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petersthree · 4 years

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ൠ With Steve/Jonathan/Nancy???

Random headcanons for the trio that should be canon if the duffer brothers weren’t cowards, so enjoy these.... “if Stranger Things was like, 10% funnier and had the trio we deserve” headcanons yeah that’s the theme I’m sticking with it

Jonathan and Nancy don’t know that Robin is a lesbian, so they get so lowkey jealous when Steve is hanging out with Robin all the time. They 1000% think that they’re dating and they don’t get why it doesn’t sit well with them much, because they’re just like “This is fine! Robin’s great! She’s great!” and like, she is, they like her, but then they see her with Steve and they’re like :)))))) “This is fine!”

Nancy finally admits to Jonathan how she feels whenever they’re on (what they think are) double dates with Steve & Robin and she’s talking to him and saying she gets if he needs time to think and she’s expecting him to be upset but definitely not for him to be like, “Nancy, I’ve..felt the same way.”

She’s really supportive of the fact that Jonathan is into guys and doesn’t brush over that but she’s also really relieved that they both are into Steve and that this isn’t going to be a big thing in their relationship that drives them apart.

Jonathan is also worried because he doesn’t know how Steve feels about guys. Nancy technically doesn’t either, nor does she want to out Steve potentially, but she’s heard his crush-rambles on different guys before and she tells Jonathan that she doesn’t know either, but she’s pretty, pretty sure that Jonathan has a chance, and that even if Steve isn’t, that he’s a good guy who wouldn’t make a big deal out of anything.

They only have one problem and it’s that they think Steve is dating Robin lmaooo. Nancy one day very over-enthusiastically says, “you two are so cute together!” and Steve and Robin just look at each other and start laughing, and poor Jonathan and Nancy are Very Confused(TM)

Anyway, I say this in literally every Stoncy headcanon I make but that’s because it can and should be canon - they dance around how to ask Steve out for a while, but eventually it comes up at the best time - the world’s most inconvenient time.

They’re all fighting off a demodog together and Nancy yell-asks if Steve wants to go out with them. Steve, wildly hitting monsters with his bat: “You WHAT?” Jonathan has a lighter out and is burning the monsters and is like “Yeah, we’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

Steve is wildly flattered but he’s also like ???? They get rid of all the monster and Steve is beating up the last one and with each whack he’s like “You - whack - didn’t think - whack - to tell me this - whack - when our lives aren’t in danger?”

Nancy: “To be fair we thought this was significantly less awkward.” Jonathan nods, and on the inside he’s kind of thinking that if Steve says no that a demogorgan eating them all would be wildly more preferable.

Steve says yes, obviously. He’s been talking a lot to Robin about the fact that he thinks he likes guys and girls and he talks about it with Jonathan & Nancy too, later, and he and Jonathan go a bit slower than he and Nancy do but they’re just on their own romance.

It’s really sweet because Steve and Nancy fall right back into place like how they were before they broke up except they’re more open and communicative now, but Steve and Jonathan go a bit more slow - and can’t be out and about like Jonathan and Nancy can (Steve and Nancy can’t either, technically, but still, it’s easier for someone to see them together and laughing than with the guys).

They find ways that they can show affection though, going to the movie theater and holding hands in the row, going to the carnival and Nancy insists on not being in the middle because it makes her feel too enclosed so Steve is in the middle and no one can notice him clutching onto Jonathan’s arm as they’re all screaming when the ride takes off. Sure, people can talk, but there’s nothing there to talk about to the average person.

Robin is with them hanging out a lot of the times too because they’re a queer gang of monster hunters! There’s no headcanon there I just really want that

Headcanon meme || Send me a symbol + character(s)

#long post for ts #stranger things #stoncy #ot3monsterhunting #stranger headcanons #janie has headcanons #janie gets asks #let-the-whump-commence

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soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years

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Alex ze Pirate Mini Review 4: The EED: Emotional Exposition Dump. Or why THIS is not friendship

So here we are. The last part of this 45 page three parter, meant to be about what Sam really means to the crew. And what have we seen so far in the previous parts? That Sam is not just their underappreciated, but downright exploited slave (yeah, did you know that in ancient Greece slaves supposedly had more rights than Sam in this one? At least they could buy out their freedom one day), that Dobson has no idea how to genuinely pace a story, turning what could have been a decent 100 page story if planned out and presented with more care into a 45 page short snore fest and that Hat Andy’s idea for jokes are either based on abusing token buttmonkeys, turning annoying memes into even more unfunny jokes or making dark comedy with dead orphans.

At least when South Park makes jokes about children dying, they are appropriate in that dark setting and the death is still in some way handled or refered to as a horrific event. In Dobson’s case however, it just leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Sorry, I just can’t get over the orphanage thing. If Dobson wanted the reason for Sam leaving be that he finds out someone he cared about from his old life is dead, that is one thing. But did this asshole have to destroy an entire building with countless victims to do it? Couldn’t he just have one person die and the rest be still at that place? Honestly, I think it would have been funnier and more meaningful emotionally, if Alex and Co actually interacted with people from Sam’s past and in doing so learn more about him as a person, by genuinely visiting a still standing orphanage. Give the comic some meat on the bones and in doing so actually create the impression this comic is truly about Sam and not just about characters doing random stuff in relation to finding him. Instead Dobson goes for a literal overkill, which he then does not even treat as a tragedy but as a joke.

Dobson, THIS is a better and more dignified joke about orphans than the shit you did.

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You got outclassed by Chuck Lorree of all people on this planet, you disgrace of a storyteller. A storyteller who can’t even keep his own barely existing continuity in the Alex-verse straight, now that I think of it. After all, according to Legends, the orphanage was closed and all the orphans were sold out to others, with Sam being the last of the litter

Which again is just unintentionally more horrific than Dobson likely intented. But you know, dumb people don’t know when they do dumb shit.

But I digress Let us just get into the last part. In which we finally see the “emotional” pay off of everything that happened so far.

Spoilers, this is my reaction to that pay off.

And here is what everything led up to now.

Sam ran away, because he wants to say his final farewell to his sister figure, we never knew about at all and about whom we do not learn one single thing really.

Where do I begin with how this revelation fails?

Let’s start with the fact that this in execution does not have the emotional impact that was intended. And why is that? Because Dobson doesn’t bother to actually introduce us to the sister as a character.

If I may digress a bit to talk about One Piece here: In the manga, oftentimes Oda will “interrupt” an ongoing story arc to feature flashback chapters, through which he tells about past events referenced in the “present” chapters prior. Through those flashbacks he further gives meaning to why in present time the characters facing certain foes or having to win in their current situation, is so important, even on an emotional level. In short, those flashbacks are no interruptions, they are integral in giving those story arcs emotional weight.

Because now we are not just “told” why we should care about things and people, we have been shown why we should care. The old rule of “show, don’t tell” being followed on.

A good example from a more “recent” storyline I can think of, is through the flashback chapters of the Dress Rosa story arc, where we are not only being shown how De Flamingo took over the kingdom of Dress Rosa and brought pain and misery over its people for years to come, but also the past of characters such as the gladiator Rebecca and Mr. Soldier, her father figure that raised her up from the time she was 10 and De Flamingo took over… only for the flashbacks to also reveal properly how Mr Soldier is not just a father figure for her that took her in, but her biological father Kyros, who had been turned into a toy by one of De Flamingo’s henchmen via a power, that also took Rebecca’s memories of her dad away so she never identified the toy as her dad.

This way Oda achieves multiple things at once; Among other things, he establishes how evil De Flamingo is, how tragic Mr Soldier and Rebecca’s lives really are, adding to us the readers wanting to see them and Luffy beat De Flamingo into a pulp and it makes the later “present day” moment when Mr. Soldier and many other victims turn back to normal and Rebecca regains her memories and is reunited with her dad so much more sweeter. Cause now we care.

Truth be told, I myself believe that Oda is one of few storytellers on this planet, who truly has “mastered” the technique of emotional flashback storytelling.

A technique Dobson could have used in this part of the story, but didn’t. Cause honestly, the way he tells how Sam’s sister was “important” to our poor cabin boy is not emotionally engaging from a storytelling perspective. We are told she is important, but we learn genuinely nothing about her, not even what her name was and what she looked like except from that one picture in the locket from over 15 pages ago. Nothing about how “close” she and Sam truly were is revealed through showing, only telling and as such we don’t even begin to care for her relationship with Sam and how her loss is genuinely important to him. So the main goal of this story, to make us the readers feel something for Sam aside of pity for how he is treated by his supposed friends, has not been achieved.

… Dobson, you are a hack. You can’t even use flashbacks, a basic technique in the realm of storytelling, to show us why we should “care” more, heck, even at all, about Sam and his loss.

If you just had adjusted a few things, you could have had something good here.

By adjustments I mean the following: Take the first page of this chapter as well as the first panel of the second page, and combine them into the final page of the previous chapter. In doing so creating a proper cliffhanger for part two. Then start chapter 3 of with a few pages (lets say 6 or so) showing young Sam and his sister interacting in the orphanage in doing so turning her from a nameless plotdevice into a genuine person to care about. And then use content of page 2 and 3 of this chapter, to elaborate on their relationship, potentially with small cuts always between present day Sam at the grave explaining himself and saying his farewells, with pictures of the past showing what they meant to each other.

But nope. This very basic idea a fanfic writer now has come up with, a fanfic writer who never studied literature or took writing classes by the way, something I doubt you did at college the more I read your work, has never crossed your “superior” mind.

Also, I find Sam’s text on page 3 really, really backwards in a way. Like, I get that we are meant to consider it a good thing Sam is this way. You know, being genuinely selfless and wanting to make others happy. And don’t get me wrong, generosity and selflessness are virtues I hold in high regard. But the way Sam talks about how he just wanted her to be happy while sacrificing any fulfillment of basic needs for himself feels more like a pathological disorder in that case than something to reach for. In fact, psychology speaks from different forms of generosity and the thing Sam describes here is likely “compulsive giving” or “unrelenting generosity”, a pathological variant that can be highly toxic for all people affected by it.

Funny how Dobson, a person who wants to claim he is all for mental healthcare, is essentially “promoting” the positivity of a psychological disorder via Sam.

Then again, this also feels more like Dobson putting words into Sam’s mouth (in a literal sense) to retroactively make Sam’s treatment look less horrid. Cause now Sam doesn’t just do all the work because he is ordered around, he deep down is “happy” doing all of the work and gain not even some basic respect in return, because he cares so deeply for his friends.

… I feel myself get livid again here.

And the next few pages don’t really help me “calm down”.

Cause now the “justifications” just go on. The thing that is meant to be a heartfelt farewell turning into Sam “justifying” that hey, it must be good that he ended up with Alex and her crew. Cause after all, by being abducted years ago and being treated as a slave who in the ginger’s eyes is worth less than lint, he likely avoided dying of shitting his pants and a crushing roof. Ignoring the fact that he was going to be sold out anyway back then and would have potentially ended up with a more generous master than the crew of non Captain Syrup.

Also, just all of the shit going on in page 6. Sam asking his “sister” to be at peace, when likely, if the girl could still talk, she may even just ask Sam the following: Who the heck are you. Cause really, if you think about it, if Sam did all the nice things for her in secret, did the girl even realize she had a “big brother” figure to watch over her? Also, him saying he is happy and he is doing quite alright for himself?

All the pictures of him sighing and looking in misery in this story alone, plus the cavalry of strips I posted about how Sam is abused in the first part of this post series tells me another story.

Finally, Sam’s message “At least now, we are both free”? Sam, she is dead, likely having died in pain when a house crushed on her, weakened by a deadly disease and traumatized by other children around her dying of said disease. And you are stuck with a bunch of people that haven’t shown to care for you up until this story and the only reason they may even care for you now is out of “sympathy” because you lost your sister figure, not because they genuinely love and care for you as a person. As far as I am concerned, you would be better off being the slaveboy of some nymphomanic pirate princess in the world of Berserk than you are on this plane of existence.

And now that the “emotional” farewell is out of the way, Dobson can go back to focus on the characters he really cares about in this shit anyway: Little Bitch Annie, lesbian chocolate rain Miroku and Deadpool’s pubes.

Oh Alex, you are such a rascal. You really make me want to shoot you with a crossbow, stab you in the eye, hurl you out a window and shove explosives where the sun won’t shine.

Yeah yeah, you are a pirate, but that doesn’t mean you need to be that awful as a person or even protagonist.

Christ. For someone who complains how toxic Walter White is to the point he believes “sympathizing” with the character turns you into a nazi, Dobson certainly is blind to how awful Alex really is, particularly as protagonist in a comic series intented for little kids. Compared to her, I can think of freaking slasher movie villains with more of a moral compass. Like say what you want about Jigsaw, at least he never victimized genuine children or teenagers.

And Talus, thanks for ruining the “emotional” moment Sam “earned” by pointing out how weird it is he kissed a gravestone. Also, I am glad I know what happens in the next pages or else I would assume Alex’s great idea includes to dig up his sister and turn her into a life sized doll for Sam to cuddle.

No, their ideas to assure he is emotionally save and to redeem themselves for years of taking him for granted/hurting him, is to throw him a surprise party.

… you know, I think you may be the only individuals in fiction, that Pinkie Pie would think do not deserve to throw a party or get one thrown for.

But I guess Sam is just so nice, he even throws you a party for no apparent reason.

Either that or now that his “sister” is dead he will overcompensate even more and this is the next destructive stage of his compulsive generosity.

… Sam, I am sorry for your loss. But you need to get help. Once by the authorities who will hopefully get rid of Alex and then by some psychologist who helps you redefine your own self worth.

By the way, I find it funny that the banner he made also actually only mentions Talus, Atea and Captain Daphne with a bad hair day. It just confirms that Peggy either never bothered to join the others or that Dobson developed an early onset of dementia and totally forgot about the fact that the midget is a genuine character in this trainwrack. And I am convinced the later is the case, which really just makes me wonder how someone is able to do that. To forget a major character of the thing they create and want to turn into a money making franchise. Imagine if Disney did e.g. a sequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, only to forget about the god damn dwarves themselves.

At least Talus finally realizes he is unworthy to get a party thrown or be Sam’s friends. Good. Now jump into a wood chipper and free ourselves from your existence you dog beaver thing.

Content of the next page in a just alternate universe… Alex: You are a better human being than I could ever be and this is all because my creator is a hack who does not know how to create genuinely likable personalities.

The reality:

FUCK YOU, ALEX! FUCK YOU AND THE BIKE PUMP YOU FLEW IN ON! Atea and Talus have learnt more than you about what it means to be a friend and they don’t even bother to punch you in the face for still being the biggest red haired raging cunt since Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

If this is how Dobson thinks “friends” should treat each other, it is no wonder he has a friendless background. Hey, Hat Andy, if you want to emulate manga, may I suggest you just become even more blatantly about it and simply copy paste One Piece? Cause Luffy at least knows how to be a friend. How much does he care for his friends, strangers and even at times former enemies of his?

He cares so much, that e.g. when a special military force that beat the crap out of him got hands on his crewmate Nico Robin, he did THIS:

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He declared war on the world government. Fuck, even Jack Sparrow, who is an opportunistic jackass, in a movie where everyone stabs the others at least three times in the back, was less selffish than Alex, when he gave up his chance on immortality as Captain of the Flying Dutchman, just so Will would live in some form.

Metalbeard from the Lego Movie cared more about doing the right thing than anyone in Alex the pirate did. You created the worst friends and “heroes” I have ever seen in a webcomic since the entirety of sinfest. Congratulations for that accomplishment, Dobson. It really takes a special kind of anti-talent to show such level of not understanding the power of friendship as one of the most basic tropes in storytelling, to the point a show about pastel colored equines managed to profit of it for nine years.

WOOOOO! We are the worst, we are the worst!

And look, Uncle Pennywise’s scrotum is back.

Anyway, here are the last two pages of this thing, to end on what is meant to be a whimsical note because Sam actually gets something from Alex that is not a beating or verbal abuse.

Too bad anything that would feel heartwarming about this is drowned by a) me actually remembering all the shit Alex, the crew and the writer pull to get to this point (from abusive neglect of the characters to pathetic emotional manipulation on a narrative level) and b) the weird rapey face Uncle Peggy makes in the picture. Like Jesus, did Dobson try to emulate the Burger King here?

But hey, this story is over. And who knows, perhaps from this moment on, Sam will actually be treated better overall in the comic and Dobson will spend time actually developing an overall plot and the world of this com-

Tom Kenny: ONE COMIC STRIP LATER

And it is back to business as usual.

... How much would I need to pay for someone on the internet to write an alternate ending to the story where it turns out Sam actually poisoned the food at the party and while Alex is slowly dying, a now evil Sam who has finally broke under years of abuse, is going to become a genuine threatening pirat? that is after he villain monologues to Alex how much she sucks before scalping her?

Wow, I am entering a dark place right now. I think I need to take a break.

So I am going to give my final verdict on this story with the next post around the weekend most likely. Cause that is how much time I will now spend rereading One Piece and watching the Pirates of the Carribean movies in addition to playing the Pirates level of Kingdom Hearts 3, in order to forget this shit and remind myself why I think pirates are cool.

#andrew dobson #alex ze pirate #fuck you #hat andy #tom preston #so you are a cartoonist #syac #comic #webcomic #pirates #sam the cabin boy #atea #talus #one piece #magic of friendship this is not

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dontcallmecarrie · 5 years

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Meme anon here, so I am stuck in being a perfectionist and trying to find the right meme/pic to use (with proper credit where it is due) or to make for myself so i am right now just going to send overall descriptions in 4 different asks if that is okay. Just to get the overall idea/theme of the memes (since they deal with Phase 3 and such. Here goes nothing... (1/5)

(2/5) HAL and Skynet memes. I'm actually working on MAKING them, OMG! It's kinda fun actually.

(3/5) The picture where Tony announces at the Press Conference (tm) that he was Iron Man. Then Text Post/meme. Or various pictures of Tony in the suit. THEN meme. (Sorry if any of these were not what you were/are expecting.)

(4/5) Use stuff inside your TWIFFON au, such as using the S.W.O.R.D. Logo that you have and make memes using that. (Just a thought.) Or pretend/fake images for the Fashion Week Fiasco or the Relay Race (if that was hypothetically photographed in your au.)

(5/5) And for the last meme ideas/descriptions: Pictures of the world/Earth with the initials of SI or the SWORD Logo ghostly photoshopped on top/behind it, with then the meme idea. Or just the planet with the meme (something ominous but funny). I got some HAL memes already made. They're not perfect but they're done. Still working on some of the others (not the SWORD logo, that I'm leaving alone) Please let me know your thoughts. Too far? Not quite what you're looking for? This has been fun!

...oh boy. Friend, some of these memes are actually edging into spoiler territory, because of Reasons.

Under the bolded part for those who don't want spoilers, because the more I think about it the more likely I am to ramble and the memes are actually a very important plot point in TWiFFON, no matter how ridiculous that sounds without context.

Also: in regards the memes you’ve mentioned, I get the feeling some of them would probably be SI-only. For instance, while the Fashion Week Fiasco made headlines, other incidents [cough cough, the Relay Race] are the sort of thing that stays in-house. Kinda like Legal’s jokes about world domination, now that I think about it.

The spoilery territory comes with the memes that might involve the world, though, for multiple reasons.

See, after the Civil War arc, there’s going to be a few others to go: the fallout of Civil War, the Final Battle, and the Realization.

Specifically, after the Civil War arc, there’s going to be another timeskip as Tony acutely feels the crunch of ‘oh shit the Avengers aren’t an option to protect the planet anymore, it’s literally just me, oh fuck’.

When he feels this crunch, he’s not going to pull his punches intellectually— by which I mean he’s going to delve into morally dubious stuff, and the other side of the Merchant of Death takes center stage as he brainstorms potential defense after defense for Earth. Here’s the thing: when I say ‘morally dubious’, I mean ‘he’s going to wish he could afford to drink something stronger than coffee’ because he’s going to go over SHIELD’s shadier research, notes of the tech found after New York, everything JARVIS found via scouring the dark web, you name it.

Even more specifically, remember that energy shield that protected the portal device in the first Avengers movie? Remember how it was borderline impossible for anyone to get past it?

Yeah, Tony’s going to do something like that. But for the entire planet.

An immense network of satellites and what-have-you, spanning the entire globe.

[it’s not exactly original since I got the idea from both Star Wars and Doctor Who, but bear with me]

There’s more to it than that, but the energy shield is meant to be one of the last lines of defense.

Here’s the thing: it’s not subtle. Kinda hard to be, with its size and the breathtaking amounts of energy it requires [good thing SI’s invested so heavily into green energy], and its name is what makes it prime meme fodder.

Because what everyone’s seeing is this bigass energy shield network in the sky, keeping out the vast armies that stretch as far as the eye can see. And Tony’s naming skills are only marginally better than a biologist’s, and the rest of humanity’s isn’t much better.

The energy shield’s official name is the Iron Dome [also because it’s got the same idea as the thing in real life], but the moment it went online, the internet renamed it Skynet, which, awkward.

It only gets funnier after the Reveal, too.

...on another note, the main role the memes play ties in with Tony’s obliviousness.

See, after the Civil War arc, Tony’s [understandably] hyperfocused on the whole ‘protecting the Earth’ schtick and doesn’t really have time for much else. He’s tangentially aware of other stuff going on, but he has so much to do he doesn’t really pay attention to it.

When the first memes about world domination start to float around, he blinks but goes back to work, because again, turns out that when it comes to protecting the planet, if you want something done right you have do it yourself. Normally he’d have fun with the memes, would be over the moon and be laughing at them with everyone else— but he has Things To Do.

The single meme I have in mind for the matter is Star Trek-based, and also later on serves as the basis for why the rest of the galaxy refers to them as the Terran Empire, btw.

The first meme desensitized him to the idea; by the time Pepper approaches him about it, he thinks she’s joking. When the Sorcerer Supreme shows up shooting him significant looks and talking about being responsible to take care of threats to the Earth, the implied threat flies right over Tony’s head and he just goes “great, welcome to the club! I haven’t accounted for magic yet, is there anything we could tweak in this project to bolster our defenses?”

This is why it takes a honest-to-goodness Destroyer of Worlds to break it to him that no, it’s not a joke, he genuinely did take over the world. Yeah, oops.

...long story short, I really like the idea, but again, not sure how much screentime I’d be able to give the memes in the main fic. The sidefic would allow for more screen time, of course, but I’m not sure if that’s something you’d want to see?

edit: I’d put in a read-more, only apparently I can’t? Apologies to anyone who didn’t want spoilers or long posts.

#I got an ask!#replies #Naught replies #behind the scenes #The War is Far From Over Now #major spoilers for TWiFFON #TWiFFON spoiler #long post

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tamersa · 5 years

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Most of those AUs are pretty dark, but I found the one I liked the most I didnt even think that hard, you know what I wanna? Akiko/Ryuu ...going through a divor...NO. IM KIDDING xD Akiko almost did that and it was horrible, I want celebrity/fan au you can decide how ise celebrity and who is the fan

Here you have the AU:He visited his parentshouse, and was waiting for the supper when local TV station showedher again. That Stand up comedian beginner. She still had modestpopularity, still somehow for him the girl was biggest celebrity. - Oh you watching this again? - his sister sat near him – She isnot that bad you know. I laughed few times from her jokes. -Really? - he smiled warmly which was rather rare nowadays when hishectic police work was draining him more and more. - Yep. But herInternet is even funnier “The slipper girl”. She is a meme in ourschool. “Don’t anger me or I’ll call slipper girl and she willslipper you into the space” – she started to laugh.He wasn’tsure if this tease or not so tried to be neutral. - You knowthat is only her part time job right? - his father entered the room - You never guess what is she aiming for. - I don’t know. Tell me– He was interested now. - A detective! How about that! Narumisays she has potential but till quite unshaped. - Haha dad! Shewill break the cases with the footwear for sure!Both laughed butRyu just smiled looking at the muted now TV where his small cute idolwas waving her slipper. A detective huh? That means there was quite abig chance they will meet someday and then he, for sure, will get herautograph. That smile is worth getting it.And here not so much Au ;) : - I’m a star, Ryu-kun astar! - Akiko shouted entering the Agency with her daughter who shetook back from kindergarten. Her husband sat there, drank teahaving an eye for knocked out Philip (Double was needed but thetrouble was not that much to call for Accel. For now that is) -Really? What happened? - the man asked taking his kid up in arms. Thegirl giggled - Mum’s on the phone! - she laughed. - she isright look look! - Akiko almost glued her smartphone his face. -Remember when I smacked with slipper that creep on the park?Howcould he forget. They had nice family walk when some middle agedguy was pit too friendly toward 2 girls. Ryu didn’t had enough timeto react when his wife took a slipper from her bag and smacked thehell of that man. Of course in this ere some people recorded it andnow policeman was witness of all this mess where Akiko showed him fewdifferent memes of the event. - Who know? Maybe they will ask mefor a talk show or something? - she danced enthusiastically with herphone. - we have to celebrate! I know! I’ll get us some cake! Beright back! - she walked fast from the room humming some randommelody.Ryu sighed but then smiled looking ant the screen of hisphone where he had photo he made himself somehow of the event.Hewas so sure, he was her biggest fan in the end.

#princess-sas #kamen rider w #kamen rider double #short fiction #Narumi akiko #terui ryu

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deadmandairyland · 6 years

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Chihiro Fujisaki for the ask~

Thanks for the ask! I probably put way too many words in this. I hope you like reading!

002 | Give me a character & I will tell you

How I feel about this character:

Chihiro is probably my favorite character in Danganronpa. I think there was a time where I would have said he definitely was my favorite, but I have to give credit where credit is due because most of the characters in this series are amazing and uniquely and creatively designed. But Chihiro will always be near the top of my favorites if he somehow isn’t in first place. He is an unsung hero of the series. Without him the survivors of DR1 would have never escaped the school. He is at least in part responsible for the creation of the Neo World Program, which is a key part of the Hope’s Peak Academy arc’s lore. Supplementary materials often show Chihiro being at least somewhat involved in the backstory of the series. As I mentioned back when Absolute Despair Girls came out, Chihiro was basically the Adventure Time snail of the series for a time, showing up in or being mentioned in about as many installments and spin-offs of the series as Junko Enoshima. I’m pretty sure Chihiro has made more appearances in one way, shape, or form than friggin’ Komaeda, and everyone loves Komaeda. (Though screentime, on the other hand, is another story. I think it’s safe to say Junko and Komaeda won out on that end)

All in all, I feel that this is a character who deserves better–not just because he died such a tragic death, but in a meta sense as well. I feel like the series, after building up Chihiro in flavor text for so many installments, decided to backpedal a bit and make him more of a footnote than anyone important. This is especially disappointing considering that when most people talk about Chihiro, most of the time it’s in reference to the gender controversy, rather than his accomplishments in the series. Granted, this is a very important aspect of Chihiro’s character as well, and I’m not going to go out of my way to be a dick to people who say they saw something different in Chihiro than what I saw, but whenever I go through the tags it does seem like Chihiro seems to be one-note to a lot of people, and I feel it is a shame because there is a lot going on there. Themes of inner strength and resurrection and how destructive enforced gender roles and bullying in Japanese high schools can get when taken to the logical extreme. A lot of this seems to be ignored. I mean we all joke about how Chihiro’s birthday is Pi Day, but how many people also realize it’s White Day, the day when boys are expected to give gifts back to girls in response to being given chocolates on Valentine’s Day? Thinking about it that way, it makes you wonder what Chihiro’s birthdays were actually like. With all the talk surrounding Chihiro’s gender, I’m surprised that I’ve never seen anyone speculate on this. Might make for an interesting fanfiction prompt too, regardless of how you view Chihiro’s gender identity.

This got awfully wordy and more political than I expected it to get and I apologize. Though, to be fair, Danganronpa is a very political series… usually. Still, this is just a fun little meme, and I don’t intend to dive head first off a cliff into the sea and jagged rocks of fandom discourse, so let me end this segment by briefly saying another thing I like about Chihiro that will hopefully lift all of our spirits before we move on:

Chihiro is a sweet and adorable cinnamon roll that we do not deserve.

Just look at his smiling face!

No matter how sad I am, that smile will always make me feel a little better, if not outright happy.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Well, I could look over the charts I’ve made and find probably a million Chihiro ships (okay that’s a bit of an exaggeration; it’s probably more like twenty, which is still about fifteen too many), so I’m just going to stick with the big ones.

Naegi, Asahina, Sakura, and Ishimaru.

…Maybe Mondo. Maybe Leon. Maybe Mukuro. Maybe real world Chiaki. Maybe Kuzuryu. Maybe that Yukimaru guy who we sadly never get to see. Maybe Miaya… who we sadly never get to see. Maybe a crap ton of others…

But mostly the first four I listed.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

All of the “maybes” in the previous section.

Am I cheating at this? Yes.

…

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Don’t worry. I won’t be going for the obvious joke. (I mean I better not, especially after that first segment. It would defeat the purpose of that giant wall of text I made you sit through)

Instead I’m just going to remind anyone who thinks Chihiro is overrated and wasn’t an important character that Chihiro vicariously saved Naegi’s life and therefore the other survivors’ lives as well and y’all can suck it.

Also there’s that thing I made a thing in my DR3 fic that I still haven’t finished yet or even updated since November (oh my god it’s May already) where Chihiro is a fan of professional wrestling and that’s now a headcanon of mine that I’m sure very few people have or would agree with.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

This might seem like a cop-out, since this is Danganronpa and all, but I wish Chihiro survived.

To be fair it wouldn’t make sense from a narrative standpoint. Alter Ego is essentially a replacement/doppelganger for Chihiro, so having them co-exist in the story would be jarring. Also Chihiro plays the part of sacrificial lamb perfectly, and the foreshadowing leading to Chihiro’s death is written remarkably well. (Even as far back as the very beginning of chapter two, which occurs immediately after Leon’s execution, Chihiro is distraught over having sent Leon to his death, and Chihiro even says that he would rather die than do that again)

But that doesn’t mean I’m happy about it, damn it.

#LetChihiroLive2018

my OTP:

Naegi x Chihiro. Two adorable cinnamon rolls with heartwarming and occasionally sad Free Time Events that actually tie into the plot in such a way that they actually feel 100% canon. There is also that punch to the gut that happens at the end of Chihiro’s FTEs if you manage to get them all. Naegi’s reactions to Chihiro being gone are also heartbreaking, especially in the anime adaptation which includes this response to Alter Ego being crushed into a ball that I admit there is a possibility I could be taking out of context here but it’s worth mentioning.

“We lost him again.”

And of course, as I mentioned before, Alter Ego saves Naegi’s life later, which means Chihiro saves Naegi’s life, which means Chihiro effectively saves all of the DR1 survivors. Important character is important.

Oh, and also Naegi can give Chihiro a thong for a present, which is still hilarious to me. I mean I know Chihiro isn’t the only character who likes the thong, but even Togami liking the gift isn’t as funny to me as Chihiro liking it. And Togami alone liking it is straight-up absurd. It’s a thong. That you can give as a gift to other people. During a game where people are forced to kill each other in order to escape what is essentially a prison. A thong. The only thing that would make it funnier is if it changed the outcome of School Mode. “Hey, remember this thong you gifted me? I’d like to return it, because it just occurred to me that this is a really weird gift. Why, Naegi? Why did you give me a thong for a gift? You could have given me perfume, or a Kirlian camera, or a portable video game console, or a punk rock T-shirt, but no. You gave me a thong. Why?”

But for the most part, it’s their interactions. FTEs included, I love all of the interactions between these two, both one-and-one and with the group. It always seems like they have each other’s backs and care about each other’s well-being. Chihiro even foreshadows the memory wipe very early on in the game in a way that makes me wonder how close they might have been before the memory wipe.

Also, they’re just sweet to each other and it’s adorable and heartwarming and, y’know, goals. But if you prefer your ships to be more interesting, these two do have that potential what with their baggage and all–Chihiro for obvious reasons and Naegi being just some guy in a relationship with someone who is far smarter, nicer, and more talented than him. So if conflict (though it’d likely be more along the lines of inner conflict, or conflict dealing with others outside the relationship) is what you’re looking for, there is potential for that too, even if we don’t see it very often.

(Honestly I think that’s why there isn’t a whole lot of content of this ship, at least nowadays. It seems like a lot of people ship it, but no one really writes for it much or draws much of it beyond fluff. The ship itself, I think, is seen as too fluffy for engaging storytelling… if you’re not thinking outside the box, anyway)

my cross over ship:

Pick a programmer, a hacker, or an intentionally gender-ambiguous or “otokonoko” type character who is roughly within Chihiro’s not-fully-established age range from any work that I’ve personally seen or played and I’ve probably considered shipping Chihiro with them at least once. Honorable mention goes to Pidge and Saika Totsuka, whom I’m pretty sure I’ve at least talked about and compared Chihiro to on this blog.

a headcanon fact

Remember when I said that the series seems to be backpedaling a bit after making Chihiro have an ungodly amount of behind-the-scenes importance? Well screw that. I mentioned it here a couple years back (and I have since mellowed out on the whole “If Chihiro isn’t important in DR3 we riot” thing so don’t worry about that), but I’ll mention it again. IF said that Chihiro recognized Monokoma’s programming as something he worked on. His FTEs say that he was working on an AI project for some company. And Usami looks way too much like Monokuma to be a coincidence.

So screw any potential retcons that may come out of Monaca Towa being the mass producer of Monokuma units, because I believe that the company Chihiro was making the AI for was Towa, and Monaca modified the AI to fit Junko’s needs, which would tie everything together into a neat little bow.

But sadly, this is still only a headcanon. But it’s one that I feel has a lot of weight to it, and that the series has yet to make impossible. So I’m clinging onto it like a friggin’ koala.

Holy crap, this was long! And yet I feel like I haven’t said much of anything. It’s tough to bring my thoughts into words sometimes. But I think it’s plain to see (damn it, Tsumugi, get out of here, we’re not paying your VA double for this post) that I love Chihiro, and he’s definitely one of my favorite DR characters if not my top favorite.

Thanks again for the ask!

#dangan ronpa #chihiro fujisaki #makoto naegi #naehiro #chi-the-hero

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bnrobertson1 · 3 years

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The Cleansing Comedy of “Cum Town”

To paraphrase a point Canadian All-American Hero Norm MacDonald laid on a then-alive Larry King, comedians used to aspire to be funny, now they aspire to appear smart. While political humor, ostensibly a stage to show off one’s intellect and humanity by the empathetic tackling of modern topics, has been a thing as long as humor itself, there was time in the not-so-distant past where the goal was the display of comedy chops, not compassion*. This significant shift in the mainstream started with Jon Stewart’s reign as host of The Daily Show. A far departure from the wackier Craig “Dance Dance Dance” Kilborn’s approach to the Comedy Central staple, Stewart treated TDS as a megaphone in which he could espouse his political views. Nightly challenging W’s hawkish take on foreign policy, liberals the country over championed their new clever-if-not-amusing hero- but at some point during Stewart’s ascension, reflecting a certain acceptable viewpoint became more important than reflecting a sense of humor.

*Back in the early SNL days Chevy Chase suggested that Gerald Ford sustained significant brain damage playing football to mock Ford’s bumbling persona, not excoriate him on the tenets of his agenda.

Consider Last Week Tonight with John Oliver or the zeitgeist-shifting Nanette. The former features some of the best reporting on the planet, displaying a willingness to cover potential viewership-poison like prison reform or, on a recent episode, black hair and its connection to the systematic racism African Americans face daily. The show is relentless, passionate, and is about as funny as that sounds. John Oliver is clearly a witty person, but even he often acknowledges how “Erudite Brit Shames Americans over Racism” isn’t exactly the blueprint for a yuckle factory*. Much like his old boss Stewart, Oliver is more dedicated to espousing the correct viewpoint over a funny one. To this point, most “jokes” in the show feel jammed in like a satirical sausage, often coming across as after-thoughts that can mess with the tone**. As a show it is unquestionably a success, opening myriad eyes to plights once unknown. As a comedy show, which is what it at least originally marketed itself as, it is a failure.

*It is, however, pretty perfect Monday Morning hiding-in-cubicle watching

**While he does try to infuse some zaniness into the program by talking about fucking animals or whatever, I don’t think Oliver realizes how genuinely funny it is watching a bookish Brit get upset about coconut oil hair products, although not in the way he probably hopes it would be.

An even purer example of Norm’s point is Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette. The buzzed-about stand-up special is essentially a takedown of white male-ism, albeit one that seems allergic to laughing. Gadsby is trying to woo you with her intellectualism, not her ability to make you chuckle. Some called this approach brilliant- turning a male-dominated form on its head to put its practitioners on blast for things ranging from sexism to transphobia. Widely decorated around the world for its innovative and sharp honesty, Nanette asked the big question: is the next wave of comedy not meant to be funny? Is cutting edge humor not humorous at all? Are we entering a Metal Machine Music era of comedy? And if so, is merely criticizing the perceived powers-that-be now considered comedy?

More like No-nette

This desire to display empathetic enlightenment has gone well beyond the world of stand-up and political comedy. It can be seen by the yanking of episodes of comic cornerstones such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and 30 Rock that feature blackface, or animated programs recasting characters so that voices are both more inclusive and representative. Even The Simpsons has all but abandoned its once trademark balance, its current form essentially the wet-blanket Lisa, a far, far cry from the Homer-centric past of the show’s glory years.

All of these decisions have been made by the shows’ respective creators, a mea culpa for insensitive liberties taken in the recent past. Blame the internet for the long, indelible digital footprints, but people are now more worried about how the future will remember them, in some enlightened far-off utopia where comedy is really about nothing being funny, and everybody is judged by the language you used when no one really gave a rat’s ass about what you had to say.

Entertainers are far more concerned with looking good fifteen years from now than making people laugh now. Ironic detachment- the reason a lot of the questionable humor existed in the first place*, isn’t a big enough distance for comics to get away with racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, chuckles be damned.

*Racists have been the butt of the joke- and not the jokesters- for as long as I can remember. I find it hard to believe that anyone could watch an Always Sunny and think they’re mocking minorities. While the meme-ification of America has robbed many of these jokes of context, it’s a waste of time to criticize creators for devolving consumption habits, especially in the name of inclusion, compassion, etc.

It’s not my place to say whether this is good or bad. As self-censorship isn’t really censorship, it’s hard to argue that an artist willfully pulling their work from the marketplace is some sort of injustice. It’s their reputation (read: livelihood) after all. There are things I would probably delete/hide if anybody gave enough of a shit to do a deep dive into my past babblings. But while I certainly applaud the idealistic efforts to make a more welcoming society for all, it does kind of suck that it comes at the expense of comic mana such as Lethal Weapon 5 (and 6).

At the risk of kicking dusty horse bones, this does boil the whole “cancel culture” debate down to one consideration: what is acceptable to laugh at?

Insert the podcast “Cum Town.” Starring the trio of Nick Mullen (the bitter one), Stravos Hilias (the bigger one), and Adam Friedland (the butler?), “Cum Town” is the least political of the “Dirtbag Left”* wave of offerings*. If you can’t tell by the name, “Cum Town” isn’t for the crowd that regularly uses the word “problematic.” Employing a fairly new media in the podcast, the three NY-based comics shoot the shit on pretty much all matters, keeping the atmosphere loose and the unapologetic laughs flowing.

*Which also includes the hugely popular “Chapo Trap House” and “Red Scare,” shows that are both fairly funny... and can often be accurately described as “permanently congested neck-beards talking tough about revolution or whatever in between rhapsodizing about time-old yet currently posh talking points (distribution of wealth, liberalism vs. leftism, etc.)”.

As bad as the Olivers and the Gadsbys of the world want to change your mind, the trio at “Cum Town” are much more focused on tickling your funny bone (and/or prostate). Its setup gives the show an air of Howard-Stern-in-the-90s danger, where things that probably should never be thought are said with glee. They’re the type of guys who find the humor in places that make others uncomfortable, such as the connection of the Clintons to Jeffrey Epstein’s murder or, in one particularly great skit, how Trump would undoubtedly try to smear Robert De Niro as a non-Italian homosexual.

youtube

Devoid of the pretension other “enlightened” modern comedy wears so proudly, the show can focus on being being funny in ways that spur a gut laugh, not a guffaw.

“Cum Town” works because its as self-aware as it is fearless. These aren’t Andrew Dice Clays winding up the Islanders stadium with bits about “the brothers.” They’re not just reliving old Stern bits, asking alcoholic little people and other societal pariahs to make fools of themselves. The show wouldn’t work if it was merely “saying racial slurs with the EdgeLord Crowd.” "Cum Town” operates like a savvy boxer- throwing shots, usually at modern idols, knowing that it leaves them open to counter punches.

The genius of this approach is that they know what the counter punches will be (being called “racist,” “sexist,” “fascist,” etc.)... and have a counter-punch for that!* It’s not like it takes Ali-esque anticipatory vision to know what the criticisms will be. While calling a (probably white, cis-gender, straight) male “racist!” or “sexist!” or “fascist!” surely feels empowering to the counter-puncher, the reality is a lot of those terms have absolutely lost their meaning or the damaging heft that used to accompany their utterance. With the mass acceptance of systematic sexism/ racism as prevalent in everyday life, all the (bad) -isms are supposedly so ingrained into the white male psyche that they’re bigots no matter what. Especially when you consider that laughing- actual laughing- is more of a neurological reaction than a considered response. Put another way: a skit depicting Tony Soprano as an Indian may not confuse anybody into thinking Stav is on a first-name basis with Noam Chomsky, but it is infinitely funnier than all the “Donald Drumpf”s shouted together combined.

*Sorry, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out is about the extent of my boxing knowhow.

The show operates in a world where performance compassion is a hell of a lot worse than genuine feeling. Where Donald Trump gets mocked- but less so than Hillary Clinton, who’s president campaign’s attempt to make her “cool” was, let’s say, ill-fitting. It gets mean and nasty because comedy does. So, did Adam Friedland get called out by Chelsea Clinton for calling her ugly*? Yep. And many came to Chelsea’s defense calling for Adam’s sexist, disgusting head, I’m sure in only pro-Semitic ways. Does Nick’s archaic (though quite good) impressions of various ethnicities to a certain trope? Or does Stav talking about pornography and getting ass with a somewhat slimy tone? The three “Cum Town” hosts know that the list of the “powerless” has changed considerably in the last few decades, and that those who pay service to liberal ideals should be mocked just like the rest of us.

The tweet in question.

Juvenile? Sure. Insensitive? Yes. But God Dammit, isn’t humor supposed to be that way? If there’s a killer joke where the punch-line is “bigotry is bad,” I’m not aware of it. “Cum Town” generates a type of laughter that feels liberating- like you’re shaking off the oppressive scowl of a world that blames you- person who has been around for about one one billionth of the world’s life- for all its ills. The more modern society weighs us with new considerations on language and decorum, conjured rules that dictate what you may have a reaction to and what you may not, the funnier the humor in its opposition flies. Breaking rules is inherently funny- thumbing your nose at society is at the core of comedy’s release. And the more it becomes taboo to say words like “tranny,” “fat,” “dumb,” “midget,” etc., the more comedic release will be given when we say the words that I’m not going to type right here. Because the further the joke is from the norm, the more space there is for laughter to form.

Some believe this humor can lead to hatred which can lead to violence. That the Capitol’s riots were a warped result of the Rogans of the world. That by hearing Dave Chappelle say the n-word, white people will start to adopt it, and chaos will surely follow. But there’s another school of thought that says being able to laugh at something is the genesis of being able to process something and eventual acceptance.

I realize this is hardly a surprising point from a straight white guy, one who has said (regretfully and not recently) on more than one occasion that “I don’t get offended, I don’t understand why others do?” But I also think that a lot of the “hurt” these societal infractions cause are more of a smokescreen or diversion from bigger problems. It’d be easier to distract people with discussions over whether James Bond should be black or if Dr. Seuss books featuring offensive illustrations should be banned as opposed to, I don’t know, actually try to combat some of the systematic problems that propagate systems that truly stun growth? Telling people they should feel guilty about something is a slippery slope as we have around 8 billion people on earth, there’s plenty of misery to go around. We should all probably feel bad about something.

In conclusion, “Cum Town” knows that just because something is bad doesn’t mean it can’t be funny. As mentioned before, humor is often how people cope with the hypocritical, values-starved planet we find ourselves on. Humor should delight our soul, not display our sophistication.

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omniishambles · 4 years

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brotp/platonic ship meme for Thera and Jonathan and Thera and Az :)

leave a brotp/platonic ship in my ask and i’ll tell you...

* * *

who steals french fries off the other’s plate: I can imagine they’re both very guilty of this! Jonathan’s probably the one who started it though. who jokingly moves in for the kiss when someone asks if they’re a couple: Thera. Definitely Thera, but Jonathan will play along in that mocking way he does! who has to bust or bail the other out of jail: Oof, I mean...they take it in turns, I suspect? However, Johnny will be more likely to actually get caught out of the two of them, so him more so being bailed out. who gives the other advice/comfort about dating issues: Why give advice when you can just get drunk and complain? who shamelessly cheats at games by reaching over to cover the other’s eyes: Jonathan, because he can’t actually do things like that when he’splaying against anybody else! who immediately calls dibs on the top bunk: Jonathan, because he has Eldest Sibling Syndrome. who starts and who wins the pillow fights: Thera starts them. She also finishes them. who says “your pants would look better on their floor” to the other’s potential crush: T he r a. 100%.

* * *

who steals french fries off the other’s plate: Aziraphale wouldn’t dream of stealing food, he’d ask! Thera is chip thief though and Aziraphale lets her do it. who jokingly moves in for the kiss when someone asks if they’re a couple: Thera would, because Aziraphale would still be too busy processing the fact that someone called them a couple. who has to bust or bail the other out of jail: Aziraphale will gladly help Thera slip out of jail when needed. He’s only had the experience himself once and once was enough. who gives the other advice/comfort about dating issues: They both swap advice, though Thera has a lot more experience in this area! But the angel is always there to listen if she wants to sound things off or straight up bitch over tea who shamelessly cheats at games by reaching over to cover the other’s eyes: Thera does! Aziraphale doesn’t need to cover her eyes to cheat lmao who immediately calls dibs on the top bunk: Thera does, and Aziraphale would let her have it! He doesn’t sleep very often. who starts and who wins the pillow fights: I think they could both be guilty of starting this, especially if they’ve been on the wine. Winner depends on whose had too much. who says “your pants would look better on their floor” to the other’s potential crush: They’d both say this, but Thera would say it straight while Aziraphale would do so in some strange convoluted way and either confuse the person or end up being funnier than his own attempt to embarrass her.

* * *

#therapardalis #hc: jonathan #hc: aziraphale

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snakepointb · 3 years

Text

Ask me how I feel: Current times

The world is upside down. If you’re at the bottom and want to be on top, just turn everything upside down. You’re there. It’s a metaphor. I don’t know what it means. It just sounds true to me. What is true these days? I don’t know anymore. Somebody turned everything upside down. I turned myself upside down to be able to see things the right way up again, but in the meantime, somebody just shook everything around, and now, I don’t know whether I’m upside down, or everything around me is upside down, or inside out, or whether simply the terminology was swapped, or whether all or a combination of the above scenarios has manifested.

It’s confusing. It’s draining. It’s hard work. I want to cry sometimes. Other times it’s all hilarious. No one could make this up, but I suspect that someone did. Wow, what a guy (or girl)! Well, it wasn’t just one person, of course. There must have been a whole bunch of them. Sometimes I imagine them at their brainstorming sessions. Are they dead serious, or do they roll on the floor laughing at the thought of what they’ll be able to get away with. In my imagination they roll on the floor. It’s funnier. Those that do not roll on the floor laugh insanely, like the villain in Austin Powers, with an 80s Kung-Fu movie zoom in on his face. Robert Anton Wilson reminded us that reality is what you can get away with.

Imagining it like that is more entertaining, and what if anything can we expect to gain from this life but entertainment, at least according to George Carlin. Life is for your entertainment. Everything is for your entertainment. If you’re getting all worked up and frustrated, you’re doing something wrong. Just relax. Enjoy the show. Have a good time. Laugh.

It’s all a farce. All the big words have been turned into their opposite. We speak of the economy as if it is about managing the resources of the Earthly household. But what we mean is chrematistics, the art of maximizing personal profit. What economy used to mean has been termed ecology and was given to the academics to discuss to death. The practice of it has been appropriated by the chrematisticians and misleadingly termed economics. Nobody noticed.

Everything is misleading. We think that all of this economic hullaballoo is the entrepreneurial expression of homo modernus, the realization of our promised fate, the progress and wealth and glory that awaits us at the end of a long and arduous journey from the darkness and poverty of the past to the golden light of the future. But as one wise thinker expressed it, this economy is not an business enterprise. It is a liquidation. The whole planet is being stripped of its assets; everything is liquidated and carefully turned into transient expressions of social status.

This economy mines life itself by feeding on the regenerative capacity of nature. It decimates diversity, turning the potential of tomorrow’s abundance into today’s monetary profit. But what even is money? One hell of a belief system, that’s for sure. And here, too, people think it’s a science. They study it in finance, and economics, and business management and people get Nobel prizes for it. How astonishing!

It’s like we’re living in a world that makes sense on paper, but not beyond. Or imagine writing on the keyboard of your computer. You hit the letters and the words appear on the screen as they always do. You can write sentences using the same words and they mean the same things when you read them out. But the point is that that’s just on the surface.

Below the surface, there are additional levels of reality. In the case of your keyboard and your word processor, the next level of this reality is called ASCII, the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This ASCII code represents the text you write, but is actually much more comprehensive than that. Only the code space from 20 to 7E (hexadecimal) represent printable characters. The rest is machine commands and control characters.

So every letter and every symbol has a code. The code fore “A”, for example, is “1000001” (binary), and 41 (hexadecimal). The codes for “Z” are “1011010” and “5A”, respectively.

If someone went to the level of ASCII and changed all the code, we wouldn’t see it on our keyboard. We’d type an “A” but produce a “Z”. Since ASCII also represents control characters such as Delete, Backspace, or Line Feed. We might hit Return but delete a word, or press Shift but produce a space.

Changing the underlying code changes nothing on your keyboard, but everything in the actual effects of your actions in reality. In the same way, on the surface, our language and concepts appears the same, but at some point, somebody went ahead and changed all the underlying code.

It so comes that we now think we do economics, when what we’re actually doing is chrematistics. There are endless examples of this. We think we’re doing education when we’re actually doing indoctrination. We believe we’re doing rational science when it actually has already become a belief system. We think we’re eating diverse food, when in actual fact we are consuming processed commodities that are composed from a handful of raw ingredients that have been given the appearance of diversity. We think we are exercising freedom of thought and expression when in actual fact we have already internalized self-censorship and conduct conversation within delineated opinion corridors, ensuring at all times that we stay a safe distance from politically incorrect and other touchy subjects. We think that we are self-determined, free, and autonomous actors when in actual fact we have from the very first breath been firmly embedded in culturally determined matrices of values, morals, expectations, categories, gender roles, age roles, social conventions, and belief systems. Our mind is a colonized space. Our body is a vessel, and our mind was already being filled long before we could give informed consent. By the time we were old enough to object, most damage had already been done.

Well, it’s obviously not all damage. Don’t get me wrong. We were also given the frameworks to appreciate art and music and the ability to express ourselves. We also learn how to use our minds for useful things, such as writing and calculating, and making plans and stuff.

The point is that we have drifted for too long, placing too much emphasis on trust, and too little on scrutiny. And we were enticed to do so. The trust-inspiring message from the worlds of corporate and political governance was: “You just enjoy life, we’ll take care of the rest”.

For the last decades, we enjoyed life. I don’t know when exactly, but somewhere between the 1960s and the 2000s must have been the longest stretch of peace, rising living standards, social progress, civil liberties, and positive future outlook.

While our parents’ generation basked in this awe-inspiring wealth and abundance and faith in unlimited progress and power of science to transform the world for the better for everyone, the corporate powers were left unchecked.

Now, that the first generations have woken from the slumber and are finding themselves in a world full of growing existential threats and increasing bleakness of future outlook, we come to realize that those that we thought were taking care of “the rest”, first and foremost took care of themselves. They have become the untouchable billionaire class. The new divine rulers of the world. Untouchable by us mortals, untouchable by the law. Their relative social status and power is equal to that of the emperors of ancient Rome. Unfortunately their mental health is comparable to that of some of Rome’s more insane emperors, too. I think Jeffery Eppstein and his associates would have been best buddies with Caligula, had they ever had the fortune to meet.

Anyways, while taking care of themselves, the elite also did other things, like plan ahead for the time when people would start waking up. They also messed everything up to such an extent that everything is upside down, and even if you stand on your head, you will still not be able to make any sense of anything, because they also changed the underlying code. Like, you type an A and get a Z. You support peacekeeping missions and get war. The leaders of the Free World, champions of Human Rights, Liberty, and Democracy, the United States, France, and Germany are the largest, third-largest, and fourth-largest arms exporters in the world. Like, you type an A and get a Z. You vote for peace and get war. In the same way, you promote health but actually support the medical-industrial complex. The system’s been hacked. You’re being deceived. It doesn’t make any sense. It makes money. It’s a liquidation.

So how does this work?, you may ask. Well, I suspect that there is a kind of place for the cognitive dissonance “dividend”, if that’s what you want to call it. It follows the dominant logic of privatizing profits and collectivizing the cost. The cognitive dissonance dividend is absorbed by society through individuals who internalize it and express it as disease pathologies. Stress, trauma, mental disorders, diseases, sociopathology, psychopathology, violence, but also art. Lots of art. Thanks for the art. Oh my god, Halleluiah for Art! If it weren’t for the arts providing a reliable vehicle for collective catharsis, we would have long broken apart. So that’s one of the positive outcomes. The poetry and song, the visual art, the installation, the dance, the memes, the comedy, the tragedy, the film and theatre. The whole range of it. But that’s not the point.

The point is that everything is upside down, and no matter how many times you flip yourself, or the world, it’ll never come back together again, because, in addition, the underlying code has been changed. My suspicion is that it isn’t just the code that was changed, but the entire hardware and software and, most importantly, the architecture.

We’re all still behaving like it’s the good old days, while actually the system has already long entered a new paradigm, where data mining has replaced democratic decision-making processes and perception management has replaced the idea of citizens informed through a diverse and pluralistic media landscape .

It doesn’t matter. In the meantime. Don’t look for a reference point outside yourself, because you’re in a madly whirling vortex of confusion and disinformation. Look inside. Take a deep look at yourself. Perhaps you can undo some of the doings that have been done upon you and create some sort of holy ignorance, or a beginners mind, as some Zen practitioners like to call it. Madness is just another form of sanity. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Make it yours. Be upside down, and be a code breaker. Then, break free from the Matrix, cleanse the doors of perception and let everything appear as it is.

E&OE

#covid late stage capitalism postmodernity critical theory

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50shadesofbrain · 6 years

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What makes a meme go viral?

A bit of a warning before reading: This post starts talking about Twilight roughly halfway through, and doesn’t really stop. I offer neither excuse nor apology.

Hello, internet, and welcome to another exciting installment of 50 Shades of Brain. I’m your host, Tim Carroll. Today, I’m delving into the exciting/horrifying world of internet memes.

What are memes?

The word “meme” was first invented by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book “The Selfish Gene.” A meme is an idea, behavior, or belief that spreads from person to person like a thought contagion. In the same way that a person can develop biological traits (hair color or skin color) by expressing the right genes, a person can develop mental traits (political beliefs and religions) by expressing memes. Just as the study of genes is known as genetics, the study of memes is known as memetics. (Meme rhymes with team, and memetics loosely rhymes with phonetics.)

Memetics and Psychology are closely related sciences. But while Psychology often asks “How do people find ideas?” Memetics asks “How do ideas find people?” [This quote - along with many of the ideas expressed in this blog post - is taken from the book Thought Contagion.]

I’m a big fan of the term “Thought Contagion” to describe memes, as it likens memes to viruses. Memes, like viruses, require people to spread, and, also like viruses, often don’t need the people involved to be willing participants in the spreading. That’s why memes are often described as “self-spreading ideas.”

Now keep in mind, an idea doesn’t have to be true in order for it to be a meme. A great example of a probably-untrue self-spreading idea is the story of Saint Elmo’s Fire. In case you’ve never heard of it, Saint Elmo’s Fire is a meteorological phenomenon in which glowing plasma surrounds tall, pointed objects during thunderstorms (or any situation where there’s a lot of electrical potential energy in the sky.)

This means that during intense thunderstorms at sea, the mastheads of old sailing ships would begin to glow. You can see a video of it here. Rather than seeing this as terrifying, sailors who saw these lights claimed that it was a sign that Saint Elmo, the patron saint of sailors, was there with them to ensure that they would make it through the storm.

Now, is that explanation true? Probably not. What makes the idea “a glowing mast in a storm is a good omen” memetic is that it’s a thought that’s nearly impossible to disprove. Think about it: the sailors who saw St. Elmo’s Fire and made it back to shore could tell everyone the story of Saint Elmo guiding them through an impossible and terrifying storm. Those who saw Saint Elmo’s fire and didn’t make it back to shore… well they couldn’t tell their tale to the contrary, could they? As such, with plenty of sailors to confirm the legend, and none to speak out against it, the legend – or should I say meme - spread.

This meme also had two other things going for it that helped it spread. The first is that it benefitted from some “pre-existing infrastructure.” Saint Elmo was a figure in an already-established and incredibly popular belief system, in this case, Christianity. [Christianity, as well as every other religion, is also a good example of a meme.]

The second factor that helped this meme spread was that it was generally a comforting thing to believe in. During a terrifying storm, a captain probably felt a lot better shouting “Saint Elmo is with us!” to his crew than “We are all so screwed…”

Saint Elmo’s fire is just one example of a meme. I mentioned religion above, but faith in science is also a meme. If you feel the urge to share this blog post with your friends, then the ideas inside are also memetic.

I could go on for hours listing examples of memes (any cultural/social norm for instance) but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. But before we move on, I should also mention anti-memes – ideas that terminate themselves. A great example of an anti-meme is the idea “melee weapons are more useful than guns during warfare.” This idea died a rapid death in America right around the time of the Civil War. Care to take a guess as to why?

So that’s what the word meme used to mean….

But what does meme mean now…

The science of memetics has hit something of a stalling point in recent years. There are several reasons for this, but a rather salient one is the fact that the word meme has taken on a somewhat different definition.

Today, the word “meme” most commonly refers to pieces of media – be they images, gifs, or blocks of text, that are passed around the internet usually as a joke or to make a political point. Probably the most famous of these is Pepe the Frog. These are often thought to have started with the internet but it’s not too difficult to find historical examples. During the 40’s it was popular for WWII GI’s to scrawl the words “Kilroy was here” on walls and structures. In the 60’s and 70’s it was popular to wear buttons or make graffiti that said “Frodo Lives.” Or if you wanted to get really old fashioned, people have been drawing a square that reads “SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS“ since around the birth of Christ. (That last example looks much cooler when it’s arranged into a five by five square, rather than written out.)

Two thousand years is a long time for a five word message to hang around, wouldn’t you say? What makes those five words have more staying power than all the other Roman graffiti out there?

I guess I’m asking what makes certain memes have so much staying power. Or, in other words…

What makes a meme go viral?

Every year we post an estimated 1.8 billion images to the internet. (Just to give you an idea of how big a number that is, if you dedicated a single second to looking at every one of those pictures, you’d finish sometime in 2075.)

With such a massive number of pictures, it’s likely you could only view a tiny fraction of them, and share an even tinier fraction. And the fraction you see is almost entirely composed of pictures that others decided to share themselves.

What makes that fraction special? Why have over a hundred million people looked at this dress, but not this one? Why is this frog so damn popular, but this one isn’t?

Today on Fifty Shades of Brain, I’m going to endeavor to answer these questions. It turns out there’s not one answer as to what makes a meme more sharable than another. However, I’ve found that almost all memes have one or more of the following things in commons. The first of which is:

1. Pre-Existing Infrastructure

Up above, we talked about pre-existing infrastructure being important in the spreading of the legend of St. Elmo’s Fire. Turns out having a “fan base” helps your meme immensely. In fact, as this Daily Dot article about the ‘wistful Javert’ meme explains, most memes become famous as derivatives of other memes.

If you have a favorite meme – and who doesn’t – you can track its evolution on the surprisingly comprehensive website Know Your Meme, where you can see not just how that meme started, but all of the ways that that meme has crossed over into other memes.

But why would we prefer derivatives? Shouldn’t we like originals just as much, if not more?

Not exactly. The answer lies in something called the Mere Exposure Effect. The Mere Exposure effect is a logical fallacy that causes us to like things more that we’ve seen before. It applies to pretty much everything. We’ll even think that Chinese characters mean nicer things if we’ve seen them before.

In fact, things become funnier the more you’re exposed to them. The more people are exposed to a newspaper comic, the funnier people think it is. [I have a hypothesis that this repeated exposure effect is why comics like Dagwood and the Family Circus have stuck around for so many years.]

Now sometimes memes can be a reference so obscure, that it’s almost impossible to know what the original topic being referenced was without the aforementioned Know Your Meme website. In fact sometimes the joy of spreading an obscure meme is…

2. The ability to be part of a cool secret club.

When we look at some of the ancient memes above we find that a lot of them have a component that is difficult to read to outsiders. For example, the phrase “Frodo lives” doesn’t mean much to people who don’t know about Lord of the Rings. And “SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS” doesn’t mean much if you don’t speak Latin.

So why all the secrecy? Don’t we like it when people understand what we’re talking about? Isn’t that the whole point of communication?

As a rule, humans don’t like keeping secrets. A 2013 study in the journal of adolescence found that keeping secrets was toxic to your health. Their exact words were “secrecy was associated with increased delinquency, physical complaints, depressive mood, loneliness, and with lower quality relationships.” Yikes.

However, humans do love feeling superior to an outgroup. It’s even been argued that it’s crucial to our self-esteem to believe our ingroup is better than our outgroups.

What better way to feel superior to others than to possess relevant information that they don’t have? And what better way to make the information you have relevant than by plastering it everywhere you can?

This love of having special information (or, at the very least, appearing to have it) would explain the internet’s love of increasingly obscure memes. Intentionally incomprehensible memes have become so common that some have likened memes to Contemporary Dadaism. (For those out of the loop, according to Wikipedia, original recipe Dadaism “consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest in their works.”

So we like memes that build on infrastructure and memes that make us look like part of a knowledgeable ingroup. What else do we like in our memes?

3. They make an argument without making an argument.

Here on 50 Shades of Brain, I try not to get political. I tend to leave that to other edgier blogs. That said, this argument is best done with political example

It’s not too hard to find a Facebook page that’s willing to share political messages in the form of pictures. But out of a very strong desire to stay out of current politics, why don’t we hop on a time machine to the year 2009 and look at this picture. In case you didn’t click on it, it’s a photo of Obama’s Inauguration that says, “One Million people attended Obama’s Inauguration and only fourteen missed work.” It doesn’t take much googling to find that both of those numbers are demonstrably untrue. A quick check on Wikipedia will tell you that roughly 1.8 million people attended the inauguration, including thousands of currently-employed security personnel]

Still the implication of this message is clear: “The people who voted for Obama didn’t have jobs and voted for him because he’d help them stay that way.”

But here’s the fun part about posting that picture to your Facebook page, you didn’t actually say that thing about Obama’s supporters. You implied it. So when your crazy/sane liberal Uncle Jeff comes to your wall and says that plenty of people who attended Obama’s inauguration had jobs or that it’s totally normal for people without jobs to vote against the party in power, you can tell him that it’s only a joke.

Isn’t it great? You get to be snarky and sarcastic with none of the consequences or commitment.

And we do love not being committed to an argument. People may like arguing online, but they hate being locked into things they can’t get out of. A study by Dan Ariely shows that we like keeping our options open. We’ll even throw away potential profits to keep options that we know are bad for us open, just because we can’t bear to be hemmed in. Even if we are completely aware that those options are worse for us than the path we’re on now.

Now, disliking Obama in 2008 wasn’t exactly a rare opinion. Roughly 47.1% of the country agreed with you on it. But just in case you’re confronted by that persnickety 52.9%, you can claim it’s just a joke and get out of the argument. This also helps if you’re not as well versed in politics as your aforementioned uncle since we hate losing arguments.

But if we didn’t like engaging in arguments then why even post this stuff? Well that brings us to the final thing that makes for a good meme.

4. Memes that allow us to declare our allegiance.

To understand this next bit, it might help to learn a little about signaling. In both Psychology and Biology, we have a term called “Signaling.” Basically, anytime we have an aspect of ourselves that we want to show off, we need to find a way to “signal” it to the world. In the (non-human) animal world, a peacock “signals” how sexy and well fed it is by showing off a nice coat of feathers. In the human world, a man might show off how much money he has by buying an expensive sports car.

One of the most important things in signal theory is understanding that every signal has a cost. Basically, the more time and effort you put into broadcasting a signal, the more others will assume you care about what you are signaling. For instance, if you donate $200 to breast cancer research, one would think you’re way more dedicated to ending breast cancer than if you just tweeted about it. Granted, what is considered a high-cost signal for you is probably not what would be considered a high cost signal for Bill Gates or Elon Musk.

Now, memes are pretty clearly low cost signals, but sometimes quantity can matter more than quality.

Signaling dovetails nicely with the innate human desire to belong to a group. A lot of popular memes allow you to declare your allegiance to something.

For instance, we talked about this dress earlier. The entire controversy around that dress was based around picking a side. Did you see it as black and blue or white and gold? Either way you get to belong to a new ingroup. An ingroup you get to be in with celebrities.

If you want to get more elaborate you can declare a side within declaring a side. Do you remember Team Edward vs. Team Jacob? [If you don’t, it’s a reference to the Twilight novels where the main character’s two love interests were the sexy brooding vampire Edward and the sexy brooding werewolf Jacob. Now that I told you, you can feel like you’re part of the in-the-know ingroup. You’re welcome.] You could declare your team on t-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, and of course, with internet posts. Now this is a double declaration of your team, not only can you show off that you’re a Twilight fan (a Twihard, if you prefer) but also you can share your allegiance within the Twilight Fandom.

But hey, isn’t shouting Team Jacob also a way of building upon something that’s already part of “pre-existing” infrastructure? Isn’t it also a way of being understandable to your ingroup (Twihards) and not your outgroup? Weren’t those things we talked about earlier in the post?

Yeah, maybe instead of taking a look at these four things separately, we should be talking about them all together.

Bringing it all together

So if you’ve been counting, we’ve narrowed it down to four things. We like memes that are the following.

1. Build upon some “pre-existing infrastructure”

2. Be understandable to your ingroup but not your outgroup.

3. Make an argument that you can walk away from.

4. Show off your allegiance.

Now, it’s not too hard to see that these four objectives do dovetail nicely with each other. The ideal meme would signal to your ingroup that you’re a member (possibly with a humorous reference), but leave your outgroup with no information. This meme would also present an argument you can easily dismiss as ‘just a joke.’

If we wanted to keep going with our Twilight example (and honestly, why would we want to stop talking about Twilight for any reason?) When you shout, “Team Jacob,” you are 1. Referencing the well-known love story Twilight. 2. Showing off knowledge that is potentially-unknown to your outgroup. 3. Making an argument that you can walk away from (after all, isn’t the other side ridiculous for starting an argument about a book?) 4. Showing off your allegiance to the chiseled werewolf known as Jacob.

Almost every meme we’ve mentioned in this article falls into one or more of these four categories. The Obama election meme above is a very clear way of signaling your allegiance and making an argument you can walk away from. Saint Elmo’s Fire allows you to build off of the pre-existing infrastructure of the Catholic Church and also show your allegiance to that same Catholic Church.

Now there may be a few other factors that help memes spread, and we’ll talk about them and a few other things in this blog post’s appendix, which you should expect to see on this blog in the next month. (Unless I decide I want to do the next post first)

Until then that’s all for this blog post. Be sure to share the ideas in it with literally everyone you can.