#what’s that quote about the problem with othering the enemy in media is that we can no longer see our own reflection in their eyes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

showtoonzfan · 1 year

Text

Looks like they revealed the “redesigns” of Vox, Velvet, and Val. The only one who changed is clearly Velvet, Vox and Val are exactly the same except they’re simplified. It is disappointing, I never liked Vox’s design, (he looks too much like Alastor and his design is very boring honestly) and Val isn’t bad but…he never looked much like a moth either, he could have looked better but these are just personal nitpicks of mine. The only positive thing I have to say is that I am glad they changed Velvet’s outfit. Before I didn’t like her design because she looked nothing like a “social media” character, more like a clown Melina Martinez (I know I spelled that wrong) rip off lol. This is certainly better than before in my opinion, but ugh, the stripes, Vivzie what is it with you and the stocking stripes?? Anyway, for those who have seen the Hazbin leaks, this is VERY similar to how Velvet looked in her picture, except she had her hair in a bun and now it’s different here. She’s still wearing the same blue scarf thing and skull, so this kinda leaves me to believe that those leaks are real, however don’t quote me on that, we’re not 100% sure of course. However, I will definitely review the leaks, later lol.

With that out of the way, again…would have been easier if they drew the characters STANDING UP, so we can see their full bodies. Like how hard is that??? But anyway, on the subject of the three V’s, I should say that I’m DEFINITELY worried for the villains of the show. I feel like I’m going to have trouble taking some of Vivzie’s villain characters seriously, because I have the feeling most of them will just be edgy swearing “middle school bully”- style villains, ESPECIALLY Vox, who I 100% believe his rivalry with Alastor will just be similar to Blitz and Fizz’s rivalry, where they’re just throwing petty childish insults at each-other lmao. When it comes to Val, I honestly have no interest in him because we all know what his character is ganna be, the abusive jackass controlling Pimp who says lines like “I own you” “you’re nothing without me”- basically every abusive pimp or boyfriend character that you’ve seen ever. He’s kinda just a tool so the writers can have something bad happen to Angel dust to make him look like a helpless baby, so yeah I’m not excited to see Val nor do I care about him. Don’t really care for Vox either, and as for Velvet, we don’t know anything about her, she’ll be lucky if Viv gives her focus and development since she’s a female amongst two popular male characters lol. I expect her to kinda just be a Harley Quinn/Nifty knockoff, but I dunno we’ll have to wait and see. That’s all I have to say for these designs, I will say that I wonder if Vox even appears in season 1, because Viv had mentioned in a livestream once that he doesn’t appear until “way later” in the show. I certainly hope that Viv doesn’t try to cram in a shitload of enemies and problems in the first season (since she DEFINITELY did that with Helluva and look how THAT turned out) but again, we’ll have to wait and see. I certainly wonder who’s next.

#vivziepop critical #spindlehorse critical #helluva boss critical #Hazbin hotel criticism #Hazbin hotel critical #Hazbin hotel Vox #velvet #Valentino #hazbin hotel critique #Hazbin hotel redesign #anti vivziepop

86 notes · View notes

anarcheamor · 6 months

Text

So I Wanna Talk Vodou in Castlevania: Nocturne But First...

We gotta talk about Magic in Castlevania as a whole. The problem though is that there's not much new to say that one can't grasp from watching the show and being exposed to other media which includes magic (which is like what? 99% of all fantasy fiction?). The show doesn't go out of its way to explain anything about how magic works but then again what is there that needs explaining? Pretty brown lady does some finger stuff and something goes boom or sparky, a couple of guys can raise the dead, something something levitating sword, something something magic portals, something something something something magic exists, just deal with it. What seems to be of interest to the show is how magic is used by each character and what that says about them, their roles in the story, and their arcs.

Sypha, for example, is the powerhouse of the main trio boasting the most diverse and deadliest set of abilities since her magic consists of control over fire, water/ice, and lighting. This has led her to be key to some of the team's wins over various vampires, creatures, or even humans. While Trevor may struggle with one enemy, she could be handling several at once. This dynamic is most evident during the fight with Dracula as Daddy Drac could handle his son and a Belmont but Sypha was a wildcard that he knew he would have trouble. Even if you can argue that by herself she could never beat Dracula, her presence was the edge that the trio needed. But what does that say about her? She's adventure- loving, brave, and her knowledge as a speaker gives her insight where Trevor's experience and Alucard's vampiric and scientific knowledge might fail them. However, none of this is more important, I think, than her role as the "heart" of the team. Trevor and Alucard are cynics held back by their respective familial traumas to see the world for what it is, she provides optimism and love for life and humanity that both lacked and this aspect of her character enabled them to think in ways they weren't able to before. Like her magic, she's able to take the elements of those she loves and make them into something more powerful than what they seem capable of. Get it?

You can basically extend this analysis to most of the cast. Nothing entirely too deep either for people whose hobbies involve over-thinking about the stuff they watch. You see, my thing is magic in most fiction isn't really... magic and that has some bad implications for Annette's Vodou in Nocturne. Why? Because it's basically just science when physics is weird and wonky. That's not even off brand for it either, we all know that one quote about advanced enough science being indistinguishable from magic but even before this quote some Italian guy name Giovanni Pico della Mirandola said that magic was the practical application of natural science. The video I reblogged of the guy moving a crowd of bugs from the light in his yard to the streetlight is absolutely magical... but pretty easy to explain using bug psychology. Hell some scientists go out of their way to find miracles from various faiths (mainly Christian though) and try to explain them just for funsies (or apologetics) to stretch the limits of what science can explain and what it can't. This is all well and good for a view of magic that is centered around the idea of it being manipulation of phenomena but it kind of runs against other perspectives that see magic and adjacent activities as more than just phenomena. Take, for example, the existence of deities. If there is a fire god, what is fire magic? Does the magic come from the god? Do you need to have a special connection with the god to do the magic? Is it possible to become a fire god if you're powerful enough or is there something more to the title? What separates what the god does from the magic a human performs? If not a god, what about a fire spirit? Is there a difference between a spirit and a god? Do spirits take on the form of the element itself or are they separate from it? Notice how me adding in the element of a conscious thinking entity now muddies the waters a bit. Now what would be a simple "application of science" is now a question of relationships between two persons.

Let's apply this back to Sypha. Sypha's magic is manipulation of fire, lighting, and water. Assuming that elemental spirits/deities exist, how did she acquire such skills? Does she pray to them, bargain with them, worship them? Is there a ritual involved that she has to perform? It's a bit of a headscratcher if we think on it but I don't believe that she's dealing with any external entities with her magic and I'm certain the writers intended for her magic to be as straight-forward as it appears. And notice how the other magic in the show fit a similar simplistic "mold"? Alchemy and Forgemastery are basically in the same "do a thing then a thing happens" territory that Sypha's elemental kinesis fits in. But just like how adding in a "second party" into the mix of the magic throws a kink in how we're supposed to perceive Sypha's magic, doing so for Alchemy and Forgemastery does the same. In fact, Alchemy stops being Alchemy the moment you start adding in cosmic beings because it practically ruins the point of alchemical work. So in a world where all the magic is connected together by a common "science-y" theme to it all that's supposed to enable us to shut off our brains and just accept said magic without explanation because we trust that there is one, how do you fit magic where entities are a part of how everything works? And when the magic you're introducing is from a faith that's been demonized to hell and back, how do you make it fit into your world with good representation? Well, for Nocturne, the answer is not terribly but not all that good either...

#castlevania netflix #castlevania nocturne #castlevania anime #sypha belnades #magic #annette castlevania

10 notes · View notes

nostalgia-tblr · 1 year

Text

Hello this is me procrastinating having to actually write my sylki AU fic by writing a post about why sylki AU fics are a terrible idea. Pls enjoy, as I am sure you will.

Basically my premise is thus: the selfcest is not a bug it’s a feature and unless you specifically set out to create an AU environment where selfcest can actually be a thing then any given fanfic AU will lack that feature and now you face not only the traditional AU problem of “are these now just two random people who in the mind’s-eye of the reader look like the canonical characters?” but also you have to retool the entire thing because most of their canonical interaction and indeed the romance your fic is probably about is based on them being the same person.

Now I know that this is A Bit Controversial because when I say it boldly enough there is indeed pushback and so disclaimer that like all media takes this is subjective but that’s what I think. So many of the significant interactions between Loki and Sylvie, romantic or otherwise, are in some measure based on them being the same person. Like they would literally never have met if they weren’t. And now to prove this is A Serious Essay I will quote from the text:

“Your years-in-the-making plan was to tear the place down, create the ultimate power vacuum, and then just walk away. I’d never have done that.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not you.”

Yes, that last line there points out that they’re not literally the same person, and indeed much is made of the ways in which they differ… but those differences are explored from an angle of “shouldn’t they be exactly the same” so even when it’s not about the selfcest it is in fact about the selfcest. But no, the first sentence is the one I want to focus on here. Ep 3 of the Loki show (the ep that quote is from, obvs) is what I like to call ‘the enemies to lovers speed-run’ which I am sort of joking about but also not, and that change and the speed at which it happens both rely on… yes, the selfcest, I admit this essay is a bit repetitive but bear with me here. Loki’s initial interest in Sylvie is ‘oh hey, another me’ and specifically that here is a he (well a she) who is doing something that would never occur to him and so now he needs to know why, which in the context of a redemption arc carries a certain element of ‘what would need to change to make me think like that, and should I make some attempt to do so?’ So now he has to follow her about for the remainder of the episodes and inevitably fall for her. A lot of which does seem to be based on her being The Only Successful Loki (arguable, I know, but just go with it for now) and so you have the self-attraction plus the differences between them holding the seductive possibilities of self-improvement. And also she’s hot.

And yes there are any number of fictional romances where people fall in love at first sight for no discernable reason but I contend that most of those stories are shite. Because fiction generally needs to make more sense than reality does and so we as an audience want to be able to go “okay I can see why these people would be into each other.” I at least generally don’t get that into ‘these two people have met and now they’re love. Because they just are. Love doesn’t have to make sense!!!!’

So back to the AU fic issue (remember that? I almost didn’t.) and you may see where I am coming from on this. This is a pairing with quite a lot of AU fics (probably because there’s about ten minutes of actual canon to work from and there probably is a saturation point for Fics Where They Banged On That Train, as unlikely as that saturation seems to me) and not all of them are any good. And many of them are good but not in ways that I personally find fannishly satisfying because they’ve strayed too far from what I want to read or whatever. Which often does involve the lack of selfcest and the corresponding ‘now you have to have rebuild their relationship from the ground up and it may or may not appeal to any given reader.’ I don’t care enough about these characters to read about them when they barely resemble these characters, if you get me. I am not that invested in the universe in which they are (made-up example) baristas. We have entered the world of ‘I want these two characters to get together and even though I have removed the very things that made them get together they are still going to because I am the author and that’s just how it’s going to be.’ Which is valid, obvs! But not always my thing! Arguably this is true of all AU romance fics for any pairing and the fun lies in seeing how you can make them bang when the circumstances have changed but this is a bit of an outlier in terms of what the original scenario was so it’s tricker than some.

(Also as an aside I noticed that while we all (rightly) go on about some aspects of the paring being gender-flipped a lot of AU fic keeps ‘Loki is annoying posh twat’ but then doesn’t keep ‘Sylvie is laser-focussed on a specific and slightly insane goal and is hardened by a terrible past’ and so he’s like IDK going to shut down a donkey orphanage and she has to stop him by thawing his cold heart with love which I note is basically flipping it back to what would be expected genderwise and if nothing else we’re now in territory I am less into and now that I think about it those Arranged Marriage AU things probably work more for me because they keep the ‘she is openly hostile and pissed off about her supposed destiny’ thing that I generally like? But I could be wrong about that. I am wrong about a lot of things. Possibly this entire post, even.)

I shall stop now not because I feel I have made my point and expressed it fully but because this is a lot of words and nobody has time for all of this shit do they?

#fandom #hot take oh no #sylki #anyway back to writing my AU fic in which they bang despite not being the same person (omg i am so problematical oh no)#the selfcest is a feature not a bug damn it #this post is 1000 words but it probably didnt need to be sorry #pls don't hate me now?????#like there is a fic I LOVE that i realised flipped the gender roles right back to the expected ones and... i still like it i just feel odd?#i realise i am abnormally fond of the selfcest angle but i tell myself everyone is even if they don't realise it yet #do we still call this meta?#or possibly even wank D:#loki series

7 notes · View notes

heartxshaped-bruises · 1 year

Text

I posted 2,408 times in 2022

That's 1,044 more posts than 2021!

412 posts created (17%)

1,996 posts reblogged (83%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@nanlanmo

@x-brokencrowns

@funnytwittertweets

@merrymusings

I tagged 2,408 of my posts in 2022

#★ qᴜᴇᴜᴇ - 802 posts

#[ answered ] - 196 posts

#★ ɪɴꜱᴘɪʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: ꜱᴀꜰꜰʀᴏɴ ɢᴀʀʀᴇᴛᴛʏ - 191 posts

#★ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ɴᴏᴛᴇꜱ ᴏɴ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ʜᴇᴀᴅꜱᴛᴏɴᴇꜱ: ᴊᴏᴇ - 179 posts

#★ ɪɴꜱᴘɪʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: ᴇᴍʀʏ ʟɪʟʟɪꜱ - 164 posts

#★ ᴍᴜɴ ꜱᴛᴜꜰꜰ - 163 posts

#★ ɪɴꜱᴘɪʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: ᴅᴀᴠᴇʏ ᴅᴇᴛᴛᴇɴ - 148 posts

#★ ɪɴꜱᴘɪʀᴀᴛɪᴏɴ: ʟᴜᴄɪꜰᴇʀᴏ ᴍᴏꜱᴄᴏɴɪ - 139 posts

#★ ᴊᴏɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪʟᴅ ʜᴜɴᴛ: ᴛᴀʟɪᴇꜱɪɴ - 135 posts

#quotes - 119 posts

Longest Tag: 130 characters

#[ cara and oliver defining their relationship through coffee and alleged re-enactments of the boston tea-party in the bathtub... ]

My Top Posts in 2022:

OPEN TO. f // m // nb ; mutuals && non-mutuals MUSE. Rachel Dolan (test-muse) RELATION. based on this plot. rachel’s muse b and it can take literally any direction !!

❛❛Wait, that’s your locker ?? Shit -- sorry. My bad...❜❜ Rachel was deeply in thoughts and barely noticed as the other approached. As soon as he registered that he was blocking their access, leaning against the blue row of lockers in the hallway, he moved aside and hoped to not fall back into a staring contest with the wall across the room. MAN... HE FELT SO OUT OF IT. He’d been up very early, unable to sleep since his stomach was growling and didn’t stop ever since he dragged himself into school.

All that was left in his bag was another package of sour cream crackers. The other one had served as his breakfast. At this point he had exactly 20$ left and something told him that it would be tricky to split it over the week. Actually... his whole situation was tricky as fuck. But he tried not to think too much about it or this massive headache would return. Ignoring it helped to stay sane -- or maybe he was just becoming delusional at this point. Either way -- ignoring the problem until it got worse sounded tempting enough to go with it. HIS STOMACH GROWLED AGAIN and his hand shot up, but it couldn’t stifle the sound. Although his cheeks heated a little, his voice didn’t give away any embarrassment that he felt. ❛❛Don’t worry -- if I wanted to eat someone I wouldn’t go for you. The freshmen have shorter legs. Can’t outrun me.❜❜ Not that he could afford stupid remarks -- not with his reputation. But then again, he had no idea who the other was and maybe, just maybe he was lucky enough thath they didn’t know him, either.

24 notes - Posted July 10, 2022

SEND ◕‿◕ TO PLAY WITH MY MUSES HAIR

@nanlanmo: ❛❛ ◕‿◕ for Tal if he's feeling open to it lol!❜❜

✧･ﾟ 𝐀𝐍𝐒𝐖𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃.

See the full post

25 notes - Posted June 20, 2022

✧･ﾟ 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒

bc my bestie and I sold our souls to him and satan.

“Why do you think we’re out here? I’m not wearing any pants.”

“God left us in a hot car to die and I think we deserve it.”

“What?! What are you suggesting here that we do, this is really macabre.”

“I’m gonna bring the dinosaurs back and I’m gonna make them gay.”

“Social Media was a mistake made by the mistake of humanity.”

“There’s only one solution to this: Organized Crime.”

“Is this like a malicious compliance thing?”

“Well, now you get fired and I get a giftcard -- yeihh!”

“I’d say apply cold water to the burned area, but there’s no cold water that could cure this.”

“Well, nothing brings people together like a common enemy, am I right?”

“How much of this stuff can we sneak in before they catch us?”

“I’m so disappointed, this day sucks.”

“You really know how to... uh, savor your emotions for the ‘important’ things in life.”

“No, thanks. Just sex, drugs and rock’n roll for me.”

“You stole my pokemon-card when I was twelve, get fucked!”

“This isn’t facepalming. This is me ripping my entire face off.”

“How can any human have so little compassion and kindness?”

“Why is this a debate?! You can solve this with two sticks!”

“This is very disturbing but also very creative. Jesus.”

“That just sounds like prostitution with extra steps.”

“Who in their right mind would do this?”

“Oh yeah! I can feel the hellfire coming all along!”

“Why must you ruin everything I hold dear in life?”

“The only people who’d call you a good catch are probably the cops.”

“So you’re not only proving that you’re creepy, you’re also proving that you’re a complete idiot.”

“What kind of shrooms where you smoking when you made this?”

“Just because your body can physically survive something doesn’t mean that your... uh, whole being is ready for it.”

“This is where this was going?!”

See the full post

34 notes - Posted November 18, 2022

✧･ﾟ 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑

OPEN TO. f // nb ; mutuals && non-mutuals @indiestarter RELATION. arranged marriage; a more historical setting possible. our muses were required to get married in order to form an alliance between their two parties -- can either take place in their own realms / worlds for supernatural muses or between the fae kingdom and the human world. both aren’t exactly happy about it and cope in their own ways, but lately mine has been warming up more to the idea. he secretly started to like yours but so far, all of his subtle efforts came to nothing.

❛❛I get it -- just because we’re married now doesn’t mean that you have to like me. But instead of making this harder than it needs to be, why don’t you cut me some slack? You’re not a saint either, my lovely.❜❜ Taliesin was unnerved as he turned around to his newlywed, sneering over the all too familiar bickering that the other never quite dropped. As if it could change something about their fate. The closer the day of their wedding had come, at least he had been willing to keep a more open-mind. It wasn’t like he had jumped with joy at the decision of the king. IT WAS A DUTY, NOTHING MORE OR LESS, to make sure the truce was kept and a strong alliance was formed and maintained between the Autumn Court and the others. But if he was forced to spend his life with someone he never met before, he’d do it under his own conditions. And that’s what was partially to blame for the rather rocky start they’ve had. He had been trying to cover up his own unnerving reluctance over the matter by embarrassing them in front of everyone during the official proposal. With other mischievous digs, words and actions that only made it worse to be in the same room with them. And now, on THEIR WEDDING DAY, he realized that there was the possibility that this constant fighting would turn into a perpetual state.

Taliesin’s face didn’t give any of the mild regret over past mistakes away as they stood on the side, the noise and music from their wedding guests in the background. Nobody here celebrated any of them, only the alliance and their truce. He brought the glass in his hand up and downed the wine in one swig, SAVORING THE TASTE and the light haze it draped over his mind. ❛❛Mhmmm... this one’s good. You should try it. In that way, maybe we still get to somehow enjoy our wedding night.❜❜

74 notes - Posted May 22, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

✧･ﾟ A short and easy workaround for Reblogs with Beta & XKit Rewritten

Disclaimer: This also seems to work with old Legacy-Threads when reblogging with the new Beta-Editor bc XKit Rewritten doesn’t work with Legacy. The whole trimming order and process of both combined can be confusing, but it’s important so the post doesn’t get fucked up. So technically, it's also helpful for Beta-Reblogging in general. (video below)

SO, IF YOU WANT TO AVOID DOUBLE-POSTING of your own reblog, do the following:

Hit reblog (make sure you’re using Beta).

Enter reply, whatever.

Safe to drafts.

Remove the first post with Trim Reblogs.

Safe.

Refresh drafts.

Remove your own reply that now shows twice with the Beta-Editor. You will only have one option to remove here, so that makes it easy.

Refresh.

Tadaaa.

In this way you can preserve your partner's reply if you want to, since the blockquote-format won't work like that anymore. So hopefully, reblogs with the Beta-Editor & XKit Rewritten should be easier now for you and your partners without having to move your whole Legacy-Thread to a new post after this measure. I am very nostalgic over my old stuff, so that's a reason why I don't want to do it. If you have additions or experience possible errors, feel free to add them.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS WILL ONLY WORK if your partner reblogged their response without any XKit-Extension. Just a plain reblog.

78 notes - Posted December 10, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#★ ᴍᴜɴ ꜱᴛᴜꜰꜰ #[ I love how the top entry is the thing I posted yesterday lmao ]#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #long post

2 notes · View notes

ashthehermit · 1 year

Text

Legends of Tomorrow: A Retrospective 1.7

A lot of these episodes are melding together. I think I was used to the later Legends, which changed mood drastically episode by episode. Maybe humans weren't meant for bingeing television like this.

The rooms on the Waverider are rather limited this early on. There's the bridge, the brig, the cargo bay, the parlour. But I don't think I've seen the kitchen yet. I know that the joke about the single toilet will come about much later. Right now, the Waverider seems like it isn't a place where people live.

MAROONED

We start with a Star Trek-esque cry for help. Rip doesn't much care, but he knows the timeship in question will have a computer he can use to find Savage. It's finally time for a space adventure.

It is also time for flashbacks on Rip's past. Rip and Miranda are dressed like they are training to be in Starfleet. There's no other sane reason to wear a miniskirt in a situation like this. The Time Masters dress like Vulcans to my eye.

Jax quotes Star Wars, but precedes it by saying that he is quoting Star Wars, just in case we were wondering. I think this is the first mention of this series' Time Pirates. I never quite understood where they came from. Are they people who stole from the Time Masters? Are the legends effectively Time Pirates? It feels like they are. Rip did steal that ship against orders. Apparently they're the natural enemies of the Time Masters. That's all I've got.

'You're not Captain Kirk. You're Picard.'

Ray and Kendra start talking about Star Trek, in case the reference was lost on me. The episode isn't parody, and it isn't accurate enough to be a pastiche. Again, it isn't quite sure what it wants to be. Legends will reference Star Trek again in the future, but better.

Sara and Snart get trapped in the engine room (another room we've seen!), which allows for plenty of quality time. The chemistry between these characters has been overlooked until now, but one of the better pairings of the show at the moment. They talk about dying, which sounds dour, but they make it compelling enough.

Rip states that personal attachments are expressly forbidden, making the Time Masters the Jedi Council, as well as the Time Lords. This season is really let down by how much it relies on other properties. The later seasons continue this Legends loves to reference other media. The difference is that later down the line they become more parodical, more honest about where these ideas are coming from. They might reference Indiana Jones, but it's in an episode that George Lucas is a character in. This episode is Star Trek style, and this has been lampshaded, but it just isn't as fun.

'That'll teach him to mess with a nuclear physicist.'

Rip goes a little Sherlock, and offends Rory. That isn't hard, but the admission that Rip was only ever interested in Snart was a good one. It makes a lot of this make sense. Rip wouldn't pick Rory. He's got no talents that Rip can use. It's part of the arc that sends Rory away from the team, so it's all fair enough.

Watching this though, reminds me that I do prefer the Savage-less episodes of season one. There's more time for character moments, and more direct stakes. Sara and Snart face the prospect of freezing to death. Rip, Jax and Rory face the problem of maybe being killed by pirates. There are no apocalyptic futures here. Instead, Rip is devastated by the loss of his family again. Sara and Snart get to cuddle up to stay warm, despite typically keeping people at arm's length. Plus, Stein is funny wearing that beret.

'Time to choose a side I guess. Chosen.'

It escalates to a punch up. I enjoy this one a lot more than the previous. There's a few corridor shots which are fun to look at. And they're fighting Mick, which ups the stakes. There's less of a sense that these are faceless goons. At least, the pirate leader has been built up enough to be a secondary villain.

The message of the episode is that love is the highest power. Which is pretty positive for this season of legends, and even a little philosophical. Contrary to all that, Snart takes Rory to the woods to kill him. This is, at least, what we have been building towards. We are left to assume that Snart succeeds.

Now, we are going back to 1958, apparently before Savage encountered the legends at all. I cannot remember how that will play out, but at the very least they are not moving chronologically anymore.

#legends retrospective #legends of tomorrow #arrowverse #dc's legends of tomorrow #cw

2 notes · View notes

dallasareaopinion · 3 months

Text

The one thousandth post

It has been over twelve years since I first started this blog. And I knew the 1,000 post was coming up, so I wanted to write something so profound the universe would stop, you know the pride thing going on. Well…I can’t think of a thing.

And between spending three weeks in Washington D. C. moving, being tired, and uninspired I haven’t gotten around to this post. Yes we are in a new place and are settling in so do I have all the good excuses not to be Mt. Tibet inspired to save you all from your daily drudgery?

I was thinking this morning just in general not for this blog and thought the more I travel the more I realize how little I know. And that just sounded so familiar that I internet searched. Yep there are quite a few similar quotes running around about traveling and realizing how little you know. Yet I do feel quite strongly about that thought. And I think I have blogged about something similar before because one of my favorite quotes is from St. Augustine “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” And as always he hits the nail on the head. And my thinking is quite a few problems we face could be eventually solved if more people had a better idea of everything going on beyond their scope of life. And besides traveling is quite fun.

So the above is not quite the earth shattering post I wanted to make, however, it does incorporate one of my favorite topics and pastimes, traveling. I love to travel and see new and even familiar places. Right now though I am sitting on my couch trying to figure out what to post.

And since I have not reached the peak of thought for mankind I decided I just needed to make my post and move on. I still owe you the rest of my independent or fictional third party platform for 2024’s election. It isn’t like our government is racing to solve all our problems right now and with Tucker in Russia committing treason, Trump crying don’t do anything so I can win, the Democrats caught between the games the Republicans play and their inability to push through them, the left and right wing media all geared up to tell us how bad is the other side, and absolutely no legislation of any kind about to be passed we, the people as usual are screwed. And quite frankly the Republicans now saying we shouldn’t do anything until the people decide with the next election along with them saying it was a rigged election if they lose, we can now guarantee nothing will be achieved for years.

And yet for some reason, as little as I don’t like government it would help if it actually did address some issues. And yes I know the Democrats are trying to do something and there was a bi partisan attempt at the border issue, but hey Trump passed gas so the Republican righteous jumped at the prescribed height and so no border bill.

And for the vast majority of us, we are stuck paying too much for everything, mainly now for corporate greed because hey, Wall Street prescribes the height they are to jump to, and no help from the people who we pay through tax dollars to protect us from enemies within and outside of our borders.

I will continue my tirades just so when the deal goes down there is something in writing that says I tried to tell you so. Maybe some future alien civilization will come across the remnants of our planet and dig through all the terabytes of information left behind and go, hey at least someone knew things weren’t working. Ah to be so redeemed.

Anyway if you are reading this on Tumblr or Wordpress you may go I do not see 1,000 posts and that is because I originally started this on blogger or blogspot or whatever and then somewhere along the line I started this same blog on the other two platforms and just copy and paste the same post to all three sites. My thinking is I need to try and reach more people. Who knows if that is succeeding. So if you want to catch up you have to go to blogger or blogspot and read from the beginning. I also changed my original description of this blog. At first it was a couple of paragraphs long, now it is a simple sentence that really doesn’t describe the blog, yet is more of my feeling about the whole sha bang.

Eventually I do want to do a podcast tied to this blog while still posting in the written word. I have a microphone someone gave me, however in all the moves we have made in less than a year I cannot find it. Once I do, be forewarned. My plan is for some of the podcasts to compliment my written posts and some to be on separate topics. And then there is the quote the best laid plans of mice and men and if you want to read something profound maybe read Steinbeck. And according to all the modern world thinking, I also need to create a brand so people can understand who am I. That is simple: crotchety old man who thinks he knows it all, who is frustrated that the people who say they know it all keep screwing it up. How about that for a brand?

Folks, we all need something better than the current leadership we have in this country and elsewhere on this planet, and honestly I hope we find it because I want to travel to where you live and enjoy life with you.

Cheers!

And before I forget, Go Mavs, Stars, FC Dallas, Rangers and then Cowboys (sheesh). Wish Dallas had received the World Cup Championship, but we did receive 9 games so it will be fun around here in 2026.

And yes there is quite a bit of news right now, but everyone else is commenting on all the craziness so another time maybe.

#front porch ramblings #blogging

0 notes

wolint · 3 months

Text

GODLY INFLUENCER

Matthew 5:13-16

Now, more than ever before in the history of humanity, has man began to take another’s word instead of God’s as laws to live by. An influencer is a person who inspires or guides the actions of others, one able to generate interest in something or someone by posting about it on social media. We now have so many influencers in varying shapes, organisations, product lines and sectors but not so much in the spiritual setting.

Yet believers have been called to be influencers wherever they find themselves, because we carry Christ and the light of him must shine through us to influence our world.

The social influencer is telling us how-to, where to go, what to, and when to, their influence is far-reaching and impacting that some believers are even following them instead of the scriptures.

Some people have completely thrown away the culture, and lessons they were brought up with to follow the fads purported by influencers as the “now” thing. The scriptures strictly encourage us to follow the teaching of our parents in Proverbs 1:8-9 and not to be influenced by anyone that speaks contrary to what it should be, we are not to entangle ourselves with the ways of the sinner or wicked as stated in Proverbs 22:25.

Our generation follows the advice of influencers, social, financial, professional, and otherwise but would not consult the scriptures for anything. There are influencers in every sector who have followers that will do anything and everything they purport in trying to look, be and sound like them, when what we as believers should be doing is letting the light and word of God in us influence the people we interact with. People should see us and see God and want to have what we have.

Even Satan has more influence than a lot of us believers, as we see in the number of people Jesus delivered from satanic influences in the scriptures such as the one influenced not to speak in Matthew 9:31-33, and many others.

As an influencer, we must be sure that we represent Christ and His kingdom properly. We can’t afford to do things that will turn people away from God, church, or salvation.

It is the good, positive, and upright things we do that influence a person and allows them to glorify the Lord, our Father in heaven, whom they cannot see but see through us.

The world is using subliminal messages to influence people into doing atrocious things to others, committing crimes, and creating false problems, yet the Lord says in 1 Thessalonians 1:6-7 that we have received the word of God so that we can become examples or influencers to other people.

We are a nation that quotes social media influencers in everything we do, we look at what they’re doing, eating, wearing, and the way they act and live to determine what we do when the scripture should be our standard.

We must learn to love the Lord more than anything else and follow His teaching, leading and guidance than we love the word and all its content according to 1 John 2:15-17. History is speeding toward a conclusion planned by God and ungodly influences and influencers are making the pace even faster by influencing people away from the truth and salvation and straight into the arms of the enemy that Christ died to deliver mankind from.

Proverbs 13:20 says "Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble." Obviously, influencers make an impact on their audience.

A particularly important caution is found in 2 Corinthians 6:14: "Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers." Do not be unequally yoked with or influenced by unbelievers.

You are an influencer, God made and called you to be a fisher of men in Mark 1:17, which makes us godly and spiritual influencers, so influence people for Christ and don’t be influenced for the devil.

PRAYER: Help me Lord, to not be easily led or allow my soul to be snared by bad company and influence in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Shalom

WOMEN OF LIGHT INT PRAYER MIN.

#spotify #devotional #christianpost #women's ministry #biblestudy #biblestudy christianpost women's ministry #biblestudy christianpost 'women's ministry #conference #family #prayer meeting

0 notes

arrowpusher · 1 year

Text

Book Review #2: The Midnight Library (by Matt Haig)

I’m a slow reader and often read non-fiction, but The Midnight Library was a real page-turner and convincing me to check out more fiction.

I first heard about because it was a recommended read by BTS, and naturally a lot of fans started reading it and talking about it. The book cover design with 00:00:00 even seems reminiscent of their song 00:00.

The Midnight Library is not a light causal read. In addition to the dark stretches (trigger warning: depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation), there are deep and heavy themes throughout the book as it explores alternative universes of what could have been if you went back in time and followed through with regrets.

“It is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.”

It starts off with the main character Nora having a terrible day. It’s Mercury retrograde with a string of unfortunate events, coupled with unanswered cries for help, and culminating in an attempted suicide. Nora then finds herself in the Midnight Library where she can choose to teleport to other lives that could have been if she had “fixed” her regrets.

It’s all mostly relatable--a 30-something-year-old who feels all the insecurities because it’s a point in your life when your peers seem to be hitting milestones in all directions (sometimes the social media feed seems like an endless parade of engagement-marriage-home ownership-babies). It’s a time when we dwell on past decisions but forget our own accomplishments.

As Nora experiences the various alternative lives she could have lived, she promptly realizes that a lot of things are actually beyond her control. In reversing every regret, she finds a mixture of successes and tragedies. Big decisions could take unexpected turns, and small decisions could lead to a big impact. Even when she reaches a seemingly picture-perfect life, she quickly felt regret again when she found out that her decision to teach a little boy piano had actually changed his life, because he got into trouble in the alternate universe when she decided to pursue a academic career instead with a cush lifestyle. Nora also encounters a near-death experience when she faces a polar bear, and she had a sudden surge of desire to live.

The main takeaways:

Don’t focus on regrets, because things may not always end up how we would have expected it.

There are so many things beyond our control... just having good intentions and staying positive are like planting the seeds that could blossom into wonderful outcomes.

In order to prevent readers from getting too deep in the philosophical weeds about the meaning of life, the librarian (the wise figure in the book) reminds us that we don’t have to understand life to live it.

Notable quotes:

“It’s about an infinite number of universes... Dream big... You can be anything you want to be. Because in one life, you are.”

“But you will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life” --Camus

“I think it is easy t imagine there are easier paths... But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths... Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.”

“There are patterns to life... Rhythms. It is so easy, while trapped in just the one life, to imagine that times of sadness or tragedy or failure or fear are a result of that particular existence. That it is a by-product of living a certain way, rather than simply living. I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.”

“Remember, when we were young enough, not to fear tomorrow, Or mourn yesterday. And we were just us. And time was now, And were just in life... The bad times are here. The bad times have come. But life can’t be over, when it hasn’t begun.”

“You can’t give up, Nora. You have more to offer. More opportunities to have. There are so many versions of you out there. Remember how you felt after the polar bear. Remember how much you wanted life.

“The game is never over until it is over. It isn’t over if there is a single pawn still on the board... And even if you were a pawn--maybe we all are--then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn’t. Because a pawn is never jut a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.

“You didn’t have to enjoy every aspect of each life to keep having the option of experiencing them. You just had to never give up on the idea that there would be a life somewhere that could be enjoyed.

“Nora wanted to live. Once she’d finished writing the inscription she waited a moment. Frustratingly, nothing happened, and she remembered what Mrs. Elm had once said. Want is an interesting word. It means lack.”

“We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence... Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No. But do I want to live? Yes.”

Life is a series of infinite possibilities.

0 notes

saby-chan · 3 years

Text

Why the ATLA comics fail when it comes to Zuko and his family

To whom ever took their time to actually stop and read this post, thank you in advance for not skipping my post and willing to stay and read my humble opinion! I hope I won’t disappoint you!

As a relatively newcomer to the ATLA fanbase since 2020, I’ve come across a lot of interesting debates, comments and rants about the show, characters and fandom in general, but nothing has captivated me as much as the dumpster-on-fire that are the ATLA comics, more specifically: The Promise and The Search.

On one hand we have the hardcore fans who want them to be animated or serialized into the Netflix live action, praising the comics for the new views and subject matters they’ve brought into the show’s lore, while on the other hand we have the furious Azula fandom who is really angry for the fact that best girl didn’t get the redemption arc she rightfully deserved so much after the painful event that was the Last Agni Kai and the even more angry fans of the Urzai ship (yeah, the people who actually ship Zuko’s parents unironically) who hated the retconning of the show’s cannon since the comics basically took a huge fat dump on what was previously established as official cannon, when the Search entered the scene, but between these two sides, who has the more valid point? In the end, are the comics good cannon or bad written fanfiction?

Well... Here are my two cents on this matter since I myself happen to be an Azula and Zuko fan and had huge expectations from these comics (since I wanted more from my fave hot-headed fiery siblings duo) but ended up disappointed: the comics are indeed a huge mess and actually bad written fanfiction when it comes to Zuko and his family! Don’t click off yet, because I actually documented the reasons why exactly the comics fail in this area:

1. The author of these comics is not part of the BryKe duo

Yes, I would like to start with the fact that if you actually take a second to look up who in the heck took the time to write these two books, you won’t find Bryan, nor Mike, but a fellow man named Gene Yang. This is important because while the wiki of both The Promise and The Search state BryKe as the creators, that doesn’t mean that they were the actual minds behind these comics, but rather because ATLA is their “baby” and these comics involve their characters, over which they have copyright. Mr. Yang here is the actual brain behind the plot, as the main writer, which explains why we find huuuuge inconsistencies between the show lore and the comics, especially Zuko wise.

My main issue with Mr. Yang isn’t that he isn’t BryKe specifically, but because he did an unforgivable mistake in his writing process: He projected himself into Zuko’s character, based on the relationship Zuko had with his father. This is a documented fact from an interview in which he explains that he sees himself and his dad’s relationship into Zuko and Ozai and used that when writing their interactions and built Zuko’s character in the comics. And this is wrong because when you have an already very developed and complex character such as Zuko, you can’t just come in and be like “Oh, I was an angsty teen just like him in my teenage years, fighting with my dad and whatnot, so he must have the same thought process as me!”. NO! This is bad fanfiction writer behavior! Zuko has his own personality and philosophy, which he developed over the course of 3 seasons and is not defined by only 1 unfortunate aspect of his past, so you can’t just base his whole mindset and actions off of your own personal experience just because you had the same daddy issues he had!

2. The whole “Promise that you will kill me if I turn out like my dad!” nonsense in The Promise

Reason number 2 why these comics fail and go under the category of “bad fanfiction” is because they fail to convey the core essence of the source material. The whole point of Zuko’s redemption was that he realized the wrongdoings of his ancestors and his own mistakes. He outgrew his desire of gaining his father’s acknowledgement in favor of choosing his own destiny. Having him worry that he’ll turn into his father is utter nonsense and feels like poor angsty drama material for the sake of angst. At this point in time, Zuko has overcame that obstacle in his life a long time ago and should be at the level where he himself is the “Uncle Iroh” for other people and in no way someone concerned of becoming their own worst enemy!

Not only that, but the whole point of Aang’s journey and the story of the show as a whole was to teach us, the viewers, the importance of forgiveness, empathy and love in life. Aang didn’t spare Ozai, aka “the ultimate evil” just to flex in front of his pals or because he is a “ 12 y/o vegan pacifist monk kid”, but because he knew that killing someone, no matter of what they did or wanted to do, wouldn’t restore balance into the Universe, on the contrary, him killing the villain would have meant perpetuating the “endless cycle of hate” that plagued the world. So having Aang promise to kill his best friend in case “they turned into an evil maniac like their dad” contradicts Aang’s whole character and it’s a nonsense that throws into the trash what we’ve learnt throughout the entire TV series.

3. Azula deserved (and was supposed) to have a redemption ark

This might still be pure speculation, but I count it as a documented reason because I’ve heard quite a few people saying that there should’ve been a book 4 in the show, aka “Book 4: Air”, and no, it wasn’t The Search, but actually Zuko and Azula’s journey as Zuko helps his younger sister heal her broken mind by being her very own “Uncle Iroh”. Sure, they prolly were going to end up looking for Ursa, but the journey should’ve ended with them actually being happy and a family again and not the bs we got in The Search where a still very unstable Azula runs away and becomes the “Next Joker”! The only problem is that M. Night had to pop up and curse the world with his movie, which forced BryKe to delay the project (and eventually abandoned it in favor of Korra).

All in all, either if BryKe had this preplanned or not, it made sense for Azula to get a redemption ark, she deserved it because she was just a broken 14 y/o child! If Katara’s mom’s murderer deserved to be forgiven, so did this poor child who had no fault for what happened to her since she had a dysfunctional family! What Gene Yang did in his poorly written fanfiction was to just antagonize a broken child, turning her into a monster for the sake of friggin angst!

4. The Search is the worst of the two, being flat af character wise

And finally, getting to the point that I personally find the most annoying about these comics: The Search. This one... This one is a mess on a hella lot many levels, and just to list a few: characters are flat as fudge, being either black as vanta black (like Ozai and Azula) or pure white like Gene’s Gary Stue OC, Mr Ikem (or how I like to call him, IKEA man) and his ‘victim’ rendition of Ursa, Azula gets to suffer more for no reason (see reason number 3 to why I find this as a no no), Ursa’s whole character sucks ass (man, I could write a whole thesis on why Yang’s version of her is terrible and doesn’t match the strong woman we got in the show) and Zuko does morally wrong stuff (my man literally used his unstable sister to bribe their dad into spitting info about Ursa... Show Zuko would never do that!;-;)

Oh boy, as a person who’s seen a ton of anime and other media and read many books, I can’t begin on how much I despise this type of writing: flat characters are the worst!

ATLA characters in the show are nothing close to being flat! What I mean by that is that none of them fall perfectly into pure white (aka goodest of good characters with no imperfections) or vanta black (aka lowest and darkest twisted monsters out there), each of them are various shades of grey (like Aang who is a very light grey because despite being a very kind and nice character, he still isn’t a “perfect hero” since he ran away from his duties, practiced tax fraud with Toph, had insecurities and even threatened to kill people on ocassions like with the sand benders who took Appa) and this is a good choice because that prevents them from becoming what’s globally known as Mary Sues and Gary Stues (aka those either “perfect” characters with no flaws and/or unlimited power, or the twisted monsters full of flaws).

And the other reason why many other people hate The Search: it literally negates previously established cannon. And here comes my short essay on why this comic fails Zuko’s family (since we’ve already talked enough about Zuko himself).

In cannon and even interviews with BryKe, it was clearly stated that Zuko’s family was “once happy”. Where is this “once happy” family in The Search? All I see is pain, deception, lies and betrayal, nothing close to anything that resembles happiness. Okay, some of you might come in and say that “It’s because it was never the case! It was only lies and Zuko trying to convince himself that he didn’t live in hell forever!” and here is WHERE YOU WERE ALL WRONG! And why? Because, my dear fella, where were depicted the flashbacks of Zuko’s “happy family” in The Beach? Ember Island. And what do we know and had been even quoted in the show? "Like waves washing away the footprints on the sand, Ember Island gives everyone a clean slate. Ember Island reveals the true you." (direct quote from the show). Exactly, no matter who you are or how hard you try, you can’t hide your true self when you are on the Ember Island, best example being Azula, who’s impenetrable though shell cracked and revealed the true vulnerable child that was underneath. If Azula couldn’t resist the “spell of the island”, no one can. So this means that Zuko’s family was indeed happy once and yes, Ozai wasn’t always the douchebag we got to know in Season 3 (I have a whole nother essay on my theories regarding what could be his real past story and why he’s actually the “Zuko” of his generation, based on stuff I gathered from old wiki entries and character analyses I made, but that’s for another time, lemme know if ya’ll are interested).

And what I guess is the biggest proof why The Search did this family’s past trash is comics Ursa herself. My dude, if this woman were indeed the victim of years of endless abuse and never loved her husband, I guarantee you that she would’ve been closer to what we saw in Todoroki’s mom from BNHA and Zuko would’ve gotten that scar or even worse long before the Agni Kai, not from his “daddy dearest”, but from “mommy dearest” herself, because no sane woman would be soo affectionate and attached to a child that’s the perfect copy of their abuser, sepecially appearance wise (again see Todoroki’s mom’s case from BNHA because the stories are really similar) and in no way would’ve she been willing to sacrifice her life for said child’s sake. With this ocassion, I remind ya’ll folks that according to the ancient ATLA cannon wikis on Nick’s site, Ozai was designed with Zuko’s appearance in mind, being meant to be like a “grown up scarless version” of Zuko. So yeah, remember this with a grain of salt that whenever you simp over grown up Zuko, you involuntary simp for Ozai too.

So yeah, I guess this kinda concludes my “not so short” rant about why the comics fail and are bad fanfiction. Lemme hear your thoughts in the comments and if you agree, feel free to leave a like and even reblog.

Bye bye and remember that Momo is the true strongest character of the show!

Saby out.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #atla comics #zuko #azula #ozai #ursa #fire siblings #the promise #the search #atla rant

35 notes · View notes

kaypeace21 · 3 years

Text

Rebel Robin podcast (ep 3 &4 analysis)

For those who haven’t read them yet. Here’s the analysis for podcast ep 1&2. Analysis of Rebel Robin book-here. And eastereggs from rebel robin novel- here.

So the main things I noticed in ep 3 was how Robin spying was shown as a huge NEGATIVE-and Mr Hauser got upset over her doing so. Robin listens to mr. Hauser’s phone call (like Karen with Mike in s3/ us gov spying on calls in s1) & on a different occasion Robin also eavesdrops on a private convo he is having with someone else in his classroom ( like El spying on Mike talking to Lucas in s3). And when he finds out about this he tells her how wrong it was to spy on other people like that. In the past, I also talked about how the theme of spying is shown for many other st characters ( in the show) and how it isn’t romanticized like people think it is- here .

Anyways , Ep 3 ends with a call from a h*mophobic teen( Dash) telling Robin to “stay away” from Mr. Hauser cause he’s “dangerous”. Why he thinks he’s dangerous is solely for the fact he’s gay.I think this theme may come into play in s4 Hawkins (in relation to the satanic panic). In ep 4 Robin jokes to (gay) Mr. Hauser : “ So what are you into... satanism?” (Sadly most queer people have been told over and over we’re going to hell for being gay/lgbt+. it’s sadly an almost universal experience.) For those unaware- the ‘satanic panic’ was a right wing christian movement in the 80′s that WRONGLY associated certain things with supposed satanism. Just some of the many things they demonized : rock music , stephen king , wearing black, horror/fantasy media, and of course queer people and d&d (hellfire club - the name is a a xmen ref but in the show it’s probably an inside joke about the satanic panic and people being scared of d&d). We see foreshadowing of the satanic panic hinted in s3 (in relation to d&d)- on tv the narrator asks if “satanism” (pans to d&d set) is to blame for the odd occurrances in Hawkins. And given how the s4 el-trailer had the clock say 3:00am for the “witching hour” also called “the devil’s hour” since it’s supposed to be a subversion of jesus dy*ing at 3:00 pm. And the possibility s4 may take place around Easter. I think we’ll see that religious (Christian) extre*sm causes many people in Hawkins to interpret the supernatural as ‘satanic’. And no , I’m obviously not talking poorly about all religious/christian people).

After this Mr. Hauser jokes how Hawkins is like “lord of the flies” and how he “worries” what would happen if teens were left to their own devices-like in the book. The themes in the book mostly focus on the dangers of ‘mob mentality’ and how human beings can become v*olent and turn on each other- if the safety of civilization disappears...

This I believe is foreshadowing - i mentioned in a post a while back (here). How movies on the s4 list had the theme of : a supernatural event indirectly causing towns people to act irrationally and turn on eachother v*olently. Despite literal monsters attacking them from outside (they chose to turn on eachother instead). In the end some townspeople become the real monsters via mob mentality/v*oence/false witch hunts (the mist, the birds, etc). In ‘the birds’ (while people are hidding in a store)- they wrongly blame certain characters for the supernatural chaos. Similarly, in ‘the mist’ (crowd of townspeople are trapped in a store) and some start interpreting the monsters as being sent as punishment by god- some town’s people start quoting the bible and saying the only way to stop the punishment is to start “sacrificing the s*nners and nonbelievers”. BIG YIKES.ST references mapple street (where the wheelers and sinclairs live). It’s based on the twilight zone ep of the same name “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” .The ‘monsters’ of that episode -were the townspeople turning on eachother because they incorrectly think their own neighbors are part of an invading supernatural army. The enemy was actually the paranoia/mob mentality-not the supernatural force they feared. And yes i do think this concept is linked with 80s satanic panic and will cause some town division/obstacles for our heroes to deal with . **I also think the s4 bts of the Hawkins blood clinic-may be used to show h*mophobia (linked to satanic panic) in the town. Like in one s4 movie “paradise lost”the punk rock boys who were into black clothes, rock music , horror/stephen king books- were accused by the town’s people of being gay AND have demonic powers that are k*lling fellow town’s people.

Mr Hauser says he thinks steve Harrington is Ralph from lord of the flies. And Robin disagrees saying he’s Jack. Personally- since this was when Robin didn’t know/hated Steve. I think Mr hauser is right that Steve is Ralph (one of the oldest boys) who’s “commitment to civilization and morality is strong”. But Jack (perhaps the popular s4 kid Jake?) and his savage crew take control of the group and start trying to attack Ralph and his friends (steve’s crew- over satanic panic?). How this begins is -

Jack, torments Ralph and others. And some kids begin to develop savage personalities, after someone claims to have seen a Beast (demongorgan?) in the woods. This creates fear among the boys, which allows Jack to access more power.Ralph gets into an argument with Jack, who splits from the tribe. Many of the other boys follow Jack, who uses fear to manipulate the boys into leaving Ralph. And Jack’s crew begin attacking Ralph and his friends.

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

Ok, next topic of ep 4- the sentimental part of my brain got emotional when hearing how upset Robin was. And than Mr Hauser-telling her she’s wrong and she’s not “broken” or “rotten” and “nothing about her needs to be fixed’” (got me right in the feels) . As a queer person- I feel like every lgbt+ kid/teen needs to hear what Mr. Hauser said to Robin.

However, the analytical part of my brain -did notice some easterggs/ series parallels.

The convo starts with them talking about music Mr hauser likes (such as Bowie). And transitions to Mr Haauser asking about things she likes, whether she’s being bullied, and he later tells her “ DON’T let other people’s small mindedness make you fell bad about yourself. you don’t need to change yourself-no matter what anyone else says” . And Mr Hauser than says him calling her the “weirdest girl in Hawkins” was a compliment (not an insult-like she initially assumed).

This is remarkably similar to certain scenes in s1/2. In s1, Jonathan mentions musicians he likes such as Bowie, asks Will about what he likes, and tells Will “don't like things cause people tell you you’re supposed to-especially not him (their dad who called him h*mophobic names)” . In s2, Jonathan tries to cheer Will up after asking if he's being being bullied. And calls Will “a freak” (and says it’s a good thing) and he should be content with being a “freak “ and compares Will to Bowie ( who was openly queer since the 70s) .

In ep 4, Robin also mentions how sad she is that her parents won’t let her ride her bike anymore cause their paranoid about her safety (like what happened to Will in s2).

Robin (before Mr. Hauser comforts her) says she feels like she has a “rot” inside her . This is a s2 eastergg that could be linked to either Will or El. Will says his now-memories are “growing”, spreading”, and killing.” Later Kali says the emotional pain caused by her father caused a “wound” to “spread”. Later allusion-Brenner tells El she has a “terrible wound “ (“a rot”) that Will “grow, spread, and kill.”

The reason Robin rants about feeling like she has a “rot” inside her is because she’s being bullied, and lost all her Hawkins friends and says “maybe I’m broken maybe there is just something about me that drives people away? I’m the only common denominator-there’s something wrong with me! There’s something inside of me that’s just rotten and there’s nothing i can do to fix it”. Which 1)-poor Robin. 2) I feel like could easily be How Will feels in s4(who will be the same age as Robin is here in the podcast)- his dad abandoned him, all his hawkins friends are gone , the st s4 movies have h*mophobic bullying in them (and he was bullied in the past). In a interview Noah said Will in s4 “doesn’t really get along with people-it’s just him and Mike.” I think it fits more so with Will than El . But they may feel similar: it’s implied in s4 audition tapes she’ll be bullied too, she moved away from her friends, and her father (Hopper) fake “passed away.” It could easily be how both Will and El feel in s4- that there is something “broken”/ “rotten” about them . In fact, in the rebel Robin novel there is even a character named Sheena. Sheena reminds me a bit of a mix between Will and el . She is very quiet, queercoded, and is often bullied. And she finds mean notes and other things stuffed in her locker- placed there by bullies. A bit like how Will found the zombie-boy note in his locker. A teacher doesn’t stop her bullying just blames her and says “ This wouldn’t happen if you made it just a smidgen easier for PEOPLE to understand you.”(sort of reminding me of that Noah quote about s4 Will not getting along with most people/Jonathan saying not to change himself cause “people” say to). But sheena can be another name for Jane (there was also a 80s show character named Sheena who was psychic) so ...maybe foreshadowing of el/jane being bullied in highschool? Along with Will?

*It’s not a eastergg/parallel...just speculation. Unlike the rebel robin book... in the podcast (in multiple episodes) almost every time she opens up to Mr Hauser about her problems she says it’s ok for him to do the same and she’ll be supportive and listen. However, Mr Hauser (so far) always rejects her offer-much to her hurt/frustration. In ep 4, she asks if he has someone his “own age” he can talk to about his problems-which he says he does. Now... since in ep 4 Mr hauser is paralleled to Jonathan maybe Jonathan will have someone his own age to talk to about his problems (maybe his new friend Argyle?) We see similar to Mr Hauser giving advice/pep talks to (gay) Robin. Jonathan is always giving advice/peptalks to our (gay-coded) Will. But so far- Jonathan has no one he really emotionally leaned on in the same way (Will does with Jonathan). I also wonder if Will in s4 starts gets tired of how he always confides in Jonathan (but Jonathan never does the same with Will in return)? Like Robin with Mr. Hauser?

#robin buckley #steve harrington #will byers #el hopper #jonathan byers #stranger things #stranger things theory

52 notes · View notes

lochsides · 3 years

Text

Yellow Metal - cathartic Review

Here’s something I did not expect to be reviewing this week but when Zayn drops a 24 minute rap track, you fall in line. I had to listen to it a couple times through before I could even begin to make sense of my thoughts because my brain sort of malfunctioned. I have never been prouder to be a Zayn fan. He’s such a nuanced songwriter and there is so much to unpack here.

I think this is the most unfiltered version of Zayn that we have ever been exposed to (and possibly will ever be). I am grateful that he said his piece in this because it needed to be said. As a brown woman, I felt so seen by this and I cannot explain what that means to me. Thank you Z, for your unvarnished truth in addressing racism and various forms of discrimination.

I’m doing a short lyrical analysis below the cut, but the TLDR is that this is a fantastic piece of art that deserves to be heard.

I wish he had released this as an EP because that would be easier to review than a single 24 minute song, structurally speaking. So instead, I have picked out some key lyrics, going from top to bottom, that really spoke to me and decided to study the song that way. His lyricism is hard-hitting in this track. It is beyond anything he has ever released before.

“The planet bleeds, the damaged trees. It’s never leaving until we ascend so fuck the fence.” — I have not seen this lyric being talked about in the fandom, because the lyrics that follow this steal the show, rightly so, but I wanted to give this line a moment because it’s important too. To me, this lyric speaks to where Zayn is at with his relationship with the physical world. He’s out on the farm (about which he even goes to say “tell you what I like, farm life and the tractor”) and I believe he’s happy in his space and he feels connected to nature (also see River Road). So it is a poignant and slightly jaded, but valid perspective that he shares on climate change. It’s never leaving until we ascend. The damage human beings have done to the planet won’t be undone until there are no humans left to do damage. It’s a single sentence that says so much about the depth of the climate crisis. I’m doing my PhD on urban air quality so this is something I care really deeply about and I resonated with.

“And until they stop killing colour, it’s fuck the feds.” — Yeah, agreed Zayn. The systemic racism that he calls out here is echoed throughout the song, in equal parts anger and boldness. I love that he isn’t glossing over it with metaphors, which he could easily do and it would be beautiful in a totally different way, but this makes it harder for racists to overlook. There is so much power in calling it like it is.

“Never lose me to fentanyl, scared when I take a Benadryl, keeping it green in general.” — It frustrates me to no end to see Zayn painted as this drug-addicted lazy musician that doesn’t care about his work, because we know how untrue that is. This narrative is tired and simply boring too, and I won’t get into the racist connotations of it when you consider it against his white colleagues who smoke as much as him but that isn’t one of their defining traits in the media.

“I’m racking up excuses while I’m slacking off on work … it was hard work that got me heard” — I love the juxtaposition in this verse. The public/media perception on his career is that Zayn doesn’t put in effort or that he doesn’t want it. This obviously stems from his leaving the band. It goes back to what I was saying before about narrative, when in reality, as Zayn has said on various occasions, he fights to make his own choices. And that doesn’t have to look the way everyone else expects it to (“I beg you, don’t include me. I might write it on my shirt”), he has his own struggles that have helped forge his path, but it is his path that he paved, himself. He works hard to be heard. He has to. It reminds me of something my parents used to tell me when I was younger about being immigrants: you have to work 10 times harder for the same opportunities just because of the colour of your skin or your name on the cv. It’s a harsh truth to grow up with but it was my reality, as it is for most POC.

“This life doesn’t give you no armour, a lot of myself can harm you. I swear on what’s good, that I’m here ‘til they take me. I pray that I’m wrinkled, at least over 80…” — There is something about the simplicity of these lyrics are the messaging that I love. He isn’t trying too hard to sound poetic but he still manages it perfectly.

“All I've been achieving, clocking miles in this region, moving like a legion. Promise that I made to myself, an allegiance. Do you still believe I’m a fool for ever leaving? Staring at the ceiling, can never put a cap on achieving. I’m just here for the rap, then I’m leaving. // I’ve had about enough of being my own enemy. It’s time I grew up, a long way from 17. Always went against the grain, struggles in my life. Got some things to say when I stand up on the mike.” — This is the only 1D-related lyric I’ll make reference to because this song is about so much more than that. That said though, we cannot overlook Zayn’s experiences in the band because that is part of his story. The tongue-in-cheek of “I’m just here for the rap, then I’m leaving” is hilarious to me. The line about not wanting to be his own enemy anymore and growing up from 17 reminds me of that quote Taylor (Swift) mentioned in Miss Americana about celebrities getting stuck at the age they got famous. I think this verse is similar to that. None of them ever wanted to be in the band and I don’t care what anyone says, Zayn leaving and proving success outside the band gave the rest of them the courage to follow their own solo careers. Sure there was drama surrounding the split but he did it for himself, to tell his stories the way he is now. Whatever else you have to say about him, you cannot deny his authenticity.

“I ain’t dropping this for fame, I need this time, like therapy, it’s just to keep me sane.” — I think this line tells us 2 things, the first being that this song was not leaked. Z knew what he was doing and his twitter likes tell us as much. He didn’t release it for any sort of attention, otherwise it would be widely available on streaming platforms and for purchase. Which leads to my second point, he released this song to get everything he talks about on the track off his chest. Its referenced in other lyrics too, like “now you see where I come from, the world don’t.” This was for whoever cared to listen, not the world. It’s inaccessible for a reason. I love that he threw those lyrics in. It makes the song feel more like a private conversation or listening to a friend rant. It creates a different form of intimacy between himself and his fans.

“Lessons that I’ve learned, I’ve tried teaching to myself. What I’ve learnt from certain people is that they’re better than myself. So I surround myself with real ones, and you feel the plastic melt.” — This one is for anyone that buys into conspiracy theories surrounding Zayn’s personal life. He surrounds himself with real people, real friendships, real connections. I have never bought into the bullshit that he has zero autonomy over his personal life. I love the use of plastic melting as a metaphor for ridding his life of fakeness.

“Feeling trapped. This industry is a cage.” — Zayn is obviously not the first person to say it. Many artists talk about how suffocating the industry is ( which he further comments on in the sung portion: “I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be, a part of this, no, I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be, a part of this”). Fame is such a wild and unnatural concept and the exploitation and politics of the music industry only feed further into it. The industry being a cage makes me think of zoos and how celebrities are animals on display, when they should be free in the wild. I also really like the musical interlude following this part.

“Nobody’s speaking the truth, I’m offended by the State. Look at the state of the news, I’ve decided the argument, reciting my views.” — Zayn toes the line between keeping to himself and speaking out on important issues, sometimes not very well. I am his biggest cheerleader, but I’m not up his ass. There have been many occasions where he could’ve done better. But I cannot fault him for being offended by the State because same, Z, same. I love that he took this song as an opportunity to real speak out, no punches pulled.

“See I’ve been facing the racists from back when I were a kiddie. Born up in 93’. Living in Bradford City, they kicked me out of the school. Said they had a problem with me hitting the kids that would call me p***, still sit in the classroom, chilling. I’m angry now that I’m older cause I see they treat us different. Got me thinking I’m the problem ‘cause they never dealt with these issues.” — See what I meant about no punches pulled. He said that! He said it like that too. There is so much in this verse that I relate to, it hits a little too deep. I grew up as a brown in predominantly white communities where the colour of my skin was the reason I was outcasted. We know when that’s happening, clear as day. The lyric “got me thinking that I’m the problem cause they never dealt with these issues” says it all. I have many racial traumas that I’m dealing with as an adult because the adults around me when I was a child didn’t deal with racism in the classroom. They do treat us different!

“20 years later, I’m still in the same boat. Tryna treat me like my grandpa, say I came up off the boat. Came to tell you what I stand for. Man I think you’re shit, a joke. How can I be civil when they got me by the throat? // Pushing my feelings down, you ain’t got it like them. ‘Boy your skin is so light.’ Ok motherfucker, take my name up on a flight. Try to convince immigration that your bloodline’s half white.” — Zayn talking his shit is my new favourite art form. How can I be civil when they got me by the throat? Something that I will always be enraged by is that POC are expected to de-escalate situations of racism. We have to push our feelings down, as Zayn says in the verse, because the institution is against us. All of the institutions are against us. The fact that he takes it a step farther to say that his name makes him a target for racism, even though he is half-white just nails his point home. Also, can we please quit the whole ‘Zayn is white-passing’ bullshit. He alludes to it again later in the song (“asian in my face, but still my race you can’t define”). Its not a compliment to erase someone identity in favour of white-washing them.

“My name ain’t on the list unless they label it ethnic.” — Oh, the amount of times we have heard that age old (v. racist) saying ‘{celebrity of colour} is the new [insert white celebrity here]’ as if POC aren’t allowed to succeed in their own right. It is wild to me that Zayn has to deal with this given his level of success.

“Start to understand why they think that I’m threatening. I move in certain ways, couldn’t slow me with ketamine.” — There is a subtle nod to racism (and Islamaphobia) in this line, because of course the brown man is a threat, but I like the way Z turns it around. I also like the rhyme scheme.

“Raised on the benefit for whose benefit? They’ll never learn shit, man, if the shoe fits.” — Okay I might be reaching here, but this is just my interpretation. We all know the benefit system in the UK sucks. Being raised on benefit implies a lack of money growing up, but the benefits aren’t really all that beneficial to the families that rely upon them.

“Dealing with the hurt, they should know cause they don’t deserve it, it hit deep cause I hit the nerve.” — Well, okay then, just call me out. It’s fine. I seriously feel like he’s talking to me directly with this line. I imagine a lot of us do. Its one of those lyrics that are a bit too honest but that why we love them.

“Cathartic, I’m an artist. Trying to put my heart in” // “Freedom fighter, Yellow Metal is my name.” — So do we have an alternate persona for Zayn now? Alright, I’m down. I think these two lines are tied together, because both are mentioned in the song title. (I think of the song as cathartic, by Yellow Metal, aka Zayn, or Yellow Metal as the name of the EP if this was officially released). The lyrics that accompany both title lyrics, along with the subject matter of the song as a whole, suggest that his heart is in standing up against injustices. I said it earlier, this is the most unvarnished version of Z that we have ever been exposed to. Almost like the complete picture to the puzzle pieces we’ve been putting together over the years.

“They’re tryna kill us with disease.” — Why did this line scream out ‘COVID-19 outbreaks in developing countries’ to me? Again, I might be reaching, but there is a disparity between how COVID is treated amongst minorities, along with many other diseases, and not to mention rich, primarily white countries hoarding vaccine supplies while places like India (and my beautiful Bangladesh and I’m sure Pakistan too) suffer needlessly.

“Started something sick and on my mind is what’s next. Just became a dad so now I’m taking all the cheques. Better know I’m staying and paying like it’s debt. Imma get it done, if it’s taking all my breath, sweat, and down I ain’t messing around ’til I’m the best.” — I think this lyric shows off Zayn’s sentimental side more than it does his ambitious side, because we know he’s in this for the long haul. Others may doubt that but his fans never have. But hearing him talk openly about being a father on a song is something else. It’s like Khai added this whole other layer of meaning and purpose to his life and it’s beautiful to watch. I’ve been here since the X-Factor auditions guys!! It makes me so emotional to witness him like this.

“Aint many of me around, p***, I’m just different. Certain stages to this level aint here because fame is to the devil, fuck a label, imma do this from the ghetto.” — God, we’ve been waiting for a fuck the label moment in this house, haven’t we? I won’t get into my theories on his label or his team, but none of us deny the fact that they should be doing more for him than they are. He has the potential to be the biggest thing with the right team and promo because he has a built-in fan base that would go the mile for him. Obviously, there’s also his aversion to promo to contend with and that’s his decision. Even without it, he could shatter every ceiling. Another thing I want to mention about this verse is the nod to the complete lack of South Asian representation in contemporary Western media.

“Don’t know what’s worse: the way that you live your life or the way that you write a verse.” — I’m just putting this in here because it made giggle. Also going to take this space to say how much I love his energy in this song. He knows he’s the shit, as he should!

“Can’t be louder … so free Gaza on my banner.” // “They’re hating on Palestine ways.” — I love that Zayn has always supported this movement, years ago, before being ‘woke’ was a thing. But now, he has a daughter that has Palestinian heritage and I’m sure that makes this hit that much deeper for him, personally. The apartheid in Palestine is heart-wrenching. It’s so strange to me to watch it happen, because I never thought I would witness something like this happening in 2021, yet here we are.

“Like vipers, I see the sly ones, the snake that’s called Biden, none of them abiding what they might put in writing. We should be used to it by now, say whatever for the vote and then just choose another route. Say they’d never kill another unless that brother’s skin is brown. I’m just telling you the facts, if you can’t take it, the truth naked, to bare bones and my thoughts lately, spitting politics.” — This verse is straight up savage and I am living for it! I find it hilarious that he called Biden a snake. This verse addresses the truth about politics, that even electing a left-wing leader doesn’t fix the system.

“I’m Tony Stark, still embarking on a dream” // “Gone green like Bruce Banner” // “He taught me like Ra’s Al Ghul. Felt like living in Gotham, the people were rotten.” — And to tie it all off, I wanted to take a goofy moment to mention all the superhero lyrics Z added in this song, really showing his personality because I’m such a nerd when it comes to this stuff and it makes me wish that we were friends so I could annoy him to death about it.

#reviews #zayn #yellow metal #cathartic #zayn malik

65 notes · View notes

raydom-gamer · 3 years

Note

I got to lesson 53-54 myself just now so I was hoping to discuss it with you if you're okay with that. My own reaction was similar to yours, but all my ire was aimed at Solomon. Barbatos and MC literally have no relationship prior to this so I have a hard time calling what he did a betrayal. Asmodeus is in a pact with MC, but he's also in a pact with Solomon. He was never "solely" MC's. But Solomon? The trusted mentor? I hope we get more follow up on this side of him in the plot. Otherwise...

/cont/ Maybe my lack of reaction to Barb and Asmo is due to my total apathy of them. But I liked Solomon, really liked him. Now I'm heartbroken T_T and I don't even get comforted. Instead I'm told to suck it up. MC... is a real trooper, for seemingly moving on so quick. I couldn't do the same. Especially not when my face of betrayal is immortalized on Devildom social media forever. Wasn't an entire horror game's plot based on this exact premise? I need someone to make a fanfic now. T_T

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Absolutely, I love people's thought processes and opinions on things.

I also forgot to mention this in my previous post but do to the way Solomon was behaving in the last couple chapters, I honestly suspected that Asmodeus and Barbatos would probably turn on MC but I figured that they would at least give MC a fair shot. Not literally wait for MC to have their back turned on them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You are very right that Barbatos is kind of a wild card because MC really don't have a relationship with him. I'm aggravated with Barbatos because depending on the answers you give to the chapter give you a little more peek into Barbatos the demon. At least to me it felt like you were finally going to get to know him better. Barbatos is also kind of like an enigma because he's always been there through most of the chapters but you rarely hear anything about him outside of just being still go Diavolo's butler and being able to time travel. So throughout the two chapters you get to actually have more conversation with Barbatos and for me it was almost like we are finally making a foundation of a relationship between MC and Barbatos. So knowing that he planned on taking MC's tail no matter what feels like a betrayal to me like the whole foundation that MC were building with Barbatos wasn't made out of concrete it's made of quicksand. Which actually makes me trust him less, I know his loyalty is to Diavolo but the way he's able to hold a conversation with MC like it's meaningful but he also gives you nothing in return. It also irks me in a way because Barbados knows everything about MC from the profile that Lucifer red all the way to the documents that proved MC is human Lilith's descendant. That's why I feel like it was a betrayal with him because he literally knows everything about MC and gives MC nothing about himself to the point where he dances around your questions.

As for Asmodeus, I didn't think about that during my first post that he is indeed both of Solomon's and MC's demon. You are completely right about that. So I am a little less upset with Asmo but I'm still in the same squad as his brothers mad about those photos. I'll put some tanner in his foundation.

Then there is Solomon, I had a problem with Solomon since the beginning of the game. Solomon and Diavolo have the same vibe at times to me that they're both so old and bored that will do nice things for you but they're going to take the piss out of you in the process. Like every time I've seen Solomon do something nice or helpful to MC it's usually for his own entertainment.

After all that's how you got the pack with Asmo was him wanting to see what you were capable of doing if you actually had powers. Powers that if you abused or did something harmful to others, he could have easily take from you.

Then there's the start of chapter 21 where he literally walks into MC's life says hey we're going back to Devildom and teleports MC back without even a regard of their life. Like what is MC was off to see their family or had an important job interview. Nope time to go on an adventure and then he landed you on Satan's head.

Solomon is now MC's mentor which is good because a human who doesn't know how magic works and you're apparently powerful enough that you had an angel rob another angel to keep the peace amongst the three realms. And he volunteers MC into a sorcerer test and does it in the most chaotic way possible. Outside of like a weird dominance thing there was no real need for him to put Lucifer in such a vulnerable position. Especially when he convinced Lucifer's brother's to start that entire video game session where Solomon who apparently was a teammate then announces at the very end that he was the enemy.

This entire two chapters is again just came to setting you up for some kind of weird game to test you somehow only for your teammates to announce themselves as the enemies who then gets control over MC to do whatever they want. Yes they asked harmless request out of MC but to quote Lucifer "Demons can't control themselves when temptation is right in front of them." At a human willing to do anything for them without the ability to say no is quite the temptation.

Solomon is always been kind of a hot and cold relationship with MC but I feel like either he's projecting something on MC considering when MC went to the wizard place with him, Lucifer and Beelzebub. He mentioned that he lost someone important to him and they're still at that place. Or something like that it's been a while since I read the chapter. Solomon just keeps putting MC in situations that would be a lot less upsetting if you would just talk it out. Solomon just likes to wait till people are forced into the situation before even mentioning anyting of useful.

#obey me #answering asks

26 notes · View notes

spaceorphan18 · 3 years

Note

I read with interest your view and that of @hopefulobjectmiracle about tumblr Klaine fandom. Is there more shipping these days than 2010-15? I ask because there seems to be a smaller group that only ship Kurt with Blaine but there seems to be a huge rise in Kurtbastian and Hevans shippers. Likewise, there’s many more pezberry or faberry shippers. And a lot more of those shippers trying to discredit Blaine or Brittany as OTP for Kurt and Santana. There seems to be new younger people joining Tumblr declaring a love for all things Klaine, and then a week later shipping Kurt with everybody else!! Has there been a change since the show aired?

Hi Nonny! :)

Hmmm.... There's not really a clear answer to this because the way shipping evolved is different than people just finding things now.

There are kind of two different things going on here -- Kurt related shipping and non-Kurt (blaine/klaine) shipping. I can't tell you much about non related Kurt things -- however, I will say that Faberry was HUGE when the show was on. It's a subsection of the fandom I never interacted with but it was around in season 1, and loud enough that the show makes nod to it from season 2 forward. Brittana was always around, too, and the reason Brittana became a thing on the show was, partly, due to fans crying out that they should be a couple -- and more than the throwaway joke the writers made in the first season.

I don't know what happened to those ships over time, or how the evolved since the show ended -- I'm sorry :/

But now, I will tell you the epic history of Kurt shipping. (Again. i should really dig out my old notes on this, lol)

Here we go long post...

I found it! I'm going to quote myself so I don't have to write it out again, lol. This was originally from an ask about the BBO (Better Boyfriend Olympics), but it'll work here, too.

Okay, so let’s go back to 2010 when there wasn’t a Klaine fandom, there was a Kurt fandom. A lot of the BBO stemmed out of the Kurt’s Boyfriend Shipping wars of 2010.

Back then, there was just a Kurt fandom, and a lot of opinions about who he should date. Believe it or not, Kurt was shipped a lot with the other guys on the show, there was a healthy dose of Kurt/Finn, but Kurt/Puck was huge, and there was a smattering of Kurt/Mike (I never really did see much Kurt/Artie now that I think of it, which is kind of funny in retrospect, but I’m sure it’s out there.) Anyway - when the show announced Kurt was getting a boyfriend – well, things began to get heated up.

Three big ships emerged

Kurt/Sam - because the rumor was that Sam was originally supposed to be Kurt’s bf (probably not, but that rumor was big at the time). Btw, they were the canoe ship (I have no idea why) and was also known as Kum (rolls-eyes). This ship’s fanbase was so huge and lasted so long, that the show felt the need to address it head on in Season Two’s Rumours (not a joke).

Kurt/Karofsky - Also known as Kurtofsky, they were also called themselves the Pirate ship (god, Idk why, shipping wars are weird, yo). These people were also really passionate, mostly about Dave, but liked the whole idea that Kurt would save Dave and they would have this weird - enemies to loves love affair or something. I don’t know, I could never get past the squicky assault aspect, but whatever.

Kurt/Blaine - which. at the time, was… the biggest possibility? It’s funny cause the other two ships were just as big as the Klaine ship, and really the fighting became over who was going to be the best option for Kurt.

And that’s the thing. Fans of Kurt were so passionate about who was best for Kurt, because everyone had seen him go through hell and back on the show, so his boyfriend needed to be perfect for him. And you know who was perfect (at first) – Blaine. More on that in a second…

However, Blaine brought his own bit of baggage – namely fans of Darren Criss (and/or Starkid fans). Unlike Chord Overstreet or Max Adler, people knew who Darren was before he was on Glee. So his own fandom joined in on the Klaine of it all. At first it was all fine – as the shipping wars continued, it was less about Kurt vs Blaine and more about Klaine vs the other shippers. Well, that was going to change….

Original Song happened and Kurt and Blaine got together ending the question of who would ultimately be Kurt’s boyfriend. And things were nice and cozy headed into season 3. You’d think the Kurt/Sam and Kurt/Karofsky ships would die out, but not really, they stuck around for a long time, and kinda morphed into something else.

See, The First Time happened. And for the first time Blaine wasn’t the perfect prince that he was in season 2 – he had more of a developed personality, and more flaws. And… some people didn’t like it. (Also added to the mix was Sebastian – and the Seblaine and Kurtbastian ships were born, but those kinda go off on their own thing and I’m not really going to bring them up much here.) Anyway, what really got fandom split was Dance With Somebody.

You had two sides of an argument, people who saw Kurt’s POV and people who saw Blaine’s POV – and guess what happened. The two sides began to fight with each other over who was “right” in the argument. (My god…) And thus started what fandom started referring to as The Better Boyfriend Olympics.

See - for reasons I don’t fully understand - instead of seeing that each of the boys have a fault and each were wrong in the episode, each side wanted to say that their side, and their POV was the correct way – that one boyfriend was more oppressed and the other was not as good a partner.

On the Kurt side, though, you had a lot of the old Kurt fans and ships who didn’t like Blaine (and/or didn’t want Blaine as his partner) so they vehemently decided that unless Blaine was the perfect boyfriend again, he didn’t deserve to be with Kurt. Meanwhile, you had the Blaine fans, many of them Darren fans who wanted Blaine to have more depth to him than just being Kurt’s boyfriend, and not being Kurt fans first (or originally) they were going to push back at the Kurt fans who were lashing out at Blaine.

Compounding this was the fact that during season 3, there were so many cast members and characters that unless you were Finchel, you were begging for scraps and your featured episode to come along. Meanwhile - Kurt got a ton of screen time, but didn’t sing much, while Blaine sang a lot more, but didn’t get much story. The Kurt fans resented that Blaine was always singing. The Blaine fans were annoyed that the Kurt fans resented it, and tried to remind the Kurt fans that Blaine barely got any development.

Either way, a war had begun. And then The Break Up happened.

Now Kurt fans had a specific reason to point at – Blaine being a terrible boyfriend. He cheated. He’s terrible. The end.

The fandom was not firmly split into sides - you were either a Kurt fan - a lot of them who HATED Blaine - partly because he was getting more attention at the time, partly cause he did sing more, partly because they were made up of Kurt ships that didn’t work out, and partly cause they saw so much of themselves in Kurt that they projected onto him their own feelings, and loving Blaine was not a part of that projection. Or you were a Blaine fan - who spent a lot of time defending Blaine to the point of exhaustion, and became so resentful of Kurt that they wished Blaine could be with anyone else because Kurt (fans) didn’t understand Blaine and should just stop trying.

Weren’t there any Klainers you ask? Ha, well…. Klainers, people actually liked Kurt AND Blaine were stereotyped into two categories. Category A) the really really loud fanbase (usually on Twitter) that harassed the creators, RM, Chris, Darren, various crew about Klaine every second that they got – to the point that it started to feel embarrassing (that’s probably my own projection). Category B) People who thought (think) that Chris and Darren were (are) in a secret relationship. (Spoiler alert they aren’t, never have been, and never will be.) The two of these categories overlapped A LOT, and many of the fans of one boy or the other just disassociated completely.

You could still be a fan of the Klaine relationship, but you had a preference to which boy you were actually a fan of – you couldn’t like both, or else you were a Klainer, and that was not cool. (I spent a long time NOT identifying as anything, and trying to make sure everything I did and said was equal – a) cause I was new to fandom and b) cause I hated that either one or the other of these characters were villainized so frequently.)

Anyway - Season 4 continued. Adam showed up, and Kurt fans got all excited, but the problem was that a lot of them saw him as the perfect boyfriend again – not a real character but a prop that could make Kurt look good and be everything for Kurt. Look, I liked Adam, I did, but he was underdeveloped, and this weird idea that your boyfriend needs to be perfect in order to be a functioning relationship is just unrealistic. I digress. Meanwhile, we didn’t get a lot of Kurt POV, which didn’t help things, and meant even more projection over his character.

Meanwhile, the Blaine fans had formed their own community, which became viciously defensive of him. I think the whole fandom was toxic during this time for a lot of reasons, and I really wanted to quit it. Many people did – the show wasn’t being fun anymore.

Season 5 came along, the boys got back together, tempers simmered, but the whole idea of the Better Boyfriend Olympics came back every time a conflict happened. Arguments about who was the better boyfriend ensued, gatekeeping as to why their pick was best and why your opinion sucked still ran through the fandom. Not helping was the fact that Cory had died, and the creators, actors, and crew – as well as media – was tired of Glee.

The one nice thing, though was that a lot of the old crowd had moved on by then, and there was an influx of newer people coming in during season 5 (and season 6) – they weren’t here for the season 3 droughts and season 4 wars, and brought in a newer and fresher perspective.

But still - we had the end of season 5 and the summer of spoilers and season 6 to get through. At this point, the Kurt and Blaine camps had moved to their parts of the internet and really not speaking much to each other if they could help it. When an argument happened on the show, the same kind of Better Boyfriend Olympics came up again – one boyfriend was worse than the other, and unless they changed xyz they were not good enough for the other. But at this point, it was incredibly tiring. I know that I was just ready for the show to be done with.

I should say, as an aside, not helping things were the rise of some rather vocal BNF-ish fans, who dug their heels in about their own opinions. The refusal to even acknowledge that one side or the other might be right, or have valid points was not helping anything. A lot of people on both sides refused to even listen to the points on the other side – and instead of being frustrated at the show, the creators, or whatever, they took it against each other, which wasn’t fun to watch either.

Season 6 happened - Blainofsky happened, and that killed enthusiasm for the season on both sides, most people just kind of wanted it to be over. And then the ending came quickly, and I think a lot of people who were just plain unhappy about everything left for good.

The Better Boyfriend Olympics, or this weird competition that always pitted the boys and their fandoms against each other in the name of one being better than the other, leveled off after this. I won’t give myself /that/ much credit - but one reason I created @todaydreambelievers was to give fans of both Kurt and Blaine a safe place where we could enjoy and discuss both boys without the BBO rearing its head. And you know what – it did mend a few hearts.

For the most part, it’s been pretty quiet since. Fandom is quieter, but I think the people who have come into it after the show has ended are a lot less judgmental and argumentative. (I suppose it helps if you know how the story is going to end.) And the cool thing, for me, is finding a group of people who enjoy Kurt and Blaine equally (or respectfully) – and reclaiming the name Klainer as a good thing.

I’ll end by saying this – it’s been relatively peaceful, even with the influx of new people throughout the years, but I have been seeing shades of BBO pop up again. Look, you don’t have to like Klaine to be a fan of one or the other of them. But there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world, a lot of things to be angry and get indignant about. How a fictional couple was written ten years ago is not one of them. Be respectful of people, and know that maybe the side you understand better isn’t the only side worth listening to. ;)

////////////////////

So, I suppose that's part 1 of this full picture. Onto Part 2.

Here's the thing -- I've stayed, mostly, in my little tumblr buble over the past five years -- blissfully unaware that I suppose things were going on around me. Except... they really weren't. Until the pandemic happened, and Glee went to Netflix internationally, and a whole bunch of young kids grew up and started watching the show.

By the time I ended TDB in 2019, there weren't many of us left. I knew there was our small, dedicated group of fans. The tinhatters (the group who thought Chris and Darren were in some kind of relationship. spoiler alert -- they're not). And I know the Kurtbastian fans have been kicking around for a while. But no one was around in huge numbers.

And then boom - pandemic, and I'm shocked (not in a bad way) that this show has already seen a resurgence. The weirdest part, for me, is the fact that not only is history repeating itself -- seriously, people are bringing up old conflicts that have been dead for ages, and old shipping wars I never thought I'd see again -- but I think this new group's relationship with the show is much different.

I think that Kurt is a character whom a lot of people can still identify with. And because he's on his own in the first season, it's still easy to project yourself onto him. And then shipping goes from there. Blaine went from being the exciting option, omg are they really gonna do Klaine?? to -- hey Klaine is the boring canon choice, we can choose who we want for Kurt.

Layer over that years of Blaine hate still circling the interwebs. The echo chamber that Twitter and Tiktok create. And the fact that neither Chris or Darren seem to have the army of fans they once did (well -- Darren does, but they don't really watch Glee anymore). And you get this varied landscape of shipping.

No, some days it doesn't feel that different from the BBO days. The fact that I still get asks about Blaine and TFT car scene or Tested makes me feel like I'm back in 2013. Other times I'm perplexed by resurgences -- such as Kurtbasitan and Kurt/Sam. (Please don't bring back Kurtofsky guys)

But there's a saying -- Same Shit, Different Day.

I think there is an entirely different group of people than the original people watching, and their reasoning for shipping whatever is much different. But they've certainly come to a lot of the same conclusions that brought about the shipping wars in the early days.

At the end of the day - I think Kurt will always been a fandom mattress. But ship what you like and be nice to everyone else. There's enough hate in the world -- no need to dump on people's escapism.

#that's how s.o. sees it #klaine history #klaine #and fandom #did I answer the question?#idk

35 notes · View notes

mira--mira · 3 years

Note

What's your opinion on the Ame Orphans? (Nagato, Yahiko & Konan)

Konan

See this sister post for a shorter but more positive take. I love Konan, but I cannot physically express how much rage I have for her place in the narrative. This will tie into Nagato and Yahiko as well but as I'm mostly focused on Konan I'll put it here in her section. Her backstory was ignored in favor of the boys'. She was pushed off to the side and god it makes me furious. Her powers were incredibly versatile and unique and she was knee-capped at every opportunity to show her true potential. I 100% believe she should have fought Jiraiya with Pain. (Also, their backstory and how fucking creepy he was to her when he acknowledged her at all? Disgusting.) Even after she died (which I hate izanagi very specifically bc of that fight. I love the Uchiha but for gods sake izanagi and izanami are some of the most distilled deus ex machinas that are just insufferable to watch) she was erased from the story. Did she get resurrected with the other Akatsuki? Did anyone mention her again after she died? Was she remembered? Given the same level of Important Legacy as Nagato or Yahiko? Of course not. I think it's easy to point to characters like Sakura to say "Kishimoto doesn't know how to write women" and that's true because we saw Sakura's character throughout the entire run of the series but characters like Konan are pure condensed versions of that to me. She couldn't be a love interest and she didn't fall on the angry/shy duality of Naruto women so, just like Tenten, she was forgotten. I don't usually like speculating about authors bc a single piece of media can't really encompass a whole person and their beliefs but god "I don't know how to write women" is the most sexist bullshit excuse I've ever heard in my life. That's why you read narratives about women written by women. That's why you ask the women you know. That's why you recognize you don't have the lived experience of being a woman and you do the bare minimum of research and so you can realize half the human population are in fact, guess what, human and they don't fall into limited one-note angry/shy/love interest categories.

Nagato

I have no problem with the character of Nagato, all of my issues come directly from the child of prophecy plot point. I despise this plot point. It adds nothing and actively detracts from Naruto's themes about taking control of your own destiny. I also have issues with how the Pain arc wrapped up. I don't mind in the end that Naruto talked Pain down, but I don't like how he did it. Acknowledging he still hated Pain for killing Jiraiya and destroying Konoha was good but...Naruto didn't address the root of Pain's philosophy which arose from the great nations using Ame, a smaller weaker nation, as their personal battleground. Naruto promises to do better but he doesn't explain how he'll do that, how if he becomes Hokage he'll negotiate or threaten the other great nations to leave the small nations alone. Instead, he just quoted Jiraiya’s book and suddenly that makes everything ok again. I would have taken anything more concrete than ‘I won’t give up bc this wouldn’t be my story if I did!’ It just feels like a non-answer in the end, relying too much on Jiraiya nostalgia to work. That Nagato accepted it (without fucking talking to Konan first I might add) irritated me. I wanted him to press back and force Naruto to give an actual answer because this was his people's futures and lives on the line. The last issue I have with Nagato is that he didn't get Konan's input on anything and didn't consider how it would affect her. She went through the exact same thing he and Yahiko did, but was even a second spared on how she felt? No. Nagato decided to go rogue, upset their decade-long plan and killed himself to help Naruto and did he once ask Konan what she thought or consider how his death would affect her? No. And then of course she bears no resentment against Naruto, of course not. And she’s willing to give up on the Akatsuki just like that because Nagato believed in Naruto and she will too despite not having the connection to Jiraiya’s book and logically no reason to flip so late without previous concern/hesitation established. She just will. God.

Yahiko

I don't have much to say about Yahiko, I liked him and his role in the story, I get some Hashirama & Madara vibes from what he, Nagato, and Konan were trying to do, and looking at it from that lens is pretty interesting. Hashirama and Madara wanted to build a village and put an end to the senseless war that killed children, but they were from two of the strongest shinobi clans. The Ame orphans came from nothing and their enemies were the great nations that used their home as a battleground and made them orphans.

#naruto #ask #anon #konan #yahiko #nagato #rant #long post #hopefully this is understandable lol #i tried to organize my thoughts but the more I thought about konan the angrier i got

28 notes · View notes

unexpectedreylo · 3 years

Text

With Fans Like These...

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”-- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I decided to keep quiet on The Affair of the Chair or Chairgate yesterday because I knew it would turn out to be a huge misunderstanding and it would be better to wait until my hunch is confirmed. And alas it has been. Instead of breathing a sigh of relief and learning a lesson about not jumping to conclusions too fast, some so-called Adam stans and Reylos aren’t backing down even with the actress in question clarifying that this was all about Adam accidentally bumping her with his chair while he was performing a scene, which annoyed her, not that he beat her with a chair or threw it at her or smashed it over her head. Some of them were “demanding” he apologize. What??

Maybe I’m an old fashioned but I thought if you’re a fan, you like that person and if an allegation against that person turns out to be false, you would be happy it’s false. But there’s something really peculiar and quite wrong with the Judgy McJudgersons on Twitter and the more you think about it, the more disturbing it is. It goes back to the Lewis quote at the top...people who want to or need to believe the worst about those they don’t like (and there’s a lot of that on social media) will eventually do the same to their friends, their family, the people they “stan,” and even themselves. So here we are.

I’m nobody’s “stan.” I don't blindly worship celebrities. At my age I know that nobody’s perfect and people in the limelight are among the most imperfect and (ahem) complex people you will ever meet. It’s wise not to put them on pedestals.

On the other hand, it’s also wise not to expect any other human being to live up to the fantasy you have of that person in your head, expecting that person to be perfect. This isn’t a fair thing to do to anyone.

You know what else isn’t fair? Automatically assuming the worst about that person the second you hear it, especially from dubious sources. And not acknowledging you made a misjudgment when the truth comes to light. I admit, I misjudged when I considered that at worst, Adam’s a big ol’ diva who doesn’t want people looking at him and throws hissy fits. I don’t think that happened either.

What also disturbed me is how many misappropriated the language associated with rape or sexual abuse. “Believe the victim” was not an appropriate application for this instance; Adam wasn’t accused of any such thing and I think it’s careless to the extreme to try to put someone on the same moral plane as a rapist or domestic abuser without knowing the whole story. Take it from someone with experience in the system: it’s a very serious thing to accuse someone of a crime. But nothing is serious in the online world and that’s a problem. People have tremendous power to utterly destroy lives without any consequence to themselves.

Had this actress not clarified her statements, this could’ve rapidly spun out of control. Someone’s livelihood, marriage, career, and reputation could have been destroyed. (Look up the sad saga of silent film star Fatty Arbuckle.) This isn’t an abstraction or just another white man, this is a human being. This is somebody’s dad. This is someone who’s worked hard for what he has and what sucks about fame is other people are going to start talking crap about you, true or not. He’s in a precarious position in Hollywood because there are lots of rivals who want what he’s got and he doesn’t tick off a lot of diversity boxes. I get the feeling he’s well aware of that too. But he’s got “fans” eager to take bread of his baby’s mouth so they can ride that high horse and collect the woke clout.

With fans like these, who needs antis?

#adam driver #istandwithadamdriver #thisisridiculous #boocancelculture

61 notes · View notes