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supertrainstationh · 1 year ago

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Disaffinity - Betrayal and Gaslighting of a Fandom

[This piece discusses severe subject matter and is intended for mature audiences]

[If you are looking the intro/news post to my blog that I usually have pinned, PLEASE FIND IT HERE]

Decisions and actions by administration of Furaffinity.net in the Spring of 2023 demonstrate to me that any display of respect toward their users and artists is either performative in nature, or else is temporary, conditional, and based on arbitrary whims and moment-to-moment perceptions of utility rather than loyalty or trust.

Even from my perspective as a family-friendly creator with a negligible following and minimal visibility within Furaffinity, the furry fandom in general, and the wider internet beyond, I am vividly aware of how much it can hurt a creator when the nature and intention of their work is deliberately disrespected by those making misguided judgments and morality-driven accusations of misconduct.

"Disrespect" is a word I use only after careful consideration, but when the morality and acceptability of creators and works that for years were welcomed, encouraged, and even financially patronized by certain Furaffinity administrators abruptly become the subject of an officially sanctioned decency crusade in which those same creators are being faced with expulsion from the site, and slapped with a most severe accusation, that of producing inappropriate images of children, even when the images in question literally do not depict children or underage characters of any reasonable description - "disrespect" sums it up as well as any single word possibly can.

In response to this disrespect, some users and observers involved with the issue have made statements to the effect of "Furaffinity hates its artists."

While my natural reflex is to encourage those frustrated with the situation to dial back such an obviously hyperbolic reaction, upon further consideration, I find it difficult to determine if it could be possible for a person or organization to make implicit public accusations against people of, in essence, creating a form of child pornography, without also saying that they do in fact hate those they are accusing.

If it were possible to accuse someone of creating child pornography, but somehow do so without hating them, perhaps that should call into question the mental state and motivations of the persons or parties casting the accusations.

Deepening the disrespect by Furaffinity toward its own users is the gaslighting practice demonstrated by site staff in making official statements to pacify concerns about the nature and scope of the revised enforcement policy, when details of those statements had already been proven not to be true by specific records of moderation actions which have already taken place, or have been officially threatened to be carried out.

Furthermore, Furaffinity is overtly insulting the intelligence of its users by claiming that this revised policy merely enforces rules that had already been in place for years, and then attempting to establish that the artists impacted by this policy change had been using loopholes to circumvent the official rules of the site all along, and are not being targeted or picked on, but being held accountable for ongoing rule-breaking which was both conscious, and intentional.

It's like a town changing the posted speed limit on a certain highway from 60 miles per hour, to 40 miles per hour, and responding to complaints from ticketed drivers by claiming that the speed limit had always been 40 miles per hour, and that everyone who had previously been driving at 60 miles per hour were habitual dangerous drivers who were now facing the consequences of their deliberate misbehavior.

It's quite rotten that Furaffinity, a keystone website serving a community of people who are already outcasts and misfits in various ways, would spend above and beyond a decade to build up the trust of its users that it was a space where they were not only safe to be themselves, but safe to attempt to make a living on their talent, only to then abruptly accuse their members of having produced egregiously inappropriate content featuring the sexual depiction of children.

This is especially so when the content in question consists of cartoon drawings featuring non-human creatures, and the characters themselves can by no sensible stretch of the imagination be interpreted as representations of children, or people under the age of majority, either mentally or physically.

To be absolutely clear, I am not speaking in defense of artists who draw and publish inappropriate images of child characters, and I am also not claiming that such images are not reasonably objectionable.

What I am speaking in defense of are the significant number of artists on Furaffinity are who being accused by site staff of drawing inappropriate images of children, when the characters they are depicting are literally not children within the context of their artistic designs, fictional lifestyles, and fictional settings.

Furaffinity's definition of what constitutes a "child character" for the purposes of this crackdown have been expanded in a manner so vast and meaningless that a depicted character's chronological age, intellectual maturity, and physical appearance no longer count as valid proof of adulthood, and one might go as far as to joke that even a drawing of that fictional character's imaginary driver's license and birth certificate wouldn't count either.

When explanations of this enforcement policy (as of my writing this) mention that assessments to determine if a drawing of a fictional character or species may count as an inappropriate image of a child will, as a matter of procedure, disregard the creator's intentions, as well disregard any information the creator or other source of material can provide regarding the history or physiology related to that imaginary character or species, there's genuinely nothing that could possibly be assessed other than whether or not a moderator decides they're personally offended by a particular piece, character, or art style.

Official communications surrounding this revised policy state that its goal is to make the site's content guideline enforcement robust against situations resembling a specifically cited hypothetical opportunity for abuse in which an artist might publish art of a character that clearly appears to be an inappropriately dressed or provocatively behaving humanoid child, while insisting that the character is actually a millennia-old supernatural being that doesn't physically age, and using this excuse as a chintzy moral justification to circumvent the rules against artwork of child characters in sexual situations.

This hypothetical extreme example provided by Furaffinity would be an obvious bad faith misrepresentation by the creator of their intentions for the character, and would not be accepted by any reasonable person assessing that particular case.

However, the use of that hypothetical case as the foundation for establishing as standard practice the rejection the context provided by creator intent, fictional setting, and the character's backstory, in examining if a character is a depiction of an adult or a child, and instead assuming nefarious intent based on the style of the artist and subjective "cuteness" or "off-modelness" of the character, demonstrates a refusal to employ elementary human capabilities of judgment and comprehension.

Creating and depicting lively worlds filled with imaginary sapient beings of all shapes and sizes, populating those worlds with compelling characters, and exploring the stories of their lives, which may or may not include sexual aspects, and having the freedom to do all of this without fear of punishment or rejection on the basis of what someone else may arbitrarily decide is abnormal or offensive, is what allowed this fandom, and Furaffinity in particular, to survive and grow in spite of many difficulties and controversies, including organized opposition from people outside the fandom who are angry that it merely exists at all.

My own published creations are entirely appropriate for all ages, and I particularly enjoy creating things that I would have been able to enjoy as a small child, and therefore I have nothing at stake in terms of my creativity being limited by these latest policy revisions on Furaffinity.

What drives me to write in response to this situation is not a desire to defend the production and display of inappropriate drawings of children, which should have never been permitted on Furaffinity in the first place (though at one point it incredibly actually was, and remained so for an extended period of its history), but to protest the sheer injustice and betrayal faced by so many creators who trusted Furaffinity as a place they could be themselves, only to suddenly be discarded like this.

The overwhelming majority of the people affected by these policy changes have always been (and rightfully so) vocally opposed to the creation and display of inappropriate images of children, and in spite of finding such images disgusting, suddenly find themselves being accused by officialdom within Furaffinity of producing exactly that.

For what little art I've created myself, I've faced a small amount of my work suffering from accusations by people outside the furry fandom of containing harmful or morally questionably intent, while refusing to listen to me or attempt to understand what I was making, or what I intended to convey with my creations. These accusations hurt me tremendously, and still irritate me, although years have passed.

Even with that experience, I can't guess how I'd begin to process suddenly having the foundation of my presence within the furry fandom pulled out from under me, if it without warning became an official position of a major website at the forefront of the community, that works I produced without any sort of evil intentions have been redefined by site policy as constituting inappropriate images of children, when the images in question literally do not depict childhood-age characters at all.

Pouring salt on the wound is the absolute nature of this dictate, with it being declared final and infallible, regardless of the sexual maturity, age, and fictional history of the characters in the artwork being judged, a standard which renders the actual work in question an invalid source in considering the nature and intention of the work itself.

It is akin to saying that the addends in an arithmetic expression are invalid for the purpose of reasoning the correct sum of those addends.

Even in consideration of concepts such as Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author", no legitimate form of argument or analysis of a creative work demands that the work itself be rejected as a valid source from which to formulate an explication of that work.

It's quite incredible that Furaffinity, which describes itself as an art site, would take such a stance.

This model of assessment could be used to define the character Rocko Rama the wallaby from the animated television show "Rocko's Modern Life" to be a child, even though that character's premise fundamentally depends upon Rocko being an adult homeowner with a driver's license and a job, or to define the character Noelle Holiday the reindeer monster from the video game "Deltarune" to be an adult, even though that character's premise fundamentally depends upon Noelle being a young teenager who lives with her parents and attends high school.

I've both heard of and have been friends with several wonderful people who have endured hideous sexual abuse during childhood.

Only much later in life did they discover adults-only spaces within the furry fandom as some of their first encounters with the idea of sexuality as something with the potential to be positive or healthy, which they then explored through creativity within the fandom, and for some, that included the crafting of adults-only work depicting consenting adult characters, and some of which they actually had the courage to share on sites such as Furaffinity, a place they felt they could trust the leadership to respect and welcome them, and take reasonable steps to shield them from negative treatment for their interests and tastes.

Given the extent that people within the furry fandom tend to identify with the characters they create, and use them as avatars for themselves, I can't begin to imagine what it would be like to have endured sexual abuse as a child, and later as an adult begin to explore sexuality in a way felt to be safe, through making adults-only art of an imaginary being representing themselves, art that they may have been sharing for years on Furaffinity, only to suddenly receive official warning that artwork of their avatar, which represents a fantastic version of their own adult self, has been without warning declared by the website to constitute an inappropriate sexual depiction of a child, and in essence that their own artwork of themselves has been redefined as a form of child pornography.

All of this, because the moderator viewing their art, and judging the art style and proportions of an artist's personal avatar, disapproves of the character's height, head shape, clothing, lack of clothing, leg shape, being too cartoony, being too realistic, being "too cute", having the wrong coloring and shading style, or other arbitrary and frequently contradictory explanations that have been given for many characters of wildly varying size, shape, and attributes, and based on that, officially re-categorizes that character to now define a depiction of a child.

With concerns over adult characters being depicted in "cartoon-like", "excessively cute", or "off-model" art styles being frequently cited as the reasoning for which non-child characters are suddenly being declared by site staff as "sexual depictions of children", I really have to wonder where my own art would stand in this situation.

I do not create adults-only art of any kind, but what art I have created and shared with the furry fandom over the years is limited by a fine-motor disability I have received services for since childhood, in addition to services for autism spectrum disorder.

My handwriting and artistic capabilities always have, and always will, be extremely limited.

Handwriting and drawing come with difficulty, and the results are stunted in quality to the point where art and language teachers as early as first grade were complaining about the lack of detail and "effort" put into my best work.

Art and writing projects took me many times longer than a non-disabled student to attempt, resulting in me spending most of many lunch and recess periods in detention for failing to finish coloring and math classwork on time, in spite of giving the projects my full and undivided attention.

I created a unique species of worm-like creatures specifically to serve as something I could draw using my limited abilities, and every single digital piece I created with these worm characters took me hours of work in a program like Photoshop for a result that others tend to think I effortlessly scribbled together in Microsoft Paint in a matter of seconds.

With my self-invented race of imaginary cartoon worms, I've explored many subjects and themes, including concepts I can only relate to with the perspective I've gained as an adult.

These themes include frustration with debt, and even affectionate encounters between worm characters, with the last of those themes being presented in such a chaste and tasteful manner that I'm sure my childhood Sunday school teacher would have been charmed by it.

The thought of these ultra flat, ultra simplistic cartoon worms of mine being depicted in any sexual situation strikes me as profoundly absurd.

But now, I find it interesting to think of the peril I would be in now on Furaffinity, if, hypothetically, I had decided to use my Doorworms (which I have already used to reflect my non-sexual experiences as an autistic adult) to also explore thoughts or feelings regarding sexuality, as many others within the furry fandom had in the past using their own invented creature characters, back when there was little risk to be seen in doing so.

I created Doorworms to be able to drawn within the limits of my own motor deficits by using simple body shapes and exaggerated facial expressions that autistic people tend to easily relate to, or find appealing.

So would this make my Doorworms, a direct result of my abilities, disabilities, and neurodivergent life experience, a species that would run me afoul of Furaffinity's new acceptable use policies, were I to have chosen in the past to depict Doorworms engaged in sexual activity?

From what research I've done regarding how these policies have been projected to be enforced so far, some characters with typical seeming adult human body proportions have been classified by site staff as inappropriate images of children.

Even if one moderator were to deem my Doorworms acceptable in an adults-only context, there's no reason to expect other moderators would be so permissive, given the extreme variations in what has and hasn't been deemed compliant since the changes were announced.

The incongruent reasoning in moderator decisions is so extreme that one user has claimed that a moderator on Furaffinity went so far as to declare that a reported case of drawings of anthropomorphic child characters being physically abused in a non-sexual manner by adults was acceptable on the basis that the children were being depicted as not enjoying the experience.

Wasn't this all supposed to be about discouraging imagery that exploits the theme of child abuse for entertainment purposes?

To intentionally repeat myself, I say with confidence that Doorworms would eventually be considered forbidden in adults-only material on Furaffinity because official judgments that a character is a child have already been made on that site based entirely on the character being "overly cute", and ignoring the character's physical age, physical maturity, and mental maturity, which are all the defining factors that differentiate adulthood from childhood in any reasonable situation.

Instead, these decisions are being based entirely on assertions that the character's clothing, or their lack of clothing, the shape and size of their eyes, or that a "cartoon like" art style in terms of design, coloration, or line work, any of which can define the character as being an indisputable depiction of a child in an adults-only situation, and inappropriate for display on the site due to being a form of child pornography.

If an imaginary being that in our world would be of similar size and shape to a typical adult human, and would have the body type, mental acuity, and physical maturity, of an adult, and could be expected to be capable of operating an automobile, opening a bank account, or being employed, can in spite of all of this be determined by Furaffinity moderation to count as a "child", there's no possible way I could hope for my own Doorworms, which due to my fine motor disability were created to be as crude and simplistic in style as an artistic depiction of an intelligent imaginary creature could possibly be, to somehow escape eventual judgment from a Furaffinity moderator of counting as inappropriate images of children, if I had decided to explore themes of sexuality using my Doorworms, and posted them to that site.

Feeling reasonable in my prediction of how the preceding hypothetical scenario would be eventually assessed by site staff in this present situation, I'd have to wonder then, if that would mean that artistic expressions of sexuality through imaginary creatures within the furry fandom were, after all, only a privilege for those fortunate enough to lack impairments like mine which restrict their artistic capabilities to those akin to someone only barely learning to hold a pencil, resulting in a style one might perceive as reflecting "emphasized cuteness", or even accuse of being deliberately "child-like" as though to appeal to an indecent and predatory predilection.

Do my limited motor skills and inability to create more sophisticated, realistic, and human-like character designs, invalidate the legitimacy of my right as an adult to use what little artistic capability I have to explore themes that might mirror sexual aspects of my own adulthood?

If that were the case, it would certainly reflect the ongoing struggles many disabled people face in having their adulthood, including their sexuality, respected as valid by non-disabled people who, consciously or not, may view other's impairments, difficulties, or requirements for additional assistance or patience, as placing them in a permanent state of partial childhood, in which the thought of those same people possessing ordinary adult human attributes such as sexuality seems distasteful.

Luckily for myself, the thought experiment as to if my Doorworms would be tolerated in an adults-only context on the Furaffinity of Spring 2023 will never need to be explored in practice, as I regard Doorworms as an intensely non-sexual creation, and would never create or publish adults-only art of any kind, in any context, anyway.

However I do have concern for others like me. My concern is for adults who may have somewhat limited capacity to depict sophisticated or realistic art styles for their creatures, or who draw cartoon creatures with bright clothing and body coloration, and render faces with exaggerated, "cute", simple-to-read design language and facial expressions, as neurodiverse people often do and find appealing.

These are people who were baited by Furaffinity into feeling safe in exploring the expression of sexual themes through creating artwork of physically and emotionally mature imaginary creatures representing themselves, only to be stabbed in the back when their adult-themed work is suddenly judged by Furaffinity as a gallery of inappropriate images of children, regardless of anything those creators have to say about it.

Any creators on Furaffinity whose existing body of work is now threatened by these policy changes are now, if they dare to argue in their own defense, are facing instantaneous dismissal by Furaffinity administration as bad actors who are making excuses for their extensive histories of disrupting and abusing the site and its community by exploiting it to publish inappropriate images of children, a status which marks any argument they could possibly come up with to be inherently invalid for consideration.

What makes this more insulting still is that in spite of the fact that many of these Furaffinity-based artists have not only always been vocally opposed to the sexual depiction of childhood age anthropomorphic characters, but now find that some of the only furry-dedicated websites they can consider as alternatives to display their artwork are smaller sites with sometimes dubious standings within the furry fandom that flourished by serving as havens for those who wished to to draw adults-only artwork of child characters after Furaffinity forbade such images.

If this new policy on Fuaffinity that redefines which characters are considered appropriate for depiction in sexual situations were a simple matter of forbidding creatures from children's franchises such as Pokemon, Digimon, or My Little Pony to be featured; as inconvenient and unpopular as a decision as that would be for some, and in spite of all the backlash I know I would face for stating such an opinion, I wouldn't have placed blame on Furaffinity for doing so.

However, that is not at all what is actually taking place.

I find it incredibly ironic that I am writing this, because not only do I have no financial or recreational interest in creating and sharing adults-only works within or beyond the furry fandom, but for years I have dealt with backlash from other furries for suggesting that the furry fandom's famous and infamous sex-positive nature might, in some aspects, have made itself into an unhealthy excess of what in reasonable moderation could be a good thing.

Over the years myself and others within the furry fandom have been publicly accused of "sex-negativity" merely for discussing the potential for strictly PG, all-ages options for conventions, art sites, and online social spaces, and I've been called a "fake furry" for not only failing to put my sex life on public display, but failing to establish it as the defining characteristic of my online presence.

Sometimes I've even seen expressions of interest in family-friendly spaces within the furry fandom be derided as veiled attempts to promote bigotry toward non-straight people.

I find this attitude ironic given that I'm sure many of these same people are the sort that get outspokenly offended when mainstream media coverage depicts the furry fandom as an insidious subculture of sex-obsessed maniacs that use cartoon animal imagery to attract minors.

Even polite requests for obviously fetish-driven artwork to be appropriately labeled as such and placed in its defined categories to reduce the chance of it being viewed by those who don't want to view it, or who should not be allowed to view it, face routine backlash, which has included publicly published personal statements that have been made by Furaffinity administrators accusing others of being judgmental.

I've also seen this behavior take the form of resistance from furries, who for example, might insist that a drawing of two characters engaged in foot fetish activity that any reasonably informed person can assess to be sexually motivated, can not possibly be considered mature content.

In this example, the claim that the image in question was perfectly acceptable general-audience content was made on the basis that both of the characters, though blushing, and obviously aroused, were fully clothed, and that therefore anyone who dares suggest that such an image might not be appropriate in all contexts and for all audiences fails to understand the "true spirit" of the furry fandom, because the paws of cartoon animals represent joy, freedom, and innocence, or something to that effect.

Though I could go on with a number of more extreme examples than that, both on Furaffinity, and elsewhere, which I have witnessed personally, my real point of interest here is the extent to which I've seen it as routine that people within the furry fandom take personal insult to the idea that a racy, or even sexually explicit image, might be inappropriate in a general-audiences setting that isn't designated for such material.

It's very strange to me watching furries take offense to a request to tag a sexually implicit or explicit piece as not-safe-for-work (NSFW) and treat the concept of NSFW tagging as a judgmental statement on the morality of the particular piece, those who might enjoy it, and the piece's creator.

Maybe I feel strongly about this due to disability services I received to offset my social deficits, which included actual classes attempting to catch me up to speed on what is and isn't considered appropriate in different settings, and in which I was lead to take these boundaries very seriously.

I can't help but recognize the behavior I mentioned earlier from certain furries who lack ability to reasonably judge which subjects are appropriate for which settings and audiences as a form of impairment of its own.

I often wonder how much this phenomenon may have to do with people having growing up in the online furry fandom from a young age, routinely encountering inappropriate content and behavior, and ending up with an improperly developed sense that these boundaries should even exist.

For all its positives, the furry fandom is lousy with environments in which the boundaries between adults-only and family-friendly spaces are often very poorly delineated, or not defined at all.

In spite of its new hyper-vigilance against inappropriate artistic images of children, whether the pieces in question actually feature underage characters or not, Furaffinity itself is a prime example of the problem I'm pointing to, in which actual children are at reasonable risk of being exposed to inappropriate content.

Furaffinity presently allows children as young as thirteen years old to hold accounts.

However, the site itself would be blocked entirely by most reasonably robust parental control filters due it not only hosting adults-only content, but adults-only content of a sometimes extreme nature that even many furries find questionable, and that some furries acquiesce to being in the distant company of due to Furaffinity's near-monolithic status within the fandom, and difficulty some find to be "visible" or “discoverable” without the presence of having an account there.

Since I was a toddler, I was fascinated with animals, cartoon critters, mythological human-animal hybrids, aliens, monsters, human-to-creature metamorphosis, and other themes popular within the furry fandom.

I developed and explored these interests before I had even heard of the internet or the furry fandom, and when my household did get internet access, it was so long ago that my first order of business was dialing up a website via AOL 3.0 that provided coverage of the 1998 launch of the Sega Dreamcast.

It's an incredible advancement that the internet has allowed people who would have lived completely isolated in the recent past to form communities and bonds with those who have esoteric interests in common. In spite of all the drawbacks of the internet that could be discussed, the benefits of its emergence are not something I would want to go away, or be dampened or diminished.

At the same time, now that I am an adult approaching the age my parents were when they first set up an original model iMac equipped with a 56k modem in my bedroom, and left me largely unsupervised to use it freely, it's a bummer knowing that if I were a parent, and had a kid with interests similar to my own at that age, that I could never allow my cartoon, creature, and transformation obsessed child to freely partake in the furry fandom, and that I would have to exhibit so much oversight that I could only imagine it as overbearing and stifling.

And that goes particularly so for Furaffinity, arguably the largest site within the fandom, which allows thirteen year old children to join, in spite of it hosting extreme pornography in a setting where a considerable number of users happen to have a concerning difficulty in accurately determining for themselves whether or not sexually implicit fetish content, or even explicitly pornographic material, should be considered "safe-for-work" or not.

Even as strange posturing in the world of politics and public policy drags the furry fandom into the context of a greater "culture war" in which reactionaries are stoking unfounded animosity toward any culture or subculture even slightly alien to them, the furry fandom has enjoyed an unprecedented period of positive coverage from the mainstream media, who are for the first time willing to understand and explain to their viewers and readers that anthropomorphic art, media, and literature isn't a purely sexual, purely fetish-based, or purely adults-only field of interest.

Years back, even the most benign interview between a furry and the mainstream media could be expected to be twisted into a juicy novelty story about a surreal and shocking sexual underworld that was fixated upon kids-only subject matter. Today however, furries featured in such outsider material happily show off their non-adult artwork and fandom related experiences to outside reporters and film makers, and sometimes even discuss adults-only aspects with minimal judgment, at least from the interviewers themselves.

At the same time, in no other fandom or hobby have I been involved in have I found the need to routinely clarify to outsiders, or even insiders, that my mere mention of being connected to it isn't a declaration of my sexual interests, especially in situations where anything related to sex would (with reason) be unexpected, or inappropriate.

Even with the extent of anthropomorphic content and activities the furry fandom has to offer which are genuinely appropriate for all ages, and that without the context of the furry fandom might be likened to the works of Dr. Seuss or P.D. Eastman, there is a reason the furry scene is so closely linked in the popular consciousness with sexuality of a sometimes extreme nature, and no quantity of fundamentally dishonest attention-grabbing hatchet job exploitative news stories could have capitalized on that association without there being some kind of plausible basis for it.

With that having been said, my main criticism of Furaffinity its apparently desperate desire to enjoy the prestige and benefits of taking up an ambassadorial role at the forefront of the furry fandom as one of its largest and most popular websites, and doing so at a time when the fandom is still struggling to be seen as anything other than an untamed scene of sexual radicals residing entirely on the absolute fringes of society.

This alone would be fine, but Furaffinity also hosts a large of volume of not just adults-only content, but morally and sometimes legally questionable content, and has suffered repeated instances of publicly visible hypocritical standards and selective rule enforcement on behalf of site staff and volunteers.

Administrators currently or formerly attached to the site have been known to harbor and shield from criticism personalities seen among many within the furry community to be controversial, or even overtly objectionable.

Furaffinity does this while maintaining a paper-thin outward facade that's perpetually been a breath away from running afoul of the standards of payment processing companies and other bodies the site needs to appease in order to survive, which in the future could include actual lawmakers who are already setting their sights on punishing public schools for employing people known to be associated with the furry fandom in their personal lives.

If past and ongoing questionable and hypocritical conduct among Furaffinity's leadership was merely limited to a long ago incident in which an administrator banned a user from the site for discussing the adults-only aspect of the furry fandom on a daytime television talk show, while the same administrator who issued the ban was known to have funded the creation of custom-made publicly accessible adults-only furry artwork that was published on the very website they banned the user in question from accessing, I'd have no response other than to point and laugh at the irony.

But the sheer volume of obviously bad decisions, direct and indirect compliance in cover ups of alleged and suspected wrongdoing on behalf of certain users (some of which might have been worthy of professional criminal investigation), as well as the granting of privileged permission for continued and overt terms of service violations on behalf of popular or well-connected users, and more nonsense aside from this, all permeate Furaffinity's history and present.

As one of the largest websites in the furry fandom, which many fandom members depend on as the axis of their participation within it, this is not a disaster waiting to happen, its a disaster that's been happening for over a decade.

Furaffinity is an ongoing disaster which the furry fandom has been ingeniously and painstakingly deriving utility from, like squeezing water from a stone in the desert.

The tolerance for mediocrity and discordance from the website itself on behalf of its users, and ingenuity and cleverness from the same to make practical use of it, is made necessary by site's status as a monolithic burning cenotaph of a tower upon which more and more unstable floors are continuously and precariously added like Jenga blocks, while the rest of the surrounding city that is the furry fandom has been starving for wood and nails to build anything larger than a small shack.

As I write this, Furaffinity continues to harbor content of a far more severely ethically dubious nature than art of imaginary adult creature characters that are rendered with "emphasized cuteness" or "off-model body proportions" while being depicted having consensual sexual encounters.

Even if properly tagged and categorized adults-only content is concealed from view of the accounts of Furaffinity users that list their birth-date as indicating an age under that of legal adulthood, I as a parent wouldn't be okay letting my thirteen year old self, if Furaffinity had existed back then, have an account on that website; not when an artist can post something such as a drawing of two cartoon animals relishingly licking each other's feet, or urinating on themselves, and list it as appropriate for all ages based on the logic that the character's genitalia aren't exposed, and where site moderation is known to sometimes take months to respond to enforcing user-generated reports over such cases.

Some might say I'm attempting to instigate a moral panic against Furaffinity or even the furry fandom itself by mentioning these problems, but Furaffinity has done that on their own by starting a crusade against some of the least objectionable adults-only material on their site, while continuing to allow art which replicates real-world criminal acts of sexual violence against animals in a shockingly realistic manner that upon first glance can be mistaken for actual photographs when seen in their miniaturized preview size, all as it fails to address with satisfaction many basic systematic and administrative shortcomings like those I've mentioned above.

Stanley Cohen, who is credited with establishing the phrase, "moral panic", described it as when:

"A condition, episode, person, or group of persons, emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests. While the issues identified may be real, the claims exaggerate the seriousness, extent, typicality, and/or inevitability of harm."

I think Cohen's insistence that an irrational moral panic by definition does not exclude the possibility of a legitimate concern lying at its root to be an interesting one in this case.

In years past, Furaffinity was known to have permitted sexual artwork of imaginary creatures and humanoid animal characters that were explicitly presented and described by the artist as being children.

Even after policies forbidding such content were enacted on Furaffinity, it has been recorded that certain users whose adults-only artwork enjoyed particular popularity on the site, continued to, without consequence, post adults-only art featuring characters which on their Furaffinity listings were explained by the artists as being "short adults", while the same characters were openly described as being underage when posted on other websites that lacked rules forbidding underage characters in adults-only pieces.

The presence of artists who knowingly and intentionally present adults-only art of characters which are very obviously meant to represent children, and make bad faith claims that the characters are intended to be "short adults", or belong to an imaginary humanoid species which retains prepubescent physical attributes at an advanced age, is an actual problem.

However, this problem is not at all significant to the extent which the revised acceptable use policy on Furaffinity would suggest they are.

This is especially true when these revised rules, rather than target specific cases of actual misuse, instead redefine vast quantities of already existing material on the site to constitute alleged inappropriate child images, even if the images in question do not feature anything resembling a child or any other sexually immature imaginary creature or being.

To build on my analogy from earlier, this would be akin to a police department cracking down on illegal underground street racing circuits, not by hiring more officers to patrol particular highways known to be frequented by these unlawful racers, but by reducing the speed limit to a walking pace, and declaring that everyone operating their car at speeds that were formerly within the speed limit must have been participating in street racing gangs all along.

My understanding is that Furaffinity's former policy, which actually permitted sexually themed artwork of child characters, was changed in large part due to pressure from third parties such as advertising service providers, payment processing companies, and prospective investors or owners, which Furaffinity depended on for revenue to run the site, and who didn't want their businesses associated with such objectionable material.

In the case of the Spring 2023 rule changes however, I doubt that demands from third party businesses making ultimatums to Furaffinity as a condition for future transactions were the core cause of these specific policy updates.

I say this because I find it difficult to believe that a brand manager from a company such as Visa, American Express, or Pay Pal, in the course of preserving the good will and reputation of their company, would know of, care about, or even be able to comprehend the sorts of discussions this policy change has provoked.

These discussions often consist of esoteric debates over subjects such as if a magical transforming fox monster from a video game, or a computerized feline imp from a twenty-five year old Japanese cartoon, count as adult characters in the context of these imaginary creature's ability to undergo instantaneous supernatural transformations induced by elemental trinkets and magical phrases.

If it turned out third party demands were the underlying cause of these changes, I imagine the new policy was specifically formulated in such a manner that Furaffinity could sacrifice a calculated number of users in the course of presenting theatrical reforms that an uninformed outsider could perceive as bringing that site in alignment with higher standards and casting out significant numbers of alleged bad actors, while they remain ignorant of what's actually been going upon the site this entire time, which would likely drive them to abandon ship immediately.

The fact is, in spite of whatever strengthening of the moral fabric of Furaffinity that those at the helm of that site may think they are carrying out by cracking down on adults-only art featuring adult characters arbitrarily deemed to be "children" based on unpredictable and incongruent judgments of art style, Furaffinity remains to be a site that not only currently allows near-photorealistic computer generated artistic depictions of human beings sexually assaulting unintelligent, non-anthropomorphic animals that are obviously incapable of consent, but allows children as young as thirteen years old to hold accounts there.

It is akin to the captain of an airship inflated with explosive hydrogen gas ejecting passengers that were wearing wool sweaters for fear the sweaters could build up static electricity and spark a fire, but openly permitting the on-board smoking of cigars, lighting of fireworks, and wielding of flamethrowers by a handful of favored passengers, while the majority of those on board would rather have had the airship inflated with non-explosive helium in the first place, but tolerate the risk for lack of any other practical means to travel, and the likelihood of being thrown out the window should they speak up on the matter.

It's all rather silly.

[Twitch] [VOD Channel] [Furaffinity (Writing Only)] [Ko-fi]

#a.griffin writes #furaffinity #furry #furry fandom #furry drama #fandom drama #opinion piece #essay #furaffinity aup

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lostacelonnie · 1 year ago

Note

Can i hear 5 and 25 salt for honky pls 🙏🙏

HII OF COURSE.... i love complaining ab my fav things

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

KAY SO. HONESTLY. not really quite ruined a pairing bc i still do enjoy it but i deeeeeefinitely started preferring other ships over kiamei bc of some fans. NOW DONT GET ME WRONG the majority of kiamei fans are so sweet but theres this Specific type of them that just start bitching whenever they see someone ship kiana or mei with anyone else even if they do not follow, are friends with, or in any way engage with the person in question. LIKE GO AWAY LEAVE ME ALONEEEE

25. How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?

now. its been said a million times and i will say it again. I HATE MOON ARC. I THINK ITS SO BAD. i cannot bring myself to truly dislike elysium everlasting bc i am EXTRAORDINARILY insane ab the flamechasers, and i. really do think it wasnt AS bad as some ppl say. like yes i absolutely agree that elysias character was Not Great in ee, that it impacted the following arc [and thats not a good thing], and generally was uuueueueghgh but i also kinda enjoyed it tbh. it had fun parts!!! yeah it was rushed and confusing and often lacked subtlety when fleshing out some of the characters [KALPAS'S DEATH SCENE. CMON. I LIKE HAVING LORE BUT NOT BEING SPOONFED IT] but at the end of the day i think it was. okay. BUT MOON ARC?? MOON ARC WAS SO BAD. NOBODY WAS WRITTEN CONSISTENTLY. NOTHING MADE SENSE. THE OPEN WORLD WAS SOMEHOW EVEN MORE BROKEN THAN EE. DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE INCLUSION OF LAMBDA AND PLAYERS?? FOR SOME REASON??? of course im not trying to push all the blame onto the writers bc i understand they were overworked and rushed to get the ending out but ahhhh. mihoyo. why. i DID like the ending of "on the name of the world" tho. bronyas transformation and her quote ab how at the end of the day, all herrschers are just people is one of the only things i remember positively. but thats enough hating 😊 salt snow arc is good so i forgive them

#ANYWAY. thx for the ask ^-^ i wouldve answered it yesterday but my grandma is over and shes making me become the joker #which is also why i might be particularly bitchy today. sorry ❤ its in my blood #asks #laios-burger

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rainysflowers · 17 days ago

Text

Rainy answers this because it doesn't have enough people who would actually send in asks for an ask game so it'll just do it on it's own!!

1. What was the first anime you watched?

The first anime I ever watched was Pokemon Black and White when it aired on Disney XD. Ofc, at the time I didn't consider it an anime for whatever reason, and that has stuck with me forever, so when asked this question, I always answer with the one I consider to be really the first anime I watched. Ouran High School Host Club. Summer camp, awards ceremony, final day. My friend comes up to me and says, "Hey, have you heard about this show??" I said no, and went and watched it on Netflix. Instantly hooked. Kyoya was my favorite host, btw.

2. What was the first fandom you were involved in?

Pokemon and Warrior Cats. I 'wrote' fanfiction for Pokemon in my head since the age of zero, and made so many Warrior Cat OCs as a baby. Had a HUGE playlist of M.A.P.s too. Both of them had a long impact on my life going forwards, and I'm not entirely certain which came first.

3. What fandoms are you involved in right now?

Gosh, atm? Nothing specific. I've been in a depressive mood for a while so I haven't watched anything at all in a LOOONNNGGGGGGG time. It's sad, to be honest.

4. Who is your favorite character from Lost Universe and why?

DAMN, putting me on the spot right away, god. Okay, so LU is a spin-off of Slayers and I have to be honest, I don't have a favorite character from it, mostly because it's not all that much of a favorite anime to me in general, BUT for the sake of this question, I think Rayl would probably be the one I like the most. Tho, that's cuz he's kinda aimed to be the Xellos of the anime...

5. Who is your least favorite character from GetBackers and why?

Easy. Drunk Vash. I, uh, don't know his name, but if you've seen the anime he's the other blond older man with light powers who shows up in the second half. To be fair, I hate the second half period, as it feels like a retread of all the cool stuff they did with Maku-chan and the Fortress in the first half, but I also think that Drunk Vash is just boring. The random assholes he brings along are boing (Not Toshiki, I respect his manga characterization), his motives are boring, and his ending is boring. And that's coming from someone who hate the manga's ending!!

6. How do you feel about Boa Hanncock from One Piece and why?

Of course the wheel chooses the long asf anime, smh. I'll have you know I put a decent amount of people on the other wheel. I hate her. I cannot stand her. I want her to go away. Great, very sad story though!! Okay, seriously, I HATE Boa, I hate her probably more than I hate any of the other characters that I hate. She kicks small animals, she's a dick, she's vain, and I hate her. She has a beautifully tragic and traumatic backstory I love. I love the symbolism of it that she has to carry, and how that has affected her into her later life. I cannot stand her. That should summaries how I feel about her.

7. What color do you associate with Zelgadis from Slayers?

Hmm, I'd have to say lighter blue. Not light blue, just a lighter blue. A grossly dusty and depressingly grey lighter blue. It is his skin color, so that's little surprise. But other than that, maybe a little bit of yellow. The sickly bright eyes of a creature watching you from the woods, stalking your every move. Will it attack you with its monstrous teeth and blood-stained claws, or is it making sure that you can't hurt it like everyone else whose come to this forest?

8. Have you read the manga for Ghost Slayers Ayashi?

Actually, I have not. I do own it, it's a two volume series, and I have an extra volume one that came with the collector's box set for the anime, but I haven't read it yet. I should, GSA is pitifully under stocked with content.

9. What is your favorite anime op?

I don't really think about this all that often, but if I had to choose, I'd probably say Death Note OP 2, What's Up People. Its fun. Other than that, We Are from One Piece.

10. What is your favorite anime ed?

Have a Nice Music!! from Show by Rock!!, or Revolution from Slayers Evolution-R. Mostly the latter.

11. Who is your favorite character to write for?

I think it'll have to be Xellos. That's hard to say, but I do really enjoy writing about them interacting with other characters, and they're one of my ONLY antagonistic characters I write for. Writing their world view as the Slayers equivalent of a higher demon is fun, and I just love using their character voice in the things I make.

12. What is your favorite headcanon for Crow from Show by Rock!!?

Oh boy. I'm not super fond of Crow, personally, I don't think about him too often, but if I had to choose something, it'd probably be that he actually does care about Aion, but just teases him cuz he feels like it. Basic, I know, but this headcanon applies more towards various fics and AUs I like to write. Most of them deathfics. A large through point is Aion breaking down to any degree and isolating or removing himself from the group, which causes the tri to go and find him. I usually like to have Crow most affected by this when I am writing him because it's a good contrast.

13. What is your favorite character to read fics about?

I don't have an all time favorite character to read for, but I do have characters who I like to see focused on in the fic, if that makes sense. There's not one that's more than the others, tho, cuz I usually read fics fandom by fandom. Character's I prefer to have a focus on (NOT THEIR POV THO) are: - Xellos (Slayers) - Ban (GetBackers) - Jack (L/R) - Sanji (One Piece) - Yoji (Weiss Kreuz) - ECT... Basically look at a list of my favs and you get the point. Funny enough they're also all my favs to read about dying er uh who said that!!

14. What is your favorite ship from Death Note?

Oh no. Why would it land on this. Oh well. If I have to admit it, I do really like Light/L, but not in a super sexual or even romantic way. I like them more as a fucked up, evil dynamic that can't be quantified, like 'love and hate are both the same' type sentiments. I particularly like them ship-wise when in a No Kira!Cops! AU I have, because it allows me to mess with them not liking one another BEYOND the scope of being a serial killer and a cop. Other than that, and a worthy mention, I also like Misa/L, both in canon and in that AU I mentioned. I just think it could be cute :3 No Light/Misa tho, not in canon most certainly, it skeeves me out

15. What is your least favorite ship from L/R: Licensed by Royalty?

Time to sound awful. Uh... I don't really like Claire/Rowe... I don't want you to get the wrong idea, they're fine, I'm just not into their chemistry. It's not something that I would enjoy writing about or consuming solely. That's mostly because I ship the boys, Jack/Rowe, the non-canon gay ship, but I really don't mind seeing Claire/Rowe in general. I'm just not into it. I don't really have strong feelings on characters outside of the main three (Jack, Rowe, Noelle) in this anime so the two being in a relationship means I'm not interested in half of it and it's hard for me to engage with it. Sorry two other L/R fans on Earth :P

16. What ship will you go down with?

... Okay, uh... this is weird, but my fav fav fav ship is Shuu★Zo/Aion from Show by Rock!! It's an enemies-to-lovers ship with two character who I don't believe have ever spoken before once... BUT I have this AU. So in the show, Aion ends up possessed by a negativity demon, and wanders to the roof of a very tall building (He seeks out high places when distressed, he's very mentally ill). Shuu notices and tells Aion's band where to find him. In the AU, it's Shuu who goes and saves Aion instead of the band, and they grow closer after this, which is hindered by the fact they are in dueling, opposite genre bands (Aion is vkei, Shuu is jpop). I love them so much.

17. Who is currently your main comfort/emotional support character?

I have like five million but a sold fall back is Xellos from Slayers. I don't know why, but something made me gravitate towards them and it was never the same after that. Other notable ones are, like, Ban from GetBackers or maybe L from Death Note, but Xel is def the all time fav.

18. What is a comfort character you have that makes other people go ??? "Really?"

I honestly can't think of anyone that would fit that description, but I like Kiriko from Black Jack and I think that he might be one of the weirder ones?? He's an old man twink who does euthanasia, but he's got a good story and I like that he just shows up sometimes lol.

19. Have you used a quote from an anime/manga in a relevant situation?

Nope. I have referenced the plots of anime/manga in situations before, however, like when I let made my friend explain the semantics of Minecraft Parkour Civilization just to say "OMG that's like GetBackers :3"

20. What anime food would you like to try?

L's strawberry shortcake from Death Note. It's a weird choice, right, but it just looks sooooo good. Perfect strawberry, good looking cake, and it's L's!! What's more to ask for?? Or I'd like Sanji from One Piece to make me something. Anything at all, I just wanna see what he'd give me.

21. What anime place would you like to visit?

Not an anime place, but omfg take me to Sapporo or Okinawa. They are soooooo pretty in Yakuza 3 & Yakuza 5 respectively, I wanna go NOW!!!!!!! But if I'm allowed to choose a fictional anime place then probably... I think I'd like to go to Shinjuku cuz Count D from Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo is there and the GetBackers boys are there too. I'd like to meet with them.

22. What anime animal would you like as your pet?

I feel like I'd rather BE an anime animal more than having any that I WANT, but if I had to choose, then... The person I reblogged this from makes a good point with an eevee from Pokemon. I kinda want a persacom from Chobits but thats not really an animal...

23. What anime movie is your favorite?

I don't watch many anime movies, but I guess if I had to choose one it would probably be either the Castle of Cagliostro or The First, both from Lupin the Third. Great films really, each extremely well animated and easy to get into... well... Cagliostro is, not so sure about The First... BUT you should still watch them, they're wonderful!!

24. What is the saddest anime you have watched?

Trigun 98. By far. Saddest shit you will EVER see, I highly recommend it. It starts off really fun and goofy, but as you get into it, the anime slowly creeps in its depressing things until you get halfway in and its game over from then on. You will watch Vash cry at least once per episode, and you will watch as he is broken down mentally and physically till he's nearly nothing. Great show, tbh.

My overly sepcific ask game with questions no one wants an answer to

Alternative title: things I want people to ask me but no one does

What was the first anime you watched?

What was the first fandom you were involved in?

What fandoms are you involved in right now?

Who is your favorite character from (anime) and why?

Who is your least favorite character from (anime) and why?

How do you feel about (character) and why?

What color do you associate with (character)?

Have you read the manga for (anime)?

What is your favorite anime op?

What is your favorite anime ed?

Who is your favorite character to write for?

What is your favorite headcanon for (character)?

What is your favorite character to read fics about?

What is your favorite ship (from a specific anime or in general)

What is your least favorite ship (from a specific anime or in general)

What ship will you go down with?

Who is currently your main comfort/emotional support character?

What is a comfort character you have that makes other people go ??? "Really?"

Have you used a quote from an anime/manga in a relevant situation?

What anime food would you like to try?

What anime place would you like to visit?

What anime animal would you like as your pet?

What anime movie is your favorite?

What is the saddest anime you have watched?

This took me forever to make please don't let this flop

#🌧rb #🌧op #🌧IRL #lol im lonely

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makeste · 3 years ago

Text

BnHA 326: What’s up Kids, It’s Me, Your Old Pal Stain

Previously on BnHA: Ochako shamed the U.A. Clown Mob into letting Deku go back inside his own fucking school by giving them an hour-long speech about how not to be humongous dickheads. Kouta and Gigantic Fox Lady saved the manga by being the only ones brave enough to give Deku a hug. Shouto was all “man, all this togetherness sure does remind me of that promise you made that we would handle Touya together which you immediately bailed on, doesn’t it, Dad.” Aizawa was all, “for the one and a half people out there who thought that my losing an eye and a leg might actually make me less sexy, I’m very happy to prove you wrong.” All Might was all, “[standing outside the U.A. fortress alone in the rain talking to someone or something??].” Like seriously, what was up with that though.

Today on BnHA: All Might is all “here I am in Kamino having a belated mid-life crisis because Deku abandoned me and I’m a terrible mentor and everything sucks and I hate myself.” Stain is all, “don’t make me come over there and give you a ten page speech about why you’re still the goat while menacingly holding you at swordpoint the entire time” because idk if you knew this guys, but Stain is pretty crazy actually. Anyway so he does that, and then All Might gets all emotional, and then the lady from chapter 92 shows up and gives All Might’s statue an encouraging pep talk, and then Horikoshi is all “and it even stopped raining lol can you believe this shit I’m not even a little bit subtle,” and he really isn’t. But I still got emotional anyway, because seeing people reassure All Might that everything he’s struggled for his entire life hasn’t been in vain just got to me okay. Horikoshi knows I am weak to the All Might feels and he just goes for the jugular every time, that bastard.

lmao. “in the neverending downpour, All Might is...” yeah, thank you, glad we’re getting right to that then

“All Might is driving 95 mph in his busted ass car in the pouring rain, is what he’s doing.” huh

so basically a day or two after his adopted child refused to accept the handmade bento that he packed with love, my man is out here acting like he’s got nothing to live for anymore. this sure bodes well for certain prophecies on which the clock is still ominously ticking down

his fucking face though omg. is it weird that I’m kind of hoping more people ambush him just because I think it’d be funny to see them get their asses kicked like the last bunch

(ETA: or maybe he will just stand there openly not giving a fuck and basically daring them to stab him!! get it together please All Might.)

side note, “anti-hero supporters” is such a strange way of saying “people who hate heroes”, which I’m assuming is what they actually wanted to say?? this makes it sound like it’s a group that really loves antiheroes. “these Hannibal stans have been a real menace lately. time to go deal with them”

ha ha ha, fucking ouch

are you really gonna do it Horikoshi you bastard. are you really going to let that be the final encounter between the two characters whose relationship you once described as the vertical axis of the entire fucking story. are you really gonna?? huh??

huh

you’re telling me you were driving 112 mph and you still didn’t get there in time. you’re losing your touch old man. lol Todo’s ice is almost fully melted already, how late were you

(ETA: so apparently this is taking place after the end of chapter 325, meaning he went to U.A., hung out for a bit, saw the kids come back with his bedraggled half-dead protégé in tow, watched as they shamed the civilians into some long-overdue character development, and then was all “welp, time to go argue with the hero-hating faction or something because I’m feeling useless.” and Edge just let him go, just like that. though to be fair I have to imagine it’s pretty hard to say no to All Fucking Might.)

also belated lol at the fact that the kids were all “yeahhhhhhh we are definitely not gonna touch that thing, let’s just leave it here, he doesn’t need it anyway.” probably the right call to make since they couldn’t get a hazmat team on such short notice

fuck. ha ha ha fucking ouch part two

All Might please put that thing down before you get gangrene. also yeah, you dropped the ball, good for you to acknowledge it. nobody’s perfect and you did your best. but yeah you could have handled a lot of things completely differently. but I still love you

is Horikoshi really putting this flashback here. are you serious. what kind of fucking sadist

look, I swear I’m not one of those people that runs up and down the street shouting “DEATH FLAG!!” at every third panel lol. but this shit screamed Death Flag when we originally got it, and it’s screaming DEATH FLAG!!! even more now. like with the capital letters and exclamation marks and all. and that’s just a fact. I don’t like it but that’s how it is

ffkdjslk

“DID YOU READ THE SIGN??!” Horikoshi asks while zooming in maniacally because he thinks we’re blind or something. lol what

-- though actually, it only just occurred to me that this sign is actually written in English. I never really paid attention up until now and had been assuming it was written in Japanese and translated by the scanlators, but the writing here is clearly part of the original image. anyway so maybe that’s why he’s zooming in?? just to make sure everybody pays attention lol

okay fuck this

see, this is the whole problem right here. once again All Might is all on his own. Deku’s self-destructive angst spiral was fortunately brought to a grinding halt because he actually has support from his friends and family and teachers and classmates. but All Might never had that same kind of support, and it’s made all the difference between the two of them, and not in a good way. Katsuki wasn’t wrong when he said All Might and Deku were both cut from the same cloth. but now when it’s All Might’s turn to go all “I WALK A LONELY ROAD~~” once again, there’s nobody in sight

just, after forty plus years of him carrying this torch, I just wish someone would finally come along to let him know he doesn’t have to. all those things that he wanted to say to Deku are also things that he needs and deserves to hear himself. Aizawa was making a little progress there, but now he’s got his sad zombie cloud boyfriend situation to deal with, and we can’t expect him and his perfect hair to solve all our problems. someone else has gotta step up

oh my god

“you rang?” never mind I take it all back sob

omg why am I laughing. shit

this man truly has the best PR game in the series. we were truly convinced he was gonna suddenly become a good guy and defend All Might against the other villains or some nonsense. as if this wasn’t the same man who decided on a whim that Iida Tensei deserved to be paralyzed, and that his fifteen-year-old brother deserved to die for daring to be upset about it

lol even All Might is all “I genuinely never saw this coming” lmao

just want to say, for the record, I have always harbored a very sensible hatred toward Stain. feeling very vindicated right now. good job Past Me

adsfklwkfsdwgkj

ffffwefjslkg. ghsdlkg. dsfkkkslkjldwkjrg

STAIN: heard you talking shit old man

ME: smh that’s what I thought you’d say you dumb fucking Stain

STAIN: how dare you talk about All Might that way

ME: gljfljgk

(ETA: in hindsight I have no idea how I didn’t clue in sooner that he didn’t recognize him -- or, well, ~didn’t recognize~ him, to be more accurate lol. I think it was the whole “is that a slight against the heroes?” thing that threw me. Viz’s translation makes it much clearer that he’s offended on behalf of All Might specifically, not heroes in general. anyways.)

sob. so All Might is all “yeah I don’t blame you for not recognizing me in this sweet leather jacket”

good thing he still knows how to do this party trick

A+ reflexes on Stain’s part presumably pulling the sword back a few inches to keep this dumbass from impaling himself with his whole pufferfish routine. can you imagine if that was the gruesome death Nighteye foresaw. and he was just too embarrassed to say anything

lol anyways guess I was wrong about Stain everyone

way to fucking go, Past Me. you really biffed this one

oh wait

Stain sure is one wacky rollercoaster ride

oh fuck me lol I forgot how much I did not miss this

(ETA: “this here is the sacred ground where All Might gave up the last of his power and turned into a shriveled old man!! please ignore the part where I admit to knowing all about that, and yet pretend not to recognize said man when he’s standing two feet in front of me.”)

Past Me, I know we’ve had our ups and downs these past ninety seconds, but I’m really starting to think you were on to something. this dude has always been kind of insufferable. always acting like his high horse is a fucking giraffe when it’s actually a Shetland pony

dammit now he’s got All Might going off on a depressed monologue

oh my god my heart

shit

why the fuck does that hit so hard. he became a hero because he couldn’t bear to just sit back and let bad things happen to people who didn’t deserve it. I mean that’s basically the same as every hero ever, right? so why does it still hit so fucking hard every single time though. what is it about seeing someone so determined to stand up for other people and fight on their behalf. it just never loses its impact no matter how many times I see that determination mirrored in so many of my favorite characters

“I wanted to make the world a better place.” omg. but you did, though. like seriously, I feel like people are always dogging on him for not being 100% perfect, and fandom really doesn’t give him enough credit for everything he still managed to accomplish. this man came of age at a time when Japan was by all accounts a total shitshow, and singlehandedly managed to bring about an era of peace that lasted for four fucking decades. can you imagine having peace for that long?? that’s longer than I’ve been alive. shit

and he gave people hope. he inspired them and protected them and made them feel safe. and no, he couldn’t save everyone, because he’s only one fucking dude (and also because the whole time AFO was also out there desperately working to undermine him so that he could keep preaching his narrative of “heroes are bad actually”). but you know what he did do, is inspire multiple new generations of heroes who, if they can all manage to work together, will finally be able to accomplish everything he never could

so yeah. forty years of peace, and inspired the “that’s how we all became the greatest heroes” generation -- that’s a fucking win in my book. talk about having a net positive impact on the world. lol anyways now I’m all fired up and ready to fight anyone who tries to talk any shit about you, All Might

“but what if I talk shit about myself” okay listen up All Might I’m gonna need you to try just a little bit harder to work with me here okay. please calm down and stop blaming yourself for every single bad thing that’s ever happened in the world. do you remember that time Bakugou was blaming himself for Kamino, and you gave him a hug and told him it wasn’t his fault, and that he was only a boy, and that even though he was strong, even strong people can struggle with the burdens they place on themselves, and that you were sorry for not seeing that earlier? do you remember all of that? that’s what I want someone to tell you too, dammit. anyway please stop breaking my heart please and thanks

wtf

are you dead All Might

I don’t even have the slightest idea what’s happening lol

oh snap did he grab him so they could hide??

hold the fucking phone. don’t tell me this person in the background with the umbrella is here to actually do something decent??

oh my godddd

and here come the feels. oh boy. okay don’t mind me, I’m just gonna sit here sobbing over this fictional lady and her simple act of kindness in this weekly shounen manga that I care about way too much

FUCKING DAMMIT AND HERE’S A SECOND HELPING

DON’T MIND ME, I’M JUST GETTING DISPROPORTIONATELY EMOTIONAL OVER THIS WOMAN’S DETERMINATION TO HONOR A MAN WHO SACRIFICED EVERYTHING TO SAVE HER AND COUNTLESS OTHERS. I’M JUST HAVING SOME FEELS OVER HERE ABOUT HER HEARTFELT, DOESN’T-EVEN-KNOW-ANYONE-ELSE-IS-WATCHING FEELINGS OF GRATITUDE THAT COMPELLED HER TO COME OUT HERE AND MAKE THIS SMALL BUT POWERFUL GESTURE. I’M JUST OUT HERE GETTING ALL PROFOUNDLY WORKED UP ABOUT STATUE MAINTENANCE AND THE HUMAN RACE. NEVER MIND. JUST IGNORE ME AND CARRY ON

holy shit. I was not even remotely prepared. you can’t just do that to me. you can’t just leave all these death flags on my lawn and then suddenly shift gears to show me the best of humanity in a chapter where I was expecting the worst. that fucks a person up lol

OH ARE WE STILL GOING

my heart. you see that, All Might. your legacy is so much more powerful and meaningful than you think

...has. has Stain actually been giving All Might a pep talk this entire time

I give up lol. this dude is a fucking enigma

YAYYY

it may just be a metaphor panel, but I’ll take it lol. I missed them. nice to see the traffic light trio front and off-center. I know the whole “this is the story of how we all became the greatest heroes” thing had left some questioning whether certain characters would continue to play a central role in the narrative, and hopefully this will help to ease those concerns just a bit

anyway, so idk if it’s getting a bit chilly down there in hell, but damned if Stain didn’t just give an actual decent fucking speech

I have to say, earlier when I was whining about All Might not having a support squad, I really was not expecting Stain to be the one to come over and pat his head and reassure him that he made the world a better place

-- okay LISTEN

YOU CAN’T JUST COME INTO MY HOUSE AND HIT ME WITH THOSE ALL MIGHT TEARS AGAIN GODDAMMIT THIS ISN’T FAIR. my god. first 317 and now this

holy fucking shit

“I’m just gonna pretend like I haven’t been stalking him for two days and didn’t see the entire Deku bentogate thing go down, and then I’ll give him the whole big speech that I rehearsed, and then I’ll turn around and be all ‘BUT IF YOU’RE A TRUE HERO’, and then I’ll toss him the super-secret AFO wifi password that I stole from Tartarus. god I’m such a badass. fucking give myself chills”

so basically what you’re telling me is that this whole time my “what’s up kids” characterization of Stain from this shitpost has actually been 100% accurate. just want to make sure I’m understanding this right. okay then

“and then I’ll dramatically spin around and be all NOW COME KILL ME BITCH”

it must be so much fun to write Stain. drawing this coked-out maniac who talks like a chatbot that was trained to speak by reading Alan Moore monologues. that must be a trip

anyway so All Might is still crying, the awesome lady from chapter 92 is admiring her handiwork totally oblivious to the batshit insanity going on fifty meters to her right, and it’s finally stopped raining lol

“THE RAIN WAS A METAPHOR YOU SEE” yes, yes, we got it lol. thanks for that Horikoshi. don’t think we needed any help putting the pieces together on that one but I appreciate the effort

so that’s the end! and as I mentioned in another post, I had the count off by one chapter, but next week should be cliffhanger week! so break out your U.A. Traitor bingo cards, friends and fiends. either that or something else happens that I’m completely not expecting at all. which, based on my success rate with Stain predictions, I’d say is more than likely lol

mmm but anyway, so now that the Hug Deku 2021 campaign has finally come to an end, what’s it gonna take to get a hug for my struggling bento-preparing jacket-rocking world-weary death-flag-waving husband who is the worthiest man to ever live and deserves the fucking world, goddammit

#bnha 326 #all might #yagi toshinori #stain (bnha)#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha

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cloudslou · 2 years ago

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sorry im back on it again this morning (since i think these asks i came across are from the same op as the last post i screenshotted and this is likely in response to my post and the tags of others on the post)

a) op states that refusing to acknowledge harmful things a person (woman) is doing is not feminism. thats true, its not. and it’s not what i do, either. what i am specifically talking about is baseless comments made that distort reality and presume olivia to be an unequivocally immoral person and harry a victim of a stunt, rather than understanding this as a mutually-beneficial arrangement that both parties have entered into, with full knowledge of what it entails and what would be asked of them

b) if anything, there is no “lowering an objective moral and ethical standard” for women, but in fact an unreasonably high standard women (in general, but also specifically within this fandom context) that women must meet to ever be considered acceptable (and if any woman has met this standard, please do tell me cus i cant name one). the things olivia is derided for, the thing she is hated for, are in equal measure (or greater) present in harry styles. “treating others poorly in professional settings” (firing previous members of his band w/ little to no regard for their financial wellbeing or that that his tour was likely the major source of income they were waiting for since they had been slated to work it prior to covid) (not to mention that olivia’s supposed mistreatment of people is, so far as can be materially proved, pretty baseless atm), “allowing them to make everything about sex to the detriment of other people’s comfort” (again, fairly baseless for olvia since she has talked about a range if things in regards to dwd, and she is hardly to blame for the focus that media outlets and fans have on sexual aspects of the movie) (and i think this is where harry’s music videos come in-- in ws and lnt both he was full clothed surrounded by much-less-clothed women, and i think its likely models and actors in the videos were more likely to accept the role despite discomfort because of financial motive, and i do not think there was any kind of intimacy coordinator to help manage sexual and sexist scenes, since this role is apparently very important to dwd haters)

c) i disagree with the “crux of feminism” here and find it unbearably shallow, but the whole “women do bad things too!” is the most useless and overdone idea of modern feminism, as if women do not have a history of being accused of wrongdoing, being thought to be immoral, being the scapegoat for all things bad and the downfall of good society, etc. there is no “dehumanizing” here or denial of “complexity”.

d) literally what in god’s fucking name decisions are you talking about in which patriarchy made it harder for olivia to make the RIGHT decisions?? (also condescending but). for all that this last paragraph pretends to be sympathetic to patriarchy and the impact it has on women, it all comes down to “well even if patriarchy is involved, olivia still did wrong and deserves no ‘pass’ at all and btw i have no empathy for her and the position she is in”. again, no one is getting a “pass”, but if someone actually wanted to consider patriarchy as a motivating factor for any of olivia’s actions, i think you would end up at a much more nuanced and empathetic conclusion.

e) my “crux” of all of this is that it is absurd and obviously misogynistic to say baseless things about olivia and hold her to much higher standards than you would harry. clearly so. if you dislike olivia, stop paying attention to her. disengage. admit that your dislike comes from a place of “protecting” harry and not liking the choices HE is making, rather than pretend you are on a moral crusade.

#hello anon from this morning here is my more meaningful and coherent post about misogyny #tbh its funny i even came across these lol #this isnt the whole post but tbh if u have a brain its not worth reading the whole thing

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amuelia · 3 years ago

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How do you think Roose will meet his demise? Or will he survive? What's your best Roose end game predictions?

Thank you for the question! This will be a long post under the readmore, going into my thoughts on the show ending and exploring what the books may have set up in regards to themes and characterization, as well as a bit of general analysis of Roose' story arc in a Dance with Dragons (and some speculation about Ramsay as well).

If you click on the readmore i will have divided the post into sections with bolded Headers, if you want to only read my specific endgame ideas you can skip ahead to the "His Endgame?" section.

In The Show

The show had him get killed by Ramsay in s6, which informs a lot of the fandom speculation about this storyline.

I am not a fan of the show's scenario as it was both similar to tywin and tyrion as well as a mirror of robb's death; it would also be offscreen in the books since neither of the characters are PoVs and Ramsay would need to do the act in secret. This would ultimately undercut Roose' role and impact, being a death scene that is not very unique and also isn't shown to the reader directly. Since no PoV is even in Winterfell currently, we would just hear of it from afar and not witness the consequences.

The show also has a different dynamic in the Bolton storyline, emphasizing Ramsay as the "main character" of this arc, and elevating him to the main villain for s5-6 to fill Joffrey's shoes as an evil character played by a very charismatic actor. Ramsay's show writing is informed by the needs of a TV setting that wants shocking moments and capitalizes on "fan favourite" actors; his rising importance in the show thus is not necessarily an indicator of his book importance. The show was also missing many central characters like the northern lords and the Frey men in Winterfell.

The show had a tendency to kill off characters early when they wanted to cull storylines or had no plans to adapt more of the character's story (like Stannis, Barristan, possibly the Tyrells...); In Mance Rayder we have the most obvious example, where they killed him off for real in a scene that in the book was a misdirection. We also have characters like Jorah where it appears the showrunners had their own choice of how they want his storyline to end, even if Grrm has his own ending in mind.

"For a long time we wanted Ser Jorah to be there at The Wall in the end," writer Dave Hill says. "The three coming out of the tunnel would be Jon and Jorah and Tormund. But [...] Jorah should have the noble death he craves defending the woman he loves." - Dave Hill for Entertainment Weekly

So a death in the show does not need to be an indicator that the books will feature an equivalent scene, even if it gives a hint as to what may happen. By s5 the show has become its own beast, and the butterfly effects from radical changes they made as well as the different characterizations results in the show having to cater to its own needs in many cases when it gets to resolving a plotline.

"We reconceived the role to make it worthy of the actor's talents." - Benioff and Weiss for the s5 DVD commentary, on Indira Varma's casting as Ellaria

In The Books

(Since this post was getting out of hand in length a lot of these arguments are a little shortened/not as in-depth as i'd like! Feel free to inquire more via ask if something is unclear or you disagree)

In the books i find it hard to make a concrete guess as to how it will end. Occam's razor would be to assume the show sort of got it right and that it will vaguely end the same, which could very well happen and i will not discount the possibility; Ramsay is cruel, desires the Dreadfort rule, and is a suspected kinslayer and has no qualms to commit immoral violence.

"Ramsay killed [his brother]. A sickness of the bowels, Maester Uthor says, but I say poison." - Reek III, aDwD

Reek saw the way Ramsay's mouth twisted, the spittle glistening between his lips. He feared he might leap the table with his dagger in his hand [to attack his father]. - Reek III, aDwD

Arguments against this or for a different endgame come down to interpretations of the themes in the story arc and opinions on dramatic structure/grrm's writing, and are thus very subjective.

The way the story currently is going, Ramsay killing Roose treats Roose almost as a plot device; his death brings no change or development to Ramsay's character as we already know his motivations and cruelty align with such an act, and we can assume that he would feel no remorse about it either. The results of such a scene would be firmly on a story level, as it brings political changes and moves the plot along into a specific direction. Roose himself cannot have any relevant character development about it as he does not have a PoV and we would not be able to witness his reaction from the outside.

“The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.” - William Faulkner, often quoted by Grrm

Further, killing his father is very difficult to pull off in secret (Roose is frequently described as very cautious, and employs many guardsmen). And even if Ramsay pulls it off (people often interpret Ramsay as Roose' blind spot, assuming he might be caught by surprise, not expecting Ramsay would bite the hand that feeds him), Roose is the one that holds his entire alliance together; The Freys would be alienated by Ramsay who would antagonize Walda and her son as his rivals, The Ryswell bloc appears to dislike Ramsay (especially Barbrey), and the other northmen are implied to not even like Roose himself. Killing Roose would quickly combust the entire northern faction, and hinder Ramsay's further plans (another reason why I am not convinced of a book version of the "Battle of Bastards"). Though this might of course, if we look at it from the other side, be grrm's plan to quickly dissolve this plot and move the northern story forwards.

"Ramsay will kill [Walda's children], of course. [...] [She] will grieve to see them die, though." - Reek III, aDwD

"How many of our grudging friends do you imagine we'd retain if the truth were known? Only Lady Barbrey, whom you would turn into a pair of boots … inferior boots." - Reek III, aDwD

"Fear is what keeps a man alive in this world of treachery and deceit. Even here in Barrowton the crows are circling, waiting to feast upon our flesh. The Cerwyns and the Tallharts are not to be relied on, my fat friend Lord Wyman plots betrayal, and Whoresbane … the Umbers may seem simple, but they are not without a certain low cunning. Ramsay should fear them all, as I do." - Reek III, aDwD

Roose' death at Ramsay's hand also removes him thematically from the Red Wedding, as we can assume such a death might have happened regardless of his participation in the event (seeing as Ramsay is getting provoked by Roose constantly in normal dialogue, and has a general violent disposition). Roose already took Ramsay in before aGoT started, and married Walda very early in the war, which is already most of the buildup that the show's scenario had. It also has little to do with the The North Remembers plot except set dressing, since the northmen are presumably neither collaborating with/egging on Ramsay nor would they appreciate the development.

Themes: Ned Stark and the rule over the North

Roose is treated as a foil to Eddard; They are often contrasted in morals and ruling styles, while also having many superficial similarities that further connect them (they are seen as cold by people, grey eyed, patriarchs of rivalling northern houses, etc...).

Pale as morning mist, his eyes concealed more than they told. Jaime misliked those eyes. They reminded him of the day at King's Landing when Ned Stark had found him seated on the Iron Throne. - Jaime IV, aSoS

They both have a "bastard son" that they handle very differently; Roose treating Ramsay in the way that is seen as common in their society. Ramsay and Jon as a comparison are meant to show that Catelyn had a reason to see a bastard as a threat (since Domeric was antagonized by his bastard brother), but also shows that her suggested plan for Jon would not have stopped any danger either (as Ramsay being raised away from the castle didn't help).

And if his seed quickened, she expected he would see to the child's needs. He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his bastard home with him, and called him "son" for all the north to see. - Catelyn II, aGoT

"Each year I sent the woman some piglets and chickens and a bag of stars, on the understanding that she was never to tell the boy who had fathered him. A peaceful land, a quiet people, that has always been my rule." - Reek III, aDwD

It appears to me that Roose' story functions in some ways as an inversion to Ned. He makes an attempt to grab a power he was not destined to (becoming warden of the north), where Ned did not want the responsiblity thrust upon him ("It was all meant for Brandon. [...] I never asked for this cup to pass to me." - Cat II, aGoT). Where Ned rules successfully and his northmen honor his legacy ("What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl." - The Turncloak, aDwD), the Boltons are largely hated and there are several plots conspiring against them ("Let me bathe in Bolton blood before I die." - The King's Prize, aDwD).

It seems possible to me that in terms of their family and legacy, Roose might also live through an inverted version of Ned's story; where Ned died first, leaving his family behind, Roose already lived to see the death of his wives and trueborn heir, and might thus also live to see Ramsay's death. Ned leaves behind well raised children and a North who still respects his name, and even though he dies it will presumably all be "in good hands" in the end (in broad strokes, obviously this is all much more morally complex). Roose however built up a bad and toxic legacy, and also built his way of life around evading consequences; it makes sense to me that he would be forced by the story to finally endure all the consequences of his actions and witness the fall of his house firsthand. After all we already have Tywin who fulfils the purpose of dying before his children while his legacy falls to ruins, and a Feast for Crows explores this aspect thoroughly.

Roose' arc in A Dance With Dragons

The story repeatedly builds up the situation unravelling around Roose, and him slowly losing a grip on it and becoming more stressed and anxious.

Reek wondered if Roose Bolton ever cried. If so, do the tears feel cold upon his cheeks? - Reek II, aDwD

Roose Bolton said nothing at all. But Theon Greyjoy saw a look in his pale eyes that he had never seen before—an uneasiness, even a hint of fear. [...] That night the new stable collapsed beneath the weight of the snow that had buried it. - a Ghost in Winterfell, aDwD

Lady Walda gave a shriek and clutched at her lord husband's arm. "Stop," Roose Bolton shouted. "Stop this madness." His own men rushed forward as the Manderlys vaulted over the benches to get at the Freys. - Theon I, aDwD

It also directly presents him as a parallel to Theon's rule in aCoK, who similarly experienced a very unpopular rule and his subjects slowly turning against him. Presumably, the point of this comparison will not just be "Ramsay comes in at the end and unexpectedly whacks them on the head". Both Theon and Roose invited Ramsay into their lives, giving him more power than he deserves, and causing Ramsay to make choices that increasingly alienate others from them (the death of the miller's boys for example has repercussions for both Theon and Roose). Grrm is likely steering this towards a difference in how they will deal with this situation.

It all seemed so familiar, like a mummer show that he had seen before. Only the mummers had changed. Roose Bolton was playing the part that Theon had played the last time round, and the dead men were playing the parts of Aggar, Gynir Rednose, and Gelmarr the Grim. Reek was there too, he remembered, but he was a different Reek, a Reek with bloody hands and lies dripping from his lips, sweet as honey. - a Ghost in Winterfell, aDwD

"Stark's little wolflings are dead," said Ramsay, sloshing some more ale into his cup, "and they'll stay dead. Let them show their ugly faces, and my girls will rip those wolves of theirs to pieces. The sooner they turn up, the sooner I kill them again." - The elder Bolton sighed. "Again? Surely you misspeak. You never slew Lord Eddard's sons, those two sweet boys we loved so well. That was Theon Turncloak's work, remember? How many of our grudging friends do you imagine we'd retain if the truth were known?" - Reek III, aDwD

Roose' arc is deeply connected to the relations he shares to the other northern lords, which has been heavily impacted by the Red Wedding. It stands to reason that they are going to be an important part of his downfall, and we see many hints of them plotting to betray him.

The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer's farce is almost done. My son is home." - Davos IV, aDwD

Themes: Stannis and kinslaying

The books set up Roose and Stannis as foils as well; Both lack charisma and have trouble winnning the people's support, Stannis and Roose both parallel and contrast Ned, Stannis appears as a "lesser Robert" where Roose is a "lesser Ned", Stannis represents the fire where Roose represents the ice, both struggle over dominion in a land that doesnt particularly want either of them, etc... What i find interesting is how they are contrasted over kinslaying:

"Only Renly could vex me so with a piece of fruit. He brought his doom on himself with his treason, but I did love him, Davos. I know that now. I swear, I will go to my grave thinking of my brother's peach." - Davos II, aCoK

"I should've had the mother whipped and thrown her child down a well … but the babe did have my eyes." [...] "Now [Domeric's] bones lie beneath the Dreadfort with the bones of his brothers, who died still in the cradle, and I am left with Ramsay. Tell me, my lord … if the kinslayer is accursed, what is a father to do when one son slays another?" - Reek III, aCoK

Stannis is set up as someone who is very thorough and strict in following his own code and his "duty", even if he does not like what it forces him to do.

Stannis ground his teeth again. "I never asked for this crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head, but so long as I am the king, I have a duty . . . If I must sacrifice one child to the flames to save a million from the dark . . . Sacrifice . . . is never easy, Davos. Or it is no true sacrifice. Tell him, my lady." - Davos IV, aSoS

The armorer considered that a moment. "Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends." - Jon I, aCoK

Roose however is frequently characterized as someone who tries to get as much as he can while avoiding negative consequences, and who does not have a consistent moral code and instead bends rules to his benefit to be the most comfortable to him.

It is often theorized that Stannis will end up burning his daughter Shireen; the Ramsay issue might then serve to contrast the two men. If Grrm intends it to be compared by the reader, I can see it going two ways: Either Roose will be forced to finally act in a drastic way after avoiding his responsibility in regards to Ramsay and he will be forced to get rid of his son, making him break the only moral hurdle he has presented adhering to during the story (though analyzing his character, the kinslaying taboo is probably less a sign of moral fortitude and more him using the guise of morals to explain a selfish motivation). Or he might not act against Ramsay and suffer the consequences, presenting an interesting moral situation where some readers might consider his action "better" or more relatable than Stannis', breaking up the otherwise very black and white moral comparison between the two men. It serves as an interesting conflict of the morality of kinslaying compared to what readers might see as a moral obligation of getting rid of a monster such as Ramsay; contrasting Shireen whose death would not be seen as worth it by most. Ramsay as a bastard (who was almost killed at birth if he hadnt been able to prove his paternity) also makes for an interesting verbal parallel with the bastard Edric Storm, and might be used for a look at the utilitarian principle of killing a child (baby ramsay/edric) to save countless people from suffering that underpinned Edric's story.

"As Faulkner says, all of us have the capacity in us for great good and for great evil, for love but also for hate. I wanted to write those kinds of complex character in a fantasy, and not just have all the good people get together to fight the bad guy." - Grrm

"Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?" - Eddard VIII, aGoT

"If Joffrey should die . . . what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?" - "Everything," said Davos, softly. - Davos V, aSoS

However Grrm decides to present these conflicts or which actions the characters will take in the end, it will result in interesting discussion and analysis for the readers.

His Endgame?

Looking at the trends of the past books, it is probably going to be hard to predict any specific outcome; every book introduces new characters and plot elements that were impossible to predict from the last book even if their thematic importance or setup was aptly foreshadowed.

Roose has a lot of plot importance and characterization that has, in my opinion, not yet been properly resolved in a way that would be unique and poignant to the specific purpose his character appears to fulfil. However I also have a bias in that i did not like the show's writing of that scene which makes me averse to see a version of it in the books, and i really like Roose as a character and want to see him have more scenes in the next book(s). This leads me to discount plot speculation that cuts his character arc short offscreen early. Roose is only a side character; however, i have trust in grrm's writing abilities and that he would give him a proper sendoff that feels satisfying to a fan of the character.

"…even the [characters] who are complete bastards, nasty, twisted, deeply flawed human beings with serious psychological problems… When I get inside their skin and look out through their eyes, I have to feel a certain — if not sympathy, certainly empathy for them. I have to try to perceive the world as they do, and that creates a certain amount of affection." — George Martin

Considering my earlier analyis, there is a case to be made for Roose killing Ramsay; however it appears grrm might have a different endgame in mind for Ramsay, foreshadowed in Chett's prologue:

There'd be no lord's life for the leechman's son, no keep to call his own, no wives nor crowns. Only a wildling's sword in his belly, and then an unmarked grave. The snow's taken it all from me . . . the bloody snow . . . - Chett, aSoS

I tend to think something might happen to Roose/the Bolton bloc later in the book that would cause Ramsay to attempt to flee the scene again like he did back in aCoK fleeing Rodrik's justice; perhaps Ramsay is sent out to battle but then flees it like a coward, or he sees his cause as lost. This time, the fleeing and potentially disguised Ramsay would not make it out to safety though, and get killed without being recognized as Ramsay, dying forgotten. This would serve as dramatic irony since Ramsay so strongly desired to be recognized and respected as a Lord of Bolton, without being too on the nose.

As for Roose, i could see him getting captured and somehow brought to justice (either when someone takes Winterfell or in some sort of battle). I see it unlikely that he will be backstabbed like Robb was, because it seems very "eye for an eye" and ultimately doesn't teach much of a lesson except "he had it coming"; But the various people conspiring against him could lead to his capture by betraying him (giving a payoff to the northern conspiracies and the red wedding). I would find a scene of him standing trial interesting since i believe we didn't have one of these for a true non-pov villain yet, and it would be an interesting confrontation that he cannot escape from (he also loves to talk so it would be a good read to see him make a case for himself).

I assume Roose will be out of the picture when the Other plot finally properly kicks into gear (whether dead or "in prison"). With Stannis as a false Azor Ahai and Roose as a false Other (with his pale, cold features), their struggle in the north seems to be a representation of the false "Game of Thrones" that distracts people from the "real threat" of the Others.

As always this is just my opinion, and it could all go very differently in the books! There could always be something that completely uproots my analysis and goes into a direction i did not expect from the material we had; But i have fate that Grrm as a writer will deliver and give me something i can be satisfied with.

#asks #asoiaf #asoiaf meta #roose bolton #valyrianscrolls #a song of ice and fire #not art #anonymous

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urwendii · 1 year ago

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Oh I'm adding to this because I went through this a few months back.

After knowing rather good engagement on my first fics, I was hit by a sudden drop for the Sequel and all others recent works.

And i kept comparing myself to the other works in the fandom and mostly some fics i really liked who still showed strong engagement by the fandom, while my kudos had plateaued and i was getting comments by 2 or 3 people max. If any.

It hurt a lot and it brought a lot of jealously and envy bc damn it I was there too and it seemed the fandom were now only focusing on these 5 or 6 authors.

I took down my fic in the end, then another and another and in the end, it killed all joy to write about that specific ship. All in all, it poisoned a lot of my happiness in the fandom in general.

It's a complicated situation when you are part of a fandom that is proficient in writing fanfics, and is also subjected to the short attention span of some casual watchers. Aka my first fics were written a couple months after the show and therefore enjoyed more exposure (even if I never managed to hit the popular threshold I was nonetheless extremely happy with the response.) So it becomes hard when half of the readers move on, I was struggling with writing in general and then posted a couple of chapters that got no immediate attention.

It's heartbreaking and as I said I was in direct view of the fact it was not the case for others. Fandoms are like that. It's a brutal reminder that it's all about finding a community you can exchange motivation with, uplifting you.

Sadly for me in that particular fandom I never got that. (I will now confess that A lot of this is also self perception and RSD. I did interact with a few persons, but I never was part of the big communities that flourished and therefore remained apart.)

Looking back, I should have done things differently, I should not have looked up that much to others that are more successful/popular because it's the only road to self disappointment where you forget about your own accomplishment.

Write for yourself they say. OK so I do that now. I am completely rewriting the fic I deleted and will not post it until I am sure I am ready to deal with whatever the answer is going to be.

Comparing yourself with others is natural there's no shame in that. But it should not come at the cost of your self love and confidence. And definitely not let it poison your interest for the topic you used to write.

It came to the point (and I have never said it to anyone before) where I was getting panic attacks just thinking of opening ao3, seeing others chapters getting more kudos, seeing people who used to interact on my fics commenting on others but not mine. I cried more than once. I hated half the fandom. I hit rock bottom.

It's a hard battle. And I think some of us are less equipped to deal with that than others.

That was barely two months ago.

Now I have found my little corner, with a small rarepair and a small handful of people who enjoy it as well. One day I might come back to the big ocean but for now I'm happy to be back swimming in a pond.

My only advice to this is such: if you're feeling wronged or you think it's unfair your fic is not getting recognition. It's NORMAL. you created something and you are in the rights to expect a response.

BUT. If it becomes something that impact your creativity or life in general then it is time to take a step back. Allow yourself this. Its self care. Don't do like me and try and try until it all falls apart and you end up having to move on from something that brought you a lot of joy last year because the mere thought of facing self perceived failure/embarrassment gives you anxiety.

Take a step back. Allow yourself one day to be angry/sad/ashamed. It's healthy. But the next day? You take a deep breath, go outside a bit, hug a tree then refocus on the joy of creating for yourself. It's not easy. It's darn hard. I know. But it's worth doing this.

One last thing, i am fairly competitive so online creations are already a double edged sword for me. And along the way I think I got used to having attention and took for granted the ones I always had by my side.

And to echo OP, now I have relearn this and I am so grateful for my best friend who is always supporting and reading me (despite not even being in the fandom. Seriously Aryn, real MVP ❤️) and I have a couple of other friends with who I love sharing silly niche headcanons.

Having a rarepair reset your need for online clout.

Now I'm happier. Far happier. Actually, I felt blown away that 5 whole people left kudos on a fic that was the 1st of its ao3 tag.

I don't really have a miracle solution. I think in the end, when things get bad for you (aka negative emotions toward your published writing) the only answer is this one:

Sadly you can't force people to care and pay attention to you. Life is unfair. Your work is as good as the ones getting popularity. Find a handful of people who will support you (perhaps offline even - not necessarily irl but friends outside your fandom?), relearn to find joy in little things and don't underestimate the benefit of going offline for a while.

any advice about how to deal with posting a fic and getting radio silence? I know ppl aren’t owed engagement ofc, but I feel embarrassed at having spent so long on something no one cares about, and although I liked thinking about the characters and fandom before (and was considering writing more about them), now I can’t think about it without feeling that overpowering embarrassment 😭 part of me wants to delete the fic, but that would mean having to open ao3 and look at it again LMAO

sorry for the venting, I know this is probably a me problem, but has anyone else felt this, and if so, is there any way to make this pervasive shame go away??

*hugs* This is a very painful thing to experience and there isn't really any way to make it just go away, unfortunately. However, you can reflect on it a bit, when you're ready to.

Writing and posting are separate activities. If you've enjoyed writing the story but you haven't enjoyed posting it to the Archive, you can always continue writing just for yourself. This may or may not be something you'd enjoy - you know better than I do whether some of your enjoyment came from the anticipation of a reaction to your work.

Try to analyze where your embarrassment is coming from. Is it worrying that your story was poorly written? A lack of a reaction doesn't mean that the story is bad. Being unpopular doesn't mean it's bad, either. If your story is good to you, then it's a good story.

Is your embarrassment from feeling like you were "caught trying." Is it a cringe at the idea that you put effort into something that someone else doesn't (appear to) find valuable?

Is it actually embarrassment at all? Are you feeling a different kind of hurt instead? Did you hope that someone in particular would read your story and now you feel ignored? Did you hope to be embraced by your community and now you feel shunned?

These are difficult questions that I'm asking and you might not want to think about them right now. That's okay. You don't need to if you don't want to. You can definitely delete the fic and pretend it never happened. Or you can log out of that AO3 account and create a new one and never look back. Maybe you just need to take a week or a month off for a hiatus of sorts and when the ache isn't as bad, you'll be able to face it all again.

When I felt this way, it was because I felt like I'd put something into my community and that I'd been ignored. But since that time, I've found one person who gives me all of the community support I used to get from an entire fandom, and now when I post something on AO3 I don't actually need a response anymore. I get all of the fun and excitement and validation etc from my conversations and RP threads with my best friend.

Once you've got a little distance from the pain of this moment, try to figure out what it is that you were hoping to get and then figure out how you can get it. Maybe it's through posting fic to AO3, but maybe it's not.

Let's see what others can suggest. This is not something you're experiencing alone, anon. So very many of your fellow fan writers have experienced this too ❤️

#sorry i had feelings to process 😅#i hope it helps.im not sure but i get you anon ♡#writing

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izzyliker · 3 years ago

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Hey, asking you this as nicely as I can but can you give the immediate victim blaming a break. The absolute lack of respect you have for the people tmc abused is genuinely disheartening. Yes, he’s a shitty person, you’re entitled to hate him but immediately going “well you should’ve seen it coming earlier lol we’ve been saying this” is just ASTONISHINGLY shortsighted and cruel. Have your opinions about him and the situation all you want I would just ask that you please keep it to yourself due to the many many people he’s hurt that are still on here and can see you disparaging them.

ok, that is not what i have been saying. "well you should've known" is not an accurate summary of my feelings on this matter but apologies if thats how it came across. i have been in an abusive relationship where the person did a lot of the same things and i, too, defended that person without considering how it impacted other people. i almost lost my best friend because of how i acted as a result of keeping him in my life while people around me kept telling me to get tf out. i know.

what i am is im frustrated and annoyed by how long people were willing to publicly and passionately defend this guy while apparently fully aware what kind of shit he was doing to other people, many of which is detailed in the callout itself, and how this is now being framed as news. before the document itself was published all me (or anyone) had to go off of was vague posts that amounted to a "callout trailer" and almost all of the information on it was shit that was 100% completely public knowledge. 20+ people being aware of all that goddamn stuff and not one of them publicly stopping associating with him is frustrating. it comes across as spineless and yes, like one anon told GD, gaslighty (although i have my own issues with this being used on a large scale instead of in interpersonal relationships but i understand where they were coming from). his lesbophobia, transphobia (strange that none of the transphobia towards trans men was mentioned?), and panphobia/aphobia/biphobia were widely documented and seeing that on a callout post as if it were news was extremely tiring.

ive since read the callout. the interpersonal actions seem to have been horrible but sadly im not surprised (by which i dont mean "and neither should you" but rather. my spidey senses for this sort of behavior are pretty accurate most of the time and i did see this coming. this isnt me saying im Better than these people or that they shouldve as well but rather that i have learned to identify people of this genre.) by any of them.

also im 75% sure this is tumblr user GD. hello. if not then apologies, its just that the typing here is very similar. if it is, i think you trying to both take accountability for this and process whatever it is youre processing at the same time on tumblr is a bad idea and going to just lead to people feeling hurt and betrayed because while i truly do see where the reaction is coming from (like, truly, i understand, believe me), if you say "i take responsibility for how i acted while being manipulated" but then when people voice their negative feelings you tell them theyre victim blaming you it is going to reflect poorly on you. i dont think you understand how many people were absolutely hurt by the enabling you and your large, massively popular group of friends did for him, including the MASSIVE defense rant you typed up in defense of him when someone sent an ask to the bi jon event about him being panphobic and aphobic. whether its fair for people to expect you to immediately go into depth about it is questionable but dont invite people to do this when you obviously cannot handle it (i dont mean this in a bad way like "oh you should handle it". i mean genuinely this is how you get burnt out and possibly worsen possible future trauma. by trying to immediately placate people without having the mental resources to do so.)

i think the "we dont condone these views and never did!" without ever specifying what they were or doing any other work there is a lazy fucking cop-out. your circle was/is massively popular and a lot of people took all of you as authorities on stuff like headcanons and respectful portrayals of certain characters or identities to the point of accepting your meta as canon (something you havent really dissuaded ever), and associating publicly with someone who would constantly do this kind of shit and then defending him publicly while also positing yourself as an authority isnt something you can just "oops! we never agreed with him!" yourself out of. GD & TF specifically, you are massive blogs. you are babys first TMA blog. people in your askbox hurt and betrayed by this shit are not necessarily there to victim blame you. they are there because they trusted your word when they said "hey seraf reblogged anti pan and anti ace and weird transphobic posts" and you said "seraf is one of my dearest friends and would never do any of those things and im personally offended youd even imply that." i think you dont understand the real life consequences of the massively popular posts and sentiments he made & published and that you helped spread (despite apparently knowing that he was being a massive hypocrite and bigoted towards those groups or identities in his personal life). obviously interpersonal abuse/conflict is going to be "worse" but dear god i hope you collectively understand that "oh btw we never endorsed his views" is a massive copout and a shit apology for the hurt this association and endorsement caused. tmc has been terrorizing this fucking fandom for months with his bullshit and bigotry and you have not been passive bystandars but active enablers.

anyways, hope everyone involved gets to uh, heal i suppose, but i think expecting the people who seraf suicide baited, the groups of trans men he misgendered, the people who he targeted and harassed, the genuine fucking long lasting dysphoria he caused real people to have over his shitty takes re: transness and dysphoria, and the general shit behavior he was allowed to keep up with zero pushback from anyone in his circle of the fandom to drop all the anger or frustration they have for the people who enabled him and defended him aggressively is... unrealistic. and makes you look bad. especially when the doc doesnt even clarify which opinions you still support.

#disk horse #abuse ment #long post #also im ngl some of the shit in the doc rly didnt need to be there if it genuinely was just a warning or whatever #also from what my jewish friends have said the whole section about converts not being jewish seems recklessly irresponsible as a thing to #include with any amount of authority re: the status of converts #But whatever.

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thetrashsean · 4 years ago

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“Why wasn’t Life is Strange 2 as popular as the first game?”

A lot of people like myself have wondered what exactly made Life is Strange 2 go so relatively unnoticed compared its predecessor, Life is Strange 1. And when you think about it, you may come up with the few obvious generic answers, such as the lack of Max and Chloe and just the original cast in general. However, I think there was a lot more at play here that prevented Life is Strange 2 from reaching the amount of success/popularity the first game had. So I want to take the time and break down what exactly happened to Life is Strange 2 and the things that hurt the game’s ability to really connect with the audience of LiS1.

Disclaimer: We do NOT know how well Life is Strange 2 was for Dontnod and if it was a success or not. No sales numbers have been given out to the public so there’s no way of knowing for sure how well the game did. What we do know is that LiS2 did not receive the same amount of attention/popularity as the first game. That can’t be denied, it simply didn’t. However, based on the fact that Dontnod have recently announced they are working on six new games at the moment and are now expanding their studio, even if LiS2 was a “flop” it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on them (most likely due to the success of Vampyr). Dontnod is going to be fine either way. Another thing I want to mention is that this is not a anti-LiS2 post and that I am a fan of the game. I’d consider myself a pretty big fan actually. I have my problems with the game of course and don’t agree with a lot of the writing decisions but I enjoyed the game very much overall. But for the sake of this post I will try to be as unbiased as possible, giving out only what I’ve observed when it comes to reactions from the fandom on different websites and forums. So with that all being said, let’s dive in to this.

Here I will be listing the many different reasons as to why Life is Strange 2 failed to reach the same amount of popularity as LiS1 or even BtS managed to achieve. This list isn’t in any particular order but some reasons are bigger/more important than others.

For some background, there was a lot of hype going into Life is Strange 2. The teaser trailer for it with the cop car trended at #2 on YouTube, a huge feat for the series. It generated immense amount of views and comments in a short period in time, completely surpassing Before the Storm’s announcement trailer in just a few weeks. So what exactly happened to all that hype? Where did everybody go? Well, let’s break everything down.

1. The lack of Max and Chloe: Yes I said that this list wouldn’t be in any particular order in terms of importance but I think it’s obvious this one is one of, if not the biggest reason as to why LiS2 failed to match LiS1’s popularity. When the protagonists Sean and Daniel were first revealed, the reception was pretty divisive. Specifically, a very vocal part of the community were baffled and disappointed at the lack of Max and Chloe present within the trailer and subsequently the game itself. This instantly turned off a lot of people from the game, as they couldn’t connect with the new characters or simply didn’t want to. At that point in the franchise Max and Chloe as well as the original cast from the first game had been the face of the series for almost three years. It’s understandable why it was hard for people to just…move on. To this day people are still asking for Max and Chloe to return. The Life is Strange subreddit is still dominated with Max and Chloe fanart. Whenever the social media accounts for Life is Strange post anything Max and Chloe related it gets way more attention compared to a post about Sean and Daniel. Whenever a post online goes viral about Life is Strange you can bet it’s most likely about Max and Chloe. Hell the only reason why episode 5 of Life is Strange 2 trended on Tumblr was because of the fucking picture of Max and Chloe. On the releas day of episode 5 of LiS2 the top post on the subreddit was the Max and Chloe picture. It was almost as if that one photo of them completely overshadowed the entire episode. Point is, Life is Strange 2 lost a lot of momentum the moment it was revealed Max and Chloe would not be present. Case closed, let’s move on.

2. The release schedule: Words cannot describe how frustrating the release schedule was for LiS2 when it came to it’s episodes. For those reading this who didn’t follow LiS2 until the game was finished, each episode took around 3-4 months to be released. This was because Dontnod bit off a bit more than they could chew with the road trip story in having to create new locations and character models from scratch. The reason why this wasn’t a problem for LiS1 was because Max was for the most part always in the same locations around the same characters (I’m pretty sure you roam around Chloe’s house like 4 times throughout the season), which made development a lot easier since the devs could just reuse a lot of the assets. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible for LiS2 due to the nature of it’s story. The wait times between each episode made a lot of people leave the fandom due to loosing interest or simply forgetting about the game altogether. This also impacted youtubers/streamers as many of them either stopped coming back to play the new episodes or they’d not be as connected as they were in the previous episode due to the amount of time that had passed. One of the reasons why LiS1 gained so much popularity was because of youtubers/streamers and how they would bring in their audience and would pretty much make them fans of the series. With quite a handful of youtubers/streamers quitting LiS2, the game was not able to draw in as much of an audience as previous games did. This is how detreminetal the release schedule was for LiS2.

3. The marketing (or lack thereof): Square Enix really fucked up on this aspect. Due to the ridiculous wait times you would think Square Enix would try and advertise the game heavily when a new episode was about to be released, right? Well they didn’t. Not at all actually. Throughout the games release schedule from September 2018 up to December 2019, I had not seen a single ad for the game. Nothing on YouTube, nothing on reddit or any other websites, it was like Square Enix had completely forgotten about the game’s existence. Now don’t get me wrong, SE did do a few things with LiS2 like starting up the community series on their YouTube channel and also the dev updates that came after episode 1 (that stopped after episode 2 for some reason) but these went relatively unnoticed to people outside of the fandom and did pretty much nothing. I believe SE was trying to wait until the game was fully complete with all of it’s episodes released before actually marketing the game (and they DID start advertising the game after episode 5 came out) but that’s just WAAAY too long to go without any type of advertisement. I understand marketing teams have budgets and what not, but you’re telling me there was no way for SE to market each episode in anyway as they were about to be released? Seems a bit ridiculous, don’t you think?

4. The road trip story: I completely understand why Dontnod wanted to branch out and do something different with the story of Life is Strange 2 and I respect them for stepping out of their comfort zones. However, it can’t be denied that the road trip story where characters are cycled in and out as Sean and Daniel make their way to Mexico was a very…questionable decision. Seeing as how LiS1 was loved for it’s world filled with a reoccurring cast of characters that developed as the story went on, it’s really easy to understand why LiS2 was so off-putting for a lot of fans. It was off-putting for me, even. It just…wasn’t fun having to leave these truly interesting characters behind because the plot demanded it. This left a lot of characters feeling underdeveloped to many people and by the time you meet new characters you already know they’re most likely gonna be gone soon anyways, so it made it even harder to connect with them. Couple this with the fact that LiS2 lacked any type of mystery unlike LiS1, speculation and discussion fizzled out a few weeks after each episode was released. LiS1 kept people speculating and wondering about what would happen next, while LiS2 left a lot of people struggling to care.

5. Politics: Yeeeeaaaaah I think I had to put this somewhere on the list. While many of the people who tease and mock how LiS2 handled its political topics were most likely not fans of the series anyway (the type of people who called LiS1 “Life is Tumblr” and hate Chloe), I do think it’s important to realize that some people just don’t want politics in their games, period. I’ve seen people online come out and say that while they agreed with what the writers were saying when it came to the political topics, it overall still came off very forced and one-sided to them, lacking any type of nuance or subtlety. I could write an entire essay discussing if the politics in LiS2 were handled well and whatnot but this is not that post so I’ll just leave it at that.

6: Lack of a prominent female cast/wlw: This is a bit more tricky to talk about (for the record the person writing this is a black gay guy) but I will try and write about this the best way I can. For many women, specifically queer women, Life is Strange was a series they could expect representation from. Max, Chloe, Rachel, and Steph are all popular characters amongst the fandom and even other wlw ships such as Marshfield, Chasefield, Chaseprice, etc are popular. So when LiS2 was revealed to be about two (hispanic) males, the queer women within the community were understandably upset. It felt like DN were simply throwing away the community that for the most part made up the entire fandom. At the time I simply found the situation ridiculous and overblown as many people were dismissing Sean and Daniel as “generic straight males” (even though it turned out Sean was bisexual in the end) before really getting to know them. However, looking back I totally get why people were upset. A lot of the fanart/fanfiction that was made for the LiS series was mostly created by queer women, so when the franchise pretty much stopped giving them representation, they left in search of other media (like She-Ra, which honestly has better wlw rep anyway). LiS2 is also mostly male dominated in terms of its cast, and features no queer women as well, which is really disappointing in my opinion.

7. Price: This one is pretty simple. When Life is Strange 2 was first released the full season costed $40. This was a pretty big jump in comparison to LiS1’s $20 price tag (original price was $25 however) and BtS’s $16. Obviously people would be more skeptical about buying a sequel that is pretty much double the price of its predecessor and has completely new characters. With the pretty mixed reception from gaming communities I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people saw the price and decided to either watch a playthrough or simply not check out the game at all. With the first episode now free the base price has been lowered to around $30-32 I believe so yeah.

8. Daniel Diaz: Some people just don’t like kids, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people grew easily frustrated with Daniel early on and once he got more irrational and bratty as the story progressed they just stopped playing altogether. Even if you do like kids, or at least don’t mind them like myself, Daniel can still be quite a pain.

9. Not having control of the powers: This one is honestly really disappointing and I know it was to a lot of other people as well. In LiS1 Max had the ability to rewind time and do certain scenarios and conversations over and that basically acted as the more interesting gameplay segments. In LiS2 Sean doesn’t have the power, his brother Daniel does. This leads to the gameplay feeling much more boring and mundane. There are also no interesting puzzles this time around, most likely because Dontnod didn’t know how to implement them without the rewind power so they just…didn’t even attempt to add any. The power itself, telekinesis, is also much less interesting compared to rewinding time, according to a lot of people.

SO YEAH that’s basically it for me. I know this probably came off a bit rambly/incoherent but I tried my best to be as clear as I possibly could. I don’t doubt there are other reasons at play as to why LiS2 failed to meet LiS1’s success (such as liscensed music not being quite as good as LiS1) but I think I hit the main points I believe were key reasons. And the thing is, there isn’t just one main reason why LiS2 didn’t do as well as LiS1. It’s overall very unfortunate so many things went wrong with it that ended up making people lose interest in it. I think the lack of Max and Chloe hurt the game the most right off the bat, but the other reasons just led it to do even worse. Oh well.

I hope any of the people who read this enjoyed it (it was a BITCH to write). I’ve been wanting to get my thoughts down about this for SO long but just never had the motivation/time but I finally did it!

Again, thanks for reading! If you have any disagreements or just thoughts in general don’t be afraid to reply or dm me about it and I’ll be sure to reply! Now back to reblogging Marco posts….

#lis2 #lis #life is strange #life is strange 2 #max caulfield #chloe price #sean diaz #daniel diaz #lis2 spoilers #pricefield #amberprice

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mebbrrr · 3 years ago

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i personally like when people tag character crit/neg because some of the takes on this site are just. bad. or wild. i started heavily blocking specific character critical tags back when people were shitting on c!karl (and to some extent cc!karl) all the time, saying his lore was terrible and shallow and had no impact on the story and complaining constantly and saying his character deserved to be killed for everything he was doing. i was literally just trying to enjoy content and it kinda sucks to see people hating on something you enjoy. rather than, like, argue with every single person i saw talking about how tales didn't need to be serious i could just block the c!karl neg tag and not have to see any of it.

i also have some friends who prefer to see character crit/neg tagged because they have introjects of said characters and seeing people say heavily negative things about them or say that they want specific characters dead is very harmful to them and their system.

i personally think it comes down to just...respecting people's space and allowing people to filter what they want to see. i feel like people deserve to come into a fandom space and enjoy something without having to see all of the various critiques for it, not to mention the fact that a lot of character crit or neg can range from something entirely logical to just people being assholes or weird for no reason. i like being given the option to keep my dash a friendly space for me where i dont feel attacked or like my interests are being insulted, and overall i feel like tagging neg just prevents so much conflict.

that seems to be the main takeaway yee. i try to stay in my lane with most stuff, and the stuff i do talk about is generally lighthearted or tagged if its not. think most of yall are used to me wanted to stomp on c!dream (affectionately) at the very least lol

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citadelspires · 3 years ago

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22 and 35 for Persona 4?

22. Ship that you immediately fall in love with after one scene despite not considering it before.

Ok so I can't really give you a good description of the scene for this one because I never even thought about it during the whole of playing the game, and the "scene" that sold it for me was just seeing it in a fanfic, and at this point it's been so long I can't even remember what fic it was but.

Rise/Naoto/Kanji is shockingly good. I loved Kannao from the moment Kanji got all nervous around Naoto before I even really knew who either of them were, and through the whole game I only grew to like the concept of them together even more the more interaction they got and I got with them. And naturally I always wanted good things for Rise, Who Wouldn't? I'll admit the concept of Rise/Naoto was on my radar a bit before I read the first fic with the three of them in it. Rise/Kanji specifically I had never thought of before, though honestly I would never go for that without Naoto also there, but somehow with Naoto thrown into the mix the three of them become a trio I just adore in every way, platonically or romantically or anything in between.

Talking about them has jogged my memory a little and honestly I'm pretty sure the first fic I ever read with them as a pairing wasn't even technically about the pairing it was like a thing they just had going on in the background and never really got addressed too much in the fic but that and the presence of the tags just suggesting the idea alone was enough for me to be sold. I just think Rise deserves to be with two people who she loves and they love her back. Naoto just deserves to have close relationships with people who respect them both for their abilities and who they are as a person, and especially being with people who love them regardless of how they ultimately choose to pursue their gender, and are even able to help them figure out how to present the way they want I mean. The talented apprentice of a textile shop and a literal idol, if any two people can help Naoto be comfortable in their body Rise and Kanji are the people with both the skill sets and the stubborn but genuine love to give Naoto the world. And Kanji I mean. That boy just deserves some good people who will see him for who he really is and Naoto and Rise both know lots about that and about him. I mean think of how much potential there is. Don't even get me started on the potential of Rise and Kanji knowing eachother as kids before idols and gangs and drama. Kanji being the one to treat Rise as a human more than anyone else cause he never stopped seeing her as "that Rise kid from down the street" and Rise believing in Kanji when everyone else in that town thought he was just some thug up to no good I MEAN. COME ON.

I didn't mean to talk about Them this long nor did I think I ever would but I will not apologize you asked for this.

35. Ship that you have kinda love/hate relationship with

Ok so not to shut up about Kanji and Naoto but I cannot think of a single other ship that does this for me more than them in the whole of persona 4. Within the context of the game I usually just stick to the love part (save the occasional uncomfortable "Atlus stop being weird about teenage girls and gender stuff" thing) but oh man do persona fans on the internet like to have opinions. I usually don't give fandom the time of day when it comes to drama and its impact on my perception of characters, and I mostly stick to that with this, but I sure would describe it as loving Kannao and hating people being Heccin Weird about it. Also, I'm sure you can tell from the above extensive rambling that my preference is strongly in favor of the trio ship over just kannao, so in general my feelings over time have changed from "i love this" to "this is good but give me one Rise and I can make it Incredible"

I'll always have a soft spot for it but between it being a little replaced and the way talking about it in general risks the chance of my notes becoming unreadable it's more an old friend I reminisce on than something I'm like "Oh Yeah!!!"

#persona 4 #ask #ask game #thanks for the ask!#and for the chance to get my thoughts on that trio ship out because #OH MAN #Do I have Thoughts #apparently #I didn't know that about myself #Kanji Tatsumi #rise kujikawa #naoto shirogane #good questions homie #this took way longer for me to answer than I thought

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sailorbadger · 4 years ago

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The Fandom’s Least Favorite Character - an analysis on Kate

Kate is probably the most hated character in the Robin Hood fandom. Not even probably, she is the one who consistently gets the most hate. So, what has she done? Did she commit several murders? Did she kill off a beloved character? Did she do something so problematic that she deserves to burn in hell? Did she do war crimes? No, her biggest sin is existing among unfair circumstances.

The title of this post is kind of a lie. This analysis is not really about Kate as a character, but about how she is written, how the narrative presents her and how this all affects the fandom’s treatment of her. I started writing this because I am sick of seeing so much unnecessary hate for Kate. This is just me commenting on larger trends I have witnessed and a decade’s worth of frustrations finally being written out. If you do recognize yourself from some of my descriptions, I hope that this post will give you something to think about, but just know that this is not meant for any one person in particular.

I’m not going to try to convince anyone to think of Kate as their favorite character. I’m not even trying to make anyone like her. I’m just trying to see why she is so hated within the fandom. So, let’s start off with how it all began. Grab some snacks, you’re going to need them; this is a long one.

Introduction: Is it all Merlin’s fault?

To understand the context in which Kate was introduced to the show, let’s first look at where we left off at the end of season 2. I’ll start with the in-universe changes first. The biggest change obviously is that Gisborne murdered Marian. This altered the whole course of the show. Marian was such a central part of not only the show but also the Robin Hood legends, that at that point it was obvious that things were going to change. Will and Djaq left the show as well. Them leaving is not as dramatic of a change for the show’s narrative since they were not as central as Marian, but they did make up one third of the gang. This meant that there was a need for new characters to be introduced in season 3.

In our world, things changed between seasons 2 and 3 as well. There was a larger gap in production than before (with seasons 1 and 2 coming out in consecutive years and there being a gap year between seasons 2 and 3), and some of the people working on the show left or were replaced. Robin Hood’s spot on the BBC schedule was taken over by Merlin for 2008 so I guess we could blame that show for everything that went wrong in season 3. (I’m obviously joking here but conspiracy theories are welcome.)

The most important change in my opinion – and I think this is even more important to how season 3 turned out than anything that happened in-universe in season 2 – is the fact that Dominic Minghella was no longer writing or producing the show. It’s surprising to me that the fandom as a whole doesn’t ever really talk about this, when in many other fandoms creators or showrunners leaving the show are usually a big deal and mark the end of an era. I myself only found out about Minghella’s departure from the show before season 3 this year, but it seems to explain a lot on why season 3 felt so different from seasons 1 and 2.

With all that out of the way, the stage is set, and it is time to look at how exactly Kate came into the show.

Six boots, two feet

Season 3 starts off with my least favorite episode of the whole show (see my episode ranking for more details). It tries its best to address the events of the season 2 finale, but in a way that will let it quickly get to the season 3 storylines. Unfortunately, the things that happened at the end of the previous season were so important that they would have needed several episodes to cover the full impact of the events.

Kate herself is introduced in episode 2. She is immediately given a reason to hate the villains and join the fight when her brother dies. She doesn’t join the outlaws right away, but when she does, she essentially has to take over three roles at once. I do not think it’s a coincidence that I think episode 4 is Kate’s best episode and that she’s at her best before she actually joins the gang. That is the point in the show when she is allowed to be her own character rather than someone who is trying to fill a void.

Like I said, Kate has three roles to take over; she gets Djaq’s spot in the gang as “the girl one”, Will’s role as “the peasant with personal connections to the people’s suffering” (and interestingly, since Kate’s family is around, her connection could have been even stronger than Will’s) and Marian’s as “the love interest”. Since the season 2 finale got rid of both of the only female characters in the show, it was inevitable that they would eventually be replaced if the show wanted to include any romantic storylines (it was, after all, 2009, so queer representation was out of the question). With three pairs of boots to fill, and only two feet, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Kate can’t possibly do it all alone. The show does introduce Tuck and Isabella as well to help fill the gaps, but I think Kate gets labeled as “the replacement” far more often than the other two.

A triangle without a base is just an angle

Kate had all the potential for a good plotline. Her brother died, making her hungry for revenge, yet this part of her is only sprinkled in every now and then instead of being a part of her character arc. Instead, she is made a part of not one, not two, but three love triangles.

I’ll start with the Much/Kate/Allan one. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t actually exist. All sides of this “triangle” are… weird. The writers try to frame it as a legitimate love triangle, when only one person in it seems to have any real feelings for another character. Much is shown to be interested in Kate, but we as the audience are never given a reason for why he likes her or even how he fell for her. I guess we’ll just have to take his “I fall in love very easily” (from 2x4) quite literally. Kate does not seem to have any romantic feelings for Much, and she seems oblivious to his feelings as well.

To be honest, I don’t think Kate ever really saw Allan as an option either. At best I could admit that maybe she had a slight attraction to him, but I never got the impression that it was something she would seriously pursue. I don’t think Allan was seriously interested in Kate either. His flirting with her is quite similar to his joke-y flirting with Marian and Djaq. My friend and I talked at length about this, but Allan doesn’t seem like the type of person to flirt for real. This could be a whole analysis on its own, so I won’t go too deep into it here. But I don’t think Allan considers Kate a legitimate romantic option.

So, this “love triangle” only exists in Much’s head and in the narrative the writers try to force on the audience. The Kate/Allan side of it is practically dropped the minute Kate/Robin becomes a thing.

Then there is the Much/Kate/Robin/Isabella triangle that is not a triangle either. I already covered Much/Kate for the most part, so I won’t go into it. Since the Robin/Isabella relationship is not that central to Kate’s character, I won’t bore you and myself by going through it that deeply. The buildup for that relationship is practically nonexistent, and so is the end of it. The whole Robin/Isabella relationship feels forced, because the writers didn’t know how to properly replace Marian while coming up with something new.

Kate’s crush on Robin seems to develop out of nowhere as well. It looks like a pattern when it comes to romances this season. Robin himself doesn’t appear to have any romantic interest towards Kate until he and Isabella “break up”. After that point, their relationship progresses way too fast. It doesn’t help that they seem to have no chemistry between them, and Robin treats Kate like a child and then five seconds later proceeds to make out with her.

Honestly, if Kate had to have a romance with a character on the show (and with it being 2009 obviously they could not fulfil my dreams of Kate being bi but that’s beside the point), it should have been with Archer. The two of them had more chemistry in the 30 seconds they worked together in 3x12 than Robin and Kate had the entire season. It would have also made me far less uncomfortable, since the characters would have been closer in age. Which brings me to my next point.

“There is only one thing worse than a rapist – a child”

How old is Kate supposed to be? Seriously, this show can’t seem to make its mind about her. In general, I do not trust anyone’s age on this show unless it’s been stated somewhere. I know some people try to base the characters’ ages on the actors’ real ages, but to that I say, “fuck that”. Archer is the best example of the fact that this show did not even try to cast people who are the right age, or even look the part. (Seriously, he does not look even close to being 20.)

That being said, Kate is written like she is both 15 and 25 at the same time. I don’t know if the writers had a specific age in mind when they were writing her, but there is a huge difference between those ages. I think it’s the most reasonable thing to assume that she’s in her late teens, maybe at most in her very early twenties. She is still living with her family (I know that most women at the time married in their 20s but it’s not like this show is concerned with historical accuracy) and her behavior is a little immature at times. With all that said, I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I find it incredibly uncomfortable that all the men that are presented as possible love interests to her are fully grown men.

It is the most obvious in Robin and Kate’s scenes. Like I said earlier, Robin treats Kate like a child and speaks to her in a condescending way, only to then make out with her in the same scene. I must wonder why the writers didn’t just age up Kate. I think it would have been more interesting to make her someone who is already married, and instead of losing her brother, it would be her husband that dies. Of course, I would prefer it if Kate didn’t have to be a part of any of these love triangles to begin with but aging her up would have made the dynamics far less uncomfortable. (I do have to also point out the fact that Meg is also written like she is a teen girl. The show then tries to pair her off with Gisborne, who is even older than the men Kate is being forced into love triangles with. So… yikes.)

Let’s take a break, drink some water

Let’s take a moment to recap what we’ve learned here. First of all, Kate entered the show in unfair circumstances and with only two feet to fill three pairs of boots. She was only ever allowed to be a part romance plots, and she didn’t get a proper character arc of her own. In general, the women in this season were not written well (not that seasons 1 and 2 were the height of feminist television either), and they were reduced to being love interests or tools to further the male character’s plotlines. Without Dominic Minghella involved and with a full year between seasons 2 and 3, the show lost some of its charm. Unfortunately, this meant that Kate was not the best written character. But I do not think she deserves all the hate the fandom has given her over the years.

Interlude: Doctor Death

Before I get too much into how the fandom has reacted to Kate over the years, I feel like I should explain my own history with this show and the fandom surrounding it.

I started watching the show when it was first airing here on TV. It was some time during season 2, and once I had seen my very first episode, I watched all the following ones as well. With the finale, there was a problem. I had seen 2x12 and knew that the final episode of the season would air the next week. I was so excited for it, but then my mother decided that we would all go out and have dinner. I kept looking at the clock all day, hoping I would make it home in time. I got home just to see the credits rolling. I’m still a little bitter about it.

After this, I was desperate to see how the season ended. I’ll remind you that this was before it was common for shows to be put online officially. Streaming wasn’t really a thing yet. I did the only thing I knew what to do; I went to YouTube. The thing is, I did not know that what I had been watching was the second season of the show. So, you can imagine my confusion, when I find the very grainy version of 1x13 on YouTube and start watching it. Eventually I figured out my mistake and watched 2x13. At some point I watched season 1 as well, but I honestly don’t have that many memories of when I first watched this show. My clearest memory is being betrayed by my own mother when she forced me to go out for dinner.

Since I do not remember what year this all happened in, I did some googling and if I’m correct, season 2 aired here for the first time in the summer of 2009, with reruns in the summer of 2010. Because I have no other memories for context, I can’t say whether or not season 3 was even out in the UK at the time. Anyway, I did not watch season 3 for a few years. I also didn’t engage with the fandom until 2012, when I joined Tumblr. (A side note: while trying to find out when season 2 aired, I found the episode titles and descriptions. Apparently 2x4’s Finnish title was Doctor Death. There were some real gems on that list but this one was my favorite.)

Over the years, I had read bits and pieces about season 3 on the internet. I was still upset about the end of season 2, and the things I read did not make me want to watch season 3. Sometime in 2012-2013 I finally gave in and watched season 3. I was mostly disappointed by the season as a whole, and as for Kate specifically, I found her annoying. In the fandom, I went along with the Kate-hate that was popular in the fandom at the time.

I did a full rewatch of the show with my friend in 2016–2017. During that time, I didn’t hate Kate as much as I did before. Maybe it was that I had a fresh perspective, maybe it was that I had matured in those few years. Who knows? I was mostly disappointed by the bad writing. Even back then, I wished that Kate had been given a proper chance.

The next proper rewatch of the whole series I did was this past winter. I watched the show in a non-chronological order with someone who had never seen it before. This time, I was angry at the writers and found myself half-ironically becoming a Kate-stan. I also began to really pay attention to how the fandom has talked about her over the years and was unnerved by the hate has she gotten.

So, here we are. Time to take a look at how the fandom has treated Kate. Most of this will be based on my own experiences and memories, so if someone else has a different point of view to offer (especially from the early days of the fandom while the show was still ongoing), feel free to comment! I just wanted to give you my own history with the fandom to show that I have indeed been around for most of the fandom’s history.

The hate-train for Kate-town leaves from platform 4

It seems that from the very beginning, Kate was disliked. I remember reading negative comments about her way back in the early 2010s (I would try to look for examples, but I just spent 30 minutes trying to find out when season 2 first aired here and it’s currently 1am so I am not spending any more time googling right now). There are fics that make fun of her and how badly she was written, and most of the jokes and dislike about season 3 seem to always come back to her. This attitude has been present in the fandom in other contexts as well. Over the years, the hate towards Kate has come and gone along with the popularity of the fandom.

Every once in a while, someone has tried to either write Kate better or even see her as a character that was let down by the writers. Mostly this has not led to any significant change in the fandom’s attitudes. I feel like whenever some of the older fans outgrow their Kate-hate by either just maturing and realizing it’s pointless or just not wanting to waste their time making fun of her, new fans come in and start the whole thing all over again.

I am grateful, however, that the general consensus in the fandom seems to be (at least in the year 2021) that the actress is not to blame for Kate’s faults. It still does make me uncomfortable that people go so far as to cross out her face on pictured etc. just to show how much they hate the character. This hate that Kate gets feels very misogynistic at times and is at least partially the result of the show’s misogynistic writing, but the actress deserves no negativity for playing Kate.

What about Isabella?

One thing that is very interesting to note is that while both Kate and Isabella were newcomers in season 3 and were both replacements for Marian in the sense that they were love interests for Robin, only Kate has received a significant amount of hate over the years. So why does the fandom not hate Isabella?

I think that a big reason for why Isabella is tolerated – not necessarily liked, I haven’t seen too many people genuinely enjoying her character – better than Kate is the way the narrative treats them. Kate is essentially forced down our throats. The show is so desperate for us to like her that they end up making her unlikeable. Isabella, on the other hand, is eventually made into a villain, and thus we’re not meant to sympathize with her in the end anyway. (I could write a whole rant about how Isabella’s treatment in the narrative is bad but let’s not do it here.) Isabella also has the advantage of being Gisborne’s sister, so her backstory ties better into already existing characters. I think it’s reasonable to say that Gisborne being a fan-favorite in certain parts of the fandom doesn’t hurt Isabella’s case either.

Isabella is also only involved with Robin, while the show keeps pairing Kate off (unsuccessfully) with almost half the cast. I think she was written in a way that reminds people of Mary Sues, and considering how fandoms tend to not like characters like that, it’s no surprise that Kate got all the hate she did.

Murder and being annoying – they’re the same thing, right?

So why exactly does the fandom hate Kate so much? Obviously, the writing is a big reason. Season 3 is not written well, which means that Kate is not written well either. She doesn’t really get a storyline of her own, and instead her main purpose is to be someone else’s love interest. I would also add that Kate doesn’t really get hate for her personality. Most of the hate that she gets in terms of character traits revolves around her being annoying, but that’s not really a personality trait. So I think the issue is not her personality, but her role.

The next reason won’t surprise anyone who has spent as much time in fandoms as I have: Fandoms do not like female characters. Well, I should probably rephrase that. Fandoms tend to hate female characters more easily than male characters. I’m not going to analyze too deeply on why this is, as I’m sure someone has already done research on this with references to actual feminist theory. There is a lot of internalized misogyny in fandoms, and female characters get hate for even the slightest wrongdoing, while male characters who commit far worse crimes often have a strong fanbase that will defend them despite these flaws, especially if said male character is played by a conventionally attractive man.

Kate is also blamed for things such as breaking Much’s heart, even though she was never really aware of Much’s feelings in the first place, so it was definitely not intentional. She’s blamed for every small wrongdoing in a way other characters in the show are not. I’ve seen people criticize Kate for small things that she has not even done on purpose. Some of these people then also go on to ignore the fact that Gisborne has committed several murders, taken part in the oppression of the poor and done many many more atrocious things, and paint him as a more sympathetic character than Kate. I understand if you do not like Kate, but it feels misogynistic that the female characters are held to different standards than the male characters. I can already hear some of the Gisborne-fans saying “but I acknowledge his actions and think what he did was wrong! I just find him to be a misunderstood and/or interesting character”. To those people I will just say: Why are you not applying this same logic for Kate? Why are you making outright hateful comments about her? If you don’t like her, why not just ignore her? If you are a Gisborne-fan and have never made these comments about Kate, this obviously doesn’t apply to you. And even if you aren’t a Gisborne-fan, but you do recognize this way of thinking in yourself in regard to some other character, I encourage you to think about it critically. I just used Gisborne as an example since I know he’s perhaps the most popular male character in the fandom (at least if Ao3’s numbers are anything to go by). I’ve also seen a similar attitude from a lot of Allan-fans, though in their case the hypocrisy is often not as obvious, but I’ll return to Allan in a moment.

Many female characters end up getting hate because they get in the way of a popular (often m/m) ship. In this regard, Kate is kind of an outlier since she doesn’t exactly do that, since there isn’t really a ship to get in the way of. Sure, she’s eventually paired off with Robin, but Marian is already dead by the time she shows up, and if people were truly bothered by someone other than Marian trying to get Robin’s attention, they would also hate Isabella with the same intensity. I do think there is one “ship” Kate does come in the middle of, and here’s where we get back to Allan.

Now, the ship Kate does get in the middle of is not in fact canonical. I am of course talking about the popular Allan/OC trope. If you go on Ao3 or Fanfiction.net, you won’t have a hard time finding fics where Allan is paired with an OC. This is understandable, seeing that the show only has four main female characters to begin with, one of whom is already in a love triangle with other people, one of whom canonically ends up with someone else, one of whom is actively hated by the fandom and one of whom just does not interact with Allan.

I want to make it clear that I think it’s fine if people want to come up with their own OCs for the purpose of shipping them with existing characters, it’s just not my thing, especially when those OCs are any level of self-inserts. (I personally don’t feel the need to ship Allan romantically with anyone. I just tend to not like OCs in any fandom.) Since Kate is presented as a potential love-interest for Allan, I think many fans who would rather see Allan with their own character or even themselves view Kate as an obstacle or a threat.

As you may see, this fandom, like many others, unfortunately treats the women in the show differently from the men. Male characters like Gisborne are viewed as redeemable so long as they are attractive, but Kate is irredeemable for… breaking Much’s heart and/or getting in the way of Robin/Marian or Allan/OC? This is something that really bothers me. I don’t mind the fact that people don’t like Kate, it’s the extensive hate she gets that makes me uncomfortable.

Conclusion: Where do we go from here?

Like I said in the beginning, I am not asking anyone to say Kate is their favorite character or to even like her. I just wanted to provide some things for people to think about regarding how they treat female characters. I think it’s about time the fandom took a proper look at itself and critically thought about how it speaks about female characters. It’s 2021, let’s not hate on female characters just for being a little annoying or getting in the way of shipping.

I haven’t seen the fandom analyze that much why season 3 is the way it is. I would love to see some meta about how Dominic Minghella’s departure and other behind the scenes factors contributed to the story and aesthetics of season 3. I would also love to see some actual analysis on the season 3 characters that isn’t focused on tearing them down. If the fandom never made another post about how terrible Kate is without providing any actual reasons, I would be happy. I can sort of understand this immature hatred coming from 15-year-olds, but I’m disappointed to say that I have seen fully grown adults tearing down Kate in this quite misogynistic way. I know that many people do not intend for their dislike of Kate to come across as misogynistic, but it does not erase the fact that that is how many of those hateful comments appear.

I think Kate had a lot of potential. Season 3 had a lot of potential. It is quite a move to kill Marian in the middle of a Robin Hood story, so they had the chance to take the story to all kinds of places. Unfortunately, the season 3 we ended up with was not of the same quality as the previous seasons. Instead of just hating on the characters or story in general, I think we should focus on really analyzing the season, and even coming up with our own ways of improving it. Many people have already done this (though unfortunately many of these attempts also include thinly veiled hatred towards Kate. It’s your story, why are you not treating her any better than the actual writers of the show?), but there’s always room for more takes.

At this point I will shamelessly advertise my own “Kate should have been the new Nightwatchman” theory and my Nightwatchman-fic. I wrote the latter in a way that would let it be a part of canon if necessary. I think that by refocusing the story and shifting the way we read the text, we can find new aspects of season 3, and perhaps even enjoy it more. That is what happened to me during my latest rewatch, and all it took was watching it in a non-chronological order and talking about it with someone who had never seen the show.

I’m not trying to gatekeep the fandom and say that only thought-provoking analysis or fix-it fanfiction is allowed. I just feel like people should be more conscious of the message they are sending out when they write hateful comments about Kate, censor her name or even cross out her face from pictures. Is it actually funny? Are you contributing something to the conversation? Is it actual criticism or just hate for the sake of hate? You don’t have to start writing posts in the defense of Kate, but you can just start ignoring her. It’s not that difficult. It’s fine to make jokes, but let’s start thinking about what our jokes say about us.

I once more want to emphasize that this is not a callout post I wrote with any one person in mind. So, if you felt offended when I was talking about Gisborne-fans, Allan/OC-shippers or Kate-haters in general, I can assure you that this post was not about you personally. This is not about any individual person. I’m just commenting on trends in the fandom I have noticed over the years. I don’t think any of you have committed any sins or that you need to be cancelled. I just hope that if you did feel guilty reading this, you’ll realize that maybe this post was something you definitely needed to read. As a woman, I would love it if this fandom worked on getting rid of its internalized misogyny.

I’m not claiming to be right on all of this, in fact I have a lot of bad opinions as well. I hope this post has provided people with things to think about. Feel free to use this as a starting point for your own meta or analysis. I’ll end my rant here, and leave you with this thought:

Kate had a lot of potential to be a good character. She did not let us down. The writers did.

#robin hood bbc #bbc robin hood #I'm not gonna tag any characters just to be polite #this is less of an analysis and more like a rant #the second half really is something #90% of this was written at night so it shows #anyway I hope every kate-hater reads this

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