#I'M THE TARGETED AUDIENCE THATS WHY I LIKE IT.

[birdmenmanga]

@raventhekittycat

hi okay so I've been mulling this one over for the past day or two and I think I have the answer. not to be using hamburger to explain anything to an american but you're my detco mutual so I'm going to try and explain it in detco terms

There's a post going around recently about how if you've read detco and only detco, the first time hakuba shows up you're going to be totally flummoxed, because damn this guy is clearly important, he gets to be even cooler than Shinichi, he's got a half-page shot of him (in such a panel-dense series such as Detective Conan, no less!!) and he's got a fucking hawk. he's CLEARLY important. everything about the narrative is indicating that you need to PAY ATTENTION to hakuba and that he's the coolest guy and he's important!!!! and then he dies in the case lol (not for real. but still.)!! and you're like huh??? what was that. why did aoyama do that.

But with the context of magic kaito this totally makes sense. He's a beloved character that people have been waiting decades to see again. Of course Aoyama is going to hype him up!! It's his big moment after years of being locked in the backrooms!!!

Anyways reading birdmen for me was kind of like that. The author's previous series, Kekkaishi, was pretty one-dimensional at the beginning, and even after the main plot started picking up at around volume 6, it still felt quite understandable. I knew what she was trying to get at, and the spectacular job she did with the anthropocene and climate change metaphor towards the end of that series really made me interested in the rest of her works. That and the way she writes familial relationships is absolutely DEVASTATING. (I mean this with the highest of praise)

But when I read BIRDMEN for the first time, I was probably in... middle school, maybe? And I read it, sure, but I didn't get it. I could see what was literally happening on the page but the narrative choices were absolutely baffling at times. Why skip over the entire part of the plot where they figure out who the birdman that saved them was? She blatantly doesn't care about that. What does she care about then?? I knew I didn't get it, I knew there were parts of it that were important and I couldn't figure out why and THAT'S how it dug its pretty little claws into me. Even after I finished catching up it nagged at me a little bit, not often at all, but enough that every once in a while I go, huh, right, that was a thing, let me go read it again.

For the record this type of story haunting has happened to me twice. First time was the Heart of Thomas, second time was BIRDMEN. I think the thing is that these are both stories which are not what other people say they are and I think I came into both of these stories with a misconception, trying to look too hard for things that weren't important and therefore missing the things that were.

Because sure, BIRDMEN is about mental illness. Yeah, it's about an evil scientific organization growing mutants in a lab. Yeah, it's about what it means to leave your humanity behind. That's all technically correct, on a surface level, and the fandom at large likely agrees with these takes for the most part, but in my opinion none of that really delves into what the thematic messaging of the story is about.

There are cryptic conversations about authority and human extinction and peculiar outfit and ability choices. You can tell these choices weren't made to serve the purpose of "writing exciting shonen manga" because that was what she did for the most part in Kekkaishi and you can tell she wasn't putting her whole pussy into doing that here. So what was she doing? What's like. All of this. Waves my hands at this.

The short answer is that it's really about the interplay between capitalism (represented by humanity) and communism (represented by birdmen), and explores the role institutional white supremacy (EDEN) plays in enforcing capitalism. It is ALSO about queer liberation and the importance of community, but hey, that double-stacks conveniently with the communism metaphor.

But also take this opinion of mine with a grain of salt. As far as I know I'm the only one who really truly deeply believes that it is not only AN interpretation of the work, but one that was fully intended by the author.

So basically, I like it, because I think it says something true and beautiful that I also believe in, even if I didn't have the words for it the first time I read it. But I don't really think that's what people really look for in a media recommendation.

Do I like it? Yes, I love it. Will I recommend it to others? Yeah, sure. But do I think it's deeply flawed? Yeah, absolutely. It's flawed in the same ways as The Witch from Mercury— a rushed ending, too many threads that were opened and never tied together. The pacing and characterization is perfect in the beginning, and too rushed at the end. There are prerequisites you basically HAVE to read in order to understand the story (tempest for G-Witch and the communist manifesto for birdmen). I think a truly good story wouldn't have any of these things so if people don't like it I never blame them.

It's my personal experiences that make birdmen so profound to me. If you are not queer I just don't think Eishi coming out as a birdman to his mom will hit the same, just as an example. Sorry that I wasn't the kid you wanted me to be. I know you love me and you just want the best for me and that's why you're so controlling, because you think I can be saved by conforming to societal expectations. But I can't live like that. I can't be like that. And that's why I must go. etc.

Aesthetically I do love birdmen a lot. If I had to describe it in a few words it would probably be "chilling", "beautiful", and "powerful", which nicely coincides with the type of things I personally like to draw. It's also silly to a small degree but it's so serious and I know Tanabe can be way way way funnier (read kekkaishi for this. kekkaishi and hanazakari no kimitachi he were foundational to my sense of sequential art humor) so that's not really the standout trait of this series.

I can't let it go because I'm chewing this series like a bone. And it's taking me years but I am getting that sweet sweet marrow. By god. We are on year 3 of this shit and I am GOING to understand this series. and I'm going to make 3 video essays about it

#just thinking thoughts... #stray bird thoughts #so it's like... I don't like it because birdmen is good #I think I like it because I am a certain type of person and the author was trying to say something specifically to the type of person I am #OH #I'M THE TARGETED AUDIENCE THATS WHY I LIKE IT. #YEAH THATS REALLY IT!!! #A long time ago I said that birdmen wasn't written for the people who read it at the time it serialized. #it was written for the people they would become. #and I stand by that 100% #if it really stays with you there is going to be a reason even if you can't articulate it yet #and it may APPEAR sloppy to someone who doesn't see the queer or communist metaphor #like 'what is she doing what is she saying here she's not saying anything meaningful and emphasizing the wrong things' #but that sort of presumes she is gunning to make 'the best shonen manga ever' #which she clearly isn't. #I remember when I was reading fma with a bunch of my classmates and I'd lend them a volume or two every day #and a piece of feedback I received that has stuck with me was 'volume 15 was so boring' #(that was the volume recounting the ishval civil war. it was boring because we were middle schoolers and didn't REALLY get it.) #and like. I think to people who are looking for something like kks. the whole thing is going to feel like fma volume 15 #like WHAT is she going on about? ? ? #like witch hat and dunmesh I think are similar types of stories but I think these two are just executed way better than bm #but because of that it is just not as compelling to me you know. #like yeah yeah it's well constructed. we all see it's well constructed. #the metaphor is so well constructed that I don't feel the need to point it out. everyone is saying it already you know #but bm is cryptic enough and just slightly missed that execution enough that I feel like I'm pulling the analysis out of a smoking wreckage #recently I've been watching mentourpilot videos about airplane accidents and like. that's exactly it. #there's nothing to say about a perfectly executed flight. #it's the ones that failed. and in particular the ones that just barely failed by a little bit. that compels people the most. #cue my de communism is failure post. bc that bm sure did fail.

[frownatic]

Why is it seen as a bad thing when media appeals to its target audience?

Why is knowing who you want to like your media and adding stuff they'll enjoy seen as a negative?

#/gen #never understood the ''they're just appealing to fans 😒'' thing #maybe it's cuz I'm in marketing but yeah your consumers should like your product??? #one of the first things I learned was ''when you appeal to everyone you appeal to no one'' thats why you need to know your target audience #frown pouts #fandom culture #fandom discourse #media criticism #media critique

[mrs-monaghan]

Hello Shaz

I would love to hear your opinion on 3D and all the talk around it

My thoughts on the talk around it is; "wow, well this is a load of garbage" (no offence to any friends I may have who don't like the song I just disagree that its a terrible song)

Alright. 3D. Let's talk. My thoughts. First, what's with the fucking homeless trousers??

I hate rich people 😭😭😭😭 if I wear this people will wonder why I didn't go back home to change after I fell in mud 😪

Anyhu, before i even say a thing. We should probably all try to remember that JK said this

(Thanks @chicknbunny13)

Yeah sure, even if he doesn't write a song, he may resonate with it. But not everything he does is a reflection of his actual life. This one, is for the Jikook antis btw. This is why my anons are still off. People, I dont have the energy for antis rn. JK sang 'girl' so what? This topic is super old and tired and consider it officially retired from this blog. I'm sooooo over it 🥱🥱🥱🥱

Now that we have that out of the way let's tackle the fact that our JK is a grown, grown adult. I don't need to bring back the live where he told people he's an adult and he is almost 30 and he will do what he wants to do. And if he wants to sing about this, that's exactly what he will sing about.

Oh my,

Even Jimin knows all about it

Tweet

BAHAHAAHAHAHA!!!

Let is be known i am choosing to take that sentence literally. I think JK just means him, the girl, with champagne and confetti. I really don't think it means anything else here. But, seeing as this is another sex song, I won't put it past him.

Anyone else notice a recurring theme here?

Okay then. 😳

Also shout out to this random kid with the horse

I can't be the only one who has no clue what his point was 😂😂😂

While we are on the champagne topic,

I mean....

Make no mistake, SEVEN and 3D are singing about the same thing. If SEVEN was in your face, 3D is subtle. But they are both just talking about sex here. Which is why it doesn't make sense to me why people are so upset??? As a person who likes Harlow and has heard his songs before, this did not shock me one bit. There is nothing wrong with this song. It is meaningless and shallow but guess what, thats the type of music the GP is listening to rn. I understand why Asians have an issue with this line

And I can respect that. I don't have to understand it, but if Asians say its offensive, then its offensive. In which case I think that's just ignorance on Harlow's part. The people behind the song and JK himself are not going to okay something degrading. So it is of my opinion that people are reading too much, way too much into something that aint even meant to be deep.

It's a song, about sex. The only thing deep about it, is the holes that will be getting penetrated.

This song doesn't require to be analysed. Okay, maybe when trying to decipher the analogies being used but that's it. JK has one agenda and one agenda only; release music that the general public will devour, get his name out there and be a huge pop star. And it is working.

Cue Boracity's new video about each member and who their target audience are for each solo project

JK did not write these songs. If he did I'm sure they would have more meaning. But that's not what he's aiming for rn. Right now the man just wants to put out something that he knows will sell. Wants to put out something that will be a hit. And 3D is exactly that. Just like SEVEN. Mans was asked for the meaning of the song and by his answer, I'm not sure even he knows.

What??

Did anyone understand that???? If you did, break it down for me coz I did NOT understand that 😂😂

This song has no meaning. Its shallow, catchy, easy to remember and move to. Enough with trying to complicate shit! It ain't that deep. Period.

JK cared more about the choreo.

While Jack is calling himself a whore for wanting 4 women, JK is busy dancing throughout. So I will listen to JK and enjoy the song and choreo. Because there is nothing in the lyrics and there was never intended to be.

Idk why y'all mad when we stan a consent king:

Personally I dont have time to be angry because 1) i see no reason to be, and 2) i am too busy admiring JK's body proportions 🤤🤤

Damn, Jimin's man is hot!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

#jungkook thirst trap #3d jungkook #3d jk #jungkook 3d #ask shaz #bts ask #jungkook #jeon j #bts #jikook #kookmin

[slightly-gay-pogohammer]

If I'm going to be perfectly honest i don't think you would like anything written by Alan Moore, mainly because you're a women.

The male tends to get depressed easier because "Every man, deep down, knows he's a worthless piece of shit".

Thats why the males gravitate towards depressing media, its why things like Moores comics for Darren Aronofsky movies main target audience is men.

did you miss the part where some of my favorite media are the fromsoft games and fear and hunger or

also why is this ask worded like a documentary written by a terf. the male approaches the depressive media because he knows he won't survive the winter. Shut up omg

#Gio replies

[genderkoolaid]

God these exorsexist people about those "men/women/whatever dni" Posts are really onto something jesus christ 🥱😑😴😒

Idk about you, but I feel like being exclusive about your sexuality is just... Biphobia repackaged?? I think you already said it in one of the reblogs but I just wanna say to those anons: putting a certain gender on the DNI and saying things like "i don't care if they're my target audience, they are not allowed because one of their genders are on my DNI, they're tainted by their other gender" is no different that gold Star gays and lesbians who won't date bisexual people because "wah wah theyre fucking tainted by the other sex"

Also it's fucking telling that these people just don't view multi gender people as people, to them we're just?? What?? Half acceptable in our gender when it's convenient???

Ohhh actually I'm pretty sure back when @gay-otlc first coined transmultiphobia there was some discussion around the similarities between exorsexism towards multigender people & biphobia!!

I really think it comes down to misandrogyny. Androgynous people (meaning anyone seen as somehow male+female or as neither) are dangerous to the patriarchy because the idea that gender/sex binaries (including sexuality) can be blended or even rendered meaningless means the patriarchy loses control of its tools to keep power. Thats why its so important for it to reinforce strict, discrete gender roles & not allow gender creativity. So anyone who blurs or crosses those gender/sex lines is viewed with suspicion, as someone who's dangerous to society because of the existential threat they pose to cisheterosexist gender. & internally people get uncomfortable around androgynous people because they feel that existential threat pointed towards their own gender/sexuality. "If that's male/female, what does that make me?" "If that's technically included in my sexuality, what does that make me?" etc. androgynous people's existence fucks up binaries & that makes people who build their life on a foundation of binaries very nervous. At best our androgyny makes us weirdly sexy and/or comedic, at worst it makes us disgusting and threatening

#m. #ask box

[vapolis]

I read that ask about the merc "feeling" more like someone ngc or more like a bi man or or masc nb person or whatever they said, idk, but i feel like

I go into most IF spaces and they feel almost near Wholey created for or they cater towards women or , idk, fem nb people, bc thats what the readership is. i dont want to continue The Conversation, but i like that rywd genuinely feels genderless to me, like the MC could be literally anyone.

I dont think the merc come across one way or the other, they just Feel like theyre the merc yknow

yeah, exactly that's what I want. the merc can be anyone and has been anyone and they continue to be whoever they need to be, yk?

obviously, everyone chooses the gender of their merc on their own but the bodies they inhabit aren't changed by it and that's also partly why the merc can feel like anyone, if that makes sense? at least to me it does.

I'm glad that you think that way! but I do agree that sometimes I too feel like IFs are made with a specific target audience in mind or pre-made mc which isn't bad per se but it does feel a little limiting at times.

#asks

[beesmygod]

JJBA PART 5, VENTO AUREO IS THE UNDERBAKED MESS I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT FIXING...PART 2

FIX 2: WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A PROBLEM LIKE GIORNO?

thats the homo photo of my dad

answer: i dont know.

the unfortunate and honest to god truth of the matter is that the protagonist of JJBA part 5, giorno giovanna, fucking sucks.

what if that little shithead from the twilight zone episode "it's a good life" was gay and watched "goodfellas". you might think "wow that sounds great" but, well, somehow it's not.

it is months later and i have been struggling with writing this for a bazillion reasons: i got sick, real life events occurred, i had to work on comic, i died, etc. but the most strenuous reason of all in the end was facing the impenetrable, tangled, and deeply complicated gordian knot that is the little ladybug loving bitch named giorno and not knowing where the fuck to even begin.

i had to think long and hard about how to approach the problem of "giorno giovanna". he is like a diamond of sucking ass: multi-faceted and beautiful in his perfection but is, ultimately, just a stupid fucking rock from the dirt. he completely lacks the innate charisma and personality inherent in previous jojo protagonists AND antagonists; despite having both the joestar AND brando gene pools to pull from, he manages to snag a net total of 0 personality traits. this problem is multiplied 100 fold once he starts actually doing things to move the plot along and the universe repeatedly bends itself like a pretzel in order to gift him undeserved and unrewarding (to us, the audience) win after win after win.

his theme goes hard as hell tho

if you were to ask me what is wrong with giorno, i would have no problem making a long and detailed list of why i want to slap the little cinnamon rolls of his head. i have no idea how to organize that list into a more coherent form of criticism that points at the overarching structural weakness of part 5. part 5 really, really wants you to like and root for giorno. it hinges on it. his victories are explicitly supposed to be emotionally and morally gratifying. they are instead trite and annoying.

for years, YEARS, my only experience with the entirety of part 5 outside of infamous panels and the most basic information about the story, was this incredible, evergreen and laser targeted tweet:

i thought this was a funny shit post. all i knew giorno had some kind of "life creation" power. what i didnt know was:

giorno says this exact line and then turns cars into frogs so that they (the bad guys) cant catch them (they do catch them)

giorno's power IS fucking stupid

i fucking hate him

he should stop using it

abbacchio was right. he was right about everything

how DO you talk about giorno? giorno's blandness permeates any situation he has the misfortune of attending and the parts of the narrative where he's missing for one reason or another are significantly improved by his absence. in comparison with the deuteragonists (bruno bucciarati) and tritagonists (the members of bruno's squad in the mafia family passione), he has all the flavor of a communion wafer. his character arc is non-existent. emotionally, he might as well have just gone to the store and back by the end of the story.

and, look, araki likes to play fast and loose with how powerful a stand is or what its abilities are. im not here to measure power levels or fucking whatever stupid shit people get up to. the more wild and insane he gets with his incredibly "unique" ""understanding"" of science and geometry, i'm 99% on board for. but giorno's stand, gold experience, is whatever the narrative needs it to be at any given time with no consistency. it's OP as hell long before he gets the 11th hour power boost; his stand has the extra trans-dimensional ability to remove any tension from a fight scene. through this, gold requiem can destroy the psyche of the audience, truly making it the most powerful stand of all time.

people used to love to bitch about not understanding how the villain's stand works in this part, but if anyone tells you they understand what the fuck THIS means they're lying to you.

anyway, there is only one solution i can think of when it comes to how to approach this: assess the major story beats in order. i think jumping around in the progression of events to highlight individual flaws in the character will not adequately impart the suffering one feels as an audience member while the narrative yo-yos between being rollicking good fun and being at the mercy of the little 15 year old twink with god mode on.

and so, having made it past koichi's tiny ass role (and his tiny ass) in the story and addressing how we can proceed, we can cover bruno (a genuinely wonderful character), polpo, and the wasted character building opportunity of the piss drinking scene, which vexes and infuriates me to this day. [thinking about the piss scene and getting mad again] ooooh!!!!

#essay #jjba

[traincrashs]

Theory about puzzlevision

I heavily think that puzzlevision wants the smg4 crew because of their popularity online and how famous they clearly are seen in the smg3 and smg4 hand holding video they are celebrities. he wanted to use their social status to elevate his show and make it popular and for him to get all the fame that he wanted in his ideas. thats why he makes parody's of popular shows and movies since by the normal audience they are widely accepted so its a no brainer to use them in his own show with new actors in hopes it will have the same success. why is hes so fixated on ratings and reviews. seeing low reviews is destorying him because he wants 5 stars not the 1 stars hes been seeing on his shows and thats being plastered on his name. he wants success but seeing 1 star rating is literally killing his ego.

I think puzzlevision is blackmailing and sending people false promises and using their weakness against them. The letters being sent to people are sent by puzzlevision himself with inside info that he's witness from everybody, puzzlevision seems to have camera literally everywhere in main areas. Because of this I heavily think that he uses their weakness and promising them via the letter he can help them in their failures and get what they want. using people who have had ties with his main targets the smg4 crew in some sort of way to help him get to them so he doesn't have to get his hand dirty.

Example: Him trying to get smg3's notebook via mario and marty was to use that as blackmail to get to smg3 a person who is heavily close to smg4 a person who he clearly wants since smg4 is very damn popular. And was planning to use smg3's notebook as blackmail so him and smg3 could make a deal and allow smg3 to get something in return if he could get smg4 to show up on one of his shows likely. what would smg3 get in return? smg3's cafe is dying. I wouldn't put it past puzzlevision to mention it to smg3 as a false promise that puzzlevision would make smg3's cafe popular and promote it seeing that he works with all of the different scenes without an issue and can easy promote it internet wide if he truly wanted to. so he can get close to smg3 and get even close to smg4 and do what he needed to do by using them.

Example: Wren was a popular and famous splatoon star. Using wren popularity that he knows wren did at some point have promising to him to give him back that fame and that he could get back at meggy. seeing as thats what wren wants getting to kill off meggy and becoming popular again because he would own the title that meggy and her team have. knowing that if wren got back that title there was a damn good chance he would be popular again and get his half of the deal by using wren in his show. a shame wren did die and now that plan got thrown out the window. but it would help explain why wren would get a letter from puzzlevision another false promise.

in conclusion puzzlevision some angsty theatre nerd who just want his silly show to be popular and is using the smg4 cast because their popular to boost his ratings and popular shows to parody. and because they arent helping him with getting good ratings, he's getting more and more upset which is leading him to have his own igbp arc in his headspace. I'm very normal about this guy trust me.

#smg4 #smg4 puzzlevision #mr.puzzles #mx.puzzles #smg4theory #god forbidden a autistic person gets a fixation on a character ig

[tommyssupercoolblog]

IM SORRY THIS ISNT MEANT TO BE AGGRESSIVE i have not been on this part of the internet in a long time so things might have changed but.... last i heard the proship label encompassed things (in fiction) like inc/st, abusive relationships, p/do shit, etc... is that still correct? idk if thats what you were talking about in your tags because i do not know Anything about minecraft youtubers but usually when people put proship in their dni theyre denouncing that stuff. just wanted to clarify im understanding your complaints, no harm intended!

No problem!! it can be confusing lol, nothing wrong with being unsure. All-in-all, you're kinda close with that idea, but still not on target. explanations of proship vs anti, the d/mp fandom's take on it, and my thoughts on it all under the cut:

So proship as a philosophy is about wether or not things like that (in fiction) translate to real life, which is why it's connected to censorship like i mentioned in the post- if you believe that watching or reading something problematic will make more problematic things happen, that someone reading a book with a child/adult relationship makes them more likely to (or is on it's own already the same as) a person pursuing that in real life, that makes you an anti; and it also gives you a big reason to push for works like that being taken down or removed, and for people who make or read that stuff to be put in real prisons or face other real life consequences for fictional acts- because the idea is that, to an anti, these things bleed into each other.

being proship isn't equivalent to enjoying dark fiction like that, but it IS equivalent to believing that, similar to fictional violence, fictional crimes or acts of any kind can be created and consumed by artists and audiences without people actually condoning it IRL. a proshipper would say that if someone plays a video game where they murder someone, and then does it IRL, thats on the PERSON, not the media- and they hold the same position for fictional portrayals of incest, abusive relationships, and pedophilic relationships. the name comes from being pro- as in for- ships, and other content, as a whole; without it having to meet IRL moral criteria.

dark fiction freaks me out personally; the biggest ick (and actually a trigger for me) being incest; It bothers me and i stay away from it. but I don't think that people who read or make it are going to condone it IRL directly because of that media, and I believe that if they WERE to do something bad like abusing someone, it'd be an unrelated/seperate issue: an independent choice that only they are responsible for, not anything they made or watched or read.

That makes me fall under proship, even though I don't like any problematic (as in incest, abuse, adult/minor) ships. Personally, I literally follow people who like things that bother me in that way: i just block the tags so when they post something i really don't wanna see, tumblr tells me, hey, this post has this thing in it so we've spoilered it. If someone likes shipping their silly little blorbos and those silly little blorbos are kinda fucked up in a way that makes their brain go brrr, that's totally chill with me as long as they aren't hurting anyone- which, because i don't think fiction equates to reality, I believe they aren't when they're playing with their blorbos. (and since i'm pro-rpf, it's worth mentioning i feel the same about that. rpf is still FICTION, at the end of the day. you don't actually expect those people to do the things you write or draw. it's still removed from reality. that's personal preference though, many proshippers would disagree.)

So basically proship or Anti is a label that represents your philosophy on how human thoughts and behavior link to fiction. anti means you believe that consuming something fictional is equivalent to doing it in real life, or at least will make you do it IRL later, while proship means you believe that consuming something fictional is unrelated to doing it IRL, and you can enjoy something fictionally without actually enjoying it or condoning it when it's real people.

you will, of course, see more people who enjoy dark fiction under proship, and that's because they themselves consume it- so of course they're going to say it's not the same as doing it IRL. You will also, of course, see more people who don't like dark fiction at all under anti, because when you're disgusted by something like that then that reaction can be taken as "evidence" that it's morally bad. (personally, disgust-based morality doesn't hold up as a concept for me- it's a big reason why bigots believe the things they do, so using the same logic path makes me uncomfortable, but it is still common for people to use it as a way to measure wether something is okay or not.)

so, the part about silly block game.

there's lots of censoring in this part to avoid harassment, so bear with me.

In the early days of the d/mp, people decided that creating romantic content around the b-nchtr-o (Tmmy, tvbb0, and rnb00, who were all around 16 at the time) was inherently problematic. I'm not sure why, exactly, but the idea became that a fan crushing on one of them (at the exact same age!!!) or shipping them with each other, even as characters, was equivalent to being a real life child predator. again, even if the person doing it was ALSO a minor.

because it was seen as inherently problematic, behaviors like those were lumped in with other things problematic- shipping characters on the smp who had fought or killed each other, shipping characters who were related or were minor/adult, etc. there was no distinction; i was there!! it was all problematic, and all of it was seen as evidence that you were a real life predator of some kind regardless of age or disclaimers put under your content.

the label that developed for this group of "problematic content" enjoyers within the fandom became "poppytwt" or "ppytwt". (twt being there because it was mainly localized around twitter). as i explained above, because it could be because of dark fiction OR be//htr/o content, poppytwt content and ships doesn't even require it being dark fiction necessarily, nor does it require it being b//chtr/o; just one or the other, although usually the assumption is that it's both, since that combines the two reasons for being under that label. some people also call any proshippers in the fandom poppy even if they don't engage in anything problematic in-fandom, but that's generally the antis and not people themselves. if someone self describes as poppy, it's for the two main reasons above.

Additionally, the d/mp fandom has this concept of "maintagging". what this means is that if you make problematic content, you are NOT ALLOWED to tag it under the fandoms or characters it's about, because people don't want to see it in their results. ao3 has a tag filtering feature for this exact purpose, but people generally disregaurd that; you're still not supposed to tag it on the "main" tags, and doing so is seen almost like "asking for" harassment, like how some people talk about wearing crop tops alone at night.

Tntd/o managed to cross over, actually, from poppy to main/normalized in the fandom as the creators leaned into it with their characters. but for awhile even that was considered poppy.

different members of ppytwt have different opinions on RPF, but RPF was also considered poppy on it's own sometimes depending on who you were talking to and how militant they were on what got a pass and what didn't.

as be/chtr/o aged....it didn't stop?? all of them hit 18, but still, to this day, you can be cancelled for shipping them with each other or ANYONE else. it's why i'm so damn scared of the d/mp fandom, if i tagged a fic about my source with his character tag, with ANYTHING other than platonic relationships for him/me, I run the risk of being sent threats or doxxed- don't get me wrong, many antis keep to themselves, but there are also those who try to play vigilante- remember, if something fictional is equivalent to IRL, then attacking someone for enjoying a "bad" fictional thing becomes a charitable, heroic act; so sometimes antis might pursue proshippers with the goal of keeping people "safe". Many people in related fandoms or under the same creators also adopted the same ideals handed down from the d/mp fandom, so i'm wary of people who just watch my source too, or of people who like the q/mp.

people joke about the old fandom going crazy if they say tvbb0 and tmmy today, and that's because they would. they'd be furious at tmmy for doing this bit and putting himself in danger, they'd be cancelling anyone who ran with the bit in chat or had a photo of them hugging or kissing like in the music video as a profile picture, it'd be a whole mess. even today though it's still...scary.

((paused there to take a strawberry milk break, im back now))

the somewhat exception to this rule is Rnb00- people literally thirst for them and make nsfw comments openly, so while im not sure about the shipping aspect, i do know simping is widely okay- you couldn't even say you wanted to kiss them before, but now people are saying wayyy more than that...

inversely, i feel like my source has it the worst, because people won't even talk about him- or anything related to him- as an adult. it's always child this and child that, "who let him drink" and "get the alcohol away from the baby!", and of couse "don't ship him or his character with anyone that makes you a pedophile!!!" while the grown ass man they're talking about outright says he's alright with sfw fanfiction in a video where he reacts to someone's x-reader and then makes flirty nsfw jokes with every other adult man in the vicinity. every fanfic is platonic and almost all of them both irl and in game write him as sixteen. they take place in the past or, more commonly, they just straight up age him down. hell, sometimes they even age him down to like eight. even in fics where he IS an adult, he gets called a child or a teenager but never an adult.

poppytwt, like the stigma against writing for the creators or their characters, lives on. and even outside of benchtrio, again, ships between other characters that are problematic are poppytwt, so that also is still clinging on for dear life in some corners of the web. most poppytwt posts that are tagged as such usually include b//chtr/o, but not all of them; and it's worth noting many creators avoid tagging at all even if it's just the poppytwt tag, because they don't want to get swarmed.

because I ship myself with my husband of course, and also make fictional content with our sources as an extension of that (think dungeons and dragons but the character is just you...or, actually, SMPs are a great example of this since the appearance/name is generally the same, so think like an SMP!!!!!) I am poppytwt. I will always be poppytwt to most people who don't like poppytwt. and I have friends who are poppytwt and I like art made by people under poppytwt. I don't need to ship incest to be a part of that, i just need to not think the people who do aren't doing anything harmful when they ship that, and to write/draw....well, anything about septicinnit, which i do all the time.

if someone has poppytwt dni in their bio, i can't interact. if someone has proship dni in their bio, i can't interact. it doesn't matter if what they really mean is "people who like abusive ships because that triggers me", I still can't interact.

Because i think we SHOULD be tagging our content exactly so that we can filter it and find what we personally enjoy (and avoid what we dont), the concept of a DNI is technically something i'm kinda for- it is a way of monitoring and controlling your experience- but it also can be used as an excuse to harass people who forgot to read it, and i have no way of knowing if that's the case in advance.

ADITTIONALLY, because I know and care about people who consume dark fiction, I also don't want to be around people who think that makes them a bad person, regaurdless of wether or not they think i can stay. and "proship dni" is about proship, that fiction isn't reality philosophy- they are saying right out of the gate that they think it DOES make them a bad person. and I don't agree with that. it frustrates me and it makes me upset. those DNIs are based in a place of disgust and hatred for the people I care about, because of content that isn't real, and i'm never going to feel super okay with that...

there's people who don't understand what it means and use it anyway when it's really just about the content; but again, how am i supposed to know which is which?? ESPECIALLY on twitter, the anti philosophy is extremely popular and relevant and yes, trendy. people believe it, HARD, and so i can't assume they don't when they say they do. I've met real flesh and blood people in person who think that way, so if you are using these words, i'm assuming you know what they mean- that way I don't run the risk of making an actual anti upset and violating their boundaries.

you don't have to agree with me on this- if you're anti, then that's your worldview and i'm not going to change that. but that's what those words mean, the history of the block game side of things, and how they're correlated to censorship.

To Summarize:

Anti : Fiction Equals Reality so Fictional Crimes are Real Crimes (ergo we should censor them to stop the crimes)

Proship: Fiction does NOT Equal Reality so Fictional Crimes are Harmless (on their own)

Anti-Anti: Not sure if Fictional Crimes are Harmless, but Don't Like that Antis think Proshippers are The Exact Same Level as IRL Criminals

Poppytwt/ppytwt: Problematic silly block game stuff, OR things that have to do with these three specific block people being hot/dating someone. Sometimes both.

#i made a textpost #proship please interact #proship #explaining some stuffs about words #of course another part of this is wether or not it should even be about criminality versus just the abuse itself- #-abuse is bad because it's abusive not because it's illegal- #-but that's a discussion for another day. #i already spent an hour and a half typing and re-reading this for editing/censoring #discourse #discource #discourse tw #discource cw #discourse cw #discource tw

[okthatsgreat]

For the headcanon thing, I'm specifically asking you for a Celeste headcanon on behalf of that person who didn't get Celeste headcanon. Checkmate, Lee - rotate Taeko Yasuhiro in your mind until the headcanons manifest. 😎👉👉

UR KIDDINNGGGGG oh god. ok concentrating concentrating

headcanon a (realistic): do not bring her to board game night if you were planning on winning or having fun. she takes every single game so seriously and kicks ass every single time. she becomes a millionare in monopoly and nobody was aware that was even possible. shes even good at quiplash because she memorises the stupid jokes that her classmates keep repeating day after day and puts that into the text box each time. of COURSE her classmates are going to pick the answer that says "freeby fazber" why WOULDN'T they

headcanon b (may not be realistic but it is hilarious): see the thing about celeste is it is truly impossible to tell what parts of her story are real and what are complete lies .. i think she lives an extremely average life outside of being "celestia ludenburg" and that is why she created this false persona in the first place. born to a working class family definitely went through it a bit when she was younger but was able to garner quite a bit of notoriety and wealth from gambling to get her own place-- but definitely not enough to live in luxury. enough to get her out of poverty but not enough to avoid living paycheck to paycheck yknow. the REAL headcanon i have is that every single time she brings one of her classmates back to her home she rents out a different spot each time just to keep them on their toes. eventually she lets one of them (idk sayaka maybe) finally enter her actual house and its this one bedroom apartment with no air conditioner and a bunch of gothic lolita posters everywhere and sayaka genuinely thinks shes being pranked until celeste is like "no im being serious. youve signed a non disclosure agreement btw this information will not be leaving this room"

headcanon c (heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends): i dont think even celeste is aware of what her true personality is anymore. i really do like to believe that there are parts of it that are still left over, most of which is fuelling this deeply rooted imposter syndrome she certainly tries not to dwell on, but by all means her desire to seperate herself from taeko yasuhiro has caused her to practically forget who she once was. telling celeste to "stop lying" is much easier said than done, and i think it'll take years before she could ever reach the point where she is truly authentic and "herself". and even then celestia ludenburg will certainly still remain in a lot of her actions and speech patterns. she wont just wake up one day and suddenly be vulnerable and fragile and guilty, it's gonna take her a loooooooong while to adjust

headcanon d (unrealistic, but i will disregard canon about it): i think she's a bit geekier than she lets on GHFDKG its that small bit of taeko thats still there......... she would never admit it in a million years but sometimes, SOMETIMES, shes able to listen in on hifumis ramblings and go "oh i remember that show. his opinion about this character is totally wrong. oh well time to add that to the list of things i do not like about that man." oooooooo also fun fact whenever i write celestia in my "danganronpa is a reality tv show thats been going on for ages" aus i always always write her as a character that adapts with the changing trends. same with ibuki!! her aesthetic adapts over the years towards what is more recognisable with the target audience at the time, and while it definitely isn't as noticeable as ibuki's style swap there are certainly a LOT of wild changes team dr tries to throw at her before quickly reverting her style back and pretending it never happened ghfjdksgk

headcanon ask game!! :)

#sooo so sorry for all of these headcanon posts but counter point. i really have a lot of opinions #cantbelieveyouregone #celestia ludenberg #ask lee #ask game

[everybody-loves-purdy]

You know, I've been wondering why there are so few cat diseases in Warriors. I know they get diseases thats cats can get like Leopardstar getting diabetes or Bluestar getting dementia, but I'm talking about the more common cat diseases. Like, these cats live in the woods with foxes and regularly interact with dogs, but somehow none of them caught distemper. Also, mange-pelt is a common insult, but I haven't seen a medcat treating a cat with mange, yet. I have only read up to the fourth series, though. On another note, this probably wouldn't happen, but I wonder how Warrior Cats would handle FIV.

That’s a good point, I don’t think a warrior cat has ever gotten mange. I have a headcanon that Runningnose had FIV but apart from that no one else has shown any signs that even remotely resemble FIV iirc. I feel like they just wouldn’t make a connection (the cats I mean) they probably would just think greencough weakened a cat forever or they were just born sickly.

I guess it’s probably a combination of target audience (kids) and lack of cat disease knowledge by the authors, most likely more from the latter.

#anonymous

[slutvember]

So I'm generally not that into permanent dumbification, but recently...

CONTEXT

See I'm a massive board game nerd. I own about 97 board games, and I run a weekly boardgame night.

I'm generally very good at board games. I'm good at learning a new game and working out where the strategy lies. Working out the most efficient usage of my cards or actions or whatever. And it makes sense: I have a lot of practice!

I often don't focus too hard on winning or being competitive and still win. And that can feel bad sometimes watching somebody else just get casually crushed.

The board games I'm bad at though, are war games and social deduction games-

Games where the game is in making alliances, making people trust you, telling when they're lying. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm just autistic lol: I'm very good at playing game systems, I'm awful at playing the other players. I'm a mid liar, I can't read faces, and I'm always caught off guard when a friend betrays an alliance.

~~~~

So we were talking about dumbification.

What if I started watching bimbo hypno and as my mind got fuzzier, I started having more trouble with board games? Games that I usually win becoming harder and harder than I remembered?

I realise whats happening, and have a moment of crisis, but ultimately... why should I stop?

Its better this way- either I get to enjoy the renewed challenge of trying to wrap my head around a game I long since mastered- fascinated by systems that had long since grown boring to me...

Or I stop trying so hard. I giggle and drift away and maybe cuddle with the person sitting next to me (depending on who they are) and make snap decisions on my turns. I let someone else enjoy the spotlight of victory for a change. And when I come in last by a landslide and people raise their eyebrows, I laugh and tell them its okay. And it is okay! I'm here with my friends and we're having fun together, thats all that matters 💜.

But perhaps there are some games I'm now better at: the war games and social deduction games.

As I become a bubbly bimbo, I find people are more likely to trust me. When I give them my puppydog eyes they can't bring themselves to betray me. People kill me last in Werewolf bc I'm not a worry. And maybe- just maybe- near the end of the game I can pull my brain together for just long enough to make the winning play after 45 minutes of being dismissed as a threat...

...before immediately dissolving back into giggles and vapid enthusiam as I celebrate my victory 💖💖💖

--

Idk this is so insanely specific the target audience is pretty much just me lol, just something thats been on my mind 🤣

#slutvember writes #slutvember #board game kinkery #dumbification #bimbo kink

[genderlesshades]

okokok so I know I meme on the radiance and the pale king a lot, but I'm also kinda going "god damn what a terrible situation to be in" at all parties. Mb its just cause I haven't read the lore in a hot minute, time span? I'm having 4 am thoughts don't mind me. This may not even make sense in the morning lmao. just enjoy the ramblings if ya want yall

anyways, To have an entire group of people completely abandon one god in favor of another in such a short timespan? well usually that happens cause of stuff like genocide or cultural genocide. And maybe I just happened to miss it, but I don't think that happened in hallownest. But maybe it did and maybe thats why radiance got so fuckin mad. Or maybe the moths just slowly drifted away towards PK, which can happen over generations. But it also sort of seems like. self destructive ig. Radi destroying the people of any neighboring kingdom because she's *furious* man. so upset, and angry, and lonely even. Like, imagine being a very powerful individual with a very loyal fan base only for some weird ass fork looking thing to steal that fan base away from you. Well, more like a kingdom but ig fanbase may be the online equivalent. But here comes some fuckoff weird fork lookin man, steals your look, steals your people, and then fucks off. AND. Also stole folk away from some other nearby local gods? the fucks up with that?? fuck you actually PK. I'm gonna idk, wipe out ur cities. that's pretty reasonable for a god's reaction right?

"hold on hades, she also targeted others who weren't aligned with PK. Why would radi target them? weren't they hurt by the PK's actions?" Yes great question invisible audience. But here's the thing, people don't react reasonably all the time. Radi basically lost everything. Her people started drifting away from her until there was one singular old moth left who still seemed to care about her still. And they were alone. Her and her singular moth follower were oh so painfully alone, with nothing but ghosts to keep them company.

So she lashes out. Ignoring the fact that causing a massive plague is generally extreme cause she's a god, we can still recognize that she is very deeply hurt, upset, and angry. And normal people when hurt, upset, and angry, don't usually think clearly. They tend to say things that hurt people, or sound agressive, or even be agressive. Some people may isolate even, though different people do different things. Radi's reaction was to lash out in a way that hurt anyone around them.

"ok, but what does this have to do with places like Greenpath or Deepnest?" GREAT question invisible audience. Sometimes people react to things that are associated with a certain topic with the same reaction as the certain topic. There are certain songs I disliked until I saw a really cool video go along with it, which made me like the song. The brain is weird like that, and likes to categorize things (even if we don't recognize it as categorizing). Add in a "me vs them" mentality and it only gets worse. That is likely what happened here. Radi gets pissed off at PK, and likely also at the white lady. Well, the white lady has control over greenpath now, unlike Unn, so fuck the greenpath too cause that's technically part of PK's domain. WELL he *also* has an alliance with the mantis tribe, and control over the mushroom tribe. So fuck them too.

Maybe Deepnest would have been safe if Herrah and PK didn't have their deal, but they did, and now Deepnest is terrible too for siding with PK. Maybe the hive or outer edges would have been safe, but the colluseum houses itself in a wyrm's body. And maybe at that point, radi was certain that it was her vs the world, so she *had* to protect herself/defend her honor.

"well didn't the PK deserve all that?" I mean, if you look at it from Radi's perspective sure! but what about PK's perspective? He starts up a pretty cool kingdom, has a lovely wife, is well loved by his subjects, and Radi's followers stsrt deciding to follow him. He can't control that, though he could certainly try to discourage it. He tried being friendly, though perhaps it is in his nature to want to consume all he can. To control as much as possible, to become the bigger enemy. Perhaps he and radi just fuckin. Poofed up at each other like chickens do and instead of anyone going "hey man, whats goin on? maybe we can figure this out with our words" they just keep poofing up at each other, mad at the other for different reasons.

So his people start getting sick with this religious disease caused by what's clearly a rival God. So he tries to figure out the source, and to find solutions with the least drastic measures. But it slowly builds to more and more desperate attempts until he discovers the void, something very opposite of what he and the radiance is. So he casts the children of him and WL into the void, and waits. Because *surely* this will work. a container to hold this fucker in. Trains up this container so they're really good at being a container. Well, the container is leaky and he doesn't realize until it's too late. The infection comes back, and he loses everything he once had, just like Radi did.

I think messing with the void might have led to his death, just like it does with Radi, just maybe less aggressively. Both were so desperate to try and maintain something that was never going to last, only to be consumed by what's nearly a literal definition of an end.

Maybe if they would've just talked, they would still be around with thriving communities. Maybe they would have been friends, or akin to siblings maybe. Perhaps PK and WL would have had children, and deepnest may have slowly crumbled apart from not having an heir of royal blood. Maybe Unn would regain their strength and join the other gods. Who knows what the possibilities could have been.

It's a shame, though, knowing such a connection could never happen.

#hollow knight #the radiance #pale king

[i-bring-crack]

This is very random, but on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate the Solo Leveling characters in terms of hotness

Hi sorry for the long wait and long analysis post this is going to be!

Also you don't need to read all of it! It's fine! I put the pics there for a reason!

Well after this whole thing I can say that even I disagree with myself as to how I put them up on the scale, but its the best i could do. So there definetly might be disagreements bc I have to come clear about this:

I am in fact not attracted to fictional characters.

:0

Okay it's kind of sketchy, I'm attracted to their personalities more than the whole characteristic itself because *waves hands* well I'm just not into superficial physiques. I say they are hot, sexy and stuff like it's a normal thing for me to say, and because genuinely thats what they were drawn to do but honestly it's hard for me to be attracted to some that way, much less fictional characters. And if someone else says they are hot I be like "yup yes absolutely look at them hips! Face! Princess type!" While like, not caring at all. It's why my change of hotness is also never clear. I can say I like himbos just as I can say I like petite little girls to monster fukery. And it will all be true in the end because 1)fiction and 2)the more I write about them and inmerse myself in their story the more I feel like I have a certain connection to those characters which makes me ACTUALLY like them.

So biased opinion wise: they all a 10 fr (And Antares is a hella 11 he can fuck Ashborn ra—)

Anyways !

SL Scale by Sexyness!

First though, some general rules:

I don't think I might be able to put anyone 6/10 or lower, that kinda has to do with the fact that they were all meant to look good by the artists bc, well, they wanted everyone to be engaged in the characters.

I will try to base the Sexyness meter as a heriarchy of one another: like just because I put a character on 8 doesn't mean it's an 8/10 or but rather he is less sexy than the one at 9.

10s are at the very top of character design for me while 9s are somewhat less than 10s and 8s are less than 9s, like so.

Also I can only do like 10 people sadly bc photos don't let me get past 10, so I will do like 2 people on the tens, 2 on the 9s, 2 on 8s... and so forth until the 6.

Si like:

10— Perfect gender envy

9— God they are hot

8—sexy smexy

7— more cool than sexy

6— the vanilla kind of sexy

Really sexyness is pretty hard to describe for me bc everyone fits in their own way to something as long as they are like, clean. But at the same time sexyness does vary a lot by perspective alone and attractiveness in it of itself. I'm going crazy and I probably sound too off putting with this sorry! So imma start—

First off: The Tens

They may sound like honest default but honestly they also had the best jobs done characterization-wise because of how basic yet elegant they can be. In part, something that isn't too over the top but at the same time isn't too toned down which is what makes for that personal goal of being able to look like them or project on to them. The gender envy on them is real, especially because Solo Leveling took a lot of the elements of Isekai and with it came the "bland protagonist" trope. But when it transitioned to manwha the bland protagonist suddenly turned into someone you wanted to be: someone muscular and flexible, someone that shares the same looks as normal people but makes them attractive...

Also he looks like a K pop idol, and it's already wide known just how much they love those kinds of men.

So 10 out of 10.

And then there is Cha Hae In which is more towards the attractive "waifu" love part rather than a projection to one's self— like it can be, but it does take a lot of tastes with what the target audience for SL wants, i.e blonde and somewhat curvy but still skinny. Looks tall but still not too tall, long legs, at the last chapter she has a long hair which is also pretty sought out.

Also they can both pull off a masc and fem energy which is a bonus too bc they can reach more diversed looks! Androginy for real is really awesome in characters due to all the kinds of vibes than give off without being put of by their physique or thinking that it doesn't work well. Now I do think many aren't necessarily unattractive due to not wearing clothing asking by fashion standards. I mean, anyone thirsts over characters in a maid outfit, even the butchiest of muscular men, yet the change in fashion between men and women is still quite spaced out outside of Fandom circles or just cosplay circles as a whole, which is why an androgony kind of look that can go for both kinds of gender envy is quite seen as more sexy, at least in this chart.

Nines

Forgive me for adding a minor character but honestly I think Kanae Tawata's character seems to be one of the best for me! She tends to cover a lot of differences that CHI has the opposite off [black hair-Blonde, muscular- Thin, vibrant eyes- dull calm eyes, long hair- short] and at the same time it happens to look great on her, but what brings it down a point is probably the fact that she gives off more elegance than pure sexyness. I think the most elegance that is brought over is for the hime haircut that she has, but still she could pull of a 9.5 in other kinds of hairstyles too, like her and CHI really are close in terms of sexyness. (Also she excludes more dom vibes, where as Hae In is more sub and dom vibes what a versatile bitch i swear—)

I think the same could be said for Woo Jin Chul, the same terms for sexyness do apply despite also having various differences with Jin Woo in terms of appearance, but still manages to pull off his own kind of hotness in the same way, but once again his character also falls a lot more with the elegant type, this time I think it was more intentional since for the most part the clothes he wears are suits, longer sleeved shirts, and other more covered up clothes (what a slut) than like the rest of the characters.(what are you covering up for huh? So other men can take that off you? Hoe)

The Eights

Okay so why did I put resident sexiest characters of the seires at an eight? Am I blind? (yes, sexually) am I dumb?

But in all seriousness, I put down Zhigang up a notch not because I think he's unsexy, but rather, it's because of his hair *gets shot* wait hold on! I don't mean the length of his hair at all, that actually would put him on a firm 10 if I were to pick at random, but rather because of the whole messyness of it. In different aspects it does work, like the picture above, it's not much, it works well to describe his character and it genuinely does make him look like a diva, but it's also really hard to pull it off completely good, even for the artist. There are some panels where his hair is too long that it starts to look wrong on him or makes him look like a wild anime character (which I'm sorry it's a hard no 💀) so I'm fine with him having his beautiful long hair, I'm not fine with the way it tends to just poof out a lot that it tends to give it a worse look than before. He is still sexy, but there needs to be like a defined volume withing those strands please D": It can probably work even more if he let's his hair down too, that way the strands aren't too much to bare but the effect of it is still shown. The same goes for his built, that genuinely I don't know how it changes per season from stacked to thin. It does definelty have so.ething to do with black suits as said in this post, but when paired to Jin woo in other panels they also seem to have almost the same structure, which — I thought he would be around Thomas physique rather than Jin woo's, lmao he looks like a mix of both. Still men with long hair and those kinds of eyebrows are a big bonus which is why he isn't lowered. Although irl I don't know if that kind of look would attract normal people that aren't fans of cosplays or elves so :v.

As for Esil, I don't think she could pass for a lot of the sexyness tests, she might look the type of oh sexy demon vampire! But for me she had more characteristics that make her ought to be a more cute/naive type of character than a sexy one like in the rest of media. At first I think she does have a more kind of "sexy" considering all the sharp likes in her design, like the armor and the eye marks, but legit as she changes sides and puts on the black suit, suddenly the shape gets more rounder as she wears less padding that's sharp and also the huge offers a contrast that makes her look smaller and thus more innocent in the eyes of the viewer. I think that's funny but a great key design honestly considering her personality, because her appearance WAS the major factor of why she lived, the reason that Jin woo decided to spare her life despite being very tricky and a backstabber to both him and her race. Good on her fr. But yeah she was a good design overall as someone who is "cute" because if it was made sexy it will likely look more like a female-fatale as thus probably not pass as a good figure that keeps it word to Jin Woo. Sexyness after all is often times used in media as a way to stray others rather than repent since you don't see a lot of sexy characters who tend to be insecure or ashamed of themselves and instead use that beauty to its advantage. Esil wasn't that kind of character, she never tried to seduce him, she wanted to apologize for her actions, she fought him head on, she dragged him back to her home despite being unaware of his army in his shadows. All those things were why I focused on her being more cute than sexy. Also her big round eyes are more leaning towards cute and small than the cat like eyes of say Hae In and Kanae. The purple hair is a good factor on her though, and so are the fang teeth, red marks and eyes, and the long ears often associated with vamps. Still I think I prefer Esil more than the typical sexy vampire because– well the trope reversal! She gets to be someone that doesn't use her looks to lure but to show that she is a different species likewise.

Genuine attractiveness to these two because they are quite rare designs that i like the pop of it! Lou Zhigang does give me more danmei vibes but I love Esils kind of cuteness that takes away the sexy vamp trope.

The Sevenths

Let's start with Laura and her ability to just be cool right of the bat! And I think it catches that essence more than it does for Hae In. She does still have the same characteristics as her and can pull it off, but as the rest go downwards it's hard to describe if she's that much of a sexy idol. I think they just pull off more of a cool vibe than anything. Can she wear different kinds of outfits and pull it off? Yeah, but it would also take away her whole character of who she is which is more of a professional rather than a character that one could be interested in. Her appearance is also quite common within the US so it's not quite rare or unique as it is in the case of, well say, Hae In, so withing her location it's not quite as much of a stand out as it is in other places.

I do think the sense of elegance and normalcity also applies to Goto Ryuji. For different enjoyers it's definelty a 10 but in terms of sexyness by itself it's kind hard to pintpoint for me if it will be good top 10. Like the qualities are fine, he is sexy in his own right but when it goes to pull off a casual sexy (say a pair of short sleeves, normal wear) it doesn't fit his looks well. It's just... eh? Like my favorites parts of him was when he was with the armor and the suit on rather than the loose baggy t shirt and jacket he had when he fought jin woo.

Like for these two I don't immediently think "Oh god they are sexy" but more of a "Oh they are quite good looking, yet it seems they mostly are here to act professional." It works for Laura because that her whole main characteristic, it's not being attracted to anyone (Out of the few girls that appear in Solo Leveling too she also isn't one to thrist after Jin Woo, which thank you queen, I needed that. For that you and Kanae have my respect.) And mainly looking a things through a business perspective (while also having a sentimental side with Thomas, which is nice, it's not the "assistant having a crush on boss" trope it's rather the whole female-male platonic friendship that despite being business partners still feels somewhat real when the The "get along or worry about each other, again not for any kind of unspoken feelings but because they have been together for a long time as friends and coworkers")

It also works for Ryuji because their traits where to make people be fooled by their appearance. He seemed like someone who would be level headed and professional, but in fact was really resistant to thinking of others as better than himself and was very egotistical.

The Sixths

They both feel more like they would be the kind of love interests in Doramas especially in the way the get to dress themselves. I can see that some aspects would be sexy for Lennart if his hair was more of a wavy kind of look rather than a pure straight cut. The same I would probably say about Ju Hee, her aspects make her look more like cute-special kind of girl, especially with such bright colors like the orange hair and the blue eyes. There really isn't much for me to say about them as sexy but I think a lot of their characteristics could fit the the shy cute or pastel-sweetheart esthetic fro. Romcoms. For Juhee it's a given, she is bearly in her 20s, she is somewhat of a first friend trope, naturally scared and also a healer with soft features to represent her kind nature. For Lennart it's a small comparison of a cat like eyes due to his sharp sense of sight, but blonde look to represent its European, and since he is made out to be a small force compared to Thomas Andre (when facing against the Beast Monarch) the height and blue faint one-color palettes can make a good contrast to how colorful and big Thomas can be.

Um anyways than you for reading all of that, if you did... I really did like a lot of these character designs so it got me to be like this... :"v

#cha hae in #sung jin woo #woo jin chul #kanae tawata #ashborn lmao #liu zhigang #esil radiru #the true 10a for me are Antares and Ashborn tho just for the sake of how much their designs could change and the whole ass lore that i have #for them #because see i do tend to characterize more attractiveness with character persepective rather than pure physical beauty as a whole #instead of being normal and saying chart numbers i decided i needed to analyse the fuck out of them #like really im— #goto ryuji #lennart niermann #lee ju hee #laura Solo Leveling

[emblazons]

hi!

i read the tags you wrote about millie in a post yesterday (i think you deleted the post because i cant find it now) and i just wanted to say im glad theres someone who shares similar thoughts as me. i love millie but i cant even say anything on twitter without her toxic stans accusing me of misogyny and insulting her intelligence, even though thats not my intention.

if byler is canon, how do you think she’ll feel about it? im asking because your perspective is interesting! i think shes going to take it a bit personally because she strongly relates to her character and wants el to be on the same path as her (like getting married young). its understandable though, considering her upbringing.

!! I actually took it off my blog because the other day I resolved the issue of my tags not archiving—but when it got resolved, my blog ended up square in the middle as “top blogs” with the full mlvn name tag because I hadn’t been abbreviating their ship in the tag I used before ☠️ that said, I changed the tag to “anti mlvn” so I could keep myself out of mlvn corners, but a lot of the recent posts that I kept under the old tag are gone or private until tumblr tracks the change—hence the missing post!

Still...me and that tag rant was giving “why would you say something so controversial, yet so brave” for sure (lmao), though I certainly meant it less as a comment on her life decisions themselves and more a "I can tell by the decisions you make as a creator, producer of other films, and in general that you are not The Duffer Brother's target audience, but a lot of your fans can't" kind of way...which is still controversial in several corners of this fandom for sure. 😭

the rest of this answer under the cut because it got long lol

Like, yes, she does play a principal character in the show, but playing a character does not mean the character is modeled to you as a person—just look at Emilia Clarke playing Daenerys Targaryen, Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter, or even Rachel McAdams playing Regina George lmao.

Despite playing El since she was a child, as Millie has come into adulthood it's become clearer that she is very different from El—and that The Duffers aren't creating Eleven's arc with Millie's own "coming of age" in mind. Her choices to create things like Enola Holmes, Damsel, and even Nineteen Steps (her new book) showing up as sharp contrasts to not only the women in Stranger Things, but in all of The Duffer's upcoming work on Death Note, The Talisman and The Boroughs prove that well enough, which would be zero problem at all...if a lot of her fans didn't conflate Millie with El is as a character.

To your point though...I honestly don't think Millie is going to be all that personally upset if El ends up single and Byler happens—she's already made clear that she loves El, but is ready to move on and tell other stories and that she would have written the story as a high school drama if she was in control of the direction of the plot (while pointing out that she's not the one in control of it) lol.

Even what she said recently in an widely published and official Seventeen interview shows that she's really just here to finish the story and move on with her career—that she's ready for her role as El (and the drama I'm 10000% sure comes with that) to be done:

At least to me, all of that makes it seem like she is a level-headed young woman who can handle her character not being aligned with how she would live her own life—and will, when the time comes.

That said: imo the real problem is that fans of MBB are confusing Millie's own "I can be young, strong and still have a man" creative and life choices with El's "I am overcoming the bounds men have put on me to become strong by myself" storyline, which only becomes an issue when Millie jokes about things like mlvn getting married—

—and (by nature of being an influential celebrity) ends up with fans who mistake Millie's headcanons (because...honestly that's what they are) based on what she enjoys in fiction as what The Duffers are writing & planning for the ending of Stranger Things.

Basically: as an actress, it's literally MBB's job to bring life to stories that don't necessarily reflect her own values or desires, and she knows it—but because she's been playing the character on people's screens so long (and from a young age) a lot of fans have issues separating the woman from the fiction and recognizing that (as Adam Driver once said) it's not Millie's job to have a feeling about or even agree with who El is as a person—it's her job to bring El & The Duffer's vision to life, even if her life informs how she plays the role.

None of that is particularly Millie's fault (though she, like Noah sometimes, adds fuel to fandom fire with the jokes she makes lmao), though it does get irritating to navigate when you're constantly subjected to arguments rooted in nothing but headcanons when trying to make sense of The Duffer's work itself lmao.

TL;DR - Mills joking about El and Mike getting married feels the same as someone here putting their headcanon out into the world about married & domestic Byler—only, because she's the face of Eleven + has now gotten engaged young herself, people misinterpret her own "cute headcanons" as canonical fact, leaving people who love the actual canon + who enjoy the 'style of womanhood' the Duffers write to arguing with people who misunderstand the actual characters.

Millie is a woman whose had a complicated relationship with celebrity and fame since she was a very young girl, and she has certainly made different decisions than I have (and likes different fiction than I do)—but that has nothing to do with her intelligence or ability to respond gracefully to the character she's played since 12 turning out differently than she would have imagined it if she had written El herself. If and when Byler happens, I'm sure she will meet the reality of it with respect and consideration, even if her fans (and hardcore fans of mlvn) don't lmao.

Hopefully that explains it (and doesn't get me shot for saying lmao). But thanks for the ask!

#the short answer to your question? #I genuinely think she's gonna be just fine with it when it happens even if she wouldn't have written it like that herself #her personal history is immaterial given she's not a 'method actress' and doesn't conflate herself with her characters #when she says things like 'they'll get married' its basically her making joke-y headcanons same as people do here #but...a lot of superfans don't see it like that—they take it as law over anything the duffers ACTUALLY do in the show lmao #tbh its the same for every one of the actors but. her fans seem to take her jokes more seriously than anyone else takes Noah or Finns #also...I could have been nicer in those old tags but I was super annoyed when I wrote them so. apologies for the snark LMAO #asks

[dustteller]

What are some fantasy books you consider represent colonialism wrong/from a very white or colonial pov?

Sorry you dont have to tell which books etc you were vagueing im just genuinely interested !

Hmm, this is tough bc for the last three years most of the books I've consumed have been for college, and most of the stuff on Imperialism has been nonfiction for my PoliSci classes. When I wrote that post, I wasn't just thinking about books, but about media as a whole.

Now, I want to make it very clear that I don't necessarily consider any of the following works ✨️Problematic✨️ because they fail to capture certain elements of Imperialism/Colonialism (I'm using the terms interchangeably bc they're similar enough that in fiction they tend to get glomped together, but they're actually technically two different things but also It Does Not Matter). I don't consider a white person not completely grasping colonialism a moral failing. My issue is less moral and more of annoyance at how so often we hold up white people as the standards for writing about something *they didn't even write about well*.

And with that point made: Avatar. It's Avatar. Not the blue people movie (that one's awful, but I don't think I need to explain why), it's AtLA. Listen, I really do love AtLA. It's a great show that does an excellent job at demonstrating that just because something is targeted to children it doesnt have to be dumbed down and can still tell an incredible story. I also think that the showriters did a lot of research in order to write the Fire Nation and it's imperialist actions. It touches on a lot of elements of imperialism that a lot of other media fails to capture. It's a good show, it really is.

But it is still a children's show written by a bunch of white people. It annoys me to no end that people hold it up as The Pinnacle Of Anti-Imperialist-Colinialist-Racist Writing, the Golden Standard To Which All Things Must Be Held, when really its Baby's First Look Into Politics. It was WRITTEN to be Baby's First Look Into Politics. Half of its target audience is still literally munching on crayons.

I also don't like how it handles a lot of things. A lot of people have brought up Hama, but I also think that it doesn't do a great job with the Jet stuff. Again, its a children's show. Its HAS to show the right socially accepted moral lesson that Pacifism Best and Killing Bad. If you study real life imperialism tho, extremism is its natural consequence. Almost always, when there is a successful revolution, it IS led by extremist groups, because those are the people most willing to sacrifice themselves! I think AtLA does a good job at portraying Jet and Hama as sympathetic, but it also goes very hard on the Still Bad angle. The thing is, Aang's my way or the highway deal only really works because he's the Universes Specialest Boy Avatar. I don't think there's much of an aknowledgement that there really isn't much that people like Jet CAN do if its not turn to more extremist measures. I know a lot of white people are very pro-pacifism and love clean revolutions, but thats just. Not how it works.

If you're part of a colony, the sad reality is that you Will continue being a colony unless you can find a way to perform a mass upheaval of the existing system. And, sadly, the only viable way to do this for a lot of the colonized is violence. And violence born in anger is not known for being Clean and Pretty and Morally Just. I don't like the trend of holding colonized peoples solely accountable for their actions in response to the incredible colonial violences of an empire. I get to murder you indiscriminately, but you can't dare to murder in my general direction back, or you're just as bad as I am. Actions don't exist in a vacuum.

I think this is where AtLA's view on politics is weakest, because I feel it fails at providing a viable alternate measure to the actions of Hama and Jet. Aang, and by extension team avatar, has a privilege that they don't have access to. They're just mean to sit there and wait to be saved, I guess.

Also we spent three seasons seeing the after effect of a single shitty Emperor that the Avatar trusted deciding he was gonna be shitty and starting a hundred years of imperialism like some evil aureliano buendia, only to at the end immediately put Zuko on the throne? Maybe Zuko is a good emperor, but can you guarantee his kids will be? His grandkids? What happens if he gets murdered, Azula gets to take the throne and starts Being Evil again? The system remains unchanged, and it can still be abused in the exact same ways.

I bring up AtLA because I think it demonstrates these two aspects that I think make a lot of Imperialism According to White People (IAtWP) narratives fall flat to me. I use AtLa as an example precisely because its a good story, because I want to demonstrate that getting some stuff right and putting in effort and ending up with a good product doesn't mean that a work WON'T have these issues.

Generally, IAtWP narratives will have a very morally pure view on rebellions and demand higher levels of moral righteousness from the colonized than it does from the oppressed, or they will be overly dark and gritty and "realistic" and will refuse to interact with the morality of the setting, being an Everyone Bad, Actually narrative. Secondly, IAtWP stories tend to see Imperialism as a Good People/Bad People issue. Usually they will aknowledge the failures of an imperialist system, but they will still uphold the "superiority" of the imperialist system by treating it as the only way to govern, ergo revealing that they cannot conceive of alternate methods of rule.

On that second point, white american/european people who live in an imperial system never seem to grasp the idea that those poor suffering colonized masses are also capable of the concept of innovation. I think where a lot of white leftists fail when interacting with anti-imperialist rhetoric is that they limit themselves to the anti-imperialism. They can recognize that imperialism is bad, but they can't concieve of the colonized as anything BUT colonized. Even while free, they are Free From Imperialism. The truth is, we have entire fields of scholarship discussing the intricacies of how to navigate freedom. There's internal debates in politics and public and academia about how freedom will work for us. I'm going to talk now from a puertorrican/latin american perspective, since that's my field of specialization. Freedom is not an abstract concept to us. We have spent decades examining the fabric of our society to find alternatives to the current system. Here in Puerto Rico, the modern independence conversation dates back all the way to the 19th century. For most of that time, Puerto Rico and Cuba acted in conjunction when it came to academic matters. Until Castro, you did not discuss Puertorrican independence without Cuba also being talked about, because there was a very strong solidarity between the two nations. This is, of course, without mentioning the work that Haiti and the Dominical Republic also shared with us, as well as a wider Latin America. If you read W.E.B Du Bois' essays on imperialism, he does not focus only on Africa, but he also frequently talks about Latin America and Asia and MENA and even some European nations/ethinicities/racial groups when discussing unity. If we look at Political Science, the Dependence Theory, which is one of the frameworks through which imperialism and colonialism are understood today, was pioneered by Latin American and South/South East Asian academics in conjunction, academics of dozens and dozens of countries that worked and interacted and argued with each other to create a field of scholarship that directly countered the trends in white academia of the time. Even more colloquially, I do not know a single Puertorican that knows the basics of the history of the Philippines that does not solidarize with them and consider them our siblings in the same way that we think of the rest of Latin America. The Global South is not composed of a bunch of meek little victim nations, isolated within our own colonial bubbled, but of over a hundred countries that actively interact with each other's ideas.

I find white authors and creators often do not understand the level at which imperialism has effected the very way that we think about the world, or at the level to which we talk to each other about it. To them, we only exist within the context of interractions with our colonial powers. They often underestimate the level of solidarity in thought that has formed within nations BECAUSE of imperialism. And as a result, they always write overly simplistic resistance moments lead by vague ideologies and people that don't know what they're talking about. Theres a lot more to resistance than the resistance itself, there has to be a strong backbone of intellectual tradition to back it up.

I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but I still think it's important when discussing how white creators fail at portraying imperialism and colonialism. They fail by not being able to see it from the point of view of the colonized. I know I didn't fully answer the question, but I hope this makes sense and helps you understand the framework through which I judge a piece of media that interacts with the themes of Colonialsm and Imperialism. I just want to add here at the end, that this is just how I see it, and not an Objectively Correct Method Of Identification or anything. I know a lot of people that consider things differently, because we all have different frameworks which we use to view the issue. Its not a matter of being right or wrong, but a matter of how we all interact with the world differently. Now, please pray for me that I don't get murdered for this.

#atla #my thoughts #asks