#also not. but idk on some kind of weird stupid meta not meta level.

[cat-with-a-keyboard]

aborted mandrake and stillborn monster.....

[piosplayhouse]

congrats on your shower (genuine)! and on going outside. my Su She thoughts aren't very well developed, I just read a lot (a lot lot) of fanfiction and he is Always like. the Worst. to me mdzs was always like. about questioning what is true/false and right/wrong, and like accepting that the answer might be weird or inaccessible, and it kind of always rubbed me the wrong way the way Su she is always always the ubiquitous evil of every fanfic ever. people are more forgiving of jgy. hell, people are more forgiving of wen Chao. why? like in fanfic Su she is often described as "having a bad vibe" and characters always like "have not liked him from the first time they met him", and I'm like. not here to shame people who did that, do that, or will do that, you know, because I get it, and also we're all just having a fun little hobby right? but very very gently I just wonder... why? do people stop and think about it sometimes? I think it's doing the themes of mdzs dirty a little, to do that. idk. like I'm not trying to stan him or turn him into a miaow miaow, I just feel like a character can do bad stuff without having to carry some "evil miasma" or whatever lmao. su she is always rude, always stupid, always mediocre, always ugly, he always deserves the shame and humiliation coming to him, or the (often senseless) death... I just feel like maybe we should stop and think about this a little. I don't know, I don't know. you know?

Yeah !!! Yeah!!!! I get it!!! It's like, he's not really a good person or character in any way, but on a meta level it feels almost unfair that he was doomed to play this role in the narrative. It's like pity for what could have been because we as the readers only know the role he plays in the story. Very interesting thoughts, thank you for sharing!!

[matan4il]

Thanks for your lovely meta again! I really hope they won't go through with the sperm donor thing. I hate how the writes treat Buck right now. He has issues, yes, but he is very smart. It's not like if he said no, they could never have kids, because they could ask someone else. The whole thing is so weird, because who asks someone for something like this after not having seen that person for years? And if the spec is true, that Connor had something with Buck back then, weird doesn't cover it.

Hi Nonnie! Awwwww, thank you! I’m so happy to hear you liked the 604 meta and I am sending you big hugs!

As I said there, I tend to believe they won’t go through with it, both because it doesn’t fit Buck as a person, and because he clearly didn’t think about himself while reaching his decision, which is the opposite from the balanced, healthier view he’s supposed to be moving towards. I also think it doesn’t make for as much drama, right? If everything is smooth sailing once Buck said yes. So I do tend to think we’re gonna see that ride get bumpy. How will it be resolved? I very much hope (and believe it better fits with Buck’s arc this season) for him to start recognizing when he’s allowed to say no to things, and that it’s okay to put himself first when it comes to issues involving self-sacrifice.

But without a doubt, it was a very weird thing to ask for out of the blue. If it’s okay, I wanna combine this portion of my reply with the following ask:

asking someone to be a donor because they’re a kind person is the dumbest thing ever. kindness isn’t inherited. writers must think viewers are stupid if they expect anyone to be okay with this reasoning

I think that between the weekly meta and my Connor tag, you can see several more reasons why it just didn’t feel right, that whole request and the reasoning behind it. I mentioned, for example, that Connor knows who Buck was, not who he is now. That in itself should give us pause. Yes, Buck used to be kind. But is he still today? ‘Coz second Nonnie, you’re right. Kindness is not height. If Connor knew back in the day that Buck was tall, he could still count on that hereditary trait to still be pronounced in the same manner. But kindness is a complex trait. It might be influenced by some genetic factors, but not exclusively, and it interacts with experience along our lives to such a degree that we can observe people showing very different levels of kindness along their lives, or even just choosing to express it differently towards different people as life experience accumulates. What if life had made Buck bitter and hard, biting and unforgiving in the years that have passed since he was Connonr’s roommate?

Things like being ghosted by Abby or used and dumped by Taylor in 208 could have changed his level of trust with others and how he behaves towards them. Connor doesn’t know. When he and his wife decide to ask Buck, it was clearly before they even met him in this ep, so how was she comfortable with asking for the sperm of a man she hadn’t ever met? IDK, the whole thing feels desperate. As if this couple for some reason think that Buck is their only option, or maybe only good one? Which begs the question, how few kind friends did Connor have? But I’m kind of putting all of that aside, ‘coz most likely, this is just about the plot. If Connor and his wife weren’t so weirdly desperate and hung up on one trait that they didn’t even know how it was currently manifested in Buck, they wouldn’t have asked him right away, and the show wouldn’t have its dramatic dilemma. This isn’t like Buck and Eddie’s story, with all of its careful and loving build up. There’s a chance this will come back and Connor and wifey might end up admitting to themselves (and to Buck) that they didn’t think this through and made mistakes beyond how they sprang their request on him. It wouldn’t surprise me if the show went there. But they also might not, ‘coz this is more about Buck realizing what he hadn’t thought through, in which case, this couple’s odd decision making process is less interesting to the writers, so they might not get too into it.

Thank you for the ask, I hope you both have a great day, lovelies! And here is my ask tag! xoxox

[jubberry]

oohkay let's go tua with those ship asks: fiveya, horrance and alluther.

thanks el i love you

Send me a ship and I'll answer three questions based on if I ship it or not.

fiveya obvs i ship this since this is 90% of my tua drawings lol

1. ill wait ill wait (to be the one) by georgiestauffenberg made me ship it cause holy fuck dude. I dont know if i ship them romantically when i saw them onscreen cause first of all, age difference is kinda weird lmao. Second, they dont rlly interact much outside literally the first couple of eps. But he was so soft for her, and i felt like they had so much unexplored history.

so i looked at fanfics cause i was wondering if ppl still ship it, then i liked the description of this one so i gave it a go.

Basically the premise is that vanya dates a much older man who seems to know a lot about her. And it was amazingly in character and just provided their characters some depth that u wouldnt find outside of a romantic relationship between them. (The implication of five pining while she doesnt know who he is, their missed chances when he time travelled, fives missed chances of living and having a 'normal' life bec of his own hubris, vanyas insecurity and being able to open up bec shes with someone whos known her since childhood). Its so sweet and thats how i was like, oh yep i can do so much more with these two, and what has kept me interested in drawing them etc.

2. My favourite things are the shippers cause i made some friends in the fandom who are super cool and supportive! I dont get super involved in fandoms and usually just watch from afar so finding people to talk to and muck around with in this tiny fandom is super cool 😭

Though thats not to say I havent come across some bad apples in this fandom and things that I dont like. I think thats the importance of carving out a place for yourself and ur friends in fandom tho.

Another thing I like about the ship itself, i just like the grumpy person whos soft for one person trope. Its so cute. I like all the little clues in canon on how their relationship as kids is quite warm, which is interesting cause five is basically the star student and he can be quite cold vs vanya who is the black sheep of the family.

I also like how five likes her powers even when she caused the apocalypse he spent the majority of his life in lol. Like its a popular hc that five is just a wife guy and i love that.

I see vanya as the type who has a lot of love to give, and she sometimes has unrealistic expectations of what her partner can give. Betrayal and lies really angers her, but also when her partner cannot meet her expectations of love she gets very upset bec its also an indication of how shes not good enough, or not loveable enough to be able to have this in the relationship (her insecurity means every failing always comes back to her, even if its out of her control).

I feel like five would be a level-headed person enough in the relationship to not be afraid to say 'vanya ur being stupid' (ie. the s2 confrontation lmao). Also, five's personality means she will never have to doubt his actions bec she knows hes the type who will not give u the moment of the day if hes not interested.

Not to mention they also have the whole apocalypse vs. saviour, hero/villain thing. Theres just a lot to explore!

3. I probably have several. But mostly I dont mind five being a dick to vanya bec first, even if the appeal is hes soft to her hes already kind of a dick in canon lmao. Also, vanya isnt a child. Shes grown and she can handle petty af things like five telling her shes not good at cooking lol. I also dont mind it cause I feel like people are getting too afraid to write... conflict for fear or portraying an abusive relationship or smth. Like, chill. Conflict is fine, resolving it is how u get a story. However in saying that, nobody should be obligated to write any way unless you want to! Fanfic is for comfort so if what your doing is making u happy then its good enough!

horrance which i also ship but i love the platonic and romantic relationship equally:

1. I came in tua in general not shipping anything so Im honestly not sure. I do remember someone doing a meta before s2 came out that was basically how ben acted weird when klaus summoned dave in s1 that made me go 👀 Otherwise, tua s2 rlly made me like them cause tua FED horrance shippers. Like..... the fact that klaus didnt want ben to leave him, and ben knows thats why he stayed 😢 or the fact that klaus was all over him for some reason???? Somebody also mentioned gay ben once and I resonate with that deeply. Like i get that jill exists but i resonate with gay ben deeply.

2. I love their bickering, theyre so cute together. I just like ben being angry bec hes self aware that hes got both shit and amazing taste. Shit bec he cant believes he likes Klaus (and also amazing also bec Klaus). I think the idea of them being kind of underdogs, theyre not rlly leader types and dont want to be, helps them bond together even in platonic horrance. They're both down to earth, and even tho they can annoy each other, they also know if they want a space to feel comfortable its with each other. Theyre not pressured by rivalry over leadership, or any sort of competition.

I love the idea that even tho ben is like klaus's ''conscience'', hes also down for chaos and bitchy. I feel like klaus rlly enabled that side of him, its not exactly a good thing but its p funny lol

3. I know some people think their dynamic is unhealthy but i dont care lol

alluther. So id say i dont ship this, mostly due to the fact that im not invested? Just like all tua ships so far I rlly came out not wanting anything but platonic relationships cause I feel tua doesnt do romance very well. With alluther, theyre so cute but im not super invested in either of their chars so they havent stuck for me. I appreciate seeing them and talking about them tho, and I'm def open to exploring them further.

1. I think tua canon romances are just so lackluster 😔 Idk who writes the romances but I was just like 'nice' but afterwards I dont really think about them. I love their dance scene and the message behind it! Otherwise, theyre sweet like most of the tua romances but im not super invested, same with all the non canon ships.

2. I really feel like tua needs to decide on what their relationship is. Like, just say its incest or not and stick with it 👀 Or if you wanna support it or not, just make up ur mind. I think I would've liked it better if I found the characters more interesting. Allison especially I feel like suffers from the fact that tua just doesn't want to make her ''mean''. They want to make her supportive and are less interested in making her flawed (ie. she should've had a conflict with Vanya in s2, but the writers didnt want to write the girls fighting which is stupid imo and not what that conflict is about).

In regards to Alluther, the scene where Allison gets annoyed at Luther for sleeping with someone else felt out of line. Like, how are you marrying other people and moving on but Luther isn't allowed to? But honestly, I don't mind if they actually just acknowledge it and make it a deliberate part of Allison's trait that Allison can expect a certain loyalty automatically from other people (which can tie in to her childhood being a star, and the rumour).

Luther is a big simp for Allison, which is sweet, but at the same time it would be nice to have him explore himself for a bit, and who he is outside of the academy. Then maybe they can rekindle their relationship again as new people and see where they go from there.

3. I don't hate them, but they're ok. I'm not super invested in them, just like all the tua canon romance. But I wouldn't mind making content for them if I were a bit more invested in their characters. I love their dance scene in s1 and I feel like its super a underrated portrayal of what their relationship is meant to be. I know no one talks about it but it's just such a great scene, and I'm pretty sure the choreographer was into interpretive dance? The scene had a lot of meaning that I don't see people dig around with.

Essentially I'm pretty sure the fairy lights are obviously a throwback to their childhood together, spending time outside of Reggie. So the dance scene kind of symbolized that pocket of space they made for each other in their life (even if theyre far away, or with other people, they will always have that space for each other).

The way they danced was more like playfighting than dancing, which means their relationship isn't sensual. It's more ''pure'', and romantic. Its basically two kids rekindling their love as adults. I also think this is a response to the incest, cause in s1 tua klaus literally said that 'thank god Regg is not their real father' right before Allison and Luther meet lmao. So its kinda like saying Allison x Luther isnt supposed to be 'ohh step sibling hot' but two people who experienced the same trauma as kids and finding comfort with each other (and rekindling that love after many years).

[liodain]

Oh hey! Consider this a humble request for J, L, and O from the writer asks. And if you’re feeling extra generous for X, a prompt of ‘strange beauty’ with whatever fandom/characters/ship strikes your fancy.

Hey you 💙 thanks for the questions!

J: What does writing mean to you?

My first foray into writing was kind of nonstandard in that my hobby was writing room/item/npc descriptions for a MUD (the text-based telnet precursors of the modern MMO). Back then I didn't even think of it as "writing" as such, since they were separate if interconnected chunks of text that averaged about 50 words a piece, so like... not exactly a book, was it? (I figured out eventually that what I was doing was environmental storytelling, don't worry 😅)

My satisfaction with it wasn't so much the narrative anyway though: it was the freedom to build a world that I wanted my character, and my friends' characters, to inhabit. The admin side of this particular MUD was largely hands-off, there were no specs and barely any documentation and the guy in charge was bordering on Timecube levels of weird (and retrospect, was some kind of unwell) — builders were given free rein to generate whatever content we liked so long as we could figure out how and that it fit the aesthetic of the game, which was kind of nuts in retrospect. Someone would go "hey lio (this mud is the lio origin story btw) I want to explore some caves", so I'd build some caves for them to explore, and die in, more often than not — there'd be a bunch of clues scattered around that suggested they should probably get out of there before high tide. When was high tide? The fisherman on the beach would tell you, if you took a moment to talk to him. Writing meant an ability to shape the world into one I wanted to spend my time in. And boy, did I.

This was back in 2000. I didn't write any narrative prose until 2009, when I fell into my first real fandom at the tender age of, uh... 27. I'm not particularly good at quickly converting my feelings into thoughts and articulating them, as 1) anyone who's tried to talk to me in real time and/or irl and 2) how long it's taking me to reply to these asks will attest, lol. Writing is an effective way to share what it is about a character or ship or canon that grabs my attention (/obsession), and a way to satisfy that urge to talk about them, only instead of trying to have a conversation or writing meta, I can write a story instead. Show, don't tell, quite literally. So for me, as well as a way to get lost in a world and characters I enjoy, writing is also a way to...idk, feel part of a community with people, but with a buffer that can compensate for my fumbling interpersonal skills, thus saving us all a lot of embarrassment, lmfao.

L: What advice would you give to other writers?

I'm not sure I can say anything here that wouldn't be regurgitated Le Guin or just straight up hypocritical 😂 I don't think I'm in a position to be imparting any words of wisdom in a general sense.

But for writing in a fandom context specifically — this. AO3 has done a lot to protect freedom of expression for fans, but also visibly quantified success and/or popularity, then made it sortable. Hits/kudos/comments are far from an objective assessment on the quality of your work but it's still easy to lean into that external validation and get the value of it all tied up in that shit, and that's a miserable place to find yourself. I 100% recommend getting rid of those numbers.

O: What motivates you to write?

I have an idea in my head and I cannot rest until it is not in my head any more, and about 50% of the time, have inflicted it on everyone else like a cursed videotape. Sometimes it's a(n often stupid) joke or dialogue exchange that I pack a fic around, other times it's a scene that expands itself naturally because I want to hang out with the characters for longer, or it's a trope that interacts with the specifics of a canon/character in a way I find interesting. The rest of the time it's just habit; I write excruciatingly slowly, but even 200 words a day still results in a fic a month on average (recent months are an outlier adn should not be counted). I love exchanges in theory, but tend to stick to treats or game for art requests as a safety net because I don't trust myself to finish something on time. Like many writers, I put a not insignificant number of skill points into procrastination. Psst hey wanna see my spreadsheets?

I will cop to a degree of contrarianism as well, but I think it's fair because while I love a good old well-worn trope, I do genuinely prefer a few things that fall outside of wider fandom preferences as well. When I read something that makes me go "oh, this again?" and then write the opposite or a subversion, I'm doing it because that's what is more interesting to me, and it's what I want to read.

X: (strange beauty)

I WILL GET BACK TO YOU ON THIS ONE 🤣

[denndrawings]

Hi and welcome to Misha Mixes Unrelated Things. Todays episode is called: The Grishaverse Is A DnD Campaign That Got (VERY) Out Of Hand And Here’s Why

(There are going to be spoilers of. Pretty much everything. Except for King of Scars because I’m only like 3 chapters in so. No spoilers from KoS)

Let’s begin with the SOC duology because that’s the first thing I read and also I feel like it has a more “conventional” dnd-esque narrative (probably because of the multiple POVs and stuff idk).

So, first things first: characters. While I think all of the crows are equally important to the plot of the book I also think that not all of them are players’ characters. I don’t think Kaz is, for instance, and probably Wylan isn’t either. But let me explain the rest first and then I’ll elaborate on this.

Inej is a classic rogue with her amazing skills and tragic backstory and everything. I think the person that plays her would probably be a beginner because Inej’s backstory is so intertwined with the plot and so well fitted to the city where the story begins and she has such a clear role and stuff that it can only be because the DM had a say on this. From my experience at least and I’ve been DMing for like 5 years now so maybe I know a thing or two. I may be wrong tho.

Matthias is an oathbreaker paladin. The drüskelle sounds like the kind of half military/half religious organization able to provide paladins in a dnd game. They would be Oath of Devotion paladins. Or like a twisted version of those but yes. Oath of Devotion to Djel or whatever I don’t really like fjerdans let me be. I also think Matthias’ player and Nina’s knew each other/had player with each other before and that’s why they made a backstory together and made sure their characters were… a thing from the beginning. I think they wouldn’t be as committed to the DM as Inej’s character so they probably chose a far off place to set their backstory so they didn’t have to learn all of the kerch politics and stuff and join gangs and shit (even thought Nina’s player kind of ended up doing it but I think I remember it was Kaz who found her and not the other way around so).

Nina is a cleric but like. Either a Death or a War Domain cleric. Not a cleric suited for healing but for killing. Cool shit, I personally love clerics. I think the player would have the curse of being the only “““healer””” of the group without even being a real healer. It happens to the best of us ;_; (not to me tho I never play I’m a forever DM XDD)

I think Jesper is a fighter. I have considered making him an artificer but yeah, no because he didn’t build his guns or anything he’s just really fucking good at shooting stuff. That’s a fighter to me. And he later double-classes and stuff when they arrive to the Ice Court to be able to do his thing. I think this player is this type of player the DM invites to the table because they have played together before and they are fun as shit and they kinda help them direct the party where they need to go. I personally love that kind of player but I mean, who wouldn’t?

So yes, now on why Kaz and Wylan aren’t players’ characters. Maybe this is gut feeling of mine and I’m wrong but they are like. Too well intertwined with the plot like. Wylan is definitely this npc the DM brought randomly to like maybe kill him at some point and make Loving Father Van Eck want to mess with the Crows and then the party just fell in love with him and so the DM couldn’t kill him and made an incredibly tragic backstory for him instead where Bad Guy Van Eck became the man we know and he just was a terrible man stupid enough to mess with them.

And Kaz… he is just /too/ in control to not be an npc. Literally nobody but the DM would know so much about the city and the npcs and everything. That’s just Not A Thing. It would almost be meta-rol. For me it makes sense that at the beginning Kaz was only going to be like the Crows’ hirer like, the contact between Van Eck and the players’ characters. And this time I don’t think it was the players’ idea that he stayed, it was probably the DM’s. Having a character that knows pretty much everything is just So Useful to a DM. And then the DM fell in love with him, gave him an amazing backstory and issues and everything. And the final miracle of bringing Inej’s parents to Ketterdam is something only a DM can do like. The man is a disaster but I think he totally has the signature of the DM of a chaotic AF party that realized that their party needed a compass to remind them all the time what their mission was.

About the plot per se…man I don’t know what to say. That looks like the DM pitching a simple robbery and everybody getting nat20s in super weird situations and getting away with stuff. But I mean, that’s DnD in a nutshell so.

My headcanon for Matthias’ ending is that the player had to leave the group for some reason. They probably had this super cool redemption arc planned for him that he totally deserved (listen I Don’t Like Matthias like. At all. But the man worked for it ok? I think I could have get to maybe like him if he had a little more time to grow but whatever) but then they had to leave and the group didn’t want to like get rid of him right away or for him to become an npc so the DM and Nina’s player took turns playing him until well. The thing. You know. It was kind of a sudden death like, players’ characters usually have death saves and stuff and they don’t get killed that easily and that’s why I think Matthias wasn’t a player character anymore even though he began the campaign as one.

And because y’all have been good and have read my bullshit until this point, here you have my headcanon for the trilogy:

The Grisha trilogy is an overly complicated off-roading some of the players made up during the campaign like imagine the discord server where they usually play. Well in most DnD discord servers there is a channel where you can roleplay through text as your character. I think the Grisha trilogy was born there from the DM telling kind of the backstory of the world and Sankta Alina and the war and stuff and the players made up characters or maybe just took side characters from that story and made them into Proper Characters to roleplay following that but also kind of ended up developing more aspects about it (I imagine the DM probably had a few details on that, like an outline or something and the players just kinda took it to a whole new level. Players often do that kind of magic). And they were all hyped AF when their DnD characters met their Other Dnd Characters, obviously.

I don’t know which player would play each character, though. Maybe Jesper’s was Nikolai just because they both are /like that/ and Nina’s was Zoya and maybe Inej’s was Genya. Or the other way around, idk. I feel like the whole monologue Nina has at some point of Zoya Is To The Drüskelle Like Jarl Brun Is To The Grisha sounds like Nina’s player is also Zoya’s player but idk.

So yes I can probably elaborate on everything if someone’s interested but this is what I have so far.

[comradesummers]

top 5 btvs episodes, top five buffy summers quotes?

I’ve answered top 5 episodes in this ask.

Now, top 5 Buffy quotes is going to be hard, because I love her so much, and there are so many good moments. Narrowing it down to five is going to be one hell of a challenge, but here is my very incomplete list:

5. “If I were at full slayer power, I would be punning right about now.”

Idk what it is about this one that always gets to me. For one, it’s just really funny. Like I legit laughed out loud the first time I heard it. But, as funny as this line is, it’s also really powerful, because it’s Buffy’s way of reasserting her self worth. Despite being betrayed, and stripped of her powers, Buffy still manages to save the day through her ingenuity and power of will, and she knows it. This line is a testament to that. Even powerless and alone, she can still make an incredibly meta joke about puns. 

4.”She irons her jeans! She’s evil!”

I am not even remotely exaggerating when I say that this line is peak comedy.

3. “I don’t know how to live in this world, if these are the choices, if everything just gets stripped away, I don’t see the point.”

Yeah, I sure do love me some angst, huh. 

So, for context. I’m not a person who cries a lot, or like ever. I don’t know if this is because I internalized some weird toxic masculinity bullshit from the men in my life, or if I’m just an emotionless robot, but for some reason, I just don’t do it. Certainly not at fiction.

But this scene is perhaps the closest I have ever gotten to crying at anything fictional. You can just feel Buffy’s exhaustion through the screen, She’s been at this so long, and she’s lost so much, and she just can’t take it anymore. It’s absolutely gutwrenching, and for my money, SMG’s best performance ever on the show, for which there is obviously very stiff competition.

2. “Me.”

So, a lot of people have spoken much more eloquently about this moment than I ever could. It’s absolutely iconic and meaningful to so many people, and I would just be regurgitating the words of better writers if I tried to explain why.

All I’ll add is that this line never fails to get a physical reaction out of me. Like, whenever I watch that scene, I have this intense need to take action. It’s empowering on the most literal level, in that it empowers me to get off my ass and do whatever it is that I’ve been avoiding due to anxiety that day. 

1. “I say we change the rules. I say my power should be our power.” and the entire Chosen speech.

Listen, I get that there is a lot that the show got very wrong in terms of feminism. And I get that Whedon sucks, and that for those reasons, the girl power message of this episode is going to ring pretty hollow for some. And that’s totally valid.

But I just love this speech so fucking much. I think it works so well for me because I just really love this idea that the end of Buffy’s journey is one of triumph over the Chosen One narrative. Buffy’s story isn’t, like so many of these kinds of stories, about accepting her fate. It’s ultimately about her recognizing that her fate is stupid. That there are better ways to go about this. That just because these are the rules, and this is how it’s always been, doesn’t mean this is how it should be.

And I love that all this is couched in the idea of the redistribution of power (maybe one day I’ll write more about the extremely accidental socialist themes of BtVS), and the understanding that this redistribution is what will truly grant Buffy freedom. That the answer isn’t martyrdom, but community. It’s really beautiful, and the perfect way to end the show if you ask me.

[wojtekbc]

Watch, as local idiot rants about garbage

Oh boy, if I could type the most deflated, defeated sigh, it would go here. Spoiler warning here. Hey losers! It’s GRRM Boot-licking Book Purist here. My local friends have heard me bitch and moan about Game of Thrones since Season 5, and they are S I C K   O F   I T  so now you, my brilliant Tumblr friends, get to hear me scream about incompetent show-writers taking a Vietnam opposing hippie’s anti-war story which basically screams the message “Hey being ruled by sexism and tradition and racism  makes the world shittier for everyone aside from the dude sitting at the top and he’s made it  impossible for even the powerful players in his system to peacefully change anything,” amping up the American fetishisation of eugenics, male primogeniture and the idea of a Righteous War Against The Others and making quintillions of dollars off of the brainlet audience who just overlook how gross it all is! (Before I begin with the two or twenty issues I have with this episode I will say that if ASOIAF interests you at all, seriously do yourself a favour, read the books with an understanding of who GRRM is, and exclusively watch Preston Jacobs’ analysis.) One: Why the fuck is Euron just a disgusting sex fiend in the show? Do the show-writers know how to write a compelling villain or will they just defend this as if it’s a ‘creative decision’ to make one of, possibly the most compelling, “bad guy” completely one-note and gross? Okay, bare with me, because the last re-read I did of ASOIAF was like, end of 2016, so I may not be able to describe this all too well, but book Euron is like, part mad Blackbeard, part world-weary mystic, and part eerily compelling politician. Half of the reason he’s so fucking creepy in the book is that when he attends the Kingsmoot, not only is he just kind of a weird bloke, but he uses what seems to be magic (with the horn that has ash idk I can’t remember everything rn I’m kind of drunkenly rambling) in a very low magic setting, and speaks directly to what the traditionalist Ironborn want, which is blood and plunder, and it completely de-rails their growing acceptance of a less toxic lifestyle. The show just decided to make him some gross Jack Sparrow impersonator whose only characteristics include being a completely stereotypical pirate, and wanting to have sex with Cercei, pestering her and pushing the subject even after a firm “No.”  A common thread with everything in the show is that the show-writers take the “Kick the dog” route basically every time even a modicum of understanding would be necessary to see why you feel like some character might be bad. Anyone with a brain could read the Victarion and Asha chapters and just feel that Euron was bad. The characters have their own reasons to dislike him, and they’re good enough, but when you as the reader simply look at what he does, and think for a moment, you KNOW why you think he’s bad, and honestly that kind of shit makes you feel good, it makes you feel like you get what is being told to you. The show-writers just believe that about 80% of their audience is comprised of troglodytic idiots who wouldn’t understand any subtlety at all, so everyone you’re “supposed to dislike” is now a creepy psychotic abusive rapist. Who knows? Maybe they’re on to something. Maybe the main audience is as stupid as they think. Two: This is something I don’t even try to discuss with people any more, because the camps are apparently “People who disagree with this,” and “People who do not care,” but what the fuck is up with American media and eugenics and male primogeniture, specifically how often they are intertwined? I could go on about the show’s interpretation of what Jon Snow “means,” forever, and I will someday, but I will stick to what this specific episode did that fucked me off. META INTERJECTION HERE: I cannot even phrase the question. What kind of back-flipping through loopholes, logical gymnastics type shit does one have to pull to create the drama that Jon Snow is somehow a more legitimate heir? No, this isn’t me refuting R+L=J, because not only is it canon, but it’s something I’ve been screaming as truth for longer than Game of Thrones has been a relevant cultural topic. WHAT I MEAN, is, how, in the fuck, can you try and pass your real-life bias against woman off as in-universe, canon logic, when it is fundamentally against every rule and precedent you’ve set? So the show seems to think that because Jon is Rhaegar’s son, he’s immediately the true king and the rightful heir and the most purebred child and he’s the genetically superior race and all that American bullshit. Only, first off, that implies Targs still have a rightful claim (which they do but that’s personal preference,) but MORE DAMNING is that characters imply, in canon, that he somehow passes his aunt’s PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE claim,  simply because he’s a man. Now this is wrong on about 50 levels but I’ll skip that and tackle the issue two ways. I) This drama is the kind of forced, fumbled shit that has plagued the show since season 5. No one is acting logically and it leads to stupid shit like this. Only this time, the drama is not even caused by characters acting illogically in their own world, the show-runners are writing their own real-world bias in to these characters in spite of everything, because... II) Even in canon, (though I don’t know if the show has acknowledged it because who gives a fuck about what the show thinks) Targaryen queens have a precedent in Rhaenyra. If any dumbass is still reading this and argues with me on that by saying there was a war and she lost, sure, but like, look to the show’s OWN CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS, where 4 kingdoms are lead by women who have male relatives. The only reason this drama exists is because the show-writers are fucking idiots and they just decided the easiest thing for them to write was dudes being sexist and jerking off to how pure-blooded their candidate is. Oh boy, I just wrote for like 40 minutes. Sorry folks, but the whole “show v book” thing is not even a meme for me in regards to ASOIAF. I saw a video a few days ago where some guy was talking about he won’t make videos on his favourite anime because he doesn’t want to undersell how much they mean to him; he doesn’t want to make a video trying to summarise his experience with a show, because if someone says “Oh, I get what he thinks now,” they still won’t understand how much it means to him. Though it’s pretentious, I feel that way about a few things, and ASOIAF is one of them. I won’t go on about it, but those books mean so much to me, and the way the show not only butchered them as an adaptation, but also in their cultural understanding among the people I associate with, genuinely makes me sad. It kind of breaks my heart that ASOIAF will go down in cultural history as “The books for Game of Thrones,” and not as what they are; some old hippie’s anti-war, anti-tradition, pro-feminist fantasy epic with so many moving parts that something may never be attempted on such a scale again. It ruins my day when I see what Benioff and Weiss have done to the series, and how they managed to turn a writer’s heartfelt letter to fantasy, his magnum opus, in to generic, edgy-for-the-sake-of-shock, often disgusting, popcorn shlock for a mass audience. It fucking kills me to be a fan of ASOIAF. It kills me to have something so dear to me associated with this filth.

[occupyvenus]

Great post - "about why Jonsa of all ships is so bitterly thought about" and I think your really nailed a lot of the key factors, especially how the San/San people like Sansa, are more likely book readers and can accept the Jonsa ship maturely. There is definitely a pathological hatred of Sansa that drives the fanaticism against her being with Jon. You really captured a lot of the thinking (if you can call it thinking!) on a tv forum I've been following for about a year. People literally (1/2)

will dream up any reason to keep Sansa away from Jon. There is essentially a subculture that allows the Jon/Ary@ ship and the Jon/D@ny ship to coexist. Even kind of support each other. Dany might die and then Arya and Jon will raise the Targcest baby together. Pretty crazy stuff. Anyway thanks for writing so clearly on this topic. (2/2)

First of all … that was supposed to say FOUGHT ABOUT!!! NOT THOUGHT ABOUT!!!  WHY JONSA OF ALL SHIPS IS SO BITTERLY FOUGHT ABOUT!!!

I lower my head in shame, while contemplating my bad habit of never proof-reading the stuff I write. But as the previous anon so correctly pointed out my spelling isn’t exactly top-notch. Most of the time it’s honestly  p r e t t y  bad. If words sound somewhat similar, by stupid brain assumes they’re interchangeable. Seven hells.

Though I think this - Sansa being regarded as a side character or at best, the least important main character - also explains why Jonsa isn’t seen as a possibility by the general fandom, not just the radical antis. People look at the infamous original outline, believing that Sansa never gained any real importance as a character since then, like she was just allowed to tag along with the “real” key five (Arya, Bran, Dany, Jon and Tyrion). She was supposed to marry Joffrey and die at some point and the crazy folks think she’ll not even survive but also get THE MALE LOVE-INTEREST?  I suppose, to people who don’t realize (or don’t want to admit) that Sansa was “upgraded” to key-status (GRRM always includes her when talking about the most important characters nowadays), any serious theory that claims she could be Jon’s grand love interest sounds as implausible as if it was … idk, Arianne or Brienne or whoever. Those two are great and all, but Jon Snow is on an entirely different level when it comes to significance to the narrative. Why would he of all people end up with some puny side-character? Shouldn’t that “honor” go to one of the real heroines? Makes sense. It’s not just the people who actively hate on Sansa, but also those who simply don’t care much about her character. 

I guess you call this hypothesis “Why Jonsa of all ships is so bitterly FOUGHT about and/or not taken seriously”. 

I’m honestly not an expert on what’s going on between the other camps (ie the general attitude between J0nry and J0nerys shippers), but according to my experience these two subgroups (together with the Sansa/P€tyr shippers) make up the majority of devoted jonsa-haters and put forth the most obsessed ones as well. If I remember correctly, a few years back before canon!jonsa gained so much momentum those two groups weren’t getting along nicely either. There was a lot of bickering about who’s more important (Ary@ is grrm’s fav!, D@ny has dragons and all, so shut your piehole!), mixed up with some shipping wank and as far as I can tell (as I said, I have a very limited perspective on this. I don’t really interact with either group), that has gotten a bit better since Sansa entered the stage as another key female character. What do people say? The enemy of my enemy … 

I don’t think that shipping is super important to asoiaf, I care about the story first and was pretty indifferent to it before I jumped on board the Jonsa ship, but I do think that we’ll get one “main” romance between two “main” characters. It would simply make sense to me, Grrm was never shy about including romantic love in his works, even if it was never the main focus. Now, this will more likely than not end in tragedy, but since asoiaf can be read as a coming of age story for at least 5 of the key six, and settling down with a spouse and a couple of kids is one common way to end such a story, maybe that will belong to the “sweet” part of the bittersweet ending. Idk, anything’s possible. (Btw, I don’t count Sansa and Tyrion’s marriage as a “romance” for obvious reasons.) If you don’t subscribe to the idiotic assumption that Jon and D@ny are the “real” real main characters and assume that all six are of equal importance … why is shipping either of them (other than the biological siblings, perhaps, that would be a bit weird even by grrm standards), less legit than the other? (Of course, if you do subscribe to this assumption, there probably only exists one “legitimate” pairing in your opinion. In which case, no argument about this could ever be solved until finding a common denominator to this question of principle, so why even bother…)

If one of the male characters can be seen as the “romantic lead” it would be Jon (grrm even sorta confirmed this in his “fake” -lol- medusa interview), simply because Bran is just a kid and Tyrion, well some people will accuse me of ableism, but I don’t get any “romantic lead” vibes from him. Not because he’s a dwarf, because he’s the only “grownup” of the key six. So everyone can keep any accusations to themselves. I also don’t think that Grrm will stride away from hetero-love, to be honest. HE COULD. But I don’t think he will. That leaves us with the three possibilities mentioned above: Jon and one of the leading ladies. I think it’s rather inevitable that that will happen. 

But when it comes to the ladies … things simply aren’t as clear. They’re all similar of age, neither of them is closely related to Jon (at least, not THAT closely related), they could all work. I obviously don’t like J0nerys, but I can totally understand why so many people believe in it. I would maybe even ship J0nrya a bit, if it wasn’t almost impossible to find shippers who don’t hate on Sansa/Jonsa. And I would never call either of those groups “delusional” because it basically comes down to personal preference and a couple of other factors, most notably how you judge the future projective of these three characters. 

I also hate the assumption that J0nerys is the only pairing with solid foreshadowing in the books. I read the books a few times, all j0nerys meta I could find, plenty of J0nrya ones and, well, I don’t have to talk about all the jonsa-metas I’ve consumed xD. Trying to remain as unbiased as possible, there’s an almost equal amount of foreshadowing for all of them. I simply came to the conclusion that Sansa is the most likely candidate because a) I’m pretty sure D@ny will go dark and there will be a targbowl of sorts. She could just as easily be a love interest, as she could be an adversary. b) The age-gap between Ary@ and Jon is a bit too big for my liking. Especially at their current canon age. Also I love them siblings so much. And c) Sansa’s upgrade and the drastic change in her narrative must have a reason. Martin liking the idea of tormented pseudo-incest, and the reveal of Jon’s parentage making such a relationship “proper” but deciding to emphasize the brotherly bond between Jon and Ary@ and “using” Sansa’s character as the love interest instead simply makes sense to me. 

But I only came to this conclusion because I consider Sansa to be of equal importance. It’s more or less a precondition of even consider Jonsa, even more so to ship it in a canon kind of way. 

Now, to put an end to this little rant and get back to the original topic, D@ny and Ary@ stans regularly accuse Sansa of “stealing their narrative” or at least “Sansa-stans want her to have it all”, so it’s no surprise that they a) don’t want her to be key player and b) subsequently don’t want her / can’t see her ending up with Jon. There are a few very great posts out there dealing with the issue why Sansa is hated so much, but I think it comes down to (to get off topic one more time, because it’s my speciality)

Misogyny. Feminine characters always attract a lot of unwarranted hate (female characters and general, but at least on tumblr … one can undeniably see a certain trend), more so the ones who don’t take off their clothes. There’s this really nice post going around that as a female character you either have to a) be a sex object or b) act like a man. I would link to it if only I could find it. I’m not going to add much to this, it has been talked about many times. 

You can’t live vicariously through her. Sansa’s narrative often is … very frustrating. Nobody “wants to be Sansa”. People want to be the rebellious, fighting girl who doesn’t take any shit, they want to be the mother of dragons who goes around the world freeing slaves, they want to be Jon kicking some White Walker ass, they want to be the future three-eyed-raven (though Bran is seriously underappreciated by the fandom), they want to be a smart ass know it all, like Tyrion. They don’t want to be the girl stuck in situations she has almost no means of escaping. The sad truth to this is though, most people, if they found themselves in the same situation, “would be Sansa”. Most people aren’t active heros who fight against the unjust system all the time, most people aren’t geniuses, or brave enough to put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of other all the time. I actually fell in love with Sansa’s character because of that. (Though I have to admit myself, I was rather indifferent to her character for partially those exact reasons myself). It’s refreshing and a honest take on human nature to have a heroine who mostly has to resort to endurance and passive resistance. Mostly, not always. I don’t subscribe to “Sansa is weak and useless” weekly. Don’t get me wrong. She’s awesome and badass in her right, it’s just a bit harder to notice and appreciate. In this aspect she’s probably the most “realistic” character of the key six and people don’t like to read the truth about themselves. They wanna read about what they want to and could be. 

People are projecting. HARD. I spent a lot of time wondering why Sansa gets so much shit for her “evil deeds and traits”, in a series where people kill other people, shove children out of windows, burn people alive, rape a slave prostitute, and so on and so forth. And you know what? It’s easier to “forgive” those things because they are so absolutely horrendous. All these things are so far removed from our everyday reality (for most people at least), that it severs our emotional connection to it. Don’t get me wrong, we can still judge their behaviour, we can still emphasize with the victims, but we have no personal experience to connect to. But Sansa’s “villainous characteristics” (especially those of s1/agot)? An ignorant, privileged white girl who is mean to her little sister for being different, is caught up in some naive classicism, does stupid shit because she has a crush on some asshole everyone else could sniff out a mile away and always has to be so fucking perfect all the time. NOW THAT IS A “BAD GUY” WE KNOW! That’s a “villain” we all encountered in real life. To put this in different terms: I’ve never been pushed out a window for witnessing a incestous relationship between two people of high social standing (nor has anyone close to me), but have I felt victimized by my sister being the pretty, perfect girl, while I was the loud, unruly, unattractive tomboy? Yeeeeeeeeeeees. Have I ever actually lived through the experience of my elder sister getting nicer gifts than me, because “I would just break them”? Yeeeeeeeeeeeesss again. I grew out of it after elementary school, of course (okay, to be completely honest here, I might have still struggled with it during puberty, but thank god that’s also behind me). This also works the other way around: I have never been in the situation of “having” to push a kid out of a window, because it witnessed my incestous relationship and I, my sister-lover and our three children would lose their heads if he told anyone. I’ve never had slave master nail 163 children to crosses to piss me off. Idk, man. I have no idea what I would do. I never had to deal with shit like this. Who am I to judge? But then people look at the “mean” things Sansa did and go I WOULD NEVER EVER EVER. (though they probably did at some point in their life). 

Since this is tumblr, I have to note something: I don’t think this applies to everyone who dislikes Jonsa. I don’t think that everyone who dislikes Jonsa also dislikes Sansa. I’m not even saying that everyone dislikes Sansa for the reasons listed above. Before you accuse me of any of this, make sure you didn’t fall victim to a logical fallacy. I had enough of those lately. Those are just a few of my personal observations and conclusions, that I think, apply to quite a few people. If your reasonings and opinions are completely different, great, I’m not arguing, just don’t give me any shit about it.

So to draw some final conclusion for this long ass post: Jonsa of all ships is so bitterly fought about and/or not taken seriously, because a) Sansa attracts a lot of hate for several reasons, b) Sansa is considered to be too unimportant to be the “romantic lead” kind of main character grand love interest.

Shipping Jonsa is not “delusional” if you a) consider all three lead ladies to be of equal significance and b) don’t dislike Sansa. (Though since this is Tumblr, I might point it out one more time: This does not mean that anyone this applies to also ships Jonsa. This does not mean that this doesn’t also apply to people who don’t ship Jonsa. This does not mean that only people who stan Sansa hard ship Jonsa - I myself actually started shipping it because I staned Jon so much and I need my baby to be happy. Some people who fulfill both a) and b) might still believe that Jonsa shipper are “delusional” simply because it’s the common narrative of a big portion of the fandom.)

… Now that I think about this, the entire question could have been answered with the last paragraph alone, but you know how we do, go big or go home.  

[opheliasang-blog]

anyway re: this. i don’t know where’s the line between our characters being simple writing exercises & being actual people — rationally, i can see that i have entire control over my character’s decisions & thoughts & feelings. i chose to try & make her a coherent character, so i would never have her doing something absolutely ooc, but i could — still, there’s a level where morgan just... is. it ? sounds weird and dumb saying it like it, but she is. i don’t know if she’s some sort of imaginary friend to me orr just a name i’ve given to a lot of parts of me i still can’t comprehend, but i know she’s an actual muse in the original sense, muse as in an inspiration that drives what i write, something that exists despite what my intentions may be.

& when i think about it mo’s had such a ? wild, deep evolution i can’t quite explain but it’s happened ? & it’s not just because i was a terrible roleplayer five years ago. i remember her being a creature of pure rage. she only understood rage & lust, she was... extremely shallow, because you were either against her or with her, & most of the time it was the former. & she didn’t really have ? purpose other than being angry. as i started meeting more muses & muns, she’s learned things, i’ve discovered parts of her, i’ve changed her background at least a couple times before it got to the actual, definitive version: & she’s so different now but it also all makes sense ? like - this kind of... meta development she’s had ( from angry, two-dimensional character to a deeper, more three-dimensional one - at least i hope ) mirrors her actual background ( from angry teenager to depressed apathetic young adult to deep, emotional young adult ). & i know now she embodies a huge part of me ( it scares me too, how some things i’ve written about her could explain stuff about me ) but i’m just so ... i’m so fucking proud of her. i’m so fucking happy i got to write her again after i thought she’d left me for good, & after all the joys & heartbreaks she’s been through she’s just... she’s the kinda woman i wish i was ? 

& idk. i owe every partner i’ve ever had a huge thank you bc this never would have happened without all those dynamics & development but i’m just.

i’m so. happy. i’m the proudest idiot ever, & for something absolutely stupid but ... i’m proud.

[calzonekestis]

@agent13: Jackie hasn’t been active in quite a while, but she’s always been kind to me and her blog has has A+ opinions and content. 

@ar-se-ne: IDEK how long I’ve been following Cristian, but he’s a really nice guy with whom I have similar interests. He’s also someone that I’ve kind of of been inspired by in some ways. I don’t want to get too personal information, but it involves introspection and self improvement and yeah. I’m proud of him. He should be proud of himself.

@chujo-hime: I remember like circa 2012-2013 I had a ~moment~ because the webmaster of FYBN followed me. Chujo always has quality content, and is someone I respect for being very genuine and respectful. If something’s drawn her ire or made her bitter, she has a reason for it, and can write a solid meta on why it’s bullshit. At the same time, she’s someone who I’ve looked to when I consider how to handle my own fandom disagreements. It’s not worth arguing with people on the internet, it’s never fun. So long as people enjoy what they enjoy? Stay in their lane and let others do the same? We can all get along~~~

@cimikat: Katie is another person who I don’t even remember following. I can’t really remember my tumblr experience before her, though? I can say without any hyperbole though that she’s probably the nicest person I’ve ever encountered on this website? Literally, I can’t think of a single time I’ve seen her be salty. Upset and disappointed, sure, but she doesn’t wallow in negativity the way some people do and have in the past. If she enjoys something, she’s enthusiastic about it. If she no longer enjoys it? You won’t see her b*tch about it. She’s just very upbeat.

@dazzledfirestar: Daz shares my love of certain villains (Sin and Crossbones) while fully recognizing they’re deplorable human beings. That’s just one of the more superficial reasons I respect her. She’s another person who’s also genuine, and whom by following I feel like I’ve actually learned a lot? And I actually like to learn. Ignorance isn’t always mean spirited, and in the past I’ll admit I’ve been an ignorant white boy. Not that I was prejudice, there was just a lot I was either blind to or unaware of.  I’ve learned a lot about Romani culture by following Daz. A lot of history, a lot about the struggles and persecution they still face to this day. I also learned lot about the LGBT community; which honestly was a big help when I was trying to figure out/accept my bisexuality.

@diaryofawriter: What do I even say about you? believe we met because we both RP’d in the same fandoms and enjoyed the same content. Comics, OUAT, Harry Potter, and Star Wars. She’s both listened to me flail or rant countless times, either feigning or expressing genuine interest… for that I’m truly appreciative. She’s also helped me when it comes to letting go of things that are no longer fun or enjoyable for me (OUAT) and focus on the things that do bring me joy. A role model in that sense. >.>

@diisnerd: Leah. Leah was someone I met though a mutual friend, and while they’re closer than I am with her… I let me just say I have so much fucking respect for Leah. She’s just a good, loyal, protective, and caring friend. We have a lot of the same interests, too. We don’t talk all that often about them, but when we do it’s always an enjoyable conversation.

@dreamimpcssiblethings: Kath. Jesus. You know how much you mean to me, I should hope. You’re one of my best friends. It’s not even that we like a lot of the same things (we do) but you’re just very hard not to like? You’re super intelligent, super passionate. Be it about fandom things, classic literature, or just life. If one good thing came out of the rise and fall of my OUAT fandom, it was meeting you. All the salt is worth it for knowing you~

@ilikethequiet: Ally was one of the first people I met in the OUAT fandom, via a mutual friend/aquiantence. She’s a wizard when it comes to making edits and graphics. She’s someone with whom I’ve been salty on many an occasion, and I lured her into the iZombie fandom with me when our favorite actors transitioned over to that show. She’s just a delight. She also somehow made an AU graphic for a trashy ~problematic~ hateship look classy? Real friends hunt down topless screencaps so they can make you smutty collages for your birthday.

@jjoelswatch: Sarah is one of the first people I can remember following on tumblr. She’s another person where I wouldn’t recognize my dash without her. I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but I really respect her. She’s just a good person, very down to Earth and very witty. We don’t talk that much, but it’s always very pleasant when we do? Sarah was the first one to reach out and respond when I came out as bi. I’m still not out to my family. When I posted that little confession, I didn’t know what to expect. I simultaneously cared and didn’t care how people responded. It was weird, because it was something I had tried to deny and rationalize for so long. It’s something that no one should even care about, but Sarah empathized and realized it was kind of a big deal for me? Her reassurance that I wasn’t alone, even in such a short and concise message meant a lot. She’s one of my favorite mutals tbh.

@kennyhoemega: Bethany is a Goth Goddess. I’m not just saying that because she demanded the best compliment. On a superficial level, she’s just really pretty?? Now that’s out of the way, let me tell you legitimate reasons why she’s one of my favorite people to follow. She’s got great taste in music, she loves Star Wars, dabbles in Marvel and Harry Potter. You see a theme here with people I follow. She just also tends to reblog really neat things unrelated to those? I’ve gotten into astrology because of her. It’s mostly her fault that I’ve started watching wrestling again, bc there’s nothing good on TV and her passion is contagious and the gifs she reblogs are wild. She also has the best tags out of anyone I follow, bar none. I don’t even know when I first followed her either, around 2012 or so, but I know that it was absolutely 100% Sarah’s fault. Thank you, Sarah. TBH the first time I remember interacting with Bethany was when I added a gif and sarcastic comment to one of her salty posts about people trying to woobify Brock Rumlow. The next day, I realized this was likely not the best way to make a first impression? Fortunately she assured me that she got it, and that we were cool. Which is a relief, because as I’ve told her (and IDK if she believes me) she’s probably one of the coolest people I follow? It’s come to light that neither of us are big talkers, so we don’t actually talk that much… but she’s really rad. IDK when it started but she’s consistently been in my tumblr crushes for ages. Lots of mutual reblogging, again, lots of respect. She’s witty and intelligent. That’s not butt-kissin’, I’ve seen her post about certain tests and looked them up out of curiosity and wow. Yeah. Bethany also has the longest compliment, so that should make her happy. There was something about my needing a nuclear bunker if she wasn’t on this list. She deserves it though, she’s another one of my faves.

@kittenspawn: Nichole is my unofficial big sister. I say that as someone who actually has a big sister. She messaged me in 2012 with questions about Bucky and Natasha, and from that point on she was screwed. She got me into Hellboy in turn, but I like to think I’ve thoroughly corrupted her and caused her to spend far too much money on certain things. Nichole is someone who I can go weeks without talking to, and yet we can fall right back into conversation as if we talked the night before. She’s been a terrible enabler over the years, but she’s also been there for me during some difficult times and when I’ve done very stupid and questionable things. I know she’ll say I’ve been there for her as well, but the scales are seriously tipped here. When I need advice, or when I need to talk to someone about something serious… she’s the person I go to. I can always count on her, and she’s pretty much family at this point.

@ohmygil: Gil. I think I found you through Davis? You’re just a very sensible person, and very rational about a lot of things. It’s refreshing to see that on the internet these days. You’re someone who I don’t think I’ve ever had a actual ‘discussion’ with, but I’m including you here because I really enjoy your presence on my dash. I stopped reading DC regularly with the New 52, and pretty much all my DC intake these days is absorbed through your blog. You also get points for liking Superman. Some people think he’s too powerful, or a big boy scout, and while I’ve never regularly collected his titles I am a fan.

@prof-anity: …You know, I was tempted to leave you off this list just to be a dick. Yours would be the longest entry, so I’m keeping it short because what is there to even say? How much needs to be said? Seven years ago you met a bitter teenage douchebag on a message board. You made the mistake of accepting his friendship when he reached out to you. You’ve stuck with me through highs and lows, man. It’s one of those relationships again, where we may not talk every day. We may not be up to date on the details and goings on in each other’s lives… but you said it yourself. Our friendship has been one of the best constants in the past seven years. A third of your life, btw. Isn’t that depressing? You are, truly, the best friend I have ever had. One day I’m going to meet you, hug you, and then insult you to your face. You’re truly a brother to me. I love you.

@readytocomply: Stef! Stef is a delight. Always pleasant, always fun. She’s also super creative? She makes great edits, great cosplays, and is just pretty damn great over all. Stef is another person who I try to model myself after when it comes to shipping things. Re: Multi-Shipping. Stef ships Steve and Bucky. I do not. Stef also ships Bucky and Natasha. Stef respects canon and appreciates Sharon Carter. All this may sound inane but I’m glad I didn’t meet Stef until I did, because 2013 Tim might have been a little asshole re his ships and missed out befriending a great person because of his own stubborness… that could cross into douchebaggery. Stef has quality content on her blog at all times. Sebastian Stan. Marvel. Star Wars. Mark Hamill.. Harry Potter. Tron. Just general film. Chicken nuggets. Stef is a quality person with a quality blog.

@rocktheholygrail: Dana is someone I met through the iZombie fandom, and she is another wizard. A gif wizard, who has too often indulged my requests or suggestions. She’s another person whose enthusiasm is contagious. I was able to convince her to watch the entirety of Prison Break (save the revival) in less than a month before it was taken off Netflix. I don’t think I ever apologized for that. Dana also is trash tho, bc like me, her favorite iZombie character is the trashiest. I say that tongue in cheek, at least the first part. It’s really been great though to have someone who recognize a character as both human and horrible, and who is capable of watching and enjoying them despite their being problematic. If this was another fandom, I’d expect to be judged or ostracized, but instead I’m enabled once again.

@swanmagic: Gia is another person who doesn’t post on tumblr much (at least her personal) these days, but I’m including her because she’s been one of my favorite RP partners for years and we still talk from time to time on twitter. She’s just a great writer, great person, great friend. She’s another person who has excellent (and varied) musical taste.

@thealbooty: I met Alberto through Davis. It’s another thing where I don’t remember the circumstances, there was just one day where suddenly Alberto was in my life. Alberto is just a good guy… and I just mean good. He’s pure. If Davis is Spongebob, I’m Squidward and Alberto is Patrick. Only not as dumb. We don’t talk as much these days which makes me sad, but I love him too. Back in the day the three of us used to have group Skype chats and watch movies together. There was one day when Davis couldn’t make it or wasn’t online, and he and I just watched Hellboy and chatted for a few hours. That’s when Alberto went from being a friend of a friend to my friend. I’m glad he’s my friend.

@thejazzdalek: Max is another person, like Gil, who I’ve never really had a discussion with? He’s followed me for ages though, both on tumblr and on twitter and I appreciate that. I don’t really know him that well after all this time, embarrassingly. He seems like a nice guy, though. Big into Doctor Who, OUAT, DC, Marvel, just sci-fi and fantasy in general.

@timelessmulder: Emily-Alice is someone who I’ve been mutuals with since like 2012 I think. I don’t even know if we’re in the same fandoms anymore, but we keep following each other regardless. Over the years we’ve discussed everything from OUAT to DC, and these days when we talk it’s mostly to pick apart The Flash. She’s someone who has been with me for ages though, and has seen things.

@uhohjonsnow: So Betty is one of the first friends I actually made on tumblr when I engaged in fandom? I was an obnoxious teenage white boy who thought he was straight and acted like it, and she tolerated me anyway. Again, she’s someone who was witness to a lot of nonsense. We really were dicks to each other, lmao. I adore her though, bc she really is sweet and laid back. We went for years without talking,not due to any falling out, but we just drifted apart. She actually took a year off tumblr and recently returned, and we reconnected. She also accidentally deleted her blog and started fresh, so um, go follow her!

@uminoko: We’ve been mutuals for like years, and she’s just a nice person? Again, that’s a pathetic compliment, but it is true. She’s also another individual who I feel I’ve learned from by following? Part of that has to due with her being a former civil rights lawyer, but beyond that she’s just yet another smarty pants who I don’t talk to that much. She also  messaged me privately when I came out, and made me laugh when I needed it. Also, she’s an actual Russian who is a fan of Black Widow and Winter Soldier.

@uncleclustersthirdbrain: Donnie. This might be a little weird, because Donnie and I only reconnected like two weeks ago after three years of not really talking to each other? Again, there’s no bad blood, and he deserves to be on here. I’ve actually known him for five years, we met through his girlfriend Morgan. Donnie’s another person who has seen things, re seen me at my worst. Most obnoxious, outspoken, salty, dickish… and so on. I’ve always sort of looked up to him, though? Back when 17 going on 18 year old Tim met him, there was a sort of ‘notice me sempai’ thing going on. He’s yet another person who is too cool for me. In spite of toolish tendencies, there were times when Donnie reached out to make sure I was okay when I was being dramatic and having anxiety attacks over damn comic books. It sounds ridiculous, and it was, but at the time comics were my escape and how I dealt with a lot of tough shit I was going through. I was invested. Heavily invested, to an unhealthy degree. He’s just a good person who cares about his friends, and people in general. He’s also a fucking brilliant writer, who just recently put out his first comic. So I’m going to use this as another excuse to pimp it for him. Not because he’s my friend, but because I’m a selfish bastard who wants to read more and wants you to give him money so he can make more. He makes no personal profit from it, all the money goes towards paying his artists and the production. I’ve pretty much walked away from buying monthly comics, but as I’ve told Donnie, this is one I would pull. The first issue of And The Hare had some of the best dialogue I’ve read in a comic in easily the last year. At least.

@xeleyan-tequila: I met Chelsea through the OUAT fandom, and like me she gave up on the show a long time ago. She’s another person I don’t really talk to that much these days, but she’s a lovely person with a lovely blog who posts a little bit of everything. There are personal details to our relationship I won’t get into bc it’s no one’s business, and though we’re still friendly we sort of fell out of touch. I enjoy following her though, and she’s a wonderful human being.

[cookinguptales]

Omg with TokyoPop 😂 Please share the early 2000's anime days this is new to me and sounds hilarious.

they were dark-ass times, my friend

TERRIBLE AMERICAN PUBLISHING (idk how it was in other countries; I went to Paris many years later and was impressed with their...everything when it came to different kinds of comics but) Tokyopop which was basically run by people who only half knew what they were doing, Viz which mirrored manga for a long time bc they assumed Americans were too stupid to learn how to read the other way (which was particularly annoying in comics where like a right arm or something was important), ADV which probably couldn’t actually release an entire series if their goddamn lives depended on it (yes, I’m still mad about MaLoki), and various other publishers that would publish like one title ever

No legal streaming!! Which meant you either had to buy super expensive DVDs or pirate them online. (BACK IN THESE DAYS, CRUNCHYROLL WAS A PIRATING WEBSITE. NEVER FORGET.) This was right at the end of VHS days, though, so it could be worse!! If you got a VHS, it would be subbed or dubbed. When I watched Evangelion it was on bargain bin VHS tapes so it was like 70% subbed and 30% dubbed and it was a painful time.

Fansubs online were a huge thing. Legit companies had pretty slow turn around (you were lucky if something like the Anime...Network? I can’t remember. or Toonami or Funimation picked it up, bc they had tv channels -- though you’d usually have to put up with a shitty-ass dub) and you’d usually have to wait for a large-chunk release. If you wanted to watch something as it aired, you had to watch it raw or depend on fansubs. These were uh. Of varying quality. They’d usually have a 2-24 hour turnaround depending on the size of the group, with Shounen Jump titles having the fastest turnaround. Those were anime that were already published in manga form in the US via Viz, so they were already mostly familiar with how they’d go, plus...lbr, a lot of those shows were....easier to translate. If you catch my drift. (They tended to be dumb and repetitive. That is what I’m saying.) Also a larger fandom, so greater pool to get workers from and a greater reward re: downloaders. (And people usually torrented new fansub releases bc there were fewer online streaming sites, so popular shows downloaded faster.)

So like, picture if you will, a group of tween-teen nerds sitting around a computer watching fansubs of suspicious quality and shrieking the theme songs in unison because a fansub wasn’t a fansub without bouncing karaoke at the top. We got a DVD player that could play avis at one point and that was kind of mind blowing. Otherwise, you could use an AV cable or buy a DVD.

You bought things legit if you wanted to really support the industry or you really loved a show, not because they were always better quality. I’ll leave it at that.

There were also a lot of scanlation communities, which were basically fansubs but for manga. These were also of extremely variant quality, and there were a lot of rules for a very weird online translation subculture. I always kind of got the impression that most of them hated each other. A lot of these groups required IRC use, which was confusing af, and I honestly believe that’s the biggest reason why most of these ended up getting put on online manga reader sites. There were fewer of those back then.

Most anime fandom was very strongly demarcated. Most of the fandom I engaged with was on livejournal, which meant it was like...maybe 95% female. You’d get more men on forums, which is why we all fled the forums and went to LJ. lol. Trash spaces. Trash.

The whole yaoi/shounen-ai/BL situation was very different. LGBT stuff was considered more niche and still something you needed to “warn” for in most environments. For a long time, the only legit published stuff was like. FAKE and Gravitation and CLAMP and maybe Eerie Queerie or Loveless or something. So basically, it was shit. lol. (As a young teen, I was particularly attached to CLAMP/Kaori Yuki stuff. Thank god my parents never caught on.) Anyway, to get to scanlated BL works, you usually had to go to special communities/sharing circles online or figure out the prominent scanlators and follow them. Very, very little doujinshi was scanlated. Very few (English-speaking) people ventured onto pixiv. There were a lot of arguments about the differences between yaoi, shounen-ai, and BL. Don’t let anyone nowadays fool you. When I was a teen, 90% of all “yaoi fangirls” were queer, and half of that annoying sex-focused excitement was because it was the first gay sex we’d seen in any publication anywhere. It was a different time in the media landscape. BL has a lot of shitty-ass tropes, but we were basically starving in a desert. We took our Gravitation and we liked it. F/F manga was very rarely translated, and I guess that’s still the case today. There’s less of it, and I think we’ve all been trained to prioritize male sexuality. (Plus most of the shoujo-ai that got posted online was like uber-innocent schoolgirl stuff.) People make fun of “yaoi fangirls” and “fujoshi” and all that now, but I can honestly say I would have never understood my own sexuality without that subculture. Like the anime clubs were full of obnoxious little weebs, but let’s be straight about something, no pun intended. They were full of obnoxious little gay weebs. People are all about gay (western) cartoons nowadays, but when I was a teen, they were all about that anime.

Because almost all published anime/manga was in hard copy, you’d get mini congregations of fans in stores. See: hordes of manga fans sitting in the manga aisle of the book store, fans chatting with each other in...suncoast, or wherever they could find DVDs/VHS. The level of social skills in these areas was...not high. Also, a lot of fuckin creepy predatory dudes going after girls. Hooooly shit. I was so glad when they started releasing anime/manga online. Y’all livestreamers on Crunchyroll don’t know how good you have it. You used to have to deal with the fedora bros who were a good 10-20 years older than you but still following you around in stores, conventions, etc. any time you wanted to get new stuff. Like it was a legit problem.

LIKE I’M TRYING TO CONVEY HERE THAT JUST GETTING ANIME/MANGA WAS A PAIN IN THE REAR END. not as bad as the dark days when people had to physically mail each other shit, but it was still definitely a subculture and you’d definitely be thrown in with a lot of people you wouldn’t want to be around. (Similar to how things are in modern western comics fandom...)

Fandom itself was basically a tire fire. In every possible way. Like I’m nostalgic for it in some ways, because in some ways I really miss how text-based it was. There was a lot more meta and conversation, and fanfic was much better supported. Comment culture was a lot stronger and you’d become friends with people who read your work and/or people who wrote stuff you liked. But on the other side of that, there was a lot of weird fanfic gatekeeping. Sporking communities and flaming and fic rating communities were much more of a problem back then. You release stuff to crickets nowadays, which is demoralizing, but back then there was a solid chance you’d wake up to an inbox full of hate mail, especially if you wrote slash. It definitely happened to me a few times as a kid. I think they really targeted teens, too. So writing fic could be shitty. There was less fanart in American spaces, too.

I do agree that to some degree things have gone too far with the whole virtue-signaling/issuefic thing, with a lot of people yelling very loudly about things they may not always understand very well, but you gotta understand. Fandom was a hateful place in many ways back then. Sexist, racist, homophobic, you name it. Female characters are still ignored now, but they’re typically treated less horribly than they were back then. People try to be more educated about other ethnicities and sexualities and such now. You’re less likely to get bullied because you were gay. I think the big problem is that sometimes people hijack important movements to be giant dicks, and a lot of people, especially younger people, get swept up in that.

There was a very specific kind of anime badfic back then. I could write literally an entire post on that. Like god. Where do I even begin??? The bluenettes? The super kawaii fangirl nihongo? Script fic? “Tell me what to write next!” fic? lolololcrack fic? I mean, there were a lot of varieties of suck back then.

Weird subcultures. Like...really weird ones. Things got kind of cult-y relatively often. Just say no to cults.

if you want more details on anything, I’m having particularly painful flashbacks right now. ugh, the free hugs signs.

[starcallers-followblog]

tbh

after all this is happening

me not really giving anything to overwatch because i really dont want all of this drama

and the tf2 comic coming out

i feel bad for how hard I hyperfixate on things because it was such a clean jump for me between tf2 and overwatch and frankly because of all of this ive been interested in tf2 again and like..... why did i ever lose interest in the first place. somehow it was the best “fandom” ive ever been a part of, maybe just because its not new or something stupid shit never went down and there were a lot of really dedicated people just doing their own thing. it was never weird or nasty for me. and the game is still fun even though i went from only tf2 to only overwatch basically, and frankly i still really like a lot of the characters and if fictives/fiction kin had been as big of a thing when i was into tf2 as now tbh i would have been pyro lol.

like idk why im making this post but reconnecting with tf2 is nice and although i never left for any negative reason or whatever (its really just because i hyper fixate and when overwatch got announced i knew that would be my Life for the next good while) its just as refreshing and envigorating to get back into it as it was to get into it in the first place, honestly

i dont wanna say “fuck overwatch” because unless problems dont get solved/blizz fucks up in some other big way its going to be a big part of my life at least for the next few years probably just because im way too deep into the characters and lore and stuff now

but also kind of.... fuck overwatch. for having sloppy lore (yes i know tf2 lore is a different ballgame but they never presented it to be serious just to break their own rules. if anything their rule-breaking is the interesting part of the lore). For having just a totally fucking abhorrent fandom space. For not having dedicated fan content that makes up for that (sorry but shitty meta fics just don’t compare to the cool shit you get from tf2 community. I dont want to emphasize this point too hard because they are just different things and ovw hasnt been out for nearly as long or has really had a chance for that level content, but tbh... a lot of ovw fan content is very predictable bland basic fandom spit). For hyper focusing on some characters while totally ignoring all of the best ones. for presenting a huge, diverse, complex world and then doing totally nothing for it (yeah, even if “its coming” its been over a year since announcement and so far we have only just started to have forward moving content, and there is still so much backup that we need to sort through before we understand the lore or world or characters at all tbh)

like i didnt mean to make this a “shit on overwatch” post because frankly its ignoring a lot of why i am so interested in overwatch and everything i do see it, but its just frustrating and weird to me on a level to realize how deep down the rabbit hole ive ended up and frustration with myself on how much i let that happen

this post isnt supposed to be deep or a commentary honestly its more or less me just saying “fuck it dude”

[the-cryptographer]

Not having reliable internet, I’ve had to resort to other methods for continued procrastination. …Like writing these tumblr posts in word. And looking through the pkmn freeware games and other things floating around my desktop. Some scattered thoughts about this and other things under the cut.

While I had a whole host of freeware (and a few other) games on my laptop – the number of which I managed to play was actually much smaller. I know I’m further limited by the fact that I’m playing without a mouse – so nothing complicated or actiony – mostly menu based imput and all that. But I was reminded once again that there are many games that are beautiful and creative and full of amazing concepts and informative discussion that are /utterly/ unplayable because the controls SUCK ASS. Honestly, playability is number one in terms of what makes a good game – don’t forget~

In terms of what was actually decent…

I played the Night in the Woods supplement – Lost Constellation. Which was a decent and thoughtful little point-&-click adventure – very pretty, engaging, nice dialogue. You build snowmen as part of the story and are encouraged to take pictures of them.

It’s actually convinced me I should look into purchasing the game proper. So you can tell I liked it.

...

I also played Pinkamena – which is what you should play if you’re the kind of person that likes to mix depressing murder mysteries and serial killings with My Little Pony. I know it’s based on games of a similar type – but the gist of it is – it’s a text based game where you’re running an investigation trying to piece together which among a list of townsfolk are regular folk with regular jobs and which are the murderers… before the murderers kill everybody… It took me a couple of runs to get the hang of it, but after that the regular mode becomes kind of boring. So I initiated a challenge mode where I’m not set apart from the other players in the drama, but at risk of being killed myself. Once I’d gotten the hang of this, I initiated all the challenge modes at once, at which point the game becomes less about investigating who the killers are, and more waiting for them to kill everybody else and then making 50-50 guesses trying to kill off the killers instead of the townsfolk so that, next round, there will be people left for the remaining killers to kill off that aren’t you. Either that, or it’s about being assigned to be the jailor. If you’re the jailor, you can jail yourself every night as a method of shielding yourself from attack, and thus stay alive long enough to see everyone else dead and win the game by default. …I did finally manage to win all-the-challenges-mode without being picked for jailor, but winning a guessing game isn’t as exhilarating as winning something based on skill, so at that point I kinda chucked the game out.

...

And – this isn’t really freeware – but the only way to play the second Ace Attorney Investigations game in English is to use the ROM and an unofficial patch. I had started it a long while back, and finally managed to finish it.

I think… the issues that people have with the Ace Attorney games are pretty well documented. It’s really easy to end up ahead or behind the path of the story, depending on how logical or illogical some connection in the game’s evidence folder is, or how heavy-handed and obvious the story telling is being. Also, there is so much dialogue and so much of it is spent rehashing what we already know /god/, but you also never know when the games are going to sprinkle in jokes and good character moments imbetween the dialogue, so you feel obligated to drag the game out and postpone every advancement in search of the interesting bits.

On the bright side, the characters are as amusing and captivating as always. I can complain about how the best character and the most interesting relationships (that’d be Franziska and her relationships with her father and adopted brother) are constantly shafted. But more to the point I want to say-

I love him. He’s such an insufferable idiot. And he’s just such a sweetheart, and it’s so heartbreaking, and I love him.

...

Okay, but- Pokémon fan games.

Going back in time, Pokémon Reborn is the first pkmn fan game I’ve played. It seems different fangames have different things going for them. Pkmn Reborn will probably only appeal to you if you enjoy (a) grimdark that’s highly aesthetic, hilarious, and over-the-top rather than truly horrifying, and (b) getting your ass kicked. I never knew that a pkmn game could actually be difficult, but it turns out that a pkmn game can be very, very difficult, and also there’s a whole world out there of competitive tactics. And you’re only getting a taste of them in a singleplayer campaign, but it’s crazy and also crazy fun. Without any prior knowledge, I ended up using the F.E.A.R. method trying to beat some of the bosses. When a game challenges me to independently invent last ditch tactics to proceed and the answers I come up with are well known game breakers… it’s a feeling. At some point though, I ended up with a team full of pkmn with extremely slow levelling rates, and ran out of trainers to battle against for experience, and fell out of playing in the process of waiting for trainers to respawn at the hub. I intended to pick it back up now, but I realised I’d misplaced my save files. I’m waiting to get home to see if I can track them down or something. But, you see, I was so impressed with Pkmn Reborn, it inspired me to downloaded a bunch of other pkmn fan games to try out sometime. And that time was now.

A couple of other things though – Pkmn Reborn all takes place in one city and its outskirts, and I really kind of admire that decision. Worldbuilding is one of my favourite aspects of RPGs, so it’s nice to see a city that actually /feels/ like a city with its different industrial, commercial, and residential districts – warehouses, slums, and wastelands. Also I took screenshots of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirtles:

The immediate problem with downloading a dozen pkmn fan games is then you actually have to decide which ones to play. Admittedly, I used very shallow and superficial reasons to decide which ones not to play. Nothing I had to patch to a ROM, because that would mean me having to download a ROM and emulator and patch it. Also one of the readmes for the patch included a disclaimer that if you were too stupid to get the patch working then you were too stupid to play the game, which made me doubly not want to play it because apparently the developer is a know-it-all douche who feels the need to get personally insulting instead of just saying something neutral like, ‘sorry, I don’t know how to explain better than this. so if you can’t get the patch working I won’t be able to help you.’ I ruled out something with an installer too, because I was feeling extra suspicious about my freeware and what I was giving it permission to do to the insides of my computer. And there was something that wouldn’t start properly, and I wasn’t going to futz around trying to coax it.

And I also ruled something out for having a disclaimer that ‘you can’t choose to play as a female character because this game is very PLOT CENTRIC’. And, lol, Pkmn Reborn was very plot heavy, and they let me play as male, female, or nonbinary, and one of my costaring NPCs is a flamboyant bisexual man that hits on me no matter which option I choose. Unless your game’s plot is heavily involved in societal deconstruction and gender politics, I can think of no reason your plot wouldn’t allow for MC being a girl. Which, frankly, would be a pretty significant tone shift from original pkmn games, which your game doesn’t actually seem to be. …It’s weird, because I don’t actually mind games flat-out not giving me a choice in who I play as. Especially for a freeware game, I don’t mind the developers going, ‘I don’t wanna take the time to program in an alternate set of player sprites and dialogue variables. You are playing as this one person who is not you, and that’s just how it is.’ But the game apologising for this choice and then trying to feed me this bullshit excuse about plot feels somehow like either (a) an insult to my intelligence, or (b) you actually think your plot is so special and unique to a male perspective that you may not realise women are human. So it’s kind of lose-lose situation I’ve been put into, wouldn’t you say? idk, I guess it’s possible the game turned into the Revolutionary Girl Utena of pkmn fangames, or a realistic investigation of isolated all-male cultural groups, like a men’s prison, in which case I’d agree the genders of the characters can be significant af to maintaining the plot. But given some of the other signals the game was telepathing to me, it seemed far more likely I’d be heading in a direction where at some point some bitch was going to hit on me so I can’t play as a girl bc that’d make things too gay or something. I apologise for being so bitter and jaded.

...

Anyhow, after throwing a good number of things into my computer’s recycling bin, I ended up with Super Pokémon Eevee Edition, and Pokémon Sage.

In Super Pokémon Eevee Edition, you’re playing as the gen2 protagonist – albeit one that talks and is full of good natured snark – in a kind of alternate version of the Johto region. Notably, all the gym leaders are the same, and Silver is your rival, although the environments and layout of the region are different. You’re immediately cued in on the fact that things are very WRONG though. Before you’ve even chosen your name, you’re getting images of old style gen1 glitches in place of the professor your screen. Anyhow, you start the game venturing into the woods into the lair of an old (and allegedly insane) hermit – that’s Professor Oak – who ends up gifting you with a glitched ‘super’ Eevee that is able to switch between the different eevolutions at will. You set off to start your Pokemon journey, but it’s all overlayed on top of a meta plot. Gen3 is set to start in the span of about a month, and the ‘hypervisors’ controlling the game and its code are all set to erase the current Gen2 and all the people in it to make Gen3 happen. It’s not functioning on the level of Undertale having its story interwoven with your save file but, even given all its superficiality, it’s a fun little way to play with the idea of a meta game world. And it’s suspenseful. It catches your attention quickly and, even having played through all six available chapters, I’m not sure who to trust regarding what’s happening in the story.

In terms of the gameplay… It honestly fixed a lot of the worst things about pkmn gameplay imo. You’re given an axe, pickaxe, and surfboard to replace Cut, Rock Smash, and Surf – so you don’t have to fill up your moveset with HMs. But the limited moveset is also gone altogether. You’re playing a type of hybrid Final Fantasy X-2 active battle system, using teams of four pkmn max. The whole thing makes battles a lot faster, especially without the tedium of switching pkmn in and out of battle. Later battles do get kind of easy as a result tho, as you build up a star team and spam high level attacks one after the other, but I think the rest of the game carries the lack of challenge well. It goes quick, like I said.

There’s a good amount of content for the game as of now – 6 gym leader battles, and a host of other stuff. Although I wish there was more as of now, I recommend the game in the shape that it’s in~ Although you may find some strange and inexplicable loose ends. Like quests in your log book that you can’t fulfill, or some rather empty environments near the end, or-

I don’t even know.

...

For Pokémon Sage… the big draw for me was the pkmn SOUTH AMERICA thing. I gotta love me some silly cultural diversity in my pkmns~ It seems like all the pkmn are fake, compared to the above games where all the pkmn (except one) are ripped directly from the source material. But they’re so adorable!! My pkmns~ Let me show them to you~

Anyhow, it really plays exactly like a pkmn game, so there aren’t any fastballs thrown at you. I think the closest thing to a subversion you get is your rival’s pkmn being stolen shortly after he (or she) has gotten it, and the Professor handing off the final pkmn so your rival won’t be without one. You see the thief run past you at one point later, but the game is really only a short demo right now – it stops after the first gym battle – so there isn’t really a significant encounter with this thief. I feel like it’s kind of a flaw in the demo actually, to leave that so significantly hanging…

I think it’s a neat composition though. It’s a colourful setting and really detailed environments, so if you want to play a couple hours of Pkmn in the Andes, it’s not as if you’ve got anything to lose~

...

Other things I’ve been doing…

I watched Over the Garden Wall. And I can also really recommend it.

I like these kinds of shows that are a short set of fifteen minute episodes. With a concrete plot. That ends.

But, beyond that, I was glad to watch something that somebody obviously put a lot of passion into. Obviously the creators were neck deep in love with 1800s American Folklore, and the show is just oozing that love. It’s not even an area of particular interest for me, but the show sold it with such love and cleverness and with such colourfully human characters and a singing frog – I just adored it.

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And I’ve been reading some shoujo manga… Or no, not really.

I was thinking again of Fruits Basket, which was all the rage back when I was in secondary school. Tbh, I still can’t quite put my finger on the series. On one hand, I think it’s terribly melodramatic, and Touru does strike me as being inhumanly perfect – almost repulsively so at times. But despite all of this, I like Touru, and I find the series really touching~ It’s really so alike and so unlike everything else I’ve ever seen.

Right before I left on vacation, I was also reading Akuma to Love Song. It’s really… terrible, lol. The protagonist is super pretty, but challenged in the realm of social schmoozing. She’s straightforward, and intimidating, and seems to see right through to people’s insecurities and drag them up without realising it’s their insecurities she’s unearthing. She immediately catches the attention of the class darling/hottest guy, and also this other guy’s attention. And all the girls hate her, and also her teacher, and it’s only through her earnestness and the help of hot guys that she’s able to pull her way through her struggles~ And also there’s a strange religious bend to it where she’s ‘the devil’ but also she went to catholic school before this and is always wearing a cross and singing Amazing Grace. It’s weird.

My beef with the series is that every secondary female character is some kind of conniving bitch that’s out to get the protag. After the protag kind of… outwits(?) them, there is this kind of thing where they admit they were only insecure and you’re allowed to start to sympathising with them. It’s a defeat means friendship kind of thing. The series seems to play around with the idea of how much the protagonist is incapable and tactless and has a bad attitude. But I do kind of get the idea that it’s pushing the message that the protag is more ‘honest’ and more morally correct, and it’s really everybody else’s problem for being jealous and angry and insecure. And the whole thing in general strikes me as kind of simplistic and misogynistic. And the fact that the men in this series are willing to put themselves on the line for her as much as they do – even if they are attracted to her… even if they feel some kind of deep intrigue and connection… it’s sometimes a little hard to buy them doing all this for someone they’ve just met. Men sometimes seem less afraid of making social enemies than women… but I think it seems like that because men are allowed to cross more, or rather different, boundaries than women are before they’re ostracised. But, if anything, men are even more desperate to fit in and not lose their privileges than women.

…And, if anything has been communicated to me through manga, it’s that bullying is a crazy terrible problem in Japan. This specific manga is obviously a symptom rather than a realistic portrayal of bullying. It seems to convey a kind of emotional state brought about by the fear of ostracisation, and the desire to not only fit in but to feel superior instead of inferior. The reason it probably seems simplistic is it’s attempting to reach the kind of mental state of a middle or high schooler caught in the middle of the whirlwind and provide wish fulfilment, rather than a holistic view of the topic from outside. The facts are screwy, but the emotional impact is real.

Ugh, for what it’s worth, I want to read more. I’ve read a lot of terrible shoujo before, and this manga is a kind of paint-by-numbers guide to some of the terribleness, but I can’t help but be intrigued by the protagonist. She’s deeply flawed in a rather unusual way for shoujo manga, whether the narrative recognises it or not. I would be reading more if the internet wasn’t what it was.

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And, lastly, I’ve been reading Komura Ayumi’s newest manga, Kamisama no Ekohiiki. And, goddamn, I love Komura. The last time I made a post about her manga, I got a reblog from somebody asking if Komura would ever write a series with a likeable, sympathetic protagonist. And, different strokes for different folks, I guess, but I felt deeply confused and a little worried about what this person didn’t find likeable and sympathetic about Komura’s protags because they are honestly THE BEST. They just so unabashedly like what they like. They can be selfish and shallow, but they’re just so earnest and guileless about it – it’s so cute <3  And, in spite of themselves, they become sentimental and get touched by the smallest gestures – it’s just so cute <3  And this is all aside from the fact that she’s apparently given up on writing straight people. (I remember reading Mixed Vegetables in print and feeling the attachment to how down to earth the characters were.) Anyhow, the newest manga is about a guy who makes a prayer at a shrine for every day for a hundred days to find the courage to confess to his male best friend. His friend rejects him, softly, but rejects him, and he promptly walks out into traffic by mistake. The god of the shrine allows him to come back to life in whatever form he likes, and he rashly says he wants to be a girl, so his friend will be able to return his feelings. This turns out to be a very stupid wish, since he IDs pretty strongly as a guy. And then he meets his friend’s ex-girlfriend, is attracted to her, befriends her, and then the ex-girlfriend falls for him – who’s living as a girl. And now the male best friend is all distraught bc his best friend just died. I’m not sure where in this mess of BL and GL there’s anything even remotely shoujo-like. But it’s so, so shoujo in the best way. I just… can’t not love a silly manga that’s so sympathetic with all its characters. The more I feel like I should pick on Komura’s work - the more I just can’t. It’s just so lighthearted and dumb and sympathetic towards all of the characters, even and especially when they’re bi and stupid. I feel a strong kinship~

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Anyhow, that’s it for now. I’m also trying to read fanfic i have preloaded in my browser. And write. Between work. I’m sorry I’m so scattered. I have the fifth season of GoTs on my computer too, so maybe I’ll watch that too 3_3