope the kid is not a fan of Iron Man or Black Widow, cause they are the only superheroes of the bunch who are going to join Old Yeller and Co in the everlasting realm of fictional character deaths to “fuck up” your kids.

Which btw is the other thing worth pointing out: See, I can imagine kids having the most negative reaction to watching the Snap play out. Because most kids will not know as many media as adults and are on average not exposed to as much violence or “traumatic” events in the stuff they watch/consume or in real life (hopefully). And lets face it, Infinity War has some “brutal” scenes in it. Thanos choking Loki, Thanos getting stabbed, Thanos getting an axe in his torso, Thanos throwing Gamora of the cliff, everyone getting blown with the wind etc.

But the way Dobson words it, he believes that adults too will react to it negatively, to the point they may need therapy. To which I say, no. If most children can deal with Infinity War, so will even more adults. Personally I think the only person “traumatized” by Infinity War was Dobson himself, because if his history in regard of movies and media he consumes is any indication, he is a pantsy who likely pisses his knickers at animated Halloween specials despite being now almost 40.

Even others called him out on it, but Dobson, the manchild that he is can’t acknowledge that he may have overreacted to it and still believes this movie is a horrifically traumatic experience, based on some youtubers overreacting for the sake of clicks.

Last but not least, where was that kind of reaction by Dobson when Man of Steel came out? You know, the movie where the fight scenes in Metropolis were actually called out by many people in the media of being triggering for people who experienced 9/11.

Seriously though, if Dobson thinks Infinity War’s ending is traumatizing, I just have to ask the following things:

a) how many mainstream western comics has he actually ever bothered to read, cause on average even worse shit can happen in them to heroes than seen in Infinity War (just ask people who read “Cry for Justice”)

b) if Infinity War is already that traumatizing for you, how did you expect to ever be a decent story creator yourself, cause obviously you can’t see characters actually suffer? Except of course when they are straight males abused by redhead pirates.

c) Just as a personal opinion: Better turn into dust than to be inflated and popped, Catty!

#marvel #infinity war #mcu #Andrew Dobson #so you are a cartoonist #adobsoncomic #adobsonartworks #adobsonartwork #seriously?#what a manchild #ptsd #Tom Preston

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bondsmagii · 5 years

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I mean to ask this genuinely, no hostility, but can you explain how you correlate scp to being in a cult? I dont disagree, I just cant articulate the reasoning as to why I dont disagree, and would like to see where youre coming from with this. Also, could you tag it with cults or cult discussion or something similar, please? Thanks! Have a good day.

OK [cracks knuckles] I will try and keep this as short as possible, but you have to understand I’ve been observing the wiki in the wild literally since its inception, so there is a lot of stuff to consider. anyway let’s buckle up.

[EDIT: after finishing, this is obnoxiously long. sorry. I encourage people to read it though, because yikes.]

I base this theory on a set of guidelines set out for spotting if an organisation might be a cult. generally cults are religiously based; obviously this does not apply here. as far as I’m aware, nobody sees the SCP wiki as a religion (yet). because of this a couple of the points regarding spotting a cult are irrelevant (they concern things like separation from the Church which obviously doesn’t apply) but nearly all of the others (even some religious ones) can apply if we provide context. so without further ado:

Signs You’re In A Cult and How the SCP Wiki Literally Fits Into All of Them

let’s start with the most obvious:

opposing critical thinking

something that has long pissed me off about the SCP wiki has been its complete inability to think critically. staff will literally ban people for criticising them, and the parameters of “criticism” have only grown wider and wider over the years. anything that is the “party line” is sacred; nothing can be improved upon because it’s already perfect, and Staff Knows Best. any policy changes are law, and any dissenting voices are silenced – even among younger staff members (length of service wise, not age wise). I have seen staff put on probation or demoted for arguing against pointless or pedantic policy changes; I have seen people of all levels banned for arguing with staff. if this doesn’t happen right away, arguing with staff over their decisions will absolutely get a target on your back, and they will find a way to ban or demote you as soon as they can.

any criticism on the wiki is frowned upon unless it comes from the Major Staff Members – these are people at the top of the hierarchy who can do no wrong, and as you can imagine, they’ve done some shit. staff has always had a problem with elitism, bullying, and even abusive behaviour (blah blah blah #NotAllStaff, but the ratio is quite concerning) and any criticism of their behaviour or even pointing this fact out is dangerous if you want to remain on the wiki. hell, I know many people who are aware of this who don’t speak up because they’re genuinely scared of retaliation. a lot of staff are really nasty people, and because of this attitude they are beyond criticism.

isolating members and penalising them for leaving

the penalising them for leaving part isn’t strictly accurate, because as far as I know, nobody has ever been bullied or threatened into staying on the wiki. however, I do remember a while back (2011/2012-ish) when the Foundation RP community began to show up on Tumblr, and the wiki began to get a fanbase that wasn’t contained on the site itself. staff were not happy about this and to this day they still constantly try and get a monopoly on all off-site locations. they have an official Offsite Outreach Team (yes, that’s its real name) who “reach out” to communities on other platforms (YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, etc) and set up an Official Presence there, and then they encourage everyone to use the Official Presence rather than the fan-made ones (which are often more established and better/more consistently run). there have been several off-site spats between staff and the fandom, because they arrive demanding the authority and respect they have on the wiki and get Big Mad when they don’t get it. just recently one (now ex) staff member, djkaktus, went absolutely primal on Reddit and banned a whole bunch of the community for daring to say that they didn’t like the new LGBT logo for pride month (many of these people were LGBT themselves and felt as though it was pandering/putting targets on their backs); several more years ago (2014, I believe?) I myself had a run in with the Outreach Team and it was one fucking hell of a headache that ended in a malicious smear campaign against me, so like. yeah.

as for isolating members, they do this via elitism. the above is an example of it (making everyone feel a sense of obligation or loyalty to the Official Presence), but a huge part of it has always been the elitist attitude prevalent on the wiki. the SCP wiki has high standards for writing (allegedly… I’ve seen some garbage on there tbh, same as any other website) and it uses this to bully and demean its users. criticism of writing is overly harsh but highly encouraged; anyone complaining that it was too cruel (which it often is) is ridiculed for being too sensitive. (staff have been working on this for years, but really nothing has changed; people have just gotten more between-the-lines about it.) this encourages a kind of desperation among new users to “rise up the ranks” and earn respect so they can be the ones dishing out the criticism instead; they will do so and then immediately act in accordance to their status, bullying others how they were bullied and sticking to their own “rank”. brief interruption: staff and bootlickers if you’re reading this and thinking of reblogging to defend yourself, the code word is yeet. if I do not see the word yeet in your reply I will know you have not read this thoroughly and tell me why I should then bother reading anything you have to say.staff themselves is incredibly removed and closed off from the rest of the community; they have a bunch of private chat rooms they hang out in, and inter-dating is common. they don’t tend to interact much outside the flock, and are the definition of cliquey. joining this rank is supposed to be an achievement, but really it’s probably the most dangerous place to be. I have seen so many staff members have literal, clinical mental breakdowns over the strain and treatment they suffer.

(there’s nowhere to neatly slot this in, so: I don’t know how many people have noticed this, but SCP fans, when you spot them on other platforms, are snooty. not casual fans, but those involved with the wiki? I can spot them from a mile away, because whenever the Foundation is mentioned, there they are, acting like they’re part of some cool club. some of these people are innocent (they’re just mimicking the behaviour of other members) but some of them really do seem to think that their site is somehow better than whatever site they’re on, and it’s really creepy to see.)

emphasising special doctrines outside of scripture

obviously this is religion-specific, but with context it can fit. if we take scripture to mean SCP lore, and special doctrines to mean differing headcanons, ideas, writing styles, etc… oh boy.

there’s something that’s often said on the wiki: there is no canon. buddy, there is. yes, you can write whatever you want technically, and you can disregard headcanons you don’t like and you can build on different things and theoretically people can just ignore your shit if they don’t like it, but that is not what happens. there is absolutely a canon, and deviating from it will get you downvoted into oblivion and even personally attacked. people will accuse you of the most ridiculous shit, like desecrating the wiki or betraying the universe or whatever. so where does the emphasising part of this come in?

why, it’s simple! if one of these special doctrines (headcanons or whatever) comes from staff or an Approved Member, it’s fine. go nuts. even if it’s something that anybody else would be absolutely slaughtered for, it’s fine if staff approves. there is no creative freedom on that wiki, and anyone attempting to carve a piece out for themselves will suffer for it. one of my close friends still gets hate for an SCP he wrote featuring heavy headcanons and building on existing lore about a well-known character, and some of this hate is because he didn’t set the fucking article out “how it should be”.

seeking inappropriate loyalty to their leaders

oh boy. staff are god on that website. they’ll deny it, but they know it’s true. many of them are arrogant and, in my opinion, some of them are pathologically narcissistic. they think they are hot shit, and they encourage people on the site to believe the same. a huge majority of users on the wiki are high school students, so 15-18 years old. the next huge group are college-aged, so 19-22 or so. several staff members are in their mid-20s up to 30s, maybe even coming 40s or early 40s now. when you’re in your mid-20s, it’s very easy to look cool to a 15-year-old. it’s very easy to look at a young userbase and convince them that you’re hot shit, and that’s what staff do. they act like it; most users respond to it, and if anyone dissents? see point one.

staff have always had double standards. from the very beginning of staff, they have gotten away with a lot more than the average user. staff have been allowed to bully, ridicule, harass, dismiss, shit upon, and target people with reckless abandon, usually only meeting punishment when other staff members feel too inconvenienced by them. a lot of the time when they’re punished, it’s a lot lighter than it would have been for an average user (a month ban rather than a permaban, for example). this is seen as almost a point of hilarity for a lot of people, who think it’s cool and just a right you get when you’re staff. you know best, you’ve seen some shit – who can blame you for slamdunking a 15-year-old’s first SCP?

the amount of respect and adoration these people demand is ridiculous, and anybody daring to criticise them ends up on a shitlist. staff show up in other areas (Tumblr or Reddit) and expect that same amount of respect, even among people outside of the wiki who might just be casual fans. they act a lot more important than they are, and demand that everyone treats them appropriately. I’ve seen staff members throw shitfits because they didn’t get enough upvotes for their articles, and many staff members’ quality of work declines when they make staff, simply because they know that they’ll get easy upvotes as soon as people realise it’s a staff member who wrote it. downvotes are enough to get you put on a shitlist.

publicly, their word is law. you are not allowed to debate with them in the forums if they put a “stop” on the topic; the same applies in the IRC chat. if staff says “stop”, you will be punished if you mention it again. you are allowed to discuss it with them privately, but I think that’s rather insidious, as staff have been known to twist facts and withhold information before. this gives them a public persona of always being right – and something else that cults do is silence dissenting voices so nobody who might agree can see other people saying the same things and feel encouraged/emboldened.

crossing Biblical boundaries of behaviour

again, we’ll need to contextualise this. if Biblical boundaries are things like sins and all the stuff the Bible says Do Not Do, then in this context these are the wiki rules. staff (and their friends) will constantly cross the rules, as previously mentioned, and they will get away with it.

the wiki rules say “don’t be a dick”. I have caught staff bullying people countless times, and no doubt there’s more I haven’t caught. even out in the open, staff are argumentative, dismissive, rude, intimidating, and oftentimes plain nasty. the wiki rules say “don’t coldpost articles; get feedback”. staff is just out there throwing their shit onto the wiki and expecting an avalanche of upvotes in five minutes Or Else. policies are made that set parameters and staff changes them whenever convenient – for example, the long-standing rule that things that occur off-site are not the responsibility of the Disciplinary Committee (yes, its name.). unless, of course, it’s someone they don’t like. a major staff member bullies somebody on Tumblr? “sorry, it was offsite, not our problem”. someone staff doesn’t like gets into a brief spat on Reddit? banned for harassment.

there are countless examples of this, from small things to major things like bullying, harassment, and even abuse (or enabling of abuse). staff will punish people for transgressions and then turn a blind eye to a fellow staff member committing a transgression that was ten times worse. they have even protected rapists and sexual predators in the past – another kind of behaviour common in cults, because that’s what happens when you combine narcissism and entitlement with total authority.

that’s the main bulk of it

but now the context has been established, here are a few more concerning things I’ve noticed (quickfire now):

cults shit on former members

and the wiki does the same. any staff member that’s grown fed up of the groupthink and the cliquey attitude and how nasty people are or who has been mistreated by staff themselves; any regular user who feels the same and vocally quits? shat upon. lauded as a bastion of whatever is wrong with the wiki. declared an Enemy and rallied against. it is so creepy.

cults use Us vs Them mentality, especially in language

broad declarations establishing a community and a community spirit in the face of adversity are common in cults. appeals to emotion and loyalty are used in a very manipulative way. catastrophising and fearmongering is common, too. I’m seeing this in how the recent drama with the legal issues is being handled. broad appeals to “defend the wiki”, hashtags being encouraged, emotional speeches from staff about how it’s a make or break situation…

…and this is being reflected in the absolutely insane comments people are responding with.

this is a fucking writing website. the above is not a normal reaction at all.

the attitudes of regular users quickly grow concerning

people very quickly get obsessed with the wiki and it defines their lives. they seem to feel as though they owe something to it or they need to serve some kind of a purpose; many people try and “get the word out” and become voluntary spokespeople. they go around practically preaching, and I do not see the users of any other website doing this.

cults want full control over how they’re seen by outsiders

and the scp wiki does the same. as mentioned previously, when the fandom grew and spiralled off the wiki to other sites, staff debated for weeks over what to do. brief interruption the second code is shrek is life.they were not comfortable with the idea of the wiki having an independent fandom, and for years now they have been in constant struggle with offsite communities, trying to gain the same amount of control they have over the wiki. it’s impossible to do so thoroughly, and it’s clearly an annoyance for them.

cult leaders will let “lesser” members do their dirty work for them

and guess what staff does? rather than wade in there and get their hands dirty with internet arguments, they’ll sit back and let regular users dogpile on dissenters and say all the things staff shouldn’t be seen to say in public. note how even if this would violate the bullying policies, they’ll just get a warning so long as staff agrees.

in conclusion

@ everyone on the scp wiki: yall know you’re in a cult, right?

#scp shenanigans #scp foundation #cult discussion #long post #like LONG post #anon #asks

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themattress · 4 years

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Pokemon Franchise Narrative Comparison

To this day, there have been only three other mediums that have run for as long as the core Pokemon game series has: the anime series, the Pokemon Adventures manga series, and the Trading Card Game. With the obvious exception of the TCG, these have all had narrative arcs within each passing generation, and I want to use this post to compare their quality.

GEN I Games: Red/Blue/Green/Yellow Anime: Original Series: Indigo League + Orange Islands (The Beginning) Manga: Red/Blue/Green Chapter, Yellow Chapter

1st Place - Manga. The original R/B/G Chapter brings the world of the Game Boy games to life in stunning accuracy, while also its own spin on certain things and crafting a simple yet sophisticated coming-of-age narrative, with the Yellow Chapter being its Actionized Sequel that raises the stakes even higher and deepens everything within this manga series. Add to this clear influence from the anime and the fact that it’s the only Gen I product to feature the character of Green in it, and we have the definitive story for the franchise’s first generation.

2nd Place - Anime. While increasingly less faithful to the details of the games, the anime remained very faithful to the spirit of them while telling its own coming-of-age tale for Ash Ketchum in the Indigo League series, plus a “postgame scenario” equivalent with the Orange Islands series. The highlight of this story is definitely how it fleshes out the games’ main antagonists: Gary Oak, Team Rocket and Mewtwo, into interesting, memorable characters.

3rd Place - Games. The 8-bit adventure that started it all is incredibly bare-bones and basic: take the Pokemon League challenge, thwart the evil Team Rocket along the way, and if possible fill up that Pokedex with all 151 Pokemon (”Gotta Catch ‘Em All!”). As a story, it’s not very interesting, but as an excuse for gameplay it works marvelously and established a winning formula for the series, and to this day it’s still charming in its wholesome simplicity.

GEN II Games: Gold/Silver/Crystal Anime: Original Series: GS (Gold and Silver) Manga: Gold/Silver/Crystal Chapter

1st Place - Manga. It’s funny - in the first volume of the G/S/C Chapter, things seemed to be a definite downgrade from the Kanto-based arcs that came before in terms of artwork, characterization and narrative. But then the mysterious masked antagonist appears at the end, and from then on out things just keep escalating to such epic heights that it becomes the best Johto story in the franchise and arguably the best arc in the whole manga series! Practically everyone and everything from the previous two arcs end up joining up with the new elements and the series up to this point is brought to a satisfying, conclusive note.

2nd Place - Games. While the League challenge and Pokedex narrative threads are basically the same as before, and the Team Rocket thread is actually weaker, this story also features a stronger regional setting, a stronger rival, and stronger characterization for side characters both old and new, especially in the special edition, Crystal, making it a welcome step-up.

3rd Place - Anime. An attempt at a new narrative was notoriously abandoned early on, with Takeshi Shudo leaving the head writer position and the whole show devolving into formulaic Filler Hell. While the Johto League tournament that concluded the whole thing was good, there was barely a story to support getting there, and the main characters had all become Flanderized versions of their former selves by the end. Without question, the anime had jumped the shark. But Shudo did give us the best movie and an OVA that properly concluded Indigo League’s Mewtwo arc before he was through, so let’s not say it was a total waste.

GEN III Games: Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, FireRed/LeafGreen Anime: Advanced Generation (Ruby and Sapphire) Manga: Ruby/Sapphire Chapter, FireRed/LeafGreen Chapter, Emerald Chapter

1st Place - Games. The first time that the games get first place, but only on the technicality that the other contenders are worse, since this really isn’t that big an improvement over the previous two generations’ game narratives. The biggest difference is that your character is the child of one of the Gym Leaders, and the evil team narrative thread (Team Aqua and/or Team Magma this time) builds to an epic high-stakes event that involves the Legendary Pokemon mascot of the game which will become a mainstay of the formula from now on. There is also the remakes of the original Gen I games, and aside from some small tweaks of improvement and a postgame scenario in an island archipelago (anime-inspired, perhaps?), the narrative is basically the same as it was before. Nothing outstanding, but serviceable.

2nd Place - Manga. Talk about a mixed bag...the R/S Chapter started out with promise but ended up going to shit in its second half, the FR/LG Chapter was fantastic only to conclude with a bullshit last-minute cliffhanger, and the Emerald Chapter that connects the two arcs is just stereotypical, badly-written shonen crap with only a few good elements in it (plus some ironic enjoyment to be had in its batshit insane climax). On the whole, this was the weakest period that the manga series has ever had, despite Kusaka and Yamamoto’s best efforts.

3rd Place - Anime. Beyond May and her character arc which, by some lucky fluke, came together wonderfully, the anime hadn’t improved that much from the Johto days. Hoenn was not done any justice (even the manga did a better job with it!), and the FRLG/Emerald composite for the filler arc afterward was just weird in spite of how entertaining half of it was. All in all, the anime hadn’t gotten a real narrative back. It was just going through the motions.

GEN IV Games: Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, HeartGold/SoulSilver Anime: Diamond & Pearl Manga: Diamond/Pearl Chapter, Platinum Chapter, HeartGold/SoulSilver Chapter

1st Place - Manga. Pokemon Adventures retakes its crown in this generation, with a phenomental two arcs in the Sinnoh region that are so linked that they essentially make up one whole story, and a brief, adequate arc in Johto that properly bridges the gap between those Sinnoh arcs and the Emerald arc before them. Whenever I think of Sinnoh, it’s the region portrayed in this manga that comes to mind, which is a testament to its high quality.

2nd Place - Games. One word can describe the narratives of these games: overcooked. There are a lot of good ingredients here that elevate the series’ storytelling to a new level, but way too many cooks who don’t have a unified idea of how to properly mix them together means that it becomes a muddled mess of mythology, philosophy and vague character motivations. This particularly pisses me off when it effects the otherwise solid Gen II remakes. However, the good elements are still good regardless, and as showcased by the following generation this was a necessary learning curve to get through, so it deserves some respect.

3rd Place - Anime. Ugh. Newly appointed head writer Atsuhiro Tomioka tries to have his cake and eat it too here, maintaining the anime’s banal filler formula while also attempting to tell a legitimate narrative, but he as just one man somehow manages to clutter up that narrative more than the several writers did for the games in this generation! It is an increasingly insufferable roller coaster of plot threads and supposed character arcs that are drawn out to the point of disinterest across four years, with you really feeling the disastrous pace when it takes a years’ worth of time between Ash winning his 7th badge and him winning his 8th. Combine this with the source material of the games being disrespected or cast aside perhaps worse than ever, and you get what I will always believe is the lowest point for the anime.

GEN V Games: Black/White, Black 2/White 2 Anime: Best Wishes + Best Wishes Season 2 (Black and White) Manga: Black/White Chapter, Black 2/White 2 Chapter

1st Place - Games. With this generation, particularly with its first set of games, the learning curve undergone in Gen IV paid off. This is quite possibly the richest narrative in the whole game series in terms of plot, characterization and themes, and the peak of the traditional formula. Combined with stellar gameplay, it creates a high point that has yet to be matched.

2nd Place - Manga. The Black/White Chapter had a rough start, just copying the games’ plot almost to the letter but with the characterizations for the main characters truly being less than ideal (see what I did there?) However, once Black and White go their own separate ways the arc starts rapidly improving until it ends on a phenomenal high note that segues perfectly in the Black 2/White 2 arc that, like the Yellow arc, is an Actionized Sequel and, like the Platinum arc, is essentially the continuation and conclusion of the same story as in the previous arc. The only real mark against it is that it can be too fast-paced which only adds to the frustrating irony of the absolutely Hellish schedule slip it underwent (8 fucking years for an arc of just 24 chapters / 3 volumes to be completed! It’s never going to live that fact down!)

3rd Place - Anime. Kind of the reverse of the manga: had a great start being the best that the anime has been in a long time, only to get progressively weaker, with the third and final year being a trainwreck of checking off plot points in a mad rush to promote the upcoming Gen VI and pander to the whiny fanboys who’d been complaining about the loss of the formula and D/P-style story writing (yes, they actually liked those) plus the “soft reboot” aspect going on, particularly with Ash. However, much like the Gen IV games, the Gen V anime proved to be a necessary learning curve for the future and is a highly impactful series in that regard, so it deserves respect for that (although I hate that both a natural disaster and the B2/W2 games screwed up the originally planned Team Plasma arc! It’s never going to live that fact down!)

GEN VI Games: X/Y, Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire Anime: XY + XY&Z Manga: X/Y Chapter, Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire Chapter

1st Place - Manga. I thoroughly dislike the story of the X/Y games and the Delta Episode of OR/AS, so imagine my surprise when Pokemon Adventures actually makes something good out of them (or, in the Delta Episode’s case, something tolerable at best). The X/Y Chapter is a delightful deconstruction of a lot of what’s in the games, turning what was light and fluffy and hollow into something dark and suspenseful and meaningful. And the OR/AS Chapter gets points for being the best that Ruby and Sapphire have ever been characterized, to the point where they’ve been officially Rescued from my Scrappy Heap (Emerald’s still lame tho).

2nd Place - Games. Like I said, I dislike the X/Y games’ narrative and the Delta Episode of OR/AS; I think they are the worst writing the game series has ever seen to date. But the main narrative of OR/AS - the actual remake of the Gen III games which features a lot of new and necessary improvements - is solid, and that’s enough to put the games at second place here.

3rd Place - Anime. Similarly, the one thing the anime series does really well - the Myth Arc, which includes the Team Flare storyline - is not enough to elevate it beyond third place, because the rest of the series’ narrative is just as lame as the X/Y games’, there’s not much benefit from OR/AS elements, and everything that it positions in its shameful fan-pandering utterly fails to deliver or add up to anything meaningful in the end. The Mega Evolution specials pretty clearly demonstrate that this should have been Alain’s show, not Ash’s.

GEN VII Games: Sun/Moon/Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon Anime: Sun & Moon Manga: Sun/Moon/Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon Chapter

1st Place - Games. The Gen V games have serious competition story-wise with the Gen VII games. Both S/M and US/UM are excellent, with things not done so well in one being done better in the other and vice-versa to the point where they compliment each other beautifully.

2nd Place - Anime. Miracle of miracles! For the first time since Gen I, the anime series gets its narrative in second place, with Daiki Tomiyasu and Aya Matsui completely reinventing it in a refreshingly fun and vibrant way. There are some missed opportunities here and there, but overall it’s a perfect adaptation of the Alola region and everything that makes it so great.

3rd Place - Manga. While this is still an arc of good quality that I like, it’s also perhaps the most disappointing since Ruby/Sapphire back in Gen III. After doing so well with Sinnoh, Unova and Kalos, one senses that Kusaka and Yamamoto struggled to adapt Alola to that same standard, and while the decision to keep US/UM as part of the same arc rather than be a separate one was wise, it’s during the US/UM half of the arc that things really start falling apart and the wasted potential of stuff that got set up earlier becomes overbearing. It doesn’t help that the leads are an unlikable hero with an interesting, relatable goal and a likable heroine with an uninteresting, unrelatable goal respectively. Let’s hope that the patchwork done in the volume releases fixes some of the problems so that I can like this arc even more.

GEN VIII Games: Sword/Shield Anime: New Series (Journeys) Manga: Sword/Shield Chapter

1st Place - Manga. As I recently stated, Kusaka and Yamamoto are back at their A-Game with this arc, taking advantage of all that was lacking in the games’ story and utilizing them in an interesting narrative that I can’t wait to further experience alongside our surrogate, Marvin.

2nd Place - Games. If the Gen IV games’ narrative was overcooked, then the narrative of the games four generations later is most definitely undercooked. It’s not the worst story - that’s still Gen VI - but it’s possibly the most disappointing since it’s so easy to see how it could have been better and you are left baffled as to why the writers didn’t go in that direction.

3rd Place - Anime. This series is highly enjoyable thanks to the continued leadership of Daiki Tomiyasu, but not only is there not as much of a narrative as there’s been in earlier shows, it isn’t even uniquely Gen VIII-based: taking place across all regions in the Pokemon World and taking influence from mobile games like Go (released in Gen VI) and Masters (released in Gen VII). Add to that the unfortunate hiatus it’s now on and it can’t help but be placed last.

#Pokemon #Opinion #Analysis #Comparison

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.10

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in trial 6, everything became terrible in a hopefully-mostly-deliberate way as Keebo took over as protagonist. Tsumugi pandered to the audience by trying to twist the story to be all about them and not this story’s actual goddamn cast, then completely forgot about that moments later as she forced an arbitrarily cruel final vote on the students that has nothing to do with actual hope and despair, apparently Kaito’s efforts in trial 5 suddenly mean nothing because it turns out the audience is totally okay with unfair executions after the mastermind broke the rules, and Keebo kept spouting a familiar meaningless buzzwordy hope that didn’t address any of his friends’ actual reasons for being in despair, which the audience lapped up because they’re morons while Keebo utterly failed to consider that maybe what they want from him isn’t actually a good thing.

Keebo’s already chosen to become the first arbitrary pointless sacrifice of the vote, and the Mass Panic Debate we just finished was supposedly him trying to inspire one of the others to do the same, even though he wasn’t even shooting his hope at them.

“Nekomaru”: “Even if you won’t give up, as long as you don’t sacrifice someone el—”

Not giving up is the definition of hope! Doing anything other than that should not be necessary for hope to “win”, you arbitrary fucking murderer!

But one way or another, whether due to Keebo’s nonsensical Hope Bullet efforts or not (I’d very much like to think not), Maki chooses to sacrifice herself.

Maki: “If Keebo and I sacrifice ourselves… then Shuichi and Himiko live, right? Then they can… survive this absurd killing game…”

Of course it would be her. Her backstory meant that she’d never cared all that much about her own survival or her own suffering, so if she can die to let at least Shuichi and Himiko live, then that’s no real loss, right? Kaito only helped so much with her sense of self-worth… and maybe his influence has been dampened right now because of all the bullshit Tsumugi has been spouting.

Shuichi: “Maki…?”

There’s a very subtle wavering to Shuichi’s voice here beneath his surprise. He can’t bear the thought of losing her too, and it’s this pain that’s going to lead to him figuring everything out and fighting back.

Maki: “I don’t want this killing game to end with despair. That would just… piss me off.”

Tsumugi: “Even if you only feel that way cuz I wrote you like that? Just like with Kaito…”

Tsumugi’s still bullshitting about the Kaito part, but otherwise what she’s saying is not entirely wrong. Despair being bad is self-evident and you don’t need to be written a specific way to think that. But the feeling of needing to “defeat” despair is something that’s still a part of Maki being manipulated, not by the way she was originally written, but by that Flashback Light in chapter 5. Maki still can’t quite see that to its fullest extent, despite having long since realised that the main point of that Flashback Light was to manipulate her into killing Kokichi.

Maki: “Even then… I’ll choose that ending if it means I can kill you. Even if I have to sacrifice my life, I will kill you!”

Now that’s something that’s how Maki’s always been written. Deal with problems that have no easy solution by killing them, and definitely kill the big evil mastermind no matter what you have to sacrifice to do so. Maki Roll, can’t you see that this is exactly like what you were trying to do for the first half of Kaito’s trial?

This would at least be Tsumugi’s writing backfiring on her, if this “punishment” she was going to receive was actually death. But since it’s not, she’s quite happy with Maki choosing this, and guh.

“Makiiii”

“my darling assassin T_T”

“That’s my Maki.”

“Assassiiiiin”

Maki has fans. Her fans seem somewhat possessive of her (although at least she doesn’t have the total sicko that Shuichi has). It also seems that some of them are hung up on the idea that she’s an assassin and don’t see her as so much more than that, as if the only reason they like her is a shallow “hurr durr schoolgirl assassin hot”, rather than any of the many things that have been compelling and interesting about her character and her arc. She deserves so much better than this.

“ALL OF THESE TEARS”

“;_; i’m gonna cry…”

At least a few of them are actually having meaningful, human reactions to this – a character they love is going to sacrifice herself for her friends! This is sad! …or, well, it would be if the sacrifice was at all meaningful and not completely arbitrary, but, you know.

“Another hope loop?”

This might finally be a vague allusion to other seasons we haven’t seen. I can kind of imagine a “hope loop” becoming the fandom term for one particular way in which the meaningless arbitrary hope ending was once resolved, but it doesn’t sound like it’s referring to DR1 or 2 specifically.

“Shuichi looks yummy <3”

I’m going to keep giving you updates on this one person just so you can keep seeing how much of an absolute creep they are.

Tsumugi: “I told you over and over there’s nothing for you out there.”

Keebo: “No, once the audience sees this ending, I’m sure they’ll help us.”

Oh, poor naïve Keebo, thinking that the audience is a force for good and actually gives a fuck about any of his friends when they’ve been watching them die. When they’ve been doing this for fifty-three seasons and keep wanting more. This ending right now is not meaningfully different from any of the previous ones and is not going to change anything about the audience’s behaviour at all, Keebo.

Shuichi: “It’s because of hope that this whole thing is happening!”

But Shuichi gets it! He’s figured it out! I also love the emotion in his voice here. All of Shuichi’s (English) voice acting in this last part of the trial we’re entering is just fantastic.

The music used for Shuichi’s Rebuttal Showdown here is Clair de Lune again, which is lovely. It’s like that’s become less Kaede’s song and more just a song for Shuichi’s sadness over losing his friends.

It’s a neat twist that the last Rebuttal Showdown is against the game’s actual protagonist. This is possibly the easiest one in the whole game, with Shuichi’s words coming in completely horizontal, unmoving lines. He’s just explaining the plain truth of the matter. He’s not wrong and he’s not trying to get in anyone’s way; he’s about to fix this whole ridiculous mess.

Keebo: (Shuichi… why? Is this the power of despair? Or…)

Yes, Keebo, despair is clearly so powerful and so evil that it dares to make Shuichi not talk like hope is the best thing ever. It couldn’t possibly be that Shuichi’s actually making complete sense and isn’t in despair any more and you should listen to him.

Buuut, Keebo’s only bullet (or, well, blade) is still just “hope”, so he still thinks that’s the only possible solution to this situation.

Keebo: “Despair takes everything from people! Even their strength to press onward! That’s why it’s not possible for despair to be better!”

Keebo, you absolute moron, this isn’t about which one is better! Obviously Shuichi knows that hope is a better feeling to have than despair, because he’s not an idiot! But no matter what Tsumugi’s trying to make it sound like, this isn’t about proving any kind of point like it was in DR1; this is about what happens next. This is about whether the outcome of the vote, regardless of which meaningless label is slapped on it, is something we’re actually okay with, including the fact that the killing game will keep happening if we do this.

“Shuichi is the cycle of despair?”

“What are you saying, hat boy?”

“What if Shuichi is the mastermind?”

“You’re slipping up, detective.”

“Fire, Keebo! I’ll allow it!”

Aaaaaand the audience has suddenly completely stopped caring about Shuichi as a character because he dared to say a bad word about hope. This is again not remotely what an actual reasonable, human audience that’s been enjoying this story up until now would ever do, and this time it can’t just be the cherry-picked minority of despair lovers, because this is the people who are rooting for “hope”. A reaction something like “well, he’s kind of got a point, but I still want more killing games…” would be reasonable, but not just immediately denouncing him the moment he questions them. Did they not even care about Shuichi at all during the five chapters they’ve seen of him and the arc he’s had?

Shuichi: “The people watching probably feel the same way… They want hope, too.”

Oh, Shuichi, you are giving them far too much credit. You’re assuming that the “hope” they’re obsessed with is actual hope that will inspire them in their daily lives. It sure would be realistic and understandable and relatable if that was the actual way the narrative was portraying this, but it really isn’t.

Shuichi: “Even if it’s fiction, everyone wants to feel hope… It gives them… courage.”

That should be how this works. And I love that Shuichi clearly understands this on a personal level. Now would be a very relevant time to remind everyone that Shuichi’s Likes in the report card are listed as “Novels”. Which means that, most likely, he always used fiction to give himself courage, especially when he had so little courage on his own in the first place! Shuichi understands better than any of these one-dimensional morons in the audience exactly what gaining real hope from fiction really feels like!

Shuichi: “While they ignore all the tragedies that we had to suffer to get there!”

Keebo: “Shuichi, that’s—”

Monokuma: “Then let’s start the Voting Time!”

Hah, Monokuma sure does jump in quick. He’s afraid of Shuichi pointing out what’s really going on here and how real all their suffering is and making the audience realise that maybe they shouldn’t actually want this after all, isn’t he.

Shuichi halts them to ask what the “punishment” for this vote will be, because he’s already figured out what it is. If we’d been playing as him, we’d have seen plenty of inner monologue of him slowly realising this and piecing it together as Tsumugi rambled on and on. But since we’re not seeing inside his head right now, all Keebo has seen is Shuichi being almost completely quiet and then suddenly jumping in with a fully-formed theory explaining exactly what’s going on and why this vote is bad. Shuichi really does look like a hero from the outside.

Shuichi: “That’s what Rantaro was talking about.”

…

Rantaro: “You wanted this killing game, so you have to win no matter what. …No matter what.”

…

Shuichi: “Something similar must have happened in the last killing game, and he was given a choice. He sacrificed himself… and was forced to participate again.”

See, Rantaro wasn’t the only survivor of his killing game. There were two actual survivors who got to escape into the outside world just like Shuichi and Himiko hypothetically would here. Rantaro just sacrificed himself to allow for that. (In my headcanon, those two survivors were both girls and kind of reminded Rantaro of his sisters and that’s why he chose to do that.) It’s still a stretch to think that Rantaro would ever have thought of that as “wanting” this killing game like his message said, though, so I still think that line was mostly there just to make chapter 4’s opening stinger mysterious.

But man, spare a thought for Rantaro’s two friends who survived and escaped, dreading to watch Rantaro go through this again while having forgotten about them, but watching anyway because they have to know what happens to him… and then seeing him be the very first one to die. That has to have been awful. I hope that when Shuichi, Maki and Himiko do escape, they find those two and every other pair of survivors from each past killing game and start some kind of big therapy group to deal with their trauma together and share stories of their lost friends and reassure themselves that they’re all still real.

Shuichi: “Tsumugi will still be the mastermind, Keebo will still represent the viewers… and Maki will be the new Ultimate Survivor. The killing game will begin again.”

Even if Maki wouldn’t necessarily die in this outcome, the fact that she’d lose her memories of everything in this killing game and forget about Kaito and Shuichi and be reset back to the guarded, lonely, self-loathing assassin she was at the beginning would still be awful and unacceptable. Especially since Kaito was one-in-a-million and the next game probably wouldn’t have anyone willing to help her out of it again.

It’s a little odd to think that Tsumugi would still be the mastermind? I always assumed Tsumugi wasn’t the mastermind of Rantaro’s game, simply because if she then also masterminded this game as well, it’d ruin the mystery for the audience. Unless she usually cosplays as some made-up character and this is the first time she’s ever played as herself (or at least someone who looks like herself and superficially shares her nerdiness but is less terrible and murdery).

“Izuru”: “Then it’s despair? You’re going to choose despair to end the killing game? …How boring.”

“Celeste”: “But this is fine. Our audience loves despair, so this will please them too.”

Will it? I mean, maybe it would if it were actual despair, since there’s emotional investment you can get from that even if it’s nothing but painful emotions. But what’s actually going to happen with the “despair” outcome of this vote is simply Shuichi, Maki and Himiko (and apparently Tsumugi) continuing to live isolated, boring lives in the academy without any more killings. That’s not a despair ending, that’s a boredom ending. Precisely the kind of thing the audience shouldn’t want.

Keebo: “Then… hope has to win this game, too. If we continue to win for hope, then this killing game will surely end someday!”

Keebo, dude. You’re going to continue doing the thing that Shuichi has just explained is exactly what causes more killing games to happen… and then you’re just going to hope that eventually they’ll stop happening anyway? You are not being very smart right now. If you’re going to hope for something to happen, you should also at least act in a way that might help make it come true, otherwise your hope is useless.

Shuichi: “When Maki said she was going to sacrifice herself just now, I thought… Why? So many of our friends have sacrificed their lives. Why Maki? Why now? Why do we have to go through it again…? The sorrow of losing Kaede… and Kaito… Why do we have to feel that sadness over and over and over again…? Why do we have to bear that burden…?”

I love Shuichi here so much. I love that he’s realised what this means and that it’s cruel and unfair and wrong.

Shuichi: “Well, I don’t care how much the audience wants it, I’m not gonna feel that way anymore! I don’t want anyone to feel that way anymore!”

I love that he’s realised that the audience wants this from him and how fucked-up that is! I love that he’s thinking that not just for himself, but for every hypothetical character in future seasons who’d ever have to go through this same pain if they don’t end this right here!

I just… really wish that that actually seemed like what the in-universe audience wanted at all. Some people were sad when Maki offered to sacrifice herself, but not a single person was thinking “oh man Shuichi’s going to be devastated to lose another best friend” and empathising with the pain Shuichi’s feeling here and enjoying doing so in that immersed, in-story way. Instead, they just immediately stopped seeing him as a person the moment he spoke out against them and their precious “hope”.

The thing is, I’m still enjoying Shuichi’s emotional pain here! Of course I am! Because I care about him and I’m empathising with him, and all of this is making me want him to succeed and get what he wants and never have to feel like this any more, even as I’m enjoying that he’s feeling this way right now.

And, see, while the in-universe audience are obviously inherently more twisted than an out-universe audience because the people they’re watching aren’t really fictional and they know this, that doesn’t have to automatically make them this kind of one-dimensional asshole who can’t even empathise with the characters or engage with this like it’s a meaningful story at all. Things could still have been made to work while having them basically respond to Shuichi and his story like those of us on the other side of the real fourth wall.

Enjoying actual genuine fiction requires suspension of disbelief, compartmentalising away and ignoring the knowledge that it’s all made-up, so that you can get invested and care about what happens. So in a similar way, it might be just about believable if we could be shown that this in-universe audience has instead been suspending their knowledge that it’s real, compartmentalising away and trying to ignore the fact that real people are suffering, so that they can still enjoy this and keep watching despite knowing that people – uhhh, characters, definitely not real people – are going to die. Then they could have been reacting to this approximately like a real person watching genuine fiction would (you know, with actual investment in and empathy for the characters), until Shuichi blows the lid off their wilful ignorance right here and forces them to confront their awfulness.

Shuichi: “Even if this is fiction, even if we’re all fictional… The pain in my heart is real! The sadness I feel when I lose the people I love is real!”

I am so, so glad that he’s realised this! This is one of my favourite moments in this trial and completely restored all the faith first-time-me had lost during all the ridiculousness of last post. This is exactly what we need to be talking about and really should never have stopped talking about – the fact that of course they’re still real people regardless of how fake their memories were. They still really felt all that pain, and they still really meant everything they did for their friends, and they still really died, regardless of the “writers” that were sometimes pulling strings behind the scenes.

And I adore the way Shuichi calls them “the people I love”. He’s not talking about specifically romantic love here, because he doesn’t have to be. Of course he loved them anyway regardless of what kind of love it was; they were his friends and they gave him all of his strength and meant everything to him. If anyone tries to use this line as proof that Shuichi must have had romantic feelings for Kaito as well, they’re completely missing the point. Using the word “love” in a platonic sense will always melt my heart and it’s especially so in this context here.

Although, while Shuichi is using this pain of his to prove to himself that he’s still meaningfully real, I do wish there was a little bit of time spent on the realisation that, since they all must have felt the same way as him, his friends must have been real, too. Being deceived into thinking they were just lies was what caused Shuichi to fall into despair, and there’s no way he’d have been able to climb out of that despair and talk so passionately about losing his friends if he didn’t truly believe once again that their lives were worth exactly as much as a “real” person’s. He has definitely figured this out by now, but it’s kind of a shame he never directly mentions it.

Shuichi: “I won’t forgive this game that treats us like toys. And if this is what the world wants… then I reject that world! I’ll fight the world that inflicts suffering for entertainment!”

Shuichi is being such a hero and Kaede and Kaito would be so proud to see him like this!

And it’s still inconceivable that seeing him like this isn’t what the audience wants. This is a far more inspiring and meaningful story than any of the nonsense Keebo has been spouting. They should be cheering Shuichi on, not Keebo – even if that means cheering Shuichi on against themselves.

“What are you saying, detective?”

“Forget about Shuichi.”

But nope. The audience doesn’t care about him. Now that he’s speaking out against them, they’d rather just drop him entirely.

“You’re in despair, right?”

“It’s okay to feel despair sometimes…”

Yes, clearly the only reason Shuichi is saying this is because he’s being controlled by that super-evil force known as “despair”, not because he’s right.

“C’mon, Keebo! Attack!”

“hurry up and refute it!”

“Force hope through!”

And of course, they just want Keebo to yell more words about hope at Shuichi, because doing that will totally change his mind and make him think inflicting suffering for entertainment is okay. Yelling emptily about hope can achieve anything, right?

“The big reveal, at last.”

Uhh, no? What does this person even think the “reveal” is supposed to be – the fact that these characters aren’t actually fictional and that watching them suffer for entertainment is fucked up? That’s not a reveal, that’s something that should have been apparent from the start but everyone has been wilfully ignoring. (And it’s something that everyone should now be forced to confront whether they like it or not, but apparently almost nobody is.)

“mmm… shuichi’s eyes ^q^”

This “fan” of Shuichi’s is still here. And they still don’t actually give a fuck about him and haven’t been paying attention to anything he’s been saying or feeling at all.

“Why have we been doing this…?”

You! You, right there, are the one sensible actual human being in this whole stupid audience! This is what everyone should be thinking right now – realising that Shuichi has a goddamn point and that this whole practice is vile and that if they actually care about any of these characters at all then they should want what Shuichi wants, which is to end all this and never have another killing game again!

“something’s different, right?”

“Are they blaming us?”

These ones are more ambiguous, but it is possible that these two people are also vaguely starting to realise that what they’re doing is not okay. Maybe.

Tsumugi: “It doesn’t matter what you do. No matter what a fictional character does or says, it’s just fiction to the outside world.”

See… based on the audience’s current comments, it’s really seeming like this is actually true, in this world. Those three just now are the only comments during this part that give any sense of people actually listening to Shuichi’s words. The overwhelming majority are like the ones I quoted at the beginning, complaining about Shuichi’s outlook and wanting Keebo to “fix” things for them.

Shuichi: “I… refuse to vote.”

Tsumugi: “Refuse to vote…?”

Keebo: “Monokuma said that if we don’t vote, we’ll be killed for breaking the rules!”

Shuichi: “Yes, I know. That’s why I’m doing it.”

And here’s this rule which has been vaguely a thing in the background of all the Danganronpas but was pointedly highlighted at the beginning of almost every trial in this one, making it kind of obvious it’d somehow be important later on. It’s also quite relevant that Monokuma’s declarations of this rule always explicitly said that not voting would result in death, not just “punishment”, because it means Tsumugi can’t suddenly pull a loophole and pretend this still just means they get forced into another killing game.

(Although that’s only assuming that the audience still cares about her following the rules, which, ha fucking ha.)

Shuichi: “If this ends without a single vote being cast for hope or despair… The audience would hate it. They’d never accept an ending like that… So I abstain! I refuse to give the outside world the ending it wants!”

I appreciate Shuichi’s determination and willingness to give his life to end this killing game for good and give a huge fuck-you to the audience… but honestly, it’s kind of flimsy that this would actually achieve that. It’s hard to believe that, over fifty-three seasons, there haven’t been a few kind-of-disappointing endings here and there (even accepting that this audience laps up meaningless buzzwordy hope-versus-despair nonsense like this). But surely the occasional boring ending would only make people shrug and hope the next season is better, and it’d take several in a row for them to finally think things will never get better and the show might as well just end.

Which, to be fair, might have been happening already if this season took longer than usual to come out and some people weren’t sure it ever would. But that apparent fact was buried in some obscure audience comments and wasn’t something Shuichi seemed to notice, so he shouldn’t be nearly so sure that this would work.

Plus, it shouldn’t only be about the ending – the rest of the story is a part of the story too. The other trials in this game have mostly been fantastic and there should be no way the audience wouldn’t want more of that kind of thing, no matter how disappointingly it ends!

…This should also still not actually be a disappointing ending at all, because look at what an amazing hero Shuichi’s managing to be! He’s willing to give his life to stop the real villain behind all this – not some meaningless concept of “despair”, but the people who actually wanted him and his friends to suffer! This is still something that it should be possible for the audience to accept makes a good story, despite the fact that they themselves are the villains in it.

Keebo: (Hope… won’t end the killing game? If that’s true, then this feeling that I must win for hope is…)

Geez, Keebo, glad you’ve finally caught up with us. It really should not have taken you this long.

It’s pretty neat that the “lying” mechanic as used here with Keebo isn’t actually lying – hope is just a concept, it’s not even a fact that you can lie about. Instead, it’s representing Keebo finally choosing to ignore and go against what his inner voice is telling him to do. The only weapon he has is hope, but that doesn’t mean this is the only choice he has.

“What are you doing, Keebo?”

“Hurry up and side with hope.”

“COME BACK HOOOPE”

“it’s hope again, right?”

And of course, the majority of the audience is not happy about this. Really, though, Shuichi has already ruined their hope ending by pointing out that this “hope” is arbitrary and cruel, and no amount of empty yelling about hope from Keebo could change that now even if he did keep listening to them.

“show us maki roll!”

This single comment here is the closest anyone in the audience ever gets to even vaguely acknowledging Kaito’s existence, since they’re using the nickname he gave her. And the utter lack any other mention of Kaito from the audience is quite clearly another thing that is completely Unrealistic and Wrong. Kaito was the best, and a significant amount of the audience should have been invested enough in his story and his influence on Shuichi and Maki to still be occasionally mentioning him here.

“i wanna break Shuichi’s fingers <3”

I sincerely hope that when Shuichi gets out of here, he ends up absolutely nowhere near this person and they never figure out where he’s living. Geez. Go and re-examine your life, you sick creep.

Keebo: “I may be a robot, but the thought of my friends dying still fills me with sadness. I don’t want anyone else to feel this way!”

You know, if they’d actually done anything at all with Keebo’s issues about being a robot, it could have worked pretty well in this trial. He’s always been struggling to fully understand the feelings of “real” humans, and so he should have also struggled to justify to himself that his own feelings matter even though they’re just being “simulated” by computer software. But he still feels it, so it still matters, robot or not. That’s exactly the kind of argument Shuichi had to make to himself to justify that he’s still real. Keebo could have been the perfect person (among those still with us) to help Shuichi and friends come to terms with the existential issues that this trial has given them! If only Keebo had had an actual proper character arc about accepting himself as just as much of a person despite being a robot, and also if only he’d ever been trying to give his friends actual hope during this whole deal. His character has so much wasted potential.

His protagonist status wears off here, which is an appropriate moment for it to do so. All he was ever meant to do as the audience’s protagonist was to keep the cycle going and keep more killing games happening, and now that he realises that, he doesn’t want to be their protagonist any more.

“gonna dismantle you, Keebo.”

Oh boy, here’s some foreshadowing to what they actually end up doing, because apparently none of them ever really cared about Keebo as a character or a person.

“WTF? You already killed each other?”

As if the fact that the murderers were all participants of the game makes everyone in the game a bad person and therefore it doesn’t matter if they suffer and die? As if most of the actual murderers were even bad people and not good people desperately trying to save everyone and/or being manipulated into it? Yeah, no, sure, this was all just a meaningless slaughterfest and so it’s totally okay for them to all continue to die.

“the questionnaires were pointless?”

I mean, it’s not like you guys ever affected Keebo’s actions in any meaningful way up until now anyway; I don’t know why you’re so disappointed.

“Shuichi has a point.”

Hello, sensible person! I don’t know if this is the same person as that one from before, but it’s nice to see at least a tiny, tiny fraction of the audience getting it. It really is such a tiny fraction, though – the vast majority of people are still just complaining about not getting what they wanted. And I’d like to just put this down to the fact that the people who are realising this are also nice enough to then stop watching and stay out of the comments section – but, no. The comments section is exactly where these people who’ve realised this should be, because they should be trying to persuade everyone else to agree with them and realise that this is fucked up and no longer want this!

Shuichi: “New characters are created just to show the outside world a fictional hope. They get written into these killing games, forced to betray one another…”

I appreciate how Shuichi is describing them as being “created”, because it proves that he now understands that this is exactly what happens. This has nothing to do with the pregame assholes who auditioned and wanted this; they just donated their bodies. The characters who are actually in this killing game never wanted any of this, yet they were literally created to suffer. That is not fucking okay and Shuichi will not let it continue. No-one else will ever be created for that purpose. He and his friends are the last.

Shuichi: “To end this killing game, and end it forever… We will reject Danganronpa!”

This whole speech here accompanies Shuichi’s protagonist status switching back on, and it has pretty nice dramatic effect. He’s being a hero!

Shuichi: “Tsumugi… you were right. I’m weak. I’m weaker than anyone else… If I didn’t have my friends, I’d be useless. That’s true even now!”

It’s lovely that Shuichi is okay with this. He realises that this is the character Tsumugi wrote him to be… but that doesn’t mean that it’s not still who he is, and it doesn’t mean he’s not real.

But he’s still not giving himself enough credit at all. Yes, he’s only able to be strong when he has friends to rely on and inspire him, but all that potential strength is still right there inside him, ready to be brought out by the right people! All he needs is a little nudge in the right direction, from the right kind of heroes.

Shuichi: “If Keebo and Maki didn’t stand up… I would have ended it all right then.”

It’s really sad to think what Shuichi probably means when he says “end it all”. Kind of like the way he once said that Kaito “saved his life”, without ever properly elaborating on what he meant by that.

But still, Shuichi – Keebo and Maki may have chosen to sacrifice themselves, but you’re the one who used the pain of that to realise that you’re still real and figure out what everything meant. They weren’t trying to encourage you to do that, or even to be strong at all, when they made their choice. That all came from you, and from your own strength that you’ve built up through Kaede and Kaito’s belief in you. You’re not as weak as you were at the beginning, not by a long shot!

Shuichi: “But it’s because I’m weak and because I lost my way… that I finally realized. I finally realised how cruel this “hope” really is.”

It’s cruel because the best way to write a good story is to have characters that are weak and suffer like Shuichi has been. The most inspiring type of heroes who give people the most hope aren’t the ones who are perfect and invincible, but the ones who struggle and suffer and yet still manage to win in the end. Shuichi has realised, because of his own suffering and the fact that he’s managed to claw his way through it anyway, that this is the kind of thing the audience should want to see, because it gives them the hope that they can overcome their weaknesses and struggles in the same way. A storyline like Shuichi’s should be exactly what the audience wants and exactly why this has happened so many times to so many real people who didn’t deserve to suffer for this.

I say “should be”, because this isn’t even remotely what the in-universe audience actually wants to see at all. It’s honestly bizarre how obvious the divide is between what Shuichi is describing as a genuinely inspiring engaging fiction that should be the reason the audience keeps wanting this, and the one-dimensional idiocy that this nonsensical audience apparently wants instead. If the out-universe writers are able to write Shuichi talking about the audience wanting this kind of story, they should also be perfectly capable of writing the audience actually wanting it! This shouldn’t be difficult.

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