#But I get why it may have been considered too dark for the show's overall tone | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

surgepricing · 6 months ago

Text

RWBY Final Thoughts: Legacy

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. ... [Basically,] they behave like a cult.

This is a repost of a post I made February 1st, 2024 on another site. At the time, it was the final post of a deep-dive recap of RWBY and the history of the show, its fandom, and its direction under Rooster Teeth.

I felt this out with some of my peers and the feedback I got in relation to posting in on Tumblr was that, well, why not? It was my main haunt to begin with, and I may as well, since Rooster Teeth is closing its doors. I'm posting this mainly as a shot in the dark just to see how it gets received. Only minor edits have been made; I'm sure there's some stuff in here that would make people mad, but that applies to pretty much anything someone could say about RWBY. Click the read more to get a glance at how my time with RWBY ultimately wrapped up.

Nine years ago today, Monty Oum died of an allergic reaction. Today is a day of mourning for fans of his work, including RWBY. There’s no sense in waiting. Let’s finish this and heal.

The Showrunners

Miles and Kerry often received the brunt of the attention when it came to RWBY. As the writers of the show, they bore responsibility for the largest chunk of why it eventually went into the shitter, and fan anger against them was almost certainly not helped by the damn near idolization heaped on them by fervent stans. They are, undoubtedly, the focal point of RWBY fans’ parasocial relationship with the show.

Of course, despite sharing about the same credits space as his partner in crime, Kerry tended to fly under the radar a lot, with it being Miles who received the brunt of the fandom’s fury with each successive volume. It’s not hard to see why; the character Miles voices has been consistently over-exposed and is in many ways an obvious creator’s pet, with denials as to this fact falling on deaf ears as Jaune’s screentime continued to balloon past its merits, whereas the character Kerry voices could just about wrangle an average of ten seconds of screentime every three years. Certainly Miles has been in trouble with fans more often than Kerry for the shit he’s said and done. The Ruby body pillow and the Tifa Lockhart ‘prostitute’ comments come to mind. Oh, and the slurs, that one too.

But perhaps the reason Miles gets so much more flak than Kerry is that Miles just...acts like an asshole a lot of the time. Even aside from above examples, Miles’ flaws come out in his writing: he’s petty, holds grudges, can’t take criticism, and just overall has way more power over the story than someone of his caliber should. He’s very poor at disguising his real feelings and often lets them bleed through, and when he actually decides to voice them on purpose, things get ugly—refer to that Cameo about Ironwood.

But as tempting as it is to treat Miles as an out-of-control cockwaffle on the rampage and Kerry as his sympathetic ineffectual shadow, the reality is that they’re co-writers, have been for ten years, and anything Miles gets away with doing is as much Kerry’s fault as his. If the Gray Haddock situation has taught us anything, it’s that more people tend to harbor blame than the one individual that makes an easy scapegoat.

Since aside from aforementioned n-word business, Miles and Kerry are almost never connected to moral outrage, this makes it easy for the stans to uphold them, since all they really have to defend them from is accusations that they didn’t honor Monty’s “vision” for the series. This is only easy because the stans are fucking insane, but that’s for later on down the page.

“Vision” is in quotes because that’s how fans treat it, we all know they don’t really care. Miles and Kerry’s vision matters, and we know that much because of Calixyn’s interview where she all but begged to be told that RWBY Volume 5 was as bad as it was because the “good bois” had control of the show ripped from them. Nope, turns out all that racism, homophobia, and plain shitty writing is all on them. But at least they’re nice!

(Miles was 26 when he said the n-word. I’m 26 now when writing this. I think it’s pretty fair to call him an asshole.)

But the truth is that it’s objectively stupid to think that the direction of RWBY hasn’t changed since Monty’s passing, it’s impossible for it not to have. There are more writers on board than before, and it’s been a long time since he was alive to contribute his thoughts. The real question is whether they at least tried, and I don’t think they did.

I mean, Shane Newville never names Miles and Kerry in his letter, but he does state several times that the choices made for the show were not only not what Monty wanted, but “straight up just shitting all over what Monty made”. I find it very difficult to believe that that insinuation, and all of the people caught up in the net it casts, wouldn’t include those two. And like it or not, but the person who is able to compile tons of clips and interviews over the years as some sort of seeming immutable proof that “CRWBY” are good-hearted people determined to preserve Monty’s vision, isn’t really looking at any more evidence than the person who’s come to the conclusion, based on what they’ve seen, that that the opposite is true. And they’re certainly looking at less evidence than the people who actually did work there around Monty, Miles, and Kerry. The facts sometimes boil down to ‘if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and is implicated in the walls of text like a duck, it’s probably a duck’, guys.

Even in the best case scenario in which the work of Monty Oum turns out to have been treated with dignity and respect (and was just really shittily written from the beginning), the fact remains that Miles and Kerry did not put a quality product into the world. I will be very surprised if either of them manages to get a lead writing position ever again, because once the popularity of RWBY fades, so too will the goodwill they’ve somehow amassed among its fans. RWBY, much like Twilight, is inevitably going to taint the people who were in charge of writing it.

But Miles and Kerry are just two dudes. What exactly is going to happen to those fervent fans who hung on their every word and insisted they were the embodiment of everything pure and innocent? What, exactly, is going to happen to the RWBY fandom that once seemed to be unavoidably populous on the internet?

F, N, D, M

We already went over “constructive criticism” and “worldbuilding”, so let’s add another eternally-misused word to our roster. You know, something I’ve occasionally thought about in terms of online spaces is that no one knows what a “comfort show” is. It’s one of those terms that became too popular almost as soon as it was introduced, to the point that it became meaningless, much like “hyperfixation” and “anxiety”. I see people refer to RWBY as their comfort show and I’m just like...how? A comfort show is supposed to be the show that always puts you in a good headspace, a show you rest easy with because you’ve always connected with it because the love was always there. A comfort show is a show that you watch in your down moments to feel better, not a show you think is just the greatest thing ever, the bees’ knees if you will.

A comfort show is not a show you force yourself to like, it is not a show you defend at all costs, and it is not a show you only still cling to because enjoying it once coincided with a time when you felt popular and among friends. Which, increasingly, seems to have been the case for RWBY fans.

RWBY’s Fandom

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. But I’m doing it now because the RWBY fandom, though now it’s a shadow of its former self, is still a sizable chunk of people and took a lot longer to die than most other fandoms.

The RWBY fandom itself was an especially big and very online fandom, and the show produced an abnormally large amount of big name fans who continued to use their own influence to push its success and keep its momentum going. As I’ve said before, the RWBY fandom is something that Rooster Teeth were able to extract an excessive amount of praise out of for minimal effort; it simply seems to be in RWBY fans’ nature to speculate and theorize and over-analyze and fill in blanks, and to perceive good writing and animation where there is none. But you know how fandom operates—the bigger its size, the more infamous it becomes.

Long since famed for being especially toxic, those who are in the know consider RWBY fans a different breed, really. They create and move narratives at high speed and act quickly to correct any perceived dissent in the ranks, casting out anyone that feels disillusionment with the product and insisting everything is peachy even as their world crumbles around them. To RWBY fans, the “CRWBY” are always separate from the “problematic” aspects of Rooster Teeth (which is basically the whole company) and it doesn’t matter how many of its flaws get highlighted; RWBY and the people that make it are always great, innocent of any harm done and fantastic, and anyone that dislikes them is a villain��even if those people were at one point part of the “CRWBY” themselves. Loyalty is everything. In other words, they behave like a cult.Those acronyms themselves have always bothered me, and I’ve grown a strong distaste for them. Originally they were just a quirk of the show; a format for team names that spawned the name of the show and eventually stopped being relevant altogether. But RWBY fans are simply unable to not use them. It’s not “the fandom” it’s “the FNDM”. They’re not “the RWBY team” or “the RWBY crew”, they’re “CRWBY”. Even people that the fans are actively trying to shame, shun, and harass don’t get to simply be people—they’re “RWDE” and, when that became an actual community of sorts unto itself, was switched to “HTDM”, short for “hatedom”. They remind me distinctly of code words that get formed and passed around in cult movements, identifying terms that quickly provide boxes to put people in and make it easier to sort loyals from disloyals. “Hatedom” itself is another one of those terms that spread and got so prolific it really doesn’t carry any meaning anymore. Real hatedoms are surprisingly rare, guys. Every fandom that becomes big enough for its respective product to become criticized eventually comes to believe it has a ‘hatedom’ because how could someone dislike something I like so much? But a hatedom on its own arises out of very specific circumstances and environments, and causes the spread of hate for a product based on broad foundations that are often unfair to the product and which creates perceptions that spread faster than the work, so that the work is often talked about in mocking reference rather than true dissatisfaction.

RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom guys, it never did. The Last of Us doesn’t have a hatedom. Fairy Tail didn’t have a hatedom. Blackpink doesn’t have a hatedom. Even Marvel doesn’t have a hatedom.

Paris Hilton had a hatedom. Nickelback had a hatedom. Hell, the website Tumblr itself had a hatedom. These were examples of people or products whose reputations spread too quickly and eventually swallowed rational perception of them, with people who have never experienced them or their work dismissing them and the fans who enjoy it wholesale.

Using the term “hatedom” is understandably common because (and in spite of the fact that) it allows for easy miscategorization. A hatedom is not composed of people that were actually exposed to the work, found it lacking, and expressed that. A hatedom does not occur in the wake of a product that was so bad it pissed off its fans and caused them to walk. People don’t hate Metroid: Other M because they can’t stand the sight of a woman being vulnerable and don’t understand challenging drama, they hate it because it was poorly written, badly designed, and tarnished a long-running and highly cherished gaming heroine’s reputation. People didn’t hate Fifty Shades of Grey because of some bias against women expressing their sexual freedom, they hated it because it was a wildly misogynistic and badly-written piece of dreck. People didn’t hate The Last of Us Part II because of homophobia and transphobia, they hated it because it was a misery fest with a tired moral theme that posited itself far more deep and compelling than it really was. And just because people with the above disingenuous views also hated these things does not discount the fact that the works got the reputations they did because they were getting back the exact amount of love and respect that was put into them.

Similarly, RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom. It does, in fact, have an ex-fandom. Those are also things you don’t see very often, but when you do, they almost always follow the same pattern, don’t they? A work which got wildly popular very quickly, took really deep nosedives afterward, and became disowned by the people that had formerly propped it up.

But that’s a discussion for later. What exactly makes RWBY’s fandom so toxic and cult-like, and why and how did it get that way? I think it’s a combination of several key factors that were baked in and collided badly.

The first was ease of access. RWBY was sold extremely well early on, and shared enough similarities with both anime and video games that it attracted many curious people from those communities. Combine that with vibrant colors, an attractive visual aesthetic, an air of badassery, and good music, and it gained a lot of loyal fans quickly—fans of anime and video games, specifically, being fans that tend to get more attached than to other mediums and are known for spending a lot on merchandise. These, in turn, morphed into nostalgic elements ripe for misremembering—people often have difficulty acknowledging that something they once liked isn’t good anymore even on its own, and I think RWBY fans in particular put way too much energy into the show to be able to admit that all the time they spent defending it (and harassing people who criticized it) was for nothing.

That skyhigh rocket to fame early on, of course, was attached to the reputation of Monty Oum, and once he died, he quickly became a martyr, which galvanized the loyalty of the show’s most toxic fans even further. To this day, talking about Monty at all, even for the right reasons, is seen as disrespectful or distasteful unless you’re trying to use him to prop up Rooster Teeth, a double standard I’ve unfortunately run into even in seeming safe spaces. I think if we’re comparing RWBY fandom to a cult, then Monty Oum and his memory can be compared to a central mythologized figure, the center around which are formed all of the pretty lies the members of the cult will tell you. Monty’s name is irreplaceably tied to RWBY, and as such, in order to defend Monty, its fans have to defend RWBY...and you can see where this leads. Attempting to talk about the mistreatment Monty and his family went through at Rooster Teeth is seen as using his name as a weapon—nevermind the fact that Rooster Teeth and their fans regularly use his name as a shield.

Of course, what this really reveals is that many such people don’t care about Monty, who he was, or who he went through, but rather his name alone. In fact, I’ve straight up seen RWBY stans say that people shouldn’t “take Monty’s name in vain”, as if Monty were in fact some sacred religious figure. It’s both bizarre and harmful.

A third factor was popularity. For a lot of the same reasons as, say, Supernatural, the perception of RWBY skews much more broadly between fan and ex-fan than that of the typical over-hyped show. The truth of the matter is that when a show gets popular, or really any work gets popular, enjoying it becomes a cliquey sort of thing. People that enjoyed being into something well-respected and widely known and basically the hottest trend are far more prone to become overly attached, put too much of themselves into it, and remain unequipped to deal with the fact of that trend’s eventual passing, especially if it’s a fall into disgrace rather than a quiet entrance into history. You can still find certain especially toxic big names from the RWBY fandom active and posting, pretending not to notice that their audience has become smaller and smaller over the years. Let’s face facts here, a lot of people that enjoy being part of the “in” crowd never manage to figure out how to accept losses and will do anything to try and regain lost popularity, or fool themselves into thinking they’re still on top of the world.

But we can reason and explain all day. Another truth of the matter is that it shouldn’t be other people’s problem that fans can’t accept reality and adjust, and that the RWBY fandom quite honestly deserves its reputation as abysmally toxic. The way terminal fans of the show have treated anyone who dissents, most prominently Shane Newville and other ex-employees, let alone other ex-fans of the show, is quite frankly disgusting. RWBY stans are difficult to look at in all of their bewildering, teeth-gnashing toxicity and forgive...so I’m not going to. People that still insist there’s nothing wrong with this show or the company making it are, as far as I’m concerned, beyond help, and are part of the problem. Many an ex-employee certainly thinks so.

In a lot of ways, you could call the fandom one of the driving forces of the show’s failure, mostly because they had an abnormally large amount of influence over the show. Pleasing the fans has always been a major goal of the RWBY team (unless you like characters Miles Luna doesn’t, I guess), but it’s almost disturbing how the Rooster Teeth strategy has been to lead them along and bat their eyelashes at every turn and how the fandom laps it up.

Of course, Rooster Teeth feeds the parasocial engine by engaging with the fans as equals, and I was given a disturbing reminder of how many of the people who worked on the show—the ones who aren’t pissed and digging themselves out of trauma ditches—behave exactly as the fans do, tweeting twenty times a day about their favorite ships and memes. By creating the perception that RWBY’s team is just like the RWBY fanbase and wants the same things they want, they tap that line of excess energy that’s kept this fandom going so long despite how far it’s fallen. It’s that “hey! my friend said my ship is going to be canon and he works on the show” feeling.

Of course, a probable reason as to why so many employees who worked on RWBY behave the way RWBY fans do is because a lot of them started out that way. As in, student hires. This has long been an open secret of Rooster Teeth’s M.O. for a while now, hiring people who look up to them and engage heavily with their content. Many an ex-animator has lambasted this tactic because it’s insidious, and purposely designed to make the incoming staff feel honored and indebted and excited so they won’t notice how they’re being fucked over. Arryn Troche, who made the ‘gays greenlighting volume 10’ tweet, rings up as a particularly eerie example considering they have the same rather-uncommon and unconventionally-spelled name as the voice actor for a ship they’re obviously very attached to. A quick search reveals them to have been a longtime fan and cosplayer for the show before being signed on as a junior animator.

And it is the fandom who ultimately makes the legacy for any given work or body of work. So what is RWBY ultimately going to be remembered for?

Legacy

I thought about it for a little while and found five things that are most likely to be associated with RWBY in the public’s memory after its death. The first should come as no surprise to anyone.

Bumbleby

The only part of RWBY that will likely be carried on by fans who stuck with it until the end is, of course, the only part of it that mattered, to many of them. You’ll know from my earlier recaps that shipping was always a big deal in fandom, but due to key choices (or if you prefer, mistakes) made during Volumes 2 and 3, one ship grew larger and more promoted in fandom circles than any others.

This is a combination of the unique features of the RWBY fandom and their one-track mind. The fans are well-known, as I said, to fill in the blanks in a pattern that best suits their narratives, and this works out with Rooster Teeth because it means that any sudden changes in direction they make will always be excused and praised rather than critically examined. Unsurprisingly, Bumbleby’s fandom, now that their victory has been cemented, have doubled down on their narrative that this was the intended goal from the beginning, despite it being plainly obvious that early RWBY was angling for Sun Wukong as the love interest and threw the occasional bones to Blake/Yang shippers to try and play nice.

This used to be one part of the fandom, of course, but as the show continually bombed with viewers and made more and more decisions that pushed them away, all competitors were slowly filtered out as their fans left, until Bumbleby shippers were the fandom. It’s no coincidence that Blake and Yang suddenly started acting unusually touchy and sentimental in Volume Six, following on the heels of a volume of RWBY so wildly unpopular that it woke up the company execs and forced them to acknowledge that the biggest part of their fanbase was only going to remain loyal in exchange for one thing: their ship.

The sad thing is that you can tell Rooster Teeth wanted to explore other options. Volume Five features a rather sudden shift into Yang and Weiss interactions in what I remain positive to this day was an attempt to sway shippers into a potential second choice while Black Sun was still in the oven, and this really represented one of the major errors of Rooster Teeth, in that they failed to understand the audience they were trying so hard to please.

Bumbleby became what I call a “Big Red Button” ship, and it is only the second of its kind that I’ve seen. The first? Destiel.

Yes, there’s a reason I kept comparing RWBY to Supernatural whenever Blake and Yang’s relationship came up. I admit I wasn’t a part of the Supernatural craze in its heyday and have never really enjoyed the show, but I’ve watched enough of it to connect the dots from what cultural osmosis I had to the eventual downfall we saw in November of 2020.

Both Bumbleby and Destiel were held up as the gay ship that would change everything, the biggest ship in the fandom and the one that would’ve been a major push for LGBT visibility, at least during their heydays. The problem was that its fans were not really that interested in LGBT visibility and were simply obsessed with the ship itself, applying it value as a win for LGBT audiences purely to bolster its perceived importance. Fans like this were not ever going to accept any alternatives regardless of the sexual orientations or gender conventions involved. Hence, the metaphor that is “the big red button”. You have a big red button that says “canon gay ship but not the ship you want” and ask the fans you’re trying to court whether they’d press it or not. Whatever they might say out loud, you know none of them is pressing that fucking button, ever.

Both of these Big Red Button ships became what they were due to showrunners being forced into courting an audience they really didn’t care for, and how could you blame them when both were infamously very, very over-active and annoying in general. Just like with RWBY’s well-intentioned but misguided Freezerburn phase in Volume 5, Supernatural also tried to gently shut down fans who then managed to obliviously ignore any and all hints that their ship was not meant to be endgame, and I can say that because “he’s like a brother to me” in any fandom but Supernatural would’ve been a tactical nuclear strike that sent the shippers packing. Once it failed, the gay bait came out in full force. It’s well known by now that, contrary to what one would imagine, the CW was not pulling a profit off of Supernatural’s minor mainstream success pushed by a cult following, so it’s no wonder they eventually resorted to desperately baiting the one audience that was going to stick it out no matter what, provided they had the right relationship dangled in front of them. RWBY went through the same thing.

The main problem with these two ships is that for all its diehards insisted that it was all about the gay representation, their respective shows teased and baited for so long that the world outside the little bubble these shippers lived in had moved on by the time they came to fruition. Gay visibility in media these days, at least western media, is easily available, to the extent that sometimes people believe homophobia is totally over when it really, really isn’t. If you’re looking for gay representation, you can find it plenty of places, and the first place you look probably isn’t going to be Supernatural or RWBY. So the huge wave of viewers that these shippers expected upon their victories was never going to occur, which might could’ve been avoided if the writers had simply grown a pair and made moves towards canon much sooner than before the shows were on their last legs and due to be scrapped.

Or, you know, just been honest. Diversions and alternatives were never going to work. The only thing that these shippers were ever going to understand was a hard no, a “sorry, this ship isn’t going to happen”. But the execs in charge of these shows were never willing to take a hit like that, so instead they dug their own grave.

And where does that leave the shippers, those people who devoted their whole lives to these fictional characters, only to find the show that bore them into the universe dead in a ditch? Well, nowhere good. Much like Supernatural, RWBY is heavily associated with its booming period, the heavily online portion of these shippers’ lives in the early and mid-2010s when it was all the rage, and yet in modern day, it’s seen as a bad neighborhood to hang in, an abandoned mansion at the corner of the street where awful things happened. These shippers don’t have many friends except each other.

Just like RWBY, Supernatural also exists primarily as an ex-fandom now. Much of its former fanbase remember the good days fondly but make no secret that they stopped following it once the writing tanked, and this left the shippers without many allies to associate with since so many of them had been pissed off with the way their shows ultimately became the Destiel Show and the Bumbleby Show, respectively. Contrary to an unfortunately popular idea, these shows did have actual LGBT fanbases, only a lot of their LGBT fans were not on kool-aid and avoided being sucked into a trap called “if you don’t ship this, you’re homophobic”.

You will find that the Bumbleby fandom are often looked on with disdain by quite a number of viewers of RWBY who have accused them of speaking over minorities, sexual and otherwise. Many fans have noted that, aside from Blake’s bisexuality being a seemingly late addition (Arryn Zech is noted to have cast her as straight when discussing Ilia Amitola’s ill-fated crush on her as late as 2019), Blake was very swiftly removed from all faunus characters who held romantic connotations in favor of Yang, implicitly saying that Blake was better committing to a white human woman than to an ethnic faunus male. There are obvious reasons why this left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. Not to mention, other LGBT fans that invested in the show were not exactly welcomed with open arms.

Fair Game, or as I tend to call it, Qrowver? Qrow x Clover? Yeah, that was huge in Volume 7’s airing days. It very much experienced a rapid ballooning in fans and fandom love...but we all know how that ended. Many a fan who felt heartbroken and, importantly, betrayed by Clover’s sudden and rather pointless death turned on RWBY and Rooster Teeth and accused them of gaybaiting, which is of course exactly what happened. They received no sympathy from Bumbleby shippers—because of course they wouldn’t. If Rooster Teeth would gaybait with Qrow, a popular male character, that would mean they could potentially be gaybaiting with Blake and Yang, too. That was unacceptable, and so ironically the part of the fandom that had always crowed about the importance of extending a hand to LGBT viewers turned on LGBT viewers, valiantly defending Rooster Teeth as they always had.

And because Bumbleby fans had no room in their hearts for anything about RWBY except Bumbleby, and were hostile to anyone who didn’t ship it, they ended up being their own best friends and everyone else’s bad memories. When RWBY has faded from the public’s memory and is no longer a source of active income at all (so, basically right now), one of the only relics you’ll find of this show will be the two women making out in all the fanart you’ll find on the occasional Tumblr blog.

The Bigotry

You could call this section “the Racism” since that’s the biggest part of it, but we’d be remiss in neglecting the harm done to other minorities as well. We’ll get to them in a minute, but race is the thing that’s going to pop to mind when we talk about one of the other things RWBY left behind in the common memory.

One of the longest-running subplots that RWBY ever went through with was the racism subplot. Its basis is one of the things that so severely dates RWBY: creating an in-universe stand-in for people of color through the existence of people with animal traits was something you would absolutely not get away with after 2020, and even by 2016 was something liable to be seen as tacky. Nonetheless, RWBY openly used the faunus as stand-ins for black Americans and the struggles they faced in a white world.

Except that the company, based in Texas and headed largely by white staff, did not feel the importance of that. What slowly started out as a main character’s attempt to redeem an organization she felt had been driven too far and was no longer her home was slowly transformed into a means by which some incredibly racist people could spout off about what they felt were the real issues to be talked about, which were the condemnation they felt was deserved by activists that turned to violence, labeled, a little too quickly, as terrorists.

The 2010s saw a shift in social values, and much as with gay audiences and gay characters, black audiences and black characters—as well as other racial minorities—were experiencing something of a renaissance, with efforts to put the voices of these people into the public’s feeds. It wasn’t just George Floyd in 2020—the unexpected and frankly traumatic reign of Donald Trump as president of the United States galvanized the divide in America and social awareness became a bigger thing than ever, and since Trump was a flagrantly racist person with racist beliefs who enacted racist policies and was uplifted by racist Americans, people pushed back as they felt their lives and existences being threatened by a racist establishment...an establishment which Rooster Teeth came down on the side of very firmly.

No quarter is given to the fictional stand-ins. Sienna Khan’s policies are never examined in-depth, and the only close looks we get at the sorts of activism the White Fang does are at Adam, who is obviously condemned by the narrative and made into everything but a mustache-twirler, with delusional and frankly baffling beliefs of faunus superiority spelled out at length. No matter what concessions Rooster Teeth might’ve tried to make with Sienna’s beliefs before they stuck a sword in her, the fact of the matter is that their beliefs came through in the voices of Ghira and Blake, who made it very clear that the individual motives and experiences of people like Ilia, Corsac, Fennec, Yuma, and the rest simply don’t matter in the face of what they’d been driven to do by them. The whole ‘blacks can be racist’ tone of the final scenes involved in this subplot are both miles removed from the more cautious and neutral tone of early RWBY, and also just a very alarming red flag overall.

I went over this in my Volume 5 Final Thoughts: the shoddiness of the volume does not lie solely with the animation department. Miles and Kerry are known to have had generally sole control of the show up until Volume 7—but we also know that they didn’t have to, if they were writing anything company execs felt wasn’t to their tastes. The sudden twisting of Adam into a homicidal incel ex-boyfriend, along with his mutation into a faunus supremacist, when he was the face of the faunus movement as a whole, along with Sun’s blatant ill will towards the White Fang when he’d previously been willing to give them a chance on Blake’s word, all imply that Miles and Kerry endorsed the worst possible interpretations of racial activists and felt free to condemn them and place responsibility onto the faunus—and by extension, the real-life minorities they represented—to take a stand against the bad seeds within their causes, and the fact no one stopped them from airing this implies the higher-ups felt the same way.

People didn’t just leave RWBY after Volume 5 because of some really badly animated fights—they left because they’d felt too much of the authors’ racism coming through in the narrative and couldn’t comfortably continue watching. Every member of the faunus that had “bad” views was either killed (Adam, Sienna, Fennec), arrested (Corsac, Yuma), or “redeemed” by choosing to fight the first two (Ilia). All of these combined factors, with no room for charitable interpretations…not a good look.

And once Adam was defeated in Volume 5, and the White Fang reformed, that was the last anyone saw of that subplot, which had taken five years to wrap up and somehow still ended too early. Miles and Kerry had washed their hands of it, and references to Blake’s place in society were sparing from then on. This subplot’s inescapable presence throughout the show, combined with how it was dropped out of existence, left no room for redemption, either. No one was going back and saying “maybe this looks really, really bad”.

And so, that’s what a lot of people carried with them as their final and most relevant memories of RWBY: it’s astounding levels of racism. This is a bitter subject for many an ex-RWBY fan, many of whom aren’t white and, even among those that are, it’s simply inexcusable. Meet someone on social media who talks about RWBY at all, and isn’t one of the Bumbleby stans we’ve already discussed? You will find some mention or other of RWBY’s racist elements somewhere within their sphere. And so, that becomes a part of RWBY’s legacy, as a feature of the show that was simply too big to ignore and too poorly-handled to forgive. People don’t get over this shit, man.

This is of course not to mention the well deserved shitty reputation RWBY has for its other bigoted elements, as well. Bumbleby, as we’ve discussed, encompassed pretty much every RWBY stan left standing by 2020, but that left quite a few ex-fans that were fed up with the company’s obvious ploys when it came to sexuality and gender. Remember when I talked about Qrowver up above? Its ballooning and immediate fall from grace was a much-condensed version of RWBY as a whole, and pretty much featured as Rooster Teeth blowing their last remaining patience from LGBT fans to smithereens. The fact of the matter is that when you get down to it, every RWBY volume after Volume 4 was not a good time to be a minority. If you were gay, the show seemed to either ignore or despise you—between the background gays that warranted mockery, the mixed reception Ilia generated, and the outrage that finally boiled over when Clover bit it, part of RWBY’s legacy is how utterly unpleasant it has been for LGBT fans who expected and deserved better.

And so despite entering the scene in 2013 as a supposedly progressive show all for being led by four women, the show died known as a low-effort half-baked cringefest whose politics were always on display and always several years behind the trend.

The Good Days

Of course, another major part of RWBY’s legacy is the early days when everyone actually liked it. This is, again, something the show creators brought on themselves and something fans assisted with. I did mention the nostalgia for the Good Ol’ Days as a significant part of the RWBY fandom’s more cult-like elements, after all. The fact of the matter is, on some level, everyone knows that RWBY has spent several years going downhill. The ex-fans lament this fact, and the diehard stans insist that it’s all just as good as it used to be, primarily by doing what they do quite a lot, and linking completely coincidental elements back to things characters said or did in previous volumes as some sort of evidence that this has been the plan all along.

I’ve run polls on this matter before; even though I’ve recapped Volumes 1-3 thoroughly and shone lights on some pretty significant flaws, you ask anyone what they think the best volume of RWBY was and they’re gonna tell you Volume 3. Yes, even with all of the stalking incel Adam and the deaths of Penny and Pyrrha. It’s the last time RWBY felt cohesive and even though some obvious derailing was in effect, and Shane Newville has openly said that the behind-the-scenes matters were pretty ugly, it’s still the golden child. Shane’s only one person, and it’d be a while before RWBY scandals would become consistent and begin to overshadow the show as a whole.

The RWBY team themselves have certainly nurtured that very much on purpose. That tactic started with them, of course. Many elements that were either unpopular or predicted to ruffle feathers were stated to have originated in earlier volumes, even in situations where this wouldn’t have made sense or where it’s an obvious lie—such as Maria Calavera. They know full well their seasons post-Volume 3 were unpopular and receiving blowback, and tried to minimize it by linking them to more well-respected seasons. Suffice to say that this simply didn’t work. But it does make people remember those earlier volumes. Because so many ex-fans lost their energy for RWBY after its most active period, much of the hype from the hype era is all that you’ll see when you encounter one. Nostalgia wins out in the end, and at least RWBY can say that, as a show, it had enough of a headstart to leave an impression that lasted in a positive way. Although that’s only one side of the coin...

The Scandals

Let’s face facts here, the biggest part of RWBY’s legacy, period, is that it fucking died. It didn’t die instantly, but rather took hit after hit, blow after blow, and slowly had its image tarnished alongside that of the company, which failed to contain repeated scandals as ex-employee after ex-employee after ex-employee spoke out about the abysmal ways they’d been treated.

RWBY is Rooster Teeth’s biggest IP by far and, really, their only one worth talking about. Every other show was either eclipsed by it or unofficially canceled after bad reception. So when Rooster Teeth suffered the consequences of their actions, so did RWBY. It really can’t be overstated how the last few years of RWBY’s existence have been absolutely bombarded by a barrage of terrible Glassdoor reviews and bombshell exposure letters. Fans managed to stay strong through the first few rumblings of ill will, but after Volume 5 shook the fandom loose, discontent entered enough of the fandom sphere to be normalized, and once that happened, it was all downhill. Once people were actually allowed to talk about not liking Rooster Teeth’s content, they sure as hell weren’t going to be dissuaded from talking about not liking Rooster Teeth as a company or its practices.

Separating the art from the artist is a very difficult thing to do and only really appropriate in certain situations. Don’t fall for any kool-aid, guys, it doesn’t make you more mature or ‘above all the drama’ to actively ignore the damage done to real people in the process of getting fictional content out into the world.

If you��re still able to enjoy the Harry Potter books and look back on the good times they gave you in fondness, then fine. If you actually purchased and played the Hogwarts Legacy game programmed by antisemites and which puts money in the pocket of the transphobic owner of the franchise, then yeah, people will be right to give you shit for it. There’s a difference between quietly enjoying a product in a manner that doesn’t hurt anybody, and actively ignoring the people hurt to make that product while feigning concern. The gap in the fandom widened as the repeated leaks and scandals continuously ate away at the protective bubble around Rooster Teeth and it became clear that whatever fans might bleat, Rooster Teeth wasn’t going to ‘learn their lesson and do better’. The habitual cycle of using whatever recent scandal had occurred to cast disappointment and anger on a particular figure and uplift the rest of “CRWBY” (see also: the Gray Haddock issue) gave diminishing returns as the bombs kept dropping. This is part of why RWBY has such an ex-fandom, because if they aren’t enjoying the product and people were hurt to make it, why stay?

Crunching employees so hard they struggle to sleep and suffer debilitating health issues? Writing the n-word on a white board knowing a black employee will see it? Goading someone into trying to kill themselves? Calling an LGBT employee a slur and then making up a public-friendly nickname in place of that slur just to get away with continuing to call her that? Laying off people without warning or a means of letting them stay afloat until another job is found? Not paying or crediting employees and cultivating an environment where those in charge do what they want and those in the public eye reap all the benefit while those without a consistent spotlight get treated like dirt?

Just some of the things I thought up off the top of my head. There’s plenty more in the details. And you can’t blame Fullscreen, you can’t blame Warner, you can’t just write it off as something that happens at animation studios, because it isn’t. Yeah, the work environment in general for animation studios in America is lacking because, ya know, late-stage capitalism hellscape, but that’s dismissive of the point. Rooster Teeth are a bad company and hurt their employees and lie when called on it. It’s impossible to separate RWBY from Rooster Teeth (despite stubborn stans’ best attempts, which themselves have been called out by these same ex-employees) and because of that, RWBY’s legacy is one of corporate abuse and utterly vile behavior towards people that just wanted to make something cool.

People have refused to associate with the show over these things and honestly, they’re right to. RWBY’s ultimate legacy, if we’re honest, is the show that became a shadow of its former self, still trying to dazzle with reminders of its former glory and promises of gay relationships, all while trying to squeeze money out of both the employees who made it and the fans who upheld it. It’s the show that cost hundreds of people their physical and mental health and didn’t even have anything to show for it at the end of the day. It will live on in history as the most bitter of pills to swallow, that something you once liked and wanted to succeed can and will be ruthlessly twisted for profit margins and might actively hate you on the side. And speaking of…

Monty Oum

The biggest travesty of RWBY’s legacy is that Monty Oum is ultimately only the smallest part of it. He’s there, but barely—he’s a name in the credits that quite frankly is only there to keep up the facade of loyalty, when the show had stopped being Monty’s show before he even died and by now can be safely said to resemble nothing he would’ve made.

It’s a shame that for all that Monty was held up as a genius of his craft and a genuinely good man who inspired so many people, all he’s going to be remembered for is...this. A show people only attach his name to in an effort to insist it’s actually worth sticking by. Yes, Monty did other things, had other works, but none of them ever achieved even a fraction of the fame and respect that RWBY had from its first baby steps in 2013.

Maybe this could’ve been avoided if the real carriers of Monty’s legacy—Sheena, his wife, and Shane, his pupil—hadn’t been cast off as they had.

Shane seems to have found a new life and is working with Dillon Gu on animation, but I think we’ve all noticed his name hasn’t gone mainstream yet. I’ve tried to get in touch with him; from what I’ve gleaned, I frankly just advise leaving him alone. He wants to move on and I don’t think the RWBY fandom, which was so awful to him for telling the truth, is ever going to be a place he can feel welcome.

Sheena has mostly been quiet and done her own thing, cosplaying and watching anime and hopefully enjoying herself, although I notice posts on her Twitter feed from last year calling for a New Deal in the animation sector and castigating corporate abuses.

She also plays Hades, a much better product than RWBY with more love put into it and much better LGBT representation, which means her taste is excellent. She has a site now that you can go to, and the about section doesn’t mention Monty, her late husband, at all, for obvious reasons: Sheena doesn’t want to be connected to RWBY. Though, there is something there that’s noteworthy, in the last paragraph:

Still desiring a social element to her career, the animator turned professional cosplayer also has a history in the live stream world. Past broadcasts have included creating costume pieces, playing games with community members and subscribers, RPGs and more. No matter the project, peers or problem, Sheena strives to keep moving forward.

That powerful phrase we all associate with Monty.

It’s a shame that this show had to be Monty’s legacy, and that years off from now, his name isn’t going to mean anything to the public because the project he was passionate about and died making outlived him and his passion. It feels like his legacy was stolen, and his own part in the show’s legacy is held up purely as a pedestal on which the show should rightfully shine.

Every time I think about Monty, I think about how much I don’t want that to be me. For all the years I’ve spent here, with my graphics certifications being wasted since I earned them while I slave away in retail, I wonder if I’m the lucky one. If I were to enter the workforce and do what I loved, would it be worth it in the end? Would what happened to Monty and Sheena and Shane happen to me? Not sure I wanna know.

Snipped here.

#rwde #rwby

43 notes · View notes

pienhime · 1 year ago

Text

10 female vtubers who are popular with ryousangata and jirai girls!

Two important things to know before you read any further: I am NOT alleging any of these vtubers to be jirai kei. That'd be incredibly inappropriate for me to do, as I don't know any of them well enough to know if they are a part of the jirai kei subculture. I am simply listing vtubers who seem to be the most popular within the ryousanjirai crowd, that is those whose female fanbase seems to have a higher proportion of ryousanjirai girls than most.

The other thing I'd like to get out of the way is that some vtubers on this list are known for using "menhera" as an insult. Sadly, thats grown popular in the vtuber scene and online spaces in japan. For vtuber fans reading this who think that's a weird thing to say, the word "menhera" has been around since 2001 and was the name given to an internet subculture revolving around mental health safe spaces, awareness, and vent art. Even tho it was literally created to help erase the "mental illness makes you dangerous" thing, the stigma took over once the term went mainstream, so its often used to mean "yandere psycho". The subculture still exists if you know where to look, but barely ever uses the name it gave itself anymore because it attracts trolls, edgelords, and fetishists.

One last thing- a few of these girls fit the "loli" archetype, and consider it a part of their appeal, but no minors will be featured on this list.

absolutely zero past-life discussion

I'll do my best to summarize what the vtuber is known for and the reasons i think are likely why their female fanbase has a larger proportion of ryousanjirai girls.

1. Sakamata Chloe (Hololive HoloX)

Given that she recently got a new outfit that looks a lot like a dark girly kei coord, you've probably seen Chloe on your feed recently. Despite her yamikawaii punk-ish look, she's so cute and probably couldn't survive in the wild if she were a real orca. The "pon" is unreal. Her original songs talk about her own inner pain in a way that may be relatable to jirai girls, and she's covered a lot of songs popular with us too (such as Cute Loving and Devil Janai Mon). Between her cutesiness, choice in fashion, and her songs, it's easy to see why she's loved by jirai kei girls.

2. Minato Aqua (Hololive Gen. 2)

You probably know about Aqua if you follow me, since I just posted a link to one of her more recent song covers. It's one about a ryousangata girl falling in love with a host, and knowing his affection is fake but wanting it anyway. She covers a lot of songs about topics that are familiar to ryousan and jirai girls, like kyuukurarin, darling dance, goodbye declaration, and internet overdose to name a few. Her original songs are also hits with the ryousangata crowd, with "aqua iro palette" being the choice of song in so many tiktoks and reels of ryousan wotas showing off their lavish birthday celebrations for their oshis. She's also a cosplayer, frequently wearing maid outfits, making her relatable to a lot of girls who work at concept cafes. She also did a duet with Shion, a cover of "menhera janai mon", which is a song i often see misinterpreted outside of japan because of the need for cultural context on jirai kei, ryousangata, and menhera both as a subculture and insult. Should I do a post explaining the lyrics and overall themes?

3. Makaino Ririmu (Nijisanji Gamers Generation 3)

Listen. If you're in the jirai kei subculture, I guarantee you've seen Ririmu. This girl's fanart is probably on every jirai kei blog known to man. If you don't recognize this model, you'd recognize the maid outfit with bondage elements thats paired with a coat that looks suspiciously like REFLEM's bunny ears coat (the one that took yamikawa lovers by storm a while back). Ririmu's popularity with jirai kei girls isn't just because she likes similar fashions to most of us. Ririmu has been open about her past suffering with agorophobia, suicidal ideation, and being a NEET. She's shared bits and pieces of her recovery with her fans! Of course, she also does yandere bit that might be more than a bit, and covers a lot of songs popular with ryousan and jirai girls, like more kyun, chuupuri, and vampire.

4. Mikeneko (Indie)

Mikeneko isn't new to the scene at all, but has recently come out of a partly mental health related hiatus to a much larger following than before. Mikeneko collects models like they're pokemon cards, going thru four in total now, two of which have been in one year. She wears tons of yamikawa fashions, and plays up her chuunibyou for streams. Aside from her on-and-off NEETdom, Mikeneko is open about a lot of her health issues, including bipolar, and about her medication and trips to the psychiatric hospital. She calls herself menhera, often in the secondary meaning, but she's also rumored to have been a part of the actual subculture for a long time. Her original songs, drop and you&me ring really true for a lot of jirai and menhera girls such as myself.

5. Meloco Kyoran (Nijisanji EN Generation 7)

Meloco is the only vtuber on this list to be a part of an company's EN (english-speaking) branch. She's included on the list because she's also big in japan- because she's japanese. She's almost fluent in english and was accepted for the english branch, but frequently slips into japanese and appeals to her japanese fans. Her outfit is gothic lolita inspired with bondage elements and plenty of edge, to fit her overall spooky exorcist theming. Her creepy-cute nature and cool alternative onee-san demeanor have attracted her many jirai kei fans, and inspired a lot of ryousan girls' oshi nails.

6. Sukoya Kana (Nijisanji Tulip-gumi Unit)

Admittedly, Kana's probably got more menhera (as in the subculture) fans than jirai or ryousan, but she still has enough that I wanted to include her. Her nurse theming isn't just a gimmick, her actual "day job" is as a nurse. As in, when she's not streaming, she works in a hospital as staff after passing her qualifying exams in 2022! She must be super busy! Her morbid interests and fetishes, as well as her medical themed design, have no doubt appealed to many jirai girls too. Besides that, she's covered a lot of songs, including quite a few beloved by landmines such as lavie, nainai girls pride, and godish.

7. Natori Sana (Indie)

Listen, I just know you've seen her figures by now. Every menhera, yamikawaii, and "cutecore" account in the west has at least one of this nurse girl's figures. She's ultra cute, with a sickeningly sweet smile and design. Her lore is interesting- she claims to work at a sanitarium, but has hinted very heavily many times that she is in fact not a nurse, but a patient in denial. Whether this is just lore for fun and appeal or is a dramatized reflection of Sana's own feelings and mental health is up for speculation.

8. La+ (Laplus) Darkness (HoloX)

Remember that disclaimer regarding using menhera derogatorily earlier? Yeah that's 90% because of Laplus's inclusion on the list. It feels like she accuses someone of being menhera (derogatory) like every other VOD. Apart from that, Laplus is a grade A kusogaki, complete with constant angry outburst when things don't go her way. She's a demon whos intelligence was... "sealed away"... sure. Her gothic appearance and explosive personality seem to be what's gained her such a large jirai kei following.

9. Houshou Marine (Hololive Gen. 3)

Dear god. Alright, so you've definitely heard at least two of her songs if you're on japanese jirai kei SNS at all. This cosplaying pirate is so horny that it's literally considered her catchphrase. Her original songs about wanting to be seen as desirable and be... pleasured seem to be especially popular with landmine girls (which is maybe related to how many jirai girls are in a certain profession). She enjoys gothic lolita fashion, girls love/yuri, and enough fetishes to lose track of if you're counting.

10. Shigure Ui (Indie)

Did you really think I could make this list without including hololive star Oozora Subaru's mom and voice of the song that's plaguing japanese social media, ESPECIALLY landmine social media rn? Sure, it's everywhere, but go check every insta kaiwai dedicated to jirai subculture and see how many of their reels have this song. Even though she's just now broken out to this degree of fame, she's been around a while, and is the "mama" (artist) to several other vtubers. She often collabs with hololive members! She loves taboo fiction, which is also especially popular amongst jirai girls.

Last but not least, I want to add three honorable mentions from Hololive that are also popular with ryousanjirai girls. Tokoyami Towa is a super popular choice of cosplay amongst jirai girls specifically. She has a cute-but-cool look, and lots of her outfits definitely have subcultural influences from japanese ゴスパンク (gothic x punk) and general "egirl"-type styles. Murasaki Shion is a very popular choice of profile pic for ryousanjirai girls, and it's easy to see why. Her "kusogaki" appeal and lolita outfits, as well as her "Menhera Janai Mon" duet with Aqua all appeal to that demographic. Finally, last honorable mention is Amane Kanata, purely because of how popular she is with lovers of Tenshi Kaiwai, which has a lot of overlap with the jirai subculture. She basically predicted the trend before the magazine that popularized it even existed. Mizuiro x white cybercore outfits, a nurse cosplay, and angel theming make her a spot-on icon in that scene.

That's it! Now I have to stop procrastinating on the pien kei characters post...

59 notes · View notes

decimal86 · 2 months ago

Text

New AU concept: Felltopia.

The idea is simple: The Failfleet Miis lost the fight against the Darkest Lord in the finale, leading to a darker story for The Incident and the overall storyline. Now, the fate of the universe lays in the hands of an even more dysfunctional group of adventurers brought together by demon looking to take back the power that was his.

Orion - a haunted suit of armor grown over by vines and weathered from the elements. Once donned by a member of the Greenhorne guard, only his daughter knows of its true nature. After eventually finding peace, flowers bloomed through the cracks in its helmet. A being of few words, but protective until the end.

Friend - a fallen angel whose voice was sealed away by a malicious force, twisting their power to for its own use and silencing it with a permanent smile of false serenity. But the forces of righteousness may still be able to have their victory...

Shrimp - a young siren deemed as a monstrosity by the citizens of a coastal village and a failure by her species—specifically, for having a scream capable of shattering glass. After being cast out by both humans and merfolk alike, she's been on the run, resorting to scavenging and vowing never to sing her melodies again.

Erica - a now-disgraced undead cleric who shed her robes after being unable to save her kingdom. A living corpse contained in the armor of a fallen knight, both her mind and body alike gave up on the idea of healing. The wounds of the past only remind her of what could have gone right, leaving her bitter and untrusting of any potential allies.

Chi - an alchemist gone mad from the loss of her partner in crime, she torched almost anything in her path in honor of her old companion. Impulsive and manic, but a trace of stifled innocence and longing for a new start are still left through the ashes.

Failboat - a once-optimistic and confident team captain, he left the world after losing a battle against the gods ages ago. Now elusively hiding away in the sand dunes of Neksdor, he survives only by the power of a broken artifact... which was crudely shoved into the paws of a lynx costume. While a part of him stays desperate to atone for his mistakes, it's drowned out by the memories of those he led astray.

Bo - hailing from an aristocratic family that's fallen on hard times, she's the sole undead among a small army of ghostly servants. Starved for love and nutrients alike, plus on the verge of a breakdown nearly every waking moment. Given a vampiric curse for not surrendering to the Dark Lord, the rest of her family disappeared from the public shortly after. Why? Only Bo knows, and she's not willing to talk about it.

Chat - an amalgamation of discarded facial features considered too unruly to bring life into any monsters. Now inhabiting an obsolete piece of battle machinery, the animalistic cries from victims of every corner of the globe can just barely be heard over each other. The only company they've had is themselves.

Big Bill - a witch doctor for an endangered avian race, he made a vow to aid anyone working to stop the new apocalypse in hopes of finding the resources to heal his people. The rise of the New Dark Lord unleashed a plethora of dangerous plagues, but he's endured plenty already.

Mar - the stoic, yet unhinged head of the rebellion against the new Dark Lord... and also the one one responsible for powering the one before it. Taking on the appearance of a middle-aged Italian chef, to him, destruction is merely a necessary ingredient in his recipe for vengeance. He'll get his title back through any means possible... but does that include showing kindness to his former enemies?

@rosetheocto helped with a lot of development for this AU, so big shout-out to her! I dunno what I'll do with this, but I can feel there's definitely potential. If anyone wants to make art for it, feel free to do so!

#failboat miitopia #failtopia #au concept #the incident #felltopia

13 notes · View notes

yuseirra · 1 month ago

Text

I'm really sorry, I should shut up about this subject because I say too much over and over but, I end up thinking a lot about it because it's left unclear. If things weren't as confusing, I'd just have happily set down to draw fanarts as I usually do, I never knew I could do this about a character. I really, really didn't think I'd have to dissect a character like this as much ever (I really want to show my analysis to aka-san and ask him, am I wrong??;; am I taking things the way you thought or is this all just in my head?) I guess you learn something new about yourself every year! At least..hm, I saw the really good sides in someone's nature. So, I feel like it can be a good thing.

I'm so dumb... I feel like I never get tired but maybe I will if the story does fail me heheh. I feel I've been able to write these because I feel there's still hope.

Like I say, I feel like I know the ultimate direction of where all this may head. I just can't predict all the details in between so that's what makes me so nervous. That's all.

Well, I jotted down my thoughts again-

This one's machine-translated!:

Analyzing Kamiki's Character (I Keep Analyzing His Mind) - This character really couldn't have gone mad like this on his own. Seriously. What is this guy even doing?

This character is truly a subject of study. It’s so fascinating that I keep watching him.

His role is somewhat crucial(since he's the main target of the protagonist's revenge, right?), yet the perspective on him remains strangely obscure. When it comes to understanding a character's personality, their own thoughts or monologues are crucial, but even those are scarce here. There’s one shocking line that makes him seem truly insane and out of his mind, and… most of his thoughts center around Ai. I believe his feelings for Ai are sincere, but since he hasn’t been properly portrayed in the anime, the author has twisted things a bit. I feel like the creators intentionally left out certain information to maintain suspense during the anime airs—if everything about a character is revealed before their appearance, it ruins the intrigue. He was presented almost like a complete villain at first, didn't he? That whole scene with Yura I mean. So, at least while the show was airing, they seemed to have controlled things so that nothing new would be revealed and to build anticipation.

The storytelling is so unfriendly. Based on what’s been shown, it's hard to tell if this character is just a psychopath beyond redemption who hired someone to kill Ai, and somehow still can't forgive anyone who surpasses Ai, and turns into a serial killer—so much of a threat that Aqua's determination to kill him makes sense—or if he’s someone Ai loved enough to risk everything to protecti, that she found was truly worth loving, born with a kind and gentle nature that got twisted due to some external influence, making him another victim of the entertainment industry's darkness who deserves eventual redemption.

It's difficult to say for sure, but if I had to choose, my interpretations on him would lean toward the latter. I've been looking at him with that kind of light.

What confuses me is how the story reveals so little about this character. Why don’t they show more?

If they would just reveal more, I could understand him properly. It's like… even when he’s drowning to his demise, there’s nothing clear to grasp onto.

He’s a truly puzzling character.

Regardless of how you interpret him, the storytelling leaves a lot of unresolved tension. Up until a certain point, the story leads you to think of him as the former—just a villain—only for it to suddenly reveal moments where you think, “Wait, Ai really loved this guy sincerely? He actually loved her too?”—and you start to question your assumptions.

Considering the overall message of the story, the latter interpretation seems to make more sense direction-wise.

What strikes me as strange is that after this, I tried to gather all the scattered pieces of information about this character and put them together to form a clearer picture. For me, having that foundation is necessary before I can talk about him or even draw something.

And the conclusion I reached is this:

"This character was truly, inherently, a very, very good person, and Ai made a great choice with him as a partner."

I didn’t expect to reach this conclusion, so I was surprised at first, but I went with it, even while feeling a bit uneasy, and I ended up drawing a lot based on that. It was fun. At least, back in his younger days and when he was with Ai, it seems he had that personality. For Ai’s sake, that’s a relief. But by all means, if Ai fell in love with someone who turned out to be this kind of lunatic, what meaningful story can be told from that? I think it’d be more harm than good.

He truly was a kind person… and if that’s true, it could also make for a compelling story, one that shows how the darkness of the entertainment industry drove such a person to madness. But will they explore that properly?

I’m convinced. A person this kind and gentle couldn’t possibly go mad like this on their own.

It could be that he was so excessively pure and naive when he was young that he could be easily influenced.

That's why I think something must have driven him mad. And if that's the case, they should delve into that.

Under normal circumstances, it’s impossible for him to change this much. It’s difficult to speak confidently about a fictional character, especially when there’s so little revealed about them, but this is the only explanation that makes sense to me. He wasn’t just ordinarily kind. He was… truly saintly.

That’s the impression I got, so I’ve been drawing him with that interpretation, and it turned out to be right, didn’t it? He was like that originally.

Then he would never end up like this. Not typically.

So as I watch, it’s all so fascinating, puzzling, and strange. How did it come to this? Honestly, they should show us more. I want to analyze his mind, but there are so few clear pieces that I’m itching to dissect it.

I’m curious how someone so kind could change like this. It feels like something must have artificially altered his personality—something major must have happened. It doesn’t feel natural.

I’m curious, even if it’s just to understand it better.

The reason he's so hard to understand isn't really anything else—it's just that they keep hiding and not showing us anything. It’s hard to know because it’s hidden, but if they would just reveal it, I think I could understand him right away.

And I’m… sure that this is the kind of character I enjoy dealing with. I really love thinking about and drawing characters like this, so even though I only have a vague outline, I took the plunge with some courage.

But looking at his current situation, I find it hard to be hopeful, haha.

But you know what? Like I keep saying, if he’s someone Ai cherished and fell in love with that deeply, then he must be the gentlest person in the world.

If he’s like a manifestation of Sarutahiko, then he’s a good fit. I’d make him Ai’s husband if I were the author.

If he’s just a crazy person, there’s no point, right?

And like I said before, if he was genuinely in love with Ai, he would have done anything for her—given up his liver, his gallbladder, even his heart if he could. He would have loved her that much.

In fact, that’s exactly what Kamiki is doing now too. He’s just completely corrupted and has lost his mind.

:) I’m probably right. Ai really did meet the one person who could love her more than anyone else in the world.

Enough to throw everything away, even his noble heart and sanity.

But if he killed a lot of people after that, then… that’s still pretty messed up. If that’s the case, then what’s the point of this story? How can you save a guy like that?

So I hope they reveal more about him. What happened to him… if he can be redeemed (based on the story elements, he should be redeemed).

#oshi no ko #hikaai #hikaru kamiki #oshi no theories #ai.. what kind if person did you love...#how do you feel about him right now...#oshi no ko spoilers #spoilers #I feel she'd be really concerned and upset and worried. her man is so broken #he WASN'T LIKE THAT!! HOW DOES SOMEONE BREAK THAT BAD(she got murdered)#...yeah...his life is so messed up #why was he never happy except for that brief moment he had w Ai. I understand why the writers set him up like that I mean #that WOULD make even a kind person like him throw just everything away to get Ai back. I would make that choice as a writer too if that's-#what's necessary #but his past was too horrible for a sweet person like him. the world was unfair to him. he's like.. the most unfortunate person w sarina #long post

7 notes · View notes

bellamyroselia · 11 months ago

Text

I've recently been thinking of how some of the missing Olympian gods could be adapted for future Kid Icarus games and in Poseidon's case he could be expanded upon, so I decided to dump some of my abridged thoughts about them here. Turned out I still had lot of things to say, but in general these thoughts are about what I think these gods could do and why it's possible, along with what kind of relationships they could have with the already existing KI-cast. Considering the subject matter, expect to see mythology-typical mind-fuckery and the words "motive failure" a lot - not only are these people extremely unhinged, in many myths the gods take the "fuck around and find out" approach way too literally.

To see this on its entirety, go here.

Starting with Hestia, she has a bad case of motive failure. Like what are you supposed to do with her? You can count her major mythological appearances on one hand, and even in those she doesn’t do much. It does also make imagining what kind of relationships she could have with the existing cast hard; none of Hestia's relationships are all that developed to begin with, but the ones she has with her siblings are those that get most focus… So that only really leaves Hades, Poseidon and maybe Viridi? Not much to work with, and I can’t really imagine those relationships being anything else but positive. Sure, they may disagree of some things, but overall they get along with each other. The most interesting thing about Hestia’s possible relationships is that I could actually see Dark Pit liking her due to her nice and unproblematic nature. It does leave plot potential pretty minimal though, but I could see writers using some legends about Vestal virgins as bases for plotlines where Hestia shows up as a supporting side character. The problem with those is that they tend to be pretty specific, so who knows how well they might actually work. “Arx tarpeia Capitoli proxima” makes a good moral but not much of a plotline if you divorce it from... Well, Tarpeia herself. Another possibility is that Pit’s sent to defend a place that had its sacred flame extinguished and he has to defeat the culprit behind that.

Artemis also suffers from motive failure. She may be a bringer of sudden death and disease along with being a serious contender for the title of the most wrathful Olympian, but… She’s so petty with it? Much of it is very small-scaled all things considered. Most things she does don’t have long-term consequences, and the few that do are quickly hijacked by other deities whose actions have bigger impacts to the myths in question. Like yeah, Artemis may have told Agamemnon to kill his daughter if he wants to set sails to Troy, but who cares when Apollo is inflicting the Greeks with a plague and Athena is ignoring the pleads of Trojan women. This being said, I could see her being used as an unfought antagonist for a chapter or two depending on what she does (something akin to her sending the Calydonian boar to terrorize Calydon could work), though that story ends the moment the threat is dealt with. I however wouldn’t cross out the possibility of her appearing as an ally out, though I’m not sure what she could offer to Pit and co. if that was the case as she’s not really a god of anything that could help Pit on his journey. And I honestly don’t see her having particularly positive relationships with anyone in the already existing cast - she may not dislike any of them, but she doesn’t really like them either. She’s a true neutral in that sense, which could possibly earn her Dark Pit’s respect. How long that’s going to last is a completely different matter though, it may be small-scaled put she’s still very wrath-happy person.

Have some more motive failure with Hermes, though this time it has everything to do with him being a rather hard character to utilize in a world without Zeus - because of the rating he’s not allowed to be horndog making more of himself and since Zeus isn’t there asking him to do things, it leaves him with next to nothing to do. He’s extremely loyal to Zeus and this loyalty is exclusive to him; while Hermes clearly loves the rest of his family, he wouldn’t do half of the things he does for his father for them… And boy, has he done lot of things for his father. He’s a big daddy’s boy and daddy simply can't be replaced because Hermes just doesn’t love many people in the same unconditional way he loves his father - this means he’d have to be an independent figure, since the only person he’d be a lackey for is out of the picture. Now Hermes does have some interesting figures connected to him, like his son Autolycus (shapeshifting thief and the maternal grandfather of both Jason and Odysseus, whose name literally means “the wolf itself”) and the goddess of persuasion Peitho who’s described as his wife on occasion, but I’m not sure how any of that could be utilized. Autolycus possibly could've had some potential as a recurring character if he wasn’t dead by old age, but who knows, maybe he did get deified and therefore became an immortal in the world of Kid Icarus. I mean, Medusa is just a sea daemon and a dead one of that in the myths so why not let Autolycus to become a god. But back to Hermes, what I think of his possible relationships with already existing characters? They’re likely positive overall and I can see him appreciating both Pits for their spunk, but I think that the most potential comes from different minor antagonists, like Thanatos, Phosphora and Pandora. In case of the last one, Hermes was the one who gave Pandora her personality so there's that. Into the two former ones, Hermes is a psychopomp which means that he guided spirits to afterlife and he was everyone’s preferred psychopomp. Only person who wasn’t happy to see him in this duty was Sisyphus (Ares freed Thanatos after he had been captured by Sisyphus and brought them both back to Underworld → Sisyphus sweet talks Persephone into letting him go for a short period of time → Sisyphus refuses to return and Thanatos refuses to try bringing him back, so Hermes drags him to Underworld), so one could argue that Hermes is better at doing Thanatos’ job than he is - the fact that the Sisyphus-myth is one of Thanatos’ only major mythological appearances doesn’t exactly help him in this situation. One could get some funny dialogue out of that. With Phosphora, her Japanese name is derived from Electra, who’s the younger sister of Hermes’ mother Maia. For some additional hilarity, Maia and Electra are both elder sisters of Merope, Sisyphus’ wife. Everything about the possibility of having Hermes, Phosphora and Thanatos interact smells like a comedy goldmine to me. But let’s be real, isn’t it weird that Hermes has never been a merchant in any KI-game? It’s so goddamn absurd considering how he’s the god of commerce! You’d think he would’ve been the first choice for that, but apparently not! That’s a one big missed opportunity!

Hera too has a case of motive failure, but the reasons behind it are pretty simple. First is the same as with Hermes, which is that Hera doesn’t get to do much in a world without Zeus; can't be angry about your husband being unfaithful to you when your husband isn’t around. The second reason is equally simple, it being that Hera likes Athena. In fact she probably loves Athena more than she loves Ares, Hephaestus and Eileithyia (aka Lucina) combined (her love for Athena and Hebe is probably around the equal level and if it’s in someone’s favor, it’s Hebe’s), so toss away all the possibilities of her being a villainous force. It wouldn’t really make sense considering how Palutena is mostly Athena-inspired character. The two goddesses are pretty much partners in crime and by crime I literally mean “Let’s try to overthrow Zeus with Poseidon and Apollo” and “Let’s be the only deities to celebrate Troy’s destruction” levels of things, having each others backs whenever something happens so I think it would be better to just let Palutena have a good relationship with her. With Pit things probably would get a tad more confusing depending on some other factors, but on a vacuum it’s hard to say anything about them. Regardless of those I think she and Dark Pit would have a pretty rocky relationship, as Hera along with her favorite stepdaughter and Aphrodite were some of the biggest menaces to society when Zeus was still in the picture… All roads may not lead to Rome, but many do lead to a scorned goddess, a nosey goddess or to an easily angered goddess.

#kid icarus #kid icarus uprising #ki #kiu #personal thoughts #dumping all of these here so they could stop haunting me in my head #“fuck around & find out” taken way too literally means that they wait for demigods to do something #demigods truly are the ones who drive the plot around in these tales #feel free to share your thoughts with me! i'm interested to hear what you think #thought dumping ground

28 notes · View notes

the-selfship-corner · 7 months ago

Text

Canon S/I Selfship Ask Game!

Original Post Here!

Using Kasumi for this :)

✍️: Overall, how does the fandom trait you? Are you a beloved character, or hated? Are you popular, or a minor side character? Anything in between?

I’d say Kasumi is a beloved secondary character. Not quite as small of a role as a side character, but not important enough for a main character either. I like the think she’d be a fan favorite.

📝: How would your story in canon go? How would you influence the events of the original story?

Kasumi would have transferred to U.A. under recommendation. Her appearance wouldn’t change much of the main storyline, but it would change small things like how Bakugo acts later in the series. She would probably have her own side arc.

🤪: What is your trait that fanon would exaggerate?

The fanon would exaggerate her quirk, Angel, and probably draw her as some immortal being with six wings, floating eyes, and a halo.

🥰: How would someone who loved you portray you?

They would portray her as a sympathetic, kind person.

😡: How would someone who hated you portray you?

They would probably portray her as an emotional crybaby who obsesses over Bakugo.

👯: What canon character are you most similar to?

Probably a mix between Mina and Uraraka.

🌦️: Would you be accompanied by mostly fluff or angst fanfics? Both? Explain why.

There would probably be a lot of angst with Bakugo and Kasumi, mostly because of Kasumi’s backstory and Bakugo’s aggressiveness.

🏷️: What is you and your f/o’s ship name?

Katsumi :)

❤️: How popular is you x your f/o? Are you a rarepair?

Pretty popular. Most people either love it or hate it. Katsumi is almost canon, but never officially talked about. There’s plenty of scenes that hint to it, though.

💞: Aside from with your f/o, who else would you commonly be shipped with? Why?

Probably Kirishima. The two of them get along pretty well and have those similar bright personalities.

☕️: What are the most common plots of shipping fics between you and your f/o?

One rescuing the other from a kidnapping, one comforting the other from a nightmare, cuddling after Bakugos had a long day

🛌: What tropes show up in fics involving your ship?

Apocalypse, enemies to lovers, angst, fluff, villain x hero, married AU, breakup

🪐: What would be your most popular AU and why?

The most popular AU would probably be the World End AU, just because the designs are cool and Bakugo and Kasumi only have each other to rely on.

💘: Why would people love your ship? Why would people dislike your ship? How might it start debates?

People like the ship because Kasumi and Bakugo balance each other out. Bakugo teaches Kasumi how to stand up for herself more and get stronger, while Kasumi teaches Bakugo to have an open mind and try to be vulnerable with others. Some people dislike the ship because they feel Bakugo is too toxic for Kasumi, or that it’s doomed to fail due to the amount of stress on both of them. Some people may headcanon Bakugo as Aroace, while other avid Katsumi shippers would argue.

🙈: Why would your ship be thought of as cute/fluffy? Why would your ship be considered problematic?

The ship would be considered cute and fluffy because it shows a side of Bakugo the fandom wouldn’t see otherwise. He’s this really tough, hotheaded character, but when it comes to Kasumi, he becomes gentler.

🎞️: What ‘canon’ scenes would the fandom point to as evidence for the validity of your ship?

Kasumi and Katsuki were walking silently together after All Might lost his powers. Katsuki hadn’t been the same since that night. “It’s not your fault.” Kasumi said, seemingly out of nowhere. Katsukis eyes widened a little and he stopped in his tracks. He balled up his fingers into fists, knowing exactly what she was referring to. She turned to face him, putting her hands on his shoulders. “I can’t stand seeing you give up. The Katsuki I knew didn’t give up, no matter what.” Kasumi said softly. It was already dark outside. Katsuki didn’t say anything, he just looked down. “I know you’re angry at the world and yourself right now.. but…” She moved her arms slowly to hug him. “I think you’re pretty cool.” Katsuki stood there in shock for a second, before one of his shaky hands found its place on her back, just barely noticeable. After a few seconds, he pushed her away. He wiped his eyes. “Of course I’m cool… I’m gonna be #1..” His said, trying to go back to his snarky tone of voice, though a quiver could still be heard. He had that cocky smile on his face, though forced. Kasumi smiled.

💌: How would your dynamic be portrayed? What might people focus on most? Any misconceptions?

A misconception would be that Katsuki is abusive because of the way he acts towards other people, however, he’s never shown to be this way towards Kasumi. He’ll get a little snappy, but he’d never lay a hand on her. The dynamic would probably be portrayed as Ray of sunshine x angry gremlin. People would focus must on how they grow throughout the story together.

👀: How does your ship with your f/o influence both of your characterisations and the world? Would there be any interesting metas written about your dynamic?

Bakugos character would definitely be a little different. The way he treats situations would differ, how he treats people he’s fighting and people he’s saving.

8 notes · View notes

cidthesquid · 4 months ago

Text

Better Late Than Never! | Style Savvy : Styling Star #05

[Previous Post] [First Post] [Next Post]

Hey, So I do try to upload at least once a week, wasn't actually going to post today, but a lot happened today, and I need a distraction. So expect a bit less commentary than normal. But let's get started!

Alright, so last time, we failed Rosie's request, so let's fix that:

Ok, it's pretty much the same, but only contains items fully in the 'rock' theme. And the Result.

$4 over budget :'( No option to compromise, or change her mind, she just leaves the store again. (I would have given you a discount if that was an option.) Alright, round 3. (same outfit but without the $19 earrings)

Ok, there we go!

We're reminded of Rosie's dreams of being a popstar, and it seems like she has a bit of a rival/role model! She then offers to show us some family photos, and..

well it's nice to see she cares for her animals. okay next photo:

I lover her description here, showing that both groups are considered family.

I know I mentioned this before, but I'm really enjoying her character, they really put a lot of effort into making her story enjoyable to witness, even if it is in a fairly passive sense. I really like hearing about her reason for wanting to sing, it's not just "I want to be rich, popular or famous, it's about bringing smiles to people.

Definitely very in line with character motivations to become idols in Japanese media. Alright, with that event cleared, ..back to work!

I'm always sprised when I I read these inteatctions, Lots of intresting ideas, for example Lydia just wanting to branch out, But afraid that other styles may not work well for her. I've been there, it's like "if it works, why change it?", My own appearance is not really something I see often, so I don't really think about it, nor put much value in.(Real clothes are $$$!)

And that's the great thing about avatars and dress-up games, they make the design/composition work super easy, And I feel I can appreciate the designs more as I can actually see them, they stick out in my mind more.

Ok, I'm sure that sounded super weird to some, I don't even 'self-insert' into games, so this idea is kinda hard to explain, not even sure why I brought it up. oh well. Any way, the day has ended, but before we move on to the next, let's try on a new outfit. Hmm, I guess we have not gone for a 'cute' look in this game yet.

Originally I went with a pink bow, but I really wanted an inner with straps, and the only option was dark blue, so I picked this hat to match, I think the navy blue still stands out a little, and the hat ages the look up a bit, but I still like it overall, and may just swap out the blue stuff later when I get more options.

And so we end the day.

We've just reached rank 6, and Raven Candle has just unlocked!

Oh, I really like the sample outfit:

And on the way out of the shop...

We run into Rosie, she's super nervous about her audition, and was a little too focuses on her breathing practice, but she's so pumped that she.. ends up going in the wrong direction.

So we decide to join her at the production studio:

Against the receptionist wishes, we decide to check on Rosie's audition. It's really cool that we get to follow her to this degree, and see her try out using the outfit we picked out. It's really driving home our connection to the character's story, and even if we can't really change anything, it makes us feel like we have some level of agency, even if it's just picking out the outfit, it feels deeper. As she starts she bumps into the mic and falls over, but her endless optimism helps her push through.

Before she can begin, we get kicked out. And this ends the event, I guess we'll have to wait till later to see how it turns out. Its getting a bit late, but I stop by the shop to see if any customer arrived. And it looks like Richard (jo's Brother) and Anneke are here:

They talk a bit about office and pop tar clothing, giving more hints to Richard's preferences. (Likely for a later event) And Anneke asks for a new outfit to wear to the office. I don't really know what qualifies as professional, but I'll try to avoid anything too flashy, and see how it goes.

I think my color matching could have been better, but overall I'm pretty happy with this. and it seems they were too.

Afterwards we get a followup with Vincent, seems he's looking for Jo and he reiterates the frustrations around Richard's dress codes.

And with that, I've again reached my 30 image limit, and I got to get ready for work soon anyway, so this seems like a good stopping point.

Playing and writing this has been very relaxing, and I actually found a solution to my initial irl problem while working on this. So it just goes to show, making some space from a problem is not the same as ignoring it. Doing something fun/creative may seem like a waste of time when you're busy, but it can also give you the boost you need to complete a hard task you'd otherwise be stuck on. But anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this post! <Next Post>

---- As always, all comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome! (I'm also looking for feedback on this new style, how's the formatting?)

You literally can't bother me, (unless you go out of your way to be a jerk), so post whatever you need to say!

#syn sophia #fashion game #style savvy #style boutique #3ds #new style boutique #stylesavvy #nintendo #styling star #nsb3

6 notes · View notes

cherry-stained-corpse · 2 years ago

Text

After watching the final episode of Netflix’s Wednesday, rewatching the whole thing a second time, and then letting it sit for a couple days to get my thoughts together, here are my overall likes/dislikes/critiques. Hopefully I don’t forget anything as I tend to do sometimes. I am notorious for long written posts, you’ve been warned.

❌ WEDNESDAY SPOILERS ❌ [obviously]

I still hold true that overall I quite love the show. While there are a few critiques and things I didn’t like very much or that I thought could be done better, I would watch it again and still enjoy myself. So now to get into my thoughts in the form of bullet points and lists :). The critiques may seem longer, but that’s mainly because I go into a bit of a rant in regards to writing and choices and stuff. Overall what I like does out way what I disliked or considered flaws.

-What I Liked-

• The casting and overall characterization of Wednesday Addams.

• Maintaining that she’s so bizarrely out of the scape of ‘normalcy’ that she’s an outcast even amongst other outcasts.

• Latino main characters and representation for once.

• Enid. I love her claws and just everything.

• Eugene.

• The focus on being primarily Wednesday and not on the Addams as a whole. It’s a Wednesday show about HER after all. The whole internal conflict is her not wanting to be overshadowed by her mother.

• The further exploration of Wednesday not just being a mini-Morticia

• The inclusion of the supernatural, creatures and such and showing how being a different species does not necessarily make you the oddest one out.

• Gothic Aesthetics done wonderfully.

• Wednesday’s wardrobe.

• Wednesday actively listening to Spanish music and the language overall being used a bit more in dialogue by, yknow, Latino characters and not limited to the usual “hola” and “gracias” in the script. Have Latino characters speak more Spanish more often please I get so excited every time…I promise it’s accurate why do you think spanglish is a thing?

• The headmistress and how it didn’t go down the stereotypical “evil headmistress/the headmistress was the one behind it all or involved” plot twist.

• The school was more interesting and kind of better than Hogwarts and that’s coming from someone who’s a massive HP fan all my life. I just wish we could have spent more times at the school related stuff doing school things. Maybe go harder on the monster high vibes (OG monster high, not G3)

• The uniforms and having Wednesday’s be different was a great choice. This girl cannot be seen in any other color that would just be blasphemy and I can totally see her taking and dying the uniform herself.

• Cello, Typewriter, Gramophone (or as most people would refer to it “record player”). Made me very happy to see those as they are literally things I love as an antique collector and user.

• I love that she’s a writer. Not just cause I can relate as a writer myself. But because it just fits so incredibly well.

• Using the term normie.

• Fuck colonizers

• Blood dance visuals

• Dark Gothy tone with gothic architecture, a boarding school with very nice uniforms, Murder mystery, secret societies…this show is dark academia.

• young Gomez and Morticia was fun to explore.

• Thing. But that’s a given.

• I can go on and on about what I liked but then this will end up way too long.

Things I Felt Could Be Done Better But Did Not Hate.

• Morticia Addams. I thought the actress did a lovely job overall (she certainly got that Morticia walk down), and I don’t really agree with a lot of peoples criticisms. But I would have liked to see a bit more attention to the part she plays in the strain between her and Wednesday. Like I would have liked to spend a bit more time on that, it kind of felt like it just got dropped after that one episode where the parents come to the school and Wednesday’s complex about being compared to her just disappears a bit too quickly.

• Weems and Morticias whole thing going on. Loved the idea but sad it wasn’t explored more, it had such interesting potential. Especially in regards to Weems and Wednesday’s dynamic.

• The whole resolution between Gomez and the Sheriff dude was way too fast. Your telling me this guy that has held a grudge for years against Gomez, is suddenly going to be all friendly after it being proven he was innocent? An apology is fine but then that should have been it. I dunno that final interaction between them even if ht was really short felt a little too “we are friends now yeah my son likes your daughter haha isn’t that funny”. Just would have liked that executed a smidge differently.

• The drama with Bianca, I liked what we got but would have liked to see more of a rivalry and moments like that.

Things I Disliked/Critiques

• while the CGI wasn’t the absolute most amazing, it wasn’t the worse…until we get to the CGI and overall designs of large creatures. I’m sure you must know I’m referring to the Hyde, but Enid’s werewolf form is not at all exempt from this criticism. Granted the Hyde’s form is a lot more agreggious. The only thing I disliked about Enid’s wolf form was her face. As a furry that follows many furry artists including ones that work with 3D sculpting and stuff, I dunno. I felt like the face, the snoot mainly, could have been shaped differently? She looks kind of derpy, the body is fine but it’s just that face. Also the way her hair/fur in her head was shaped reminded me and my partner of bibble.The Hyde though? Everything but ESPECIALLY the face. And why do Tyler’s eyeballs have to be the first things that transform and bulge out I could not stop laughing it was so…wow. It reminded me of when cartoons inflate themselves by blowing into their thumb and their head is the first thing to expand like. I dunno I couldn’t take it seriously. The art Xavier drew of the Hyde looked way cooler and scarier than the actual model of the Hyde, which is such a shame because I think the model could have done the art justice if just a few tweaks and details where added. There wasn’t enough detail so I feel like that made the face look cartoonish in an uncanny way, and not in a good uncanny way.

• Why is Wednesday so eager to work with the police? You could probably argue that she only worked and cooperated with them because they had access to resources she needed so yknow she was using them but that’s not how it came off. This is I think one of two things I did not agree with In regards to this characterization of Wednesday. And yes there are really only two as far as I remember. She was way too cooperative with the sheriff, wanting to work together with him which is very out of character even to this very characterization of her. We are supposed to see how she commits all sorts of criminal activities no problem, I mean it’s in her nature, but she still goes and asks to work with the sheriff? It made it feel almost like a jarring 180 when she did what we expect her to do, disregard morals and torture/kill people without batting an eye. Not sure if I’m making much sense. I would have expected her to have acted like Bianca in that regard, not trusting the police and going straight to Weems instead like she had said to her.

• The second thing I didn’t agree with in regards to this characterization, and it is mainly because I don’t think it’s written well. Why is Wednesday, the girl that is writing and has written several mystery novels about a detective, probably has done in depth research on murders and crime and probably has read detective novels herself…committing the mistake of jumping to conclusions way too soon and forgetting evidence that would actually debunk that conclusion? Like the whole thing with Xavier. Her first inclination to confront him and accuse him? Yeah okay. That’s fine. She’s a teen she’s bound to be impulsive. But after she knew the DNA results had come back and didn’t match? Why did she ignore/completely forget that and continue to pursue, even arrest Xavier? As a suspect yeah he could have remained in her list of suspicious peoples but shouldn’t she have considered that very specific debunking fact SHE had sought out in the first place? Wednesday is a clever person, and she’s written here to be considered as such. But she’s conveniently written to forget or not consider things that I felt like she absolutely would have while sleuthing. Not only that, but just…I feel like after falsely accusing Xavier, and then being further made to question her own deductions thanks to the results of the DNA, why did she continue to go and throw out accusations so easily? It would have made more sense to me if the DNA results made her question her first conclusions and sort of take a step back and proceed more carefully when it came to investigating her potential suspects. She wouldn’t have continued to make the exact same mistake the next several times. I think this was done with the intention of showing how she interpreted her visions with too much bias and kept clinging to a story she put together rather than consider how her visions only show a small piece and not the full picture…but I feel like the over repetition of her kind of blindly going up to and accusing people didn’t quite show that.

• Everything with Tyler and Xavier portraying anything Wednesday did or said as “signals”. I’m fine with either of them kind of crushing on her. With Xavier, it did feel a bit more one sided and more like he was trying to get close to a girl he liked but then later I feel like that got ruined by him saying “you don’t know who your real friends are” just because his attempts and advances where ignored or rejected or obliviously brushed off. It veered into demanding a bit and not actually being considerate of how she just doesn’t work that way. She’s not selfish for only focusing on a mystery she’s been very clear about wanting to solve, she’s not selfish for not paying any mind to you or your advances. Same goes with Tyler but I feel like he’s kind of worse. At first I found it cute but when he said stuff about her “sending signals” and “I thought you liked me” I was like huh? When? Where? I was at first under the impression it would develop into a more obvious attraction between them as Wednesday learned to navigate any feelings she was beginning to experience for the first time, but by the time he says that there hasn’t been an inkling of development in regards to romance yet other than his very clear interest in her. But not so much the other way around. Also, while I understand being upset or jealous that the person you like is going or chose to go to a dance with someone else…you’re not entitled to them or their time? You can’t really get mad at them for not choosing you when they haven’t even made any actual advance or show of interest towards you. This goes for Xavier too. Why is it that when she went to ask for his help when he was locked up, and she told him about the vision she had that exposed Tyler as the Hyde, his focus was on her “getting action while he’s being framed”…wouldn’t you at least be more interested in how someone finally knew you where innocent and was going to help you? Basically…with both boys it just came off as very forced “obligatory Hetero love interests”. Because it was literally just “Boy like girl. Girl interacts with boy. Boy takes that as interest from girl who is clearly not in tune with those kinds of emotions and hasn’t shown a single whiff of interest. Girl ignores advances and puts epic mystery above any romance. Guy gets mad and views this as selfish and callous for not reciprocating and focusing on her case even though this is all she would talk about around them”. It just feels like they could have done the same conflicts and plot lines with these characters without it having to be love interest right off the bat. Developed in a later season? Yeah okay. But instantly? Instant love interests that are forced in? It feels a but pushing heteronormativity and kind of disregards how character development should be gradual. People growing and especially someone who is not in tune with emotions won’t suddenly be interested in a boyfriend when they don’t even have interest with friends. Someone like Wednesday that is used to isolation and only relying on herself needs to first develop an understanding of friendships and how it’s okay to let people be your friend, that it’s not a weakness, before jumping to insta romances.

• This might go back to the whole sleuthing thing before but I’ll put it in a separate bullet point cause I would not want to make them too terribly long. But…the way Wednesday figured out Tyler was the Hyde…she didn’t actually figure it out. It was pretty much spelled out for her, shown to her. And that could be fine if executed differently but it takes away from the whole whodunnit detective-ing thing. There’s a level of satisfaction we get when we watch or read our main characters finally solving a mystery and finding out the epic answers we witnessed them searching for this whole time, and I feel like having her figure it out because her vision power actually showed her takes away from her actually solving it thanks to her cleverness and the clues she gathered, as well as conflicts with the whole “don’t trust your visions so easily they don’t show the full story and you have to learn how to navigate them” plot.

• Next. Weem’s death. Why? I really wanted to see that character arc between her and Wednesday flourish and conclude properly, maybe even have them bond a little? Explore more about her as a character and her past through Wednesday? But she died. They killed big tall lady headmistress >:(. And so quickly too not even a final word to Wednesday or anything. I get why but still. Such a loss of great potential.

• The vampires are there…but…where are they? We introduce sirens and their existence, we explore werewolves and how they work. Adequat introductory lore for those. But Vampires get one mention, and that’s it. I didn’t even realize Yoko was a vampire until I realized all the vampires wore sunglasses. I would have liked an actual main character with more than two lines to have been a vampire. I would have liked to explore a little of what vampires in this world were like the way we got to explore the wolves and the sirens a little bit. As a vampire enthusiast this made me sad.

• It kind of feels like they where too scared to go full Wednesday Addams level of cruelty and immorality. Like they kept her personality in tact but things where a bit too almost sanitized to keep her as the “good protagonist” when she’s a very very very dark grey. She’s always had a strong sense of justice but she’s not above vengeance and carrying it out in the most fucked yo ways possible. You can’t have her gush over serial killers and but then call the murderer behind the killings a “psychotic murderer” in a derogatory way but then admire murder cases. When we all know she would have been impressed by it at least a little. Cause she’s morbid that way. Also I read someone say that she would have driven her therapist insane and I wish she had that would have been so perfect. There’s ways to differentiate a character like her from the actual antagonists without watering down those aspects. Like when she was down to torture Tyler. But that ended up conflicting with some other things due to that “watering down/sanitization” of her actions.

•I didn’t mind Ajax as character but he also felt particularly empty and like he was only added in to ensure heteronormativity love interests for the mains. He especially had not much to him, no real development, hardly a personality, and on top of that it’s just established that Enid likes him but we never explore any of that so it feels empty and thus forced and shallow.

• Why are there no gay guys? Or non-binary/trans? I see the lesbian parents and potentially lesbian Yoko and that other girl but like…can we have some gay men too please? And gender inclusivity? Non-binary/Trans people would be a nice inclusion to this allegory about outcasts and being different to societal norms.

That’s it for now. If I remember anything else I’ll edit it in probably :) sorry it’s so long I just have lots of thoughts in this silly skull of mine.

Bonus section, personal headcanons I agree with :)

• Autistic Wednesday

• Morticia is totally aware of weem’s resentment towards her and considering how the Addams tend to have a very different perspective on things most people view as a bad thing, she’d likely consider it a nice aspect of their friendship. Don’t all friendships include the spice of bitter resentment?

• Bisexual Enid

• Wednesday starts listening to true crime and supernatural podcasts.

• Puerto Rican Wednesday and no one can take that from me.

#netflix wednesday #wednesday netflix #wednesday addams #wednesday 2022 #addams family #enid sinclair #wenclair #thing addams #the addams family #t

72 notes · View notes

fiercefauna · 3 months ago

Text

@tiredsn0w sorry I forgot this but I was making content for Afflicted Lands, (my plaguecore universe). It’s not a lot of trouble to post these seeing that I already have all the material, I just didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much stuff at once - to anyone else earlier 2 installments are below. This is a tale about 049 and 6118, containing parts 7 through 9.

The Doctor’s inner monologue might be a bit dense and elaborate, he’s supposed to be an old soul - lol. I wanted it to sound different from the other writing.

Part 7.

Against a blue-grey hellscape of alien modernism perfected by long practice, a Victorian fever dream stood as a rude imposition beside a sea of plate glass (or some other transparent material) filled with enough greenery to have perhaps once provided the wood used to build it. The extent of the incompetence attributed to him by these inhospitable natives was thrown in to stark clarity by the perceived need of assistance in order to locate such distinct and obvious buildings as these.

“We think he might have just gone ahead and walked over.” Came Tasha’s voice from the phone. “He self-harms if he gets bored so let him study the samples in the vault, the ones you’ve been saying you need to get rid of. Oh- and he’s extremely recognizable so try to make sure people don’t notice him too much.”

“Just get the hell back over here and away from the murder mongers next door! I will deal with the alien, just make it back alive!”

Seedy made sure the cameras were running; seeing the harvest play out in their absence would later give them peace of mind. They noticed a dark shape on one of the monitors and couldn’t help but feel excited. Exotic biology was their secret obsession and this was as exotic as it came.

“Uh, - Hi!”

The Doctor looked up from the pamphlet and its incomprehensible extraterrestrial symbols to see that someone had finally arrived in what had seemed like a reception area. Initial conversation with the heavily tattooed and overly friendly alien Ogre was inane. Things became more interesting when botanical samples were offered, and infinitely more interesting when he was lead into a cold room full of pristinely preserved wet specimens.

Part 8.

First appearances could deceive, this “Seedy” quickly made up for what it lacked in Terrestrial language skills by laying out subject after subject and providing tools. A pair of sketch books were soon filled completely with anatomical explorations of an alternate sphere. Oh, how the ages would envy him! But it was the last and greatest of the items in Seedy’s charge, finally uncovered by the removal and recycling of the rest, that promised a chance at redemption.

These people didn’t know him, didn’t trust him, clearly did not consider him worthy, and why would they? What was the Asu, but a literal god, the ultimate achievement of a civilization far more ancient than any on Earth? The angel’s perfect immune system had drawn him in initially, only to reveal deeper secrets buried beneath, information that could only be sullied by its expression in images, odors, numbers or words.

As before, the Doctor would need to prove himself. Six hundred years of study could not have been for naught. He would show these people the span of his education, the overall quality of his carefully pruned mind, and the true reach of his capabilities.

“He’s been in there for days, never sits down, has never so much as sampled the homosapien rations I’ve provided, just back and fourth, back and forth. Be sure to at least offer him water now and then.” Tasha fell back on her haunches after peering through the window of the cold vault.

“You think he may take nourishment intravenously?” Offered Forby, knowing full well the size of the undertaking that was. “If he’s some kind of Two like you said, maybe there’s a port on him.”

“How much tranquilizer do you have? We may need to knock him out to do it.”

“I was - attempting a joke.”

“This is serious, if he’s been at this for days with no rest and no water he - he could be dying.”

“Maybe it’s for the best.”

“Was that a joke?”

“Not sure.”

“Wait a minute what is that?”

Tasha shrugged on a warming suit and slipped into the cold vault, not wanting to interrupt whatever the Doctor was doing with the very large body on the platform, the body Seedy had told her was a kohl. The only other thing it could have been seemed far too absurd to even entertain, there was simply no way for her sibling to have gotten a hold of such a thing.

Part 9.

“Tell me that isn’t what it looks like.” She said to Seedy as they brought the Doctor a freshly prepared set of tools.

“I don’t know. What does it look like?”

Forby seemed to materialize beside her. The Two had explained that it had actually been infantry and not an assassin like the stereotype implied and that even then, it had found the work distasteful. It would have made a really good assassin though, but now it was acting as her appliance, if not her appendage. Things these last few days had just gotten - done. It disturbed her to think what having the Two at their beck and call did to the minds of Federation Aven.

“Get the Doctor out of here, Forby, this is way over his head.”

The Doctor was swept away quickly. Tasha suspected the element of surprise and the use of that handy syringe.

“Seedy, where did you get that?”

“The neighbors picked up some movement in the marshes and, assuming their Federation friends were up to something sneaky - kaboom. Next thing you know they got a - problem.”

“Did they tell you to get the transmitter out of the body?”

“I don’t know anything about a transmitter, I just assumed the body might be valuable but, keeping it any longer is a bit risky so I’ve been letting our friend take a gander. He’s an alien who doesn’t know shit about local politics and he’s famous so I thought he’d be immune.”

“These things are people Seedy, I’ve spoken with them.”

“But they’re kind of slow right? Can’t do anything but hunt and farm, don’t have any tech?”

“You are a farmer Seedy, and no, the’ve wanted access to tech for years, the Federation tells them it will blow their cover.”

“Why are you going ‘full-disclosure’ on me now, Sib?”

“Because the Federation keeps track of these things and gets murderous when they’re killed by One’s!”

“Wouldn’t it help if these guys officially existed?”

“The Federation thinks people will eat them.”

“What!?”

“Historically One’s seem to have had a cannibalism habit. Not just with the big Zeros but - the tradition of hunting Zeros seems to have held out longer.”

“Dark shit, but it explains a lot, interesting though. I probably should have worked for the Feds. You get to know so much.”

“It was mostly because I wanted to go to Earth that I schmoozed the government. Afterward they made me an “Earth Person” and I played along. Why do you think I get to carry tiny dogs around and call myself Tasha?”

“Cause - you’re cool?” Offered Seedy.

“We’re wasting time. We need to get the transmitter out of that body.”

“What’s this?” Seedy picked up a long tube of clear liquid, containing a silver capsule and an attached wire. Tasha embraced her sibling, ran out of the vault and into her own laboratory where she thoroughly disinfected the probe, and changed its fluid, not knowing exactly what the Doctor had used.

Seedy swirled the transmitter in it’s new home. “Now what?”

“We need to grab a big animal of the type that roams a lot, plant the tracker and let it go. By the time it’s discovered, the wardens will assume it was their mistake, wrong tracker - wrong species.”

Before leaving, Tasha checked on Forby and the Doctor. “Can we get anyone else? I don’t think this guy should be left with only one handler.”

Ethics aside, drugging 049 had provided the perfect opportunity to administer first aid for severe dehydration. It was educated guesswork aided by her experience with humans and information from the neighbors.

“I’ll do my best. Is the situation as bad as you say? Sorry, I overheard.”

“Just be sure your helmet doesn’t have active spyware.”

Though Tasha had never seen Forby’s face, a face was probably there, perhaps gaunt and pale like the famous 5a82 and hopefully not entirely replaced by a contraption of cartilage and chitin as it was for the figure on the bed. Barracks once used to hide fugitives had been refurnished for a houseguest who, till now, had seen very little use for them.

“Don’t worry, the rebels did a bunch of stuff to it when I was loaned out, I’m sure it’s quite safe, at least from the Feds.”

Forby followed Tasha and Seedy as far as possible without loosing sight of the, hopefully sleeping, Doctor. An alarm buzzed from its side satchel. One did not ignore a call from the Asu.

#scp 6118

4 notes · View notes

b4kuch1n · 2 years ago

Text

review of every type of meat that’s ever been subjected to me

disclaimers: this will include offals when I have personal experiences with that. score is subjected to personal taste and accessibility price- and prep-wise. YMMV, etc., etc. "meat" here includes non-mammal non-avian animals, as long as it comes directly from the body (which means eggs and such are not included). I tried to find the closest english word for some of these that I only know as local ingredients, but the taxonomical orders at least should be correct.

pork: 9/10. classic. a bit finicky to prep and cook, which is why it doesn't get full mark, but re-heats nicely. very versatile, though on the heavy side as is the case with most bigger animals. the amount of fat and gelatin that comes with a belly cut makes it ideal for new year aspic, which very few other types of meat can be used for. pig offals are of acceptable textures most of the times, though they've overall softened as time goes on, which may lead to one point docked as I don't like that texture.

chicken: 8/10. also very versatile and takes on spices very well, but experiences may vary much more due to the large difference in texture and taste between dark and light meat on a chicken. the big reason why I mark chicken one point lower than pork is that I find reheated chicken much less pleasant than reheated pork. phantom extra point for show of skill with eating bone-in chicken with chopsticks. remove phantom extra point for overrepresentation in every offering meal. offals are inoffensive, but overly soft for my taste. blood however is more tolerable than pig blood.

beef: 8/10. I love beef. beef is great to eat and great to cook, especially viet beef, since you're either sautéing it on high or stewing it until it falls apart anyway. but not only is beef expensive, quality also varies greatly with different price points. beef fat is also very hard to deal with and it makes me mad to throw away a whole puck of fat. as a casual source of protein it falls firmly into the "more troubles than it's worth" category. the one thing keeping its score in the high range is phở and beef jerky.

duck: 9/10. far superior to chicken in my sincere opinion, but a chore to eat in the summer. in no way an every day meal, but this only secure its place as a treat, which gets it graded on the treat ladder, and it scores high there. the only thing keeping it from perfection is the heavier musk that limits its versatility compared to its land-bound counterpart.

muscovy duck: 7/10. taste-wise deeper than duck, but texture-wise much chewier, which makes eating it even more of a task. cooking options have been pretty much limited to roast and poach. it being bigger than a duck makes prepping and portioning it just slightly off as well, so most often you go out to eat it, which docks point for convenience.

squab: 6/10. the problem here is maybe lack of dedication to the craft. or maybe it's that it's very little, not very exciting meat for too much effort. putting a tentative question mark here for this score because I believe there is a squab experience out there that doesn't feel gimmicky but will blow the doors wide open to new horizons for me. I see potential in this, and I'm not yet sick of disappointment.

silk worm: 8/10. the reason why it's not getting a higher score is because there's one single dish I like with it as an ingredient, which is roasted dried silk worm with fish sauce, but the reason why the score's still an eight is because that dish slaps mad shit. it tentatively falls on the treat scale because it's not very easy to acquire, but once you get a bag of it you're pretty much set for several months, so I would still consider it casual-meal-worthy. may be an acquired taste, but I fully recommend acquiring that taste.

snail: 5/10. abhorrent texture, mild taste. better as ingredients for more complex dishes than as a standalone protein. my mom likes it though so it gets passing grade.

oyster: 3/10. worse texture than snail, even worse taste. doesn't get better when you season it, only makes the seasoning itself worse. not getting a zero only because it's good for blood and I'm open to a chance of redemption down the road.

shrimp/crab: 6/10. get the same mark because I eat them at the same frequency and the amount of paperwork required to eat them is equally excessive. take on spices fairly well, but it's not enough. if I could hold a crab like a hamburger and take a big bite this score would change. saved from the mid grade by their seasoning quality for delectable summer broths.

eel: 4/10. the only good way I've found to eat eel is to deep fry it until it denatures and turns into basically seaweed chips. this is good for sour soup rice noodle, but for that same palate a number of different fishes do the job better with more personality. it's okay with a heap of sauce japanese style, but the price discourages exploration.

tuna: 7/10, and mostly for canned tuna salad. eaten raw I find it mid and unexciting. a nice tuna salad sandwich is fun and childlike in its appreciation of the simple things though, so I wholely respect it.

salmon: 9/10. about as versatile as a seafood can get, and is fun to experience in any form. only one point docked for price and lack of excitement - I also, like with squab and oyster, await a life-changing salmon experience that makes this protein perfect once and for all.

clam worm: 8/10. like with silk worm, I only find it edible in one single form, which is minced clam worm patty fried up, but it excels at that one single thing. also stays in the high grade for fun factor of being a seasonal treat.

frog: 6/10. I really like frog legs. it has the tenderness of white fish with the ease of access of a chicken wing, and the taste is delicate in a delightful way. but I really dislike most of the rest of the frog to put in my mouth. this makes it kinda wasteful as a meat option. overall just kinda better enjoyed alive than cooked for like a third of its body.

dog/cat: 3/10. grouped up once again because they're equally unpleasant texture-wise and limited in prep options. I find meat from mammals of this size downward soft in a really off, is-it-going-bad-or-is-it-just-like-this way. the musk borders on off-putting, which is why prep options are limited to heavy seasoning and stew or roast. overall just way too little bangs for their bucks.

rabbit: 5/10. texturally worse than dog and cat, but the musk is much lighter and takes on seasoning much better. not really something you can find casually in the wet market, so exploration of the possibilities here isn't of convenience. this score may be subjected to change in the future.

deer: 6/10. interesting taste, but tough texture and a bit hard to figure out how to season. very hard to get one's hand on in the city, and honestly from my exposure to it I wouldn't go out of my way to acquire a cut. firmly in the "sure, if I come across it" category.

water buffalo: 6/10. beef but chewier. makes for good drinking food, but I barely drink, so mostly not my thing. also limited in ways to prep - most commonly sautéd with garlic or made into jerky. I feel like there's a depth to this protein I cannot access, which makes me mad, but also earns it respect.

field mouse: 4/10. texturally even worse than rabbit, taste-wise extremely inoffensive. verges on the low end because it just raises the question of why. why is this a local specialty. it's mouse, dude. you can not be gentrifying that. they failed to make it a big deal btw so I'm correct on this one.

lobster: 6/10. gets this score for lobster freaks who spent decades studying how to make this big shrimp taste better and furiously honed their craft with cheese and butter and garlic. 80% of lobster experiences happen at the hands of those people, so the median score averages out at pretty ok. I am, however, lactose intolerant, and thus unwelcomed by these lobster zealots. this, combined with lobster being a luxury food, lowers the score to slightly above passing grade.

snake: 5/10. literally the only impression it left me with was that it was snake meat ooh how rare and cool. texturally more pleasant than eel and more versatile, but that ends up landing it squarely in the “utterly unremarkable” zone. at least now I’m pretty confident I would bite a chunk off a snake if I’m ever lost in a jungle with no way out. passing grade for the worth of information.

horse: 7/10. has the taste depth of deer, but with the texture of beef when simmered for a long time. literally had this first time today so my experience with it is extremely limited, but I can't really imagine it being easy to chew if roasted. two outstanding features are that the fat is really nice to eat even in larger pieces, and the blood cooks into a texturally acceptable jelly, which is not the case with any other animal blood for me. score may be up to change in the future as well.

mantis shrimp: 8/10. lobster wishes it has the playful zeal and easy-going nature of mantis shrimp. the amount of paperwork required to enjoy mantis shrimp is half of shrimp's or crab's, and texture-wise it's just better. literally crack this one in half like a flip phone and put some salt and lime on it, that's a treat. so far the gold standard for shelled seafood. only gets an eight because I don't really think about eating it every day, but I have hope this can be turned around in a shocking and life-changing event as well.

anchovy: this one doesn't get a score due to its ritualistic importance. really is included here because I ritually cleaned and cooked way too many of these so a job I was gunning for could go through successfully. it worked btw. still don't know if I recommend it

#bakuspeech #cw: food #cw: meat #obvious disclaimer I dont make it a business to repeat previously proven to be unpleasant experiences #so some of these I limit my exposure to as much as possible on purpose.#hi. Im at my grandparents place. its dark in here #not getting to work on what Im supposed to for a whole weekend is making me antsy #I think I will be able to chip off something for prep during the course of this. but its not gonna be much #anyways Im bored as shit and new food experience dropped today so I guess I sat down and wrote this up #happy solar new year in like a day. hey if you have a new year meal with some meat enjoy it yeah?#cherish the protein. we can learn to love ourselves through loving the meat. and the green and the starch and the spices #have a good night. idk why I tallied this tbh. I just kinda realized how much Ive experienced food-wise #and yet! still very little in the wide world of meals and treats #here's to a future filled with more....

43 notes · View notes

superthatguy62 · 1 year ago

Text

FFIII Fun Facts of the Whatever: Dev Interview Edition (Part 2)

When the DS version of the Final Fantasy III remake was released in Japan, Square-Enix released an official strategy guide to go with it. This strategy guide went into quite a lot of detail about the game, giving tips on how to use jobs, showing off unusual team compositions and even discussing some mechanics that may not be clear in the game itself.

I’ll talk about that stuff later, but the most interesting aspect is an interview with the game staff at the back of the manual, touching upon various aspects of the game.

Thanks to Alex Highsmith of Shmupulations, part of this interview has been translated. I only had enough for an excerpt, but this excerpt is very interesting: In it, Kazuhiko Aoki (Battle Supervisor) and Hiroaki Yabuta (Main Planner) discuss the battle system for III, several of the jobs, a few ideas that didn’t make it into the final game and a rather surprising fact: A PVP mode was considered.

--Please tell us about your overall concept for the battle system of FF3DS.

Aoki: The thing we were always aiming for, throughout the development, was making sure that the battle system would be easy to pick up and enjoy, even if you knew nothing about it or hadn't played the Famicom version. That's why we decided to change some of the finer details from the original. It should still give players that overall "Ah, it's FFIII" feeling, though. I hope older players will enjoy comparing their old memories of how the game progressed, which jobs were good, and so forth with the new game.

Yabuta: For me, I didn't want this to be one of those RPGs where you just spam Fight and breeze your way through it. That's why we changed many enemies' attributes and attacks. During the development, we actually made the enemies TOO strong, and after a single normal battle your party would be practically dead. (laughs)

Aoki: There's no thrill to the battles if you're just mindlessly pressing the A button the whole time. We instead wanted a system that forced characters to make tense choices, one where your characters could easily die if you aren't paying attention.

--It sounds like balancing that system was a big challenge. Compared to the Famicom, there's fewer monsters in each battle... was this also part of that balancing?

Yabuta: When you go 3D, the battles always get a little bit longer. We calculated how often we wanted players in a given dungeon to get close to death, and adjusted the number of enemies, their strength, and the encounter rate accordingly.

Aoki: Speaking of balancing, Aoki kept adjusting the strength of the final form of the Cloud of Darkness all the way to the very end of the development, moments before the deadline.

--Now I'd like to ask you about the job system. Let's start with Suppin [Freelancer].

Yabuta: Since we've added personalities for the four characters, it felt odd to suddenly start the game and see that everyone already had the "Onion Knight" class. So we brainstormed some new names, but it was surprising how quickly everyone settled on "suppin." (laughs) Suppin first appeared in FFV, as the most powerful class that could equip anything, but we've made them a little weaker for FFIII. With everyone in their basic default state like this, players would be able to better enjoy the prologue... that was our concept.

--Did you know from the beginning that you would split the Onion Knight and Suppin in this way?

Yabuta: We had planned to add some special bonus features as apart of the new Wi-Fi functions. At that point we already had separate designs for Suppin and Onion Knight drawn up, so we decided to make the Onion Knight a hidden job, something you'd have to dig a little past the surface to find. Rather than a brand new job, we thought it might make players happier to add the most popular job from the original FF3 as a hidden job.

--You acquire the Thief job earlier now too, and with their attack power and Steal command upgraded, they're a lot more usable.

Suzuki: There weren't many monsters in the Famicom version you could steal from (or items to steal), and we thought players who are used to modern games wouldn't be comfortable with that. So we gave players the Thief earlier and added more items so players could enjoy using Steal more. Also, the number of attacks you get in FF3DS is based on the weight of your equipment, not your speed stat, so you get to take more actions if you wear light equipment. The Thief excels on both these points so he can play a much more active role in battle.

--In contrast, you get the Karate-ka [Black Belt] later now.

Yabuta: The biggest reason for that was to maintain the balance of the number of jobs you get. The water crystal has a lot of fighter-type jobs. But strategically we couldn't afford to hold back the Dark Knight and Dragoon classes. So it was like, who can we put later... and that was Black Belt. My apologies to fans of this class from the Famicom version.

--The Ranger could use white magic in the original, but you've replaced that with Barrage.

Yabuta: Barrage didn't appear until FFV, but it's now one of the Final Fantasy serie's most well-known, signature abilities. Attacking four times feels great--and my personal love for that ability was a part of it too. (laughs) As for the white magic, we were worried that if there were too many jobs that could use magic, it would make the Ranger's role kind of confusing. We wanted him to be focused on fighting.

--How about the Sage?

Suzuki: Compared to the original we lowered their power a lot, so much so that I was wondering if it's OK. Our image for them was a balance between the Devout, Magus, and Evoker jobs.

--Next, I wanted to ask about the Scholar.

Suzuki: The Scholar works very well with the Thief. The Scholar can use the items the Thief steals 2x as effectively, while being able to discern enemy weakpoints too. He uses healing items like Hi-Potions twice as effectively too, so if you have a Scholar you don't necessarily need a White Mage. That versatility made him very popular with our staff, too.

Yabuta: The problem is whether players will realize these things. We definitely don't advertise the 2x item effectiveness very much in game. But I think once players notice it they will think the Scholar is awesome.

--Next up is the Viking, who I feel has been hugely improved from the original.

Suzuki: In the Famicom version, the Viking was one of those jobs that didn't really stand out. Since they don't get a lot of hits--or rather, they are a low speed character--we decided to compensate for that by making the Viking focused on single, one-shot power attacks. And the biggest change, of course, was adding the Provoke command. If you make use of that, the battles become quite easy.

Yabuta: It's easy for players to get into a habit of just spamming Fight for every battle, so Provoke adds a nice accent to that. It was a great addition for that reason, I think.

--It gives you more of a chance to combo attacks with your allies.

Aoki: Yeah. In the Famicom version he was more of a solo fighter, but this we're hoping players will think of the various combinations they could pull off with the Viking and other characters.

--Moving on, I wanted to ask about Yabuta's favorite job, the Evoker.

Yabuta: This job gave us a lot of trouble. At first, we considered letting the player choose the summoning effect (black or white), but ultimately we reverted to the original way of having it be completely random. We're hoping players will actually enjoy the slight unexpectedness of it.

Shiva, Ramuh, Titan, and Ifrit are about equal strength, and if you can figure out the right one for the right circumstance, then Evoker can be very strong. On bosses, Titan might be best for the consistent damage, while for normal enemies, Shiva is a good choice for the sleep or magic damage... if players realize those distinctions I think they'll have a lot of fun with it.

--Like the abandoned "at-will" Evoker ability you just mentioned, were there any other abilities you dropped during the development?

Yabuta: There were tons. (laughs) There was an ability called "tsuresari jump" [abduction jump] for the Dragoon.

--What was that like?

Yabuta: The Dragoon would grab the enemy, take them into the air with them, and then slam them down on the ground. Another idea we had, actually, was to have PvP battles using the Wi-Fi connection. And for awhile we had a number of abilities related to that feature, but ultimately we felt uncomfortable about it. "Should Luneth and his friends really be fighting and hitting each other...?" So unfortunately, we decided to put that off for another game in the future.

Thanks once again to Alex Highsmith for translating this. Shmupulations is a site that hosts translated video game interviews from various sources, including several Final Fantasy games, such as VI and Tactics.

#Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy III #FF3 #FFIII #Unused #Interview #Onion Knight #Freelancer #Thief #Black Belt #Ranger #Sage #Scholar #Viking #Evoker #Game Design

14 notes · View notes

devil-doll13 · 1 year ago

Text

Zachariah ‘Zach’ Johnson NSFW Alphabet

Tw: Smut

I am inexplicably down bad and thirsty for this man so you have to deal with this now. I love doing these alphabets since it allows me to procrastinate more on actual writing lol

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

It depends on what kind of sex it was. Generally he’s inclined to leave before his partner wakes up if there was no real feeling behind it, but with you in a serious relationship it might be different. Zach’s moments of gentleness are typically offset with a healthy dose of snark that might make you want to smack him in the face instead of taking his offer to get you some water. He’s genuinely trying, though. And yes, he will carry you to the bath and help you run one for the both of you, just be prepared for him to brag about how he blew your back out in the process 🙄

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

He’d likely say his back, as in spite of how scarred up and rough it is (although that may have augmented his good looks to you…) it is also strong and broad, the sort of thing he’d see as attractive. He also thinks of his… Single eye. It’s that deep, dark brown colour, And yes, he has tried the Flynn Rider smoulder before. No, it did not work.

Your back and the small of it is also a place he finds his gaze wandering towards at times, and he has the habit of holding you there. Heaven forbid you wear something that shows it off, in that case he won’t be able to keep his hands off you. Zach also has a healthy appreciation for your thighs, just saying…

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

He cums about an average amount, and it’s fairly watery. It sort of just gushes down his length rather than releasing in spurts. Zach is another one who’s cum probably doesn’t taste very good - he’s a heavy smoker and drinker, remember - but he’s not too bothered where it goes. I can also see him preferring the use of a condom overall because he doesn’t want kids (if you can get pregnant) and it makes cleanup relatively simpler.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Considers his occasional bottom tendencies to be this. Zach probably sees sex as another way to gain back control in his hectic life so he thinks of himself as strictly a dom, but he… Definitely cannot deny how his body reacts to aggressive flirting. He’s always been the one to chase, so being sought after himself is thrilling even if he doesn’t want to admit it.

He also finds himself attracted to people he normally despises way more often that he thinks he should.

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Very experienced. He gets around quite a bit, and he’s known all sorts. Basically, he can tango, so have no worries. Even if you have no idea what you’re doing, he’ll do his best to make it an enjoyable time for you. He’s not heartless after all.

If anything, the one thing he doesn’t know how to navigate all that well is a serious and committed relationship. Sex is one thing, feelings are another. That said, if he’s decided to actually dedicate himself to you, he’ll try his best although he might have some… Endearingly old-fashioned views of what he should do for dates and such, haha. Behind all that bravado and James Bond mimicking is a dork with unfortunately a lot of baggage - the reason why he doesn’t really want to get hitched in the first place - honestly you might find he’s most charming when he isn’t trying to be.

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

Considering he spends so long fucking you with his eyes, it might come as a surprise that he avoids eye contact during casual sex. It just feels too personal to him in the moment, y’know? So in that case he prefers facing away from you. If you’re in a serious relationship it’s a little different, but he’ll still take a bit to warm up in being vulnerable with you. Either way, he loves fucking you against the wall or table, or having you bounce on his lap. Lying down has him needing to resist being lazy, which isn’t good if he’s still on the job, but he’s a power bottom at heart and the power trip of being able to sit back and enjoy his cigarette while you just use him is pretty tempting.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

Zach is pretty lighthearted during sex, sometimes maybe too much tbh. You might wish he could be more serious, or at least try not to ruin the moment. Eventually you’ll realise this is his way of processing things - sometimes getting past some embarrassment as well - but eventually he’ll figure out when there’s a particularly bad time to stick his foot in his mouth and can it then. It just takes a while.

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

Most of his body hair is on his face, arms, legs and there’s a tuft on his chest as well. It’s all quite dark so it stands out, and his pubic hair especially is very curly. His personal shaving routine is basically designed to give him as much five o’ clock shadow action as possible, so just be aware of the scratchiness when he kisses (or goes down on) you.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

Again, it depends. He’s capable of being detached and quick with it, very much a “wham bam thank you man/mam/etc.” affair lol. That said, he enjoys the seduction, the allure and desire, so it’s never really cold or callous. More like a bright flash of heat that’s gone too soon. He eases into more ‘romantic’ sex the longer he’s attached to you.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

Tbh I think if Zach was horny he would probably rationalise that it’d be easy for him to find someone to scratch that itch rather than using his hands. He doesn’t mind holding off for a while either; while he can be impatient with certain things, he enjoys the tension and release that comes with being made to wait, even if you make it frustrating.

Besides, if you tease him that just means he’ll have to get you back…

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

Edging, Overstim, Lingerie, Biting, Light Bondage (most likely tying you up or using handcuffs, but he’ll experiment with other things), Light Spanking.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

Realistically? A hotel room he’s rented out for exactly that purpose. You could do it in one of The Organisation’s safe houses as well but they don’t have very comfortable beds… That’s only a problem if you don’t like it though, he’s very relaxed and will literally take you anywhere: the busted sofa, the desk/table (after he clears all the files off of it), against the wall… You’re starting to think he actually prefers changing it up a little, that he finds it exciting. Besides, how else will he show off his strength other than holding you up?

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

It’s really not that difficult. He certainly has a good handle on your body language, so when you give him ‘that look’ he’s pretty much ready to go. Hey, he’s just not the kind of guy who wastes his time, okay? And he appreciates a well dressed partner, so he’ll notice if you gussied up to look all good for him. It only makes it all the better once he gets to undressing you; and he loves watching you try to get his clothes off as well, prompting him to tease you even more. He’s a sucker for nice smelling perfumes/scents as well.

I’m willing to bet he also thinks you’re hot when you’re mad, whether you’re going off on someone else or him lol. He’s infuriating that way; angry sex is definitely on the table (probably where you’ll end up fucking) and I wouldn’t put it past him to end up attracted to someone who he believes he hates or feels competitive with either.

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Causing you any pain that goes beyond something like light spanking or biting, knifeplay or gunplay because he’s more cautious than you think, and also anything to do with pregnancy/having kids. That is an entire discussion in itself.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

It’s probably not that surprising that he enjoys receiving the most. He particularly enjoys guiding you and telling you how good you’re doing as you suck him off. Maybe take this opportunity to get your own back on him and edge him; he won’t stop you even if it irritates him.

He always enjoys a challenge, after all.

That said, he prides himself in being a passionate lover and he would never neglect you. He feeds off of your noises and reactions so his eye often flickers to yours as he goes down on you. He likes to drag his stubble against your thigh to annoy you though lol.

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

He prefers a mixture of both, makes things interesting, especially when he changes pace on the fly in order to tease you. A quickie will have him mostly chasing the high, but as time goes on and you get more serious Zach will probably slow down a bit. Plus, he also kinda gets lazy/tired sometimes.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

Most of the time Zach practically runs on quickies, a.k.a one night stands with strangers, so with you he’s also perfectly capable of a quick encounter and then back into the fray again. Of course, with you he might be more inclined to drag it out, especially in edging you since he’s found he enjoys that. But yeah, he’ll default to quick if you’re in the mood and you don’t have that much time. It’s very casual for him.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

Yeah he’s game, Zach is actually pretty open to most things unless it crosses some big boundary of his. You’ll probably have to be the one to bring it up though since he’ll mostly stick to what is tried and true if left to his own devices. I mean… It’s also because he’s had plenty of time and energy to understand what he likes before, so…

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

Zach is so athletic, he’s used to strenuous physical activities and this is no different. That said, he’s partial to getting in maybe two really good rounds instead of squeezing in as many as possible. It also fills him with way to much pride if he tires you out enough for you to be the one tapping out.

(Especially since with you he sometimes likes to tease and drag it out bc he’s an asshole)

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

I’m not sure if he’d go as far as to pack one himself considering he does have to be selective with the stuff he owns travelling around in a car most of the time, but Zach is perfectly willing to use toys on you. Now if you count things such as handcuffs as toys, he does have those and is quite eager to make use of them during sex. I think he’d enjoy tormenting you with a vibrator, he gets off being in control of your pleasure like that.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He’s mean tbh 😭

The one thing he loves most is hearing you whine and beg for him to show a bit of mercy on you. If it’s a quick encounter he’s less bothered about this and more interested in just feeling his pleasure, but you’ll find his sadistic streak might translate over to your activities in the bedroom at times. He’s not going to deny you your orgasm; you will always get it, just not yet. And when you do you might regret it, because he’ll stimulate you into oversensitivity and make fun of you for that; isn’t this what you wanted?

You’ll probably have a safe word just in case though.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

He’s a dirty talker, so much you might want him to shut the hell up sometimes. But there are times where he can really get under your skin and he knows it. Zach swears under his breath a lot and often praises you if you do something particularly good. He believes in giving you encouragement, yeah?

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

His father works as a wood carpenter and would often make little wood carvings for him. I know I’ve mentioned the angel before that he keeps but I also imagine things like cars, animals etc. Zach has tried in the past to emulate him and carve wood himself, but he never got the hang of it and he lacked the patience to not get so frustrated with it that he just wanted to quit.

Maybe an oddly wholesome hc to put in this alphabet but 🤷‍♀️ I just wanted to get it out

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

7 Inches, thin-ish, sleek and cut. His dick curves a little upwards. Zach knows how to use it to go deep, and to hit just the right spots.

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

Fairly high, he’s young and fit and with lots of steam to blow off. Sex is one of his methods of coping with his stressful and often traumatic life. It’s sort of like a sport to him when he’s doing it casually, and he always makes it clear in those case that there’s nothing else to it than that.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

Doesn’t tend to sleep afterwards, mainly because he’s used to recouping and leaving after quick encounters. Zach mellows out a bit, his sweaty chest heaving with exertion as he leans back and lights a cigarette… (He’ll probably offer you one unless you make it clear before you don’t smoke) If you have a moment of respite however, Zach would love to roll over and get some snoozing in with you beside him.

(Taglist: @rottent33th, @slaasherslut, @myers-meadow, @the-pinstriped-hood, @vincent-sinclair-deserved-better)

Let me know if you want left off/added to my nsfw list as always

#getting the hang of doing not sfw stuff a bit more now #Zachariah Johnson #Zach #nsft alphabet #alphabet #my writing

15 notes · View notes