#and therefore the main episodic stuff

[coldgoldlazarus]

That is fair, yeah. It guess it comes down to a difference in priorities, because while I wouldn't have minded a bit more context, I was fine with things still being ambiguous? Like, for me the important part wasn't finding out exactly what he was, just how he was connected to the Plants and Knives, and how that figured into the destruction of July that put him on the run to begin with. It didn't give me a complete wookiepedia article on him, but it did pull together all the key details that had been laid out beforehand into a cohesive enough picture, and I was fine with that.

Though I do disagree on what you said about Wolfwood in the tags. Like Vash, I think what they gave us could have been elaborated upon, but didn't need to be for the most part? You mentioned that it was clear from the start that he was hiding a sort of "true self" under his outward personality that you never really got the chance to connect with, and that is a fair reading.

The vibe I got, though, (maybe mainly because this is how I approach similar characters in my own writing) was more that he was very good at compartmentalizing the stuff he needed to keep secret from the rest, but that the Wolfwood the other three got to know was still genuinely him; just an incomplete picture of him. Same principle as Vash having all that big dramatic backstory, but still being an earnestly silly and optimistic dork at the end of the day, not just putting on an act.

Again, as you said, the delay on all this was a bit much, and so Knives and the Gung-Ho Guns do get the short end of the stick. So if Stampede handles that stuff better, then that's good to hear.

It feels like kind of a microcosm of the overall difference in focus, I guess? Based on what you said, Stampede sounds like a much more conventionally plot-driven take on things, and I can see how that would be appealing. Just personally speaking, I liked 1998's "Journey not the destination" vibes, to the point that some of the more plot-relevant episodes with Legato or the other GHGs felt like more of a slog to sit through instead of like, the episodic stuff that was more focused on the characters and their development together.

At any rate, your opinions on it are valid to have, too, just wanted to offer a counterpoint, both for you and the person wondering which version to watch.

In defense of the original, while I do agree the episodic vibes were a bit much at times, and it was something I kinda had to work my way through slowly rather than binging all in one...

I do kinda prefer the more gradual approach to laying out the information; getting to know both the setting and who Vash is as a person and the different facets of both, before getting the context that lets it all click into place. Plus the main quartet having ample time to grow together so that later developments have stronger emotional weight.

I will agree that Knives definitely suffered in focus, and I am interested in how Stampede handles him, but admittedly he wasn't really what I watched Trigun for in the first place. ^^;

yeah my gripe is less with the way the setting and characters were handled and more with the way the. actual plot was handled. it honest to god felt to me like they realized about halfway through their run that they didnt have enough episodes left to get the backstory in in a cohesive way so they just shoved it all into one episode and pretended that that explanation didn't create more questions than it answered. you spend 20 episodes teasing your audience like "ooooh what is vash?? clearly hes not human!! clearly there's something going on!!! don't you want to know whats going on?? keep watching and you'll totally understand whats going on!!" and then your big reveal is that. He Is Not Human. which is something that any idiot who has watched the last 20 episodes has already figured out. the question the audience ACTUALLY has at that point in the runtime is what, EXACTLY, is vash, and what the context is behind the conflict he and knives are in. the backstory episode explains that Knives Is Here, and it gives context to the setting and everything, but it pissed me off that it STILL didn't answer the actual mysteries i cared about, i.e. vash's real identity and the thing with the gun and his fucking arm and knives's motivations and everything. maybe that gets answered in the last episode that i neglected to watch but personally I prefer a story where i UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON by the time the final confrontation hits. with trigun it got to a point where vash was going out for the final battle with knives and i STILL didn't know who vash was, who knives was, where they came from, or what the hell their motivations were. that just made that final confrontation seem so wholly uninteresting to me that i didn't even feel like watching it. it was like "hey look vash is fighting a cardboard cutout that he is Afraid Of. Why? lmao idk man. probably has something to do with that weird spaceship that shows up in one whole episode before this point. not going to tell you how tho." I think some writers have this tendency to think that mystery = good writing and that not revealing anything to your audience will consistently draw them in for more, but that only works for so long. after 20 episodes of virtually net 0 information it got to feel like I was being strung along and like my questions were never going to be answered, so I gave up on the show in the final hour. Again, i'm not saying it was BAD necessarily and i understand the context in terms of writing and production that led to the show being produced that way but i think it really noticeably suffers due to the fact that it refuses to give the audience ANYTHING but crumbs of information for about 80% of it's runtime. that being said. i did genuinely like a lot of it. it has its moments. im not trying to discourage anyone from watching it or anything lol i just think stampede is a little more successful in keeping the viewer engaged in the story throughout by constantly feeding you bits of information and actually answering your questions as they become plot-relevant.

[three--rings]

One thing I haven't seen a lot of talk about in the fandom so far is about the financials of this season.

It took us two whole months to get a confirmation of renewal from Max, and I talked at the time that I think there was probably a lot of heated negotiations going on at the time with contracts and that's why it took as long as it did.

I think we see a huge number of indications of the compromises that were made in order for S2 to be made. One obvious one that has been talked about is being making in in NZ instead of LA, to save $.

But there's also the eight episodes instead of ten. And then the cast aspect. One downside of moving overseas was having to fly out and house the cast, not just pay day wages.

We knew immediately about Guz Khan not coming back, losing Ivan as a character. At the time I was sad but I thought it had the air of a pretty harshly practical call. If you went through the main recurring cast and said okay which character will affect the fewest things, has the least character interactions of anyone? It would be Ivan. (With the only competition being The Swede IMO, but he's Stede's crew and therefore a little more central.)

And then this season started and we got first The Swede sidelined and taken out of major scenes. And then I noticed that different members of the crew were simply absent for long stretches, like Wee John isn't around for ep 5 at all. And then Buttons takes flight.

Lucius and Pete aren't at the party for most of it. Fang isn't in the torture scene. Roach and Fang aren't in the bar. Etc. SCHEDULING IS HAPPENING.

The new characters are almost entirely played by NZ local actors, which is great, but also...cheaper.

In other words there are big signs that they did everything possible to give us a giant cast of almost everyone we love from S1, and cool new characters, in the most economical way possible.

And I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful we got S2, and it looks great, and it's well written, I'm having a blast, and we get to spend more time with this awesome cast.

But I also kinda think it needs to be said that the cost-cutting shows. That it shouldn't have been only 8 episodes, the pacing is off. That we miss every time someone from the ensemble isn't on screen.

That despite what they've put on screen looking very good, there's far less costuming budget, there's less elaborate sets, and it's a little disappointing. And it's clear it's not a lack of will or talent or vision but blatantly lack of money.

Look, streaming networks want brilliant shows that people love (that will get them to subscribe) but they very don't want to pay anyone to make them. That's like, the whole moment we're having right now.

Max puts out promos about how great it is to not have unions messing shit up in NZ. Well I have friends who are union costumers in LA and guess what union costumers did amazing last season. This season, well, I guess Stede got three whole shirts, so that's cool.

So I dunno. It's just stuff I think about. I'm not trying to be negative about the show in any way. I'm extremely happy with this season; I love it more than well, possibly any show I've ever been in fandom for.

But I see you, Max. You're cheap. You weren't that cheap when you were called HBO.

[luunamoona]

the way community handled queerness is honestly so peak. like, there're 3 main moments i can think of in the show where queerness was apparent and mentioned: advanced gay, queer studies and advanced waxing and britta's pitch in emotional concequences of broadcast television.

in advanced gay, the cornelius hawthorne is seen as a villian for having traits like being abusive towards his son, pierce, him being really racist and him being homophobic. this acknowledgement of homophobia being a bad thing is definitely good for the early 2010s, as many shows treated being queer as a joke back then. also cornelius being fucking murdered at the end of the episode solidifies the fact his actions were deemed immoral and he therefore had his comeuppance.

community only ever uses queerness as a punchline in the context of troy and abed's relationship, the punchline usually being "look at how romantic these 2 friends are how silly", which could be seen as homophobia as the same context with a man and a woman would be treated differently by the showrunners as it'd be turned into a romantic subplot.

the next example i have is from queer studies and advanced waxing. having the dean tell richie and carl that he "isn't openly anything and gay doesn't begin to cover it" is much more progressive than many other media at that time, and even now, as they'd usually have the queer character just be gay for convenience. this need for convenience is commented on in the episode with richie and carl basically coercing the dean into adopting a label that is inaccurate but convenient for his straight peers. back to my previous point, presenting queerness as being more complex and having more nuance than just gay and straight is something that is very useful to queer viewers as it presents an option beyond these 2 ends of the spectrum. unlike what other shows may do with this concept, community treats it seriously, showing the dean's inner conflict with presenting with an identity that isn't his, with lines like "i feel sick". (also side point, the line "i make gayness look like mormonism" goes so hard)

finally, there's britta's pitch in emotional concequences of broadcast television. in this, the dean protests britta's decision to make him transgender and not "all this other stuff". something i love about that scene is the ability to critique queer represention without insulting it. as a trans person, i've seen a good amount of transphobia is television. this isn't one of these times. being able to have trans identity be a part of the punchline without it being insulted is something that is apparently very hard for screenwriters of sitcoms to do, so i commend them for being able to do that. as well as this, this scene acts as a criticism of how basic queer representation in media is, how they like having one distinct, easy to understand label to give their token character, ignoring "all this other stuff". it's telling us that, like in queer studies and advanced waxing, queer idenity isn't black and white, it's a wide spectrum of identities that comes in many, many different colors.

all in all, community's representation of queerness and how it treats insults to queerness is something a lot of other shows should try to strive for. in my opinion, it has some of the most nuanced takes of queer identity and representation out of any sitcom that doesn't have queer people as a target audience. it feels very fitting, since the show is literally called community and it about a group of misfits who bond over their shared messed up-ness. this show is all about finding your people and accepting everyone, as pierce says in for a few paintballs more, "flaws and all". i think the showrunners had an impression this show would speak to a lot of queer people and i love that they were able to make us feel welcome just as greendale does to the study group.

[tex-now]

Chameleon is the most ableist episode in all of Miraculous Ladybug holy fucking shit

this is all gonna be pre season 4 jsyk

Also serious note here, my words are not gospel. I myself am not physically disabled nor do I have severe enough disabilities that it requires specific accommodations. If anyone who has any experience with this has any input they want to add or wants to correct me on anything, you are more than welcome to.

Okay let's go

Immediately off to a bad start, Marinette is upset that she has to sit in the back because she doesn't want Lila to sit next to Adrien and no, this is not because she wasn't talked to about it beforehand, because when Adrien offered to sit in the back in her place Marinette adamantly refused.

And since Marinette really was causing such an unnecessary ruckus, (ill be momentarily ignoring that Lila was lying) she was making Lila feel bad for needing accommodations. Which is super fucked up of her. And also i distinctly remember Lila cuddling up to Adrien which made Marinette angrier but that's not in the transcript so take this with a grain of salt.

Okayyy the dreaded lunch scene. I have a lot of problems with this scene so I'll do the biggest one first: The fact that the narrative states that Lila is in any way benefiting from having a disability.

People carrying her lunch trays, getting her food, making sure she doesn't have to lift a finger because of her sprained wrist and treating it like shes benefiting from it is like. Atrocious on so many levels. Not only does it state that Lila is benefiting from having a disability but it also frames making accommodations for people with disabilities as being "used" in some way, which is why disabled people don't usually get the accommodations they need because they don't get "special privileges" or the people who should be accomodating them "refuse to play favorites." Horrible thing to teach children.

And then. The napkin scene. I'm gonna say it. Marinette is the fucking worst in this episode. She is being actively ableist here, assuming that since she had one bad experience with Lila being a liar, that she's lying about everything, including having a disability, which leads to her to try and "prove" that Lila is lying. Which is super fucked up.

She throws the napkin at her in order to prove that she's lying about having a sprained wrist, and since she doesn't like Lila this is an entirely okay thing to do ig/s. The reason why this scene in particular upsets me so much is because stuff like this happens in real life all the fucking time, and people have suffered because of it.

Neurodivergent and disabled people have to fight for accommodations or to be taken seriously, by literally everyone around them while neurotypical or able bodied people constantly brush them off or interrogate them in order to prove that they are disabled, and having the main character do someting like that and end up having her be framed in the right (eventually) is abelist as fuck.

The bathroom scene is also incredibly gross to me. Marinette corners Lila in the bathroom and LITERALLY SAYS (paraphrased) "I don't have the proof for it, but I know you're lying about your disability because you lied about being friends with a celebrity so therefore I get to be ableist as fuck towards you >:(" I don't think I have to explain why that's ableist.

Okay. The elephant in the room. Lila IS faking her disabilities. She IS pretending to have them in order to benefit off of other people. This is the biggest problem in the entire episode.

The narrative itself supports the idea that

1. People benefit from having disabilities

2. Attempting to "prove" that someone doesn't have a disability is okay

3. Making accommodations for people with disabilities is "using" the accommodating party in any way

4. Being ableist is okay as long as you're right in the end

And that is hammered in by this scene in particular. Marinette is being egregiously abelist throughout the entire episode and IS being the bad guy here but since the writer's need to make her NOT look like the bad guy turns out she's right Lila is faking everything and is evil lol/s

Its not just the characters themselves that are being ableist, the writing itself is so ableist that it is literally imbedded into the story of this episode and is essential in order for it to work at all. Which is a huge writing failure on the writer's part.

Okay I think I'm done. Is this coherent at all

Edit: Okay I think I failed to adequately criticize lila's part in this post. I think that what Lila did was egregiously disgusting and was incredibly uncomfortable to watch, but im not really sure what to say about it? I have thoughts on the matter yes but because Lila is such a nothing (until season 5/4 which I haven't really gotten to yet) character other than being Evil that it's hard to get frustrated with her in particular outside of my frustration with this episode in particular.

I'm very sure it's not clear so I'll say now: I like Marinette and hate Lila. But I also want to make sure that I'm criticizing the episode without my biases getting into the way, but I ended up going too hard on Marinette and not hard enough on Lila. Which. Is my mistake. Not that its anything to apologize for it's my post but I wanted to clarify

[gotskamstuff]

My honest review of PART 1 (that nobody asked for but I wanna talk about it)

‼️ SPOILER FOR S4 pt.1 (obviously but still a fair warning) ‼️

After watching the entirety of part one I have to admit that I am a bit confused by my own reaction ‘cause there are so many little things that I loved and missed about the show and we finally found back, but at the same time on the overall it kind of disappointed me a little how much time was taken away from the important things and going straight to the point…it was mainly ruined by Topper and Sofia’s storylines, both incredibly boring, repetitive and totally unnecessary.

I gotta say I LOVED episode 1 and episode 5 and half of episode 2, they had me hooked and got me really into the Outer Banks feels from S1 both in terms of adventure and Pogues dynamics, but I feel like half of episode 2 and episodes 3-4 nothing really big happened and there was just a lot of filler scenes, in terms of plot and storyline for the treasure hunt all that happened in 4 episodes is that they found the necklace and lost it, just in episode 5 they actively move forward.

There was so much unnecessary stuff that felt like plot fillers, probably gonna get a good portion of the fandom against this statement ‘cause I know the character got so many fans, but Rafe? The amount of scenes he got with Sofia repeating the same thing over and over was too much in my opinion, it felt like fan service just to get Drew on screen as much as possible. The whole Sofia character and storyline is actually insane to me how much screen time and attention got, no offense but…who cares? It’s kind of crazy that we got scenes of Sofia’s home, family, relationship, insecurities and background BEFORE WE EVEN GOT CLEO’S!

Too much screentime and too much attention to background characters (IMMENSELY background) that the audience could not care less about, especially when it came to the expenses of the main characters story and depth. This goes for Sofia just like Topper and quite frankly also Terrance.

Sofia is a character that we barely saw one season ago for a total of probably 2-3 minutes, now she’s taking up minutes upon minutes and various scenes IN EACH EPISODE and to repeat the same thing over and over again…I feel like one scene would have been enough to understand she doesn’t fit in with the Kooks and therefore she turns on Rafe, also there hasn’t been no built ups whatsoever neither over her or her relationship with Rafe. As i said we barely ever saw this character, why or how is the audience supposed to care or empathize with her? Why is the audience supposed to care all of a sudden about Rafe and Sofia’s relationship? It went from 0 to 100 out of nowhere, from the most irrelevant thing last season to now apparently being the entire storyline for Rafe. There would have been so many more interesting things to see about Rafe’s behavior after his father’s death, how he lost it, how he’s reacting and clearly trying to become the man Ward was, but no it was just “gotta invest and be good for me and Sofia”…none of the things he cared for (and literally went psycho for) were explored with any depth: his family, the gold, the family’s property at Tanny Hill he wanted to keep, how he said he’d seek revenge if anything happened to Ward etc.

Topper as well…did they not get the memo last season of how tired the audience is of his repetitive storyline? He comes, insults the Pogues, digs at John B about Sarah and blablabla, still WHO CARES? And who cares he got a girlfriend or that he has something to prove to her? Who cares that he hosts parties and who cares he was there surfing and causing problems with the Pogues? Who cares about this Ruth girl suddenly beefing with Kie? This has been done and over for 4 seasons now, we could’ve just seen him talk to Rafe once and impress his girlfriend about the investments on the land which is the only relevant thing for the plot.

And I’m probably gonna sound like a bitch here but Terrance as well, was it necessary? I mean, the only good thing about it is that we FINALLY got a tiny little minuscule bit of backstory for Cleo but even that was sooooo superficial. Once again they wanted the audience to empathize with something that was portrayed so minimally. Terrance reappeared out of nowhere without any explanation, told Cleo to comply and died…damn we could’ve at least seen a little more of that bond he and Cleo had, have him be there a little more for a couple of episodes, see him look out for Cleo and save her to empathize a bit more with his death and even find out more about Cleo’s upbringing since it’s something related to one of the main characters, but no.

Sofia, Topper, Ruth, Terrance and I’m sorry but I’m gonna include even Rafe in this list, are all characters that have no relevance anymore for the show and might as well not be there at all, they don’t add anything valuable to this story and just take away time from the plot with irrelevant and marginal scenes that no one cares about.

I guess my overall disappointment is that a lot of the Pogue’s storyline got put too much on the side and brushed off way too quickly for the sake of irrelevant characters who got way more screentime than needed to the point it started getting boring/irritating.

Barely saw Sarah and John B mourning their fathers, not even slightly explored the evident fear of John B turning into his dad that was just blurted out of nowhere by Pope, Pope’s family that’s been a constant in this series is nowhere to be seen, Kiara’s family dynamic and storyline is brushed off ENTIRELY with a 3 seconds flashbacks and with her parents suddenly being at the ceremony without a clue on what happened in between, Cleo’s backstory that was promised to us was just a quick show up in one episode of an old character and one line “he raised me since I was 13”…and can we talk about JJ’s reunion with Luke?

It was probably the most anticipated plot and one of the things the audience cared the most about and it felt so anticlimactic, same thing for the discovery of JJ’s parents. A MASSIVE PLOT TWIST in the main storyline of a main character blurted out like that so casually? Solved in one episode in a handful of minutes of screentime? I was actually getting really excited about the build up towards JJ’s past ‘cause I feel like they were doing a pretty good job with the hints and the subtle way it was getting anticipated that JJ’s mom was the woman who died and then Luke comes back without any type of suspense and in two minutes of screentime “I gotta tell you I am not your father and that wasn’t your mother” just like that, as if the Maybanks storyline isn’t what defined the entirety of JJ’s character and personality. There was so much more depth that could’ve gone into their reunion with mixed emotions and there could’ve been waaaay more pathos about JJ discovering his true identity. It was just thrown out there after 3 minutes on screen with his dad.

Even all the couples and ships, we saw more of Rafe and Sofia’s relationship than we saw JJ and Kiara (perhaps the most anticipated ship) or Pope and Cleo.

I feel like even the whole treasure hunt was moving so slowly and got put in the background, the only real high was in half of episode 2 with the scuba diving portion and in episode 5 when they actually go do something and they are in the catacombs, I’d include Cleo’s kidnapping but once again it got done and solved so minimally and once again interrupted by scenes with Rafe, Sofia and Topper when we could’ve been on the suspense for Cleo.

Personally I think that what people really missed about S1 ans S2 was the Pogues dynamic (which I ADORED so far in part one and this is something that to me made the whole season dear to me, finally they’re back with their essence) but also how action packed the show was EVERY EPISODE, back then it was almost as if each episode was its own mission for every discovery and every adventure they went on, it was a constant “onto the next move” and so high on adrenaline and action around the treasure hunt and I don’t know, it overall felt so slow this time and like they did so little discovery except the necklace and the crown (which was just mentioned).

And I gotta be real here, the reason why I say episode 1 and 5 (and half of 2) were my favorite was indeed because it was PACKED with the Pogues, the catch up to their story, their dynamic, moves being made in the plot with the treasure…and MOSTLY because they had the least interruption from all that Sofia and Topper boring stuffs that just kept breaking the flow of the story with irrelevant scenes.

I know that at this point I’m sounding so negative and believe me, the first person saddened about this is me. I was so excited for this season AND I STILL AM but I gotta admit, I really loved a lot of things (and I’ll probably show my excitement during the wait for part 2 with a lot of things I want to rewatch, theorize about and obsess over) but also I couldn’t get past my annoyance over the superficiality the main characters personal storylines suffered from compared to the excessive importance it was given to background characters.

And once again I’m sure my excitement over the episodes I just watched will probably build up in the wait for part 2 but it’s because I’ll be able to control where to direct my interest and attention concentrating more on the things I liked and found interesting, but I gotta say that my gut reaction on first impact while watching for the first time is that something kept breaking the flow of the storytelling so far (what I just explained about the excessive irrelevant subplots).

Get more screentime and more depth to our Pogues feelings and personal stories…WE DON’T CARE ABOUT SOFIA AND TOPPER!!

[accirax]

Danganronpa: Despair Time Chapter 2 Episode 15 Dissection

FINALLY, I have a Friday night with few enough plans that I can watch and give my initial thoughts on the episode on the day that it aired >:D

... why am I celebrating being all alone on a Friday night? (/j)

Dissection time! This will be a Part 1 because I finally actually ran out of images. Please check the reblogs to see my further thoughts on the episode!

SPOILERS for Danganronpa: Despair Time Chapter 2 Episode 14. Brief mentions of eating disorders and suicide.

Of course, it's also the first week where I probably won't have as much to say, not because there isn't stuff to comment on about the episode, but because the main thing that ate up my time/word count was assessing all of the evidence to talk about who the killer might be. Now that the killer has seemingly been revealed, there isn't really any "Chapter 2 murder" left to theorize about... that's insane.

Starting the episode off with Teruko saying that accusing Ace was her "judgment" was wild. She made it very clear that it wasn't just that she was humoring Eden or haphazardly starting with Ace first, but that she thought it over and decided that Ace was the more-likely-to-be-guilty party because of seeing Eden break down like that. She paid attention to Eden's emotions and let Eden into her heart! That's awesome!!!

(Not to say that you couldn't pay attention to Eden's emotions and still think that she was the culprit-- I'd be a pretty big hypocrite if I tried to argue that. And I just don't think that it's true.)

This is a really random point to bring up, but I remember from drawing my J-to-Xander secret santa exchange that one of J's main complaints about Xander was also that he was loud. I guess J just really hates loud people.

... David, put down the megaphone--

Now this surprised me. It really made sense to me that Arturo would be the one stalking Eden, given that we first heard about the stalking on the day that Arturo and Eden had their chat!

Although, it also makes sense that it wasn't, given that the Arturo/Eden conversation probably happened after the event where J pulled Teruko into that closet (just based on Arturo's vibes). That event was the last thing that Teruko did before the nighttime announcement rang. Thus, Eden talking to Arturo probably happened pretty late in the afternoon, not giving Arturo much time to have been following Eden. To be fair, I deemed that it could still very well be Arturo anyways, because it's not like Eden said anything such as "you've been following me all day" that truly indicated a time period. But it does make sense.

Seems like everyone who thought that the culprit could have been tailing Eden was correct! A round of applause for everyone who put those pieces together 👏 (/gen)

Now, this one, I don't believe I saw ANYONE speculate. Therefore, as an idea I'd never even heard tossed around, this really took me out. It makes sense, though: Eden is small and semi-canonically the weakest character in the killing game. Therefore, if you're looking for someone who you can near-guaranteed overpower, it makes sense if you were to target her.

On one hand, thinking down this line of logic makes me worried for Eden's survival prospects beyond Chapter 2. On the other, now that this has been directly addressed in canon, I find it less likely that someone will use that again down the line. The best place to do so would be at the next Class Trial, so that the logic can be "well, looks like someone tried to execute on Ace's original plan" when it's at its most relevant because Ace's crime would be at its most recent. However, I don't really think that Eden will be a victim at the next Class Trial, so I'm leaning towards saying that she wouldn't become a victim for that reason.

(It feels so unnatural to write out "Ace's crime" and be, like 95% certain that it's canon. This case is just one of the unsolved mysteries of history, the fuck??? (/j))

This was ALSO insane to me. I know that thebadjoe cited Ace claiming to have been in the Gym the day after he nearly died in there as a reason why Ace might have been lying about what day he overheard Arei and David on (the logic is probably somewhere in here), but I think I and many others just figured that he didn't want everyone to think he was a coward, or that his eating disorder would compel him to go back to the Gym anyways.

However, going back to the Gym to sus out how exactly Nico's contraption works makes perfect sense! J was right, if Ace was suffering through being killed when he awoke, he shouldn't have had the presence of mind to figure out the crime then and there. However, if he could combine the flashes he got of what happened while he was swinging from the fan, whatever he was able to make out when he ran out of the room to chase Nico, and being able to inspect the Gym after the fact, I think it's totally reasonable that he could have figured out what happened with enough clarity that he could replicate its essential elements elsewhere.

As it turns out, despite my crack at trying to figure out what happened, the Gym murder method wasn't actually all that complex.

Teruko: One. Given that you were stalking Eden before the Nico incident, you were already planning a murder beforehand. You entered the Gym with the pre-existing intent to take the tape for some different, unspecified murder plan, and changed your mind on the details later. Two. You were pretending to be unconscious for longer than we thought. And three. You took the tape for first aid.

Dammit, fellow "but it wouldn't have made sense for Ace to take the tape right after the attempt" truthers... I think she may have cooked us. (/j)

But hey, we love to see Teruko representing the "let me explain out various theoretical options by listing and discussing them numerically" crowd! It's always great to see yourself represented in media ;P Even if I never came up with any of these theoretical options.

My guess is probably that, of the options, the first is the most likely. I also think that Teruko probably agrees with that, given that it was what she went to first and it had the longest explanation. It's not really important, though, and I don't think there's any way to truly know, so I don't have much else to say about it.

Teruko noooooooooo :(

Whit FINALLY gets a new sprite and THIS is the expression and context?????? I love him.

Speaking of, I think that, thus far, the characters to have received new sprites in Chapter 2 Part 2 are Teruko, Ace, Arei, Hu, David, Veronika, Whit, and Nico? I'm not certain about whether Eden, Levi, or Rose had any, but I don't think they did. If true, I can't believe that Eden got through such a major role in the story without picking up any new sprites. It's probably because she already had a bunch to begin with, but, still.

Oh hey, he got one too. Protag/antag/support/chapter killer, boom.

Teruko: That's why Arei's wrists were bound-- because you didn't want her to wake up mid-murder to claw at her neck.

Definitely not what I was expecting from this piece of evidence, but I guess it tracks? My only question is why it would have been a problem if Arei had scratched at her neck. Like, it's not like both of them having neck scratches would have implicated Ace as the killer, right?

I guess maybe he was afraid that Arei would be able to escape his murder contraption much like he broke Nico's, even though the rope is probably much more sturdy than the wire. Or, maybe he was worried that it would work against the idea to stage it as a suicide? Either way, it's also convenient for just restraining Arei in general, so it's not like the evidence doesn't make any sense at all.

Nico, in audio: (Sorry.)

SO creative to contrast the voice lines and the spoken dialogue to really imply that Nico is saying it under their breath, or so quietly that nobody can hear.

However, let's not forget about the actual content of what Nico says whilst focusing on the cool media-specific presentation. Nico actually apologized to Ace after traumatizing him! Nico is very much characterized as a straight-shooter (or at least, when they're not trying to avoid conflict by saying whatever they think will help accomplish that), so I believe that when they said that they wouldn't say sorry to Ace because they didn't feel sorry for Ace, they meant it. However, that means that at some point between when Nico said that and now, something changed that made Nico feel genuine remorse towards Ace.

I think it's probably just seeing how much of an effect attempting to kill Ace truly had on his psyche and decisions. I don't know at what point Nico started fully believing that Ace was the one to kill Arei, but it's possible that it was around here. Obviously, at least at one point, Nico had no qualms with the idea of Ace dying, so it's not like seeing that their actions will actually manage to kill Ace would probably be that missing piece.

However, making Ace into a blackened is different than Ace just straight up dying as a victim, a difference which Ace acknowledges later in the episode. If Ace had died as the victim, Veronika wouldn't be toying around with him right now and making him humiliate himself. Nico might see that Ace is being bullied, and therefore, have more of a reason to feel sorry for him. Furthermore, Nico was forced to truly grapple with the reality of how hard it must be for the blackened to survive the Class Trial earlier in the chapter. Knowing now that they essentially passed the mantle on to Ace might make them feel bad.

Basically, I think that, for the first time, Nico might actually see a bit of themself in Ace, and that made it easier for Nico to sympathize with his plight.

Speaking of seeing yourself in Ace, Miss Near-Victim-to-Accused-of-Killing Pipeline...

KING

Okay, I do kinda take issue with this line of reasoning, not because Ace isn't strong-- or at least stronger than Eden-- because he absolutely is, but because Arei is also one of the nation's top performing athletes in her sport of choice? I mean, jockeying feels like more of a full-body sport than bowling, so it probably requires more strength training, but looping her in with Eden and Nico feels unfair. Justice for Arei... 's muscles. Anyways, carry on.

I THOUGHT SOMETHING LIKE THIS MIGHT BE POSSIBLE!!! I just never said it because, given that Arturo said that it seemed like there wasn't any other damage to the body, it didn't feel like it was supported by the facts. (Although, obviously, this Trial has proven that Arturo's autopsies are not infallible.)

I've researched before that punching someone in the jaw seems to be the most trustworthy way to knock someone out and have a low chance of killing them then and there. However, that would likely leave a bruise, so I didn't think it would happen. Strangling someone to the point of unconsciousness, however, is possible (it just might be harder/more likely to be lethal), so this totally makes sense!

Yup, unless Eden was trying to frame Ace by "framing" Nico, it really makes much more sense that Ace would have the incentive to copy Nico's crime down so closely.

I mean... this certainly makes it sound like Nico wouldn't attempt to be a blackened ever again...

It's always good to have a frame plan set for your frame plan. Nico wouldn't just do it without thinking about anyone else to blame, so you can't just blame Nico without establishing who Nico would have blamed!

Then again, this plan does require people to think that Nico didn't think about the rules enough to realize that they could easily rule out suicide as a bait. Then again x2, they already said that they didn't think too much about the reality of going to a Class Trial when they initially tried to kill Ace, so it's not so much of a reach as it would have been for other people.

I can't tell if this is somehow suspicious or just an indication that Eden is nice and thinks about others over herself. Ugh, now I have to decide whether I'm being suspicious of Eden as a mastermind candidate or not, and people are going to get mad at me for continuing to suspect her of foul play...! (/lh)

Shoutout to SomniaVA here for doing an excellent job of voicing Veronika. The line read on "too weak, too stupid, and too incompetent" especially was phenomenal. We stan Veronika in this household.

Man, I feel so bad for Ace in this part. Also shoutout to Seth Raffield for voicing Ace this entire time; if you ever read this, you 100% made Ace who he is and overall have some of my favorite voice acting in DRDT. Not being to hear any more voice lines from Ace will honestly be one of the parts of his upcoming death that'll make me the saddest. We haven't heard the very end of it yet, but thanks for all your hard work :)

(Dude I am NOT going to cry before the execution even happens--)

Charles, internally: (FUCK i made Whit sad BACKTRACK BACKTRACK BACKTRACK--)

I love them :,)

Levi: Charles is right. It really is no simple task to control a horse going over 40 miles per hour on a regular basis. It requires physical strength and endurance. Intense training 6 days a week is standard. And the physical tests that jockeys have to go through are grueling, to say the least.

How the fuck do you two know this

Charles: Not what it's called.

Thanks to Charles' comment, I was easily able to determine that this was a reference to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which Wikipedia describes as "a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities." Or, in simpler terms, believing that something is easier than it is either because you don't know enough about the field to know about its intricacies, or because you don't know enough about being talented to realize that there's an entire world of skill above your personal ceiling (ouch).

Sorry if others already explained it or if people just knew this already, but I didn't, so I thought I'd share!

Also, Whit definitely has an interest in science/psychology or something. Or he just gets really, really bored.

Notably, we now know that this is something that DRDTdev will take into account when planning a murder going forward. Therefore, unless the culprit is one of our more athletic folks (of which there are a dwindling number-- mostly just Levi at this point), crimes in the future likely won't require any impressive feats of strength to accomplish. Much to think about.

See, the tragic thing here is that I don't actually think that Levi was trying to say anything ill of Ace by pointing out that he was the more likely of him and Eden to commit murder. After all, he doesn't give a damn about any of the murders he's committed. The worst Ace is probably getting is now being considered as a "bad person" on Levi's list (because "good people" don't kill people), but I don't think that this is the declaration of malice that Ace is taking it as.

Acevi doomed yaoi :,(

DRDTdev never fails to get silly with it and I appreciate that so much.

Just in case anyone is confused about what Teruko's talking about, I actually learned more about clothing starch since I started theorizing about the Chapter 2 murder case, because I worked at a dry cleaner for, like, a week. Suffice it to say, that now makes me an expert B) (/j)

Starch can be added to laundry when it's being washed to make it stiffer and less likely to wrinkle when it comes out to dry. It also makes them easier to iron, and easier to remove stains from. It's often used on dress clothes, just because those are the ones that people more often care about whether they're wrinkled or not. Seemingly, it can come in solid, pre-made liquid, or spray forms. All that is to say, this is absolutely something that could reasonably have been stored in the Dress-Up Room.

And this "evidence" was alluded to ahead of time-- not super far ahead of time, but when Teruko first touches the ball, she says something like, "is that starch?" I think DRDTdev probably included that line so that we wouldn't have to theorize about what could have possibly kept the ball together, but since apparently none of us theorizing last summer (or at least no one I remember talking to) dressed fancily enough to know what clothing starch was, it didn't help out much. As Arturo would say, "how disgusting." (/j)

... DAMMIT!!!

I thought about including the fitness band as a piece of evidence on my A Piece of Evidence That Lines Up With Them Only section, I really did. I just thought that including a minor detail from early in the Daily Life that would clearly only apply if the killer was Ace would be unfair territory, much like if I said, "well, we know that Eden is good at sneaking around because of how she snuck up on Teruko; that could be a killing blow so point to Eden." However, given that the killer is only Ace, it was totally within fair grounds for it to be used as the final piece. Mannnnnn :,(

Fun that he's literally riding a dark horse though. I know he was certainly a dark horse candidate for many of us.

Oh no. 30 images. I'll be back to finish my thoughts in a reblog either later tonight (in my timezone) or tomorrow. Hopefully later tonight. Until then!

[unordinary-diary]

Arlo’s Ability Potential

Arlo could actually be so fucking OP and I’m not kidding.

In my last entry, I mentioned that Arlo could do so much more with his ability: things ranging from very unlikely to happen in the story, to things that are foreshadowed enough that I genuinely think he’ll be getting a powerup soon.

I’m gonna start with the most reasonable stuff and then wander out into speculation.

First of all: Disks. Do y’all remember Lennon from episode 196-ish?

^ this fucker.

Currently, Arlo’s fighting style is to put up a strong barrier around himself, and watch his enemies hurt themselves with their own recoil damage. His only offensive technique is to put his enemy in a barrier and make it smaller. Now, this has changed in recent chapters, with him developing that softer kind of barrier that he hits people with like a shockwave, but ultimately, his offensive power isn’t very diverse.

However, Lennon up there^ uses his disks in many ways.

He throws them, they’re very sharp, he can use them to fly, and therefore attack from the air. Blyke had a LOT of trouble against this guy.

How is this relevant? Because Arlo can make these disks too.

When Sera, Leilah and Arlo are fighting Spectre agents under the dampener, Arlo conjures one of these disks as a substitute for his usual barrier.

Not only do we know that he can make these, we know that they are significantly easier for him to make and maintain. So, in theory, Arlo should be able to do all of the things Lennon can and more.

With him currently being able to make three regular barriers at once, how many disks could he make? And how many disks could he make while having a full barrier up? I imagine that the future holds lots of fights against large groups of people, so Arlo learning these techniques would be extremely convenient and very well-timed. Especially since being able to attack from the air is super effective against opponents who can’t fly (which is most of them let’s be real) since they usually can’t hit back.

But there’s more things that I think these disks can do.

Imagine him practicing with a ball—

Pick it up, bounce it up and down.

Add another disk, make it ping-pong.

but he could also just put the ball in a regular barrier and just... move it around. Move that sucker to a different location.

he could pick the ball up, carry it really high, then drop it.

Now imagine the ball is a person.

... yeah.

but there’s more that he could do.

say that someone is coming at him with enough strength to break his barrier

If aimed right, the opponent shouldn’t hit the third barrier head on, but rather at an angle. The angle should be enough to prevent the barrier breaking, but still cause significant recoil damage. In this particular scenario, the recoil damage will go straight to the head and neck, using all their force against them. Depending on how much force is coming at him, the third barrier could still break, but it isn’t his main line of defense at least. With practice, Arlo should be able to use disks to divert attacks, and control where his opponent aims. The only person this wouldn’t work against is probably Seraphina bc Arlo can’t react in time.

Another thing to consider is: how small can he make the disks? Could he make little shurikens? If so, would making them very small allow him to make more? Could he stand behind his full barrier, while sending out a flurry of tiny chakrams? And if so, wouldn’t that be dope as fuck? Especially against a large crowd.

And since, in theory, he should be able to fly, he should also be able to make other people fly. Imagine all of them flying on top of a disk with Blyke and Isen loudly singing I Can Show You the World. I see zero reasons why this can’t happen.

Moving away from disks, Arlo should start filling his barrier with stuff. Now, we rarely see characters weaponizing things that aren’t abilities or their bare hands, but it does happen. This is where the idea of water balloons comes in. Fill that sucker in the sink, throw it, then pop it whenever he wants to.

But it’s not just water, he could put anything in there. He could put a shit ton of glitter. He could put sewing needles, caltrops, a big rock, anything. He could probably even put a barrier over his stove, gather steam, compress that shit and make smoke bombs!

But enough with that bitch baby shit.

What about chemicals?

Make water balloons but instead of water it’s hydroflouric acid. Or fill that shit with liquid nitrogen. Make smoke bombs but instead of steam it’s mustard gas— he and his friends will be protected inside a full barrier. There is any number of chemical weapons he could use, and some gases could even be made at home by mixing the wrong cleaning materials.

But what about insects? Go to the woods, find a beehive and yoink that shit.

The main problem with the “putting things in barriers” idea is that he’d have to prepare ahead of time, and keep those barriers up and his ability active until he uses them. That means it isn’t useful unless he knows the fight is gonna happen, and has enough time to prepare before it, but not so much time that he loses energy keeping them up. It’s also not useful if he wants to be non threatening at first, because his ability will need to be active. And also, unlike other weapons, A lot of these can’t be stored. He has to use all of them before the end of the fight— especially since gases can’t be released without using them. So, not very convenient or practical most of the time, but it would be super cool and effective in certain circumstances.

The next unlikely technique for Arlo to develop is vacuums. Arlo could make a really tiny, spherical barrier. Airtight. EXPAND that sucker. Make it real big- a near vacuum inside. Then make a tiny hole in it. Depending the size, that could create some insane suction. Suction is something so versatile that it could actually be a whole ability in its own right. That’s a whole ass mid tier added to Arlo’s already dope skill set. Possibly more.

Seriously, just think about suction for a second. You could bring anything close to you— Arlo actually has an easier method of telekinesis as we’ve gone over, but still— you could probably break and bend things with enough force, divert an attack by sucking it, or your opponent’s body in a different direction, you could cause some severe damage by sucking directly on someone’s skin. (I’m trying so fucking hard not to make a sex joke oh my god)

Here’s where Arlo’s capabilities get… gruesome.

My brother suggested that he could suck someone’s brain out through their skull. I was incredulous, but with enough force and with the tiny suction hole placed on an eye or nose, he definitely could.

But there’s an easier method of killing right there: put the vacuum over someone’s head. It doesn’t have to be an intense enough vacuum to explode their head (it could be though), just enough to suffocate them. Even without killing, suffocation could be used for intimidation or to knock them out.

But if we ARE killing… Arlo could put someone’s whole body in a vacuum and have the same effect as throwing them into space. They explode, their blood boils, it’s fuckin freaky what happens when a person depressurizes.

Even without a vacuum, (or any of these, really) it’s a good thing Arlo isn’t willing to kill because there are about a million ways he easily could.

The question that inspired the whole idea of a vacuum to begin with is: could Arlo make a barrier inside of someone, then expand it? The answer? Probably yes.

This gruesome shit is the reason I imagine Arlo at his full potential to be like… a villain au. Also because having an OP villain doesn’t have the same narrative pitfalls as an OP protagonist.

What’s Arlo’s range like? Could he expand his range with practice? How far out could he shoot a disk? Could he puncture the hull of an empire class battle ship leaving thousands to drown at sea? You know, because it’s so sharp?

Seriously though, could he take down airplanes?

Making barriers bigger or smaller doesn’t seem to affect his energy at all, considering that he never has to shrink it to save energy even when it would make sense (like with the dampener— Arlo just warned that he couldn’t keep it up, then took it down and switched straight to a disk even though there was plenty room to shrink it). So if the size of it doesn’t matter, then how big could he make it? Could he make Atlantis? Pick up a city and put it underwater with a barrier as an air dome? Could he make a dome around the earth and block meteors? Could he crush the core of the earth and blow up the planet if he wanted to??

Sadly, the answer to all of those questions is “probably not”.

Arlo is already super OP, they don’t call it a god tier for nothing. But he could be so much more godlike. I know I got really crazy at the end there, but back up just a little bit and he could realistically be a god among gods with just a little creativity. Especially at the top where the images are. Most of this stuff would not be hard.

[olderthannetfic]

i was listening to the fanficmaverick podcast episode you did on fanfiction history, in which you mentioned (~55 min in) that you were one of the main people writing the terms of service for AO3 and bringing up the types of "would this be allowed" test cases, that these were not "oh it's a slightly problematic kink" but "violent snuff porn of gillian anderson, not scully, but gillian anderson" — and that you all eventually landed on "kinda gross, but legal in the US, and therefore would host." question: was this the most contentious case? any other memorable/notable test cases, or other interesting discussions you can remember?

i'd also love to hear more about how the major archive warnings were decided on — on what basis were these chosen? which others were considered? — if you happen to know!

sincerest thank you for all the work you've done for fandom and the preservation of fandom history. ❤️ seriously, such a feat, and so interesting!

--

I think even then my personal level of wallowing in annoying wank or looking at horrifying fic was vastly higher than everyone else's, so this was pretty much the example we looked at.

Though, if you want to laugh, astolat's original post is still up on LJ with the comments, and there were totally people going "I'd be interested in this new archive project, but not if it includes RPF!" or "Not if it includes any underage fic at all!" etc.

--

On usenet in the 90s, there was somebody or somebodies who were reaaaaally into that specific type of snuff story. I remember noticing how many of them involved not only hangings but very specific imagery of one high heel falling off. I was 13, so I really couldn't tell you if it was one dude with a specific fetish or genuinely super widespread. But it made an impression.

The alt.sex.stories hierarchy was a wild time.

Anyway, in practice, badwrong RPF of female celebs that sounds like it's aimed at straight dudes ends up on fetish sites for whatever the fetish is, not on fic archives for the most part, but I thought it was a useful example because it was so far into actually offensive to AO3y types. We're not talking the weaksauce shit people are always asking me about on here like "Oooh, what if someone posted [bog standard slash trope] to AO3?" as though it's a gotcha.

--

Man... were there other test cases? I'm trying to remember. This was all in like 2008, and of course, I didn't keep internal documents when I left OTW. Not that half of this was stuff I'd have had documented on my computer anyway.

My memory is that the general shape of the content policy had been decided by the founding Board before Content Policy started up. I don't think we were actually making the ruling on RPF ourselves.

I'm pretty sure most of what we were up to was looking at wank and trying to determine how to head off shitty behavior with the ToS. Trying to define harassment is a mega pain in the ass, let me tell you.

One major internal wank there was was deciding whether to allow Original Work. I was the one who'd been in anime fandom, and I was very used to archives that have an original section, often for the "original slash" and "original yaoi" that had nowhere else to go at the time. (These days, you'd just become a "m/m romance" author, as I in fact have.) Fanfiction.net had spun off its original years ago at that point, but a lot of the non-English archives and a lot of the archives in other parts of English-speaking fandom found fannish-but-original to be a normal thing.

I am a grudgy bitch, and I am still not over how much pushback I got on this.

AO3 went live with a ban on original work, but the policy never ended up being heavily enforced. We waited to see what would happen with posting, and it was predictably that people from those backgrounds outside of US Media Fandom posted some original without even thinking it might be banned, but they didn't post so much it overwhelmed the archive.

The big fears had been that #1 people would flood AO3 and drown out the fic. This was predicated on the idiotic notion that original = inherently not fannish, so there's no dividing line. In reality, the people who were used to posting original to fic archives had an internal sense of what belongs and what doesn't. Fear #2 was that people would try to post chapter 1 of a commercial story and then go "See here to buy the rest". Little did we know that this would soon be a problem with fucking fan fiction itself. (Also, commercial spam was always against the rules and needed no extra anti-original work rule.)

People didn't just disagree with me: they looked at me blankly.

Pretty sure I vented about this on that podcast too though. Anyway, most of the shit people find contentious now was already decided before we started writing the ToS, I think... though I don't really remember clearly. We were more looking to plug up holes in the rules that nitpicking trolls could use to harass.

The kinds of things we were deciding were often like the policy that AO3 doesn't necessarily tell you if someone reported you. If they need info, they'll contact you, and if they decide you broke the ToS, you'll hear about it, but obviously bogus reports don't get passed on. This is to remove the temptation to use the team as a proxy to harass a target. An official e-mail, even if it's "You're fine, actually", can be disturbing.

--

Re the warnings themselves, I know I'd done a survey of what archives were out there at the time and had come up with a list of a few dozen. This was early on in OTW's development process, not just for Content Policy. You can still find the list somewhere on that LJ group. Anyway, for the ToS writing, we looked at the commonplace warnings from archives past, which were basically character death, character death, and also character death.

It always cracks me up when people are like "Um, rape makes sense, but how dare they downplay these other bad things with a character death warning?" Old fandom places were full of unwarned for rape, but woe betide the person who posted surprise character death of a main ship!

We needed an under-18 warning because we had a lot of Australian fans who were like "Dude, my government is a bitch, and I cannot use this archive at all if I can't filter that out". Past archives had mostly just banned it entirely or been full of death eaters raping teenage Harry Potter characters with nary an underage warning in sight.

I don't remember why we picked the violence one. It really wasn't common, but maybe we wanted to make a philosophical point that sex doesn't have more cooties than violence.

CNTW was a compromise with older fandom standards where people objected to literally any warnings existing. A lot of the really oldschool warnings debates aren't about which ones you should have but about whether you should have them at all.

I think people around here miss how non-universal warnings are and how many other communities and spaces even today don't think you need all that.

I don't recall if we seriously considered any specific others. I don't think we had a big list, then ruled them out. It's more like we accreted a few must-haves as we went along. We probably looked at the metadata for the eFiction archives that actually had ticky boxes for search (as opposed to the very low-metadata norm on many archives). But a lot of those filters would have been fandom-specific or redundant or hella vague.

One thing to keep in mind is that this was an Era of Archives, so there were fucktons of examples to look at, though only a few flavors of example since a bunch used eFiction or otherwise copied each other's design. It was possible to make some judgements about past norms on archives, not just go "Are we copying FFN or not?" A lot of fans now see fic hosting as the big three or see AO3 as the only option, but we were used to having many archives with many designs.

I know we wanted a short and manageable list of warnings, and we wanted unambiguous things that could be effectively enforced. If I'm populating my hard-coded 90s website with other people's fics, I can go through each for dubcon before I post it (not that you'd ever have warned for dubcon in the 90s). On a big fic archive, making judgement calls on vague ass categories like dubcon is a nightmare.

We did do some focus groups where other interested fans came in and critiqued our work. I can't recall how much was about our ToS wording and how much was about the actual policies. But we did workshop this shit extensively with people who were around at the time. I think many of the whiners now assume it wasn't enough of a community effort (since we didn't decide things they like). But actually, a bunch of people weighed in. Maybe elf remembers what we actually asked them. I think she was in a focus group.

[kynimdraws]

INFO POST

Name: Kylee (they/them). 30+

A totally normal Korean American mostly known for my drawings, specifically my Pokemon nuzlocke comics. But I will talk about other things on occasion because I do have periods of being fixated on certain topics. I also am a doctor!

Interests: Pokemon, League of Legends (everything except the game lmao), Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Animal Crossing, Mother series, Korean history/culture, character design

General FYIs: 

General inquiries/commission work/etc should be sent thru kynimdraws [at] gmail [dot] com! Tumblr messaging/asks/etc is not 100% reliable

I will not follow NSFW accounts but I am fine talking/interacting with them. There may be suggestive shitposting but I like keeping my content on the SFW side

I am VERY picky about who I follow/interact with online. Fandom content in particular is a minefield for me aka I have many things I dislike and don’t want to see, even if it might be a popular thing in media that I otherwise enjoy. Therefore, I will unfollow/block/mute liberally. There are times I accidentally block a blog bc I mistake them for bots. So if you got hit with that, just send me an ask or email me

I am very open about what I like and dislike, and none of those things are a direct attack on your sensibilities. I have never gone out of my way to directly send hate or whatever have you if I end up seeing shit I don’t like. My complaints in my little online space ain't a personal attack on you.

My ask/submission box/DMs  are open for criticisms if you have any issues you want to resolve in private. No one is perfect and I may have done ignorant shit that needs to be pointed out. I have deleted or edited posts in the past if people tell me what I did wrong. PS I get that some of my stuff may upset you, but try to act civil when pointing shit out please.

I try to tag all my things whenever I can. Again, send me a message if anything bothers you. I am all for good debate but if you send me excessive hate or threats bc I have different opinions about matters that are trivial, I will block/delete them.

If you wish to use any of my hcs, please credit me. And if you are comfortable with it, send me the works so I can check them out! Or @ me if that is easier.

---

FIRE EMBLEM FYI: Specifically for 3Houses/3Hopes because I need a separate one for this franchise specificially given how many crazy things I got due to being involved in this fanbase via my fanworks:

DO NOT try to convince me to like or tolerate Byleth/student ships, ESPECIALLY the ones with the lords (aka CIaude, Dimitri, EdeIgard). I already summarized why I don’t like FE3H Byleth ships with student chars here. While the spinoff game FEW3H has now removed that teacher/student problematic situation, the fandom keeps putting the FE3H elements into the FEW3H fanworks (i.e. remembering Byleth from “another life” trope)...so no thanks!! DO NOT SHOW ME IT!!!

As for the Byleth ships with faculty members, my response is here so don’t try to bait me about that topic either thanks.

I do not care whom you ingame S-support. 3Houses limits the dating-sim part of the game to that character, so I cannot care less about how you play the game. The main issue I have is when people treat Byleth the “character” as a legit ship material when I personally think they are a cool character ruined by fans who are too obsessed with badly executed self insert otome tropes bc they self-project super hard onto them. Just to be clear, any FE3H or FEW3H OC/Canon >>>>>>Byleth ships personally. Even Byleth-sonas that remove the teacher/student aspects are better than canon FE3H!Byleth

Please don't drag FE VA statements as some sort of “gotcha” on my opinions like this post here. IDC what other people prefer with ship shit, that’s their problem and not mine. I am not gonna bother them about it. So don’t bother ME about it.

---

Links to check out:

Myths of Unova + Episode Grey (Pkmn White/White2 Comic)

Tales of Sinnoh (Pkmn Diamond Comic)

Art Site (Portfolio)

Twitter 

Instagram 

[shaunashipman]

Maybe this feeds into same-sex relationships, but I feel like Buck acts differently to how he does when he's in a relationship with his previous exes, like in the Halloween episode I don't think he'd act like how he did if he were with Abby or Taylor (the other exes - Natalia and Ali, they were quite shortlived, so I'm not counting them). I think it's partially cause of gender roles but maybe also because he feels more himself with Tommy? I feel like Abby and Buck kind of wanted different things, whereas Taylor and Buck were good for a while, except I think she used him sometimes, which is kinda insincere.

I could be wrong though in saying that, does this make sense? I think with Tommy he feels like he can be more himself and Tommy is good for him.

it probably is partly about it being a same sex-relationship, from both a watsonian and doylist perspective. maybe buck feels he can let himself be doted on now that he's been forced to re-evaluate what behaviours in a relationship were based solely on gender; and also maybe the writers are subconsciously (and maybe consciously) writing him in a less stereotypical masculine role in the relationship because it's between two men.

but it's not that he never acted that way in previous relationship that is notable; it's that we never saw it. abby isn't quite a comparable relationship here, simply because she was a main character herself with her own arc. with taylor, the majority of their interactions in the first half of s5 were either directly work related—ghost stories—or buck talking to her about his Plot of the Week—maddie & chim, the hostage ep. but she wasn't a running part of the plot throughout the episode, it was a scene or two where she was for the most part a sounding board.

and when she did start to more screen-time in buck's plots in 5b, it became immediately apparent that it was the beginning of the end, what with the lucy kiss happening in the 5b premiere. (we won't talk about how the kiss ended up having fuck all to do with their break-up, and therefore just poisoned the audience against a new character and caused them to dislike buck a bit for literally no reason) so all their scenes in 5b essentially just became conversations about their relationship. we didn't really get to see them just being around each other like tommy and buck were.

also just on the topic of taylor, i don't like her, but i don't feel saying she "used [buck] sometimes" is accurate. i know it was a Thing™ while s5 was airing that was using him for stories, like saying that's why buck didn't tell her the whole story about the hostage situation, but that stuff never happened in the show. in "first responders" buck goes to her first. yes, being on a story like that would be good for her career, but they were working together, there was no using. and it's not like she spied on his convo with hen & chim about jonah. she broke their trust, yes, and it could be said that she used him in that instance, but she also then did her own work off of what hen & chim said to find out all the other stuff. no hounding buck for info or anything.

anyway, yes buck may be acting a little different because he's dating a guy, maybe it's not that different and we're just actually seeing it, or maybe it's just that buck finally feels comfortable in a relationship, that happens to be with a man. the most salient point is that we're seeing this part of the relationship at all, where tommy is thoroughly involved in buck's plot, and that plot is not about their relationship.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

I’m personally a bit mixed on the senti-kid stuff.

I like it in concept because I’m a big fan of angst and existential horror, especially involving the “am I really a human/person? Am I a monster?” character arcs. Then you add in the horror of “they can have their free will taken away incredibly easily” (and be killed at someone’s whim) and that adds a whole other layer. I know that’s part of why a lot of people don’t like it, but I like the angst stuff a lot.

Having said that, I am still on the fence about it, because as much as I like the aforementioned reasons, I really hate how it was handled narratively. They do address the “can be killed easily” part a little, with Sentibug and Felix, but I think they don’t expand much on it, and don’t really stay consistant with it (like how they treat other sentis- LB controlling Sentibubbler, for example).

But the most glaring part of it for me is: having Adrien be a senti feels more like yet another reason for them to take him out of a significant action role in the story. They already did this with Chat Blanc: “oh he can’t know his dad is Hawkmoth bc he’ll destroy the world!” Then again with Ephemeral, though this time with the obvious use of the amok (Gabriel twisting the ring as he akumatized him). S5 shows him using it more and more, and has the finale with him still in control of the main villain, making it incredibly risky for Adrien to even have the Miraculous. Astruc and other fans can talk all they want about how feather kids are just magical IVF babies, and while I agree that they are human still, it blatantly ignores that having them be controlled by someone that dangerous makes them a huge risk, even if they get their amok (which is why I think there should have been some way to at least break them free of the control aspect, even if not their lives being tied to an object). (It’s also incredibly scary for the senti kid themselves.) Someone whose free will can be taken away so easily can’t be trusted with one of the most powerful objects in the world. It’s harsh, but powers like these, despite how they’re treated sometimes, can’t just be given out like candy to anyone, they need to be given selectively and carefully. Something like this can’t just be put in the hands of someone who isn’t even in full control of themselves. That’s so much responsibility to have. The narrative gave us two huge reasons that the narrative gave us for why Adrien can’t be a part of defeating his father and isn’t fit for the miraculous: 1) he’ll destroy the world, 2) he can be magically controlled and they can’t do anything about it. Why are they trying so hard to come up with reasons for why one of their main characters shouldn’t be in the role they gave him? The senti story would fit far better if Adrien wasn’t Chat Noir- I’ve read a lot of fics where things do work out, but they usually always take it in a direction that the show wouldn’t (in terms of story style and episode outline), so I don’t really think it can be successful in a canon style (though fic writers always surprise me, so I’m happy to be proven wrong).

That’s not even bringing up how Adrien’s arc was all about him obeying his father because he wants approval, not bc of magic, which… I guess can be explained away by Gabriel acting on the assumption that they made him perfect, therefore he doesn’t need to be controlled (like why Tomoe let Kagami keep her amok), but they don’t really address that on the Agreste side- how far is Gabriel willing to go? Why is he using it more now? Did Emilie use his amok? What for and why? Did the couple have a discussion beforehand? There’s just too much left open for the giant hole they created.

Sorry if this came off as ranty, but I wanted to share my thoughts as someone who does like the senti plotline, but still has frustrations with the show’s writing quality and inability to pull it off.

In another show, the sentikid stuff would have been amazing, so I don't fault anyone for liking the concept! It's a fantastic setup for a dark and twisted take on the genres that Miraculous is playing with. I could easily see that more serious show being considered a sort of sister show to Madoka Magica in terms of what it's trying to do.

The problem is that Miraculous isn't Madoka Magica. It's not trying to be a dark fantasy for teens and adults. It's trying to be a rom-com for little kids and the sentikid plotline has no place in a rom-com for little kids. It's way too serious for many of the reasons that you brought up.

For me, the biggest one is probably this point:

Someone whose free will can be taken away so easily can’t be trusted with one of the most powerful objects in the world.

Because sentimonsters do not have true free will, Adrien is a massive liability who should never be trusted with a miraculous. The risk is simply too great. He should also never be with Marinette or anyone else whose job is high stakes as he's a massive liability to them. A perfect sleeper agent who could be commanded to fool everyone until it's too late.

Great stuff if you like psychological horror, terrible stuff if you're here to see the power of love and friendship triumph over all!

There's also the issue of when the sentitwist was introduced. Madoka Magica goes from classic magical girl team show to psychological horror within the first few episodes, which is perfectly reasonable. Shows often take a few episodes to establish their tone. Miraculous doesn't introduce the sentikid stuff until season four, well over 24 hours into the show's runtime, way too late for a massive tone shift!

Add in the issues with how the sentitwist is used to downplay Gabriel's abuse and Adrien's reactions to it and, yeah, this was not a good move. I have no idea how the writing team got the higher ups to approve this twist. I'm still stunned that Disney okayed it.

I do think that Miraculous could have kept its lighthearted nature and done the sentitwist, but it would have required the sentikids to have a way to truly break free. After all, Pinocchio is a children's story and it has similar elements, but we didn't get Pinocchio. Instead we got Ephemeral, the episode where our hero stared his love in the eyes and doomed the world because he is totally incapable of being her hero when someone else has even one of his rings. That isn't a love story. It's a tragedy.

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

EVE (PARADISE LOST)

1.) I recognise how insane this submission is because this was written in 1667 and so attitudes towards women were obviously very different. But misogyny has always existed, no matter the time period, and so I think it’s fair to pick up on it. Although Milton somewhat avoids painting Eve as the wicked seductress, she is nevertheless presented as inherently inferior to Adam - her ‘virtue’ and 'passion’ are supposed to be an equal counterpart to Adam’s intellect but Milton’s clear resentment of Eve shines through. She is vain from the beginning - enamoured with her own reflection until she meets Adam. She is Adam’s subordinate and readily accepts her place in the hierarchy below him, until she meets Satan. Women seeking power and knowledge is therefore inextricably tied to the fall of mankind. Her attempt for some kind of independence away from Adam (going to tend the garden away from him) is also presented as the primary reason she succumbed to Satan because Adam is needed to protect her. Eve (the mother of all women) therefore creates the assumption that women are weak and easily misled away from men. The description of her eating the apple is very sexual - perhaps reflecting the anxieties of men at the time of being cuckolded and therefore dishonoured by their wives. She is the ultimate disobedient, dangerous wife. Her reason for sharing the forbidden knowledge with Adam, rather than keeping it for herself, is because she is worried she will face the wrath of God and be replaced with another Eve. So it is her jealousy that brings them both down. (It is all a lot more complicated than this so Eng lit people don’t kill me) but yeah poor Eve.

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

[demodraws0606]

Why I am a die-hard believer that Whit is the mastermind

You know I was going to make an entire structured theory thread about it but Tumblr decided to be a little bitch and remove all my writing so I'll just kinda throw a messy list of evidence here.

Notice how Veronika's summary of Forever Dead is suspiciously similar to the secret dialogue

Notice how the main character's gender is pointed out

It's also interesting how the mysterious dialogue in the beginning who seems to be related to the hidden text (the idea of not being able to remember anymore link those two) seem to often mention the fact that they're grieving the loss of someone.

That someone most likely being Mai who seems to have suffered a tragic fate due to Teruko, which can explain the mastermind's hatred of her.

Guess who's character is linked with grief ?

(I know this is most likely about his mother but there is nothing contradicting the fact that he could be idolizing multiple dead people)

Wow it's interesting how these secret texts about Mai seem to be really idolizing her.

We can also add how the person who wrote the note to Xavier is very clearly the mastermind and how Whit's tool is a Stationery (it's spelled Stationary but i believe its a typo) which is commonly known as writing and other office materials.

Which includes paper, pens, ink, highlighters and other tools for writing

It's even made worse by the fact that the note seems to be written by a specific type of blue pen that we haven't seen anywhere in the series.

And even worse is that Charles, who knows Whit's handwriting, couldn't point out the writing is his as he couldn't access the scene of the crime due to his trauma therefore he couldn't see the note's handwriting.

It's really really interesting how the hidden text points out how they can predict everyone's behavior in a killing game and Whit's intuition is highlighted three times in this game.

Another suspicious thing is how the mastermind of the game talks about how they basically can predict anything that can happen. It's almost like how Whit jokingly predicted Arei's death.

Along with how Whit is the only one who has directly talked to the audience (him showing the papers) or how he's nudged the killing game into more interesting directions/avoided it from going off the rails.

Other exemples would be him defending Teruko/Charles in the first trial, him not revealing David's secret until the last minute (as well as the note that suspiciously pointed to Eden), him not trying to help with the fight in episode 4, him insisting that Charles and Teruko talk about their family life (aka nudging them to talk about their backstory which would entertain the audience) and other stuff i don't feel like adding.

It's also important add that Mono-TV and Whit also have similar personalities. They both don't take anything seriously and make constant jokes about the killing games, Mono-TV and Whit also act constantly incompetent and like they're a lot dumber than they actually are.

Another thing is that it's interesting how Whit opens up about his secret so easily, even though almost everyone's secrets are something they're at least flustered about and at worst completely ashamed by. If he was the mastermind, it would make sense that his secret wouldn't be anything that could ruin his character and that he could just admit easily.

Also another point, the mastermind character talks about a time when they cared so much about people and how it hurt them so much when they died. Which you can see that caring nature shine through a lot with Whit as it's possible that Whit's personnality is not actually a lie but more so a reflection of how he used to be before he went through all this alledged horrible stuff.

We can also note how the mastermind has to be one of the students and how there is an extreme likelyhood that Mono-TV saying it isn't bait because it's not actually told to the students but to us. Why would Mono-TV tell it to us and not to the students if it was a lie meant to make the game more interesting, wouldn't it be more entertaining to reveal to the students of a fake mastermind among them to get them to kill one another more easily. It's why I have no doubt someone in this class has to be the mastermind behind it.

Mono-TV also seems to not have any contact with the person controlling him which would make sense if it was someone in the killing game as they would have a hard time communicating without being caught.

(It's a stretch but it would make more sense if Mono-TV didn't know if the mastermind was one of them as if the mastermind was behind the scenes there would be no reason why it wouldn't interact with Mono-TV, although take this with a grain of salt as he could be lying)

And just really there aren't a lot of other options for the mastermind that would be compelling unless they introduce a mysterious new character.

It could be the mysterious red haired girl but everything hints towards her being dead or hurt and it being the cause for the killing game rather than her being the one behind it. There is some decent evidence that it could be her but I genuinely don't think so considering it again feels a little too obvious and doesn't work with how the story/secrets present her.

(It's just not very compelling to make your ONE mystery character the mastermind and again it would be weird considering Mono-TV telling the audience the mastermind is in cast doesn't make sense logically as he would have no reason to try and trick the audience)

Not a lot of characters in this cast can be really put into the mastermind category as they are either too obvious (teruko, veronika) or too farfetched (eden, hu etc...).

I honestly am a die hard believer that Whit is the mastermind however what's interesting to me is not If Whit is the mastermind but more so the Why ?

Which honestly might be a question for another time...

But yeah this is why I 95 pourcent believe Whit is the mastermind

If anyone has anything more to add I would be really interesting in seeing what other people have in terms of evidence.

[the-s1lly-corner]

Hey, so, I was reading your request rules n stuff and I do have an idea but I'm not sure if it'd be considered a character (and therefore I'd have to commission it) or not.

I made some TADC oc concept art before e2 came out, one of which was a scalie, and happens to look Incredibly like Gummigoo. (Og concept was gator XD ... then salmon ish then a spinosaurous) and after e2 I kinda decided to scrap em? Or well, that was the idea but then I was thinking. If I kept them, and they joined the circus, how would Pomni react? Because of how similar they look to gummigoo (rip)

Essentially I want to ask if this (Pomni meeting/reacting to seeing reader, who looks like Gummigoo. Platonic. Between Pomni and reader, at least. idrc if it's Pomni x gummigoo or just platonic) is something you'd be down to write and if it'd be something I'd have to commission or if it's something you would/could queue.

And if I'd have to commission it; if you're commissions are open right now, and what are your prices n stuff?

Thanks so much for reading, I wasn't sure where to ask so I hope it's chill I sent it as an ask. (^‿‿^) I hope you're having a good day/night! <3

Pomni x reader who looks like gummigoo

Helio hello!! Sorry for taking so long to get to this, I got side tracked and queue stuff doesnt make things move all that fast <\3 .. I dont think this goes against the oc thing at least not totally since it's still very vague and can be applied to general stuff!! To answer the comm stuff, I do intend on allowing ocs for comms and raffles however neither are currently an option <\3

Notes: platonic post, wasnt sure if you wanted the reader to be a NPC or circus member so I decides to default on circus member!, takes place post episode 2, reader joins after gummigoo gets poofed

CWs: grief

she has a lot of mixed feelings, honestly even if this werent a platonic post i dont think she would be comfortable starting romantic with you given the circumstances... so good thing this isnt a romantic post!

i can see her avoiding you in the beginning for a long while, she doesnt hate you and she feels horrible if you think she does

you didnt know gummigoo so someone is going to have to fill you in so you understand why pomni is so distant with you and seems to shut herself off when you enter the room

you might be able to coax her to talk about it with enough time and patience, you get to learn a little bit about gummigoo... at least as much as pomni got to know in the short time she knew him

opens up about some guilt shes been harboring for bringing him to the main grounds, she appreciates that you try to tell her that she couldnt have known... but it seems to fall on deaf ears, at least the first few times you tell her

she doesnt look at you all that much when talking to you, her eyes are always darting around or fixed downwards

time is your best friend here, theres a lot of guilt here and a lot of hopelessness in the situation

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

IG this might be the wrong blog to ask (do you have a main?) but what are some things you hate about the show/fandom that don’t relate to Zutara? Is “The Great Divide” really that bad? The comics? The Legend of Korra?

Okay, let's split these in categories

What I dislike about the original show

How we never really see much about the cultures of the Air Nomads and Water Tribes, and that the planned episode about Aang's parents was scrapped.

How Ty Lee basically has no arc and just went from "Hates being part of a matched set" to "Happily part of a matched set."

How Toph didn't really get any resolution with her parents, be it a reconciliation or a decision to cut contact like Zuko did with Ozai.

How the Lion Turtle wasnot introduced much earlier and instead used a Deux Ex Machina. We all know Aang won't kill Ozai, guys, you don't have to pretent, just let us know there's something Aang can to do avoid it and go revealing stuff about energybending little by little, then give us the final piece of the puzzle in the finale.

How the White Lotus was clearly a retcon that stopped making any sense after season two and that they're actually pretty fucking useless when you think about it.

How the show basically forgot that Iroh was very much a villain in season one, and for most of his life, therefore he has no right to call Azula crazy and dismiss her as a lost cause.

How Iroh says it wouldn't be right for him to kill Ozai, even if he could, because history would just see it as just a brother killing another brother for power, then IMMEDIATELY sending his 16-year-old nephew to a battle to the death with his 14-year-old niece - all while the White Lotus FINALLY decides to do SOMETHING and frees Ba Sing Se...

...Which looks horrible for Iroh when we think "Oh shit, last time he tried to capture it because he thought it was his destiny, his son died, and now he sent his nephew to a battle in which nearly dies and gets another scar while he's off trying to free that same city because of destiny again." (Seriously, when it comes to Ba Sing Se, don't let Iroh do ANYTHING other run a tea-shop in it. Somehow it always shows the ugly side of his personality).

How "Sokka's Master" is really an episode that did not need to exist at all because while Sokka had always wanted to be a warrior, he never really expressed any insecurity about being a non-bender and was only ever teased about it once. It just felt like an obligatory "The dude with no powers is important too!" episode and not a natural stepping stone of the narrative.

As for "The Great Divide" it is a pretty boring episode... but it's not as bad as people say. I don't think the original Avatar had any episodes in which nothing is important or at least creative and/or cool. I like the music in it, the world-building is kind of neat, the theme of helping refugees is pretty coherent with a show about war, and the animation changes when we are told the versions of the story on what these people hate each other was pretty cool.

What I dislike about the novelizations of the show

While some of the attempts of exploring how characters felt in some scenes really works and provides some interesting interpretations, others just fall completely flat and feel a bit OOC.

What I dislike about The Lost Adventures comics

That ridiculous story with Katara being way too pushy with Aang's training for no reason and refusing to communicate with him when he wants to talk about the kiss on the day of the invasion. She would never treat him like this.

What I dislike about the Azula In The Spirit Temple comic

The bits that remind me "Oh yeah, that's supposed to be set in the same universe of the Yang comics." Other than that, it is a pretty good stand-alone story and it allowed Azula to be turned into a deeply offensive stereotype about the mentally ill.

What I dislike about (most of) the comics and Korra

Nearly everything. Seriously, I don't know how the reception to these were mostly mixed instead of on the same level of hatred the fandom has to the Shyaman movie. The character assassination and lack of understanding of what made the original story good is EXACTLY the same, yet because it had Bryke's approval/involvement people expect me to take it as canon and it's NOT gonna happen.

What I dislike about the Netflix version

It exists. I'm sick of all the bullshit, souless remakes/reboots that are clearly just crash-grabs for companies that completely forgot they can make money AND art at the same time. I especially hate the trend of beautiful 2D animation being replaced with cheap cosplays, ugly CGI and poor lighting to pretend it is the "dark, mature version of the story"

What I dislike about the fandom itself

To make a really, really, REALLY long list very short and not really rank them 'cause it'd take forever:

1 - The blatant ableism towards Toph and Azula.

2 - The constant delusion about Avatar being "just like Game Of Thrones" and "not a kid's show."

3 - The people still insisting that the Netflix version, Korra, and the comics are good or "not that bad."

4 - The weird way some people act like Zuko was the first character to ever get a redemption arc and that everyone who does it now is taking inspiration from it.

5 - The refusal to accept that uncle Iroh was never perfect, both due to oversight of the writers AND deliberate narrative choices.

6 - The people that act like the show was trash just because of a few bad choices.

7 - The people that act like the show is perfect.

8 - The people that act like Bryke's interpretations are the only ones that matter.

9 - The inability to not harrass others for not agreeing with them.

10 - The weird, stupid people that act like Sozin and Azulon were not that bad and not just as power-hungry, racist and cruel as Ozai.

11 - The people that don't understand how Aang killing Ozai would be character assassination AND a deep betrayal of the themes and morals of the story.

12 - The people that keep losing their shit if you want a character like Azula to have a redemption arc because it'd "make Zuko's less especial" (it wouldn't, and I know that because HE WASN'T THE ONLY CHARACTER TO GET REDEEMED IN THE STORY, hell, he wasn't even the first).

13 - The downright offensive and disgusting need the fandom feels of sweeping Zuko's mistakes under the rug, no matter how bad they are, because they think he needs to be perfect otherwise he was not truly a victim of abuse.

14 - The way people just full on make shit up to support their headcanons, ships and theories.

15 - The blatant racism.

[haley-harrison]

Eric Kripke is the Alfred Hitchcock of our generation. In this essay I will outline the main types of horror they use, offer examples, and elaborate the genius of the said tropes.

It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the man's work, that Kripke loves his ✨gore✨. Now that he's no longer restrained by CW's PG rating, he gets to go full-throttle with it in The Boys. That isn't to say that Supernatural didn't get it's fair share though - I mean, just remember the "Skin" episode in season one - that scene where the skinwalker changes his skin is pure body horror. Masterful.

Okay, Haley, so what? Some of us aren't squeamish. What's the brilliant part?

Good point, my med/bio orientated reader. That gets me to the second type of horror (and my personal kryptonite): psychological horror.

Here we get to lovecraftian themes. And I don't exactly mean Cthulhu. See, lovecraftian monsters are incomprehensible to the human mind, which generates horror through the unease of being unable to understand. Similarly, certain characters that the majority of the audience cannot identify with, can be used to the same end. Lemme illustrate this with two examples: Homelander and The Deep.

I reckon it's safe to assume most people aren't sadistic psychopaths, nor zoophiles with a penchant for sea creatures. Therefore the extreme Otherness of these two makes people uneasy, disturbing on a fundamental level. Hitchcock refined that particular horror trope by sprinkling his movies with taboo-topics of his own time, such as implied homosexuality. (*gasp* 🏳️‍🌈😆)

And here we get to the now well-known horror rule: the unseen monster is the scariest monster. More broadly, what is only implied can be more impactful than having the exact scenario shown on screen. The unsaid leaves more to the imagination (which is the most powerful tool for horror), and creates and additional dread with the element of unknown. People are unsettled by what else there might be, when elipses replace a clear answer.

Now back to Kripke, and how CW's censorship actually worked in his favor in Supernatural.

Maybe you saw this coming, but the monsters aren't the lovecraftian element. (Really, with the exception of tulpas and wendigos, none of them were even remotely scary). As I said above, Homelander and The Deep are lovecraftian because they're freaks. Unsympathetic freaks, but imagine if we took that first part away...

I shan't say it.

Just. Something something, american gothic, shit's implied and that's the point.

Haley, is this an elaborate ploy to talk about shipping? Really?

No. This is about environmental storytelling, gritty noir filter, camera angles, and just how much is left unsaid. This is about trauma, and repression, and the emotional reaction of the audience when they're left to ruminate a bit on the kind of lives the Winchesters had. It's about the missing scenes, the psychology, the implications - just -

*deep breath*

Another brilliant thing is how Kripke plays around with bathos - causing contrasting feelings in quick succession to give the audience emotional whiplash. The quips sprinkled in between the violence. The unexpected gag right before a gut-punch. It accentuates the experience for the audience. Like the way Dean's relationship with food is often played for laughs, but when you mull it over it's not hard to figure out the underlying food scarcity while growing up.

And furthermore, where did the money come from when times were tough? A myriad of angst-fics went ahead to answer that, which just proves an implication is far superior to exposition.

Then there's Hell. We don't get more than a few seconds of flashes, but think about it. Wouldn't Hell use every torture method imaginable? And what's the most psychologically damaging thing you can do to a person, especially a man?

I think you know the answer.

And that realization is the dawning psychological horror.

Finally, I'll leave you with this:

Just... Kripke!!!

I'm biting stuff!