#and the creator's own biases could be what are getting in the way of them writing what are frequently lady villains properly

[holdharmonysacred]

Also just saw a post having a giggle about Pearl and Vriska discourse and I think that like. If you want to try to seriously figure out why the hell that particular genre of discourse gets so bad - and hell, I’ll throw The Egg Guard in as the same genre of disk horse - then the big thing to look at is that all these characters tend to be Creator’s Pets. “Character did bad things” is almost never the actual problem, if the arguing goes in that direction it’ll be because the people making the arguments don��t know how to articulate things from a Doylist angle, the actual problem is pretty much always that Character is blatantly the creator’s favorite and the creator(s) cannot stop themselves from being self-indulgent. And that constant self-indulgence means they can’t bring themselves to Kill Their Darlings or approach the Shenanigans that Character is doing appropriately.

So you get this weird genre of character who constantly does really horrible shit to the rest of the work’s cast - horrible shit that frequently crosses the “this is too real and hits too close to home” boundary - and basically gets away with it and excused for their actions literally all the time and always hogs the spotlight and is just plain annoying if you don’t like that character. And a big part of this genre of creator favoritism is that the creators just can’t bring themselves to actually treat the more villainous characters in this genre like campy villains, so you don’t even get the fun kind of evil girlbossing. And it sucks, if you’re a writer, don’t do this shit. This is the exact kind of thing that the classic “kill your darlings” advice is meant to warn against, nothing good comes from writing like this.

[genericpuff]

i find it funny that one of rachel’s drawings of herself in the afterword that just went up is just fully persephone. is that something she does a lot?

Alright so I've been making it a general rule for myself to like, not harp on Rachel in any way outside of LO as much because frankly the horse is dead now and there's not much left to say outside of what can be analyzed in hindsight. I think despite everything I have to say about her and her work, she still deserves to get away from this nonsense and I don't wanna spend eternity hovering over her shoulder.

But the afterword was posted within the LO series and is clearly meant for readers of LO in the functioning of being an afterword so let's just call it fair game LOL

I will say, on the whole, it does feel very honest and sentimental and I can respect Rachel for taking the time to write out and illustrate her afterword in a way that was personal to both her and her fans. I can understand why she went at it from the angle that she did and I'm not gonna fault her for that.

But there's also something that feels deeply... disingenuous about her approach right from the starting gun. I will say, before I continue, that I'm well aware I am biased towards Rachel as a creator, and I fully acknowledge that I could very well be reading too much into things. This is just my opinion, take it with mountains of salt.

I can get looking back on your own childhood, your past self, whatever, and going "see! it all got better!" because sure! For a lot of creators like Rachel, it must be wild to look back on where they came from and there's a lot of sentimentality on expressing that through an afterword like this where she reflects on where she came from. Though she STILL didn't acknowledge her other comics outside of LO, I can understand if she wants to leave those skeletons in the closet.

But I feel like her drawing herself as a child who's being given an Eisner by her adult self and all that just feels like some gross attempt to disarm any criticism of her because "don't make fun of me, I'm just a sad lonely baby girl!"

She's not a child. Child Rachel didn't grossly misappropriate Greek myth into their own self-indulged vanity project. Child Rachel didn't claim herself a folklorist of a culture's works only to bastardize them completely. Child Rachel didn't create a hostile environment within her fanbase by bullying anyone who she perceived as a threat, sneaking into critical spaces to try and cause trouble, and writing her own clapbacks into her comic. Child Rachel didn't claim to be challenging misogyny and purity culture only to reinforce misogyny and purity culture through her own self-insert baby-virgin-gets-rescued-by-rich-tycoon power fantasy that regularly glorified abuse towards women and the lower class.

30-almost-40-year-old Rachel did though.

At best it comes across as really cringe sentimentality from a Greek-weeb (heh, greeboo) and goes to show how much Rachel inserted herself into Greek myth without ever absorbing its messages or cultural contexts, it was all about her and her feelings as a sad New Zealand girl with dyslexia who thought Persephone's story was about another sad girl being rescued from her "horrible childhood".

At worst it's an active attempt to play on people's heartstrings by drawing herself as a child who people will naturally not want to criticize. I don't want to assume she's doing it intentionally, I really don't want to leave her afterword on a bad foot, as I can definitely understand as both a creator and a person who struggled with learning disabilities in their own childhood how and why she wants to pay homage to her past and where she came from... but let's just say, as someone who's also gotten way too "lost in the sauce" concerning personal self-reflective projects, I think there's a lot to say about how this confirms that Rachel made LO entirely for herself, about herself, without any actual intention to respect the original myths, because she never truly separated them from herself when she was a child. And, in my humble opinion as someone who has Been There with the self-insert OC's and self-reflective angsty plotlines, I can fully attest to the fact that that's not fucking healthy. Even with personal projects, you NEED to learn to get your head out of the sauce, you NEED to learn to objectively separate yourself from the narrative so the story doesn't fall apart under your own hubris and ego, you NEED to learn to draw a line if you want to have any sort of identity as a human being outside of what you make for people. And that's with just normal original stories, this was a story based on Greek myth which doesn't belong to her.

And this goes for a lot of the things she's said and done in the past, so much of her own "sources" even are tethered to things that she read / watched in her childhood and only vaguely remembers, as if she never mentally left her childhood at all, which just... if the point was to highlight her past and the traumas she went through and how they contributed to her present, an Eisner isn't going to validate those experiences. And drawing attention to her past through the lens of her childhood self absolutely 100% does not absolve her of the negative effect her work has had on the modern Greek myth zeitgeist nor the things she's said and done as a 38 year old woman who should absolutely know better.

The community she entered and took from will forever remain changed by her influence and taking, in many ways not for the better. She has the privilege of walking away and never having to think about it again, with all the awards and accolades that were bought for her, the bravado that she built around being a "folklorist" with zero credentials, and the platform she was given over many other creators struggling to even be heard.

That "place" she claims to have now was built entirely on inserting herself into another culture's works and doing nothing but taking, taking, taking, while offering nothing in return but vanity and lip service. That "place" was paid for and brought to you by Webtoons.

[tododeku-or-bust]

Hi there! I thought your post about fandom antiblackness was really insightful! However, it also left me with a question I was hoping you might be able to answer. Number 45 under the general experiences section mentions characters being made Black but "acting and talking like white people" (paraphrased). This definitely seems like it'd be frustrating, but I was wondering if you had any recommendations for creating/writing Black characters that feel Black as a non-Black person while avoiding stereotyping or making a caricature unintentionally.

Well first, shameless self plug: you could always follow @creatingblackcharacters to learn different ways via fun and thorough lessons to create your Black characters with intention-that is, thinking about how to create Black characters rather than characters that happen to be "Black"! 👍🏾🤯🎉😁

Plug aside, I mean.... Black people are people. So write us as people. We're not some different species that are not understandable or that need to be translated into another language lol. We have feelings and go through shit too- we can be anywhere y'all can be lol.

But if your major concern is writing Black people that aren't caricatures, one important thing is to read and watch stories created by Black people, starring Black people! If you're in fandom and you wanna write that Black character in more depth, read Black fic writers' works on that Black character! Follow Black bloggers and creators! By knowing how WE write us, you can learn how to appropriately write us!

Also, to really get into the depth of the concepts of stereotypes and antiblack racist caricatures, do some self guided reading into what exist historically. There are plenty of books and i'm sure YouTube videos that would go into the details. White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad is an excellent one that i think breaks down EVERYBODY'S stereotypes and how they're enforced in media (and in society). You kind of just have to be willing to get uncomfortable, because you'll probably end up checking your own biases at some point during them. That's where you realize you're doing the learning!

Hope this helps 👍🏾

[swordfright]

Tell me about how the structure of the medium impacts the story 🔫

My brother in Christ, prepare yourself for the most boring essay you could possibly imagine. I'm going to over-simplify a few things here for the sake of Getting To The Point, so bear with me.

I think a good starting place is that DSMP is an example of New Media. The go-to definition most folks use is this one: that New Media are stories told via "communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content." In other words, NM is basically this category of stories made up of convergent elements, which satisfy a multimedia requirement, and are heavily reliant on both participatory fan culture and recent advances in technology that allow creators/audiences to communicate with one another instantly.

There's a couple ways you can understand DSMP as a New Media, but as far as I'm concerned, one of the most interesting is prosumption. The term "prosumption" describes a creative situation where a piece of art is being produced (at least in part) by the same people that consume it; they're both audience and creator. DSMP is a really great example of this phenomenon, because A) it's serial and therefore the CCs had ample opportunity to respond to and engage with the audience's reception of their story; and B) because the chat feature allows CCs to interact directly with their audience during roleplay rather than after the fact. These features, among others, kinda set the stage for DSMP to function as a highly prosumptive piece of media.

In particular, the stuff that interests me is the stuff to do with storytelling convention (genre, perspective, etc) and how prosumption turns all that on its head. There are a number of altercations in DSMP canon where the course of the story is altered because of real-time interactions between the CCs and their chat - particularly times when a CC's chat warns them about events happening at the same time elsewhere in the server. In this kind of scenario, the CCs are static, they can't really leave their own stream. Their viewers, on the other hand, are able to jump between streams and talk to each other to figure out what's happening in the overarching story. When this happens, viewers have choices to make: are they going to tell a CC what's going down on the other side of the server? If so, how are viewers going to communicate those events? Viewers are biased, they directly inform CCs, and the information they divulge (as well as how they divulge that info) goes on to influence CCs' actions and thus the events of the story, to some degree. In my opinion, this is a pretty new and exciting way to prosumptively construct a narrative! Media has always been interactive to some extent (especially serial works), but the interaction being live and in real-time is pretty significant in my view because it can exert unique pressures on a narrative.

Speaking of audience choice, that brings me to the next thing I want to yap about: ergodic storytelling, a term that refers to stories “negotiated by processes of choice, discernment, and decision-making.” For reference, a good non-MCYT example of this would be hypertext fiction, because it's generally characterized by the ability of the interactant (that's the reader, in this hypothetical example) to explore material provided by someone else, either as a kind of conceptual landscape (think setting in a video game), or as puzzle pieces that must be put together in order to give the interaction the "big picture" of the story. Basically, with hypertext fiction, there is a core text (the main document that forms the skeleton of the story) and there are multiple hypertexts branching off of the core text - and whether the reader ends up reading those branches, and in what order, inevitably shapes that reader's perception of the whole story.

So here's where it gets tricky. In the case of DSMP, where is the core text located? Is there any one identifiable core text at all? Or is it more appropriate to consider each individual stream or VOD as its own singular core text, with the related Twitch channels and Youtube recommended in the sidebar being "branches"? Alternatively, if the streams and recordings distributed on the server members’ official channels are the central text in the grand hypertext fiction that is DSMP, then can adjacent spaces where audiences do the work of creating and archiving lore be considered their own story branches? I don't have answers to these questions. No one does. That's part of what makes DSMP exciting.

To translate the above quote out of Academia Hellspeak: in an ergodic story, the audience has agency, but the agency enabled and allowed by the text varies in its intensity and mode. Yes, stories told ergodically necessitate choice — and therefore enable agency, turning the reader or viewer into interactant — but that element of choice doesn't always look the same. Some hypertexts are more choice-reliant than others, or are choice-reliant in different ways. So, rather than being a choose-your-own-adventure story, DSMP is more closely analogous to a story where the audience chooses the perspective through which they view plot developments, in addition to having some influence over how plot developments unfold.

(☝️From a 2021 Polygon article, if you think I sound crazy☝️)

The web of choices DSMP presents to viewers is very complex, even compared to other forms of choose-your-own-adventure game. Because each CC approaches the task of story-creation from their own angle (bringing their own narrative baggage to the writers’ room, so to speak), those shifts in perspective this Polygon article describes often also constitute shifts in genre. For instance, cc!Wilbur brought his music production experience and interest in musical theater to the server, cited operas and stage musicals as some of his main inspirations; and accordingly, much of c!Wilbur's most crucial arcs observably draw from those sources. When you watch a c!Wilbur stream, you’re watching a story about statecraft, about revolution, about the triumphs and tragedies of ego that play out during the process of nation-building. On the other hand, cc!Quackity has repeatedly identified Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul as his primary influences; accordingly, his RP character’s story is closer to a piece of gritty prestige television in some places (especially LN series). Unlike with c!Wilbur, a lot of c!Quackity's tension does not revolve around a romanticized fantasy of revolution but around more personal conflicts: securing your place in a new regime, navigating exploitation as both exploited and exploiter, etc. In terms of both plot beats and character arcs, Wilbur and Quackity’s respective storylines embody many of the genre conventions the content creators are working within.

Moreover, a shift in genre often entails a shift in style or mode. Because cc!Wilbur was heavily inspired by musical theater, the presentation style of his character’s storyline is correspondingly both theatrical (i.e. only loosely scripted, nearly always televised live, and improv-heavy) and musical (featuring multiple instances of Wilbur singing in-character ballads and anthems.) On the flipside, Quackity’s streams (especially the later ones, since I'm mostly focusing on Las Nevadas era here) demonstrably mimic the prestige TV shows the CC draws his inspiration from, with lore sessions being pre-recorded rather than televised live, featuring distinctive sonic and visual aesthetics popularized by neo-Western thriller dramas. So, where a piece of media like DSMP is concerned, shifts in perspective entail shifts in genre, which in turn entail pronounced shifts in style. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say it's an entirely new story depending on which character the viewer decides to follow. In that regard, what initially appears to be a single choice (whose perspective to watch a plot event through) has the power to determine a wide array of other elements, as viewers’ responses to the options presented to them will decide the overall tone of the section of the story they're about to watch.

While I think the genre-switching is genuinely super cool, lately I'm a lot more interested in perspective-switching and how it's related to viewer empathy. One side-effect of DSMP being televised live is that yes, you can watch a plot event from 30+ different POVs, but you can't watch every POV live. Typically, you either have to switch between multiple streams, or you need to pick one streamer to watch live and maybe later you'll watch other characters' POVs as you see fit. This has an impact on your perception of how that plot point went down because watching something live feels very different from watching something after-the-fact. I haven't done study on this, so what I'm about to say is mostly conjecture, but I wouldn't be surprised if viewers felt greater empathy for (and greater degrees of kinship with) characters whose POVs they watched live.

The choice of which character to follow also has observable impacts on other kinds of narrative conventions (who is the main character of DSMP? the boring answer is c!Dream because the server's named after him, but the real answer is the protagonist is whoever's POV you watched most of the major plot events through) but to be honest, those questions don't interest me as much.

So, going back to perspective and empathy. I think viewers' reactions to Exile are a really solid way of exemplifying the thing I'm trying to say, so this is the part of the yapping where we gotta bring up the dreaded Exile discourse.

Even though the Exile VODs are available and new viewers can go back and watch them, those viewers experience the Exile arc in a way that is fundamentally different from the experience had by viewers who had to wait in between updates as the videos were being streamed serially in real-time. I would argue that viewers who were “present” during the whole arc noticeably felt the brutality of c!Tommy’s treatment to a greater degree, because the audience was effectively forced to sit in exile alongside Tommy’s character - stewing in anxiety, looking forward to the possibility of appearances from other characters, and living in fear of Dream’s next visit, etc etc. Obviously you could also make this point using c!Dream's time in Pandora as an example, but I'm using Exile here because I've actually seen a lot of fans bring this up when discussing the arc: "people who didn't watch live Don't Get It," "the reason newer fans don't see Exile as scary is because they didn't have to watch it live," that sort of thing. And while I have certain qualms with some of the implications here, I do think these are really fascinating responses! These sorts of responses show that viewers consciously perceive their viewing experience as having been fundamentally different from others' based on a temporal element that's unique to serial fiction!

This instance of a divergence in collective fan experience is an example of choice being rendered unavailable to viewers by virtue of the story’s structure and means of distribution; audience members who happen to accidentally miss streams or who begin following the story after major events have occurred will never be able to engage with and witness those events as LIVE viewers, merely as retrospective ones. They don’t get to make that choice, but they do get to make choices about which perspective (and therefore genre) they get to experience the story through. So it follows that each aspect of DSMP, a semi-ergodic story, can be categorized as either ergodic or non-ergodic, and whether a particular storytelling element is ergodic can change depending on WHEN the viewer began tuning in to the story.

I have a lot more shit to say (shocker) but I'm gonna cap it here for now. Though I do want to add that this is kinda why I have a lot of patience for the crazy diversity of interpretation you tend to get in DSMP fandom. If you took a random sample of fans and asked them what they think of various arcs, characters, and plot events, chances are they would all have fairly different things to say. To me, that's a feature, not a bug. Obviously I have my own opinions, and obviously I do think it's possible for a given interpretation to be "bad," i.e. not grounded in the text - but I have a lot more patience for it here, in a fandom where agreeing on what "the text" EVEN IS presents a challenge. We can't all agree on who the main character is, so I don't ever expect us to agree on more nuanced questions of theme and conflict resolution in the narrative. Again, that's a feature, not a bug. I don't think it was ever possible to reach a consensus with a piece of media like DSMP because of how inextricable the audience is from the story.

[bonesandthebees]

As someone looking for a new fandom after the DSMP collapse, how do I get into QSMP? I haven't watched any of it but from what I've seen it sounds pretty interesting.

if you were a fan of dsmp I definitely recommend qsmp! it's got similar styles of humor and also some incredibly intense lore that has been so fun to watch unfold. however, it is very hard to get into because, y'know, we have a lot of different creators the majority of whom don't speak english primarily that are on the server so catching up is certainly difficult

if you want summaries of the early days stuff, this channel on youtube has 3 summary videos but it only covers up to I think around may of last year? maybe june?? so like, a lot of stuff is not included in those.

if you want a more isolated event that's easier to catch up on so you can get a feel for the characters/ccs you could watch purgatory 1 vods from whichever creator you're interested in, but also, uh, purgatory was kind of hell to watch. I personally really enjoyed it from a story/character perspective, but so much of it was just miserable grinding and fighting so it kind of sucked to watch live 😭 also it had weird repercussions on all the lore that happened before purgatory so it definitely holds a contentious place in the fandom

if you want a different (and slightly more accurate way of getting an idea of everyones characters) there are plenty of server events you can watch vods for! the ones that pop to my mind as being especially fun was festa junina for a holiday, and the spiderbit wedding was also pretty great

the cc I watch the most of on qsmp is phil, so if you want recs for him I can list some specific vods that I think were really great for his character. but I don't watch a ton of streams so I'm also not the best person to ask. my second main pov is tubbo so I can also provide a few recs for him but I'd definitely be leaving some important ones out unintentionally

then I also try to watch tina and bagi when I can but definitely not as often so my recommendations are limited for those two

the only thing I'd say to avoid when trying to catch up is don't trust the qsmp wiki especially anything written in the relationships section for individual characters. those wiki editors put so much inaccurate info on there just to fuel their own biases and headcanons. just be aware of that if you need to reference it

if anyone else has any recommendations for how to catch up feel free to add them!

[the-final-sif]

One of the things I think people as a whole don't understand about the internet today is that so much of what's wrong/dangerous/flawed about the internet exists because so much of the internet started as one person's hobby they built in their spare time or as a specific task for a specific function that was just useful/functional enough that literally everyone started using it. There's tons of biases built into the modern internet and some of that is carelessness but a lot of it is... just like. This was invented by a group of grad students fucking around for a few weeks. How the fuck were they supposed to know it'd be become the global standard and that nobody would bother to address or change these things?

Like, the whole reason that the US government gets the ".gov" domain name is because this entire system was invented in the US primarily for use in universities. Under the original system, you had to phone in to talk to the center who owned the list, tell them what name you wanted and then a person would type your name/ip onto the list attached to a nickname much like a phonebook. Then people slowly figured out domains and maintaining domain registries. And then the system became useful enough that more of the US started using it, and then people realized "oh shit, other countries want to use this too, guess we need to figure that out".

The "world wide web" or the thing we all know as the internet (and the reason that every website you visit has www in front), was invented originally by one dude trying to make his own job easier (Tim Berners-Lee). He thought it was pretty cool and shared it, and he was one guy who only spoke English and was just doing what he thought was going to work.

Like, this is a very lighthearted article talking about him, but I think it illustrates the point really well,

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, has confessed that the // in a web address were actually "unnecessary". He told the Times newspaper that he could easily have designed URLs not to have the forward slashes. "There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said. He admitted that when he devised the web, almost 20 years ago, he had no idea that the forward slashes in every web address would cause "so much hassle". His light-hearted apology even had a green angle as he accepted that having to add // to every address had wasted time, printing and paper.

via "sorry for the slashs"

We have an entire internet and infrastructure built rather haphazardly but also in such a way that going back and trying to change or fix things either requires an insane amount of work or could render vast swaths of the prior internet inaccessible.

Like, I think everyone here remembers Flash getting shut down and how much of childhood games got wiped off the generally accessible internet and relegated to projects like Flashpoint. It was really hard to see, but Flash was also a project started in 1996 (or 1993 if you count the OG version that turned into flash) that was supposed to be for a limited set of use cases, and not the medium on which major parts of the internet would run. By the time Adobe shut it down, Flash was incredibly dangerous with the constant risks of malware, it was buggy, slow, and there were a million better programs. It had to be killed to make way for better things, but because of how the internet was built, that death came at a pretty high cost.

So if you're ever wondering why it feels like the web is a bunch of dominoes ready to fall down at any time, it's because it is. And it does. And so many people spend so much of their time combating all the problems created by using systems that were never intended to handle everything they are currently handling because the alternative is a task of monstrous undertaking that would almost certainly turn decades of history to dust.

[alagaisia]

Hey if you’re still enjoying and engaging with Harry Potter in any capacity you can unfollow me 😊 please and thank you

Like. I get it. I was super into it as a kid too. I did not have the social context to pick up on the antisemitism or transphobia or sexism or fatphobia or bioessentialism or racism or anything else. I also picked up on surface-level language of Fighting Back Against Evil and ascribed my own values onto what that meant and thought we were all on the same page. I remember when the original kids who grew up with the books started becoming adult fans and picking up on the (blatant!) antisemitism and everybody was still mostly willing to give JKR the benefit of the doubt on it. (“She was writing kids books!” They said. “She didn’t know she was penning a global phenomenon! She picked a common literary trend in European fairy tales (antisemitic caricature) and didn’t examine it closely. It’s a mistake anyone could make,” we said. “She would probably do things differently now. After all, she word-of-god confirmed the vaguest hints she dropped that Dumbledore might be gay,” we said.) There was actually a span of several years where biases inherent in the actual real content of the Harry Potter series were coming to light and even the people pointing them out still seemed mostly to think it was an unfortunate accident.

That time has passed. Years ago! We are long past the first months of “maybe she doesn’t realize this seemingly-feminist tweet she liked was made by a noted TERF” and then “how could she not realize that these many veiled TERF-y things she’s retweeted have implications for the many queer fans of her work” and finally “oh wow okay JKR just dropped an entire transphobic manifesto on twitter. I guess the transphobia was the point.”

Yeah, there were a few months after that where people were still processing and still working through how they felt about Harry Potter and all of its flaws with the context of the now open transphobia of the creator. I was there for that. Remember how I was one of the kids who built it up into something noble and worthwhile based on my own beliefs about what messages it was probably trying to convey? Turns out it wasn’t trying to say any of those things, and when you take the time to examine all of the terrible shit that made its way into the text whether JKR intended it to be there or not, the whole series falls apart. It’s weird to discover that there’s a room in your house that’s rotten to the core, but eventually you figure out you can’t live like that, still going in there and holding your nose and pretending it’s still the same room you thought it was when the termites were only inside of the walls and hadn’t yet started chewing their way through the furniture. Because what’s going to happen is that they are going to infest the rest of your house. If you decide you can ignore transphobia and antisemitism and everything else just because you liked the color of the wallpaper, the rest of your principles are going to crumble too. You get rid of that fucking room. You put those books on a high shelf in the back of your closet behind other outgrown clothes and interests and you move the fuck on.

JKR uses the money made from her transphobic antisemitic children’s books to actively funding hate groups and to lobby for legislation that will and has actually affected the actual lives of trans people in an entire country. We are past the point of grieving something you were wrong about in childhood. Kids are wrong about a lot of stuff. You grow up and you learn new information and you change your behaviors based on it. You have to choose. It is transphobic to pretend there is not transphobia where there is. It is transphobic to support the work of someone who is using those funds to take rights from trans people with every fucking dollar. It is hateful to continue to engage positively with a story that at its very core is rooted in hate and bigotry and prejudice. You can choose to do all of those things but you cannot claim ignorance of them and you cannot choose those things and still pretend that choosing them upholds the values we convinced ourselves that Harry Potter stood for over a decade ago as uninformed children. You cannot choose to do those things and pretend to still support your trans and queer and Jewish neighbors. I do not want you in my neighborhood. Leave.

[saruin]

I can agree that Veilguard has its issues, there are some things I’m not a big fan of and some choices that as someone who’s played through the entirety of the series multiple times and read the books/comics don’t make a lick of sense to me, but overall it’s a good game imo. I’ve been taking my time and exploring in it but to me it read like if DA2 was given time to be fleshed out properly while still being new. I think because of the lore and previous writing they wrote themselves into a bit of a corner, but that’s was inevitable at some point. If this is supposed to be a soft reboot then maybe that means the next game goes back to having that more open choice RPG feel people are saying it’s missing

Personally, I went in with no expectations because I love this franchise and I know most of my headcanons and thoughts aren’t EA’s world state, which is fine. But I’ve been really enjoying the game. The combat is a bit of a learning game curve compared to what we’ve had before but the heart of the games has always been the story and the interaction you have with your companions but that’s just me. People can be mad and upset and complain about being a “DA purist” or complain that they don’t like the art style but at its core everyone has a different experience and connection to the game and no single DA game looks like another. The styles are all different! And if something doesn’t match with your story for your player character you can literally write fix-it fics and headcanons if you’re really mad about it *cough cough all of us who wanted the Hawke/Varric romance that they scrapped*

At the end of the day, I’d say take everything everyone’s been saying about the game with a (large) grain of salt. Take your time, explore, and enjoy it. It’s a got beautiful scenery, you can pet the cats and Mabari, and the cc for both Rook and the Inquisitor made me tear up because I literally haven’t seen my girl in 3 years and here she is with pretty flowing hair and still (in my mind because I haven’t seen her in game yet) is a rebel with a cause

Sorry for the long rant and rambling also, it’s just neat seeing creators and blogs I follow on here get excited about what is pretty much my favorite game series when in my offline experience is that it’s a very niche series to like. Also love your content for sims btw! I always get excited seeing when you’ve got something new cooking

Thank you for this. I think it's easy for people to forget that everyone doesn't experience games the same way. I don't listen to critics and I ignore people's opinions on stuff I'm genuinely excited about because I want to judge it with my own two eyes. I appreciate other people's perspective but I don't have to agree with them, what fun is that.

I remember when I was about to start playing Mass Effect and was asking friends for input (cause I didn't understand at the time that people could be extremely biased) I was told over and over again that ME3 was the worst game ever and to not even play it, to just get the story online somewhere. Well I ended up playing it despite their opinions and ME3 is my favorite game in the series.

Thank you again for giving me your opinions and I'm so happy you're enjoying the game. Also thanks so much for liking my content 🩷

[aeterna-auroral-avenger]

STORY TIME!

This story has been in the works quite literally since I drove home from the cinema after watching Infinity War. It started off as a fix-it, no matter what the MCU outcome would be, and then I watched Endgame and made my fix-it cover as many cracks in that story as I could.

Personally, I like my idea waaaaaaay better. No, I'm not biased, what?

Jump down the rabbit hole with me, my friend because I'm going to infodump so much on you. I will try to keep it brief, but I already can feel it's not gonna happen because I'm so excited to share this story. So apologies in advance @sobeautifullyobsessed

In the comics, there are actually seven stones not six due to some god-like entity with the power of Infinity committing suicide out of loneliness. As a result of this act, the entity split into the six stones we know plus the Ego Stone which holds the entity's psyche; however, that stone was lost to an alternate reality somehow.

I hate the Ego Stone part, but I saw great potential with the idea of seven stones however.

Let's start at the very beginning. After the creation of the universe, the Creator saw it was good and presented it with gifts: Stones that controlled certain elements of the universe. Sometime after, who knows how long after, a secret organization of beings from across the universe banded together to protect the stones and make sure their powers would not be abused. But there was one among them who sought a Stone he wasn't meant to keep. He stole it, killed the Stone's keeper, and used its power to flee. But he was unworthy and unable to handle the Stone's power, and it killed him. But since he fled, the Stone was lost to an alternate reality. Ours. The Stone in question? Light: a power that seems to encompass all the rest of the Stones' powers while also keeping its own. (it may be mary sue-ish but idc)

The rest of this band of protectors searched in vain, but alas, the Stone could not be found. The band was disbanded, and the Stones were spread far and wide for safe keeping. Agamotto was one of the last of this band, and only he had been successful in doing what the rest could not.

And the Light Stone was lost to time and history in their reality. In ours, the Stone grew dormant and even depressed as it searched the future for a way to return to its universe. And it found one in the form of a baby not yet born. Seeping from its Stone casing through the expectant mother, the powers of the Stone lay waiting for the time this baby would bridge realities to get it back home.

Jump ahead to 14 months before Infinity War, and Dr. Strange finds himself wounded and in his attempt to return to his own dimension, he accidentally finds himself in ours where a young woman named Aurora (or Rory to her friends) manages to tend to his wounds and take care of him so he could return home when he was ready. An unlikely friendship arose, and in return - especially after hearing how our reality views his - he gave her a gift: a sling ring and the lessons needed to use it properly. It took some effort, but eventually it clicked. Now she was free to come and go as she chose.

In the time Rory spent wandering their reality, she had successfully wove her way into a world and friendships she believed she wasn't supposed to have but would take anyway (this was well before I learned the consequences of multiverse meddling so I'm going to ignore such things. They don't exist).

Rory was in our dimension when Thanos began taking Infinity Stones, and her unknown connection with them made her hear voices in her head: the Stones begging for help and rescue. And when Dr. Strange peers into so many futures in a desperate hope to find victory, he does find one. The lost Stone residing in none other than his friend from the other dimension. Who was now also stuck in said other dimension. And he had to make sure there was a way to get her back to theirs. Which also required making sure Scott Lang is in the Quantum Realm before Thanos laid the devastating blow.

When all that occurs as the Master Chessplayer devised, he used what last bit of magic he had before turning to ash to do two things: appear to Rory and assure her the task she would find herself taking on would be one she could do, despite it all, and appear to Scott in the Quantum Realm and lead him to a Quantum vortex leading to the right dimension to get Rory (who he insisted was vital to winning) and lead her back to their dimension before that vortex closed again for another 100 years. Success.

The problem with working in the Quantum Realm though is once Scott and Rory get back to the right dimension, two years have passed (screw the five year gap). The pair make their way to the Avengers compound, and Scott has been devising a plan the whole way there. Once the remaining Avengers give them all the full story, Scott explains how Strange put a lot of emphasis on Rory’s importance, much to her chagrin. But he and Bruce convince the rest that Strange’s way is the way to go considering they’ve seen how legit he is. Scott gives his first plan: the time heist, and Rory, who has heard Strange speak of the wonders and dangers of Time, said absolutely not.

Then Scott came up with plan number 2: a Quantum Heist. A dangerous plan to send all of them and Thanos to the Quantum Realm where the Infinity Stones would be rendered useless and the playing field would be leveled. The reason why the Stones still exist is because in this story, Thanos needs all the Stones to destroy them. Since he did not, he could not do that even though he tried, rendering him weaker than before.

In the process of everyone working on making sure this plan would actually work, some plot things happen. Rory discovers what she possesses and what her infinite heritage is, uses that power to restore Mjolnir and remind Thor he's still worthy, and test her newfound powers in the Quantum Realm to make sure those Infinity powers really would be useless.

But there was a problem during testing. Rory accidentally fell into one of those Quantum vortexes which led her to a time and place where she meets (and has a philosophical debate with) Thanos himself. Too little too late, she realizes she is not in the same Time she left and Thanos learns there will be a group to go against him in his quest with her at the lead with the power he wants most of all.

She manages to get back, but now the Avengers know Thanos will be waiting for them which will make the job extra challenging. Not only that, but Thanos is rebuilding his army just for confronting them. So they have to cut him off from his army to get him alone and then get him to the Quantum Realm via the bifrost through Thor's axe. By some miracle, they manage to do not only that, but get the Stones from Thanos in the Quantum Realm too! But he escapes them before they could finish him off, and they use the Quantum Tunnel built in Endgame to return to the compound in the right time and space.

Bruce snaps his fingers, reverting himself back to Bruce/Hulk instead of Professor Banner, right at the time Thanos unleashes his attack on the compound.

Cue the epic portals scene plus one human woman with the blazing powers of Light at her disposal. Major fighting ensues, and mostly everything plays out similarly but Strange knows one extra thing the rest do not. Tony is still meant to snap his fingers, and he will survive as long as Rory helps him carry the burden of the Stones. And with milliseconds to spare, Rory gets to Tony in time. The only real casualty on the heroes' side is Rory takes a lot of the damage from the snap, leaving Tony with lightning scars on his arm. Strange, Shuri, and Dr. Cho take care of her injuries.

So the war is over, and it's a happy ending, right? Not yet. The universe is very scarred and weary from such a war, and it needs a jumpstart. It needs an outpouring of love to heal such wounds. And using the power of all the Stones, Rory manages to do something pretty incredible. She came from a universe of untapped love for the marvel universe, and she acts as a catalyst, a bridge between universes for all that outpouring of love to go right to where it needs to go. And like a great tidal wave, the love and devotion of the fans practically floods that universe, giving it the medicine and jumpstart it needs to move forward like the Infinity War never occurred.

But the cost of such an act was high, and the Infinity Stones were returned to their Creator. Forever. Rory was allowed to live, and since the Light powers were basically fused with her soul, remnants of said power were left behind. Only time will tell if it will be useable or not as she heals.

And that is a rather large synopsis of my Endgame rewrite.

[olderthannetfic]

I've read through the End Racism posts (not all, but a good part of them) and think the people behind it do have good and honest intentions, and that a lot of things are being blown out of proportion. I don't necessarily agree with some of the ideas regarding out of archive harassment and AO3's responsibility, but I can see the thought process. Same with a lot of other things. I'm very wary of Stitch being cited, but can likewise understand why people may not fully clue into why there are.... so so so many issues with that. If you haven't been hyper involved in fandom (included those you're not in) you miss things. Which is a whole other issue lmao. But overall, I don't think anyone is being malicious

That being said, there's a lot that seems.... overly optimistic? Or perhaps very central to where the creators behind End Racism are from and their own biases and education. People have brought up HOW on earth what is or is not racist (beyond the incredibly obvious examples) can be decided, or how you can know who's writing a fic and why (is it a racist bigot, someone writing about their own experience as a POC, or someone who doesn't know something?) and the answer, as another anon mentioned, is never really stated. Because there isn't an answer in many cases, but that hasn't been acknowledged

I also worry about the insistence (in some responses to questions and in notes I've seen even in the asks you've received) that a diversity consultant will help as much as people seem to think. Yes, it's a step forwards.... but a diversity consultant cannot be an expert in EVERYTHING. I suppose the argument is "get more diversity consultants to volunteer" but that still causes it's own issues. I was in a server with someone who frequently read over fics as a sensitivity reader, and was extremely well educated and respectful. But even they flat out said they made a hell of a lot of mistakes once they stepped out of what they knew, and wouldn't give feedback on certain things. I worry a diversity consultant would be, well, very american centric, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, people have brought up how it could be, and those concerns are being completely brushed to the side.

I think there's just SO much to this, and so much more complexity than they're willing to admit. Again, other anons have brought this up, but there's a ton nuance in this. We're talking international views on majorly complex issues, with endless cultural lenses, people writing and reading from countless backgrounds, and so on. It really just feels like they don't want to even acknowledge that

I don't think most behind it are trying to actively push for censorship, or are operating in bad faith. That's my impression from reading on my own. There have been some individuals around tumblr that have been horrific about it (the anti-semitism that came out is.... something), but overall I think there are good intentions. But so many pertinent questions aren't being answered, and the very valid concerns people have brought up have been ignored.

I support the idea behind it, and having a diversity consultant on staff certainly isn't a bad idea, but the way in which they're going about things, the concerns they're ignoring, and the dismissal of people who are raising said concerns as racists is. huh. Well, it makes me wary to actively support.

--

[fantasyinvader]

Something just clicked.

Remember how Rhea in her S support questions Byleth if it's okay for her or Byleth to be happy over her not dying after seeing her true form? I think that might actually have to do with Edelgard's symbolism, namely safflowers. Safflowers symbolize attraction, meaning that players should be drawn to choosing her for whatever reason. In fact, IRL her family's tea blend is artificially scented, the only one at that, with safflower. However her path is said, by herself no less in her S support, to have been hadou. So we have Edelgard's route being one of tyranny made to appear attractive to the player, with the devs confirming that her path leads to hadou. Edelgard may say she will stop walking that path, but that's not the case as some endings confirm she still rules through violence rather than benevolence.

Meanwhile, the symbolism of Sothis and the Sword of the Emperor of Heaven/Creator makes it clear that Byleth's duty was to remove Edelgard from power. Safflowers are a type of thistle, making the route a path of thorns. A path where Byleth sinned because they fell to sloth and didn't do what they were supposed to. This is alluded to when Claude fights Hubert in Wind, where Hubert makes him and Edelgard out to be thorns in Claude's feet however Claude ends up getting rid of those “thorns”. You know, the thing the game is saying is the righteous path through this symbolism.

Rhea acting like her true form would be repulsive seems to align with the general philosophy of the Black Eagles route. Just because the path looks less attractive doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do. The alternative, again, leads to Fodlan being under the control of a despot who begins attacking other nations according to Caspar's endings. The route is also the one the worldbuilding was done to support, and the devs made it clear that they deliberately refused to make a golden ending for the game. The endings were meant to be bittersweet, in the case of Snow Claude and Dimitri's failings, failings you could have helped them get over, lead to not just their own downfall but the downfall of everyone who continued to follow them. And considering you spent the route trying to save Rhea, if you hadn't supported her beforehand you'll have to kill her instead when her power goes out of control...

Huh, I think I just realized the point of that final battle and again it's meant to be a foil. Rhea loses control of her power and becomes a threat to Fodlan, keyword control. Meanwhile, Edelgard uses the war to increase her power, concentrating authority of Fodlan onto herself while at the same time removing any checks and balances to her power. And, as previously mentioned, Caspar's endings in her route are built around her beginning to invade other countries after the war. Rhea loses control of her power and threatens Fodlan, Edelgard seeks unchecked power and as a result is a threat to the entire world!

And as I've mentioned in the past, that support also sees Rhea worried she's responsible for the war in some way. Meanwhile, Edelgard in hers celebrates before dropping the hadou reveal and Byleth refers to her with a title for a god. The two supports are meant to be foils to one another, one meant to be attractive but leading to evil while the other less attractive but leading to a better outcome that, ironically, players are led to believe will happen if they go down the more attractive route.

There's a deliberate dichotomy there, one the translators fucked up to favor the villain route. I mean, you can't look at some of the changes they made and not walk away thinking they were biased towards Edelgard and KNEW her ending marked her as the bad guy. And because of those changes, people walk away with the wrong impression of them, kinda like the Age of Stars ending in Elden Ring (also an ending about breaking it's world's cycle) except non-accidental and in more places.

[genericpuff]

I’m gonna have to disagree with you that Kaos is any better than LO. It’s all the same bull crap.

Kaos just seems like live-action LO, both having a boring storyline with bad or fetishized characterizations of the Greek Gods and figures, and both looking artistically beautiful and some cool concepts, but badly executed. The only difference is that Kaos has more LGBTQIA+ themes than LO, has a tiny bit more Greek references, and gets much darker. That’s pretty much it.

As a Greek who studies our myths and stories extensively, I’m tired of the west trying to take and rearrange our stories and retell them ‘with a modern, western lense’. It’s exhausting and infuriating.

It’s time the west gets over its fascination with us and move on.

Fair opinion! Honestly, the initial post I made about it was after only watching the first couple episodes. Now that I've finished it, I can definitely see actual glaring issues with it, both in their characterizations as well as in how they kind of lose the intrigue after a few episodes of the setting and elements of them being gods. Which are all issues that LO have as well.

Though I will say, LO has those issues far more than Kaos does, but what really separates LO from Kaos, in my opinion - the creators of Kaos aren't pretending that Kaos is more than it is. To me, Kaos isn't in any way a singular Greek myth retelling, more so a fun "Greek epic" style story featuring the gods in a modern setting, the way LO could have been if Rachel hadn't tried to make it into something bigger than it was (and if she didn't put herself on a pedestal as a "self proclaimed folklorist"). I can watch Kaos and appreciate it as a fun Greek myth inspired piece of media because that's pretty much all it's trying to be. Meanwhile LO gives us middle-school-level writing with very little real Greek myth influence (aside from what it benefits Rachel to do so) that even goes so far as to outright disrespect the myths that they were based on... all the while people praise it as the greatest Greek myth retelling ever.

I think Kaos is miles better than LO because it at least tells a more coherent story than LO ever could have, with a lot more attention paid to the stylization of a Greek epic (compared to LO which tried and failed to implement those same things, such as the Fates, self-fulfilling prophecies, and witty narration as to retell a story that's already happened).

Granted, that story still takes a lot of liberties with the source material (some that I enjoyed, others not so much), but in that regard, I refer to the above - Kaos isn't trying to be an actual retelling like LO did, so I view it the same way I do as something like Hercules or Hades, where the people who made it clearly love Greek myth and wanted to do some Greek myth-inspired story with their own twists on the narratives, and it paid off in a story that, in spite of their flaws, still feels intentional and thought out.

LO, by comparison, is just a mess of ripped off half-baked ideas thrown at a wall and filled in with self-fulfilling power fantasy garbage written by someone who claims to have deeper knowledge of the myths but clearly doesn't. It's hard to enjoy LO in spite of its flaws because it's all flaws and they're so deeply-rooted in the context of Rachel's own biases and sexual preferences that you really can't separate it from that once you know if it.

I do have some criticisms of Kaos and some of its more creative choices - Hera cheating on Zeus with Poseidon (literally wtf lmao), Persephone still being the "I went down there willingly!" archetype (though at least she's not 19 in this, the casting for her and Hades was great), as well as the fact that things weren't wrapped up by the end of the first season which really bums me out because now it's up to the mercy of Netflix to give it that second season - but ultimately, from a story-writing perspective, Kaos absolutely did accomplish having an actual narrative with themes and goal-driven writing that LO failed in having. That comparison doesn't make Kaos a 100% perfect show without flaw, but I made the comparison initially anyways because much of what I enjoyed in Kaos was what I expected from LO (and ultimately didn't get).

That's just my own two cents though! And I need to make it clear - I am not a Greek person! I have no say or merit within the discussion regarding Greek myth and how it's been appropriated!! - so ultimately... my opinion of these things really aren't as valuable as someone who actually is Greek or studied heavily in it.

So that said, I can completely see the merit in your own arguments that a lot of these "modern retellings" tend to miss the point of the stories they're trying to retell (esp with the criticisms I outlined above) and are often chewed up through a Western lens. The lesser of two evils is still evil. But if we're purely talking Kaos vs. Lore Olympus here as modern entertainment that are both attempting similar things... I'd be way more likely to rewatch and recommend one over the other. Plus there are a lot of adaptions out there made by Westerners / non-Greeks that are incredible and are, at the very least, amazing stepping stones into the world of Greek myth for those who want to learn more about it. Out of the pool of ongoing modern Greek myth retellings/inspired works - Blood of Zeus, Hades/Hades 2, Kaos, Epic: The Musical, Hadestown, Hercules, Percy Jackson & The Olympians, and Lore Olympus - it's not hard to guess which one I'd be the least likely to recommend as gateways into Greek mythology. If those titles were organized in a list of best to worst, Kaos isn't at the top of that list, but it's sure as shit higher than LO 💀😆

[valoisfulcanellideux]

Points of interest from today's Pix stream

See behind the cut for some points of interest transcribed from Pix's Empires stream today (fWhip joins in, in chat, too). Included:

endings for the season and fan expectations

fanworks and headcanons, how Pix wanted to structure his S2 to enable fans to run with their own ideas, and how his S1 ending the way it did also enabled that

what Pix would like to do if there's an Empires S3 [speculative only; not concrete plans]

Behind the cut with you!

This led out of a conversation wherein Pix discussed having seen many fans' opinions of S2 ending 'suddenly'/'too soon' and 'unsatisfactorily' and not to their liking, and how the endings could have been better/loose ends tied up more, etc etc (we've probably all seen those opinions and posts repeatedly by now, so I'm not going to belabour them anymore).

First off, Pix very briefly mentions his season end plans:

fWhip (in chat): A lot of people seem to have taken my video as the end.. not realizing everyone will upload their own finale. I didn't do any real lore this season so having a full lore based ending felt wrong

Pix: I've got an ending planned, but it's going to be very much like my ending. And, again, I'm somebody who doesn't have any story to my stuff, really. Like… I became a ghost. Nothing's really happening with that. It's just a fact of my existence now.

fWhip (in chat): I finished building gobland to where I was happy with it, so that was a natural end for me as a creator

Pix: Yeah, like, "Guess what? I'm done building. Series over!" [pause, then mutters] I wish I was done building [laughs]

[discussion continues for a while around fan expectations]

fWhip (in chat): also I think some fans don't realize not all of our audiences love the heavy lore, and if our videos don't get views we can't really keep making videos lol

Pix: Yeah, that's the thing. There's always going to be the most activity around stuff that people really feel like they can get behind as a community. But the communities tend to isolate themselves with other people who enjoy the same stuff they do, right? So, like, folks on Tumblr or Reddit, for example, might get really behind certain creators' approach to lore.

[short discussion about browsing the Empires subreddit and seeing so many posts about Jimmy being a toy, including polls worded in such a way that they're biased from the outset. also how - when fans latch on to certain ideas like that - it can be stifling to a creator, as in 'once you've exhausted that thing but people still want it from you, where do you go from there?']

This next part was what I really loved about this stream discussion: Pix's views on fanworks:

Viewer: Tumblr will come up with lore even if there isn't any tbh

Pix: And that's what I wanted to do with this season. I really wanted to just create whatever I wanted to create, and have it be something that people could speculate about all they wanted to, and any answer would be the right answer. That's one of the things I liked about… [pause] Even though I felt bad having left Empires Season One when I did, and everyone else was very kind in pointing out, like, "You said you were going to leave then anyway, so it's not you kind of left us in the lurch, or whatever"… [pause]

One of the things about the ending of Season One not really being there was that people come up with their own theories about what happens to the Copper King after all of that. And I'm, like, "All of those are correct!" [laughs]. Whatever you think happened, happened. Because that's the fun of using your imagination for stuff like this, right? That's sort of the approach I want to encourage people taking when we do projects like this, is your interpretation is just as valid as ours. And if you want to imagine that stuff, don't always expect us to act on it.

Finally, someone in chat asks what Pix would like to do if Empires S3 takes place. [NOTE: This should not be taken as gospel and what Pix plans to do. He appeared to just be spitballing and chatting casually here, so this isn't a concrete plan, nor is it confirmation that there will be a season 3. I'm just adding this as another point of interest from the stream.]

Viewer: I know you said that you're not sure about Empires season 3 but what would you do if it did happen?

Pix: That's the thing: I really don't know, and that's part of the reason we're not doing a season 3 immediately, if at all. I don't know what ideas would work, I don't know what ideas would be compatible with other people's ideas. Like, I would love to do something that feels a bit more modern, because I don't challenge myself often enough to build in a modern style. I would love to do something that felt a little bit more cyberpunk, in… like a System Shock kind of way. But I don't know for certain if that would be at all compatible with anything else, because Empires in general skews a bit more, like, D&D fantasy, which tends to be more medieval fantasy; European medieval, specifically. And, y'know, there's a few exceptions to that, but I think a lot of the time - because Minecraft itself feels like more of a fantasy world… y'know, there's cobblestone and wood everywhere, and bookshelves, and enchantment setups, and brewing and that kind of thing. It all feels a lot more medieval fantasy than anything else. I just think it's kind of difficult to sell the idea of there being, like, a cyberpunk kind of modern setup in the middle of all these other people who are still playing, like, straight-up D&D. It feels anachronistic, and not in a good way.

[brief discussion about how 'modern empires' could also mean business empires, but that would then mean creators having to build whole cities, which are a pretty hefty undertaking]

[duckprintspress]

I feel like I need to start talking more about how one of the big things that Duck Prints Press does is open the door to people who could never even get a foot in with traditional publishing or even most medium/"small" presses (we're a small press, but we're really more of a micro-press, I see places calling themselves small presses that are fucktons bigger than we are).

I've got some anecdotal evidence that people avoid the publications of Presses like this one because they think our writing and editing standards are lower - that we're the people who failed to make it in bigger presses because we weren't good enough - and that, consciously and unconsciously, gatekeeping biases on who is and isn't qualified to write lead people to support small presses less than they might support a more established organization.

So...y'all realize that there are a lot of reasons people wouldn't pursue working with trad pub, right? and I don't even mean ethical doubts, and I don't even mean "trad pub doesn't want to publish certain kinds of stories," though those are definitely factors - we're able to give more space to play with themes and genres because we don't focus solely on "is this marketable" as a sales rubric.

But that's not what I consider the biggest difference.

Hi, I'm Claire, and I own Duck Prints Press, and I have a massive history of clinical depression, including being suicidal in the past. I'm a great writer, and I'm not just tooting my own horn, I've got almost 150,000 kudos on AO3 that suggest that just maybe, I know wtf I'm doing stringing words into sentences. I don't need a big press to tell me I'm competent, I already know that. What I do need is to not end up suicidal again. If I face the gauntlet of rejections that's supposedly "required" as part of gatekeeping trad pub, it will do severe damage to my mental health, and probably destroy my ability to write as depression-induced self-deception eats through what I know to be true.

THAT'S what's different about a micropress like ours. Yes, our founding vision was to work with fans, but the vast majority of the people who work with us have mental illnesses, physical disabilities, neurodivergence issues, and/or other "meatsuits are terrible actually" issues that strict publishing environments can't or, really, won't accommodate. We say "fuck that noise" and go out of our way to accommodate people, granting extensions and ensuring everyone can work on their own schedule. We're able to be very flexible, which means we bring in a lot of people whose incredible skills are overlooked, ignored, looked down on, kept out of, more mainstream publishing options.

If someone has trouble with deadlines? We still work with them.

If someone has an illness that flares irregularly and unpredictably? We still work with them.

If someone needs frequent reminders? We still work with them.

If someone works slowly because they can only do a little at a time? We still work with them.

If someone needs extra time, additional support, special software...we have thus far been able to accommodate literally everyone who has come to us.

As long as the creators who work with us keep communicating and keep showing at least a little progress, we will find a way to make things work, because we want to be as inclusive as possible, and because we know that most people with these challenges, no matter how good they are at writing or art or whatever it is they do with us, would face many more hardships to have these opportunities with a larger, more strict organization.

Just, every time I see indications that people think we're "less" because we're not HarperCollins or Penguin or Tor or something, I get so angry, because it shows so little understanding of how gatekeepy and especially how ableist trad pub is, and I wish more of the people who are thinking things like that would recognize that their behavior is, essentially, snobbery.

And to be clear I'm not saying "people with these challenges never get trad pubbed," that's clearly ridiculous and untrue, but I am saying, people with these challenges shouldn't have to be The Most Exceptional just to have a chance, and we deserve to have a place that will accommodate us instead of having to perform health, perform neurotypicalness, etc. just to succeed. We deserve to not have one flare-up potentially ruin our careers, and we deserve the same opportunities and respect as people who choose other directions.

Between trad pub, small press, and self-publishing, no one route is inherently "superior." Backing one over another doesn't guarantee you're only going to get good stories, or good editing. Trad pub publishes utter schlock sometimes, and self-publishing is fantastic sometimes, and some small presses do have lax standards, and some small presses are exceptional, and I feel like maybe people just really don't understand why places like Duck Prints Press try to exist - it's because we're trying to create spaces that meet us where we are, instead of focusing on rigid conformity, marketability, hard rules, etc.

The only way we'll get a diversity of voices in publishing is by supporting a diversity of publishers. The only way we'll be able to make space for everyone is by supporting the places that carve out new spaces to fit those who didn't fit elsewhere.

I wish more people would understand what we do and why we're here, and that folks would at least try our publications before assuming that we're "like big press but worse at writing/arting/editing."

Idk. I'm just tired, and sick, and still working even tho I'm sick, and frustrated with how hard it is to get anywhere, so here, have a rant I probably shouldn't post.

(this post brought to you by me seeing Chuck Tingle - entirely reasonably, to be clear, Chuck Tingle is awesome and I support him entirely! - celebrating the Camp Damascus release to thousands of notes, and Tor posting a poll about some Locked Tomb short story and getting 1300+ votes, and how I have to claw our way out of the background tumblr noise to get 100+ notes even on our biggest releases)

[alexissara]

Alexis Sara's Top 10 Most Anticipated Games Of 2024

We're about to enter 2024 and with that we have all the lists, lists I am not immune to making because I slowly build them up all year. Last year I played a fuck load of games and so this year I wanted to talk about 10 games I think look really fucking cool that are coming out in the next year or two. Some of these games are likely to release in 2025 instead but it'll be fun to see if they remain on the list next year then. I mostly just wanted to spotlight some art that looks cool to me outside of the context of a Sapphic Games Guide or a Review and maybe get others on the hype train with me. This list is not in order and just 10 games I think look like they could have an impact on me, I may not even buy every game on this list but there the 10 that look like I am most likely to check out.

Gales Of Nayeli

So this is one of two games on the list I've already purchased. I backed the kickstarter of the game a while back and I thought "it looks alright and when I asked if there was gonna be any sapphic content the creator told me in depth what content he had already made so sure I'll back it. What was more if a thank you for being so kind and responsive so fast has turned into my most hype game of the year. Blindcoco and me have become friends over time so I am biased but I was actually sold on the game before me and him became buddy buddy when I played the demo and saw the amazing work that went into it. Then the extremally positive response from him and the community towards my desire to focus in on women and sapphic women only added to my excitement for the game.

The game genuinely seems to be raising the bar for SRPGs and really feels like it is a step above Fire Emblem and not an emulation of Fire Emblem. I loved the demo and the concepts in the game so much it inspired me to start working on my own SRPG studios game knowing what is possible at the high end of investment in the system can really be something special and really cool. I love that there is a focus on trying to cast voice actors who match ethnicity to the diverse cast, I love that there is a wide range of diversity in the revealed cast, I love the amount of queer women I am aware of in the game, I love the animations and sprite work, I love the gameplay, I am really really excited about this game and I think this game has a high shot at being one of my favorite games.

Fields Of Mistria 

I make fun of farming sims a little on my lists and stuff but only because I actually love farming sims especially in concept. This game probably has my favorite art style of the whole lot of games today. It's lovely 90s anime style sprite work is just AHHHHHHHHHH so good. I do in fact want to kiss the women in this game very badly and I would enjoy playing the game for the sake of dating them alone.

Rune Factory: Dragon

Let's bang out the second farming sim while we're at it. We don't know a bunch about this game but it really just has to do two things for me to be into it. One, let you be gay like the newest RF and Story of Season games already let you do and Two, keep up the art direction and bam, I'm in. My biggest problem with the last Rune Factory game was that the art style made every woman look like a 12 year old and not in the like chibi story of seasons way like they just looked like they were kids. This however, has a much better set of art direction and it makes me think there might actually be women I'd want to gay marry.

Mahou Senshi Cosplay Club

I really love Behold's previous game Chroma Squad but when I got this demo I had no idea they were the Chroma Squad people. The mix of dress up and RPG gameplay is a dream come true kind of game and the outfit customization is leagues beyond a game like Fashion Dreamer despite likely being made on a much smaller budget. The PSX style graphics actually work here with them evoking nostalgic graphics while also not actually being restrained by a Playstation One's issues. I just really loved the process of making the outfit and character in this game and honestly that alone is a potential game seller. The gameplay element was solid and I really want to play more of this.

Beastieball 

BeastieBall seems to be a really fun take on the Monster Taming genre. Having the monster friends play a sport and naturally be inclined to play the sport makes for a very cute and wholesome premise to which you become more a coach than an owner to these little cuties. It's a pretty simple concept in the demo but it's promising and cute and I do like that the monsters you collect build relationships with each other, I think that is something really special and neat and something I'd like to see more monster tamers do.

Love In A Bottle

 There is a lot of nice looking visual novels coming out but Love In A Bottle is dating sim that is really capturing my eye. You play as a demon girl, bam okay I am sold. You date other monster girls okay I'm sold. And it's got more then the basic one outfit you expect from a standard visual novel dating sim type deal for characters that is yet another sold factor. It seems really cute, seems fun and I hope I can smooch all the women at once.

Fantasy Life I

While I said we were done with farming sims, I didn't say we were done with sims as we have Level-5's Life Sim, Fantasy Life. I won't be buying the game if I can't be gay in it but I really loved the first Fantasy Life on the 3DS and I think if it can keep up the charm and fun of the original game and add a homosexual seasoning on top it'll be a perfect cute and fun time. I love the wide array of jobs and how these all build into each other, it's a very one of a kind experience and really fun.

Princess Peach Showtime 

This is the true triple A game of the list and the only one that has captivated me in all the shows of all the consoles and developers I've seen of late. Peach is barbie now and I am here for it, let her have a million jobs and have a game based around her doing these different roles and being an icon in each of them, sounds good, I'm in, it's a really cute and fun concept. It looks really fun and the art style looks great.

Our Life Now and Forever 

There is no other games like the Our Life games and getting to be sapphic in this one means I finally get to go ahead and experience the series I have been curious about for a while now. This game will let you be polyamarous which is the only game on this list I can say for sure will allow you to do that and that alone is something that would keep me engaged. However, getting to grow up with characters, change your pronouns, your name, anything about yourself as you do and having the characters change with you is amazing. I love the concept of this game and the wild reactivity the games demo has always provided just to a simple thing like me choosing to be trans in the childhood phase is amazing, it is truly such a considered and thoughtful game with such masterful crafting that the act one demo alone is probably worth money. So I did back this one on kickstarter as well so this is my other pick up.

Unlike other games on this list I am fairly confident this is a 2025 game and not a 2024 game but I want to talk about it now because people on the Patreon will be getting to play updated versions of the game over the course of the year akin to early access. I think the game is for sure worth a look.

Izrand Allure

After playing the previous game in the series I am totally sold on wanting to experience Izrand Allure. Luxaren Allure was a really special experience I had this year finally checking out the game after I think years of putting it off and beating it I really want to play this follow up. This game seems far more in depth and far more artistically masterful then Luxaren as well so I really want to see everything this game has to offer. I love a good job system and this game boasts one. I really want to see this lesbian RPG and I hope I get a chance to play it very soon but obviously Unity the dev should take her time to make it. Regardless, I am just gushing every time I see the game and I think this has potential to be a massive game of the year type hit for me.

If you enjoyed this post, I got a lot more end of the year lists coming up when it's actually next year so I can tell people what I enjoyed in December. You can also support me in making cool queer art by checking out my Patreon and Ko-fi.

[madnesswithmadhu]

chat the madagascar/ahkj hyperfix is coming back so here are MY HOT, ULTIMATE TAKES🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 (also I might remember things wrong so pls correct me if I do!!)

AS MUCH AS LITTLE ME LOVED THE 3RD MADAGASCAR MOVIE, I JUST HATE IT LORE WISE. LIKE CHANEL DUBOIS WAS ICONIC THO BUT THEY COULDVE MADE HER LIKE A POACHER AND LET THEM STAY IN THE WILD LIKE... WHY DID THE CIRCUS HAVE TO BE BROUGHT IN??? AND DONT GET ME STARTED ON THE WHOLE LOVE INTEREST THING (THAT CHEETAH GIRL, FORGOR HER NAME SORRY, AND THAT BEAR WHO'S NAME WAS SONYA I THINK IDK THATS HOW UNREMEMARBLE THEY WERE TO ME) LIKE IN MY OPINION THAT CHEETAH GIRL WAS JUST THERE FOR ALEX BC "OOOH LOVE INTEREST" WHICH SUCKS TBH BC SHE COULDVE BEEN COOL, BUT THEY KINDA DID WITH HER WHAT THEY DID WITH CLOVER AT THE END OF AHKJ, PURELY EXISTING FOR MALE CHARACTERS.

SPEAKING OF RHE 3RD MOVIE (I HAVE IMMENSE BEEF WITH IT SORRY) WTF WAS THAT SCENE WHERE MAURICE SMILED WHEN RHEY ALL THOUGHT JULIEN DIED??? LIKE HUH?...WHAT ABOUT TRUE BROMANCE?... I, MAURICE??? LIKE HUH. AND IT WASNT EVEN ONE OF THOSE MOMENTS WHERE ITS LIKE THEY SMILE FIRST FROM SHOCK AND THEN FREAK OUT BC THE CREATOR **CONFIRMED** IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THAT MAURICE WAS HAPPY HE DIED LIKE NO???? THOSE TWO ARE LIKE AN OLD MARRIED COUPLE WHO BICKER BUT STILL LOVE EACHOTHER AND ARE JUST GRUMPY MOST OF THE TIME

I WISH WE COULDVE GOTTEN A MOVIE THAT FOCUSED ON THE LEMURS/MAYBE ANOTHER SERIES THATS ABOUT THE LEMUR TRIO RETURNING TO MADAGASCAR AND TRYING TO FIX EVERYTHING THAT WENT WRONG WHEN THEY WERE GONE, OR THEY COULD ACTUALLY EXPAND MORE ON THE WHOLE TRAVELLING CIRCUS IDEA WHICH COULD MAKE IT MORE INTERESTING

ALSO CLOVER IS A LESBIAN. SORRY NOT SORRY LIKE THE LEMUR TRIO LITERALLY THOUGHT SHE WAS GONNA MARRY A WOMAN, AND FOUND NO PROBLEM WITH IT, LIKE SHE DOESNT LIKE SAGE, SHE LIKES THE IDEA OF HIM BC SHE LOOKS LIKE THE GUY FROM HER NOVELS!!!!!! (Need someone to draw the lemur trio+maybe like Ted or whatever going to the mountain lemur kingdom and playing "good luck, babe!" From Chappel Roan to try and knock her out of the comphet. OR ILL DRAW IT MYSELF IDK)

WHY ARE WE OVERLOOKING MAURICE'S LORE?... LIKE SURE MORT'S LORE IS CWAZY BUT MAURICE IS LITERALLY LIKE A GOD TO A BUNCH OF SNAILS???? LIKE NO ONE HAS DEEPENED INTO THAT LORE AND IT MAKES ME SAD LOWKEY, NOT ONLY CUZ HES MY FAV AND HE IS TERIBBLY UNDERRATED SINCE PPL WANNA FOCUS ON KJ AND MORT MORE, BUT HE GENUINELY HAS LORE THAT IS SO INSANE, LIKE HE LOST BOTH HIS BIO PARENTS AND HIS ADOPTIVE PARENTS DUE TO FOOSSA'S; HE GOT BULLIED AS A KID; HE IS A IMMENSE PPL'S PLEASER; ETC ETC. LIKE HE'S SO COOL IM NOT BEING BIASED CUZ HES MY FAVE PLS

OVERALL: DREAMWORKS STOP MAKING FEMALE CHARACTERS ONLY EXIST FOR MALE ONES AND MAKE GOOD SEQUELS/PREQUELS THAT DONT CONTRADICT ONE ANOTHER

THE MFS WHO MADE RHAT JULIEN ASSASIN JOKE IS DEAD TO ME TBH

PLS MAKE ANOTHER MADAGASCAR MEDIA SO THE FANDOM REVIVES

#SAVECLOVERFROMHERCOMPHET

PLS STOP IGNORING MAURICE, HE IS SILLY IN HIS OWN WAYS AND DOESNT HAVE TO HAVE A WEIRD KINK AROUND ANOTHER CHARACTER TO BE POPULAR, BC HE IS JUST AS OVER-THE-TOP AS THE OTHER CHARACTERS JUST IN HIS OWN WAY PLS😞😞