#especially in a franchise that already poorly handled him re: Hopes

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Poked my head into some of @mysticdragon3md3′s thoughts regarding popularity with DimiClaude fanon and am happy to say I’m here to Talk (tee em).

I also saw the post from the user saying why they were falling out of love for the ship, and... yeah. The people they’re talking about, the generalized group of people who do certain things, definitely bother me as well.

I love that you pointed out Claude is not flirty and is just playful. It’s not the DimiClaude fandom alone unfortunately with that though - it’s the entire fanbase that views him as a flirt. And, according to Twitter, a slut. Yeah. Yeah. I know what they... “mean”... but it is still not him.

Them being annoyed with each other is also fanon and a very strange one. Never in Houses did Dimitri come across as being annoyed or bothered by him. In fact, they have friendly banter! Dimitri doesn’t get specifically exasperated at Claude, but that’s just more so how he is as a person and he sometimes doesn’t understand playfulness. That said, he does not berate Claude the way he berates others. There’s one instance I can think of where he berated Claude and that was in the DLC when they were talking to Aelfric for the first time.

In Hopes, same deal in AG. In fact, he’s quite fond of Claude in AG. GW itself was a well discussed mess in a lot of ways, and even then as a ship they didn’t have a lot of negativity. If nothing else it was an odd opposite, because even as enemies when Claude admitted he couldn’t defeat Dimitri alone, Dimitri just basically laughed, smirked and walked away. That’s like... the worst of their relationship in GW and it’s extremely mellow.

I think part of the problem some dmcl fans are facing are the fanon version of the ship rather than what they’re like in canon. It is definitely true that part of the dmcl fandom has absolutely warped the ship into being something it really isn’t and never was in canon. There’s also this whole thing about Dimitri being the dominant, feisty one with Claude being the uwu blushy one and it’s just... not them. Not as a pair canonically, and not individually. When Dimitri gets “dominant”, he’s, uh, not in a good mental state. It’s a mental illness that makes him like that and personally I’ve never appreciated seeing people use it for a kink for a ship. Normally I’d say people can like what they want, but I get the feeling a lot of dmcl fans have absolutely pushed their views onto others and driven fans away.

I will also say have absolutely, 150% come across those kinds of fans. The ones who refuse to listen to anyone else, but if your headcanons don't vibe with them then you’re just completely “wrong”. Not only do they portray the canon characterization poorly if portraying it at all, but they tend to also bring it down a racist route, which is... beyond ironic considering they should be the last ship that deals with that based on their characters and stories.

Engage kinda went wonky with a good few things regarding the previous lords, so I don’t see Dimitri being like that as some kind of definite canon. Actually, even in Heroes their interactions are friendly and calm. The “worst” banter they had was their swim alts, while on the opposite end we have the brave alts who apparently hang out together outside of the castlegrounds, and for so long that they can’t be of any help in a search for someone (which like lol how long you gotta be gone to have no idea and can’t help at all lmao).

I think people see outside-Houses canon scenes like those and just... decide it’s their actual canon. Dimitri is not, in any way, actually mean to Claude in canon. That is unfortunately a very popular fanon. In Houses especially, when Dimitri doesn’t know Claude well in the mock battle he’s more like ummm hey Claude your defenses are open what are you even doing, more than being like ugh Claude you’re so annoying. In the real version of that mock battle though, a good few months had passed and their battle quotes are significantly more approachable and they clearly have respect for each other. Dimitri knows Claude likes to fuck around and be goofy sometimes, and he picked up on that and played along with it in the JP version (in the English version he simply picks up on it, but there’s no anger whatsoever and it’s just more oh okay I get it).

As far as Engage goes, ultimately I just see it more as an extremely condensed version of their mannerisms, and yes, they for some reason, especially in the localized versions, try to keep up the whole rival shtick when Dimitri never even felt that way about Claude, and he never gets truly annoyed at Claude. Ffs, in canon Dimitri literally drops everything after retaking his home from the Empire/TWS, and runs to go save Claude. Literally. The next day. While Claude is a little tsun about it (!), Dimitri is just “come on let’s go hurry hurry no slowing down pick up the pace we are saving Claude”, and that’s basically him the entire chapter except with the Arundel specific stuff. When he talks to Claude one on one, there is literally not a single shred whatsoever in any plausible way or in any damn universe any tension from Dimitri to Claude. He just wants to know he’s okay and relaxes once he knows Claude isn’t hurt. I mean literally, no, like... that’s them, in canon, in their Natural Habitat together and I have no fucking clue how the portrayal of them in fanon got so insanely warped beyond recognition.

Also, Engage kinda dropped the ball with a lot of stuff with the other lords. Hell, they’ve been unable to keep Ike’s character consistent throughout all of his non-canon appearances (Awakening didn’t seem too bad, but Fates was pretty awful for example. They can’t seem to really understand the character they’re writing anymore, and idk if it’s just because the writers have changed and such/aren’t the same as Tellius’ games had, or they just don’t care to keep him consistent).

They also try to make Sigurd sound wise and super helpful in every single solitary iteration of him outside of FE4 which is honestly just obnoxious as fuck lmao. Sigurd was naive, foolish, overly trusting, and far too kind and gentle for his own good. It ultimately was what led to him following orders blindly, having blind faith that his king was righteous and would give him the right orders (without realizing the court was very much in disarray during his absence and with several other prominent court figures away because of the war). Sigurd was too quick to believe in the good in humanity and that things would work out, and it led to him not realizing how wrong he was until it was way too late and he had to take shelter in a foreign country to avoid having to fight the same people’s armies who had the court’s ear.

Basically Sigurd is nothing like they write him to be in every. single. solitary. iteration. outside of FE4. 

(SPOILER here just in case you care lol. Or anyone who is reading this. Or if you’re someone who somehow does not know about the biggest known spoiler in the whole game) He has one little section of potential dialogue (i.e. it’s triggered by a very specific condition) that shows somehow ghosty Sigurd has grown more wise and understanding ??? while being dead ??? and somehow learned while being dead that the world do be full of grief and Stuff. (END SPOILER)

So they pretty much took like, two lines of dialogue from FE4 and made it Sigurd’s entire fucking character forever in every single game he’s been in since. If nothing else, let that be your insight on never to trust content you see outside of a character’s original game. At that point it’s simply fanservice because they don’t even know their own characters. If they wanted to write even a semblance of Actual In Game Sigurd’s Personality And Not Two Lines Of Dialogue That Are Completely Optional And Quite Honestly HIDDEN, it would be very easy and reasonable to do so. They choose not to, and then we get what they did with Houses’ lords.

Another portrayal I see too often is that Dimitri and Claude... argue??? I won’t lie, their Heroes summer alts was the very first time they even seemed to “argue”, and it was mostly just goofy nonsense that means nothing because they’re literally alts in swimsuits, and it wasn’t really them being vicious at each other. Meanwhile in canon, they’re always very calm and able to talk through their problems - even in fucking Hopes in the GW route. Even in the worst possible circumstances for them to be in, that is, as enemies, they were still able to talk it through. Barring Claude’s written in idiocy so he could be a mouthpiece for Edelgard and do her bidding by invading the Kingdom (which was literally nothing but plot convenience because Actual Claude would’ve reasoned his way out of doing that), even in the worst possible situation, they still called a truce and still worked things out verbally, calmly and peacefully.

Point being, this whole cat fight dmcl portrayal isn’t even remotely close to their canon selves, and normally I’d say, you know, like what you want and enjoy your ships how you want... but it’s pretty much almost entirely the people who view the ship that way that uh, attack people who don’t agree with them or insult them/laugh at them for seeing the ship differently. These are the people who make you feel bad, for enjoying a fictional ship of two pixelated characters kissing, because you don’t like the concepts in their head more than the way you’ve interpreted the canonical characters.

To be totally frank, I have a visceral hatred for the fanon portrayal of dmcl because it makes Dimitri out to be terrible and makes Claude some kind of punching bag for Dimitri in various forms. There comes a point where it’s like, you ship something and then there’s the point where you ship two characters you made up in your head, who aren’t the same characters you first started to ship, because you’ve warped them so extensively that they became nothing but a person’s OCs with their faces and some similar backstory elements at best.

#DCB Comments #not sure what else to put this as but yeah... the dmcl fandom is not that large tbh and #what it does have is extremely divided and a lot of the fans can be completely ignorant of how poorly they handle Claude #especially in a franchise that already poorly handled him re: Hopes #but also I know exactly the kind of people you're talking about... and they're also hypocrites so. #they're the ones who shit on others for having different views of the same ship and decide you are inarguably ''wrong'' for your takes #also mind you if you call 'em out for that they get uwu mad and it spirals from there bc then they gotta vent to their #uwu friends who do the exact same things they do. can you tell I'm literally speaking from actual experience?! :D #like yeah I get it... a lot of the dmcl fandom in particular is gross about Claude #I personally prefer Dimitri as a character for a lot of reasons but when I began shipping them I didn't love Claude /as/ much as now #shipping them got me to look more into Claude as a person and I started loving him more as well #thanks to loving this ship I got to know him more and understand him more /and/ that made me love the ship more #also like it's one thing to have AUs and modern AUs in fics and stuff... bur just don't do... you know... things worth side eying #also if you have to change the dynamic of the ship to make it how you like it then you... probably don't actually like the ship itself #it's the same as with people warping characters to create a personality put onto a face #it's what a lot of Edel stans even do. they make up who they want her to be instead of seeing her for who she is #and they like the made up version of her more than the actual version so in that sense they don't really like who she is in the canon #not all of them are like that and some DO like her for who she is (which could be... arguably WORSE in her case lol) #but it's the same thing with ships. they alter the dynamic and just want to use the pretty faces #which by itself would be fine ig. confusing af to me but fine. not fine anymore though when it starts becoming an actual fandom problem #ppl take ''fandom drama' too lightly most often imo. I don't think ppl realize this kind of bullying over the internet #has a lasting impact and that seeing words on a screen doesn't make them any better or worse than how they'd be irl #in a sense it makes it more cowardly if anything bc ppl fear no repercussions for what they say :/

[growingupguidepup]

Pet or Service Dog, That is the Question – Part 2

Abuse: How it affects service dog teams

When pet owners abuse the system by taking their dressed-up pets into public, it directly hurts real service dog teams. If the pet misbehaves, the business owner will be far more likely to distrust the next team they encounter. If the pet owner shows a business a scam ID from the internet to gain access, when a legitimate team refuses to produce such an ID, they may be discriminated against and denied access. The same goes for pet owners showing “papers,” which also come from scam sites online.

Having to re-educate business owners can be extremely difficult for disabled handlers. Some people have anxiety disorders that make it nearly impossible to deal with such conflict. Many have a very limited amount of energy to expend each day, and having to educate a business can make it difficult or impossible to complete the rest of what that person hoped to accomplish that day.

And if disabled handlers are completely denied access, then we have to spend our limited resources and energy filing a complaint with the Department of Justice. This will also be bad for the business, as they can be fined for denying access to a service dog team.

Abuse: How it affects the pet

Something that pet owners who dress up their dogs clearly don’t consider is how their actions negatively affect their pet. The reason it takes so long (18-24 months) to train a service dog is that their job is extremely demanding and stressful. Even programs that breed their own service dog prospects have high wash-out or career-change rates. So it should come as no surprise that the average pet dog is ill-equipped to deal with the stress of being in no-pet public areas.

Service dogs are specially trained to deal with things like children racing up to them and invading their space, adults randomly reaching for their heads, shopping carts rattling by inches from their face, and crowds pressing in on them from every direction. These things can stress pet dogs out beyond their thresh hold.

Some pet dogs will shut down in the face of such stress—this is very unpleasant for the dog. But some dogs will be so stressed out that they lash out. This is not only unpleasant for the dog, but dangerous to the dog, owner, and members of the public. A dog who bites a child because she’s been pushed beyond what she can handle not only hurts any service dog team following them. That child will likely be hurt, and possibly be traumatized. And the dog may end up being killed because of that bite. These are serious consequences, and if pet owners actually considered them and cared more about their dogs than themselves, they would not dress their dogs in vests and drag them into public.

Possible solutions

While many people believe that increased limitations and regulations on service dogs and disabled people will solve the problem of pets in public, it is important to realize that we already have laws in place to stop this.

Business owners need further education, clearly, on what their own rights are. Many business owners are afraid to confront people with pets in vests because such people will often go straight to the media and complain about discrimination. Often they will also try internet campaigns to ruin the business.

For example, a man last year insisted to employees at a Bonefish Grill that he had the right to have his dog sit on the booth beside him during his meal. When the employees told him his dog needed to be on the floor—where service dogs belong, when not actively engaged in a task—he blew up. Unfortunately, this man had a huge internet following which flooded Bonefish’s Facebook page with negative comments and reviews.

That particular story ended well for the business. Service dog teams responded to the man’s followers by posting multitudes of photos of their service dogs behaving properly at restaurants—lying quietly under the table. Handlers posted messages of support and even made a point of patronizing a Bonefish franchise near them. But the story shows how even when a person behaves poorly with their dog, they can still try, and sometimes succeed, at smearing the business owner who only stood up for his or her rights.

When business owners stand up for their rights, furthermore, it protects service dog teams. The absolute last thing that we as handlers want to encounter in a no-pets business is a pet who has no business being there. Countless numbers of service dogs, owner-trained and program-trained, have had to be expensively rehabbed or even retired because they were attacked by pets dressed as service dogs.

Behavior is the only unfakeable and completely reliable way to evaluate a dog on a given day. Adding extra hoops for disabled people to jump through, or treating us like second-class citizens by forcing us to show proof of our disability anytime we want to go out in public, does nothing to prevent unscrupulous people from finding ways to bring their pets into public. Certifications and ID cards can be faked. Impeccable behavior can’t be purchased for $50 from an internet scam site. It can’t be obtained in a day. It takes an incredible amount of time and dedication. People who want to “take Fluffykins with me everywhere!” are not the kind of people who will put in two years of training to make sure Fluffykins can handle it.

In addition to educating businesses on their rights and getting those rights enforced, another part of the solution is increasing the punishment for both people who dress their pets as service dogs and the companies that sell useless, problematic certifications and ID cards. It is against the law already to falsely represent oneself as disabled, or one’s pet as a service dog. But in most states it is a misdemeanor, and punished so infrequently that these people feel no qualms about openly admitting their lawbreaking to news stations, publications, or even service dog handlers.

Falsely representing a pet as a service dog should be a felony, with meaningful punishments. And selling scam IDs and certifications should be plain illegal. The new FAQ published this summer specifically states that “there are individuals and organizations that sell service animal certification or registration documents online. These documents do not convey any rights under the ADA and the Department of Justice does not recognize them as proof that the dog is a service animal.” It’s important for owner trainers to be able to buy their gear online—most of us don’t have the talent with sewing and/or leather working to be able to create our gear on our own—but there is no reason anyone needs papers or ID cards.

There are ways to combat people who bring pets inappropriately into public without punishing disabled handlers in the process. Adding further regulations, extra hoops and obstacles, just makes it harder for disabled handlers to get and train the dogs they so desperately need. Unethical people would still find ways to fake the ID cards or certification papers, if they were implemented, while ethical disabled people would simply be without service dogs—especially if they wish to owner-train.

Behavior in public is what matters. Any dog who behaves inappropriately in public, without being brought under control by the handler, needs to be removed. This is already part of the law. We just have to enforce it!

For more details on our products and services, please feel free to visit us at: service dog, service dog law, service dog etiquette, service dog puppy raiser, guide dog.

[spryfilm]

“Baywatch” (2017)

Action/Comedy

Running Time: 116 minutes

Written by: Mark Swift & Damian Shannon

Directed by: Seth Gordon

Featuring:  Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, Kelly Rohrbach, Jon Bass and Ilfenesh Hadera

Mitch Buchannon: “Welcome to Baywatch. Our team is the elite of the elite. We’re the heart and soul of this very beach. We protect when other people don’t want to protect, and we go above and beyond.”

The assault on the idea concept of comedy in movies continues with the release of the remake or reboot or whatever you want call this comedy abomination that is “Baywatch” (2017) out this week on DVD & Blu-ray.

Now I wouldn’t have said this movie was doomed from its announcement, especially with the early word that Dwayne Johnson was involved, someone who is not afraid to laugh at himself as well as carry a movie that needs some very big shoulders to support it. Its unfortunate then that the studio that released this, Paramount, decided to stick Johnson with a director as well as screenwriters that seem to have no clue to what they are working on. They also seem to have no idea on how to use their secret weapon, who is normally a charmer as well as someone who can deliver almost any kind of dialogue all while inviting the audience to come with him on some kind of journey – here however none of that works, so we have what must be one of the worst movies of the year so far, along with many other comedies that have missed the mark by a mile.

The movie starts out in Emerald Bay, Florida, Lt. Mitch Buchannon and his team of lifeguards, including second-in-commmand Stephanie Holden and veteran C. J. Parker, protect the beaches and the bay as part of an elite division known as Baywatch. Having made over 500 rescues in his career, Mitch is beloved by the community, to the annoyance of local beat cop Garner Ellerbee and Mitch’s superior, Captain Thorpe.

At the upcoming tryouts for new lifeguards, three people stand out: surfer Summer Quinn, an old friend of Holden’s, Ronnie, a chubby nerd with a crush on C. J. (that is gradually returned), and Matt Brody, a former Olympic swimmer who fell from grace after vomiting during a race and now has to perform community service as part of an unspecified plea deal. Quinn and Ronnie both pass the trials, but Brody refuses to do so and insists that his celebrity status alone entitles him to a place on the team. Despite Brody demonstrating his abilities by assisting in the rescue of a drowning woman and her son, Mitch complains to Thorpe that he is unfit. Thorpe, in turn, insists that rehabilitating his image is necessary to convince the city not to further cut Baywatch’s funding.

From here the plot if you could call it that becomes needlessly complicated as well as extremely crass, as it stands for no really good reason.

I have complained about the lack of good comedies that have been released this year, and “Baywatch” has to top the list of not only being humourless, but it even manages to mishandle the action elements that may have saved this from being extremely tiresome to watch – I watched this at home and found myself hoping for the end to come, it meandered from one tireless set up to the next without seeming to go anywhere at all. My feeling was that no-one really committed to a genre so each aspect of this movie is underwhelming.

Normally any movie, especially one that relies on personality or has to because the plot is absent, that has at its center Dwayne Johnson, is already ahead because he is just so charismatic as well as being able to make fun of himself means that he can be on the audiences side as well as being in on the joke. One need only look at the “Fast and Furious” franchise to see he is one of the only actors actually hamming it up, making those dreadful movies bearable for those of us that like the over the top nature that is inherent within those movies. “Baywatch” the movie, has not earned that so we are just looking at Johnson as part of this film not apart from it. The supporting cast is made up of both experienced as well as newish actors that all come off as one note and not appealing at all. So we have Alexandra Daddario, Zac Efron and Priyanka Chopra struggling with a plot as well as trope filled exposition while appearing alongside newbies Kelly Rohrbach, Jon Bass and Ilfenesh Hadera really not coming to terms with the kind of movie they are in as well as having very little actual screen presence.

The argument could be made that there was a similar situation with the original television show with some experienced actors as well as some very average novice actors. My argument against that, as well as illustrating the superiority of the television version is that it was a different time, 1989 to 1999, the show knew exactly what it was and the talent in front of the camera was vastly superior to the people we have now. Here is some of the talent involved in the series and its an easy argument with time on our side that these actors have at least more talent as well as huge screen presence than that of this poorly attempted translation, we have of course David Hasselhoff, Parker Stevenson, Billy Warlock, David Chavert, Alexandra Paul, Erika Eleniak, Pamela Stevenson and many many others. If there was a small percentage of their presence in this movie it would have been a far better watch.

Its not only in front of the camera where mistakes have been made, the writers (which is a generous title), Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, have only had two somewhat other successes, if they could be called that, which were the middling horror re-imagining (I am being kind) “Friday the 13th” (2009) and “Freddy vs. Jason” (2003). Both of these movies are genre pieces and are just updating other people’s work, which may have been the appeal here, but sadly there is nothing they have added to “Baywatch” to even make it remotely interesting. So it is here where the director should make some decisions to enhance what is a lackluster script, but this is where the inexperience of Seth Gordon shows. Sure he had a hit with “Horrible Bosses” (2011) but misfired with “Identity Thief” (2013) then in between has directed a lot of comedy televison which means he was trying to learn how to direct narrative on the fly, which again shows here in this movie, where he was probably stuck between his script his producers as well as his actors – I am not envious because what we have been left with is a mess of a film both narratively as well as plot wise with an inconsistent tone as well as a R-rating slapped on to make it seem edgy – which it is not.

The filmmakers needed to pick a tone and style then follow through on that, I can see why they chose some kind of action/comedy route, which worked well with the redo and big screen adaptation of the hit “Starsky and Hutch” (2009) but there you had writers, a director and most importantly stars who could handle the material and knew not only what they were doing but also what they were doing. This is yet another misfire from the studio Paramount who have not been able to buy a hit this year and the slate for the rest of the year looks dire as well.

This is definitely not worth a purchase and to be honest even if you could watch this free it is unlikely you would enjoy it; in fact if you watched it on a plane you would not be forgiven for walking out.

“Baywatch” is out on DVD & blu-ray now.

Blu-ray & DVD review: “Baywatch” (2017) “Baywatch” (2017) Action/Comedy Running Time: 116 minutes Written by: Mark Swift & Damian Shannon Directed by: Seth Gordon…

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