#3. do I even have to explain why so many people have to explicitly mention bl//nkship DNI

[waywardstation]

Criteria of a Tumblr SexyMan

1. not inherently attractive

2. multiple aus with inter-au shipping

3. popular but its weird

4. sexy humansona

5. pathetic

6. cult-like fascination

Ingo couldn't have been a sexyman, most modern "sexymen" aren't tumblr sexymen. That's why Sans is going to win.

I'd say Ingo has gone through most if not all of these. There is a lot of content out there for a character that's been around for over a decade at this point, especially having been as popular as he was in Japan with the crumbs of media content that was out before PLA and Masters EX (And I think that alone proves number 6).

Though another thing I heard though was that for someone to be a tumblr sexyman, you have to see the character outside of their fandom spaces, enough to know who they are despite not even engaging with the fandom. EVERYONE knows who Sans is. Who the Onceler is. Who Bill Cipher is. And I'm honestly not sure if Ingo fits that one.

Looking at the list of characters in the poll, it just seems that what counts as a tumblr sexyman may have simply just naturally changed over time though? I know most of the characters to some degree, but I see a lot of people not knowing who they are, so maybe that doesn't really matter anymore.

[sluglore]

Explaining The Iterator's Purpose (And Why They Weren't Made to Circumvent The Echoes)

Alright, I know there's already been a few posts like this out there, like this older one from @halvedforest, and this recent one from @noizepushr, which are both good posts, but I've been meaning to touch up and cross-post my own older misconceptions post from reddit for a while now, and provide a deeper, more expanded analysis as to why this misconception exists and explain what's actually going on, so here it finally is haha I'll also be using the term 'Benefactor' instead of 'Ancient', if people are confused about that, I intend to make a post about it eventually ^^

( If you're confused on who out there even believes this, this idea originated from Rain World YouTube lore videos, long before Downpour was ever a thing! It is unfortunately still quite prominent on there... but it's definitely getting better :3 )

This misconception stems from misreading the singular pearl to ever mention the echoes, being the Bright Red farm arrays pearl, so let me begin by attaching the specific section below:

“There were some horror stories though... That if your ego was big enough, not even the Void Fluid could entirely cross you out, and a faint echo of your pompousness would grandiosely haunt the premises forever. So even when the Void Fluid baths became cheaper, some would still starve and drink the bitter tea.” (Bright red Farm Arrays pearl dialogue)

Note the specific usage of “some” here. Echoes weren't presented as an issue significant to re-center Benefactor society around, (let alone build the iterators for) but as some horror stories which only "some" people (likely on the fringes of society) would believe in. Nowhere are we given anything that alludes to the existence of Echoes being regarded as a societal problem to address, much less have anything to do with the Iterators.

Additionally, although we know for a fact that echoes do exist, its fairly possible that most of Benefactor society didn't, as LTTM doesn't even know what they are either, regarding them as nothing more than superstition. On the very next line, LTTM confirms that the void baths continued all the same, while again mentioning that "some" would still choose to abstain from them, and drink the bitter tea.

Then what’s the purpose of the iterators if they weren't created to circumvent the echoes? What is The Big Problem that they are even trying to solve in the first place? Well, both FP, LTTM, and the Exterior colored pearl dialogue spell the answer out for you. In fact, it's the first thing FP even tells you!

“The good news first. In a way, I am what you are searching for. Me and my kind have as our purpose to solve that very oscillating claustrophobia in the chests of you and countless others. A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone.” (Five Pebbles dialogue to Survivor) (Monk's version also hits similar notes)

Five pebbles introduces himself as a “reluctant gift," with his purpose being "to solve that very oscillating claustrophobia in the chests of you and countless others," meaning to solve the cycles for everyone and everything else.

If you bring Looks to the Moon a neuron, she has the chance to repeat the same exact explanation to you.

"We were supposed to help everyone, you know. Everything. That was our purpose: a great gift to the lesser beings of the world. When facing our inability to do so, we all reacted differently. Many with madness.”

FP, LTTM, and the rest of their kind were created to serve the rest of the world in finding a method of total mass ascension, of ending the cycle entirely for everyone.... and everything. Not only including the fauna of the world, like the slugcat, but the bedrock, microbes and even gases, as explicitly stated in this snippet from the Exterior pearl dialogue below:

“The Moral Argument: Five Pebbles is our Creation, and we have Parental Obligations towards him. As an Iterator, he is also a Gift of Charity from Us to The World (unable to reach Enlightenment by itself - being composed mostly of Rock, Gas, dull witted Bugs and Microbes - and towards which We thus have Obligations)” (Pale Green Exterior pearl dialogue)

Here we have the Benefactors define it very clearly, that as an iterator, Five Pebbles is a "Gift of Charity from Us to The World." It's important to note that many misinterpret the next section in parentheses as being about FP himself, but if it were, it would be the only time FP is ever referred to as “it”. What's really being described is the world, “unable to reach enlightenment by itself, being composed mostly of rock, gas, dull witted bugs and microbes” The world is unable to reach Enlightenment on it's own and therefore, that's why the iterators were created. (Also- when you think about it, the description of "being composed of rock, gas, and dull witted microbes" doesn't even really fit FP's description lol)

Quick but necessary tangent, the concept of non-living things being apart of the cycle is a little confusing, and tricky to quickly answer without going deep into cycle lore discussion, (I have an entire post in drafts dedicated to clearing this up) but it's actually incredibly important for understanding what The Great Problem is! To shed some light, it's not that non-living matter are able to somehow comprehend the cycles, but that the entire physical world itself is actually an intrinsic part of the cycles.

If you leave a stone on the ground, and come back some time later, it's covered in dust. This happens everywhere, and over several lifetimes of creatures such as you, the ground slowly builds upwards. So why doesn't the ground collide with the sky? Because far down, under the very very old layers of the earth, the rock is being dissolved or removed. The entity which does this is known as the Void Sea. If you drill far enough into the earth you begin encountering a substance called Void Fluid. The deeper you go, the less rock and more Void Fluid. It's believed that there is a point where the rock completely gives way - below that would be the Void Sea. When that stone you placed on the ground has finally done its time in the sediments, it meets the Void Fluid and is dissolved, leaving the physical world. (Teal Subterranean pearl dialogue)

There's a reason that 'Cycles' is always plural in Rain World, because there's multiple of them! Organic life is in cycles, the physical bedrock of the world is in cycles, even the very concept of civilization is in cycles. In order to ascend everything, that means ascending not only all living things, but the entire physical universe itself! That's what the Great Problem really is :D (Also technicallyyy it's only ever referred to as "the big problem" and not "the great problem", the latter term stems entirely from the community but it's whatever i just wanted to quickly mention that. great problem definitely sounds cooler LOL)

In conclusion, Iterators are described as "Gifts to the World" not once, not twice, but three entire times throughout base game Rain World's dialogue, one from FP, one from LTTM, and one from the Benefactors. Rain World lore holds many unanswered, purposefully ambiguous questions, but the Iterator's purpose is not one of them!

If you're confused/interested in analysis of the Benefactor's motivations and perspectives on Ascension, I made a post a little while back containing my thoughts right here :)

[devsgames]

"Is Tumblr Blaze Worth It For Promoting My Indie Game?" - a Postmortem

Lately I've been thinking about marketing and promotion of my games and wanting to explore new avenues. Tumblr Blaze was one of those things I wanted to dip my toes into a bit to understand how it works and if it has potential for advertising my sort of stuff. Like as not, there's no point in making games if nobody actually plays them after all!

Conversely I have also heard bad things about Tumblr Blaze; that it's not very targeted, the reach is fairly limited, and people on this site generally hate anything that is Blazed to them.

I wanted to test all these waters a bit to see if it's something worth investing in, and share what I found for my own benefit and the benefit of others. Finding various info on topics like this for indie dev can be a pain, so why not share my findings?

The Plan and Goal

While Centauri Dark is still in development and is the thing I actually want to advertise more of right now, Bombing!! 2 is already out and is much more marketable with some cool art made by community members. I think as a first impression it tends to show well, so I decided to make my test post with that to get exposure to it and see how it goes.

My goal was mostly to see what a Blaze post does for advertising a launched indie game and how much "eyes on" it actually gets in terms of actual engagement.

Posting

From the outset I knew I wanted to make a post that 1) wasn't annoying to people just looking at the webbed site 2) featured a call to action of some kind I could measure 3) wouldn't break the bank.

Here's what I came up with:

The intention was to flash some cool looking art to grab their attention, explain what they're looking at, and then link the game a couple of times while mentioning "Buy or Wishlist" for good measure as a call to action.

Since Bombing!! 2 is such an art-forward game, I found the coolest art pieces made by community members that felt the most "Tumblr" to match the audience, and would also show off the range of art you could make in the game. I also wanted to make it personal, like me writing a message to whoever would read it instead of something that sounded like a standard ad. Generally I think it was a fairly reasonable little post that catches some interest and doesn't overstay too much of a welcome. What I think also helps is it's explicitly a "hey this might interest you" sort of framing (as opposed to a more "why am I even seeing this" sort of post you tend to get from Blaze sometimes).

I also think it's worth emphasizing that writing a posted explicitly intending to be Blazed was a much stronger approach than just Blazing some random post I had made for my own followers months ago, because I could align it to my promotional goals. It also assumed that random people on the Internet would be the ones seeing my post, and not the followers and friends who already know me and my work.

Blazing

As I looked into Blaze early on there was actually a few key things I wasn't fully aware of about the system.

It guarantees a minimum amount of views

It guarantees it will be Blazed for a minimum of 24 hours no matter how many views

You pay a single base rate for the whole campaign (great compared to some ads which tend to price based on views/engagement).

You can define an audience explicitly (some info that was floating around lead me to believe this wasn't the case).

Campaigns come in a few amounts:

I paid for the 2nd tier; $17 USD for a campaign, which amounts to $25 CDN. I wanted to go a little more into it than the lowest tier offered, since I figured the lowest wouldn't give me as much data as I would've liked and I wanted to know what to reasonably expect should I decide to do it again in the future.

Since Bombing!! 2 sells for ~$20USD I also figure if the Blaze campaign prompts at least two people to buy the game then the Blaze would have paid for itself.

Blaze lets you use tags to define which audiences you want to reach. Unfortunately it doesn't let you view that data after you've applied it, but the tags I chose were generally anyone who spoke English and has an interest in Digital Artist or Video Game circles.

The campaign ran for 24 Hours, starting yesterday and ending today.

The Results

I definitely noticed a sharp uptick in engagement during the campaign! It hit the target audience of ~7k around one hour into the campaign, after which point I noticed engagement take a sharp decline.

Here's the Blaze campaign analytics provided by Tumblr (which was also very helpful to have):

So it seems ~12.5k views from Blaze, ~370 likes, ~80 reblogs, 5 shares elsewhere. The post itself has ~520 notes, so I assume there's some reblogging and liking happening from beyond the Blaze campaign that isn't pictured here. The good thing is that despite having reached its 7k target after only 1 hour, it continued to circulate and be Blazed until 24 hours later. Eventually the post made it to ~12k views overall, which was nearly double the amount promised by the campaign - I attribute this mostly to a strong post/target audience/subject matter and I'm sure it's not standard.

Here's the general velocity of engagement around when the post was Blazed:

It jumped much more than I honestly expected, but you can tell Blaze seemed to put it in front of people's faces more than my regular posts do. You can see it drops off sharply as I hit the quoted amount as well, back down to the normal amount of engagement I get on Tumblr.

But this stuff isn't really what I was looking for; I was looking for sales and keeping an eye on 'conversions' - or how many users followed my call to action because of the post. Likes and stuff are fine and cool, but how many people bought or wishlisted the game on Steam as a result of seeing the post on Tumblr?

Tumblr and Blaze obviously have no way of telling me this, so I'm looking to Steam to show me changes there.

Here's what Steam shows me happened to the Bombing!! 2 views yesterday:

That's not nothing! This shows the last month's worth of traffic to the Bombing!! 2 page, and that number was at least double yesterday as it was regularly. It's very cool to know a number of people did actually click through to the game page in order to view the game from the Blaze post.

But the real REAL question is how many bought or wishlisted the game because of this post?

I'll start with Sales, on a graph of 1 month of data:

Flat line :( Which is fine though, as the game wasn't on Sale and was just reaching people for the first time. I didn't honestly expect any immediate sales from this, and was more focused on other engagement anyways. Honestly I would be surprised if someone saw the game on a Blaze post and bought it immediately. I mean it's good but it's probably not THAT good!

Now to Wishlists, which can be a good indicator of who might likely buy your game in the future. Basically if someone has added a game to their wishlist, there's reason to believe they might buy it in the future, which is good for your game.

Here's the Wishlists for Bombing!! 2 from the last month:

That's 23 Wishlists in one day! That's roughly ~18 Wishlists more than an average day!

It's hard to know if some of these are because of the post or just a statistical fluke. However, when compared to previous trends on the game page that's quite a noticeable difference. It means even if no one bought it now, they were interested enough to add it to their shortlist. Looking at it another way, if two people who Wishlisted decided to buy the game in the future the campaign will have paid for itself.

Conclusions

I think like any advertising if you go into it with a plan in mind and try to build something around a specific action, Blaze seems pretty worth it to me especially if I just want to get eyes on something. On top of the obvious data telling me people were interested in the game, there was a few folks who just plain complemented the game or acknowledged it 'was the first Blaze post they were actually interested in', which felt worth it in it's own qualitative sort of way. It's also worth noting my game sells for $20USD, so the margins are large enough that making it back isn't too challenging.

I think having an idea of the message I wanted to send really helped, and I'm sure I'd happily do this again with a larger audience and another plan (and probably will do it for when Centauri Dark releases).

[kinopioa]

It's funny how these are technically 3 different chars

But due to sheer publicity of the latter 2 and bias, no one cares!

Let's elaborate

Rise of Lyric

RoL Shadow is a dick. However his main reason for fighting Sonic is entirely due to him fucking up in releasing Lyric. Unfortunately this is poorly explained, and most only saw the boss fight, so many assume he was just a bully for no reason

Post Final boss however

The teamwork dissing is important, I'll explain

In John Melchior's draft, the game was apparently meant to be more serious, but late dev Sonic Boom's brand was suddenly meant to be a comedy, so another writer took over to insert comedic elements along with prioritizing the *teamwork* gimmick. Whether Shadow was initially planned or not is debateable, but his dissing on it seems to have been the aftermath of this gameplay focus. It's also important to note that Shadow's origin is straight up not mentioned, and he's treated as a familiar

Shattered Crystal was made likely after this shift, hence

Shattered Crystal

So taking place in its own continuity, Shattered Crystal features Lyric wanting to use Amy's archeological knowledge to access ancient tech. Shadow is captured off screen and used as a pawn

When freed, he's confused and aggravated, especially upon finding that he was mind controlled. He however has no true hostility to Sonic unlike RoL, though mad dashes off to find the snake. Lyric in the end after the boss fight is taken out by him, then we get Stixk's crack teamwork speech

Again, Shadow specifies he's a loner, and weirdly states he's superior, but just leaves harmlessly

Meh attitude, though better than RoL in execution. This was written by Warren Graff, Ken Pontac, Tin Guerrero, interesting as it means they were aware of the brand distinction given differences to mainline

Meanwhile the TV Show

TV

Everyone knows of his infamous S1 finale apparence with him coming in on Eggman's villain council, calling them shit and leaving, then aggressively targeting Sonic and beating him up, says the fucking "shame to hedgehogkind" after breaking an IKEA cabinet entirely cuz...

He's evil

Why??? I really don't know

Season 2 is even dumber, you straight up have him want to nuke the entire universe. Again, villainous for no fucking reason

Even for Boom standards this is beyond stupid. He's an anti hero in SC, and nowhere purposefully destructive in RoL

People learned later about mandates from Sega, though it's important to note 2 things

-Shadow being an edgelord is entirely the writer's idea

-Sega barely wanted to use him in general for Boom TV

I can't stress this, for as much as fans pushed the "Sega wants bootleg Vegeta" narrative, nowhere do either writers say they were forced to. It was just them taking cynical piss at the "no jokes" mandate that clearly wasn't hard pressed given what happened, and did the surface level comparison that was common in the early 2000s. For as limiting as he was, they clearly did whatever the fuck they wanted given how much this contrasts with both Boom games

Ffs, they could've just had him petty at Sonic for taking the last burger at meh burger as a concept, there's a better way to have him be a dick

I'm honestly curious if his backstory would've ever been revealed in a later Boom game (hence the show being explicitly barred from making their own), but as we know, Boom was discontinued around 2016 game wise, and the show ended 2017

[aihoshiino]

chapter 162 thoughts!

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 19

Aqua Hoshigan Status: uh oh, gamers

damn they dragged his ass right to hell, huh

I was perhaps overly optimistic in expecting an immediate resolution to last chapter's setup. It's becoming increasingly clear that this handful of chapters covering the Aqua-Hikaru confrontation are intended to be read in one go but because I am pedantic I will continue to review them one by one <3 This chapter very much has all the same issues as the previous chapter without quite as many of the things I liked pulling it up, but Mengo's art is back to going absolutely crazy and I got to see 2.5 new panels of Hoshino Ai so who can say whether it was a good or bad chapter.

Like last time, we're starting with Hikaru again and… basically everything I said I didn't like about this handling of him is still the case but with this almost definitely being his final appearance with no more opportunities to explain anything about him, it really sucks that the note we seem to be ending on is just "damn, bitch be crazy". Given that Tsukuyomi mentioned his previously 'noble soul' last chapter, I was really hoping we might get some sort of flashback or Hikaru POV giving some proper context to his actions but all we got this chapter was him being like "ughh i miss ai. GOD i love killing people" which is, uh, underwhelming as a final note for an antagonist like Hikaru to go out on, to say the least

The thing is, I didn't need or expect Hikaru to be totes 100% an innocent bean or anything like that (ch109 looms large), but if he was going to be the final boss like this, I wanted his antagonism to come from somewhere, to have any kind of connecting thread with the story's themes or to at least tell us interesting things about him both in coming to understand where his behavior came from and why he went down this path. But we don't know anything about Hikaru, really - we know facts about his life but as person and a character in a story, our image of him is shockingly unclear. As far as the story seems to be concerned, he came into existence as an 11yo boy being abused by Airi, blipped out of reality when Ai broke up with him and then idk digivolved back into society into a guy from a yandere otome game when Ai died. Like, how in god's name did Hikaru go from the boy we see being broken up with as a teenager to… whatever the fuck this is? How did he start killing? Why? What is it about killing that makes him feel Ai's supposed presence? And most importantly - why does he pursue killing Ruby as his means of achieving this when the narrative is doing everything it can to convince us she's Ai 2.0 and therefore a living person in whom Hikaru should be able to feel Ai's presence the most strongly since her death? Hello? Can anyone hear me????

We don't get textual answers to any of that - hell, we don't even really have any textual confirmation that he is actually serial killer, despite it being something I guess we're supposed to assume at this point?? Like, whatever happened to Aqua seemingly crediting Yura's death to Nino's involvement? What happened to Aqua saying that Hikaru being the mastermind made no sense? Like, I guess he was right, but jesus

Even things I can take the time to try and infer (which, see last review's discussions on Inferring Things) just make me feel like I'm doing the work the story should have done in terms of trying to get his character to cohere. As it stands, Hikaru isn't in opposition to Aqua because he has harmful beliefs or behaviours born from his participation in society that stem from or are in conversation with the story's wider themes, but because he has one very specific unhinged belief totally disconnected from reality focused on one specific person and manifesting in such a way that caused him to just be Ontologically Evil And Broken.

And it's not like this would even be hard to do! Hikaru is literally, explicitly an affluent and powerful person in the entertainment industry despite being someone who was broken by abuse perpetuated by those very systems of power. Why not lean into that? Why not examine the ways in which Hikaru and Ai converged in their experiences of abuse - Ai able to truly sever the chain and begin healing while Hikaru ends up making Airi's mistakes and enacting abuse and control on people with less power than him to try and regain agency and dignity?

Ryosuke (even post retcon) and ch154 Hikaru work so well because their specific beliefs about Ai reflect real world misogyny and parasocialism that are rife in the entertainment industry (and even outside of it) so they're able to contribute to the story's wider themes pretty well. But as of this chapter, Hikaru's stated beliefs about killing and apparent overall worldview are so fucking detached from reality and so lacking any foundation or grounding in textual events or theming that it doesn't even feel like an exaggeration of real world issues to a logical conclusion like Ryosuke does. He just feels like a cartoon character.

Not only is this shallow in general and really a huge wet fart of an ending for a character who has been built up for 4 actual years and 150 chapters of manga, it's also just bizarrely inconsistent. There's no proper connecting thread in the text between the seemingly emotionally disarmed and remorseful Hikaru of 154-5 and fucking joker slenderman ass here. The story spent so long making Hikaru deeply and viscerally sympathetic through exploring his history of abuse and exploitation mirroring Ai's that I'm not sure of what the point of that was in terms of authorial intent if we were always gonna end at this point of "you are Ontologically Evil and must die". Movie Arc backstory Hikaru flows quite naturally into 153-5 Hikaru but these specific beliefs and fixations on killing almost feel like they popped up from nowhere to force this confrontation to happen.

Ultimately, despite being given ample opportunity to do so, it just kind of feels like Akasaka just kind of lost interest in trying to develop Hikaru into a fully fleshed out and coherent character. We get flashes and teases of what could have come together into a fascinating and compelling antagonist but he ultimately fails to evolve past a vague sketch of a character, full of unconnected ideas and loose threads. In the end, Hikaru is only ever a cipher for the story to enact tragedy through with no real interest in his own feelings and interiority in relation to it - not even his own.

To scooch back a bit into the chapter, I will say that him being dragged down specifically by Gorou is interesting, especially since he seems to have returned to his scary ass Tokyo Blade rage ghost form. This seems to represent Gorou and his rage being sort of 'exorcised' from Aqua now his revenge is complete (as I theorized might happen last week) - his memories and existence obviously live on in Aqua (F… FOR NOW…..) but as a character in a narrative, this feels like a fine enough place to leave him.

Anyway, speaking of Aqua! How ya doing, champ?

that bad, huh

The back half of this chapter revolves around giving Aqua some emotional resolution of his own and even though I've been kicking and biting to get some Aqua introspection for so long now, this one left me feeling pretty cold. After all this time of floating around the 'why' of his reincarnation, the answer we're finally given is….. just that Aqua was reborn to be Ruby's guard dog lol.

The idea that the twins were specifically reborn to be together has been imo pretty obvious for a good long while and I think it's a perfectly fine idea on paper, but this framing of it just kind of falls flat to me. I don't like that it positions Aqua's rebirth not as a second chance for him to love and be loved in a way he wasn't able to as Gorou, a gift from Tsukuyomi to two people who showed her a selfless, thoughtless kindness but as just yet more of the story using other characters and their stories to try and prop up Ruby or imbue her with more importance in a way that I think feels forced and does the characters who are used in this manner a huge disservice. I'm sure we could conclude that this is just Aqua's feelings on the matter and I really, really hope that Tsukuyomi fishes him out and gives him a slap while yelling YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LIVE FOR YOURSELF AND BE HAPPY IDIOT or something next chapter, but the extremely warm framing this is all given makes me think this is something the narrative both agrees with and approves of and as an Aqua enjoyer I just kind of hate that for him.

I also have to say that like… it doesn't not make sense for the story's finale and this aspect of the reincarnation plot to center Ruby specifically. She is one half of the titular Oshi no Kos and at least hypothetically the co-protagonist of the story. But suddenly making her the answer and central turning axis of basically the biggest ongoing mystery in the story like this feels kind of jarring when Akasaka spent a solid half of this entire manga not really doing her justice. This attempt to tug on our heartstrings via flashbacks to the twins' childhood also doesn't really do anything for me because as cute as it is, it's just disconnected flashbacks to brand new events in their childhood we never saw or heard about before. And it's weird because it's not like we don't have in-story examples of Aqua being over protective of Ruby, so why not flashback to those?

Idk. It's hard for me to articulate why this left me feeling kind of cold, but it feels like a symptom of this being part of an ending that Akasaka set in stone too early on and hasn't compromised for he way the character dynamics and story that made it onto paper have shifted and changed in ways that don't one hundred percent line up with the ending he wanted. If the twins' relationship was going to be this important to the ending and be so central to Aqua's existence as a character, I wish we'd spent more time on it. One of the major critiques of OnK that people had from like chapter 12 onwards that I still agree with is that Aqua and Ruby's relationship doesn't feel like a close knit connection between two people who grew up together for 1X+ years, and that continuing issue makes it kind of hard for me to feel the warm and fuzzy sibling feels right now. Which sucks because I LOVE the Hoshino family trio and I love Aqua and Ruby's family dynamic when we actually get to see it - their chapter of interlude and some of the scenes in their home in early OnK are some of my fave parts of the story for that exact reason. But this just kind of whiffed for me.

It also isn't lost on me that Ai is basically absent from these flashbacks despite them primarily taking part in the part of the twins' childhood they spent with her. I get that the idea was to focus specifically on Aqua and Ruby's dynamic there but it still feels kind of…

I've already written a short essay on this topic as it pertained to the initial reveal of Tsukuyomi's role in AQRB's reincarnation and the TL;DR of that post is that early in the series, Ai is centered as a character of as much significance to the reincarnation plot as Gorou/Aqua and Sarina/Ruby are, with the togetherness of the Hoshino family as a trio and Ai specifically as Aqua and Ruby's mother being emphasized as having a great deal of meaning and importance. But this chapter doubles down on essentially erasing her as a figure of weight and consequence in the twin's reincarnation in a way that is both inconsistent and just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Like… I'm sorry, but given how much of Ai's character revolves around her being the victim of exploitation, of objectification, sexual and otherwise, of being forced to warp herself to response to the filthy desires thrust on her by the people around her, it's really just gross and a huge misstep for her to be reduced to a convenient walking uterus. It is yet another example of Ai being reduced to just a stepping stone in Ruby's narrative and part of a pattern in this regard I've come to really dislike. Framed like this, Ai's own act of bravery and love in giving not just herself but Sarina and Gorou the family all three of them were denied all their lives is now nothing more than a vessel for Sarina's wish fulfillment. As you can imagine, I kind of hate this too!!

Depending on if volume 16 follows 14 and 15's trend of being 11 chapters long instead of 10, vol16 will end on either 162 or 163 - based on how 162 ends, my guess is that this is our volume ender so I'm curious to see what form 163 will take - straightforward continuation of this scene or focus switch to other characters to maintain suspense? I guess we'll see in THREE FUCKING WEEKS……. Akasaka i swear to god……………………….

sidebar but tsukuyomi just out here floating is kind of wild. what happened to 'it's a normal child's body' ya little twerp?

[aliciavance4228]

We already know that Adonis' beauty was a curse, considering the amount of people who were into him (Aphrodite, Persephone, Apollo, Dionysus, Heracles) and the fact that the first two mentioned here were very possessive over him to the point where dude ended up being groomed.

But the theory that I'm about to tell you is just... Yikes!

Many people are wondering how is it that Hades isn't involved at all in any myth about Adonis. He punished Pirithous and Theseus when they tried to steal Persephone, so why wouldn't he try to punish him as well?

There are three main possibilities, and the last one is the most... questionable, to say the least.

1. Persephone loved Adonis as a son

I heard a lot of people claiming that. Wheter it's because they do not want the image of their perfect Underworld couple to be ruined by the existence of a lover or because the idea of Persephone falling for a literal child is simply disturbing (though let's be honest, the same could be said about Aphrodite as well) is up to you guys to decide.

Anyway, here is the passage about Adonis' birth:

"Nine months later the tree split open and the baby named Adonis was born. Because of his beauty, Aphrodite secreted him away in a chest, keeping it from the gods, and left him with Persephone. But when Persephone got a glimpse of Adonis, she refused to return him. When the matter was brought to Zeus for arbitration, he divided the year into three parts and decreed that Adonis would spent one third of the year by himself, one third with Persephone, and the rest with Aphrodite. But Adonis added his own portion to Aphrodite's. Later on, while hunting, he was attacked by a boar and died."

Some people consider that the entire Adonis-Aphrodite-Persephone triangle is in fact similar with the whole Persephone-Hades-Demeter situation from Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and that Persephone plays the role of the mother here. However, when it comes to this theory I'm more inclined to believe that, while Persephone slowly started to perceive Adonis as a lover as he grew older, Hades saw him as some sort of an adoptive son and that's why he was tolerant with him all this time.

2. Persephone was very good at hiding her lover

Though let's be honest, Hades isn't stupid enough not to suspect anything and he would've figured that out sooner or later, due to the mere fact that Adonis was a living mortal. It is common sense in Greek Mythology that mortals aren’t supposed to stay in the Underworld before their time, otherwise Hades sucks at his own job.

3. Hades didn't object to Persephone's relationship with Adonis because he was in love with him too

Okay-okay! I know that it sounds weird or improbable, so let me explain.

First of all, it’s Ancient Greece. We're literally talking here about a historical period and a place where Pederasty not only that existed and was idealized by some briliant minds of the time (Looking at you, Socrates!), but wasn't explicitly prohibited even in the cities that criticized it.

Second of all, both Zeus and Poseidon had a male lover (Ganymedes and Nerites, respectively), so why shouldn't Hades have one too?

The thing is that Hades seems to respect his wife as well, to the point where he allows her to have just as much authority as him. And considering the whole Minthe incident, it’s undersandable why dude would no longer want to have any other extra-conjugal relationship so easily. So what can you do with this hot guy then? Well, it’s simple: share him with your wife! 🧠💥

Thank you for reading this shitpost. I really hope that I managed to change your entire brain chemistry and ruin your day. 👍

[victoriadallonfan]

I had this whole thing written out but it's honestly not worth getting into all the weeds. I'll try to keep it short.

I do apologize for phrasing, but it's like someone getting punched, another person saying they got stabbed, and then that person saying you're "trying to justify what the 'stabber' did" when you say it's not stabbing. So you up try to head that off by saying that punching is still *not good* but it just doesn't help.

You are the one saying "Closure" means "rape". I mean, I guess I can see how you could interpret it that way. But that's in no way explicitly stated anywhere in Worm (never managed to finish Ward and Worm is where you are claiming the rape was stated). I personally interpret it as being able to openly express her feelings without being met with disgust/getting to hear Victoria say she returns those feelings (obviously while knowing it's not real, but just getting to hear her say it)/getting a hug/saying goodbye. And that her "break" was just to have Victoria hug her/reassure her again.

And hey, it's fine if you interpret it the way you do. But people who don't aren't "rape deniers" or "canon ignorers". They just don't read it that way /shrug

It's completely possible to interpret what happened as not rape, but still very bad, and think that Victoria didn't deserve it (i.e. not demonizing her).

See, I feel that you might misremembering what went down with Amy. I made a big post about it here on the Victoria and Amy Timeline.

To summarize the events:

- Amy mind rapes Victoria into loving/being attracted to her

- 4 days later, Amy paralyzes and operates on Victoria without her consent

- Amy mind controls and kidnaps Victoria, refusing to undo the mind rape despite TT, Taylor, and Regent telling her to do so (TT even mentions that Amy’s doing this for her own selfish desires)

- Amy creates the cocoon shaped in Victoria image using stray animals, the cocoon healing Victoria in Arcadia.

- Amy tells Jack she’ll do whatever she wants to Victoria, in order to “trick him” into leaving

- Amy heals Taylor and refuses to remove the mind rape from Victoria, with Taylor realizing that Amy is going to do something bad, but she has to chase after Jack

- Amy kidnaps Victoria again and takes her to an abandoned home, so no one can find them

- 3ish days pass before Carol and Sarah are told by TT where Amy and Victoria are. Amy admits to Carol that Victoria was just “lying there” (remember, the pod was what was healing her, not Amy), and Amy realized she really could do what she told Jack.

- Amy then admits to using Victoria for “closure” and that she would wipe Victoria’s memories of what she did, so Victoria wouldn’t have to remember what that “closure” entailed.

- She also explains that it was during this “closure” that she would add things to Victoria, then go to change her back to normal, then take “breaks” to use Victoria again to make more changes to Victoria, and then repeat for several days

Even without Ward, it’s really clear that Amy used Victoria as a sex doll once the healing pod fixed her up.

Why do you think Victoria has so many hands? So many heads and faces? Multiple sets of tits and vaginas?

Do you really think Amy needed Victoria to have 4 pairs of tits and 3 vaginas to get Victoria to “hug” and say “I love you” (which is still molestation btw)?

Why do you think Amy not once fixed Victoria mind rape, but had no issue mind controlling her and altering Victoria’s memories to suit Amy’s needs?

Amy’s closure was to turn Victoria into her own person toy, a living fantasy, and it’s a scenario we see play out in Ward proper. Where Victoria is forced to watch herself from the perspective of a different head as Amy molests her.

Anything else is just denial, unfortunately.

[synergysilhouette]

An alternate take on "The Princess and the Frog" (2009)

Given that I've remade several Revival-Era films by now, it was only a matter of time that I remade the film that started it all (unless you're one of those fans who considers "Bolt" the start of the Revival Era). I wasn't the biggest fan of this film for musical and story reasons, so I hope you aren't too offended by my changes.

The film features more fantasy elements--I recall controversy about how voodoo was portrayed as magic rather than a religion, and to alleviate that, I think we should confirm that it's magic we're dealing with rather than a specific counterpart to a real-world concept. I'd definitely take inspiration from Alphonse Mucha imagery for the visual (though the art I imagined was inspired by his late 19th century work more than his early 20th century work). I do like the idea that magic is regarded as mystical and dangerous, explaining why Tiana steers away from it while Naveen is enamored by it.

2. Naveen's background and culture is more clearly defined--It was CONFIRMED when the film was released that Naveen's race is fictional since Maldonia is a fictional place, however many fans view him as being Indian. I noted in another post that they could've easily made him the prince of an Indian-inspired country (or a fictional Indian state) and educated in Europe, explaining the westernized fashion and interests--even though westernization was common in general around that time. Of course, if we go the "fictional location" route with the setting for the film rather than New Orleans, this isn't as much of an issue--but it'd still be a nice touch if it was an explicitly Indian-inspired fantastical kingdom, perhaps taking inspiration from Indian fantasy films.

3. Play the duality plotline--Naveen is cursed to be a frog during the night, and a human during the day, albeit forgetful of this. A big criticism people had was that the two leads of color were frogs for most of the film. What if this wasn't the case? Naveen appears to Tiana both as a vain frog and a hedonistic young man. Due to Dr. Facilier's curse, Naveen is unable to remember his froggy curse by day, and thus cannot go about solving it, and the night is filled with shadow monsters who hope to stop him from breaking the spell, with Lawrence and Dr. Facilier manipulating him during the day to make him marry Charlotte. Tiana takes pity on his frog form (not knowing that he's the prince), and unlocks his kindness and selflessness, and as time goes on, human Naveen becomes kinder, and finds himself thinking about Tiana until they share a kiss at Mardi Gras, where he marries her instead of marrying Lottie, like the villains planned. When Facilier tries to get revenge on Naveen, Tiana battles him and breaks his talisman in a similar fashion to the original. (I feel like there's some inspiration you can take from "Howl's Moving Castle" with the plot.) Also when the kiss on Naveen fails to work the first time, Tiana gains the power to speak to animals.

4. Give Lawrence and Dr. Facilier more backstory--It's mentioned that Lawrence has been taken advantage of all his life, and it'd be more powerful to see his villain arc if we knew how much pain he went through rather than simply seeing him as greedy and selfish from the start. Plus Facilier's magic is QUITE interesting, and something I'd love to know more about. Perhaps tying into the racial subplot, he had a life similar to Tiana and her family, only he couldn't achieve his dream and turned to the shadows. Some may consider this a sympathetic villain story, but I do think that Facilier's backstory in the original would've included some racial themes as well.

5. Make Ralphie older and give him more relevance--I do like the idea that Ralphie is close in age to Naveen (with Ralphie still being the younger brother), and they have a relationship similar to Dreamworks characters, ie Moses/Ramses, Sinbad/Proteus, and Miguel/Tulio. I also like the idea that while Naveen is selfish but somewhat innocent of the world, Ralphie is selfless but easily stressed and flustered. I picture him being a mix of Aladdin and Hercules. I love the idea that he came to keep tabs on Naveen, and both he and Naveen pursue Charlotte, though Ralphie actually develops feelings for her, and she reciprocates. Plus I do wish he had a different name, but that's just me.

6. Charlotte's friendship with Tiana is a bit more pronounced--Some people think that her selfless act for Tiana at the end of the movie was too little, too late, as they found her annoying and spoiled. I'd enjoy more moments where we get to see their friendship, ie after Lottie gives Tiana a makeover, she asks her what happened at the party (which Tiana apparently never told her about since Lottie mentions how they're both getting their wishes granted that night).

7. Embrace the green--I do want Tiana to enjoy wearing green without it being associated with her being a frog. The concept art has really great designs, and it could correlate to her growing to love Naveen--plus it'd make her a good contrast to Lottie, especially if it was Eudora making these dresses.

8. Alter the soundtrack and side characters slightly--Take "Never Knew I Needed" and make it an actual song for Tiana to sing! I'd also take Luis and make him a human (his story did feel like a racial allegory) while Ray would stay a firefly for his "Evangeline" story. Plus this could also make "When We're Human" a solo for Naveen. And maaaaybe make the "Down in New Orleans" a song for Tiana or an ensemble number. And a part of me wants Lottie to have a song (maybe with Ralphie).

9. Remove Mama Odie and give Eudora more credit--I say this since Mama Odie didn't really do much to move the plot along (her advice of kissing a princess didn't really matter since Naveen and Tiana get married anyway), and she gave Tiana a good amount of insight that she wasn't able to appreciate until later. Allowing her mother to be a bigger part of her story is BIG for a Disney princess, especially if Tiana is staying human and staying in town.

Lemme know what you think! I hope you enjoyed this reimagining.

[evidence-based-activism]

I’ve seen many trans activists compare the sudden upsurge in trans-identifying youth with the infamous ‘left-handed phenomenon’ wherein the rates of left-handedness rose after people stopped associating left-handedness with demonic or satanic affiliation.

Is this a fair comparison? What are the similarities and differences between the upsurge in trans-identifying people and the aforementioned upsurge in left-handedness?

Hello!

While looking into this, I found someone else had already written something on this [1].

Their write up was very good, so I've linked to it above. There's a couple parts I don't completely agree with, but overall it's an excellent explanation of why this isn't a reasonable comparison.

(I found the comparison between their treatment of the left-handedness graph and right-wing treatment of climate change graphs particularly striking.)

The short summary: The graph of left-handedness that is used to make this comparison is:

Truncated/incomplete (i.e., cuts off the first part of the graph to distort the message, similar to climate-change denial-ists truncate temperature change graphs)

Ignores explainable factors for the change in handedness (e.g., the industrial revolution) and attributes everything to a single cause (i.e., discriminatory stereotypes)

Depicts a much smaller increase (~200% vs ~2500%) over a longer time period (~50 years vs ~10 years)

Is essentially a hypothesis (i.e., there's very little hard data, and even less representative data)

All in all, this is not a fair comparison. It's an example of how people misrepresent data/science/statistics to support their world view. (And how that misinformation spreads.)

Other data supporting the sharp increase in children referred for gender dysphoria includes:

This German article [2] documents an overall 8-fold increase (with a 12-fold increase for adolescent girls) over ~10 years

In Sweden [3] there has been 20-fold increase in gender identity diagnoses in people younger than 20 over 10 years

This systemic review [4] found that "based on 38 papers meeting inclusion criteria, there is evidence of an increase in frequency of presentation to services since 2011, and of a shift in the natal sex of referred cases: those assigned female at birth are now in the majority." This review covered 12 countries, but there are some important limitations discussed in the paper.

Highlights from the linked article:

"This analogy fails badly because we’re talking about vastly different populations, changing at vastly different rates, over vastly different timescales, making actual direct comparisons impossible."

"[An advocates for this explanation] has pointed at some random property, asserted it has fluctuated over time, given a superficial and incomplete reason why, and then asserted that a completely different thing must therefore be changing for the same reason, therefore there’s nothing to worry about ... when confronted with graphs showing the rapid rise in global temperature in recent decades, those who sought to minimise the severity of climate change and humanity’s need to do anything about it did exactly the same thing."

"The change in left-handedness was ~80% over 20 years, in comparison referrals to GIDS over the last 10 years have gone up around 6000% in girls, and 2000% in boys."

"Tiny in absolute numbers but the rate of change is vastly different, is different across sexes, is the subject of huge attention and celebration in schools and throughout media, shows absolutely no sign of plateauing, and - unlike handedness - is being medicalised, with potentially huge personal consequences. There are clear and glaring differences that a glib comparison to handedness simply can’t explain."

Issues I want to mention:

This is actually explicitly addressed in the article, but I just want to highlight, that attempting to compare world-wide data/hypothesis to gender clinic referrals in Europe is ... iffy.

I think the numbers reported (re: the above highlights) are slightly misleading. A better summary would be the one I provided in my summary (~200% in 50 years vs ~2400% in 10 years).

The article attempts to graph the gender clinic data on the same time scale as the handedness data, but, in doing so, are replicating the same issue underlying the handedness graph (over-reliance on hypothesis over data). I understand their goal here, but the graph they produce is misleading (i.e., we cannot reliably extrapolate past the data time frame we have).

The article (to a degree) and more so the twitter thread they linked appear to be arguing that because there was a reason for everything to be created for right-handed people (industrial revolution, mass production, etc.) it wasn't a case of discrimination. I don't really agree with this. That is, I think the fact that much of the modern world has been designed around right-handedness is unfair to left-handed people, even if there's a practical reason for the design.

Reference:

Void if Removed. The Left Hand of Daftness. 11 Nov. 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20230501044319/https://www.voidifremoved.co.uk/p/the-left-hand-of-daftness

Bachmann, Christian J., et al. “Gender Identity Disorders among Young People in Germany: Prevalence and Trends, 2013–2022. An Analysis of Nationwide Routine Insurance Data.” Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, May 2024. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.3238/arztebl.m2024.0098.

Landen, Mikael. “[Dramatic increase in adolescent gender dysphoria requires careful consideration].” Lakartidningen, vol. 116, Oct. 2019, p. FSMH.

Thompson, Lucy, et al. “A PRISMA Systematic Review of Adolescent Gender Dysphoria Literature: 1) Epidemiology.” PLOS Global Public Health, vol. 2, no. 3, Mar. 2022, p. e0000245. PLoS Journals, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000245.

[keira-kaz2y5]

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

SPOILERS FOR NEW MARVEL STUFF! ⚠️

Finally got around to watching The Marvels on Disney +!!!!! It’s the best mcu film this phase istg omg it’s SO GOOD and immediately you can tell it was written by a woman NOT TO MWNTION THE INSANE END CREDIT SCENES WTFFFFF KATE BISHOP PIZZA THE DOG AND XMEN?!?!??!!!!!!! Omg I’m ecstatic this is the best marvel film in years it’s finally giving avengers early phase vibes! And I’m actually happy with every single plot moment! Unlike no way home where there were many questionable plot moments and bad scenes and bad cgi and multiverse of madness was something different entirely like I loved the horror and stuff and it made sense but as a whole that works with the rest of the marvel universe I didn’t like how it went and wandas “death” or “fake death” and the whole x men stuff. Loved America in that tho! Her whole moment made sense and ugh I can’t explain it properly plus the shitshow that was the She Hulk series and overall it just made me lose faith in marvel and that’s why I didn’t see The marvels in cinema like I usually do bc guardians of the galaxy 3 was so shite and I thought this would too maybe that’s why it flopped cuz the hype on past films wasn’t lived up to. But this FINALLY brings back early marvel vibes and I’m so into it. (Plus the reign of the cats 🐈‍⬛ 🐈😆)

Cuz as much as I liked NWH there were questionable parts yk, Dr Strange characterised Wanda badly from start to finish and didn’t do her justice, Wakanda Forever was amazing don’t get me wrong I really loved it and cried A LOT, but I wasn’t too keen on the whole Namor thing or unnecessary deaths, and some characters really just deserved better than what they got, like Okoye.. and Black Widow was great but it could’ve been a bit better with cgi and plot-wise like the deleted scenes should’ve been kept and so on.

For the first time I just really enjoyed every part of this film, since marvel has gone downhill lately, this is new for me. also I loved the queer undertones for Kamala and Carol, although they should’ve been braver and put it in explicitly if they wanted to show Carol and Valkyrie together instead of the kiss on the cheek and no talk of them being together. But headed in the right direction for sure and not to mention the Kate and Kamala scene? Female avengers team? Finally not outnumbered by men? Also I really ship Kate and Yelena so I hope she comes onto the team too, though she might just stick with the Thunderbolts antihero theme. I love that it’s so clearly written by women and directed by them plus the brilliant casting and having the villain also be a woman and with a realistic villainisation like I get why she turned out the way she did, she just wanted her home back for her people, also it’s Zawe Ashton, Tom Hiddlestons wife so it would be cool to see them act together perhaps, but either way brilliant casting and script and everything, I love Kamala really speaking for the fans in a lot of it, and the musical scene was fun in a mystical way, like when we first got introduced to Asgard way back when, I just wish we saw what happened there at least a small look in at the end with Carol checking in on them because they left in the middle of a battle and then we don’t find out what happened to that planet. But other than that small detail the film was fantastic and I loved how even Goose got a good storyline.

(My dreamteam avengers would be Bucky🦾, Yelena🕷️, Kate🏹, Carol💫, Kamala👊, Monica🌠, Shuri🐾, Riri 🛠️(ironheart), America⭐️ and Cassie 🐜 and Morgan Stark. Plus some xmen if that’s now an option?? And AOS team but marvel would never do that

Maybe Peter🕸️ Sean⭕️, Wanda and Moon Knight🌙🤺 boys too but idk )

[summersmithlatinxgyatt]

GoTron Was Another Summer Best (another Summer yap session)

Let's start with one thing. I felt generous and tried to watch Rickdependence Spray. I turned it off after 10 seconds. In fact, I paused after I saw that horse breeder thing for longer than I watched the intro Tried watching the Thanksgiving episode which was, just fine. Although nothing Summer caught my eye. I did this to finish up Season 5 but it was not worth it

You know WHAT was worth it, though? And what a few of you guys recommended?

'GoTron Jerrysis Rickvangelion'

I now see why this was recommended to me, and by the way it means a lot that most of you guys want me to write about Summer :3

It's almost Summer's episode, focused on her dynamic with Rick too and how it can clash with Morty

(FYI the wiki doesn't have a gallery for this episode I literally will rely on Google for this shit)

Right from the start we see that Summer is basically Rick's right-hand man. I know many people have pointed out (and it's outright said) that Summer is enabling Rick's obsession, which is explained IN the episode and something I'll return to later. Part of this episode is not only her relationship with Rick but with herself. Morty sees this as some sort of sabotage when Rick goes with her opinion and sees Morty as sort of an enemy for not going with what he wanted

She not only LITERALLY becomes a right-hand to the GoTron itself but oversees these Rick meetings instead of just hanging out with the other Summers. I mentioned the fact that Summer holds family in such a high regard. Whether or not they did this because this was also a Goodfellas parody, any good parody utilizes its characters purposefully, so I think it still works. There's also several lines where Summer talks about keeping the family close, and considering the blog I wrote about Rickmancing the Stone that mentions her being the glue that keeps the family together...yeah. When I say she's consistent and has a clear arc, it's because I managed to break her down and see the same attributes pop up here explicitly

Rick congratulates Summer for being the one reason he's even doing this GoTron shit and calls her a queen (queef first tho). Considering Season 7 where he says Summer reminds him of Diane, every time he cherishes Summer it's very genuine and because of how special and important she is to him

I know that the plot was hinging on Morty pointing out Summer being a negative influence but I still understood what she was going for. If my points sound hollow, it's because from now on I don't want to sound like a broken record whenever I mention the words 'Family' and 'Summer'

Like I said I was not a fan of Naruto and the fact that this show says the phrase 'giant incest space baby' more than once, which no show should ever do. But when Summer talks about how lonely she feels, it felt fitting. Sure, it's a...gross incest baby, but Summer felt basic motherly instincts kick on. She also wanted him to escape from there because she knows about the literal feeling of being cooped up. Like...how often does Summer go out?

With whatever friends she has she usually just stays inside. I am writing this AS I'M COOPED UP INSIDE AS PER USUAL I'D KILL SOMEONE TO GO OUT. The point being that avoiding this is something she actively does. That's why she was surprised her mom didn't originally want to use the GoTron Ferrets and why she kept enabling Rick. It's not an agenda, she just wants to bond more and go out more

However, I want to know - does this contradict 'Big Trouble in Little Sanchez'? I bring this up because it's an episode where they're supposed to be bonding and Summer is rational enough to know Rick is being harmed, yet everyone hates her for it. Why didn't Summer stop enabling Rick if it meant he would've been obsessed further? In that episode, it quite literally was killing Rick. Here, different universe versions of the Smith family come together as if to emphasize the point further. The actual issues were ones that Summer weren't aware of, but I just bring this up because no, this doesn't contradict any earlier episodes. Plus, Summer is obviously changing

Also, Summer's speech was fucking amazing. She mentions how lonely she feels in her OWN FAMILY because she has no one and went with Naruto, which is also temporary. She'll take any chance to bond with anyone

To wrap this up - Summer's place in this episode IS the crux of the plot. The family is brought together in more ways than one, with the robots and alternate universes coming together. This also makes sense with Rick having Morty and Beth having Jerry 'naturally', so to speak. If these people have each other, who does Summer have?

Her family

And even if she doesn't have ONE person to always fall back on (as she tends to be around Rick AND Morty), she'll be the one that chooses to keep everyone together. What I said in 'Rickmancing the Stone' and the trilogy I analyzed was true, Summer is the glue that keeps the family together

oh also im gonna be making a blog on the voiceovarians and a theory on Night Summer so keep an eye out for that guys

Thanks for reading!! <3

[baddygab-bi]

This episode explicitly put space between Buck and Eddie, let me explain.

1. “What were you doing before you came over?” it’s a Saturday. Chris was at a friend’s. The writers could’ve said Eddie was hanging out with a friend, could’ve been hanging out with Buck. But they didn’t.

2. “Me and Chris, we’re a team” Explicitly Eddie only mentioned the two of them, though Bobby knows how much Buck is around the two of them. He didn’t have to leave off Buck, but the writers didn’t want to include him in the statement, since Bobby talks about having an important work/life balance and it could be twisted beyond what the writers were aiming for.

3. “I don’t want you to be alone anymore.” Eddie could’ve said he isn’t alone. He could’ve said he has his 118 family. That he has his friends. That he has Buck around all the time. That he’s not alone. But that wasn’t what happened. They had Eddie agree he is alone so they could set up the romantic interest.

Why are they putting space between them? Because if they are working towards one or the both of them having actual, long lasting love interests, they have to make it clear where the other man stands in their life. For Eddie, as of right now, regardless of anything else, based solely on what we see on screen, not digging into beer bottles in a fridge or magnets… For Eddie, they’re saying Buck isn’t as major a person in his life as previously thought. Now, as a viewer and a writer, I don’t like this. Since they do have a very solid best friendship, but the writers of the show all seem to sorta have a different idea of where things are gonna go led by a showrunner who is very explicit in her dislike of Buddie. Yet, I think this episode had multiple opportunities to drop even a single hint of Buck and Eddie being a thing if they wanted to.

At this point, it’s not “keeping them separate to have them grow means they’ll be canon soon” or “they can’t say anything because it’s a slowburn and that means nothing can be shown for a long time”

The exclusion doesn’t mean romance. Maybe it could’ve at one point. It really felt like it was leading somewhere. But now, exclusion just means exclusion. I think the show’s being super clear about things without being explicit, because they know the backlash. They’ll lose more fans and face more anger by keeping Buck and Eddie apart than by putting them together, so they’re going to keep things ambiguous for as long as possible. I know people are probably writing posts about how Eddie didn’t mention Buck at any of those times because “It didn’t need to be said, everyone knows how important Buck is. Everyone knows that Buck’s there.” But like… This is a TV show. 60% of the audience likely doesn’t read fanfiction or blogs, they get their info from the scene. They know what the characters are telling them. They aren’t reading into every line. The writers are writing for them. So, it does have to be said. If they wanted any sorta of hint drop, they’d make that explicit. They had many times tonight they could have. It’s super disappointing that they didn’t, but can’t change that now.

Also, am I the only one who didn’t love the “I don’t panic” call back? Because… he did panic before. He had panic attacks. Whether you say it was due to Ana (which is how it started) or his PTSD (which I think the show wanted it to be), he did have panic attacks to the point where he broke down and saw a therapist. He thought he was having a heart attack due to his panic attacks. They used the callback as a funny line, but to me it sorta erased the progress of having a strong male character actually come to terms with the fact that it’s okay to panic. It’s okay to need help. The callback just felt cheap and I didn’t love it. Ryan shoving pasta into his mouth was funny though.

[themadxd127]

GGY sucks, a followup

Hi, this is a followup to my previous post about my hatred of GGY. You can read the previous one to get my general raw opinion on it. This serves as an in depth debunk of responses and further explanation to my previous post.

Same disclaimers apply. Also, this is not for the faint of heart. This is a pure opinion piece about my pure raw hatred towards GGY explained, not an attack on others.

You can read the last post here :https://www.tumblr.com/themadxd127

__________________________

Gregory is not ggy and makes no sense for Gregory to be GGY. It's a stupid concept that's an insult to the character of Gregory. It's nothing but glorified headcanon that flanderizes Gregory's character into the exact opposite of how he is like. It's the objectively worse of Fanon as a whole, and that's saying something given this is the fnaf fandom we're talking about.

1) Gregory being possessed by glitchtrap is nothing but a silly, infuriating, overrated concept that has zero bases for being true. It makes him evil for the sake of contrived moody teen drama nonsense that goes nowhere. And I do say evil. GGYstans that claim he's not is nothing but cope. They draw him explicitly being evil for the sake of it, and abusing and manipulating others. Actions speak louder than words. And these actions shattered my fucking eardrums. This concept also spits in the face of everything built up about Vanessa, even more then what the game did. We get so much insight, and so much stress of the mind from the many hints that built up her relationship with Glitchtrap before Security breach, only to be thrown to the side and retcon a completely new character into her role out of nowhere in an overrated theory, and this shit is a "good concept" apparently.

2) This glorified theory has no bases in the games, period. Gregory's character can easily be described from the games as a scrappy innocent kid who's homelessness has molded him into being distrustful of others. He is being chased by Vanessa because she is secretly a child killer and doesn't trust her because of it. This is why he stutters his name to freddy, and No, its not definitive proof of his supposed "amnesia" (we get to that later), that line is so vague you can describe any meaning to it, and because of that, the most likely meaning is the simplest one supported by the game. He simply didn't trust Freddy at first. His actions throughout the game was never malicious in the slightest. It was self defense against beings after his life. They are killer robots after an innocent kid, nothing more, nothing less.

3) Alright, this is where the rant truly begins. The one thing I truly hate about ggy is how out of nowhere this would fucking be. It's an actual insult how none of the game ever makes an effort to actually include this. Gregory being possessed is never mentioned once, never alluded too, and acts surprised against shit he should have already known about if he was possessed. In other words, not only does this spit in the face of Gregory's established character, the game makes no effort to make it an actual plot point ever. If the game doesn't wanna make it a plot point, then why should I even like it in the first place? There's no narrative value to Gregory killing his parents, and the game never mentions it, and the book never mentions it. So if the games have no use for this, actively ruins my favorite character, and makes no effort into proving it ever happened, then why should I like or believe this again?

And this brings me to my other point. GGY never happened. I want you to point me to the evidence that Gregory is patient 46 that hacked the pizzaplex, and killed a bunch of people, killed his parents, and somwhow turns homeless, is in cahoots with vanessa, then freed, and then somehow forgets everything. Go on, I dare you, and no, Gregory acting as if he doesn't know this doesn't count, you are using a plothole to debunk the same plothole. I want evidence that he somehow did all that in the games without a noncanon book explaination. Oh wait! You can't, cause the game never alludes to it, and doesn't make it an important narrative plot point? No shit.

"Why can't you just block the tags?"

You think I already hadn't? Blocking tags does jack shit cause it still brings up the post in searching, and plus, that's not even touching on the millions of other art platforms that I don't have an account to block things with. And that's even assuming they have tags to block the post with

"You are just inserting your opinion as fact"

Nigga please. Like yall and the rest of those fucking youtube fnaf theorist like GT, ryetoast, siresquawks, ozone, and dmuted haven't been doing that for a whole fucking year at this point, and I don't. I dont wannna hear it.

That analogy doesn't work, and is a complete insult into how I opperate, and search for content. I am not going into a pizza place to complain. It's more like I go into a pizza place for pepperoni pizza, but instead they serve calzones covered in shit now out of nowhere cause the majority gassed it up, and acted like pepperoni pizza is objectively more horrible food then the calzone. Then I go to another pizza place for pepperoni pizza, only for half the of very small selection of options be those awful calzones again that has now, even overriden the new pepperoni options. I tagged ggy cause that is what I'm talking about. What kind of question is that? That's how basic tagging works.

Any artist I follow for Gregory shit eventually falls into this ggy slop. Every single goddamn nigga acts like it's undeniably canon and that I'm stupid for denying it. Do you know how insulting that is? I bet not.

You can not even begin to fathom the anger of having to constantly sort out the worst dumb ggy garbage everytime I look up Gregory, and I still get ggy post that slip past my filters. Every. Fucking. Time.

I looked up Gregory on another site and half the new art now is obviously possessed Gregory/GGY abusing Cassie, and now with idiot commenters gassing it up at how "cool it is" and (yet again) how "obviously true it is."

You can never begin to fathom my anger. Imagine having you most favorite thing and obvious interpretation get turned over and replaced with something worse. Imagine having your beliefs be ostracized, downplayed, and discarded.

Everytime I voice my opinion I get shmucks trying to argue with me at how I'm wrong, or misinterpreting it. While they impose their unproven headcanon as fact, and write me off as some biased hater.

I'm not. My interpretation is the most basic obvious one you get by playing the fucking game normally, but somehow being possessed before the games makes more sense then It never happening.

And if you read thru all that to just call me a hater and write off my issues and problems, then you are the exact reason why I made my last post. Which I'm not retracting either, I fully stand by what said. I despise GGY, and I hate the act of others liking it. Its an insult to my intelligence to see such slandering of the only character I kinda like in this stupid fucking franchise.

Imagine if everyone starting treating mario like a psychopath, acted like it was undeniably canon, and that you're stupid for not believing it. That's how I feel. Shit like this is why I left the fandom and Fnaf as a whole. I'm sick of following a game and story I don't even enjoy anymore and am constantly worried it'll ruin what little I still like about it and ruin common consensus again cause I don't trust anyone to think for themselves anymore in fandoms now.

I think thats it. Welp. Back to leaving Fnaf again. So don't expect more Fnaf from me except on the off chance I stumble upon more people gassing a theory I blocked to hell and back, and piss me off again. I'm going back drawing, anime boys, and art reblogs. Peace out.

PS: Don't come to my post with the intent of arguing with me. If you did, you are the reason these post exist.

[catgirl-catboy]

1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 for the violence ask game lol

- @nsfwitchy

Since I don't think we share any other fandoms, Danganronpa it is!

1.) the character everyone gets wrong

There are so many, since I suspect the reading comprehension of the average Danganronpa fan is subpar. (If I haven't blocked you, then this jab isn't at you, dw.)

But Mikan is the most glaring. People take her defense mechanisms at face value, and write her inner monologues the same way as they write her dialogues. No way is she consistently that nice. She knows shes a doormat. I perceive that Ch3 is closer to her true feelings than 99% of the fandom thinks, even if Junko undoubtedly makes her worse.

2.) a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

I'm not really that into the PWP aspects of fandom, but pre-sauna scene lines heavily imply that Taka is the top here. You'd think that'd be the fandom default, but nah.

Also, bottom not equal submissive, but most bottom Kokichi fics are WILDLY OOC. If he bottoms, he's bratty and a pillow princess not "uwu soft boy".

3.) screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

There are so many, how can I possibly pick one.

DRV3 spoilers ahead, since idk if you've played that.

hmm. Danganronpa isn't pro incest since Kiyo's backstory is made up by Tsumugi. Okay then, explain Dr3 Mukuro. Explain Leon's FTEs. Explain the multiple pretty heavily implied ships where they call each other siblings. (Looking at you, Soapies and Ishimondo.) Explain why Kodaka CHOOSE to have Tsumugi pick that specifically for his backstory.

4.) what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

I cannot stand a lot of the people that headcanon Chihiro as trans (I do too, I just dislike the other fans) and act like its fucking canon, when it explicitly isn't. Is it a highly trans-coded narrative? Yes. Is it squicky to some people for that reason, yes. Are people being transphobic for enjoying what actually happened in canon? No you dumbass.

5.) worst discord server and why

OKAY, I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THIS IS STILL A SERVER SINCE IT WAS IN 2021, BUT I ONCE ENTERED A SERVER WHERE CHARACTER DEATH WAS ON THE BLACKLIST. I WISH I TOOK SCREENSHOTS. IN THE CHARACTER DEATH FANDOM.

(A shitton of Danganronpa servers have problems with blacklists, actually.)

Then there was this other time, where I campaigned hard to have a part of the server where people can talk about blacklisted material, since over time that becomes 99% of ships and characters.

And then the server decided that kinnies and people with DAs have the right to not have shit mentioned even in that section of the server. Goodbye!

I'm otherkin too. If you can't stand people talking about you, stay the fuck away from the fandom. Y'all are entitled little pissbabies, and if you tell me what I can and can't write (asking for better tagging is understandable) I will write it to spite you.

6.) which ship fans are the most annoying?

Komahina, 100% Tenmiko is a close second. Yes, its semi-canon. People are still allowed to enjoy other ships w/o being homophobic.

[justahumblememefarmer]

Teen Wolf The Movie thoughts

The timeline is WACK. The show ran from 2011-2017. It took 6 years of real world time for 3 years in the show to pass. So in the show it either went from 2011-2014 or 2014-2017. This is set 15 years after Alison's death, which at the earliest is like... 2012, which would make this set in 2027.

Derek has a son. The mother is never mentioned, however the son is explicitly stated to be 15 years old, which means that he was born shortly before or after Allison's death, while Derek was still fully apart of the show. So either he had a baby with Jennifer Blake completely off-screen, or with some rando woman. And then either he didn't know, and just... randomly got full custody later in his life, or knew and never mentioned it.

They picked up dirt from where Alison died, but... didn't she die right outside of Eichen House or something? I thought maybe it was the ruined site based off the gate that was there. I forget what happened to Eichen House at the end of the show. But then at the end, I guess Eichen is still in operation?

The cursing was wild. It was like everybody got a free F bomb.

The nudity was even more insane. My friend and I were SCREAMING when Malia randomly jumped Parrish and they both stripped. Such an insane couple. He should stop going after girls he met when they were in high school and he was an adult.

Why was Liam in Japan? Never explained. Why was he in charge of the Nogitsune? Why was he friends with a random Kitsune?

Why the FUCK wasn't Kira there? Instead they just introduced Not Kira Hikari and she served exactly the same role. It's like they wrote the script with Kira in mind and then when Arden Cho didn't come back they just find & replaced her name with Hikari

How did she telepathically transfer her fox spirit to Scott. I noticed when they made random eye contact, but that was an out of the blue thing

I SCREAMED when the Science teacher came out of the blue. My friend didn't even remember who he was. We were theorizing either Gerard or Kate. His... motivations were a little unclear, and of all the flashbacks I kind of wished they had done one to explain who he was. I remembered he was the asshole science teacher, but that's it

Jackson was... useless. He almost always asked stupid questions that didn't really move stuff along. He's missed so much of the show that he was out of the loop on everything. The only useful things he did was stab the teacher

The special effects were... noticeably not that great at some points. The fire effects. The CGI cliff top. The greenscreen replacing the lacrosse field with the Nogitsune realm

They had several humans there who could break a mountain ash line. Alison. Melissa. Argent.

The lacrosse field was crazy. How the hell did they get 10,000 people watching a lacrosse game?

Most of the characters did not have much to do in the movie. It was like, they had everybody back, but it was too many people to give them all a plotline, so they just needed to make sure some of them were tied up for most of it. Liam didn't even join the final werewolf fight alongside Derek, Scott, and Eli

THE STEREK METAPHOR. I've never been a big Sterek shipper and I wasn't in the fandom at the time of "We're on a ship", but come on. Derek keeping Stiles old jeep to fix up and his son constantly stealing it and being obsessed with it, and then after Derek's death, Stilinski giving the car to Eli and saying that Derek "always had mixed feelings about the car, but it meant a lot to him". Like, what the fuck? That's such shipping language.

The ending definitely made it seem like they were leaving it open to another movie/show. Which makes my confusion that Wolf Pack is not a sequel series starring Eli even more bizarre

So that was all of the stuff I hated. I did enjoy a few things

I thought the fight scenes were really well choreographed

I wasn't sure how they were going to bring Allison back, but I thought that it made sense, and she had a decent storyline

I hate Parrish, but I did like seeing his butt

The Nogitsune was a good villain to bring back. Season 3 had arguably the best plotline. It does suck that the two characters most important to the Nogitsune storyline (Kira and Stiles) weren't there though

[asachuu]

(3/10)

Part 2: what exactly is Rimlaine?

[List of all parts]

[Part 1]

I’m counting on the fact that some people reading this might not be too familiar with this ship, or perhaps they’re wondering why it gained some noteworthy popularity after Stormbringer’s release to a point I would find this an important essay to write, just in case. For this part, I will try to explain the very basic concept of it, where it seemed to originate and why I think it appeals to others. While detailed recollections of light novel events only come after this section, I must also give a fair warning that from this point onwards, I do expect people to have read both 15/SB novels, at least to understand the vague context of what I will be talking about, or to simply not mind spoilers.

Rimlaine, for those who aren’t that aware, is a ship between Arthur Rimbaud/Randou and Paul Verlaine from BSD. It had a fairly small, niche audience since the release of Fifteen, but has gained quite a fair share of liking compared to its early days since Stormbringer came out. Granted, it’s absolutely nowhere near the levels of ships such as Soukoku or Shin Soukoku, but it certainly is more noticeable nowadays due to SB practically introducing Paul to the story properly, especially if you enter spaces centered around these two light novels or the two characters involved.

Now, what makes this ship appealing to people? In a certain way, I don’t quite know myself. I have never even considered it might be taken this way by the fandom back when I read the first light novel and I wasn’t able to change my mind down the line, either. However, I am somewhat familiar with the “concepts” it seems to portray and have seen some similar, much more beloved equivalents to it in other pieces of media, and I’ve also heard it be discussed many times to a degree I believe I have gained some possible understanding of the community, and thus will try to assess it this way without looking at it through my own lens. A far more detailed assessment will only be in further parts, though.

From the beginning, at the time of Fifteen being the only novel featuring Arthur and a cameo of Paul at the very end in it, the main thing I noticed was that it being so close to an actual, canonical relationship made a handful of people simply accept it as such, which became quite a prevalent talking point in this topic back then. As is obvious from the start, Bungou Stray Dogs is a series with characters based on actual authors, and many noticeably take up more traits after their real-world counterparts than simply sharing a name or their abilities being referred to by titles of their books. In the case of Arthur and Paul, one of these traits could have been the real-life poets’ actual relationship, but this was never confirmed in the story itself, nor even truly mentioned to begin with besides the pair having been “partners” at one point in time. This, unsurprisingly, caught some people’s attention– a few of those simply took it as a fact regarding the BSD characters despite no actual evidence of it, all while another few have not done so explicitly, but still began thinking of it this way due to the implications it had, no matter what the story itself stated and how the characters referred to each other, even back then. Either way, from my personal experience, the vast majority of people interested in the ship at the time always brought this up in one way or another.

I should also mention that a much smaller number have unfortunately seemed to blur the lines of reality and fiction in this area to almost unsettling extents, which I will talk about in a part entirely dedicated to the pair’s real-life counterparts, as it comes hand-in-hand with this topic.

So then, if the real people were in a relationship, isn’t it only natural to assume their namesakes would be too? At least, that’s what I think some of you might be asking now. To that I say yes, but even this has its nuances. I will elaborate on it a bit further later, but the real relationship was nothing short of a toxic, abusive mess, and had the fandom at the time wanted to see something depicting precisely what it was, that would be mostly understandable and not something I would fight against, given what the BSD series is about and how it creates its characters, but I presume many people simply saw the words “were in a relationship” and thought no further of it, especially that it was a queer relationship— a thing I’ve seen a lot of folks wish for in their respective fandoms for a sense of comfort, happiness or visibility. Still, that changes absolutely nothing about how destructive it truly was, and there is nothing wrong with wishing to see the true time it was supposedly based off of, even just to some degree that would have also fit in with the actual plot of the media itself, yet it seemed to me that this was the opposite of the case. The instances I saw someone genuinely not sugarcoat anything or erase whatever information was available to everyone back then regarding both the real and fictional worlds were so rare, I could count them on one of my hands alone.

Now, our lack of canonical information changes vastly in Stormbringer, a novel following Fifteen, released three years afterwards. In it, we get an actual look into Arthur and Paul’s backstory, as well as their time spent together. Personally, this novel only furthered my own views even more, but there are now some points– or rather, fictional tropes– people are relating this ship to. In some way, they do serve as a fair summary of it. I’ve heard it be described as tropes related to a character hating the whole world, yet only loving a single person in it, or two characters who ran out of time and missed their opportunities, even a very skewed “enemies to lovers”, and so on. I suppose I can see some of them too, except only as a mere recollection of the events, nothing else. All these outlines and some more I haven’t mentioned can absolutely be done right, even in the context of romantic ships, this is not to imply something is inherently wrong with them– unfortunately, however, Rimlaine doesn’t strike me as an example of that whatsoever. For some of these, there really is a thin line to be walked between making a tragic, yet healthy friendship/romance/etc., and making something which should not be put on a pedestal in any way. I’m not quite sure where the intentions lay with this pairing as I am not the author of the BSD novels themselves, if there even were such intentions in the first place as I believe it was meant to follow its real-life inspirations, but I’d say they must have been far closer to the latter category, to which they ended up falling entirely either way.

I will add a minor side note here, one I’m continuing from the previous part, I am placing no fault on the creator of BSD nor on anyone else who happens to create this type of content, no matter what it is, as that is a thing I and many others have also done ourselves. Creating a story is one thing, and whether we like it or not, these stories do exist in real life as well and shouldn’t be a secret, taboo topic, but actively taking that story and romanticizing it yourself is another matter, that of which is the part I do not condone.

Nevertheless, following this novel, Rimlaine gained its fair share of popularity, no longer being the ship with fans so far underground one would have to actively dig to find a lot of them. Since we got their canonical interactions, at least to some degree, people could see the way they talked together, worked together and so on. For me, that’d be a major thing I’d closely assess even just thinking about it if this was a pairing that I was already uncertain about, but I don’t think that was the case for many others. I believe, or rather, wish to believe the actual point of interest from there on came from the used tropes themselves and the tragedy it all was destined to be from the very beginning, not so much from the true dynamic between the two. Now, I certainly am not opposed to reading, watching or playing things which are intended to cause nothing but sorrow and I can also see where this appeal comes from, too, but that still doesn’t quite clear everything up. It was intended to be a tragedy, and that’s about it— whether it’s “beautiful” or “lovely”, as some have called it, is solely up to the reader’s personal tastes and opinions, however I absolutely do not believe there’s anything about it to be romanticized, which is what seems to be happening instead of mere appreciation of the story or proper acknowledgement of what occurred to give inspiration to it.

With that said, all the context for my statements, if necessary for the reader, will be provided in the next section in detail. Now, let me begin talking about the novels themselves.

[Part 3, 3.1, 3.2]