#and a couple times it was to the detriment of not only her character but others as well to turn the world against her

[glassica]

Second Male Lead

Notes: M!yan 2nd male lead, Gn!reader*, jealousy, reincarnation, obsessiveness, possessiveness, implied potential kidnapping and murder *reader is more like an observer, not shipped with anyone

-> part 2 with different yan

You got second male lead syndrome.

No matter how much author emphasizing the undeniable chemistry and love between the main couple your eyes only had him. With brownish eyes reminded of untouched sacred woods and dark silky hair slicked back, he was a perfect balance of not too interesting to overshadow the male lead while unique enough to stand out from the extras. Friend of female lead from childhood, he'd always been by her side protecting and looking out to her well-being, hardly be wavered unless it was a matter regarding the heroine. His silent thoughtfulness reserved only for the main character had charmed thousand fans of the series, which included you.

In the previous world you kept daydreaming about travelling inside the novel just to whisk him away. After all, you read countless isekai stories where protagonists from your world winning the heart of abandoned side characters. You were sure you could do the same to him, by showering him with endless attention and love he didn't get from the female lead. In no time he'd be head over heels for you!

"Apologize, but I fear I'm unable to return your sentiments."

Giving you a polite bow, he gently turned down the bouquet of roses which you'd painstakingly catered to match his taste. Today was the equivalent of Valentine in your old world, you were determinded to catch the love of your life at all cost. His rejection throbbed your heart a little, but you weren't the one to back out easily. That's right, you'd been waiting your whole life (actually two) for this moment, you just needed to keep up a little more.

"No sir, please don't be sorry. I'm the one who out of the moon confessed to you. Of course you would be startled!" - you replied cheerfully, trying the best to hide your disappointment. "My feelings came out too strong, but if you don't mind, would you mind joining me for a dance later?"

"I'll have to decline that. I've never been a fan of dancing. I'm really selective in choosing partner and to be honest, there's only one I ever want to take to the dance floor."

You knew right away who he was talking to. The nobleman didn't even bother to be subtle, as the whole time talking to you his eyes unchangingly laid on her. Shining with glitter and lace, basking in attention of the whole ballroom, the heroine was there, hand in hand with her royal lover, rejoicing herself to the dreamy sound of orchestra. The scene was wholly magical, breathtaking,… and perhaps jealousy-inducing.

For obvious reason this lit a fire in your stomach. You cursed the author for making it almost impossible for you to leave any impression on his mind, when your competition was the center of this universe and everyone’s darling. In the midst of envy, you blurted out words that forever detrimented his opinion about you

"She’s engaged to the Crown Prince."

"I know."

"Sir, she would never look at you with those eyes. Perhaps you should look for someone who will appreciate and reciprocrate your passion."

Now you had his full attention, not a positive one mind you. Shooting an icy glance visibly filled belittlement and fury, as though he was sneering at you extra character for having audacity to dictate how he should live his life.

"Oh well, she will soon. You don’t just assume I’ll sit there and let any vermin taking what’s rightfully mine, no? You believe I would be that selfless of a man?"

For the first time ever in your interaction had you sensed enthusiasm in his often monotomous voice. That’s right, the second male lead never got emotional by any happenings until it was about his target of affection. In other words, he would get ruthless, pretty, pretty ruthless, when anyone ever presented as a threat to his relationship with main character. He clashed plenty of times with the Crown Prince at the beginning of the book, then slowly retreated to the background after realizing his childhood friend was serious about His Highness. Lots of readers pointed out how odd he waved the white flag so effortlessly considering he had vehemently expressed dislike towards the male lead. Everyone collectively chalked it out as plot hole, but what if…

No, you shouldn’t dwell further than that. Epecially right at this moment you witnessed with your own eyes two extremes of emotions on the man’s face. The intensely lustful heat and adoration following every movements of the heroine, the bloodlust and pure venom on his pupils when looking at the Prince. You vaguely had a gist of what was going on in his mind, and it wouldn’t bode well for you to stick your nose into that.

Funnily, all that jealousy for the main couple you felt earlier was fully replaced by pity and well wishes now. Perhaps staying as an extra wasn’t a bad thing after all.

[genericpuff]

ok listen right

please don't take the implication of what i'm about to say the completely wrong way, there's a point i have to make here

there's this gross thing that happens in LO that's been definitely talked about numerous times (by many people) where fashion is used to label a character's like, "alignment" between "good" "bad" "pure" "tainted" etc. this is something that comes up a lot when discussing Minthe and Persephone because there are a LOAD of double standards in how Minthe was treated and viewed for dressing like a "slut" but then Persephone wears the exact same fit and suddenly she's a queen-

(image courtesy of @anoldplace on Instagram, I'll be showing a couple of their posts in this because they show off a lot of the great - and frankly disturbing - parallels in LO, whether intended by Rachel or not)

-but can we talk about how the "bad ending" version of Persephone where she ends up with Apollo slaps WAY FUCKING HARDER than anything we've seen her dressed in since she got with Hades ??

fucking hello?? where's THAT fit ??

you're telling me this girl is queen of the underworld and the best she can do in the fashion department is looking like a color-swapped version of Hera ???

and I WANNA MAKE THIS PERFECTLY CLEAR, this isn't me trying to say "Persephone would have been way cooler if she got with Apollo", that is FAR from the point, more so just pointing out the pattern of Rachel aligning "bad" with "dresses with more flavor than an extremely out-of-touch conservative boomer". Even when she tries to draw Persephone in more "out there" clothing it just comes across as ... tacky? And only at her own detriment?

Like, how the fuck is this supposed to be Persephone being drawn through a literal male gaze (Apollo):

And THIS is supposed to be Persephone being drawn from a female gaze (her own because she dressed herself):

Like literally how? How does this happen? Especially when the latter is STILL being framed from a male perspective (the green guy behind her, "Jeffrey") but we're supposed to believe it's some "boss babe" moment for Persephone to just be walking down the street while getting oggled inappropriately by a male onlooker? How could these scenes be any more different and yet more alike? She's still being objectified for the characters around her and the audience, but we're supposed to believe the second is better than the first one because... she chose to wear that?

Sure, one could argue that at least she dressed herself and that definitely gives her agency, but it's really Rachel telling on herself where her priorities are in trying to write a "feminist comic" that she had Persephone dress herself and then STILL have its only purpose be for men on the sidelines to stare at and objectify her. When you just know this same outfit would have undoubtedly been used to slut shame characters like Minthe or Thetis or Leuce.

I don't even know, man. The intentions in LO's writing are so confused, contradictory, and ultimately pointless. It's trying so hard to be "feminist" and a "deconstruction of purity culture" but then it turns around and reinforces all that same shit it's claiming to be fighting against anyways. Persephone would be an evil slut if she was with Apollo, look at her outfit! But not here, not the banana purse dress being oggled by strangers on the sidewalk, not now that she settled down with her old rich husband who she only knew for a couple weeks before being separated for 10 years but their love was just so strong and the thirst for dick so real that she and him loyally waited for one another until she was old enough to make it "not be creepy" anymore for them to hook up, but only after marriage. She's definitely not a gold digger like Minthe or a vapid slut like Thetis or a homewrecker like Leuce, nah.

I just wish she'd dress herself, for the love of god. Let her dress herself with her own input and not the influence of the people around her or the tone of the comic's own internalized misogyny that demands "woman must always be objectified for better or for worse, that is The Rule!"

Of course she can't "dress herself" though. She's an extension of Rachel and Rachel herself writes like an out-of-touch boomer who will and has gladly gone about how men are just clamoring at the bit to stare at her and get to her... but then claims she "didn't realize sexism was all that bad" until she started working on LO.

Sorry, this post got very long and very mean, I initially just wanted to make the comparison in a very silly haha "wild how bad ending Persephone has way more visual personality than good ending Persephone" way, but then I thought about it too long and pissed myself off LMAO

And no, I don't want to go back to beating the dead horse of "banana dress bad" because honestly, I think in any other context or comic, sure, it would be very cute to see her walking around in an outfit she chose herself even if it's "objectively" not a great outfit, it shows agency and not caring what other people think which is VERY freeing. But we're not reading that comic, we're reading LO, where a woman's worth and value is only determined by how the men around her react to her and only Persephone is allowed to be empowered by wearing outfits that would otherwise be treated as "slutty" if worn by anyone else.

I don't want the message to be "Persephone looks like a dumbass bimbo" or, on the flipside, "Persephone looks boring and out-of-touch", I want the message to be "Persephone is valid for dressing how she wants, just like how the women around her are valid for dressing how they want regardless of whether or not they're protagonists or antagonists."

Quit using women's fashion as an alignment chart, quit using these "not so sly for a misogynist guy" dogwhistles as a way to "other" the women around the power fantasy main character. Women deserve to dress how they want without shame or objectification - all women, not just the women you like.

[tumblingxelian]

The "real" Batman

I see people complain about the emphasis some people put on Batmans more negative character traits a lot.

"That's not the real Batman, that's flanderiztion, fanon, a few bad but popular adaptions, the 90's only" and the like are common refrains and it really gets to me. Cos see, while I am aware no incarnation of Batman is totally one note, I emphasize the more negative sides of Batman for reasons that aren't "Edgy, badass, GRRR, Toxic masculinity woooh" bullshit and I hate being dismissed as such.

So, here's why I do it:

First is because of general frustration at the dismissal of any incarnation of Batman, regardless of popularity, or ongoing presence in the main-line comics and timelines, being invalid. IE, the "HE's not the real Batman so he doesn't count" when he canonically is, & as done stuff like that.

60s/80s Batman smiles after sending a purse snatcher away in an Ambulance, kidnaps & others relies on torture style interrogations. Just like 90s/2000's Batman threatens people with assault in prison & looms over a Mugger he slammed so hard into a wall it left a giant blood splatter.

It is fair to ague that brutality is not all of what he is, that's valid. But that side of him is not something I feel one can just handwaved away as "not canon" & people doing so frustrate me in large part because it feels intellectually dishonest. Its refusing to engage with a metric ton of the canonical lore of a character they are discussing.

Secondly is the fact that a lot of the lore, history, character development, derailment, treatment, tone, framing and more for characters OTHER than Batman relies on him having a history of problematic behavior.

Cassandra basically living in a Bat-Cave with no civilian life or identity because Bruce is giving her what HE wants for himself even though its bad for both of them is just an example of a huge part of their dynamic. One that can be deeply damaging, self destructive and messy, but also makes perfect sense given the characters involved.

How Jason's entire shift in character and framing was done largely to insulate Bruce from criticism over his death, IE, Jason being characterized post death as violent, arrogant, not particularly bright and then coming back as a villain also ties into 20 something years of smearing his name to protect Bruce's.

Stephanie's entire character history begins falling apart if Batman doesn't treat her like the trash he did in canonical mainline comics, and leaves her with only a couple of borderline cameos at best. Hell, even 'new' stuff where he's "nicer" still has him do things like fake therapy appointments to trick her.

Hell, even Dick in a lot of incarnations as well as mainline comics at different times has a lot of issues that came from being raised/trained by Bruce. No, it isn't universal, but it is far too common & recurring of an element to just say "doesn't count!" & declare the discussion over.

& the thing is, when people say they want the "Real" batman or the "Good" Batman, they not only erase these characters histories. They don't replace it with anything worthwhile for anyone but Bruce himself.

If ignoring all that meant replacing it with stuff like Jason never died & or never became Red Hood & is a totally different character. Or Cassandra and Bruce having arcs about their obsessions with vigilantism at the expense of their personal lives, or Stephanie actually getting to be ROBIN. Then it would be something at least somewhat interesting to engage with. But they don't, instead Jason still became a supervillain & is the Red Hood, Stephanie still got fired if she was Robin at all.

They are either forgotten (Cass & Steph) or end up being warped (Jason) so their characters history, everything is different and all to better serve making Bruce look good. I really find it vexing that even in "Batman is not a jerk" stuff, he still warps the narrative to everyone else's detriments.

[comradekarin]

In your rhaenys post, What do you mean that the male characters around them are smarter than them (alicent and rhaenyra)?

TW. long post……….

what i mean is that in the writers’ pursuit of portraying their female characters as “peacelovers that don’t wish for destruction and bloodshed”, they are also making them appear extremely naive, much to the detriment of their respective factions. lucerys has been murdered by aemond while acting as an envoy. visenya was born pre-maturely after rhaenyra heard the news of viserys’ death and the greens’ usurpation. jaehaerys was killed as a placeholder for aemond due to the rat catchers inability to find the latter. viserys is presumed to have been killed by the greens to even steal the throne from rhaenyra. do we see rhaenyra truly reckoning with all of these events? no. alicent lost her grandson and clearly still does have gripes over aemond losing his eye as a child (i have a personal headcanon that alicent edged the possibility of aemond getting revenge further down the line). alicent is also responsible for spreading those illegitimacy claims about rhaenyra’s three children, and consequently endangering her and her kids’ lives. she is also—albeit indirectly—involved in harwin and lyonel’s death. despite the fact that their families are at war and are killing each other, these women remain firm in keeping peace. yet their stances aren’t cemented because of their losses, but because of the writers’ consistent efforts to erase what has happened to them now and in their past.

rhaenyra goes to kings landing to sue for peace. that in of itself is extremely foolish. she doesn’t tell her council where she’s going, nor does she seem to have a plan if things go sideways. and in her absence, jacaerys and baela are essentially thrown to the wolves mitigating the black council’s frustrations with, again, no info on where rhaenyra even is. rhaenyra goes to KL, speaks to alicent, and by bad writing extreme luck is able to leave unharmed. alicent literally doesn’t tell anyone that nyra infiltrated, OR that she let her go. they come off as silly to the audience, not wise. jacaerys seems to be the only person with common sense, to make matters even worse. there’s even times where you’re thinking that rhaenyra should have listened to daemon.

these women are not allowed to express how they feel about the events happening around them. not only are the writers destroying the complexity of their feelings, but they’re also falsely equating alicent and rhaneyra even though narratively it doesn’t make sense to put them on the same pedestal. rhaenys spoke to alicent herself, who wanted her help to rob rhaneyra of her throne, thus endangering the lives of baela and rhaena due to them being betrothed to jace and luke. yet, a couple of episodes later, we have rhaenys implying that rhaenyra is to blame for jaehaerys’ death and sees the “violence” in the men around alicent, thus urging nyra to go to KL. baela is only being used as a rhaenyra’s cheerleader so far this season, never really having her own thoughts and opinions on this war outside of her support for nyra (which isn’t inherently wrong, her support I mean). and don’t even get me started on helaena’s lack of reaction to her son’s death. i think daemon cried more over that little boy than her. rhaena doesn’t even have enough scenes for me to make an assumption, which is bad in of itself.

lastly, in going this “peaceful women, evil men” route, we also get a lot of contradictions with the writing of these characters. especially so with alicent. no longer is alicent this protective, cunning and bitter woman we saw in season one. now? it’s almost as if the writers are trying to absolve her of the things she did in season one, thus erasing what makes her the character her fans love. whether it’s trying to push the rhaenyra x alicent ship, bad writing, or both, overall, i just think it’s really silly and just soft misogyny to even have this line of thinking when writing women. the writers only have like six anyway, and it’s like they haven’t done any of them justice.

[maxdibert]

Do you think that the fact that most Harry Potter fanfics have gay couples as pairings (to the detriment of straight or lesbian couples) is because people have difficulty writing f/f characters as strong and m/f as equals or is this due to underrepresentation? of women in books?

This is an interesting question, especially because it’s not limited to the Harry Potter fandom; it’s actually quite widespread in all fandoms, particularly those where there are either very few female characters, or where the female characters play much more secondary roles than the male ones. I think nowadays, with the (slow, but ongoing) effort being made to foster representation, these sorts of things might go more unnoticed. But in series or franchises from fifteen or twenty years ago (we’re talking early 2000s here, no need to go all the way back to the '80s), it was pretty common for m/m pairings to prevail over the canon het couples and, of course, far above f/f couples, which are basically the ugly ducklings of most fandoms—and this isn’t just a coincidence.

The Harry Potter case is especially interesting to me because it’s a series written by a woman where, in fact, there are quite a few female characters, and one of the most important in the whole series (Hermione) is a girl. She’s not only the most significant female character but is also the only one truly developed, with depth and a gradual evolution throughout the books. The rest of the women are either unimportant secondary characters, villains, or merely “placeholder” girlfriends for Harry who only becomes relevant in the last two books (and yes, I’m talking about Ginny, who I find unbearable. J.K. Rowling’s forced attempt to keep Harry in the Weasley family shoves us with this girl who’s meant nothing throughout the story and is then given this “pick me” girl personality—please don’t count me among the other girls—which not only has aged terribly, but I already found it repulsive back then).

I’m bringing up Hermione because it’s not just that she’s the most important girl in the story; she’s also the token character who is constantly paired with every male character in the saga, including men who are twenty years her senior and are her professors, father figures, or fathers of her schoolmates. And this is really interesting because it’s not that Hermione “matches” with everyone or could remain in character if paired with Sirius or Snape; it’s simply that Hermione is the only genuinely complex, three-dimensional female character in the entire series. So, if people choose to create non-canon pairings between canon characters, she’s the easiest choice because she’s got substance and a basis to build on. The rest of the female characters are mere shadows or are relegated to the role of villains or mothers. And if we talk about the younger female characters, it’s a real hair-puller.

Sure, Rowling doesn’t give recurring characters much emphasis in general, but for every ten things you know about a male character, you only know one about their female equivalent. If you know little about Dean Thomas, you know even less about Parvati Patil, just as an example. And all those secondary characters with a bit more screen time ultimately end up being someone’s girlfriend or wife. For example, Fleur, who is also the only one who doesn’t make much of a mark during the Triwizard Tournament (what a coincidence—the three guys stand out, and she doesn’t). We then only see her as Bill’s girlfriend and eventual wife. And the other semi-relevant female characters despise her for being beautiful, only accepting her when she proves she’s a devoted, loyal woman to her husband, no matter what happens to him, even if he’s scarred or turns into a werewolf. This vision of a beautiful, confident woman as merely a sexualized figure (as initially presented) or a threat to other women (as happens later), who can only prove her worth as a woman who conforms to “proper” standards by renouncing her feminine essence to become a wife, is typical of a misogynistic, male gaze often found in fiction. It’s quite striking here because it’s a woman writing the story, yet she still falls into the same old tropes.

Then there’s Tonks, shown as an Auror, an independent woman with her own job, who’s “cool” because she’s “not like other girls” with her colorful hair and Metamorphmagus powers. But all that gets overshadowed when she suddenly becomes a simp for Lupin, who, on top of it all, abandons her after she becomes pregnant, yet she forgives him because love conquers all. Excuse me? This is the female representation you get in the series. Because the rest are mothers: Lily is a saint who sacrifices her life for her son, Molly Weasley is basically a tradwife, and Narcissa Malfoy is only worthy of some respect when she risks everything for Draco. Again, we know much more about their husbands than we do about them; we know more about the men in their lives than we do about them. Their husbands have deeper backstories, richer histories.

Take Lily, for example. We know nothing about her. The little we do know comes from Snape’s memories, and it’s tiny compared to everything we know about James throughout the series. We know so much about James that we can debate endlessly about whether he was truly a good guy or a jerk, and this despite the fact that both are dead at the start of the story and Lily’s relationship with Harry is supposedly more central to the plot. Yet James is more fleshed out! James had friends, friends who talk about him, who tell his son about their youthful adventures. James was someone outside of being a father and husband; Lily wasn’t. Lily is Petunia’s sister, Harry’s mother, Snape’s lost love/friend, and James’ crush and future wife—period. That’s it. Did Lily not have friends of her own? Didn’t she hang out with other girls in her year? Didn’t she have relationships beyond Severus? Why is there not a single friend of Lily’s in the entire saga who can tell Harry what his mother was like? We have not one, but two friends of James, a traitor, and an enemy. But for Lily? Nothing. Only Snape, whose relationship with Lily isn’t even revealed until the final book.

All the Weasleys, except Ginny, are boys. We know things about all or most of the Weasleys, and they have significant moments in the story despite being secondary characters. There are no recurring female counterparts who show up as consistently. Harry’s female classmates don’t interest him, or only come up when Hermione criticizes them. Generally speaking, the female characters have a lot of shortcomings compared to the male characters at any level of the story.

All this to say, while you could argue there’s female representation in the story, is there really? The only girl from the Marauder’s era is Lily. Mary McDonald is mentioned, but we know nothing about her. The rest of the female characters in that fandom are invented—names that pop up randomly in the books with no physical description, no substance, no relevance to the plot. They’re practically OCs thrown into fanfics because all that exists is Lily and the name of some supposed friend of hers who we never hear from again. There’s very little material to work with. And even though Harry’s generation has more girls, they aren’t significant enough for people to be interested in them because there are more boys, and the boys are much better developed. So, people either dive into slash or create OCs because there isn’t much else to hold onto. And if we talk about the reasons behind the lack of f/f pairings, it boils down to the same thing: if it’s hard enough with het couples because, aside from Hermione, Ginny, or Luna, it’s hard to find anything to work with among the female characters, imagine trying with two women.

Of course, I also think it’s largely because there’s zero LGBTQ representation in these stories, but back then, LGBTQ representation was practically non-existent in all children’s/young adult fiction. Although, seeing where J.K. Rowling stands on these issues now, I doubt she’d have done much differently in that regard today.

What I’m saying is that I’ve seen time and time again that when a fandom has well-developed female characters who actually matter, people do work with them. Take “A Song of Ice and Fire,” for example: we’re talking about a story with a ton of male characters, but every single female character has a point of view, a backstory, and a way of seeing the world. You get to know each of them, even the less important ones. If you dive into that fandom, you’ll see all kinds of het pairings and plenty of f/f pairings too. And this is a medieval fantasy saga with plenty of misogyny, but the reality is that it has a very powerful and diverse cast, full of women, each of whom is her own person with a story, ambitions, and a journey—and that gives you something to work with, which is not the case with Harry Potter. But it’s not exclusive to that saga; if you look at fandoms like Naruto, which hit their peak around the same time, it’s the same thing. Ultimately, the common thread I see (besides the fact that we live in a patriarchal society that usually ignores women in fiction, even when it’s by female authors) across all these fandoms where m/m dominates over any other pairing is precisely the lack of female characters or, if there are enough, the fact that their development ranges from minimal to nonexistent.

[canmom]

So the Tie Fighter guy, Paul 'OtaKing' Johnson, dropped his latest magnum opus: this time, Alien in the same 80s-anime inspired style! Six years to make, which I can well believe looking at every frame of this.

I have mixed feelings about it as a film, but it's definitely worth a watch before you read my words below.

As ever, it's a retro pastiche fan film - this time a tribute to Alien. The animation is, as before, largely 2D-on-3D with a bit of 3D-roto assistance here and there - there's a process video from a couple years back here.

How do I even comment on something like this? The man is a shape rotator nonpareil, drawing complex perspective shots with an ease that makes me envious. At the same time... do you notice how the movement is just... kinda off throughout this film? So many shots feel too evenly spaced, lacking weight, or with odd unmotivated choices in the character acting. It seems churlish to make such a criticism when this guy is singlehandedly drawing animation at a level of detail that would be out of reach for most full-fledged studios, but it feels like the same problem as Umetsu's animation in Megazone 23 Part 2, where they pursued such a level of detail that nothing moved naturally. It's like this guy is some kinda animation minmax build.

Like Tie Fighter, it's a side story that leans heavily on the visual language of the original. It's not as heavily referential of anime shots this time - no Itano Circus or that one shot where the camera flies over the decks of a ship up to the bridge (where did that come from, Yamato?). But it's still got a lot of flashy rotating camerawork and unusual angles and complex character rotations.

Despite this technical complexity, though, there is little of the tension that suffused the original film. Here the alien is in plain sight throughout, somehow feeling more like a guy in a rubber suit than it did in the original movie. This is, I think, largely down to how it moves, and how much the camera wants you to see everything.

It's a tricky balance: on the one hand, the whole thrust of this short is to wow you with its drawings, so it really needs to show you just how shiny the alien is in Johnson's style. But Alien was very much a 'never fully show the monster' kind of movie, letting the alien blend into the dark mechanical environments of the Nostromo as a constant 'could be anywhere' menace. Here everything is brightly lit, the better to show off those delightful anime highlights, so you'll never miss the alien walking down a corridor.

It was also a much slower movie, with waves of 'worse shit happening' washing over you - the escalating ladder of tension and brief relief before the alien does something more fucked up. Here there's no mystery, we know the alien's life cycle already. So in the end this feels like something of a speedrun of the original's beats, to its detriment - when the MC decides to scuttle her ship, you don't get the same sense of a desperate last resort against a relentless enemy, such that destroying the ship is the only option. (In fact it seems rather like she could have escaped the alien once it was floating around in space near the ship...)

Creating a fan film like this, much like franchise media, is a pretty tricky problem! Devotion to the original is kind of its whole raison d'être, so it can't do anything that would really extend or contradict the canon, or really touch the canon characters. But it still wants to hit the images that people associate with Alien! So not!Ripley on the not!Nostromo confronts an alien, as if this is something of a regular occurrence. But the alien must not escape, or it would undercut the original movie. So it's like an echo; it can't mix up the formula.

I don't want to complain too much tho. It's not every day you get something like this drop. More just that I want to learn from it... that 80s shading style still has that power, flat colours and strong shapes beat all the gradients in the world. But if you neglect those animation principles... it won't save you!

[ofthehands]

I think another, often overlooked aspect of Drayton’s parenting that would have been detrimental to his brothers and formative for them is his inconsistency. It’s probably less discussed because it’s more subtle and inconsistent parenting isn’t necessarily abusive, but I think it is worth considering/ exploring with these characters. 

Heads up for discussion of abuse/ unhealthy family dynamics. 

Drayton is shown to be a very inconsistent man, primarily in the first film but in the second as well. He’s sadistic in the scene where he has Sally in the truck with him, stabbing her with the broom handle for fun, and in the dinner scene at points, where he seems to be enjoying his brother’s antics- then he abruptly turns and snaps at them, telling them not to “torture the poor girl”. He’s fine with the family living in filth- he doesn’t complain about things like the room with the chicken in it being covered in feathers or the rotting flesh and taxidermy around them or the corpses they keep in the house- until he turns and snaps at Bubba for not having pride in his home and beats him for breaking the door. He talks on and on about how family comes first, and insists his brothers live by this- with their near worship of Grandpa and lack of outside connections and his anger at Bubba for his perceived relationship with Stretch, but at the same time he isn’t supportive of his brothers and only very rarely indulges them in their interests or listens to them. And while it’s a goofy scene, because of the nature of TCM2, Drayton does ultimately commit murder-suicide, taking out nearly his entire family with him- without any visible concern as to whether or not Chop Top will be present when it happens, leaving him behind. 

All of this makes sense with what we know about Drayton’s character- he’s inconsistent because he’s in conflict with himself. Drayton goes back and forth about being sadistic towards Sally because he likes it, but feels ashamed about that. In Chainsaw Confidential, Gunnar Hansen said that Hooper wanted to get across that, “[Drayton] seems to enjoy torturing her and, at the same time, to be afraid that the torture will produce some terrible reaction with which he will be unable to cope” in the dinner scene, and Hansen describes him as afraid of his own sadistic desires. He also probably cares and doesn’t care about the house because of his own waxing and waning lucidity. He’s also shown to be the most lucid of the Sawyers- running multiple businesses and interacting mostly normally with strangers, but at the same time his priorities and perceptions of the world are shown to be skewed in odd ways. He runs back in to turn the lights off with a hostage in his truck, he misunderstands Bubba’s infatuation with Stretch as her coming on to his little brother, and he thinks Lefty was sent by another catering business and could be payed off despite witnessing evidence of dozens of murders and witnessing their attempted murder of Stretch right at that moment. 

But, no matter what’s going on in his head, his inconsistency is going to create a very confusing and disorienting environment for his little brothers to grow up in. Consistency is very important in parenting- especially in children’s formative years. The younger Sawyers would have, in this time, dealt with both whatever changes took their parents out of the picture, and Drayton’s erratic behavior. Children with inconsistent parents are often more easily agitated, more anxious, and struggle more with regulating their emotions and behaviors than their peers. They have also been shown to have difficulty with self-doubt, self-esteem issues, and inconsistency in extreme cases can even impact a young person’s development of their identity.  Which, when coupled with the physical and verbal abuse they clearly endured, really didn’t give the younger Sawyers much of a chance. Much of this is very evident in the twins- they’re both easily agitated and seem to struggle with emotional and behavioral regulation. Bubba shows it too, but in different ways. He’s often anxious and seems to doubt himself when he’s left alone- as shown in the scene after he kills Jerry when he’s panicking and unsure of what to do. Bubba also, very famously, has identity issues that are explained in depth in Chainsaw Confidential and brought up in interviews. 

Of course there are aspects of these characters that explain these traits and behaviors- the brothers’ different disabilities coming to mind quickly- but I think even in situations where the primary reasoning for the behavior is something else, the impacts of Drayton’s inconsistent parenting style could come into play by exacerbating their existing issues. It also undoubtedly causes and worsens tension between Drayton and his brothers. With how inconsistent Drayton is, his brothers likely don’t know what behaviors will get them punished and what won’t- because it varies. Of course, there are some sure-fire ways to get punished, like disobeying something Drayton tells them directly- for instance Nubbins leaving behind Bubba and going to the graveyard. But other things, like Bubba cutting through the door in pursuit of Sally are more variable. Clearly Drayton wanted Bubba to catch all the kids no matter what- Bubba only manages to escape a beating after convincing Drayton he did. But, then in spite of the importance of letting no one get away, and Drayton’s general lack of care for their home- Drayton gets angry with Bubba for not taking pride in his home and starts berating him for that instead. This seems to be frustrating for Nubbins, who snaps at Drayton when he tries to stop them from tormenting Sally- saying he never lets them have any fun- and it seems to be frightening for Bubba- who cowers and tries to explain himself almost the moment Drayton walks through the door.Ultimately, Drayton’s inconsistent parenting style compounds on the problems the Sawyers have, entrenching them further and further in unhealthy behaviors and worsening the effects of his abuse. 

It’s sad, really, and more likely than not a manifestation of the cycle of abuse continuing its way down the Sawyer line. I don’t think its much of a reach to conclude that Drayton parents the way he does because that’s what he knows/ what he experienced to some degree. I’m not sure where to end this exactly. I wanna do some properly sourced and in depth analysis of them in the future, but tonight is not that night. I just had this idea in my head and needed to write it all down before it escaped me. I just think it’s sorrowful and fascinating the way that they never even had a chance.  

Source below is a study/ analysis of the effects of consistency in parenting I found useful when writing this. There’s a lot more literature on this, but this one condenses it pretty well. 

[eddie4bat-president]

I'm not a writer but i had this thought so- bear with me, yeah?

For months Eddie hears all about how cool and badass Steve Harrington is, yeah, but you know what he also hears about? How Steve and Robin are made for each other and how cool and pretty Robin is and how stupid it is that they're not a couple for some dumb reason, like Steve not wanting to be with a band geek and still clinging to high school hierarchy. And in all of the things Dustin says about Steeeve Harrington, that last part is the only thing that fits into the Munson Doctrine, so obviously everything else Henderson is saying is what's skewed in his little shrimp world view.

Steve Harrington thinks he's better than a band geek and that's why we won't look twice at a girl that would be perfect for him (according to Dustin Henderson, so... still questionably trustworthy information). Eddie probably assumes Dustin is talking up how close Steve and Robin actually are, just how he's exaggerating how close Dustin himself is to Harrington (like that would impress Eddie and the rest of Hellfire??? He really doesn't know how to get through to the little sheep that his worship of Hawkins' most notorious square is a detriment to his character and not something Eddie would find impressive. If it was real. Which it obviously isn't. Anyway-)

Turns out? Steve Harrington? Actually a cool dude. Not cool as in popular but cool as in "holy shit did he just bite that thing's head off???? Oh and he's not even gonna brag about that, it's just nbd, yeah sure, cool cool cool be fucking cool Eddie, oh god he's talking to me why is he talking to me" and just, chill to hang out with. After the whole shit show went down. Who would have fucking thought, huh? (except for Dustin Henderson, yeah yeah yeah, shut up)

So now Eddie has to reevaluate some other assumptions he made. Maybe Dustin was right and Steve actually is cool and badass, and he and Buckley actually are as close as he had said (and they really fucking are! He has seen them give Keith eerily matching bitchy looks for trying to schedule them on opposing shifts and basically bully the guy into changing the schedule around so they can spend as much time as possible in each other's presence. It's enough to make a guy question his own friendships when sometimes a few hours of band practice are enough to make him want to never see any of those chucklefucks again. Of course, that feeling abates but seriously, how are those two never sick of each other??)

So if they're as close as advertised but not a couple (and after meeting everyone Steve cares about and they're basically all nerds so the "Harrington thinks he's too good for a band geek" thing can't actually hold true-) what is the hold-up? Why aren't they a couple? And somehow, somehow Eddie comes to the conclusion that Steve is in love with Robin. Steve is a serial romantic (emphasis on romantic) and while his love life isn't the talk of the town post-earthquakes as it would have been before, people do still talk about the fact that he hasn't taken out a girl since it happened.

Which brings us to a day in summer, maybe fall, after Eddie has seen Steve look wistfully at a young couple with a baby, that he shows up at Robin's door step.

"Eddie? Hey what's up?"

"Good, good, how are you? Uhh can I... can I come in?" There's a nervous energy around him that is immediately infectious and she leads him to the living room where he immediately starts walking back and forth in front of the couch. She watches him for a moment, hands fluttering through different motions trying to find one that might calm him down before giving up on that. Instead Robin swerves around him, clambering onto the couch and wrapping her arms around her right leg, putting her head on her knee. She follows Eddie's path with her eyes and decides to wait before quickly realizing that she can't, actually.

"As riveting as it is watching you walk a groove into my parents' rug, do you maybe want to say something? I mean I can definitely talk enough for the both if us if that's what you want it's just that I have the slight suspicion you've got something you need to get off your chest" Eddie stopped walking halfway through her monologue and starts nodding.

"Yeah. Yeah yeah yes you're right it's just- I haven't a hundred percent made up my mind about saying something", Eddie has one arm wrapped around himself and uses the other to alternately play with his hair and gesticulate at her, "because on the one hand it's a little bit driving me crazy, maybe, but on the other hand this is none of my fucking business" And Robin who was worried at first just because Eddie is nervous, then for a second because she was scared he was going to confess to a very ill-advised crush on her, is stumped. What the fuck is this about and why did it bring him to her of all people?

"Just say it you weirdo", is what decides to comes out of her mouth but it doesn't even matter because half of her sentence is layered with his "Are you aware Steve is in love with you?"

[here we're facing the issue of me not actually being a writer and pretty much running out of steam but we also haven't reached the part that sparked this whole thing yet, which is wild - let's just pretend I wrote a very funny dialogue between those two in which Eddie confronts Robin for stringing poor Steve along ]

There's a moment when they're both silent and there's a moment when they're both talking and then there are steps coming down the stairs. They make a smirk grow on Robin's face that is starting to worry Eddie when not a parental figure but Steve Harrington steps through the doorway. He's wearing sweatpants and a shirt that might be Robin's and there's a headband pushing his hair away from his face.

"Don't yell at me for coming downstairs, you took forever and the first layer... is... dry....", he stops in his tracks the moment he looks up from his bare toes and sees Eddie. Then he very quickly rips off the headband and slings it somewhere to his right into the unknown of the hallway.

"Hi Eddie. What's... up" Eddie is going to sink into the floor and never come up for air again.

In the meantime Robin stood up on the couch to sit cross-legged on the back of it for a better vantage point and is steepling her fingers in front of her face. Eddie is getting the distinct impression he's missing some crucial information here.

"Stevie, babe, platonic love of my life-", Steve nods for her to go on, "you know how we decided I get a veto on your romantic life because we realized droves of suboptimal dates actually make you miserable so we're going for quality over quanity for the first time in your small-town Casanova life?" Steve has that cute little crease between his eyebrows while he's looking back and forth between Eddie and Robin, trying to figure out what's going on but he rolls his eyes at the end of her sentence, back in familiar territory. "Yes, Robin-"

She interrupts: "And you know how I also reserved the right to give a shovel slash molotov cocktail talk to anyone we deemed worthy of being a potential future partner?" Steve's face somehow shows an emotion that can only be encapsulated by "?!" as he glances to Eddie before shifting back to Robin with just the "?" remaining.

"First I have to say I'm personally very pro, I loved this experience; Eddie here really made a fool of himself, very worried for your delicate sensibilities and how I'm breaking your sweet little heart." "...what...?"

"So: what's the verdict on a potential future partner giving me the shovel talk?"

[acourtofthought]

Canon: The mating bond is sacred. It is an unbreakable bond between two souls, and if rejected, the pain will be indescribable and haunt the pair for their entire lives.

Eluciens: We want this ship to be successful.

Elriels: You don't care about what Elain wants! You hate her and only care about Lucien!

Eluciens: Most of us actually really like Elain, think Lucien is a good match for her and don't want either of them to suffer a rejected bond because in this series, that seems to be the worst fate imaginable.

Elriels: No! You hate her! You hate Azriel and don't want them to be happy! She's going to break the bond in her book and be with Azriel, and you know it! You just can't stand that you're wrong and your poor baby Lulu won't get Elain in the end!

Eluciens: So, you want Elain to suffer the all consuming pain of a rejected bond that will never actually go away and haunt her forever?

Elriels:... LeT ELaIn HaVE a ChOiCE!

The argument of choice on their end is to the detriment of the characters and their growth. Elain is not real. Az is not real. Lucien is not real. That means that we as real people actually know things they do not. That means we as real people reading a book the author wrote see the clues that she left us (the real people) that Elain, Az and Lucien have not yet learned of or do not have the ability to process as they are simply the characters and not meant to have these things revealed to them just yet. I don't know single FMC or MMC that really knows what they want at the start of their book or that is making all the right choices for themselves. The joy of reading is in their journey, the characters ability to grow from their mistakes, to mature, to embrace that which they once feared. So yeah, it's actually really fine for us to say we don't care that Elain wanted to hook up with Az and believe Lucien is still the better male for her because those are the clues the author has laid out for us. The author wants us to see what Elain, the make believe character, does not yet see herself. We want for Elain what the author wants for Elain and that's really all that matters. If Sarah did not want Lucien for Elain when it's time for her story than she would not have written him in exactly the same way she wrote Rhys and Cassian when it came to their mates / suspected mates. How the second the female need something to help them through their depression, they were at their side in an instant or tried to be there for them. How the second the female seemed interested, they were ready and waiting. And how the second the female seemed to need time and space, they stepped away so she could have that freedom though it caused them their own suffering. It's not about Az, Elain or Lucien. It's about the way the author has set these characters up and how most all authors follow a certain formula when it comes to situations like theirs. How Sarah herself has set up a situation like theirs in the past with Feyre, Rhysand, and Tamlin. It's easy to see that Az was on his way to becoming a Tamlin in this new setup but Sarah stopped it before it got to that point. It's not wrong to ship a couple based on your preferences but it's silly to ignore what Sarah wants in the end for these characters, to instead focus on what Elain wants especially while she's a 24 year old who was just recently turned into a new species, lost her father, her humanity and her fiance and told everyone she's still dealing with trauma. Sarah decides what Elain wants and the most autonomy that Elain has ever had for someone whose sole existence is a bunch of letters written on page is when she "spoke to Sarah" and took Sarah and "Lucien" by surprise by being someone that would be right for him when Nesta wasn't.

[legally-allowed-to-slime]

2 things:

Seeing Gem single-handedly carry Joel to 2nd place from 3rd - and only not in 1st for being teamed at all - sent me into a laughing fit.

Pearl, with the highest average of everyone, not just her team, can commit to abandoning that horrid situation and drop them down to fourth (team with BigB or alone) or third (any other team up), letting Gem drag Joel to first instead.

The power they mathematically hold...

Anyway, I'm handling the first episode perfectly well, how 'bout you?

anon that’s 3 things

i’ve had many thoughts about this

i’ve talked about the fact that gem and pearl both hold the highest average placements far too many times, but to be as honest as possible, pearl’s objective for this season has shifted from “have fun alliance and maybe kill a couple people along the way” to “survive”.

i don’t think pearl needs anyone to save her per say, but right now she’s just a little too passive as ep 1 traffic!pearl tends to be. but at the same time, the idea that gem is the only way for pearl to be happy is the same reasoning in LL with the 3Gs that led to whatever WL!pearl is doing. (and she was doing so well in LiL and SL too)

and, you know, pearl’s loyalty. i would 100% support pearl running off to go team with someone friendlier, but it’s still, technically, a selfish action, and there’s no point in butchering her character to find an easy way out of the situation she’s in. her loyalty is one of the most integral parts of her character, and as much as it’s frequently to her detriment, taking that away would take part of her away. not to be dramatic

it’s important to note that the tierlist is in no way indicative of the final placements. scar was a surprise win in SL, and arguably so was pearl in DL, so i think the idea that 3Gs + imp are def winning is misguided. as they stand, gem and joel are the strongest alliance. they’re both confident and brash and loyal to each other. joel was fuming for the latter half of ep 1, but never took it out on gem (iirc), at least not in any significant way.

ALSO (sorry i have a lot of thoughts) a short tangent about them. both gem and joel REALLY want to win and neither of them seem the type to pull a smajor. so there’s that. the proverbial elephant in their alliance

on the other hand… i’m guessing whoever follows me has heard plenty about that alliance in the last 24 hours. hanging by a thread. normally i would’ve said at least pearl and impulse are buddies but that’s not working out since he wasn’t really involved in divorce quartet in DL and thus can’t, and doesn’t, stick up for her.

okay. pearl’s first episode. i’ve rewatched it twice now and all i can say is ohhh my god insane secondhand embarrassment she is not beating the awkward and socially inept allegations. on the other hand i keep replaying the 5 seconds of “hi gem!! :D” “hey pearl :)” so um. crumbs? gempearl crumbs is crazy when they usually give us seven-meal courses

i remember posing a hypothetical (before the season) that gem teamed up with cleo while pearl was stuck in a stable alliance. how the turn tables

[tex-now]

Ranking vocals for prsk characters yippee yahoo

DONT LOOK IM .NOT DONE

20. Saki Tenma

Babygirl I'm so sorry.... okay listen. Saki's voice is actually nice to me! I like it, it's sweet and jubilant to me. Makes me happy. But saki simply doesn't have as... good..? Of a voice as the other characters, that coupled with the fact that she's in a unit with ichika (the line stealer/lh) she doesn't get many moments to shine, and she hasn't has any particularly impressive moments to me. I'm sorry bbg I love you 😔

Best vocal performance: Tera Tera

19. Mochizuki Honami

Once again, HONAMI BBG IM SO SORRY 😔 honami's voice is very soft, and while that isn't bad at all, it's personally not my style :( however I also must add that when honami is good, she is AMAZING, and when she's less good, she usually isn't the focus of the song so it doesn't really matter. Honami shows up when it counts

Best Vocal Performance: Flyway and Regulus

18. Tsukasa Tenma

This hurts. Listen. Tsukasa is EXTREMELY inconsistent with his vocal quality. Sometimes, listening to him sing gives me second hand embarrassment. Other times he serves so much cunt it makes me forget his slumps at times. This means that sometimes his vocals suck ASS and other times they're amazing. Which averages out to a much lower score than the others above him 😔 also since he's tsukasa his voice is incredibly defined and like... nasally..? Which sometimes is a detriment. Still love you tsukasa

Best Vocal Performance: NEO

17: Emu Otori

Emu has a lot of the problems that Tsukasa has but what she has over him is consistency and a cuter voice. Her voice is like. Really squeaky and cute which makes any song that's not that kinda awkward but her voice is PEAK when it fits the song she's singing. She has a niche and whe she fills it she's amazing.

Best Vocal Performance: Mr. Showtime

16. Yoisaki Kanade

Kanade's voice sounds like heaven sometimes. Its soft and melancholy and beautiful and very consistent. She doesn't ever have a bad vocal performance. But you know what she DOES have? Songs that don't fit her voice at all! kanade is extremely soft spoken and her voice usually doesn't sound weak like honami can, but she simply cannot belt to save her life. Songs like Bug, Kitty, Infinitely Gray, exemplify that so strongly it's actually crazy. Kanade didn't even get another vocal for bug and I think that was the reason, she simply cannot go higher than her soft voice, which is a HUGE restriction on her otherwise wonderful voice. Her voice is still really nice though

Best Vocal Performance: Into The Night

15. Mafuyu Asahina

Mafuyu has inconsistent vocals. The thing puts her above other inconsistent singers like Tsukasa, is that her highs are HIGH. When mafuyu goes hard, she fucking decimates. When she doesn't it's mid as fuck 😔 her voice can be really soft at times, which as we know, is not my thing, but she almost weaponizes that by making her belts all the more harsher. You don't expect that from Mafuyu! She's generally either "soft spoken" or apathetic when she's singing! Then she's fucking yelling and you're like "wtf I didn't expect this!" Not only is it fun from a vocal standpoint but it's amazing character acting! Her singing represents her psyche and I think that's wonderful. The only reason why she's so low is because of the inconsistency in some songs

Best Vocal Performance: Bug and Villian

14. Minori Hanasato

Minori is an AMAZING singer in terms of sheer versatility and consistency. Her voice is extremely consistent and she benefits from it! It's also an extremely cute and smooth voice that fits the songs she sings very well! She doesn't really have any detriments, but her softer vocals are a bit restrictive but she doesn't struggle nearly as much as Kanade because she doesn't usually have songs that would require a strong voice.

Best Vocal Performance: Love Trial (Solo)

13. Akito Shinonome

Akito's voice slaps. No further comment/silly but seriously his voice is so.... good. Idk how to describe it. Like okay for one his voice is niche definitely. But his "niche" is street music AND HOLY FUCK I LOVE STREET MUSIC. It's like. So powerful and free? Like he goes hard for every song and it's so fucking good. Honestly he should be higher. He's so fucking pgiohufogigooguhogh... akitos voice.....

Best Vocal Performance: Cinema and CRaZY

12. Shizuku Hinomori

Shizuku's voice is fucking GORGEOUS. Like she sounds like an angel sent from the heavens half the time. Its very satisfying to hear her sing omg she's so fucking amazing. Her voice is amazing and airy and mature. God. It sounds like a fairy resting on a leaf in a magical forest. Shizuku is a siren and I am bewitched by her wonderful vocals. I love you shizuku. It's really soft but I can excuse it because it seriously is that good. Makes my ears happy

Best Vocal Performance: Milk Crown on Soncheka

11. Toya Aoyagi

GASP?? TOYA NOT BEING IN LAST??? WAOW.../silly. His voice is like heroine and I am inhaling it sorry. His high notes His belting his fucking RAPPING OH NY GOD TOYA... his soft vocals are also peak (save me blender) and he's just. So good. And also very versatile! He can do quiet and soft, loud and belty, and he can rap like no one else. God. I love Toya's voice sm. Ough

Best Vocal Performance: Utsuro Wo Aogu

10. Ena Shinonome

Ena pls marry me. Her voice is a little... scratchy? Like idk how to describe it. It's a little rough and SO SOSOOO FUCKING GOOD OH MY GOD. she can't belt like hell, has really good vocal chemistry with her fellow group members, and is just a really good singer! She also sounds really cute but not cute like minori or emu cute. like Mizuki cute. A little bratty? Spoiled? Either way it's really ho-

Anyway she has a few flaws. I'm not huuuge a fan of when she sings softly (nomad is an exception) and I feel like she's straining her voice sometimes. Other wise she's really good and I love her no other notes. Ena one chan-

Best Vocal Performance: I ♡ Nandesu (Full Solo)

9. Haruka Kiritani

Listen to the full Near alt. Her voice is so fucking good im surprised honestly. Its a little bit rough just the slightest bit and very crisp. Like an apple! She's a very good vocalist and almost always sounds amazing in any song. She can do mature she can do suave silly cute anything you need! She's very versatile and just like I said amazing voice.

Her voice can be a little strained sometimes (devils manner 😔) but it's actually used to her benefit at times, like with Darling Dance. Her voice is just really good :3 I love her vv much

Best Vocal Performance: Near (Full Solo) and Darling Dance

8. Ichika Hoshino

Shes perfect what can I say. Nice vocals popular lead singer of her band gorgeous ichika never stops winning. Her vocals aren't smooth, but they're like, clear? Like a sunbeam going through a window pane. Bright and cool and crisp and gorgeous ily ichika. Her voice is hard with soft edges it's everything you could want it's great. Her voice is great. Ichika <33

One flaw is. Ahem. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST LET THE OTHERS SING GODDAMN!!! SHE TAKES UP HALF THE LINES OF A DAMN SONG AND BASICALLY DUETS WITH A VOCALOID WHIKE EVERYONE ELSE GETS ONE LINE EACH. okay I'm done vocals rock

Best vocal: Kibou No Tsuki and Yomosugara Kimi Omou

7. Kohane Azusawa

Her voice is smooth as butter and cuts like a knife you may think she's just another minori but God DAMN can kohane sing. She's a fucking BEAST in the vocals department. She can sing low, high, loud, soft, you name it and she can do it. She sounds so hypnotizing I am NOT kidding about her voice being as smooth as butter. Jesus fucking christ kohane she's the GOAT

Best Vocal Performance: Hitsuji ga ippiki

6. Rui Kamishiro

I mean. It's rui. His voice is gorgeous. He has a really wide range and his voice is very smooth and sweet and amazing ousgsjsshs.. he always sounds like he's having fun with his singing and he just sounds very jovial and mischievous. Love his voice sm. Ouhj

Best Vocal Performance: Fixer and Subarashiki Nyansei

5. Airi Momoi

AIRIIII her voice is perfect. It's clear and bright and fiery and also very versatile! She can sing low or high soft or loud and she always sounds awesome! She's also good at the lil chirps in the background. Just good for literally any song. God ily airi

Best Vocal Performance: Marshmary and Momoiro no Kagi (honorable mention: Parasol Cider)

Shiho Hinomori

[spopsalt]

I'm not even sure the writers knew they were writing Catra to be abusive. The writing of the whole show isn't just in bad taste, it's incompetent. They even failed at 'setup, reminder, payoff' multiple times, and that's the most basic screenplay writing tool.

The thing is, I actually think Catra and Adora being together would be really interesting because of the sheer complexity of such a relationship. But She-ra is a children's adventure show. The focus of any romantic couple is on how they are getting together for the happy ending. It's not the right place or time to depict this type of relationship. It would take a immense amount of screentime and nuanced writing on both characters to make it work.

The implications of their relationship. Adora's heroism stems in part from her childhood, where she always had to protect Catra. As Shadow Weaver doesn't give a shit about Catra's safety, Adora's only bargaining power lies in her own wellbing This dynamic fosters her detrimental tendency towards self-sacrifice.

Nevertheless, Adora's heroism also springs from her genuine compassion and love for the world. Catra's accusation of Adora prioritizing self-sacrifice over her, and Adora subsequently apologizing, should have been used to highlight the toxicity in their relationship— how their traumas makes them both worse. Adora is literally apologizing for putting ideal she believes in above Catra, who is 'supposed' to be the most important thing in her life.

Catra only reinforces such an idea, because Adora is the only one to ever value her in their developmental phase. Catra's safety depended on Adora prioritizing her. Combined with her self-loathing, she rejects new relationships of any kind, because in her mind 'only Adora can love her.' Adora learning to value herself from their love is so deeply unrealistic and insulting.

I can't find myself disliking or liking Catra because she's not even written with enough consistency for me to read her as a person. Just a flat character trope in attractive shell. The show as a whole is just botched piece of media and the interesting implications might even be accidental.

Thank you! People will say that Catra helped Adora's trauma but she just made it worse, she made Adora feel weak

"It won't be over until I see the look on your friend's faces when they find out that you failed, because you were too weak to save them"

Made her think that she's hurting her friends

"Haha! You're the one who left the villagers unprotected! You're good enough at hurting your friends without my help!"

Andddd made her think everything was here fault...ohhh there's so many to choose from let's run through some of my favorites!

"Let's be honest, all of this is your fault. If you hadn't gotten captured, your sword wouldn't have opened the portal."

"You broke the world and it is all. your. fault."

"You MADE me this! You took everything from me!"

There's more, but I don't want my answer to be too long

[my-mt-heart]

Why Equal Representation Matters for Caryl and McReedus

I love Carol and Daryl equally, and I think they deserve equal representation. That's the key word in all of this, but that's not what I'm currently seeing in the promotion. Extras are getting in trouble for posting pictures with Melissa while set photos with Norman are fair game. Casting calls always say "starring Norman Reedus," but leave Melissa out. The one time I do see her name, it's placed in the wrong billing order and spelled incorrectly. Then there's the title. Daryl's name is in it. Carol's is reduced to a subtitle in much smaller letters.

The past couple of years have been difficult. After Melissa's "exit," which I know wasn't her choice, I kept getting messages from other fans who were battling anxiety and depression because they lost something that meant the world to them, because they felt like they could no longer connect with a story that once made them feel safe. Sometimes those messages included graphic pictures of self-harm. It was overwhelming, but even though I was struggling too, I believed Caryl fans could promote positive change. And we did.

Of course we did, because we learned from the best. We watched Carol overcome anything and anyone who tried to keep her down. Her perseverance and resilience are inspiring. I am so excited to have her back, and I'm so grateful to Melissa for choosing to continue her story. She and Norman looked very happy to shoot together again. I know they get the same amount of input on their characters' arcs, which is great. I just don't know how to reconcile my excitement with my concern that other business practices are still treating Melissa/Carol like the lesser half.

It is detrimental for Melissa to be the only woman in a position of power among several male EPs, execs, and directors. It isn't fair that she has to risk being labeled as “difficult to work with” every time she needs to stand up for Carol. It isn't fair that there isn't another woman to help her tell and promote Carol's story in ways that can reach her largely-female fanbase. For the show to be the huge success we want it to be, that needs to change. Daryl and Carol are partners, "Batman and Batman" as Norman once put it. He and Melissa are leading the show together. That needs to be clear.

For the last couple of years, Melissa’s fans have done all the heavy lifting to support her the way she deserves. It's time for someone in power to be vocal about Caryl’s romantic bond, Carol’s vitality, and respecting Melissa’s wishes, so we know that the show values equal representation. The story should reflect those values as well.

[nightingaletrash]

I love the Last Flight so much tho, the way it truly encapsulates the horror of the Blight. How a single day of dawdling was enough for Antiva's royals to doom their people. The soul-rending endlessness of it, and how even the biggest victories are only temporary unless they can get you to the Archdemon.

It also shows how, by this point, the Grey Wardens have come to be so respected that its detrimental. When they say that a Blight is here, they're listened to and people react accordingly, but Antiva's royals really believed that the Wardens could save their city - its why they sent for them, they believed they could turn the tide of the entire horde and were shocked when the Wardens said 'we can't save your city, the best we can do is help to evacuate you and your people before it's too late.' And then that belief keeps them from listening to the Wardens when they say that they can't perform a miracle. And it costs them everything.

Then there's Isseya's blood magic, and how the novel shows us that while she never used it for malignant purposes, there was a huge cost for her... but it wasn't entirely her fault. The first time her blood magic had a horrible cost - when her altered Joining practically destroyed a griffon's mind and filled him with hatred - she swore off of using the spell ever again. It's not until the First Warden orders her to do it over and over again does the magic take its toll by accelerating the Taint in her blood. And when her spell proves to have created a blight disease unique to griffons, the fault lies largely with the First Warden as he failed to enact quarantines and he kept using the griffons as messengers. If Isseya had had her way, Shrike would have been the only griffon to have been changed, but the pressure from Garahel and the First Warden and Lisme and everyone else that insisted that the joined griffons were a solution made it so that she couldn't say no.

There's just a lot going on in the Last Flight that really communicates things better than the games do without diving into codexes. Origins doesn't really show just how soul-grinding and all-consuming a Blight is supposed to be because this is the weird one that only lasted a year. DA2 only shows the consequences of blood magic via the reactions to it as opposed to the real consequences of the magic itself. And Inquisition's attempt to portray the Wardens as flawed and sometimes misguided comes off as dismissive of the order itself.

The Last Flight describes how the Blight changes the landscape as it spreads and shows our characters changing and ageing as it goes on, with the protagonists going from a couple of fresh-faced recruits to aged veterans over the span of a decade. We see a real, tangible consequence of blood magic beside the societal reactions to it. And we see the Wardens at their best and at their most flawed; from evacuating and saving as many people as they can from the Darkspawn, to recklessly forcing blood magic on their griffons and failing to enact proper quarantines when the first signs of the problem began to appear. Its such a damn good book and I love it so much 💜

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

HINATA HYUUGA (NARUTO)

1.) When Hinata was introduced she goals, weaknesses, interesting interactions and relationships with characters other than naruto and a personality of her own. Post timeskip in shippuden, however, she was reduced down to simply 'naruto's future love interest' and little else. The entire Hyuuga plotline was dropped and she no longer had any relevance or personality outside of naruto. Part 1 hinata was shy and insecure on the surface but underneath that she was determined & hardworking, even to her own detriment. Her struggles were compelling. Her interactions with neji and her family are something you look forward to seeing more of. In shippuden she's like a flat carboard cutout of hinata. Her shyness exaggerated, her relationship with her family suddenly perfectly fine and boring. In part 1 naruto inspires her to keep trying but he isn't the reason she's working so hard, in shippuden he's pretty much all she thinks about. Her change in character design really highlights these changes - the perfect little wife for cishet men to fantasise about.

2.) Her entire personality and arc is boiled down to “shy uwu waifu in love with Naruto” and basically any development she gets, which is barely at all because Kishimoto hates women, is as attributed to NARUTO and Naruto only. Even her reaction to her beloved COUSIN’S DEATH makes her be like “omg I love Naruto” and serves to further NaruHina, which is absolutely insane she would Not react like that. Naruto only starts being romantically interested in her at the beginning of like, The Last movie, which is after 500ish episodes of her being treated as the sidelined love interest who is devoted to a guy who only cares about her when she’s a damsel in distress on a fight.

There are so many parts of her character that are/could be interesting, like her part in the Hyuga Clan due to being born as a superior and her dynamic with her cousin Neji as a result, (which could have had SO many great moments of reconciliation and standing up for each other grrr grrr) an exploration of the impact of her bullying & being looked down upon (even when she’s supposed to be a superior member, which adds to the shame) LIKE MANY OF THE CAST, seriously the people Naruto trauma dumps to are mostly consisted of people unfairly treated like that and it could have been used to further NaruHina WHILE showing her struggles

She is an incredibly capable fighter but the moment Naruto is there, she instantly becomes defenseless and needs to be saved by her crush, mostly as a “wow look at him isn’t he so brave and kind to do this for her?!”

There’s an episode where she is literally used as a defenseless punching bag for Pein by trying to sacrifice herself for Naruto and telling him she loves him, JUST so he can be more angry and have more motivation to beat Pein’s ass (aside of the yknow. Killing his loved ones thing) AND her confession is ignored by Naruto for the rest of the series. Just like any moment she shows her crush for him is met with obliviousness, which would be fine if they weren’t the main couple and didn’t go on for THE ENTIRE SERIES!!!!

In Boruto, the shitty sequel, Naruto is basically her deadbeat husband in her bland lavander marriage and Boruto is rightfully mad about Naruto’s distance from the family and even says he left her basically a single mom and barely pays time to the family, and Hinata’s role in the show as the housewife is being like “no you see Boruto you have to understand your father’s pov as the Hokage” and the narrative treats NaruHina’s marriage as a Good, Healthy Thing as if the characters are not miserable in this marriage.

3.) Man I don't even like her that much but she deserved SO much better. She was introduced as the heiress of a really powerful and renowed clan with complex dynamics, yet the author somehow decided to do almost NOTHING with the potential she had, and gave her very little personality besides being shy and fawning over the protagonist. She gets slightly more active in Shippuden (part 2), but her character still pretty much revolves around her love for Naruto, which sucks because again, she has so much potential. It's no secret that women in Naruto are badly written, and Hinata certainly is no exception. The male characters get dozens of episodes/chapters about their motivations, their backstories, what pushes them to keep going, and Hinata gets almost nothing besides her lifelong crush on Naruto that we are reminded of literally every time she's on screen.

NIKI NIHACHU (DREAM SMP) (CW: Bullying)

1.) Ohhhh my FUCKING GOD okay. So first off, MCYT (Minecraft Youtube) is not synonymous with the Dream SMP. The Dream SMP is MCYT, but not all MCYT is Dream SMP. I just want to make that clear before I start. (Also, the DSMP characters are referred to with a c! in front of their name, and the person playing that character is referred to with a cc! in front of their name.)

Anyway. So Niki, right. The Dream SMP had a LOT of ccs, and I can’t remember all of them off the top of my head but I think there were like…four women? Out of…god, at least fifteen people, maybe twenty? Which would have been fine, I’ve seen worse ratios. But the thing is, a lot of the male ccs’ fans were uhhh…not great about treating cc!Niki like a person. We’re gonna move on to her character in a bit, but cc!Niki got bullied, harassed, and criticized no matter what she or her character did.

c!Niki is either a mean girlboss or gentle and nice. When I saw people talking about c!Niki while the DSMP was active, their views of her were very one dimensional. Maybe part of this was because cc!Niki didn’t get a chance to develop her character as much as someone like cc!Tubbo did. One of the DSMP’s fatal flaws was a lack of communication and organization, and…yeah. It was very difficult for white male ccs to organize people for lore, but for cc!Niki it was…also bad. The misogyny that cc!Niki experienced from fans is inseparable from the misogyny that c!Niki also received. It’s a really shitty package deal.

OH AND ALSO. You know how the DSMP ended by getting like, wiped from existence or some shit I don’t remember. And Dream did this without letting the majority of the ccs resolve their character’s stories/arcs? Will it surprise you to learn that afaik cc!Niki wasn’t informed about this at first? Yeah. Overall she was just treated horribly by everyone and so was her character.

2.) Literally only like three people ever did storylines with her, two of whom immediately dropped it as soon as something else came up. She didn't even get to officially participate in the revolution despite repeatedly offering aid, and eventually ended up just. Building her own underground city. To have something to do. The only people to actually include her in storylines consistently ever were the anarchists, toward the end of the server.

3.) ok, so, the thing is, this isn’t just about the DSMP. historically, in mcyt spaces, women content creators have been harassed and treated terribly by fans (and talked over/ignored by other ccs and the fandom) for, essentially, daring to be women, and niki has been subject to that. cc!niki (the real life person, for those who don’t know mcyt player/character differentiations) was/is really good friends with cc!wilbur soot (i haven’t been keeping up with this corner of streaming recently but assume this is the case). however, despite being close irl friends and working really well with one another, niki had to deal with endless bullshit from people who shipped her and wilbur (and people who didn’t!!), so much so that they stopped streaming together for a while. this is just some background so you understand the baseline we’re working with here. (this is going to be more of a meta analysis on how cc!niki was treated by other ccs, as that’s my specialty and also in a rp space it affects how her character was played) (fan treatment of her also factors in a lot here since fiction is highly affected by realities like this in mcrp) niki’s character in the dream smp, and the lore she had (she went from a kind baker to one of the last holdouts against a tyrannical government, to a broken girl resorting to revenge for stability, to someone who was finally able to find healing and support in a safe space and worked to do the same for others) was largely ignored or disregarded by both fans and the other content creators on the server. hell, when her best friend died nobody even bothered to tell c!niki! she had to find out from his own goddamn ghost! (can you tell i’m mad about this?) she put up with so much shit on that server, in-character and out, and never even got to have a fucking break about it. justice for c!niki!

[vulpine-spectacle]

So, I am having a Day (tm) and I am trying to write at the moment, but otherwise I'm having some brain fog and writing is proving tricky. My leg is also sore due to the tattoo I just got and my mood is somber due to failing my certification test, so...yay me. :) ( I can retake the test, so no worries on my end. )

But since I am in a Mood (tm), I am going to share a couple of random facts about Echoes in our Blood - deleted plot points, random facts, etc.

The scene in Hyperion when Eurydice, Isca, Jael, Valeria, and Delphine were undergoing a Bene Gesserit test originally had a different outcome. While they were nesting under the roots of a tree, they were going to be attacked by direwolves and have a chase sequence. Eurydice was going to get bitten by a direwolf, then escape with Isca. They were both going to jump into a river and Eurydice was going to have a vision of Cienna during that sequence. This was actually a pivotal change, because Isca was originally going to be Eurydice's companion. But I scrapped the idea due to how long it would take to write and my general lack of interest in it, and...opted for Delphine instead. This singular change thus amplified Delphine's character within the narrative. :)

In vein with the wolf bite, there was going to be a scene where when Feyd goes down on her for the first time, he sees the bite and asks about it. When Eurydice explains it came from a big ass wolf, Feyd sinks his teeth into her thigh and basically "marks" her. I thought it was neat, but ultimately not worth the whole narrative and scenes, etc., that would've had to come before it.

Chapterhouse is about 80% untouched, so the natural resources are allowed to flourish, hence why the trees are so big. But it also has a bunch of impressive creatures that would be long since extinct from earth but are thriving on the planet. ;) These animals are based on the Late Pleistocene mammals. And to clarify, no, sadly no dinosaurs exist on Chapterhouse. :')

In my original draft of the first few chapters, Feyd-Rautha was going to kill Kaine at nine years old on Lankiveil, not Giedi Prime. Feyd-Rautha was going to grow up under his father's wing, a bullied boy within Lankiveil who was ridiculed and berated by his peers for being the son of an exiled member of House Harkonnen. The knife belonged to Kaine and Feyd-Rautha killed him with it and buried his body in the snow. This was changed shortly after when I did research on Feyd-Rautha's history and found that his father and mother were killed by Rabban when Feyd-Rautha was two. I liked this much better and decided to keep it. :)

A narrative regret of mine...I wrote and published EIOB before watching Dune: Part 2. When I found out the movie changed Feyd-Rautha's narrative so he killed his mother, I regretted having written her already dead at the start of the story. I would have deeply loved exploring the possibilities on how this would've affected Feyd's childhood. :') It's my only major regret, but honestly, it's not detrimental to the narrative. It's just one of those *face smack* moments, ya feel? :/