#Which it is not it’s very American 😭

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Tugging on the heartstrings using her dead dog😭😭

I am really surprised she announced that on January 7th. I for sure thought she’d wait until January 9th to take the attention off Kate.

So putting my tinhat on again, I wonder if she announced when she did to try and take some of the early coverage and/or if she finally learned her lesson from Uvalde, Trooping 2024, and New Orleans not to announce things when other people are mourning. (January 9th is also the US National Day of Mourning and the state funeral of Jimmy Carter, so a lot of the American media cycle will be about him.)

Also, legit and seriously, I hope they are ok and safe from the fires in LA. There’s one encroaching on Santa Barbara, which very close to Montecito and also where the Sussexes seem to hang out quite a bit - not to mention all the rumors that the kids are enrolled in Santa Barbara schools.

[anaphoraholic]

Seen anti shippers grow too comfortable about spreading hate

I mean that was always a thing but they have become increasingly more violent and fetishistic of violence, as a non American they sound like people who are obsessed with gun rights, if that makes any sense?

and the most frightening thing is that they’re all teenagers. Teenagers who don’t really enjoy fandoms, but who have to be performative activists to feel included and who are socially and emotionally neglected otherwise.

I can think of a few reasons why this is happening

Kid friendly spaces disappearing (both online and offline)

the shift in political climate (fandom is not an isolated universe)

overexposure to sexual things through mainstream media (streamers and streaming services, music)

Parents not teaching their children internet safety anymore

the implementation of the SESTA/FOSTA laws

What do you think?

I'm not super educated on what the SESTA/FOSTA laws are, but outside of that I wholly agree with this take! I think the point about performative, fictional activism was really well said =)

fandom no longer being as isolated as before is definitely a big reason from my perspective; over the course of the pandemic, areas of the internet that had previously been dedicated to more specific groups of people and neglected by the majority (like fandom) became mainstream. the lines between what should go where on the internet became blurred in general.

with everyone stuck inside, politics was among most other things that became discussed almost entirely online (and intensely so). Overloaded algorithms continued to serve more and more political/activist content (which, due to the nature of the internet, generated less-complex discussion than real-life conversation); I think this, along with the blurring of the "what goes where" lines, was chiefly responsible for allowing that social-media brand of overly-simplified, performative activism to permeate almost every online space. Of course, this includes fandom, and with so many young minds being confined to this online world during critical developmental periods (as well as with lessened internet-safety measures given by tired parents who weren't sure how to handle a global pandemic), mirroring highly-polarized, performative-activist behavior in fandom became commonplace.

a lot of it likely also had to do with people more immersed in common, mainstream media suddenly being plunged into the previously more underground world of fandom. there was (and still is) a lot of history and culture regarding fandom spaces that provides essential context for what goes on in them; because fandom has historically been a safe space for nerdier/geekier "outcasts" and a haven for things deemed "unsightly" or "impure" by society at large, those used to mainstream, "normal" things were shocked and in some cases horrified by what they uncovered. having so many others that were currently sharing in that experience gave weight to the idea that fandom should change to accommodate these kinds of newcomers, instead of promoting an ease-in and learn-as-you-go approach to new online spaces, as might have automatically occurred in the past.

It is, as is typical for me, 1 am as I'm writing this, so I hope it's not too incoherent 😭 anyways, thank you Anon for the very insightful ask! Feel free to drop by again if you'd like to reply or expand on any of your points ^^

[mumuscae]

SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS!!!

Rant on Storytaco's bad writing of dark skinned characters. Specifically Sirius.

I wanna start this out with saying, I do not hate Sirius as a character. He's one of my favorites and I feel like he had wasted potential being in the hands of Storytaco. I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying Sirius as a character either! I believe however that we can enjoy media, and look at it from a critical lense. There are good things about his character and I enjoy a lot of how he was written lore wise!!! Otherwise I wouldn't be so violently obsessed with him since the age of 15 lol. But again. There are a combination of things that I can't really see as a coincidence.

If you have anything to add, or disagree with any of my points, please do not be afraid to say so! I wanna have an actual discussion about this. please I do not bite. I stand pretty firm on my points at this very moment, but I'm entirely willing to listen and change.

Uh. Apologies if my points come across poorly or if my writing is incoherent. There's a reason why I did bad in school lol.

My criticisms are below here. Have fun

Anyways.

Fuck Storytaco?

Uh. This is 100% inspired by recent discussion on the fandoms treatment of Sirius. But I'd like to discuss why this treatment is actively perpetuated by the developers of Arcana Twilight. Which is much more disturbing to think about when you consider their games are often marketed towards minors.(There are other issues with storytaco marketing towards minors too. Uh, idk if those are relevant for this post though. Maybe later cuz it's high key disturbing!!! 😃)

Sirius was written very inconsiderately. Like I know he's a villainous/morally gray character. However I feel like there needs to be a lot more tact when your only dark skinned character is written to be not a good person. Especially in comparison to the light skinned characters. I feel like they just applied every negative trait on earth to him, then turned around and went "jk guys! He's not actually bad. Hes like this cuz he's an orphan." 😭 Like some of these traits would be fine in their own if balanced out with other things, but there's so many combined together that I can't help but feel suspicious of their intentions and bias.

He's the most provocative out of all the love interests. He's consistently initiating suggestive situations, is labeled the "sexyman", and is constantly making innuendos. The game has a lot of fan service in general (even though it's rated E), but Sirius is disproportionately portrayed this way and is just constantly going "hehe sex 😁" Which making him the provocative one is both an issue with him being queer coded and dark skinned..double whammy 😟

He's the dangerous, unpredictable and violent one. He SHOT!!! SHOT the mc within the first few floors. And like. There wasn't even a good reason behind why they decided to write that in other than to make us think he's violent/dangerous/untrustworthy. There are times when it's portrayed that he can't even be trusted alone in a room with the mc, even prior to the villain arc. 😐

He's a pretty much a domestic terrorist.... 😐

He was a wanted criminal for half of the story. Idk if I need to explain what's wrong with that either 😐

He's potentially the only one killed off at the ending depending on your interpretation.

In the clan equivalent of Americans (cough. Guns + eagles + the lazy unlikable rebellious group that just gets into trouble) which is just. Silly. 😭😒

Again he's the "untrustworthy one that nobody wants to be around." This is a point constantly driven in by the characters he's surrounded with. they drill that into the viewers head so so so much.

He's the "party animal" of the group??? Which isn't really portrayed beyond him drinking a lot but was definitely advertised as such.

He's 100% queer coded you cannot convince me otherwise. Which. Now we're falling into queer coded poc villain territory. Double whammy again! Disney is that you?

Going off the queer coded point, he's falling into "predatory gay man" territory. Hes shipped with basically every man in the game by storytaco for promotional and bait reasons. But it's always displayed as Sirius making the other party uncomfortable and getting in their personal space. Making unwanted advances. Like... Y'all don't got a do that

Ok this is possibly nitpicky but deadass why'd they make him a basketball player in the highschool au thingy. He's a theater kid. Nothing about him reads as liking sports. Please do not wear dangly earrings while playing sports??? It bothers me so much 💀

Okay so the sassy, violent, deranged, perverted terrorist... is the only romance-able dark skinned man in the game. ??? NONONO just think about that for a good moment

HE HAS OTHER THINGS IN HIS CHARACTER. THERE ARE GOOD PARTS ABOUT HIS CHARACTER!!! I LOVE SIRIUS SO MUCH. HES VERY COMPLEX AND INTERESTING.. but this is such a horrible combination of very specific negative tropes that it's hard to ignore. Especially when thinking about how this game is advertised to minors who, more often than not, are easily subjected to subconscious bias in media and are easily influenced due to our lack of ability to critically analyze media we're haphazardly consuming. (Sorry fellow minors. As a senior minor aka 17 yo it's the hard truth y'all gotta accept. we've all been there and we've been influenced by media whether we're aware of it or not. I'm not mad at y'all or belittling. Keep having ur funsies with ur silly star men I'm not stopping you lol? This is legitimate concern and criticism towards a company that is promoting weird stereotypes to us)

And I don't think Sirius is just a one off weirdly written dark skinned character from Storytaco. Thuban (WHO IS GREEEEEY. Big issue on its own 😰😭) is depicted as lazy and rude.???? Like he has a single redeeming moment but again. Just reads as "domineering rowdy black man." Especially when you look at the whole great hero trio .. he's supposed to fall within the fantasy "Fighter" archetype with his big ass mace. Compared to Polaris who is like a Cleric and the Wizard/Ranger Schedar.

Also shout out to storytacos other grey men.....???????? I was only able to find four dark skinned men (not just tanned a bit) including Sirius when I went thru Storytacos game catalogue. Two of them are grey. 😐

Anyways Sirius was a huge motivating factor in why I wanted to make Extraterrestrial... Fucked up potential of a character. There are 100% biases showing through how he was written. These were all conscious decisions made on the writers part and I don't think it can be kept behind "he's a morally gray character who's going thru it" because there were so many good ways to show that and his grief without going to every. single. extreme.

--

[undercover-grisha]

I’m obsessed with the idea of Wylan using British slang while Jesper is just like horri/terrifed

Wylan: “yeah, Chef was making apple pie today, so I stole a swipe of some squirty cream from the bowl.”

Jesper, slowly turning to look at his husband, twitching: 😀😄😀

Wylan: ???

Jesper:

Jesper: “w h a a t ? ?”

[caruliaa]

staff still hasn't given me polls, what should i do?

🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 their moms 69%

🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪 their dads 31%

grace image os i get to look at her

[skitskatdacat63]

"Arrogant, ruthless, and by all reports (including his own) utterly charming."

(I don't know why I drew this but please take Revolutionary War British officer George, I think it suits him, okay!!!)

+ George Russell the type of guy to t-pose in front of rebels

+ the usual

Okay first of all, process, as always:

I drew this in one day hahaha....Actually really fun! I haven't finished anything in almost a month, and haven't painted for even longer, so I'm kinda dying at the fact that 18th century George Russell got me motivated 😭 Sometimes when painting, I realize I have free will and can actually just start painting over the lineart, and that's the best moment of every drawing process 🙏

Also I'm very proud of his face!!! I've said before, but art progression is such a weird thing. You'll keep repeating to your self "I'm no good at [insert art thing.]" And then randomly realized you can in fact do it. That's me with drawing real people's faces 😭 I'm just so shocked I got his face pretty good in one try!!!

Okay about the pose and quote. God its so fun to misappropriate quotes for my own evil deeds. Both of these are from this one officer from the Revolution: Banastre Tarleton. Idk, I randomly saw his painting in a history video, and it's stuck in my mind ever since. And then yesterday, bcs I spent a lot of time looking at George, I'm like "hey you know what he kinda reminds me of-" and thus we have this.

I just found that quote about him from some historian to be funny, so I put it as a caption, as I would with Napoleon. This won't be an AU by any means but. I think if George was in the Revolution, he'd be the most stereotypical, evil British villain in American media type guy ever. And Tarleton is kinda that guy tbh, to the point where him and others like Arnold Benedict are the poster boys of evil Revolution guys. He even has a mocking nickname! "Bloody Tarleton/Ban", very "Osama bin Russell," no? 😭

Some notable moments from Tarleton's campaign that I think fit George: Apparently killed a bunch of American soldiers after they surrendered, making sure everyone was dead(😭😭), threatened to burn an American general's house down to make him surrender and then took him hostage, went toe to toe with George Washington himself and Washington even taunted him and Tarleton got a shot in, has a helmet named after him(very slayful.)

[uncanny-tranny]

Brought to you because of my searing hatred for the DEA 💛

[toxictrannyfreak]

I strongly feel that in Hawk’s evil bitch s3 era he gets super into American Idiot. Stewing in his room punching the wall like no one understands me… I’m so alternative while listening to one of the biggest hit albums of the 21st century. When Demetri tells him it got a musical adaptation he gets so mad he punches Kyler

[bloomfish]

Share your thoughts on Angel's irish accent lolol

😭😭😭 Oh dear. I feel kind of bad for Boreanaz tbh. He was plucked from nothing with no training as an actor and to his extreme credit he was SO GOOD as Angelus. Like to go from one of the weakest actors in the cast to one of the best?? He was absolutely incredible playing an evil character to the point that I wanted him to be evil lol because he was so much fun to watch. And Boreanaz only got better on his own series, which made me go from hating Angel to actually really liking him as a character.

But anyway the accent.... It's bad. I'm not Irish so it's probably not as painful for me as the potentials who have accents that supposedly are more similar to my own, honestly at this point I find Angel's Irish accent so bad that it's funny. It's probably one of the more difficult accents for an American to do, to be fair. And it feels like he tried HARD. :(

Another candidate for worst accent is poor Kendra. I recently saw someone say she likely would have been a better character were it not for the accent (which was forced on the poor actress last minute) and I think that's probably true.

[pixiestein]

i’ve really been hoping that g3 Venus would be Indigenous bc venus flytraps the actual plant are exclusively indigenous to coastal areas in north & south carolina usa so it would make sense & be cool to see venus be part of an Indigenous nation in the same area. it’s looking like in this gen she’s going to be black/black coded but afroindigenous ppl exist so maybe i’m still holding out hope lmao

[fakevariety]

damn i kind of ate with this

[dankovskaya]

ok so im a huge huge massive huge sopranos fan and I MUST know what are you're feelings on it? do you have any favorite characters yet? :D

Omggg I'm enjoying it a lot so far I think I'm 2 episodes into season 3? My faves are Christopher and Adriana at the moment I just always love when either one of them is on screen. Also love Carmella.

[woodfrogs]

i feel so bad for americans like the more i learn about your electoral system the more im like 😭 thats ass

[theresa-of-liechtenstein]

ironed out the piece i've been working on for the past four months with accompaniment today and then asked my teacher a question about one of my contemporary orchestra pieces and she took one look at the section, flipped to the first page to see who wrote it, and said in the most gently chiding voice "well that's not very nice of you, [composer name]"

[inmirova]

In an ideal world, it would be a program for Deaf teachers, the government could even put it under vocational rehab if they wanted to! Unfortunately, even some Deaf schools don't employ many Deaf teachers and a lot of teaching jobs end up going to interpreters or just hearing & non-signing people instead. But you're right and I love what you said, we can hope 🩷

idk man. i just think itd be really cool if sign language classes were mandatory throughout primary school. yeah because it would make communication with deaf kids and autistic/nonverbal kids much easier. and those kids would be accessible to the others so they cold make friends and have healthy relationships. yeah. and kids would eat that shit up man. like their own little secret language? they love that.

[wizardyke]

i feel like literally everyone aside from white people from anglophone countries are allowed to make fun of europe. there's like ten million valid reasons i can list like literally any of the problems are shared or paralleled very closely (in regards to social attitudes or systemic/cultural racism etc) or like "hqha thats literally your grandpa" but honestly its mostly becsuse its so unfunny