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stargazeraldroth · 8 months

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Ooohhh, good luck with your schoolwork, then! And don’t push yourself too hard~

I get what you mean! To be honest, I tend to make him lean more towards good, myself- It’s just how I view him, in no small part (like you said) thanks to all of the overly malicious interpretations of him. And honestly, especially with the other Stars, I usually interpret him as “good-leaning chaotic neutral,” so really, I’m probably biased, too! Also, he definitely, absolutely does need therapy- To help recognize and process his own feelings (and validate them), to help him recognize social cues he tends to disregard, etc. If nothing else, he’s lived for so goddamn long and seen so much shit that he could do with talking to A Professional about it and just getting it off of his chest. And that’s just with his canon role as a Protector… If you view anything with, say, Gin as canon, he probably needs it even more. And I’m a sucker for Gin/Ink, so I like taking it into account, heh.

I think I may have read that one, too! I… Also cannot remember the title, though, whoops. But! I could see his abandonment issues (and probable RSD, at least in my opinion (no I’m not projecting hush-) because Look At Him) playing into how he takes all of this- And the entire thing combines with his other issues and the fact that protecting the Multiverse is kind of a Big Deal to him, and it all just. Really, really starts to weigh him down, I think. He’d be trying to go over everything he did- Wondering if he did something to make them think he hated being soulless, like you said, or how he led them to think that he needed saving from the Creators (which, maybe he does, just. Not like this), or how me screwed up so much that two of the people he bases his understanding of morals off of went off the deep end. Did he interfere too much? Is this going to happen to others? Was there a way he could have seen this coming and stopped it? Blue and Dream would probably hate that he’s thinking that way (and maybe it even feeds more into their delusions, because how could he think like that? It couldn’t be their fault, right? They’re in too deep now, they can’t just stop-), but Ink is gonna spiral into self hatred and spiral hard, no matter how you look at it.

Core deserved to go a bit feral and wreck havoc on people who hurt the ones they love. Just a little bit. You know. As a treat. For real though, they’re definitely the sort of threat you regret overlooking, because even if they, physically, cannot do anything to you, kiddo’s got Influence and Knowledge and probably a damn good Scary Face. They’re definitely gonna assemble the squad to get their artistic pal back.

Depending on how badly off Ink is in the moment (both emotionally and physically), Cross might actually start out as a necessary caretaker AND protector for him- No one wants to decide things For Him, given everything that happened, but also, if he’s refusing to take his vials and not letting himself feel or function, someone needs to try and make sure he’s at least semi-healthy, you know? Either way, given time and A Lot of healing, I definitely see it developing into a much healthier, much happier friendship and partnership- With Cross probably acting like a Big Brother sometimes, because you know, Oreo Bros. And by that I mean, once they regained their bond, he gleefully holds having almost an Entire Foot on Ink over his head, and stuff like that (let them tease each other and be goofballs, they need it-).

Core and Cross are just gently giving Ink hugs and head pats while Error is just that one video of the guy awkwardly petting the other guy with a broom. And Fresh, in my mind, has plenty of motive to keep Ink Alive and Kicking because, if the Protector is gone, the chances of his Primary Food Source dying out goes up. Also I just really like the dynamic he’d bring to this particularly chaotic table, it’d be fun.

AHAHAHAHA HES SUCH A FUCKIN MANBABY AND I LOVE IT. Tantrum throwing Error over what would, to other people, be Weird Shit is always just. So funny to me. If Blue and Dream do kidnap Ink, I imagine he’d be a likely source of rescue, because the indignity of Someone Else having the nerve to capture His Rival would drive him insane.

O O F. That’s a tough (and painful) one. My first thought is that, if they wish for Ink to have a soul, and to not be “burdened” with the role of Protector anymore, the Overwrite reconstructs his old soul and locks him back in his old, unfinished AU… With just the sketches and his own thoughts for company. Unless it erases his memories, I don’t imagine he’d cope well with the sudden onslaught of Feeling so much and being in his Worst Nightmare.

My OTHER thought is that they wish to be Ink’s “perfect protectors” or something along those lines, but without any real guidelines, so now everyone has to deal with Shattered Dream and a Much More Deadly Blue running around and refusing to let Ink go anywhere.

Alternately, it goes right… For them. By locking all three Stars in the Doodlesphere and rendering it impossible to breach. Talk about an opportunity to gaslight poor Ink.

YOU KNOW GIN LORE!?

I'm sorry for shouting at you like that- but I have not been able to find a single thing about Gin's lore! Like I have a name, that's all I know. All I know is his name and that he had a close bond with Ink, or something like that. I don't even know where to look for this man's lore, which sucks because he?? Looks cool to me??? And he's Ink's friend???? I genuinely don't even know what Gin's lore is or what AU he's from-

Okay so that either refers to Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or rejection sensitivity, and honestly? I'm here for both of them (I have looked as their basic definitions and nothing more). I, too, suspect that I may have some problems when it comes to abandonment and rejection... but this isn't a therapy session and I'm trying to be mysterious about myself, so we won't dwell on that. I can get behind Ink spiraling into self-hatred, that's a whole mood. Also, I just feel like if Dream and Blue tried to reassure him that it wasn't his fault (and of course they would, why wouldn't they step in?), Ink wouldn't believe them. There's just no other explanation for it, to him. Especially if they were to try and explain their reasoning to him.

I want you to know that I read "artistic" as "autistic" and didn't bat an eye. That's some self-projection right there.

Ooo yes yes, I understand exactly what you mean! I can see Cross being a necessary caretaker for the time being, if only to keep Ink functioning. Also just to keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't do anything drastic, just as a precaution.

HJBVHHJBHJGG- Error with the broom?? Trying to comfort Ink by probing him with it?? Splendid imagery. He never learned how to comfort people, he's doing his best. He's improvising for the situation and I think that deserves some credit.

If Dream and Blue were to kidnap Ink, Error would be that one clip of the tank pulling right up to the house's door. I hope you know what I'm talking about, I think it's the perfect example of this. Error being a huge manbaby and having tantrums is something I live for, but it's so rare to find it in fanfics?? At least from my own experience. And I attribute that to the fact that Error's also greatly mischaracterized by a majority of the fandom as some sort of saint, but that's a topic for a different day.

(I will never want to rant about this.)

You know... I'm the one who suggested the hypothetical scenario, but you didn't have to assault me with that first interpretation /lh. My poor baby- especially because I'm pretty sure Ink doesn't actually remember anything from before waking up in the Anti-Void?? So he'd be confused and petrified, with no way of stopping his emotions or processing them. This also means that Broomie's gone for good, how could you do this Anon?

I do love me some Shattered content. Some nice Shattered and Ink interactions, we love to see it, love to see it. Some "nice" interactions. In this case, it's definitely a hostage situation, even before they hypothetically emerge victorious. Since Shattered now has tentacles, he can basically keep Ink restrained at all times, if he were to catch him. I can picture the scene: they use the OVERWRITE on themselves and, as soon as they do, Ink feels it. Something is wrong. So very wrong. The story- stories- they're different now. Something's gone wrong, he needs to fix it, but he's probably too bewildered by what he just witnessed to react properly. And for a little treat, just a little seasoning, imagine that he feels actual pain whenever something major like this- something so extremely off-script- happens. If the pain's great enough, it would render him stunned just long enough for the two to strike.

In the situation where they get locked in the Doodlesphere, I imagine there would be a scene where Ink's just processing everything. He's like "Creators... what the actual fuck?" The Creators really went to get the milk, huh?

Alternatively, Nightmare's probably just somewhere, eating popcorn while watching this whole thing go down from start to finish.

#underverse au #dream sans #blue sans #swap sans #ink sans #platonic yandere dream sans #platonic yandere blue sans #anonymous asks

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linkspooky · 3 years

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"The Only Ones the Heroes Protect Are Themselves."

is a quote given to us by Dabi. That's starting to sound more and more true after this press conference chapter. This post will be mainly talking about Hawks, because I think this chapter sheds a lot of light on Hawks' flaws as a character.

I think for understanding Hawks it's important to know this:

And this:

Are both Hawks. Hawks is both the person willing to manipulate, scheme and ruthlessly hunt down others for the sake of the greater good, and he's also the person who just wants to help because his whole life he's felt useless and unworthy. Hawks is both the overly idealistic child who believes in heroes and just wants tp help the heroes, and at the same time, the cynical adult who thinks heroes can't always save people.

Some part of Hawks is aware that this darker side of him exists. He tells the hero commission that he's willing to dirty his hands for the sake of general peace. He specifically warns the villains not to underestimate his resolve. He tells Twice that he's not the type to get tripped up by sentiment in the crucial stages of his plan.

However, at the same time Hawks doesn't cop up to this side of his personality. If you confront Hawks about his actions in any way he switches back to his hero-mode. I don't believe this is because Hawks believes himself to be a good person. I don't even think Hawks defines himself as a person to begin with, just a tool. It makes sense that Hawks doesn't have a consistent identity it all goes back to his origins.

All Hawks could do was internalize everything he felt, and every abuse hurtled at him by his parents. All he wanted to believe back then was that he wouldn't turn out the same way they did. He wanted to believe in some good part of him.

However, I wonder if Hawk truly believes he's good. If he truly believes he's a good hero. He seems to have internalized so much of his abuse when he was younger that he has little self worth and all of it, is built around what kind of things he does for other people. He has to believe he's helping other people, because otherwise he crumbles. Otherwise the part of his head that tells him he was just trash the hero council picked up on the side of the road, is right.

I'm touching upon all of this to say Hawks does not really have a sense of self-identity. It's very weak, and he bases it on things are around him instead, things he can cling to provide him some sense of self worth, his role as a hero, his pseudo-imagined relationship with Endeavor, the idea that the things he's doing is ultimately for the public good. Because he's clinging to these things it makes it almost impossible to be self-critical. Because if Hawks isn't a hero, then he's nothing. Hawks also, similarly, can't deal with any criticism to the institution of hero because that's the institution that saved him, that's where he belongs, that's where all of his personal relationships are.

Hawks previously thought everything he did was for the public good, because heroes protected the people, hero and the public were both aligned.

However, when the public they're protecting begins to question the heroes, when they're not alligned Hawks picks the heroes.

Now I'll touch on Enji briefly to give an example of why this is wrong. Enji's excuse for why he didn't do anything with Toya, why he didn't even try to be a father, was because he was a hero first before he was a person.

Both Enji and Hawks (they're meant to be read as character foils) divide their personalities this way. They are who they are as heroes, before their faults and individual failings as people. However, in reality, they're just running away from their actions. Enji is depicted entirely in shadow in these few panels, the same way Hawks is depicted in shadow when confronting Twice.

Ultimately it doesn't matter if whatever Hawks did to Twice was justified or not, the problem is he wasn't a hero to Twice. He decided in that moment Twice was not worth saving. He divided that line between who gets to get saved, and who doesn't.

What I mean when I say that Hawks is unable to cop up to the darker sides of his personality, is that he's unable to acknowledge when he's done a bad thing. Which is also, something he shares in common with Enji. Enji's failures are never personal ones, he's never the one at fault. Toya's death was what drove him to train Shoto so hard (nevermind the fact he was already doing that beforehand.) Toya attacking Shoto was the reason that Enji had to isolate Shoto (nevermind, that Toya himself a thirteen-year-old kid was able to recognize that he was wrong to blame his brother, but it's still unfair for his father to put all his attention on Shoto and leave the rest of his kids alone). Uraraka is the narrator for this chapter, but Uraraka also said this.

IThe real question is, are heroes to be held individually responsible for their actions? Can we criticize heroes as people? Hawks, Enji, and Jeanist all seem to believe that identity and world of heroes is far too important to level criticisms at any individual. That the world of heroes somehow, elevates them from others in a way that makes them impossible to understand, because they have more responsibility.

I'm not going to say Hawks doesn't feel sorry for Twice. He expressed like, the greatest possible expression of public apology he can. The problem however is everything else about Hawks. Twice apologizes for the act of killing twice and expresses it as a moral failing on his part, while stating he had no choice before that point.

Hawks is unaware of his own personal biases, and his own flaws, and therefore properly can’t account to them. He thinks his failing was that he couldn’t convince Jin to join his side. Not that his wrongdoing was his act of choosing only Jin to save because he was one of the “good” victims, and only offering Jin the chance to atone conditional on him betraying his friends. He’s still picking and choosing between good and bad in who he helps. And Hawks’ standards for that are pretty biased. Notice how his help for Enji doesn’t involve mandatory jailtime and atonement for his crimes like it did with Twice. Enji still gets to remain a hero.

Hawks has a bias and it goes on unacknowledged, by framing his actions as heroic and for the greater good.

His priority isn't to make the same mistake again with Twice or even to feel bad about Twice, it's to stop public criticism. It even comes down to the way he frames his own actions, Hawk doesn't acknowledge the part of him that manipulated Twice, held him at gunpoint, forced him to choose between his friends and his own safety, cruelly taunted him. All of things which were by the way, an abuse of his power, and things Hawks did because he personally likes to feel in control of situations not because it was necessary for the greater good to break Twice mentally like that.

Hawks didn't do all those things in the Hawks vs. Twice situation, because he was forced to in a bad situation. Hawks planned the whole situation out to give himself control over the situation, and try to manipulate Twice into siding with him because he liked Twice. It's like, written in a very specific way to show how manipulative Hawks is for setting things up this way, the whole thing was a set up. However, hawks can't cop up to that. He frames it like an oopsie daisy. He frames it like something he did in the heat of the moment because he felt like he had no other choice, and not something that was pre-meditated and all set up by him beforehand. It's because, while Hawks acts like this, he never owns up to his actions, he only ever frames himself as the guy willing to sacrifice anything in order to help people. The guy determined to be helpful and useful to others. Therefore he can't find fault within himself and he can't find fault within heroes.

Even with Enji, his first response isn't, "Wow, if heroes are using their position to cover up their crimes we should investigate how other heroes might be abusing their families." It's to find a way to make Enji look good for the public, so the public gets off his back.

Uraraka says that if Toga wants to threaten people she has to live with the consequences, but the heroes aren't living with conesquences for their actions. It's not just that Hawks murdered someone. I mean after all, I argue that Toga who kills lots of people., Shigaraki who destroys whole cities, Dabi who admits to murdering 30 people, are all people who I think are going to get positive character development.

However, they all also accept that they're going to be seen as murderers. Dabi calls himself a murderer live on television. Toga accepts it, when Uraraka says that she has no choice but to put her down if she's going to hurt others. Shigaraki even holds himself responsible for the murder of his family which was a complete accident, he had to have his reluctance to hurt other people beaten out of him.

It's not that Hawks murdered a person, but rather he can kill a person and not see himself as a murderer. Just speaking in terms of character development, to have a character arc, a character must first acknowledge they are wrong, and then work to improve on that wrong. Hawks hasn't reached the first part.

Hawks and Enji are unable to admit to their personal failings, because not only do they appear to the public only as heroes, but they also think "Heroes" are like a special protected class of people. They can make up for all of their flaws by being good heroes. However, it's not the public that they're defending. Just like it's not his family that Enji is really doing all these things for. Time and time again, they choose to be heroes over everythig else, because the world of heroes is the only place they exist in. Being seen as a good hero is what validates both of them. For Hawks it comes from his own perosnal trauma and loneliness, from Enji his priority of being a good hero above everything else. So if you ewre to strip all of that away, if you were to admit, that Hawks deciding to kill Twice, that Enji abusing his family, doesn't make them very good heroes? Means they aren't entitled to being heroes anymore? What would be left of them for both of them? They'd just be left with what they've done and who they are and neither of them are or were ever very happy with themselves. Which is why, rather than trying to be better people. Trying to address the cricticisms that other people have lobbied to them, including Endeavor's own son who was personally hurt by him. It keeps coming back to being better heroes.

They're not heroes though, they're just people. Everyone is just people in the end.

#mha meta #dabi #hawks #touya todoroki #keigo takami #mha 306 #mha 306 spoilers #bnha 306 #bnha 306 spoilers

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galemalio · 4 years

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3 Examples of Racial Bias in Animation Storytelling

It’s not hard to grasp that a white person, while not explicitly or consciously racist in the sense we might usually imagine, is still inherently racially biased because they benefit from and grow up used to white supremacy.” - Scottishwobbly, Tumblr

This is nothing new. This is something POC (People of Color) have been talking about in separate fandoms. Nevertheless, it needs to be acknowledged by those unaware.

This article is not made to say that some of the animations that I will use as examples are bad. But in the hopes that we, as consumers and creators, will do better in the future in handling characters that are POC.

Most often, racial bias in storytelling is when the narrative treats white or light skin toned characters better than darker skin toned characters. The darker skin toned characters are often POC-coded or actual POC.

White creators often do not notice their racial bias in their storytelling as they benefit from and grow up with white privileges and white supremacy. This can also apply to light-skinned POC who have light skin priviliges.

Some of us don’t often see it but real people who relate to the characters of color do. Especially when it reflects from their experiences with racial bias, microaggressions, colorism and flat out racism.

So when they speak up, it’s important to listen to them to unlearn the racial bias we may have in ourselves.

I will be emphasizing “the narrative” for I am criticizing how the story treats its dark-skinned characters and not because I am criticizing the characters themselves.

This article is critiqued by @visibilityofcolor as a sensitivity reader once and then additions were made before publishing. If you’re looking for a Black sensitivity reader, you can contact her.

This article is a 14-minute read at average speed so buckle up. Unless you want to skip to your show mentioned below. External Tumblr Resources will be put in the reblog.

Here are three examples that I was made aware of.

Example #1: The Narrative Treats the Light-Skinned Character at the Expense of the Dark-Skinned Character

Steven Universe was one of the animations that pushed lgbt+ representation in cartoon media. However, there are narratives here and there that showed racial bias.

SU creator Rebecca Sugar was raised with "Jewish sensibilities" and both siblings observe the lighting of Hanukkah candles with their parents through Skype.[1] Rebecca Sugar also talked about being non-binary.[2]

But as a white person, she (and the rest of the SU crew) is not aware of the inherently biased values from growing up and benefiting from white privilege.

One example is the human zoo. There are people that have spoken up about this such as @jellyfax of Tumblr who pointed out that the Crewniverse mishandled a loaded topic and reinforced a white colonist propaganda where the captive humans of mostly black/brown people are naive, docile and childlike in order to subjugate the people that they colonized. .

What I’m here is how a character of color from the main cast is more obligated to the lighter-skinned character.

In the episode, Friend Ship, one fan had spoken out about how Garnet, who had been validly angry at Pearl, was compelled by a dangerous situation to forgive Pearl. Garnet is a Black-coded character. While Pearl is a light-skinned character.

Garnet was mad at Pearl for tricking her into always fusing with her. Then they were trapped in a chamber that was going to crush them. In this situation, they have to fuse in order to save themselves but Garnet refuses to because she was still angry at her.

In the end, they were forced to talk it out, for Garnet to understand Pearl’s reason for wanting to fuse with her and everything worked out well.

The narrative focused so much on Pearl’s self-worth issues at the expense of Garnet’s right to be angry.

Yes, it showed that Pearl is trying her best to make up for it but Garnet should have been allowed to work at her own anger at her own pace instead of being obligated to consider Pearl’s feelings over her own.

I wouldn’t have noticed it until someone had mentioned it. Because it was never my experience.

But it’s there, continuing the message that it’s okay to put the emotional labor on Black people and disregard their own feelings for the sake of the non-Black people who have hurt them -particularly light-skinned women.

White Fragility and Being Silenced White Woman Tears

Again, racial bias in animation storytelling is often not intentional because white creators do not experience it due to white privilege.

Without meaning to, that scene alone shows Garnet as the Angry Black woman trope that is ungrateful and rude to Pearl who then ends up in tears. Without meaning to, Pearl with her light skin, became the tearful white girl trope that had to be sympathized over.

The Angry Black Woman trope is a combination of the worst negative stereotypes of a Black woman: overly aggressive, domineering, emasculating, loud, disagreeable and uppity.[13]

The Tearful white girl trope comes from the combination of the stereotypes of white women being morally upstanding and delicate and therefore should be protected.[13]

Which, unfortunately, many white women have taken advantage of.

These two tropes are harmful to WOC (Women of Color) because they experience the "weary weaponizing of white women's tears". This tactic employed by many white women incites sympathy and avoids accountability for their actions, turning the tables to their accuser and forcing their accuser to understand them instead.

(Image by Виктория Бородинова from Pixabay)

In "Weapon of lass destruction: The tears of a white woman", Author Shay described that white tears turns a white woman into the priority of whatever space she's in. "It doesn't matter if you're right, once her tears are activated, you cease to exist." [11]

White woman tears have gotten Black people beaten and lynched such as Emmett Till. Carolyn Bryant who had accused 14 year old Emmett Till of sexually harassing her in 1955, admitted she lied about those claims years later in 2007.[15]

In Awesomely Luvvie's "About the Weary Weaponizing of White Women Tears", she states that the innocent white woman is a caricature many subconsciously embrace because it hides them from consequences. [10]

In The Guardian’s article, "How White Women Use Strategic Tears to Silence Women of Colour", Ruby Hamad shares her experience:

"Often, when I have attempted to speak to or confront a white woman about something she has said or done that has impacted me adversely, I am met with tearful denials and indignant accusations that I am hurting her. My confidence diminished and second-guessing myself, I either flare up in frustration at not being heard (which only seems to prove her point) or I back down immediately, apologising and consoling the very person causing me harm."[4]

This is not to say that all crying white women are insincere. But as activist Rachel Cargle said:

“I refuse to listen to white women cry about something. When women have come up to me crying, I say, ‘Let me know when you feel a little better, then maybe we can talk.’”[3]

One of the most quoted words in “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.” is this:

“It is white people’s responsibility to be less fragile; people of color don’t need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible.”[3]

When white women cry in defense, instead of taking accountability, People of Color are then gaslighted into thinking they’re the bad guy. This is emotional abuse and a manipulation tactic.

People of Color shouldn’t have to bend backwards to accommodate discomfited white or light-skinned people who have hurt them.

How She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (SPOP) Did It Right

Despite SPOP having good lgbtq+ representations, there are other biases in the show. Such as Mara, a WOC whose only purpose was to sacrifice herself for the white protagonist. There was also the insensitive joke in their stream regarding Bow’s sibling that perpetuated an Anti-Black stereotype which Noelle Stevenson has apologized for.[14]

But the scene I have encountered where the Black character was validly angry and his feelings were treated well by the narrative, came from SPOP.

Bow, a black character, was validly angry at Glimmer, a lighter skinned character. Glimmer made a lot of bad decisions, one of them was using Adora and their friends as bait, without their knowledge, to lure out and capture Catra.

Glimmer tearfully apologized in Season 5, Episode 4. Adora readily forgave her. But Bow didn't.

They faced dangers along the way but the story didn't put them in a dangerous situation where Bow has to forgive Glimmer in order to get out of it.

This was Glimmer's words of apology:

"Look, I know you're still mad at me. Maybe you'll be mad at me for a really long time. I deserved it. And maybe... maybe we'll never be friends like we used to be. But I'm not going to stop trying to make it better. I made a mistake with the heart of Etheria. I should've listened to you and I'm sorry. You get to be mad. For as long as you need to be. But I'm not going anywhere. And when you're ready, I'll be here."

In short, Bow was allowed to take the time to be mad and not just get over it for someone else’s sake. The story validates his feelings and he was allowed to take his own pace. That is emotional respect the story gave to him.

Example #2: The Narrative Gives Better Endings or Portrayals to Colonizers than Their Victims

Avatar: The Last Airbender has handled dark themes well such as genocide, war, PTSD, disability and redemption with great worldbuilding.

However, I never noticed the racial bias in ATLA until people spoke up of the double standards in ATLA’s treatment of light-skinned colonizers compared to their dark-skinned victims-turned-villains.

The characters in question -Iroh, Azula, Jet and Hama- are all flawed and well-rounded in a believable way. But how the narrative treats them is unequal.

General Iroh is an ex-colonizer who gets to redeem himself and not answer for his past war crimes, living a peaceful life as a tea shop owner. The only reason Iroh changed was when he was personally affected by the negativity of their military subjugation -his son’s death. It wasn’t the harm of the Fire nation ravaging Earth kingdom villages or cities and affecting millions of people that opened his eyes.

Azula, the tyrannical daughter, had closure of her mother's rejection when she was a child and was able to escape imprisonment.

Jet and Hama, victims of colonization who have done bad things, did not get similar conclusions to their stories OR compensation for what they have gone through from the Fire Nation's colonization.

Jet was given a second chance but was arrested for trying to expose Zuko and Iroh being firebenders -firebenders who were their enemies for conquering their villages. Then he died from the injuries of the person who had brainwashed and mind-controlled him.

Hama was imprisoned for life.

Compared to the sins of the light-skinned colonizers, the narrative didn’t give Jet and Hama the development where they could heal from their trauma, receive compensation for what happened to them and really have a chance in life.

The dark-skinned victims of colonization just became a lesson to the viewers how they shouldn’t hold grudges for being colonized. The end. They have received consequences for their actions but there is no continuation to their stories after that.

It almost seems like the narrative is saying that because they have harmed colonizers who have no part in their trauma (and in Jet’s case, some Earth kingdom villagers), they are therefore unworthy to be given an actual chance in life.

While Azula and Iroh, who have actively participated in conquering, colonizing and attacking the Earth Kingdom itself, were.

Someone once said that if indigenous people have control over Hama’s story, it would have been done differently. But the ATLA crew are white, non-indigenous people who prioritized redeeming colonizers instead.

The narrative has also affected how the ATLA fandom thinks. If most fans are asked who they would want to be redeemed, the popular option would be Azula over Jet or Hama.

Once again, I don’t think the ATLA crew noticed it due to their racial bias. But still, the harm is done and the racially biased message is continued:

The colonizers and their descendants don’t have to make amends for the colonizers’ crimes. Or if they do, only lightly since it’s in the past (no matter how recent that past is).

The colonized who rebel will tend to hurt innocent people and then get a grisly end for getting in way over their heads.

I would venture as far as to say that the narrative may have the added subconscious desire to quiet their white anxiety on the vengeance of the colonized. As I have learned when writing about Vodou stereotypes and how they have stemmed from the history of white anxiety of Black vengeance, of Black fetishization and of dissolution of the white race through intermarriages.

In @visibilityofcolor’s blog, someone asked:

“So I saw some of the really heated debates on here and on twitter about how if Iroh and Azula can be portrayed sympathetically despite their actions then characters like Jet and Hama should've been given a chance too. Do you think that the writers understood the implications of only redeeming characters from the colonizer/fascist nation but not giving the characters who suffered because of their fascism a second chance too?”

To which VisibilityOfColor replied:

“No, because at the end of the day, the writers are white. When it comes to stuff like this, it’s no surprise when we see white writers redeem problematic characters before they actually redeem victims of those racist problematic characters. For instance, Dave Filioni, who worked on both avatar and star wars rebels, did the same thing when redeeming agent kallus who was an soldiers in the imperial army and took credit for a genocide. where as victims of the empire were still painted in negative lights. i really don’t think they understand.

They have this ‘be the better person’ view on things, which is what a lot of white people tend to emulate when it comes to people of color standing up to their oppressors. and unfortunately, these are ideas passed on to children, esp minorities. that they should forgive people and communities who hurt them and ‘be the better person’. this is why white ppl don’t need to write narratives for people of color.”

Example #3: The Narrative Favors the Light Skinned Character Than Dark Skinned Character in Similar Situations

I would like to reiterate that racial bias in storytelling is often not intentional. I am not saying the creators and the people who support them are bad people. No.

However, I encourage that once a racial bias is made known in our work, it is our responsibility to change them to stop the perpetuation of its harmful message.

Hazbin Hotel is a popular cartoon with whimsical designs and its concept opens the conversation about redemption. The creator, Vivziepop may not have noticed the racial bias in her cartoon as a white Latina [5] that grew up with and benefits from white privileges, along with the Hazbin crew.

In the Youtbe video, "Hazbin Hotel - How Art took over Writing", Staxlotl states:

“I understand that there was a lot of time and effort put into this pilot, almost three years worth of effort. But I think most of that time was spent into the art and visuals when it should’ve gone into polishing the writing in the characters.”[6]

Once again, I’m not here to critique the characters but how the narrative treats its dark-skinned characters.

The story treats Charlie, the white-skinned, “Disney-esque” protagonist princess differently from how it treats Vaggie, the dark-skinned, more outspoken and protective Latina girlfriend of Charlie who supports the princess’ cause.

In its pilot episode, both girls experience humiliation. While Charlie is portrayed by the story as someone the viewers have to feel sorry for...

...Vaggie is portrayed in her humiliation as the butt of the joke for the viewers.

While they both didn’t like what Angel Dust did, Charlie was sympathized over in the narrative as a moment...

...while Vaggie’s angry but valid callouts were dismissed and ignored as part of the comedy.

While Charlie was someone that needs to be protected in the narrative...

...Vaggie is left to fend for herself.

Again, I don’t think the creators noticed the racial bias of their cartoon. However, this racial bias is reflected in the harmful perceptions that dark-skinned women, particularly Black women and Black girls, are more mature, tougher and need less protection at a young age.[7]

This adultification bias perceives them as challenging authority when they express strong or contrary views and are then given harsher discipline than white girls who misbehave.[8] And this continues when they grow up.

In a 2017 study, Black women and girls aged 12-60 years old confirmed they are treated harsher by their white peers and are accused of being aggressive when they would defend themselves or explain their point of view to authority figures.[8]

This bias also coincides with the Spicy Latina trope of a brown-skinned, hot-blooded, quick-tempered and passionate woman.

Everyday Feminism described this trope as "Although objects of desire for many, the spicy Latina may have too much personality to handle. So much so that she is often viewed as domineering or emasculating." [16]

Sounds familiar? (Look at Angry Black Woman trope above.)

Why is it that a light-skinned character, Charlie, is allowed to be vulnerable and be sympathized while the dark-skinned Latina character, Vaggie, is mocked, dismissed and expected to tough it out?

Severina Ware had to remind the world in her article that relates to the bias against dark skinned characters:

“Black women are not offered the protection and gentleness of our white counterparts. We are not given permission to be soft and delicate. We are required to exhibit strength and fortitude not only because our lives depend on it, but because so many others depend on us. Black women should not be charged with the responsibility of saving everyone when nobody is here to save us.”[12]

As @cullenvhenan of Tumblr has said in her post:

“if you're a white creator and your brown/black characters are always sassy, reckless, aggressive or cold and your white characters are always soft, demure, shy and introverted you should think about maybe why you did that”

(Image above from Iowa Law Reviews’ “Aggressive Encounters & White Fragility: Deconstructing the Trope of the Angry Black Woman”)

Detecting Your Own Racial Bias

It would be hard. No matter how much you edit and create, you may miss it because it was never your experience.

So how do we prevent our racial bias from creeping into our creations?

Listen to POC and their feedback.

As @charishjb from Instagram has shared, here is one of the things that we can do (tumblr link here) [9]:

Consider POC voices. Listen to their experiences. Hire sensitivity POC readers. Put multiple POC voices in positions of leadership in creative projects.

Then we can stop the racial bias that perpetuates again and again in the media. I hope for that future.

#racial bias #racism #colorism #animation #steven universe #su #pearl #garnet #atla #azula #general iroh #jet #hama #hazbin hotel #hazbin vaggie #lynching mention #lynching tw #writeblr #artblr

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feministfocus · 3 years

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Cautious, Vigilant, Fearful: On Being Asian American

Art by R. Kikuo Johnson

By Cynthia Lin

The mother and child wait for the subway. The mother grips the hand of her daughter tightly, her other hand raised to check the time. A simple illustration, yet the mother’s and daughter’s eyes catch my attention. They are cautious, vigilant, fearful.

I realize what else makes me uneasy. The mother wears a turtleneck sweater beneath a long blazer and wide black pants. And tennis shoes. The sneakers clash incongruously with her formal attire—why wear sneakers with a blazer? Unless you fear you will need to run.

The New Yorker’s recent cover, “Delayed” by artist R. Kikuo Johnson, comes at a time in which racial violence against Asian Americans has surged. Just a few days before, a man was filmed kicking and stomping on a 65-year-old Philippine-American woman while onlookers from the nearby building watched. One even shut the door in her face.

It’s simple to blame the violence on the pandemic and the subsequent xenophobic rhetoric, but it’s not as if racism against Asian Americans did not exist before—it’s just that the public is finally made aware of it. It’s difficult to argue that racism is just overblown paranoia when there is widespread video evidence of the harassment.

For a while, I used to debate with myself whether someone was being racist towards me. Is it all in my head? Why am I making a big deal of this? Am I too sensitive? Can I not take a joke? It is exhausting to constantly question whether or not an action is racially motivated. I did not want to be so overly sensitive that every slight I experienced came down to race. You start to doubt yourself—is it not worse if you think it is racially motivated when it is not? Am I being hampered by my race, using race to excuse others’ treatment of me when it is just their reaction to me? But then again, my Asianness is written all over my face; how can you react to me without reacting to a core part of my identity? So there must have been some part of that action that was racist, even if it was mostly ignorant.

But it is easier to wonder what you did that made you seem so foreign, so “un-American” to warrant that might-be-racist action. You start overanalyzing your past actions, and you turn silent and reclusive, thinking it best that you should not bring more attention to yourself, but then you realize that by being quiet you are contributing to the Asian stereotype of meekness. You wish that there was a clear line distinguishing what is racist and what is “all in your head.” But that is the issue, isn’t it?

When the news first broke, I think I might have even believed the narrative the investigators spun about how the spa shootings in the Atlanta area were not racially motivated. In my mind, I hovered between calling the shootings a “hate crime” or a “crime.” It did not strike me until I read the words “sex addiction”—the excuse the shooter used to explain his murder of the eight people, six of whom were Asian women—that I realized the label “racial motivation” contributes to the falsehood that there is a distinct line separating what is racist and what is not.

“Racial motivation” is the covert label we use for the obviously racist. But the phrase doesn’t take into account the subtleties, the dangerous norms we have adopted to mark what is foreign and what is “American.” Or even more relevant, the generations of popular culture over-sexualizing and fetishizing Asian women. Perhaps the shooter’s alleged sex addiction is not inherently anti-Asian, but depictions of Asian women in film and television have dehumanized them into objects of desire, generalized them as “docile,” “demure,” and “obedient.” Easy targets.

But why this compulsion to explain the actions of the perpetrator? This desperate grab for a motive every time a racist crime is committed? Whether or not the shooter’s intent was racist, the ramifications still exist. Asian Americans, especially the elderly, do not feel safe in America. I worry about my grandparents’ recent move from Brooklyn’s Chinatown to Staten Island, where they are cut off from all that is familiar and comforting. After living in America for over twenty years, is it not their right to go on an afternoon walk without fearing for their safety?

Anti-Asian sentiment in America has not recently materialized; it’s only resurfaced in our collective attention span. Lately, I have been digging deeper into Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history, approaching it with the intent to examine the longevity of the community’s residence in America, not just the well-taught immigrant story. Asians have been here before many Europeans immigrated through Ellis Island, but even to me, these “newer” Europeans seem to fit better with the American mold. How can they not, when U.S. history lessons consistently depict Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as foreigners and national security threats? When the few times the curriculum touches on Asian American history, it focuses on Chinese immigration in the mid-19th century, the subsequent Chinese Exclusion Act, and the internment of 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II? The Asian Americans I learn about in history class seem to exist solely in the backdrop of exclusion, which only serves to highlight their “otherness.”

What of Larry Itliong and his efforts in organizing the Delano Grape Strike? Or Patsy Mink, the first Asian American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives? Why is it that these milestones in Asian American and Pacific Islander history aren’t taught more? By acknowledging the multifaceted and ever-changing nature of the Asian community in the U.S., we acknowledge the progress made and what we have yet to achieve. Instead, I learn about AAPI history through an antiquated lens—depictions of Asian Americans have remained stagnant, fixed in time, and painted in broad strokes of homogeneity. The diversity of the AAPI community has often been forgotten, pushed aside for the ease in generalizing one collective group of people. This has not only perpetuated the harmful myth that most Asians, being the “model minority,” have attained success in America, but has also led to blame on the whole AAPI community for the pandemic.

In high school, race was a political topic, one made so controversial that even now, there is still some ingrained part of me that hesitates to voice my opinions for fear that I would “get it wrong.” It was only through my college search that I realized a major like “Ethnicity, Race, & Migration” even existed. And if I, someone who plans to study race, feel this way, how do others —students, teachers—even begin to broach this topic without fear of controversy? Focus on eradicating the stigma behind racism without fixating on being politically correct? So, besides a reevaluation of curriculum, we must also change the culture of avoidance we have fostered in schools, end the mindset of avoiding uncomfortable conversations.

Perhaps during the first discussions, we’ll stumble over a few social faux pas, reveal some implicit biases we’ve kept locked away under niceties, but it is better to acknowledge these societal problems than pretend that ignoring these issues will make them disappear. Uncomfortable conversations elicit defensiveness, but they can also be an opportunity for growth, a way to find empathy for others who at first seem entirely unlike ourselves. Having these conversations can help make true social change, can even help materialize a world in which a mother doesn’t have to fear for her and her child’s safety while doing something as mundane as taking a subway.

Chen, T. (2021, March 22). Asian women are Hypersexualized, so don't tell me the killings In Atlanta aren't about race. Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tanyachen/asian-women-fetish-racist-atlanta-shootings

Fan, J., Hsu, H., & Park, E. (2021, March 19). The Atlanta shooting and the dehumanizing of Asian women. Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-atlanta-shooting-and-the-dehumanizing-of-asian-women

If the mass killing of six Asian women isn't a hate crime, what is? (2021, March 18). Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-03-17/killing-six-asian-women-hate-crime-atlanta

Mouly, F. (2021, April 13). R. Kikuo Johnson's "Delayed". Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2021-04-05

Waxman, O. (2021, March 30). Why the Asian-American story is missing from U.S. Classrooms. Retrieved April 20, 2021, from https://time.com/5949028/asian-american-history-schools/

#stop asian hate #feminism #girls learn international #black lives matter

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jadynrosetta · 4 years

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Okay so I may have caught COVID (not sure I’m going to the doctor tomorrow) so to occupy my time I got a prime account and decided to FINALLY watch Promare.

This movie has been on my Watch List since I first heard of it, which was before 2020 started. I just never got around to it, till I realized I was going to be stuck in my room to avoid people :(

So I watched it... twice. I probably will watch it again cause it’s the only movie I bought and I am not buying anything else. So here’s a little review and my thoughts about the movie. (Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it)

So the plot I thought was very interesting. For those who don’t know, the story starts with introducing “The Burnish”, a group of people who can create and control flames. These people seemed to come out of nowhere and it started a whole movement for Burnish rights and it caused a lot of problems for society. It ended, but The Burnish were labled as terrorists and do not have the same rights as humans. (Harsh)

Our main character is a part of a group called the Burning Rescue. Which is a group of fire fighters that deal with emergancy flames caused by The Burnish.

The team includes: Lucia, Varys, Remi, Aina, Ignis the leader, and Galo Thymos.

Now as I said, this himbo (Galo) is the main protagonist. He’s a rookie in the Burning Rescue, and has a “Firey Spirit”. He always goes off on some random speech and enjoys his job being a fire fighter and takes pride in saving people. He keeps this mindset and energy throughout the whole movie.

He gets sent up a building to save people on the roof and meets a terrorist group called the Mad Burnish. There aren’t many of them out now, but the top generals and the leader are still at large.

(This was the first and only image I saw from this movie and I was so confused I had to see it... months later)

After a tense fight with the generals (Both noting that Galo is an idiot) he defeats them and takes on their leader. The leader isn’t so easy to defeat, not backing down easily and even pinning Galo, but ultimetly he was taken down by the whole Burning Rescue squad. Their leader is actually a very small young man who goes by the name of Lio Fotia.

(I specifically wanted this scene so I looked hard for it)

Lio, who was mistaken for a child, is shown to be one of the strongest Burnish alive and takes pride in it. Wanting nothing but rights for his people and will never stop fighting for that.

He’s actually a good foil to Galo for many reasons and why I like them being the protagonists for the story. Galo is loud, over the top, and loves to show off his skills. While Lio is more on the quiet side, and doesn’t really show off, more on the reserved side.

But the two are very alike. Both feel the need to protect their people (Galo with humans and Lio with Burnish), but they don’t hate the other. Galo wants Burnish rights while Lio vows to never kill humans. They also share a god damn brain cell and 90% of the time neither of them have it.

So yeah, Galo gets a medal from his hero, Governer Kray, impressive prison break and all that. We cut to Galo and Aina having a moment, which Galo realizes the Burnish had escaped prison. He finds them in a cave and thus we learn more about the Burnish from their very leader, Lio, who remembers Galo, but Galo forgot him.

(Fire go pew)

Lio explains to Galo that the Burnish are people too, even showing how disgusted he is by Galo thinking otherwise (some very racist viewpoints). There Galo witnesses the death of a Burnish, turning her to ash. Lio explains to Galo that the Burnish can hear the flames, they speak to them, wanting to burn more. He also learns that his hero, Kray, was using the Burnish for human experiments, and calls Galo an idiot and to believe what he wants. Then the Burnish run away and leave Galo tied up...

Galo’s whole view changes on the Burnish and see that Kray is conducting human experiments on the Burnish, even though they’re people like them. The reason being that the Earth is gonna become a dead planet and everything is going to shit. So Kray is going to take 10,000 humans to another planet and use the Burnish as fuel. (Fucked up).

Galo goes against this and gets arrested. Meanwhile Lio and the other Burnish are found and taken as fuel, but Lio’s loyal generals get him to safety (much to Lio’s disagreement).

Lio goes into a full on rage and uses his full power to attack the city and Kray. Telling him to free the Burnish, or watch the city burn.

He takes the form of a dragon and damn near destroys the whole city. He almost succeeds too, getting to Kray. But of course Galo cuts in and fights Lio in an effort to calm him down. Aina decides to drop them off by the frozen lake to “cool off” and discover a lab under all the ice.

They meet Professor Deus, the man responsible for all the cooling gear. He wanted to help the Burnish, but was killed by Kray for disagreeing with him and his viewpoints. Deus, who is now a living computer, tells Galo, Lio, and Aina about the “Promare”, A group of aliens from another dimension who connected with a human, Burnish. However the Promare feel what their human host feels, even extreme pain. If Kray’s plan succeeds, then the Earth is gonna blow up due to all the pain the Promare feel.

It’s up to Galo and Lio to stop Kray from his evil plans (cause they happened to be there) by piloting the Deus X Machina. Later on the suit gets a name change, Lio de Galon.

A suit powered by a firefighter and a Burnish. Both Galo and Lio work together to stop Kray. Along with their allies they succeed in stopping the ship, but Kray was not finished. He reveals himself to also be a Burnish, and kidnaps Lio, saying he was going to be the new core to the ship. He then attacks Galo and sends him flying in flames. But Galo was saved last minute by Lio’s flames, and now he plans to save Lio, with the help of his team, and goes into the core to save his new friend.

He makes it, stopping the ship a second time, and sees Lio is dying, turning to ash right before him. Kray was ready to fight, but could not harm Galo due to Lio’s flame. Galo punches Kray and says he’s gonna save Lio, stop the magma, and even save him. Then we get the scene. The scene.

The “Kiss of Life” some like to call it, or just CPR. Either way, it’s a pretty romantic scene. Galo brings Lio to life and the two have a new plan. Save the Earth. Lio says the Promare want to burn out, so with the help of Galo, and all the Burnish, they create Galo de Lion

This behemoth of a mech saves the Earth and everyone on it. As well as burning out the Promare, sending them home. The movie ends with everyone being okay and the end of the Burnish. Thus the next plan, to clean up the mess they all made. The End

Longer than I thought, sorry... So what’s my thoughts?

Well let’s start with the animation. It was done by Trigger (if it wasn’t obvious just by looking at it), and they go ALL out on it. Everything is stylized and looks gorgeous. The colors just pop out at you, nothing in this movie looks dull. Action scenes are very fast pace and intense, and their calmer moments are beautiful and let you relax with the gorgeous scenery, everything is gorgeous in the movie.

The characers are pretty good, one complaint is that we don’t get to know some of them well, like some of the Burning Rescue. We only get to know Aina out of the Burning Rescue team. Plus a few other side characters, like the two Generals, Meis and Gueira, don’t get enough screentime, but I guess they weren’t the focus.

Galo and Lio, again, were really good main characters, who play off each other well. They both open each other’s eyes and see things in a different light, especially Lio who showed Galo what the Burnish are really like. They do tend to argue and seem to disagree, but they are an amazing team. We see that when they pilot Lio de Galon and together create Galo de Lion. I do believe they fell for one another in the end, but I cannot say it’s canon since I don’t know for sure.

Voice acting was also great. I watched it dub, don’t kill me, and I actually think the dub was better than the sub, and this is coming from someone who watches subs more and is very biased. Billy Kametz played Galo well, just giving off so much energy and really selling his performance. I’ve heard people not liking Johnny Yong Bosch playing Lio, but he was perfect for the role. Enough sass and emotion for Lio, I don’t think anyone could have done it better. Everyone else did a great job as well, Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld as Aina, Crispin Freeman as Kray, and Steven Blum as Ignis. Just... everyone did amazing.

Do I need to say anything about the soundtrack? It’s beautiful and I love every song in this movie, I am listening to is as I type this review. From upbeat songs like Inferno, to the saddest like Ashes. Each song that plays puts the whole scene together, music makes the scene after all. Gallant Ones is the most memorable example (plays during the scene) and it really sets the mood on how the characters feel about one another. Ashes is really good in my opinion since it plays during the death of a Burnish. But they all are good, if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t plan on watching it, go listen to the soundtrack, it’s worth it.

Overall I adore this movie, it’s over the top and super entertaining, keeping my attention the whole time. It has helped me relax during this pretty scary time for me ^^; I highly recommend this movie. It’s got way too many good points that I dare say it’s one of my favorites. It sold me on the plot and I stayed for the great and entertaining characters. If you haven’t seen it (which I would be surprised) then go check it out. If you want to see the sub then it’s on Youtube, but if I sold you on the dub then it’s on Amazon Prime, (you’ll have to pay for both and I’m too lazy to find it for free).

That’s all, thanks for reading my overly long review of this movie.

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dearlazerbunny · 5 years

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Lie to Me (Ch. 3 of ?)

Pairings: Loki x Reader

Genre/Ratings: M eventually (aiming for a slow burn here); warnings for kidnapping and subsequent anxiety/PTSD (will be marked before every chapter)

Words: 1700

Summary: If you had to guess what the captured, traitor, trickster god Loki Laufeyson wanted or needed at this moment, a babysitter would be far, far down on the list. (Set after the events of Avengers 1.)

SHOUTOUT TO @molmcb and @jessiejunebug for their awesomeness.

Requested Tags: @deraniel @iamverity @yasnooshka24 @themusingsofmany @dark-night-sky-99 @wegingerangelica

You really have no idea what to expect. A message popped up in your inbox telling you to be in a certain room at a certain time. That’s it. Nothing about who you were meeting or why they wanted you there. But you know better than to ask questions about things SHIELD has deemed to be on a need-to-know basis. So you gather your notebooks and straighten your uniform, and take a deep breath before opening the large double doors in front of you.

That breath is immediately knocked out of you when you catch sight of the other occupants of the room. They’re a little hard to miss. Tony Stark has certainly been on the news enough for you to recognize immediately, though he looks more haggard and hungover than on his usual press tours. The bright red curls of Black Widow are iconic by now, as is the shield leaned up against Captain Roger’s chair. He drums his fingers on it thoughtfully. Judging by the arrowhead flitting through a brunet man’s fingers, you’d guess him to be the archer Hawkeye. And of course, the Norse god Thor sits with his mythical hammer Mjolnir by his side, also looking lost in thought. Oh, Christ. What have you gotten yourself into?

There’s a rather inconspicuous chair situated in the corner of the room, away from the conference table where all the superheroes- Avengers- are seated, so you settle into that, trying to take up as little room as possible. You also try not to hyperventilate. For some reason, being in the same room one-on-one with a god who has decidedly not great intentions is much less intimidating than being in a room full of heroes.

Thankfully, Fury walks in a second later, and all eyes drift to him as he takes his place at the head of the room. The second he opens his mouth, questions begin to overflow into the air-

“Where is he?”

“When does the interrogation start?”

“Bastard better be in pain-”

“The press keep asking if he’s contained-”

“Who are you?”

You glance up belatedly, realizing that last question is directed at you. “Um-” you look at Fury for help, but he simply raises his eyebrows at you. “I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you that. For… security purposes.” Which is complete and utter bullshit, and you’re fairly sure everyone in the room knows it, but the thought of being on any of these people’s radar makes your stomach turn. “I work for SHIELD.”

Tony Stark snorts. “Obviously.” He turns back to the director. “Well?”

“Loki is contained,” he says simply. “None of you will be allowed to access his cell.” This statement raises a round of protests until the man holds up a vaguely threatening hand. “Both the government and Asgard want him alive. And his being alive cannot be guaranteed if he’s put in a room with any single one of you.”

Most of them look disappointed, but in a murder-y, vicious sort of way. Thor looks relieved. “So we’re holding him?”

Fury nods. “We’ve worked out a temporary truce with Asgard. Before he returns with Thor for their trial, he’ll remain here with us until we can get some answers out of him.”

The group seems to agree to this with varying degrees of acceptance. “And who exactly is going to have the pleasure of choking him out until he gives over the intel?” This comes from the archer, who very much looks like he wants to be the one to have that pleasure.

“We have several of our best agents on the job. And…” Fury’s good eye trains on you, and you clear your throat in effort to keep your voice from wavering.

“They’ve also got me.” All eyes are suddenly on you, ratcheting your breathing up to eleven.

“You?” Stark asks incredulously. “What, is SHIELD just sending in junior agents as fodder now?”

You want to argue, but you really can’t, considering you’re basically the definition of a noob when it comes to this. The Norse god Thor is staring at you coldly, and dear god you really don’t want your neck snapped by any mythological figures anytime soon. “I’m keeping him company while he’s locked up, nothing more. I’m not going to hurt him,” you say, mostly to the god. He must see some truth in your statement because he settles back into his chair. “I’ve studied mythology, so I know a little about-”

“Yeah. I don’t really think you’d be capable of hurting him even if you wanted to, sweetheart.” You have to stop yourself from glaring at the billionaire. Jesus, does his mouth ever stop? “Why the hell aren’t you sending one of us in to do the job? Or, I don’t know, someone capable of actually defending themselves?”

“You’re all biased,” Fury answers easily. “If we’re going to get any answers out of him, he needs to feel like he isn’t in imminent danger of being throttled at the drop of a hat.”

The Black Widow raises a delicate eyebrow. “You plan on what, psychoanalyzing him?”

Thor shakes his head. “He is the god of lies, his words are not so easily sieved through-”

“He’s a psychopath.” The archer’s eyes look dead. “Enough said.”

Thor coughs. “I am not sure precisely what this ‘psychopath’ means, but I can assure you-”

“Save it, Thor.” The arrowhead stops flitting through the air, and the man abruptly stands, throwing a caustic look your way. “When he’s got you shaking on the floor wishing you were dead, let me know and I’ll put an arrow through his eye.” He leaves without looking back. After a few moments, the Widow follows silently.

How reassuring. This assignment just keeps getting better and better.

Fury sighs heavily. “You’ll be updated when deemed necessary.” A dismissal if you ever heard one. You’re out the door in a flash, intent on putting as much distance between you and that room and the people in it as possible. You’re so lost in thought you don’t even notice you’re being followed until you’re five hallways away.

“Lady Y/N.” You freeze, recognizing the deep voice behind you.

“Um… yes?” You say faintly. You’re scared to turn around.

“Please, I only wish to introduce myself.” That gets you to look at him. Thor Odinson stands at a respectful distance away, hunching his shoulders to make himself seem slightly less intimidating. It isn’t really working. “I am Thor,” he continues. “Son of Odin, prince of Asgard. Loki’s… brother.” He says the last bit hesitantly, as if he isn’t sure anymore.

“I know who you are,” you blurt without thinking, then immediately turn red and slap a hand over your mouth. You are not going to fangirl over Thor. You’re not you’re not you’re not. Just because you’ve been reading bedtime stories about him since you were five and wrote your dissertation about Norse gods does not mean-

“You do?” He doesn’t seem insulted. More like pleasantly surprised. “I take that my reputation precedes me.”

“Something like that. It helps that I’ve been studying mythology since I was little…”

“You mentioned this. What does it mean?”

“Mythology?” He nods. “Well. Basically, it’s the study of… you. I mean, not just you specifically. But gods and monsters and things like that. Of course, until a few years ago we had no idea what we were studying actually existed…”

He chuckles at that. “Indeed. I am pleased to hear our exploits have stood the test of time.”

“No kidding. You’ve got stories about you that date back to 1030, and that’s just what we’ve been able to uncover and translate-” you stop yourself, realizing you’re going into your whole overly-enthusiastic-academic persona. “But you probably already know that. Sorry.”

He surprises you with a hearty laugh, throwing back his head and making his hair ruffle around his shoulders. You find yourself smiling back. “I am happy to see the little one has such a lively personality! Perhaps it will do him some good.”

You want to bristle at him calling you ‘little one’, but he says it with absolutely no malice in his voice. Considering he’s about three times the size of you, you figured it’s a fair assessment. “Maybe,” you say sheepishly. “As of now he won’t even acknowledge when I’m in the room.”

“He is stubborn, and no doubt in a highly unpleasant mood.”

You snort. “I suppose foiled evil plots tend would do that to you.”

Thor sobers at your words; an abrupt change to his demeanor. “Tell me something, lady,” he says carefully. “What is your opinion of my brother?”

What? “Well, he did try to blow up half of New York and enslave the human race.”

“Aye, that he did.” He doesn’t offer anything else, but he seems to be looking for something nonetheless.

You shrug your shoulders. “He doesn’t strike me as the type to do something without reason, I guess. If historical accounts are to be believed he’s much too smart for that. I’m trying to keep a neutral opinion unless he gives me reason to think otherwise.”

“I see.” Thor looks at you thoughtfully. “You are wise for your years, lady Y/N.”

“You are literally thousands of years old.”

“And therefore you can take my word for it.” He pauses. “I am not allowed to see my brother, as you heard. Will you tell me of him? Just so I know he is…” he doesn’t seem to know how to finish that thought.

“I’ll let you know what I can.” Thor seems genuinely worried for his brother, and it sends a pang through your chest. The god nods, accepting that. “I’ve got a report to type up, so-”

“I will not keep you.” He inclines his head in a very polite manner. “Thank you for speaking with me.”

“Of course.” He walks off in the opposite direction, leaving half your brain screaming you just had a conversation with the god of thunder and the other half sulking and now you have to go sit with the god of lies.

A/N: Yeeeeeeeah you’re not exactly on great terms with the Avengers in this story. Fair warning.

Also, we’re up to 🎉 30k! 🎉 with 12-ish more chapters to be written? That’d put us at around 30 chapters, woot

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ofjunkrcts · 5 years

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OKAY HI u guys have no idea how pumped i am for this!!!!!! i almost NEVER pick up second characters so u know that means i gotta whole lot of love in my heart for this girl :’) let’s jump right in i’m so excited!!!!!!!!!

part one: the backstory!!!!

what the fuck is up im coming at u HOT with another Hot Fucking Mess say hello to my mfn BABYGIRL frankie rivera

yes frankie is a nickname no u probably don’t know what her full name is bc undersharing is the name of the game baby

born on the wrong side of the tracks…… literally! technically the trailer park she grew up in wasn’t Actually an ashmont mailing address bc heaven forbid 100% of ashmont residents aren’t stupid rich! but thanks to the wonder that is school of choice, frankie still went to ashmont high school w the gang way back when!

(sex work tw) she was raised by her single mother who was a community college dropout when a random ass hookup ended up in her being pregnant! her mom has worked two jobs all of frankie’s life to afford the basics, being a waitress at a bar by day and also a stripper by night to make that money and provide for her daughter! and even though they barely BARELY ever had enough to make ends meet, frankie’s momma is her whole HERO so watch ur mouth

because she didn’t really have much growing up and because her mom’s demanding work schedule left her with very little supervision, she resorted to petty theft at a pretty young age. sometimes it was to get things that she or her mom needed, like medicine from the gas station down the street. sometimes it was to get things that she wanted, like if she wanted fresh fruit for breakfast. and, eventually, she ended up stealing because it was what everyone expected from someone “like her”

by the time that high school came around, frankie’s tendency for theft had surpassed means of survival and had, instead, had turned into something that she couldn’t stop herself from doing. she stole clothes, makeup, accessories, art supplies, anything and everything that the world of rich kids around her made her believe that she needed but couldn’t afford on her own and she quickly found that she couldn’t stop herself

the idea that she was constantly being judged by people who looked down on her, constantly believing that there were a set of expectations she would always be held to, constantly being seen as nothing and constantly having to prove that she wasn’t worthless — all became recurring themes in her life

the first person frankie met who changed her life was a man named mel carson, the owner of carson’s automotive shop. when she was fifteen, frankie got caught attempting to shoplift from the pharmacy of the convenience store and, really, she’d just been lucky that mel had been there and convinced the owner of the store to let her go with a warning, paying for what she’d been trying to steal. and then he’d really saved her life by offering her a job at the shop

the second person frankie met who changed her life was her art teacher, junior year. coincidentally, it was another instance where she thought that she was going to end up in trouble with the law. she’d developed a love for art at a young age, but it had always seemed untouchable until the day that she began to express herself through graffiti. it was her art teacher who found her spray painting one of the back walls of the school and, instead, of reporting her to the school or to the ashmont pd for vandalism, he looked at her and saw the talent and the passion with which her work was carefully completed. he convinced her to start taking classes, gave her a place and supplies to work in his classroom, fostered her interests and encouraged her to stick with it

she did and, by some miracle, she ended up at st e’s on a scholarship for her art after spending a year at community college, which she never thought would have happened to someone like her. opening her college acceptance letter, with her mom looking on and beaming with pride, was the first time in her life that frankie truly felt like she might be able to amount to something

now she’s out here at st e’s chilling, working at the art gallery, also running a “technically illegal because you don’t have any certification” underground auto shop in the junkyard just chilling !!!!!!!

PART 2: PERSONALITY

as far as her personality goes, frankie can probably best be described as being single minded to the point of recklessness. she has been held accountable for very few things in her life, never really had a lot of responsibilities, was never held to a very high standard, often got away with things she shouldn’t have without seeing repercussions, etc. because of that she’s always been a bit flighty and had a difficult time seeing the full extent of the consequences of her actions

this probably..... best displays itself in her tendency to be...... overly flirtatious with uhhh everyone all the time she is so TERRIBLE about it she is so so flirty n so so ........ Like That. i dont mean 2 be that person but like........ female danny/female noah. thats her ladies!! ready n willing to sleep w anyone at almost any moment in time

but shes super gay so jot that down xoxo

ANYWAY. it isnt that she’s not empathetic bc she IS. she gets Way Too Attached to people and then backs out before she can fully commit bc..................

she’s also a BIG TIME commitment-phobe, terrified of letting people in and seeing the parts of her that she keeps tucked away under a cool, icy, collected exterior which mostly stems from the fact that she has a lot of repressed contempt towards people who have always viewed her as lesser because of her status, social standing, etc

i might be biased but??? i love her and think she’s a good person still??? like deep down she’s such a sweetheart she really is, she likes to just hang out in the junkyard and and go through trash that people threw away and pick out pieces of things that can be built into something new and beautiful

she’s super sentimental deep down but will throw punches if anyone tries to say that, she doesn’t give a SHIT if she’s only like 5 ft tall she will fight

she’s a baby and strongly identifies in the “junk” of the junkyard n wants someone to put effort into her to make her beautiful the way that she does to everything else and that’s on that

OKAY. PLOTS

basically i have some in my brain already but im gonna do the tldr version of them rn so that i can POST THIS.

first of all, GIVE HER SPICY CONNECTIONS PLS kiki is the loml n my girl but shes 2 sad 2 b spicy ever in her life so LET ME HAVE A SPICY GIRL PLS

FRIENDS!!!!! she would live and die for her friends SO VERY MUCH give her some sweet wholesome plots esp someone who was perhaps her friend back in the day

“EXES” and i put it in quotations bc its... highly unlikely that frankie was ever 1000000% committed and in a serious relationship (OR maybe she was maybe ur character was the 1 exception that broke her heart) BUT THERE R SO MANY POSSIBILITIES FOR THIS TO GO MESSY

also she needs ROOMMATES. WHO WANTS A ROOMMATE!!!!!!!!!!!

um????? hateship?????????? didnt get along??????????// still dont get along???????????

IDK. MY BRAIN IS SO SCATTERED BC I AM SO EXCITED N FEELING CRAZY BUT!!!!!!!!!!! ILY

#veritasintro #WHAT THE FUCK IS UPPPPPP

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acatnamedlulu · 6 years

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My Thoughts on Channel Awesome- Part 1: The Walkers

So, full disclosure, this is going to get dramatic. This isn’t going to be an “objective look” on the whole controversy surrounding Channel Awesome. This is going to be a biased, unfiltered rant. And it’s gonna get loooooooooong. I’ll put a TL;DR at the end of this, and I’ll try and keep the deep anger and frustration to a minimum to prevent any rambling tangents or “CAPZLOCK YELLING BCUZ I AM ANGER, RRAAAAGH!”

Ok, I’m sure many of you already know by now the recent shitstorm of events surrounding Channel Awesome over the past couple weeks, but for those of you unaware, how about a little context:

A few weeks ago (at the time of this posting), several former producers/content creators of Channel Awesome compiled a 70+ page google document titled “Not So Awesome”, each detailing their own shitty experiences working at Channel Awesome. Many of these allegations range from minor jabs, to full legitimate complaints regarding Doug and Rob Walker and especially Channel Awesome CEO Mike Michaud’s behavior. So while maybe one or two points brought up in the document could come off as petty, or just throwing shade, I don’t think that’s a reason to discredit the entire thing.This is nearly a dozen or so ex-producers affiliated with the “TGWTG” website as early as 2008, all with their own experiences and grievances. And even though everyone has a different story to tell, they all seem to be tied together by the same goddamn themes: Not just about the shitty behavior/poor business etiquette of Mike Michaud, but also poor behavior by the Walkers. And although Michaud is absolutely the worst out of all the people being named, I wanna talk about Doug Walker first. And by extent Rob Walker. Although, Rob is more of an issue when it comes to the business end of Channel Awesome as opposed to the actual entertainment, so maybe I’ll talk about him more when I go into a rant about Michaud. Granted, I have a feeling that my opinions on the Walkers are going to be met with a more negative response, and believe me, I completely understand why, but just... just here me out. More bullshit context and backstory, oh happy fucking day!

Alright, so when I was a dumb, hormonal young teen exploring her “edgy” side, I came across the Nostalgia Critic circa 2009-10ish? And after finding the character’s harsh judgement, foul colorful language, and humorous approach to critiquing to be right up my alley, I became an extremely loyal fan of TGWTG. Even after the NC reboot in 2013, I still stuck around and tuned in every week. For as much as I hated some of those goddamn skits, and clipless reviews, I still wanted to hear Doug’s opinion on a movie. He helped me understand film on a critical level that I didn’t think I could reach. And while I don’t consider myself a “critic” in any sense of the word, it was cool to have someone help guide me through an entire medium and look at it in a meaningful and thoughtful way. I eventually started watching Doug and Rob out of character, and both of them seemed like passionate, humble people who enjoy what they do. Watching the NC behind the scenes were sometimes more fun than watching an episode because Doug Walker truly looks like a man who’s dedicated to his work. But as I say this now, this also seems to be one of his biggest flaws. I know this is already longer than it has any business being, but the reason I’m going on this lengthy diatribe, is because I need you guys to understand where I’m coming from, and why I have such a strong stance on this. Which is why I’ll finally get to my fucking point:

I think Doug Walker needs to be held more accountable for his actions. Or at least his actions need to be taken more seriously/into consideration.

As stupid as this sounds, this has been bugging me since the day the “Not so Awesome” google document has been released. Not so much the contents of the document itself, but rather, some of the reactions around it. The general consensus is that Mike Michaud is a terrible person, and something absolutely needs to be done about him... which is absolutely true. But what bothered me is people’s quick need to, maybe not justify, but brush over the shit that Doug has caused too. One of the biggest issues that many of the producers discuss in the document is the absolute production hell of the CA anniversary movies.

From “Kickassia” all the way up to “To Boldly Flee”, it just baffles me how incompetent and incapable Doug Walker is, both at making a film, and caring for his crew at even the bare minimum. Going back and watching TBF, you don’t even have to read the full extension of what it was like working on the set, because you can practically see it on the actors’ faces! You can just feel the exhaustion of everybody involved except Doug, but that’s because the man was so severely wrapped up in this self-serving ego project, that everyone else gets stepped on as a result. Remember what the stupid plot of TBF was anyway? The Nostalgia Critic brings everyone from CA into space to fight an anomaly called a “plot hole”, only for the NC to make his big damn sacrifice and die as the noble hero, killing off the character for good... until the reboot in 2013. With none of the other producers being notified of this until they received their scripts just a few weeks before filming.Yeah, it’s kinda fucking heartbreaking to know that other contributors and producers were treated as such an afterthought, that they were told this information in this short amount of time, in a movie that they were starring in.

Several people have pointed out the lack of basic necessities needed on a film set such as catering and water. Guys, this isn’t a group of kids dicking around with a camera and a computer for a few hours and making a home movie. This was an actual production supervised by grown adults who needed to be told during filming that “people need food and water”. Across the course of several films. One of which was filmed in the Nevada desert. How difficult would it have really been to stop off at a fucking Walmart, gather up some coolers and ice bags, some of those 24 packs of water in bulk and keep it at a safe location on the damn set? This isn’t something that requires a goddamn film degree to understand, it’s common fucking sense. It’s just baffling to me that these painstaking efforts from the producers were just “voluntary” positions, too. The document itself goes into much more detail of how that shit works, so I’ll be posting it at the end of this rant, you’re welcome.

And this is where I draw the line of giving Doug a pass. You can’t convince me that this level of negligence is just some kind of mistake that can be easily forgiven. I can’t believe that people can defend Doug on the grounds of “well, he’s just the pawn in this” or “he was just being naive and selfish”. No, this type of naivete and lack of basic human decency has caused people physical harm. Several actors sustained injuries throughout the production of the anniversary films. This usually ended with both Doug and Rob shrugging some of these off, while others had to sign contracts in order for CA to avoid a lawsuit. That is fucking insane!

A couple producers in the document recall how Doug was more involved with the business aspect of CA. He was more than just a puppet for Mike Michaud. Remember, the anniversary movies were written by him and Rob. And while Michaud was most likely the one who had the final say of what went on, Doug was the overseer of these projects. These were his creations, and he should have taken full responsibility for what was going on. And for him to have such a cynical and uncaring approach to the treatment of both the characters within the film, and the producers portraying them is sickening. This man has put on the persona of being this nice, approachable, easy to work/converse with person for years, and to hear how egotistical and negligent he truly is. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there was always something a bit self-centered about Doug, but knowing what I know now... like, it’s hard to explain why I feel so guilty about supporting Doug for as long as I did. I know we all can say “oh, well, it’s not like we knew”, but see, the thing is, I kind of did. The incidents with Obscurus Lupa weren’t completely unknown beforehand. Since like, 2015, people have been bringing this shit up, and I willingly chose to ignore it because I was such a huge NC fan. I just blindly kept watching the show and pretending CA was this cool, friendly place and nothing was wrong. Yeah, I’m not gonna act like I’m such a good person for bashing Doug, and I know that I shouldn’t have had such blind support. But the good news is, I don’t now. I know better, and I hope we all can move on from this, and learn.

Ok, so going back and reading this overly dramatic tripe, I realize I may have gone off the rails at some points. So before this turns into an “amateur hour smear campaign”, I think I’m going to split this up into two parts. I already said all I want to say about Doug and Rob. But I still have issues with Mike Michaud that are probably the same opinions everyone and their mother has expressed on this insane human being. But I still wanna get some stuff off my chest. Anyway, this is now Part 1 of the “Lunatic ravings of a disgruntled former fangirl” saga, maybe some of you would like to join me for My Thoughts on Channel Awesome Part 2: Electric Boogaloo.

and now for the TL;DR

I think Doug Walker is an inept, egotistical man who has hurt people both emotionally, and sometimes physically to get what he wants. And people shouldn’t excuse his actions just because he doesn’t run the CA site in the way Mike Michaud does. If he’s going to go through the trouble of making a fucking movie, especially one that’s nearly four hours long, he should make sure the crew is at least hydrated and not exhausted all the goddamn time. Doug is a grown ass man, and he should carry these responsibilities like an adult. Maybe then, the CA anniversary movies would be at least a little less cringey to watch. Rant on Michaud coming soon. Peace out, dickholes.

The “Not So Awesome” document

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZFkR__B3Mk9EYQglvislMUx9HWvWhOaBP820UBa4dA/preview#heading=h.smmxroimnosh

#changethechannel #channel awesome #nostalgia critic #i immediately regret this #get to the point

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damienisverygood · 6 years

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you: deceit is an abusive, gaslighting asshole

me, an intellectual: not only does has deceit only been in one episode at the time of this post’s creation, but putting him in the villans chair after virgil was removed and making him seem like a evil monster while virgil was just a nuisance is highly unfair

‘but virgil is a pure angel’ you say, and i say to that you clearly don’t remember asshole virgil from the first ‘season’ where virgil wasn’t a villan just because he was an emo nightmare, but because he seemed like a narcissistic asshole. he regularly made thomas uncomfortable, insulted the others on a episodely basis (ie. “no one cares you’re the least popular character”) and was generally antagonizing during every video until the sides started getting used to each other. in the first episode he appears in, he literally talks down on everyone around him with some pseudo emotional abuse shit, the same that my anxiety does to me.

‘still virgil’s a pure angel’ you may say and, yeah, he’s a good bean now. but before everyone knew that he was a pure bean? he was still the villan. the emo nightmare. and maybe lots of people initially liked him at first because he was an edgy kid and was named anxiety, and a lot of people could relate to that because a lot of us have anxiety, I being one of them. But Virgil was an asshole, and was never seen as an abuser, and yet as of the creation of this post, deceit has been in ONE episode and already people are writing him abusing the other sides when we know nothing else about him.

‘But Virgil was furious at Deceit for impersonating Patton so he must be evil’ you cry, and honestly, that’s pretty easy to explain. I’m sure they do have their past together (anxiety is a mix of the logical things that can go wrong and the illogical things that you think are logical that can go wrong) but like, if someone was trying to impersonate my best friend, and managed to convince me they were my best friend while also keeping said best friend away, I would immediately begin to throw hands. no question about it. the deceiver doesn’t have to be an abusive dick for me to immediately punch them in the face

‘okay, so we should give deceit a try. but the word deceit still has bad connotations with it, and its often used for abusive assholes’

im not arguing with that one, but also, one again, consider Anxiety. Anxiety doesn’t have the best connotations either, his name really should’ve been ‘fear’, and when Thomas redeemed him in the Accepting Anxiety arc I was pretty damn concerned. For me, anxiety is Not a good thing. It prevents me from doing almost anything, makes my chest hurt, makes me feel like no one around me truly likes me or everyone is out to get me and it sucks ass. and yet he was redeemed anyways, and now I love Virgil with all my heart, and now he encompasses fear more than anything. maybe the same thing will happen to deceit in the future.

‘but what’s so good about deceit?’ you ask? and i am more than happy to tell you

his lying is so fucking ridiculous like is he being sarcastic or can he literally never tell the truth we may never know and its amazing

he’s??? a good actor??? like how long was he planning on impersonating Patton? did he decide to do it the day or minute before, because if he did wow??? good job???? and like, his subtle check of the hand for notes and him managing to fool all but the literal personification of detail nitpicker is so??? good??? Like he must be jealous that roman is regarded as the actor cause dammit he can act too!

on that note deceit apparently loves musicals and acting in general. that entire end card scene where he just lists off a bunch of puns centered around lying and plays? he literally did not have to do that but wild!!! not to mention his outfit i mean seriously the only thing more dramatic than that outfit is deceit himself (and roman too i guess)

HE ACTUALLY MADE SEVERAL PUNS ON THAT END CARD GUYS ITS AMAZING

on a serious note, Patton doesn’t hate Deceit. In fact, he describes Deceit as an ‘inner coach that acts with the one intention of self preservation’ (its also worth mentioning that morality technically isn't emotion, but whatever thomas believes is right or wrong. happy is good, sad is bad, lying is bad given some exceptions, etc the fact that patton is giving deceit some credit here speaks volumes)

and logan likes deceit a bit too i guess

‘so why do you care about him so much?’ you may ask, now curious, and i’m going to admit it, I’m pretty biased towards deceit because I lie a bunch. when I was twelve I lied about getting an online account because I was afraid my parents would be angry at me (they were). I lie about my grades because I don’t want my parents to be angry and disappointed. I lie about my opinions to others because I don’t want to out myself. I say little white lies every day to prevent people from getting mad, feeling insulted, or for bothering me too much.at me. I even lie to myself, giving myself hope that I don’t even believe in. ever hear the phrase ‘fake it till you make it’? thats been a whole lot of me this semester, especially since if i didn’t do that, I’d be too depressed to do anything, and that gets you nowhere (not saying you shouldn’t accept that you have to stop sometimes - you should - but remaining optimistic under false hope is better than staying depressed)

so uh, yeah

and thats my rant on deceit

Edit: *kicks down the door to edit this post* aND ANOTHER THING

The entire basis of Sanders Sides was created on the idea of getting to know yourself and the self improvement that follows. It’s about taking and understanding all of the strengths and flaws you have and using them to better yourself and become a kinder person, and yes, all of them. Making Deceit an abusive character who stays evil is counterintuitive. Not only does it help no one (especially Thomas since Deceit still is a part of him), if someone like Deceit is pushed away on the premise that he’s a bad guy (*cough* like Virgil *cough*), then there’s a risk of another case of ‘ducking out’, and who knows what trouble an overly honest person can get himself into.

and on that note who here has never lied before come on

#damien's posts #sympathetic deceit #deceit sanders #thomas sanders #thatsthat24 #ts #i have a lot of feelings about the fander's treatment of deceit #i mean he's still a villan but #god guys #chill #edit: it seemed like i didnt like virgil so i changed it a bit #edit: added more stuff

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egyptbra6-blog · 5 years

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Therese Anne Fowler Reminds Us How Insane the Gilded Age Really Was

Given the runaway success of Therese Anne Fowler’s novel Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, it’s not surprising that her new novel, A Well-Behaved Woman, has been among the fall’s most highly anticipated historical fiction releases. This time Fowler takes on the lesser-known figure of Alva Vanderbilt, who married into one of America’s richest Gilded Age families and took bold actions to steer herself, her family and society forward into a better future. Like Zelda, Alva hasn’t always been described kindly in historical narratives, and as Fowler puts it in our interview, every word of these descriptions makes a difference: “critical adjectives create and maintain mischaracterizations.”

As a fellow writer of novels that seek to reframe and center women’s role in history, I was delighted to sit down with Fowler and discuss her latest work. Like its subject, A Well-Behaved Woman draws beauty from paradox: it is both detailed and fast-paced, loving and critical, heart-breaking and hopeful. We also explored Fowler’s thoughts on the challenges of shaping a novel from biography, what it’s like to live in a two-author house, and how the common advice for authors to create a “brand” can be a disservice both to authors and readers.

Alva Vanderbilt, 1883.

Greer Macallister

You describe your initial impression of Alva as a negative one, saying she’d been “described as a pushy, selfish, overly ambitious, materialistic social climber.” And if one looks at Alva’s life through that lens, she definitely seems iffy. She threw eye-poppingly lavish parties for New York society, including a masquerade ball in 1883 that cost a reported $3 million. She challenged authority and societal norms that didn’t suit her. But as you write them in A Well-Behaved Woman, these events make sense in context. The ball, for example, is a desperate yet calculated bid to improve the status of the socially questionable Vanderbilts, the exact reason the penniless Alva was approved by the Vanderbilts to marry W.K.

Do you feel like your sympathetic interpretation of Alva, seeing her as strong instead of pushy, strategic instead of selfish, gets us closer to the truth of the person she really was? Or does it even matter—can there ever be a “true” record? This is fiction, after all, not biography. (Though biography also has its biases…)

Therese Anne Fowler

Biographical fiction is always an interpretation, but yes, I do think I’ve given readers a truer Alva, and yes, I do think this reframing matters a great deal. We as a culture need to reconsider our judgments of women, past and present, who don’t embody the traditional ideals of what a woman is supposed to be and do.

If a man had acted in the ways Alva did, he would be lauded for those actions—described as progressive, a visionary, a champion. Critical adjectives create and maintain mischaracterizations, hence Alva’s (and Zelda Fitzgerald’s) frequent depictions as difficult, problematic women who should therefore be disliked and dismissed.

And yes, context is another matter that’s often ignored in modern assessments of Alva’s life. Given the way Alva is so often held to account, one would think she was the only socialite hosting lavish entertainments, that her lifestyle was excessive for her time and place and class—when in fact nineteenth century millionaires were in the habit of spending wildly long before Alva came along (and that’s leaving aside the habits of Europe’s upper class, who we might say wrote the book on “lavish”). Alva was in many ways more restrained than her cohorts, including her sister-in-law Alice Vanderbilt as well as Caroline Astor, but they are both given a pass because they embodied the traditional ideals of feminine comportment while in some notable ways Alva did not.

If one wishes to take issue with the excesses and assign blame, let’s remember that nearly all Gilded Age extravagance ultimately occurred not by a woman’s hand (any woman’s) but by her husband’s: the men controlled the money.

Greer Macallister

Very good point. You begin the book in the summer of 1874, when Alva Smith is just beginning to consider marriage to William K. Vanderbilt, and end it around 1908. When you’re writing about a life as rich and complex as Alva’s, how do you decide where your version of the story starts and ends? How did you decide what to leave out? I’m thinking of Alva’s sister Jenny’s marriage to Consuelo Yznaga’s brother Fernando—does the stage get just too crowded?

Therese Anne Fowler

As those of us who write biographical-based novels know well, research materials may be dense with information, but no individual’s life follows a tidy plotline. We have to create one from the material at hand.

Shaping a novel from biography means we have to learn and assess all the facts about an individual (who they were, what they did, the historical context) in order to discover thematic through-lines, and then use those through-lines to help in the selection of what gets onto the page. There’s not necessarily one right approach.

Once I knew that this story was going to a depiction of how the Alva of Women’s Rights history came to be that woman (as opposed to a novel about her suffragist activities), I had my general start and end parameters. As for choosing how much of the narrative to give to any particular person or situation, that goes back to knowing the thematic through-lines. There are many pieces of Alva’s life that get minimal attention in the novel (or none at all), because, while they may be interesting, they’re tangential to the storyline.

Greer Macallister

You’re a writer married to a writer. It seems like that could either be a recipe for perfection or disaster. Are you and your husband early readers of each other’s work? You write in such distinct genres that your styles don’t overlap much, but good writing is good writing, and it seems like it could be enormously helpful to have someone else in the house to help you puzzle out a problem.

Therese Anne Fowler

My husband, John Kessel, does read my early drafts, and I read his. It’s never a bad thing for a writer to have another experienced reader/writer/editor in the house as long as you respect each other and aren’t competitive with each other.

In our case, I think it helps that John established himself as an award-winning author long before we knew each other, and that he’s been a creative writing professor for more than thirty years. We absolutely think ours is a recipe for relationship perfection (inasmuch as such a thing can exist). Not only are we qualified early readers of each other’s work and great sounding boards for those thorny plot problems, but we can fully commiserate about the difficulties of this business as well as truly appreciate what goes into each other’s successes.

Greer Macallister

Any story that combines fictional interpretation with the historical record raises a question in the reader’s mind from time to time—is this particular bit real? I was particularly curious about the letters and newspaper clippings you include. Some are letters from the public to Alva after “Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt’s Great Fancy Dress Ball”, some full of praise (“You are a fine lady of good imagination”) and others the opposite (“…such expenditure on frivolities is immoral when so many are going hungry. You should be ashamed!”) Were these based on or excerpted from real letters? Were you able to see archived letters between Consuelo and Alva, or did you create their correspondence as it exists in these pages?

Therese Anne Fowler

Unlike the voluminous material I had to work with when writing Z, authoritative materials relating to Alva’s life are relatively few. Most biographical accounts of her rely on a lot of hearsay and a handful of highly biased accounts from newspaper articles published about her during her life; we really have an echo chamber of misinformation. Too, there’s a lot of cherry picking from her daughter’s memoir, a lot of selective use of critical facts that ignores both context and Consuelo’s praise.

In the novel, quotes from newspapers are for the most part taken from actual publications. All the letters, however, are invented, derived from facts about the relationships between the individuals and the events in each respective authors’ lives. Written correspondence was the mode of communication, even for people who lived nearby one another, and so although I didn’t have source documents to work with, there can be no doubt that this kind of correspondence took place.

Greer Macallister

Your recently announced next novel (congratulations!), Edge Effects, has a contemporary setting. It may seem like a departure to readers of Z and A Well-Behaved Woman, but since your early novels Souvenir, Reunion and Exposure were all set around the time when they were published, does it feel like more of a homecoming to you? Do you see yourself continuing to explore both contemporary and historical settings in the future?

Therese Anne Fowler

While there are many authors who are strongly encouraged by their agents and/or editors to write in only one genre (in order to build a “brand,”), I feel that this advice can be a disservice to the author and to readers of that author’s work.

I have wide-ranging interests, and while I might be said to return to a handful of favorite themes in my novels, I’m choosing to write stories that grab me irrespective of their time settings. Readers, too, have wide-ranging interests, and I trust that the ones who read across genres will willingly come along with me for the ride as long as the stories I give them are compelling and done well.

So returning to a contemporary setting for Edge Effects is less of a homecoming than a matter of having again pursued the idea that captivated me most. And I will say, it was a real treat to get to invent the characters and storyline from scratch.

Here’s the other thing: though many of the authors who’ve come to have name brand recognition write the same kind of novel every time, there are so many others whose names are less familiar and whose career paths are diverse and winding. Sometimes this is by design. Sometimes it’s a consequence of factors well outside of the author’s control. Success and longevity, if it’s going to come, comes from showing up and doing the work. It comes from continuing to learn and improve. I’m here, and I’m writing, trying to make each book my best yet.

FICTION – HISTORICAL A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts By Therese Anne Fowler St. Martin’s Press Published October 16, 2018

Therese Anne Fowler is the author of the New York Timesbestselling novel Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. Raised in the Midwest, she moved to North Carolina in 1995. She holds a BA in sociology/cultural anthropology and an MFA in creative writing from North Carolina State University.

Source: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2018/10/24/a-well-behaved-woman-therese-anne-fowler-interview/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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mrmallard · 7 years

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Late night rant, might get a little messy.

People who can’t make a clean break from relationships.

Disclaimer, different relationships have different levels of context and backstory, no two relationships will be the same, and there’s no way to account for all relationships because factors like abuse muddy the waters. It’s not cool to tell an abuse victim that they’re weak because they couldn’t get out of their situation - that’s not what this is about.

My gripe is with people who have this pathological need to be in a relationship, and see the breakdown of a bad relationship as a failure of themselves as people to the point that they’ll threaten self-harm or act like their life is over because their relationship didn’t work out. People who will go behind each other’s backs and get upset at each other for those slights without addressing their own wrongdoing, who’ll post a cutesy selfie on facebook to celebrate their 3 month anniversary in the middle of a vicious break-up.

I think it’s our media - rom-coms and stuff that’s all about falling in love with one person, breaking up because they cause each other pain, but then one of them has a critical epiphany and gets back together with their partner because true love is absolute and weathers all storms. People see a path that deviates from the perfect fairy tale, and it causes them genuine distress because it’s a failure of who they are. They cut out perfectly healthy chunks of themselves and display them with an earnest desperation to hit that magical epiphany, instead of having the diseased flesh removed - they’d rather feel venom and gangrene to fit the desired dream instead of coming around, realizing that a diseased limb is bringing them down no matter how much they liked it when it was healthy, and getting it removed to stop the pain it was causing.

Of course, that’s an overly simplified exaggeration of what a relationship is. Like I said, relationships come with different sets of context behind them. And it sounds a bit misanthropic to compare a relationship to gangrene and diseased limbs. Relationships can be a source of immense joy, but people will roll the dice on their longterm well-being for a chance to have a slice of that. They’ll suffer through the worst storms and they’ll become so sick of dealing with it that they’ll cheat and lie and become awful people, all for a chance of that happiness, when five sides of that die are rigged to warp you as a person. And then they’ll turn around and smile, because they care so much about perpetuating the perfect relationship and making it work that they’ll stay trapped in a bad situation because of what it represents to them. They’ll cry to friends and threaten to drive into trees over a relationship, instead of taking a step back and viewing those three months of shouting, fighting and paranoia for what they were and realizing that maybe, despite your immense love and desire to be happy with someone, it’s objectively a better idea to make a clean break, re-group and go back to a life that’s less complicated and less painful to deal with.

And yeah - you get with a person, and you think you might be willing to be with them forever. That’s a valid expression of love. And a few years down the line, when things have gone south, you might still be dedicated to fulfilling that ideal. It’s not weak to save an ailing relationship, and it’s not weak to feel love and affection for people regardless of the circumstances behind your relationship. But there’s a point where being in a relationship is a net loss, and instead of making that hard call, people will anchor themselves to their relationship and get dragged down with it - give into petty grievances, fight over the same recurring issue without addressing it for what it is, change as people and do petty, spiteful things to serve one’s self and get angry when they get called out - and insist that they were making the most of the best they had, and blame everyone else for their unhappiness. They can break out, revert to an earlier state to survive - in some cases, people still live with their parents, so they have some support networks to turn to - but because romance is the be-all end-all of existence, they have to hook their claws in and suck every last drop of juice out of it until there’s nothing left to stand on at the end, where they crash and shatter at full velocity instead of stepping back and climbing down when there was something left to climb down from.

That lack of self-awareness when a relationship becomes poison, that willingness to lash out at everyone and desire to die when a relationship breaks down, is something that immeasurably bothers me. I’ve been in one relationship that barely resembled anything, so I guess outside some incredibly potent crushes I don’t have a leg to stand on. And I understand that not all relationships are created equal, not everyone can drop their whole lives to re-organize after a break-up. This is a creed about the people who can do that, who with a bit of time, sadness and support, can break things off - who would be better off single, who would be in less pain with no partner, and who could do it with little to no financial/lifestyle negatives - but won’t, because the idea of being single again is a fate worse than suicidal depression, constant paranoia and complete and utter self-loathing and content at the expense of yourself and someone else.

I was on the sidelines of a breakup like that, where a girl was cheating on my friend and he’d be so upset about it, so sure that it was happening, to the point that he’d raise his voice and claim that she’s dead to him - but they were together for six months, five of which were spent fighting and being upset about the same things, and days before they broke up - in the death throes of their relationship - shared a happy selfie for their 6 month anniversary with all this “still so in love, #blessed” crap. DAYS before they broke up. So desperate to appear sane and normal, but self-destructive and mutually resentful of each other for five months. Why bother bleeding for five months, when you can feel fucking bummed and awful for a while but ultimately recover quicker when the relationship hits that level of quality - where text messages are being deleted, you’re talking to different people and you’re always fighting about it? If you’ll struggle and bleed for five months because romantic love is worth hating your partner for, then I think you’ve wasted five months.

My relationship ended pretty cordially, all things considered. My girlfriend tried to OD on vodka and painkillers, and that was a clusterfuck - that incident was the hardest part, and arguably the moment we disconnected, but it was a whole different beast compared to how we actually ended things. When we actually split up, she messaged me over facebook one day and called it off. I was fully prepared to tell it to her face and do it right, and she saved me the trouble. But I was going to go the hard way and talk it out, when it became clear that there was no more goodwill left. Maybe we overstayed our welcomes, but the time came to break things off - I became self-aware enough to see that there was more trash than treasure. And I think people need to have that moment, and apply it to their future relationships - be happy, be good to each other and don’t get bogged down about it, but stay self-aware and get the fuck out before it becomes a hollow, hateful lie that you keep up with for appearance’s sake. Maybe my account is just as bad as the case I’m trying to make, and that’s a fair point to make - I’m biased as shit. But I didn’t drag it out and I didn’t involve anyone else. The well ran dry, it became clear that it wasn’t worth keeping up the facade and that there was no happiness left, and it came time to end things. If I had done that in the first place, we wouldn’t have fucked up as much along the way. Even then, there was a minimum level of collateral damage, and I’m proud of that.

That’s all I have to say. Thanks for reading.

#love #relationships #facebook

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trulycertain · 7 years

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Tru’s Writing Notes

I’ve had people ask me after seeing my feedback on stories if I’m as overanalytical with my own stuff. The answer is yes. My stuff may often be written at 4 AM and typo-laden, but yes.

Because of that and @thesecondsealwrites talking about process (though unlike her post, this is more the why/how than the everyday practicalities of writing), here are some of the notes I’ve left myself in my journal. These apply mostly to the way I write my original rather than my fic, but they can apply to both. Can I add: a lot of these probably seem very obvious, I know, and I don’t always manage to bear them in mind. Also, I’m not a pro or even a talented amateur, and these aren’t addressing an audience, they’re addressing me - and they apply more to the way I write than writing in general. But if anyone might find this interesting or wants to know if I worry about my writing, here’s your answer.

People tend to like a strong story, with good reason. The best plots tend to be simple, and then you build outwards and maybe twist. A compelling central arc, certain genre tropes or something familiar tend to be what work: forbidden romance, or an unsolved murder and a maverick. We have a fair idea of what’s going to happen, but it’s the anticipation - and/or the eventual subversion - that brings the fun. Plot and drive.

Again, try to have a strong idea of where it’s going, or the spirit of it. Terry Pratchett once said that you want to be able to write your own blurb: it’s a good sign if you can distil the essence of your story into a hundred words or so.

Just like real people, characters have verbal tics, peculiar turns of phrase and certain mannerisms. Learn them, and use but don’t overuse. Keep it natural.

Some people just don’t like present tense, or past, or first person, for whatever reason. You may be buggered from the start, and sometimes all you can do is try. Try and know your audience, try your best. Try not to bang your head against a wall.

However, present tense is a slippery bastard. At its best, there’s almost nothing that can match it for immediacy and visceral intensity. At its worst, it can either be staccato, bleak and overly clinical - or at the other end of the scale, it can be overwrought sensory overload. Either way, a reader will be put off. Ideally, I try to balance the two and end up somewhere in the middle: punch and verve, but with restraint and room for the reader to infer. I rarely manage this, but God do I try.

Speaking of inference: don’t assume the reader is an idiot. Sometimes the best punchline or explanation is the one that’s never given. Myself, my favourite horror stories are the ones that don’t go for shlock and shocks: they’re the ones where I finish them feeling mildly unsettled, go and do the washing-up while my mind puts the pieces together, and then go, five or ten minutes later, “Oh God, it was behind the door the whole time! That’s... Argh.”

People are terrifyingly complicated. Every reader brings something to the text, whether they’re aware of it or not. This can add unexpected beauty or poignancy, but it can also make implication, idioms, dialect and offence into total minefields. People can come out with things that would never have occurred to you. Something might fly over someone’s head, or something might turn out to be an incredibly offensive phrase in their country and perfectly innocuous in yours; someone might find your happy ending the most depressing thing in the known universe, and someone else might hate your likeable romantic hero because he reminds them of their arsehole ex. Sometimes you can anticipate this and take countermeasures for clarity’s sake; often you don’t need to because theirs is a perfectly valid interpretation and part of the joy of making a cake is seeing people eat it; and mostly you just can’t know, because people come in so many different permutations and you’re not actually psychic, so leave them to it. Gah.

Watch your tenses. Things like flashbacks are nightmare territory and ripe for grammar slippage. Never be afraid or too proud to read up on usage.

Same with semicolons. Tricky little gits.

People mangle language. Doesn’t matter whether you’ve had the “perfect” education, everyone does it at least sometimes. People lose words, misuse vocabulary (me, all the time), go for double negatives, mix metaphors. You always want your dialogue to be readable, and you don’t want your portrayals to be hackneyed or offensive, but it’s generally unnecessary to aim for perfection in dialogue unless it’s for effect: say, if you want to make a character less approachable, if you want to show they’re not human, or if rose-tinted dialogue is a stylistic choice. Generally, true-to-life dialogue is inherently descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Sometimes said mangling leads to fascinating new quirks, dialect and expressions.

Speech is very different from thought. A character’s narrative voice is often quite different to their dialogue voice. Thought is much faster than speech, and sometimes someone will answer their own question before they’ve finished saying it. Thought is by nature more disjointed, and thought is also a monologue, unless everyone’s suddenly turned telepathic or you’re dealing with dissociation/multiple personalities. In contrast, speech has a listener, which changes it. Nerves can make phrases choppy or make them fail completely. Often people interrupt each other. Realistic dialogue should reflect this.

On a similar note, let your characters talk. Know where to draw the line - no-one wants the tension ruined by a half-hour conversation about socks - but very few people are all business or all dramatic emotion all the time. (Those who seemingly are will have reasons for it, and those are often worth exploring, too.) Unless you’re on a particular word and/or time limit, let your characters occasionally be real people whose eyeliner runs, or who dislike artichokes, or who make bad jokes - and people who don’t revolve completely around your protagonist, with their own internal lives. When done right, relateable is not boring - especially if you’re working in a fantastic or dramatic canon. The odd anchor to reality can grab your heart and tug.

But do know where to draw the line. Let them be enigmatic and heroic when they need to, because often the magic is in that contrast between the epic and the mundane. Characters can do and be what we can’t. Don’t take away all their mystery and more idealised qualities.

There’s no one way to do funny, and there’s no way to write an instruction manual for it. Again, like most other things, it’s a matter of interpretation: everyone’s tickled by different things. But often humour relies on the subversion of expectation - bathos and anticlimax, for example, or giving an established word/phrase an entirely new meaning - or it relies on particular character idiosyncrasies, or on the other side, the utter, crushing fulfilment of expectations. (”Save the world, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.”) A good source of jokes is often that “I bloody knew it!” feeling.

Characters have biases, too. Always try and account for this in the narrative.

Foreshadowing is your friend, and often a key to emotional closure for the reader. Unless you can do some serious, stylish authorial sleight-of-hand, deus ex machina endings will prompt pissed-offness rather than satisfied applause. Even if you don’t introduce your secret weapon/s early on - best right near the beginning, if possible - at least get the key themes and characters down. You want to get an, “Oh, of course,” not “Well, that was a total arse-pull.”

Screenwriters sometimes talk of an A-plot and a B-plot. The A-plot’s the main one, and B is a seemingly separate subplot that inevitably turns out to be all tangled up with A. It’s pretty standard for detective dramas: there’s a murder, they start investigating, and the seemingly unrelated corpse on the other side of town always ends up being central to the case. A and B always converge. Often, if it’s a story with depth and a well-reasoned plot, the B plot will grow naturally. Of course, that’s only one way of doing it: some stories have a strong, driving A plot that drives everything and stands on its own, and have some C, D, E, F, so on plots. I admit, I’m not much good at the A + B plot thing, so I don’t tend to do it. If I have subplots, they tend to be less connected and a bit more character-driven, rather than about world-saving/murder-solving like the A plot. (I tend to half-jokingly call these C plots, where the C stands for “character” or “crying.”) Good characters usually write their own C plots - they have ulterior motives, hidden aspects, unexpected connections, and if you let them wander off they’ll make trouble for themselves. C plots are connected to the main plot, but unlike B plots, not a fundamental part of it. Sorry, screenwriters, for the terminology mangling.

Another trick to nick from Hollywood: the meet-cute. Sometimes you want someone to enter the narrative sneakily and unobtrusively, but often, especially with protagonists and love interests, never underestimate the power of a good, memorable character introduction. Audiences remember the ways they meet your characters, and the ways that characters meet eaxch other.

It’s not necessary for every story, but often it’s good to have a rock-bottom moment where everything looks hopeless. It reminds your audience viscerally of the stakes and penalties for failure, and it makes eventual victory even sweeter because it’s against the odds. Unless the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. In that case, rock on with your downer-ending self.

Often the best plot comes from character. (After all, Greek dramatists went on about this all the time with concepts like hubris and hamartia.) Even when nations clash, nations are run by flawed, corrupt people. Antagonists ought to have strong motivations unless you’re writing senseless violence/cruelty intentionally. So on. People often talk about the heart of drama being conflict, and some people, taking that to heart, write a war or their couple arguing. Yeah, that can work brilliantly, but there are other ways to do it, and conflict can be smaller-scale, too. It can be as simple as different aspects of the same character clashing; for instance, if they’re torn between love and duty (there’s a reason that one’s so popular), or the conflict between their past and present selves.

#writing #tru talks #tru rambles #long post #god i probably sound so bloody arrogant #but did i mention this is mostly me prodding myself and my stories?#not anyone else necessarily

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hellagaypokemon · 7 years

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there’s something I really need to get off my chest, regarding someone I once considered my fave youtuber and the way he seems to view gay people..

I’ve been watching Mark’s videos for about 3 years now. I first found his videos through finding Yomimash while looking for good Slender Man LPs to watch, and found Mark when they played that gory cat multiplayer game together. I decided to watch his videos more regularly after watching his unfair Mario and cat Mario videos which were absolutely hysterical, and have been watching his content regularly ever since.

but there’s a pattern I’ve noticed that’s really made me uncomfortable lately.

I’m really starting to think that Mark is homophobic.

now, not the kind that’s obvious, where someone actually has hate in their heart (think: mike pence, the westburrow baptist church, ext) but the kind that doesn’t bother to check all the tiny biases that one accumulates in a bigoted society (the kind of thing that causes people to think there’s nothing wrong with things like this, or not seeing what’s wrong with things like constantly calling video game enemies b*tches/sons of b*tches/wh*res/ext and talking about how a player or enemy that got swiftly/dramatically killed “got raped”) because both are harmful, but I’d argue the smaller things even more-so, as no one takes the WBC seriously, but the microaggressions are so ingrained in our society, no one but those harmed actually notice, and when we attempt to call them out, we’re told we’re just being overly sensitive and to lighten up/not take things so seriously, or even that we have a victim complex.

in all the years I’ve watched him, the only time he refers to us, it’s as a joke. he and his friends love joking about “suckin’ dick” and each other’s and just general constant dick jokes (makes you wonder why he was so shocked he got a 7 for his mental maturity test) and specifically joking about gay people, which in and of itself is homophobic when you realize that type of humor is what’s called a “punch down” which in and of itself is harmful, but on top of that, specifically straight people thinking of gay people/same-sex affection as a punchline is in itself a microaggression (and if you want sources, look at the latest Golden Globes, or one of many of Stephen Colbert’s skits, just to start)

but, dick jokes in and of themselves aren’t that bad. I mean, I don’t find them funny, and the amount with which he uses them seems more like a crutch than anything, but w/e. I don’t have to find everything he says funny, but it just gets worse from there.

like for instance that pirate prop hunt video where Bob ignorantly comments about how “the whole gay thing is not real cool with pirates”, because pirates are cool and the only way he could view a pirate being gay was if he was like Smee from Peter Pan, even though most pirates were gay, to the point that the word “mate”/”matey” (the word that first comes to mind when one thinks of pirates) actually comes from a French word that more or less translated to ‘significant other’. (also, to top all that off, he’s just also not comfortable being alone with a gay man when there’s only men around, and the idea of being checked out by another man, aka treated by a gay man how straight men treat women, which he made very clear makes him very uncomfortable)

which, in and of itself is absolutely awful, and I really wish more people would have called him out on how absolutely overwhelmingly homophobic that is, but as it stands, even Mark thought it was ok enough to post.

because while Mark did say that he’s “ok” with gay people/pirates, he never really truly called Bob out or pointed out how hurtful such comments are. instead he turned it into yet another dick joke, and decided he’d put a generic “trigger warning” in the front of the video (without actually telling us what the trigger was for, making it completely useless, only succeeding on making me feel on edge the entire video because I had no idea what to expect)

he never called out Bob on his comments outside of personal minor disagreement, which clearly did not phase him since he kept going. I understand wanting to keep things lighthearted for the video, which could explain the very minor disagreeing and turning it into a joke, but there was no reason he couldn’t cut that bit out (as the prop hunt videos are always full of cuts so we the viewer only see the parts they deem funny enough to show us) and just leave it out of the video entirely, which tells me he found the homophobia from Bob and the subsequent dick jokes and everything else around it entertaining enough to leave in, even though he KNEW it would be upsetting enough to need a warning.

this hurt, but I chucked it up to not wanting to ruin the fun mood they had going, since they seemed to be playing for a few hours, and simply decided to not watch any more videos including Bob and hope that Mark talked to him after the fact. it still sat in the back of my mind though, and I was never able to fully forgive ether of them.

I’ve also yet to hear of any of his charity live streams focusing on LGBT charities ether general or focusing on a specific subset, nor has he really made any effort to actually acknowledge us (unless to joke about us).

when same-sex marriage was legalized I looked damn near daily on all the social media accounts of his that I was aware of, but I never managed to find anything. I’ve since been told he simply posted on facebook an image of the rainbow flag and “today’s a good day”, but...I still feel like my original feelings stand, as I never found it myself (and have yet to actually see it, so for all I know that post could have been completely made up in an attempt to shut me down) and for something so important, for someone who will go on a tearful 30 minute monologue about the importance of love and being kind to each other and so-on at the drop of a hat, it really feels strange that when #lovewon, after all these years of fighting and hate and death, all he had to say was “today is a good day”.

and then when Orlando happened, I was sure he’d say something. I mean, with that much loss of life and so much hate surrounding it, I thought surely he’d have something to say. I mean, he talks about death and suicide and great losses of life and how important it is that we all stick together and love and protect one another all the time. there’s no way he could just gloss over this one, right?

and yet, he still managed to. he did make a statement, but it was what, almost a week later? and just a generic “love each other” sort of post that never actually referenced anything. I’m not even sure he mentioned the shooting specifically, just saying “with everything going on right now” or something and we all knew what he meant, because there really wasn’t anything else he could be talking about. but he never once mentioned anything specifically. it was a racial and homophobic hate crime, the worst mass shooting of our time, and all he could offer to his fans was a general “be good to each other”, which he says all the time, only this time much shorter than normal.

just a little two paragraph post, a general statement, for the worst mass killing of modern time on US soil.

and if I recall, within a week of it he had another charity livestream, and it wasn’t for Orlando. nor was the next one, or the next one. he “doesn’t feel it’s his place” to say anything, and apparently he doesn’t feel it’s “his place” to send help for people literally dying ether. well, unless they’re children dying of cancer, or people trying to kill themselves. they’re the only people dying that he seems worthy enough and “his place” to send money to and bring awareness about.

but the thing that hurt me the most personally, was his comment just a few days ago in his blooper video, not two minuets in (all of which had been literally nothing but dick jokes btw) he tells two of his buddies to act like they’d just realized they’re lesbians, and they immediately recreated a porn scene, and then they all laughed at just how funny that was.

I couldn’t finish the video.

I was too hurt. never before had his homophobia been so obvious, and directed at my community specifically. nothing had hurt me quite like this does.

I’m still floored to be completely honest. I had been giving him the benefit of the doubt for so long, thinking he just really likes making dick jokes and he’s secure enough in his sexuality to be able to make jokes like that (which is a privilege in and of itself btw) but I thought surely, surely someone who’s so passionate about doing the right thing and being good to people and who actively talks about being ok with us and not uncomfortable around us at all (unlike Bob) and who actively jokes about the fanfiction and art he knows about that depict him and his male friends as lovers, surely he himself would never partake in dehumanizing anyone, surely he couldn’t be homophobic.

but when you look at him and how he treats us compared to say, HarshyCritical, you can see the difference. (especially since after making this post it was brought to my attention that just a minute into the latest video he made with Bob, the one posted the same day I write this, they laugh at the use of a violently homophobic slur)

especially since the person whom John seems closest to and colabs the most with is himself a gay man. they even share a channel together where all they post is multiplayer colabs.

I don’t know if John’s done any LGBT-centric charity streams, but the fact that his good or possibly even best friend is a gay man and how he treats the narrative and characters in a game where the story is all about dealing with homophobia and being yourself says a lot more in his favor that anything Mark has done. (which is also very ironic since John lives in the very homophobic state of Texas and Mark now lives in the very liberal state of California)

I honestly can’t find a single thing he’s said about us specifically that wasn’t a joke, and he’s made it painfully clear that in the end that’s all he sees us as.

inherently sexual, a porn category, something to laugh at, something other.

and the thing that hurts the most, is no one cares. he just got 16 million subscribers. most of his fans are homophobic fangirls who treat homosexuality as a fetish for them to enjoy, and everyone else is too much of a stan to think critically of his actions. no one will want to call him out. he’s too much of a “good person”, since everyone’s expectations of men and male gamers is so low, with the bar being fuckin buried in the dirt, that someone like Mark who cares about sick kids and depression and preventing suicide and all of his talking about caring about each and every one of us as individuals, he looks like a damn angel just by walking over that bar, so anyone wanting to call him out will be blown off as someone who just wants to bring him down because of jealousy or some bullshit like that.

so at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. he could be as openly homophobic as he wants, and every non-straight fan could up and drop him on the spot, and I doubt it would really affect him much.

and I think that’s what hurts more than anything he’s actually said or done.

#markiplier #harshlycritical #homophobia #lesbophobia #not pokemon #personal #posting it to this sideblog cause it's at least about gaming #and when the shit hits the fan I don't really want that all over my dashboard

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luckykhuxguide · 7 years

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Have you found a lot of resistance or ire pointed at you for encouraging people to play JP? I find that there's a good amount of people who insist JPUX is "easy mode" and I've even been called a shill for pointing out how different the two servers are in an effort to teach others how the NA playerbase isn't treated fairly. It's made me want to leave the NA experience entirely...

(*´◒`*) Hi Anon!

This really depends on the people you’re around. I’m going to put our replies under a read more (so click on the question) since I’ve a lot (I wrote way too much so I apologize for the wall) to say regarding this, and Lucky probably has some things to add as well.

I’ve been met with healthy skepticism, which is perfectly fine. After all, I AM biased. You shouldn’t just believe everything everyone says, and always think for yourself.

I did try to convince my friend (IRL) to play JP KHUX, because she loved playing NA KHUX. At first she said no because she didn’t want to fall into KHUX hell like me, but after I told her how different JP KHUX and NA KHUX was treated, she did join! :> She said she enjoys JP KHUX a whole lot more than NA KHUX and stopped playing NA KHUX.

~ Lucky ★彡

We try to state hard facts in addition to our own experiences and there’s plenty of those. We’ve listed differences in play, treatment, jewels, bonuses, events and handling before. The reasons we list as PSA or when people ask for differences/reasons to migrate are to make people aware. After that, it’s up to them what they want to do with the information.

I’m guilting of urging NA KHUX players to play JP KHUX though. =w=;; When they come and rant to me on this blog, there is nothing I can do but tell them to play JP KHUX if they enjoy the game play but couldn’t handle the way NA KHUX were being treated. Honestly, I wouldn’t have much of a problem with playing NA KHUX if NA KHUX were treated the same way as JP KHUX. But all I can do is to advice them to change. Whether they take action or not is ultimately up to them. I’ve done all I can do urge them, but the choice is their’s to make.

~ Lucky ★彡

While it’s sweet of you to make them aware of the differences (and suggest they try JP KHUX), a lot of people have trouble with language barriers or straightup abandoning their account. Personal reasons also apply. This is completely understandable, and we do encourage to read up on the plot of KHUX through either the global version or youtube videos/translations if they try JP KHUX.

I’ve always found it a bit difficult to recommend KHUX JP, especially at first. I got better at reading Japanese through it, but I’m definitely among the select few of intl players who can read Japanese. The more feedback I got from happy migrated players, the more confident I got with recommending the JP server to others (using quotes and numbers to back my claims more in addition to the facts and my own experiences). Obviously I still put a disclaimer; part of my experience differs, since I don’t need to look things up. This makes me a faster player and enables me to enjoy the story. Heck, my own party members read either no Japanese at all, or picked up some keywords for when I’m not around. And even they enjoy the game a ton. In both versions, being part of a good party can make such a difference…I’m trailing off.

Okay on my part, I’ve never understood the plot for KH games. I just know that my goal is to kill whatever I see really. There is too much in-between cut scenes that you forget why you’re doing it in the first place. So, the same happened for me with KHUX. I just kill whatever I see and complete missions. I didn’t REALLY care for the story because I’m so lost with the KH plot already and I couldn’t figure out why KHUX is so important to the KH plot aside from the keyblade war. (We’re going to be dead kids.)

~ Lucky ★彡

NA KHUX is the way it is, and probably won’t change much due to the amount of players still dishing hefty sums of money out. The resistance you’ve been seeing is part of that problem. Calling JP KHUX ‘easy mode’ is a new one to me, and makes me think that’s what they call it to make themselves feel better about it. So long they’re enjoying the game, that’s fine with me, though.

I can understand why NA KHUX players call JP KHUX easy mode, and they’re not wrong to call JP KHUX “easy mode”. Especially going from JP KHUX to NA KHUX, my JP KHUX account is GODLY compared to NA KHUX. The enemies I fight in JP KHUX die easily with a single guilted premium, yet I’m suffering in NA KHUX even using an entire deck. You do have to strategize differently in NA KHUX than you do in JP KHUX, such as giving good skills (i.e. SP+&Atk boost 3, or Lux+&Atk Boost 2) to guilted non-premiums, because chances for f2p to guilt premiums is rather impossible.

And, TBH, because JP KHUX are so strong now, we can easily solo Raid Bosses even at level 99 (no joke guys, we can bring in like 5 million lux in one fight against a lvl 99 RB). It used to be more fun when the entire party coordinated together to kill a raid boss because we really needed to work together to defeat the raid boss and bring the raid boss to level 99. Someone needed to be a summoner and everyone else participated in killing the raid boss. Now, it is just us soloing the raid bosses. Yes, we need to work together as a party to rank well party wise, but it’s not the same... There is something fun and satisfying knowing your party members rely on each other to help each other out, and being too strong with the RBs took that aspect away.

Square KINDA brought back the “work together as a party” aspect by giving up 101 Dalmatian hell in JP KHUX, but it is only temporary. I do hope multi-player will allow us to work together again in a party.

~ Lucky ★彡

I do not advertise JP KHUX actively. I recommend it casually when I see players struggling on global, or when they approach me about it.

I’ve seen JP KHUX players obnoxiously advertise (under SENA KHUX tweets, for example) that NA players should just join JP, that JP is better, that NA is being ridiculous.

IDK, I DO THINK NA KHUX IS RIDICULOUS THOUGH. I mean the requirement to get a commemorative medal requires NA KHUX players to have them guilted?! LIKE SERIOUSLY? If the new premiums are guaranteed to come with 3 dots. FINE. So we need to make at most 10 draws to be qualified to get the premium and NA KHUX f2p players can do that. But asking us to get SEVEN COPIES of a premium so we can have it GUILTED by a CLOSE DEADLINE TO THE RELEASE DATE is ridiculous!! No way can ANY f2p or c2p players can obtain these commemorative medals. Or if Square keeps the requirement in order to obtain the commemorative medals you need so and so premiums guilted, but no deadline, is okay too because f2p players can EVENTUALLY get the commemorative medal. But Square is expecting NA KHUX to have premiums guilted by such a close deadline to the release date is similar, if not the same, as the JP KHUX standard. While it is difficult for f2p JP KHUX players to obtain a commemorative medal, it is not impossible. Honestly though, they should’ve kept the requirement to obtain the commemorative medal as obtaining the premium by a deadline.

And don’t get me started on the lack of special VIP missions available every week and lack of guilt bonus events. IT WOULDN’T HURT TO GIVE US MORE GUILT BONUS CAMPAIGNS. JUST SAYIN’ SQUARE. GIVE US MORE GUILT BONUS CAMPAIGNS.

~ Lucky ★彡

To me, that’s JUST as annoying as NA players calling JP easy mode or calling players who migrate “traitors” or “weak”.

OH SNAP. I DIDN’T KNOW NA KHUX PLAYERS CALLED THOSE WHO SWITCH TO JP KHUX PLAYERS NAMES. I mean yeah, NA KHUX players would feel like they’re being betrayed, but it’s not like everyone is willing to have their wallets go on a diet for NA KHUX, or have access to the google survey to get free money and offer that as sacrifice to NA KHUX.

~ Lucky ★彡

Nobody has the right to ruin another player’s experience. You do whatever leyts you have most fun. It’s fine to call SENA out for being unfair, but be specific, be factual, and be articulate.

There’s NA players who will call you a shill for advertising JP KHUX. There’s NA players who will stick with NA regardless of what anyone says. There’s also JP players who feel overly sorry for NA players or will think highly of themselves for having made the switch to JP. There’s annoying/obnoxious players in both versions of the game, because we’re all just players looking for a fun experience. And players are humans, so there’s always going to be ones you don’t get along with. But there’s also those you’ll be able to befriend.

In the end though, it’s not your responsibility. If they’re having fun as is, or don’t feel like giving JP KHUX a shot, that’s their own decision. If it really starts causing you grief, remember it’s not your responsibility to persuade them or make them aware. In fact, if you’re actively persuading, I recommend you to not do so. It’s a lot of wasted energy, and if they resist, it’ll make their game experience less fun to be (constantly) reminded of the differences, too.

If they’re having fun, and you’re having fun on your own, then that’s perfectly fine the way it is.

If they don’t want to try/play JP KHUX even after knowing the differences, there’s little anyone can do about it, and it’s their choice.

There’s a whole lot more I could say about this, but I’ll stop here.

I don’t know if you just point it out, or if you’re actively persuading, or if you’re part of the group who’s actively advertising.

I don’t mind what you choose to do, that’s your responsibility too.

But you did hint that the feedback you got impacted you negatively, which means you’ll want to rethink your actions– not because you have been wrong (or depending on how you went about it, maybe you approach was, I cannot say) but because your advice has been ignored or you’ve been called out for advertising.

( I’m aware that my phrasing may give you the wrong idea, so I’ll repeat: I’m not making assumptions about you. This is why I include multiple scenarios. I don’t know what type of person you are or how you tried to approach those players. You know who you are and how you approached them, so you know exactly how it went. You don’t owe me that explanation and I don’t need you do go into detail– you can figure out where to go from here. But again, my advice in a tldr: if it causes you so much grief and frustration, maybe it’s better to focus on having fun and being a bit more picky with who you try to help out. )

–Salt

#anonymous #opinion #salt takeover #khux #na khux #jp khux #Anonymous #Question #Lucky ★彡 #Salt did a good job writing this! :>

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kyselor-blog · 5 years

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Week 5

“But crucially the monster is also to be differentiated from the individual to be corrected on the basis of whether power operates on it or through it. In other words, the absolute power that produces and quarantines the monster finds its dispersal in techniques of normalization and discipline” (Monster, Terrorist, Fag 119). I think that this is a quote that really captures one of the main themes of this week’s pieces because they both discuss how people that are labeled as disposable and less than human, are subjected to receiving “help” from an absolute power. In this case, it is painted and assumed that these people are willing and waiting for this help, but it is actually being forced onto these individuals. The absolute power that has to help everyone in this narrative that it portrays to everyone is the United States. It seems to be their job to “fix” these “monsters”. I put that into quotation marks because they are the ones to label these groups of people as monsters, and the only way to fix them is to isolate them as people and force strict forms or conformity and discipline. This is a violent way to being because it rips them apart from their normal way of life is forces them into something that is unnatural and coercive. It is justified since these people “need to be saved”.

My addition to the Glossary of Haunting is the word “mobilize”. This word is used a lot in this week’s readings because it is trying to explain how power and has been mobilized over lower status communities. In the Shock Doctrine, it was explaining how the victims of Katrina were left to the discretion of private companies. They used the natural disaster of the hurricane, to mobilize their power and dominance, during a period of disorientation. There is always going to be a mobilization of actual troops or physical force, or there could be a mobilization of ideologies. These are both very harmful and both work in tandem because the physical force and violence of stripping people away from their original space or way of life and forcing them to adopt a “normalized” culture, is just another act of dominance. Mobilization in this context has a negative meaning because it may seem to be for the well being of a certain group, but there is always going to be another prerogative at the foundation.

The haunted power dynamics in this week’s readings are those of sexuality and class level. A big theme about the Monster, Terrorist, Fag reading, is that the West has the idea that the Muslim women have been subjected to a lot of violence. They are victims of their own culture and of men in general. They have been sexualized into a submissive and secondary role by people looking at the situation from the outside in. Since women have to be covered up, due to religion, others feel like they are being forced to do so or that it is against their will. They do not bother to actually get to know the personal reasons behind it or even if they are CHOOSING to do it and do not need saving. They are making these biased statements, but also have the power to make them believable by the general public. There has been a big idea of gender-dependency within their culture, which had started after the bin Laden situation. This idea that women had been waiting for someone to save them (126). This was used to justify the mobilization of the US troops into the middle east. During this period, the war had been created into a very masculine and sexist project. A lot of the actions and thoughts behind the war had put men at the front as their duty to save women and children. This taps into the traditional ideas of what it means to be patriotic and what that even looks like (127). People feel the need to be overly patriotic in these situations because of the fear of being labeled as an outsider or even going against one's country. It is good in a sense, but also tends to exclude people of color or even people of the LGBTQ community because they have already been seen as outsiders. The boundaries get even tighter when there is already an infringement on society. If they do not fit into the heteronormative ideals, then you are grouped into marginalized communities. Class level is also a haunted power structure in this week’s reading because in the Shock Doctrine piece, it discusses how after Katrina, the marginalized people which were specifically people of color and blacks, were left to survive with minimal help. The big thing that was happening at the time though, was the privatization of the state. Klein says it was a “land grab” (6). This was the people of power, splitting up what they wanted and could afford and forcing the inhabitants to follow the ideology and programs that they wanted to implement. They said that these would help them in the long run, but it is only pushing the personal agendas of those in high status. These people are racialize as inadequate, seeking help, and that is when the rich white man comes to the rescue.

The role of orphaned beginnings takes part in these readings because in the Monsters reading, it shows how people’s individuality, religion, daily lives, are totally erased and altered by the ideologies that people have of them based off of only certain groups. This leads to a common idea of what monsters are supposed to look like and handicaps all brown people because people think they could be terrorists based on a preconceived concept of them. These pictures have quarantined these groups of people because now everyone else from the outside perspective is going to initially assume they're bad, needing correction. It can also cloud judgement in how people interact with them even though they have done nothing wrong. ( Paur, Rai 117). Also the ideology that women need the help of Americans and men in general because they are victims of their own culture, is a violent process in itself because it takes any type of autonomy or choice out of their actions. They may be doing it as a form of resistance to stay rooted in their culture but the logic that they need to be saved, totally disregards that. It puts them into a secondary role from the jump, stripping them of their own identity and sense of power.

We can listen for liberators futures by actually getting first person insight to this culture that has been so polluted by western ideologies. They honestly don’t even need to say anything because they don't have to prove anything to us. We have just throw so much dirt on who they are as a whole, based on individual actions. Once we are able to see past the things that only individual people, then we can see the truth and character instead of what people in power have told us to believe. We have to give them back their voice and power to speak for themselves. I don't think I see a future where we are held accountable for the violent ideologies that have been created to mask these people and what they stand for. We can handicap a people based off of individual actions because they don’t represent everyone. So much of our history and policies have been based off of a response to these people and preemptive actions so I don't know how we can undo all of that. We are using them as a tool to justify our own military actions that harm other people, but it is hidden behind the other “bad guys”.

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