#also you wouldnt be thinking about it if the content wasnt fundamentally there to think about

[dreadfutures]

I just need to say that as a DA virgin playing a clueless Lavellan with no prior knowledge of the game, the whole deal about a) the Dalish elves' ancestors having been previously enslaved and oppressed by humans, and dealing with prejudice in the modern day and b) the horror of becoming a prophet/religious figure for the very human religion that was used to justify your extermination

was incredibly apparent 🙃 so like. idk. it's there man. maybe you want more from an already massive and detailed game and that's fine, but it's there.

and there are lots of people who talk about it!!! in detail!!!!

[aprito]

hello <3 since i got these asks at the same time i decided to combine my thoughts on them in this post. yet another annoying sjw essay from yours truly on this blog 

before i get into these i think i need to preface why im like. i guess overly hyperfocused on a certain unproblematic base (same age au / platonic canon) for them and avoid the ped0philic content like the plague lol

tw for pedophilia ment, rape ment if that makes you squicky. ALSO THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY

as i’ve mentioned a couple times already, ive been into the ship since i was 12, back when it was very very common to not only post untagged (nsfw) canonverse content of the two in writing and in drawing but also non con and the like, so you can imagine how bad my first impression online was. thinking back on it ...as a child i found it disturbing but didnt really register how problematic it really was?? (i know, but i also lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one explain this to me) 

skip to 2014 aka me coming back to naruto at 17ish and i had kinda become hyper aware of the fact that there was an increasing amount of people online who had come forward with explaining how fictional problematic content, mostly pedophilia, had been used to groom them into starting relationships with adullts. it was also a time where a lot of people didnt believe these victims, not registering how common it was for minors to be online friends with adults who had no boundaries and no qualms exposing them such content. not gonna get into my personal life here but i was lucky to not having gone through this myself. like... it kinda was my first time truly realising how fiction can EASILY be used to manipulate others irl (and yes i will not argue this, if you dont think fictional media can form and manipulate people’s opinions on attitudes, countries, cultures and virtues, pick up a book about the effects of propaganda media at least once please) 

i, being young, still liking the dynamic but not really the romance, would point this out here and there in the fandom and get into fights with grown adults in their mid 20s who assumed i automatically hated the ship(s) and tried to restrict their freedom of speech or whatever, heard everything from the “age of consent doesnt exist in naruto” to the “sasori looks like a child what does it matter” despite people clearly playing on him being older and experienced. it made me so upset that people were just consuming all this content uncritically and exposing children to it tbh?? not really just sos but a lot of minor/adult ships in naruto in general. and thats where i sat down and thought, i do not want to be a grown adult talking down to children that point out how unsafe the fandom is. theyre absolutely right in drawing these boundaries and calling out adults who defend the uncritical consumption and creation of this content. i do not want to consume or create content that predators could use to groom minors, and i absolutely do want to let younger people in fandom know that i am respecting their comfort zones and want them to have a safe and fun experience. after all, naruto is not an adult show and i think a lot of people forget that!!!! i am not perfect in that regard but its something that i, at the age of 23, am very passionate about and strive towards to.

and i guess thats where same age au was born for me and i have been sticking to it ever since. 

so finally we can move to the first question 

aside from the fact that we both dont like canon sos, i dont think it would work out even if i wasnt prejudiced to it anyways. in all honesty, 35 year old canon sasori is not a redeemable character to me, given the fact that he’s easily amongst the cruelest villains in naruto (torturing and killing and taxiderming people for his own fun personal gain, never for a goal that served anyone but himself. how do you redeem having over 300 corpses in your backpack that you felt absolutely no remorse for killing). sasori was legit one of the only cruel villains that didnt had someone else pull the strings, which sends a clear message on kishi’s part, who absolutely loves to redeem villains LOL.

being that old, he obviously had already been very manifested in what he believed in, even if it was shakey, to the point where the first crack in that world view (sakura and chiyo protecting each other) immediately had him give up on his life all together. that, in my opinion, is not a man who’s going to know what healthy relationships would look like, regardless of it being romantic or not. 35 year old sasori to me has the same appeal as an expired can of tuna and he’s probably very happy 6 feet under. he’s supposed to be a failed gaara in that sense that he had no one to look out for him and therefore was never going to experience anything but a bad ending in life. its fine that hes dead honestly, it wraps up his short character development the best IMO.

adding to that, seriously, sakura was obviously interested in knowing why he was that way, and called him out for being seriously fucked in the head, but it’s weird to me that people assume she had any interest in actively rehabilitating him, let alone starting a serious romantic relationship with him. sakura who’s not only very, uhm, immature and straight forward when it comes to her romantic viewpoints also, as a big bootlicker, wouldnt soil her standing in the village by starting anything with a disgraced and far too gone criminal like sasori. shipping that version of sasori with sakura intimately is still going to set her up for a huge power imbalance that would be difficult to handle imo, even if she was the one in the fight ultimately exerting her power over him. i would still look at it and think damn she deserves better than having to play therapist for man like that lol.

additionally, even if you ignored all of this, you cant really ignore that sasori had already known her as a child, and that had been his first and most impactful impression of her. i dont think that sasori would look at 35 year old sakura and see her as a grown woman and not the little green girl she was in the fight. plus, you easily fall into predatory comparison territory between the “childish” and “womanly” and i have seen way too often in fic just being boiled down to her now being fuckable. a lot of of ships do this and i would just like to remind yall thats it not normal for adults to want to start relationships with children they have seen grown up or known as a child when they themselves were fully grown adults. therefore, maybe if sakura hadnt met sasori before it would be less of a problem? but that also obviously defeats the point of the dynamic and the reason he died in the first place. so yeah, it sounds kind of doomed especially if you were to make it romantic. 

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SECOND QUESTION

let me preface this that im not fundamentally against age gaps, even if im not super interested in it. after all, colorblind had a 5 yr age gap (with sakura being 21), even if, say, i wrote similar fics today i probably would make it smaller lol. i think it can be handled well if both parties have enough life experience to deal with it, and the author is cautious of where the age gap starts, i think a 10+ year age gap would be fine in a scenario where the younger party (i guess sakura) was at least 25-27ish, meaning she has completed most of her most formative life stages and probably had been in relationships before, meaning she would be able to handle it without having to fear a huge power imbalance. the older the younger party is the less the age gap is going to matter tbh .TsukiHoshino and AngelOfDeath10 both handle age gaps in their fics really well imo, so i do not mind reading about them.

unfortunately, a lot of people in this fandom think making sakura barely "”””legal””””” (18, not even 20 which is hilarious to me because the source material is obviously japanese) because they both cannot stand her being past her “prime years” of being young fertile and fuckable to much older men as well as thinking a 20 year old is automatically old enough to handle that type of relationship. ive seen a lot of unironic takes that believe it will absolve them of callout posts if they throw around age of consent and “shes 18 now suckers!!!” enough lmfao. absolutely hilarious. aging a minor up without aging the adult down seriously reeks of predatory “cant wait until youre 18″ narratives and thats why i find it similarly disturbing as straight up pedo shipping.

ultimately, sasosaku is and will always be a inherently problematic ship in canon, which is why i think it should always be handled a little more responsibly in fandom spaces, ignoring or outright excusing the main problem factor, which is sasori, isnt going to convince anyone that the dynamic in itself is well written and interesting enough to explore in aus, like giving sasori the redemption most of us wanted him to have by aging him down to a point in time where he was still realistically going to allow being positively influenced, similar to gaara. 

so really, what i think is well handled age gap and how most people handle age gap in the naruto fandom are two different worlds at times lol 

tl;dr

canon shippers have never been anything but gross when i was younger and i didnt wanna be like that, even if youre “smart”enough to differenate, actual creeps dont really care and might use your content to blur the lines, sasori isnt rly redeemable so romantic canonverse realistically wouldnt make much sense and is still iffy, age gaps are fine if they are handled well, but given that the dynamic doesnt really need the age gap to still work im not that invested on making that an essential part of my shipping experience.  

thank you for reading and hope this makes sense!

[biggerb0at]

(1/4) I just need to get this off my chest: Tumblr and Reddit Fate fandoms are obnoxious about Abby rn. I've been seeing posts like "there's no difference between a drawing of a partly naked child and an actual naked child" which is... no. Do you think someone who likes guro will enjoy seeing actual organs spilled on the ground? There's snuff, there's dismemberment, there's even a "fucked by a dog" fetish do people actually think that those who enjoy them don't seperate fantasy from reality?

(2/4) And that’s not even getting into proportions. You will NEVER see a child that looks just like Jack, or Wu, or Abby because ultimately they’re just lines on a page. Even if they’re meant to be children their fundamental proportions- eyes, hair, demeanor, body shape at times- are far removed from an actual child unless they’re drawn to be realistic which they’re clearly not. Just pull up a photo of a 12-year old girl and put it next to Abby can you really say they look all that similar?

(¾) It’s not even that you have to approve of it! Hate it! Redesign these characters yourself, keep them out of those ascensions! Find it as gross as you want! Nobody’s saying you should enjoy this! This is coming from a person who loved reading about Salem and think Abby’s ascensions are a waste of potential and absolutely HATES Jack and Wu’s. Having those bad experiences myself it just tick me off when people think any of the two are remotely comparable.

(4/4) Also inb4 people reblog with “Just say you jack off to kiddy porn”. I’ve seen it thrown around on reddit and tumblr and it is by far the smuggest most pretentious cop-out for an argument I’ve read. I don’t care what’s been said before, it automatically makes you the asshole for insinuating such a thing and makes you no different from antis or sjws that scream out “nazi”. The worst part is that I’ve seen it used on people who aren’t even INTO Fate or anime and just had a stance on it.

Anyways, sorry for spamming your inbox I’ve been seeing people go back and forth for so long that I felt the need to rant about it and you seem fairly reasonable.

ok where to start here. well I havent been on reddit enough as I used to be (more on twitter and fate discord servers from reddit and the only obnoxious comments Ive seen recently is “why does melt whos from a sex themed game look like that and why does the goddess of sex ishtar wear little clothing, and right now im seeing a lot of OC abby drawings) 

but I can say that I was there when abby came out for JP, it wasnt really an obnoxious shit storm other than “why japan” comments and the usual “ill keep her in first form” so I can say that the obnoxious people you are seeing are the minority type who should have left a long time ago because with that argument then well its hard to justify why you’d want a kid whos only clothing option is a thong and stockings on your phone if you think it’s straight up pedophile content like that should have been the line where you dropped the game.

and yeah im with you there fiction is fiction they dont look at all like real life kids just like how eirris (the gramps comics artists) guro side blog doesnt look at all like the real thing like its not going for realistic at all in any proportions or anything other than smol, and anyone who wants to make a argument for or against the loli = pedo heres some donation links here and here and here im not trying to be smug about it I am saying that donating makes a better impact than online arguments. (personally I think that if you do try to go for realistic in fiction like 3D models and going for anatomically correct in it then yeah you’re probably are thinking about real kids at that point.)

and yeah im with you on there I hate it too and enjoy the redesigns of others better especially wu like god that dude can do so much better if they let him. (yeah I know I say redesigns with the “Fix it” attitude are shit but give a pass with the kid servants cause ofc that would be allowed)

I wouldnt put it on par with sjw screaming nazis but it is on par with them being a anti cause it really is just going “no im right your a pedophile for disagreeing now enjoy the death threats from people who see this” cause god forbid people say that while you can still think lolis are gross and such we should care more about real children.

[bruhsauraus]

Armando Iannucci: I was saved from being a reject by comedy

The king of satire, back with a new film about Soviet-era Russia after Stalins death, talks about being uncool, Veep and building a spaceship in London

Armando Iannucci arrives for our 3pm meeting with a small amount of his lunch still clinging to his shirt. We discuss retouching the mark for the Observers pictures but, admirably, he doesnt seem to care either way. It is tempting to describe the 53-year-old Iannucci as the most feared political satirist of our age. Certainly, his output in the past decade the BBC sitcom The Thick of It, the companion film In the Loop, and latterly Veep has been untouchable in skewering the vanity, incompetence and plain childishness of people in power. But, in person, nothing about Iannucci is remotely scary: he is self-effacing, smiley, quick to laugh. At the end of the day, hes just a guy with a tomato stain on his shirt.

Iannuccis latest target is Stalin and his cronies. His new film, The Death of Stalin, is set in 1953 and depicts with unexpected historical accuracy the undignified scrabble for dominance that followed the demise of the Soviet despot. It is silly, moving and revelatory, all at once, with deft, pitch-perfect turns from Simon Russell Beale as Beria and Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev. Iannucci, who never likes to have fewer than seven plates spinning at any moment, has also just published a book on classical music, Hear Me Out, about a lifetime of listening to Mahler and Britten in open defiance of the keepers of the cool.

Was it easier than you expected to make a comedy about Stalin and his inner circle that was also factually accurate? Yeah. When we were researching it, we found out things like Vasily, Stalins son, really did lose the ice-hockey team in a plane crash. And because the comedy is the comedy of hysteria, you want to be true to what happened and how people responded. So anything that was so-bizarre-and-yet-true was a candidate for going in. I thought about having This is a true story, but then I thought, no, just watch it for what it is, and it would be great if you subsequently found out that the bulk of it was true.

These men are vicious, but your film also gives them a human side. They have families they fear for; they play practical jokes. Did your feelings towards them change? Um, no. But I did think, what must they have done to have survived and ended up so close to Stalin, and what has it done to them? The fact, for example, that he would almost taunt them and mock them and play them off against each other With all these things its about posing the question, What would you have done in those circumstances?

Power corrupts? Yeah, it was almost like Animal Farm by the end, and yet they all lived near each other and popped in and out of each others houses. He might have had your brother shot and all that, but they had to sublimate that as just part of the process of moving forward. But, you know, you read that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were the biggest enemies and are now reconciled. Im not saying they are like Stalin, but in that febrile environment where you see each other every day, in order to survive, just psychologically, you must have to close off a bit of your emotion.

Watch a trailer for The Death of Stalin.

So there are lessons about todays political landscape? Trump gets all his closest associates in over the past three or four months, and has to say, By the way, youre fired because I need to survive now. So could you go away? And eventually hell be saying that to his daughter and his son-in-law: Youve now become an albatross, I cant be seen with you anymore. Or after the general election, Theresa May turns to her two very close advisers and says, Its you or me. And they all kind of understand that. Its like that thing in The Godfather: Its not personal, its strictly business.

Is it true there have been calls in Russia for the film to be banned? You say Russia its a person in a country of 200 million people. Just somebody somewhere said something.

Were you expecting a reaction? I was wondering what it would be. I was surprised to hear we sold it to a Russian distributor. Stalins been making a comeback. There have been busts of Lenin, Stalin and other key figures going up in Moscow for the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Its that sense of, dont be frightened of strong men. Thats the message in Moscow at the moment.

Theres a line in your book Hear Me Out where you describe film directing as an astonishing ego trip, and that you wouldnt recommend it to anyone who has the slightest psychotic tendencies. Is it a job you feel comfortable doing? Ha! It is, but you do spend all day ordering people around, and everyone will do what you say. My wife teases me when I finish a shoot that it takes about a week and a half before I stop going, Right, shall we have a cup of tea? You, get a cup of tea I can see how, especially if you do shoots that go on for months, you become like a medieval lord with all these serfs, just ordering them around and torturing them and asking them to tell jokes and fetch food.

As the creator and showrunner on HBOs Veep for the first four seasons was it a difficult decision to give it up in 2015? No. It might have been the British thing that we dont do that many episodes of TV shows in the UK. Plus, it was three months of the year going out to Baltimore, backwards and forwards, and it was an all-year-round thing of the writing, the shooting, the edit, the publicising and then the writing And I knew the show could carry on, but fundamentally Id taken it to where I wanted to take it.

The show will end next year with a final, seventh series. Do you know whats going to happen? No, no, no. They asked if I wanted to stay on, but I knew I was going to do Stalin and I just thought, I cant be on set and get a call saying, Can you look at this script? But its great, because I watch it as a viewer and you realise though I always knew this what an amazing cast it is and how funny they all are. And also, I genuinely dont know what they are going to say next, which is really great.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as vice-president Selina Meyer in Veep. Photograph: HBO

It was recently announced that youre making a new show with HBO called Avenue 5. Whats the idea behind that? Ive always wanted to do sci-fi, so this will be set mostly in space, in about 40 years time. Its not going to be Blade Runner, but there will be an element of realism to it. Ive been out to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and Virgin Galactic, looking at where it might be in about 40 years time. Ive mapped out the season and were writing the pilot episode and well shoot that sometime next year. And because its in space, its not location specific, so we can shoot it in a studio or a hanger in London. Well just build a spaceship here.

What impact do you think streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are having on terrestrial TV? Well, the good thing is that content producers writers and producers have more places to go. And also, whats great, and HBO paved the way with this: quality stuff is profitable. Thats their business model: youll only subscribe to HBO if you think youre going to get good stuff thats different from whats on the networks. So they need it to be better and well thought out and high production values and all that.

But is the quality always better? I do worry that simply because theres so much money available from the big streaming companies, theyll say, Oh well make your movie. We know no one else wanted to, and we realise why, because it was slightly indulgent or whatever, but well make it. And you watch it and you think, it was fine but For all the criticism of the studio process, if youre making something that costs someone else money and which is going to be available commercially, you want people to go and see it. So it does force you to think: have you made it as well as you can? Or have you really thought this through?

In Hear Me Out you write about the tyranny of the keepers of cool. Was liking classical music a reaction against them? Well, I was never really into fashion or clothes. I just wasnt that bothered. I wanted to read a good book. I was saved from being written off as a complete reject by the fact I could do comedy.

You started to learn piano in your 40s. Was that difficult? I found it hard. It was learning a language: Oh, I can speak music! And suddenly these dots and whatever started to make sense. But it was hard work. Some people can do it instinctively and I couldnt. My son would lean over me, hed be practising the violin, and go, No, no, no, its like this. And he hasnt had a piano lesson.

Do you listen to any non-classical music? I kind of like Radiohead, the Beatles, Bowie, its not extensive, but Im always trying. Whats interesting now is, because everything is available, kids can listen to Sinatra when theyre 12 and theres no real sense of: Youve got to listen to this because its out now. But you cant listen to that because thats from 20 years ago. They are a lot more experimental in what they are listening to and that then feeds into the music thats being produced. Its influenced not just by music from two years ago, but music from 20 or 30 years ago.

How can classical music stay relevant? Its up to the classical music establishment, for want of a better word, to open it up. Concerts neednt be off-putting and expensive and you dont have to dress up and you dont have to understand the technical complexities. Just talk to the audience. One of the weird things about a concert is that nobody says anything to you, so youve got to just accept whats in front of you and work it out. Somebody should sit down and explain: This piece, when it was first composed, caused a riot. Now it might sound a bit more conventional because its been used in a Walt Disney movie. I dont know, I think its just useful.

Stalin had a great passion for classical music. So listening to it doesnt make you a better human being then? George Steiner writes about how Goebbels was into Mozart and played the piano beautifully. Wagner was an antisemitic bastard, so actually, no. Thats the sad thing: it doesnt make any difference. It really doesnt.

Can you put that aside when you listen to the music? I dont know. I always got taken by the grandiosity of Wagner, but the more I listen to it now the more I think, it does sound fascist, doesnt it? But its interesting, that thing of, Can you excuse? Like Polanski. That whole, Great film-maker, but should you be watching his movies? I dont know what the answer is.

The Death of Stalin is released on 20 October.

Hear Me Out by Armando Iannucci is published by Little Brown (14.99). To order a copy for 12.74 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/oct/15/armando-iannucci-the-death-of-stalin-hear-me-out-interview

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