#fun fact: i intended to do more analysis of his actual comments but it got too long so instead you just get this :)

[chayannesegg]

honestly I think it’s kinda interesting how phil’s relationships with wilbur, tallulah, chayanne & tubbo are all reflecting back into his view of sunny tbh. like he has such complex delicate interwoven dynamics with all of them and it all gets thrown onto sunny, this poor kid who he loves in theory, but in practice is a stranger to him. 

like wilbur left tallulah in phil’s care and didn’t come back. even now way after he was initially supposed to, wilbur hasn’t returned (that one day aside). and phil, who had already taken on a big commitment watching tallulah, has been left permanently with two eggs in his sole care. and even though he loves tallulah and wil, and won’t want them out of his life, this is a stress for him. it’s a big undertaking for anyone, to care for two kids alone, but especially since tallulah required a lot of changes in his life.

for better or worse, in many ways phil sees chayanne as an extension of himself. they’re similar in a lot of ways, and often on the same page, and it means phil often struggles to catch up when chayanne’s emotions aren’t on the same page as him. we’ve seen this week, phil having such a hard time understanding the depth and breadth of chayanne’s grief. when he catches on, he usually does a good job empathising and talking it through, but when he doesn’t, he really doesn’t and it can be hard to watch. 

the same is NOT true for tallulah. he has, through hard work and practice, learnt how to identify her emotions. he had to. she needed it. she would have been miserable otherwise. she desperately needed asked for the emotional care and birthdays and consideration that chayanne would never ask for. and he’s good at it—tracking her moods, knowing what upsets her & what she cares about in a way that doesn’t come as naturally with chayanne (or sunny or tubbo or anyone else really expect maybe wilbur). but that took A LOT of time and effort, months of work, and I do think he’s a bit wary of the idea of having to do that again, even when it comes to people he loves like chayanne (or god forbid tubbo).

now tubbo is not wil. tubbo is not phil's son. but he’s still not dissimilar to wil in phil’s mind. whatever the backstory is, phil introduces tubbo to tallulah as an old friend of him and wil’s. he makes tubbo his kids’ godfather. he calls tubbo his boy. he looks out for him. but past those first few weeks, their relationship doesn’t progress. they mean a lot to each other bc of their pasts, but they don’t put any work into upkeeping their relationship and phil in particular doesn’t reflect at all on what how that changes their dynamic. and it does change it—this is clear in purgatory, with phil having zero trust in tubbo to protect chayanne and tallulah, and after, with tubbo endlessly poking at phil’s sore spots trying to illicit a reaction he’ll never receive. 

it's also clear in the way phil has no understanding of what’s going on with tubbo. if he’s struggling to grasp chay’s emotions, he’s not even touching what’s going on in tubbo’s head. tubbo’s death makes no sense to him. it’s sudden. it’s random. it’s illogical. it’s stupid. he wasn’t joking about having two lives? he still took a death bet with richas? he’s not come back? he can’t come back? he’s left phil with distraught kids for no reason with no warning. he doesn’t see the erratic suicidal behaviour, the unending depression, the desperation to be loved. he doesn’t want to see it. he doesn’t want something to be wrong with tubbo, but he also doesn’t even know how to see what’s wrong. he’s annoyed he’s having to deal with it and he desperately desperately wants to believe this is all happening for no reason.

bc at the forefront of phil’s mind is still his love for tubbo. of course, phil would drop everything to help tubbo (if he could recognize something was wrong). of course, he would care for sunny as his own. of course, he would make the same sacrifices he’s made for wil. and he assumes he’ll have to. he thought that sunny would now be under his care. that he’d have to figure out the logistics of a third egg to care for. with wilbur, phil was the only person who could ever have taken care of tallulah. the only person he trusted, the only person who knew tallulah enough. now this isn’t true for tubbo. it’s a genuinely illogical assumption for phil to make: three eggs would be a genuine burden on him; they've never spoken about it; there’s a long list of people who would tubbo expects for sunny before; and he doesn’t even know sunny well enough to name these people for her as comfort.

but still in the moment, alone with tubbo’s eggs and dealing with everything he left behind, phil can only think that the exact same thing that happened before will happen: he alone will be left to care for another scared hurt kid of someone he loves.

and here we come to sunny. a kid whose dad he loves. a kid whose dad he doesn’t understand. a kid whose dad is suddenly gone like his son is gone. a kid who would need him like his daughter needs him. a kid who his son needs to protect. a kid he cares for. a kid he can’t afford to care for, a kid he wasn’t expecting to care for, a kid he doesn’t know how to care for, a kid he would care for if he needed to, a kid he doesn’t know why he’s been left to care for. a kid who is somehow a reflection of all these people he loves but not someone he knows at all.

idk i think this tension comes out in the a lot of the comments phil makes of and to sunny. he doesn't know them well enough to distinguish them from his relationships with other people. and as long as no one challenges him on that, we'll continue to hear these misplaced comments from him, that come across so insensitively, even as he tries his best to genuinely help them and their dad.

#qsmp #qsmp philza #qsmp sunny #suicide #philza neg #qphil neg #i guess i'll tag out of an abundance of caution even if i don't intend this analysis meanly #that said he is absolutely being unfair to sunny and hurting her bc of this and he doesn't even realize #and won't realize unless someone else talks to him about it #lest sunny just snap at him some day which i do think is what we're currently headed to #fun fact: i intended to do more analysis of his actual comments but it got too long so instead you just get this :) #even tho i think this covers too much in too little time and could reference more canon events lmao #but it's already a behemoth #oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #also nothing is ever going to justify the 'maybe i won't look for your dad as hard' comment fuck him fr for that #cw wilbur soot #won't delete this but warning he's mentioned here

[momotonescreaming]

Your posts and fics about Steve not being a pushover are some of my favorite in this fandom! I was wondering if you had any thoughts or headcanons about how Steve would deal with other members of the older party, instead of the younger party? This is more so in fanon than canon, but people mocking his intelligence or being surprised he's not a douche? Thanks!

Oh!! Thank you so much!!! That really means a lot! I'm always a little nervous when I make another post about Steve's boundaries and how fanon sometimes treats him, so it's a relief to hear people like them haha. 

You raise an interesting question! And one I will admit I haven't thought about too much, actually. Most of my posts have been about Steve and Dustin, as that's what I've been thinking about lately, but you're so right that the older teens do it too. LOTS to think about. So fair disclaimer that I'm thinking and writing by the seat of my pants here. 

I do just want to start off by saying that fanon is fun! Taking canon apart and disecting it, taking out its parts and figuring out how it works is fun! Diving deep and analysing and comparing what the writers intended vs what they ended up portraying vs what the fans thought. Media analysis baby! But fanon (like canon), can't cater to everyone. I'm just a Steve girlie with a lot of feelings. Not to say canon's exempt, of course. These ideas had to have come from somewhere. And I swear that each season gets a little bit worse at turning Steve into a verbal punching bag. A joke. He was supposed to be Nancy's jerk boyfriend who died, but everyone loved Joe Keery so much they kept him alive. And now they thank him by boiling his character down to a dumb jock who was an asshole. It's tiring. 

I remember ages ago there was a post (that I cannot find for the life of me) that pointed out that in season 1 Steve says the word connoisseurs (in the scene with the camera smashing) but if they made him say that in season 4 they would have made Dustin make a comment how he didn't know Steve knew a word with that many syllables or something.

All this insulting Steve, all the canon jokes and fanon characterisation shitting on his interests and his personality and the fact that he decided to be a better person 3 years ago by the time S4 rolls around? Just feels like an excuse to shit on the jock. Revenge of the nerds. But it just makes the nerds look like bullies. Like the Duffers got bullied by jocks when they were kids and now they're making it everyone else's problem.

But to the actual point of this ask! The older party! Below the cut because this got long.

First up is Eddie! With canon Eddie a part of me doesn't think he would make fun of Steve's intelligence or call him a douche post season 4. A big part of Eddie's journey was him getting his whole world turned upside down (pun not intended). With the whole monsters thing, but also with his worldview! He thought he was confident and tough, but realised that he panicked when things got real (which I mean, fair, but that's not what we're talking about). And that he was making assumptions about people based on his own unfair biases! He canonically admits to Steve that he couldn't accept the fact that Steve is a Good Dude and the only reasons he thought he was a douche was that he has rich parents, was popular, and chicks love him. Nothing based on Steve's actions. Him turning around after all that to comment about Steve's intelligence, or bringing up his non existent assholery again just feels like a huge backslide. Doing both their characters a real disservice.

But you mentioned fanon more than canon, and there are absolutely fanon Eddie's out there who would insult Steve like that. And I gotta be honest - I don't think that Steve would take that lying down. Steve absolutely has an angry knee jerk reaction to things during this show. Back in S1, but also in S4 - when he says to Dustin that he was going to punch him so hard his teeth would fall back out. If Eddie, the new dude, decided he was going to be a jerk and insult Steve's intelligence? Steve would absolutely retort that it was fucking rich coming from the guy who failed senior year twice. Which is harsh, but I'd be angry too if I saved this guy's life and he turns around and calls me stupid for it. He'd call Eddie a hypocrite.

One thing I like about Steddie (both platonically, and romantically) is how they're on equal footing. The get along. They respect each other. Stop making Eddie a jerk to Steve for no good reason.

Eddie bringing up he thought Steve was a douche feels better than the other instances because he admits he was wrong!! Willingly! To Steve's face! But any times after? Steve would drop Eddie like a hot potato. He's not going to hang around with someone who's a dick to him for no reason. The fact that they went through the Upside Down together isn't going to make him suffer through it. Like, there's no way Steve hung out with Nancy and Jon after the breakup. No Upside Down monsters could make that less awkward.

Speaking of other instances - Robin. Stobin, my beloved. Sometimes I wonder if people actually like Steve, or if they just put up with him because him and Robin are a special deal. My thoughts on her are a little more all over the place, so bare with.

Is she a jerk to him in Season 3? Yes. But she's also a lonely, angry, teen, holding a grudge against him for no good reason. The only 2 things she says she hated him for were - he ate bagels messily in class, and that he didn't pay attention to the girl she had a crush on. Once again, nothing substantial.

But then they get tortured together, they become best friends. They get a job together again and he drives her to school. Robin canonically is the one to bring up what if they could combine into one person. She cares about Steve! She loves him so much she wants to merge with him!! And yet so much fanon has her acting like Steve is a bad rash she can't get rid of. Insulting him at every chance she gets. I get that friendships have gentle ribbing, teasing and jokes, because you know them and you know where their line in the sand is. But a lot of fanon feels like Robin rubbing salt into the wound. Taking it too far.

How many times does Steve have to apologise for being an asshole when he really wasn't that bad in the first place?

Steve reinforcing his boundaries with aggressive fanon Robin would be more chill than Eddie, I think. More like a conversation. Like, hey, you're my best friend and what you're saying is actually really hurting me? Could you please stop because it really doesn't feel like you want to be my friend since you won't stop insulting my intelligence? Robin isn't just an angry teen on her own anymore, she has a friend and the things she says has an effect. I can see him being more conservative with it than him telling Tommy & Carol that they're assholes. If he loses Robin, he goes back to his only friend being Dustin. But he'd still bring it up. He wouldn't just roll over and take it.

If she didn't listen when he talked to her like an adult? That's when he'd call her out like he did Tommy and Carol. If he can call out his best friends before, he'd do it again. It'd suck, but he needs to put himself first.

Nancy and Jon I'm still thinking about.

Jon doesn't like Steve, doesn't respect him, and canonically says mean things about Steve still, after Steve's done so much to atone, to save and help everyone. That mean joke he makes at the end of S4 about Steve being in charge? Oof.

A part of me can see Steve being like 'who cares what that guy thinks, I know myself'. But I'm afraid I just don't have a lot more on Jon. He's just not a character I'm a big fan of so I'm not as confident with his characterisation.

Nancy however? Nancy would hurt. Steve loved her, cared for her, she was there when he was trying to be better, when he was atoning. (I know that Steve says that Nancy was the bump on the head he needed, but he's wrong. He did it himself. But that's besides the point.). He went with her to the Hollands, he saved her little brother's life, him and all the party. With Billy and then in the tunnels. He opened up to her, she helped him with his college essays. She broke his heart and for her to turn around and comment on his intelligence? to call him a douche? would fucking hurt. Not at the same level as the S2 drunk bathroom bullshit convo, but it would hurt.

A part of me can see Steve doing the whole - pinch the bridge of your nose to hold back the tears and leave - thing like in S2 after the party. But a part of me could see Steve having had the time away from her to say something. But IDK. I'm not too sure on this. If she wasn't going to be mature about their breakup, about the things he told her, wasn't going to respect him and not insult him after all the things she's done? I'd say leave her behind, but I don't know if Steve would. He has a big heart. It might just be easier to take the bittersweet option and quietly let her go. Don't interact.

ANYWAY. OOF. Sorry this got so long, I was thinking and then my brain kind of ran away with me. Hopefully this was the sort of thing you were thinking? It was a fun thought experiment either way!!

#ask #anonymous #momo.txt #Stranger Things #Steve Harrington #Eddie Munson #Robin Buckley #Jonathan Byers #Nancy Wheeler #meta #headcanon #fandom wank (to be safe) #this just all came out of me in a flood #hopefully it makes sense? #it really feels like the duffers are pushing a Jock VS Nerd agenda #(on the side of the nerd) #and some fans are eating it up

[satansaidmyturnintheh3llscape]

Everything Right/Wrong with Ninjago “Rise of the Serpentine” E8: Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Imma be honest… there’s at least 1 very overly-analytical character analysis about Jay. There’s also quite a few critiques about jaya here (cuz I have lots of issues with their relationship the first few seasons of the show) so be warned. Disclaimers: Show owned by LEGO, this is not a professional review/critique - it’s just intended for comedy.

Comment/reblog and follow for more!

- Theme ✅

- ^ This is not what a Hypnobrai general looks like ❌

- “If one is able to wildly raise their heart rate, hypothetically it could reverse the venom’s effects.” Because turning into a snake doesn’t already raise one’s heart rate enough? ❌

- “I get them mixed up.” Kai attempts to m*rder his own sister ❌

- Within - what? A day? - Zane’s humor switch moves from his chest to his arm ❌

- “Impress me? But I look so-“ “Fantastic…” At this point in the series, we have no reason to believe Jay’s feelings toward Nya had anything to do with anything other than her looks, or even just the fact that she was a girl. We have yet to see these two bond with each other or even hang out. It’s cutesy pining without actual substance and Jaya as a ship would be 10x better if they had given us more of that substance prior to them becoming an official relationship. ❌

- Obligatory Nya appreciated cuz look at her✅

- “You mean… like a date?” “Um… yeah..?” “I’d love to!” I love scenes that portray BOTH sides of a romance as awkward and slightly inexperienced as opposed to the fairly one-sided approach many of them tend to take. It’s genuinely realistic and refreshing to see ✅

- “But I have to go now before the perfume toxins enter my bloodstream and I go into shock. See you tonight!” ✅

- That fly doesn’t look more like a snake, it just looks more green ❌

- Where did Garmadon get those weapons from?? They just flew into his arms - who threw them?? ❌

- Also, I know this is likely supposed to be a parallel to the actual golden weapons, but all I see is Garmadon using these as cosplay props ❌

- “Mud monsters converge!” Why do the mud monsters obey Garmadon? ❌

- “You don’t belong here old fool.” Garmadon you’re literally older than him ❌

- “Your son’s in danger!” “Lloyd?” Never forget that Garmadon literally went from about to murder his brother to “wait Lloyd’s in trouble? Why didn’t you say so! Get out of there stupid we’ve got a kid to save!” in a matter of seconds ✅

- “What has Lloyd gotten himself into?” I love that he just knows it was Lloyd getting himself wrapped into this sh*t ✅

- “But I used it all and now have no way back.” Well that was stupid of you ❌

- The poor lizard was just trying to sunbathe ☹️❌

- “Maybe it’s better to wait until dark so we don’t attract any unwanted attention from the ninja or samurai.” “Oh I have a feeling we’ll fit right in…” And then they immediately attracted unwanted attention from both the ninja and samurai. ❌

- “Did I ever tell you I was the first one to learn spinjitzu? Uh, I mean I invented spinjitzu…” I like the detail that Jay starts out by bragging about an actual accomplishment of his and THEN changes it to a lie. It’s fits the theme very well and gives good insight into Jay’s character. He starts out trying to be himself but is then overwhelmed with the idea that he and his accomplishments aren’t enough. ✅

- But also, Jay seems to think Nya is an idiot ❌

- “It’s just a rash!” Bluejay, it’s green ❌

- “Pythor would not be there for fun” Type-casting ❌

- “Get your priorities straight, man!” Kai doesn’t think Nya is a priority ❌

- Look, I kinda get why Jay keeps the bite-thing a secret (not really given the context but I’ll still let it slide) but neither of them have any reason to hide the fact that the Serpentine are around. I guess Jay might be doing it because he’s afraid that he’ll never get another chance with Nya or something, but that’s not an in-character concern for Nya to have ❌

- Doesn’t Nya changing behind a foldable wall kinda defeat the purpose of her earlier excuse of why Jay couldn’t come into her room? ❌

- “I was thinking we could take my storm glider” Actually, the set is called “Jay’s Storm Fighter” ❌

- “It was clear I was born and bred for adventure…” Jay is who I imagine is the worst type of person to be on a date with ❌

- “So the samurai, um… I hate him!.” I’d give him a shovel to get outta this hole but apparently my phone doesn’t have that emoji so how’s about we see what he can do with a wrench instead: 🔧

- “He’s just such a showboat, ya know?” “Oh.”The wrench did not work I repeat the wrench did not work-

- VA appreciation for Nya’s “oh” cuz it’s the same bitterness I hope to achieve in life ✅

- “Nothing can compare to two good old fashioned feet and fists.” You have nunchucks that shoot people with lightning. ❌

- “It’s okay! Just go out there and tell her the truth!” The method Jay calms/reassures himself with hits way too close to home✅

- So Pythor is wearing a costume but Jay they attack? ❌

- “Not so fast!” “Really? That’s the best you got?” ✅

- “How bout ‘time to burn’ or ‘jump on this fire rock’” Cole those are both just as bad.

- “If you can keep up!” “Oh come on you gotta follow my lead-“ Cole points out my sin for me ❌

- Win for that one snake somehow hanging from the ceiling. ✅

- But also sin because how is that one snake guy hanging from the ceiling? ❌

- Pure silver is (generally considered) to be NOT magnetic. I don’t know what all these artifacts are made of but they can ALL be stuck with false advertising at this point ❌

- “Do not go in there; he bites!” The people in this diner are all idiots ❌

- Why does Jay’s transformation happen so much faster than Ed and Edna’s did? It took them a night + before they started turning green but Jay is this far through in a few hours? ❌

- “I was meaning to tell you but I didn’t want it to ruin the date!” “Aww that’s so sweet!” No, it isn’t! Sh*t like this isn’t romantic - it’s annoying at best and dangerous at worst. Jay’s actions come from a place of personal insecurity, which should NOT be romanticized, and Nya should be angry that he’s been lying to her all day. Why would she think it’s cute? ❌

- “You were the first to earn your knot badge in little scouts, right?” Those are metal chains - I doubt a knots badge would be much help. ❌

- “Where is he when you actually need him?” Samurai X has shown up EVERY time you needed her, actually ❌

- WOAH! Can we have some consent, pls? ❌

- “You are the best you…” Seriously the true potential scenes are all sooooo good ✅

- “Wonder what sensei’s doing now…” Lloyd’s mom, most likely

Sentence: Generic kids show messages

#ninjago #ninjago lloyd #lego ninjago #ninjago kai #ninjago memes #ninjago jay #ninjago nya #ninjago zane #ninjago cole #lloyd garmadon #ninjago sins/wins #ninjago jaya #jay x Nya

[after-witch]

IM SO OBSESSED WITH “Tell Me”!!!!!! Lovingggg how reader spent days working up the courage to practically whisper-ask what Feitan wants from them, literally the perfect performance of subservience and fear. And Feitan eating that shit uppppppp!!! He’s almost like an elementary school bully being confronted by his crush he’s been picking on all year and just being TICKLED that he 1) got their attention and 2) has more ammo to bully them with.

ALSO the way he embraced/crushed the reader FROM THE BACK. LIKE. Hugging from the front or the side seems way too open for him at this time. But from BEHIND? He’s given the freedom to do whatever he wants without revealing his face/any intimate emotions he may display on accident. And Reader can be scared shitless. Win/win for him tbh. And the way he literally didn’t have to embrace them, but did so anyway with the weak argument that it was a “scare tactic”. He could’ve put them into an arm lock or dragged them by the hair but instead you hold them close to you?! Even when reader is feeling pain from the force of his arms, we all know he’s using what? 2% of his strength? This is him being “soft” with them. simp much

AAAND the fact that he’s ecstatic that they’re so obedient they outright ask to do whatever he wants, and yet. It’s too much fun to push their buttons and have them make cute worried or scared faces day-to-day! It’s like a kitten meowing in protest when you’re too handsy and therefore making it impossible to stop messing with them…!! AGGGHHHH. Reader did everything right and as a result, they get punished. I’m fanning myself HEBDJSKAL

Last note! Love how Feitan, man of few words, went out of his way to tell Reader, practically speak it into the skin of their back (freak) that no matter what, he intends to make sure that they stay together no matter the circumstances. If reader is obedient, a rebel, comatose, or anything in between, he’s vowing to still keep them close and with him always. Reader asked for clarity in his motives and he essentially gave it to them in a roundabout way: he does what he does because they are what his world revolves around, whether Reader OR Feitan like it or not. Holy crap, Romance King! I’m sleeping for half a year. Goodnight

(ALSO YOUR WRITING IS GREAT AS ALWAYS, HAVE A GREAT DAY/NIGHT!!!!!)

Listen, I might actually print out this comment and put it on my desk as motivation. I might just. Even if I don't, know the sentiment is there. Thank you thank you for sending in all these thoughts, I've been rereading them for days.

I love your analysis of Feitan! School bully, indeed.

Also yesss @ the hug from the back. I view him as engaging in intimacy through veiled means most of the time. Sure, you might get a head pat as a token affectionate gesture, but it's deliberately condescending. For hugs and embraces, anything that might be remotely soft? You've got blindfolds on or he's hugging you from behind or you can't be entirely sure why he's doing something or what he's feeling while he does it. That's what he wants, or really, what he needs, in order to express that vulnerability. Reader being scared is both a bonus and justified punishment for making him feel soft things.

Thank you again for this comment 'non, it is the comment equivalent of a surprise trip to Disneyworld.

[batsforbadones]

Dear Batsforbadones,

I wanted to thank you for your writing of Billy Lenz.

As cute as OOC fluff can be, I just love it when there's writers who stick to the more canonical version of characters, and aren't afraid to write them as the deranged assholes they are. You made Billy rather sarcastic, condescending, and rather calculative while still maintaining is mental instability and rather animalistic insanity. The way you even write his dialogue is so great, as it oozes this capturing, but psychotic asshole vibe of "You're a dumb slut, but I'm gonna fuck and kill you now". With that, you're not afraid to unleash the more unpopular, and controversial side of Billy character, and that's the fact that he's pretty much a sexual predator, and absolutely wouldn't mind crossing lines to get "what he wants". People tend to baby Billy as some "ADHD" poster child of Gen Z "quirkiness", but you don't seem to infantilize him at all. You give him a personality outside of the "lol random xD" trope that many people seem to like projecting onto such characters. Like a gust of cold wind, your writing is rather refreshing.

Once again, I gotta thank you for writing Billy in a way that makes me smile whenever I see a new fic with him being released. I wish you well!

This comment means so much to me. you've given me a very in depth analysis, and I feel the urge to give you an explanation- a thought process as to why I'm so- mean when I write my slashers. because i do try to be. I also enjoy the fluff and the 'awwww, cute they'd hold my hand in a barn after killing someone' thing, but I am intentionally mean when I write, at least i try to be.

so, if you're willing to, hold out with me. It may not be worth much, but I'm- so glad my writing does what I intended it to. TW - DISCUSSIONS OF SA

fun fact about me- I got my fanfictional start in the creepypasta fandom on wattpad c.2012. If any of you got pipelined into being a horror movie watcher, you know how I got here, but basically, OOC content is- insanely popular in the creepypasta fandom because of how little substance there is to a lot of the root characters. Most of the source material has this very- passionate, but over all lacking development vibe so you'll get these really mediocre concepts handled very poorly. so you end up with things like jeff the killer, whose very clearly written by some 14 year old boy who listened to marilyn manson's cover of sweet dreams are made of these and it changed him for life (me too), or you get some bastardized form of someones passion found footage project- this isnt to say I wasn't also in that boat, but it was to say that I was kind of thrust into this very romanticized, and understandably less morbid view of these characters very early on. I responded to fear with sexuality, and that is an incredibly unfortunate boat to find yourself in so early on in your internet life, but fuck it we ball-

so basically, theres a character who is incredibly similar to Billy Lenz in the creepypasta fandom, and if you were there, you know exactly what I'm about to do because i've been sitting on this for almost two years now-

The way Billy Lenz is often written, is the way Ticci Toby was written. And Ticci Toby was my favourite creepypasta (i am using creepypasta as a fandom term, and not an actual iteration of the website. i mean the pantheon, because this differentiation is important to some people ((theres a lot of creative elitism in the creepypasta community)))

Ticci Toby is a slenderman proxy oc described as neurotic, bipolar, delusional, unstable, and with an unmaskable type of tourettes to where he garners the name he would later use as his moniker (all as written by a deviantart user c.2010, so take a lot of the sensitivity with a grain of salt)-

and my god, did the creepypasta fandom infantilize him. i did too. he was, for all intent and purposes, my baby girl. and I was like- idk fucking 10 and being into true crime and not flinching was cool so I was dick riding this man and eyeless jack like it was my job. and a couple of notable things about how they would treat him would be a bizarre obsession with waffles, Hollywood tourettes, if you were really ballsy, you'd make him hypersexual, and constantly trying to anime grope the reader, and he was just- all around considered to be the comedic relief character when paired with our other collection of 'the killers'. get its, its funny because its 2012 and we all think a severe social disorder is the peak of comedy.

and he wasnt well written, i would argue this is an actual infliction of what he was written to be (creepypasta oc rights drama aside), but later down the line when I got older i had this faint realization where its just like- no. he wouldnt-- do that. And not that it matters, you can literally do whatever you want with these characters, death to the author shit, but I was put off by it, almost? like, i look back on my old preconceptions of these characters and im like, morbidly inspired by my own childhood innocence when interacting with him. like- oh wow. i really wouldve just walked into the woods with a man with a hatchet if he was hot enough. oh wow.

once again, i too love to read ooc fluff and smut and stuff where these men aren't sexual predators and arent abusers, and i care for funny giggle billy, dont get me wrong, but I'm not- aroused by him much. i feel like, an emotional fondness, but im not- attracted to him.

and this isnt to say i dont think everyone isnt aware of how we are writing about fucking fictional murderers. we all watched the movies, we all got horny when he came out. we're all aware- and i know for some people it comes from a place of personal comfort that the boogey man treats them with care. its not my place to ruin someones comfort character. it never will be.

but, i genuinely struggle to make myself dissociate enough from these characters to believe they would care about consent. Most if not all slashers are founded on the grounds of the male, predatory gaze. the woman is the victim. the man is the victimizer. they're often literally metaphored with actual prey/predator situations. anyone killing women in mass is doing it because they hate women, and likely wouldnt have a problem raping said women. this is a fact i cannot remove myself from, both meta and not.

and i find a weird comfort in knowing they will always be- just that.

i feel that way about billy lenz a l o t. he, verbatim, threatens to rape the entire sorority house and then kill them. Its only by 70's movie censorship that I'm sure we didn't have a violent and grotesque assault scene from him. Billy Lenz is, at his core, a sexual predator. The little canonical input we get from him is- of him being a sexual predator. I'm not going into his phone calls, but basically- him being a rapist is, so incredibly core because we get... what? 7 minutes of dialogue with him? and not a SINGLE full body shot of him moving? We get a blood shot eye and?? what?? like i cant just remove him from the rape. theres nothing left of him. i'd be ticci tobying him again. and its not that i dont feel right doing that. not everyone should be like, forced to think about rape all the time- like, if you want a funny, sexy, evil guy, do it. I'd read it and giggle and kick my feet. if billy is your favourite character because you read him as autistic and gender, do it. but my billy- exists on those grounds. And so does my Jed. and my Stu. and my brahms- and so on so fourth.

sorry for the rant i'm just- so so passionate about like, this topic. and this is so fucking sweet to me. it means the world, really. thank you so much. im always in a billy lenz mood and plan to do some stuff for him soon. Thank you thank you thank you <3

#slasher fandom #rant post #sam has a little fit about billy lenz again #kicks feet and giggles #the slasher community is so much nicer than the creepypasta community #the creepypasta community was really mean #like actually

[cloverthirteen]

Was Ace Attorney made as a satire on Japan’s legal system? -- An analysis

I wouldn’t really call myself an Ace Attorney fan--I’ve never played any of the games, the closest I’ve come being watching other people’s let’s plays. I do like reading about the series on wikis and interacting with fan content for it, though, so I do know a fair amount about it.

One thing I see being said pretty often by fans is that the series was intended as a satire/parody of the Japanese legal system, which is why the courts are ridiculously biased towards the prosecution, prosecutors often care more about perfect win records more than putting actual guilty people behind bars, etc. If you’re familiar with this, you’ve probably heard of Japan’s 99% conviction rate. This interpretation of the games and the way they work definitely makes sense.

But after hearing this many times I eventually noticed something. There isn’t a single actual source (creator statement, interview, etc.) that backs up this claim. Every time I see someone online say “the series creator made Ace Attorney to parody Japan’s actual legal system” there is never a link to an interview or anything that proves their statement correct. If someone has an actual, verified source from Shu Takumi or someone else who had significant involvement with the series, please prove me wrong and show it to me. But according to all of the creator’s statement’s I’ve read, there’s no evidence of the series being an intentional parody.

So, what do we know about the creation of the Ace Attorney series? Well, it was created by Shu Takumi, who wrote and directed the first three games. After working on the dinosaur survival horror game Dino Crisis for Capcom, he was given the opportunity to make any kind of game he wanted. He really wanted to make mystery and adventure games, and from that came Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

MC: Before developing Ace Attorney you worked on Dino Crisis. How does one go from dinosaur survival horror to virtual courtrooms?

ST: Dino Crisis was the brainchild of my then boss, Resident Evil creator, Shinji Mikami. Working on his projects taught me not only how to make games, but also how to think about them. After Dino Crisis 2 wrapped, Mr Mikami gave me six months in which to create any kind of game I wanted.

I was still pretty wet behind the ears, but as I'd originally joined Capcom with a desire to create mystery and adventure games, this was a huge chance for me to make my mark as a creator. In the end it took a team of seven 10 months to produce the first GBA Ace Attorney title. Having the freedom to create exactly the kind of game I wanted was amazing and it was a real pleasure to work on that project.

MC: Can you remember when the idea of Ace Attorney first came to you? How did your bosses respond to the idea of a lawyer-based adventure game when you first described it to them?

ST: It was in 2000 when Mr Mikami said I could make my own game and my original idea was a fairly typical adventure with a detective as the main character. Most mystery adventures have the player choose from a number of different dialogue options for their character in order to progress the story, but I wanted a new gameplay style that enabled players to deduce for themselves what was happening, rather than just selecting canned responses. I developed this into the concept of facing off against the suspect in a crime and exposing the contradictions in their statements.

I was sure my new idea would be a fun and original take on the genre, so I started to revise the main character, since a detective would be too traditional for such an original concept. I asked myself, "What kind of professional would face off against a suspect and expose their contradictory statements?" The answer, of course, was a lawyer and so the Ace Attorney concept was born.

(source, from an interview on the making of the series)

Takumi’s original concept for the game involved Phoenix as not a defense lawyer, but as a detective. The gameplay was to consist of “facing off against the suspect of a crime and finding the contradictions in their statements.” However, Takumi eventually realized that taking apart contradictions wasn’t really a detective’s job, and decided to change the protagonist to a lawyer and the setting to a courtroom instead. And thus, the game’s concept was finalized.

Janet: As you know, “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy” is coming out world-wide this winter, and as I was brainstorming what to write about for this week’s blog, I remembered your tweets from 2010.

Takumi: Tweets from 2010?

Janet: …Well, it was a long time ago…

Takumi: ???

Janet: I-It’s OK if you don’t remember…

Takumi: …Oh, THOSE! Yes!

Janet: I remember reading them and being shocked by how different the original draft of the game’s story was – how Phoenix wasn’t even a lawyer, but a private eye!

Takumi: Yes, AA was originally supposed to be a detective game, so naturally, Phoenix was to be a private eye. But then, one day, I made a startling realization: the gameplay concept I was going for was for players to enjoy finding and taking contradictions apart, but that was hardly related to investigating or detective work at all. In that moment, I had it – I realized that the main setting for the game should be the courtroom.

Janet: That’s quite the jump, but you know, I can’t imagine this series being anything else at this point. 

(source, from an interview by Janet Hsu about the game’s early development)

During the development for the game, Takumi actually knew very little about the intricacies of the legal system--and in fact, he’s been very transparent about that fact in interviews. There’s even a story he talks about in a blog post where he was asked “shouldn’t we do some research on law before we make this game?” and agonized over it for a bit before deciding that being accurate about courtroom processes wasn’t important--what was important was that the game made the trials exciting and fun.

November, 2000. The characters were coming together, and I was working desperately on my first scenario (the current Turnabout Sisters). One day, I was asked about the one thing I didn’t want to be asked about.

“Mr. Takumi. Don’t we need to do some research on law?”

The knowledge I have about the law, pretty amounts to the one fact that in Japan we have the Roppō Zensho ('Complete Book of The Six Major Legal Codes').

“Don’t bother with that. This is a detective game. “

It should have been over with this one line, but…

“But this isn’t a detective game, it’s a lawyer game!”

“If it’s not going to be realistic, I don’t see why this should be about trials.”

“People who play this might get wrong knowledge from the game!”

“We might get sued by the Bar Association!”

“They’ll start complaining!”

…Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney GBA) is simply a “mystery game.”　“Being realistic” is not what is important. What’s important is emphasizing, and recreating the unique “atmosphere” and “tension” of the courtroom. That is why the judge uses a gavel, even though no judge uses that, and why Naruhodō shouts "Objection!" even though nobody does that either.　This game does not need a “realistic courtroom”!

Chasing the true murderer down to the end, and then getting applauded for that in the courtroom. That feeling of thrill and excitement. It was only by February of the following year when we finally manage to recreate that in the game. The couple of months after this had happened, we looked around, got lost and troubled our minds in search for the answer of the big question of “How do we make a trial into a game?”.  Fall was passing by, and the cold winter was close upon us.

(source, from an archived blog post by Takumi)

So, realism and knowledge of law wasn’t important to Takumi during the development of the series. But there’s also the fact that Takumi has actually personally denied that the Ace Attorney series was an intentional satire or criticism of the court system at any point. In fact, according to a blog post (done as if Phoenix and Maya were reading the column and commenting on it), he actually dislikes people seeing his work this way, as he never intended the games to have any big political statements.

A major prerequisite for Gyakuten Saiban is it’s so simple “even my mother could play it”.  So there is only one point at the core of the game: “Seeing through lies”.

Naruhodō: It wasn’t even supposed to be a game about the trials at first. Mayoi: Eh! Really?! Naruhodō: “Simple” is basically all this game is about, according to TakuShū. Mayoi: What do you mean? Naruhodō: He didn’t want to add all kinds of elements for the player to think about, like alibis, tricks or about the culprit. It’d just confuse them. Mayoi: Really. Naruhodō: Basically, you can proceed in the game if you just think about where the contradiction is. He figured that with that, the controls of the game could also stay simple. Mayoi: But, but, why the trials then? Naruhodō: “A story about a detective seeing through lies” wouldn’t be any different from the other games out there. So that’s why he decided to have someone whose job is seeing through lies as the protagonist. Mayoi: So a defense attorney. Naruhodō: Occasionally  TakuShū sees magazines introducing the game as “a work that dared to take on the theme of trials”, and that actually hurts him. Mayoi: He never meant to be something as big as that…. 

(source, from the mentioned blog post)

Ultimately I see how easy it is, if you know a good amount about both Ace Attorney and Japan’s legal system, to come to the conclusion that the games were made as a dig against the latter. However, somewhere along the line, people apparently stopped seeing this as merely a theory and instead as a definite fact. Now, that doesn’t mean that the theory is entirely unfounded--given that Takumi focused only on making trials interesting and fun in the games, you could say that the games work as an light, comedic parody, not meant to make any political statements. And hey, maybe there’s something I missed--maybe there were other people working on the series who did have significant knowledge of law and wrote some parts of the games as intentional satire of the system. Again, if anyone has evidence of this, don’t hesitate to provide it. But with what I know, I don’t think going “well actually” to people who point out the ridiculousness and unfairness of Ace Attorney’s court system is necessary. It’s simply that way to make the games more fun.

#ace attorney #phoenix wright #this was actually kind of fun to research and write! #kinda felt like i was making a statement in a courtroom...

[the-sound-of-her-wings]

I Am Not Starfire, And That's Okay

I recently read I Am Not Starfire and I had lots of thoughts, which are under the cut. It is spoiler-heavy and an analysis of the main character, who I find to be a charming, flawed, and incredibly human character.

Mandy is a fascinating character and a great look at a teenage girl who feels ostracized by the people around her and who feels disconnected from her parent. Mandy is by no means flawless, and that's what makes her very interesting. It also makes her relatable.

Mandy starts by talking about how she's noticeably different from her mom, being the "Anti-Starfire". She's a regular kid, can't fly, and doesn't own a swimsuit, while her mom is a superhero, can fly, and always wears bikinis.

On page 11 she mentions "her mom hasn't liked how I looked since I was twelve. She wears less than a yard of fabric every day, yet somehow, I'm the one who's dressing weird". While I understand people who call this slut-shaming, and I'm inclined to agree, but I think it's a little more nuanced than that. The next page reads, "My friend Lincoln convinced me this is the cultural divide that happens between family generations born in different countries or universes. His parents were born in Vietnam." This tells me that the authors intended to point out the difference in dress more as another difference between Starfire and Mandy, and less as a reason to blatantly slut-shame Starfire. I think there's absolutely a conversation to be had about why the authors decided to use this language instead of conveying the point differently. I also think it speaks to how Starfire has more or less been sexualized from inception, and how people look down upon her character because of that. In the context of this book, though, it's one of Mandy's character flaws that I think fits her both as a character and reflects what I've seen from actual teenage girls. Our society coaches us to view women who dress a certain way as less than women who don't and unlearning that takes time and effort. I don't think this comment about her mom should have been put in there by the authors, but I do think it fits in with the values American society in particular teaches about women.

Page 15, 16, and 17 all point to a far more complicated state of existence than Mandy points out within the first few pages. For one thing, Mandy has to deal with people who love her mother and only want to use her to get information about her mom and the other teen titans. This is shown by the "Titan groupies" who ask her to tell Starfire what they say about her. Another thing she has to deal with is the expectation to be a superhero and have powers like her mom, and the questions about who her dad might be. She gains her first real friend, Lincoln, because he tells the people asking about her parentage that they are assholes.

It is revealed that Mandy has a crush on Claire after she gets assigned a group project with her. Mandy is in denial over the crush. She thinks about the fact she's meeting Mandy at the end of the day throughout the rest of the school day, causing her to explode something in Chemistry Class. I find this to be highly relatable and gives her character a softer side to the edginess she desperately tries to portray herself as.

While talking about the project with Claire, it is revealed that Mandy ran out of her SATs and didn't complete them. While Mandy tries to paint this as a cool badass moment, the way the comic artist portrays the scene makes me think Mandy had an anxiety attack. Mandy didn't run out of her SAT because she's some kind of alternative badass who doesn't need to take them. Mandy ran out because she got overwhelmed by the sounds of people chewing and the pressure of the test. While she frames it differently, it's clear to me that Mandy is avoiding taking the SAT again because she doesn't want that to happen again.

When Claire invites her to hang out with her friends, Mandy gets treated like she isn't there, or as some kind of unwanted outsider. The topics they discuss seem to be specifically made to make Mandy uncomfortable, like mentioning how stretchy jeans are only made for fat people, and asking if aliens don't go to college. Jaded by this, Mandy makes up that aliens actually have to go through this huge blood right and battle to the death, but tells Claire's two friends she was joking before leaving. This tells me that Mandy deflects her pain by using humor to cope and has no issue clowning on people who are trying to belittle her for being an alien.

Starfire tries to bring up going to college after this, and Mandy just flees to her room. She hasn't told her mom she didn't take the SAT yet or that she isn't going to college. She feels distant from her mom, which is explained further through a montage of birthdays where she never got her powers. Her mom expects a lot from her, and Mandy thinks Starfire is disappointed about her lack of powers.

Later, Mandy invites Claire over to her house to complete the project they are working on. The Titans are still there when Claire arrives, but she seems to ignore them, as they leave shortly after. Mandy and Claire bond as they continue the project. Mandy reveals to the reader that she's never had a girlfriend, except for one time at sleep-away camp where she kind of dated a girl for four weeks. She didn't tell her who her mom was because she was tired of living in the shadow of a superhero. But the relationship ended because Mandy had lied about who her mom was, and the girl she was dating didn't understand why she would lie. I think this really shows just how much Mandy actually wants to be a normal girl like everyone else, to the extent that she'd lie about who her mom was. Her edgy demeanor at school and around town where her mom is known to be her mom is a defense mechanism to having lived under the shadow of a superhero her entire life.

When it's revealed that Claire took a photo with the Titans at Mandy's house, Mandy is understandable heartbroken, and furious. She thought she had been making a real connection with Claire, but this photo makes her think she's been used, again. Claire seems genuinely baffled by Mandy's reaction to this, thinking little of it. But to Mandy, it is a breach of trust from someone she thought cared about her. I think her angry reaction to Claire makes sense because of this, even if it might have been disproportionate to the offense.

On top of this, Starfire has discovered that Mandy walked out of the SAT and doesn't plan to go to college. After a heated conversation, she runs away, but her mom finds her. And then Blackfire finds her. Turns out the fake story she told Claire's friends earlier in the story was actually true, even though Mandy didn't know it.

Since Claire actually cares about Mandy, she tracks down Lincoln who explains to her why Mandy reacted badly, and that she should probably apologize for taking the photo. Claire also admits that one of the friends from earlier, Deb, actually dared her to take the photo. Claire is a good person at heart, but this action shows that she can still be influenced to do something that would hurt another person. And while she might not have known it would hurt Mandy, Deb probably did.

Starfire and Blackfire fight since Mandy has no powers, but Starfire gets injured causing Mandy to realize just how much she loves and cares about her mom, even though they don't see eye to eye on most things. This finally unlocks her powers, as she's let go of most of the resentment she's held against her mom. She even gets asked for an autograph by someone in the audience after the battle.

The story ends with Mandy training her powers, studying for the SAT, and reconciling with Claire, sharing a kiss, and becoming girlfriends.

I've seen a lot of discourse that frames Mandy as being "not like other girls". I don't believe this framing actually fits Mandy very well. The only girl Mandy ever says she is not like explicitly is her mom. She is the only woman she compares herself too, and the only person who she seems to have a lot of resentment for, aside from people who use her to get to Starfire. Additionally, Mandy falls for someone who is what a stereotypical, normal popular girl is often portrayed as. She's preppy, wears makeup, gets good grades, has friends, and runs a fairly popular Instagram account. If Mandy was extremely into the "Not like other girls" rhetoric, she would've made fun of Claire for all those things. Instead, she admires her for them. Mandy is fat, has acne/freckles, dresses goth, and wears a nose ring. If this is the reason people are identifying her as a "Not like other girls" girl, then they don't understand that trope. Simply dressing differently from your peers, being fat, and hating your mom does not make her the "not like other girls" trope. It actually makes her like other, real-life girls who dress and act similarly, because that's who they are, not because they somehow think they are better than other women.

I'd also make the argument that, fundamentally, Mandy IS different from other girls on the account of having a superhero mother and potentially a superhero father. Her life is completely altered by Starfire's existence as her mom and is likely only relatable to the children of other superheroes and celebrities. She is not like other girls because of her mom, and that still doesn't make her someone who falls in line with the conception of being "not like other girls".

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and hope others do too. I read Mandy as a flawed character who was trying to figure out how to exist outside the Shadow of her mom- and eventually succeeds, by learning to embrace her mom. I would've preferred if Mandy had a slightly darker skin tone, as her features seem black-coded to me and Starfire is also often black-coded. Otherwise, I do think this was one of the best DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults I've read, alongside Teen Titans: Beast Boy and Teen Titans: Raven.

#i am not starfire #mandy koriand'r #mandy anders #i am not starfire spoilers #starfire

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

“Let’s BTS” asks about “I like you the most” and Jin’s reaction

by Admin 2

First of all, I want to wish you all, far away in the world of Vmin and BTS, a healthy and peaceful Easter, if you celebrate it, and a nice weekend for those who don’t! Since Admin 1 is quite busy right now and currently also participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, I (Admin 2) will take over our blog for a little while though Admin 1 will still be lurking and checking comments etc. I want to emphasize right away (you will probably notice it anyway) that I have no literary talent compared to Admin 1. I'll try to worthily “replace” Admin 1 for the time being and talk to you about Vmin and more.

Unlike Admin 1, I am not so careful with shipping discussions (and I even like them) as long as everything is done respectfully and we’re all sticking to the truth about the BTS members. I don't like criticizing other shippers because I understand that other fans may love their favorite members and ships just as much as we love Vmin or Namjin, but sometimes it’s inevitable that I have to say something.

So, I invite you to a discussion. I am open to discussion.

We got two interesting questions about “Let’s BTS” and specifically Jin’s reaction to vmin and I want to discuss them.

From anon: Hi, just wanted to see what you made of Jin’s reaction to Tae’s message to Jimin on the Let’s BTS show. I’ve seen some people say he looks so done and even annoyed with it. I can understand him looking apprehensive at first because Tae is a bit of a loose canon, but everyone’s reaction after is to laugh and smile and shout but Jin is very stoic. I’m kinda new and wondering whether he isn’t a fan of Vmin’s brand of declaring their love on national TV. Although when I think of how he behaves with Joon - I’d struggle to wonder why he doesn’t like it. Any thoughts?

From anon: Hi, I cannot believe what I’m reading about Tae on some platforms. What is wrong with people? Anyways I wanted to ask you what you thought of Jin’s reaction to Tae’s message for Jimin? I’ve started seeing people saying that Jin hates the fact they’re close that’s why his reaction was weird. I’m a vmin shipper but Jin is my bias and I can’t get my head around the fact that Jin doesn’t love them both dearly. He did look “apprehensive” perhaps but I’d say with Tae being Tae; that isn’t surprising.

In order to answer these two questions and to form my opinion on the matter, I’ve looked at the situation with regard to Jin and other members several times.

I admit that I’m surprised myself that Taehyung went this far. Actually, it's not even about the content of his words, but about the whole circumstance and the atmosphere that he created around his "confession". I don't know who added the music, whether it was a Taehyung hint or simply something the editors and PD thought of, but the whole situation and phrase gained even more "meaning" and "seriousness" through it.

I seemed as though the background music was supposed to make the moment remind everyone almost of a scene from a K-Drama (or one of vmin’s playful roleplays), but it only added to the effect of this being a serious, sincere and weighty moment instead.

Taehyung joked around by turning the table and pretending the envelope was not intended for Jimin, but this just led to an increase in the tension displayed by the members and the moment itself, and yet still Jimin was immediately convinced that he was the one for whom the envelope would be. Everyone was acting (which makes it sound like they were faking it which isn’t what I mean) like they were curious, but you could clearly see everyone's tension and nervousness, especially when looking at Jimin. Taehyung added that the contents of the card within the envelope were for Jimin's eyes only, emphasizing the seriousness and intimacy of what he was about to say. As a result, Jimin’s reaction led to uncertainty, nervousness, and at the same time an awareness of the sincerity and seriousness of Taehyung's words.

The words "I like you the most" are (on a superficial surface level) nothing big when compared to "I love you", but they still had the biggest reaction. Jimin wrote "I love you" to Suga and absolutely no one reacted nervously, everyone joined in on the declaration, and the situation was relaxed and even funny. Why did Taehyung’s words cause such reactions then? Why?

My thought is this: When the envelope was revealed to be for Jimin, it was met with tension by both members and Jimin. We all know that Taehyung can be a bit of a loose cannon sometimes, even on national television, when it comes to Jimin.

Jungkook immediately commented that "it’s about friendship", Suga laughed nervously and loudly, as if he wanted to end the situation quickly, and Jin had a serious face that didn’t seem all too positive or eager about what would happen next.I'm not going to go into Jimin's reaction here, but rather Jin’s, since that’s what the anons were wondering about.

In my opinion, Jin doesn't like situations that slip into seemingly too private matters. He is definitely the kind of person who gives up the least private information. The situation with Vmin clearly didn't suit him. And not because Jin doesn't like Vmin (because that’s simply not true), but because he knew this program would be broadcast nationally and streamed worldwide, that it would be debated, that every word would be analyzed, and most importantly, because the team that recorded the show wasn’t their own but one that belonged to KBS. Jin doesn't want anyone to have access to BTS's private life, after all he even asked the You Quiz editors to cut what he saw as too sad/depressing about his answers so clearly he thinks about and considers many such things. I think Taehyung didn't care all that much, but Jin did care.

Perhaps I will go too far in my analysis and imagination here, but let's not forget that in the near future Jin is going to have to leave for his military enlistment in the highly conservative Korean army, which holds very homophobic views. Any shadow cast on any of the BTS members (even if some of them are already suspected to be queer) can endanger Jin or make it even more difficult for him to perform his service well and safely. The suspicion that two of the members might be in a relationship with each other would make Jin an accomplice, since they belong to the same group and would lead to him also being suspected of being queer, guilty by associating basically. This is my opinion at least.

Jin is the oldest and feels responsible for BTS, much the way Namjoon does as leader, for everyone including Taehyung, because Jin is aware of the wave of hatred that will be/is poured onto Taehyung across sns after such a public statement. According to Jin, in my humble opinion, this is neither the time nor the place to take such a step in such serious manner. As long as everything was done in form of jokes and witty answers, Jin was joining in and having fun, but when it was Tae's turn his face became serious, as if to warn Taehyung. Jin knew that "Taehyung's atmosphere" could/would fluster Jimin and the entire team, and could become the subject of rumors spread by the staff that isn’t their own.

So no, Jin’s reaction wasn’t because he hates vmin or anything like that, because that’s not true on any level, but because Taehyung’s words about liking Jimin the most were perhaps too sincere for the setting they were in, raising too many brows, and that’s potentially why he reacted the way he did. After all, if you watch the 5th Muster concerts, and especially the one in Seoul, when vmin stand at the very end together, Jin approaches them and throws water at them as though to pull them out of their bubble and back into reality. All in good fun and because he simply cares a lot about them.

Also, an alternative and even more simple answer could be that Jin’s face has no relation to anything I just said and doesn’t tell us anything about what he thought about Taehyung’s words. After all in some interviews he also just sits there quietly and watches/listens to the other members and that doesn’t mean anything at all, or at least nothing negative. But since you asked for my thoughts, here they are, though they don’t have to be right.

I actually have no idea what the reactions are to this show in Korea and among the general public, but I've seen the reactions to Tae’s words across various sns, which one of the anons also mentioned so I’d like to talk about those for a moment as well.

My hair stood on end when I read some of the responses/posts about Taehyung. I never thought that people who call themselves ARMY or fans of BTS would have such opinions about any of the members. A wave of hatred literally flooded Taehyung, like Admin 1 previously mentioned in their answer to an ask.

I just wanted to cry. It shocked me how far shipping can go (literally playing with actual, living people with no regard to their own words and thoughts) that it can cause such extreme emotions in "fans". It's hard to say which is more negative and alarming for some, Taehyung potentially really having (romantic and reciprocated) feelings for Jimin, Taehyung's feelings not being for the “right” person, or the mere fact that Taehyung's feelings are for a person of the same gender.

It’s also interesting to see how deceptive some are. I don’t even mean that “Taehyung and Jimin like each other most” is ignored, which it is, but rather that those mutual feelings were manipulated to twist them into a completely different direction and to another person, or turned into mere jokes or sarcasm. As if all of this simply never happened.

On the other hand, the fact that Jungkook unbuttoned his shirt before going on stage for “My Time”, as opposed to him not doing so during rehearsals, has become very important and an example of J*k*ok being in a relationship, how that’s now even clearer than ever before and is an indisputable fact, according to shippers. Apparently, J*k*ok were flirting with each other throughout the entire segment and show and only had eyes for each other. Somehow Jungkook imitating Jimin is the final piece of evidence to prove everything shippers ever claimed and thus, according to them, everyone must now see that they love each other romantically.

I've carefully watched this show three times, this particular segment and everything else too, and frankly I haven't seen anything that could be called anything even close to flirting when it comes to the two main ML ships. I'm mature and I think I know what flirting is and I can “read” the simplest human behavior, but I really couldn’t see any of it. In my opinion, Jungkook imitating Jimin is clear and open and not a secret. I fully understand Jungkook, I would also follow Jimin in his place :-) Jimin's dancing and looks, as well as his professional work ethic, are truly breathtaking, inspiring and worth imitating. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with romantic affection or a romantic relationship between them, in my opinion.

Hence, I fail to understand these behaviors which in turn lead to a wave of hatred against Taehyung and the, repeated, disregard, belittlement and erasure of Jimin’s and Taehyung’s friendship and relationship bond, and even some going as far as pretending anything vmin was simply not there at all just to make their ship seem more real, booo.

#BTS #vmin #Jimin #Taehyung #Seokjin #Let's BTS #answered ask #answered by admin 2

[gh0st-patr0l]

Tommy and Tubbo - An Analysis

Thats right baby we're really fuckin gonna do this,

Just so yall know, this was written on December 5th, directly after the exile.

I really wanna talk about what, I feel, has been the crux of this entire arc; Tommy and Tubbo's relationship, and how it is inherently flawed.

I know that might sound strange- after all, aren't they best friends? And yes! They are! But I think what this arc has revealed is that it wasn't the most stable or healthy relationship. Think about it- what was the source of the conflict between them? When you strip it down to the core, it was exactly what Tubbo pointed out after Tommy screwed over their negotiations. It was respect.

Tommy has never fully respected Tubbo. I don't mean to say that this was purposeful or malicious- I want to stress that Tubbo and Tommy always have genuinely loved each other and were never intentionally unkind. But the nature of their relationship had sort of developed into this protagonist-and-sidekick dynamic. Which was fine, when the two of them were on the same page! Tommy took the lead and Tubbo was happy to help, because why wouldn't he be?

The problems only started when Tubbo was put into a position of authority.

This is where the lack of respect becomes an issue. Because the one thing that has always plagued Tubbo is that he is never taken seriously. People never listen to him- least of all Tommy! Watch any discussion from any of the main plot points of this arc. Tubbo barely gets a word in edgewise in any of them, and he's the fucking president! Even when the country is in his hands, he's ignored, talked over, and dismissed. And at the center of it is Tommy, shouting over him, encouraging anyone else involved to do the same.

And while we're talking about being listened to, I wanna remind you all of something Wilbur said, back during the festival. He said that Tubbo is a yes man. Tommy was quick to deny that, to defend Tubbo- but in reality? He was right.

Tubbo isn't necessarily a good liar. In fact, he's pretty abysmal at it. But one thing he's proven himself to be good at, time and time again, is being amicable. At going along with things, at saying yes, at hiding hiding any feelings that may conflict with whoever is in charge. It's something he defaults to- just accepting that his input doesn't matter, that it's easier to shut up and nod along. And as unintentional as it may be, Tommy has consistently taken advantage of that.

The argument right before the exile is a prime example. Tubbo was clearly opposed to the war plan. He said so, many times, and clearly didn't want to agree! But Tommy and Quackity and Fundy refused to let him speak his mind. They kept pushing, they made it clear that they wouldn't take no for an answer, and finally Tubbo defaulted- he said yes, because that's what they wanted from him. That's what they expected from him.

Of course, this was purely unintentional. Tommy undoubtedly never considered that the way he treated Tubbo was hurtful. But then, that's the point, isn't it? He never considered that. He never stopped to think about what Tubbo wants, how Tubbo feels about things, because why would he? Tubbo is just going to agree and be fine, isn't he?

This becomes more outwardly malicious when they talk about Tubbo's responsibility. Tommy repeatedly brings up in their arguments that he didn't want Tubbo to be president. That Tubbo wasn't his first choice- which, honestly, is kind of just mean on it's own. But he also reminds Tubbo that L'Manburg is on his shoulders now, that he can't afford to mess up- in between telling him that he can't possibly entertain the idea of exiling him. He creates this vicious double standard; never letting Tubbo really speak his own mind, yet putting all of the pressure and culpability on him for the fallout. Expecting Tubbo to be fine with taking the blame for what he does and wants. Expecting everything to stay as it always has been.

And that's where the discs come in.

When they argue, Tommy always says the same thing- that it's always been him and Tubbo versus Dream, that it's always been about the discs. And that is exactly the issue. That's where Tommy's ignorance shines through. He always assumed that he knew what Tubbo wanted and what Tubbo cared about. He assumed that Tubbo stuck with him because he wanted the discs as much as he did. But that was never the case.

Ranboo made a very astute comment towards the end of Tubbo's vod- about how the discs don't actually have a physical meaning, but that they're more of a symbol. That the discs have always represented power. They represent the struggle between Dream and Tommy for control. The fight between Dream and Tommy has always been about power, from the start.

But as Tubbo tells Ranboo, earlier in their talks- he doesn't care about power. He never has. (This is mostly my reasoning for why I don't really like the concept of Tubbo "being the next Schlatt", but that's a different conversation...) He didn't ask to be president. He was thrust into power- into responsibility- that he never wanted. He doesn't even want to keep the presidency! He fully intends for it to be passed on to Ranboo in the election.

No- For Tubbo, it was never about the discs. It was never about power. It was only ever about Tommy.

When Tommy went to war with Dream over the discs, Tubbo didn't help because he wanted them. He helped because it was Tommy, because this was what Tommy wanted and what would make him happy, so of course Tubbo would help- how could he not? And when Tommy joined L'manburg and the revolution, Tubbo joined, too- not necessarily because he wanted to separate from the SMP, but because it was what Tommy wanted, and he could help, so he did. And when Tommy and Wilbur were exiled? Tubbo put aside his morals, everything he stood for, to become a rebel spy. Because Tommy needed him to. Then, they won the war, and L'Manburg was still destroyed. Tubbo was the president of a crater- and he started to rebuild, from the ground up. Because Tommy told him he had to.

Tommy kept talking about how much he sacrificed for L'manburg, but hadn't Tubbo made sacrifices, too? Time and time again, Tubbo has put aside everything he had or wanted for Tommy. He's lost his house, his pets, everything he cared about, over and over. And it was always for Tommy.

Tommy was all Tubbo had ever cared about. He always had been. But what Tubbo realized, as he was standing on that wall, was that Tommy didn't feel the same way. That Tommy would always choose the discs over him. That Tommy cared more about power than he did about his best friend.

And that, in the end, is why Tubbo chose to exile Tommy.

Tubbo knew that the war wouldn't end well. He knew that Tommy was leading them into another hopeless battle. He knew that once again, he was going to have to sacrifice everything he had and cared about for Tommy's discs. For a stupid power struggle he doesn't even have a part in.

But this time, the choice was his. He could choose to hold on to something. He could choose to stop, and think, and do things his way. Being in exile isn't fun, but Tommy knows how to take care of himself. He'll be fine, and Tubbo knew that. He didn't exile him out of malice. He did what, in his mind, he had to do.

Because Tubbo knows first hand that Tommy won't just go down with his ship- he'll drag anyone he can down with him, kicking and screaming, no matter how many times he has to. He'd burn L'Manburg to the ground if it meant he got those discs, and Tubbo knows that. He wasn't wrong when he said Tommy is a liability. Tommy's priorities are with his vendettas- Tubbo's is with his people. This was where their paths had to diverge.

The separation is going to be interesting. I think it will be an incredibly good opportunity for character development. And I also see this whole arc as an amazing stress-test.

People keep talking about how Tommy and Tubbo's friendship will never be the same, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that however long it takes, in the end, Tommy and Tubbo will make amends, build again, and be better off for it.

After all- Tubbo still has Tommy's last disc, doesn't he?

#mcyt #tubbo #tubbolive #tommyinnit #dream smp #ghost.txt #this was written in a fucking fever dream at 3 am pls dont judge my grammar too hard

[transthaumaturge]

Squirrel Girl is Super Gay for her Roommate and I Want Everyone to Know

A gay infodump of sensible length by Rachel Tikvah

ALRIGHT, SO The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was the very first comic that I ever read regularly, back when I was looking for more stories with strong female protagonists but didn't really know why. Back then I just thought I really liked strong female characters and not that I was being gay on main, but now I know the truth. The comic had a 5-year run, and it was the first time that Squirrel Girl, AKA Doreen Green, had had her own series. She had a brief run in the mid-2000's where she was established as someone who could beat up Thanos with her bare hands well, more like squirrel hands but was mostly a joke character that happened to be incredibly buff and had indestructible plot armor. USG decided that Doreen's next major life goal would be to enroll in college to become a computer scientist, because her writer, Ryan North, is really into computer science and they basically gave him free rein over Squirrel Girl canon for five whole years. Like, a solid third of the plots are solved with some kind of computer science smarts. It’s really cool. Anyway this is Doreen in one of the gayest solo pictures I could find of her on short notice, which is also one of the variant covers from the actual series:

And this is her college roommate, Nancy Whitehead:

I'm like, 99% certain that Ryan North intended for them to end up as a couple and Disney!Marvel told him no. So he decided to make them AS GAY FOR EACH OTHER AS POSSIBLE without explicitly saying that they were a couple, and it ended up going under the radar. What follows is evidence for that claim. I’m going to put a "read more” after this so it doesn’t clutter everyone’s dashboards, but please read on if you’re interested. There’s a lot of cute gayness after this point. I’m also going to put all of the image descriptions at the end, since they take up a lot of space and I don’t want to break up the flow of the post. Finally, a quick spoiler alert for one arc in the middle of the series and a couple major plot points from the final few issues.

AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES

So for a while it was just kind of hinted at that they’re in a relationship, mostly because they were basically domestic life partners for like, two whole years in-universe before the comic run ended. But it really came to a head with an arc that was ran about 2/3 of the way through the series. Some pictures of them being, like, so cute together in general and/or talking about how much they care about each other before I get to that arc, though: 

Also Doreen describes her and Nancy's cat as "co-parented" in one of the last issues:

ANYWAY, THE ARC. THE HYPERTIME ARC. So one of the villains created for the Squirrel Girl run (I think they liked making weird shit canon just because they could) was a dude who went by the name "EpicCrimez". He’s a crime streamer. He livestreams his crimes to an online audience. I don't know. *Throws up hands*

He had some kind of laser gun that he built out of scavenged alien tech but didn't really know what it did, so he shot it at Doreen and Nancy for kicks. It shot them into hypertime, so suddenly the rest of the world was moving at a fraction of the pace that they were. They were moving so quickly that they were slated to live out their entire lives over the span of a single weekend if they didn't figure out how to reverse the effects. And...they did. Live out their entire lives together. For the two of them, they were the only two people in the world. There were other people, but they looked like statues unless you spent a very long time observing them. Doreen and Nancy grew old together in a world where they only had each other. This is an incredibly cute domestic scene from a little while after they found themselves in hypertime:

Gosh, I wish I could find more official art from that arc of them just living together, it was so good. But the point is, they were both old by the time that Nancy figured out how to get them out of hypertime. And it wasn't ideal. Their bio signatures were stored in the gun that EpicCrimez shot, and they could essentially "reboot" their bodies from when they were first shot and send themselves back into the regular timestream. But they wouldn't remember anything about the life that they had shared together. Nancy almost didn't want to do it. She raised the possibility of them just living out the rest of their lives together, because she didn't want to forget their life together. This is the conversation they had:

"I don't regret any of it. I don't want to lose it, and I don't want to lose us." "You're not getting rid of me that easily." Every time I look at that last picture, which took up an entire page of the comic, I start to cry. We’re seeing the final moments of two people who love each other more than anything, who were each other's entire lives, savoring their last moments together and wondering what the future holds. Sacrificing the life that they built together so that their younger selves could live a better, fuller one. Dying in each other’s arms, scared but comforted by the fact that they had each other. And then the arc ends, and they can't remember anything, so the status quo is restored. They have some paintings they made of each other while they were living together in hypertime, but they move on pretty quickly without ever knowing the significance of those lived decades. Still, it's clear in the arcs that follow and the adventures they embarked on afterward that they would die for each other. All of that continues until the end of the last arc. Their shared apartment's been blown up at this point by a supervillain who wanted to ruin Doreen’s life before eventually killing her. And in the aftermath of the fight, they're sifting through the wreckage for anything that survived (don't worry, the cat got out in time) when they find the picture that they painted of themselves during the hypertime arc:

They have a really cute conversation about how this chapter of their life is over, but they're going to be okay and they're going to build a new life together. And then Nancy basically tells Doreen that she can't live without her:

And then Doreen says something super queer-coded about how she likes the idea of the world knowing her secret identity now:

On the very last page of the comic, after all of the action is over and the series is about to end, they're talking to each other in what's supposed to be a twitter thread and Doreen asks Nancy a very thinly veiled question about whether she still wants to spend time with her now that her identity's out. She pretends it's about a class project, but it's really not about the class project. Here's how that conversation goes:

With no knowledge of what happened during the weekend when they shared their entire lives together, without ever having heard Doreen say it to her before, Nancy’s heart still knows which words to choose. "...you're not getting rid of me that easily. <3" I believe that the author of the series, Ryan North, did as much as he possibly could to portray them as a couple without saying it outright. And as the last piece of evidence to support that claim, I want to share a response he wrote in one of the series' last-ever letter columns:

"as for more Doreen and Nancy, I hope so too. A Squirrel Girl book without Nancy would feel like--like--like some sort of hypothetical "Super" "Man" book without an equally hypothetical "Lois" "Lane"!" It's easy to write off this analysis as wishful thinking, or as a misreading of the subtext. But when the author of the series says that these two characters are meant to always be together and compares them to one of the most famous couples in any comic series ever, it's clear that there's more to it than that. 

Some Additional Thoughts: 1) Doreen and Nancy are both probably bisexual or pansexual, since they both expressed romantic interest in men throughout the series but they’re both clearly interested in each other too. There might be an element of demiromanticism there as well if part of the reason that they’re into each other romantically is because of how emotionally close they’ve become over the years. I want to make sure that that facet of their romantic orientations doesn’t get erased, because bi and pan folks get erased enough as it is. Neither Doreen nor Nancy are lesbians, just super-cool WLWs.

2) HERE’S WHAT THE ISSUE 50 VARIANT COVER LOOKED LIKE

That’s NOT a fun, totally straight way to pose with your platonic gal pal. They’re so incredibly cute together! I have no words! In Closing If you got this far, thank you so much for letting me talk to you about a comic that’s very important to me, and a couple in that comic that I care about very much. I spent way too long making this (six hours and counting), mostly in writing the image descriptions, and I’m very proud of my work but very tired now. Hyperfixation is a hell of a drug. If this resonated with you, please consider reblogging it so that more folks can see it. If not, even a like is nice. I’d also love to engage with people who have their own thoughts, so feel free to leave some comments in the notes if you’ve got an idea/a reaction/any additional cute Doreen/Nancy scenes that you’d like to share with me. At any rate, this post has gone on long enough and I don’t want to ask y’all to read any more than you have to. So have a great day, good morning / afternoon / night, and stay safe. Thanks again for reading! ~Rachel Tikvah, AKA @transthaumaturge Image Descriptions: Image 1: [ID: Squirrel Girl, a young woman with light skin, is posing in front of a brick wall that she seems to have crashed through, leaving a perfect outline of her body. She’s facing away but looking backwards over her shoulder at us and smiling. She’s flexing upward with her right arm and has her left fist resting on her left hip. Her sidekick, a squirrel named Tippy-Toe, is standing in the cutout she left in the wall and is making the same exact pose while wearing a light pink bow around her neck. Squirrel Girl is wearing brown lace-up boots, fur-lined hot pants over grey tights, and a brown fur-lined jacket with sleeves that come up to her forearms and a symbol of an acorn embroidered into the back. She’s also wearing a hairband with fake squirrel ears on it over short reddish-brown hair. She has a large squirrel tail coming out of her hot pants that sweeps down in a curve behind her lower legs. The illustration is drawn so that everything is bathed in the light of a sunset, and Doreen is casting shadows on the wall in front of her.] Image 2: [ID: Two frames depicting a scene between Doreen and Nancy in their college dorm room, with many cardboard boxes still not unpacked and sitting on a bare bed mattress. Nancy Whitehead is a young woman with dark brown skin and short, curly black hair. She's wearing black tights, a white dress-top, and a yellow cardigan over that. Her arms are crossed as she holds her white cat, Mew, against her chest. Doreen is wearing grey tights and a black long-sleeve shirt with a wide collar and white stripes across the chest. She's holding Tippy-Toe up to Nancy with both hands so she can see her better. The following dialogue ensues: Nancy: "A squirrel? But weren't you the one who was all about pets not being allowed in--" Doreen: "Yeah, I know. But this really interesting person I met today told me that obeying an unjust law is itself unjust." Nancy: "...You know, I was worried I'd get a weird roommate, but you're all right, Doreen Green."] Image 3: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are both sitting on a lavender-pink couch in nightclothes. Doreen has short, orange hair. She is wearing a loose-fitting grey long-sleeve shirt and steel-blue cutoff shorts; Nancy has cropped black hair. She is wearing a dark purple top with sleeves that come down to her upper arms, and loose-fitting navy-blue shorts that come down to her lower thighs. Doreen is side-hugging Nancy as she says, with an ecstatically happy smile, “Nancy, you’re the greatest. You know that, right?” Nancy gives Doreen a full smile as she responds, “I’d always suspected it, but it is nice to have it confirmed.”] Image 4: [ID: Nancy is shown from the shoulders up. She has short, curly black hair. She’s wearing large, disc-shaped gold dangle earrings, and a red jacket with prominent shoulders and a yellow collar. She’s fixing the observer with an angry, determined stare as she says, “She knows this man wouldn’t dream about betraying her, or he’d have to answer to me.”] Image 5: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are eating breakfast at the brown, circular kitchen table in their apartment. Doreen’s wearing a skin-tight athletic crop top that’s striped in black, red, white, and blue. Her arm muscles are well-defined and clearly visible as she puts a spoon in her mouth, closing her eyes as she does so. She has a bowl of cereal in front of her, and half a banana in front of that. Nancy is sitting to her left in a pink camisole top that’s also exposing her muscles, scrolling through something on her smartphone. Her hair is in a yellow fabric wrap that’s knotted on one side of her head. A cup of coffee sits in front of her. The clear blue sky is visible through the window centered on the wall behind them.] Image 6: [ID: Nancy and Doreen are facing away from the vantage point, walking towards an Empire State University campus building and holding hands with their fingers intertwined. Nancy is wearing a long knee-length grey coat and black knee-high boots, with a baby-blue side bag hanging from her left shoulder. Doreen is wearing a magenta sweatshirt with the periwinkle-lined hood down, light brown form-fitting denim pants, and black ankle-high boots, with a dark brown side bag hanging from her right shoulder. Trees and bushes hem the walkway in on either side. The building in front of them is dark red, with glass doors and a row of floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor. Doreen is saying “...we’re just going to have to take the long way around.”] Image 7: [ID: Doreen is facing towards the vantage point and is visible from the legs up, standing in front of a pile of rubble in the background. She’s wearing high-waisted light blue shorts over black tights, and a red windbreaker with sleeves ending at her upper arms that’s opened to reveal a white t-shirt underneath. Tippy-Toe is sitting on her shoulder. There are two people facing Doreen, each slightly in frame and silhouetted in black against the light of the setting sun. Doreen is fixing them with an angry, determined expression, resting her right fist at her hip while she gesticulates with her left hand and says, “So! I don’t know about you all, but Melissa kidnapping my friend and blowing up my life and my house and almost blowing up my co-parented cat makes me feel like giving her a piece of my mind. Friends...”] Image 8: [ID: A full comic page. EpicCrimez is looking like a dork in a green and black skin-tight jumpsuit, bright red ski goggles, and a green wig cap with his brown hair sticking out the back in a mullet. He’s standing inside a jewelry store and holding up a fist of expensive gems and pearls-on-strings as holds up his smartphone and speaks into it. He’s facing off against Squirrel Girl, with her allies Koi Boi and Chipmunk Hunk on her right, and Nancy and Brain Drain on the left. The following scene ensues: EpicCrimez: “And for those of you just tuning in, welcome to another successful heist by your boy EpicCrimez, streaming live! Now with 10% more live crime action than any other streamer! Don’t forget to like and subscribe!! I know some of you in EpicCrimez Nation have been forgetting to do that lately. Not acceptable.” Squirrel Girl: “You picked the wrong small business to rob, crime-initiator! Because this mall is protected by super heroes.” Brain Drain: “HELLO” SG: “And also an unrelated civilian friend I brought along too!” Nancy: (Not looking up from her phone) “ ‘Sup.” EC: “Check it out--Squirrel Girl and her miscellaneous friends are here! It’s action you won’t find on any other channel!” SG: “Are you...streaming your robberies?” (Nancy pockets her phone) EC: “Yeah I am! For money reasons! And with you “heroes” in it, I’ll make even more!” SG: (Whispering to Nancy:) “Question: a fight scene just gets him more traffic, which lets him profit from this crime even more--so does this mean we don’t fight him?” N: (Whispering back:) “I feel like letting him go causes more harm, but I look forward to us teasing apart the moral implications of this later.” SG: “Nice.” SG: (No longer whispering:) “I’ll like and subscribe, EpicCrimez! I’ll like fighting crime, and subscribe... to a worldview wherein the strong protect the weak!” EC: “Oh my gosh, are you like wholesome Spider-Man or something??” At the bottom of the page, small text says: “Wholesome Spider-Man, Wholesome Spider-Man/Does whatever a wholesome spider can/Is he tough?/Listen bud/He’s here to hear you talk about your day and tell you it’ll all be fine while taking you out for your favorite meal for dinner because he knows you deserve it.”] Image 9: [ID: Another full comic page. Doreen and Nancy are in their apartment together, and their friends Tomas and Brian (AKA Chipmunk Hunk and Brain Drain respectively) are frozen as they look down at the machine that Nancy is on her knees in front of, working on. Nancy, barefoot, is wearing cerulean-blue athletic pants, a black long-sleeve spandex shirt without shoulders, and narrow-framed glasses. Her hair is partially covered by a yellow cloth head wrap tied on the left side, with black dreadlocks spilling out the side and back. The machine in front of her is made of dull grey metal, about a meter tall and roughly circular. Wires dangle out of a hatch that Nancy is fiddling with. Doreen is wearing a flowing, dark-purple pantsuit with wide, ankle-length legs and a halter top with the sleeves tied off at her shoulders. Her shoes are light-brown ankle boots with a horizontal gap on the bridge of each foot. Her wavy orange hair is parted in the middle and down past her shoulders. She looks incredibly cute. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “What do you think?” Nancy: “I think--come on you stupid screw--I think we’re still years away from this thing working, if it ever does. Who knew time machine construction is really hard, except of course for everyone who has attempted it?” (She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand) D: “Hah! No, I mean my new outfit.” N: (Looking up and checking her gf out:) “Doreen! You look amazing!!” D: “Liberated it from a very expensive department store uptown!” N: (Now standing) “Tony paid for it?” D: Tony will eventually discover he was kind enough to leave some expensive jewelry in trade, yes. I pinned a note to him so he knows.” N: “There really are advantages to being friends with billionaire playboy genius philanthropists.” D: “Right?!” N: (Taking Doreen’s hands in hers:) “It’s a shame we can’t take a picture of you all dolled up.” D: “Not without standing still for a few months, yeah. But I was thinking about that. I picked up something else at another store downtown. Thought maybe it could help us with that.” (Holding up a shopping bag with one hand while still holding onto Nancy’s hand with the other:) “Nancy Whitehead, I thought you and I might take up painting sometime.” At the bottom of the page, small text says: “Tony Stark moves from meeting to meeting, his body accumulating dozens of notes every second. He sighs. Stuff like this didn’t happen before he knew Doreen. But then he smiles, because after all...stuff like this didn’t happen before he knew Doreen.”] Images 10-16: [ID: Several pages worth of comic frames, posted together to depict one scene. Doreen and Nancy are now old women, likely in their seventies or eighties. Doreen has short, grey hair. She’s wearing a tan button-up waistcoat and an orange ascot, brown flats with an olive-green skirt, knee-length and softly pleated. Her tail is sticking out the back of her skirt over the top, bushy and brown but with stiffer, less-dense hair. Nancy has her grey-black hair done up in a ponytail, a mass of tight curls behind her head. She’s wearing thin oval glasses, black dress pants, black flats, and a lavender cardigan with a flower motif along the edges, open to show the yellow-orange top underneath. They’re standing in front of a completed time machine. On either side are tall pieces of machinery, and in the middle is a round, flat metal dais hooked up to everything else with snaking cables. The following scene ensues: Nancy: “So...this is it, babe. The new machine.” Doreen: “Your secret project! Nancy, it looks like you started from scratch!” N: That’s because I did. I finally realized our old machine was never going to work. Maybe if we had a few more decades, but...there’s no time. And given that our backs are to the wall, I took a risk. I disassembled the gun right down to the metal, and examined all the parts. And I did find something: a data chip. Doreen, the gun stored our bio signatures when it us.” D: “What are you saying?” N: “I’m saying my new machine won’t send us back in time, and we’ll still have lost a weekend of real time. But it will restore our bodies to normal time.” D: (Hugging Nancy tight:) “Nancy! You saved us!!” N: (Resting her hands on Doreen’s shoulders:) “Not--quite. There’s a catch, Doreen. Our bodies will make it...but we won’t. Look, Doreen...I’m an old woman. I’ve spent most of my life in hypertime. This wasn’t how I saw my life going, but...I don’t regret any of it. I don’t want to lose it, and I don’t want to lose us.” D: “I don’t understand.” N: “It’s like restoring from backup. Our bodies will be restored to how they were the moment we were first hit. But--that necessarily includes our brains, too. Everything we’ve done since we entered hypertime--our entire lives spent together...we’ll forget.” (She looks at Doreen in distress) D: “I don’t either, Nancy. You’ve been the most important person in my life. But if we do go back--we can do it again. All of it. It might not happen again quite the same way, but--well, like you say...we’ll have all the time in the world.” N: (Their faces inches apart, they both tilt their heads down and smile sadly:) “Twist my arm, why don’t you.” (They both step onto the dais holding hands, and blue energy starts to ripple around them:) “You filled up Spidey’s web-shooters before we go?” D: “Yep. Again.” N: “You and me, saving the world.” D: “Well,” (holding Nancy’s hand in both of her own) "No reason we can’t do it twice.” N: “You know, there’s a chance things could turn out differently, now that we’ll have video games to distract us. In 40 years we might decide we don’t like hanging out after all.” D: (Hugging Nancy even tighter than before as the energy from the time machine starts to envelop them, resting her face in the nape of Nancy’s neck:) “Nah. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”] Image 17: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are sifting through the charred rubble of their apartment as night starts to fall around them. Doreen is wearing faded blue jeans and a navy blue t-shirt with a Captain America star in the middle. Over top of the shirt, she’s wearing a dark reddish-brown leather vest with four metal studs at the four points of the folded-out collar. Nancy is wearing black tights and a light green long-sleeve shirt with olive-green sleeves. The front of the shirt has a picture of Cat-Thor, Cat God of Cat Thunder’s head on it. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “So I know we’re only a few hours into it, Nancy, but I think my identity being public isn’t gonna be as bad as I thought.” Nancy: “Oh?” D: “Yeah, Tony’s given me lots of tips, and it does honestly help to know that my parents are protected by a robot tree with laser eyes and my friends live in a city with the most super heroes per square mile.” N: “Most super villains too, but--Hold on. I think I found it.” (Nancy lifts a picture frame out of the wreckage, charred around the edges but otherwise no worse for wear. It has a painting inside of it of Doreen and Nancy, arm-in-arm, from hypertime. Doreen is wearing the lavender pantsuit from before, and Nancy is wearing a tight-fitting lilac dress.) “...And it looks like you and I made it through just fine.”] Images 18-19: [ID: Two later comic panels from the same scene. They’re wearing the same outfits, but Nancy’s now cradling her white cat, Mew, in the crook of her left arm while she holds onto the picture frame with her right hand. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “Come on, let’s talk about it! If we’re starting a new chapter in our lives, and we can decide what’s in it, what do you want it to contain?” Nancy: “Doreen...” D: “What are the three things you can’t live without, Nancy Whitehead?” N: (Holding up the picture so that Doreen can see it:) “Fine. If you must know, all this girl needs to be happy are cats and squirrels and knitting and computers and friends and secret tattoos and super heroes and lots and lots of love. Also food and shelter. And water. And internet.” D: “That’s more than three things.”] Image 20: [ID: Same scene as before, a single frame with a close-up on Doreen from her chest upwards. Doreen cups her chin with one of her hands and says, “Honestly--I thought about it. I really did. But I realized that where I am now, I’m safe and I’m loved and I kinda like the idea of not having to lie to people anymore, you know? Even if it is just a lie of omission. I want to share my whole self with the world. I don’t want to have to hide who I am anymore.”] Image 21: [ID: Something resembling a twitter thread, with dialogue between Nancy and Doreen stacked chronologically as horizontal boxes. Their respective names and handles are at the top of each of their comments. Nancy is Nancy W. and @sewwiththeflo, Doreen is Squirrel Girl and @unbeatablesg. The following conversation ensues: Nancy: “You think I’d leave you high and dry??” Doreen: “I think I don’t want our lateness harming your grades and therefore harming your post-secondary education or career choices and therefore harming your ENTIRE LIFE?!” “So yeah I think you should switch to someone else, real talk. I honestly don’t mind, I promise.” Nancy: “Please. If there’s one thing I know about you, about me, and about how we spend our future together, it’s this. Doreen Green...” “...you’re not getting rid of me that easily. <3″] Image 22: [ID: A paragraph of text, black text on a yellow background. “As for more Doreen and Nancy, I hope so too. A Squirrel Girl book without Nancy would feel like--like--like some sort of hypothetical “Super” “Man” book without an equally hypothetical “Lois” “Lane”!”] Image 23: [ID: A group picture of Squirrel Girl and friends sitting down on a grassy hill and watching the sunset together. Kraven the Hunter is in the foreground for some reason, looking almost directly at the camera. In the background we see Koi Boi, Mary Mahajan, Chipmunk Hunk, Brain Drain, and Mew the Cat. In the middle of the shot, Doreen and Nancy sit together. Doreen is in her superhero outfit with Tippy-Toe on her right shoulder, and Nancy is in a yellow cardigan and jeans on Doreen’s left. They’re holding hands, fingers intertwined, as Nancy leans against Doreen with her whole body. Their heads are tilted inward towards each other, the side of Doreen’s head touching the side of Nancy’s, as they look off into the distance together.]

#the unbeatable squirrel girl #squirrel girl x nancy #squancy #squirrel girl #nancy whitehead #queer comics #WLW comics #long post #described #squirrel girl spoilers #thaumaturgethoughts

[destielshippingnews]

Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x04 Phantom Traveler

In this week’s analysis, I’ll be discussing the unfortunate introduction of Abrahamic mythology, the lamentable gender politics of Dean in his nightwear, and magic languages.

Supernatural’s fourth offering, 1x04 Phantom Traveler, (not a misspelling, 'traveller' is spelt like that in America) is a solid episode. It’s not fantastic, and Supernatural certainly has better to offer, but it’s still an entertaining watch which introduces demons into the Supernatural universe and continues developing Dean and Sam’s characters, making them more distinct.

It is also the first episode Robert Singer directed for Supernatural. I didn’t see much to particularly comment on in the direction for this episode (my two years of Media Studies were not wasted on me at all), but one interesting choice, however, is the tracking shot of Dean’s sleeping form straight after the title card. EscapingPurgatory podcast had a shrewd postulation: the intended audience was heterosexual educated men between the ages of roughly 15 and 39, but a lot of them would be watching with their girlfriends and wives etc, and Dean is the brother who’s available at the moment.

Returning to the plot of the show, the script does itself a major disservice as early as the cold open. This episode was broadcast in America four years after 9/11 (almost four and a half in Britain) and was right in the middle of the decades-long and still ongoing war on drugs. The atmosphere surrounding airfare has changed fundamentally. The air hostess clearly saw the man’s black eyes and was affected by it, and should have alerted somebody on the plane to her worries, because she would have thought he was on drugs of some variety at the very least, and possibly smuggling drugs on the plane. However, for the purposes of the plot she does not act on her misgivings, but simply gasps and goes about her day.

This raises the question of why the demon revealed its presence like that. Demons are usually incredibly stupid on Supernatural, but this level of dumb is difficult for me to believe. The air hostess could have very easily had the man thrown off the aeroplane, and then its plan would be scuppered. The most likely reason was to show the audience that the man was possessed, but the audience was going to find that out in about a minute’s time anyway, so why reveal it there? It breaks the fourth wall in a bad way.

Whilst on the aeroplane and the demon’s plan, the episode never makes the demon’s motivations explicit. Sure, Sam claims that demons like death and destruction for their own sake, but this doesn’t fit well with how demons behave later in the show. They are, forsooth, as thick as poo, but they usually have higher ups telling them what to do. Was the demon’s repeated downing of aeroplanes part of a higher up’s plan?

Before I go on, it’s worthwhile mentioning that this episode is the first one to introduce the idea of an actual Abrahamic Hell in the Supernatural universe. It’s not the only genre show of its kind to have included something like this, with Charmed having the Underworld where the Source of All Evil resided, and Buffy having various Hell dimensions, but those two examples weren’t Hell as depicted in the Bible.

Joss Whedon specifically avoided the idea of a Hell and employed dimensions ruled by demons and demon gods rather than Archangel Lucifer. Charmed used the Underworld as an equivalent of Hell, but it was not a place of punishment for human souls. While Charmed is definitely my least favourite fantasy/horror/sci-fi genre show (Prue notwithstanding), I appreciated that it took a step away from Abrahamic mythology. Buffy/Angel were even better, having their own mythology that had precious little to do with Middle Eastern religions and more to do with Dunsany, Lovecraft or sometimes even Tolkien.

Kripke, however, took the lazy route with Abrahamic, specifically Christian, mythology, a choice which I believe was to the show’s detriment. It’s supposed to be a show about American folklore and urban legends, but that stuff eventually gets thrown under the bus. Forget Native Americans, screw the Americanised versions of Scandiwegian lore, screw the Old West and the Gold Rush and all the tales revolving around America’s history. And Canada? Pfft. What even is Canada? And don’t even think about Mexico. Let’s just have yet more desert myths from 2-3000 years ago.

My distaste aside, this universe has a Hell (and a Heaven), and demons are made by torturing humans until all humanity is gone from them, or by letting the humans off the torture rack if they agree to become the torturers.

Knowing this, two possibilities come to mind. One is that this demon is repeating its own human death for some reason, and another is that it kills people and drags their souls to Hell to make more demons.

Repeating its own death is entirely speculative, but this episode mixes up demons with traits later associated with ghosts and death echoes. Never again is an EMF reader used to detect demonic activity, and unless I’ve forgotten a certain example, demons aren’t shown to act as specifically as this again.

The second option, that of dragging souls to Hell, doesn’t seem likely as it’s made clear that demon deals or trades are required in order for Hell to get its claws on human souls, at least in usual circumstances. There’s nothing saying that demons can’t just decide to drag certain souls to Hell, and there is an implication at the end of this episode that this might actually be the case, but it’s a stretch. If this were the case, however, it would give the demon a real motive and make the episode less of a stand-alone bit of fun with overt X-Files vibes.

Sticking with Hell events on the aeroplane for now, let’s skip to the end and the exorcism. Whilst trying to exorcise the demon, it tells Sam that Jessica is burning in Hell. Dean tries to reassure Sam by saying that demons read minds and that it was trying to get to him, but demons can only know the minds of people they possess. This then leaves three options: the demon was lying and Jess is in Heaven, it was telling the truth and Jess is in Hell, or the demon was just trying to get to Sam, but unbeknownst to him Jess actually was in Hell.

Technically speaking, Jess shouldn’t be in Hell. She didn’t make a deal (that we know of) and it’s established later in the show that most people go to Heaven anyway. But Kevin didn’t, neither did Eileen or Bobby. Mary did, even though she made a deal with Azazel, and she died under the same circumstances as Jess. As Jess is never mentioned as being in Hell by another demon in the show, and as Dean, Sam and Cas eventually visit Hell and find nothing of her there, we can assume Jessica went to Heaven.

The exorcism in this episode is strange compared to exorcisms in the rest of the show. The Doyle (external to the text) explanation is clearly that the writers didn’t know exactly how they wanted things to work yet, but the Watson (within the text) explanation could be that they used a different exorcism ritual. Later in the show, there is no intermediate stage between being expelled from the host body and being banished to Hell: they just go directly down. This version, though, forces the demon to manifest and thereby makes it much stronger and more dangerous. I personally think the version in this episode makes the demons more of a threat because it’s harder to exorcise them, but I can see why it became streamlined later in the show.

The fact the demon possessed the aeroplane, however, raises the question of why it didn’t do so in the first place. Maybe it’s more fun to possess a human first.

Speaking of the ritual, Jared tells us on the commentary that he had to have a Latin teacher from a local university instruct him in Ecclesiastical Latin because he learnt Classical Latin at school. As a language person, I’m left wondering why. It’s the same language, just pronounced differently. Does the spell need to be pronounced in a certain way in order to work? If so, would the Ancient Romans have been completely incapable of expelling demons with their own language? Would they have had to rely on Greek, Etruscan, Gaulish or Sumerian for the rituals? It’s just completely unnecessary, especially as we later see Rowena casting spells in Scottish Gaelic, Irish witches casting spells in Irish, Celtic ‛demons’ performing rituals in Gaulish…

At least the university teacher got a little bit of extra money, I suppose.

Sticking with the aeroplane a little bit longer, Dean’s fear of flying is a welcome expansion to his character, though it was clearly included with the intent of making fun of him. It could easily have been played as such, but Jensen’s comments on the commentary indicate he saw it as an opportunity to provide more depth to Dean, as his connection with Lucas through their shared childhood trauma did in 1x03 Dead in the Water. In these two episodes, Jensen begins taking Dean away from the writers and making him his own: he was supposed to be the sidekick, but Jensen said nope.

In making Dean afraid of flying, but having him so insistent upon flying in spite of it, The Show perhaps did itself a bit of a disservice in its mission of making Sam The Hero and Dean The Sidekick. Dean was terrified, but flew anyway. That is bravery, and it’s what the audience wants to see in a hero.

Sam, however, does not miss an opportunity to make me dislike him (you knew this was coming at some point, don’t look surprised). Not only is he incredibly unappreciative and derisive of Dean’s talents, such as making his own EMF from an old Walkman, but he was also derisive of Dean’s fear of flying.

Sorry, let me reword that. Derisive of Dean for being scared of flying. It’s perfectly rational to be afraid of being in a giant metal bird suspended miles above the ground, but Dean agreed to it anyway in order to save people. And Sam treats him like a child because he’s scared of take-off and turbulence. Dean’s fear is a rational one, something that a person who hasn’t been sheltered from reality would have. Sam’s greatest fear, however, is…

Clowns.

I get it, they’re brothers, and siblings are supposed to rib on each other like this (the siblings I still talk to aren’t like this with me or each other, so I find it difficult to relate to Dean and Sam’s relationship) but it makes Sam come across as an utter cunny-hole. If somebody is clearly terrified of something and on the edge of a panic attack, you don’t sneer and mock, and then demand he calm down. Sure, Dean needed to calm down and Sam was the only one who could do it, but talking to him like a child just reveals how little Sam knows of taking care of other people. He’s the pampered younger brother, and it really shows.

He also shows a lack of judgement when roughly putting a hand on Dean’s shoulder while he was distracted. Dean’s essentially a war child (and suffers C-PTSD) and you just shouldn’t do things like this to somebody like that. That’s how you trigger panic attacks or flashbacks. Ask a veteran, I’m sure s/he’ll agree.

Aside from that, the middle-aged man on the aeroplane winked at Dean – winked – when Dean was walking down the aisle with his EMF reader. A man winking at a man has sexual overtones nowadays, and has done for a long time. How many men wink at a built guy standing over them like that unless they’re sure they won’t be punched in the face? Dean had his EMF reader out at that moment, but he was simultaneously on somebody else’s radar. Something about Dean set sexual bells ringing in cameo middle-aged man’s head. Regarding Sam, there’s two important moments for him in this episode (Jess aside): when he discovers John talked about and praised him in his absence, and when he exorcises the demon. It’s made clear in a few episodes’ time that Sam never felt like he fit in with his family, and that he believed John was disappointed in him. Exactly how he came to this conclusion is uncertain, since John doted on Sam and afforded him liberties he never would have allowed Dean, but it’s clear their relationship is difficult. Going away to university was Sam’s attempt to run away from the dysfunctional family he felt an outsider in and to escape John (and Dean): that he apparently didn’t speak to either John or Dean during his time there says a lot.

He finds out, however, that John praised him, undermining somewhat Sam’s belief that John regarded him as a disappointment. Episode 1x05 Bloody Mary provides another moment of character growth for Sam that subtly changes the way he perceives himself, but all in due course.

Praise from parents is important for children, and it really shouldn’t be hard for parents to tell their children they’re proud of them, even if they don’t say it in as many words. In spite of his difficult relationship with John, Sam gets that by proxy in this episode (whilst Dean’s happily checking out all the men in the hangar) and it changes the way he sees himself and John, even if only slightly.

The other moment – discussed above – is his exorcism of the demon. I don’t mince my words about disliking Sam, but even I can see he had potential. He’s the weird kid who wanted a normal life, but because of cursed blood had that hope denied him. Series 4 shows us the beginning of what Sam could have turned into when his blood magic arc truly kicks off, and it could have been a riveting plotline if written and handled well. Think for example of Willow in Buffy and the journey she went on with her magic powers: there was real darkness in there, and a gargantuan struggle to overcome it and become stronger.

This exorcism reminds me of Willow’s first steps at witchcraft in 2x22 when she casts the spell to restore a certain character’s soul and we see the potential for true strength as she performs the spell with ease. This exorcism of Sam’s should have been something similar, and his demonic powers should not have been completely removed and forgotten about in 8x23. He could have been Supernatural’s answer to Willow, and the Dark!Sam arc in series 3-7 could have been the first in his descent into darkness and his fight back out to take control of his own powers and become the opposite of what Azazel wanted him to be.

But – and not for the last time – three words come to mind. Such potential, Supernatural.

You might remember I mentioned the tracking shot of Dean (and neglected to mention the revealing shot of his thighs and underwear). Paula R. Stiles’ suggestion that the fact the writers and director for this episode were men doesn’t cheapen it is one I don’t understand. Jensen is in my 100% objective and unbiased opinion one of the finest men alive, but exploiting that in order to draw in an audience does cheapen the show.

To be fair, Supernatural is hardly high culture and commercial television is about revenue, but things like that break the illusion of artistic integrity, just like not making Dean explicitly bisexual does because that’d scare away too much of the audience. If having scantily-clad women in a show or film is there for the male gaze and drawing in money, then so too are Dean’s thighs and buttocks, similarly cheapening the show. If the male gaze objectifies women, stripping them of their power and subjecting them to male desires, then the female gaze objectifies and strips men of any power they might have and subjects them to female desires.

If it’s bad for the gander, it should also be bad for the goose.

Neither do I think it matters one bit that the writer and director are men, or am I supposed to believe a woman has never encouraged or coerced another woman to flash a bit of boob in order to get men to empty their pockets? Claiming that presenting a person as an object of possible sexual attraction turns him into an ‛object’ is strange, and that claim’s only ever made when women are being presented for men’s enjoyment.

But let’s stick to Supernatural because I have work in the morning. To be honest, I never notice if a woman on screen is being subjected to a ‛male’ gaze because I have no sexual or romantic interest in women whatsoever: if a woman is supposed to be portrayed as appealing to men’s eyes, it’ll usually go straight over my head because it just doesn’t register as having anything to do with sex. Interesting, however, is that this begins the trend of treating Dean in certain ways that women are usually treated, or associating him with ‛feminine’ traits.

Some people go overboard with for example Dean’s association with and likeness to Mary, his taking on the parental (maternal?) role in Sam’s upbringing, his knack with children etc, and use it as evidence to suggest that any traditionally masculine behaviour – or masculine behaviour at all – from Dean is a performance to keep up an act so that he can hide how feminine he really is.

My take on this is quite different than the condescending viewpoint that a man behaving like a man is performing and pretending. Dean’s ‛feminine’ traits are not his ‛true’ self in opposition to his feigned masculine behaviour. There is absolutely no contradiction between Dean exhibiting ‛feminine’ traits such as being good with children, cooking, or trying his hardest to fill the role Mary would have filled, and being a masculine man who identifies very strongly with being male.

I do think it’s fascinating, though, and the complexity and depth of Dean as a male character is one of the reasons he is one of my favourite characters. We rarely get to see men who are very manly and also incredibly loving, loyal and paternal and who exhibit a normal range of human behaviours and interests, including ‛masculine’ and ‛feminine’. That’s what normal men are like, something television and film seem to have forgotten.

Regarding Dean in bed, note that he is a stomach sleeper (sleeping on your stomach keeps your tummy safe), and this is consistent throughout all fifteen years of the show. However, this early in the show he takes his trousers, outer shirts and shoes off, in contrast to sleeping fully dressed as he begins doing sometime rather soon. He’s alert and cautious this early in the show, but not yet quite so worn down that he can’t be bothered to get ready for bed.

Note also that both brothers have sleeping problems here. Dean knew Sam was still up at 3am, meaning Dean likely slept for less than three hours, having been woken up by Sam at 5:45.

The end of the episode presents the brothers with something to be hopeful about. John has a new mobile phone number, the first evidence they’ve had so far that he is very probably still alive. It’s not much to go on, and John does not answer Dean and Sam’s call, but it’s something the boys can latch on to and keep them searching for John. Whether or not they should be searching for John is another question altogether, though, but at least it got the plot going in 1x01.,

Phantom Traveler is a strong but flawed episode which builds on last week’s expansion of Dean’s character and role, as well as introducing demons and Hell into the lore. The cut scene where Dean has to remove all his concealed weapons before going into the airport really should have been kept in because it says a lot about his character, as does his sleeping with a blade under his pillow, but other than that, I’m happy to leave this episode now on a positive note.

#Michael's Supernatural Rewatch #SPN Rewatch #spn 1x04 #phantom traveler #sam winchester #john winchester #dean winchester #demons #hell #male gaze #female gaze #christian mythology

[four-loose-screws]

I have a another question about localization since you say all of the FE localizations are good but then there's the localization I hear about of FE fates a localize game that I hear so many Nintendo and FE fans say really bad things about it such as a lot of Mistranslations, Big Script changes, Memes being add in, etc also there was some censorship that got some of them really mad and with some of them saying that it's the wrost localize game of all time is it really that bad as they say?

Whew, this ask has been sitting in my inbox for actual months! Sorry for taking so long to respond! It’s probably unsurprising, but there’s so much to unpack here, and just deciding what to write had me going in circles for a long time.

I’m not entirely satisfied with this answer, but if I tried to discuss everything I have in mind about the Fates localization at once, I’d never be done. So I stuck to 5 topics to give a basic summary. If anyone wants to follow up on one particular issue for more info, or know more about something I didn’t discuss here, please do! I’d love to round out my argument.

First off - a little history just to get our minds situated into the history of localization. Bad localization has always existed, in fact that’s pretty much all we had in the 80’s and somewhat into the 90’s until it became clear that video games were going to become very complex in story and text going forward. Even a surface look into old localizations like this one tells a very long story. We have to remember that “bad” localization is everywhere, and it’s just always going to exist, even now that we have professional teams dedicated to localization, so long as humans aren’t perfect, time crunch is standard in the gaming industry, and we all have our own definition of “good”.

Next, here’s the short answer to the question:

When I say “overall” good, I do stress that pretty heavily, because of course there are plenty of changes that each individual player of the game will have their own take on. The Fire Emblem games simply have so much text in them that even a hundred small mistranslations or changes are just a drop in the bucket.

But I do agree that Fates is one of the worst of the FE localizations, if your terms are in number of changes from the Japanese. Awakening’s is up there too. 

Yeah, Awakening’s localization has a lot of questionable moments too. I know this take isn’t a surprise to all fans. But ever since Fates came out, I’ve seen people praising Awakening’s localization, and saying that 8-4 (an outside studio often hired by Nintendo, they localized Awakening) is an amazing localization team and Treehouse (Nintendo’s own team, did Fates) is garbage. TBH… They both did a job that has huge ups and downs. Are people really doomed to always forget the flaws that the previous installment in a series had as soon as something new comes out? Ha ha.

I think it’s common knowledge at this point that localizations are not made for the people who want a more direct-to-the-Japanese version. And that sucks, and the feelings of anger, disappointment, etc. in those who wanted a more direct translation are perfectly valid and entirely understandable. 

But we really, really need to understand and accept that localizations are made for the target audience/culture as a whole, and to sell to the most people possible. By getting angry and rejecting the entire game’s script as “total changes,” “butchering,” “changing the games to fit the localization team’s motives,” and all sorts of other toxic nonsense, we miss out on all of the nuance that actually exists. We rob ourselves of the fun that could be had analyzing whether or not the localizers did their job of adapting the game to the target audience, and how they might have done it better. And we can’t notice and appreciate all of the times the team did do a great or good job.

In the vast majority of cases, localizers only want those who play their games and read their scripts to have fun! To imply anything else is just wrong.

What I feel I can do here, to define if “the localization is as bad as they say,” is debunk these “all or nothing” arguments, and show that the changes aren’t usually anywhere near as drastic or simple as people make them sound.

Now let’s goooooo!

I read these two articles to prepare myself to write this, link here, and link here, which I got off a quick Google search. They are from the time of Fates’ release, and report on how a lot of people generally felt back then, so I found them to be good references to put myself back in time with the thoughts people had then.

Character Changes

These often tend to be the biggest topics of conversation. Hisame will be my topic of more detailed discussion today, but I’ll bring other characters up for a hot second too.

I can never stress this enough, but Hisame made pickles in the Japanese. He was always talking about them in the Japanese, too. (Fates loves supports revolving around food in general, really.) I think people generally know this to be true? But I did read some comments saying that the pickle love was totally made up in the localization, you can see the proof above, so I had to point it out.

I don’t think a lot of people who have talked about his character picked up on this - admittedly, I didn’t until someone close to me explained it - but the main gag of Hisame’s character is that he’s young, but already acting like an old man. He lectures his own father on how to behave, etc., and makes pickles. And the “acting like an old man” is not totally lost in translation, with him still acting serious and lecturing his father. But the making pickles trait… I’d never pin that as an “old man” stereotype as a US American. Well, now I would, because I know Japanese culture well enough… but anyway.

And this is where the cultural differences come in. The number of people farming and making traditional foods from scratch is dwindling fast in Japan. In just five years there, I watched countless rice paddies and other small produce fields be turned into houses or apartment buildings. The elderly farmers are becoming too old to care for their crops, and their kids choose to pursue other careers, so the family sells off the farmland. Following along this trend is traditional pickle making. You can just buy them ready to eat in the supermarket, so why make your own? Most people don’t even have the space to be making them if they wanted to. And so, pickle making has come to be seen as something old people do. It fits in with Hisame’s “old man” character perfectly.

But again, as an American, I never would have figured that out without knowledge about Japan. Of course you could argue that the localizers didn’t need to change anything about him. The making pickles was quirky and unique, and would give you a chuckle as is. But there was space to make him funnier, so they did. That is, after all, was what the Japanese intended, for it to be funny. It’s not funny in the same way… but sometimes it’s impossible to be.

And that is what is most important in localization between two wildly different languages like Japanese and English - not retaining the same words, but the same intention or mood. The same words can convey a totally different meaning or mood, or make no sense, because of cultural differences. So localizers need to achieve the same mood, not the same words. I have come to see people understand this much better as the years go on, and the general gaming population becomes more learned about what localization is.

Of course, that’s a pretty simplified way of looking at it. But that’s how I summarize localization as a whole, in an easy way to understand. You might not agree with exactly how the localizers did what they did, but I think we might all be able to agree that they were trying to do their job and had no malicious intent to butcher the Japanese original or something absurd like that.

One more thing that’s relevant to this - Japanese people don’t care about repetition so much. The same character tropes are repeated over and over, the same lines are repeated over and over… In the US, we don’t like that! It’s boring and dull! This cultural difference is a constant struggle in localization. A lot of the people who think they want a direct translation don’t realize that it will be boring to them… So localizations alter and add details and lines here and there to give some more variation. This also helps to explain Hisame’s changes to talk even more about pickles.

And I’ve seen many a comment from people saying they liked Hisame in the localization. They found his exaggerated pickle lines fun, and enjoyed many good laughs. How can we call his new characterization outright bad when it worked for some? When they like it more than a straight Japanese translation? He’s still essentially the same guy… just some of the things he says are different. That’s not much of a change at all.

...And back to that original screenshot I showed. Isn’t Hisame still serious in the localization? His lines are funny, but I’m under the impression that he himself is still dead serious. ...Anyway. That’s about all I have to say about Hisame.

Many characters have changed lines. There’s no disputing that. But something to always question is how far do these changes go? Did the localizers completely change the intent or tone of the original? Or are they playing up certain character traits the characters always had in the Japanese? Or is something else going on? 

This is also a prime example of how shallow some articles or “analysis” into the Fates localization are. You can’t look at one line change and make a sweeping conclusion about an entire character. Always be suspect of stuff like this. Kana ALWAYS acted like a little kid. That’s their entire schtick. They are your cute little mama/papa loving kid. That one line may have changed that scene significantly, but Kana’s whole character? No, not at all.

Even Kana’s S support changes aren’t as simple as it seems. They aren’t all changed. The 2nd gen characters that Kana is close in age to retain their romantic endings, such as Midori. Only those considerably older than Kana turned platonic. 

And Effie, another character commonly cited as changed? She wasn’t radically changed from some deep character to a one-note workout buff. If only a conclusion could be that easy to reach. Overall, on this specific aspect of Effie, the localization simply added in extra strength or workout jokes when the opportunity arose. Some workout jokes were in the Japanese! She was always an extremely devoted retainer who was always working out and training to get stronger so she could better fulfill her duties.

What is MUCH more interesting in my opinion is the issue of her femininity. In the Japanese, her speech nearly always trailed off with ellipses, and she had feminine voice acting. Whereas in the English, all of that femininity is stripped away with a deep voice, and virtually no ellipses. How refreshing it would have felt in English for Effie to have retained that femininity! Women can bench press trees and be feminine! It would be unique to see a female character like that. ...Or so a US American might think.

But from what I understand, strong female characters in Japanese entertainment are nearly always very feminine. They send a clear message: “You can be whatever you want in private, so long as you still fit the girly-girl mold in public and fulfill society's expectations for you!!” In the Japanese, Effie is fitting their stereotype.

So in one way of looking at it, Effie wasn’t really changed, because in both Japanese and English, she paints a stereotypical and the most socially accepted image of a physically powerful female in each culture. ...That’s an interpretation of mine, anyway. I’m not sure how many people would agree with it.

...See what I mean, that the answer of “changed or unchanged” really isn’t as straightforward as “are the lines translated directly?” 

Looking into the deeper details creates a much more interesting picture! You come to paint a picture in your mind, without even thinking about it, of what the localizers intended to do, and you can at least understand what they were thinking. This forms a much more accurate conclusion on whether or not the team achieved a good localization, and whether or not that sacrificed the intent of the original.

So as you can see, few issues are as bad as they’ve been blown up to be. None of the characters are completely different from their Japanese counterparts, or anything so extreme. They were just localized. Whether or not they were localized well, is up to each person’s opinion.

...I do want to write about Soleil, as an example of someone who I think could have been localized better, but I’ll save that for another day. It’s gonna get long. If anyone is interested in seeing this post, just remind me every couple of months or so until I find the time and write it, thanks in advance.

Memes

Since I mentioned Kana’s dragon speak in the last section, this is a perfect time to transition into my feelings about memes, aka context-specific humor. I agree with the most commonly shared opinion: memes don’t belong in localization. Though it’s not just because of a simple “change from the Japanese is bad!!!!” approach. In my opinion, the best localizations will be as timeless as possible. I want my future self and everyone else who will play the game in the years to come to enjoy the game as much as possible.

Memes come in and out of fashion so quickly that they’re almost guaranteed to be out of date by the time they release. And only the most popular of popular stories will be widely-known enough for most everyone to get the reference. Of course, it’s pretty difficult to know what expressions and such people will remember and use 10, 20, or 30 years down the line. Some language you think will be timeless will fall out of style. But using memes and references that are not likely to appeal to as many people as possible… that’s one of the few things I can almost universally call “bad localization.”

Unless, of course, the game was intended in the Japanese to be a product of its time, and used a lot of references. That’s a whole different ball game.

Accurate translation, much less full localization, requires creative thinking to recreate the tone and intent of the original. 

Here’s another example that showcases another couple of things I find really important to localization.

Number 1: The writer of the article said “The American localization … gives her silly lines that aren’t in the original.” But does it really “give” her anything new at all? I’d argue not. Tottemo is commonly translated as ‘really’ or something like that… but doesn’t ‘super-dupity’ convey the same meaning as ‘really’? Just because an English word isn’t given as a common definition for a Japanese word, doesn’t mean it can’t be a definition. Sometimes… a word we don’t commonly think of as a translation for the Japanese, can still be a perfectly valid translation. This is not an addition. Just an uncommon translation of the Japanese word.

Number 2: Japanese has a wide range of “I” and “you” pronouns, sentence endings, and other little things that define character age, personality, gender, and more, that simply don’t exist in English. To not use similar features of English when localizers find opportunities to do so, would just take away that sense of nuance the Japanese had in utilizing their language’s own unique features.

Of course it’s one possibility that Sophie uses kiddy words. She’s not a little kid, but she’s still pretty young! To have everyone use the same word choice, because that’s how the words translate into English, is not only inaccurate to how real people talk, but also inaccurate to how the original Japanese was used. Since many equivalents for Japanese word and grammar choice that define personality do not exist in English, the localizers have to use what does exist in English in new places. I think that makes sense, and creates a much closer script to the Japanese than just translating the words.

Again, it’s all about how we look at the lines!

I see a lot of people define “translation” as “one-to-one recreation of the Japanese words.” To reinforce what I said in the first section, I do not think this is true. To me, translating is recreating the same tone, mood, meaning, and message of the original. You CANNOT achieve that just by translating the words and grammar alone.

Different words conveying the same overall meaning.

This section is really just a continuation of the previous one. But reinforcing central arguments over and over again is the core of good essay writing.

So this is one of my strategies for deciding whether or not a script is a good or bad translation/localization: “Does the script convey the same basic meaning?” (or tone, etc.)

Changes, adding detail to what the Japanese said, and “playing-up,” are all wildly different things.

So first, I break down the bit of dialogue into as few words as possible.

-Nohr royals inherit dragon blood.

-So they have superhuman power.

...And then I look to see if the localization conveyed that same basic meaning. Which, in this case, I think it did. Your mileage may vary, but I think I’ve made my point at least.

I wanted this scene to be one of the five I addressed because I think it exemplifies yet another of the fascinating differences between Japanese and English. Japanese is a language that likes to be vague, and leave out context that is already established. Speech can seem super boring as few characters say anything unique. (At least… that’s how us English speakers see it! Japanese people think they are just being normal, and not vague or boring at all!) ...English, not so much. So much as leaving out the subject of the sentence is chastised as incorrect grammar. And we like unique dialogue and prose more than most other languages.

I saw one person in the comments of the article I got this visual from argue that the tone is totally different, that the Japanese was more of a history lesson, but the localization is trying to pump Corrin and Leo up for battle, but… eh, I just don’t see it. The English also just feels like he is describing the powers of their bloodline to me. Again, that’s why this is so complex and fascinating, because everyone has their own viewpoints they are coming from.

The “direct translation” and “localization” reach the same message. This isn’t a big change in my opinion at all.

Sometimes mistakes happen...

These interpretations of Saizo and Beruka’s C Support have always boggled my mind. Coming up with all these explanations as to why the omission was done on purpose to completely erase the support when… it just seems… obvious to me… that the localization team never wrote or programmed a translation and shipped the game with the placeholder? 

After all, if the localization team felt they had to remove or change content that might be questionable for the target audience, wouldn’t they alter or rewrite the conversation, like they have with Soleil’s supports, for example? This very game has multiple examples of proof that the localizers will rewrite entire chunks of script if they feel it makes the scene better fit what the target audience be more comfortable with.

Mistakes happen. That’s all I think Saizo and Beruka’s C Support is. We probably never got an update just because Nintendo doesn’t have a track record of being the best with those.

Of course, I may be wrong. Nintendo and Treehouse keep pretty much all of their processes a secret. But I never, ever would have imagined on my own that Saizo and Beruka’s support was omitted on purpose. Citing this as a reason why we need to be up in arms about bad localization is so absurd to me.

Mistakes happen. It’s not like the Japanese creators didn’t have embarrassing moments with underdeveloped content in this game either… they didn’t even name the continent in this game!

Sometimes, “bad” localization is just human error. It’s something we can’t eliminate entirely, and will just have to accept.

Final thoughts:

I realize that this analysis, for as long as it is, is very short, and still leaves out so much that could be talked about. 

But what I hope that it did was not really help convince readers that the Fates localization is actually good, exactly… but helped to create some more balance in how we look at the Fates localization and localizations as a whole. All localization changes have a reason and nuance to how they ended up happening, and it’s important to be thinking from that perspective when we discuss them!

Since I know I may have created more questions than answers, again, feel free to keep the conversation going through more asks! I’ll answer them in time!

#fire emblem #fe #fe14 #fates #fe fates #nintendo #2ds #3ds #nintendo 2ds #nintendo 3ds #japan #japanese #translation #localization

[candicewright]

Kindly requesting that analysis on wangxian being peak romance and how it compares to queerbaiting please 🙏 🙏 🙏

Hello, anon! I am very genuinely happy that my rambling thoughts interest you in any way (because I have a lot of thoughts) so here is my analysis as promised. It is veeeery long (almost 2k), sorry about that but I’ve really been looking forward to talking about this for a very long time. In the end, it isn’t so much about how Wangxian is peak romance and more about the censorship and how it compares to queerbaiting, I may have to do another post about that later on. Without much further ado, here it is!

The Untamed’s tasteful censorship vs. BBC Merlin’s queerbaiting and why I prefer one over the other.

I know most people follow this blog for Merlin and believe me when I say that I love this show more than I can say because it has quite literally changed my life. But The Untamed has opened my mind to a whole new world (insert Aladdin’s A Whole New World here) and it has given me a lot of perspective on a lot of things.

I often joke with my friends saying that my first consideration when choosing a new show to watch is saying “is it gay?” which is not far from the truth, but it’s also not the complete story. What I mean is that I ask myself “does this show have a relationship that I think is worth getting invested in?”. Yes, t usually happens that those are not heterosexual romances, but what can I say, I’m queer and I like my emotional support fictional characters to be so too. This is the exact reasoning that led me to Merlin. I saw a couple of videos about them on youtube and immediately found their dynamic compelling and their story beautifully tragic. But like with most shows these days, the writers failed (among other things) to make their relationship explicit. This has happened with every show I watched after Merlin too; The Witcher, Sherlock and Good Omens being the most notable ones. 

You can argue if they are or are not queerbaiting, I at least think Good Omens isn’t, but again, it is pretty subjective.

But i had grown so accustomed to this type of media that I fully went into The Untamed expecting something similar.

And oh boy was I wrong.

Now, the case of The Untamed is a curious one because it is supposed to be a love story between two men due to being based on a BL novel, but because of censorship, it had to be very toned down. I found this out right before actually watching the show while doing some preliminary research and while it did change my thought on what I was getting into I truly thought they would just erase the entire relationship and try to hide it behind straight relationships like in most other shows I had watched.

But that was absolutely not the case, to my endless relief and joy.

But how? How did they get away with censoring all the explicit aspects of a romantic relationship while still managing to tell a wonderful love story? And how does this compare to the queerbaiting of a show like Merlin?

Warning: I will be using different parts of both shows and probably some of the MDZS novel to illustrate my point, so there will be spoilers.

The initial accidental chemistry + innuendos vs. The establishment of the very clear enemies to friends to lovers trope

I’m going to use Merlin to compare and contrast this because it’s what I know best and the other show I've given a lot of thought to.

Merthur and Wangxian are both similar and different dynamics in the way they’re written and it was one of the things that drew me into The Untamed in the first place. Both stories begin with our main duo meeting and instantly disliking each other, ending up in a fight. And while they both set the story up to lead to a more intimate bond being created between the pairs, there’s something very different from the start.

Merthur is deliberately set up to be a close friendship and all innuendos and chemistry are accidental (in my opinion and only at the start). Let me explain.

The concept for Merlin clearly started with the idea of how the story would change if Merlin was a young boy arriving in Camelot instead of an old powerful sorcerer. Then they made the main plot to be his destiny/friendship with the young and arrogant Prince Arthur. I truly believe that the first innuendos were not what they intended and that all chemistry and sexual tension between the characters comes courtesy of Colin and Bradley and how undeniably good they look on screen together. Fans then started speculating (as we always do) and then the production team decided to run with it, making it almost a recurring joke when it shouldn’t have been. Had they treated that developing relationship seriously like what they were hinting it was, the show would have been very different.

The Untamed on the other hand, is everything but accidental. What they’re doing is deliberately establishing the enemies to friends to lovers trope from the very beginning. It’s not an accident that during their first fight on the roof of the Cloud Recesses Wei Wuxian tells Lan Wangji that women would find his true character very disappointing and that no one would want to marry him. he says so several times in fact and this is clearly both to highlight the change in their relationship as well as to say that Lan Wangji is not at all interested in the opinion of any female (or anyone besides Wei Wuxian for that matter). This is the same stuff we see in mainstream straight romances: one of the characters saying something to the effect of “who would want to date them?” only to end up involved with the other at the end of the story.

You could argue that Merlin does something similar with the conversation between Merlin and Kilgharrah where Merlin is affronted by the idea of having to help Arthur where he says “There must be another Arthur because this one’s an idiot...If someone wants to kill him, they can go right ahead. In fact, I’ll give them a hand.” but the difference between these two is that Merlin is hiding behind the guise of destiny and friendship to make these parallels while Wangxian is deliberately and clearly in a romantic context.

The deliberate continuation of the subtext vs. The suggestion of something more

The accidental nature of the subtext doesn’t last long and in true BBC fashion, it turns into full-on queerbaiting real fast. Again, you can argue endlessly about when the deliberately suggestive comments start, but by the end of the show, we know for a fact the entire production staff and even the staff were aware of the effect and reception their show was having. This was no longer an innocent mistake on people reading too much into it, it was a very purposeful narrative that they were pushing without ever truly committing to it. This is what got fans going crazy over “poetry” or lines like “you’re the only friend I have and I couldn’t bear to lose you”. These are all very intentional choices they made to keep their devoted fanbase interested and while we’re all very thankful for this material it really keeps us wondering what it could have been if they had taken that extra step.

The Untamed can’t take that step because of the censorship laws, but it’s still much more daring than Merlin ever was. While Merlin keeps the soulmate aspect of the Merthur relationship a suggestion, The Untamed outright says it, which was baffling to me. It even does it at a pint where the first kiss happened in the novel, which you would think makes it less romantic. But that's absolutely not the case because of both the non-consensual nature of that original kiss and because of how heartbreakingly beautiful the replacement scene is. Not only that, but they also keep all the elements you could expect to see in any pre-relationship stage of a developing romance story: endless amounts of mutual pining, not-really-unrequited love, jealousy, panicking at the sight of your crush (yes I’m looking at you 15-year-old Lan Wangji) and even some fun in vino veritas moments. They even have a son together! It doesn’t get more clear than that!

This is all the way the show has of suggesting something more without outright saying (even though it’s a pretty not subtle way of suggesting it).

Merlin, on the other hand, keeps trying to deny the romantic nature of the Merthur dynamic, which brings me to my next point.

The introduction of a female love interest as an excuse vs. The awareness that the audience understands the relationship in the way it's meant to be

Now, this one really bugs me, because of all the ways they could have done this they truly chose the worst and destroyed Gwen’s character in the process. 

In my opinion, the writers could have done a few different things. They could have fully developed the Merthur relationship as a romantic one while keeping Gwen’s role as a queen and creating a much more satisfying character arch for her, maybe even getting her together with Morgana or Lancelot. They could have focused on the Awen romance and therefore lowered the suggestions of romance between Merlin and Arthur, once again creating a much more enjoyable subplot for Gwen, though it could have also meant sacrificing the very powerful bond between the main characters. They could have even taken advantage of Gwen’s crush on Merlin in the first season and gone on the full-on polyamory direction! That would have been much better! Instead, they halfassed the romance between Arthur and Gwen and made it just...meh. Not that Angel and Bradley didn’t do a great job, it was more of a writing problem than a them problem.

The Untamed (despite the rumours and possibilities of a Wen Qing/Wei Wuxian relationship) decided to just run with the not really platonic relationship between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, making them the complete focus of the story while still upholding the censorship laws. What I think the biggest difference between the two shows is, is that one runs on assuming the audience is stupid while the other one assumes the audience is smart.

Let me explain once more.

The Merlin writers clearly thought that by introducing Gwen as the love interest to Arthur he would just become what? Magically straight? As if we hadn’t seen the last four seasons of sexual tension between him and Merlin? The audience was not fooled for the most part, but some people did fall for this, coming with the argument “But he’s married to Gwen so he’s straight!” as if being gay or straight are the only two possibilities but oh well.

The Untamed does quite the opposite. It relies on the fact that the audience is going to catch onto the romantic aspect of the narrative without them actively saying anything because we are Not Dumb. It also does something that I think is quite beautiful which is leaving it up for interpretation as far as whether it’s platonic or not and even more touching is the way the story has resonated with the ace community (that is according to what I’ve seen, please do correct me if I’m wrong) by focusing on their emotional and intellectual connection instead of in their physical and sexual one.

This is why, in the end, I prefer what I call The Untamed’s tasteful censorship over Merlin and other shows’ blatant queerbaiting.

I feel the need after all of this to state that Merlin is still my favorite show of all time and that this is not by any means me saying that Merlin is absolute trash or something like that. There’s also a lot more that I think can be said in this conversation, so please feel free to tell me what you think and if you’ve ever encountered something similar to this.

Also, if I made any mistakes or wrong points, please don’t be shy about telling me!

I hope this rant was at least somewhat interesting and that you found it satisfactory, anon!

#mdzs/cql meta #merlin meta #the untamed #cql #wangxian #bbc merlin #merthur #merlin bbc #ask response #i have a lot of feelings #someone stop me #long post

[ckret2]

Anon from PDA review (again, I’m sorry if I’m getting super annoying): just read your fic, “I Realize I’m the One” and it was amazing! I ended up liking it more than PDA, because of the happy ending. (Also, I think I might just be really into seeing Alastor get embarrassed.) I loved how he tried to make it into a performance (to separate himself from it) and Sir Pentious wasn’t having any of that! It ties in so well with your excellent analysis of Alastor you wrote a while back (1/?)

What is it with so many people these days thinking that gushing to an author about how much they like their stuff is annoying? Lemme assure you—and every single person on the Internet—that it’s the opposite of annoying, and just about every author on the planet is sitting at their computer hopefully waiting to get long excited comments.

Some characters... it’s just satisfying to embarrass the hell out of. Especially the smug assholes who act like nothing has ever embarrassed them in their lives. I love Alastor to death but he is the smuggest asshole in history.

And YEAH I feel like Alastor’s default reaction to just about everything is Slap That Radio Host Persona On Top Of This Situation, it takes effort to rip that off.

Replying to your other part under the cut:

Anonymous said: (2/?) About how he always talks like he’s on a show, that was really helpful for how I write him too. There was one line that was like, “Alastor was out wandering the streets looking for dinner” and I was wondering if that meant looking for someone to kill and eat, or looking for a restaurant. (Could go either way with this guy.) I liked the part where Alastor reveals he’s done this many times before, for some reason I thought he hadn’t, and that got a laugh out of me. Same with Sir P chasing...

😂 I left the “looking for dinner” line ambiguous on purpose, I was hoping someone would wonder which it was. I figure he was planning to dine on with whatever (or whoever) catches his eye first.

Anonymous said: (3/4) him out with a gun and how Alastor blew up his car, but did truly feel guilty about it. I like how for Alastor shame and arousal are very closely linked, and how you write his demisexuality (or asexuality if that’s what you were going for here!). The microphone’s contributions were wonderful, and I am living for Sir P’s snarky, unimpressed reactions to his disaster ex. Sorry that this review isn’t very good (it’s just a list of obvious stuff I liked) but I just wanted to let you know...

I’ve sorta got a handful of versions of Alastor in my head that I pull out to play with depending on what I want to do with a particular fic (and, specifically, how self-indulgent I want to get on the Alastor Being Obsessively Attracted To Sir Pent front), all of which are on the ace spectrum but at different points. Fics like Slippery When Wet, An Unspecial Occasion, and CDIH, I’m writing him as very explicitly no-sexual-attraction-at-all asexual, to the point that he’s sort of skeptical that attraction works the way other people say it does, and when he is doing anything sexual it’s rooted in romantic/aesthetic/sensual attraction and a desire to have fun with and/or pleasure his partner. Fics like PDA, Eggs Benedicked, and I Realize I’m the One, I’m writing Alastor as demi-ace—because I want to play with him suffering with that attraction. (The fact that Alastor is demi in all those fics is one of the main reasons they’re incompatible with the “canon” CDIH continuity, because when I write the actual full-length sequel, I intend to keep characterizing him as ace-ace, not demi-ace.)

But no yeah I’m kinda digging the shame/arousal link going on in all three of those fics too lmao.

Also: most reviews are lists of obvious stuff people like. Authors love getting that. You’re good.

Anonymous said: (4/4) what I thought, since this was a similar premise to PDA but actually went in a happier direction. I kind of feel that Alastor getting shamed is a necessary part of the healing process for these two baddies. Trying to give decent reviews through anon asks is honestly really annoying with the character limit, so I’ll stop writing them if you want, but I love your work so much I really wanted to write this. Thanks.

Hmm. Necessary? 🤔 Not sure about necessary, but... for me, “fully, deeply, and genuinely acknowledging just how much he fucked up” and “becoming honest and open with his actual real feelings” are the two main components necessary for the healing process. That can take the form of “emotional self-flagellating” and “VERY LITERALLY exposing his true feelings to an audience” which, when combined, is definitely gonna result in a whole lot of shame, so that’s one way to kickstart the healing process; but I think there are other ways to get the same results, and that’s one of the things I’m gonna be angling for in the "canon” CDIH sequel.

#(this got long) #(so sticking it under a cut) #(I'll answer your standalone ask tomorrow when I'm procrastinating on my 7th spicy week prompt) #anonymous #ask #about my writing #hazbin hotel

[turkleader]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo Spoilers Below

[ooc]

My partner and I have gone through the Demo three times now, focusing on different aspects, refining our familiarity with the combat system (which really does become quite fun once you start to overcome the learning curve), and I wanted to share more of my thoughts after delving a bit deeper into the details of things. I also took pictures of various things that caught my eye, and I’ll spread out those thoughts over several other posts. Hope you enjoy the few things that I’ve had my mind wandering over.

There are three pieces of extra dialogue that you can hear during the second battle of the Demo (the one specifically before you jump over the turnstile).

If you build up your ATB gauge and use the Fire spell that Cloud has equipped, the infantrymen you’re fighting will say, “He can use magic?” “Where the hell did he get the materia?”

If you build up your ATB gauge and use either of Cloud’s two abilities, Braver or Focused Thrust, they will say, “Holy shit!” “He a SOLDIER operator?”

If you build up your ATB gauge and use an item, either a Potion or Ether, they’ll say, “He’s come prepared...” “Hey, careful now! This guy’s no boot!”

On this topic, I wanted to take a moment to expand on what I was dwelling on before, the ease at which we can kill these woefully outmatched, average infantrymen. These dialogue options, especially the ones regarding Materia and SOLDIER, made me wonder about the state of Shinra and Midgar at this point in the Remake and how the developers took inspiration from the original game and Crisis Core. I remarked early on that there’s no comment from the many infantrymen we fight about Cloud’s attire, which is the distinct SOLDIER uniform. But if we consider that during the events of Crisis Core we lost the greater part of our SOLDIER force to desertions because of Genesis, and then SOLDIER further lost clout with the “death” of Sephiroth, perhaps it’s not at all surprising that SOLDIER members are so rare at this point in the timeline that the everyday infantry wouldn’t even be able to recognize one on sight, and would only put two and two together when an unnatural ability was used against them. On the note of Materia, the original game itself doesn’t shy away from mentioning that not everyone has an affinity for materia, and some people can’t use it at all. It was a really nice touch to add some flavor text that emphasized that this was still the case in the Remake, in addition to the fact that materia is much harder to come by by the time we get to FFVII’s time period than it was during Crisis Core’s years, where materia production was rampant. We do have the trailer with Scarlet watching possible materia creation or fusion, so we know there’s still some aspect of its production going on, but I wonder to what extent we’ll actually have materia’s availability, and if, in addition to the regular “Gain AP > Materia Levels Up > More Spells(/Uses?) become Available” is still in place, will we also have the ability for fusion? That’s not confirmed yet, but I’m patient. We’ll see yet.

Then, my partner and I discovered that if you push the touchpad on your controller, you get additional menus to pop up if you focus on a specific enemy in battle. The description for the infantry just sealed the deal for us about how grossly underprepared most of these people are to deal with someone of SOLDIER ranking or power.

Their title in game is “Security Officer” and their description reads, “Troopers serving in the Shinra Public Security Corps. Typically seen patrolling the city streets and company installations. Many are new recruits with little training.”

On the right side of the screen we get additional information, much with “???” under each category, which I’m assuming we’ll be able to fill out either the more we encounter, once we steal from them, or use Sense magic, which I believe was renamed to another term for the Remake.

We also have a lovely menu that gives a preview to various status icons that we might be able to see throughout the game. We’ll have more confirmation if these are all the final icons once the game comes out, but it was very interesting to look over. Loved this menu.

I didn’t intend for this to turn into a full-blown analysis of menus and the basic level Shinra unit, but it was an interesting thing to analyze. I have yet to go and do the same with all the other enemies we encounter, but I look forward to the game having any kind of bestiary so we can review this information in more depth and outside of battle. I believe the lucky few that got to play an extended amount of the Demo when they were invited to one of Square’s events were able to confirm that, at least for now, we’re getting a menu category titled “Enemy Intel” which may serve as our bestiary for the final version of the game.

If you would like to watch the video this screenshot originated from, you can watch JesseCox’s AMA regarding the FFVII Remake here. He also has a playthrough of the Demo on his channel if anyone hasn’t had a chance to play the Demo yet and would like to experience it secondhand. Link to that is here.

A month and four days to go, my friends. We’re almost there.

#Final Fantasy VII Remake #FFVIIR #Final Fantasy VII Remake Demo #FFVIIR Demo #.tmunspeech #.ffviirthoughts #.obashinra

[tomakeitbeautifultolive]

Hey Sharon. Thank you for being patient with your responses and I also want to commend you on the incredible insight that you have. Please I need some reassurance that Jon loves Dany as much as she loves him. In my head, I know this is true, but I think I've made the mistake of not being able to separate Kit from Jon who goes on and on about his wife. Could you help? Thank you in advance.

Aww, you’re welcome! And wow, I thank you, anon! ♥

You need some reassurance that Jon loves Dany as much as she loves him? Sure thing! Let’s go!

First, we’ll knock Kit right out of the equation. And we’re going to use Maisie Williams to do it. Two episodes into season 8, we get a sex scene between Arya and Gendry, following comments Maisie made that Arya is ‘asexual’. If Maisie was so concerned with potentially spoiling her character’s relationship with Gendry in the show, it probably even bodes well that Kit keeps blathering on about Ygritte. What better way to throw the audience off the scent?

Episode one:

There are a few things I’d like to point out about episode one, first. Because I think they are important:

Jon rides Rhaegal. Sure, he’s a Targaryen (not that I personally believe king’s blood has anything to do with one’s ability to ride a dragon…), but what’s most important about his first time greeting Drogon as well as Rhaegal is that the dragons trust him.

Jon wants to share something special with Dany:

“We wanted to re-anchor their relationship, an it seemed important for it to involve the dragons since the dragons play such an important role. When he flies up with her and shows her where he used to hunt as a kid, I think she falls even father in love with him.”

Make no mistake, that was exactly Jon’s intention:

Interestingly, Jon neglects to wear a gorget (extra protection) alone in Dany’s presence. This likely means he trusts her quite a lot, too.

His first reaction upon learning he was a Targaryen was to get upset about Ned (which was exactly what I thought his initial reaction would be).

Episode two:

Jon’s chair is tilted/angled slightly toward Daenerys while her chair, as well as Sansa’s, are facing forward. I think this is a subtle hint that despite the fact he’s avoiding speaking to her, he still wants to be close to her.

Okay, so if he’s not repulsed by the incest issue, then what’s his deal, anyway?

We all know Jon’s a terrible liar, and not the best communicator. He knows that the next time he speaks with Daenerys, he owes her the truth. He’s probably not ready to accept that the next time they speak, Daenerys learning he’s her nephew might just mark the end of their romantic relationship.

Arya and Gendry’s sex scene is shot very similarly to Jon and Dany’s last season. I mean look at this!:

Arya and Gendry have loads of romantic foreshadowing in ASOIAF, as well as the show. Maisie had very different thoughts on what Gendry meant to Arya when asked after episode one:

“That’s who I was in love with and thought I’d follow to the end of the world.”

While it might be easy to think that Jon is avoiding Daenerys because he’s considering capitalizing on his claim to the throne, he reminded us this season, as well as last, that he doesn’t want to be king. Whether or not he’s the true heir is a non-issue for him.

And his sister Sansa kindly reminds Daenerys that:

“He loves you, you know that?”

And hey, according to Arya, Sansa’s the smartest person in Westeros lol.

When Sam tries to rush Jon into telling Daenerys the truth, he more or less rolls his eyes at him. He’s delaying the inevitable, sure, but I think this shows that what Jon’s truth means to Jon is different than what it means to Sam.

But our true Jonerys scene comes at the end of the episode, of course.

As I’ve mentioned in another recent ask, Jenny’s Song was almost certainly written by Jon’s father, Rhaegar. And this is also most likely the song that he actually sang to Lyanna the night they fell for one another.

So in a way, while it’s very somber, it’s also… kind of a love song.

Which is why I think, as it plays, we get shots establishing, well, couples:

Brienne and Jaime

Gilly and Sam

Theon and Sansa

Arya and Gendry

Missandei and Grey Worm

Daenerys and Jon

In the crypt, Jon smiles when he sees Daenerys approach him. It’s a solemn smile, absolutely. He’s happy to see her, but dreads telling her the truth.

He turns to Dany, giving her a nod before she holds him. They stand in front of Lyanna’s crypt as Jon recounts the true story of his parents.

“He loved her.”

Jon is holding her as he says this. And let’s not forget:

The truth causes Dany to back away in shock, but Jon steps forward, signally he’s ready to finally close the distance he’d put between them:

“It’s true, Dany.”

Jon calls her Dany - an endearment. If he wished to distance himself from her, he’d have opted for “Your Grace”.

When Dany mentions that he’s the last male heir, Jon looks genuinely upset that she would jump to this conclusion:

While this is worrying to some, it’s just a bit of angst. Honestly, I’d be more worried for them if they weren’t having a little drama sprinkled into their lovestory. The leading cause of angst in fiction is miscommunication. Jon avoids Daenerys for a while, leading to her jump to these conclusions. You see hints of it throughout the episode, such as when Sam mentions that death is like being forgotten, it hits Daenerys - and not in the way Sam intends.

So, while Jon was off having his identity crisis, Daenerys was left alone with only her nagging thoughts - perfect for imagining the worst, especially every native northern person she interacts with disrespects her, gives her the stinkeye, etc.

While this is something Dany says, I think it’s important to remember:

“I’m here because I love your brother. And I trust him. And I know he’s true to his word.”

What is Jon’s word, exactly? Aside from him telling us in every way he can think of that he doesn’t want to be king? Well…

“How about my queen?”

And those who swore allegiance to him?

“They’ll come to see you for what you are”

Dany says she hopes she deserves it.

“You do.”

And later, in the Dragonpit:

“You’re not like everyone else. And your family hasn’t seen its end.”

Jon goes on to more or less threaten Daenerys with a pregnancy, as they pass a baby dragon skull back and forth. If you can’t trust me, trust Jon. After all, he’s true to his word and their family hasn’t seen its end.

Also, they’ve got a love theme! A theme called ’Truth’. While I know Ramin said he hadn’t written any music for season 8 at the time he released this, I can’t help but wonder why he’d compose, for fun, a version of Truth that includes a lullaby and the victorious title theme intertwined within it:

If these two ‘break up’, what would the point of this version be?

This version has been analyzed by people much more apt than me, and if you’re curious about the changes Ramin made to this version, I did a transcription of an analysis on it here.

Lastly, Jon’s identity crisis does not in any way cancel out all of the foreshadowing between the pair. If you’re still worried, it might be worth going over this brilliant meta by @mhysaofdragons!

Hope some amount of that helps, anon! ♥

#answered #jonerys