#also fuck the creators for the bad rep in the first place

[dtkqer]

wait why ranboo (idk much abt him)

ESSAY WARNING AHEAD do not fucking repost this shit anywhere holy fuck i will kill you!!!!!!! respect my boundaries :((

ok my thought process was somewhere along the lines of

rboo (kid wanting to blow up as a mcyter during summer 2020) getting attention through making fan content of dream smp (also trying to write themself into the lore) -> dream (kid who blew up as an mcyter before the pandemic hit, getting even more insane numbers) sees himself in rboo, adds him to the dream smp

-> path 1: parasocial stan delusion - ran is both viewer and cc, relatable to viewers in a down to earth way while gaining an insane amount of success very very fast -> heightened scrutiny to not fuck things up because his audience is full of normal people who care about social justice on paper (part of dreams influence in having a gender and race diverse (somewhat) audience) -> growing importance of boundaries (tm) -> fandom becomes insanely blue haired liberal and jumps on every mistake, demanding quick and GOOD apologies for both inane and serious shit -> fandom becomes volatile and creates disproportionate responses to everything -> they (rboo) become spineless -> this attitude and spinelessness leaks over to the whole of mcyt since most of dsmp shared an audience at that point -> feedback loop we see today (sidebar: growing media illiteracy combined with volatile reactions extend to lore shit on all ends and was absolutely compounded by their joining -> "sanctity" of the lore -> michael -> dsmp audiences split over the parasocial belief that character = content creator's thoughts beliefs and actions in real life instead of. acting)

-> path 2: control and queerness - branch off from blue haired liberal -> viewers have good intentions in wanting more rep in the cc space (queer and women, not so much race) -> marginalized communities cant afford to make mistakes as much as white men in the space -> disproportionate amount of criticism for both white men and marginalized ccs -> viewers attempting to take control of ccs due to ran blurring the line between viewer and cc during lockdown/most viewers' formative social years being taken from them -> not much education about queerness in the first place -> queerbaiting discourse and queer being a symbol of goodness -> people seemed to want dream to be straight and evil and ran to be gay/queer and good -> double standards when dream and ran come out because of dream's perceived power, status, and past growing up in conservative florida he had already been addressing, but ran gets a warm welcome because of bending to the audience more than dream has and past not holding as many mistakes meaning they could claim queer as an identity -> selective biphobia because if dream is queer hes a bad queer so everything he does is evil

-> return to main thread - brighton bastards formed, beeduo date and break up, everyone becomes bitter boots after lockdown ends and dream abandons his adopted bastard child he came to love that george originally gave birth to -> october and drexodus -> quackity resentment somewhere in there behind the scenes, dtkq breakup -> former audience split over lore comes back into -> qsmp shit -> dream and by extension dteam/munchy is evil except badboyhalo who supports dream but is still on qsmp because hes a lore andy -> schisms from the past continue to grow, new schism of q's side vs dream's side appears (secret third challenger of brighton floptopia) -> people air out their dirty laundry and snide comments -> november and december -> relative peace -> march-> karl gets hit by a car -> present day -> dnf sextape

i may be wrong for quite a bit of this but this is how i saw it . again this is a tumblr exclusive if you repost this anywhere even iwth my url cropped i will fucking kill you.

[cosmos-dot-semicolon]

I've seen you mention on some posts that Ninjago had an affect on your relationship with being Asian, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts you wanted to share on the subject of Asian representation in Ninjago.

Feel free to disregard if the subject is too personal.

This is absolutely fine! In fact I’ve been itching for an excuse to talk about it for a while, because this show deeply influenced my writing growing up, and honestly I'm sick of most of the people getting noticed for discussing it being white.

So, I think Ninjago’s Asian representation is garbage. It’s not unique: there was a common trend in 2010’s kids’ media to make everything cooler by including Ninjas or, more generally, Asians Doing Martial Arts. I remember it being in media as distant as Club Penguin and many Flash games back in the day, as well as worse cartoons I don’t bother to remember the name of. I’m fairly sure adult-geared Kung Fu movies also had a hand in this, but I didn’t watch those as a kid.

But Ninjago’s particularly bad in that they’ve kept doing this for over 10 years, and it’s baked into their story.

Everything from them not checking up how ‘ninjutsu’ was spelled, to them not actually making the characters have Asian skintones in that one anime segment, to that one time they based Nya’s outfit off a clearly named Cheongsam from Pinterest and called it a Kimono? It all just reeks of people who wanted to make a quick buck of an entire continent’s ‘aesthetic’ and the mysticism around it, rather than portray them as actual people.

There’s a really great website by someone (who I can’t remember the username of) detailing all the Orientalism of the show up until about season 10. It dives very deeply into how the design language of Ninjago always seems to be based in making the actually ‘Asian’ parts of the show evoke more of a feeling of East Asia than actually being accurate to any one culture, and a lot of inaccuracies and why they arose.

A poignant point it raises is that any time we get a cool character or place, they’re always portrayed as more western-coded and ‘civilised.’ Jamanakai Village is poor and the villagers are rude. Ninjago City is civilised and clearly closer to what white people are used to living in. Lloyd is this world’s destined saviour, and he is blonde. There was *one* Asian voice actor on the VA team. And 2/3 of the Ninja team is white-coded by name.

Some my own observations over the years also include:

Jay’s ‘yin to my yang saying’ being completely made up.

That intro to… season 7, I think? Where the Ninja fight off some slave-drivers whipping people working a rice farm. Which never gets brought up again.

Nadakhan’s entire design is the only bit of South-Asian rep we get for the first few years, and his mythology is inaccurate to how actual Djinn work, and he’s acknowledged by the creators to have a sexy voice and be an absolute creep.

Having enjoyed Monkie Kid, I think Ninjago’s Asian rep is fundamentally unfixable. It was built to appeal to a western audience that simply thought the concept of ninja were cool, and thought of Asia only as a conglomerate where people had powers and did cool fight sequences or were otherwise savages. And also where the entirety of South Asia doesn't exist.

Like, I've tried to make an AU where I overhauled things completely to be better rep, and you just can't do it without breaking the show in half. Half of a character's name comes from Japan, and the other half from China. You're going to be losing something whatever you choose (shout out to Koko from the movie), and it gets uncomfortable to think about real quick, especially when the show's strongest suit is its characters.

As a kid who was part of a diaspora, Ninjago definitely didn't help my fucked up viewpoint of being cool only if I passed as white enough and viewed my parents' country as a magical but ancient land rather than part of reality.

[chaos-otter]

I tend not to defend creators because the story is usually deeper than what is initially spread. That being said, I'm really sick of so much of the boyfriends tag being full of monogamous non-black gentiles trying to cancel someone over stuff that happened years ago, were taken out of context in one case, and about representation that isn't yours to call bad rep.

As a polyaffectionate/polyamourous black jew I'm going to ask that people stop bringing this up as an excuse to shit on a creator and comic you dislike. It is fine to dislike him or his content. It is not okay to imply he is a pedophile for drawing a short character or writing fic about teens when he was a teen.

First off, a character being short is not child coded. Please fucking stop with this. As a short 29 year old who has been thought to be anywhere from 12 to 18 recently, some people look young. It is a fact of life. The reason CSA is illegal and damaging isn't because of how children look, it's because they cannot consent. So despite looking like an adolescent at times, I am not a child, Nerd is not a child, stop with the weird desire to change what constitutes CSA.

In addition, if you are an allosexual adult, you can't tell me you never fantasized about a celebrity in your youth. You may not have posted it, but unfortunately, the ability to post things is becoming more and more accessible and expected. Along the same vein people say/do fucked up shit in their youth. We cannot expect people to have spotless lives, he apologized and hasn't posted anything remotely antisemitic or rascist in many years. If people can't grow from their mistakes and change for the better without the mistake following them forever, why would anyone ever want to change?

It is why criminal records, in the US, are locked once a minor comes of age. It allows people to grow without the mistakes of youth following them forever. Maybe judge people on their current actions and not those of years before?

As for the poly rep, no story will match every experience. There are many poly couples who have stories just like boyfriends and many more that don't. Sure, it might not feel super realistic, but that's because it's not real. I'm sick of people getting upset that representation in media is not their exact experience because that's not the point. There is no way to perfectly show every way a person can be in one story, but if one story makes it, then that is one more place for people to find representation. It also opens the door for more diverse forms of representation. For example, I hate the Madea movies for how they portray black families. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't have been made because they portray some families, and those people deserve representation just as much as I do.

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

4 and 19 for the salty ask game

you didn't specify a fandom but im pretty sure you followed me for owl house stuff so i will assume you meant the owl house fandom.

4. Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?*

lmao if youve followed me for any time at all you would know i fucking hate the huntlow ship. huntlow ship my beloathed <3< <3< <3< :333 at least how 90% of the fandom portrays them. ppl will see a white angsty boy and immediately find the one shippable girl and file down all her character and make her his emotional support decoration.

to be clear, huntlow in the actual show is fine. i don't think them getting together would add anything to their character arcs, and since the show is running on a tight schedule i think they should have just cut that subplot out. i think there are ways to make them interesting but the show doesn't have any time to do that. there's barely anything substantial about the ship in canon anyway so i think it's fine. it's ignorable if you dislike it and its enough to extrapolate into a funny post canon ship if you do. my opinion on huntlow in the show is like my opinion on gustholomule. it's fun to consider but it's obviously not important to the story i actually care about.

but the shippers??? hoooo the shippers. first of all while i don't like to think about most fandom stuff from the stance of representation it's really important that owl house is like. THE gay cartoon rn. the creator had to fight tooth and nail and write around a bunch of stuff to get queer couples on air and make the fandom more receptive to it outside of a fetishistic thing or a "cute background couple that everyone acknowledges is canon but no one actually explores" thing. and then the moment a blond boy looks at a girl everyone explodes. im not calling ppl bigoted for shipping it bc i dont know the exact reasons every single huntlow shipper likes the ship but the fact that they also try to use rep to justify it? even though 90% of them didn't give a shit about the non white boy half of the ship before the ship became a thing? not a great look for the average huntlow fan lmao.

also the mischaracterization of both characters, especially willow, is super annoying. it shouldn't be a hot take but characterizing willow to be a brute that tries to beat up everyone who looks at her wrong? and indicating that hunter, a survivor of child abuse, is attracted to her because of this? uhhhhh don't like that! its one thing to portray this and explore why its bad but that sure isn't what 90% of the shippers do! youre allowed to depict any dynamic you want but im allowed to say that depiction sucks shit! same with making willow to be either a 50s housewife or a manic pixie dream girl she isn't any of that? literally just make a self insert to ship hunter with if you want his ya love interest ass so bad.

anyway ive complained more about the huntlow ship and its place in fandom here, here, here, here, here, and here, among others. a lot of my points are in the tags lmao. that isn't to say all huntlow shippers are annoying some of them make genuinely good content thats in character for both of them! but the shipping community is. bad. and i already didn't care for the ship anyway so they haven't made my opinion better. it was a mistake for the show to put hunter's conventionally attractive angsty ass into a shippable position lmao.

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

I think part of this phenomenon is because the fandom skews younger since at the end of the day toh is a disney show rated for kids. but there's a phenomenon ive seen with a lot of young skewing fandoms where fans assume just because the thing they like is diverse, that automatically exempts them from being bigoted or even having implicite biases. like "i cant be racist my friend is black!" but it's with fandoms so they have even less of a leg to stand on. ive been guilty of that too in the past and im trying to examine my biases both in fandom and more importantly in real life.

the fandom has a serious favouritism towards the white and/or male characters. just look at the disparity of opinions on the blight parents, even before clouds on the horizon. or even better, before s2 when all we had on them was just a background shot in lilith's flashback. people were already portraying odalia as a catty evil woman and alador as his uwu tortured husband whos scared of her, before we even knew their names.

same goes for other female villains compared to the male ones. all the villains are different so there isn't a one to one comparison but generally, the reactions to villains like darius (right after his first appearance in edas requiem) and graye were a lot more nuanced. most people who talked about them were trying to write meta about them or finding them sexy or thinking about a redemption arc.

and compared to female villains like terra or kikimora? i am serious about this they were objectively more compelling villains than darius or graye in their debut, if you discount kiki's minor appearances in s1 and just look at hunting palismen, her first episode as a major villain. and yet most people talking about terra and kiki after the fact were just calling them bitches or other more sexist stuff i won't say. and being mad at them for...doing bad things to the protagonists? bc they're villains? i get the lack of thirsting but no serious meta? ive grumped about it here. also i wasn't in the fandom during the week between agony of a witch and young blood old souls where everyone wanted lilith's head on a stick but from what ive heard? yyyyeah i don't think they were just mad at her for being a villain.

same thing with the white characters people always give so much more focus on the white characters compared to the poc. luz had a bunch of angst like amity in season 1 but 99% of lumity content focused entirely on amity angst. the hyperfocus on hunter is something to note too. i get that fans love angsty characters. i do too. but him being a white boy definitely didn't hurt his popularity lmao.

its a problem in the show too so not all the blame falls on fans. the show focuses on majority white characters as well. even though the show is very racially diverse, luz's most important relationships except her mom are eda, amity, and hunter, and gus and willow are pushed to the side. same thing with their portrayal of some female characters i love what they did with terra and kiki but their portrayal of odalia...oof. i've grumped about that here.

but yeah if you point this out a lot of fans get uncomfortable or even angry at you for accusing them of, in their eyes, being a Bad Person who likes Bad Things and have Bad Thoughts. so they argue back that there's no definitive proof that any biases are happening on a personal basis. and yeah i can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law that you're actually secretly racist or sexist but if you just look at general trends in the fandom? the bias is there. it's not a problem of individual people it's a problem of fandom culture.

anyway i don't want to say fans who do this are bad people because judging by the ages of some fans toh might be baby's first fandom for some of these kids. they haven't had enough life experience to really examine their biases or even determine their principles. it would be mean to condemn kids for having biases, especially since i also did that at their age and i'm still trying to deconstruct my biases now. these kids need to learn about nuance in media and also that fandom is not activism, but it's not my job to teach them this. this is annoying but it's a reasonable price for being in fandom. especially a fandom for a show targeted at kids.

[birdblinderdraws]

don’t be a transphobe.

[celiaelise]

My thoughts after watching The Owl House for the first time! 😊 (muchos spoilers!!!)

(I watched with some good friends who had already seen it; they had strong opinions but were also determined not to spoil me.)

We yelled at the screen a LOT. The most common cries were, "It's The Fascism."/"Do you think maybe it could be the fascism?"/"yeah because you're a fucking FASCIST!" we also yelled at Lilith for her poor decision-making skills very frequently. Like, "yeah, you did this!! This is entirely your fault!!!!" Oh, and at Luz for not thinking things through, though we accepted it's a part of who she is.

I LOVE Willow soooo much!! She is so cool and fun and has great outfits; I would like to cosplay her! I started doing her little part with her during the theme sequence in s2. When they revealed her interest in derby, I was like, "she's SUCH a lesbian."

Probably the least satisfying arc to me was how quickly Eda and Lilith reconciled with their mother, but I'm 100% willing to admit that's probably bc I'm projecting my own Issues onto the situation.

My best friend couldn't help but express sympathy for Hunter and Darius the whole time, which led to a few arguments during our watch 😂 they kept saying, "he's a GOOD BOY!" about Hunter, and making excuses for Darius, and I was like, "yeah but he (Darius) could've not been a dick about it, though." But I did agree that Hunter was doing pretty well considering how abused and conditioned he was. We compared him to Lilith, who ended up in a much worse place, after being raised in a much better environment.

Obviously the Belos/Philip/Hunter/Caleb stuff is super compelling!!! My heart was breaking when Hunter ran into the woods at the end of Hollow Mind, both because of his emotional distress and because, "oh my god, he needs to get out of the open, where is he going, he is going to get himself killed." I don't remember when I first suspected Belos' true identity, but I was pretty sure by the middle of the time travel episode. The foreshadowing and reveal were masterfully done, especially with Luz clinging to the hope that Philip could help her get home.

Gus is literally the most powerful illusionist there is??? Also he's like a tiny bit unhinged, but what can you do. 🤷🏻‍♀️ My friend pointed out that all the copies he makes of himself seem to have some degree of sentience, and express fear, specifically fear of death/not existing, and thus, fear of Gus himself. Which is likely not something he's specifically doing on purpose? So that's interesting. But also he's Baby!!! Someone give him a hug!!!!! He just wants to do a good job and be accepted and appreciated!

KING!!! 🥺💕 His arc in s2 was also heartbreaking, oh my god. The episode where we saw his castle was probably the closest I got to crying during the whole show. He is also Baby.

I don't have a lot to say about Eda? Not in a bad way, though, I think I just don't relate to her much. I did really appreciate her curse as rep for people who are chronically ill and/or have to take maintenance meds just to exist every day. I'm not sure I've ever seen that treated so naturally onscreen before. wrt meds specifically, it's usually either a joke to show the character is "weak", or a Big Fucking Deal that is portrayed somewhat tragically. Obvs the curse is tragic, but Eda using the resources at her disposal to manage it isn't.

Similarly, I don't have much to say about Amity. You would think I'd relate to her more, with us both having emotionally abusive mothers, but I think her being a rich mean girl overrides that 😅 No hate, though!! I like that she's gay and a huge nerd, and that she puts up a front of being together but she's still very much Just A Kid.

Luz just being Latina and occasionally even speaking Spanish is so 🥰💕🥰💕🥰 Also no one mispronounces her name the whole show?! So nice. I am curious what her ethnicity is. I assume the creators have one in mind, but if it's hinted at in the show, I didn't notice. Though I get the feeling she isn't Mexican-American. (that's what I am) (One small downside is that I've always liked the name Luz, but I fear it will now forever be a "fandom name" in my brain 😅)

I've seen fan speculation about Hunter's clothing hiding a lot of scars, specifically his gloves. Which makes sense, but I had the thought that he could have some homunculus- or even automaton-looking shit going on under there, before I remembered that's something he probably would've noticed about his own body. Could still make for a cool AU, though!

I LOVE Kikimora! She's chaotic and kind of dumb and ADORABLE, what else can we ask of anyone?

I'm probably forgetting a lot of things. I kind of already want to rewatch it! But my attention span for this post is waning, so I'll wrap things up.

Despite the circumstances, I am very happy the kids all ended up in the human realm together!! I'm excited to see the witchlings be out of their element in our world, as that is my exact favorite flavor of hijinks! Also I'm so glad they're together and we get to see them be friends; it's refreshing what a loving and drama-free squad they are. Y'know, once they decide they're not mortal enemies, lol 😅

[numetaljackdog]

what i’m listening to 8/5/2022 (song notes under the cut)

spot link//yt link

Laura Les - Haunted: haunted. by laura les

Radiohead - Idioteque: i listened to kid a for the first time not too long ago and this track made me gasp when it came on. something about it just absolutely touches the base of my skull

Rina Sawayama - Hold The Girl: my fav of the singles so far from the upcoming record. rly like the kinda uk garage sound, plus the lyrics + video hit hard. stan rina, etc

Pharrell Williams - Cash In Cash Out (ft. 21 Savage and Tyler, the Creator): took a bit of warming up to but i came around. tyler’s verse is the standout here for me, and i like 21′s contributions too. tbh i think the weak link here was, surprisingly, pharrell’s beat, but hey. still gets points for being weird ig

ANGEL_TECH - Keysmash {RE:smashed}: new banger from melodus and metagirl! def my favorite angel_tech song so far. the remix in particular is super energetic

Limp Bizkit - Back Porch: bonus track on my least favorite bizkit album but good GOD is that riff cool as fuck. literally that alone makes it worth it

Steve Lacy - Bad Habit: delightfully quirky and refreshingly summery. i’m glad to see steve lacy continue to have bigger hits bc i don’t think anyone else is doing it quite like him

Radiohead - Everything In It’s Right Place: unlike idioteque, this one took a few relistens to click. i lovvve vocal chopping/mixing and this is that good shit. catchy AND scary! one of the most songs ever

10 Years - Wasteland: have i ever mentioned that i love post-grunge

Kanye West - Gold Digger (ft. Jamie Foxx): like 80% of the appeal here for me is really just the masterful ray charles sample. maybe i should just listen to more ray charles actually

Foo Fighters - Everlong: so touching to me... reaching out for the hand of your love and holding them tight and saying this life is hard and cold and cruel very often but we are here together and i will never falter from you and we will make this worth it. we have to. i feel confident saying this is one of the greatest songs ever

Dove Cameron - Boyfriend: yeah babey let’s see some wlw rep in the top 40!!!!!! this song’s sound is kinda derivative of the billie eilish ripoff sound that has become popular since 2019 but it adds a bit of a jazz kinda thing which is fun, and also more importantly is very hot

Coal Chamber - Loco: MI LOCO. MI LOCO. MI LOCO. MI LOCO.

DJ Rozwell - F1 Tiger Road: soumds

Sugar Ray - Fly: in a surprising twist, i prefer sugar ray’s pop material VASTLY to their early nu metal shit

Limp Bizkit - Head For The Barricade: STICK EM. STICK EM.

Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz - Get Low (ft. Ying Yang Twins): do i have to say anything here? this is a total classic banger

Maroon 5 - This Love: OKAY! FINE! i’ll admit there is ONE! ONE singular maroon 5 song that i like....

Thousand Foot Krutch - Move: this song fucking sucks!!!! but it’s very funny to me. bc mr. krutch wants so badly to be like a tough nu metal guy but his voice is so thin and nothing that he just can’t 😭 i did steal this talking point from a crash thompson video btw

[reginaofdoctorwho]

if anyone wants to recommend musicals to me I would fucking adore that. Until then, here are some suggestions:

Love in Hate Nation-- LET’S GO LESBIANS! 1960s sapphic love story taking place in a girls’ reformatory. Also, trans girl played by trans actress!!! Some of the amazing songs are “I Hope” and “Oh Well”. Susannah Son wants to be a singer, her performative activist boyfriend is gross and also wants her to marry him so he’ll have better options politically. Sheila Nail is so fucking cool and I love everyone in this. My brain cuts out about this I’m so sorry babes. There is not a cast recording but there IS an original cast bootleg on youtube.

Holy Musical B@man!-- If you liked the goofiness of 1960s Batman and Robin, but think “man, these guys should’ve been able to swear! And also should have had a candy themed villain!” this is the musical for you. Also if you’ve heard of the very queer Harry Potter musical that JK herself tried to sue over, it’s made by the same group <3. As usual with Team Starkid, whole thing is up for free on youtube by the creators.

Firebringer-- Speaking of the same group... Cave people sapphics who I think are bi or pan. I love them and they’re all so dumb. Also, if you’ve seen the “I don’t really wanna do the work today” vine, that comes from this. I do not remember any of the second half other than one of them taking the ring the other is proposing with... to propose. And the “*blows kiss*” “fuck no, Zazz” “duly noted”. Kind of like a shitpost musical. Once again, free by creators. Actually, check out any of their musicals.

The Prom-- In Indiana, Emma just wants to take her girlfriend to the prom, and in response, the PTA cancels it. With some help from some broadway actors looking for good publicity, they manage to pull it off. So, to summarize, teen lesbian gets gay uncle who knows what she’s going through!! This musical makes me cry every goddamn time. There is a movie now, and I’m very happy about that because *high profile gay rep on netflix*, but I personally did not like the direction they took with it. They put a weird amount of emphasis on biological rather than found family in the movie, and were a little too forgiving when it came to trauma from family for being gay. Also, they took away Emma being butch. This was sadly (loosely) based on a recent true story from I think 2012. Also, was the first gay kiss in the Macy’s parade. You know those movie musicals the straight girls in theater like? The music is similar, but gayer, and for some reason that makes me so fuckng happy. I think it’s because non-queer people have had musicals for so long, and those normally have a 60s vibe, and the music in this does too and it feels more classic?? Sapphic promposal song (het at the beginning). “Unruly Heart” and the end of Act 1 will break you. Please ignore the bad wigs.

Spies Are Forever-- GAY SPIES GAY SPIES GAY SPIES!! Curt Mega (played by... Curt Mega) lost his partner Owen during a mission. Now, he’s just trying to get back into spying like Owen would want. I fucking weep every time. Also, a song about comphet (at 6:36)!! And here is a video essay on how it relates to the Lavender Scare. I want you all to know that everyone also headcanons the femme fatale spy in it as either a lesbian or aroace, which uh, makes sense. Also high quality videos put up by creators. They had Jewish people making fun of Nazis while writing this, but “Not so Bad” is... kinda bad. “Torture Tango” has so much goddamn sexual tension and becomes devastating.

Hadestown--  If you know the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, it’s like that, except capitalism part 1. Orpheus is a poor musician, Eurydice dies, just like the myth. Except, the Great Depression post-apocalyptic setting that works better than it probably should. There are actually 3 soundtracks: the concept album, off-Broadway, and Broadway. I personally don’t like the concept album purely based on vibe. Off-Broadway has an absolutely gorgeous sounding Orpheus, and if you’ve heard of the disaster that was Spiderman: Turn Out the Dark, then you’ve heard of surprisingly amazing Broadway Orpheus Reeve Carney. The Fates are gorgeous and I’ve decided they’re queer. Tony’s performance link here. Explores relationships, with Hades and Persephone’s aging relationship mirrored by Orpheus and Eurydice’s relatively new one. Anyway, unionize.

Jasper in Deadland-- If you know the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, it’s like that, except capitalism part 2. Jasper is a teen who’s best friend Agnes is pretty much the one good thing left in his life. His mom left, he got kicked off the swim team (he’s manic pixie dream boy in this, especially for swimming), and Agnes dies at the beginning trying to show Jasper that she’s brave and he should be too. So, he bravely ventures into Deadland to find her, meeting Gretchen the tour guide along the way. He also finds out that since he’s still living, he can bring memories back to the dead. Songs like “Stroke by Stroke” (he’s uh, definitely a teen, guys) and “Living Dead” (I shared a prinxiety animatic of that on here a while ago).They blend Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Christian, and whatever Dante’s Inferno counts as together to create Deadland. Story’s kinda hard to follow from the soundtrack, so if u wanna learn how it all ties together message me.

Death Note Musical-- Okay babes, here’s where it gets tough. It was written originally in English, and there is a spectacular English concept album, but the only productions have been in South Korea, Japan, and I think Taiwan. Listen to it anyways, find a bootleg of it with english subtitles. It has so much gay tension and also a truly ethereal character who seems to be a lesbian who is also either demisexual or demiromantic. If any of y’all saw the anime like me, it kind of cuts out the arc after episode 26. I personally thought it was actually a better story for it.

Alice by Heart-- Okay, this one makes me fucking cry every goddamn time. In WW2, these poor goddamn kids are all alone in the Tube System (is that what y’all call it? genuinely asking here) with none of their parents but still some grownups. Alice’s best friend Alfred is dying of tuberculosis, and to try to have one last thing together they start reading Alice in Wonderland, only for Nurse Hart to rip it apart to try to separate healthy Alice from dying-from-TB Alfred. It doesn’t work, and Alice proclaims she “knows it all by heart”, She tries to linger in the story with Alfred to have more time with him, he keeps trying to move it along because he’s dying and wants to finish it one last time. Themes are growing up and grief I guess.

Last I checked, there is a bootleg for all of these on youtube. Have fun!

[posi-pan]

Ugh it makes me so upset how lowkey panphobic people are. Like they’ll seem really supportive sometimes but then claim we need to think about why we chose pansexuality over bisexuality or that some definitions are harmful or we need to consider the (supposed biphobic/transphobic) origins. Or if someone doesn’t wanna watch a show or read a book that has panphobia in it that’s somehow not enough of a good reason. It’s like how can you claim to be supportive and not see yourself saying all of this stuff? You’ve said it before but man pan people are REALLY held to a different standard. We’re treated like we just have to accept panphobia and we constantly have to over-explain ourselves whether it’s why we identify one way or why we /aren’t/ bad people, the fact that pan people very rarely use hurtful definitions (ofc when LGB ppl use a hurtful definition they’re not treated like the majority…), or why our history is Not bad. Can you tell someone I thought was a good person just pulled a lot of bs lol. I saw them say things like “we always talk about panphobia but never biphobia” before so maybe I should’ve known. Sad stuff.

“we always talk about panphobia but never biphobia” are they for real? WHERE? i cannot stand when people say shit like that. because it's flat out fucking untrue. and as someone who is constantly witnessing and calling out and hurt by the lack of care the community has for pan people and panphobia, panphobes insisting that panphobia is taken more seriously than biphobia or there's more/better pan rep than bi rep or both sides of the "bi vs pan" shit is equal is starting to feel like gaslighting.

just last night someone was put on my timeline on twitter talking about wanting to undo bi erasure in a video game and one of the characters they were talking about was confirmed by the creators and voice actor as originally intended to be pansexual but was erased due to network pressure. the sources they gave said this. but they're still saying the character's bisexuality was erased. like....even pan erasure gets erased. even when people write a pan character and they fuck up what pan means, everyone rushes to say it's bi/transphobic but never once mentions how it's panphobic.

it's just. no one fucking gives a shit about panphobia. and i am so beyond tired of people outright fucking lying and saying it's more of a priority than biphobia. like, not only is it outright false to say people care more about panphobia than biphobia, but it's outright false to say people even care about panphobia in the first place.

(also, you were spot on with everything. and i'm sorry someone you liked/thought was a good person turned out to be a panphobe.)

[dragynkeep]

Hi there, ironpines! (Love the name btw, I read a really good fic about ironwood being a father-figure to Oscar when RWBY and co. get to Atlas).

So this is probably going to be very long but I’ve really gotta vent about some stuff.

(Also, first ask. I honestly didn’t know how to do this for the longest time. Just got back into tumblr a bit ago).

1. I hate Jaune Arc (a lot of people do), but I want to know why. Do you think/believe he’s an author’s pet? Also, why the HELL did he kill Penny in the first place?!? Why not Winter, Nora, or Ruby? Why did he have to go to the island? Just- WHY?

2. In the first three volumes I really liked Team RWBY, but now….how did they get so skewed? What went wrong? How can Ruby be THAT arrogant that she point-blank says to Qrow: “we never needed an adult’s help.” Like- yes you did! If not for Qrow killing the Grimm in v4 they would have been continuously fighting Grimm. I’m the fight against Tyrian (one of my favorite characters and favorite fights) if not for Ruby getting in the way Qrow wouldn’t have been POISONED!

3. (This is the one I’m going to get cyber-ly killed for). (I also had just started RWBY when volume 5 was airing weekly.) The beginning of Volume 5, in my opinion was good. I liked the first five-six chapters, but when AU watched ‘Rest and Resolutions’ V5C7, I was so angry! Everything about the conversation between Ruby, Weiss, and Yang felt so out of character and out of place. It was so bad and the next episodes following that were not good either (only the raven v cinder fight was any good). The battle of Haven was a train wreck that I honestly have no idea how I even retained braincells after that. Like- why KEEP teasing Weiss v emerald if you aren’t going to do anything with it. Why tease Mercury v Yang if you’re not going to do anything new and interesting with the two (Mercury isn’t even a character anymore!)

4. I wish we got good rep. I really wish we didn’t get confirmation on LGBTQ+ characters from supplemental material (that’s not even canon). And I’ve gotta ask, why do you consider cannon? Cuz for me, the only things I consider actually CANNON to the storyline are the Red, White, Black, Yellow Trailers and the show itself (Grimm Eclipse just for the sake of more cool lore about Mountain Glenn and the fact of mutant Grimm). That’s it. I don’t consider the World of Remnants, manga (DC or otherwise, those were HORRIBLE!), anthologies, and the DISGUSTING novels.

(This is the last thing, I promise!)

5. I’m working on a quasi-rewrite RWBY fic and I didn’t know whether or not I should post the first chapter on my page or not. I just really don’t want the simps to come for my head (though it might happen anyway). But I’ve been writing this for about a year and a half now and I really want to post it but I’m so nervous about the reception and backlash. What do you think?

Thanks for answering me and indulging the fact that it’s okay to like something and still want it to be better (critics/the Rwde tag is my favorite because I can read opinions that I mused share but are too scared to put as a post).

Thanks, we picked Ironpines because we loved Ironwood and Oscar, and then our friends, being the good friends they are, immediately told us it was the ship name for them so now we can't have anything nice.

1) First off, yes, we absolutely think Jaune is an author's pet. We don't really go for self-insert anymore since everyone in RWBY was a self-insert, Monty clearly based them off his friends. But now, Jaune is absolutely an author's pet and has been since the start of the show.

Just look at Volume 1. Jaune literally had more of a storyline than Yang, one of the girls in the title. He then went on to have a dumb love triangle in V2, only to resolve it with Neptune without any input from Weiss, because why not, and then V3 was Jaune finally taking more of a step back for Pyrrha, who was long over due some character.

Until V4 where, rather than everyone mourning Pyrrha, we focused on Jaune mourning her instead. Nevermind that Pyrrha was Ren and Nora's teammate too, probably their only family since they're orphans, or how Ruby literally watched Pyrrha die in front of her. Nope, gotta focus on Jaune. Add that it stretches into V5 also, adding another storyline about his Semblance while Ren, Nora, and Ruby have to stand in the background and wait their turn, while Weiss literally loses all her braincells so she's injured for Jaune's development, how the confrontation with Cinder doesn't go to Ruby, the main protagonist, but Jaune.

Then we get that stupid statue scene in V6 that took over Oscar finally getting some development of his own. It's not even the whole team, because it's only Jaune that gets to meet the lady who totally isn't Pyrrha's mother, it's Jaune that gets the big teary moment, and how Ren and Nora have to stop and comfort Jaune because of course they have to.

I was glad that Jaune finally took a backseat in V7. I actually started to like him again, because he wasn't sucking screentime away from those who need it. But then V8 happened and now I want him dead.

I've said it countless times before so I don't wanna repeat myself, but Jaune is one of the last people that should've killed Penny. He shouldn't have killed her, he shouldn't have had the big tearful scene because another redhead died, he shouldn't have fallen into the void to join Team RWBY, but he did. Now there's no doubt in my mind that Jaune is a fucking author's pet, because the writers won't let him go into the background where he belongs.

2) There's not much to say about Team RWBY. They just suck now.

3) After watching V8, V5 is no longer my least favourite volume. That's how bad it was.

4) Yeah, RWBY's rep is absolute trash and it's because they keep putting it in supplemental material, and also because they look at the LGBT and only see L. The only MLM we have is Scarlet, and he's a catty fae gay stereotype that is so unlikeable and voiced by a creep. Nevermind the whole Fairgame queerbait controversy because this company can't stop themselves for five minutes.

5) I always say that, when you post work on the internet, whether its art of writing, you have to understand that you will get criticism back. It'll suck, especially when you've put so much time and effort into something, but that's the risk you have to take as a content creator.

The good thing is that AO3 has features that let you manage what you see properly. If people just want to hate without giving proper criticism, you can always remove it and ignore it, but I personally believe that people aren't entitled to criticism when it's only said nicely. Sometimes, people will get annoyed and say it in a meaner way, but that doesn't make the criticism any less valid.

Either way, decide based on how you think you'll react to it. If you don't want the stress of criticism, be careful, but if you think you can handle it? Then go for it, the world's your oyster.

[rotationalsymmetry]

So that I’m posting about something other than tumblr drama, have some old as fuck webcomic recs. In general some of these have adult themes but none are unsafe for work. Most of these I found back around 2006-2008, when I was reading webcomics as my main form of not doing whatever I was supposed to be doing.

The Princess: cute comic about a trans girl. Girl as in not an adult. (Themes of transphobia, but overall positive/optimistic tone. Not an adult themes comic.)

Darths and Droids: screencap comic of Star Wars as a table top role playing game. Very well executed. Keeps making me want to read DM of the Rings but every time I try I get disappointed. Warning: there is a lot of it. (As best I can recall this comic doesn’t get any raunchier than the movies.)

Questionable Content: I’m doing current page rather than first page on this one. If you go back to the beginning, be aware that it gets better and much more queer later on. Also has a lot. Slice of life/coffeeshop original. Has a recurring theme of “character is lonely and bad at doing the having friends thing, makes friends.” Nobody can keep track of all the characters.

Queen of Wands: the webcomic that got me into webcomics. (Some stuff might have not aged well? I haven’t read it in a while. A bit of polyamorous rep near the end. Slice of life. Young adults being young adults. Starts with a joke of the day format, has some high drama arcs later on. Has an actual ending.) (the follow-up comic Punch and Pie nominally has an ending but I found it kind of unsatisfying? It’s enjoyable on a strip to strip basis though. Realistic polyamorous rep in that “polyamorous, but is not actually seeing anyone or is only seeing one person at a time in practice” is in fact pretty common.)

The Devil’s Panties: less exciting than it sounds, but kinda a comfort comic in a weird way. Apparently still going. Slice of life/autobiographical. Has fun with the shoulder angel/shoulder demon trope. This comic has a special place in my heart because it covered the protagonist breaking up with a long time partner when I was working up the nerve to do the same thing. Also, it’s written by a Unitarian Universalist.

Dykes to Watch Out For: has some formatting issues. Origin of the Bechdel Test. It’s about dykes. And feminism. And being the sort of dork who doesn’t know how to connect with people except by ranting about politics. Relatable?

Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl (sorry you’ll have to google for it): this one is kinda dark but it’s, uh, something. Trans woman creator.

Hyperbole and a Half: I’m throwing you into the middle of this one. Link is for one of the depression strips. Title is accurate. Autobiographical. There’s physical books now so this is something you might be able to get from the library or bookstore if you’d rather have paper.

1/0: this is a terrible comic, do not read it. (Man, I miss the early days of webcomics where half the creators had zero art skills.) (No really, I do. It feels dramatically harder to find new webcomics now and I don’t know why. Sometimes you just want to read super random amateur shit, you know?)

A girl and her fed. I don’t know what to say about this. The art style changes dramatically. There’s a talking koala with a bad attitude and the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. I have no idea what the genre is supposed to be.

Spikey haired dragon, worthless knight: black and white comic with light fantasy elements. Kind of a downer just so you know. No longer active. Weekly links to flash games that may or may not still be working.

Phoebe and her unicorn: kinda like Calvin and Hobbes if Calvin was a girl and Hobbes was a self-absorbed unicorn. This one’s family-friendly.

Kimchi cuddles: the touchy-feely polyamory webcomic.

Anyways, enjoy, or don’t, it’s up to you.

[antibioware]

My final thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda (a 3 years late review)

So I spent the past week and a half playing a game I paid 13€ for, one that I promised myself I wouldn't touch but that in the end I gave a solid try to anyway, because I was willing to give Andromeda the benefit of the doubt. Because I'm aware that sometimes I'm a bitch, and that the Mass Effect trilogy had its own problems too, but I still regard it as one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

It wasn't as bad as I had expected it would be, but that doesn't make it good. Above all else, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a game that could have been interesting, had the creators actually cared to make something out of it outside of just “Dragon Age Inquisition in the Mass Effect universe”.

I wanted to write a more coherent post about what I didn’t like about it, aside from just shitting all over it like I’ve been feeling like doing since the canonical bury your gays in the game slapped me in the face. So here it is, an overlong post about a 3 years old game.

Before getting into the main elements that I disliked, I wanna preface this post by saying that I enjoyed parts of the game. The main characters, while not as well characterized as they could have been (no Bioware character ever is), grew on me the more I played the game, and by the end were the main reason why I kept playing. Unlike DA:I, the writers did a really good job building up the found family trope in this game, and while it turns corny at times, it’s very heartwarming. I think many of the planetary settings in Heleus were stunning to look at, to the point that I didn’t even mind all that much having to drive from point A to point B.

I didn’t hate the game, and I’m speaking from the point of view of someone who enjoyed it, but not enough to simply accept its many flaws.

The problems with the gameplay itself

There are three main things that I don’t think work well and are up in your face since the first seconds of the game: the game interface, the fight mechanics, and the open world aspect of the game.

◦ The first impact I had on Andromeda, right from the first 2/3 hours of playing it, was that it was very cluttered and very, very confusing. I had just finished playing ME3 and I had issues understanding how to move without having a proper map onscreen, how to read throught the thousand tutorials for the 100 new, useless elements they added to the game that are either reused from ME1 or taken directly from DA:I. The game didn’t need a crafting system, especially not one DIVIDED IN TWO DIFFERENT SECTIONS, it didn’t need an inventory system, and especially it didn't need to have the sheer amount of sidequest it had.

◦ The fight mechanics + leveling up/classes system is a hot mess. I understand they wanted to try something new, and in part they did make the fighting feel more fluid, but not being able to rely on teammates for necessary stuff like overloads/specific powers that you need during fights severely impaired the strategic element of the game. Now it’s just a third person shooter with teammates dying left and right because you have 0 control on how they fight, aside from putting them in one place or another.

The fact that you can only use 3 powers at the time is a consequence of the confusing leveling up system. Because you can have an endless amount of powers you can give your character, they needed to find a way to make them not too overpowered. The problem is…. You had more powers to use in-game in ME1. It doesn’t work so well.

When the fighting mechanics in ME3, a game that came out in 2012, feel way fluider and more enjoyable than the ones from the game that came out in 2017, something is very wrong.

◦ Open world games are a challenge, because too many developers don’t understand that turning a game into an open world doesn’t make it good, it just makes it bigger and slower. It was a problem with Dragon Age Inquisition, and it’s a problem here with Andromeda - with the only good aspect being that at least Andromeda gives you a decent car to explore the planets.

ME1 had some level of open world-ness, and there was a valid reason why ME2 and ME3 got rid of the concept: the maps you’re given are a big, cluttered mess of nothing. You have several thousands sidequests, many of which incredibly similar to each other, and nothing fucking else. Sometimes you will accidentally stumble upon something interesting, and then return to a 6 hours drive into the nothingness that keeps repeating over and over again.

It got to the point I almost stumbled upon the endgame because I got exhausted of running around doing errands, and I tried continuing the main plot, only to realize I was almost done with it. That was it.

Empty self-referencing

This is the term I used to describe my girlfriend why the way the game made call backs to the previous games bothered me so much. Call backs aren’t new to the concept of the game (the Mass Effect trilogy literally lived on characters returning from previous games, referencing things that had previously happened, etc.), but because this game wanted to be a separate thing from the ME trilogy, it couldn’t use this sort of material. And that’s completely fine! The game wanted to be its own thing, I was happy about it at first, because the trilogy was over and done for. If Mass Effect was indeed gonna continue, it needed a fresh start.

The problem is, it also needed to remind players that it’s a Mass Effect game, the game from which Commander Shepard came.

So, how to solve this matter? Well, instead of referencing stuff that actually happened in the trilogy, it solves the referencing aspect by putting a bunch of relatives of characters from the trilogy in the game. You get Conrad Verner’s sister, Nyreen Kandros’s cousin, a lost illegitimate son of Zaeed Massani, a brief cameo of Garrus Vakarian’s dad, a krogan on New Tuchanka being from clan Urdnot, and so on. And it was funny the first time or so, maybe even the second, but at some point it just turned awkward, and I started asking myself, “is this it? Is this all that’s left of the trilogy, just a bunch of big name characters to remind the player you belong from the same universe?”. The brief way they referenced back to Shepard was also very awkward and felt... out of place, with the rest of the game.

A couple call backs I really liked were:

Liara being acknowledged for her work as a Prothean researcher and being in contant with Ryder Senior, without much reference being done to her time in Shepard’s crew. It was good, seeing her from an outsider perspective.

The fact that Avitus Rix, being a turian ex-Spectre, knew Saren and was in fact his disciple.

Both these elements are things that make sense and tie the game back to the trilogy beyond just going “hey, this x character is the relative of this other x character, isn’t it crazy!”

The plot, and the problem with binary choices

It’s easy to make fun or critique the game struggling to find its own plot after something as big as the ME trilogy was. But Bioware isn’t an indie developer, it’s a huge fucking company, and they could have done better.

While I liked the design of the Remnants architecture and enemies, putting a plot point revolving around an ancient, long lost alien civilization who was much more technologically advanced, sounds a lot like a bad repeat of the Protheans.

I liked the Angara conceptually, but I didn’t like their design all that much and I often found it hysterically funny that angara are supposed to be a deeply emotional race, when the animators left them stuck with those mono expressive faces and unemotional eyes.

And on top of all of this, the kett are boring villains. The exaltation progress is really just a bad repeat of how Reaper indoctrination worked, and the way they talk reminds me of the big bad templars from the Dragon Age universe. It’s literally nothing new, and because of it, it’s boring.

When I was playing the endgame, all I kept thinking was “this is it? this is all they came up with? for real?”. I liked the twins aspect of the endgame, but aside from that, it didn’t feel satisfying.

And now comes the reason why it didn’t feel satisfying: the game got rid of the Paragon/Renegade system from the trilogy, and because of that, they also got rid of the possibility of additional problem-solving solutions during big choices. 

In Andromeda, almost every major quest has a binary choice attached to it: choose this or that. Burn the facility or save all the angara but leave the facility standing. Save the krogans or Raeka. Pick Sloane or Reyes. Keep Sarissa as the Pathfinder or not. Etc.

in the trilogy, complete, important binary choices were rare (choosing Ashley or Kaidan is probably the biggest one) and the consequences had long lasting effects. Not all of them did (saving or killing the rachni in ME1 and rewriting or destroying the geth in ME2 didn’t have so many long term consequences in ME3, for example), but a great deal meant big changes in the following games.

The issues with these choices in Andromeda? None of them matter. Characters will get angry at you for going against their will in a single dialogue line, and then never mention it again. The opinion on the Nexus won’t change if you expose Spender, Addison’s connections to the Exiles, or Nexus people targeting the angara. None of your companions will betray you or leave you for going against their will during their loyalty missions.

A Mass Effect game with choices that don’t influence the final result of the game feels like a joke, and while I know in many ways the trilogy also had a problem on this matter on some parts, dead characters stayed dead and betraying a friend’s trust meant losing them in the near future

The unavoidable part where I mention the issue with LGBT rep in this game because I’m a nonbinary lesbian and I can’t detach that aspect of myself from how I consume media

Endless gays and trans folks out there have already written this sort of matter so as my last point of critique, I’ll make it quick. Bioware has a long story with homophobia and transphobia in its character writing - this without mentioning the huge problems with racism in the character writing, too. Many gay/bi women in Bioware games are written by the same homophobic straight cis man with a lesbo fetish, AKA Lukas Kristjanson, and that alone gives a really good feeling on why such issues exist.

The original Mass Effect trilogy had very little gay romance options, out of the amount of romance options: as of ME3, there are two main gay romance options for fShepard (Liara and Traynor, without counting the mini-romances that were put in the previous games for pure fetish fuel) and two for mShepard (Kaidan and Cortez, both only added in the last game).

Andromeda wasn’t... the big breath of fresh air in the representation department they tried to pass it as. There are more romance options, but for once, there add to add another m/m romance option later on because the only gay romance available were with minor NPCs, and there’s an issue with the amount of content gay romances get compared to main het romances.

There’s a single trans NPC, and it's a random person you meet who tells you her deadname and the reason she transitioned right away. Ugh.

And now we come to the bury your gays mission that made me almost uninstall the game: the mission to find the turian Pathfinder with the help of his partner, the previously mentioned Avitus Rix,  who also happens to be the first gay male turian character in the game (the first gay female turian being Nyreen Kandros, who dies btw). You invest time to trace back to the turian arc, while listening to Avitus talk about how important the turian Pathfinder is to him, you realize pretty fast they’re lovers, and when you find out the turian arc, it’s all to discover that the Pathfinder is already dead. Not a choice in the game that could accidentally kill him, like with Raeka, or an active choice you make to keep him in his role, like Sarissa. He’s already dead, and you’re left with Avitus alone and mourning.

The game is from 2017. This sort of bullshit is unacceptable, and I will keep screaming it until Bioware manages to pretend like they care about their LGBT fans.

To end this mess of a post - Mass Effect: Andromeda lasted me a total of 50 hours of game, and in a way, I’m glad I got it out of my system. It was a delusion, but at least now I can cross it off my list and go back to playing other stuff. I understand that this is a game many ended up liking, and I’m sad I can’t say I’m among them, and that I couldn’t even fully enjoy the game at times. Also I promised myself I wouldn’t mention this but goddamn the facial animations of the game were so ugly.

DESPITE THIS, I really loved the characters, and I very much enjoyed Vetra’s romance, which was the main reason why I bought the game. 

[angelsonthesideline]

Tales from the Ex-Crypt Vol. 7

I was deleting pics/screenshots off my phone the other day, and decided I really need to clear off any of the past screenshots of absolute abuse and bullshit. Why I have kept them for this long, is beyond me. Part of me thinks it was as a reminder to NEVER go back but part of me thinks it may have also been a reminder period... of the good and the bad. But it is time to clean the fucking house and toss the trash out...

The main one I had reminders of was my last longterm (as in beyond a year, we *dated* for 2.5 years) ex. He is the creator of triggers and the killer of a nympho level sex drive, which terrified me that it wouldn't come back (it did, thankfully, but it took MONTHS).

We met shortly before his 25th birthday.. I was 34. He walked into work, a new sales rep being introduced by a superior who already had a relationship with us. He was incredibly attractive, 6'2 and very fit. I have a huge weakness for wide shoulders and strong (physically) men. He and I didn't really talk that first introduction. A couple of weeks later, he was back with the same superior and we were talking about the exchange rate of Canadian to US funds, and nerd me piped up that I knew because my WoW subscription had increased so much due to it. I am a shameless nerd, but after he came over to me and asked me "alliance or horde?" and it just somewhat went from that moment. We started texting that night, he was super nervous that I wouldn't take his invite to text him, and I didn't text him until after 10 pm because I was busy that night. It started innocently enough, just harmless flirting, and then one night he invited himself to my apartment to drop off some work paperwork. He ended up staying the night, but we talked for hours first, both of us nervous... I asked him if he was staying or if he had to drive home (he lived over an hour away) and he wouldn't give me an answer... so at 2am, I made a move and ended up fooling around for hours and barely sleeping before getting up and being late for work.

It started casually.. he's a giant commitmentphobe. Well.. he was at the time, who knows, perhaps he's come to term with that by now but I haven't asked when we talk, we don't talk about our personal lives.

I'm a huge believer in communicating and no games... he THRIVES on games.. especially fucking with someone else's head "games". He did a total number on me over the time we were together. His worst trait was the hot/cold thing.. he would be uncontrollably obsessed, and avoid me to try to not give in.. and then cold to help him stay away, without any concern for what his own games would do to me.

We had amazing sex, and when things were good, they were really good.. I don't know why I kept dealing with his shit. We weren't committed officially, but we were for all intents and purposes.

After a year of our casual and unofficially official situationship, I was in a different place and wanted more. I knew he didn't want more, so I sat him down and told him where I was and what I wanted had changed, and while I would prefer to pursue more with him, I knew he didn't want it so if he still felt that way, I was going to start dating other people. He said he would rather lose me than commit to me, and that he was a horrible boyfriend so didn't want that.

I left it for about 6 months, we were both busy and it was easy/convenient to just keep doing our thing and living our separate lives. He came to a wedding with me in the fall, close friends were getting married and I was happy he was actually going to go with me. He ended up being a giant weirdo, had a panic attack from seeing two people commit to each other, and refused to go to the reception after we left after the wedding. When we got back to my place, he was still in the height of his panic attack, and when I finally got him calmed down and he explained why, I brought up the same discussion again of me wanting more and him still not.

That time, I did actually pursue other people, and we just kind of drifted without much contact for a few months. Their wedding was in September, the last time we hooked up was early October, and then in mid-January he randomly messaged me and asked if I had been with anyone else. I'm a super honest person, so I told him I had, and he had an absolute meltdown.. It was rough. Three days later, he messaged and said he'd like to see me.. we went for lunch and had a heart to heart, and after 2 years, finally told each other we loved each other. Then he said he'd like to try being an official couple if I wasn't seeing anyone seriously. So we made it official, and then he became officially pretty much the worst boyfriend ever for about a month straight until I ended his treatment. He created a trigger for humiliation and degradation for me, because he genuinely degraded me or humiliated me basically daily. It killed my sex drive, and then he got even more insecure because I was no longer the hyper-sexual person that he knew, because his own actions had killed my sex drive. We still had lots of sex, but I didn't initiate, or tease him mercilessly until I saw him to make him crazy with need between visits. By the end, 8 months after we decided to try to be an actual couple, we were both miserable but it was a common sense break up. I had said to him that he either needed to move in with me, or I was moving to Nova Scotia and he was welcome to come with me, or not. He said we were no where living together, and he couldn't just pick up and move to Nova Scotia, so I said that there was nothing left than really.. and he said I didn't need to rip his heart to shreds.

While we have been broken up almost 4 years, and are totally amicable and platonic friends, we do not socialize, we speak for work or occasionally share a meme or something. He pretends we never dated, or were ever more, and since that is how he needs to deal with things, I roll with that.

I was going to attach some of the abusive and crazy texts I have on my phone.. but it really would just be keeping them still and I need to just completely delete them out of my life and off my phone and toss the last reminders of a shitty emotional rollercoaster.

Bye bye Toxic T

[davidmann95]

Hey David? Why is ours such a cruel and merciless God?

mirrorfalls said: (If you don't know what I'm talking about, your inbox should be filling up with more specific deets riiiiight about now.)

cheerfullynihilistic said: THE SNYDER CUT

Anonymous said: You don’t seem to think Superman’s public rep will take another beating from the Snyder Cut coming out. Honestly I thought you’d be way more upset than you seemed on Twitter.

Anonymous said: So uhh, against all thoughts and logic the Snyder cut is being released? Maybe as a mini series? Thoughts?

Anonymous said: SNYDER CUT!

Bullies. Jocks. Guys angrily asking if we know who their father is. Assorted dudebro nerd-oppressors of America:

You have failed us. You have failed us so hard. What else do we even keep you around for if not to head this shit off at the pass? Shame on you.

Okay, so seriously: I’m actually gonna put most bitching and moaning under a cut, because I know firsthand there are as many as several non-slavering maniacs out there who dug Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and who are simply and entirely reasonably excited that they’re getting this movie after all. I don’t feel like throwing a wall of text at them shitting all over this, so I’ll lead off with I think some fairly even-handed commentary on the real-world circumstances here, rambling speculation regarding the production, and some cautious optimism about the actual movie/s. THEN I’ll get to what I imagine most of you are here to see.

So totally in a vacuum: this is a cool, good thing. I’m the notorious theatrical Justice League-liker, but at best it was a compromised product due to the original creator - who like it or not clearly had an incredibly ambitious personal vision for these characters and their world - suffering a horrific tragedy forcing him off the project, and leaving his final stamp on blockbuster culture and a world he’d devoted years of his life to a flop with his name on it when he couldn’t even truly call it his own anymore. At worst, said tragedy was taken advantage of by suits to ditch him in the home stretch so as to try and shove out something ostensibly more marketable. But now because of a...very loyal fanbase, the man’s getting the opportunity and resources to rise like a phoenix and see at least some of his vision through in a huge way. That’s pretty remarkable.

Not in a vacuum this is fucking horrifying. I’ve already seen folks poo-poohing the reflexive fears that this will ‘set a precedent’, and they were right enough that I deleted my initial tweet on the subject because I didn’t think I could express my own opinion with any nuance in the space of 280 characters. Yeah, nerd whining definitely shaped Rise of Skywalker (another movie I enjoyed in spite of the circumstances of its creation). Hell, Sonic the Hedgehog crunched its CGI team prior to unceremoniously firing them to redesign his model thanks to outcry. That’s already a market force, and just to be clear upfront, if we can’t agree the predominant mode of operation for #ReleaseTheSnyderCut has been a toxic nerd harassment campaign when they spammed posts memorializing deceased actors and chased Diane Nelson off Twitter, we’re not gonna be able to have this conversation. And director’s cuts are you may have noticed also already a thing. But this isn’t changing direction on a project that’s already going to exist no matter what, this is turning back 3 years later on a commercial flop and dumping tens of millions of dollars into it, explicitly in response to that harassment campaign. It’s not *actually* going back and, say, remaking The Last Jedi, but by god to the naked eye it’s gonna be as good as for plenty of fanboys, and probably to some shortsighted execs as well. This is a new thing, and in this context it is a very, very bad one. Hopefully one that won’t amount to anything.

As for the movie itself: what the hell is this thing going to end up being? I assume with this sort of cashola being pumped into it we’re not getting any slapdash greenscreen or storyboarded sequences, but four hours? Is it really just going to be an expanded and revised version of what we saw in theaters, or is this including content that would have been in the originally planned Justice Leagues 2 and 3? My understanding is that those were already compressed into a single Justice League 2 before plans collapsed altogether, were they maybe filming side-by-side and this’ll be the whole shebang? If not is Snyder going to hedge his bets and end this on a clean note, or keep it ending on a cliffhanger in hopes HBO will throw another $250 million his way to keep going? Does DC want to keep going? Would they give into fan pressure on releasing after all what was widely publicized as the first film of a duology or trilogy with dangling threads if they weren’t going to be at least watching the numbers to see the feasibility of returning to this in a bigger way? Not that I think WB execs would piss into Snyder’s mouth if he were dying of thirst at this point if he simply asked to be able to do Justice League 2, but if he floated that if they instead just give him a liiiiiiiitle more money he can finally deliver unto them their very own Avengers - one that they can work on even during quarantine since it’s mostly just VFX work left - and hey if it works out he’s got a sequel or two cued up and ready to go? Maybe they look at their scattered plans and say the hell with it and end up giving this a theatrical release and sequel with Snyder holding the reigns again if this ends up a killer app; stranger things have happened, if not many, and somehow this is already happening in the first place after all. Alternatively, if this succeeds, could they go “thanks and good on ya, totally do another, but it’s gonna be an HBO exclusive so you’re only getting a hundred million, figure it out”? Would Ben Affleck return? How much reshooting will he be willing to commit to even for this? And most importantly, since this is potentially going to be serialized as six ‘episodes’, will We Got This Covered count this as another ‘win’ since their bullshit rumor mill algorithm spit out “Justice League HBO TV show” recently?

As for the project itself: I ain’t subscribing to HBOMax for this bad boy, but once it becomes more widely available I can’t claim I won’t probably watch it. It’s basically a new movie about the Justice League, and if there’s anything I WOULD wanna see Zack Snyder do in the DCU, it’s the movie finally moving past pseudo-realism (aside from some of those dopey costumes) and leaning all the way into godlike superbeings bludgeoning each other through continents. I absolutely wanna see his aesthetic take on the Green Lantern Corps, and New Genesis, and time travel, and all the other weird promises of where his movies were going to go climaxing in a ridiculous super-war across all spacetime. It’s the same reason J.G. Jones was an exciting choice for Final Crisis before he had to leave, seeing a guy known for his work in an ultra-real grungy superhero style starting there and building up to seeing his version of absolutely wild cosmic spectacle. And no, to respond to one of the initial asks, I’m not worried about the impact on Superman. Everyone seems to have accepted this is its own distinct thing whether they like it or not, I think him getting to complete his ‘arc’ will quiet down many of the folks who like to yell at every other version as retro nonsense since now they’ll be able to be smug about having had the best take rather than pining for a lost finale, and I’m not interested in further Superman movies at the moment anyway with Superman & Lois in the pipe (which I was originally paranoid would be endangered by this when rumors first started floating, but if it’s been brewing since November then if they wanted to strike that down to ‘make room’ according to their Byzantine ever-shifting rules, they would have by now). Far as I’m concerned, as long as the other DC movies get to keep doing what they’re doing during and past this - even Pattinson in his corner, however that works - then totally let Snyder work out all his Wagnerian superhero bullshit for another flick or two. If nothing else, maybe we’ll learn what the hell that diagram up there is supposed to mean. And a plea I want to clarify upfront is wholeheartedly sincere: we’re already down the rabbit hole, so let Snyder to literally whatever he wants with his non-theatrically released Justice League. Zero input or veto power from outside parties. If he wants Flash to hang dong or Superman to say fuck or Batman to learn he’s Steppenwolf’s secret dad or Cyborg to learn he needs to eat babies to fuel his machine parts, let him go for it. Whole point is this is now his thing for people who want his thing.

Okay, beneath the cut the filter comes off, so go ahead if that’s your jam.

Hahahahahahaha this is gonna be such a fuckin’ shitshow you guys, Jesus Christ.

They’re giving the dude who did BvS and wants to make an Ayn Rand adaptation someday $30 million to take another crack at this monstrosity! 30 goddamn million smackaroos for four fucking hours of by many accounts roughly the same basic movie, except now presumably with what little coherency, fun, and clean character work the theatrical cut managed to pull off excised in return for weighty staring, ponderous pseudo-philosophical musings, hackneyed symbolism, aimless mythology teasing, and Steppenwolf I understand being decapitated by Wonder Woman at the end rather than taken back to Apokolips. I didn’t even spoiler mark that shit because don’t you dare pretend you care about the fate of Steppenwolf. I won’t have it.

I used to wonder if I was indeed missing the forest for the trees with these movies, that I was so inflexible in my personal image of these characters - even though I appreciate plenty of alternate takes on them and even some stories that bend or break what I consider their ‘rules’, just not these - that I was incapable of grasping or appreciating these films on their own merits as works of art using those archetypes in wildly different ways; even I could see there were good moments and interesting ideas on display despite seemingly failing to come together. No matter how much I personally deconstructed how and why it wasn’t working, I couldn’t do it to my own satisfaction to the point of stamping out that niggling little worry with how many folks whose opinions I respect love ‘em. Until I finally remembered that the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited is totally the same basic story as BvS, centrally driven by an even worse take on Superman, and that’s still one of the best superhero stories of all time. These just stink by any merits, and while I think Justice League absolutely has the potential to be the most *entertaining* of the bunch, it’s not going to magically become *good* in the eleventh hour. Not to lift up Joss Whedon of all people as some kind of savior, I’m on the record that my love for Justice League as-is is some kind of inexplicable alchemical accident, but I promise that there is not going to be one single addition to this movie that’s going to make up for the removal of “Just save one person”.

Also I’m already not looking forward to dudes tweeting “whoa, he’s splitting it up into a serialized narrative, reflective of the sequential nature of the characters’ primitive native pictorial medium! Or mayhap in ode to the pulp film adventure serials which inspired those in turn! Even the Justice League children’s cartoon for dumb babies, which was itself...made up of episodes! That’s three references in the structure of the thing alone! The man’s operating on an entirely different level!” “God, isn’t it amazing how much better he understands the source material than you”, they shall say, about a man who I understand just very confidently referred to Doomsday in his livestream as having destroyed Krypton in the comics. Again, don’t you say they won’t, just the other day I saw folks tweeting they just realized that since Jor-El wears armor over his bodysuit that technically means Superman’s whole costume is underwear which means Snyder’s totally honoring that without putting him in ugly dumb red panties so checkmate, dorks.

(Okay, in fairness, I know Snyder was saying that’s his take on what happened to the moon in the past of the movies and maybe I only misheard that he thought that also happened in the comics, and it’s trivial information anyway. Still sucks though, that seeming out-of-nowhere Jax-Ur shoutout was like the one thing I liked about that otherwise interminable Krypton sequence. And why is there a second Doomsday? You did Death of Superman already!)

And further SPOILER thoughts below on the reported plots of 2 and 3:

It’s also an amazing, perfect sort of narrative synchronicity that the hypocrisy of Man of Steel in presenting Superman as a savior would (will?) be matched by the movies also rejecting that promise long-term. In there, Jor-El’s musings on the capacity of every living thing being capable of good, the closest the film has to a singular moral statement, are proven wrong when Zod has to be put down like a mad dog, and rather than the one who’ll bring us into the sun, Kal-El’s presence draws ruin from beyond the stars to our world. And again in BvS with Doomsday. And again in Justice League 1-3, where in spite of claims by Snydercutters that it’s okay for Superman to be a really lousy take on Superman because it’s totally supposed to take several movies after putting on the costume and calling himself Superman, including his own death and resurrection, for him to really, like, become Superman, man, he remains a liability to the end. His death lures in Steppenwolf, the Kryponian matrix in his genes is Darkseid’s goal, he becomes the villain of the first act of Justice League 3 - possibly of his own free will depending on which version you’ve heard about - and at the final showdown, it’s Batman who sacrifices himself to stop Darkseid and save the world and inspire the rise of superheroism, because Batman, you see, rules, whereas Superman, stay with me here, drools. A letdown given BvS was just about the one major story of the last 30 years to unambiguously conclude Superman is better than Batman, but not a shocker. None of what I understand goes down in these - iconography from the likes of Fourth World, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Death and Return of Superman, Rock of Ages, Final Crisis, and Injustice reused but stripped of all context and thematic weight that gives it meaning (even Injustice is built on the premise of having a ‘good’ Superman to contrast the dictator); Lois being the ‘key’ because of her connections to two men, one she married and one she bears; time travel that even by the very generous suspension of disbelief applied to it in a genre like this operates by two obviously completely different sets of rules in its only two uses, and is then used to write the entire second movie of the trilogy out of continuity in the first act of the third, making one and a half of these movies pointless - is shocking. It’s just more empty notions and unfulfilled promises offered up to a fanbase staking everything on the idea that all the tampering, all the wild swings, all the meandering, it’s all building UP to something, not possibly just a dude who doesn’t understand these characters but wanting to look very clever with them before building up to one more rad punch-up. So yes, make these movies. Let what can be gleaned from them as worthwhile be revealed, leave the rest of it up for examination to be judged as it deserves and let it, finally. Finally. Be done.

[rockets-capris]

Some black youtubers I like you can support

So I’m not a very big blog. Obviously. But I figured what little influence I have I can use to direct people in this time to some underrated black creators I like since I spend all my time watching YouTube and feel free to add as always. Also this was originally supposed to be in order of sub count but that didn’t work out at all.

1. Jarvis Johnson.

Probably one of the most popular creators on this list with over 1 million subscribers but extremely funny and if you haven’t heard of him and you like comedic Cody Ko-esque commentary videos, go give him a sub. He’s reacted to many of the same channels Danny Gonzalez and Drew Gooden have such as Troom Troom and 5 Minute Crafts. He’s also a software engineer which is pretty badass.

2. Lana Summer.

Does mainly fashion and hair related videos but is very chill and easy to listen to. Sometimes I like to put on her videos while I’m doing things even though I 100% have straight hair and she does mostly curly hair tutorials. But she’s covered a large umbrella of beauty topics in her videos and if you’re the least bit feminine it’s highly possible she’s covered at least one topic that’ll be useful to you. She’s very pretty (lowkey crushing on her) and lovely and I enjoy her channel a lot.

3. The Curly Guy.

A highly underrated channel that does content similar to Lana’s but for guys! He’s a guy with long, curly hair and talks about how to take care of it. I am always here for nontoxic male positivity and getting more guys involved in taking care of their appearance. It’s very sweet to watch. He’s also reviewed bad hair products which we all like to watch bad reviews of things on YouTube, right, and once pierced his ears at home. So. Idk about you but that sounds great to me.

4. Jolie K.

We’ve got some black queer representation in here! She’s a queer woman who makes videos about queer women. She hasn’t uploaded in a minute but I think she’s still worth supporting. She’s done some cool story times about being gay as well as some beauty stuff.

5. Honest.

Honest is a drama channel run by a black guy who talks about drama between music artists and sometimes youtubers. He’s not only a black person in the drama side of YouTube but he’s a black man in the drama side of YouTube two demographics that feel excluded from that world. If you do like drama videos like Teaspill, it’s cool to support a POC in that world. I can’t say I agree with everything he says but that’s drama channels for you.

6. Ranting Minority.

This guy’s super new and super underrated! He makes spicy political content, is extremely eloquent and chill, which makes him good to listen to, and is a leftist. If you can’t stop watching left-tubers like I can’t, I would totally recommend this guy. He makes videos on racial and societal issues from a liberal and anti conservative perspective. He has less than a thousand subscribers, so I’d highly advise giving him a sub.

7. MacDoesIt

So this guy is also one of the more popular on here. Basically if you watch any LGBTQ+ content on YouTube at all he pops up. He’s like the Strange Æons of the mlm community in that respect. He’s super funny, does reaction videos, does some very comedic red carpet fashion reviews, just if you haven’t subbed to MacDoesIt, what are you doing?

8. Kat Blaque.

Kat Blaque has been under fire for certain opinions before, but all in all she’s a good leftist, political youtuber who is also a black trans woman. She does videos on LGBT+ issues, racial issues, lots of other things, and is a smart, beautiful lady. Basically you can’t be a political youtuber without being controversial so, decide for yourself if you wanna support her, I personally do. Also I am not a trans woman but I know trans women who have said she helped them figure out certain things, so that’s good.

9. Rickey Thompson

A black gay comedian who does story times and random funny videos. I also think he’s an ex viner. I’m only a comedic fan of this one but I do know he’s very handsome and I came from his LGBT+ story times. Just someone you might wanna check out. He’s kind of like Mac in some ways just like. Much chiller.

10. WiseJae

I love how this is a mix of semi popular youtubers and super obscure youtubers I like for very specific reasons. WiseJae is a very small youtuber with a little over a thousand subs last time I checked but she does videos about jobcorps and trade school and has recently started making videos about college. So basically. A cool guide for how to get your life started if you’re a young, low income adult or late teen. She’s also got a very pretty accent, soothing voice and . . . is just so fucking beautiful . . . so. So gorgeous. So like. If you’re like. 18. And you’ve been thinking about a place like jobcorps but don’t know how to start. I would say her channel would be the first place I’d go for information.

11. NotYourMommasHistory

I actually love historical fashion. And this black woman named Cheyney is a historical reenactor with a focus on African and African-American history, and often overlooked part of history and fashion history in general. She’s done stuff like historical head wraps and similar as well as talked about serious issues like sexual harassment. Most recently she did a video on white people misrepresenting Martin Luther King Jr. Basically if you like channels like Rachel Maksy, Bernadette Banner, or our meme mom Karolina Żebrowska, you’ll probably like her. Or maybe you’re just curious about African history. That’s cool too.

12. Rebranding Autism.

Black autistic rep! Jen is a black autistic woman who talks about autism, the struggles she’s faced and she was literally sent to the notoriously abusive Judge Rotenberg center and talked about the atrocities committed there. She’s amazing and has also made vlogs about her life, made advice videos on mental health that are relatable for many people not just people with autism specifically, tho certainly those too. She also makes music.

13. Tater Tatiana

Small youtuber who is in the anti Onision community. She reviewed Onision’s shitty books. She writes, does drama videos and does beauty videos as well. She read Onision fanfiction on her channel, Lilee Jean tried to take down her channel and she bounced back. I highly recommend the channel, I love Tatiana and I’ve loved watching her channel grow these last few years.

So, that’s my list, will definitely add more later, I hope this didn’t come off as pandering or me thinking black people are charity cases, which they aren’t, this is simply me, a white girl, trying to share some black creators I enjoy instead of just spouting my opinions on tumblr, since I come from a privileged place.

[pass-the-bechdel]

The Good Place full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

96% (forty-eight of fifty).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

49%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Forty-four.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Twenty-eight.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

Positive Content Status:

Good - you might even say, strong - in the sense that it’s all there, pretty much all of the big representation bells are ringing, particularly the ones for women and racial diversity. That said, the show is generally content to sit pretty and not push the envelope on inclusivity, so if you’re looking for inspiration in-text instead of just in casting, you might be disappointed. At any rate, it’s a solid feel-good time, and not likely to make you mad (average rating of 3.01).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

The numbers stay pretty consistent across the whole series, but if I had to call a winner, it’s season four, which has the highest percentage of female characters and the only above-average positive content rating (though that was awarded somewhat cumulatively, and so doesn’t feel particularly well-earned by that season above the others). 

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

It’s such a close call, but season three must be the loser here by virtue of the lowest ratio of female to male characters; it also had one of the series’ two Bechdel fails. Like I said, it’s...a really close call.

Overall Series Quality:

There’s so much about it that is fresh and original and interesting, I wish I could love it more. After a magnificent debut season, the show suffers immensely for a lack of pacing and the absence of coherently-planned plot, and at times the stagnating characterisation and pointless filler caked into the cracks in the storytelling can be frustrating and/or tedious. I’m only as disappointed as I am because the potential for greatness was so strong. That said, even at it’s worst The Good Place is still entertaining, and most of it is better than that. It’s irreverent, it’s fun, it’s surprising, and sometimes it’s even as poignant as it is remarkable. I have my gripes, in droves, but that doesn’t mean this show is not worthy.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Imagine. Imagine a version of this show where the first season is basically the same, and the second season is...somewhat similar to how it is, but with more focus and direction, less time-wasting; a second season where figuring out that some fundamental change to their circumstances is necessary comes early, and instead of faffing about with ethical lessons in the fake neighbourhood again while Michael pretends he can get everyone to the Good Place, we get down to business with going on the run and into the Bad Place to find the judge and petition for help. Imagine this show, but the third season has none of that return to Earth crap, and instead, is the neighbourhood experiment from season four, properly fleshed out. And then season four is all about going to the Good Place and solving the problems there, addressing issues with the concept of utopia and the ineffectual bureaucracy of obsessive niceness (used for comedic effect in the actual show, but c’mon, there’s a whole untapped reservoir about morality there). Each season could have (gasp!) a properly-planned and plotted arc, dealing with a different school of ethical considerations, and I dunno, maybe the characterisation could have trajectory too, and the characters could vitally shape the storytelling, and maybe not get their personalities and experiences erased and rebooted over and over again, nullifying large swathes of the narrative which came before? Ideally, they could be reset zero (0) times, or at least have all their reboot experiences dumped back into them in the first few episodes of season two, so that they could proceed from there as whole people. Rebooting everyone’s personalities is not actually necessary to the plot in any way, and is, actually, incredibly detrimental to storytelling and especially, character development. Imagine this show, but just chilling out and actually telling a coherent story? 

I am all the more annoyed by how things turned out on this show because I know that the four seasons were planned for, rather than being the result of cancellation; the idea that the creators sat down and ‘plotted’ (using that term loosely) to make this mess drives me a little wild. The (attempted) avoidance of the dreaded ‘stagnation’ seems obvious, and it leads to major narrative shortcuts and jumps and instances where the show spends an episode or two on what should have been a half-season’s development, minimum, and yet at other times all momentum grinds to a halt for a bizarre bottle-type episode where the characters just talk about a concept for a while or work on some unimportant romantic subplot. The various ethical concepts that the show heavily incorporated as its bread and butter in the first season start to stick out like sore thumbs in season two, seemingly wedged into one episode or another for no real reason other than just to be there, and the fact that the show lets go of the idea of moral choices in the life mattering at all in the end leaves the backbone of the show in a very strange shape. I said in the season four review that I didn’t expect the show to come up with some One True Answer about how people should live their lives, but that I was baffled by the fact that the show side-stepped that altogether; what I expected them to conclude was something in the line of ‘we recognise that life is complicated, not all situations are created equal, and it can be hard to know how to proceed ethically or even to access ethical options within one’s circumstances. Still, it is important to do your best, not only for yourself but for your community, because the more good you put into the world, the more there will be to go around and come back to you. What matters most is that you are doing your best with what you’ve got’. The fact that the show distracted itself with fixing how the afterlife rewards people within the afterlife means that it suggests no incentive to perform moral actions in life, and frankly...who gives a fuck? The real world is the place we’re all living in, and there’s no point starting a conversation about morality in real life if the conclusion is just ‘guess we’ll straighten out all the fascists and bigots and the other pieces of shit after they die, so don’t worry, everyone gets to Heaven eventually!’

Anyway, if that seems like just a reiteration of what I said in the season four review, well. I’m still baffled by it. The other thing I was going to talk about in the season four review but held for the full series instead was that one big thing that I have railed about all the time since season one, and that’s PACING. For all ye wannabe-writers out there, please understand how important pacing is. Even vital plot or character beats can seem like meaningless filler in a poorly-paced story, because your audience’s mind is hardwired to try and follow narrative cues that are being incomprehensibly muddled. Standard structure can be played with, but if you toss it out in favour of ‘stuff just happens, ok? Except when it doesn’t’, you just end up with a soup of disconnected story ideas, and nothing threading it together. Character interactions and especially developments can help to create the through-line you need to keep the story functioning despite itself, but as variously noted with The Good Place...initial characterisation? Strong, excellent. Development? Not so much, not least because they kept getting deleted and rebooted. Also, time skips kept happening, and that’s a great way to fuck over your narrative coherence even more: remove the recognisable constant we call time! It’ll be fine! As with all things, it is perfectly possible to play around with this stuff, but you have to know what you’re doing and be doing it for a good reason, and that’s not what they had going on here. This was narrative soup, and when you have a soup, the pieces all kinda meld together and lose any individual purpose, meaning, or power they may have had. The result in this case was not bad, but it really could have been so much better, and literally all it needed for that was some attention being paid to the story structure via pacing.

So. The good news is, I think I have pretty well exhausted all of my complaints by now, and that leaves us with the good stuff, of which there was no paltry amount. The show was not a hit by accident (even if I do feel that it’s success had a lot to do with people sticking around after the spectacular first season, and not because it stayed strong throughout), and even if there was a lot of soup going on, what comprised that soup was all really fun and unique, and this made for a wonderful piece of light-hearted television that could be as hilarious as it was insightful. It still had a lot of great takes on things, the commentary was strong (even if it pulled all its punches towards the end), and whether the storytelling was ebbing or flowing, it was always delightful. The show also managed to pull a miraculous finale out of its hat, and that’s a rare thing in television; however the story wobbled over the course, the ending provided enough satisfaction to forgive just about any sins, especially if you don’t happen to have been watching with a deliberately critical eye. Do I wish that Eleanor got to hook up with a chick on-screen some time instead of just making a lot of bi remarks? Yes. Do I consider the show to have queerbaited instead of providing genuine rep? No. Is the underselling of the queer content my most significant representation complaint? Yes, it is, and that's good news considering the world we live in and the dearth of quality representation that the industry has brought us to expect. 

There's an important distinction to be made there, regarding the tokenistic representation that is very common these days in tv trying for brownie points and good publicity, exactly that kind of 'political' inclusivity that conservatives are always bitching about. It should not be surprising that I support that tokenism over the alternative of having no representation at all, but it can still be quite disheartening to feel like your identity or the identities that you value are being referenced as nothing more than an opportunity for some shitty producer to perform wokeness for attention, praise, and the almighty dollar. I bring this up because - even though The Good Place never really worked up much of a boost to its content rating - one thing I felt that it did really, really right was providing representation without it feeling tokenistic at all. Eleanor's bisexuality wasn't as prominent as I might have preferred, and as noted through the course of the show, there were times I feared it was more bait than real rep, but reflecting on it at the end, the way it was included feels organic, it never gets in the way in order to ensure the audience notices and is dutifully impressed. The number of women around and the multicoloured casting plays out even better; I never once felt cynical about the gender balance I was seeing, and I've said it before but I'll say it again: the fact that the show was packed with names from across the world gives me so much life. I'm still a little salty about Chidi's Senegalese origins getting the shaft (and we won't talk about 'Australia'), but the nonchalant diversity of naming goes such a long way to embracing the idea that this is a world for everyone (and an afterlife for everyone, too). And where anything else might fall apart or lose its way, that is an affirming thing. If you want feel-good tv, it’s here. This is the Good Place.