#and that i should make a video essay lmao
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squuote · 5 months ago
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i wish more people made video essays talking about things they love. i love hearing people talk in depth about things they love, especially if its something new to me. like cool sure yeah you can talk about the history of something but like, maybe i wanna know your personal connection to it. maybe i wanna know what fascinated you to talk about it in the first place. many such wonders in the world, let me know why it tugs you to speak of it
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coffeeandcalligraphy · 7 months ago
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sorry I will drop this after today but I think it's so interesting that when I make writing posts/content geared toward helping writers feel better about their processes, helping writers feel less isolated/overwhelmed in the vast ecosystem of writing advice that exists online now, etc, the assumption is then that you can't do that AND also critically engage with writing craft. that is very revealing.
anyway my whole thing is centering joy in the process because that's not an easy thing to do in a capitalist context where it's assumed all artistic endeavours MUST monetarily meet the public eye because moneyyyyyy. & how I centre joy is by doing what I wanttttttt. my instinct will never be to commodify a craft I love.
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soulsintheashes · 10 months ago
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Finally keeping my word, I'll rant on every point. FULL SPOILER. Warning, I've got quite a lot to say
I'll do it several points at a time because they're all connected.
• watering down traits, general change in main cast's characterisation
• Letting characters feel emotions
• Showing too little saying too much
•Some changes that don't sense:
seriously, just think about at least one epithet you could describe that character as. none. we don't really know who these people are.
Sokka is only a little bit funny sometimes. And in some interview Ian Ousley said that while on set *he* tried to add funny lines in... So if this is the result WITH the added lines, what would it be without it?? Ian came off more as Sokka in the interviews than he did in the actual show... Here his only trait is wanting to be a good warrior/guardian of his village and being insecure when he can't do it well. Where's the humour, where's the creative problem solving and NATURAL LEADERSHIP SKILLS?!?!?! The key with OG Sokka is that not only does he take the responsibility of being the leader of protecting his village because his father told him to, but as the show progresses we see that he's naturally good at it too. His father wasn't putting him in a role he didn't want. In the live action, on the other hand, Sokka is put in this position despite his father thinking that he doesn't have the natural talent, and it becomes sort of a test for Sokka. He now has to figure how it all works and prove himself to his father and other men from his tribe that he can do it. So what will happen in the later seasons? So his fathers decision to put Sokka in charge and put this pressure on him worked because he learned all these things and is now a good leader??? What are we saying here? Why does Sokka have to be told that he's good at engineering and creative solutions vs it just coming to him naturally and he accepts it and takes it on as a part of him. Also, we're told that Sokka is more mature than Katara, to further the idea of him taking protecting the village too seriously and in the writers' heads he can't be taking it too seriously AND being immature at the same time. (I won't talk about how taking out Sokka's sexist to feminist arc is misunderstanding the cartoon and how it harms the Live Action, watch Jessie Gender's VIDEO PATIKRINT
So Katara is supposed to be immature but I literally can't name an instance were she would be acting immature. It's fine if they chose to switch these traits but come on, SHOW US. She's sooo bland. They took away her emotions, she doesn't ever get mad and raise her voice like she does in the original. I think the new writers feared that it would make her look 'hysterical' and be misogynistic of them but I think now is worse since she doesn't ever express her emotions, she's always one tone. In the original she got angry and shouted and in such an emotional state she accidentally waterbended, it just came out of her. AND WE SAW HOW POWERFUL SHE IS. She just needed to learn how to control it. Live action Katara wants to be a Waterbender but is honestly shit at it until Aang talks to her for half a minute and then she can do the move... I know it's supposed to be a bonding moment but it looks like she couldn't bend shit before a guy showed up and helped her. Then she cannot figure out another waterbending move until she talks to ANOTHER GUY (Jet) and then she can do it.... I'm frankly speechless, this is daylight sexism and the writers couldn't see it? The OG Katara is incredibly strong willed and set on being best at waterbending. The scenes from the original where she showed her determination towards it were cut in the live actions and not exchanged: her stealing the water scroll because her morals, though strong, are second to waterbending. So we don't see Katara as being determined to learn it, we just see her as frusturated when she can't master a move. So we don't ever get to think that she's determined, we just think she can't learn and we've not seen her potential (accidental bending)
Aang. I really don't like the wise kid aangle they took (haha aang-angle, get it? lol). it's like they couldn't decide between that and the goofy and from the original, and instead, they didn't commit to either. just because he feels big, difficult emotions in the original doesn't mean he's very serious. Live Action Aang is constantly spewing motivational speeches about how serious it is to be the avatar, but like,, why? as in what changed since 100 years ago when he said he doesn't want the responsibility? that he's just a goofy kid. WE'RE NOT SHOWN THAT HE'S EVER GOOFY. Maybe that, but at Kyoshi Island, but it's such a one-off, we don't feel that that's what he truly is. And we're said that he didn't really listen to what the monks said, BUT HE HAD BECOME THE MASTER OF AIRBENDING SOMEHOW. And then he's spewing all these tips to Katara like.. are you just a kid, or are you wise old man in a 12yo's body. What the hell was up with that one scene where Aang said that what he's always struggled with was CONTAINING his power?? Isn't that taking power off the Avatar State when even outside it, he can not control himself? It's also just dumb but idk how to explain it in smarter terms. Like he's inately a danger to everyone around him. Did the writers take this from Aang burning Katara in the original because he's impatient?
A change I really didn't like is Aang being told he's the Avatar on the day of the comet. I didn't like that we didn't get to see other kid's reaction to him. Because ultimately, why he didn't like being the avatar, in the original, was that it isolated him from his friends and didn't let him be a goofy kid as much as he wanted (kids didn't play with him anymore but also he was under a strict training schedule) so when they wanted to take what's left from him he couldn't take it. (it ties in to how he wasn't willing to let go of his relationship to the gaang and esp. katara in season 3, i think, with that chakra master - being the avatar already cost his closest people 100 years ago). So in the Live Action, without the time Aang spend trying to adjust to it, it feels hot headed to lash out, he doesn't yet know what it could cost him. And i didn't like that he didn't run away but it would've been even worse if he'd just run after one conversation about it. BUT not having Aang deal with the guilt that comes from abandoning his people when they needed him most TAKES AWAY THE DEPTH FROM HIS CHARACTER. He doesn't need to deal with such difficult emotions anymore. I think I said the least about Aang but I truly don't know him enough, who is this person? Oh and Aang 'showing his care for Katara' by asking her not to fight?? Where has 'I'm saving the world with my friends' gone? That's so unlike what Live Action Aang has been about, not to mention that by agreeing with Paku he's disrespecting Katara.
• What I mean by child actor voice: it's the intonation. Especially how he raises instead of lowering his voice at the end of a sentence. I feel like that's when you think ppl talk when you're getting into acting, but it's not exactly. It's not just child actors who do that. I don't really know how to explain it.
• Making characters flawed for no reason,
•Changes that make no sense
Bumi: what the hell. Why did he suddenly hate Aang? Wasn't the point of his illogical tests in the original for Aang to guess that only Bumi could think of such stuff? And what the hell is he accomplishing by putting Aang in these situations then? (I also think they ended way too quickly, that episode was cramming in too much stuff) When they said right away that it's Bumi, I thought they won't do the trials anymore AND I WAS COMPLETELY FINE WITH IT. But i guess writers thought we would he upset without any tests from Bumi.
HAKODA (Sokka and Katara's dad): (it's been 7 years since i last watched seasons 2 and 3 but) wasn't Hakoda like the best dad? Great leader and VERY PROUD OF HIS CHILDREN??? What the hell? Why give Sokka daddy issues? Why massacre a great character?? I don't understand the point of all that thing. Why did they need to give Sokka an insecurity? It hurts to see Hakoda like this, he would never say the things Live Action Hakoda said.
• Where's the 'mastering the elements' part?:
At the end of episode 2, the gaang start heading to the North Pole because Avatar Kyoshi saw a vision that it's in danger. And then they say (paraphrasing) 'Oh yeah, there's waterbending masters there, Aang could learn to waterbend' ... like.. hello? where were you planning on heading next if you hadn't learned about the vision?? And then Aang doesn't even try to learn anything from Katara or her scroll before they get there. Probably because the show was so rushing and didn't give them calm moments where Aang could take time to learn to waterbend.
• THIS IS NOT HOW BEING PROGRESSIVE WORKS:
Sokka's sexist to feminist arc. One thing we really lack these days is a little push on CHANGE. We dub people sexist or homophobic but PEOPLE CAN LEARN AND GROW and it's really important to show that. That not every sexist and homophobe, etc etc is a lost cause. We don't gain allies by dubing people awful and not letting them change and grow.
KATARA. It's okay to have Katara not be self taught!! It's okay to have her learn from Paku. And Honestly, I don't even think she's as good as she could've been if she trained with Paku. Also, their fight scene maybe wasn't as intense as I hoped, like, her hair fell apart way too quickly, it didn't feel like it symbolized a shift from showing her skills to giving her all in this now or never, almost life and death situation.
SUKI. Why did she look like she's sort of regretful to have been too harsh ok Sokka for not letting him win? Why is the storyline of women needing to become softer so common? What the fuck? Also, it sucks that they didn't put Sokka in Kyoshi Warrior garb, I feel like it's disrespectful for a man to go into a woman's field and not do their rituals. All of them train with costumes and make up on. Why not him? (Watch Jessie Gender's vis for more on that, it's so good)
YUE. I think the writers thought they were giving her agency by having her refuse her arranged marriage and choosing to give her life back to the spirits (and not her father seeing a vision of it when she was little, implying that she had no choice in it?? their opinion, probably).
● Makes no sense:
Katara and Sokka never see Aang call on Appa to fly, so how do they know how to call on him? Why didn't they just take that scene straight from the original ab their boat breaking and appa being right there. why did Appa have to wake up later?
Zuko and Iroh didn't give June nothing to go off of to find Aang HOW DID SHE KNOW THAT BIT OF FABRIC WAS HIS?!?!
• What was okay :
I wish Zuko was shown more as a hot headed villain a bit more to make his character arc more drastic in the coming seasons, but it's fine. And whoever says Jet's actor should've played him bc he's hotter, I think y'all are just a little shocked by the hair, which is kind of the point
Iroh, too, is fine. I was thrown off at first by him having a different characterisation but in time since I've accepted that that's just what this adaptation is.
Maybe contraversial but I almost like the movie that must not be named's tattoos than these. it just felt so cartoony how blue they were
• What I liked !! :
That scene where men in some kind of a tavern share where they saw the avatar and it's all the places from the episodes they cut, that was very cute!! I didn't mind that pandering to og fans at all.
Ty Lee and Mai weren't bad, actually. Mai's actress did such a good job with the voice. And Ty Lee was as bubbly as the script let her.
Quick notes on Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Live Action (No spoilers)
Watering down of character traits, leaves them strangers to the audience
Characters speak with each other too much yet say too little.
Speaking so much but showing too little
Making good characters be "flawed" for no reason
The main plot of the OG show/season - to learn how to bend the elements, takes a backseat for some reason.
In fear of being problematic and in ambition to seem progressive, they made changes that simply make the story seem lacking and dishonest. It feels so forced.
Cast: Weird age gap between Aang and Katara's actors, knowing what happens later in the original. Ian Ousley might not even be Native. Gordon Cormier suffers from child actor tone of line delivery (not bashing a child, I'm sure he'll grow out of it but for now it's a bit annoying bc I'm so aware that it's an actor saying lines)
TOO DARK. More light and saturation, pleasee
The CGI was good, The sets look reallllyyy cool, I wanna go there. And the costumes are well designed even if they look too new, right off the rack.
Yue's wig was so awful it deserves a separate point.
Can we please let characters have emotions and actually deal with them?
Sometime plain illogical changes or plot from the writers
I can give full spoiler examples for all of the points, I just wanted to make this short. Just say a word and I'll rant
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miralyk · 1 year ago
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YOU WERE SEVEN WHEN YOU PLAYED PROTOTYPE?
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basically, yeah,
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juniperhillpatient · 1 year ago
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as soon as a horror essayist starts talking about how depicting some horrific topics is just “in poor taste” or “offends people’s sensibilities too much” & thus specific horrific themes of any given nature shouldn’t be addressed in horror well. I lose all interest anyway even if the rest of what the person was saying was interesting
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senshisdaughter · 5 months ago
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I FEEL SO GROSS TYPING THIS im sorry queen but they can never make me hate you, but i got to get into the teruhashi haters tiktoks heads to nake this fucking essay
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fitzrove · 1 year ago
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Not to be shady but I think I've lost interest in a youtuber because of their bad musical opinions XD
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thursdayg1rl · 2 years ago
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okay at least I sorted out my work experience. now just the personal statement
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blakquill · 5 months ago
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This is mostly talking about the ending, where Al brings Ed back and then immediately Ed sacrifices himself to bring Al back btw but there is more to it. And its not me saying BH Ed is better than 03 Ed bc hes so much more of a good boy or whatever. I think that both Eds in both series are very complex characters and none of this is truly black and white but it also highlights how there is a turning point that happens in both shows that put each Ed on to opposite ends of the same coin.
In 03 its Greeds death by Ed hands
In BH its Ed digging up the failed human transmutation
03 Ed does try to do more for the greater good because their actions arent alone in a vaccum and they do affect others. And he acknowledges this in that talk with mustang in the car towards the later part of the series. But fundamentally, all of Eds biggest acts in 2003 are selflishly lead and pushed by his own guilt. Ones that he covers up with other reasons that arent what he truly believes. Killing Sloth and Stopping Dante are the biggest examples here besides the ending.
The Ending of the 2003 Anime also shows that he never truly learned from his mistakes. After Al brings him back, not only using the stone but himself to make sure his brother gets to live when all he was trying to do was protect him, Ed undermines that choice completely and uses himself to bring Al back anyway.
In 2003 we know exactly what can happen to a failed human transmutation, Ed knows exactly what can happen. Yet he does so anyway, because he couldn't bare to live in a world without Al, knowing that Al gave everything for him. He had failed his little brother, the one person who he had failed and had been trying to make it up to. He couldn't bare the weight of that so he decided to sacrifice himself to get Al back anyway.
Al wanted Ed to live, so he gave everything for it to happen. Ed decided to negate Als choice and basically kill himself so Al could live. Both very Selfish choices by the brothers and showed that they never really learned from the mistakes they had made.
Ed ended up in a World without his brother, a world he never wanted to be in but was forced into regardless. Al is 12 again with almost no memories of the adventurous life he had with his brother, stuck in a world thats moved on but to him he is still the same. Karmatic fates delivered from the gates once again. They both couldve ended up dead, but to the elrics i think that this one is worse than that.
For the comparisons sake. In BH we have Al unbinding his soul from the Armor so Ed could get his arm back and defeat Father. After the fight Ed rushes to the armor thats lifeless. He is given an opportunity from Hohenheim, who knows he dying soon anyway, to use his life as the toll to get Al back and ed refuses so simply because of the one conversation Ed and Al have (iirc after Ed comes back from xerxes and had dug up their failed human transmutation) where they agree to buckle down on their principles and not use anyone but themselves to get their bodies back. Its also why and how Ed comes up with the idea to use his gate of truth as payment.
TLDR: If 03 Ed had a stone, there in that ballroom, he wouldve used it in a heartbeat to get Al back while BH Ed refused to use the stone multiple times even when he lost Al. And thats really the key difference i wanted to point out.
I feel like people forget that the biggest difference between Ed in the 2003 Anime and Ed in Brotherhood is that 03 Ed stays extremely selfish throughout while in BH Ed learns to be Selfless
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jingler · 2 months ago
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Wizard101 Pov: you're scrolling on spiralblr some point around arc 2
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👀 lail-brighteyes Follow
I'm never going on a field trip again THEY PUT ME IN A FUCKIBG ZOO
🌈 gayrizzleheim Follow
A field trip to a zoo doesn't seem too bad??
👀 lail-brighteyes Follow
No you misheard me. I'm not at the zoo, I'm in the zoo. As in, I'm in one of the cages and people are taking pictures of me.
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🏡 chillin-like-a-titon Follow
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Can there stop being attacks on the spiral for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES????
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✅️ wiz-polls-daily Follow
8,341 notes
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🪦 is-malistaire-dead-yet Follow
YES.
🪦 is-malistaire-dead-yet Follow
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME
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🌋 spawnofhellhound Follow
Idk if I'm just dumb but I truly don't understand colonization in the spiral. Like you travel through time and space and through the stars and find an entirely different world doing just fine and you say, "that's mine now" ???????
🕶 beyondbonetts-deactivated
spiralblr simplifying and overexageratting other worlds' problems. why am I not surprised.
🐠 luckyhooker Follow
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🕶 beyondbonetts-deactivated
NOT WHAT WE'RE CALLED
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⚰️ wolf-deathsinger Follow
stopped by the back of ravenwood for the first time in a while and malorn ashthorn was there still lmao I guess it makes sense for the younger students to be taught there so they don't have to go all the way to nightside but what a flashback
☠️ malice-and-ash Follow
If you think I'm mentally prepared to take on the real world after Ravenswood you got another thing coming. I'm guarding that pit til I die.
⚰️ wolf-deathsinger Follow
ok first of all didnt know you have spiralblr hi second of all does....does ambrose know you're still squatting there teaching the younger students?
☠️ malice-and-ash Follow
Titan knows. I don't think that man leaves his office. I get a sack of gold each month but I think gamma is in charge of finance.
🧙‍♂️ wizardstrong456 Follow
The owl? That's why my student loans got fucked up 🤦‍♂️
🪸 coral-oceanswimmer Follow
ew, what is a specieist doing here
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🕶 beyondbonetts-deactivated
I am sick and tired of all you pretend activists calling me marleyboner. It's literally a slur. Idc if you think it's funny to shit on worlds you deem ~problematic~ but disrespecting an entire world's name like that is unacceptable.
🪩 spiral-gayte Follow
this you?
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👑 amul3twh0re Follow
i love posts where you can see exactly why the op is deactivated
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🦀 underdaseamen Follow
listen i have nothing against wizards visiting celestia but if you do can you please use a mount that makes sense for the area. yall have no idea how terrifying it is when you leave your house with your crab friends and a fucking horse starts swimming toward you.
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🐷 randolf-spellshine Follow
about to go fight this wizard in the spiral cup ill post the video later
🐷 randolf-spellshine Follow
i got my ass beat bruh im not posting that shit
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🦡 baddestbadger-inavalon Follow
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🦋 ladyorielfan23 Follow
Why we should have expected the y**ng w*z*rd destroying Azteca (part 1)
yw crit under the cut
i have to put something here but i do not have the energy to write an entire essay from ladyorielfan23's perspective so imagine a super angry rant here about how problematic the young wizard is omg why would you say that ladyorielfan23 also my apologies for fucking up the lore in the last dashboard simulator i have no idea what this game's plot is
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thedissonantverses · 12 days ago
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Me: “Veilguard is a great Dragon Age game across the board.”
Some rando somewhere: “You just refuse to acknowledge my totally genuine grief over what could have been! Joplin definitely would have been a good game and not a cash-grabbing piece of garbage. This isn’t an absurdly disproportionate response or anything. I don’t know how making video games work and that’s your fault. The artbook!!!!!!!!!”
Another rando: “Ugh I wish VG positive people would admit it’s a flawed game and validate our overly vitriolic and reductive critiques that we won’t apply to the other games and is like totally good analysis. If they just read one of my bad essays I’m sure they’d get it finally(I have and I don’t). Fuck capital letters.”
Some knob: “Guess I gotta be racist to you now. You have the media literacy of a squid. Solas went from a morally grey antagonist in Inquisition to a morally grey antagonist in Veilguard and that’s bad inconsistent writing and WE SHOULD HAVE TORN DOWN THE VEIL.” (This actually happened lmao)
People that need to touch grass: “Neve should have been racist. The lore is sanitized. VG absolutely doesn’t touch on dark themes and topics. They should have called my elf slurs!! WHERES THE SLAVERY. There’s literally multiple plot lines about it but I wasn’t paying attention and did Neve just fucking look at Lucanis????”
Anyways like my wise friend @taashyvashedan said here’s to being a toxic positivity type of fan I guess lmao. Gonna go be gay in Thedas today.
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thankskenpenders · 1 year ago
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Happy new year, everyone! Welcome to 2024, the year that will mark the 10th anniversary of Thanks Ken Penders. I'd like to go over my plans for the blog for this year.
First of all: in the very near future, I'll have a post with my thoughts on Sonic Dream Team, and I'm sure I'll write one last Sonic Prime review once the final episodes drop on the 11th. I've also been sitting on an unfinished piece about the Sonic LEGO sets. I wanted this to be longer and more detailed piece that not only reviewed the sets but also went into the weird disconnect between homogenized image of Sonic the Brand and the actual fiction it's based off of, but it'll probably end up getting cut down a lot just so I can put something out. Let's just say I did a fun little thing with one of the sets.
Second: yes, I would like to return to regular TKP updates this year. As I've said many times, I wanted to do this in 2023, but I've been suffering from creative burnout after finishing SLARPG and have generally been unable to focus on any of my creative goals this past year. I'm hoping that this year will be better and I'll be able to get back into the swing of covering Archie Sonic issues. Even doing one issue every week or so would be vastly preferable to continuing the hiatus. I'm still only halfway done!! But aside from burnout, my other main hurdle is that I need to reread my own archive to refresh myself on all these things after nearly three years away. This will take some time.
The thing is, though, this year I'll have an extra incentive to go back through my previous writing and brush up on all things Archie Sonic. Because you see...
I've decided that I want to make a video essay about Penders. The comics, the copyright battle, The Lara-Su Chronicles, everything.
The why
I've thought about doing this before, but I never committed to the idea. I was too busy with gamedev, or I thought it'd end up being too long, or I figured that there were already enough videos on the subject, or I just lacked confidence in my ability to put together a video essay. So I told myself it wasn't meant to be, and let the multiple YouTubers who have cited me as a source on their own Penders videos fill that void.
Recently, though, a few things have happened that have convinced me it might be time. For one, YouTube video essays/media retrospectives/etc. are just getting longer and longer. When Quinton Reviews is out here doing 21 hours of videos on Sam & Cat, a subpar Nick sitcom that only lasted one season, I don't feel so crazy for wanting to make a video about several hundred comic books and two lawsuits that'd be at least an hour or two long lmao. Admittedly, I've also been self-conscious about doing a long video essay like this as a trans woman who has yet to do any vocal training. But these days I feel like I see a lot more transfem YouTubers who have done little to no vocal training, and that's given me more confidence on that front.
But the big one was Hbomberguy's recent plagiarism video. As I sat there watching it, I kept thinking about the time I found a CBR article that was just a crude 800 word summary of my two previous articles on Penders, published by a CBR writer who's put out over 4000 articles since 2019. If I've already been plagiarized before, and my writing is so frequently passed around as a go-to source on Archie Sonic drama, then I wouldn't be shocked if there were YouTubers out there straight up just plagiarizing me. I don't watch other peoples' videos on Archie Sonic, so I'd never know! So if people are just gonna paraphrase me when covering these topics anyway, why not take matters into my own hands and make what I would consider to be the definitive video on the subject? If hacks like James Somerton and iilluminaughtii can churn out these shitty video essays and people will still watch them, surely it can't be that impossible to make my own, right? (And also, uh, Hbomb literally told me I should make the video lol. If you're reading this, thanks for the encouragement.)
The what, how, and when
So here's the plan.
Part of this video essay will be an adaptation of my Medium article on the recurring themes of Ken's Archie Sonic run, with its content touched up and expanded upon. There were a few things I skimmed over in the article because I didn't want it to get too long, but again, people are out here watching ten hour videos about bad Nickelodeon sitcoms now. I can get away with elaborating a little more. I can add a few paragraphs talking about the Chaos Knuckles arc, or throw in a little more historical context I've discovered in the years since.
After covering the comics, the back half(-ish?) of the video will be dedicated to the copyright battles and their ensuing controversies, trying to give an accurate picture of what actually went down, the sheer scale of how bad Archie fucked up, and what our takeaways should be. This will have some similarities to my New York Magazine article on the subject, but I'll be rewriting it from scratch. I REALLY had to keep things short for that article because I was already way over the expected word count, and my tone was a little more straight-laced than normal because I was trying to keep things Professional. I can riff more and insert more of my own opinions this time, like I normally would.
I'll inevitably have to touch on some of Ken's Bad Tweets when discussing things that have happened after the lawsuits, but I don't want the video to just devolve into a list of times people got mad at him on Twitter, so I'm gonna try to keep that to a minimum in favor of focusing on his actual work. Things like the Scourge the Speed Demon incident and his continued statements on certain characters' copyright statuses probably warrant mentioning, though. And finally, assuming that the book really does come out this summer, I would like the grand finale of the video to be about those first couple chapters of The Lara-Su Chronicles.
I don't currently know when this video will get done, but it'll probably be in the back half of the year, especially with me waiting for the book to either drop or get delayed yet again. But I've actually already started writing a bit of the script, and will keep chipping away at it for a while.
So, uh, yeah, look forward to that? Wish me luck?
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genericpuff · 1 year ago
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The Elephant in the Room - Queer Erasure and Westernization in Lore Olympus (and all its horrid stepchildren)
This is one people have been asking me for a while now, and I've been waiting for the right inspiration to hit, as is required for my ADHD hyperfixation-fueled rants. After recently watching a video that did an objective review of Cait Corrain's Crown of Starlight, I felt now was the time, because Crown of Starlight effectively proves exactly what Lore Olympus - and other Greek myth interpretations like it - has issues with.
And I want to preface this post with one question - why do we keep getting these Greek myth adaptations written by queer women that still wind up perpetuating toxic heteronormative culture?
Buckle up, because this one's HEFTY.
In that aforementioned review of A Crown of Starlight, there were a lot of points that came up about how Cait wrote the female protagonist - Ariadne, wife of Dionysus - where I immediately stopped and went, "Wait, this sounds awfully familiar."
It should be mentioned briefly for anyone who's unaware - Cait Corrain is an author who was recently (and still) under fire for using sock puppet accounts on GoodReads to intentionally sabotage the ratings of other debut authors, many of whom were her own peers or from the same publishing imprint as her (Del Rey), and most of whom were POC. I mentioned in that previous essay that I just linked that Cait Corrain is a fan of Lore Olympus and decided to give it 5 star ratings from these alt accounts, not just de-legitimizing the reputation of the books she bombed, but also the ones that she praised (including her own book, because of course she had to leave an obvious calling card LMAO). I felt it necessary to tie Cait into my discussion of white feminism in LO and its fanbase because people like Cait are exactly who we're talking about when we dissect the intent and consequences of LO's writing - much of its brand of "feminism" seems to only be catered to a specific kind of woman (i.e. white women who fetishize queer people/relationships) and seem to encourage/embrace violence towards women if those women aren't "behaving correctly" or just aren't fortunate enough to be white and rich - and so Cait choosing to give Lore Olympus 5 stars in her hate-raiding and even have it visibly in the background of her headshot photos was... not exactly disproving my argument that these are the types of people LO caters to and encourages, to say the least.
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But then I watched Read with Rachel's "Did It Deserve 1 Star" review of Crown of Starlight and it cemented my assumptions and concerns regarding Cait's intentions and influences even more.
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As a brief tangent, I've read A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Claire. It very obviously is using Lore Olympus as its blueprints, but it's not super obvious that if you didn't read Lore Olympus or weren't aware of it, you probably wouldn't notice. It's still not a great book on its own, it's riddled with writing problems, but at least it can call itself its own thing to some degree.
Crown of Starlight is just blatant Lore Olympus fanfiction pretending to be original, even down to its marketing (which I'll get to shortly) but swapping out Hades and Persephone with Dionysus and Ariadne, and setting the entire story in space. Why is it in space? There doesn't seem to be any actual necessary reason for this, it just is, go with it. I'd be willing to accept this because changing up the setting of pre-existing stories can be fun (god knows I loved the premise enough of Lore Olympus being a modern day Greek myth retelling that I had to go and make my own version of it that's still in that modern setting) but as RWR says in her review:
"... we're told that it's the 'island' of Crete, but then we talk about commbands, airlocks, [holo-shields] and it wasn't really written in a way that I felt meshed 'Greek retelling' and 'sci-fi' in a cohesive way."
Needless to say, Crown of Starlight unsurprisingly suffers from the same problems Lore Olympus does, where it will try to "subvert" the original myths by changing their setting and characters and then doing absolutely nothing interesting with them to justify those changes.
To really drive my point home that Crown of Starlight is undoubtedly Lore Olympus fanfiction, Lore Olympus was literally used as a comparison point in Crown of Starlight's marketing which is a fair tactic to use to advertise to a specific niche or demographic, and while some have argued that Cait isn't technically the one to come up with that marketing jargon, it's made much more clear that she used that comparison herself when writing and pitching the book because it is quite literally just Lore Olympus with a different couple in space, right down to the main female protagonist being part of a purity cult. And of course it wouldn't be a bad Wattpad romance if it didn't have our main female protagonist Ariadne talking about how inconvenient her MASSIVE BREASTS are and of COURSE Ariadne is a poor innocent uwu babygirl who needs a man to come in and rescue her from the evil purity cult and of COURSE it hints at them eventually having raunchy sex just for it to wind up being milquetoast bondage and of COURSE it all just winds up taking traditionally queer characters and stories and turning them into this sanitized Disney-esque plotline where the boy and girl were always meant to be together and nothing else matters except their love-
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And that, at its core, really just screams "this is bad LO fanfiction". From the stylization of the book's writing which never outgrew its "adorkable fanfiction writing" phase-
"Realizing that I'm being gaslit by my entire world doesn't make it easier to deal with, but hey, at least I still have some part of my soul!" - an excerpt from Crown of Starlight quoted from RWR's review timestamp 13:03
-to the "creative" choices made to turn Ariadne into a chastity cult girl whose resolution is obviously going to be to have what's implied to be dirty raunchy sex just for it to be like... the most tame level one bondage stuff;
-to the classic "she breasted boobily down the stairs" focus on Ariadne's body and breasts and sex appeal that's being kept in check by that pesky purity club.
And that's really disappointing because I had seen people say, "Yeah, Cait did an awful thing and deserves to be removed from her publishing schedule, but it's a shame that that book was written by Cait because it's actually a really good book!" because now it's just making me even more sus of people's Greek myth adaption recommendations (I'm still mad at BookTok for convincing me that A Touch of Darkness was worth reading). All I could think while listening to some of the excerpts quoted by RWR was that if I didn't know about Cait Corrain and read Crown of Starlight blind, I'd undoubtedly assume it was being written by a heterocis guy... but it's in fact being written by a queer woman.
And this is where I segue into talking about the root of this problem, where the calls are really coming from - Lore Olympus and its erasure of queer identities and relationships, despite also being written by a queer woman who should know better.
I could think of no better character to help carry this essay than Eros.
Unlike many of the characters in LO that Rachel has managed to straightwash by changing their motives entirely or straight up changing their identity from the source material (ex. Zeus, Apollo, Crocus who was turned into a flower nymph, Dionysus and Achilles because they're both literally babies, the list goes on), Eros has largely remained the same on paper who had zero reason to not be queer within the story.
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Eros is still the god of love in this, he's still a guy and presumed to be an adult, but we NEVER see or explore him having relationships with anyone other than Psyche, aside from a brief mention of organizing orgies in the beginning that's used as a quick joke and then promptly never mentioned again.
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Just like with Crown of Starlight and A Touch of Darkness and all these other "dark romance" stories, it's that brand of "pretends to be sexually liberating but isn't actually" writing, where they'll briefly mention orgies or sex-related things and then beat around the bush or avoid involving them entirely like a kid at Sunday school who doesn't want to say the word "penis".
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(fr out of all the corny and awful slang for genitals I've seen used in stories like this, "a certain part of my anatomy" is definitely one of the most boring and stupid, like for god's sakes Hades you're both adults and at the beginning of this comic you thought she wanted to bang in the kitchen, why are you suddenly talking like a 7 year old boy LOL)
All that aside, while Eros might still be hinted at being queer and sex-positive, it's only as vaguely as possible so that the story can quickly move on to focus on him and Psyche or, better yet, Hades and Persephone. When Eros isn't deadset on finding Psyche, he's being the gay best friend for Persephone, who he has NO right having a friendship with when he introduced himself by intentionally getting her as drunk as possible with the intent of dumping her in Hades' car as per his mom's command. It's brushed off later as "well Aphrodite maaade him do it, for Psycheee!" but Eros still agreed to potentially put Persephone in danger over a relationship that had NOTHING to do with her and was also mostly his fault in its fallout (which Artemis calls him out for, but of course, like all the other times characters have called out the actual issues in the story they're inhabiting, they get brushed aside so that Persephone can talk about Hades):
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Now, the Eros and Psyche plotline is one I've talked about before here and not the focus of this essay so I'll keep this tangent brief, but it's absolutely wild to me that Rachel took a story about a woman going to the ends of the earth to prove her love for someone whose trust she broke (a common theme in a lot of Greek myth stories, such as the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) and turned it into... woman of color gets turned into a nymph slave for Aphrodite to 'test' Eros, a test that isn't clear at all in what it's trying to achieve, and wait hold up, didn't Eros actually fail that test by kissing Ampelus while completely unaware that it was Psyche-
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This is just that episode of Family Guy where Peter justifies emotionally cheating and eventually physically cheating on Lois because "well you were the phone sex lady the whole time so no harm done!", isn't it? (×﹏×)
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Anyways. It's all very convenient that the comic will hint at queer rep just to either have it be a constant question of whether or not they're actually queer (ex. Morpheus) OR to have it be promptly swept under the rug to make way for other characters/plot points. It's like when mongie tried to be "inclusive" by writing a stereotypical vaguely Asian character with no specific ethnicity just to get angry at her fanbase for calling her out on this that you can't just call a vaguely Asian character "representation" of anything (because Asia is MASSIVE and covers so many different ethnicities and languages and cultures).
Eros is only as gay as he needs to be to fill the role of "gay best friend" for Persephone.
Krokos is no longer a male lover of Hermes but a flower nymph created by Persephone because... apparently we can't dare imply that Hermes would be into anyone besides his unrequited childhood love, Persephone.
Achilles is introduced as a baby even though it makes no sense in the comic's own timeline where Odysseus is presumably already a well-known hero in Olympus, so much so that he was invited to the Panathenea.
Apollo is turned into a flat-out rapist who's only concerned with getting Persephone at all costs and when that doesn't work, he tries to get ANOTHER flower nymph (Daphne) who's actually genuinely interested in him (contrary to the original myth, there's that "swap it subversion" Rachel is known for) to cut her hair so she'll resemble Persephone more because we can't have a single plot point not resolve around Persephone.
Despite there being loads of genderbent characters already, Morpheus is supposedly the only one we're supposed to assume is specifically trans and not just a gender-flipped version of a Greek myth character. Why? Not because Rachel stated so explicitly, not because the comic has actually explored her identity as a trans woman, but because the readers just assumed it in good faith and Rachel was clearly fine with taking credit for trans representation that's only there via assumption (and only confirmed via her mods in Discord, which is... not how you establish canon information in your comic, Rachel.)
Hestia and Athena are part of a chastity club, until uh oh how convenient that they're secretly in a relationship with each other even though it further vilifies them and their morals, particularly Hestia who was promptly called out for being a hypocrite for taking Persephone's coat gifted to her from Hades while secretly being in a relationship the whole time. Not only does the Hestia and Athena relationship manage to commit queer erasure - of two gods who are considered icons in the aroace communities - but it also makes the only two lesbians in the story come across as assholes AND ON TOP OF THAT ALSO manages to somehow invalidate queer sex and relationships as being legitimate due to the even deeper implication that breaking their chastity vows "doesn't count" because it's not a male x female relationship. It's the 'ole poophole loophole all over again.
And then there's Artemis, who has MORE REASON THAN EVER TO BE IN THE PLOT but keeps being conveniently ignored. Her finding out about Hestia and Athena doesn't get any more screentime than her going "oh you're in a relationship, okay" , we never see her question the true intentions of TGOEM or what it means to her, we never see her have any opportunity to carve out her identity beyond just being Apollo's twin sister (it tries to at times, but then immediately goes nowhere with it, amounting to just poetic word salad), and she really just comes across as what a lot of people assume aroace people to be - alone and standoffish, because obviously someone who's nice and a good person would be in a relationship, there has to be a reason they don't want to have sex or fall in love, and that reason obviously has to be that they just hate everyone and want to be alone forever (¬_¬;) Then again, like many of the queer characters in LO, I don't know if I can definitively call her aroace because it's kept as vague as possible, and - going by Rachel's answers to these questions way back in her Tumblr era - apparently people can't be gay and ace at the same time-
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There are undoubtedly loads more examples that I could cover here but that goes for practically any essay I write about LO - the more you peel it apart, the more you start unearthing some really questionable and frankly mean-spirited stuff. Queer people feel largely ignored in LO, alongside many of its derivative offspring such as A Touch of Darkness and Crown of Starlight, and it really speaks to how so many people - queer women, no less - have somehow managed to bastardize and sanitize what were traditionally very queer stories with queer characters. It's like these people think "olden times" and can only get as far as "women were slaves and men were rich assholes". Like, yeah, okay, that was the case for many cultures, but not all of them, and for some of them it wasn't as clear cut as that, many had misogynist power struggles in them while also still celebrating women and queer people in their own way. Greek myth is full of stories of women being forced into marriage or being made the victims of assault, but many of them are supportive of women and their struggles, unlike works like LO that somehow manage to be less feminist and sympathetic to women and queer people than these works from thousands of years ago.
This is another topic that's surely meant for another post, but it really speaks not only to the straightwashing and whitewashing of Greek myth, but also the Westernizing of it. That's not to say Rachel Smythe and Cait Corrain and Scarlett St. Claire are intentionally trying to whitewash another culture's works here, but if you're raised predominantly on Western media, you're undoubtedly going to absentmindedly adopt ideas about society that are primarily molded around Western beliefs .
And this is apparent in LO, while Rachel is from New Zealand, you can tell she grew up on a lot of Western media and its influences are sorely showing through LO's worldbuilding, character designs, and narrative choices. That "modern setting" that I mentioned before is much less Greek and a lot more adjacent to The Kardashians which lends to the theories that most of the media that Rachel consumes is American. Rather than actually going to the effort of doing her research on Greek culture, she seems to just prefer defaulting to the easiest assumption of how modern society is across the board - a generic Los Angeles clone with big glass skyscrapers and pavement walkways. She rarely ever draws food or clothing from those time periods; despite this story being about gods she's spent so little time on the people who passed on the stories about those gods, the mortals, and the gods themselves rarely feel like gods, rather just like Hollywood celebrities covered in body paint. The clothing feels very generic and uninspired with often very little Greek influence, even though Greek clothing is designed around Mediterranean living which you could do a lot with, to such an egregiously Western degree that Hades and Persephone's wedding was Christian-coded. The food... well, there ISN'T any because as we've seen, like the stereotypical American child, Persephone apparently only wants chicken nuggies and Skittles for dinner, so we never see her eat; and not only do we not see Persephone eat, but Rachel weirdly tries to use Persephone's vegetarianism as some kind of anti-capitalist characterization when much of the Greek diet is predominantly vegetarian. It's NOT HARD or uncommon to be a vegetarian in Greece!
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(it looks like they're literally all eating the same thing so IDK what Hera is referring to here, it looks like they're all eating toast and lettuce LMAO)
All that's to say, much of LO - and the books like it that I've gone over here - are written with this idea that every culture - including the one that it's trying to adapt - was subject to the same ideas that Western culture lives by in the modern day - that being a vegetarian is "counterculture" in every culture, that the notion of sexual purity is enforced in the same way it's enforced in the Western education system (cough Christianity cough), that queer or otherwise "unconventional" relationships should stay inside the bedroom and not be seen. As much as Rachel claims she wants to "fight the patriarchy" and "deconstruct purity culture", all she winds up doing is reinforcing it through a Westernized lens, which is, as I've talked about before, very indicative of right-leaning white feminism and what it embraces and promotes - being a "good woman" who follows the rules and willingly becomes part of the system that's oppressing them because that's what "good women" do. Women who are confidant in their sexuality are evil and should be shunned for being "sluts". Women who are in relationships with other women "don't count" as real relationships the same way heteronormative relationships do, and cannot be trusted because they're likely trying to spread an agenda that's designed to brainwash heterocis women. Women should only aim to achieve marriage and their entire personality has to be built around their true love. Women are allowed to be kinky, but only as kinky as roleplaying the exact same gender structures that puts the man in a position to dominate a woman, and it should always and only ever be with her first love who she marries immediately, no one else.
This is exactly what the critics are getting at when they hold LO - and its creator - accountable for the messages it's been sending for five years to its audience of middle aged women and young girls. Having a demographic is fine, if this were just a comic for girls it would be fine, but it becomes a lot more problematic when that demographic is being fed toxic power fantasy stories based on a culture that's being gentrified and sanitized of all its original messaging and characterization right before our eyes. It feels blatantly misinformed from the very beginning in its intention to be a "feminist retelling" of Greek myth, because somehow Lore Olympus manages to be less feminist than these stories drafted and written by men from 2000+ years ago.
I opened this essay with a question: why do we keep getting these Greek myth adaptations written by queer women that still wind up perpetuating toxic heteronormative culture?
I think cases like these really highlight how deep the heteronormative brainwashing from childhood onward goes. That, despite these writers being queer or women, still manage to reinforce the same ideas and tropes and harmful predisposed notions that were designed to be used explicitly against queer people and women. These are things that we can't ever stop challenging, and asking, and truly deconstructing, because it runs deep in many of us who grew up on popular media even as innocent as Disney. Learning about more complex social concepts like sexism and misogyny and queerphobia doesn't automatically absolve us of those very same biases that have been both blatantly and subtly ingrained into us since childhood. All that said, Rachel being bisexual does not mean she's not capable of straightwashing; Cait Corrain being a queer debut author with a POC main character didn't stop them from targeting other POC debut authors at their own imprint; being part of any minority group or identifier does not automatically protect you from perpetuating the cycle that you, too, likely had enforced upon you at some point or another in your life. The fact that these creators and writers are still perpetuating that cycle to begin with is indicative of why it's a cycle at all - it takes work to break on a subconscious level because those cycles are specifically designed to target and hijack the subconscious.
At its worst, do you really think Lore Olympus can claim to be a feminist retelling that's "deconstructing purity culture" when the creator herself admittedly never fully identified or understood sexism until her mid-30's and has the audacity to say her audience is "harsh" on the female characters that she constantly vilifies through her own narrative?
"I feel like female characters in general, people will be a little harsher on them and sometimes way harsher on them, and I used to be like.. before I started writing the story and like making a story I was like yeah, sexism is not that bad, and [now] I was like oh it's bad. It's quite bad [laughs], so like, I don't know, I feel like the female characters in the story don't get so much of a pass. But this isn't consistent across the board, it's not all the time" - Rachel Smythe, in an interview with Girl Wonder Webtoon Podcast
If Lore Olympus truly was just a series meant to be for fun "no thoughts head empty" drama and spice, that would be fine. I've said it time and time before on this blog and I'll say it again: I wouldn't have an issue if Rachel was just writing a story exclusively revolving around heterocis men and women. I'm just frustrated and tired and annoyed that she keeps lying about it, and doubly so that this comic and its creator who claim to be "feminist" have inspired other people in the same headspace to continue to perpetuate that cycle through works that are clearly inspired by LO and never challenged the things LO promoted - violence towards "unconventional" women, violence towards POC, and erasure of queer people. And worst of all, for writers like Cait Corrain, it's more than just writing a really bad book with really bad messaging, it's going so far as intentionally targeting those same groups of people that are regularly vilified in works like LO - people who are just existing, who don't pose a threat to anyone, but had the misfortune of becoming the target of a white woman's insecurity.
I don't know what the answer to this problem is. I don't know what form the solution will come in, if any, to address the ongoing issues with Greek myth adaptions that are being sorely written through an "America as the default" point of view and praised for "rewriting the script of Greek mythology", quite literally cultural appropriation happening live right before our eyes all for the sake of cheap entertainment. Maybe it'll take the failings of works like Crown of Starlight to really get people talking about it. But so long as the roots of these works - such as Lore Olympus - are still being protected and marketed en masse by the same kinds of people who don't see the issue in Americanizing other cultures and their stories, then Lore Olympus and Crown of Starlight will not be the last ones to cause harm to the source material - and the cultures that source material is born from and a part of - they're taking from.
I opened this post with a question, and I'm going to close it with another to really leave it as food for thought. That question comes from another video that I'll link here for you to watch at your convenience that spends even more time diving into and discussing the nature of works like this that have seemingly attempted to "deconstruct" the very dogmas that they still wind up reinforcing all the same.
Does the romance genre have a white supremacy problem?
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(yes. yes, it does.)
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bonefall · 1 year ago
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So, I'm writing an essay on the whole STATE of misogyny in WC for one of my university classes, and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of things! No pressure of course, please feel free to say no!
A) Could I reference your good takes with appropriate harvard referencing and links back to your blog?
B) Are there any specific moments from the books that you think should be covered the most?
C) The end result will be a visual essay, so it's like those fun infographics people on Tumblr make on like ADHD and stuff, so when it's done, would you like to be tagged to read it?
(Sorry for anon, I'm nervous lmao, but if you'd be more comfortable I'll resend this off anon)
AAY good topic! You've got a lot to work with. Absolutely feel free to reference anything I've written, and tag me when you're done.
While you're here and about to write something so legitimate, I'm also going to recommend you check out Sunnyfall's video on gender in Warrior Cats. She breaks down the arcs into numbers, directly comparing the amount of lines mollies have to toms, and examining the archetypes women are usually allowed to be.
I think it's a must-have citation in a paper about WC misogyny.
...and, I think it's insightful to look at the WCRP Forum thread about the video. Note how the respondents immediately come into the thread to complain about how the video is too long so they didn't watch it, dismissing Sunnyfall as not being entertaining enough to hold their attention, even whining that she starts with statistics to prove her point, which I'm convinced she did exactly because they would have cried that she "had no evidence" if she didn't.
I am not a scholar, so I don't know how to document or prove that the books have an impact on the audience outside of anecdotes. But I think if you do write a section about fandom, it would be worth mentioning the in-universe and metatextual apologia for Ashfur and its reflection in the real world discourse, the authorial killing of Ferncloud because of fan complains, and the utter defensiveness against the discussion of misogyny you see outside of Tumblr.
You may also want to check out Cheek by Jowl, a collection of 8 essays about sexism in xenofiction by Ursula K. Le Guin. There's a very unique manifestation of authorial bias in animal fiction, having a lot to do with how the author views "the natural world," and it's worth understanding even though Warrior Cats are so heavily anthropomorphized.
So... Warrior Cats Misogyny
I think discussing individual instances can be helpful, but I'd implore you to keep in mind what's REALLY bad about WC's misogyny is framing and the bigger picture.
Bumble's death is shocking and insulting, but it's not just that she died. It's that the POV Gray Wing sees her as a fat, useless bitch who took his mate so she deserves to be dragged back to a domestic abuser, and he's right because the writers love him so much. It's that Bumble's torture and killing only factors into how it's going to hurt a man's reputation.
It's how Clear Sky hitting, emotionally manipulating, or killing the following women,
Bright Stream (pressured into leaving her home and family)
Storm (controlled her movements and yelled at her in public)
Misty (killed for land, children stolen)
Bumble (beaten unconscious, blamed nonsensically on a fox)
Alder (child abuse, hit when she refused to attack her brother)
Falling Feather (scratched on the face, subjected to public abuse and humiliation)
Tall Shadow (thrown into murderous crowd, attacked on-sight in heaven)
Rainswept Flower ("blacked out" in anger and murdered in cold blood)
Moth Flight (scratched on the face for saying denying medical treatment is mean, taken hostage in retaliation against mother for the death of his own child, which he caused)
Willow Tail (eyes gouged out for "stirring up trouble")
Is seen as totally understandable, forgivable, or not even questioned at all, when killing Gray Wing in an act of rage would have been "one step too far" with the ridiculous Star Line.
"Kill me and live with the memory, and then let the stars know it would only matter if a single one of your murder victims was a man."
It's the way that fathers who physically abuse their kids out of their ego (Clear Sky, Sandgorse, Crowfeather) aren't treated anywhere near the same level of narrative disgust and revulsion the series has for "bad moms", even if they're displaying symptoms of a post-partum mood disorder (depression, anxiety, and rage), an umbrella of mental illnesses 20% of all new mothers experience but are heavily stigmatized with (Sparkpelt, Palebird, Lizardstripe).
It's Crookedstar's Promise giving him two evil maternal figures in a single book, while bending over backwards to make every man in a position of power still look likeable in spite of the fact they're enabling Rainflower's abuse. Leader Hailstar is soso sorry that he has to change Stormkit's name for some reason, in spite of leaders being unaccountable dictators the other 99% of the time, and Deputy Shellheart functionally does nothing to stop his own son from being abused or even do much parenting before or after the fact.
It's the way men's parental struggles are seen sympathetically, and they don't have to "pay for it" like their female counterparts (Crookedstar's PPD vs Sparkpelt's PPD, how Daisy and Cinders are held responsible for Smoky and Whisper being deadbeats, Yellowfang's endless guilt for killing her son vs Onestar's purpose in life to kill his own), even to the point where a father doesn't have to have raised their kids at all to have a magical innate emotional connection to them (Tree's father Root, Tom the Wifebeater, Tigerstar and Hawkfrost).
It's less speaking lines and agency for female characters, being reduced to accessories in the lives of their mates and babies, women getting less diversity in their personalities, with even major ex-POV characters eventually becoming "sweet mom" tropes.
You could zoom in on any one of these examples and have an amoeba try to argue with you that "Oh THIS makes sense because X" or "Ah well my headcanon perfectly explains this thing" or "MY mother/girlfriend was abusive/toxic/neglectful and I've decided that you are personally attacking ME by having issues with how a character was written or utilized," but the beleaguered point,
That I keep trying to hammer in, over and over, across books worth of posts,
Is that these are trends. More than just a couple one-off examples. It's the fabric that has been woven over years, showing a lack of interest in, or even active prejudice of, women on behalf of the writers.
LONG STANDING trends, which have only gotten worse as the series progressed. From Yellowfang being harshly punished with a born evil son who ruins her life in TPB and the mistreatment of Squirrelpaw that begins in TNP, all the way up to the 7 Fridgenings of DOTC and Sparkpelt's PPD being a major character motivator for her son Nightheart.
So, I would stress that in your paper, and structure it less as "the Sparkpelt slide" and "the Yellowfang slide," and more as "The paternal vs maternal abuse" slide, and "the violence against women" slide. They're really big issues, there's tons of examples for each individual thing.
Anyway to leave off on a funny, look at this scene in Darkest Hour that I find unreasonably hilarious,
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"Everyone who matters to me; my truest friend, my sensible and loyal warrior, the wisest deputy I've ever known, and 2 women." -Firestar, glorious idiot
He can't even think of a single trait for either of them what the hell does "formidable pair" mean lmaooo, when I finished a reread about a year ago this line killed me on impact.
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jujumin-translates · 9 months ago
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★ Main Story | Act 13 - Budding Spring | Chapter 1 - New Prologue
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Towa: (So this is Veludo Station~. It’s smaller than I thought it’d be. The exit should be this way…)
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Towa: (Umm, the map app says…)
Towa: Yeah, over there.
· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·
Towa: So this is Veludo Way…
Towa: (This is the heartland of theater, the place with the highest concentration of theaters in all of Japan… all kinds of theater companies, both large and small, are based here.)
Towa: (I’ve only ever seen it in videos, but there really is theater no matter where you look.)
Towa: (It’s amazing that theater continues all the way down the street.)
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Towa: And just beyond that is where… the Holy Land…!
Towa: Calm down, calm down. Okay.
*Camera clicks*
Towa: (I’ll let the guys know…)
· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·
momo has entered the chat.
momo: At Veludo Way rn
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Iv: congratsss. haven’t seen where you are rn in a hot minute lol shiki: That’s Veludo Way? Kar: AI detected momo: But it’s legit! Kar: Kinda blurry tho shiki: Congrats on your long-awaited pilgrimage to the Holy Land! Happy for you! momo: Haven’t gotten to the Holy Land yet. Gotta calm down first Iv: lol you’ve gone all that way and still haven’t done that? momo: It’s called the Holy Land because it’s a sacred place that you can’t just wander into, so it’d be impolite to be too careless about it Kar: What’s with the sudden essay lmao Iv: bestie’s trying to hit the nerd count shiki: You’ve been working hard all this time to get to the Holy Land, so you should enjoy it to the fullest. momo: I’ll do that!
· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·
*Bump*
Towa: !?
???: “--Gh.”
Towa: Huh…
Towa: (He’s crouching down? I wonder if he’s okay… is it my fault for bumping into him…?)
???: “The hell are you doing?”
Towa: (Huh? That voice, I think I’ve heard it before…)
???: “C’mon, let me give you a hand.”
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Towa: …G-GOD-za’s Haruto Asuka and Shift Arakawa!?
Shift: “It’s no use~... I can’t walk~...”
Haruto: “You drank too much.”
Shift: “My life’s a mess… I can’t even take another step forward…”
Haruto: “Quit overreacting just because you two broke up!”
Towa: (Ah, could it be… this is Veludo Way’s specialty…)
Shift: “I’m not overreacting! I’m always stuck playing a supporting role. At best, I’m just here to be used. I’ll never have a starring role!”
Shift: “If I keep living like this, I’ll just be stuck as a supporting role in someone else’s life.”
Shift: “What’s even the point of living like this…?”
Haruto: “Then live your own life, not someone else’s. The reason you can’t do that is because you put others at the center as the starring role.”
Haruto: “You’re the leading role in your own life. You’re the one who gets to decide what kind of life you live.”
Shift: “I’m the starring role in my own life…”
Towa: (I can’t believe they can do theater like this without a script…)
Towa: (I’ve only ever seen videos of street acts, but they were doing it so naturally. Amazing…)
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Haruto: Thank you very much~!
Towa: --.
Shift: Past GOD-za performances are streaming until tomorrow! It’s only for a limited time, so don’t miss out!
*Applause*
· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·
Towa: (It was way too lucky of me to be able to see a street act done by GOD-za’s top two here…!)
Shift: Ah, sorry for bumpin’ into ya before.
Towa: !! No! Don’t worry about it!
Shift: See ya.
Haruto: Thanks for watching us~.
*Footsteps*
Towa: Haaah~... I should’ve taken a video…
Towa: (Veludo Way really is the place to see street acts done by a whole bunch of different theater companies.)
Towa: (Maybe I’ll see them too…)
Towa: (No way, it’d be impossible to have that kind of crazy luck two times in a row, but, but, what if I really did meet my oshi…)
Towa: --.
*Paper rustling*
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Towa: (It’s something that’s way too good to ever actually happen, but I’ve decided that in the unlikely event that I do meet him, I’m going to make sure I get him to autograph this.)
Towa: (My most treasured possession…)
Towa: Ah, wait, did I bring a pen to get his autograph…
Towa: (Huh, I don’t have it. Did I seriously forget it~?)
*Wind blows*
Towa: Ah--!
*Paper falls to the ground*
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???: …?
[ Next Part ⇢ ]
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teojira · 8 months ago
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[ᴍᴏɴꜱᴛᴇʀ ᴡʜᴏ ᴀᴛᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴛᴀʀ]
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ᴛᴇᴏᴊɪʀᴀ (ᴇꜱᴛ 2ᴋ24)
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《Introduction》 +
《! Please read me !》
¤ Hi! My name is Teddy and this blog as it says on the tin, is a multifandom blog! I'm into a wide range of characters and interests, so I'm sure I have something that'll strike your fancy!
¤ This is an 18+ blog. This is to keep me and you safe should you be a minor. Please stay away! I can't police you, but use common sense.
¤ I will not deal with discourse here, don't like what I write or who I write for? Block me and move on, I don't care.
¤ I am a woman person of color, no hatred towards ANY group is tolerated here. It will end in an IP address block.
¤ My interests fluctuates alot, I have severe adhd and some characters will get special treatment depending on which mood I am in!
¤ I'm always down to chat and make conversation but please remember I'm human and I have a job outside of tumblr, this is just a hobby for me! Please be kind and understanding.
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《RULES/GUIDELINES》
¤ Every character I will write romantic ideas for must be of age. Any minor will ONLY be platonic. (Exception being the tmnt brothers, they are aged up accordingly.)
¤I write comfort, fluff, angst, pretty much anything tbh.
¤ My own rule of thumb is that if a furry character is sentient, can consent and is of age, and speaks/thinks/acts like a human, it is akin to monster loving. (Harkness scale pretty much). I don't care for your take on it, block me if you disagree!
¤ I will not write nsfw if you are on anon, your age must be somewhere on your blog. I will delete it from my askbox.
¤ A please and a thank you go a long way!
¤ I usually write with she/her pronouns or gender neutral pronouns.
¤ I am not looking for critique, this is all for fun. This is a heavy boundary, I will block if you do this.
¤ NSFW will be tagged accordingly so you can black list, if I forget to tag something, kindly let me know. I am not responsible for your experience beyond that, act accordingly if I write something you don't like.
¤ Please include some details with your requests, such as character and a general idea on what you'd like me to write! Please don't write an essay in my ask box.
¤ Things I will not write: Pregnancy, Underage, harder kinks (Scat/Noncon/vore/piss), Character harming reader physically, Parenthood, character x character.
Not sure if I write something? Just shoot me a text!
¤ Do NOT share my writing anywhere else (Quotev, Ao3, wattpad, Tiktok). A Simple reblog is appreciated here and only on tumblr.
¤ Comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated! It's nice to know something I wrote was loved!
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And finally what we've all been waiting for, put your hands together for the :
《 Fandoms I write for》
Genshin impact
Honkai Star rail
Transformers
Tmnt
Monsterverse (platonic only for the Kaijus)
Planet of the apes (remake) (NO nsfw)
My hero academia (Dabi and Tomura only)
Demon slayer
Overwatch
Twisted wonderland
Devil may cry
Apex legends (Revenant only)
Fire emblem three houses
Puss in boots: the last wish (Death only)
Stranger things (Eddie Munson only)
Red dead redemption 2
The Wolf among us (Bigby only)
Five nights at freddys: Security Breach
Sonic (platonic for everyone except Shadow)
DC comics/ DCEU
Horror icons/slashers
Countless other video game characters probably lmao.
Though I write for many fandoms, I'm more comfortable with specific characters so I'll let you know if I'm comfortable enough to write for them!
Don't see a character you're sweet on? No worries, shoot me a text and I'll see if I know anything about them to whip something up for ya!
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ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ᴠᴇʀʏ ᴍᴜᴄʜ ꜰᴏʀ ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ʜᴏᴘᴇ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇᴀʀ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ʏᴏᴜ ꜱᴏᴏɴ!
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
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