#I guess what I’m saying is I want media analysis. i want media criticism. please god.

[werewolfest]

the thing about being deeply invested in a podcast that was popular with young gay people on the internet in 2018 is that it is somewhat similar to a lot of media in that category (extremely earnest, kinda cheesy, very overt queer rep) so the current fan base is like…mostly teenagers or at least people who are younger than me. which is fine. I just find a lot of the things they have to say annoying

[itsclydebitches]

Please stop putting Rwde in the main tags holy shit. Blocked tags dont work on trending tags

Okay, today we're going to have a talk about curating your own content online. This isn’t the first time I’ve had an anon, somewhat angrily, demand that I stop using the “RWBY” tag and I’m sure it won’t be the last. However, my answer remains the same: No. Sorry. I’m not going to stop. Why?

Because my posts are about RWBY.

In case the above isn’t answer enough, let’s do a quick FAQs.

Why are you using the “RWBY” tag when so many of your posts are critical?

Because, as said, my posts are about RWBY. That’s the subject. I’ve been in the RWBY tumblr fandom for over five years now. I want all my RWBY content accessible in one place on my blog, not divided up between praise posts, critical posts, fanart, fic, etc. If an easy division between the first two is even possible (which it's not). It’s just all RWBY and, oddly enough, when I started reblogging and posting here, I tagged it with “RWBY.” Because that’s the show. My tagging system is far from complex, but I’m not about to re-organize or switch up 228 pages of content.

But we decided a long time ago that critical posts shouldn’t go in the main tag.

That’s ridiculous. People realize that’s ridiculous, right? I mean, I know we've all mostly agreed to observe this self-imposed rule, but that doesn't mean I haven't been raising an eyebrow at it since it first came up. I’ve been in a lot of fandoms and I’ve never seen another that insisted only praise could go in the main tag. When you come on tumblr and want to look up RWBY posts, you expect to get everything about RWBY—any post that deals with that subject. I would stake a great deal on the assumption that there are other posts in the main tag that you dislike, anon, simply because that's how people work. We all don't like the same things and, indeed, in a long-running show with a massive cast, there's going to be stuff we hate too. Ships you can't stand, takes you think are awful, that character you’re just so sick of seeing… yet we don’t exclude other, major subjects from the tag just because certain individuals dislike them. If we did, there would be no “RWBY” search because no one would ever agree on what is and is not allowed.

You have “RWDE” though.

We do! And as evidenced by the post you’re upset with, I use it when I think it's warranted. Here’s the thing about “RWDE” though: no one can agree on that either. Some fans think “RWDE” is solely for the angry, curse-laden posts. Others think it’s only for posts that are 100% critical. Others think it’s for ranting critical posts, not analysis critical posts. Still others think it’s for posts that say anything bad about RWBY, no matter if other parts of the post are complimentary or neutral—with "bad" ranging from "Actively insulting aspects" to "I didn't praise this enough to the individual's liking." It's so subjective as to be almost useless, to the point where "RWDE" posters are currently upset that others are posting critical takes about "RWDE" takes. Where do we draw the lines then? Your guess is as good as mine. But the one time I tried to post solely in “RWDE,” I was getting different anons going, “Omg stop posting in rwde this isn’t rwde!” So… my posts are apparently too critical for “RWBY” and, often, not critical enough for “RWDE.” Fantastic.

Just create your own unique tag then.

On the social media website where we post specifically to have other people interact with our work? You may not like my posts, anon, but other people do. “RWBY” is useful in part because it allows like-minded people to find me. If I only used a unique tag, I’d never come up in searches. Besides, I already do have a unique tag: “mymetas.” Every critical RWBY post of mine has that attached. Thus, it’s your job to blog “RWDE,” “mymetas,” or me entirely.

I tried that though and tumblr’s blocking system didn’t work for [insert reason here]

I really am sorry to hear that, it sucks, but tumblr’s shoddy system is not my fault—nor my responsibility. And now we come to the part about curating our online experience. Sometimes it’s not just about blocking everything because the system itself is flawed. Often you have to go further by scrolling past.

I'm going to say that again because people really need to practice it more on tumblr: scroll past the content you don't like.

If you don’t like a post, don’t read it. If you start reading a post and realize you don’t like it, stop and go find something else you enjoy. Being a responsible fan online often means going, “Huh. I hate that” and moving on, not coming into the author’s inbox to demand that they—impossibly—ensure that you never have to see something you hate ever again. Anon, you spent more time with something you claim to dislike by coming into my inbox to write and send a message demanding that I stop using "RWBY" than you would have by simply ignoring my post and moving on. That tells me you care more about controlling others' online experience than you do managing your own.

But we don’t want to see critical takes in the “RWBY” tag! We come on tumblr because we love the show and it sucks to see people dragging it all the time. I just want to enjoy the show in peace.

A valid stance… and one that doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to RWBY. Between the time I posted about the teaser and the time I saw this ask, two hours had passed and a hundred and four new posts had appeared in “RWBY." I know because I took the time to count. The RWBY critical community is absolutely miniscule compared to the rest of the fandom. There are maybe 2-7 new “RWDE” posts a day, max, and those are coming from a few key blogs that focus on analyzing the show. There is no scenario in which there are so many critical posts that it’s ruining your RWBY time on tumblr, simply because that amount of critical content doesn’t exist. And if seeing a single critical take from my blog—or even 2-4, because that's my own max per day—honestly upsets you to the extent that you can't just move on, you shouldn’t be on a website known for its diverse content and incredibly iffy blocking system. My posts exist in a sea of RWBY excitement, praise, and celebration. It is your job to scroll past, anon, not my job to play a subjective, rigged game to ensure you never brush past a single bit of seaweed in that massive, ever-expanding ocean.

What this argument comes down to is, “You’re not allowed to tag RWBY content with RWBY because I don’t like what you have to say.” Sorry, but that just doesn't work for me.

[sketching-shark]

I think we should start a protection squad (although they don’t need it because they can protect themselves) for Sun Wukong and Guanyin

“Begone monkie kid fandom trying to down grade these really interesting characters with interesting personality’s and backstory ( the both of them like seriously Guanyin backstory is so cool) to a villain wile trying to justify your angsty backstory (that are no where near as cool as monkey who fights gods and Person who has 1000 arms and heads to help people in need) for the actual villain”

So who wants to join

Me:*raises my hand*

Ps: sorry if I got Guanyin backstory wrong am not an expert on it.

Haha okay so some critiques on the jttw & associated media western fandom & fandom in general coming up, so please skip this upcoming text wall if you don't want to encounter my undoubtedly ~devastating~ words (i.e. don't like don't read as people love to say, & if I have to be inundated with images of my notp every time I go into the sun wukong tag then I imagine people can be chill with me expressing my opinions & giving people fair warning that I WILL be critiquing common fandom trends, but no need for you to see that if you don’t want to. Cool? Cool.)

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PFFFFFTTT oh man there are many times when I feel like signing up for such a protection squad...when it comes to the current western jttw & Sun Wukong fandom I do feel like I'm often swinging at a rapid pace between "well it's fandom & people are allowed to make the stories they want" & "I am once again begging my fellow monkie kid enthusiasts (& sometimes creators) to do more research into the og classic/show it more respect so you can avoid any potentially offensive/off-the-mark misunderstandings of the status & cultural context of the characters in their country of origin (I promise it's super interesting & I can provide you with links to free pdf copies of the entire Yu translation, i.e. the best one ever created, so feel free to ask!) & maybe also stop constantly stripping away all the nuance of Sun Wukong's character for the sake of either making him an entire asshole so your little meow meow can look completely innocent in comparison and/or making the monkey king's entire life & character revolve around said meow meow."

Like I get that fandom's supposed to be a kind of anything-goes environment, but one thing that honestly seems to be true of a lot of fandoms--and the western one for Sun Wukong & co. is certainly not immune from this--is that there often seems to be a kind of monoculturalization at work in what stories are created & what character interpretations are made popular. Across a multitude of fandoms, you frequently see basically nothing but the exact same tropes being made popular & even being insisted on for the canonical work (especially hasty redemption arcs & enemies to lovers these days), the exact same one-dimensional character types that characters from an original work keep getting shoved into, the exact same story beats, etc. And I get it to an extent, as fandom is generally a space where people just make art and fic for fun & without thinking too hard about it & without any pressure. 

This seems to, however, often unfortunately lead to the mentality that it’s your god-given right to do literally whatever you want with literally any cultural figure without even the slightest bit of thought put into their cultural, historical, and even religious context, even (and sometimes especially) when it comes to figures that are really important in a culture outside your own. For such figures--even if you first encounter them in a children’s cartoon--you should be a little more careful with what you do with them than you would with your usual Saturday morning line-up. It of course has to be acknowledged that there exists a whole pile of absolutely ridiculous & cursed pieces of media that are based on Journey to the West & that were produced in mainland China, but for your own education if nothing else I consider it good practice for those of us (myself certainly included) who aren’t part of the culture that produced JTTW to put more thought into how we might want to portray these characters so that at the very least (to pull some things I’ve seen from the jttw western fandom) we’re not turning a goddess of mercy into an evil figure for the sake of Angst(TM), or relegating other important literary figures into the positions of offensive stereotypes, or making broad claims about the source text & original characterizations of various figures that are blatantly untrue, or mocking heavenly deities because of what’s actually your misunderstanding of how immortality works according to Daoist beliefs. Yet while a lot of this is often due to people not even trying to understand the context these figures are coming from, I do want to acknowledge that the journey (lol reference) to understand even a fraction of the original cultural context can be a daunting one, especially since, as I’ve mentioned before, it can be really hard & even next to impossible to find good, accessible, & legitimate explanations in English of how, for example, the relationship between Sun Wukong and the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China & according to the Buddhist beliefs that define the original work. 

That is to say, I do think it’s an unfortunate, if unavoidable, part of any introduction of an original text into a culture foreign to its own for there to be sometimes a significant amount of misinterpretation, mistranslations, and false assumptions. There is, however, a big difference between learning from your honest mistakes, & doubling down on them while dismissing all criticism of your misinterpretation into that abstract category of “fandom drama.” The latter attitude is kind of shitty at best and horrifically entitled at worst. 

Plus, as I’ve discovered, there is a great deal of interest and joy to be drawn from keeping yourself open to learning aspects of these texts & figures that you weren’t aware of! I can say from my own experience that I’ve always really enjoyed & appreciated it when individuals on this site who come from a Chinese background--and who know much more about the cultural context of JTTW than me--have taken the time to explain its various aspects. It often leaves me feeling like woooooaaaahhhhhHHH!!!! as to how amazingly full of nuanced meaning JTTW is like dang no wonder it’s one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels. 

And I guess that right there is the heart of a lot of my own personal frustration and disappointment with the ways that fandoms often approach a literary work or other piece of media...like don’t get me wrong, a lot of the original works a fandom may grow around are just straight-up goofy & everyone’s aware of it & has fun with it, yet the trend of approaching what are often nuanced and multi-layered works in terms of how well they fit and/or can be shoved into pretty cliche ideas of Redemption Arc or Enemies to Lovers or Hero Actually Bad, Villain Actually Good etc...well, it just seems to cheapen and even erase even the possibility of understanding the wonderful complexity or even endearing simplicity that made these works so beloved in the first place. Again, I feel like I need to make it clear that I’m not saying fandom should be a space where people are constantly trying to one-up each other with their hot takes in literary analysis, but it would be nice and even beneficial to allow room for commentary that strives to approach these works in a multi-faceted way, analysis & interpretations that go against the popular fandom beliefs, & criticism of the work or even of fandom trends (yes it is in fact possible to legitimately love something but still be critical of its aspects) instead of immediately attacking people who try to engage in such as just being haters who don’t want anyone to have fun ever (X_X).   

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Anyway, I know I didn’t cover even half of the stuff you brought up in the first place anon, but I don’t want any interested parties to this post to suffer too long through my text wall lol. I was asked to try my hand at illustrating Guanyin, but as with you I’m nowhere near as informed as I should be about her, so I want to do more research on her history and religious importance before I attempt a portrait. I’ll try my best, and do plan to pair that illustration with my own outsider’s attempt to summarize her character. From what little I do know I am in full agreement that her backstory is so incredibly amazing...just the fact that she literally eschewed the bliss of Nirvana to help all beings reach it, and even split herself into pieces in the attempt to do so (with Buddha granting her eleven heads and a thousand arms as a result)...man, I can see why she’s such a beloved & respected deity. 

----

 As for what western fandom commonly does with everyone’s favorite god-fighting primate...I can talk about this at length if there’s interest, but for this post I’ll just say that I guess one lesson from all of this is that for all the centuries that have passed since Journey to the West was first completed, literally no one drawing inspiration from the original tale in the west (lol) has come even slightly close to being able to equal or even capture half the extent of the nuance, complexity, religious, historical, and cultural aspects, and humor that define Wu Cheng'en's story of an overpowered monkey who defied even Buddha.

So thank the heavens we'll always have the original.

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

what do you think of aang's comments in "the southern raiders" and what they meant to katara? I watched that episode recently with my sister who dislikes atla, and assessed similar things to what certain people of the fandom are saying: "aang didn't understand her", "aang was pushing his beliefs onto her", "it didn't seem like he knew her", etc. she was more fair than those people of course because she did say it was realistic that he'd be so worried since she recognizes that he does love her.

Honestly those arguments are all,, tired. They’re outdated. They’re boring. They’re wrong. They’re a result of a fundamental misunderstanding of A:TLA canon. This isn’t to say that those who genuinely, truly believe these arguments are terrible people (obviously not lmao), but somewhere along the line they had a seed planted in their mind that posits them to have inherent dislike for Aang. And honestly? I just feel sorry for them, because not understanding and appreciating Aang means their A:TLA experience really can’t be that great. But I digress!

“aang didn’t understand her”

Oh, what’s the post? Right - “Fandom once again forgets that Aang is the sole survivor of genocide.” Aang understands better than anyone else what Katara is going through*. There is a direct parallel between Aang finding Gyatso’s skeleton and Katara finding Kya’s body. I’m not going to sit here and argue which was more traumatizing (literally can’t stand when people do that) because you can’t quantify grief like that, but it cannot be denied that Aang has experienced something incredibly similar to what Katara has gone through: the loss of a close parental figure followed by finding said parent’s corpse. Not only that, but Aang and Katara both share a unique sense of helplessness intertwined with their grief regarding their parental figures’ deaths. For Katara, there are the questions of:

- what if I wasn’t a waterbender

- what if I had run a little faster

- what if I had fought against Yon Rha back then

All leading to “Could I have saved her?” For Aang, there are the questions of:

- what if I wasn’t the Avatar

- what if I hadn’t run away

- what if I had stayed to fight the Fire Nation back then

All leading to “Could I have saved him?” Both of them feel incredibly guilty on a personal level about the death of their parental figures, thus blaming themselves. Katara tries to push it off onto Zuko/the Fire Nation and Aang tries to suppress it entirely, but ultimately it is revealed how closely they hold responsibility to their chests. For Aang, it comes out in “The Storm.” For Katara, it comes out in “The Southern Raiders.” So, bullshit that Aang doesn’t understand Katara! He understands her grief better than anyone.

Also, many, many people have gone into this before, but Aang’s example of Appa being stolen was not callous/rude/etc. Appa was the last living piece of his culture. Appa is not “just a pet.” People who insist so are the actual ones being callous, not Aang. And, as Aang himself says, “How do you think I felt about the Fire Nation when I found out what happened to my people?” Aang has experienced more hurt at the hands of the Fire Nation than anyone. There’s a great meta here that delves into Aang’s experiences as the sole survivor of genocide. I don’t understand how someone could acknowledge all that Aang has lost (read: he has lost everything) and then argue that he doesn’t understand Katara’s pain. Like, what? Do you have no sense of empathy?

But most importantly, from Katara herself: “Thanks for understanding, Aang.” She says this after her initial dismissal of him. So take it from the source, my friend - Katara believed Aang understood her. Who are we to argue?

*The only exception perhaps being Sokka, since Kya was indeed his mother, too, but it is worth noting that Sokka did not have the same experience of seeing Kya’s dead body or feeling the intense self-blame that Katara did.

“aang was pushing his beliefs onto her”

It is SO funny how those SAME people have NO problem with everyone in the Gaang telling Aang to kill Ozai the finale! Y’know, when they were disregarding the pacifistic beliefs of his people in exchange for emphasizing their, ahem, more aggressive ones? SO funny! I’m laughing SO hard right now!

Heavy sarcasm, in case it wasn’t obvious. They’re hypocrites and they know it.

But, more importantly, Aang was not pushing his beliefs onto her? At all?? Tell me where in the episode Aang:

- refused to let Katara go after Yon Rha

- told Katara what she was doing was wrong

- told Katara that HE was right and that SHE needed to listen to HIM

Here’s the thing: none of that ever happened! Not only does Aang accept that Katara needs to go (see: “I wasn’t planning to [stop you]. This is a journey you need to take. You need to face this man.”), but he allows her to take Appa on her journey. Appa, the last living piece of his culture. Aang has incredible trust in Katara, and his choice to send Appa with her (essentially sending a piece of himself with her) demonstrates this fact clearly. That should end the discussion point blank, but I guess I’ll break down the lines people seem to have issues with:

1) “It’s okay, because I forgive you. [Pauses.] That give you any ideas?”

Honestly, the criticism this line gets is laughable to me. People use it to argue that Aang was being disrespectful to Katara’s feelings and?? I hate to break it to them, but you HAVE to look at the context a line is in if you’re going to judge it. That is Analysis 101: Context is Everything. This moment is used to break tension. That type of scenario is an entire literary trope, okay? A:TLA did not invent it! Shakespeare literally did it in Romeo and Juliet when he had Peter argue with musicians about something stupid after Juliet’s “death.” The whole point is to break tension before more serious scenes. In R&J, it is before the lovers kill themselves, and in A:TLA, it is before Katara leaves with Zuko to confront Yon Rha. That’s why there’s another moment just like it at the end of that scene! Y’know, Sokka asking to borrow Momo for no reason? It breaks tension! It’s a moment of respite before weighty scenes! It’s incredibly common in every form of media! This is what no Humanities classes did to some of y’all, I swear to God. So yeah, Aang was not disrespecting Katara’s feelings with this. It’s just a tension-breaker. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news for those who devoutly believed it was a sign of Aang being a Horrible Person. You were wrong, ain’t no big thing, go drink some water and stay hydrated okay darlings?

2) “I don’t think so. I think it’s about getting revenge.”

Um, a major point of “The Southern Raiders” is that Aang was right about Katara’s initial drive to face Yon Rha? It was a quest for revenge? Katara literally bloodbends, an ability she was forced to learn and essentially feels cursed to bear? Also, nowhere here does Aang tell Katara she was a horrible person for feeling angry and wanting revenge. He simply brings her attention to the reality that what she’s currently seeking is revenge. He’s worried about her. She’s his best friend! He loves her! He doesn’t want her to kill Yon Rha because he knows that for Katara to have blood on her hands from a revenge quest would hurt her tremendously. (As a matter of fact, the audience knows - or should know - this, too.) So, sorry that Aang expresses concern for her? Apparently not wanting your best friend to murder someone is forcing your beliefs onto them? Damn. Y’all are harsh these days.

3) “The monks used to say that revenge is like a two-headed rat viper. While you watch your enemy go down, you’re being poisoned yourself.” // “Katara, you do have a choice: forgiveness.” // “No, it’s not. It's easy to do nothing, but it’s hard to forgive.” // “But when you do, please don’t choose revenge. Let your anger out, and then let it go. Forgive him.”

I put all the forgiveness quotes together since people tend to complain about them as a whole. But like,, I really don’t see how this is Aang forcing his beliefs onto her? He asks her to choose forgiveness. And just speaking plainly: on an emotional level, it is better for someone to forgive than to murder. Killing someone is not easy, even if you hate that person with every bone in your body, and it will mentally scar whomever does it. Y’all know this! It’s obvious! I shouldn’t have to say it! But Aang knows this, too, and thus he doesn’t want to see Katara kill Yon Rha and perhaps kill a part of herself in the process. Katara is not a killer. I’m not arguing about whether she could have or even if she wanted to, because you know what, she admits she was tempted, but Katara is not a killer. An FMA quote is very fitting here:

“Your hands weren’t meant to kill. They were meant to give life.”

Why should Katara have to live with a man’s murder on her conscience, especially when his death would be a result of fruitless revenge? The answer is simple: she shouldn’t, and Aang doesn’t want her to. Katara is a warrior. A healer. A leader. A friend. But not a killer.

Anyways. Back to my point: Aang is not forcing his beliefs onto her here. He’s offering her another option, the option she ends up choosing, albeit she extends forgiveness to Zuko instead. And Prince Holier-Than-Thou (jk love you Zuzu) acknowledges it himself: “You [Aang] were right about what Katara needed.” Aang didn’t force anything on Katara here. He reminded her of her choices, he reminded her about the consequences of revenge, and he reminded her about the value of forgiveness. Never once did he tell her she had to forgive Yon Rha or else. And when it came down to it, he stepped aside, and he let her go, because he knew this was a journey she needed to take. So… He actually did the exact opposite of forcing his beliefs onto her! He respected her feelings and let her make her own decision! Seriously, how many pairs of anti-Aang goggles do people have to wear to genuinely believe otherwise??

“it didn't seem like he knew her”

Ohhhhhh my God this is SO close to one of the actual points of the episode! So close!! It’s not that Aang didn’t know her; it’s that Katara wasn’t acting like herself. I’ve talked about it before here and here, but Katara was incredibly consumed by her emotions in “The Southern Raiders.” It’s why she ignores Zuko the entire time before they leave on Appa! It’s why she makes that callous comment to Sokka about their mother that we know she never would have made normally! She is drowning in grief about her mother’s absence, guilt regarding her mother’s death, and anger about Zuko (she still does not trust him, and yet he can lead her to her mother’s killer; I don’t know about y’all, but that is really freaking difficult to reconcile). So when Aang compares her to Jet, it’s not a far-off description. She is acting like Jet, because she’s consumed by grief and hurt and anger and she’s not acting like herself. It is instrumental, too, that Katara isn’t acting like herself, because it makes her decision not to pursue revenge and instead offer a second third chance to Zuko even more profound. “I’m proud of you,” Aang tells her, and damn! The audience is, too! I was incredibly proud of her for finding her way out of what can be a bottomless spiral for some people. So again, it wasn’t that Aang didn’t know her. It was that Katara wasn’t acting like herself (I guess meaning… no one knew her?).

In conclusion, literally all of these anti-Aang arguments regarding TSR are exhausting and so easily disprovable. The fact that they somehow manage to live on is evidence that people just want excuses to hate Aang, plain and simple. Like, it’s so easy to just say you don’t vibe with his character? You don’t have to pull BS excuses to “justify” it? I don’t vibe with Ty Lee as much as I do other characters (although I have recently grown much more fond of her; bless the Renaissance for more Mailee content, even if some of it is just a Zukka byproduct), but y’all don’t see me twisting her sacrifice in “Boiling Rock” to make it seem like it was selfish or something (mostly because, spoiler alert, it wasn’t). Like, you can say Aang isn’t your favorite and move on instead of using the same boring rhetoric over and over and over that just makes it look like you lack critical thinking. :/

TL;DR - Aang’s comments to Katara in “The Southern Raiders” came from a place of concern. A place of wisdom. A place of love. And honestly? I think Katara realizes this, and she’s grateful to him all the more for it.

[thebestsandiever]

Regarding the chaos and aftermath of the Verstappen crash at the 2021 British GP

Before I begin, this is solely my own thoughts on the crash and aftermath of it, resources and intel being from various news reports, articles, interviews, social media reactions/on track fans reactions, commentators, careers etc. Also important, this post was made around 11 PM CEST, so other news after that or in the midst of this, I haven’t considered.

  Comments and discussions are welcome, though remember to keep the tone guys. I rarely comment on anything on Tumblr, but looking at this chaos, I felt like sharing a bit.

  Starting on the incident that happened, I don’t believe that I can clearly decide what happened and who caused, and the only comments I have is that I believe it was a racing incident that has no bad intention. We hear in conclusion from sources (there was an after analysis) (e.g. also Lewis’ Sky Sports interview) that both could have given each other space. Lewis trying to get in, and Max defending his position. People who think Lewis did it intentionally clearly have no common sense, no one wants Max to end up going to the hospital (but he is fine so no worries). Of course, nothing excuses that a crash happened, and it’s a big shame.

  All the hate Lewis is getting should tone down, I think it’s fair to be critical in perspective of racing which consists of the crash and his comments regarding it, but anything that comments on something other than that with negativity, shouldn’t be.

  Something that many F1 fans have brought up and Horner I believe (slightly) is Lewis 15+ years of experience in Formula one and numerous of championships. Which I think in any sport or topic isn’t a fair argument, because mistakes happen to anyone, no one is immune to that, though this is not me calling the crash a mistake, because I don’t believe that is the right word. It’s more Lewis knowing the danger of closing in and Max of course defending himself on track, and this is the end result. And if anyone was a viewer of the Euro 2020 Football Cup Finals, it’s a bit like the Southgate criticism on the penalties.

  This also applies to all the fans who bring up Max’ aggressive and old nickname “crashstappen” from his early F1 career. Whether you have your impression from Netflix’ Drive to Survive or the fact that you’re new, anyone will agree that Max has matured greatly both on and off track, in my opinion one of the calmest drivers on the grid considering the amount of criticism, hate and burden that he gets/has. The fact is that there have been some people on Twitter (when I now and later comment on fans and reactions, it’s usually the very chaotic Twitter), that mentions Verstappen’s past, the infamous Baku and this season’s races where Lewis is the one who, in their words, “has backed up and gave space” (the reason I say their words is because I can’t quite remember so I won’t say that I know for sure). But again, as I mentioned, this is not valid, because it doesn’t excuse what happened today. Every track is a title fight, and previous races and tactics doesn’t apply to this. What I mean is that because Lewis gave space previous races, does it mean that Verstappen should crash? Or worded differently, because Max didn’t give space like he has previous times, that “it was coming” or that he should crash? Biggest takeaway from this is that past and future shouldn’t mean more than what happened in the present. This leading me on to a bit of the hate Max got which I think was quite undeserving, especially under his circumstances, which is f1 fans (mostly Twitter) calling it “karma” and using his young past to somehow “justify” the crash.

Also I really disliked the videos of “British fans” (we can’t actually determine that all were British, but it was home track) cheering when the crash happened, but in general I think cheering on a crash will always be awful even if you’re favourite driver gains position. Gladly though, it quickly died down on the stands as they realized it was hard impact. Very Euro 2020 vibes, though a much better English crowd- Just kidding, maybe you can see I’m not happy when any kind of fans act out of order (also I don’t hate English football fans, but sadly, the ones who make stupid actions overshadow the rest).

  Now I also want to comment a bit on the drivers and teams’ comments and the PR.

  So regarding Max’ social media post about the race. I honestly think it’s fair for him to be upset, no one wants to be taken out on the first lap considering that he is leading while a VERY good and competitive Lewis is trailing behind. My first reaction was that it was quite an aggressive post and the part about him unfollowing Lewis (if that is correct, I haven’t seen it myself yet) was obviously implying that he isn’t happy. Though, emotions run high as well does Lewis’ celebration reaction. I know his mind is to win on track and he has always been outspoken about that fact. Also I don’t quite believe that Max’ comments were full heartedly himself, but the PR team considering he’s just been at the hospital. I’m not happy with his post at all, but I understand both from a PR perspective and a driver’s. I believe almost any driver on the track would have said something like that in an interview if it happened to them. This just happened to be online because of health circumstances.

  Regarding Marko and Horner, I must disagree with their aggressiveness or at least the way they decide to comment on it. I do understand the anger, considering the championship but also concern for Max (anyone who knows their relationship knows that they care about him.) Again, I have to say emotions run high and if anything, managers are good at, and this is not specifically only attacking Horner, but it’s stirring up tension. I would say it’s fair for him to say, and quite expected, not saying I think it’s fair for Lewis to receive though (hopefully you get what I mean).

  Commenting a bit on Lewis’ Sky Sports F1 interview, we can confirm he didn’t know about Max going to the hospital before celebrating. Anyone who wins has the right to celebrate, especially at home, so props for his win, though unfortunately through a crash (this meaning Verstappen was his biggest threat on track). Though I wasn’t pleased about the commenting on Max. This leads further into the interview.

  We get Lewis’ insight on the incident and where he sees Max as the aggressive one, both not giving each other space and having the crash as end result. So in conclusion, Max trying to defend his position and Lewis trying to get in, fair. Please watch the interview, because it clears up a lot of what is spoken about in the media.  

My thoughts on Lewis’ response both before and after hearing about Max going to the hospital in the Sky Sports interview, is that he probably could’ve/should’ve toned down on Max being the aggressor, as they were both considering what the crash led to, and him saying that it was just about who was going to give space until it was too late. It kind of goes against what he just said. But I do agree that Lewis has the right to celebrate because he simply won. I also liked that he had championship spirit saying that considering what happened, it didn’t take the shine away from his win. It may sound disrespectful, and I do still kind of think it is, but on the other side, it’s him being competitive, and both drivers have each other’s respect on being able to fight on track. So he’s got the spirit, just maybe not the right interview to show the most competitive spirit (I think the most competitive spirit/response he’s shown this 2021 season)

  A bit more on his spirit and fighting on track is seen from Lawrence Barreto who tells us that Lewis has the “game on” spirit and is ready for attacks on track but there needs to be respect on track “and if not this will happen more often I guess.” - Lewis. Just a bit more closure from another source, I like that he is more responsive, but this does make it sound like he blames Max for it. I think any driver who are up against each other have the right or it makes sense to give the majority of the blame to the other, they have their own rear mirrors (see it from their own perspective when they drive, quite literally), but it isn’t the best comment to be honest. Since he says himself, both could’ve given space.

  My biggest disagreement that I must mention is the penalty Lewis got, which was the 10 second penalty. Assessing the severity of the crash with high speed, 51G impact, first lap etc. I think the penalty didn’t really serve much of a penalty, but this is also me being critical of the penalty system. These 10 second penalties don’t really make you lose that much of position (depends on car), also this is not a blow at Lewis but just the system. Afterwards, he was also given 2 penalty points. I think compared to someone like Yuki who also got 2 penalty points for crossing the white line twice while entering the pits and George yesterday at the Sprint Race (1 penalty point + 3 place grid penalty) are quite different but looking at the number, there isn’t a big difference in what’s given. But all of this penalty talk is on the stewards and system, so nothing against Lewis and he did take his penalty that was given.

  I did not comment much on the actual incident as I have a hard time really deciding (I can admit I see Lewis unintentionally drift a bit in + this being a very fast turn, I believe just a misjudgment but so many fans think it was intentional), so therefore do read and watch the current and coming interviews and articles to get some racing perspective. It keeps updating and even drivers like Riccardo, Leclerc, Alonso etc. have given their comments, and who better to listen to than professionals themselves. So I encourage you to get perspective there, because I know not all of us are the most technical fans, and we tend to comment by being led through a bias and crowd.

  But if we’re feeling a bit tired from today, so far the drivers are leaning towards a racing incident. They speak of it as quite unclear to determine, basically saying that both drivers could’ve done and were doing something --> could’ve given space.

  We all have to remember this situation is a big deal since it’s the only two to be fair at the moment, who are competing for the championship. Both mad talented and on each other every track. Media blows it out more than them and before we know it, they’re back to what they do best, which is drive.

  Heart goes out to Max, it was quite an impact and if not his worst crash so far in his career. His team radio was quite scary to listen to, I’ve never heard him so shook, but he is doing quite fine at the moment, and he will hopefully recover well enough for the next race.

  As well for Lewis, emotions are running high and people are quick to assume and accuse without using common sense that Lewis wouldn’t endanger Max or himself. He has every right to celebrate a win and props for him winning.

  In conclusion to those who has taken the time to read, don’t let my thoughts be any decider, but more so a way to understand and be a bit more open minded. We are all subjective in the end and I try to see from both perspectives and to be critical as well, not being led by others’ opinions. I’ve stated my sources, and this is only my overall thoughts at the very moment, so remember, as drivers evolve and move on, we do too.

  I again encourage you to watch and research with an open mind so not being led on bias, especially if you’re willing to spread anything on the topic. It serves a greater outcome than sprouting from emotions and lack of information, as we have well seen from this sport. Because media does influence and we as an audience is a part of it. So I must remind again, that this is simply my thoughts.

[placebogirl7]

Why Jodie is so hated in DC fandom? - Analysis of an underestimated character and clarification about wrong assumptions

Preliminary remark: this post is just a personal opinion. No intention to start wars of any kind, I respect everyone’s opionion so I want my opinion to be respected too. If you don’t share it, it’s totally ok as it’s totally ok if I don’t share yours.

During these last 5 years I’ve been back into DC fandom, I notice all around the web many people spreading hate towards Jodie (not only here on Tumblr but everywhere, especially in forums and social media pages). It’s ok to not like a character, but you need valid reasons to hate it. If you hate it for bullshit, then it’s only hate based on nothing. And this is what I see everytime I read a bad comment about Jodie’s character. This is really annoying for a fan, to be honest. Now I want to point out some of the most popular reason why Jodie is hated and analyze them (maybe I have already explained my point of view about them in some other posts in the last years, but I will clarify them again).

1) “Jodie has become useless, she’s no more interesting and mysterious as she was at the beginning” You (Jodie haters) really notice this change only in Jodie’s character? Because I can mention at least other 10 characters who, at their first appearance, were described as mysterious and cool and whatever else, but now are “lying on the shelf” for Gosho’s choise. Jodie has been introduced in a mysterious way becase she was suspected to be Vermouth, so Gosho created the suspance around her character and made her act in a shifty way to make the readers believe that she could be one of the BO members. Once it has been revealed that she wasn’t bad, there were no more need to make her act in a shifty way. Many other character who were suspected to be Bo members but in the end were not have shared the same fate. But it’s Gosho’s decision, not Jodie’s fault. It’s not something related to her way of being, it’s a choise of the author.  She has become usless? Ok, let’s face the reality: who is useful among the characters? A very few. Let’s take all the FBI Team: Gosho has painted them as a bunch of idiots that without Akai can’t do nothing. To make Akai “shine” he has denigrated Jodie, James and Camel. Camel doesn’t do nothing of his own, he always wait for Akai’s orders; James is supposed to be the chief but actually he does what Akai says; Jodie seems to make mistakes everytime she did something, even if she’s doing it in the right way. But again, it’s not their fault because we have seen them doing even very good things and being brilliant, so they have potential: it’s Gosho who decided to treat them like dumbs so Akai can be like a God who will save all of us. Don’t get me wrong, I love Akai, but I hate what Gosho is doing to put him in the spotligh. Again, it’s Gosho’s fault, not the characters who suddenly became usless and not interesting. The hate should be towards Gosho, not Jodie.

2) “After Akai’s death Jodie has become so annoying, she’s weak and she’s always crying” Ok...question for you Jodie haters: if you suddenly lose someone you love, what will be your reaction? Will you laugh as you were watching a sitcom, will you organize a big party with your friends or will you start throwing confetti in the air? Because if you do one if these 3 things, then...congratulations, you have won the highest award for the most cool /stone-harted/ heartless person in this world! You have no rivals, not even Shuichi Akai who is now jealous of you!  Seriously...if the man you love so much dies suddenly, it’s LEGITIMATE to cry, to be desperate, to lose yourself. It’s like losing a part of you. But despite feeling lost, Jodie has been the only one among the FBI who never believed to Akai’s death since the beginning and she fought long and hard to find out the truth behind his death. Since when on the TV they show the incident at Rahia Pass and they say a man was dead burned in his car, she immediately thought that it wasn’t Shuichi and that he had surely used a trick to escape. Guess what? She was right! Do you still think she’s stupid?  Jodie isn’t weak, she just faced an emotional breakdown due to the loss of a person she loved. This is being human, not being weak. Jodie isn’t always crying, she cried when everything and everyone around her was making her believe that Shuichi was really dead. At a certain point she stopped crying, when she saw hope, a hint that Shu was still alive. She isn’t a crybaby, she just needed hope. 

3) “Since Akai’s death, Jodie hasn’t done anything interesting or exciting, she has become boring” If you didn’t notice by yourself, then I will reveal you the biggest secret of all: after Akai’s death, or better to say after the end of Scarlet Arc when Jodie and Camel discovered about Shuichi being alive and hiding behind Subaru’s identity...FBI hasn’t appeared anymore in the manga for ages, since the last files which came our recently! How are they (included Jodie) supposed to do something exciting or interesting if they don’t even appear? Gosho put them in the closet with the naphthalene and he concentrated his attention on other characters (first of all Amuro, which in my opinion deserves more hate than Jodie because of his behaviour but somehow is adored as a God in the fandom).Then one day he get up and he had the big flash of genius: “FBI still exist in my story, so better take them out of the closet and make them do something”. But in the end, as always, only Akai did something relevant. Camel has been a puppet in the hand of Akai and Jodie made a mistake. So, again, it’s not Jodie who have changed and become a worst character, it’s how Gosho is painting her and the other FBI agents which makes them appear less interesting or capable at the eyes of the readers.

4) “Jodie has become stupid” About this I made a “funny” post long time ago, so I will put the link below. I think it’s enough to explain all:

https://placebogirl7.tumblr.com/post/156414088650/jodie-has-become-more-and-more-stupid  

I will also add something that surely will unleash the wrath of somebody and maybe they will start complain, but I honestly don’t care because it’s nothing against someone in particular but just something I noticed. This is absolutely not an attempt to start a ship war nor a free criticism end in itself, because I reaspect everyone ship and opinion even if I don’t agree with that. The fact is that I noticed that often (not always of course, but often) these criticism about Jodie are moved by ShuKemi fans, and considering what I said above it seems that their hate for Jodie is just because Jodie was Akai’s girlfriend before Akemi and she has the possibility (if Gosho wants) to be his girlfriend again the future, not really because they analyzed Jodie’s character before spreading shit about it.  So I would like to point out to these ShuKemi fans who idolize Akemi’s character so much and tell shits about Jodie that Akemi sentenced herself to death with her own hands after making the worst and wrong choise she could have ever done in her life. I’ve seen many times Akemi being called “a hero” but chosing to death without obtaining nothing in return isn’t being a hero, it’s just being stupid in my opinion. Being a hero is another thing. You’re an hero if you sacrifice yourself with the goal to obtain something that worth your sacrifice, but if you sacrifice yourself knowing that you won’t obtain nothing apart from your death...well, that’s not being a hero at all. And before someone will say “You talk like this because you’re a ShuJodie fan”, please be aware that Akemi’s death has been shown before Jodie appearance and before knowing that Jodie had a relationship with Shu before he started dating Akemi, so I would have no reason to say these things just because of such trivial matters. The reason why I’ve never been touched by Akemi’s death since the beginning is because I think she has consciously chosen to die since the beginning of her “masterplan”. C’mon, how can you really think to make a deal with criminals? There’s a reason if they are criminals... She really thought that Gin would have kept his promise? If the answer is yes, then I’m sorry to say that but she’s stupid twice. So before saying that Jodie is the stupid one, at least analyze the things deeply and objectively. 

Now I know that this will make someone mad but I’m sorry, it’s what I think. And not because I see Akemi as a “threat” for Jodie’s relationship with Shuichi, as I always said I don’t need to spread shit on some character to covince myself and the other that my couple is better, I really don’t need this. I love my couple and stop, the rest doesn’t matter. If I don’t like a character, there’s always a deeper motivation behind, which has nothing to do with OTPs and trivial matters like that. But before saying I don’t like a character and draw up charges on it, I always analyze the character. I’m sorry that nobody do it with Jodie. 

Please also note that I used Akemi as example of character being idolized for no real reason because, as I said, I noticed that who talk shits about Jodie are often ShuKemi fans, but there are also other characters of course who are idolized when they actually have nothing to be idolized for. Another example is Amuro, I recently made a post about what I think of him.  Now if you don’t like what I think and what I said you are free to unfollow me, I’m sorry but I really needed to make this post because it has become more and more annoying to see nonsense unkindness things about Jodie.

Peace, love and Jodie Starling ♥

[weaselbeaselpants]

I have a lot to say and not enough time to say it. It hurts, but ya’ll know what this is about so if you want my full fandom retrospective opinion thing guys, here.

I’ve been following Vivienne’s art and career since I found her on dA in 2009. I’ve basically grown up with her and have a wide range of opinions up and down her collective work. I must stress that I do not know her as a person and no matter how critical I get in my personal time if I somehow met her in real life or converse with her online again (like, back in the day we went back and forth. She was pretty nice to me), I’d be humble and congratulate her for her success.

Critique does not, EVER equate to attacking people.

But

the reason I don’t call myself a VivziePopVivzmind-fan is the exact same as to why I don’t like the proud use of ‘anti’. Let me try and explain -

The vast majority of Viv fans are just that: fans. Viv’s one of their favorite artists and they’re happy for her and obviously defensive when some mouth breather pops into their fan discussion calling her and all of them trash. Quite a lot of the Hazbin fans I know in my circle of friends are all pretty accepting and agree on the problematic notions and implications of her work.

HOWEVER, there’s a vocal minority in the VivziePop fandom that were and still are toxic. Their specific interest in Viv back in the day was toxic...and now that she’s moved on into a successful career I doubt they’ve gone away, considering the things I’ve heard. These people - they’d flood Viv’s comments sections and stuff with messages like they were talking to her when they weren’t and they’d unironically call her a god in a way that feels like gaslighting, ex: “I’ll NEVER be as good as you Viv! My art is just sooooo unpopular oh god you are incredible no one will ever like you as much as meeeee”. It made me uncomfortable. It made me not want to be around her because these people took Viv’s role in their lives so seriously and their demand for her attention...it struck a nerve.

These same fans have been around long enough to see actual shitlords - the likes of Kiwifarms and tapatalk wikis - come in and actually harass Viv. Viv’s been sent revenge porn by sick freaks who think they’re funny and believe she deserves it. No. In my non-name fan bystander opinion, Viv’s got some shit to work on, but no one deserves raperevenge porn. EVER. It was genuinely bad and yes Viv and her base have every reason to NOT TRUST these communities. Unfortunately, when these incidents happened, these particular fans took it upon themselves to gatekeep the fandom and act like Viv’s unofficial guard against any kind of decenting opinion of her, all without her say so.

((to the critics who will be all “but Viv or Faust said THIS to their fans-”, like I said, Viv’s far from perfect but regardless of how much she prolly wanted people to side with her I’m gonna guess that she didn’t want people sending transphobic death threats to DollCreep. Again, and this is coming from a bystander here, I have a feeling Viv knows about some of the toxicity but doesn’t know how/want to address it - which is a conversation all it’s own.))

This particular breed of VivziePop “fan” holds so much toxicity in her fandom(s). They aren’t the only cause, but they’re there. They feel entitled to her attention and her approval. They creep me out. Having spoken to other much-less critical admitted fans of Viv around me, these fans appear to creep everyone else out and put the rest of the fandom on edge. They’re gatekeepers. They’re creeps. Like the bronies and SU fans of yestertodayyears, they know harassment exists and that people have crossed the line - so they think any means is necessary to prevent that is automatically good. I could pile together all the incidents and folks who’ve had bad runs ins with this aftershock of Viv-obsession, but I do have a life of my own and this post is already stupid long so I’ll just list out the biggest examples and provide receipts when asked.

Critical blogs have gotten RAPE and death threats because they don’t like Viv’s art. HonestZoophobiaCriticisms, a blog I interracted with back in the day, def got one. Now Viv’s opinion of crit-blogs is that they’re “bad takes” but I can assure you she doesn’t want that shit being said on her behalf.

I’ve seen young artists get blacklisted from sites and forums cause they so much as post a redesign. Viv and co get told through the grapevine that someone’s making hatespeech and so preemptively block said person (prolly cause they’re in the middle of WORKING and can’t deal right now) only to find out after the fact that no, it was just a kid drawing their version of her characters. There’s serious miscommunication issues within the fandom about who’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and once you get the actual staff involved in this game of telephone you’re begging for trouble. The problem acknowledged, however, it’s souly from the “Viv never did anything wrong camp”. No word is said about how ugly the fandom is under the surface it’s all one type of person’s fault and not complicated’. Blah

I’ve only ever had ONE obsessive ‘fan’ who’d stalk me, mock me, and then redraw my art just to get attention from me. That shit fucked with my head. As a follower hundreds of miles away from Viv who’s agreed/disagreed with her through the years - I absolutely believe her when she says she hates ‘creeps’ and that she doesn’t want anyone in her fandom spreading hate on her behalf. It’s the one thing about her I’m POSITIVELY sure of. Whether she believes that said underlying harassment exists and/or is even a problem within her fandoms is anyone’s guess. That’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to write stupid blog entries like this, talk about fandoms and media and how they and the real world affect one another, and rb fan art I like. I’m cautiously optimistic fan with a side of salt.

Mixed opinions and critique within a fandom CAN and SHOULD exist. Hazbin Hotel has been greenlit by a studio! It has a product line of merchandise you buy. Helluva Boss is getting eight more episodes this coming year (yeeee:3yeeee). Two of Viv’s properties are now products. Nothing is immune from critique. And in critique you will find a lot of people who are not ‘nice’. Critique or analysis doesn’t have to be nice. There will be, in Viv’s words’ ‘bad takes’ on her writing. Maybe they will be actual CinemaSins-styled bad takes or maybe Viv is just mad that people don’t love and feel inspired by her characters the way she wants them to - it’s a fact she’s going to have to get used to.

((TBH, I’m pretty sure she’s already realized that criticism of all types need to exist. It’s just that, again, her and the SpindleHorse staff are kind of overwhelmed by all matter of takes and opinions coming their way they kinda can’t deal weeding out the fair ones from the assholes, so she lumps them all together.))

Shitposters, ironic fans, unironic fans, critical fans, just critics of Hazbin and Helluva CAN and WILL exist. They should exist and not feel threatened by the megafandom. There are people out there who are one step further and rightfully bothered by Hazbin/Helluva’s use of incorrect symbols, portrayal of certain topics, and the response by creators. These people have strong opinions and are actually disgusted by Viv. They deserve to exist too and should not be vilified because, like me, they’re commentary doesn’t consist of anything personal towards the people at Spindlehorse or the fans of her works. They can rant, they can be professional, they can be petty and they can be fair. But they will exist. You have to deal with it.

I am an ADD/OCD ridden autistic woman with serious anxiety issues who has no one to talk to half the time and so only HAS my fandom to communicate with. But that’s just it - it’s a fandom. A community. You have to learn to not think souly of yourself and of others in a community. A fandom doesn’t exist just for you or any one person. You have the right to be angry and defend or be offended. And it’s in the spirit of that that I ask, prrraaaaaay even, that I please

NOT BE CALLED AN “ANTI-ANTI” for not liking the moniker?!

I DON’T TO BE AN “ANTI”. Not ironically, not unironically. ‘Anti’ should be for politics and shit like pedophiles, necrophiles, nazis, serial killer stans, Trump, racists, antisemites, terfs, animal abusers, rapists, and antivaxxers. Anti should only come into critical media analysis when these ethical issues follow suit IN TO fandom discussion. ((EX: Anime and MLP proudly waving their cp and non-con into the public eye; Hazbin appropriating cultural symbols which are not satanic; Basically anything that concerns John K or Butch Hartman.))

If your DNI list unironically consists of the entirety of one fandom:  CONGLATURATIONS! You have done the exact same thing these particular creepy Viv fans have done: monopolize the conversation. And yes, people I’m referring to, IT’S STILL A PROBLEM EVEN IF YOU’RE FIGHTING RACISM/SEXISM/HOMOTRANSPHOBIA.

There are hundreds of Vivziefans who ARE more critical, accepting of faults, interested in discussion and especially rewrite and redesign stuff who would LOVE to engage with you and give you a follow. There’s hundreds of people who no doubt agree with you!

But the thing I’ve seen these very proud AntiHazbinVivzieHelluvaWhatever blogs do is lash out at fans for continuing to like Viv and consume Viv’s art in a healthy way. What the actual fuck is your problem?

I get it. Say a crazy Hazbin fan gets on your case for even SUGGESTING Viv could be homophobic ((”SHE’SBIANDWORKSWITHGAYPPLblahablahblah”)). They get in your face, make some callouts, try to rile up support against you, leave disgusting harassment throughout your social media? Absolutely ban worthy. After that it’s perfectly understandable why you don’t want to engage with anything HHHBZPVivzierelated because you’re so fucking tired of being labeled an abuser or “just jealous” for having an opinion on a show you don’t like. I’m with you!

But,

A fan agrees that something in the canon is bad or that Viv did something they don’t like?

A fan likes your silly shitpost meme?

A fan asks if they can like Hazbin and follow you at the same time? 

A fan does fan art of something you don’t like?

If your response to any of these ^^^ things is to get LOUD and accusatory, Vivsplain them about how they’re an absolutely awful person to ever question YOUR opinion, or just block them without a second thought? You’re a petty, vendictive shit and you also need to learn to let things go. I’m sorry but you do. As I already said, Viv’s work is a brand at this point, not just the work of a singular person. As such, there are gonna be mixed opinions and you can’t judge every single one of these people by what they like. You’re a shitty critic with a shitty attitude and yes that will demean the value of what you’re saying. This is bad because, if you’re trying to point out how Angel Dust’s abuse IS handled terribly; gay rep in Viv’s work is weak and terrible; the show appropriates closed practices; the fandom makes excuses for predatory artists and creepy behavior and individuals who have sketchy pasts - I’M WITH YOU. WE NEED TO BE TALKING ABOUT THIS SHIT. JUST BECAUSE THESE ARE ADULT CARTOONS SET IN HELL MEANS THERE SHOULD BE ANYTHING CLOSE TO 2013 PONY-TUMBLR. <<<---- this shit is as important to me as it is to you and I really don’t like being called an abuser or apologist for saying “hey maybe blowing up at ppl for the shows they like ISN’T the way to go about this”. 

But I have, just like the good old days of 2015 Zoophobia of yore, been blocked because I admit to being tired of ‘Anti’ being equated to ‘critical’. Same with hater.

Critical DOES NOT = Anti+Hater. I’m fucking tired of people saying it does and I’m tired of people taking up the term as some weird form of fandom reappropriation. It’s stupid.

Tl;dr: Once upon a time, I was in a budding fandom for something I liked made by an indie artist I watched on dA. I wanted to be a bigger fan than I was already, but was told by toxic people within said fandom that I couldn’t be part of it for reasons they’d made up in their head about my ‘motives’ against Viv. My admiration for Viv or what I liked about Zoophobia didn’t matter because I thought the story was really rushed and people weren’t being truthful with how they really felt about it - ergo, I HAD TO GO. 

Flash forward 8 years later- My opinion of Viv’s body of work has changed but I still find myself in love with her style and some of her characters. I want to be on a forum or service that gives a healthy look at the problems there are with this series and fandom...and I’m met repeatedly by petty bs where people are again at each other’s throats. And yes, I do think it’s causing more harm than good especially when you insist there’s a “x person shouldn’t be trusted” mentality when fighting actual fucking racist, xenophobic, predatory bullshit.

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: this article is part of the Amerikan Musik: Fascism Ascendant in the USA collection on ninaillingworth.com. For further analysis of the chud rush insurrection attempt in Washington D.C. on January 6th, 2021, join my co-host Nick and I for the No Fugazi Podcast episode “In Between Days: Politics, Violence & Fascist F*ckery.”

Counting Coup

I must confess that I’ve never been particularly good at the “I told you so” essay; which is probably why I failed to capitalize on my work about Russiagate, despite being literally the only person I’m aware of who ultimately got the answer one hundred percent right. Furthermore, after roughly five years of writing about the rise of Americanized fascism through the lens of the objectively fascist Trump administration, I am at this point completely Trumped the f*ck out. I would very much like to pivot to critiquing the incoming neoliberal authoritarian Biden regime and their loyal muppets in the media; but neither the news cycle, nor contrarian faux-left analysts with equivocating hot takes will let me. 

All of which is to say that I find this ritual somewhat embarrassing, and this might come off as a little perfunctory. 

On June 6th, 2016, I published an essay formally stating that I thought Trump was himself, a fascist; although I’d certainly already implied as much in previous articles and on social media. At that point I was very concerned that Trump would win the upcoming election, but I wasn’t sure how much fascist crap he’d actually be able to do under the American system of government.  

By March 1st, 2017, I’d seen enough of Trump’s act to say his administration was enacting a fascist agenda and that it was time to ostracize and oppose those who supported that fascist agenda.

By August 30th, 2017, and in the wake of the deadly nazi riot in Charlottesville, I wrote that Trump was building an alliance of violent reactionary thugs, law enforcement officials and an objectively fascist Republican party to intimidate political opposition. I also warned that Trump and his Department of Justice would try to declare their protesting political opposition terrorists and use that threat to subvert civil liberties, erode democracy and install fascism.

I don’t want to simply list every article I wrote about Trump’s fascist presidency here, but along the way I wrote about liberals using fascism to punch left, corporate media complacency in the face of a fascist threat, the Trump DoJ’s objectively fascist attempts to criminalize J20 inauguration protesters as terrorists, the need to present a united front on the American left to oppose fascism, the GOP’s fascist attempts to rig the next presidential election, and literal f*cking concentration camps. If you’re up for a long, emotional and highly personal read, you can follow my entire saga of trying to warn people about the fascist nature of both Trump and the society he was presiding over, in this August 2020 essay on ninaillingworth.com.

In 2020, and after a rough patch in my personal life that happened to coincide with Trump going full-on Mussolini against Black Lives Matter activists protesting the police murder of George Floyd, and then “antifa terrorists,” I came back to write an essay definitively presenting the core evidence (up to that point) that Donald Trump was a fascist. Furthermore, in the same lengthy essay I mentioned above, I correctly analyzed how Trump would attempt to rig the election, correctly laid out the basic foundations of the right’s “legal” attempts to overturn the election in the wake of a Trump loss, and accurately predicted that if all that failed, he would summon the chuds and try to retain power by force. Crucially, I also pointed out that this strategy probably wouldn’t work, but couldn’t be ignored because of widespread right wing institutional support and the fact that even a crappy coup, is a very bad thing for a liberal democracy.

That fall, I wrote about Trump’s revenge killing, political assassination of an anti-fascist activist merely accused of a crime, about how corporate media had primed America for the fascist moment, and additionally worked on a five part No Fugazi Podcast series detailing every aspect of America’s long flirtation with fascism; during this podcast series, my co-host Nick and I also (repeatedly) predicted Trump would try to steal the election in the courts and then attempt to launch a doomed chud uprising when that inevitably failed.

Finally over that same time period and running into the post-election stages of the Swine Emperor’s presidency, I wrote a number of rebuttals and explainers; including pieces explaining what fascism is, why rich people are helping to install it now, why even stupid coups have consequences and have to be stopped before they erupt in chud violence, why it doesn’t matter that Trump isn’t exactly like Hitler, why it’s a serious problem that about a third of the country is done with democracy and now refuses to accept elections they don’t win, why fascist billionaires don’t need Trump specifically anymore, why fascism will survive the eventual fall of the Klepto Kaiser, and finally why the crypto-libertarian, contrarian “left” can sincerely blow their equivocating sympathizer nonsense out their collective butthole.   

Please also note that the vast majority of the essays above themselves contain literally hundreds of evidentiary citation links, and this was further supplemented by dozens and dozens of Twitter threads that have unfortunately been lost to history in the wake of my recent (permanent) Twitter suspension. 

In light of the fact that Trump is in fact a fascist, did in fact try to declare his political enemies terrorists, did in fact try to turn the army, Homeland Security, and chud vigilantes on those who opposed him, did in fact attempt to rig and then invalidate an election, and ultimately did inspire a chud insurrection designed (poorly) to overturn the results of that election, please allow me to declare complete and total victory while metaphorically asking my twitchy critics how my butt tastes. I could go on, but when you’ve left your opponents crying on Twitter about how the Apple Store de-platforming Parler is the real fascism, it’s best to just take the win gracefully and walk away from that wreckage.

A Jute Glute Riot

Given that I’m writing this on the morning of January 12th, literally thousands of articles about the Capitol Hill riot itself have already been written, and I just spent eighty minutes breaking down Trump’s desperate chud rush insurrection on the last episode of No Fugazi, I’m not going to waste time on blow by blow coverage of the pathetic uprising on January 6th, in Washington, D.C.

Readers who are looking for what I felt was a good, in-the-moment examination of the actual riot are encouraged to check out this January 6th article from The Daily Poster:

The Insurrection Was Predictable by David Sirota

While I think Sirota’s piece does a very good job of hinting at the larger coordination involved in this event, I also feel it’s important to note here that counterfactual arguments designed to minimize this event are sheer and utter bunk. This was a planned insurrection, attended by (ex) members of the military and American law enforcement, aided by Capitol Hill Police and the Department of Defense, funded by rich fascists, inspired by right wing media, as well as an openly fascist Republican Party and the goddamn president of the United States; this wasn’t harmless, people literally died and members of Trump’s fascist mob clearly had designs on committing politicized acts of violence against their perceived enemies.

Look, does it burn my backside that sh*t-tier neoliberal ghouls who enabled Trump’s fascist agenda at every turn, are now publicly patting themselves on the back for recognizing Trump’s fascist intentions all along? You betcha, Sparky. But my feelings don’t stop reality from being real; this was a doomed, stupid coup attempt, but even stupid coup attempts have consequences. 

I couldn’t spare a single tear for a billionaire fascist who lost his Twitter account, or neo-nazi chuds getting chased off social media, but the crypto-libertarian apologists among us are correct when they say the incoming neoliberal authoritarian regime will weaponize the Jan 6th, 2021 chud rush riot to attack left wing dissent. In fact, I predicted that part too; it just has no bearing on the reality that Trump is a fascist, Trumpism is fascism and what we just saw was a failed coup attempt; reality doesn’t really care how any of that makes you feel, folks.

There are dark days ahead for all of us at this point, and while the events of last week are almost certainly the end of the line for the Klepto Kaiser himself, American fascism isn’t going anywhere and the sh*tlibs are about to bring the hammer down on their real enemies - the burgeoning Pig Empire left.

The sooner we can collectively look in the mirror, accept the reality of what just happened and stop fighting over objective facts, the sooner we can get focused on winning “the war between us” against the incoming Biden Regime. Or, folks on the contrarian faux-left could keep carrying water for Josh f*cking Hawley instead, I guess. 

Game, blouses; now tell Mike Tracey to get back in his f*cking hole.

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

[spine-buster]

A ten (10!!!!!) part ask / analysis sent to me by @canadianheartgirl

hi, v. how is life going? hope things are better on your end.so, i was reading your answer abt willy being needy and it got me thinking. aberdeen has a very close family and close friends. she can spend holidays eating her mom's cooking, stay late at her parent's and have her dad drive her to her place, cuddle with her little brother. she's living an independent life and going after her dreams, but with this whole emotional support close to her. phisically close. willy doesn't.

its not to say he doesn't have his family support or his friends', that they aren't close too, or that things getting hard he's on his own, but we got to see him himself talk about how it feels like people aren't listening, or paying attention. on top of that, he has intense criticism all the time from media and some leafs fans. he says he doesn't care about it, but how much of it was too much to get him to this 'not caring' point?

hearing people talk bad things abt you and your work ethic is a horrible thing in any field of work, imagine in such a intense one like hockey? bet this sh*t does get him maybe more than he's letting on, specially with the impact of this coments being him changing his life entirely, up and leavig what's (and who's) familiar, and we already saw how much this specific thing affects him.

guess what i'm trying to say with all this rant i went on, is that i got extremely focused on aberdeen's experiences (specially her NSFW ones), all the learning she's getting on this new world she got to enter, and her growth overall because we aways expect to read this well-thought arcs for the OC's of the spine buster universe. but this time, it just hit me how deep your 'hockey characters' are too.

of course we can see there's intense research about the real live version of them: the way they behave, the way they speak, their backstories, their mannerisms... (i mean, I never gave a second glance at willy's direction before TPWP, but now everytime I read that "willy giggled" i can almost listen it because that's exactly how he acts, it's what we see in his interviews. he giggles easily about the most silly things.).

but beyond this real life aspect of the 'hockey character-willy' it's stiking what you're giving us about him, the levels we get to see: the vulnerability, the fears, the needs, the wants and dreams beyond hockey.  i feel like we get to know this  'hockey character' on ways we didn't with any of the other ones.

yes, morgan and fred were diferent people by the end of bree an aleida's arcs, and we got to know other facets of them that we didn't when their stories begun, but with this story it feels like you're developing willy too, not just the OC. does that makes any sense?

it's not that we didn't get it with the others at all... i mean, we read about fred's numbness and the life aleida brought him, we saw morgan open his eyes to how harsh life can be outside what mold he knew.  but this time it feels like the focus is the both of them - as individuals and as parts of a couple.

i don't know if it's because willy and aberdeen are just so much younger than the other characters,  and we're watching them (and their relationship) grow... i don't know. it's still very much so aberdeen's story, but the willy character became a world on it's own.

i hope this doesn't backfires and you read it as some sort of critic. please see it as a huge compliment  because it's written out of a place of real admiration of your writing and your ability to create such round characters and arcs. i don't know why i got into this whole daydream just from your answer to an ask, but i thought maybe you'd like to know how much i enjoy and admire your universe, your writing- the talent and thw work. Stay safe <3

My answer:

It’s so so so so SO SO SO SO right to say that Aberdeen has a support network while she works on achieving her dreams close to her, whereas William doesn’t, and that’s a big reason why he’s so needy.  In the aftermath of that Carolina game we heard him tell Aberdeen he doesn’t talk much because he felt people weren’t listening.  But he knows that Aberdeen always listens, which is why he always talks to her.  It’s another reason why he needy too – he likes to be listened to.  I think we all do, as human beings.  Willy is no exception.

The constant comments from the media about his “attitude” and work ethic definitely don’t help the situation, but he really did learn to tune them out a long time ago.  He could care less what they think or what they say about him.  The only thing he would care about is if they ever said a thing against Aberdeen.  He’d go apoplectic.  He’d go apeshit.  He’d burn the entire city down.  I think he’s very much like Morgan that way – both of them would burn down Toronto (and Long Island, in Morgan’s case) if anybody bothered Bee or Aberdeen.  

And yes, my stories are very much about my OFCs and focuses on them, but I would be doing a disservice to the characters I’ve created in Morgan and William (and Fred!) if I didn’t let them grow with my OFCs too.  They are definitely deep on their own level.   If I didn’t give them their own vulnerability, their own fears, their own needs, their own wants and dreams beyond hockey, they would be static characters next to incredibly dynamic characters, and that wouldn’t be good writing.  

So yes, I am developing Willy too, and yes, your comments make sense!  I think it does help that they are younger – I’m acutely aware that most of you are in your late teens and early 20s (I’m an old hag lmfao) so you relate more to these characters and their actions and decisions because they are your age.  

[le-fils-de-lhomme]

In your opinion what youtubers are particularly bad offenders at making bad media criticism/analysis?

So I’m not going to name youtubers who are the worst offenders but I want to name some trends that I feel mark something as bad media criticism. I’m doing this because I don’t really want to deal with stans and also because I want you to make your own decisions. 

So, I think one of the biggest marker of bad media criticism is when you see the title of a video and it’s reminiscent of those Cracked videos or articles from back in the day. A good example of this is people who assert that Beauty and the Beast is about Stockholm Syndrome. The argument is Belle is locked in with Beast with no means of escape and falls in love with him due to Stockholm Syndrome. It’s short, sweet, and snappy. It also ignores any and all parts of the movie that contradicts this. Stockholm Syndrome being the media trope that won’t die is a discredited disorder that gained prominence through bad science and bad analysis.

In Beauty and the Beast, Belle isn’t there against her will. She makes that choice out of love for her father. She also does escape at one point in the movie because the Beast frightens her. The Beast lets her go at the end of movie because it is symbolic of the character growth that he has gone through. Arguments like that may seem sound but often times those arguments are built upon a shallow to nonexistent understanding of the source material. Of course you can blame this on the fact that one interpretation of stories gets absorbed into the wider culture at large. It becomes the only interpretation and people then don’t often go and explore that story because of that one interpretation. It’s understandable but it’s a tiresome trend coming from people whose stated profession would imply that they’re interested in enlightening people about media.

There is also a trend of youtubers who want to have it both ways. They want to be clowns and they also want to saying something serious about the state of media when it suits them. Humor can be a way to point out a problem in a way that make it accessible to your audience. However, if your whole schtick is being as nitpicky as possible and being comically ignorant of how the business of production works it’s going to be hard, nigh impossible for you to step out of that mold and say that what you’re doing has something significant to say about the state of whatever piece of media you’re looking at.

Related to the above point there is a trend here and all over the internet generally, of using terms that are in common use but misunderstanding how they’re defined and used. Death of the Author is misused often. Plot hole as a concept seems to have lost any and all meaning. People have begun to label things as plot holes that were just things that weren’t explored in the work in as much detail. People have learned a couple of these terms through pop culture osmosis and continue to misuse them to shape their relationship with media.

A very prominent trend I’ve seen is that youtubers won’t approach something neutrally. Of course no one is obligated to be kind in their treatment of something they disliked. But at the same time there are many good movies out there that I dislike that doesn’t automatically make it bad. There are movies that are objectively bad. There are movies that are very flawed. But sometimes certain things just aren’t made for you. For example I do not like the movie Amelie. It is a movie that is well-acted, well shot, and has a very nice, cute aesthetic. It is not a movie that comes together for me. I don’t care for it. It does not mean that it is a bad movie. Though of course, many people won’t click on a video where the youtuber said “Yeah I saw it. It’s okay. It kind of petered out in the middle.” The algorithm promotes videos that have catchy, colorful thumbnails and controversial titles. People who want to make being a youtuber a career need to get that engagement and ad revenue somehow. 

A lot of these people do not have many qualifications for what they want to create. I’m not saying you need to have a degree in whatever you want to review. The people who have the most interesting insight to impart to you are on YouTube but they’re not the most popular people. They’re doing stuff like giving free lessons on how to light a scene to create a mood, how you transform a page of script into several shots that convey both the script and your vision, and giving you basic editing tips. These things require a skillset and they’re not as easy as the trend of youtube analysis. This section is a bit of a rant and is off topic. I guess I’m getting old. 

I can’t really describe this next trend in one word. There are many ways to analyze media. Sometimes that can work really well and shed a lot of light that the viewer may not have considered. Most of the time it ends with the youtuber creating a critique of a well-established director with a distinct style. The youtuber may dislike how the director did X thing in the movie. To demonstrate why the director did X thing wrong the youtuber will reference another director who they say did X thing correctly because they appreciate X thing. So therefore the first director doing X thing is a demonstration of [Assertion that is kind of wild and depends on being able to read the first director’s mind]. 

And if you want a real and true pet peeve of mine apart from my mini rant is this. There are people especially on the left leaning side who I feel, value art as as a means to radically change minds because of whatever meaning they ascribe to it. There are some studies that show that art, particularly movies can get you to think about changing your mind. The majority of people don’t consume art in that way. There is art that is explicitly political like Sergei Eisenstein’s work. Many Hollywood movies that feature the US military glorify it. But is the consumer really looking for or aware of that political meaning? Ultimately art has to make money. You have to get a little bit of a return in order to make your next project. Your art has to have some commercial value, unless your a person who has enough money to live on and therefore you don’t have to profit from your art then go you. You’re very lucky. The biggest downside with political art, all art really, is that you can have the clearest possible meaning. You can be completely unsubtle and people will still misinterpret what you have created. And so we return to the first point. 

I hope this helpful. Please let me know what you think. 

[jyndor]

Cop-thing-anon here:

(I don't believe in the blue lives matter thing by the way)

I do get where you're coming from. I guess I see the thing about cops and cop AUs differently because the police is different and not as fucked up in my country. The thing about the fanart is just..I think you're reading too much into it. I don't think the artist really focused on the skin colour of Sokka, I mean, it's a kids show. Skin colour was never really mentioned or important in atla. But Sokka's personality is most likely why the artist was inspired to draw him as a "gangster", with azula (the villain) being a cop. It is kind of insensitive to draw that with the events going on, but I think that a lot of people in the fandom take some things way too seriously, for a kids show back in the late 2000's anyway.

hey anon, I say this with love and I am being sincere. I'm gonna need you to rewatch the show if you think skin color didn't matter. and it doesn't matter where you live because there is no part of the world, no culture, that isn't shaped by colonialism. I don't mean to be condescending so please bear with me, I truly believe in educating people as a part of allyship and anti-racism.

Anon, please know that I am not angry or anything but sincere in what I’m about to say. Just bear with me because I know that unlearning shit is difficult and can be painful, but we’ve gotta do it. I do appreciate you wanting to have this conversation at all. And I’m not writing this just for your benefit - this is for anyone who wants to learn about why A) race is a part of ATLA’s narrative and B) why critical analysis of mass media is actually important. So I’m not assuming you don’t know basic things about this stuff, I’m not trying to be condescending.

Now we’re gonna fix colonialism and imperialism XD wee okay here we go.

No matter where you live in the world you have some awareness of skin color. Your understanding of race might be different than mine, in fact it probably is. Race as we know it today is a social construct that stems from many things (and I wrote several hundred words on it but it was too much and too far removed from the point I’m trying to make so I edited all of that out. Yay.)

You don’t usually see imperialism, one of the major themes in Avatar, without colonialism. Imperialism is slightly different than colonialism - you can think of it like the ideology behind the practice of colonialism.* Imperialism can be used to describe expansionism in general - which has been going on since the bronze age lol humans, I stg - but usually when people today refer to colonialism and imperialism they’re talking about imperialism starting in the 17th century.

Now imperialism is not just a European concept. ATLA is set in a world that we know is supposed to be like a combination of different Asian cultures (with some influences from the Americas). And the Fire Nation is clearly influenced by Imperial Japan. So briefly:

Japan had a policy of sakoku (chained or closed country) which kept it mostly isolated (out of concerns that Japan would fall victim to something like the Opium Wars in China, among other things) from the rest of the world for a couple hundred years until the 1850s when a US Naval commander named Matthew Perry (I am not kidding) forced Japan to open its borders for trade to the United States by gunboat diplomacy, an oxymoron if I have ever seen one before.

Japan ended up signing unequal treaties with a lot of Western countries, and this bred xenophobia and hostility in Japan. The Emperor who signed these treaties died of smallpox, and after some internal conflict his son decided try to renegotiate these treaties. The US and European countries were not interested in renegotiating dick but the mission wasn’t unsuccessful because the diplomats A) exchanged some islands with Russia and B) were inspired by western economic policy and society to “modernize” Japan. Japan began industrialization and it converted to a market economy with the help of the US and other western powers.

So over many years, Japan went to war with China, Korea, Russia (and took back some of the land they exchanged with them), and others. From wikipedia:

Using its superior technological advances in naval aviation and its modern doctrines of amphibious and naval warfare, Japan achieved one of the fastest maritime expansions in history. By 1942 Japan had conquered much of East Asia and the Pacific, including the east of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar), Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, part of New Guinea and many islands of the Pacific Ocean.

But ATLA is not a Japanese story. The Fire Nation is not Imperial Japan. The Earth Kingdom is not China or Korea, the Air Nomads are not Tibetan monks, and the Water Tribes are not Inuit. The creators definitely drew heavy inspiration from all of these places and others, but ATLA is a story written by American people in the United States for American kids. It is an American story.

And it was created at a time when the United States was victimizing people in Afghanistan and Iraq (and other places) in many similar ways to how the Fire Nation victimized people. In fact, the show starts in the Southern Water Tribe, which represent Inuit people, indigenous people in Alaska, Canada and Greenland, I think it’s safe to assume that the genocide being referenced here is not one by Japan but rather by European colonizers and later by the United States and Canada.

Imperialism is in the show’s DNA. 

And so is racism. In our world they are inherently connected. And visual cues from the show along with things the characters say suggest that we are meant to make the comparison between our world and the ATLA world. Every story has a purpose - it doesn’t have to be political, but for Avatar it is political, it is anti-imperialist.

In this article about how ATLA resonates with us in 2020, Aina Khan of the Guardian interviews Professor Ali A Olomi about using ATLA to teach at Penn State. “One of the things we see with the Fire Nation is the ideological justification for what they’re doing. We are a glorious civilization. We have abundance, we have wealth, we have technological advancement; we need to share it with the rest of the world. That’s almost word for word European colonisation.”

Zuko and Azula both call Katara a peasant. In fact, Azula calls her a dirty peasant. This is one step away from calling her a s*vage I mean come on. While peasant might just be purely classist (lol no) because Zuko and Azula are royalty, um it’s clearly racialized classism because of real life context. There is real history with colonizers calling indigenous people this, dismissing their cultures as primitive and barbaric.

Add into the mix colorism, which is bias against darker skin and privileges fair skin (which is a byproduct of imperialism) and you have clear race shit happening in Avatar.

When I saw that fanart, I was immediately reminded of black lives matter of course, but mainly of the fact that indigenous peoples are also at high risk of being victimized by police. Not just in the US. And how gross it is to depict a colonizer like Azula as an angry cop (representing the state) turning her gun on an indigenous man who is dressed like a gangster which... yike.

Mass media influence everything we do. The messaging we get, our politics, what we want to eat for dinner because we’re hungry and have been writing this stupid essay for three hours LOL. It’s important that people think critically about what they consume. Otherwise you get the goddamn United States with half of our population stanning a racist fraud. You want to know why US Americans are so ignorant? Because our education system sucks, because we don’t have any real media literacy. But apparently the rest of the world has some fucking nerve making fun of Americans** because all of us suck at it. No one is thinking critically about media.

A really terrifying thing about people is our ability to take whatever message we want from stories, even if it is in direct contradiction with the narrative of a story. There’s a movie called American History X which is explicitly anti-fascist, but because it’s a drama and Ed Norton is cut and looks badass and uncucked or whatever LOL, the iconography in that movie is fairly popular with neo-nazis. Yike. This is not at that level of course, this is some random niche fanart for a rare pairing.

For better or for worse, US media and entertainment gets a lot of attention and people around the world eat it up. Maybe you don’t need to know every little detail about US American shit, and I know we tend to dominate media, but black lives matter is not just a 2020 thing. People have known about it for years, since it started. If that fanart was created in 2019, which I think it was, the BLM movement had already existed for six years. If you’re watching an American show like Avatar and you’re making fanart on social media but you don’t know what BLM is in 2019... well educate yourself lmao.

Considering that Black fans have expressed frustration and discomfort in fandoms over and over again, and I am sure indigenous fans have too because fandoms are racist sometimes, it’s important that white fans help make fandoms better. And I am a white fan, and I consider myself an anti-racist. Which means I have to be active about racism when I see it.

btw I found this great essay by @cobra-diamond which you should read if you want more details about the similarities between Japan and the Fire Nation.

* that is very reductive but it’s fine lol

** I am kidding, unless you are english feel free to make fun of americans for non-gun, non-trauma related things pls

[raguna-blade]

Kinda struck by the realization that the argument that games as media needs it’s...I dunno, citizen kane, it’s big dramatic Games are A real Art Now You gotta take me serious, at least in the kind of weird occasional locations I still encounter it (I’m woefully inept at finding stuff honestly, and I guess maybe I should take the time to correct that because this kinda stuff is my jam. Hm. Thoughts for next week.)

But you know, I think it already exists? This is probably not a dramatic or world shaking argument, probably the precise opposite but this is more for me anyway so there you go.

But yeah, I keep seeing Shadow of the Colossus brought up again and again and again and again as this big huge game that has meaning and quality and art to it. Which, I agree even if I haven’t really finished it properly myself, I’m terrible about finishing most games honestly, but it keeps coming up and it strikes me that the lessons it gives about what you need/want to do if you want to make a game like that are studiously ignored by the big publishers who seem to really WANT to be the guys who make that but seem to consistently fail at it or else actively fuck up and push away the talent that can and does make it.

Like, to pivot slightly for a second, Whatever your overall opinions on Kojima’s works are, I think it’s also undeniable that there’s a startling level of depth in pretty much every game he’s made in that oh so vaunted franchise, and even Death Stranding for all it’s apparent issues (never played, just heard about, saw some analysis and it seems really interesting on one hand but also absolutely not my kind of game on the other) get’s the idea.

or I guess dancing around it a bit, the link between gameplay and the story you tell is super critical and to ignore how the gameplay actually reflects the story you are explicitly trying to tell is something folks seem to constantly fail at.

Like I know ludonarrative dissonance isn’t exactly taken seriously as a phrase, or at least it’s not last i checked, but it is a useful term and it strikes me that the reasons a lot of older games kinda keep coming back up in the conversation is that there is a kind of lack of actually trying to understand this in relation to the tale your telling.

like...hm...I don’t think it’s wrong to say certain genre’s do not work for certain kinds of games right? That seems patently obvious and it’s basically not worth uttering as a statement right?

But I want you to, if you’ve got at least a passing familiarity, imagine that Bayonetta, or Devil May Cry, or any of those super fast paced action style em up type games were played as hard line turn based RPGS. I attack, monster attacks, etc etc etc.

You unquestionably could do it. It wouldn’t even be hard really if you just want a passing appearance of things, but if you wanted to get the feel of the combat to map closely you could do things like say, an action queue of attack, dodge block etcetcetc an it’d play out after you hit the ok right? Or just that turns happened super quick.

But heck even if we went slower as the genre would expect, you could still actually DO DMC/Bayonetta as an RPG and have a perfectly sensible little game.

It’d also fail utterly to capture Dante or Bayonetta’s personality. Oh, you could have them do the same general feats and actions in story, but the fact that it’s turn based by itself instantly and irrevocably fails to capture their personalities correctly or at least the more surface level aspects that they want to project (and I think, for the both of them, the surface level that they project is keenly part of the draw because not even a paint layer underneath they both start to show marvelous depth for the action heavy characters they are)

Like yeah you can get across their risk taking showy personalities with pure text. Of course you can. But it’s a very different beast from playing as the person who decides, as an example from my history of play, exclusively jet’s across the world by launching themselves sword first screaming stinger.

Now I ain’t exactly gonna blame the actual developers here. I’ve little doubt in my mind that they’ve thought on this and deeper and better than I have because you know it’s their job and they’re experienced and they want to make games and all that. It’s probably more a publisher problem.

But it does strike me that there are a number of games with fairly big names that seem to not quite get it despite this being an example from going on close to two decades now. Certainly, whenever I attempt to dive into the so called triple A space I’m left with a certain feeling of emptiness because they don’t quite deliver on the story front in the way I think games can and should but...

I dunno. Maybe i’m just reiterating stuff already discussed elsewhere and my big personal revelation is just like “Ah Babby’s first game think” though I don’t think i’m quite THAT bad off. If by chance anyone has some good resources on stuff like this, please do point me to them.

[borisbubbles]

ESC 2019 Preshow #09

09. ITALY Mahmood - “Soldi” Autoqualifier

👏SOL 👏 DI 👏 SOL👏 DI 👏

ENTRY ANALYSIS

Much like Jonida, Mahmood sort of slipped for me when I grew more attached to other songs, but that does not mean he’s not fucking amazing! I, too, fell in love with “Soldi” on first listen when I noticed the lyrics rhymed “Ramadan” with “Jackie Chan”. 😍 😍 😍 😍. 

Other amazing things about “Soldi” include: the 👏 use 👏 of 👏 clapping 👏 as 👏 punctuation 👏, the ~Iconic~ lines in Arabic during the middle eight and the wonderful message. It was the FIRST SONG IN THIS YEAR WHICH MADE ME SHED A TEAR!!!  😭😭😭 I don’t know how or why, but I listened to the song with translated lyrics and it just *clicked* for me. I WAS LYING SICK IN BED WITH THE FLU, OKAY. Forgive me my momentary weakness!!!

So is it any wonder “Soldi” was greeted with near-unanimous critical acclaim and support? No, of course not. It’s a fantastic song and 100% deserved to win San Remo!

...

okay, so San Remo...  I did *NOT* watch it but I’m aware of Irama, Loredana and Simone, so consider those the reps if I had bothered with an NF corner. Ideal Husband Material, Blue-haired Rocker Hag and Random Dude Who Reads Poetry (not sings. reads.) respectively <3

Slated to win San Remo this year was Ultimo, who entered San Remo with some pretentious piano ballad called “I tuoi particulari” which as the name implies was particularly boring. God what a yawnfest. However, it as also the audience favourite somehow? Him?

So, the juries marked it down just enough so ‘Soldi’ won instead because again, BORING don’t work. Ultimo, instead of being like “well I lost, but oh well, I wasn’t going to Eurovision anyway*”, showed his true Salvador colours by throwing a temper tantrum on social media and spent the entire press conference uglysobbing about how quality was denied (his own words! He refered to *himself* as quality!).

(*he said he would never do Eurovision because he believes it is Eurovision is beneath him 😬)  Oh and some right-wing Forza politicians chimed with their usual drivel that Mahmood was unfit to represent Italy because Mahmood is gay & half-arabic while Italy is a vafanculo blob of fragile masculinity which can only be properly represented by drug-riggen, ugly-tattoo’d brats. Guess what? WE 👏 DON’T👏 CARE. 👏 FOR YOUR 👏 MODERN TIME 👏 PREACHIN’  👏 FORTUNATELY, Mahmood agreed to do ESC (after a week long thinking period lol) and all was well in this world . 👏 ANOTHER VICTORY FOR QUALITY  👏

Edit note: it has become apparent that my brash and snarky assesment was largely malinformed, but user @wingednerdydude​  provided a pretty detailed summation of the situation. 

It’s a quite long explanation I’ll put a tl;dr to appease the fans:  Ultimo did indeed not take the loss well, but the media also took an off-hand comment he made about Mahmood out of context and he retaliated, which led a lot of a unnecessary drama and mutual poo-slinging. It’s not just the ESC fans that overdramatize shit, who knew. 

For those who want to read it:

Ultimo never insulted Mahmood or said one single bad thing about him or that his song was better than Soldi, let's make this clear from the start. It's also true that he never even said anything complimenting him or his song. Mahmood actually said he never spoke to him nor heard from him in any way. The only thing Ultimo ever said is that he is happy for Mahmood and his success, that's it. If Ultimo really did compliment him then I never read or watched such interview

The mess during Sanremo's press conference blew up right when Ultimo said he was happy for (I'm quoting) "the other ragazzo, Mahmood". Ragazzo is a really neutral term in Italian, it just means young man, I wouldn't know how to traslate it. The journalists found it "insulting" for some weird reason (Mahmood actually said he thinks it's a totally okay term) and said Ultimo was disrespecting him. More context: Ultimo clearly was disappointed about his 2nd place

The press knew it and since the moment he entered the press room they literally started rubbing his missed victory in his face and kept asking him "yeah, but don't you think you should have won?". Ultimo eventually got pissed like mad and rightfully so. They were literally trying to make him lose his temper because they knew he had a bad character and was disappointed. They wanted a scoop and they got it.

Ultimo told the journalists that they were just trying to get an article out of it and that any thing he would say, they would turn it into something else. Then he said (quoting) "I'm fucking done with you". Boom, all of the press room went crazy and started throwing insults at him (sore loser, shit, bastard, ungrateful etc...). At some point Mahmood entered the room and the situation got chill again. By the way, look at the Il Volo guys while he speaks. They agreed.

Which takes us to the next step: why did Ultimo explode like that? I'll get ther: the day after there was a tv program the contestants were supposed to take part in. Ultimo didn't show up. It was full of journalists who obviously insulted him, they showed the clip of Ultimo insulting the press. One of the journalists though, she gave no fucks and just said the things as they were: and that is, the press insulted him. Not only after Ultimo's insults, but also earlier.

Ultimo wasn't the only artist who got insulted: the guys from Il Volo were too, during their performance and while the results were being announced (everyone cheered cause they hadn't won). The journalist says there were clips of it. Ups, looks like they "couldn't show them". Funny how they found Ultimo insulting journalists, but not the opposite. And those videos exist. In particular, there was a video of Ultimo being insulted by press, days before

There were a lot of talks, clickbaity articles written etc... Ultimo tried speaking in a video he posted and told his point of view. Now, mind you, I don't agree with some of the stuff he said. He said that he was sad about the whole thing and that it had been blown out of proportion, his words twisted to show him like the bad guy. And this is true if you read what I wrote. About the results: he was pissed because he had won the televote by a very large margin but lost.

Here I think he was really wrong, cause those are the rules, jury and televote results add up to the final result, it's maths. It may be disappointing, but that's how it is. Still, he was sad that people had to PAY to vote and their votes didn't matter in the end to choose the actual winner. Debatable. But he did make a good point about one thing: the jury votes are made of the votes of some experts (they're like 10 and actually often are people with no music knowledge)

 And the rest of the jury votes are journalists. Now, wait a second: the same journalists who threw personal insults at him and Il Volo for no reason if not a personal anthipathy were the ones deciding if they could win or not. Now this is interesting, cause the jury is supposed to be unbiased. His complaining about this is just right in my opinion, something should have been done about it (journalists faced no consequences for their insults to contestants).

This is where the whole thing ended. Ultimo just asked not to speak about it again, Sanremo's week has now well passed and everyone moved on, so that's literally all. I hope I was of some help to better understand the situation. And please guys, no fighting, let's just enjoy Mahmood's song.

 AND LET US NEVER SPEAK OF HIM EVER AGAIN!!!!!! ~moving on~

Autoqualifier Odds: very good

The most important thing one has to take away from “Soldi” is that it’s a fucking excellent song. There’s a reason it received near-universal critical acclaim from all sources.  

But, as the saying goes, it’s not the song but what you do with it. Mahmood is making great ~live performance progress~ as more pre-parties are showing his growing expertise, but at the same time I feel like everyone has sort of forgotten about him as a potential winner? Actually my friends posited the idea that Mahmood might be a Jamala-esque winner (by finishing second in both jury AND televote) and I think that is an intriguing possibility we should consider! If Duncan somehow doesn’t come through (and he won’t because Expected Winner’s Curse), it will be Mahmood who shall pick up the pieces and win instead. (unless the audience wants to go for the novelty act again, in which case Hatari or Bilal will win) I recognize that Mahmood could go down the usual Italy trajectory and be sandbagged by juries into a mid top 10 placement, I guess. I don’t want to get my hopes up and overrate his odds like I did with Gabbani. Even under the worst circumstance, Mahmood is definitely finishing somewhere in the top 10 though, as all Italian men (fragile or not) do. 

Projected placement: 1st-8th in the Grand Final.

Link to the masterpost

[thatyanderecritic]

Yandere Simulator

Title: Yandere Simulator

Media: Game, created by Yandere Dev

Yandere(s): Yandere-Chan (Ayano Aishi)/ Yandere-Kun

Yandere Scale: 0/5

Criticism written by: Kai

Editor: Julie

The Review:

(Warning! This is one of our most highly opinionated critic piece on our blog so far. Be wary and come to your own judgement in the end. m(_ _)m )

It was only a matter of time till we finally reviewed Yandere Simulator… With both the game and the main protagonist sharing the name “Yandere”, it made sense for the Yandere Critics to swoop in and see if this game truly lives up to its name (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). What horrors will our two critics discover in their pursuit of the truth?

This time on ThatYandereCritic…

Hello everyone, Kai here! It’s no secret that Julie and I absolutely hate Yandere Simulator and how the Yandere Dev is handling everything (from how he’s creating this game to the sort of person he is). We would state time and time again how we think that Yandere Simulator is pretty much hot garbage and is a bad representation of yanderes in general. Good concept but awful in execution. Now it is time to give a proper critic to the game that’s became the “face” of our community.

I would like to clarify that we’ll only be looking at the story and the main character (Yandere-Chan/Yandere-Kun). We will not be discussing about the Yandere Dev and his drama. If you want that, there’s plenty of “Yandere Dev rants” videos on youtube that goes in depth about the things he done and currently doing. If you’re curious, I recommend watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY-aqqCFjnc With this being said, now for the proper review!

Let’s kick things off by talking about the story… The game starts with our protagonist, Yandere-Chan, accidentally running into her Senpai on her way to school. It was love at first sight when she first saw him. But Yandere-Chan soon found out that a girl named Osana plans to confess to Senpai under the school’s cherry blossom tree. This is like, totally bad! Everyone knows that confessions under that specific cherry blossom tree is guaranteed to be accepted! It was at this moment, Yandere-Chan knew what she needed to do… she must eliminate everything that stands between her and her Senpai.

First, can I just start off by saying how laughably lazy this story is? It’s one thing if this game was just some sort of parody or comedy. A game that is self aware that it’s just a joke and nothing more. But with how much the Yandere Dev hypes about the story and give it a “deep lore”, we can’t give the excuse: “It’s not that deep. It’s just a joke.” No. This game doesn’t have that shield anymore. The story is half assed and it can’t give a well developed yandere character a proper chance to shine. But… let’s ignore the story for now. We have seen examples of an awful story but a fantastic yandere (Example: Joe from the TV show, You). Let’s look at Yandere-Chan.

Thanks to Yandere Dev’s channel, we got a plethora of lore and background about the characters from the game. The office website is also a gold mine of information that we can analyze as well. So… thank god that Yandere Dev is more invested in those two things than his game. Can you imagine if we had to actually play his buggy game to get this information? Lol.

Let’s get on the same page here about Yandere-Chan’s backstory: Yandere-Chan had an odd childhood. Throughout her childhood, she was inflicted with an incurable condition that made her have no emotions. Growing up, she was bullied at school (because she couldn’t feel I guess). But Yandere-Chan learned how to fake having emotions and live the easy life. Oddly enough, Yandere-Chan’s mom had the same condition as well when she was growing up. Yandere mom reassured Yandere-Chan that “When she finds that special boy, [she’ll] be able to feel.” But Yandere-Chan’s dad went “Nah, bitch. I’ll make Yandere-Chan have feelings.” Of course, that didn’t work. In the end, Yandere-Chan lived her life as an empty shell till she finally met Senpai. Yada yada yada…. Start of the game.

So… what the fuck?

This is the literal definition of a psychopath, dude. Why are we skirting around what Yandere-Chan has?! “Incurable condition” my ass. It’s psychopathy (maybe sociopathy but the evidence leans more towards psychopathy). Next, in the video, why would a general practitioner know that Yandere-Chan is a psychopath?! At most, the doctor would notice something is odd about her before recommending a child psychiatrist to examine Yandere-Chan. Mr. Yandere Dev, you make it sound like Yandere-Chan has a cold; not a mental illness. It was also mention in the video that Yandere-Chan felt pity for her father who was struggling with her mental illness. If she can’t feel any emotions, as you said, then please explain how she felt pity for her father? Can I also point out that Yandere-Chan started faking her emotions for her father’s sake AND THEN started getting bullied because she wasn’t normal. But wait a minute… Yandere-Chan learned how to fake emotions because of the bullying. So how does this logic work? Did she take two steps forward but ten steps back? Why did we have the whole doctor fiasco if Yandere Mom already knew all this about her daughter? WHY DOES YANDERE-CHAN’S BACKSTORY HAVE MORE HOLES THAN A SLICE OF SWISS CHEESE?!

Kai.exe stopped working… now resetting program… reset is now complete

Phew… sorry about that everyone. I was going insane after going through a bunch of videos by the Yandere Dev and the Yandere Simulator website.  

For a character called Yandere-Chan, she’s more like Psychopath-Chan. Like geez. If it isn’t obvious, everything about this character screams “psychopath”. Sure, she is portrayed to have “lovesickness” but Yandere-Chan breaks so many rules that her “lovesickness” can’t save her.

A couple of rules she broken:

1. The yandere shouldn’t go on a random killing spree as if she’s/he’s in an all you can eat buffet. Bottomline, a serial killer isn’t a yandere but a yandere could be a serial killer.

2. Shallow background, shallow person. Why were you even created man?

3. Instalove is a pretty cheap cop out for a female yandere to start liking someone. We noticed that sometimes they would fall in love for shallow reasons like: “Kyaa, he passed me the salt shaker, I think I’m in love!” This logic makes me cringe, honestly.

“But, Kai! This game is all about killing the rivals! It isn’t fair to Yandere-Chan to tick her off on that!”

Um… there are many different ways a yandere can get rid of a rival without killing them. Mr. Yandere Dev even suggested a mechanic where the player can hook up love rivals with other NPCs.  Yet the core “tactic” Yandere-Chan (and the player) would chose would be to kill the rivals. Not only that, it’s also encouraged to go on a killing spree for extra points for Info-Chan and the Yakuza (not yet implemented). So… this absolutely is a tick against her.

Moving on! I also find it incredibly hard to even call Yandere-Chan a proper “yandere” considering her creator doesn’t even know what a yandere is. On Yandere Dev's website, he defines a yandere as: “A Yandere girl is a girl who loves a boy so much that she is willing to threaten, harm, or kill any other girl who seems interested in him.”

Uh… W.H.A.T.

That’s literally the definition he puts on his website, people. And don’t even get me started on the definition he uses during videos (“A yandere is a person who is crazy for someone else”). Okay, let’s give Yandere Dev the benefit of the doubt and say: “He sort of right… if you squint hard enough”. But if we refer back to our Yandere Actions post, just using the “yandere snap” doesn’t make Yandere-Chan a yandere. In the end, Yandere-Chan is nothing more but a psychopath.

To those who are reading this: As individuals who are part of the yandere community, I am appealing to you right now. We may disagree on a lot of things. We may disagree on what is and isn’t a yandere. We may disagree on some characteristics of what makes a yandere. But I hope to agree with everyone that “Yandere Simulator” is not the thing we want to define our community.

I’ve heard people compare Yandere-Chan as the “New Yuno Gasai”. I’ve heard people call Yandere-Chan as “the perfect example of a yandere” or “the ideal yandere”. I’ve heard many misinformed comments about yanderes thanks to this game. It may have brought to light our community but this is a double edge sword. It’s one thing if there’s only a couple misinformed users out there. It’s expected and no offense to them. But what’s troubling is the popularity of this misinformed game and the spreading through popular youtubers (again, no offense to them since they don’t know). This game is basically our face to those outside of the community. I talked to several people who are quick to judge me as “one of those perverts” thanks to this game’s reputation (water off my back). You can still like the game or the characters. I know Yandere-Chan generates lots of yandere aesthetics and the fandom has done way better with her than her own creator. But can we all agree to denounce this game as a “yandere icon”. Use it as a conversation starter and use it to point out myths about yanderes… but don’t let this define us. I believe we’re better than that… we’re all better than that. “Romance turned Horror” and “Horror turned Romance” lovers… Aesthetic yanderes, Yandere Recommendations, and Yandere Analysis blogs… We’re all in this together. Let’s shake on this, friends.

Overall score: 0/10

(Post-edit: I forgot to mention Yandere-Kun; there is a bit of a difference between him and Yandere-Chan. He is the genderbend version for Yandere-Chan (for those who want to play as a guy) but Yandere Dev stated that Yandere-Kun’s reasoning for chasing Senpai is purely sadistic. So, regardless how you paint things, Yandere-Kun is just as psychopathic as his female counterpart)

[phoenixyfriend]

On Lotor, Dayak, and Mishandled Approaches

It’s been over a month, and I’ve finally managed to gather myself enough to actually write a post about why I disagree with how Lotor was handled.

So here we go, and it starts with a request:

Forget your opinions on Lotor as a character.

I’m serious. Whether you love him or hate him or something else, just put that aside for a moment. Just think “Okay, this is the character, this is what he did, and this is how it was presented,” because your own opinions are only tangentially relevant right now.

The target audience for Voltron is not you. If you are on this site, then the target audience is not you.

Voltron: Legendary Defender is rated TV-Y7. It’s meant for a target audience of children aged 7-11.

My critical thinking skills weren’t the best at that age, up to and including literary analysis. I didn’t stop to parse stories down to subtle messages and meanings, I just took them as they came, because I was seven years old and hadn’t had time to practice those skills yet. Last I checked, most kids that age were and are the same way.

And that’s where the problem with Lotor comes up, because a lot of those kids in the audience that the story is targeted towards are in abusive homes. Just statistically speaking, some of that target audience is kids who are going through the mental, emotional, and physical abuse that we see attached to Lotor’s childhood on-screen, whether it’s show or just implied.

So let’s dig into that under the cut.

I’ll be honest here: I'd have handled the twists a LOT better if it weren't for the fact that some of what they did is actively dangerous for their target audience, and emotionally damaging to the older watchers.

I think the production team meant well. I think they wanted to tell an interesting, nuanced story. I think they wanted a cool, layered villain.

I also genuinely don't think the team realized the full scope of implications when they included the abuse backstory for a character that had this kind of arc.

It's not something that's healthy for kids to see. A certain portion of the audience is current or former abuse victims. With an audience this size, it's unavoidable. When actively marketing to children, they're marketing towards impressionable minds. Some of those kids are currently in abusive households, and some of those abusive households have the physical, mental, and emotional abuse that Lotor underwent at Zarkon, Haggar, and Dayak's hands.

It’s not an uncommon type of abuse. I’ve seen posts that address it as being culturally similar to Caribbean households, or to tiger moms, and so on. Galra culture has similarities to a lot of cultures on Earth, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is abuse.

The messages those kids are getting are that being hit by your caretaker is a cause for humor, not concern, and that if you try to grow past your toxic roots, you will fail.

What they’re seeing and absorbing isn’t a nuanced villain, not when it’s presented like that. They’re seven. They’re not appreciating a Shakespearean tragedy of an arc. They’re seeing “Oh, he was hit by his nanny, and it was supposed to be funny! I guess when I get hit, it’s not that bad!” The slightly older ones are seeing “Oh, he tried to be better than his parents, but everyone thinks he’s just as bad as they were. I guess... I can’t be better than my parents, then.”

Again, please put aside your own love or hate for Lotor, and focus on the mentality of actual children who are watching. You are not the target audience.

I'm still furious about S6E1. There are kids who might have been considering telling a teacher about their parents' treatment of them who might now be holding off because the show told them that it's okay, that it's funny.

There are kids who still don't know that it's abuse and that it's wrong for them to be hit, and who are having that belief reinforced by this episode.

The episode is actively dangerous for literal children who are already in toxic, unstable, or dangerous situations.

And yes, for the older audience, for those of us who are old enough to mess around on sites like this, it's emotionally damaging in similar ways, even if it's not the same kind of dangerous.

They also completely defanged the abuse by having it lensed through Hunk.

In S6E1, Dayak’s abusive behaviors are all being aimed at a soldier who volunteered for the experience, who is either an adult or very near to it, who is wearing armor, who is already considered a comedic character.

And there's a lot to go into about it being Hunk, specifically, who got chosen for this role and how the production team treats him. We could definitely spend time touching on why the fat comedic relief was chosen as the target for this.

But imagine how much harder it would be to dismiss Lotor's background as a factor of his personality if what we'd gotten was... a flashback, to Dayak doing all of that to him while he was still clearly a child, rather than turning abuse into a comedic subplot.

A person I was talking to said the following:

What he really deserved was to have his complex situation and the grey area effect on his morality recognized. Like, yes, he was draining the life force of Alteans. But consider the environment he grew up. Hold his actions up against those of his parents. He had every reason to genuinely believe that his actions were not that bad by comparison, especially in the grand scheme of things. His death count was a drop in the bucket compared to Zarkon. The Alteans he used did not appear to be suffering or even aware of what was happening to them, and the ones left behind were a race being preserved from prosecution and extinction. He was also actively searching for a way to provide the Empire's needs without causing any more widespread death and destruction. He was trying to be better than his parents, and in his reference frame, his actions were better than theirs.

Which, hell, probably does come across as apologism. It’s a fucked-up situation, and one that I question seeing in a show aimed at kids. It was a delicate thing to handle, and I’d have been a lot more interested if I’d seen it in, say, Agents of SHIELD, rather than VLD.

Similar arguments apply to the overall arc. Kids who are in toxic situations are getting the message that they can’t grow out of it. “I want to be a better person and have no one to show me how, but I’m going to try anyway” is being met with “You will fail, and everyone will say it’s your own fault.”

I think they were TRYING but that they genuinely didn't realize the minefield they were entering by giving him the backstory they did. It would have been a suitable plotline if it had been in an adult show, if it had gotten more perspectives, or if there had been a different character with a background that was explicitly as abusive as his that overcame it despite the same hurdles, and no, Keith doesn’t count.

There are... a lot of abuse victims in this fandom. There are a lot of victims, both children and adults, who identified with Lotor because he showed the symptoms that people don’t like to sympathize with as easily. And that’s a lot of children who are getting negative messages, and a lot of adults who are feeling betrayed by the storyline.

Just... remember that. Please.

You aren’t the target audience, and the actual target audience is eating up messages that make them more likely to remain in abusive situations.

(And if your reaction is in any way to blame the children for not recognizing what they’re going through as abuse, regardless of media, I need you to take a long moment to reflect on the fact that you are effectively victim-blaming people that aren’t even in the double digits yet.)

(Also, I know a lot of people try to argue a lot of things as “think of the children!” It’s up to you how you approach the concept. I draw my line at portraying child abuse as comedy in media that is targeted at children, which I feel is inherently different from people who try to say “think of the children!” about things like queer representation.)

[dabistits]

1) Thank you for answering! I hope that you don’t mind my continuing this conversation despite not disagreeing with your points - the misogynistic undertones of that forgiveness were heavy enough to drag anyone’s mood down. It’s just that I feel the need to clarify that I’m in no way trying to absolve Horikoshi for writing these people on those circumstances in that way nor to guess if any nuance we extrapolate from it is intentional or not, just to say that an in-universe lens makes it really

(cut for length again and more discussion of fictional dv)

2) easy to empathize with the reactions of the Todoroki women. Maybe even more so than with Natsu’s perfectly natural hope than having their abuser at least recognize how shitty his action were may bring closure, since that puts healing on the hands of said abuser which isn’t constructive. And then there’s Shouto who has been trying to not do that anymore for a while and has felt pressure to work with/under that asshole to achieve his full potential (which, another sadly realistic thing) so of

3) course he can see that for now, regardless of how HE feels about it, the best hope for their mother is that their father’s action reflect this supposed change of heart regardless of genuinity. And I think we are actually supposed to side with that but whether that’s intended for the sake of the victims or the abuser depends on how charitable you are feeling with Horikoshi’s writing. I mean, in the absolutely most hopeful interpretation of his writing we may see that flower thing as a parallel

4) of something the Joker canonically did for Harley and hence a hint of not seeing Endeavour as redeemable but not being the time for his comeuppance since right now their world really needs effective heroes whether they are good people or not… but that wouldn’t have been such an issue if he hadn’t written Endeavour to be as consistently useful at law enforcement as he did. I very much do not feel like dismissing the Doylist readings of complex subjects, that just facilitates the propagation of

5) harmful messages, but I believe that complementing those readings with Watsonian ones can help us more fully tackle said subjects and avoid detrimental “moralizing”. We understand the world through stories, which is why fostering empathy for fictional characters is still used to teach empathy for certain groups. And like you’ve said, at least on the West victims who haven’t ‘fought hard enough’ get thrown under the bus (Cinderella being a great example of a fictional case) so to me

6) encouraging others to see things through the victims’ eyes in fiction too is important even when the author won’t. TL;DR: please do go off on any author that punches down instead of up but why miss out on appropriating representation for those who are down while we are at it?

i’ll say in advance that i know it’s hard to submit long responses through an askbox, so if any of the things i’m focusing on below were just a result of the character limit/poor wording/misinterpreting, then please do let me know and send a follow-up.

there’s one major thing that i think we have to get out of the way first:

i don’t think it’s fair to characterize natsuo (or any other person who refuses to forgive their abuser) as placing healing in the hands of their abuser. being angry and resentful towards the person who abused you is not predicating your healing on that person’s future actions; it’s claiming your emotions and experiences which your abuser has no control over, it’s setting boundaries for what you will accept from that person, and on what terms you will interact. it’s saying “if you don’t get better, then you will not have my love or support” and that’s totally fine! no one is owed our love, thus it isn’t hurting us not to give it to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

i’m not gonna lie, phrasing a survivor’s choice of dealing with their trauma as placing agency in the hands of their abuser bothers me a lot. it also sounds a lot like the things people say when manipulating a survivor into forgiveness, like: “you can only control your actions, so why don’t you forgive them for your own sake instead of waiting around for them to become better people?? :)” not that you’re trying to manipulate anyone, anon, but wording like that can be easily misconstrued and i would be mindful of it in the future.

now, for the rest of your ask: again, i fully believe it’s your right (and everyone else’s) to headcanon rei and fuyumi however you want to fulfill a satisfying watsonian reading for yourselves. the problem with watsonian readings, however, is that they’re all down to interpretation. you may say that fuyumi wants to reconcile for many complicated reasons, while another reader might say she’s just forgiven her abuser, plain and simple. it’s even more open to different interpretations than doylist readings, so why would i just pick one of them to incorporate into my analysis? how would i choose it? what would my biased choice lend to my meta?

i’m also not sure why you say sticking to a purely doylist reading would be ‘moralizing.’ a doylist reading places nothing on the characters themselves—it’s about using narrative cues to figure out what the author intends to convey, and in this particular case, it’s about criticizing the way horikoshi wrote the pro hero arc based on the way he framed the actions of the tdrks’ abuser and the perspective from which he decided to tell the story, all of which only add depth to the abuser’s character. there is no evidence to argue that this arc was meant, canonically, to condemn that character—in fact, all the evidence points to the contrary—and i disagree with the idea that our criticism targeted at the author and at the narrative must be filtered through a watsonian perspective. unless you believe that people adhering to a doylist critique of the tdrks’ narrative is somehow promoting a lack of sympathy towards rei and fuyumi, then what purpose does it serve except for doing hori’s work for him?

there’s a time and a place to discuss headcanons, and for me, within my metas isn’t it. most of them are geared towards a specific message that analyze the narrative at an authorial/doylist level, for instance “this is why hori is so damn shitty at writing abuse.” they’re not about “hori’s shitty and i’m correcting him with these headcanons based on this canon evidence and these real life examples.” if you want to do the latter, then by all means, be my guest! it’s just not a task i’m interested in undertaking, and, again, i don’t believe they’re necessary for message i intend to convey, and i don’t believe it’s actively harmful to survivors to exclude watsonian explanations.

i think it’s fine to feel sympathetic towards rei and fuyumi. i encourage it! i also understand if there are people who don’t want to get involved with them because they’re badly written and because hori uses them as his abuse apologism mouthpiece. it’s very dispiriting, and people are allowed to not interact with messages they feel are dispiriting or harmful.

i think it’s fine for fans to write rei and fuyumi however they please. they can write them as avenging furies or they can write them as complicated abuse survivors with conflicting desires. as i said in the post you’re referencing, i understand that fans themselves are coming from a complicated place, and i sympathize with that.

i think it’s simultaneously important for fans to remember real abuse victims, who don’t always make perfect choices, and who already get a lot of flak from society regarding what they do and don’t do. we must extend our sympathy to these real survivors, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have complicated and negative feelings about the ways fictional survivors are written.

lastly, i want to say quite simply, if you want to encourage people to sympathize with abuse survivors, there are better works than bnha. there are creators who work their commentary about abuse into the text itself instead of making fans invent an interpretation to convince other fans. i think it’s far more straightforward and a better overall experience for someone to read or watch a piece of media that intends to have a statement on abuse than to be left to flounder in the mess that bnha is.