#and there's this underlying narrative about how people change over time and a lot of it from leon's perspective is because of trauma/PTSD

[autumnoakes]

hyperfixations really will have you imagining a 2 hour video essay on some white guy video game character huh 😪

[mantequillamcwhoremick]

A penny for your thoughts on the Dikinbaus episode? 👀👀👀

Omg okay so I definitely have to rewatch it like 10082927 times but just to go off of my late night 'delirious from excitement' watch, I am absolutely ECSTATIC at the way the episode treated Butters and gave him a well deserved win.

Butters has evolved a lot over the course of the show, he used to be a 100% naïve and innocent boy who was absolutely clueless about everything mature or terrible going on around him and it was always a very hopeful thing for me to watch him keep going and loving life despite how much the world tore him down on all ends. In a way, watching old seasons makes me miss the old Butters, but if Butters had just stayed the same for the next 20 seasons, he would hardly feel like a real/three dimensional person as he does now.

The changes and mood swings he's gone through, as well as the resilience he's started to build up were weird to watch at first (*COUGH* s20) but then they've started making more and more sense, especially taking into account the Post COVID special and the two wildly different paths his life could go.

That all being said, Dikinbaus was an absolutely satisfying cathartic episode as a Butters enthusiast, because he's just finally embracing things he's genuinely good at and demanding justice from someone who's arguably taken advantage of him the most in the entire show: Cartman.

It's kind of like Butters' version of Wendy's "Breast Cancer Show Ever" episode, where she's often been disrespected in a sexist way by him and no one (no teachers/adults) ever really did something, so she took matters into her own hands. Cartman is always screwing Butters over by letting him take the fall for his schemes, making Butters spend money on his behalf, and Butters has let him get away with it for so long, and so have Butters' parents (and everyone else but I especially blame the adults bc yknow).

This makes Dikinbaus kind of a kickstarter for Butters' "Fuck you, Eric!" moment at the end of Post COVID: The Return of COVID, which is nice to see because in the "Worldwide Privacy Tour" episode earlier in the season, Butters' behavior (after his parents sent him to rework his "brand") reminded me much more of Vic Chaos. It's nice to see these two versions of Butters' future reflect in present episodes, and I'm excited to see more of it in future episodes.

I've been rambling about Butters only but tbh I found the Kenman dynamic in this episode hilarious too. It makes me kind of mourn the respect Butters had for Kenny though, bc I'm sure that after this episode it must've significantly gone down, but honestly I was just happy to see Kenny have some fun even if it was at Butters' expense. Let him be a dumb immature kid fr

The only issue I had with the episode for now is the commentary on mental health days at work and the underlying "today's youth is sensitive and too lazy to work" message, which lacked nuance and just kinda felt like old people complaining. It would've been okay if they'd kept it only to Cartman, kinda like the "there's queer people, and then there's Mr Garrison" thing, but they brought Kenny & other kids into that narrative too so it made me feel a little eh about the commentary. But oh well

Sorry anon, you gave me a penny and I'm throwing a whole thesis on you but I still thank you a lot for asking and letting me ramble. Kisses to you :>>

[sir-adamus]

Just noticed crunchy roll changed the synopsis of the show to reflect the show a bit better instead of just "School, beacon,magic 🤪" which does nothing to describe the plot without spoiling anything now its "In a world filled with horrific monsters bent on death & destruction, humanity’s hope lies with powerful Huntsmen and Huntresses. Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long are four such Huntresses whose journeys will take them far past the grounds of their school, Beacon Academy. Though each may be powerful on their own, these four girls must overcome dark forces and work as a team if they truly hope to become the next generation of Remnant’s protectors."

Which I think is a bit better honestly

yeah honestly like

people got way too hung up on the school aspect when that's never what the show was actually about (i made a post the other day about how we only see about three classes throughout the entirety of the first three volumes and aside from a few school-mandated activities the most relevance Beacon has to the plot is that the team sleep there); fixating on the school aspect really misses the point that it's about the world and the characters

it's not, and never presented itself as, a slice of life school show set in a fantasy world - the academic side of things rarely if ever comes into play because it's ultimately less important than the heroes coming into their own and getting involved with the underlying mysteries of the world they live in

i've said before a few times that RWBY is structured more like a JRPG, and draws a lot of influence from Final Fantasy VIII

saying 'RWBY should have never left Beacon' is like saying 'FFVIII should've solely been set in Balamb Garden', like i cannot begin to tell you how goddamn boring a 40 hour fantasy RPG set entirely in and around one location would be

i think a lot of the time people who want that out of RWBY just aren't watching the shows they want to watch (which would be... nickelodeon or disney channel highschool sitcoms, apparently) - like, is anyone asking why they want to watch multiple seasons of the same characters attending class and eating lunch together, over a dynamic story that takes the characters through various locations as part of an unfolding narrative?

[decepti-thots]

would you be down to give me a rough outline of how Prowl has been characterized over the publication history of the tf comics? I mean, in as far as you know about it. Every time you mention the costa stuff it makes me curious

I can try! I can't really drill down well without a thing to focus on specifically, but here are some general highlights.

Furman (and stuff that directly draws from Furman's run, like AHM as a whole) characterizes him basically as he did when writing Marvel G1, and gives him so little to do that not very much really comes out even then. Uptight, stick-in-his-ass, still a basically Good Guy TM and while he puts people's backs up a little, he's not under any level of suspicion. This is the closest to continuity-agnostic "fanon Prowl" you get in IDW, because that fanon figure draws quite a lot on the Marvel G1 characterization (when it isn't simply making things up wholesale, anyway). Furman copies his own homework, basically, lmao.

Roche is the guy who wrote phase two Prowl into existence as we know him. Rather infamously because he thought it was an interesting take on the character to er, ignore all the above stuff and make the Autobot SIC a rat bastard, lmao. Roche and Barber's interpretations came to dominate the character in IDW going forward, but they do differ. Roche's Prowl is more isolated from other characters (one does not really imagine Wreckers Prowl calling Bumblebee his best friend sincerely, as exRiD Prowl does), and people treat him as disliked by default. Even before the worst of what he does comes out, his reputation precedes him. Also, Roche's Prowl speaks fairly neutrally, whereas exRiD Prowl speaks more casually than fandom tends to admit to! Finally, Roche's Prowl is less spontaneously, outwardly emotional than Barber's is later on, and tends to fit the fanon stereotype of "always restrained" more.

Costa came in post-AHM but pre-Wreckers and hated all that, so he retconned it. LMAO. His Prowl is the archetype of the "good cop" protagonist surrounded by corruption, combined with surface level noir tropes that sort of work in tandem with those but lacking any grit. (Costa seems to understand what noir looks and sounds like, but none of the underlying narrative devices that make it function as noir.) This Prowl is specifically supposed to be (here's the retcon) someone who used to be more deliberately cold, removed and logical but who has specifically decided to change to be different following his experiences on Earth. (Spotlight: Prowl is a good one-issue explanation of Costa's perspective on Prowl, which is not the same as being a good comic.) As time goes on, the sheer unpopularity of this take pushed Costa to undo it a bit, and reintroduce some level of ambivalence to him... but by and large he remains kind of the "good authority figure who objects when the systems are misused" type, almost? His conflict with Spike is very much over the fact he expected better of Spike, see.

Barber's Prowl notably does not wholly throw the Costa stuff out the window. (This is why the Spike stuff features a lot; it's really the only strong emotional hook Costa's work gives you for his version of the character to grab at.) But Prowl is back to being a morally gray figure whose moral ambivalence is very strongly tied to his role as an authority figure- and that's worth mentioning. Prowl's downward spiral being intrinsically linked to his refusal to relinquish authority, and his abuse of it, is something that is all Barber and not Roche. (In Wreckers, Prowl is an asshole because of personal arrogance. In exRiD, he's more an asshole because of his role enabling a wider system, by the end. IMO that's a big difference, anyway.) He is not starting off exRiD loathed by absolutely everyone, or a figure of preexisting serious mistrust. That's something that develops over the course of the comic as things come to light for the characters in-universe, meaning exRiD Prowl feels like he's put up a more convincing shield in front of his worse dealings over the course of the war, perhaps. His position deteriorates significantly over the comic. He is more prone to balancing his deliberate cold-heartedness with angry or emotional outbursts than we saw in Wreckers, leading to him having multiple outbursts that worsen his situation over the course of the comic. This is the Prowl who holds grudges.

Roberts' Prowl is kind of different to talk about to the above because his Prowl in Shadowplay and his Prowl in Titans Return are different genres. I can do a post on that if folks really want but it probably is its own post, haha.

IDK feel free to clarify any specific stuff you'd like a vibe on if you want, this is all just what came to my mind instinctively!

[dwellordream]

thoughts on HOTD, episode 4, season 2 (spoilers below)

enjoying the continued focus on daemon's dream states. i like that the show is not afraid to focus on the underlying darkness of the daemon/rhaenyra relationship, and that it even names his actions as predatory. not because i need the show to moralize to me about it, but because it makes daemon a more nuanced character for him to have subconscious guilt and self-loathing over his relationship- he realizes he did take advantage of rhaenyra's naivety and idolization of him, and while he doesn't regret it, he does fear that part of him loved rhaenyra *the most* when she was young and easily idealized as the charming, impulsive princess, not a wife and mother with real world worries and mistrust of his intentions.

aemond stunting on aegon by flaunting that cole trusts him more, and that he has superior knowledge of valyrian- thus implying he is the more 'fit' heir, was pretty well done. that said, i think the rook's rest plan is dumb in canon and dumb here. hoping to corner rhaenys (or any dragon rider) specifically at a castle surrounded by open air and the sea just seems silly. i acknowledge that the writers could likely only change the circumstances of the ambush so much, it just irks me.

all the harrenhal scenes in this episode are fantastic. the sheer atmosphere and the spectacular set design go a long way to contributing to the gothic thrills. i wish the show could always be this openly fantastical. and gayle rankin's alys is excellent- i love her slightly nasal accent, her kirtle, her long hair- just everything about her. an actress with less charisma could not sell her blatant manipulative attitude or the snippets of dry humor. i'm excited to see her and aemond in a scene together.

i'm curious to see how long alicent's apathy and nihilism lasts. a lot of people have compared her to GoT's cersei in this episode, and i can see it, although i don't think cersei was ever quite so blasé about her son's reign. i suspect we may see her 'snap out of it' when she is confronted with the extent of aegon's wounds, though i hope she doesn't revert straight back to self loathing and blaming herself for it.

jace's reaction to rhaenyra's return is essentially that of an exasperated father confronting his teenaged daughter after she returns from a party at 2 am. i do think it is silly that rhaenyra confesses to her council that she made a last ditch effort for peace- it makes her look impulsive and naive in front of them. i think the writers are attempting to show that yes, it was foolhardy and that jace is right to be horrified, but i did laugh out loud when rhaenyra admits that she, just now, has decided to fully commit to the war.

the show's reliance on the prophecy of ice and fire is stupid- but i do like the idea of House Targaryen having a narrative they constantly reinforce to themselves whenever they need a justification for their actions. i'm not railing against rhaenyra using this as an excuse at this point- i just wish the show leaned less on this 'chosen one' narrative.

the scene of Vhagar lurking in the woods was some fantastic framing- very Jurassic Park, and the initial entry of Vhagar into the dragon duel is very well done. the entire fight scene, i thought, was fantastically choreographed- it truly was like a dance between first Meleys and Sunfyre, then Meleys and Vhagar. a lot of people were furious that the show depicts Aemond deliberately waiting to enter the battle when he realizes Aegon has shown up unexpectedly, and then having Aemond choose to attack while Meleys and Sunfyre are interlocked- but Aemond attacking without concern for Sunfyre and Aegon is what happened in Fire & Blood.

additionally, while some people have claimed that Rhaenys had 'ample time to flee' from the battle, the scene makes it clear that Meleys was badly injured, even before Vhagar gets her jaws around Meleys' neck. Rhaenys was either going to be hunted down and caught by Vhagar, or turn back and go out fighting, and that's what she chose to do.

overall, i'd say this episode was a solid 8.5/10. the last 20 minutes were amazing, especially the evocative 'dance' of the battle, and the harrenhal scenes were great as well.

[batsplat]

I just read your post about the motogp community and I wanted to ask: what are the things that interests you more about the sport?

oof that's a big question... got hooked on the racing itself, stuck around for the fraught interpersonal relationships. I got into the sport in a slightly odd, roundabout way, but it was something fun and new and just 'for me' (again, not a mainstream sport around here) at a time when I was going through a major life change. a lot of what I enjoy about watching sports is the research that goes into fully understanding what I'm watching. motogp is slightly odd in that regard (as I suppose are motorsports I got into more recently in similar fashion), because my technical understanding of the sport will always remain fairly limited. plus, you just understand a sport differently if you've had the chance to compete in it yourself, and obviously I have never raced on a motorbike before. so, for the sport I grew up with that I play myself and have a coaching license for, when I watch a lot of my thoughts and notes concern quite precise details about techniques and tactics and all that stuff. in concrete terms, that is a sport I feel like I could be a commentator for with a little practise... but with motogp, I couldn't do that. it's always going to be a sport I consider myself an outsider to

which does make a difference to me! of course, there's also something fun to that... it's all a bit more new and exciting and less personal. I don't really mind as much if motogp ends up developing in ways I don't approve with, because it's not a sport I feel like is mine to lose. motogp doesn't quite have the capacity to hurt me in that way. I'm just passing through, taking what I can get, and I also accept there are a lot of people out there who understand a hell of a lot more than I do. I have to take experts and the riders themselves at their word more than I would for a sport where... not to sound arrogant, but I kinda believe I know more than a lot of the equivalent people there. but, the thing is, motogp has clearly been able to sustain my interest because it's given me so much that I enjoy researching - and here a lot of it isn't necessarily super technical (though obviously I always want to understand more about those aspects). at the end of the day, motogp provides a lot of the kind of drama I'd kill for in other sports. all of the aliens are absolute gifts in this regard... it's like you're being slapped in the face with one banger of a rivalry after the other, the kind of thing you really really need to dig for in other sports. it's the difference between me having to scrape together an athlete's 2003 blog posts on defunct websites to figure out how she's publicly managing perception of the rivalry with her erstwhile friend and... okay, I mean, essentially I do the same thing in motogp, but there's also the more recent stuff to enjoy. not all other sports can claim the same is all I'll say. plus it's just so bonkers like genuinely where else do you get this sort of thing

for me, sports is all about narrative, and narrative is all about conflict. the joy is in figuring out how the competition makes athletes express themselves - it's a sort of language, in a way, where competing is a kind of constant back-and-forth that's informed by the image of the self and the image of the other and the image of the other's image of the self and so on. it's something I'm a lot lot lot worse at interpreting in motogp... at the end of the day, when I'm talking about riding styles or ways of winning races or mind games or whatever, I'm essentially poking in the dark. I don't know what I'm talking about. which also impacts the level of psychological insight you can get, because having a detailed technical understanding makes it way easier to understand the mental calculus that underlies each action an athlete is taking. but! motogp gives me so much to work with because all the drama is so insane and over the top... it might be poking in the dark - but also they're constantly setting things on fire! so there's plenty that even the layperson can see. it means I follow motogp a bit more for the actual athletes themselves than I do in other sports, though I think it's still quite balanced

but yeah, for me following motogp is primarily about a) watching races and understand as well as possible what I'm watching, and b) going down research rabbit holes, which hopefully also helps (a). with anything I'm a fan of, I'm fairly wary of how I interact with fan spaces. which in motogp terms means there's a lot of things I am extremely disinterested in arguing about, especially if it's stuff I was already sick of seeing seven years ago. I enjoy my fair share of sports discourse, but I find goat debates quite possibly the most tedious thing in the universe in any sport. I love numbers, I have many many spreadsheets dedicated to sports stats for some of the most obscure shit under this sun, but if it's just a dick measuring contest over comparing athletes' achievements, then again, goot bye. mainly I just want to have fun and I'm not going to interact with this sport in a way that doesn't spark joy... I already have a sport I'll never escape from, one is quite enough for anyone. if there comes the point where a specific fan space or even the sport as a whole is no longer fun, I'm out

[spiritualfeelings]

Blog post #6

How does the media shape the way people think about technology?

Media plays a huge part in shaping the public opinion. When discussing technology, media can often present it in a negative or a positive light. For example, In this class, we talk about how technology can usually have underlying issues such as racism, sexism, trolling, etc. Also, as I said the media shapes cultural narratives so whatever is trendy at that point in time is gonna be the main opinion for most people. So, the media has a very huge part in the opinions of the public.

What challenges do social media platforms face when moderating hate speech?

There are many challenges that social media platforms face when trying to moderate hate speech. The biggest issue would be that a person could just make another account and continue the cycle, but there’s also an argument that once there is moderation on a platform nothing will be allowed and that free speech will be limited. Another challenge is figuring out the context of the post, in some countries, certain words can mean good things whereas in other countries those words are the worst words you can say. It is a tricky issue to tackle but I hope there can be less hate speech without limiting free speech.

How has social media changed social justice movements?

Social media has played a huge part in social justice movements, a great example is the BLM movement and how it took over platforms like Twitter and TikTok. In 2020 every TikTok post was some sort of injustice someone had faced and their experience. Also, the speaker on Wednesday mentioned how women in Mexico who face injustice use social media platforms because a lot of the time the police and government are corrupted and do not take them seriously. Without social media who knows if those women would have gotten justice for the things that were done to them. This shows how social media can be used for good and not only trolling and hate.

What is the concept of interpellation?

The concept of interpellation, according to Google, explains how ideas get into our heads and affect our lives, so much so that cultural ideas have such a hold on us that we believe they are our own. According to the reading, Race & Social Media by Senft and Noble, it states, “The Marxist psychoanalyst Louis Althusser developed a concept called interpellation that is useful when trying to understand the mechanics of racialization. According to Althusser (1971), we derive our sense of identity from how we respond to the ways in which others implicitly categorize us through public speech and gestures each day”. This shows how the public is heavily influenced by the media.

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code.

Hungsinger, J., & Senft, T. (2014). The Social Media Handbook

Daniels, J. (2009). Combating Global White Supremacy in the Digital Era.

[takeariskao3]

“Ginny nodded and had just started to spin away when Harry caught her around the wrist. His eyes were hard, pinning her in place as his fingers tightened around the exposed skin below her sleeve.

‘Don’t miss,’ he said quietly, an underlying pleading evident in his tone. “

I LOVE the way you convey Harry’s care for Ginny. At the ball, when harry discusses his protection charm and Flitwick is fawning over the intensity of its power adjacent to the bond between that of the castor and the intended protector. When it’s obvious how draining it is to cast it but Harry does so with no qualms because clearly, protecting Ginny is what matters most.

Seriously, love it. I am so curious, what are headcanons you have about Harry caring for Ginny? What are moments in canon that you appreciated? I just enjoy your perspective and just want to read your introspections on this beloved relationship.

aahhhh thank you!!!! you quoted me back to me!! i’m so 🥹🥹🥹 right now.

i think harry’s protectiveness/care/love for ginny is pretty constant, especially through the last two books and it manifests in a very simple way. he fundamentally and consistently puts ginny's safety and wellbeing above his own. you can argue that this is a character trait of harry's in that he would take the brunt of anything for anyone if given the chance, however instead of a passive "i put others before myself", with ginny it is a very active and instinctual need, there aren't any other options. there is no choice to make. he just does.

there are lots of little instances of this in the text (and in my opinion, two very big ones). when he left with dumbledore at the end of hbp he made sure ron knew to give ginny a sip of the felix felicis. when he checks her dot on the mauraders map he's trying to communicate telepathically that he hopes she's okay. when HRH need into the room of requirement he hilariously yells after her as she runs into battle "and then you go back in! you have to go back in!"

the big ones in my opinion are these: after dumbledore died and he realized he was now enemy no.1, harry wasn't taking any chances. instead of leaving any doubt or question, he ends it for real. this is not a pretend break up. he doesn't give ginny a chance to say i'll wait for you or leave anything open ended. its over. for real. because he can't stand the thought of her being hurt/used/killed because of him.

the other big one is the final battle, harry is moments (literal seconds) away from ending voldemort for good but a killing curse comes within inches of ginny and he changes direction. i honest to god am not sure people understand me when i say HE CHANGES DIRECTION. from a narrative perspective this is insane. this is seven books of antagonism, this is the darkest wizard of all time, this is the neither can live while the other survives, this is the conflict of harry's entire life about to be resolved and he. changes. direction. like can you believe that?? can you??????

that kind of feeling to me is so all consuming and so life altering and so deeply intrinsic to who he is and how loves. it gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.

so when i realized i wanted to write a harry/ginny fic a little over a year ago, obviously it had to be a ginny is in trouble, let's burn the entire world down to keep her safe kind of a thing. there really aren't any other options for me when trying to weave them back together again. because ginny doesn't know this about him, not yet at least, and i'm a masochist so why not have her find out in the saddest, angstiest, most conflict-ridden way possible.

[thegingerheed]

The Problems with TS!UNDERSWAP's Character Writing

[A quick disclaimer before we start:

I like TS!Underswap. I think it's a decent game with a lot to enjoy packed into it's two released areas. The art direction is consistently really pretty, the music manages to both capture the catchiness of Toby's musical style whilst eloquently imbuing it with it's own unique touch that feels both familiar yet fresh and the writing, particularly for their original characters are some of the most solid I've seen in this fandom. (Koffin K. You may have my children and my heart) Clearly there is a lot of care put into this game by a team clearly passionate for the craft and I want to make that clear first and foremost as I will not be talking about it within this post itself. 

This post, like the ones before it, isn't designed to attack or belittle the folks who are behind and/or enjoy the project nor is it a post demanding change to the project of any kind. Instead, I want to use this game as an example to discuss how characters are written within stories and the many writing hurdles the concept of "roleswaps" introduces.]

What is TS!Underswap?

TS!Underswap is a fangame based on Team Switched's take on the popular Undertale AU: Underswap. A premise that sees the characters of Undertale swap with one another, usually with characters that either make up a pair or are closely related in some way. (e.g. The two humans swap with each other and the two skeleton brothers swap with each other ect) 

An important piece of fandom context to keep in mind is that the Undertale Fandom, generally speaking, favours visual media over text-based media. Where some fandoms drift more on the side of fanfiction, at the height of Undertale fandom, the most prominent fan works were almost exclusively art based, focused mostly on the aesthetics of the AU over things like Story. Eg. Underfell, Underswap, Outertale. 

Underswap was an AU entirely built for the medium of visual art. There's not much story directly attached to the AU beyond cliff notes from the creator. Characters generally act very similar to the characters they're replacing, with only small adaptations from their original character sprinkled here and there. You can aliken the appeal of Underswap and many of the older 2016 UT AUs to something like an art challenge. Where the appeal isn't really in the new stories that unfold through cause and effect of the AUs premises but rather from the fun of reimagining and designing characters under differing aesthetics. Whether you imagine how characters would look like, if they were other characters, an edgier, "evil" counterpart or dunked into blue and yellow galaxy paint.

[Art by PopcornPrince, Fella and 2mi127 respectively]

Unlike the original, TS! is a fangame, one that's designed to be quite similar to Undertale, so, as a consequence for its new medium. It needed an expanded focus on the aspects Underswap only very loosely focused on. As time went on, the project evolved and how it handled its characters changed along with it. The direction taken is one more focused on imagining characters in different narrative roles, how their personalities change the way the story unfolds.

To get the elephant out of the room. TS!Underswap isn't really a roleswap AU nor does it really consider itself one. This probably sounds oxymoronic to most people in that it is literally called Underswap but to put it simply, TS!Underswap focuses a lot of its energy on other things besides just the swaps, (e.g. the original characters, new areas ect) and the team has gone on record to call the game a "Reimagining of Undertale" I bring this distinction up because it literally does not matter and is irrelevant for my future claim. Regardless to how TS! classifies their project, it's foundation  undeniably has the DNA of the roleswap AU it is based on and so shares a lot of the same underlying principles with that kind of fanwork. Besides the term "Reimagining" is so vague it could basically describe every Undertale AU known to man. 

The game is applauded as an Underswap that understands the characters, as a goal with TS! was to retain and expand upon the characterization of the characters seen in Undertale. What I want to talk about with this critique is how TS! handles these role swapped characters in relation to everything else and how I do not think it truly has the characters justice.

How do characters work?

Characters in stories are not "active" for the entire duration of the plot. This is because stories have limits and so can't have every character being as important and doing important stuff at the one time forever. It just isn't a sustainable way of storytelling and can really damper the pacing and moment to moment coherence of a given story. As new characters are introduced older characters will usually take more of a backseat role to allow the plot time to flesh the new characters out. The mark of a good story is one where you don't really notice this fact of writing. Where characters are given the backseat in subtle ways that don't take the audience out of the story and feel like the character is being sidelined. It is a natural balancing act. The activeness of a character (that is to say, how often they choose to act in a story to progress the plot) does not necessarily dictate how important characters are to the story, as strange as that may sound. 

To put this into practice, let's talk about two examples from Undertale. Flowey is the most important character in Undertale, yet he doesn't actually appear that much throughout. He shows up at the start and end of ruins and during the end of most of the game's routes Most of Flowey's relevance comes from before the plot of Undertale itself and how that impacts his goals as an antagonist. So throughout a huge chunk of the story, he isn't actually doing much and all, everything he does in this time is in the shadows, or in other words, off screen and through other characters (Papyrus). This role fits Flowey because of his role as a player, he knows this world better than anyone living in it, so doesn't have to do much to leverage it to his own designs.

Now, second example. Papyrus and Sans are characters that work in a pair. They are characters that can't really be separated entirely from the other as they are designed to play off the other. We see this in how active these characters are within the plot. Particularly pacifist. Papyrus is the most active character in Undertale, his date is what leads to befriending Undyne and his support of Alphys helps to allow True Lab to happen. Even getting everybody together for Flowey to absorb them was Papyrus' doing, albeit unintentionally so. He's a character that isn't contained within the arc he was introduced in and has an active presence throughout. This aligns perfectly with Papyrus' nature, he's a character who is naturally very proactive and so the narrative allows him that power.

Sans on the other hand, is the exact opposite of Papyrus in terms of how active he is in the story. His mysterious nature means we don't know much about him that isn't laced in theory and his role in the story is very small. He's either there to play off Papyrus or for some funny gags. After Snowdin, he's very consistent in how little importance he is to the plot, even all the information we do get, particularly on the hangouts you can have with him is voluntary and entirely skippable. His character is balanced out by the juxtaposition from the role the No Mercy route puts him in. He goes from a shopkeeper with funny gags and occasional exposition to the final boss of the entire game and this effect is what makes him interesting within Undertale. His natural inactiveness as a character restricts how much he can really do while still having agency, he's a character to naturally sit more on the sidelines and act as support. His battle in No Mercy only has an impact with the context of everything that comes before it. It is a balance found within the imbalance of character importance. 

How does TS!Underswap handle this?

I'll mostly be talking about Sans and Papyrus here, as by nature, they're the easiest characters to explain my issues with TS! as I've already set up them with the example already.

Sans does not work in Papyrus' role. He is a character that is defined by his own inactiveness, he's the type of person that doesn't like talking about himself. Papyrus even says as such. Everything we learn about Sans is either, in his very vague, things he tells you in his No Mercy Fight, or through other people. Trying to apply the role of the most proactive character in the game onto the least proactive character is much like trying to stuff a cube into a sphere shaped hole. Papyrus also doesn't work in Sans' role either, for exact opposite reasons. Both brothers are characters who are direct opposites from each other. That isn't to say the concept can't be done well, or is doomed on conception but it will always be an uphill battle trying to find the balance between the character's nature and roles they are meant to embody.

The first thing I want to talk about is motivation. Sans in TS, much like Papyrus in UT, is the antagonist of the second area, with Papyrus acting as The Human's support while playing off Sans. Where TS differs from UT is the "why" of the situation. In Undertale Papyrus was an antagonist because he wanted to capture a human so that Undyne would let him into the Royal Guard. This goal is a manifestation of his own insecurities and desire for connection and not feeling lonely. He believes that being a member of the royal guard will solve his problems so he takes action to ensure it happens.

Sans in TS takes up the guise of "Crossbones" the "Starlight Saviour" and so, faces the human in an assortment of very goofy scenarios. It is revealed after his fight that Papyrus was the reason he started doing. Papyrus within that hang out was worried he forced his brother into the role and was just projecting.

The main issue with this is that Sans doesn't really have a story? We don't really know what Sans wants throughout the course of his arc. We loosely have, "wants to make his brother happy" and that works for a setup but it does not go anywhere beyond that, Sans' nature as someone who doesn't like talking about himself leads to even his battle not providing much detail on him, his battle is something he does for Papyrus and even the questions he asks in that battle has no clear relevance to him and where vaguely setting up question for Chara and their situation, what makes this a problem his how long winded TS is compared to Undertale. Undertale, even excluding content like Papyrus' date, had an entire arc for Papyrus, where he finds ways of connection and internal value without the need for the royal guard. Where he learns that he doesn't need that goal to have the connection he thinks it will provide him. He cared about what getting in the guard would get him, not the guard. Sans in TS, despite all the time dedicated to him, doesn't have and is not equipped as a character to handle having direct character importance. So most of the time spent on Sans are jokes, similar to Undertale. But Sans was put in the background to a lot of other things. Papyrus was played for a joke in UT too at times, however in that game comedy wasn't there for pure comedy's sake, it taught us more about the character, what he wants and his eccentricities. It was characterization through comedy. In TS, Sans is put into the role of the main antagonist in this area and yet, despite that, isn't given enough time to develop that role in a way that suits the character and not the role. So much of TS! Sans content is done because Papyrus did it in Undertale and they want to have that direct mirroring between the two games and while that is a fair thing to want but I believe that things like Sans' reason for being Crossbones were designed to be reasons just justify Sans in Papyrus' role rather telling an interesting story with Sans. He starts the same way he ends with little to no changes, you can argue Koffin K, maybe, but even then, that wasn't even Sans, that was Chara's doing. TS sets Sans up as the Hero of Starlight Isle and yet, in more time UT took to start and end an entire character arc they still haven't paid that concept off in a satisfying way by the time that arc ended. And I don't think that makes for great storytelling.

Okay, I've talked enough about the earthbound man, let's talk about the other one, now. Papyrus is locked away in TS. The narrative role he is given keeps him in a cage that restricts how proactive the most proactive UT can be. Papyrus is a character that does things, a lot of things, all of the time. My guy never stops. The main issue Papyrus has in TS! is the same issue that Sans has in by default the roles they are placed into are the opposite of their character, but where the increased importance put on Sans goes nowhere, Papyrus… doesn't really to much. Uncharacteristically, he makes this movie, I guess? There's a connection to Asgore too but we learn very little for ultimately very little gain. This was the case in Snowdin too. We learn very little about Sans here. But that isn't a problem for two reasons, one, Sans is meant to play off Papyrus, who is the main focus of the arc and that Sans naturally leads himself not to have much information about him. Papyrus is the exact opposite in that regard, the first time we see him on screen, he gushes about what he wants, how he's going to do it and how Sans is not helping. In TS, Papyrus doesn't really have that, he feels, like the analogy before: trapped in a narrative cage where he can't be Papyrus, because Papyrus can't be more proactive than Sans in this AU because Sans is the antagonist and the focus. Hell, if Papyrus wanted to make a movie… why wouldn't he want to be the star of the movie? If Papyrus is meant to have the same personality than he did in UT. He would buy in TS! He doesn't? He gave that role to Sans, because he cares about him? But Sans knows that already, Sans is the type of character to know what everybody in the room is thinking without it ever needing to be said and Papyrus knows his brother better than anyone, he is already very aware that Sans knows he cares about him. The reasoning was only there, again, to justify Papyrus' role in the story.

How did this happen?

I can't really say for sure why this game is written one way or another. The game has a lot of other issues with other characters, pacing and structure which I will not get into, for the document is long enough. But I do think I have an inkling of an idea.

I think the project's focus has stretched itself too thin. As I said, TS is not just a roleswap, it's focused on so much more beyond that core concept that it's kinda eclipsed that concept and I think that might be the root of the problem, stories can't do everything, they are limited by the scope defined by its creator. This is… not a flaw of stories, this is just how they work. Keeping the scope of a project from spiraling is important for a healthy workflow. Starlight Isles already had to figure out how it would handle the very complex problem that is redefining a role that fundamentally does not work for the character assigned to that. That alone is an interesting, worthwhile writing challenge to tackle, but it also has everything else to worry about. So much of the game is also spent on it's original characters too, having to establish them and their place within this new world, To the extent that, that the UT cast weren't given the time and attention (Sans in particular) they need to really define themself within that role and have a chance to tell an interesting story with the constraints of their character. 

In short, blending of both a role swap and a story with completely original characters. It is an amalgamation of two distinct concept and so risks lacking a cohesive vision. And, if the past 2800 words wasn't enough to convey already, was a risk I do not think paid off.

[thetldrplace]

SPQR- Mary Beard; Ch 9

Chapter 8 was a discussion of Roman life at the time. Since it didn’t have much in the historical narrative that I’m trying to document, I won’t comment on it.

9 The Transformation of Augustus

Julius Caesar had no legitimate heirs, so he adopted his great-nephew to make him the beneficiary of his fortune. Gaius Octavius was only 18. He was known as Octavianus, but he didn't use that name himself. His title after 27 BC, was Augustus (revered) and he dominated Roman political life for more than 50 years until his death in 14 BC. The Author writes: "He transformed the structures of Roman politics and the army, the government of the empire, the appearance of the city of Rome and the underlying sense of what Roman power, culture, and identity were all about".

He also transformed himself from a brutal warlord into a responsible statesman.

The face of civil war Fighting for rule of Rome followed Caesar's assassination. Octavian, Marc Antony, and Lepidus had formed a triumvirate to rule, but as they took care of Caesar's assassins, they turned more on each other. Lepidus was squeezed out by 36 BC. By 40 BC, Marc Antony and Octavian had effectively carved up the Mediterranean, with Octavian to the west, and Marc Antony to the east. Meanwhile, Marc Antony had taken up with Cleopatra, and their lavish lifestyle was leading to rumors that he was planning on transferring the capital to Alexandria. The forces met in a naval battle, but Antony's forces were betrayed and overrun. Antony and Cleopatra ran back to Alexandria, where Octavian went looking for them. But both had committed suicide.

Losers and winners There is more to the story though. What we got is a story written by the winner... not necessarily the truth. Augustus undoubtedly embellished the story to portray Antony as a Roman, morally debauched and led astray by the Oriental seductress Cleopatra. He painted his own victory as the triumph of traditional Roman values over the foreign enemy.

The riddle of Augustus Augustus didn’t change much of the Roman governing structure. All the positions continued as before. Augustus himself was more difficult to define, and it seems that was part of his plan. He did write a biography, Res Gestae (What I Did), that tells us what he wanted us to know.

What I did Several items are notable to today's historians. He gives a census number close to 5 million for Roman citizens. He also brags that he enlarged Rome's imperial reach much more than any other leader. He was also wealthy on a scale unheard of, and he used this wealth to act as the patron and protector of Rome. He also engaged in a massive building program in Rome. This laid the blueprint for one-man rule: military conquest, protector and benefactor of the Roman people, construction and reconstruction on a massive scale; underpinned by lots of cash and tempered with a respect for the ancient traditions of Rome.

Power Politics Being the son of the recently assassinated Caesar was no simple matter for Augustus. How could he devise a form of rule that would win over the people, defuse the opposition, and allow him to stay alive? Part of it came down to the language of power. He chose to frame all his powers in terms of regular office holding. He was elected consul repeatedly. Then he arranged to be granted the powers of a tribune, without being a tribunate; the powers of consul without being consul. Undoubtedly people weren't fooled by this, but he was cleverly adapting traditional idioms to serve a new politics, justifying and making comprehensible a new axis of power by systematically reconfiguring an old language.  

He also made himself the culmination of all Roman history, so that everything was meant to lead up to him.

However much art, myth, symbol and language played a part, Augustus also made sure he was secure through more practical means as well. He ensured the army was loyal to him and no one else, so that no one else would be able to easily follow in his own footsteps and raise their own private army to take over. He reformed the pension process so that the legions were now paid by the state, not their commanders.

Problems and successions There were a few challenges over the years of Augustus reign, signaling some level of discontent.

Picking an heir was also a problem since Augustus and Livia had no children together. Her son Tiberius was chosen as the heir.

Augustus is dead, love live Augustus Augustus died on August 19, 14 AD. He was succeeded by his step-son Tiberius.

[linkspooky]

My Hero Academia, Chapter 374 Thoughts. 

Why did the tide turn in the battle, just when Deku was about to finish off a ShigAfo who was well past his limit. Well, it was because Spinner managed to wake up Kurogiri, therefore teleporting all of the villains to the same battlefield sabotaging the hero’s strategy to keep them separate and finish them off individually. However, there are deeper thematic reasons beyond just the strategic aspects of the battle. The villains triumph when the heroes refuse to fix or face their mistakes, so how appropriate the last page of the chapter is Dabi and Twice facing two heroes who don’t want to own up to their mistakes?

1. Endeavor and Hawks. 

There is a lot that can be said about Endeavor and Hawks, but I think for the sake of directness rather than delving into their backstory and motivations, it’s more appropriate to focus in on why they haven’t changed.   

Before I being though let me explain personal narrative. Narrative is well.. you know... a story. It is how a series of events are told. There are different kinds of ways narrative are written up, for example first person is told as a limited personal account from a single narrator using “I”. In third person the perspective is told from outside of the characters. There are even differences in third person, third person limited can still be told in one character’s limited perspective so they are not privvy to the thoughts and motivations of another character, whereas third person omniscient can randomly jump around into anyone’s heads. 

All of this to say is that narrative is telling a story, so one step ahead personal narrative would be like a first person narrative, or a third person limited... it is the story as told in the character’s own head. Oftentimes however, this personal narrative they have will be different from the objective events that are happening in the story. 

There’s one thing you should always remember when reading a story, “Characters are liars.” There is text, which is the things either they through internal or external dialogue, or the narrative through prose blatantly say and then there is subtext the underlying theme or implications and you have to consider both when reading. 

In other words, Endeavor and Hawks are liars. The internal monologues inside their own heads, often disagree with the reality of their actions. Many times viewers have commented they seem out of touch with the reality around them and this is caused by them being so wrapped up in their personal narratives they can’t see what is happening around them. ANd in doing so, they ignore the feelings of the people around them. I think AFO, as awful as he is, makes some good points sometimes. 

I’ve said as much in previous metas, but the heroes as a whole tend to dismiss or even outright ignore the feelings of the villains they are facing, even when villains make honest attempts to communciate why they are doing what they’re doing. When AFO is making that speech, who shows up but Dabi and Twice, the two people that Endeavor and Hawks ignored the personal feelings of. 

Toya, was created by the Todoroki Family at the behest of Endeavor ignoring his feelings until they exploded out of him accidentally starting a fire and burning him to death, Twice’s return was facilitated by Hawks coldly stabbing him in the back because Twice did not accept his offer to betray his friends for a chance at rehabilitation. Something which also trampled all over Twice’s personal feelings of affection and desire to protect his loved ones, by asking him to do something he would never do. 

Hawks and Enji also have character arcs that have basically ground to a halt, ever since the first War Arc. Hawks reaction this chapter is pretty much proof of this, when he is faced with his failure to help rehabilitate Hawks his only reaction is “Just kill him again” which is exactly what he had done in the war arc. This is what I mean by character stagnation, characters refusing to grow or learn over time and instead making the same decisions over and over. 

In Enji’s case the reason is much clearer, because we spend more time in his head than we do Hawks. It is a common criticism that has been levvied against Enji’s “redemption” since the start. Enji’s redemption really isn’t about doing what is best for the feelings of his victims, but rather Enji is always focused on himself, he doesn’t want to be a better father, he wants to be a better hero. He doesn’t want to help ease the pain of his victims, but rather the guilt he feels over it. Nowhere is this best exampled then his own internal monologue. Enji has a single moment where he might have let things be about his sons and not him for once. 

But, then it immediately centers on himself. For the most part, Enji seems to truly be upset not about the people he hurt, but rather he’s lamenting the fact his life has gone so wrong that he has to feel guilt in the first place. I think this is central to Enji’s stagnation and the lack of overall progress in Enji’s arc, he still doesn’t really think he did anything wrong. 

Or rather. Look at hos he frames Toya’s funeral portrait a “Mistake.” He also repeats the same thing when he tries to talk to Natsuo. He says that he was never trying to neglect any of them. Which is, you know, a blatant lie if there ever was one. Toya calls himself a failure, because Enji literally referred to him and his brother and sister as a failure. We’re shown the flashback where he was kept away from his brother and sisters multiple times. He literally chose to treat three of his children like they didn’t exist, and not even let the youngest talk to them and he can’t own up to the fact afterwards. 

And, this once again ties back to personal narrative. Enji believes, and this has been the problem with him since the Pro Hero Arc that his true problem is that he wasn’t a good enough hero. A lot of people didn’t like the sudden inclusion of Enji’s backstory, but it makes sense to some extent, Enji’s regret is his father wasn’t strong enough to protect an innocent girl from a villain and died when he was young, therefore becoming the strongest hero makes it so he can never die and abandon his family the way his father did. Except. He does abandon his family. 

Enji can’t face what he has done wrong, because of his self-justification. He is a hero, and therefore he always has good intentions, and he can’t be the villain even when his own actions would make him one. Enji is on such an insane level of sunk cost fallacy, that in his mind, after the death of one son continuing to abuse another son is justifiable because otherwise he quite literally let one son die for nothing.

And, it’s this refusal to even face the fact that he can be wrong, which is why Enji ignores the feelings of everyone around him, and generally lets things fall into ruin. All Enji had to do was show up on that hill the day Toya burned to death, but something so small as lifting a finger is just impossible to Enji who cannot confront his own flaws, or even think of himself as the bad guy in any way.

Which is where we get a common trend between both Hawks and Endeavor, in which, they do not want to face the feelings or even the memories of their victims. In the Todofam dinner arc Enji tells the funeral portrait of Toya he wants him to come home and have dinner, but when he has the oppurtunity for that he won’t even face him and talk to him. Toya is just so much more convenient to face when he is a regretful memory, a mistake on Enji’s part, because then Enji is completely in control of the narrative. He barely thinks of Toya at all, and when he does it’s almost entirely on his own terms. 

Toya even comments on this, that he was always running and crying to Natsuo and Enji didn’t even know because he didn’t care to know. We have this same behavior repeated in Hawks. Hawks is really only comfortable seeing himself as the good guy. 

@thyandrawrites​ wrote two meta in regards to Hawks I want to reference now. This one on how Hawks thinks he has to continually justify his existence by acting as a support and helping others, and this one how Hawks in turn dodges responsibility when it comes to light he’s not the good guy. 

Hawks is someone a lot more complicated than Enji, because he’s not selfish, and he doesn’t really hurt others for self-gain. If Enji is a black hole, then Hawks is more like a sattelite. He does everything, including dirtying his own hands for the sake of others, and a greater good he likes to believe he is serving rather than for himself. In fact, it often comes at expense of himself, as Hawks has no real life, or friends or place in the world outside of being a hero. 

While he is different in intention than Enji, however, I believe it’s still right to call him out on basically everything he does to avoid guilt after the fact. “Doing dirty things for the sake of the greater good” is one thing, but Hawks in total denial of his actions can’t even see himself as dirty. Which once again we return to personal narrative, Hawks’ personal narrative and his self perception trumps everything, even the feelings of other people he is stomping on. 

To quote Thy on this: 

So this brings us to the present arc. Right after a raid that failed largely because Hawks wasn’t able to warn the heroes of the threat they were about to face, Hawks reacts by shutting down. If his existence is defined by how helpful he is, it goes without saying that he cannot accept being responsible for the huge death toll resulting from the failed ambush. So we witness Hawks not thinking critically at all about his share of responsibilities. He doesn’t think about what it meant to kill Twice.

This was the post-apocalyptic scenario that Hawks envisioned and wanted to avoid, the scenario he killed Twice in order to avoid. But it still happened, and yet we don’t see him reflect on it at all. What he does instead is clinging to something that gave him a sense of purpose before.

Being a tool instrumental to other people’s success.

Which in a way means that the same character stagnation that is present in Endeavor is there for Hawks as well. He has not changed in any significant way since his introduction in the Pro Hero Arc, effectively holding the same beliefs and making the same decisions as he did back then. That he needs to uplift Enji as a hero, and his own personal hero, even after learning the truth of who Enji was. 

And, we have this same guilt-avoidance mechanism that is at the root of Hawks’ stagnation the same way it is with Enji’s. Hawks practically does the same thing that Enji does to Toya with Twice, despite literally murdering him with his own hands, instead of taking responsibility for his own actions, or even I don’t know... at the bare minimum... feeling sorry about it, he chooses to remember Twice as an idealized memory, compartmented into a neat little box in a way that’s very flattering to Twice. 

It’s not “I killed Twice and I regret it” it’s “I want to learn from Twice and be helpful just like he was.” 

In doing so he belittles and ignores not only Twice’s feelings, but also his entire memory. Hawks and Enji both kind of want to believe their own internal narration that deep down they are good people, and their intentions and actions are those of a good person, and therefore everything they might have done wrong along the way is just a mistake or a slip-up on the road. Hawks always returns to the memory of him selflessly helping the people on the bus, because he wasnts to believe who he is at heart, but that’s also not how he is. 

They have no identity outside of being heroes, and yes it’s tragic to think they would crumple if ever faced with or trying to process the feelings they outright ignore, and also doubly tragic in Hawks case that he was groomed to feel that way by hero society at large from a young age, I also think it’s important to look at the cost of their actions. Hawks and Enji actively harm people, and get away with it with a slap on the wrist, and because of that they don’t reflect or change on their actions and they continue their bad behavior. 

It’s important to remember in Toya’s backstory, if Enji had just stopped and given up on his abuse of Shoto after Toya died, then Dabi would never have come about, and Toya would have come home. It’s this subtle escalation that happens when Enji is not confronted about his actions, and even enabled by the people around him to keep doing his bad behavior, it gets worse and worse over time. 

The whole point of the Todoroki household is that it didn’t have to get as bad as it did, but it happened because no one tried to stop Enji, and Enji was so good at self-justification he didn’t try to stop. Which is why I want to point out, it’s not just harmful for Hawks himself, it doesn’t just stunt his growth as a person, it’s extremely harmful to the people around him, because he cannot admit his mistakes and he cannot grow for them and so therefore inevitably he will repeat them again. In fact Hawks has gotten worse in some ways, which is where I want to reference Thy again.

Hawks even outright plays the victim. He’s not doing a public apology through a press conference because his personal ethics tells him it’s the right thing to do. He’s doing it because he knows it’s expected of him, which just isn’t the mindframe of someone who understood the gravity of his actions. From his phrasing, we can parse that he thinks that heroes like the top three are being put under scrutiny for no good reason, and like this is a test of his own endurance, when it should be a matter of proving his good faith. Hawks just killed a man who was running away, and he’s acting like it’s unfair that the world is holding him accountable for it.

The reason why Hawks thinks that society turned on him is because he justified Twice’s extrajudicial killing to himself as something he was doing to protect that same society that is now ungrateful for his personal sacrifice.

Hawks own motive of doing everything for the greater public good has been corrupted, because his killing of Twice did not give him the validation he was seeking. Which reveals once again, Hawks is not entirely selfless, just like a person he wants validation, he wants encouragement, he doesn’t do everything for the sake of the greater good. If he really believed his own personal narrative that he can sacrifice himself and others for the greater good and get his hands dirty and it will all be justified in the end, he wouldn’t be pouting because people criticized him. 

There’s a certain fragility to the ego of both Hawks and Endeavor where they can’t really accept any outsiders perspective on their actions at all, because everything has to be in line with their narrative, their own personal hero stories. 

Everyone talks about the differences between Nagant and Hawks, but there is one new angle I would like to bring in. Perspective. 

In the end what stopped Nagant from blindly following orders was her seeing her own self as dirty, after doing the dirty works of others. Nagant accepted the guilt of murder, and realized in comparison to the ideal way that the kids she was signing autographs for her saw her, she wasn’t living up to the hero they saw. 

Nagant was able to divorce herself from her own self image, and because of that she actually changed and took action against the corruption of the hero’s council. Lad Nagant if anything is capable of change in a way that Hawks isn’t, because Hawks can’t perceive any fault in his own self.

“I am optimistic to a fault.” almost quite literally in this case. When he is confronted with the reality of who Endeavor is he prefers to choose the image of a hero he saw as a child, and on the way he actively enables Endeavor to keep doing wrong by his abuse victims. Of course he says Endeavor is living to atone, but Hawks essentially advocates for doing what is worst to Toya which is ignoring Toya entirely, and on top of that making Shoto fight against him for Enji’s convenience. 

He remembers Twice in a positive light as someone who was helpful and wants to be like him, but when faced with a Twice who returned from the dead just wants to murder him again. Nagant says, the public gets to stargaze at the bright and shiny side, while the dark truth gnaws away from someone else.

And this, I think is key to understanding why Hawks mental spiral is so harmful because it doesn’t just harm himself, other people are always going to get hurt too so Hawks can maintain his fragile ego and sense of self. Hawks may be a brave hero able to courageously risk his life but at the same time he is an emotional coward, he cannot face himself or his own emotions or even when he does something wrong simply because he is too scared to.

And, yes the villains do this too but they at least at the bare minimum do not think they are good people. 

[fairybluedreams]

Hi OP hope you don't add me tacking on, but I did have this written up for another ask on a different poll wondering about adding Pocahontas:

Some articles that explain Pocahontas's real story & connection to MMIW under the read more, as well as the harm this movie perpetuates in current time. Content warning for sexual assault / rape, murder, and genocidal tactics.

For those who want an explanation they can just read on tumblr dot com though, it's this:

Pocahontas (not her real name, it was a secondary nickname) was somewhere between 9-11 years old when John Smith, 27, came to her tribal homelands. John Smith was a known tall-tale teller -- a dramatic incident of the chief's young daughter throwing herself over Smith to stop her father from killing him never happened, it was a story he made up -- and even he never made up a romantic love story with this child. The love story was something made up by Disney because her actual history is so horrific and doesn't make for family-friendly viewership. John Smith WAS known for going into villages and holding people at gunpoint for their stuff. He wasn't a nice guy.

When Pocahontas came of age, she married another Native and had a child with him. She was later kidnapped by an English guy, forced to leave her baby behind, and when her husband returned to the village, he was murdered. She was never reunited with her first child. She was held captive, assaulted (physically, mentally, sexually), forced to marry John Rolfe, baptized as a Christian, and taken to England to be paraded around as a colonization "success" story. When she was finally able to secure a trip to visit home, she died. A lot of colonial narratives claim she died of a European disease, but her family members, tribe, and Native historians submit that it was a planned death and likely poisoning. One of the linked articles states: "At the time, Pocahontas was perfectly healthy and in good condition to return... However, shortly after having dinner along with John Rolfe and Argall, she vomited and died. She had not even turned 21 at the time of her death, and despite her family requesting that her body be laid to rest in her tribe, Rolfe and Argall brought her to Gravesend in England where she was buried at a church. Her father was heartbroken at the news after having learned from Mattachanna that his daughter had died. He ended up dying from grief less than a year after Pocahontas." Her life was a tragedy.

This being said, listen -- I'm not judging you if you like the Disney movie. Most of the songs are fun and people have made some great covers, and I know some other Native people who enjoy watching it from time to time, even with the underlying discomfort of knowing how much they altered/lied about. For many of us, this movie was one of the first POSITIVE portrayals of Native women/people on screen, with a name and a face and a personality, in a time where we just didn't get that and you really only saw derogatory portrayals in Westerns that painted us as savages and the enemy. That, and Disney actually hired an Indigenous woman to play the lead character -- that was unheard of up to this point. For these reasons, there's a kind of like-hate relationship with some people for this movie.

I AM judging you if you try to defend the movie. If Disney really wanted to tell a story like the one they told on that screen, they should not have used a real woman, they shouldn't have changed her story so much, and they definitely shouldn't have made the colonizers who did this to her sympathetic. She was a CHILD when John Smith turned up, and they aged her UP and aged him DOWN in order to get audiences on board with a love story between a colonizer and a victim of colonization. They LIED about the events that took place, romanticized the honestly evil things that went down, and led to a whole lot of sexualization of Native women from the way they drew her to the Halloween costumes that come out trying to imitate that look -- and all of this contributes to and exacerbates issues we're seeing with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women today. The last article addresses that, and I've also copy/pasted the relevant quotes for those trying to understand what I'm talking about at the very end.

Me personally, I struggle to watch it now that I'm older and know her real story -- I can watch the little music video of "Steady as a Beating Drum" because of the colors of the scenery and the portrayal of village life and the love you see in the one woman tackling her returning husband into the water because she's overjoyed to see him again, but I struggle to watch everything else without wanting to cry or just being really angry over how they romanticized and straight up lied about a young woman's heart-breaking tragedy for their own profit and purposes.

ARTICLES:

The True Story Behind Disney’s Pocahontas -- Shortest article on this list and very to the point, basically the TL;DR for the second one

Historical Myths vs Sad Reality -- A more in depth article that takes into account writings, oral histories, tribal historian records, etc. to give a more complete view of her life and the timeline of events that led up to her death before the age of 21. PDF Version:

No More Stolen Sisters: America’s Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women -- Article looking into the factors that contribute to MMIW and the connection to Pocahontas.

Indigenous (Mis)Representation: Implications for the MMIWG2S Epidemic -- "Misrepresentations and stereotypes in media and popular culture encourage prejudice against Native Americans, especially women, thereby inciting violence and MMIP." A 25 page thesis on Indigenous portrayals in media and how poor representation and stereotypes affect the MMIW epidemic.

Important Quotes:

"Portraying Indigenous persons as stuck in the historical past serves to make them invisible today. In the United States and Mexico, only a handful of Indigenous leaders from past centuries are even recognized by name. Folklore has taken a handful of these Native women and lifted them to the status of national icons, namely, La Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea. Critically, their transformation into folk heroines takes place primarily outside of their own culture group."

"The Enamored Indian Princess narratives associated with La Malinche in Mexico and with Pocahontas and Sacagawea in the United States have been folklorized, meaning they have been embellished with incidents that cannot be verified with historical data and inconvenient details have been omitted, thus reinforcing ideologies of conquest, colonization, and Manifest Destiny associated with each narrative..."

"Knowing and willfully misrecognizing Natives through origin narratives is essential to imperial nation-states’ ability to justify the dispossession of land from Native peoples. Additionally, Downs considers the sexual dimensions of colonization as expressed in each of the narratives, in which the body of the colonized female serves as a metaphor for the colonized land. This body is available for the male colonizer to explore, to possess, and to dominate.... Pocahontas’s love for John Smith creates a narrative in which the American continent is longing for colonization by Europeans... "

"In denying the truth, Americans are able to minimize the guilt and historic and contemporary mistreatment of Native Americans. Indeed, C. Finley notes that the narrative of Pocahontas and John Smith frames conquest as a love story instead of a story of settlement and violence. The Pocahontas narrative requires love and marriage between the White man and Native woman to justify the narrative of conquest and nation-building through the universal concepts of love and marriage. Yet, Pocahontas is believed to have been only eleven years old when she met twenty-seven year-old John Smith. Eleven year-olds do not make appealing romantic leads, and are inappropriate as objects of sexual desire. Thus, the Pocahontas who is portrayed in paintings, novels, and films is usually an older teenager or young woman rather than a child, and John Smith is sometimes made younger to further reduce the age gap. D. Robertson finds that the treatment of young Native girls today bears great resemblance to the sexualized historical myth of Pocahontas—the idea that Indigenous women behave wildly, enjoy being held captive, and become sexually active at earlier ages than other racial groups of women. This stereotype fuels the fetishization of Indigenous women and girls which, in turn, creates a demand for them in human trafficking networks. The so-called Pocahontas Paradox, with its origins in folklore, is perpetuated in popular culture. For example, Keestin O’Dell conducted a content analysis of adult women’s costume advertisements with a Native American theme to investigate how aboriginal women are portrayed through costume descriptions. Results found that the majority of costume titles included words that emphasized sexuality, such as “sexy,” “hottie,” and “temptress.” Moreover, accompanying descriptions often stated that the costume will attract men, thereby sexualizing the nature of aboriginal traditions and activities. The use of children’s material and national monuments to support these sexualized, gendered, and racialized narratives make the erasure of Native people seem complete and absolute because it is something people learn from an early age."

i dont think putting pocahontis on the bracket was a good idea. i actually unironically think its on song of the south's level of racism. it falls into many harmful tropes and romanticizes pocahontis' (who was a real person) relationship with her literal colonizer. thats not even scratching the surface its so incredibly racist even at the time people were calling out how offensive it was. its way more racist than the road to el dorado, which i dont think youre wrong for not allowing in the bracket i just wanted you to see how to terrible this movie is

Yes, indeed Pocahontas is probably the worst movie in the bracket in terms of racism. There's a lot of information about it, but here I leave a short article to read.

[taltos-seidmadr]

hello! i'm a burgeoning queer norse heathen and i was wondering if you would be willing to talk about your personal view on odin, specifically his relationship to loki and their partners and children. i'm interested in working with all of them but i'm conflicted on how i feel about odin tricking and getting rid of loki's children, especially the children of angrboda since i am currently working with her. does it ever feel like, unethical to work with gods who have a bad personal history with each other? or is that an oversimplification of the gods? thanks for any thoughts!

Awww dear anon, as another queer heathen let me extend a hug (respectfully)! I'm happy you wrote. I hope that you will enjoy your newly blossoming spirituality and if you wanna talk to someone about literally anything, don't hesitate to reach out.

I think what you're asking is an extremely interesting question because it fundamentally hinges on what you think the gods exactly are, like what is a god overall and what they do, as well as what the myths actually are, and what they mean if anything? These are extremely complicated questions and depending on the underlying beliefs you can get wildly different answers from different people and even one person's belief can change over time (as mine did quite a lot). I can definitely tell you what I believe/built up from my personal experience but I don't want to convince you to think the same, I thought I would just kinda circle around the topic a little bit and maybe you can sort of use it as a springboard to discover what you want to believe.

So... I will start there, that I don't treat the myths like what you are describing, at all. I think of them as entirely man-made constructs, beautiful stories that explain how a certain culture thought the world works. That doesn't mean that they don't matter, of course, but they matter in the same way that for example a beautiful poem does, and not like scientific facts do. I still think that they can and might hold truths, but in ways that are a thousand ways more removed from reality than say, a historical account. It's not even whether they actually happened or not, it's just that like a poem, it's not really the point whether they did.

I wanna point out that if you wanna treat the surviving myths as an actual account of things that really happened, I don't want to attack that - you absolutely can - but keep in mind that that is also an "artificial" and subjective choice. There are two reasons for this. One, is that type of storytelling where the individual stories all hang on a singular, cohesive narrative thread and make up One Big Series of Ragnarök Netflix Original, either didn't exist yet (afaik) or even if it did, it can only be applied to norse myth as a creative exercise, because "norse myths" as they were, were always a collection of regional traditions that sometimes tell wildly different and occasionally conflicting accounts. The reason why this is important is because originally a version of the narrative where, say, Ódin over the course of five separate but tightly connected, linear episodes "turned evil" and "betrayed Loki's family" did not really exist. There is no linear timeline. There are only stories, loosely scattered across a landscape, in which gods sometimes appear, taking on different narrative roles. There are stories in which Ódin is the villain, and there are stories in which Loki is the villain. And there are sometimes accounts that all tell the allegedly same story but in one everything is Loki's fault and in another Loki wasn't even there.

Is this where I insert the gif? You know the one. Yeah, I think it will fit just right here.

The second point overlaps with the first a little bit, but I wanna point out a different side of the same coin. We KNOW this, for a fact, that those versions of the myths that exist today, are texts that were written by human authors (some of which we know by name), specifically for entertainment purposes, with their own unique authorial voices and intent, and the text should be understood within that context before attempting to take it at face value. This is true for all texts, generally. So it's actually less like Ragnarök Netflix Original and more like Ragnarök Extended Universe (as in like, superhero comics) full of parallel universes, retcons, and being handled by different authors who all might have had different visions of what the canon should look like.

Sorry, unfortunately I learned philology and questions like "what is the context?" "what is canon, and why is that canon?" "what does a text actually say, why that, and how is it trying to say it?" are actually SUPER interesting to me and therefore I had to make this detour. But I wanna point out one more thing, and not as a philologist, but more as a friendly fellow believer.

Like I said, treating the texts as something that literally happened is a subjective choice, and not one that I would make, but making choices like that about your beliefs is not only absolutely okay but YOUR prerogative. If someone tells you otherwise, they are either trying to control you, or take your money, or both. Dems the facts.

To stay a little bit closer to the point, my answer to this question is that to me to blame a god for something they did in the myths would be like blaming an actor for something that the character that they played committed in a movie. This would be nonsensical to me because the context is different. Which is a really simple and maybe kinda boring answer. But if you choose to treat the myths as facts, you have some really interesting questions to ask yourself, like, why is it that there are different versions of the same story? Which one do I choose to believe, and why? Are they maybe... really all factually true at the same time? How is that possible? What does that say about Aristotlean logic? Btw I personally do believe that gods come from a place where two things can be true at the same time, if that's anything!

Ok, so, you're asking about the morality of it all, which is I think an even deeper and more intriguing question. The thing is, that there was a time, when I was just a newly beginning Heathen, when I was very convinced that the gods are actually kinda like personified/conscious forces of reality (kinda like forces of nature, but more abstract) and the myths are like an approximation of the blueprint of how they interact, in an extremely metaphorical way. So at that time I was kinda like what I believe is called a "soft" polytheist except that I ALSO did believe that the gods are actual beings that you can interact with somehow, so I was more like a hard if slightly platonistic animist, if you will, without being completely aware of it. At that time, I would have told you that Loki and Ódin being "in conflict" is more like how fire and ice are "in conflict". Ya feel? That's just kinda how things are and there isn't really any morality involved.

However as time went on, I almost completely shedded this belief, and did so extremely quickly. I'm sure there's someone out there who believes the same thing right now, so I don't want to sound even a little bit dismissive, I think it's just a good example of how you don't have to set your beliefs in stone cause time will shape them regardless.

Today, with all the experience(s) behind me, I can say only one thing. I have no fucking idea what the gods really are, where they come from, and what they are doing when they are not interacting with us, if anything. But I do think that even if they are not exactly like people, they are kinda like people. Thinking, feeling persons with their own choices and preferences, and their capacity to have emotions is either like that of a human, or at least comparable to it in some kind of way. So... yeah, from my subjective point of view treating them like the Blorbos from the Ragnarök Show is a little bit reductive... but only if you are willing to take my assumption as true.

That also means that I'm absolutely sure they occasionally experience conflicts among many other things, most of which we will probably never hear about. But I will be honest, just for me, subjectively, it's hard to imagine that the gods engage in conflicts with each other that are irreparable in nature, because it's bad for PR, to put it bluntly. Like, there are so many forces in the world you could be focusing the anger on instead of infighting. It's way harder to Get Things Done (what things, I don't know, but I do believe that the gods are doing Something, influencing the way the world is going as it were) if they sow pointless discord among the few individuals (human followers) that they can count on. On the other hand, even if Ódin and Angrboda are not like, bosom buddies per se, with a little courtesy and encouragement a human who is willing to listen to Angrboda can become a person who is willing to listen to Ódin VERY easily. That's a net positive for everyone involved. Free of charge!!!!

I don't actually believe that the gods are forming like little high school factions against each other that will one day actually and physically go to war, even though the myths literally say that. I'm sure a lot of people would beg to differ, and they would not be able to convince me. In my belief, there are enormous conflicts in the world, maybe even battles, but they are somewhere completely different, and on entirely different scales.

Because I see gods as Kinda Like People, I would treat the issue of hanging out with one or the other as more or less like an interpersonal relationship, as well. Which is to say, I would ask what they think of it, and then I would think about it for myself and whether I give the gods the right to have a say in that or not. And if you believe in gods as persons you can talk to, I would urge you to do the same.

I wanna go into a hypothetical for a second, cause I feel like there is an interesting sub-question embedded into this that I have several thoughts on. Let's say that you take the myths as something that actually happened (which I think you do) and you also think of a god as a person, more or less like you and me (I don't know if this is true but I wanna assume it for the sake of the hypothetical) AND you think that "following" a god means something like "having a friendly or familial relationship with" (which I agree with, and... I think that's also what you think? I'm not sure but let's assume that too, for now.)

So let's say, that said god comes to you, and they reveal it to you as your friend that the other god was really mean to them and/or their family, and let's say you have accepted that as your personal truth. Is it unethical to hang out with said god knowing that they were in some way harmful to your friend? On a completely hypothetical level I think there is at least some sort gray area. But I wanna add two things to this. One, I personally believe that if your answer is "Sorry, I'm a human and this is god stuff and I don't want to be involved/take sides" or even "I don't want you to try and influence my relationships with other gods" it is entirely in your right to set that as a boundary. The second thing is, that the hypothetical is completely moot, because it is my personal experience AND logical conviction that gods never actually do this. If this exact thing happened to someone reading this, I'm not gonna fight that, that's your truth and I'm sure that happened for a good reason. But again, generally this is bad for PR, and also they tend to respect people's boundaries about making their own worship. If a spiritual entity comes to you and tries to control what other spiritual entities you are talking to, that is usually the exact same in the spirit world as it is in the human world. A big red flag.

I will say this. I, as a devoted Lokisperson, not only work with Ódin very frequently, but second to Ódin from his family the one I interact with the most is actually Baldr (if you can believe!) and the only conflict that has ever arisen from this was that at the very beginning Loki was a little bit upset that I assumed he could cause problems about it, which he never did, and truly, it was unfair of me to put him into such a defensive position right off the bat.

I wanna add just one more thing, that I don't really know if it will help or not but I feel like is important to add. Even if you don't believe in the myths as fact even the slightest, like me, being influenced by them on some or other level is not stupid, and in fact in a way kind of unavoidable, I think. Unfortunately it happened once that I had to say: sorry, I know this is unfair to you but the story about you just hits so incredibly close to home in a bad way that it might not ever work out between us in this whole lifetime, no matter what I do. I do think of this as a bad thing, but it is what it is, and we could discuss that and let it rest with no further conflict or issue. I don't really know in which direction the pendulum is swinging for you. But however you feel about working with these gods, is valid, and it's up to you to change it or leave it as it is.

Okay, so Ódin. I like to talk about him, because I think he is a little bit misunderstood and I fancy myself being capable of bridging over this gap, even if shoddily. I think he gets a bad rep because his followers love to talk about him as That Motherfucker(affectionate) and it makes perfect sense from an inside joke point of view but it scares potential new followers away from him as someone not to be trusted. This is really bad for many reasons but especially because he deserves way better than being (mis)represented by fascists and we could always use more people to drown them out.

You know, "tricksterness" is an extremely broad term that entails an entire kaleidoscope of different things, and trickster entities can be so different from one another depending on what aspects they tend to take to. I don't know if you have a personal connection to Loki at this moment, but if you know him, then whatever you think of him (and I can blindly say that, with certainty) you will find Ódin somewhere deep down, in the core, a little bit of the same but in the actual, practical manifestation completely different. What I personally think - and I'm not alone with this view, as far as I can tell - is that Ódin likes to perpetually do something that I could scientifically describe as a "little bit of trolling". If you pick up contact with him, it is very possible that he will purposefully challenge you and especially provoke your intellect and worldviews. Depending what kind of person you are this may seem exciting, annoying or a mixture of both. I think that the sentence "Ódin cannot be trusted" is a 10000000% true statement but more like an optical illusion cannot be trusted. In an emotional sense, he is perfectly capable of building a relationship based on trust and he does deeply care about his followers, like any god worth their salt would. It is definitely worth at least a conversation to figure out whether this is for you or not.

You did ask what I believe personally, so. In my experience Ódin and Loki are clearly very close, and I have never personally witnessed bad blood between them about anything even the slightest bit. Do they bicker, or even fight, yes of course but in the way that two people (and/or two beings who are intertwined across narratives and beyond time and space) who care about each other do. Honestly... I don't even know how to describe that but whatever they have going on makes even such a weighty thing as a narrative plot point in a thousand years old myth completely irrelevant and weightless in comparison. Wherever the story goes, they can go bigger. A book about them may say whatever, their bond is like that which holds the ink of the print to the paper. It cannot be torn apart because it's just on an entirely different level.

As for my tiny little personal perspective, they only ever encouraged me to reach out to the other, I often ask one of their opinions on my workings with the other and they are always supportive and helpful. Needless to say, I treat the myth of Ódin mistreating Loki's kids as entirely fictional, and while this does not necessarily mean that Ódin has never crossed them in any way in the history of time, I have literally never heard about it, saw them behave like that's a thing that happened, or even encountered them referencing it even one time. Somehow I never actually saw Ódin interact with any of Loki's kids but I know that Sleipnir and Ódin are in contact with each other a lot, obviously, and seem to be just fine (yes, I know this may not be the same for everyone but I do treat Sleipnir as a god in his own right). Just going off of gut feeling I would say that out of the whole bunch maybe Angrboda and Ódin are the farthest from each other emotionally, though it wouldn't veer into animosity, just in a room full of gods it's very little likely that they would be the ones to stop to talk to each other unless they had something very important to say. I must admit that I interacted with Angrboda very rarely and I really don't know her well enough to know her true opinions on anything. When we interacted, she seemed like a person who likes to keep a little respectful distance in general, but it was not even a little bit a problem to her that I was connected to Ódin.

The tl;dr of the whole thing is that I don't think that you have to be afraid of picking up contact with either of them if this is what you truly want. I don't know what they will tell you if you do. But I can't imagine they would have anything against it - as far as I know, being an Ódin and Loki follower in some or other capacity, at the same time, is actually very common.

[mittensmorgul]

Is there any evidence that Kripke wanted supernatural to only go for 5 seasons? Fans keep saying that, and I'm wondering if there's truth to it. I've tried googling it, but I can't really find anything definite. I'm wondering if because it's been so long, any actual sources are buried by opinions

Hello! Sorry it took so long to reply to this, but I wanted to find actual sources for you, because there are a few :'D

Let's start back at the beginning, or even at a random theoretical point in time. A major goal for all television series that run on a roughly 22 episode per season schedule is to reach five seasons. Why? Because then they'll have over 100 episodes, which means they can become syndicated-- i.e. leased to other television networks to be rebroadcast. So getting at least five seasons is A Major Milestone for any tv series. Or at least it was back in the pre-streaming era. But that's when Supernatural began...

So of course Kripke always hoped the show would run AT LEAST five seasons. I don't think he ever hoped it would END after five seasons, necessarily.

Over the years, the way Kripke talked about the show, and his plans for the show, changed. I mean, when you look at his early drafts of the pilot script, it was for a completely different show, and the premise and underlying larger narratives evolved so much even during s1.

(if you haven't read the Harrison draft of the pilot, it's definitely worth a read. They weren't even called Winchester lol.)

Then there's the evolving way he talked about some mythical "five year plan," that I think forms the basis for a lot of folks who made the leap from that to "oh he meant ONLY five years." Because even the BASIS for that leap is already a massive leap that breaks reality.

There's always been people who talk about the first five seasons as if they were unassailable, "pure" canon because they were supposedly always Kripke's original story, which only became watered down after he left the series... which... there's like three massive holes in the theory right there.

First, Kripke did not leave after 5.22. He was still deeply involved with the show, and even WROTE THE S6 FINALE HIMSELF. So like... yes he was still involved with production. So right there, that theory's shot to hell. But wait, there's more!

This farcical notion that Kripke started the series with some grand "five year plan" with a perfectly plotted out story arc leading to a carefully calculated series finale that we experienced as 5.22... well you can throw that notion in the trash just by looking back at any interview Kripke ever did between s1-s4. But also this:

(that's a link, despite the fact it turned itself into whatever the heck that is...)

There is zero explanation for how s4-5's entire arc existed at all, when until they showed up to break s4, Kripke had been adamant that Supernatural would never have angels. Never. Until they'd been backed into a corner by the writer's strike during s3 and had no plans for how to get Dean out of Hell. Originally, Sam was supposed to have "gone darkside" and somehow used his demonic powers to save Dean from Hell, just as Ruby had been teasing during early s3. That plot got reworked into one of the main arcs of s4, with Sam eventually using those dark powers to kill Lilith and free Lucifer instead.

But this fact alone, which is documented in other places (I have a whole tag for Kripke with factual information that he's shared over the years), sort of disproves all chatter about some Grand Five Year Plan after which he wanted the series to end.

I have no idea who's saying he always planned for it to end after s5, but heck... I'd probably trust very little else about what they say about the show :'D

[sweatertheman]

Hmm, that's a good question. See, I don't know what I was thinking at the time of this asl, but the way I'm imagining things now is less "SBURB doesn't want you to go on a character arc" and more "SBURB wants you to go on its arcs, wants to decide for you who you become, due to its own ends."

Due to the rules of Paradox Space, characters are forbidden from making choices other than the ones that the Alpha Timeline, SBURB, whatever, wanted them to make. As we see, its not because these characters are incapable of making other choices, but because they'd be killed for making them. And is that not a cruel thing to do? To take a complex creature capable of doing many things and to limit them to being only what you want them to be? It'd be different if there was no free will and characters were literally incapable of making choices othet than the ones they end up making, but no!

Regardless of how happy the characters are on SBURB's path, I consider its actions to be evil, which is why I want to write a story wherein the narrative lacks the absolute authority to control the lives of its characters down to the smallest detail, and where instead, the characters revolt against that which seeks to dehumanize them, to make them beads on a rail.

As for how the characters' arcs would change, I imagine things will be a lot tougher for everyone. Jade, for one. She was raised by the stories told by Skaia and Prospit, and they definitely effect the way she thinks about herself and her place in the world. To be confronted not only with the idea that her fate is not concrete as she'd been led to believe, but that trying to control who people end up becoming is evil, that would totally mess her up.

Also, two side notes. One is that I intend to remove some aspects of Homestuck for my thing in order to prevent the page count from ballooning and the story from becoming impossible to follow. Mainly the Trolls, Scratched Universes, Paradox Clones, and Lord English and the Felts. These things are all cool, they're just not immediately relevant to the underlying themes, and end up complicating things significantly.

On that note, a lot of what you're describing sounds very different from what I remember reading. I don't doubt that these themes do exist, as I remember some very meaningful and well thought out scenes. It's just that these scenes are crushed under dozens of layers of What The Fuck and Why The Hell, then stretched out across 8000 pages with a whole lot of distraction in between. I honestly feel like Homestuck is too long and has too many ideas for its own good. All the bits and pieces are interesting when looked at alone, but the sheer volume of them makes it hard to see the bigger picture, and taken as a whole, the story can end up being frustrating to follow, feeling like none of it has any significance at all. Which is part of why I want to write my own version. Cut out all the excess and the diversions and focus on our lead 4 characters, as well as some observations I have about them.

Overall, Homestuck is an unstable concoction of good ideas fighting for the spotlight putting immense strain on the narrative until eventually the whole structure collapses creating an explosion the size of planet fucking jupiter, wiping out civilization as we know it and and allowing Andrew Hussie to reign over the rubble as God King of the new world!

okay, you do homestuck, right? ive got this project idea in the works. basically, its homestuck, but thematically inverted. i havent actually finished homestuck, but I made it a long way in, to around Dirk's Derse Coup. i have some questions if you dont mind.

first of all, ive observed thus far that Homestuck id about discarding yourself. characters gradually lose defining traits and get closer to the platonic ideals of their classpects. strife specibi seem to represent that which ails our heroes. to become a god, you must sacrifice your earthly waking body on a magic bed, succumbing to an endless sleep to live forever within a dream. for my version, I wanted to do the opposite, having characters become more of themselves instead of less, and kill their dreamselves to truly "wake up," but first i need to know if these observations are actually valid if you read the whole story, and more generally, how valid is this idea?

any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Now let me preface this by saying: You can do anything at all. You're not restricted by anything other than your own creativity, and largely speaking, so long as you think it's cool/works, any approach is valid. Similarly, Death of the Authro, yadda yadda, there's all manner of divergent readings on a text. So anything regarding personal projects is really largely up to the taste of the author.

That being said, if you're asking me on my take on this theme in the text of Homestuck, I'd say that while you've definitely noticed one of the Big Themes of Homestuck, I'd argue the way Homestuck goes about it is the inverse- Taking the 'Platonic Ideal' of a character, while some characters that achieve Ultimate Self status are in fact better off, namely the Sprites or those sidelined in some way, the loss of self that comes with it is largely showcased as a Bad Thing in the instance of those who already were more important/relevant to the main cast. Even then, and while intrinsically tied to their Classpect, the characters still have their own particular spins on the Classpects- A Classpect is too broad a concept to have a singular 'Platonic Ideal', just as often times the Platonic Ideal of their character can contain contradictions in the 'whole' of their existence!

Homestuck is, first and foremost, a Coming of Age story about Teens growing up into Adulthood, with all the pain, trauma and baggage of carrying the legacy of their world, and their families, on their shoulders, in one way or another. SBURB wants the characters to go through an Arc, develop, and become worthy gods, but as we see time and time again, this is not always necessarily in a character's best interest, and the idea of the Self, what makes you You, if you're still You as time passes, as your body changes, as you become something metaphysically completely detached from what you used to be, and how this affects your interpersonal relationships and your relationship to the world around you, is far more complex than simply 'discarding traits to become closer to your Classpect's Platonic Ideal'.

You succumb to sleep in the Quest Bed, but simultaneously, you do wake up as your Dream Self. Whether you take this as being taken by this Platonic Dream, or truly Waking Up to the true nature of your existence, that's a matter of taste and views. Likewise, this doesn't make the characters that didn't God Tier or die and become their Dream Self any less likely to undergo changes to their Self and 'wake up' in their own right.

It's a complex story! It tackles a lot of themes of the self, agency, growing up and the like, and that is always messy. Some are happier becoming something else. Some cling to what they were. Some were always hiding what they truly were. Some are still figuring out. And that's fine. The metaphysics of SBURB are a device to explore the different ways all of this affects the characters! So the most important thing I'd say is less the validity of the observation in regards to an Inverted Version of Homestuck based on your views, and more:

How would this scenario affect the characters differently, and what new hurdles/feelings/predicaments would this create in their development and the story?

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

you said you were having sibling feels lately so consider this a free ticket to gush abt. anything related to that. i am Looking Respectfully.

I'm having a full-on breakdown about DC comics characters 24/7 for the past week I've imprinted very hard on one specific character and I'm trying to build my understanding off of fanfics and online friends and this has sent me into an absolute SPIRAL thinking about sibling dynamics

so how's about uh,,, dya remember my post the other day about MCR's Surrender the Night? yeah this song is killing me bc like. it just feels like the push and pull of dysfunctional but still determinedly loving sibling relationships, which are always the best. just like, trying to pull rank but,,, in a loving way (@brown-little-robin idk if this makes sense but for some reason whenever I hear this song it makes me think of Jason and Dick????)

also as Gracie pointed out Famous Last Words was actually hecking written from one brother to another so that adds A LOT MORE FEELINGS to this one (once again Robin will understand: this is on my very small and very intense Jason playlist adkdjalfh bc I process things by making playlists about them-)

also @disco-tea sent me this panel of a DCU comic and I uh... yeah I feel. Fine. about this. but that's like, a trademark Dana Scully "I'm fine," which is to say, I'm absolutely coming apart at the seams

also just thinking about your OCs and my OCs, because we both have at least one significant sibling pair — mainly lately I've been thinking about Yancy and Sumako, bc their dynamic just inexplicably means SO MUCH to me, they love each other so much and they're actually like, a somewhat normal/well-adjusted pair of siblings (compared to a lot of others lol) and I love to see that, they just. have fun!! and care for each other!!! and would die for each other in a heartbeat but not in an angsty way, just in a way that's been a complete given since the moment Sumako was born and will continue to be a given for the rest of their lives; simple unquestioned fact, no shadows attached.

and then MY sibling pair, Dany and her younger sister (who is currently being called either Cassidy or Carissa?? I haven't decided yet tbh) who are separated for like, over a year and are a significant portion of each other's primary motives behind... A Lot of things they do, but at the same time, they don't even get along that well. they have such totally different ways of going about things that often they're at odds even though they Get Each Other more than most people probably do??? and once Dany reaches her destination (wherever her family is) the two sisters have to reckon with the fact that they both, but mostly Dany, have CHANGED. A lot. Carissa has to deal with the fact that the sister she has now isn't the same one she had Before. neither of them always handles it totally well skdfjskfjsjwf

a lot of this is also probably initially instigated (or at least planted in my head a tad bit) by the fact that I've watched FX's The Bear nearly two times (i have one episode left to rewatch shhh) and the primary underlying struggle of that series is that the main character is dealing with the loss of his older brother and a strained relationship with his older sister (amongst other things, but I'm not giving you the whole schpiel rn lol). oh and one of the other main relationships in the show is the main character's really weird friend/family thing with his dead brother's former best friend, it's absolutely fascinating tbh. as several other people have said, in a way, it's a ghost story. the narrative is haunted by the loss of a brother.

and Gerard Way is really getting to me

and DC too

anyway thanks for the opportunity to go wild and probably come across as INCREDIBLY unhinged and incoherent, but hey, I'm in good company!