#look up the game on wikipedia if you want the context of why this is a big deal

[jazelock]

YOOOOOOO LET'S GOOOOOOOO

#I'M SO HAPPY FOR THEM #I love this game #The Sinking City #Frogwares #look up the game on wikipedia if you want the context of why this is a big deal #it's listed under Distributor dispute #tl;dr: Nacon was the distributor but then they didn't pay Frogwares so Frogwares terminated the contract #but then Nacon kept uploading their own pirated and altered version of the game onto various platforms while the legal dispute was ongoing #just to double down on the shittiness #like the Steam and PS5 versions were both Nacon's #I had to very carefully purchase the PS4 version from the Playstation Store because that was Frogwares's version #anyway absolutely thrilled

[paper-mario-wiki]

Your Trollsona is such a damn cool concept! I love the sheer insanity that the RPS unfolds into and I gotta ask, how does their Captchalogue and Fetch Modi work? Those are always another fun bonus way characters quirks are shown

Not quite!

The Sylladex object recovery and creation system is COMPLETELY separate from the RPS system.

Total mastery of the RPS fractal would be DESTRUCTIVELY OVERPOWERED, considering if you knew exactly how each object interacts with the other, you'd be able to instantly resolve any conflict with a single action no matter what. But this is near impossible because the RPS catalogue accounts for all possible concepts, not all possible objects. This is why a double-sided barcode is used instead of the typical hole punch system. You can't captchalogue a kick in the nose, after all.

Each line in the barcode represents a single binary digit. With each digit added, the amount of possible values goes up exponentially. Within only 10 lines in the barcode, 1024 values are possible. But what's even MORE exponentially gigantic is having it be double sided, because then it squares itself instead of just doubling itself. So a two-sided ticker tape with 10 bars on each side would be 1024^2, or 1,048,576 different values. And that's with a code that fits within the circumference of a nickel.

However, if you refer back to the gif with the ticker in it:

That's WAY more than a nickel's length.

And that’s an absolute necessity, because every possible concept must be accounted for. The system is pretty fucking wildly, multiversally, insanely gigantic. Hence the need for extremely dense data to get anywhere.

And even then, the bar code doesn’t actually grant you access to the item that its value represents. The only thing it does get you is access to all relative values, or everything that interacts with that object in a meaningful way. The RPS Chart acts as a gigantic excel spreadsheet which catalogs and calculates how one thing could reasonably negate, counteract, subvert, or otherwise destroy another thing, and vice versa.

You can't just KNOW where something is on a fractal, you have to find it. Like how theoretically you could find every single number combination within the digits of pi, but you'd still have to go looking for it.

Imagine it like playing the Wikipedia game, where you can only get from one place to another by clicking through links on pages, except instead of words with context on a screen, it’s dozens to thousands of arbitrary binary digits. The longer the code, the more quantumly hyper-specific the item.

You're going to have a lot easier of a time finding "cup of water" than you are "Betty McLaughlin's Red Diary From 1997".

This is why Kippyr has to spend as much time studying it as they do, because navigating through the chart with any amount of grace would take several human lifetimes to accomplish. However, with the Seer of Mind classpect, as well as their countless hours of diligent observation and experimentation with the chart, Kippyr is able to gracefully navigate through the fractals with the instinctual finesse of a sea turtle in an underwater slipstream.

NOW. Onto the topic of a Fetch Modus.

Kippyr is a slow adopter of it. Fetch modi are not a necessary element in the Homestuck world’s set of natural laws. For the majority of their life, Kippyr'd prefer to just use their satchel and pockets to carry all their stuff around. But as they progress further into Sgrub, and their session becomes more demanding and complex, they’d eventually develop one that works seamlessly with the RPS system:

The RPS Modi. The way it works is simple: Just throw the shape of the object which would beat the object you’re looking for. If you wanted Rock, you’d throw Paper, if you wanted Paper you’d throw Scissors, and if you wanted Scissors you’d throw Rock.

Simple! Just don't forget the hand shapes :^]

#rikuredo #homestuck

[aro-culture-is]

Aroallo culture is constantly feeling like a degenerate

I have... more than a few things to say on this topic, but I will restrain myself to the two major points that have caused me to delay posting this.

For one: Internalized sex negativity ahoy!

In all honesty? I genuinely do not understand how sexual attraction without romantic attraction (or any other form of attraction, really) is supposed to be bad. I genuinely cannot tell you how wild it is to think that sexual attraction, one of the instincts that has generally been selected for among all sexual species similar to us, is somehow... morally incorrect? How much must we hate ourselves, see ourselves as the monster in a bedtime story, for the invisible Thought Crime of feeling like another person is attractive? It's okay. Literally the only "bad" is if your actions in response to a feeling are performed in malice or cause harm, and even then there's nuance that requires thought and communication, not mind-reading and assuming others will be disgusted.

Sincerely, please please please look into sex positivity. Read about it. Follow sex positive accounts, movements, and people. Let yourself feel in response, and ask yourself what does and does not speak with you. Engage in the topic. You don't have to believe it right away, but I promise you, it is well worth your time to expose yourself to resources that teach you another perspective that does not demonize the vast majority of the world in some strange and non-productive way, producing shame and little to show for it.

Secondly... degeneracy.

What a very, very loaded word. To summarize some points from Wikipedia, in terms of fact: the concept of degeneracy in this usage originates from the 19th century theory of social degeneration. The concept of heredity had yet to be fully understood in social degeneration's 18th century development, and this movement largely believed that habits of parents changed their child's biology. This, in turn, was used to explain a perceived decline in civilization. It took little time for the theory to appear in medical and zoological works, with the intent to explain why different ethnic groups exist. You may recognize this concept by a directly related one: eugenics.

The theory of degeneracy first grew fame when used to explain racial differences, and quickly spread from the medical field to psychiatry (ie, mentally ill individuals will produce more severely mentally ill children, and therefore should not continue their lineage) and criminology (particularly when combined with phrenology). It was associated with authoritarian political attitudes such as militarism, scientific racism, and support for eugenics. The development of degenerate theory both partially predates and partially follows the works of Gregor Mendel in describing the theory of evolution, and frankly, largely based its so-called scientific backing on incorrect understandings of evolution and poor science, using such understandings to prop up eugenicist beliefs.

Why do I say all this? I think it is very, very important to recognize the sociopolitical bullshit that props up the absolute pseudoscience that social degeneracy revolves around, and to state that anyone who truly believes in degeneracy does not actually have the best interest of other's in mind or heart except that of the current in-groups. if people in your life are using these theories and words, I want to empower you with knowledge that they are, scientifically and historically, very much in the wrong. I want you to be able to look at their words, and understand the context behind their beliefs, even if they themselves do not.

also, real talk: if you can, form other social networks. join a club, play social games, go to community events, anything it takes to experience people outside of those who give you this message. it'll do wonders for you to build social circles outside of that stuff.

tl;dr:

the origins of the theory behind the word "degenerate", as used today, are scientifically bullshit, politically and socially motivated, and largely were used to justify eugenics. i would recommend not trusting people who genuinely believe in degeneracy to have anyone's best interest at heart but their own, and that you are perfectly normal and fine as you are.

#aro culture is #aro #aromantic #actually aro #actually aromantic #ask #mod axel #alloarophobia #internalized alloarophobia #sex negativity cw #long post

[brightmalcolm]

I'm so happy I found your blog! This show has been my hyper-fixation ever since it came out and it's nice to find people who still talk about the show :)

ANYWAYS, I just started reading The Count of Monte Cristo (for totally normal reasons, and not so I can deeply analyze S1E13 "Wait & Hope") and I wanted to know your thoughts on the fact that The Count of Monte Cristo was Malcolm's favorite story growing up. Because this book, like said in the episode, is about a man murdering for revenge (take this with a grain of salt I'm on page 73). And I can't help but think about Martins though process of reading this story about murder to Malcolm. Because in the episode, We get a flashback of Martin reading the story to Malcolm, and He's acting out a scene from the book where I think the Count kills one of the men who betrayed him (again I'm only on page 73 I'm not completely sure). And he makes the act of murder seen fantastical, fun, and light-hearted. Which makes me think that when he reads this story to Malcolm, not only to get Malcolm used to the idea of murder, but to also prematurely downplay his crimes. So when Malcolm found out that Martin's a Serial Killer as a kid, Martin could then say, "Well you didn't have a problem with it when I read those crimes to you, why do you have a problem with it now?" And we see the adult version of this when Malcolm is an adult, Martin brings up the fact the he never killed anyone on his operating table, he only killed people when off the clock. Which of course means that his crimes aren't as bad as they really are because he could have done so much worse!

AND THE WAY MALCOLM WOULD HAVE LOOKED BACK AND THOUGHT HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BECAUSE OF THE BOOK!!

because of course Martin the Murder would read a murder book instead of a normal Fairytale, of course Martin would only act out the murder scenes from the book. It just gets the trauma ball rolling, like give my guy a break please he's had enough.

hi omg it's nice to hear from you!

so obligatory I have not read the count of monte cristo so take everything I say with a big grain of salt bc I am just going off the wikipedia page and conversations I've had with people who have read it. I like to think everything (or at least most things) with this show are intentional so I enjoy looking in to these kind of details to see what they might mean. I think one way to look at it is the writers trying to do a short hand for malcolm being an intelligent and precocious child and a bit kind of like "ha ha of course malcolm's favorite childhood book was an old french classic about revenge and not like the magic tree house bc he's so eccentric and pretentious." also it ties nicely into a murder investigation that they can base on the story to give malcolm more reasons to know a bunch of random info to help with the case.

but when it comes I think with martin basically anything can be used as a tool for manipulation, even if in another context it wouldn't be by someone else. like the count of monte cristo doesn't seem like something super out of left field for a parent to read their child in my opinion, yeah it involves murder but a lot of books involve heavy subject matter and are still read at any age. so I don't want to imply it's like bad or odd for a child or their parent to read something like that, I was reading things like the outsiders and the hunger games around malcolm's age which are both kids/young adult books but also contain death and violence. BUT I think with martin he definitely could have had some more ulterior motives and again, the show deliberately made reading the book a memory malcolm had with his dad so I think the writers definitely had intent behind details like that.

so yes I get what you're saying and could 100% see it being used that way in martin and malcolm's dynamic. I think it's in the vein of how malcolm collects murder weapons in that it demonstrates how death and murder kind of consume his life even in to his interests and hobbies and how martin's shadow is always there (again, not saying reading about murder or being interested in it mean you're a serial killer obviously but in the context of like themes in the story, a reoccurring one is malcolm's preoccupation with death and how it relates to his trauma from his father). like the example you gave, martin is very good at justifying what he has done, especially and specifically to malcolm bc he knows his son is already traumatized by his actions and desperate for some logical reasoning behind them when there just really isn't one. the way martin acts out the story is also an interesting point. again, not trying to imply this is like inherently something bad or problematic but specifically in the context of this show and this relationship it definitely shows how martin kind of presents murder to malcolm. like it's all about the larger context for me; what does this mean with the information we already know by episode 13 and what conclusions should we draw from it. and I think it makes sense how you interpret the episode!

anyway TLDR the way martin talks about murder with his son is a vital part of their dynamic. martin knows malcolm wants to understand his seemingly incomprehensible actions and he uses this multiple times in the show to try and manipulate him in to thinking different ways about them, whether that is by telling malcolm he is somehow responsible for him murdering people (see 1x02) or that he saved more people than he hurt (see 1x07) or that he has changed completely (see 2x13) ect. ALSO I just remembered how interested I am in how this show portrays the concept of monstrosity and wow this TLDR is getting long specifically in the episode you referenced eye of the needle 1x14 and how martin says something along the lines of "I'm the monster, so vanquish me" as if simplifying the concept down to that of a storybook, like he's a dragon to be slain and how he tells malcolm there's no such thing as monsters in the pilot, conjuring the image of like a child who thinks there's a monster under their bed or in their closet. so the lines kind of get blurred and martin will ultimately use every tool in his disposal to manipulate malcolm in different ways, even using things that are innocuous on their own or in a different context. would love to hear everyone else's thoughts especially if you've read the book :)

#omg this got LONG sorry i love this show i love overinterpetting this show #answered #anonymous #likeeee ugh makes u think

[bro3256]

The Console Paradox

If you've been following me on social media for the past several months, you've probably noticed quite a bit of complaining on my end regarding the mix up between the Famicom and NES. At first I had a minor annoyance with it, such as when YouTubers mention that the NES released in 1983 when in reality that's the year the Family Computer or Famicom came out, the NES wouldn't release until a test launch in New York in 1985. It seems like a ton of people get this wrong due to being unaware of what the Famicom even is. Soon though, I've grown to have a very strong opinion regarding this.

But why should this even matter? Isn't the Famicom just a Japanese NES? If we're going by that logic than the NES is just an American Famicom, cause the more you start to think about this you start to realize that we have quite a problem on our hands regarding what we even call a platform like this overall. Unlike with modern consoles that are identical globally no matter where you live, consoles from a few decades ago not only look different but have separate identities that only exist in the territories they were released in. Despite that however, most of the internet seems to be happy with mixing everything up into things we're familiar with, but I believe that has resulted in tons of confusion and misinformation regarding older video games.

Now before I can really get into the topic at hand, I need to establish some definitions just so we're on the same page. Terms like console and platform are thrown together interchangeably whenever used in discussion but for this post I will be treating both terms as meaning different things.

Console: A computer designed to play software made for it.

Platform: An ecosystem that encompasses the games designed for specific consoles.

These aren't perfect definitions but my aim is to illustrate that different consoles can exist but still fall under the same general platform. So lets take the Famicom and NES again, both would be separate consoles but fall under the same platform. Now ask yourself this, what would you call this platform?

If your immediate answer is the NES then congratulations this is the reality we live in at this very moment. Of course this isn't a problem exclusively to these consoles, there are plenty of other examples you can point to with this exact dilemma such as with the Super Famicom and SNES, the PC-Engine and TurboGrafx-16, the Mega Drive and Genesis, just to name a few. Currently we do not have a neutral term to call these video game platforms, and it seems like we are content with keeping it this way for the foreseeable future which is really bad in the context of video game preservation.

(Wikipedia is the closest thing we have to a general site documenting video games in general)

Documentation regarding video games is already sparse on the internet, and this mix up certainly does not help whatsoever. That's not to discount the many projects currently in operation, my point is that we currently do not have good easy to access documentation regarding video games, anything remotely obscure is extremely difficult to find information for let alone in your native language. The tools in place can absolutely be improved and I believe clearing this console paradox up would be beneficial to everyone.

Think of it this way, consoles such as the Famicom and NES are in their own lanes. The Famicom side has its own set of things going for it and so does the NES side but the road itself is what holds the two together. If you attempt to drive on the Famicom lane and hastily merge within the NES lane you'll get into an accident and that accident is either misinformation or getting a false misunderstood narrative. Weird analogy at first but this is the best visual I can give whenever information regarding one console is applied to another.

Now before I wrap things up, I want to make it clear that a lot of this is my own opinion, that being said I am open for discussion whether you think a line needs to be drawn somewhere or that separating consoles like this is unnecessary.

(Note: I mainly used the Famicom and NES as examples in this post but as stated before this also applies to other consoles with this general platform issue.)

[runimanio]

2024 Game Clear #21 The Legend of Korra

Not the show, the digital only 2014 video game by PlatinumGames and published by Activision that was delisted in 2017 that I bought in 2016 for very cheap but has sat in my steam account unused for 7 years because my laptop at the time was so bad it couldn't handle this game somehow!

It's also very important for the ATLA lore because we learn that Iroh became a filthy capitalist during his time in the spirit world

So this is an interesting one because this game got absolutely demolished by reviewers at the time, just checking the reviews on the wikipedia page some outlets were giving this game 2's and 3's. I remember a lot reviews remarking that it was this cash grab stain of the franchise... which feels very weird to me because i think this game is better then the Avatar games that came before, and certainly better then whatever that Gamemill slop that came out recently... I almost wonder if reviewers thought they were reviewing a full priced game because sure I could see them taking issue with the lack of content under that context but the game launched for $15 US.

I do have a fair amount criticism: The game starts with your bending blocked which uhh isnt the game putting it's best foot foward, some bosses are spongy and no subtitles track is always annoying, there's also not much enemy variety for a 4 hour game that's not a big deal i don't think. Not platinum's finest work but it's decent 6 out 10 that's worth a look if your a fan. You just might need to do some digging to get it these days (please don't buy a old steam key for $7000) and I can't get mad at a korra game that lets me parry a guy off his motorbike and do a fist of north star style ten thousand fists on him.

The game does a good job looking and feeling like the show, the proper voice actors are here (though admittedly it's mostly just Korra and Jinora) every level has animated cutscene that look like the show, I'm pretty sure I recognized some of the level music being pulled straight from the show so it's sound like the show too. You can feel pretty powerful using your bending to wipeout everyone around you.

There's also a plot! I don't really have much to say about it really, it takes place after season 2 and it's really just kind of one of those "all your old enemies are bad" video game plots, not in the "Amon is randomly back" but you gotta find out why there a bunch of Equalist, Triple Threat Triad and dark spirits goons attacking you. it's pretty basic but I like the new villain design at least

Last thing I gotta say that's more of a tangent but I have a memory of a couple of reviewers holding up the Naga chase segments to make a dig against Sega being like "Wow they made a better sonic game then Sega in minigame" and now that i've played it... It's just Temple Run???? like lane changes and swipe turns in all? Guy if you want a Sonic auto runner you can play one right now! in 2014 even! very silly time

#Runi's Gamelog 2024 #the legend of korra #i aint proof reading that #we die like fish #plopping around pathetically because we can't form a paragraph without typos and grammatical oddities! #PlatinumGames

[filmforager]

Back to Black: Review

Chasing Amy 

With her signature look and soulful vocals, Amy Winehouse left an indelible mark on music and pop culture before her untimely death. But that’s why a film about her life presents such a challenge to film-makers. Is there any way of telling the story of the singer’s life - so often exploited in the tabloids - without simply retreading the tragic story that we already know? Thankfully, Back to Black just about pulls it off.

No stranger to a musician biopic with John Lennon film Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor-Johnson has framed Back to Black as a way of giving Amy’s story back to her. Following Amy (Industry’s Marisa Abela) as she chafes against the limelight of her first album, it’s clearly more concerned with the key relationships that fuelled her greatest songs. But at the outset, Matt Greenhalgh’s script seems content to follow the rise-and-fall blueprint of every other biopic, running through key moments with the nuance of a Wikipedia entry. Yes, that means scenes where studio execs try and sculpt Amy in their image, and obvious set-up scenes that exist to explain the inspiration behind Amy’s songs. 

Where Back to Black works best is in its portrayal of the doomed love story between Winehouse and on-and off boyfriend and drug addict Blake (Jack O’Connell). Played with swaggering blokey charm by O’Connell, you can completely believe the way Amy falls under his spell, their chemistry soaring over a game of pool in the back of a pub (it’s more romantic than it sounds). Their tumultuous relationship feels like the most authentic part of the film, and lays out the context for Amy’s issues with addiction. 

Playing such a huge character, the film pretty much hinges on the lead performance. But what Marisa Abela lacks in physical resemblance, she more than makes up for in capturing the spirit of who Amy was - boisterous and playful, but a fragile girl beneath the surface. More impressive still is her ability to capture one of the most distinctive voices in music. While her North London accent wavers at times, her renditions of Amy’s songs will make it tough for you to separate the original from the cover.

Less successful is the way the film handles Amy’s relationship with her dad Mitch (Eddie Marsan) - which is to say, it doesn’t really handle it at all. In fact, there’s not a lot unearthed here that Amy enthusiasts won’t already know - people looking for more insight into Amy’s life are probably better off watching Asif Kapadia’s terrific documentary Amy. But if you want a reminder of the downsides of fame, packed with great songs and strong performances, Back to Black does exactly what it says on the tin.

While it lacks the soul and depth of some of Winehouse’s hit songs, Back to Black keeps you invested with captivating performances from Abela and O’Connell. 

★★★

#back to black #amy winehouse #3 stars #eddie marsan #matt greenhalgh #jack o'connell #review

[neonapocalypta]

(Mostly) First Impressions of Eternal Filena

CONTEXT: Another thread repost from my twitter during my original batch of Takeshi Shudo stuff I watched while being ill in March. Of course, these are edited for any grammar and anything that didn't need to be there w/ hindsight. This time, I actually had to add stuff in the form of notes. I gotta get back on this watch, I've just been down so many rabbit holes this year. I had also watched cosmos pink shock, but never got around to talking about it despite loving it. I look forward to talking about these shows more someday. (And pretty soon for one of them...)

---

I knew getting ahold of a lot of Takeshi Shudo's early work was gonna be a challenge, but at least according to Wikipedia he did a lot of uncredited work throughout the early 70s. What a shame, even if it seems like he was just a helping hand.

Lucky for me I guess I've seen enough of the guy's work that I can usually tell what he might have written. He has a distinct style from what I've sampled so far. [NEW NOTE: This is in relation to some of the earliest shows he worked on as a writer. I had been having trouble finding his proper credit online for individual episodes he wrote. I had watched those before watching these ovas. During these shows I'd just have to watch an ep and guess if he'd pop up in the credits. I was right pretty much every time. What a nice memory.]

So far, my favs are Radio City Fantasy and Eternal Filena. Radio is a cute love story in twist with a drug trip. Filena is also a love story about two people that have to come together and make shit work.

Filena has 3 versions. The light novel (I can't read it.) the game, and the anime that was never completed. The anime is still worth watching, it has some cool visuals and frankly I love Lila and Filena a lot, so its an added bonus for me. I'm not sure which version is closer to Shudo's LN. My guess would be the anime since it seems like he had more involvement in the writing, but I'm only guessing. The game feels almost has a road trip vibe and is quicker paced compared to the anime.

I know the claim about Prof Ivy being a Lesbian was debunked recently, so its cool to be able to say Takeshi Shudo has written a lesbian couple. I know there's talk about Filena being a trans man, and I think that's valid. Though it seems like this is mostly talked about from the perspective of the game, where their character is written a bit different than the show. (Less openly affectionate, more traditionally masculine personality)

Also, if Filena is a trans the ending of the game is pretty terrible then, forcing them to wear a dress when they don't want to. (Aka forcing them to conform to women gender roles in this case.) I'm not saying that's why I think Filena isn't trans, I'm saying if they are, that's a really shitty ending for a trans guy. Epesh bc Lila, their partner, is making them wear it.

My guess is that Shudo intended them to be a lesbian couple. Rn having access to the novels would be really helpful. If you've never read a Shudo novel, at the least the Pokemon ones are written a lot different than most books. Most people would say he's a terrible writer, but I disagree. At least in those books you can feel his brain throughout the page. No one else could have written those books in that exact way. He has a voice, lets say, and I'm sure the writing style is the same in the EF LNs. Either way, I think it's so cool to have a series from the 90s that lets people speculate about queer identities and there's viable text to provoke discussion.

It's also cool to see how our main couple is treated. They live in a world where they're slaves and are only seen as entertainment. Together they see each other as loved ones, work ingas a team to create a better future for themselves. It's something you have to read/play to completely get what I mean and I think the anime is better at showing this aspect. But trust me, there's a warmth to their relationship past the romance. (no matter what type of couple they are.) With it being a romance, makes it better. Double for gay interpretation. It doesn't feel it was written to be "Lesbians be hot" but more "This is a couple". Even if in Shudo's novel they don't end up together (they do in the game.) or it goes any other way in the end, I still really respect how they're written.

MORE END OF THE GAME SPOILERS: They become queens at the end. Like Lila is on the throne with Filena. Based.

I'd love to keep talking about Filena and Lila at length bc I think they're great, but I don't want to spoil anything else. Btw the game is on the SNES and never got localized (i WoNdEr WhY?) so Filena being either a gay woman or a trans protag is pretty cool considering the era. Fuck, her being a woman protag by itself was a big deal for that era as far as I know.

*Btw not saying the Queer themes are the only reason this wasn't brought over. I could guess several like how it looks like FF or how its an adult property, and more. [NEW NOTE: I think I meant it looks enough like Final Fantasy that investors wouldn't want to risk it being in competition with those games. tbh that coulda made it a better candidate for an ENG release during certain times as well. I was just spit ballin' but it bothered me enough to add this note. While we're here, I think between it's adult and Queer themes, and also coming out in 95 is most likely why it stayed JPN excusive. I should have mentioned its late release date (for the SNES), but when you're sick and on twitter things slip through the cracks I guess.]

The game has a fan translation and there's a recent lp that shows it off. I'd say check it out if you like that era of JRPGs in general. Personally, for English speakers at least, the game then the anime is the best way to go since you'll get a full story first.

There's several reasons I like one version over the other but that's small shit and I've written enough for now. I wasn't planning on this thread becoming about Filena but I guess it is national Women's day [At time of writing] and no matter Filena's gender, Lila is a queen.

Also sorry if I get anything wrong. Espesh about Shudo's career. Info on the english web is not great. Like some websites say Radio city was his first work at 18, but it came out in 1984 and he was born in 1949. If I get anything wrong, I'll correct it.

i got a lot more Shudo stuff I've seen and want to see, so maybe next time I'll post more about Radio city. This was meant to be a small update thread lol.

#takeshi shudo #eternal filena #first impressions

[dangermousie]

To be fair, it's also disingenuous to present the danmei and dangai as part of some progressive movement in China. It's also incorrect to present danmei/dangai as a threat against LGBT people, and THIS is the main thing people are pointing out. People keep suggesting this crackdown has been targeted against lgbt but it's more about liuliang than lgbt, which is why people point out that (1) baihe has been left alone for the most part and (2) this has no impact on the actual lives lgbt folk. 1/

To be sure, actual gay people definitely exist in very marginalized spaces in China. But this presentation of the crackdown on danmei/dangai as being one of China coming down hard on LGBT people is what has people going "uh, not really", because that's just not the true context of what's happening. What's particularly galling is that, because dg/dm have such a straight fangirl following, when people use this excuse it reads as them co-opting lgbt causes to defend their media even while actual 2/

Chinese lgbt folk are telling them that not to do so, ESPECIALLY when this dm/dg ban has essentially left actual gay people's lives unaffected. It's actual gay people telling dm/dg fans not to drag LGBT folks and their causes any more into the spotlight in the government's fight against liuliang, especially when it's so far been a peripheral issue. 3/3

Look, bringing this into spotlight to Chinese government (whatever that even means), is pointless since a dictatorship does whatever it wants and pressuring it on anything, by outsiders or insiders is pointless and might actually backfire since they don't like people getting excited about their diktats.

I have no opinion on dangai/danmei being progressive movement - I am pretty sure the latter is driven by people enjoying reading and/or writing it for a variety of reasons and the former by hopes of profit (though it is worth noting that any author continuing to write under the rolling restrictions and clampdown is performing an act of bravery, whether they think this way or not.) As to international danmei/dangai fandom, once again, no opinion on them, but I am pretty sure the bulk of them are not co-opting anything - at worst, they are just grumpy their favorite works are in trouble, and at best and more likely, they actually see what this is a symptom of (and I am sorry, the assumption both that all women into this are straight and that even if they were, they can't care about things that don't personally affect them, is reductionist as hell.)

But to get to the main topic, while I am sure the government wants to clean up fandom for a variety of reasons, anybody who believes clampdown on danmei and dangai is solely driven by that and nothing but that is deluded. If it was done in a vacuum, sure. But not when it's accompanied by denunciation of "abnormal aesthetics," requirements for campus LGBT orgs submit membership lists, removal of a ton of novels from jjwxc for zero reasons (and I am sorry, novels don't get liuliangs, they are novels!), calling out gay stuff for video games including MXTX stuff by name (and no, video games have no liuliangs since they are not live action), and a vaunted history of censoring or removing gay content (anyone remember Addicted and 2016 and what happened then? That was not done for any liuliang phenomenon.)

So yes, in vacuum, banning dangai and limiting danmei might have little effect on Chinese LGBT people because it's just a type of entertainment they may or may not consume so its existence or not does not affect their lives per se. But what it is a bellwether of is another matter when you take a look at everything else.

To switch continents and talk about my own sort-of birthplace, I was born in the USSR. In 2013, Russia, the largest Soviet remnant and a place I spent some time living in (tho was not born there), passed a law preventing gay propaganda. Wikipedia summarizes it as "the Russian government's stated purpose for the law is to protect children from being exposed to homosexuality —content presenting homosexuality as being a norm in society—under the argument that it contradicts traditional family values." If one is really literal, one can say it's just about entertainment (or non-fiction) so who cares. Except this makes crystal clear the government's attitude. And that is what this recent clampdown makes me think of - when you want to push something in the corner while talking about values, you aren't doing it because you are cool with it. Sure liuliangs and all that blah blah blah but the singling out of gay content speaks for itself. They are not banning het idol dramas, are they?

Re: baihe. Chinese government, like many a dictatorship, doesn't care about anything super teeny and niche and baihe is currently that way. They only notice things when they get somewhat more popular since even an oppressive regime has limited energy and resources. But, once again, the fact that they sat up and freaked the hell out, when danmei/dangai became marginally more popular, is because they don't want anything against what they view as morally right to get any traction. (Side note - cannot speak to China but in plenty of other societies, lesbians were considered more OK for whatever reason. For example, Soviet penal code only went after gay men, not lesbians. I have no idea how much that may or may not influence the situation.)

Finally - I grew up in a communist dictatorship. I give zero benefit of the doubt to any such government that claims to be driven by noble impulses to clean up the worst impulses of society. In fact, to quote Groucho Marx, "I don't know what they have to say/ It makes no difference anyway/ Whatever it is, I'm against it."

TL;DR anyone who believes that this is just about fandom fervor and not influenced by anti-gay attitudes and I are not going to see eye to eye whatsoever.

#asks

[accidental-host]

New discourse video dropped, and I’m responding to it.

Discourse: Looking into A Cookie Run Deep Dive

This is going to get heated because this video was BAD

• For context:

A Cookie Run Deep Dive is an hour long video essay made by Callimara. From what I can see on her page, she has never done a cookie run video before now, and mainly posts videos about the game Yandere Simulator.

I was told to watch this video in an ask from a follower, and wanted to write a full response to it because there was A Lot going on. So here we are.

• The first part:

For the sake of trying to make this as concise as possible, I won’t even address the first 40 minutes of the video.

I don’t have shit to say about it, the video is titled “Deep Dive” but for two thirds of the video she only goes over the absolute most basic game history and aspects of the lore that you could’ve gotten off Wikipedia, and it’s about as riveting as watching paint dry. The fandom drama related points only start after about the 40 minute mark.

• The rest:

As for the last 20 minutes of the video, it shifts to being about fandom drama. Because every youtuber on earth wants a slice of this Views Pie, creators who have never previously engaged in the fandom feel the need to jump on the bandwagon of saying everything wrong with a community that most of them aren’t even in. Great start!

The discourse opinions are primarily about exactly what you’d expect, which is racial/ethnical coding and whitewashing. So let’s see what bold new opinions Callimara is bringing to the table.

An important thing to note, she REFUSES to take a stance for an uncomfortably long period of time. Not condemning or condoning anything, it takes multiple minutes of dancing around the topic before she dares to even imply that the racism in this fandom is actually a bad thing. Agonizing.

• Point 1: Coding

When she does take a hard stance, it begins well. She states that some characters have obvious coding to a specific race/ethnicity, which is extremely true. Naming characters like Scorpion, Rye, Kumiho, Earl Grey, etc. as characters that fit into this category. [48:01]

And I agree with this of course, I think some characters are coded to a specific race or ethnicity.

She stated whitewashing these characters or erasing their ethnicities would be wrong, and thank fucking god she came to this point at least, because anything good ends there.

• Point 2: The “Default” Color

Her second point is where things go downhill.

When it comes to cookie run characters, primarily old Ovenbreak and Line characters, there is a default skin/dough tone. A tan brown, #DC934C, we’ve all seen it and it’s included in tons of characters. But Calli changes her stance on whitewashing completely when it comes to these characters, treating them as if they’re wildly different than any other.

She refers to these characters as this:

“The more fantasy stock-standard types, like the princess, the knight, the adventurer, and the goth chick” [49:48]

And she uses this as her reasoning for why she thinks whitewashing these characters is fine, which she says explicitly later on where I will quote her again.

This point falls apart immediately when you do not treat these characters any differently. Yes, a lot of characters have the same skin tone. But is not an inhuman color, there is no reason for you to look at one of these characters and believe that shouldn’t be their skin tone. Why would it be any different just because multiple characters have the same color?

She follows this up even worse, stating this:

“My take is that they would have the complexion of an average Korean person” [50:16]

This feels INCREDIBLY unnecessary. There is no reason for them to not have a midtone skin color, there is no reason for their dough color to not be how they look at a human. And there is no reason for her stance on other characters to not extend to these.

Immediately after that point, she almost goes back on her own word stating that Korean people can be any color. Which is obviously true, but this feels like such a useless point to make then.

Her point makes no fucking sense, first she says they would have the completion of “an average korean person” and then says korean people can be pretty much any skin tone and still be korean, so what the fuck is she even trying to say? What is the purpose of this then? I am so genuinely lost at what the point of even saying this was if she would just dance around it going back on her own word, so we’ve ended the statement with net zero information gained.

Now, this is where she explicitly defends whitewashing. She goes on later in the video to state these characters should be able to be drawn however the artist decides, and says this:

“People that who draw these specific cookies with default dough as fair are also valid.” [52:02]

Which is the biggest pile of horse shit that came out of this video.

If the default skin tone was pale, this would not be a topic of debate. Nobody would make points like this, nobody would say it’s up for interpretation. But apparently, most of the cast being midtone is just too difficult to accept.

It’s funny how as soon as it comes to brown characters, it’s suddenly “ambiguous.” Most cookie run characters are midtone, what is the problem with that? Why would that not be able to be canon? Why would that have any reason NOT to be correct? Would you make this same point if the default color was something pale?

This comes down to her trying to decide what characters are “coded enough” to where whitewashing them is bad, and what characters AREN’T “coded enough” which makes whitewashing fine. Which is a completely unnecessary distinction.

There is no reason for them to be separated into categories like this, and there is no reason to decide that too many characters are midtone so it’s actually just ambiguous. I have never seen this specific take on the whitewashing discourse before, and it is dumb as hell.

And now, for a quotes speed round. Because some of these are awful.

• Addressing more direct quotes

“If a cookie is given a default skin color, then clearly their complexion isn’t of much consequence to their overall design” [52:47]

Why have you decided that the “default” skin tone is inherently less valid than the more character-specific ones just because it appears more often?

————༻—༺————

"And I feel like it's also important to remember that when we glorify one thing and disavow another thing, what we're doing is creating a new beauty standard that people will continue to change themselves in order to fit into instead of encouraging them to be happy with the way they are." [53:02]

What the fuck does this mean in this context?? Literally how much of a goddamn scumbag do you have to be to say that it’s GLORIFYING to depict most of the cast as midtone, and think that somehow this would change the entire beauty standard. Genuinely have no idea what the fuck is going through her head with this.

————༻—༺————

“I would argue the fact that they’re human at all makes them different from how the original characters look. That’s like saying this fan art of human Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps from Zootopia are whitewashed, because Nick had red fur and Judy had grey fur” [53:30]

You used Adventurer as an example as one of the characters that it’s okay to whitewash. He looks like a human. When drawing literal fucking animals with fur as humans instead, obviously you would have to change the color.

Adventurer does not have an inhuman skin tone. So if you were to make him lighter, that would be a conscious choice because you didn’t like the fact that he had darker skin. And that is fucking racism. This isn’t difficult, you’ve juts decided that the default cookie run dough color isn’t a valid enough skin tone already.

————༻—༺————

“Taking people’s hard work and coloring over them and then claiming that you fixed it is never okay” [54:47]

(For those who aren’t aware, this is referring to the specific way people will edit whitewashed/racist fan art to make it no longer whitewashed or racist. This has been something people have done for years.)

Why do you value someone’s drawing over POC representation? Why do you think making sure not to hurt poor sad little artist feelings is more important than making brown people feel welcomed? She then goes on to repeat the exact same sentence like three times.

————༻—༺————

"How would you feel if you baked a cake and someone else took the cake and put sprinkles on it and claimed that it's now superior" [55:44]

This is not a case of stupid little art theft!! This is about racism!! The dumbest most watered down fucking analogy possible, and it doesn’t even apply. This is not about art theft, this is about representation, but we can all very clearly see where your priorities lie and it’s incredibly telling.

————༻—༺————

“It has gotten so bad that even devsisters have come out and tweeted about it, telling people to stop attacking artists for making fan art because they’re all great” [57:37]

First, genuinely fuck you if you’re using devsisters tweets as your moral standpoint for what’s okay and what’s not. Second, if your art is perpetuating existing racism and colorism in the world, it is not great. It’s fucking garbage and deserves to be treated as such, because I think the feelings of people of color in this fandom are more important than little drawings.

————༻—༺————

“Would you rather just people stop making fan art because they’re so afraid of all the backlash if the cookies are drawn too pale?” [58:22]

Actually yeah, I think if all whitewashing racist fan artists stopped making whitewashed racist fan art, so only the stuff that isn’t racist remains, the fandom would be instantly and immensely improved. It would be a Christmas fucking miracle. Genuine dream come true. Best case scenario.

• In conclusion

This video is a train wreck. I don’t even want to encourage anyone to watch it, it’s 40 straight minutes of being told a fucking history lesson of the most basic surface-level information so agonizingly slowly I had to put the video in 1.25 speed, and then immediately followed by some dogshit opinions and then the outtro.

This is a mess, I’m going back to playing fucking minecraft because I spent way too long writing this. Thank you for reading, glad you made it this far, etc etc

#analysis post #cookie run #cookie run kingdom #cookie run discourse #my god. jesus fuck. #at least it wasn’t QUITE as awful as miss zizi but god it was close

[pumpkinpaix]

It was only when starting MDZS that I came across the terms “seme” and “uke.” To me these categories seemed too rigid and simplistic compared to actual gay dynamics I have observed. I wanted to ask whether such categorisation is truly reflected in the way gay Chinese people behave or is it just a stereotype?

okay so -- there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ve been sitting on this ask for months at this point but let’s give it a shot. to forewarn you, I found this ask really upsetting for a number of reasons, and I am. really kind of at the end of my patience with this fandom, so this is going to be harsh. please bear with me if you are in a space to do so.

so. seme and uke are japanese terms that come with their own genre conventions and such, even though they roughly mean top and bottom. you can read a little bit about it here under the “seme and uke” section on the yaoi wikipedia page.

the equivalent chinese terms are 攻 (gong1) and 受 (shou4). you might notice that the hanzi/kanji used are the same as seme and uke because i’m fairly sure the chinese terms were derived from the japanese ones. there’s a lot of cultural crossover in ACGN (anime, comics, games, novels) fandoms.

the use of seme/uke vs gong/shou does matter when it comes to anglophone spaces. because one of the facets of anti-asian racism in anglophone spaces is the way that people treat all (east) asians as interchangeable, the choice of which language to use for which media is important, even if the terms are linguistically equivalent.

it's a small thing, but even just saying gong/shou instead of seme/uke in this ask would have softened the blow a little. all of this information is easily obtained with a quick google search of "seme and uke" and "chinese version of seme and uke" and a little bit of analytical thinking. before you ask a random stranger on the internet to dispense cultural information, please do the minimum of research on your own.

with regards to the actual question:

I know this ask is old so maybe a lot has changed for you anon, but regarding this ask specifically, I’m going to ask you to think very hard about what you’re asking, who you're asking, and why you're asking it next time. for a start, I am not a gay chinese man. i have been very clear that I am abc, and i live and grew up in the states. That's not equivalent to "a chinese person who happens to be fluent in english". we are very culturally distinct, and there is absolutely no way that my background gives me any inherently privileged insight into the lives and culture of gay chinese men in china. why are you asking me to speak for them? why are you asking me to tell you about them? gay chinese men behave like individual humans. i am not your convenient tour guide into all things chinese just because I speak english. moreover, please remember that your experience, like mine, is limited. whatever observed "actual gay dynamics" you're talking about are a product of your specific position, location, age, culture etc. and it would be absurd to extrapolate your observations to generalize how all gay people interact with one another even in your specific culture.

I will be very honest: the tone of this ask evokes purity wank bait because of the wider context of the question. there has been a Lot of discourse surrounding the “roles” in danmei in anglophone fandom that essentially boils down to fujoshi discourse redux, which often has a lot of racist underpinnings and comes from an extremely white, western, misogynist, and identity politics-heavy perspective. i put links and such about fujoshi discourse in this ask if you aren't familiar, but I want you to understand that, regardless of your intent, my initial impression of this question (because of the context of these discussions) was uncomfortably close to "I'm better than those oppressive, uneducated straight chinese women who unrealistically fetishize gay men, right?" I am choosing to believe that this wasn't what you meant, but. to draw an analogy: would you ask me this question about twinks and bears in US gay culture? would you ask me if those labels/roles/categories were representative of the way US gay men behaved? what about top/bottom? if not, then why are you asking me about chinese gay men as if they're a different species?

if you can understand that top/bottom or bear/twink are not representative categorizations (though there are, of course, people who happily fall into them, self-identify as them, label themselves as such etc), why are you holding gong/shou to a higher standard?

I get that we're all in different places re: our cultural knowledge, but just. look, if you're coming to me with a question like this, the least you could do me is the courtesy of ten minutes of googling before you hit me with a racist microaggression right out the gate on a sensitive topic. As I said, I don't think you meant harm, but please try to be more aware in the future, okay?

(please do not dogpile anon in the notes, it's not constructive, thanks)

if you are curious about the lives of queer folk in china, there is plenty of interesting information out there in english as well. here's an article to get you started.

#Anonymous #asks and replies #look i just. look #im very very tired #mine #my meta #queer stuff #seme uke #gong shou #danmei #?? #whatever #long post #discourse

[doshmanziari]

Most English-speaking people today who are aware of videogame developer T&E Soft only know of them through two titles: the first Hydlide (specifically the, by 1987, dated/inferior NES re-release) and Virtual Hydlide. Both of these have acquired a pretty undue notoriety, mostly encouraged by the exaggerations of e-personalities intent on making everything out to be either AWESOME or LMAO TERRIBLE, since that’s what gets the most attention. It’s better to see Hydlide in its PC-6001/PC-88 context as an innovator of the action-adventure-RPG genre, and the influence for the first two Ys games’ format (also little-known: Ys III: Wanderers from Ys was modeled on the design of Tritorn 2, a game by developer Sein/Xain/Zain Soft; it even copied some of the settings!). Understood as such -- compare the PC releases of Hydlide to, e.g., the original Dragon Slayer, also released for the PC-88 in 1984 --, we can also begin to understand its popularity as a consequence of something more than millions of Japanese citizens being deprived and deluded. Virtual Hydlide is noteworthy too as a strange and perhaps unique attempt at crafting a lightly randomized, score- and time-based 3D arcade game for a home console using the overworld + dungeon crawler format. Its most significant downside is a miserable framerate. I get why this would put people off from playing it, especially since it’s always conflicted with the design’s speedrun-like emphases. But if this were the worst thing you could knock a game for, the medium would be specially positioned among all others for a minimum of faults (hint: it isn’t).

With that preamble out of the way, I’d like to bring to unaware readers’ attention Rune Worth 2 and 3, released for the PC-98 in 1991. As usual, if your only resources on the English-speaking Internet for videogames are Wikipedia and MobyGames, you would probably never know about either of these (Wikipedia cites the first Rune Worth (1989) for the MSX, but says nothing of the sequels; MobyGames does not even cite the former). The Rune Worth series was, by all appearances, T&E Soft’s successor to Hydlide, and while it is formally organized as a trilogy, the three-months-gap between the second and third installment’s release, their discounted price, and the way in which 3 picks up right where 2 leaves off (to the extent of being able to transfer your character data from one to the other), means that, really, there are two full entries. Much of this information was laid out on a dedicated stream for both these games by Macaw45, who has dedicated years to researching, cataloguing, and exposing people to lesser-known videogames. If you can’t read Japanese, or just don’t want to play the games yourself, the embedded video would be your best bet for seeing them in action.

There are many things to say about Rune Worth 2/3 -- the dramatic introductory sequence preceding the main menu, the luxuriant sprawl of its public spaces (one can, for example, go out to the first castle’s rooftop, partitioned into a little pseudo maze, despite no requirement for doing so), its equal emphasis on setting, story, and action -- but since I’ve elected to make this into an image-based post, I want to illustrate how amazing these games look. Even from a distance, many PC-98 games have a distinct and highly abstract composure; and, looking at them up close, where the unlikeliness of certain chromatic and textural decisions make themselves known, it’s a wonder over and over again how representation emerges from what I described in a post about Super Hydlide as “an ornate and time-worn carpet.” The resemblance to a tapestry is especially obvious with Rune Worth 3 and its faded floral border depicting a grape vine. The overall visual splendor of these mosaics on a PC-98 monitor would, of course, be all the subtler and greater.

Over time, a handful of early- to mid-90s Japanese PC videogames have gotten more exposure in the West as the consumption of anime and nostalgic sentiment have grown hand-in-hand (not infrequently to pathologically anti-social effect). The bulk of these have tended to be of the visual novel/eroge type. YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World, released in 1996 for the PC-98, is a particularly popular example, in part because of its soundtrack by Ryu Umemoto. For me, the in-game artwork for these titles can be technically commendable, but is otherwise not very exciting. When I look at Rune Worth 2 or 3, it sometimes reminds me of looking at artist Kathleen Ryan’s beady sculptures of rotting fruit and marveling at the surprising vibrancy and coloristic range within putrefaction: the intersection of the beautiful and ugly, and its fructifying of the grotesque. This extends to a number of PC-88 titles too, like Sorcerian (Falcom, 1987) and DIOS (Zain Soft, 1989). In some cases, there is a remarkable convergence of visual grit/granularity and fidelity, maybe exemplified best of all by the PC-98 release of Xak III: The Eternal Recurrence (MicroCabin, 1993). But even there I find myself missing the marvelous polychromaticism of these two Rune Worth games. The intention for, say, Super Nintendo games to be played and seen on CRT TVs has never been an impediment to contemporary indie developers mimicking their look for modern LCD monitors. Even if it feels unlikely, then, I wonder if we will one day see a small revival of that fibrous, loom-woven PC-88/PC-98 look.

﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌

You can support my writing, music, and artwork on Patreon.

#pc-98 #pc-88 #rune worth #Hydlide #japanese videogames

[wisteria-lodge]

snake primary + snake secondary (bird model)

Hello! I recently discovered your blog and really love the thought you’ve put into the nuances of the SHC system. I’m super into these kinds of personality analysis systems (I’ve probably been through them all at this point) because I think it’s interesting to know how people tick - I also think self-awareness is important so that you know why you do what you do, essentially. I took the SHC quiz and it told me I was a Snake Primary with a Bird Model, and a Bird Secondary with a Snake Model. I agree that I’m probably a (somewhat petrified) Snake Primary with a strong Bird Model, but I’m not sure which is my true secondary and which is the model. Maybe you can help?

I can sure try :)

Some things about me: I’m an oldest daughter, and I’m almost 100% sure my dad is a Bird Snake and I *idolized* him as a child - I thought he had it all figured out. He was the Zeus to my Athena in my child’s eyes, and I think I got my Bird primary model very early from copying him.

I mean, I know what you mean in a “sole creator” sense, but there is no *way* Athena thought Zeus had it all figured out.

My two younger brothers are a Lion Snake and a Lion Badger, and my mother is possibly a Double Badger, though I’m not as sure about her - maybe she just thinks that she *should* be a Double Badger. I think all that is important to help illustrate that I didn’t really feel *at home* when I was with my family, though I loved them, since I was the only Snake. My parents also had a terrible relationship and are now divorced, so there’s that as well. I think the only time I have ever been truly morally outraged was the revelation that my dad had engaged in infidelity against my mom, and then again when he started dragging his feet over a promise the he had made my youngest brother. We didn’t speak for a long time after that incident, but I was really cut up over dropping him.

Oh yeah. That’s very Snake primary. Morally outraged because your People are getting hurt.

We eventually started to reconcile, and the only reason we did was because he called and said he was driving through my city one day, and even after all of that, I said yes to meeting up because I felt sad that I had dropped him. I think this family dynamic, plus some other childhood stuff, led to me sort of “checking out” and petrifying pretty early.

Just a theory - I think it’s possible that this hit your secondary more than it hit your primary. You seem pretty strong and confident in your Snake primary so far. Even the fact that you can identify it coming from such a non-Snake environment, and don’t feel guilty about it, is big.

I had a lot of trouble making friends in school.

I’m thinking this might be more of a secondary thing.

and generally ended up with like one friend who was the other weird girl, and who I always sort of kept at arm’s length emotionally. I moved schools several times as a kid and after the first best friend (who was the daughter of my mom’s best friend and was like a sister to me until she moved away), I really didn’t try too hard to make new “best” friends.

Hmm. See, this reads like a *default* friend to me, not a friend of choice. The other weird girl. The daughter of your mom’s friend. That’s an easy friend to have… and not one that you necessarily sought out. I’m not surprised that your primary didn’t latch onto her with that Snake intensity.

Even now, though I definitely have concentric circles of loyalty and a significant other who is my “top person”, I’m not sure I have that blind Snake I-would-literally-die-for-you loyalty toward anyone - I’d kill or hide a body for my top circles

That *is* Snake loyalty. Snakes aren’t going to die for someone else, are you kidding? That’s a sucker’s game. They value themselves too much.

I would give up a lot of my own comfort for my significant other. Maybe I’m just afraid to let myself feel that unquestioning loyalty, though I want to feel it, or maybe I’m really a Bird and just want to be a Snake because that would mean I could be un-broken eventually.

Let’s talk about your secondary, I want to hear about how you think you’re broken, because so far you seem fine. Congrats on the SO!

I don’t think I’m an Idealist though - I’m surrounded by them and I know I don’t care about “principles” the way they do. Then again, maybe I’m a Bird whose truth is that moral relativism is the truth lol. Anyway, I think for my primary, I’m probably a petrified Snake with a Bird model unless I’m totally wrong about myself.

I think you’re just a Snake who… is a Snake.

(you’ve got that Birdy influence though, from your dad, and they do like to complicate things.)

As for my secondary, I loved to read (everything - all kinds of fiction, especially sci-fi/fantasy/mystery and, like, Victorian sci-fi/horror adventures, nature books, medical texts, etc. Wikipedia was a revelation when it came out), and I was smart and good at taking tests and knowing the answers in school, so at a certain point I think I just defaulted to being “the smart one” and used that as armor to help keep people from getting too close.

yep yep yep, welcome to the ‘fun Bird model’ club, we have snacks

I do genuinely love to learn, and I’ve always been known among friends and family as the one who either knows the answer or will look it up. I love pop culture trivia and nature facts. I also love and am good at debate, but not really when real feelings are involved - I more love the “battle of wits” aspect, where I can match up against a person to see if my knowledge and ability to adapt my argument on the fly can stump them. 

I also would argue the unpopular point, or the point I didn’t agree with, just for sport. Fun Bird secondary model.

I developed terrible anxiety and probably some depression as well in high school.

Okay, now I’m seeing the problem.

and now that I’m older, I suspect that I may have ADHD, though I haven’t been officially assessed. I didn’t discover my executive function issues really until college, when suddenly being smart and being able to figure out the test answers through context clues and what I remembered from lectures and readings + whatever trivia I had gathered about the topic wasn’t enough anymore.

I suspect you’re right about being ADHD. Or at least being neruodivergent.

I am horrible at studying! I would plan out my study sessions and make these nice little cheat sheets (these were allowed on exams) and they didn’t work at all! I did very well in my literature minor though, because all the graded assignments were papers rather than open-answer tests, and I could get my thoughts out better and with more resources at my disposal if I forgot something and needed to go back to the book to check.

Oh ouch. Yeah, I’m not even relating this back to a secondary, because I’m reading this as a working memory thing? Like ugh tests are such a terrible way access knowledge. What is even the *point* of memorization anymore? You should have been able to have a college career that was completely writing papers, like I did.

I was at one point very jealous of my Lion Snake brother, who I felt could do “whatever he wanted” with minimal consequences, while I always felt constrained by being “good” and not rocking the boat too much with my family.

Yep. That’s being an oldest daughter.

I couldn’t understand why he didn’t seem to care about being considerate to everyone else in the household (especially my chronically overworked, can’t-say-no Badger mom lol).

It’s because he’s the youngest. Mine’s the same.

This attitude was definitely influenced by my anxiety issues at that time, since I had (and still have) a lot of trouble asking for anything - help, permission, whatever. I’d rather do things and explore on my own, without anyone watching, so I don’t have to ask and don’t have to explain.

Did you low-key raise your younger siblings? Because it sounds like you raised your siblings.

I feel better with a little bit of distance, and definitely wear masks in most situations. I’d say my masks are half conscious and half reactive - I do have some idea of how I’d like to be perceived, but it’s only kind of systematic.

That makes me think Snake or Badger secondary.

I have a few “characters” that I use as touchpoints when I’m going into a new situation, but once I’m there I mostly just act nice and funny and see what happens.

So far I’m going with Badger secondary (be nice and and assume it’ll be fine is very badger) with a fun Bird secondary model, that you can do an Actor Bird thing with. Although liking to “just see what happens” is pretty snake.

The characters are really just costumes I use to give off a certain first impression, although I do really like the costumes and find them fun. I love clothes, makeup, and perfume too, because I enjoy the idea of making multidimensional costumes for different settings. I actually enjoy the mask a lot of the time - I have tattoos that are purposefully in places that I can cover easily, because I enjoy the idea that there’s something under the professional mask that people only know about if I show them. I’m a bit socially awkward I think (I repeat myself and talk a lot), but most people tend to either like me or tolerate me, and I don’t get into a lot of interpersonal conflicts. 

Hm. Either Courtier Badger or Snake secondary, fun Bird secondary model. However. Especially after talking about your Actor Bird in such fun, positive, happy language… I am going to call you out for “socially awkward” and “people tolerate me.” Which tells me you don’t have as much faith in your social skill set, and it’s *maybe* a little burnt.

(Also, not to get too armchair psychologist tell-me-about-your-mother, but if your mom has a  “chronically overworked, can’t-say-no” Badger secondary… that’s going to affect how you see Badger secondaries.)

Right now I work in a very Badger/Bird workplace, and it’s really a terrible fit, even though I can squeak by enough to fool my superiors into thinking I’m doing a good job. 

oh we’ve got some imposter syndrome, that can also be a burnt secondary thing.

It’s all long-term planning and daily maintenance tasks, and I really don’t like it. I change most of my plans partway through, but I’m not sure if it’s because I’m really an improvisational secondary at heart, or if I’m truly a Bird that’s just bad at planning for all of the variables.

I’m going to say you’re not a Bird. Making cheat-sheets (which is a very Bird secondary strategy) also did not work, and you feel confined by, not comforted by plans. You’re not a Lion, you enjoy keeping your true self to yourself too much. You could be either a Badger or Snake. And if you really hate daily maintenance tasks… that could be coming from a few places, but it makes me lean Snake. 

I love being in situations where I can iterate on a plan, or make a new plan on the fly. I love escape rooms and am pretty good at them; I still get stumped and need hints sometimes, but when I *get* a puzzle, it sort of just clicks for me? I don’t think in a very linear way and am not a good chess player, but I also have never studied chess so perhaps I just am at a knowledge disadvantage in that game. 

This is also you using Bird to have fun, and we know you *love* using Bird to have fun.

One of my proudest moments

okay this is definitely going to be helpful

was when I was on a day trip with my significant other, and we needed to find a place to buy food quickly so we wouldn’t miss a specific ferry and then a specific bus - we were on an island, and near the ferry station the restaurants were all too expensive and we were worried they would take too long anyway. He was starting to get frazzled, but I was able to think on my feet, and we just grabbed a calming beer (lol) at a creepy neighborhood bar, then got on the ferry and bought microwave meals at a 7-Eleven by the bus station. It was awesome and I was very proud of myself for staying calm and looking around myself for options.

Well that is VERY Snake secondary.

I generally take a long time making decisions when it’s not a crisis situation, because I have to *weigh all the options*, but I often end up in analysis paralysis. Crunch time is where I really shine as a decision-maker.

Snake again. From what I’m seeing, your Bird is a fantastic toy, but actually kind of makes you miserable when you have to depend on it for the important stuff. (studying, your job, making important decisions)

All of this long post is to say, I’m not sure whether my Bird secondary is a fun model that got repurposed into an executive dysfunction compensation tool and anxiety/depression soother to supplement my Snake secondary

I think you hit the nail straight on the head right there. 

 or if Bird is my true secondary and Snake is a model that I learned from my dad and brother + characters I admire in media 

oh your favorite characters are Snake secondaries are they? That’s a big tell.

and that I use when I fail to plan adequately given my executive dysfunction. 

Executive dysfunction is a whole thing, but you don’t have to “”plan adequately”” for everything.

I find both fun and both useful, but I’m not sure which is innate and which is the model! 

My money is on snake secondary, Bird secondary model. 

#submission #sortinghatchats #wisteria sorts #sortme #double snake #snake primary #snake secondary #bird secondary model #family dynamics

[inklingofadream]

Hey for some reason I am thinking once again of your scenario where the Eye loves Jon and is jealous of Martin and so it indoctrinates Jon's new polycult with Anti-Martin Propaganda to show them Martin must be kept away from the Jon at all costs. Do you feel up to sharing some Anti-Martin talking points courtesy of the Eye?

cw for discussions of domestic abuse: lies about it happening between Jon and Martin and the manipulative, controlling actuality of any of the Eye/Jon verses

so if i had any video/audio/whatever editing skills i'd spend way too much time making the evil anti-martin clip show, but a lot of it is the bits where martin's a bit mean to jon without the context or jon's response.

most of this period takes place with jon unconscious, having himself a little coma to recover from all the apocalypse whiplash and stabbing, so by the time jon himself can express any opinion about any of this, everyone's formed very solid ideas of what his Terrible Boyfriend Martin was like, and they're all really sure that it was a situation where jon was being abused and couldn't see it. obviously jon's going to be resistant to the idea at first- they have all kinds of statistics to "explain" why jon's still attached to the idea of Martin, instead of being glad he's dead because martin was The Worst and jon was trapped with him.* stuff like how most ppl have to make multiple attempts before successfully leaving an abusive partner. obviously when jon starts healing from his Martin Trauma he'll Understand

[*completely unrelated tangent, but yesterday i was looking on the wikipedia page for "Faked death," and their list of notable incidents includes this passage:

Timothy Dexter was an eccentric 18th-century New England businessman probably best known for his punctuationless book A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress. However, he is also known for having faked his own death to see how people would react. His wife did not shed any tears at the wake, and as a result he caned her for not being sufficiently saddened at his passing

like geez bud i wonder why she wasn't sad about you dying!]

anything that happens on tape is fair game, with special emphasis on the scenes of jon showing up in s4 like "martin my beloved 🥺" and martin giving him the brush off- jon asking to elope is NOT included, because it implies an agency for jon in the getting-away-from-the-eye thing that's detrimental to the narrative. martin luring jon away from his patron is a talking point, all the little things he expresses discomfort with during s5

a big one is the "plz don't look in my brain" thing, because while that's a p normal and reasonable request usually, why would any of you, beloved jon harem followers of the eye, want to keep your thoughts from jon? Inconceivable! Jail for Martin for one thousand years!

Also, since a decent segment of ppl who end up Eye-inclined are the kind who go into academia and the like, or who at least value that construct, lotta emphasis on how unworthy of jon martin is bc he's a dropout and has never accomplished anything with his life, framing him as like. the stereotypical basement dweller, almost. like he's coasting (jon is SO OFFENDED on martin's behalf about this in particular)

martin lured jon into the lonely and jon was lucky to make it out alive! you could have lost the archivist before he was ever even in your universe! gasp! (who arranged this affair you ask? who benefited? don't worry about it, not the eye, the eye was horrified, we promise)

And a special, starring role for the clip of Jon in Night Night, where Jon's going to keep going with the statement and Martin asks him to stop, but edited down to just "Thank you for not hitting me this time" and the heavy breathing after. It makes all the new Eyevatars absolutely berserk. You HIT the archivist??? you hit the archivist often enough he thinks he needs to THANK you for not??? etc

The version the new eyevatars are getting is basically like. you know those relationship advice reddit posts that go around, where sometimes you can and sometimes you can't tell that the op is twisting around everything to make themselves look as sympathetic as possible? Like, there was a recent one abt "what do i do about my wife trying to use magic on me" that notably left out the reason for the central issue (op not wanting the wife to be friends with a specific guy. like wtf happened. probably the reason is actually "I don't want you to talk/look at/think about men who arent me in any capacity" but he knew that wouldn't play well). It's like those, but ESPECIALLY (from an audience pov) like the ones where the person being talked about finds it and adds in some details and context that flip it completely around so op looks the Worst. The ones that are like "aita bc i technically stole my daughter in law's cherries (but family is supposed to share with each other!)?" with specific enough details for the daughter in law to turn up like "she didnt pick some w/out permission, she physically dug up our cherry tree and planted it at her house. also in the past she's dumped a bottle of ink all over my wedding dress and put a rattlesnake in my shoes". Except jon's the one with all that essential context, so the Eye's version gets taken as uncritical fact.

#asks #writing #tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #beholding/jonathan sims #tma beholding #jon/beholding somewhere else #ink post #the reddit post abt cherries is one i made up but they're all along those lines #that one didnt happen but its an amalgamation of stuff that has in various threads

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh Season Zero: The Yo-yo Crimes of Jounouchi Pt 2

OK, last we left off, we were in a different Youtube video. This one I grabbed off of 2 different videos (you’ll see their watermark in the corner change) and it makes me appreciate the quality that our other episodes have been, honestly. A little bit of compression going on in these, just to give you even more of that nostalgic feel of watching a bootleg anime from the 90′s your brother got from his weird high school friend’s Napster account.

Because this is done with subtitles on, it takes more caps to cover it. Part of why I rewrite the dialogue in these recaps is to help abridge stuff, and so consider yourself warned...there’s a lot of caps in this one. For most of you, that’s probably not much of a problem. But I’m just letting you know because...I sure wasn’t expecting it to be over 40 caps for half an episode, and I’ll probably just type less to make up for that. (Tumblr keeps Erasing All My Words anyway, so this is for the best, but that’s a tech issue I already went into in another post.)

(read more under the cut)

So, to start off, Yugioh and co. walk up to a bar like a really weird version of a bar joke and are like “do you know where we can find the yo-yo gang?” And, much like a video game npc, the bartender was like “I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about, and I heard every part of their intimate conversation. Let me give you all the details, children.”

Hey, PS, there’s an entire Wikipedia entry about the bar joke. And that is wild. Apparently the first bar joke was from Ancient Sumeria, and Wikipedia was like “Here is the Sumerian joke, but we Do Not Get it. Please don’t try to get it.”

The joke being: "A dog walked into a tavern and said, 'I can't see a thing. I'll open this one'."

Damn. I can’t believe the Sumerians were onto meme humor before we ever invented memes. They were in the Galaxy brain over there in the land before time, holy crap. Depositing their memes knowing that 7,000 years later mankind would look at the world’s first joke and be like “I don’t get it!” while all the millennials and zoomers with our MB of nonsense memes on our phones are like “No. I get it.” Good on you Sumerians, that is freakin the best joke ever made. 7000 years to get to the punch line of confusing the hell out of all us. Bless.

They promptly tell Miho that everything was resolved and that she should go to bed and she was like “Cool!” and exited stage left. Bye, I guess. Anzu also went home, but she didn’t have to be tricked into doing it, she just went the hell to bed.

(PS, I just realized that if I want to write less...I should probably not look up Wikipedia articles about the world’s first ever bar joke. But y’all, habits die so freakin hard, and I just feel like it’s very pertinent to this Yugioh recap, although I know it’s really not.)

Yuugi and Honda decide to visit the warehouse and harass Jounouchi. In the context of the show, they’re going out of their way to pull their best friend out of society’s systemic downward pull of a life of crime and most likely turning into exactly like his Father. But, the way that it’s storyboarded makes it look a lot like these kids just show up out of the corner and this gang was like “Damn it, again? OMG small children, please leave us alone!”

Honda hands over the symbolism sash, to which Jounouchi symbolically says “Nyeh.”

And Honda didn’t take it very well.

After tending to his kidneys for a little while, Honda decided to go back at it again at the Krispy Cream and do some sort of insane parkour over this completely ordinary fence.

Ah, the very first instance of real duel law where you duel over a relationship. In later seasons duel law is invoked for things like Mai’s marriage and the right to date Tea (and then just kind of forgetting you ever won the right to date Tea twice). But to think the very first time was Honda dueling for the right of Jounouchi to be part of nerd gang because Jounouchi had fallen to the dark side yo-yo gang across the street run by some 40 year old man with blue hair.

How many times is Honda gonna fight with a broom? Like are they just magnetized to his location? where are they even coming from?

Freakin janitor powers over here, put him in a Final Fantasy style RPG. I want to see what his limit break would be.

Not like it matters, because Hirotani very quickly explains why these yo-yo’s are at all a threat.

Which honestly shouldn’t be...so lethal? Seems like the weight is all you need, not really the spikes. But it’s at least stronger than Honda’s janitor stuff.

Unfortunate for Honda that he just destroyed an antique.

So with lightning reflexes, Yuugi does what he does most:

The death yo-yo ricochets back and does this little itty bitty scrape to this guy’s face and he’s real bothered by it. Although it’s like...well dude, you’re a 50 year old high schooler, I don’t think people will notice the scrape compared to everything else falling apart in your life.

And so then the Yugioh Season Zero team was like “oh shoot is it time to torture Yuugi???” and they got hella excited.

Like I thought it was just Yuugi’s class that were a bunch of disturbing criminal disasters, but I guess it’s the whole city. Like...was Yuugi’s class the good school?

I mean, it can’t be, there’s no way...

but like...is there a good school in this universe? How does anyone survive till graduation? If you so much as disgrace a yo-yo, you will get the torture treatment that I sure did expect in Yakuza games, but not so much in Yugioh, tbh.

Just a reminder: This is the third time we’ve beat up Yuugi this episode. Within the first meeting of Yuugi and Hirotani, he beat the tar out of Yuugi within eye shot of Jounouchi. So like...Jounouchi was reallllllllllllllllly lax on that deal, right? Like...he took his toot sweet time to realize “yeah this just ain’t ever gonna happen.”

And then the yo-yo wars begin.

Just like Solid Snake crawling through the radiation chamber.

Hirotani throws his Fyper-yoyo, Jounouchi intercepts with his Eireboy, and Hirotani’s completely terrible yo-yo just flies off the string again because Hirotani should have just sticked to using his fists. No wonder they wanted to recruit Jounouchi so badly, their yo-yo game is so off.

We never get a door to darkness in this episode, dipping our enemies into mind horrors. Instead, we get home-alone style traps. But, this makes sense. Not only do the show makers have to make Yuugi avoid solving problems with magic in front of Jounouchi, they also have to make it Jounouchi’s choice to leave Hirotani behind. If Yuugi did it for him in like...some sort of duel law situation...then that sort of leaves out Jounouchi’s choice in the equation.

Not like this ever really comes up in later seasons, since who even follows through with duel law and marries Mai? But like, it does feel like Season Zero calls out the later Seasons a bit in this regard. Honda got beat up because he tried to win Jounouchi back by force (or game, I guess.) That was just another form of coercion on the heels of Hirotani’s. What Jounouchi actually needed was to make his own decision to leave.

...most other anime I’d be like “I’m sure that’s just a translation error” but not this one.

So Yuugi runs to the roof where Jounouchi will never see this.

My audible sigh reading this line about fight club roof.

These stupid gang members went into Yuugi’s native territory, not just a fight club roof, but on a warehouse? They were dead before they arrived.

This was like maybe 3 frames of animation in just rapid succession, it was pretty silly and good.

Reminder that like 4 minutes ago, Yuugi was about to get like executed on a meat hook.

Speaking of getting executed on a meathook:

Hope you like the idea of glass in your eyes, because this anime’s got it.

They chase Yuugi around, in a sequence that was done mostly to conserve frames, so you rarely saw the ground until this shot:

Lots of falling down this episode, but unlike Tea, who fell from a warehouse ceiling once and just kind of rubbed her ass after and was like “ah damn it.” these guys won’t come out of it virtually unscathed.

Also, Honda is here now:

Jumping off of his symbolic sash trapeze, he decides to do in Hirotani for good.

Hey so like...walk the dog is a fairly gentle walk that a yo-yo does slowly on the ground right?

Just pointing out how sensitive Hirotani’s fingies are.

And he...didn’t appear to be dead, so I don’t have to add to the bodycount...but it’s gonna be a real long road for recovery.

And now, with the gang back together Jounouchi is back at school knee deep in make up assignments he’ll probably completely ignore since we know that in a years time, these fools are going to be trapped on Pegasus’ island, and at that point school will be just that place you talk about when you try to remember why you’re friends with Bakura.

---hey aren’t those chairs attached to the desks?

Because...holy crap, Anzu.

Honestly this is what you see before you die, but I guess Jounouchi died off screen after the episode ended, so I don’t have to add him to the deathcount (again). RIP.

Alright! That took like...8 tries to get Tumblr to save this one, but it managed! (well...I guess “managed” isn’t the word you’d use for a typing program that takes 8 tries to save)

Next time, we’ll be back to S5, for an arc I’ve heard is kind of boring. We’ll see. If it truly is, I can condense episodes into fewer posts. Or maybe it’s a secret gem? I guess we shall see.

And if you just got here this is a link to read all the Season Zero recaps from the start:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yuugi-muto/chrono

(there’s also a link to read all the Yugioh posts we wrote from the start in chrono order but straight up, this file won’t freakin save, and I just can’t even will myself to look up that link again. It’s on the home page of this blog on the right.)

#YGO #yugioh #yu gi oh #Yuugi Muto #Jounouchi #Honda #Anzu #Miho #yo yo gang #Hirotani #Yuugi and the gang do serious property damage

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

Black Sails’ Toby Stephens on Captain Flint and the Final Season

Black Sails will return to Starz on January 29, 2017 for its fourth and final season. When we last left the pirates, Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) was beginning the revolution in Nassau and Long John Silver’s (Luke Arnold) star was rising. We recently got a chance to chat with Toby Stephens about the end of the series, what’s coming for Flint and working on this epic show. Check out his thoughts on season four below!

Here is the official synopsis:

The fourth season opens with hundreds of British soldiers dead in a forest… the Royal Navy sails back to England in retreat… the West Indies are now a war zone, and the shores of New Providence Island have never been bloodier. With the help of Eleanor Guthrie, Woodes Rogers transforms Nassau into a fortress without walls, as Captain Flint amasses a fleet of unprecedented strength, hoping to strike the final blow against civilization and reshape the world forever. Meanwhile, from within the island… an insurgency builds, fueled by the legend of its exiled leader, whose name keeps grown men awake at night… the one they call “Long John Silver.”

But as Flint, Silver and their allies are about to learn, the closer civilization comes to defeat, the more desperately and destructively it will fight back. Oaths will be shattered, fortunes will change hands, and amidst the chaos, only one thing remains certain: it has never been more dangerous to call oneself a pirate.

xxxx

Legion of Leia: I was in South Africa on the set when you were filming that crazy storm sequence in season three. What sort of set pieces are we going to see this time around?

Toby Stephens: It’s huge. There’s loads of stuff that will keep fans extremely happy, I’m sure.

Legion of Leia: Flint had a crazy few seasons. I’m curious about whether or not you think his destiny was set with Miranda’s (Louise Barnes) death.

Toby Stephens: I think yes, it kind of compounded the way he was going. I mean, I think before Miranda died, maybe people could reason him out of certain choices, but I think when Miranda dies, that’s the last nail in the coffin in terms of him going after England in this relentless way. And also, I would say, the other thing that compounds it is finding an ally in Silver. The fact that they become partners in this enterprise, it seems that Flint can only function when he has somebody who he’s allied with or is an alter-ego for him. Someone who can balance him and he can work through. So that is both good for him and bad for him in a way.

Legion of Leia: In the last episode, there is that conversation between Flint and Silver where they’re like, oh, we’re friends. But bad things happen to Flint’s friends. We know a bit about where this is going to go because of “Treasure Island.” What’s ahead for Flint here?

Toby Stephens: Yeah, well, I think it’s really the end game for the whole series, and we know it’s a tragedy because there was no great revolution in the pirate world. There was no emancipation of the pirates and the slaves. It didn’t happen, so why did it not happen and what happens to Flint at the end of that, when his dreams are crushed? What happens to Silver and him? How does that play out? And also, how does the Silver that we know become the eponymous Long John Silver of “Treasure Island?” How does that happen? And I think season four brilliantly leads us to a point where where, it’s a very satisfying ending, but also leaves you to fill in the gaps between there and “Treasure Island.” You kind of know who these people are at the end of this, but it’s a kind of really cool thing to allow people to do that themselves rather than go, look, this is what happens, all the way to the end. It leaves you to do some work yourself.

Legion of Leia: I love that. This show has sent me to Wikipedia more often than you would believe!

Toby Stephens: [laughs] I know!

Legion of Leia: How much research do you do for a role like this, or do you rely mostly on the script?

Toby Stephens: Do you know what? It’s a combination of laziness and there is method to it. I just go with what is in the script. I mean, like you, I’ll go to Wikipedia if I need to know something, if I don’t know what something is. But whether or not it has real historic context, for me is immaterial because I’m working in a fictive world. It’s a fictive world with dashes here or there of historic fact. A pinch here, a pinch there, and I need to work in that world, so it’s better if I stick there.

Legion of Leia: I did love seeing how much was actually built on the set and how many little touches were there, historical and fictive, both.

Toby Stephens: Yeah, what I love is the detail in terms of everybody else, the props, etc. There was a lot of care taken about what would have been there, what wouldn’t have been there, creating that texture of the world, where you can believe it.

Legion of Leia: When we were there, we were hearing stories of bugs in the walls!

Toby Stephens: We were always having problems with–there were these crickets. And they would get in. We would call them “sea crickets!” [laughs] You would be in a take and you would hear [makes cricket noises]. We’re supposed to be in the middle of something scene! [laughs] Or there would be birds up in the rigging going “cheep, cheep!” And you just go, oh my God, there’s another hour in ADR!

Legion of Leia: Did you have to do a ton of ADR?

Toby Stephens: Oh yeah! I have become the master of ADR. I breeze it now! I kind of like it because sometimes you can actually improve things. You know? There was a scene I did in the first season where it was with Gates (Mark Ryan), and it was a storm, and we’re having this conversation and we’re having a drink, and we’re on the set–it was the beginning when they used to gimbal the set. It was so noisy! There was water coming in, dripping everywhere. They wanted it to look authentic. Because it was quite a stressful set to be on [laughs], for some reason my [in a high-pitched voice] my voice was up here! I watched it–I mean, I had to loop it because there was so much noise there, but I thought, I sound like an hysteric! I managed to re-voice the whole thing and kind of couch it where Flint speaks normally. That’s a case in point where you can really improve on things.

Legion of Leia: I can’t imagine trying to speak clearly during some of those storm scenes!

Toby Stephens: I mean, it was mad! This job was amazing because I loved the people and I loved working on it, but there are aspects that I won’t miss. It was totally exhausting. By the end of this last season, I was literally hanging in rags, because it makes such demands on you. You’ve got enormous amounts of dialogue and enormous amounts of acting to do, and then at the same time, you’ve got all of this physical stuff to do, and it’s day in and day out. And you’re in the costumes and you’re in baking heat, and it was long, long days. No other job I would be able to do, in terms of acting–I mean, I’m not working in a coal mine–but there is no other job I could do that would come near this. It sort of made me immune to–it made everything else seem like a breeze. It was so arduous. And some of the stuff we did in season four, some of the stuff that I did towards the end, it was really difficult. Really difficult.

Legion of Leia: Having seen that storm scene and the tanks of water being dumped on you and the ship moving back and forth and the yelling–it was crazy!

Toby Stephens: Yeah, it was also the length of time it went on for. Because we also did two weeks straight, and then we kept on coming back for pickups because it was so particular. And also, it’s part of the reason why I’m so proud of the show, is that they had such exacting standards for what they wanted. They’d cut it together and realize they were missing bits, or that they could get bits better, but it was a drag. You had to get back on this deck and they were spraying you with stuff and they had the engines on. It was brutal. But you look at the end result and you go, that will stand. In ten years time, it will look amazing.

Legion of Leia: What are you going to miss the most, now that the show is over?

Toby Stephens: I think I’ll miss all the people that I worked with. One of the things about the job is, you create these very intense and very fun relationships with people, creative relationships with people, very creative, and then they dissolve and move on. I’ll miss that, and working with such great writers. John [Steinberg], Robert [Levine] and Dan [Shotz], you know, just brilliant writing, fantastic showrunners. They were so good and we had a really intense relationship. I’ll miss that.

Legion of Leia: What do you have coming up next?

Toby Stephens: So I just started doing the reinvention of Lost In Space for Netflix, so I literally just started working for them. I’m really excited for that. It’s a brilliant segue from one genre to another. [laughs] It’s a really fun reinvention of it. It’s really clever, and I’m really excited about it. I think this will be fun in terms of, it’s servicing fans, making a show for now.

Legion of Leia: Also, different costumes. Maybe not so much wool in the heat!

Toby Stephens: I think it will be differently uncomfortable. [laughs]

Legion of Leia: Those costumes were insane and it was so hot while you were filming.

Toby Stephens: Yeah, it was tough, and also in the brutal sun all day long. Standing on ships. It was killer. And the boots. I remember always complaining. I bitched and moaned about my boots all the time. [laughs] These things are killing me! Can you imagine these pirates going, “Jeeze, man! Couldn’t we have flip flops? Could we have a pair of thongs? Why do we have to wear these things?” [laughs]

Legion of Leia: I feel like pirates should have worn fewer clothes!

Toby Stephens: Yeah! [laughs] But apparently they didn’t. They didn’t, actually. The whole thing of pirates wearing all of that is baloney. They actually–they had very light shirts and stuff. Apparently they just didn’t wear much.

Legion of Leia: That was for fancy pirates.

Toby Stephens: And also, it was just for show. Also, what Black Sails kind of gets into is, a lot of it was p.r. It was p.r. by the English, because they wanted to demonize these people, but it was also their own p.r.–like Blackbeard having fuses on his beard and stuff like that. It was all to make people scared.

Legion of Leia: You can see that even with what Billy [Tom Hopper] is doing at the end of season three with Silver.

Toby Stephens: Yeah, and here’s a really fun thing. You get to the end of this season, and you take a screenshot of characters at the end of this season and you compare them to screenshots from the beginning of season one and they’re just like–the journey that they’ve been on, and the toll it’s taken on them is really cool. I mean, Luke just looks terrible at the end of it! And he was so beautiful at the beginning! [laughs] And the same with Tom Hopper who plays Billy Bones. You see he’s headed towards the Billy Bones of “Treasure Island.”

Legion of Leia: I wanted to ask you about Flint and Billy. There is such a tense relationship there with so much history. How is that going to shift this season?

Toby Stephens: Yeah, it really comes to a head. It comes to blows. They’re not going to be able to–it’s really interesting the way Billy goes, I think, in this season. It’s been a long time coming.

Legion of Leia: Do you think Flint has any of the idealism left that he had at the beginning?

Toby Stephens: Well, what’s really interesting at the end of it, one realizes how personal this is for Flint. And that, actually, it’s not really some altruistic scheme that he has to liberate everybody. He’s playing out his own psychodrama in reality. And how demented–how he will not stop. How it will go on and on and on. And somebody has to stop that. You know, it’s a tragedy because we know that there was no–it’s got to end somewhere. It’s not going to be good.

Legion of Leia: I do have to ask you about working with your family! [Toby’s wife Anna-Louise Plowman plays Mrs. Hudson and his brother Chris Larkin joined the cast as a Redcoat this season]

Toby Stephens: Yeah! It was wonderful, actually! It was so wonderful because I hadn’t spent so much time with my brother for a while. And was really great hanging out with him. And it was a bit strange. We had one scene where we were given direction to look at each other across–we had no lines together, but we had to look at each other across this town square. And I suddenly realized, this is really difficult because nobody on Earth knows me as well as my brother does. And to try and pretend with one another is just impossible! There cannot be any artifice! [laughs] So both of us, it was hopeless! I said, you look at my chest and I’ll look at your forehead. [laughs] It’s impossible! You can’t hide!

Are you guys excited for season four? Let us know in the comments! Black Sails will return to Starz on January 29, 2017.

sources: Legion of Leia (unfortunately I can't put link because it wasn't secured)

#toby stephens #interview #luke arnold #black sails