#and i thought the meme was just making a resurgence and that alone was enough to floor me

[fully-caulked-wagon]

wHAT

Is Is the peanut butter jelly time banana becoming a fucking sexyman? Is that's what's happening right now? I think that's worse than the meme itself making a resurgence. what.

[nite-puff]

I feel you so much on the Mondo thing... Where every character falls into some kinda category based on how liked they are (there are the ones everyone likes, ones everyone hates, the underrated characters, etc.), Mondo's sort of floating off in this innocuous void?? Obviously he has a cult following and he has his haters, but most of the fandom just kinda doesn't even care?? It's complete indifference, and the only reason he isn't considered an underrated character is because he's in one of the much more popular ships. Other than some characters from dr3, I kinda consider him to be the MOST underrated character. Because with characters like Hiro and Akane, at least people KNOW they're underrated. People actively look at them and think "there's more to them that we don't get to see", but with Mondo, most of his major lore details are handed to you right in chapter 2. He is made REMARKABLY easy to understand, and I don't consider that to be a writing flaw in the slightest. But I think as a result of this people just look at him, go "alright, I've seen all there is to see", and then move on without much further consideration. Then with Mondo enjoyers themselves, the line between those who like him as an individual versus those who like him as an add-on to Kiyotaka or even Chihiro is clear as day, to the point where you see people get some really surface level characterization wrong (Like I hate to be that guy but people don't make Mondo nearly the level of sopping wet beast roaming around in the middle of the target parking lot all alone as they should). Then the people who actually care about the guy write 90 page essays on him. Like there's no in-between.

YES YES I 100% AGREE!!!

I remember seeing this Instagram post back in 2021 when Danganronpa kinda had that popularity resurgence (aka when I joined the fandom). It was one of those “starter pack”memes and went something like “‘Characters the fandom doesn’t care about unless it’s shipping’ starter pack” and Mondo was part of it. And I no joke thought, “Oh wow, they included Mondo,” like I was completely expecting for him to be overlooked.

It’s rare nowadays to find a character or trial or what-have-you that’s actually underrated when it comes to the mainline DR games. Most that were probably underrated at some point just kept being talked about how underrated they were until they weren’t really considered underrated anymore.

But Mondo is underrated and no one really talks about it because no one cares. At least, outside of his small group of fans.

There’s so much analysis and deep dives you can do with him from masculinity, to negative stigmas, to repressed and untreated mental disorders. Like, he’s one of the few characters who was written to have a mental disorder (ptsd, albeit with some negative stereotypes). He’s a scared kid hiding behind the mask of a fearless leader, and the game does a great job at showing that. But no one talks about it.

And that lack of talk amongst the fandom is what eventually led to the fanon Mondo we have today. No one really wanted to analyze what he brought to the table and so people just started viewing him as the surface level macho bad boy stereotype that he was WRITTEN TO SUBVERT.

I do think that there’s some sort of devolution from that version of him that’s been happening the past couple of years with those fans who would “write 90 page essays of him” coming into the scene, and that’s great. Love that for him. I’m glad that, while he’s not nearly talked about enough, there’s been a slight increase of interest of him as an individual character and not as a ship or foil.

Anyways yeah, “Make Mondo Relevant in the Fandom 2023.” Let’s make it happen.

[abhorrenttheorizer]

Jesus help me.

I'm not into kiddie shit. I don't like kids media. I never cared for the cartoons I used to watch when I was younger. I'm not "kidcore" or "plushcore" or "liminal-space-of-a-playground-core" or whatever-core.

I am a proud, dubiously respectable 20-going-on-21 year old adult.

But... A few weeks ago I stepped onto Twitter one day and saw a resurgence of the greatest thing that ever happened to 4-year-old me.

And now I've been silently obsessing over this stupid piss-colored rat and his stupid technicolor ensemble ever since. And I decided to half-sorta-kinda make some designs for a possible AU/parody "reboot", because my body functions on embarrassment and embarrassment alone.

We're going full cringe, gamers. This is my domain.

Join me, friends, on my pilgrimage to 0 followers because I keep posting stupid shit instead of things of substance.

I am going on a downward spiral to Hell and I'm dragging all of you down with me. (this is a very long post with extra autistic rambling, courtesy of yours truly)

You guys remember the show "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!"?

Well. I do. And if you (reader) do too, we're already kissing (no allo).

For those of you who aren't in the loop with Twitter's community bullshit, basically for Year of the Rabbit, some furry artists managed to dig up... Widget, as their primary source material, because she's a rabbit. And I'm half parts giddy and half parts pissed for multiple reasons.

For starters (somewhat unrelated), the HBO Max rendition of Scooby Doo, "Velma" came out sometime in 2023 (I can't exactly remember the date). It was essentially a SUPARR GRITTY EDGY ADULT REBOOT

In short, it horribly butchered the source material and in its attempt to be a SUPARR GRITTY EDGY ADULT REBOOT, basically became an insulting mockery of the show it was based off of or "reviving".

And I thought to myself... What if I did that? What if I ruined my own childhood by taking this crown jewel of 2006 and also turning it into a SUPARR GRITTY EDGY ADULT REBOOT?

In the parodical sense, of course.

Basically a reimagining of Wubbzy and friends in a late 2010s setting, possibly 2016, when the characters are a little older and having to slog through the parts of life that aren't particularly suitable for a preschooler's cartoon.

I wanted to keep the art style somewhat true to the source material, but my cartooning skills are extremely rusty and I don't know how to give things the "Generic Adult Cartoon" look, so the art style ended up looking like the horrible out-of-wedlock spawn of Winnie the Pooh and Adventure Time.

Hopefully I didn't unintentionally ruin their designs because I had to give most of them stupid emo 2012 furry hair swoops. Their "redesigns" just looked incomplete without them.

Going through the main-ish characters (incomplete) and how I've bastardized them to fit the SUPARR GRITTY EDGY ADULT REBOOT theme (very much not to sizing scale):

I've changed around some of the species choices for the characters to make them a little more "interesting" in my opinion. This will play into some of their behaviors, because I fucking love talking animal characters acting like the animals they were based off of.

Very one dimensional descriptions because I'm still finding my footing with this, and I just need to get this off my chest.

Wubbzy is a hybrid of a Mongolian gerbil and a sand cat. He's 14 now.

Basically the standard angsty teen struggling to maintain his chipper attitude in an environment that's more unnecessarily meanspirited and meaningless because he's stuck in a gritty "deep" adult cartoon and "life just suuucks, maaan".

Daizy is a Maltese breed dog (im not hybridizing her because her source design is crowded enough).

A year older than Wubbzy, she is one of those kids who "lives under a rock" per-se. Somehow is able to keep the same cheerful demeanor since she was a kid, but is frequently bullied and mocked for her naivety and her lack of knowledge on memes and other teenage trends.

And now for these three bozos. Once upon a time, they were silly kids that loved playing outdoor games and so on. Now they're juul hitting, offensive meme posting, band playing, devil's lettuce smoking (alleged) delinquents. They're all the same age as Daizy (so 15).

Huggy is a least weasel, and she's just at the beginning of her streetcore phase.

The mastermind behind the meme pages run by the three, and she's the reason why all of them are addicted to monster drinks, anime, "edgy" memes, and every flavor of e-cigarrette there is.

Buggy is a European hare, and is the patron saint of "band kids".

Super obsessed with anime and vidya, is one of the 1st trumpets in his band class and uses that opportunity to play every dead meme imaginable, and has dubiously been featured several times on r/iamverysmart.

Earl is the hybrid of a Syrian hamster and a Bengal tiger.

One of those dudes that's super into sports, cars, men's fashion, and fitness. Was the first to introduce the three to cringe anime gymbro memes. A Certified Good Boi, but is cursed to have the fashion sense of a fuckboy for the rest of his life.

And of course, we can't forget about these old, saggy losers (affectionate)

Firstly, to get this off my chest, it's one of my biggest pet peeves when people choose to... "yassify" characters, but they refuse to do it in a way that actually fits the character. I've seen my fair share of fat Widget and curvy Widget, but why do none of these cowards ever draw her buff? Did they even watch the show? Widget's a fucking carpenter and mechanical engineer for fucks sake. She's shitting out heavy, complicated robotics and automation like every half hour. SHE BUILDS ALL HER FUCKING INVENTIONS BY HAND. She could LITERALLY crush everyone around her like rotten grapes if she wanted to, and yet I NEVER see anyone make her the barrel-chested, steel-pecced, iron-fisted Valkyrie she was meant to be. Anyway...

These two (hypothetically) will have the most adult oriented themes and issues, amplified even moreso because as of "2016" they'd be in their mid 30s. Neither change very much because it's extremely likely that in the source show, they're already post-college adults.

(these two were/are my favorite characters too, so of course i have to put them through the most suffering lol)

Widget, Millennial Scum #2 (1982 baby), is a hybrid of a black-tailed jackrabbit and a greater bilby.

Unluckily had her workshop closed down for unlicensed manufacturing as well as a specific "accident" she'd prefer not to mention. Now struggles to regain where her career was dropped off by working as a designer and manufacturer for some unspecified corporation. Throughout her struggles, she somehow manages to stay hopeful and determined that she'll return to her love of freelance engineering.

Walden, Millennial Scum #1 (1981 baby), is a hybrid of a Malayan sun bear and a thylacoleo (carnifex). Goes through the most suffering because he was/is my absolute favorite ;-)

After a false accusation from some disgruntled out-of-town interns/coworkers, his credentials were compromised and he was put on a watchlist after rumors began to circulate that he owned and operated a meth lab. Was basically barred from having an in-person occupation, or really any occupation that isn't anonymous. On top of that, he believes he's "hit the wall" prematurely, thinking he's too old, too controversial, and too out-of-touch to live an exciting and fulfilling life anymore.

These aren't finalized and I don't even know why I'm speaking like this when I'm regarding basically a crackfic, but uhhhh that was all from me

See you guys later when my brain starts hemorrhaging again teehee bye

[sepublic]

I really dig how now that a lot of FNAF kids are grown up, it’s become a lot more mainstream and openly beloved now; It helps that FNAF has had recent content and lore.

Because back during its debut it was seen as ‘cringey’ and ‘for kids’ and you had a lot of older people making fun of it, and it was a niche sort of thing. But now that a lot of FNAF fans have gotten older and gained more of a presence as experienced content creators, there’s like... This resurgence of people who get to vocalize how they really liked this stuff, and find other people who also have the same appreciation; And it’s just really encouraging and validating to see. It’s incredibly sweet seeing how popular perception has turned around, when back then the only popular creators who DID do FNAF (like Markiplier or MatPat) were seen as appealing to a ‘lower’ demographic.

Obviously the constant, upwards stream of content and lore also helps. But still, FNAF really does seem so much more popular and prevalent in meme culture now, that it’s legit become something ‘acceptable’ to like, and not in a New Fad type of way either (not that kids should need ‘acceptance’ for their interests). People grew up on it and now they’re old and confident and united enough to express their enjoyment without guilt, unironically. And that in turn influences other people who haven’t really heard or are impartial, and now you’ve got Freddy Fazbear memes all over the place. There’s even the lasting influence that leads to stuff like the freaking Banana Splits movie, which was originally a FNAF film! Kellen Goff made a name for himself with FNAF and is a recognized VA.

It’s legit all over the place and a trending sensation and people are nostalgically into it, they think it’s legit cool; FNAF has legitimate staying power in people’s minds and recognition, it’s got a solid reputation and Freddy Fazbear is now a cultural gaming icon, a household name like in-universe. Creators who made stuff back in the day are just as beloved and have triumphed despite the sneering accusations of ‘cringe’. People aren’t afraid to be mocked for it or have it labeled ‘overrated’, and I think it just says a lot about how kids usually get shamed and made fun of for their interests... How all this ‘back in my day’ generational talk is just utter bullshit, how every generation before has lamented the ones after, talked of the decline of ‘good media’. It’s just people enjoying themselves and whatever criticisms one might have for the creator, they certainly weren’t at mind back when kids were being mocked for their fun.

I just think it’s fascinating and surreal to see, that stuff you enjoyed as a kid, or you saw as ‘kid’ stuff... Knowing that now or in a few years, there’s gonna be all of these older people on the internet recognizing it, talking about it with one another; Excited to see people also liked it, speaking of how it was their childhood! It’s just weirdly nostalgic even if you yourself weren’t involved in the thing, because you can really relate. You can relate to that sense of going on the internet and finding other people who also loved that! For a while you thought you were alone, but now it’s cool now, other people find it cool, and you can be casual about being into it!

It’s honestly rather uplifting, seeing it firsthand that people are gonna grow up. That your generation and the one after will grow, and actually impact the world in the future. There’s gonna be actual change of some sorts, and even if it’s something as small and innocuous as a franchise about killer animatronics... It makes me feel hopeful? Like we’ll have an impact and maybe we weren’t for nothing, after all.

So it really is important not to make fun of kids for just enjoying themselves, because what’s ‘cringe’ is so arbitrary and will easily turn around; It just isn’t worth it to ruin others’ fun, surely you remember also being shamed and scolded? This situation perfectly exemplifies about how us fully-grown geezers really should know better and be more sympathetic and patient, not be buzzkills for these kids; It’s not for us but so is a lot of stuff we enjoyed back in the day, no longer for ‘us’ as we are now! Times are a-changing as are the generations, we just gotta accept and embrace and be happy for that, because that is the best thing or everyone would’ve been way more miserable for millennia.

It just really is the best feeling growing up and enjoying that thing clearly meant for kids and being a bit embarrassed by it... But then growing up and finding others who also loved and still love it, and thus get to express and continue that enjoyment! Make new stuff for it as an adult when you’ve got more experience, which again leads to this type of fandom renaissance I mentioned. Like, it’s gonna be okay; You felt like such a silly loser, but you’re gonna find other people like you who will show otherwise. It was valid, YOU’RE valid and it was awesome just for giving you joy. No more guilt. It’s gonna get better.

(Anyhow I just gotta say as someone who left a while back but still has some memories, it is SURREAL learning through osmosis how much of a juggernaut of lore this franchise has begun. The enigmatic purple guy has a name and family members and a face reveal. It’s apparently about kids’ souls being stuffed into robots to bring back the dead? Remember when it was so simple, and now it’s so spiraled into so much more, with all of the elaborate theories no longer a stretch from canon? Reminds me of how my other childhood interests have developed, and it’s all nostalgic as a result.)

[sourbat]

For that touch writing prompts meme, Melmord/Charles - 17, or Magnus/Melmord - 20?

"Holding the other’s chin up"-charles/melm

summary: the dead don't have time to rest or mourn. they do, eventually, find time for each other.

Rating: T for being a huge bummer

Melmord could still recall what he was doing when it happened. He had just finished washing his dishes, and was busy flinging his left hand that smarted from a nasty papercut turned raging hellfire after making contact with the suds, when the alarms went off and Facebone’s voice rang and alerted him of a fire. Then, another alarm telling everyone to hurry to the surface and be prepared to “Die for Dethklok,” before the power totaled, and Melmord was left alone in the dark. The earth above shook, and for some time Melmord spent his waking hours head tucked between his knees, wondering if he was doing to endure yet another death, this one slower and far more excruciating than the last.

Four days later, and after nearly going through all his rations, he was pulled from the rubble by none other than Charles himself.

“Y-you…”

Melmord took his hand and held on to it like an anchor.

“That’s all?” Charles inquired, pushing his lopsided, cracked glasses up his bruised nose. “No witty remark, Fjordslorn?”

Offdensen told him that “there wasn’t much time,” and they had to leave Mordland grounds before the boys up above “unlatch the dragon.” That was all. There were no remarks about what caused the power outage, the quakes and Mordhaus falling apart, nor comments regarding how utterly shaken and disposed Melmord felt being haplessly caught in the middle of it. Then again, it wasn’t like Melmord was itching to know why Offdensen had suddenly lost his color and suit, or how he earned that nasty gash. Frankly, he was just happy to be alive and out of the small hole he’d been trapped in for days.

Then, the aftermath. Melmord stepped out into the moonlight and saw the blood and piles upon piles of bodies. Shattered pieces of metal and concrete were scattered across the uneven land, and tall burn tress resembling skeletons stood silently in the night. Melmord smelled and gagged at the intense stench that hung thick in the air. A soured stew or rotting meat and dead leaves.

He needed to know after that.

“What happened?” he asked through his parched lips as Charles led them deep into the charred woods.

“I’ll explain later.”

This proved to be a lie.

He tried another: “Where are we going?”

“To find answers,” Charles replied, then turned far right before gesturing for him to follow.

“Where’s Dethklok?” Melmord asked once they were already several hundred feet into the air. They hovered over Mordhaus. The view was quite lovely, but the glow of the dragon’s eyes still haunted and made him visibly queasy.

“They’re staying behind,” Charles replied. “They’ll be safe here.”

“But I won’t?”

Charles removed his cracked glasses and tucked them into his jacket. “We have business to conduct.”

That was months ago.

Several months of being mostly in the dark, still trapped, just under a new concrete and slabs that silently, tenderly suffocated Melmord with each passing day. It wasn’t like they didn’t have time to discuss, either. In between the gunfire, traveling through sewers, through sleet and snow, there was plenty of time to stop and talk. But where discussions of the unfolding events should have occurred, instead were long nights spent in absolute silence. Lonely nights where Melmord would see Offdensen staring at the moon, the stars, looking strangely lost in thought, or deep in contemplation. Naturally, Melmord wanted to inquire about the silence. He refrained, partly because he was used to the man constantly giving him the cold shoulder and suspected any attempt would result in the same. Another side savored the sight. It was rare to see Charles’ cornered, morose or locked in a state of misery.

So they continued their endless search, spending their days traveling by tank, jeep or boat to the next piece of some unknown puzzle Offdensen refused to share, and their nights separated, with him sitting on top of some crate, roof or standing in a corner, body hunched and mind elsewhere.

And, for a while, Melmord was perfectly fine with that.

Until, one cold night, he wasn’t.

He was still trapped under the heavy load, still holding the icy white hand that lead him deeper into the strange unknown, the same hand that pushed him onto the alter before having him branded, when Melmord learned the reason behind Offdenson's odd behavior. The army radio he’d stolen after their most recent stint cracked the news of the tragic events that took place six months prior.

Through the heavy static Melmord heard the news of the attack by the Revengencers, of the damage they caused, and Dethklok’s decision to renovate and create space by lifting Mordhaus into the skies.

He learned that Charles had been brutally beaten the death, and died protecting Dethklok.

Charles died.

He died, and like Melmord, came back to live a life away from everything that he knew. A sad, empty life that currently held no meaning.

“Where are we going?” the words played out in his mind, teasing Melmord at first, but revealing a sad truth when, after several months of traveling across the globe for bits of rocks and names and stories, realized that Charles was likely just as trapped and blindly feeling his way through for an escape. Charles was secretive, and Melmord knew better than to expect to be given answers Charles didn’t consider him worthy of, but he did expect something. Anything.

But Charles was quiet. Reserved. Cold.

In mourning.

Shaken by the news, Melmord dropped the radio. It held, but the connection fizzled into a crash of white noise and static, and Melmord hurried to turn it off before checking to see if Charles noticed. Thankfully, the man was still resting, but for the rest of Melmord’s watch, he remained overly vigilant, hardly moving from his spot in their camouflaged sniper’s nest, and when the time for him to wake Charles and trade positions arrived, decided against it and give the man a few minutes more. Melmord held the rifle Charles taught him to use close to his chest, staring out in the far-off distance for any possible hit man, and watched the sun slowly begin to rise.

…

Charles awoke with the sun glistening past the roof, stinging his face with humid, hot rays. Odd. Charles slid up the walls and rubbed his tired eyes. Several birds chirped around them, and the wet head amassing around them suggested he had overslept by at least four hours. He had slept through his watch, exposing their limited defenses against the unknown enemy.

A carefully planned routine, suddenly ruined.

“Hey, Offdensen.”

Charles shifted to Melmord sitting on the other side of the sniper’s nest, head resting against the rifle.

Of course. The real reason behind his extended slumber.

“What time is it?”

“Hey. Listen,” Melmord said. He yawned, then rubbed his cheeks with his hands. “I just heard on the radio–”

“Radio?” Charles looked around the nest. Sure enough, a small army radio lay beside Melmord’s blanket. That wasn’t all he saw. In a flash, Charles noticed the location of the sun, and approximated the hour, and when he was ready to snap at Melmord for falling asleep on the job, found the two contradicting pieces of evidence hanging all over the man’s eyes. Prominent veins around the iris, and dark bags forming underneath. “Did you, ah, stay awake all night?”

“Yeah?”

He raised a brow. “Why?”

“You gonna let me finish a sentence?” Melmord snickered which, with his eyes to irritated, could easily be misconstrued. After another exaggerated yawn, his head sank, and his long, dark hair began to fall over his shoulder in heavy, tangled loads. “I learned you died six months ago.”

Oh.

Charles swallowed. “Ah.”

Just hearing the news brought a crushing weight upon his chest. It was a subject Charles meant to discuss with Melmord, months ago, while the wounds were still fresh. Each time, Charles found his thoughts coming undone from the memory and phantom pain resurging with a terrible vengeance. For weeks he wondered if Melmord endured the same fate, relived those last few painful second before going black.

“How long were you gone?”

They sat together, waiting on a call to inform them of their next destination. Another clue that might lead them one step closer to finding out the answer behind his rebirth, behind the obsession behind Dethklok, and the power that helped fuel the Revengencer’s fire. Maybe this time he would earn another sliver of information. The odds were stacked against them. Aside from the name "Falcon Back," there still wasn’t much else to go on…

All there was were the few questions he could answer, and perhaps through those few similarities, could gain some solace in knowing he wasn’t entirely alone in solving this impossible puzzle.

Charles waited before giving a response. Just trying to gauge an estimate of his death proved to be quite unsavory to his bearing. He shut his eyes against the memory. “Long enough to feel myself leave my body,” he answered stiffly. “To know I’ve been gone and to know this isn’t natural.”

For once, Charles worried if his worlds were too cruel for Melmord. He wanted to glance upwards, at the light and Fjordslorn’s carefree expression and be told that he would acclimate, and that everything would return to its normal, working order.

Charles’s stare rested on the tips of his stained combat boots. “Fjordslorn?”

Melmord’s head nudged his. “Hmm?”

“Does it ever go away?” he asked, throat going dry. “Feeling so…”

Desolate? Alone? Frigid?

A hand lifted him by the chin. It was so warm to the touch. A frightening contrast to cold front that tormented him within.

“Nah,” Melmord answered, shaking his wet, heavy head. “Whatever it is…it’s never going to be the same again.” He exhaled, then to Charles surprise, exposed a curious, albeit, hinged grin. “But it has to be like that. It can’t ever be the same again, otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Point?” Charles heard himself parrot.

“Yeah, man. If everything was the same, then what separates this life from the last? It’s a second chance at life, so there’s got to be a difference, one that reminds us what’s at stake.”

His hand slid up Charles’ jaw, heating him with a careful touch.

Charles frowned. Melmord was under the terrible assumption life had a point to begin with, or that coming back to life held some significant meaning. It didn’t. People lived until they didn’t. Melmord was an exception, but only because Charles wanted to let the men in the lab to further develop their sewing abilities. Charles could explain how Melmord came back to life. He could not explain how he himself did though, not with any relevant scientific backing, and that frightened him. No one put him back together. He was gone. Gone for hours, possibly longer. And while he was gone he saw…things. He heard voices of unknown men and saw the face of something demonic, vile and uncannily familiar. He doubted Melmord saw any of that. He knew Melmord experienced none of these things, yet brought him along in the hope that he might have, and the very small chance that there was a connection. A significance. A purpose.

A point.

“Charles.”

This time, it was Melmord’s hand sliding off his chin that brought Charles back to the realm of the living dead.

“Yes, Melmord?”

“How are you feeling?”

What could he possibly say? That he felt like he was suffocating under a thousand questions, and no matter how far he traveled, and the clues they amassed, he seemed no closer to finding out the source of this mystery surrounding him and Dethklok.

Charles brushed his face against Melmord’s. “Well rested, thank you.”

[thebad---catholic]

Clone High and changing fandoms

So thanks to a certain 4 hour retro rerun video, I now have JFK induced brainrot. Earlier this year, Avatar: the Last Airbender rose in popularity again after being put on netflix. As a veteran fan, it was very interesting to see how a new viewers interacted with the show. For example, originally Zutara and Kataang were the main ships that dominated the fandom. In 2020? Sokka/Zuko became wildly popular out of no where. Aside from dumbass woke takes like “Iroh’s a war criminal”, I’d say I overall enjoyed the new life breathed into the fandom.

While watching clone high for the first time, I came to realize what I loved about the show would’ve been interpreted differently in 2003, and that I wasn’t alone in these reinterpretations. This is best seen with JFK and Abe. From what I can tell from sifting through an old live journal community, Abe was fairly well liked. Abe/Joan and Abe/JFK and Abe/Cleo were all fairly popular ships. Now though? People fucking hate Abe. I fucking hate Abe. He’s a shallow simp who mistreats his only friends to impress a girl who constantly manipulates him. He’s so overprotective of Cleo he fucking yelled at her while she was trying to comfort jfk who was grieving his best friend. In the context of being a spoof of contemporary teen dramas, this probably would’ve been funny? But without that, it just makes Abe look like an unbelievable douche.

Conversely, we can do nothing but stan our bicon chad with two dads, JFK. But when the show first aired, JFK having two dads and finding John Dark attractive were jokes- any same sex attraction between two men was funny. But now? Genuinely endearing. He’s also a certified himbo with an ass that won’t quit, and in contemporary internet that’s enough to score as a character. I credit him partially for the shows resurgence, since his funny voice and dialogue make him prime meme material, more so than any other character.

Coincidentally, side characters like Van Gogh have skyrocketed in popularity. Sad art bois are also very in vogue. This lethal combo has actually made JFK/Van Gogh a popular ship. Of the 186 clone high fanfictions on AO3, 44 of them are this ship. That’s twenty-five percent. They don’t even interact in the show. JoanFK is in close succession, followed by Ponce/JFK, meaning a whooping 60% of clone high fics are just jfk ships. Even if there’s some overlap of the tags, that’s still pretty sizeable.

Looking back at old shows to see how tastes change is a lot of fun, but kind of striking when a relatively short amount of time has passed. I remember kinda having to justify why I liked a ship? And now??? Take two characters you find remotely interesting and smoosh them together. Cleo says “hot” when she finds out she tried to get with Joan? Before it would’ve been “lmao, hot lesbians”- actually, it’s still that, but now we’re invested in them being in love. At some points I found Joan to be very annoying because of how she puts down other girls (like the giggly vapid slut bit). And then I thought, “god, I’m so glad the trope of girls putting each other down is dying out”. I hadn’t watched clone high specifically, but tropes like that were everywhere when I was growing up. It was always the girly girl vs the tomboy, or goth vs prep in this case. It was exhausting.

There’s a lot of things I hate about modern fan experiences. I hate fandom police who try to dictate what content to enjoy. I’m genuinely surprised no one has done a callout post for everyone shipping clone high characters bc tHeY’Re UnDeRAgE- but really, in a lot of ways, fandom has just become much more carefree, and sincere. What you like doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be anywhere near cannon, just have fun. Just have fun, and be horny, and love himbos, himbims, herbos, and bimbos. And that’s beautiful.

[shirlleycoyle]

Everyone Loves Attack on Titan. So Why Does Everyone Hate Attack on Titan?

When the anime Attack on Titan premiered, it was an instant smash hit and quickly became one of the most visible and popular anime series in the world. As time has gone on, though, the anime, manga, and its fandoms have run into issues with the messages in the text itself, which some say is fascist and antisemtitic.

Attack on Titan holds the same cultural space for younger anime fans that a show like Game of Thrones or even a book series like Harry Potter does for people a generation older than them. Its first volume of the manga is still topping the charts on Bookscan 10 years after its release.

"It's hard to overstate how important Attack on Titan is," Geoff Thew, who makes videos about anime on the YouTube channel Mother's Basement, told Motherboard. "It's not just this really good 24 episode action thing. Now it's this full fantasy epic that is coming to its culmination. It's probably the last anime that every anime fan either watched, or had a very strong reason not to watch."

The manga reached its final volume this month, and as fans are saying goodbye to the series, they're also revisiting some uncomfortable, and unresolved conversations about what the story is all about.

When Attack on Titan's anime adaptation came out in the summer of 2012, it was at the beginning of a shift in culture for anime. Prior to that moment, anime wasn't very accessible other than to people well versed in internet piracy, or had enough of a disposable income to buy expensive DVDs if the series they were interested in ended up being licensed in America at all. But by 2012, the world of streaming video had caught up with the world of anime in the west. Crunchyroll, which had begun to air series simultaneously with their schedule in Japan starting in 2008, had already had a hit on its hands that year with Sword Art Online, and Attack on Titan would go even further than that. Attack on Titan would catapult anime into the mainstream in a way few other series have been able to outside of Japan, at least not since Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon would air on cable television in the decades prior.

The premise of Attack on Titan is so enticing that I was completely unsurprised that the show was a smash hit when it premiered. The show takes place in a world where the last of humanity is living in a walled city, surrounded by giant human shaped creatures called Titans who live outside the walls. Titans love to eat humans—not even for sustenance, just for fun—so the people inside the walls live in fear of those walls being breached. In the first episode, they are.

It's one of the best opening episodes of an anime, ever. I remember watching it, and then inviting multiple groups of people over to try to get them to watch it with me too.

Image source: Funimation

The discomfort with the story of Attack on Titan began in earnest when the manga revealed where the Titans come from. When the lead character Eren Yaeger first left home to join the military and fight Titans, his father gave him a key to his basement, saying that he should return to investigate it when it's safe. In the basement there are books that reveal that the outside world isn't uninhabited at all, and that the Eldians, the race to which Eren and his father belong, are being kept in ghettos in a fascist society where they wear armbands to identify themselves amongst their oppressors, the Marleyans.

Although the Eldians are portrayed as being subjugated in the present day, in the past they are presented as oppressors themselves, and for some Eldians, the long term goal of all the Titan nonsense is to create a new world order.

"It should be uncontroversial to say that to a certain degree, Attack on Titan is about fascism because, I mean, they have coded Jewish ghetto," Thew said. "I think, given the resurgence of fascism globally in the real world, you can expect to see elements of that seeping into popular culture."

To some fans, it all feels a little too close to the broad arc of most antisemitic conspiracy theories, which say that the Jews rule the world through an ancient conspiracy. In some variations of the theory, Jewish people already secretly run the world government, just like the Eldian Tybur family does in Marley, where they live as honorary Marleyans and secretly control the other noble families. This aspect of the series has made other parts of Attack on Titan stand out, especially the character of Dot Pixis. According to the artist and writer of the series, Hajime Isamaya, Pixis, a military general in Attack on Titan, was inspired by real world World War II general Akiyama Yoshifuru, who is considered a hero in Japan, but also has committed war crimes against China and Korea.

These themes have been pointed out before, with some even saying that the work itself is fascist and antisemetic. While Attack on Titan boasts a huge audience, it also has a noted and vocal right wing fanbase as well; the New Republic even called it “the Alt-Right’s Favorite Manga.”

Image source: Funimation

Trying to understand the line between the allegory that the manga’s creator Hajime Isayama is playing with and his own personal beliefs is where anime fans have gotten themselves tangled up. If you search "Attack on Titan antisemitism" on Google, the first three results are articles discussing the show's fascist themes. Also on the first page of results is the rant of a frustrated fan on Reddit, complaining about people on Twitter shitting on their favorite show.

The question, then, as the series wraps up, is figuring out how to engage with it, and figuring out whether a show can deal with fascistic themes in the way it does without being fascistic and antisemitic itself. The manga’s creator Hajime Isayama, for his part, told the New Republic that he didn’t want to weigh in on the controversy, stating that “Being a writer, I believe it is impolite to instruct your readers the way of how to read your story.”

A big, recurring controversy in the fandom is figuring out how to discuss or even deal with these issues at all.

As a show, Attack on Titan has taken a position of reverence among anime fans. Even if you don't currently watch the show, or read the manga on which it is based, you've at least seen the iconography from the show, especially its military insignia, in the wild. For a lot of people this was their first anime, and their first introduction to a genre of fiction they love. It's the position that makes it uniquely difficult to criticize. In the case of Attack on Titan, not being able to discuss the issues in its fiction has led to a long simmering, never resolved conflict within the fandom itself.

At first glance, it would be easy just to dismiss Attack on Titan as being unambiguously pro-fascist. The anime plays into the militarism at the heart of the story; the show's first theme, a certified banger and classic meme, opens on the lyric "Are you prey? No, we are the hunters," sung in German.

"It’s important to note that the use of fascistic, war, or even Nazi imagery is not necessarily an endorsement of these ideas or regimes, as strange as it may sound," Joe Yang, who makes videos about anime at the YouTube channel Pause and Select, told Motherboard.

Both Yang and Brian Ruh, author of Stray Dog of Anime: The Films of Mamoru Oshii, suggested that multiple anime and manga series at least seemingly try to separate fascist iconography from the acts the horrifying regime committed. Whether they succeed—and whether this is even possible—is another question altogether. Yang noted that one of Isayama’s biggest influences is a visual novel called MuvLuv and its anime adaptation Schwarzesmarken, whose storyline includes an alternate universe German state that uses fascist imagery in its uniforms and also features a fictional version of the Stasi as characters.

"If you look up Schwarzesmarken and Muv-Luv Alternative, you can find images that are heavily reminiscent of the imagery you’d see in Attack on Titan," Yang said.

Image source: Funimation

Ruh cited the forward to one of Japanese critic Eiji Otsuka's books, Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan. Otsuka writes, "Why do [anime fans] feel that the war machines of Nazi Germany are 'beautiful'? In Japan, as compared to the West, there is a tendency to detatch criticism of Nazism and the Holocaust from the cultural items that they brought about."

"In this way, when something like Attack on Titan makes historical references it may not be with the intent to evoke a full comparison," Ruh said. "Whether it's wise or responsible for a popular artist with a global reach to play with history in such a manner is another matter entirely."

It should not be controversial to suggest that Attack on Titan includes fascist and antisemitic themes. What the fanbase and critics must grapple with is how to talk about them and whether the show is actively causing damage.

Thew told Motherboard that he hadn't totally caught up on Attack on Titan because he was kind of dreading unpacking its controversial politics, especially on his channel. Part of it is because talking about Attack on Titan and its relationship to fascism is so complicated. Another part of it is because the fandom has, by this point, dug in its heels.

"It's because this conversation keeps happening, but it's also not," Thew said. "There's some really good criticism of Attack on Titan, and I think it's important to criticize it, but a lot of people come at it strong and condemn it. That does as much to kill the conversation as people being like, 'shut the up about politics,' because it reinforces the argument that people are just trying to cancel this good show that you like for flimsy reasons."

Image source: Funimation

For a long time, anime fans had no way of knowing what their favorite writers and artists even looked like, let alone what they thought about the world. Because anime was, until recently, a niche culture, and one that has occasionally been unfairly maligned for being pornographic and violent, anime fans in general have avoided talking about the politics of their favorite shows.

"Some Anglophone and American anime fans say that politics in anime is too foreign to comprehend, I think that's a minority position. A lot more people these days seem to have some accurate knowledge about sociocultural politics in Japan, but in my experience they're equally likely to combine a dollop of knowledge about current circumstances in Japan with their own preconceptions about Japan and Japanese society," Andrea Horbinski, an independent scholar with a doctorate in new media studies and history, told Motherboard. "Ironically, while it's never been easier to access cultural and political discussions directly from Japan thanks to the internet, relying on their own preconceptions and only taking on board information that supports them definitely does keep anime fans in this position from appreciating the range of views in anime generally."

This doesn't just affect how fans view shows like Attack on Titan, but also how some anime fans might view shows that deal with feminist themes or LGBT content. According to Horbinski, some right wing fans of anime insist that certain kinds of political themes must be imported from western culture.

"[These fans] insist that feminism and trans people don't exist in Japan and that any anime depicting either is 'woke garbage' or similar. These fans are extremely angry at attempts to discuss the depiction of female characters in anime as something that could often use improvement, or the inclusion of trans characters period." Horbinski said. "They may cite 'evidence' to support their views that is wholly out of context, or they may just insist that their views about Japan are correct because they're correct. Attempts by Japanese feminists and LGBTQ activists to provide corrective information online do not go down well, particularly on Twitter."

Image source: Funimation

Given the global reach of shows like Attack on Titan, framing anime as something that is not, or should not, be influenced by culture outside of Japan doesn't make much sense.

"Anime does come from Japan, but it’s been a global medium for a very long time," Yang said. "The problem with understanding anime as a distinctly Japanese media with Japanese politics is that it makes very specific claims about Japaneseness, that it is only Japanese, that it is only the Japanese who can understand this, and that this somehow absolves the text of its messages."

Shutting down conversation about the inspirations for Attack on Titan, its themes, and how fascist imagery is used, and whether it enhances the story to use it in the way that Isamaya does, means that gaining deeper meaning from the text just stops being possible.

Given its popularity, Attack on Titan clearly resonates with the people who live here beyond just fans of anime who are deeply enmeshed in its culture. The attitudes that some fans of the show have about Japanese culture and its politics have been predominant in the fandom so far, but Attack on Titan is so much bigger than just an anime. It's a sign that anime's space in broader mainstream culture is changing. Maybe it's time for anime fans to put away old ideas about how to read and interpret this text, ideas about Japan just being too foreign to understand. Clearly, hundreds of thousands of Americans have watched Attack on Titan and seen something that they relate to.

"I think it does hold anime fans back, because aside from veering pretty close to Orientalism, it also arms them with excuses on why they don’t need to seriously grapple with the messages that certain texts can convey," Yang said. "If someone presumes a text is sexist simply because 'that’s how Japan is, you wouldn’t get it' not only does it ignore some of the subcultural connotations or history imbued in these signs, but it also speaks volumes about that utterer’s beliefs about an Othered, 'far off' Japan."

Everyone Loves Attack on Titan. So Why Does Everyone Hate Attack on Titan? syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[ruminativerabbi]

Selective Remembrance

Of all the various events of the last ten days, saying which will have the most lasting effect on our national character—or our nation’s image abroad or its sense of itself at home—would be, to say the very least, challenging. But saying which event of that same time period was the most grotesque is actually simple: surely, it would have to be the spectacle of so many eager to take sides loudly and vehemently in response to President Trump’s brief statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the United-Nations-sponsored memorial day scheduled each year since 2005 for January 27, the day in 1945 that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz.

The statement itself was innocuous enough. (I wonder how many of those who commented on it at such length and with such passion actually read it. Surely some…but also surely not all!) Because it was so brief, I would like to cite it here in its entirety:

It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.

Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. ‎ As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.

In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.

A Martian visiting Earth and being presented with these paragraphs would probably find them moving. A wave of horrific violence, correctly characterized as one characterized by unfathomable depravity, engulfed the world and took the lives of countless innocents. Yet even in the context of such horror, there were those who chose to risk their lives to save at least some who would otherwise have surely been killed. And in response to those two thoughts—the loss of the many and the heroism of the few—our national leader pledges to devote both his years in office—and the rest of his life—to the effort of guaranteeing that the forces of evil never triumph over the powers of good, and that tolerance and love prevail in their place.

The response, however, was not as the President had surely expected or wished, and for one single reason: the omission of the detail that the primary victims of Nazi genocide were Jews, not “just” innocents chosen at random from the universe of the guiltless, struck many as vaguely sinister and not at all the kind of thing reasonably waved away as a function of mere naiveté. And that single fact—the President’s failure to identify the Jewish people by name in his statement—generated the storm of criticism that ensued, some of it thoughtful and some of it beyond shrill.  

As the days passed, new details emerged among which the most arresting was that the statement, which I don’t suppose anyone imagined President Trump himself wrote, was actually penned for the President by Boris Epshteyn, once the ten-year-old child of Soviet Jewish émigrés to this country but now a White House special assistant. But the Jewish bona fides of the author’s statement did little to suppress the anger over the perceived insult. In some ways, in fact, it only made people who were already angry even angrier.

There is no doubt that the Jews were not the Nazis’ only victims and the numbers of non-Jewish victims are both numbing and appalling: half a million Serbs, almost two million Polish civilians, almost three million Ukrainians,  somewhere between 2 to 3 million Soviet P.O.W.s, a quarter of a million Romani, another quarter of a million mentally-handicapped individuals, and hundreds of thousands of others: gay people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, Catholic priests, and more than thirteen million Soviet citizens (including the 1.2 million people who died during the siege of Leningrad alone between 1941 and 1943). And yet…it is also true that it was only the Jews that were the intended victims of genocide itself, the term used to denote the intentional effort to annihilate an entire people and to leave no survivors at all.  And that is where things get confusing: it is surely so that the Germans never intended to murder every single Pole or every Soviet citizen, just to bring those nations to their knees by decimating the population and thus weakening the national resolve to resist German rule. (The situation of the mentally handicapped is more complex, since the Nazis probably did intend eventually to rid the world of mental illness by murdering the entire mentally ill population…and yet that program, called Aktion T4 because it was headquartered at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin, was in the end only used to kill German citizens and was not extended into occupied countries. Nor does it seem quite right to characterize mentally ill people as a nation that even could be the victim of genocide.)

And so we are left between a rock and a very hard place: not wishing to sound dismissive or unfeeling with respect to the countless non-Jewish victims of the Nazis, men, women, and children whose suffering was not only real but in many ways and details just as horrific as the misery inflicted on the Jews of Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe…but also not wishing to look past the fact that the Shoah itself—the Nazi war against the Jews—was a unique event both in world history and, needless to say, in Jewish history as well.

The figure of 11 million victims of the Nazis is probably incorrect—there is some evidence that Simon Wiesenthal came up with it himself without relying on the soundest of scholarship—but nitpicking about the number seems unworthy. (For a detailed account of that number and Simon Wiesenthal’s role in devising it, click here.) Nor is it a number without its own place in the history of Shoah memorialization: in establishing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, then-President Jimmy Carter made referenced to the 11 million victims of the Holocaust and there was, as I recall, no particularly vocal response at all. That figure appears all over the place as well, including as recently as last week, on the Facebook page of the Israel Defense Forces’ spokesperson’s unit. And I am personally aware of rabbis who regular reference the eleven-million victims of the Holocaust as though it would be unseemly to note the Jewish victims without folding the others into the batter so as not to appear concerned solely with Jewish suffering. I can follow that line of thinking easily. And the thought of turning the Shoah into some sort of ghoulish contest—and “ghoulish” would be to say the very least—to see who suffered more grievously or in larger numbers at the hands of the Nazis and those who chose to collaborate with them—the thought of entering into that kind of calculus of agony with other victims’ groups to see who wins the right to claim the more horrific fate under the Nazis seems revolting to me.

Under normal circumstances, no one would care. I myself, whose entire adult life has in a sense been guided by the self-imposed need fully and deeply to internalize the details of the Shoah and its deeply monitory message for my own generation and my children’s—even I can’t say with certainty that I would have reacted particularly negatively to the President’s remarks under normal circumstances. It was, I think I would have thought, impressive that the President even took note of Holocaust Remembrance Day, let alone bothered in the course of his first week in office to issue a formal statement in which he pledged to spend both the years of his presidency and the rest of his life after leaving office—a bit over the top, perhaps, but that’s what the man said—combatting the forces of evil exemplified by the Nazis.

But, of course, these are not normal times and we are not operating under normal circumstances. The presence among the White House staff of people who have been openly associated with anti-Semites, the open use of anti-Semitic slogans and graphic memes by the Trump campaign, the President’s own repeated, jarring use of the “America First” slogan in his Inaugural Address without any apparent awareness of the set of memories those words would awaken for an entire generation of Americans and particular for American Jews (for a brief history of the “America First” slogan, click here), and, most of all, the resurgence of the kind of rhetoric with respect to immigration that characterized our nation as its moral perigee during the FDR years when the gates remained shut even to children, let alone to adults, facing unfathomable torment and almost certain death—all of that provides the backdrop against which the President’s statement calls out to be read. And when considered against that background, the statement that the Martian I mentioned above would find both innocuous and moving, feels, to say the very least, unsettling.

I remember visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in 1977 and being shocked to discover that Anne’s Jewishness was left almost completely unmentioned in the displays on exhibit. That was my first experience of the Shoah universalized to the point of meaninglessness, of the effort to make the Shoah about oppression in general and not about anti-Semitism in its most extreme guise, of the notion that there was something at least slightly morally suspect in defining the Shoah as the apotheosis of rabid anti-Semitism and not, far less specifically, as an example of prejudice or extremism.  That was my first taste of that specific kind of anti-Jewishness, but not my last. I’d like to think that the President’s remarks were unfortunately but not maliciously phrased, that the omission of any reference to the Jewish people was a mere oversight by a naïve aide, that the larger concept that there even was a declaration is what we should be focusing on…and not on its specific wording. I’d like to think all those things! But whether that option will still be tenable a year from now—that is the real question for Jewish Americans—and for all fair-minded citizens—to contemplate as we move into the first months of the Trump administration.