#To which I say... You must be new.

[krysmcscience]

It’s finally done, guys – five whole pages of Narilamb AU comic AND MORE be upon you! (If you have trouble reading any of the text, view the full-size! These pages are huge!)

Yeesh, this took forever. <:)

There’s probably a ton of inconsistencies and anatomy/perspective wonkeries, but this was mostly just comic practice, so Oh Hekkin Well, Lol <:D

(Yes, I am aware the Gateway’s door isn’t present in the Afterlife, and the actual way in is just a pentagram portal. Yes, I put the door in there anyway because Artistic License, i.e. it felt more impactful for there to be a prison door of sorts to walk through to freedom, rather than just a bland boring portal on the ground. 😠)

anyway, i hate backgrounds so much lmao

Alternate ending and a buttload of bonus art under the cut, followed by goofy AU rambles and headcanon stuff:

I’m calling it the Revival AU. It’s not all that creative a title, and someone else has probably used it already, but I am too lazy to really care, LOL

Alternate ending page, which you will Definitely need to view the full-size for, Whoopsie Daisy:

The alternate ending was actually the first ending I finished things off with, because I had a brief badbrain moment where I forgot the emotional beat I initially wanted the comic to end on, and I tend to write comedy, anyway. I later remembered and drew out the proper ending, but I preserved and finished this one, too, because it still makes me giggle.

They had to go back for the followers off-screen in the AU’s real ending. And by ‘they’ I mean just the Lamb, because they weren’t about to ask three newly freed cats to go back into what used to be their prison. The Lamb DID spend some time watching Narinder and the bois enjoying the outdoors first, though:

In other news, here’s the Lamb and me making fun of my anatomy-drawing ‘skills’:

Meanwhile, if you’re wondering why the Lamb is just a-okay with how things went down vis a vis Their Murder, this bonus comic should answer at least some of your questions:

Ah, yes, also this is how they get engaged outside of the alternate ending. Forgot to mention that bit. XD (I already refuse to believe that Narinder is capable of flirting normally, so why would his initial marriage proposal be any better???)

Oh, and before any of them get a chance to actually head back to the cult grounds, there is one potential problem:

And by ‘problem’ I mean something Narinder intends to ignore for At Minimum a thousand years. Cuz he’s a petty bitch like that. :D

what do you mean i drew the lamb too tall compared to the background? clearly they’re standing on top of baal and aym lmao, why else would you think those two aren’t in this one??? (aym and baal got way too excited about finally being outside, you see, and their silly modes are nothing to sneeze at)

And, speaking of heading back to the cult grounds, I’m sure y’all would love to know how the Lamb’s followers felt about the brand new change in management:

It all went better than expected. <:D Tiny ramble now, feel free to skip down to the next comic.

Before you ask, no, the Lamb does not have any actual powers anymore, other than the immortality Narinder definitely grants them. The Red Crown just thinks it’s funny to suggest otherwise, and Narinder does nothing to discourage this. Also, the Lamb and Narinder aren’t actually married here yet, but, uh. Pretty safe to say that particular ritual directly follows the events of this comic. XD

Given how quickly he mellows out in canon, Narinder probably chills out a lot in this AU once he’s in charge of the cult, too, if only because 1.) He’s finally free, and 2.) He’s equally smitten with and distracted by the Lamb. He’s definitely in charge at least 95% of the time, though, because the Lamb never actually wanted to be a cult leader and, now that their time as a vessel is done, they just want to be a normal(ish) sheep who’s wholly devoted to their hot new divine husband.

Some followers do still have some valid concerns about these two being together, though, which I’m sure at least a few of you might share…

Unfortunately for any such concerns, the Lamb is a bonafide masochist in this AU. :D

They’re also 100% a sub, obviously

Anyone at all: Your relationship is problematic and potentially toxic

The Lamb: fuck yeah it is, it’s so hot~ OuO

Here’s just the last panel, made transparent for whatever nefarious purposes y’all might have for it:

Additional exchange Narinder and the Lamb have at some point, probably after the Lamb does a fatal whoopsie while out on a mission trip or in response to things getting a little too sadistic in the bedroom, ahaha:

Look, there is a very important distinction between life and death, and if you don’t understand that, then you’re probably not worthy of being the God of Death, anyway. (At least, according to Narinder, and ONLY Narinder.)

Last but not least, have these shittens:

~Such creative naming conventions I have utilized, lololol~ :D Anyway, there's a few deets on them in the rambles down below.

The rest is all ramble, so before I get to that, I’ll just say – likes and especially reblogs are very much appreciated!!! :D If you happen to really really REALLY like my stuff, meanwhile, I do have a link in my bio to my ko-fi page, where I’m accepting commissions and donations if you’re especially generous… ÓuÒ

Now, BE FREE IF YOU AIN’T DOWN FOR READING MY GOOFY RAMBLES

First ramble is re: Baal’s question of ‘Did it really work?’, since I didn’t feel like expanding on it in the comic proper, and it’s arguably pretty vague? He doesn’t ask because he doubts Narinder or his capabilities, exactly, but because neither Baal nor Aym have ever actually seen their god at full power before (he’s still technically not at full power here, either). It’s not expressly stated how soon the brothers were brought to Narinder after his imprisonment, but whether it was early on or after a length of time for Shamura to (somewhat) recover from his attack, he must have already been weakened, since I have no doubts that there was a huge battle that accompanied the Bishops working together to trap him. So, between that fight with all four of his siblings, sharing his power with a variety of vessels over time, and being chained immobile for a thousand years, he must have been severely weakened by the time he lent the Red Crown out to the Lamb, which would have only weakened him further.

I like to think this is how the Lamb is able to defeat him if they refuse to be sacrificed, despite how it took all four Bishops working together to subdue and chain Narinder in the first place.

All that aside, the three cats have been trapped in the Afterlife for so long that Baal also wanted verbal reassurance that they are all, indeed, actually able to leave it now – something that I headcanon isn’t possible without a significant amount of power (i.e. the Red Crown’s cooperation with its bearer/vessel).

(On a semi-related note, I don’t headcanon Aym and Baal as twins. I like sweetheart big bro Baal and snarky little goth bro Aym too much to have them be that close in age.)

Ah, teeny thing: If you noticed I switched up the art style for Narinder on the second page, that was intentional. It's sort of a visual indicator that there has been a Big Change for him - that being, how much power he has after sacrificing the Lamb. As for why I changed up his arms in the grass rollin' pic, I don't really subscribe to the notion that his arms are spooky bones because they're horrifically injured (beyond chain-chafing scars, that is), but rather just because he's the Bishop of Death, so he can change how normal-to-spooky they look at will. At some point I might doodle out how I imagine his appearance to range between least to most eldritch... 🤔

Next ramble, regarding Narinder’s feelings towards the Lamb...he was initially too focused on being freed from his imprisonment to form any real attachment to them. They were a tool for his use, first and foremost, but he did notice their intense devotion towards him. It was impossible not to notice, because the Lamb was always very happy to see him, even if it was because they died during a crusade (yet again). He wasn’t originally planning to revive them once he was freed, either, because he saw no real point to it – after all, they were already dead when they first met him, just as any other mortal would be when meeting him in the Afterlife, so death has very little real consequence in his eyes. But, once the chains were off, and it really sank in that he stood to lose the most devoted follower he’s ever had, he decided…why put their soul to rest for good or leave them stuck in the Afterlife when he could just as easily revive them again? And why not reward them for their hard work, anyway? Not only would it cost him nothing by comparison, but the future devotion that could come of it would surely make up for his (bare minimum) effort in reviving them.

He wasn’t expecting to get a full dose of that devotion and a smiling face so soon after killing them, though~ :3c (because the Lamb is a bonafide freak, and not-so-secretly into the fucked up power dynamics going on here, lol)

I should mention here that I am firmly of the belief that any non-god/vessel who crosses through the Gateway and into the Afterlife just straight up dies. So, Aym and Baal? Also straight up dead, from the second Shamura brought them through. Their souls were just never put to rest so that Narinder could have some company – if only according to Shamura. Narinder kept the two around mostly out of bewilderment, because honestly, who are these kittens, and what is Shamura’s game here, anyway??? They never even explained anything, they just tossed these kittens into the Afterlife and LEFT!!! At any rate, Aym and Baal being dead is how I explain why their souls apparently become lost in the void if they’re killed, along with the added complications required to revive the two because of it.

So, with those deets in mind, and given a bit of time, if Narinder hadn’t chosen to revive the Lamb, and also hadn’t chosen to put their soul to rest, they still would have woken up at some point, despite being as straight up dead as Aym and Baal. Who, don’t worry, were also properly revived while Narinder was waiting for the Lamb to wake up. Because I am also firmly of the belief that, first, the dead cannot leave the Afterlife without the use of a ritual/relic (and can't stay in the living world for long regardless), and second, dead followers’ devotion isn’t anywhere near as potent as that of the living, given how much more the living stand to lose.

Final ramble, regarding the Lamb’s feelings towards Narinder, and why they’re so devoted to him…

Well, you don’t spend most of your life on the run with your steadily-dwindling herd, trying to evade the ongoing genocide of your species, without becoming a little fucked up in the head. Maybe a lot fucked up in the head. Life is suffering, so might as well have fun with it, right? Maybe start finding death and pain to be kind of hilarious, even a little bit hot, once everyone you know and love is dead and gone, leaving you all alone? And maybe after that, there’s something comforting in how, despite the cold, cruel uncertainties of life, at least you can always count on the inevitability of death, patiently waiting for you until your very last breath? Who knows. Either way, as soon as the Lamb was killed, and they learned that the literal God of Death was offering them a second chance at life and vengeance via effective immortality, they were 100% ride-or-die-devoted all at once. Turns out death is kinder than life – go figure. (Of course, it helps that Narinder is 100% their type.)

They weren’t put off by Narinder’s thinly-veiled sadism or manipulations, either – they’re not too different in those regards, albeit opting for vastly different methods. It’s a very ‘two sides of the same coin’ sort of deal. In order to stay alive once they were made the last of their kind, the Lamb had no qualms with using others to their advantage, and that did not change once they were revived and expected to run a cult. They didn’t care for the position of authority, though – being a sheep and all, they’re much more of a follower than a leader, and thus greatly appreciated Narinder’s need for control. With how they had to keep on their toes for so long, the Lamb was also pretty good at reading people by the time they died, so they could recognize that a lot of Narinder’s posturing was just that – posturing. Dude’s 95% bluster and only 5% bite. He could obviously be vicious when he wanted or needed to (the Bishops' injuries were clear proof of that), but underneath his outer layer of cruelty was a generous layer of tsundere, and underneath all THAT was a soft squishy middle sibling velcro cat in desperate need of attention and affection.

(Which, for the record, he Did Not feel comfortable getting from Aym and Baal – Narinder still has no idea why the fuck Shamura sent them to him, beyond acting as keepers at best or trying to sabotage his attempts to escape at worst. Which, he thought HE sabotaged in turn, by guiding the kittens into being his devoted disciples instead. He thought he was very clever for it. ‘I outsmarted Shamura!’ he thought, despite that there was never anything there to outsmart. ‘What do you mean, Shamura sent your kittens to me for company?’ he demands of Forneus later. It may or may not lead him to pull Shamura out of Purgatory just so he can shake them and scream about how they should have Fucking Explained that!!!)

But, getting back on track as to why the Lamb was so willing to be sacrificed, I cannot stress this enough – if you pay even a minimal amount of attention to what he’s saying, Narinder is REALLY NOT SUBTLE about his intentions. ‘Death is of little consequence.’ ‘Followers are for you to use to your advantage.’ ‘Sacrifice a follower to absorb more power.’ So, yeah, the Lamb knew exactly what would be expected of them once the other Bishops were dead. They knew Narinder would expect them to die for him one last time. But, after all, death is of little consequence (not to mention hot), so when the time came, they wanted to see him freed, even if it meant oblivion for them in the end.

He’d given them a second life, and the ability to avenge their kin, and they felt indebted to him for that – so, while they were still pretty glum about the possibility that they might not get to see him free of his chains, nothing beyond their devotion and debt to him mattered. They never wanted all the drama and expectations that came with the Red Crown’s power, anyway, so, better for Narinder to have it back so that he could deal with it. What he did with the Lamb afterward would be up to him, and seeing as he was their god, they’d accept his decision gladly.

Were they in love with him by that point? Oh, obsessively so, but only in the devotional sense – romance was nowhere on their mind nor radar. That is, until he unexpectedly revived them again, told them he still needed them, and then offered down his hand to help them up.

The Lamb fell HARD for him in that moment. :3c

And now, a tiny shitten ramble. Lu and Li are twins, because sheep tend to have those a lot, and are conceived not long after the Lamb and Narinder’s marriage ceremony. Lu is the minutes older one, but Li is much more mature. I have put no further thought into these two, other than that they are utter menaces, birthed by the Lamb, cling hard to both their parents but especially Narinder (who spoils them rotten), and they are both genderfluid, using whichever pronouns/names they feel like at any given time. They are also both intersex, same as the Lamb, who was initially infertile up until Something Something Vague Magic, which I have also put no further thought into ¯\_(シ)_/¯

oh, and before anyone tries to suggest i headcanon this AU’s lamb as trending more female due to them giving birth or whatever, no, no, a thousand times no, they might have a vag, but they've also got a dick, and even if it's not as big as they'd like, they still know how to use it

Finally, the very tentative name for the Lamb in this AU is Yazdi, which is really just another name for the Baluchi breed of sheep XD (Not that the Lamb is this specific breed, I just didn’t like any of the other sheep-related names I found, ahaha...)

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW (collapses into an exhausted pile of goopy limbs)

[bosooka]

it's always "satine exiling the warriors from mandalore was a war crime" and never "the warriors did not deserve to live on the planet they irradiated with all the people they nearly slaughtered in their meaningless crusade for glory"

[babybells123]

I’m obsessed with them already

[captocie]

i've just seen another post asking what the gender neutral or nonbinary word is for "sir" or "ma'am" and i'd like to put forth "em" as a solution.

"sir" comes from sire, "ma'am" comes from "madam." "em" then, comes from "eminence" as in "will that be all your eminence?" or "will that be all em?"

it's short and quick to say, like both sir and ma'am, and it's gender neutral and stems from a word denoting nobility like both sir and ma'am

[milolunde]

We all know Timmy is Wanda’s mama’s boy but we need to keep in mind he’s still Cosmo’s kid too and that Cosmo would love him just as vehemently as Wanda

[hecksupremechips]

Come back home when you have some sense

You can throw your life away just not at my expense

You’re not the son I raised

[poisonousquinzel]

"a dude in Texas legally changed his name to "Literally Anyone Else" and he's attempting to run for President against Biden & Trump" [source]

okay, but putting aside the comedic aspect of this, it is concerning the amount of people who are prompted to vote for candidates just because it's funny. I'm not the biggest fan of how his policy about the boarder sounds [Site], but I do implore anyone who is able to vote in the 2024 US election to please research other candidates.

The media is only going to continue pushing the idea it's inevitably going to be Trump vs Biden 2.0 and we have no other options, that we have to vote for Biden again because of Project 2025. Is that whole thing terrifying?

Yeah, fucking absolutely.

But voting for Biden will not solidify our safety from that. Biden is exactly like the rest of them. He always has been. You can't make the lesser of two evils argument when they're both just plain evil.

You cannot say that Biden is even mildly a better choice than Trump when he is currently directly involved in a genocide. That is not some little fucking thing. That in and of itself disqualifies him as a lesser evil. Biden is just as bad as him and he will not save us because he doesn't fucking care.

Cornel West [Site] is an Independent candidate running for President in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia [Site] are running for President and Vice-President as the candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

There are options.

There are people trying to change the corrupt foundation our system is built on, but we have to help amplify them because the mainstream media will not.

[ecofear]

i’m getting sick to death of this

[spacedlexi]

i actually love thinking about preS4 vinerva and how their relationship deteriorates throughout the season and how it relates to the clemvi romance and just violets character in general but unfortunately some people cant be normal about them so instead i just gotta keep it to myself

[serenpedac]

“We belong to the Earth and the sea, you belong to the stars.”

— Zhang Beihai (The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu)

[outlying-hyppocrate]

i have officially returned. ask me anything.

[spacetrashpile]

2012 broadway revival of jesus christ superstar starring josh young as judas save me.... save me 2012 broadway revival of jesus christ superstar starring josh young as judas.....

[rxttenfish]

Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

[screambirdscreaming]

I used to like saying "gender is a social construct," but I stopped saying that because people didn't tend to react well - they thought that I was saying gender wasn't real, or didn't matter, or could be safely ignored without consequences. Which has always baffled me a bit as an interpretation, honestly, because many things are social constructs - like money, school, and the police - and they certainly have profound effects on your life whether or not you believe in them. And they sure don't go away if you ignore them.

Anyway. What I've taken to saying instead is, "gender is a cultural practice." This gives more of a sense of respect for the significance gender holds to many people. And it also opens the door to another couple layers of analysis.

Gender is cultural. It is not globally or historically homogeneous. It shifts over time, develops differently in different communities, and can be influenced by cross-cultural contact. Like many, many aspects of culture, the current status of gender is dramatically influenced by colonialism. Colonial gender norms are shaped by the hierarchical structure of imperialist society, and enforced onto colonized cultures as part of the project of imperial cultural hedgemony.

Gender is practiced. What constitutes a gender includes affects and behaviors, jobs or areas of work, skillsets, clothing, collective and individual practices of gender affiliation and affirmation. Any or all of these things, in any combination, depending on the gender, the culture, and the practitioner.

Gender encompasses shared cultural archetypes. These can include specific figures - gods and goddesses, mythic or fictional characters, etc - or they can be more abstract or general. The Wise Woman, Robin Hood, the Dyke, the Working Man, the Plucky Heroine, the Effete Gay Man, etc etc. The range of archetypes does not circumscribe a given gender, that is, they're not all there is to gender. But they provide frameworks and reference points by which people relate to gender. They may be guides for ways to inhabit or practice a gender. They may be stereotypes through which the gendered behavior of others is viewed.

Gender as a framework can be changed. Because it is created collectively, by shared acknowledgement and enforcement by members of society. Various movements have made significant shifts in how gender is structured at various times and places. The impact of these shifts has been widely variable - for example, depending on what city I'm in, even within my (fairly culturally homogeneous) home country, the way I am gendered and reacted to changes dramatically. Looping back to point one, we often speak of gender in very broad terms that obscure significant variability which exists on many scales.

Gender is structured recursively. This can be seen in the archetypes mentioned above, which range from extremely general (say, the Mother) to highly specific (the PTA Soccer Mom). Even people who claim to acknowledge only two genders will have many concepts of gendered-ways-of-being within each of them, which they may view and react to VERY differently.

Gender is experienced as an external cultural force. It cannot be opted out of, any more than living in a society can be opted out of. Regardless of the internal experience of gender, the external experience is also present. Operating within the shared cultural understanding of gender, one can aim to express a certain practice of gender - to make legible to other people how it is you interface with gender. This is always somewhat of a two-way process of communication. Other people may or may not perceive what you're going for - and they may or may not respect it. They may try to bring your expressed gender into alignment with a gender they know, or they might parcel you off into your own little box.

Gender is normative. Within the structure of the "cultural mainstream," there are allowable ways to practice gender. Any gendered behavior is considered relative to these standards. What behavior is allowed, rewarded, punished, or shunned is determined relative to what is gender normative for your perceived gender. Failure to have a clearly perceivable gender is also, generally, punished. So is having a perceivable gender which is in itself not normative.

Gender is taught by a combination of narratives, punishments, and encouragements. This teaching process is directed most strongly towards children but continues throughout adulthood. Practice of normatively-gendered behaviors and alignment with 'appropriate' archetypes is affirmed, encouraged, and rewarded. Likewise 'other'- gendered behavior and affinity to archetypes is scolded, punished, or shunned. This teaching process is inherently coercive, as social acceptance/rejection is a powerful force. However it can't be likened to programming, everyone experiences and reacts to it differently. Also, this process teaches the cultural roles and practices of both (normative) genders, even as it attempts to force conformity to only one.

Gender regulates access to certain levers of social power. This one is complicated by the fact that access to levers of social power is also affected by *many* other things, most notably race, class, and citizenship. I am not going to attempt to describe this in any general terms, I'm not equipped for that. I'll give a few examples to explain what I'm talking about though. (1) In a social situation, a man is able to imply authority, which is implicitly backed by his ability to intimidate by yelling, looming, or threatening physical violence. How much authority he is perceived to have in response to this display is a function of his race and class. It is also modified by how strongly he appears to conform to a masculine ideal. Whether or not he will receive social backlash for this behavior (as a separate consideration to how effective it will be) is again a function of race/class/other forms of social standing. (2) In a social situation, a woman is able to invoke moral judgment, and attempt to modify the behavior of others by shame. The strength of her perceived moral authority depends not just on her conformity to ideal womanhood, but especially on if she can invoke certain archetypes - such as an Innocent, a Mother, or better yet a Grandmother. Whether her moral authority is considered a relevant consideration to influence the behavior of others (vs whether she will be belittled or ignored) strongly depends on her relative social standing to those she is addressing, on basis of gender/race/class/other.

[Again, these examples are *not* meant to be exhaustive, nor to pass judgment on employing any social power in any situation. Only to illustrate what "gendered access to social power" might mean. And to illustrate that types of power are not uniform and may play out according to complex factors.]

Gender is not based in physical traits, but physical traits are ascribed gendered value. Earlier, I described gender as practiced, citing almost entirely things a person can do or change. And I firmly believe this is the core of gender as it exists culturally - and not just aspirationally. After the moment when a gender is "assigned" based on infant physical characteristics, they are raised into that gender regardless of the physical traits they go on to develop (in most circumstances, and unless/until they denounce that gender.) The range of physical traits like height, facial shape, body hair, ability to put on muscle mass - is distributed so that there is complete overlap between the range of possible traits for people assigned male and people assigned female. Much is made of slight trends in things that are "more common" for one binary sex or the other, but it's statistically quite minor once you get over selection bias. However, these traits are ascribed gendered connotations, often extremely strongly so. As such, the experience of presented and perceived gender is strongly effected by physical traits. The practice of gender therefore naturally expands to include modification of physical traits. Meanwhile, the social movements to change how gender is constructed can include pushing to decrease or change the gendered association of physical traits - although this does not seem to consistently be a priority.

Gender roles are related to the hypothetical ability to bear children, but more obliquely than is often claimed. It is popular to say that the types of work considered feminine derive from things it is possible to do while pregnant or tending small children. However, research on the broader span of human history does not hold this up. It may be true of the cultures that gave immediate rise to the colonial gender roles we are familiar with - secondary to the fact that childcare was designated as women's work. (Which it does not have to be, even a nursing infant doesn't need to be with the person who feeds it 24 hours a day.) More directly, gender roles have been influenced by structures of social control aiming for reproductive control. In the direct precursors of colonial society, attempts to track paternal lineage led to extreme degrees of social control over women, which we still see reflected in normative gender today. Many struggles for women's liberation have attempted to push back these forms of social control. It is my firm opinion that any attempt to re-emphasize childbearing as a touchstone of womanhood is frankly sick. We are at a time where solidarity in struggle for gender liberation, and for reproductive rights, is crucial. We need to cast off shackles of control in both fights. Trying to tie childbearing back to womanhood hobbles both fights and demeans us all.

Gender is baked deeply enough into our culture that it is unlikely to ever go away. Many people feel strongly about the practice of gender, in one way or another, and would not want it to. However we have the power to change how gender is structured and enforced. We can push open the doors of what is allowable, and reduce the pain of social punishment and isolation. We can dismantle another of the tools of colonial hedgemony and social control. We can change the culture!

[faaun]

pls i need to provide updates

[revvethasmythh]

in other news, I'M IN BITCHES