#be thematically salient

[cospinol]

really good christmas present ;^;

[butchshevik]

I will probably cave and watch the fall of the house of usher anyways but let it be stated for the record that I do not and never will like flanegans work

[chronotopes]

profoundly disappointed that little women didn't win that movie poll btw

[redjademilktea]

I've talked about this before, but with the final episode of Downfall and the Cooldown that followed it I feel the need to write about it again.

The morality of saving the gods of Exandria was never going to be clear cut. Stopping Ludinus, stopping the Ruby Vanguard maybe. But there's an important conversation to be had about the nature of divinity that needs to be had. And Downfall makes this discourse more salient and pressing than it's ever been.

I really liked what Brennan brought up in the Cooldown, about "achieving enlightenment on their terms," or suffer the fate of "not being able to understand." The gods as they exist have protected and will continue to protect the way of being that allows for their continued existence. They dismiss anything that challenges that existence - anything that makes them confront the nature of mortality, as Brennan elegantly phrased it - as something not worth considering. As something that simply doesn't grasp what one needs to grasp to do what must be done.

And if doing what must be done means calling a truce in their great war. If that means collaborating with the very siblings on the opposing side of that conflict, which has led to so much loss of mortal life and desecration of the face of Exandria, then so be it. It has to be done. We are mere children, we wouldn't understand.

I'm reminded of Ann Stoler in her book "Along the Archival Grain," along with Avery Gordon's "Ghostly Matters." Both authors talk about the lengths and extents colonial states go to legitimate and justify their existence through the policing and curation of knowledge. It is in the best interest of the colonial state to produce and maintain knowledge that justifies its being. They are doing what they do because they define it to be right, to be just.

And those contradictions? The holes in colonial logic born out of the anxieties and fears of losing that legitimacy? Those inconsistencies that necessitate their reproduction and continued existence? Poor child, you do not understand. It is the right thing to do. There are things at play that are beyond fathoming for you. It simply must be this way. It is right for it to be this way. Fallicies and contradictions in colonial logic become justified and legitimated via the production of knowledge produced from the colonial archive to reproduce itself.

The knowledge of the divine killing weapon. The people, the complex, ephemeral, fleeting, textured, beautiful, pained, vibrant lives of those that held that knowledge. That knowledge that was spread to touch every soul on that floating city. All of it could not persist. For them to persist would mean the possibility of the way things are, the way things are ought to be from those who know better, could come to an end.

So it must be this way. The city must fall, despite its infinite arcane beauty. Lives must be lost, and so too must their chance for redemption, for a new beginning. All things must come to an end, if that means preserving the infinite. Family must persist. *They* must persist. And so it must be this way.

I say all this to highlight the fact that the morality underlying the theme of this campaign is not clear cut. The nature of it prevents that. The members of Bells Hells are not good or bad because some of them remain ambivalent to the existence of the gods. No single one of them is inherently right or wrong.

But you cannot argue there is a "right" answer when it comes to the gods. They simply are. Much like anything simply is. And what their existence means, especially for what it means to the lives of mortals on Exandria who must suffer the consequences of that divine existence, must be reckoned with.

I really am impressed with the bold scope of thematic ideas that Campaign 3 introduces and continues to grapple with. It is phenomenal story telling, and is strikingly resonant with the enmeshed struggles that permeate the very real world that informs the lives and experiences of its creators. All of them continue to blow me away every Thursday night!

[rin-tezuka]

God it is so thematically cool that the one winged eagle is itself just a half baked regurgitation of fascisn. I think that single point is probably the most salient way to sum up Umineko's thoughts on fascism - Kinzo's infaturation with the west, the thing that indirectly propelled him to fortune by collaborating with the American occupation via way of Fascist gold? Literally regurgitating the half-baked logo of a rump state. It just ends up being so farcical.

[reverssentiment]

What are the salient features of Asriel, post-canon, that keep us from "saving" him from life alone in the Underground?

He's soulless (a practical problem),

he'll soon return to being a flower (a practical problem) and would prefer that you think of him like this rather than Flowey (a personal and interpersonal problem), and

he's decided to stay and tend the grave of the fallen child (and this is not really a problem at all; rather, a decision, which the boundary conditions of Undertale require us to respect).

There is a lot of UT post-canon fic out there which treats all these as practical problems. Frisk can just get a soul from somewhere, throw Alphys technobabble or soul arcanobabble at the body issue; get Flowey in therapy; and... also get Flowey in therapy for that last one, because his decision isn't really legitimate, in save-the-goat stories. It's self-harm. Which, personally, is both understandable and missing the point of one of the game's core themes: no matter how many times you restart the story, there are things you can't do; you are not getting a 100% Complete Perfect Pacifist where even Asriel is saved, and it's okay to be wistful about it, but you still need to put down the controller eventually. Getting him to the surface happens a lot in fic, because we all want the goldenest ending, but it could never happen in canon and we just have to live with it. It's thematically potent and I'd lose a lot of respect for Undertale's commitment to its story if you could circumvent it.

(Incidentally, this feels to me like it stems from the same ideas as making "* I have places to be" the wrong answer, a giving-in to Frisk's self-sacrificing, self-disregarding nature which must be corrected. Sometimes, you have to let people live and make their own decisions, outside the boundaries of the story's frame. Your perspective only goes so far.)

...now, fluffier, more sympathetically-traumatized Asriel, on the other hand...!

Ralsei's woes in Deltarune are very visibly the same kind of isolation as what Asriel's dealing with at the end of Undertale, but a) it's worse (a whole lifetime of waiting in a very deliberately empty, lifeless, three-screen-long kingdom) and b) he's stuck there for purely practical reasons. Darkners can't enter the Light World without becoming objects. He never made a decision to be here.

It's not something we can technobabble our way out of right now, but we're only in Chapter 2, right? We can save him, in a way we can't save Asriel: the deadlock we can't resolve has been removed; we don't really have to think about his preferences any more, because the preferences that kept us from helping him and left him stuck in the Underground I mean Dark World are just gone.

His issues are also much more obvious from the get-go, and seem designed to be something we talk him out of – not Asriel's decision to stay by his lost friend's grave, with a weight of meaning and feeling behind it, but hero worship, subservience, religious dedication to the Prophecy and self-image issues, all clear and visible dysfunctions. Giving Asriel therapy has left the realm of fanfiction and wish fulfillment and become part of canon... and the real disagreements we had with UT!Asriel over what he was and meant and deserved have become simple roadblocks for DR!Asriel whoops I mean Ralsei, things we have to help him through. Practical problems where the solution is friendship speech + therapy.

To make a slightly heavy-handed comparison, Ralsei saying we exist to serve Lightners and gratefully referring to himself as Kris's lackey is Anthy saying I'm the Rose Bride because I like it. It's the kind of reason we're inclined to reflexively overrule without working to deal with it at its root. Ralsei is Asriel, minus the irreconcilable and bittersweet parts, someone whose objections to being helped have either been removed or simplified down until we can feel good about disabusing him of them. He's our wish fulfillment in the way that candy on trees might be Susie's and a city of shining lights might be Noelle's and Giant Arcade Consoles might be Berdly's: an Asriel you can help, who you can make go to therapy and deal with the problems that keep him from caring for himself; who'll shut up, comply and let himself be saved.

...so the fact that Kris – whose personal issues are opaque, complex, and frustrating; who appears to be actively hiding parts of their life and motives from us; who clearly doesn't want our help or an improved social life at the expense of their agency – finds him so distasteful might not just be because he's a parody of their brother or Secretly Evil or whatever. If Ralsei is "the kid they're supposed to be" it's not just his fluff and horns!

[bestworstcase]

"keep moving forward" is one of rwby's core themes. "no one can heal alone" is another. "before healing is possible, the harm must end" is a third. and "if every door is locked shut, the only way forward is to fight back" is the thematic foundation.

the interlocking ideas here are salient to cinder's and salem's (and likely summer's) arcs in obvious ways but it's also interesting to think about in relation to ruby

who has just gone through this catastrophic emotional crisis driven by the trauma of not only being a huntress but being the leader responsible for saving the world. and then she has this life-affirming experience in the tree before immediately returning to vacuo where her face and her message have become the rallying cry. the heroic martyr brought back to life, right. her team knows better now but the world does not and the basic conditions that shattered ruby have not been changed: this is still an existential war with an unbeatable adversary and the world looks to ruby rose and her friends to save them. if rwbyxjl2 is any indication she reacts by… deciding she's going to go down fighting because she's not a quitter, to the consternation of her team

the point is. you cannot heal in the environment that broke you. ruby shattered and glued herself back together and wbyj understand now how vulnerable she is, but the world itself has not changed. ruby cannot heal until the world changes.

there is a narrative argument to be made for vacuo being an inversion of atlas but i think it is more likely that they will appear at first to be not so different, with v10 turning on the fulcrum of that realization. telling the truth, inviting the whole world to participate in this war, only changes the surface. how do we move forward in earnest? how do we fix things? how do we save everyone? more urgently, how do we turn vacuo aside from the path atlas followed to destruction? vacuo is no better than atlas, only broken in perpendicular ways. the reversal comes when the characters turn around.

[maikingsenseofit]

https://www.tumblr.com/miss-sweetea-pie/727558083762667520/listen-i-dont-like-kataang-and-maiko-because thoughts on this?

Excuse my candor but that post is kinda bullshit.

The key part to understand is OP says this:

“Zutara was just a lovely little treat and would have tied up everything in a lovely bow”

Except romance, especially romance that is reflective of real relationships, emotions, and journeys, isn’t something that can be neatly wrapped into a lovely bow. Relationships are messy, they don’t have a linear arc nor do they fit into thematic/narrative structures like The Hero’s Journey, etc. Relationships are replete with disagreements, sacrifices, and understandings that don’t magically appear or disappear the second the story ends on paper or on the TV. And that’s what makes Kataang and Maiko so powerful.

I see a lot of Zutara shippers obsess with this need for thematic and narrative cohesion, but not one can make a proper argument as to why their relationship towards the end needed to be romantic as opposed to the platonic one they had in the show. Why must two people, who started out as stark enemies on opposing sides of a war, need to fall in love? Is it not just as salient that they ended up as friends who protect each other, something that could have never been fathomed between the two of them? I actually love Bryke for not going the traditional enemies to lovers route, because it significantly reduces the impact of Zuko’s redemption and sacrifice, and Katara’s willingness to broach enemy lines due to her innate humanity. They didn’t do any of the things they did because they were head over heels in love with each other (they never once expressed romantic desire or attraction in another) but because they had a higher duty and purpose they needed to fulfill and a deeper empathy they needed to gain not only for each other, but other characters in ATLA.

The Maiko and Kataang arguments are just not in good faith. Kataang was set up from the very beginning and Aang had already reached the conclusion that she was such an integral part of his life that he wouldn’t let her go for anything (why would I want to let go of Katara)? Zuko already realized that he had to sacrifice his relationship with Mai for the greater good of the world when he writes her a letter and expresses his remorse against their portrait in the fire nation. The writers wrote Mai to turn on Azula to match Zuko’s sacrifice.

Both couples disagreements at the end werent going to make or break their relationship or their arcs because much of the ground work was already laid in the previous three seasons. The plot lines op talks about were explored throughout the series, they weren’t unearthed and festered only towards the very end. Compare that to Zuko and Katara’s relationship - where they were only on the same side and actually trusted each other in the last three episodes of the entire show. Most shippers actually agree with me when I say it would have been weird to have them magically kiss or suddenly develop feelings for each other in the finale.

Thanks for asking.

[madhogthymaster]

This is Not a Review of In Stars and Time

Let us set the stage.

An entity known as The King has cast a horrible curse upon the land, freezing people in time. It's up to the Chosen One and her friends to save the day. After a long journey, the party arrives at the final town right before the final battle with the final boss. He awaits the heroes at the final castle which was once the house of worship to Change Themselves.

You, the player, are the second to last party member (who joined right before the cute mascot character) and you find yourself "blessed" with the symbolically relevant ability to loop in time - which you discovered after being suddenly crushed to death by a big rock with a sense for dramatic irony. Now, admittedly, the prospect of dealing with Groundhog Day related shenanigans might seem daunting, at first. Dare I say, it might even be emotionally and psychologically taxing, in the long run. However, do not panic! A volunteering social worker has already been sent to "assist" you with your predicament. You can trust them completely.

Now that we have dispensed with the formalities, let's get down to business to defeat The King. Use your newfound powers to help your friends navigate the castle, climb the floors, overcome the obstacles. Be ready to repeat all that several more times. You know the drill. Perhaps, if you do everything right, your buff boyfriend will finally confess his feelings to you.

Wouldn't that be swell?

Wouldn't it?

It would be nice.

It sure would.

...

There will be no additional plot synopsis, at this time.

As I type these few words of appetizing anticipation, I find myself in a predicament of my own: I played In Stars and Time and now I have to talk about it. I have many emotions swirling, dancing incoherently within the very fabric of my being. Feelings that I must convey to you before The Moment passes, you see. I'm not sure I can, though. I'm not sure I can steel my trembling hands for long enough to wax poetically about this being, without hyperbole, one of the best games I played in the past decade. A masterpiece with many juicy layers waiting to be peeled back, one by one. I don't have the energy to write the monstrous essay it deserves for all I want to do is sit in a corner and weep quietly for a few hours, trying to process it all. I'm sad not because it's over but because I can't experience it for the first time ever again. Which is an ironic statement considering the nature of this game, I realize. Allow me to try this again.

Let us set the stage.

In Stars and Time is is a cleverly designed title. The time loop structure works both as a gameplay and thematic device, a means to (purposefully) emphasize the monotonous nature of the RPG grind in relation to the protagonist's deteriorating state, cycle after cycle, play after play. You have your classic meta-textual musings about video games as well as a legitimately gripping tale filled with many twists and turns, good use of symbolism, salient points to make about Trauma and its effect on one's memory, the Fear of Change versus the necessity of it, and Depression. It all comes together by the end in a subjectively satisfying manner and...

...

And...

...

...I have to stop myself.

I'm reducing this deeply personal experience to a mere "review" and that's not what I'm here to do.

I don't know what I'm here to do.

Frankly, there are themes in this game I am not equipped to discuss, such as its intensely felt (and horrifyingly topical) commentary about Diaspora, the shared trauma of cultural displacement, a people fading away from memory like stars in the sky. That kind of analysis would be too much for a simple "review." if this were to be one, I would praise the game for being the best possible version of itself, the best version of a Time Loop story. One that perfectly applies the narrative tropes of the genre to its gameplay, plot, all that jazz. I would also state that it didn't reinvent the wheel of "Indie Gaming" and I could feel inclined to make obligatory comparisons to That One Game because that's the unfair standard by which everything MUST abide! No, I shall not do that. I need to rethink my approach. I am going to take a small break. In the meantime, please enjoy these unrelated GIF files of Christopher Lloyd from Toonstruck that I have lying around on the floor.

I had dinner with the family. It was a small, daily reminder that I am loved unconditionally. That I deserve it. Something that is immensely easy to forget. The meal was tastier than usual.

...

Back to it.

This is the brutally simple truth of the matter: there is a lot to love about In Stars and Time, with its writing, design choices, characters, nuances, big feelings. It has the potential to be a massive crowd pleaser and it would be well-deserved. It's got explicitly gay lore, as well! In case I didn't make it abundantly clear, this game is 100% queer. Every aspect of it, from the characters and the world they inhabit to the culture and its history, is built from the ground up as a queer utopia. You might recall, all the way to the first paragraph of this long-winded, amorphous ramble, I mentioned something about Change with a capital C. That is because the very concept of Change has been deified, becoming the base of a whole religion: an extremely inclusive, open-minded, progressive community that celebrates life in all its multi-faceted forms. A significant portion of its foundation is the magical technique of "Body Craft" which allows the user to literally transform their physical appearance into their preferred shape, one that better reflects who they are. Children are given many names, both male and female, for the purpose of facilitating their own change, should it occur. Literal and figurative transience lies at the heart of this belief system, meaning that about half the population is trans/non-binary, and queerness is normalcy. As a side note, I want to live in this world. Change is viewed as positive, in other words. In light of that, the arrival of a hostile entity with the power to simply stop all of existence from ever progressing by freezing everyone in place might seem like an easy metaphor to read. I assure you, the game is eager for you to make that assumption.

As I mentioned earlier, this story tackles Depression and it doesn't pull its punches when it comes to portray the more "inconvenient" aspects of living with crippling self-esteem issues. That's when the game became a masterpiece to me. I resonated with Siffrin (He/They), the protagonist. That's you!

Their struggle to navigate the constant torment of the loop is paralleled with their increasing mental and emotional instability. Intrusive thoughts overpowering their head, saying he will never be loved, that he's toxic and manipulative. There's the all too familiar frustration of not being understood by others despite not having tried to explain how you really feel to them, trapped as you are in your own head. Big issues are equated to "small" issues. I relate with most of this. Through the Time Loop allegory, In Stars and Time captures the Kafkian Horror of existing as a neurodivergent person who gets in the way of their own happiness. It's isolating, drives a barrier between your loved ones, makes you lose touch with reality. Sometimes you have good days, sometimes you have bad days. Everything eventually blends together in a sickening routine until you either drown or you start swimming furiously.

Then the cycle repeats.

It's too much.

You cannot do it alone.

You are not alone.

Let them in.

Let yourself be loved.

That is, in essence, the reason why I think so highly of this title. I related with the story and characters. Yes, it all comes down to the most obvious thesis statement in the universe. Yes, I probably didn't need to write so much about it but, regardless, I'm glad I did. I poured my feelings towards an Object D'Art onto figurative paper as I was processing them, doing away with any pseudo-intellectual vernacular in order to get to the soul of the matter. I expressed my emotions and I feel better for having done so. Now, I can move on. All that is left to do is to recommend the game.

...

Go play In Stars and Time, I recommend it. It's good.

...

That's about it.

...

You're still here.

...

......

..............

Go away, stupid!

---

A/N:

Thank you for reading this rather personal piece. The article was extrapolated from a thread I wrote down on the subject. You can read that here. I also typed about the official prologue to the game, Start Again, which you can view here.

As a reminder, I have a YouTube channel.

In Stars and Time was developed by Adrienne Bazir. Follow them on Twitter, Tumblr and Itch.io.

Tell the people in your life how much they mean to you, and have a good day.

[artbyblastweave]

What do you think about the whole Institute brotherhood as foils of each other thing ?

Because I feel like Bethesda did set up some interesting stuff with that? The Institute as a paragon of "progress" that destroy any chance of rebuilding society around them ,then the brotherhood as champions of regression who foister environments that allow "new" societies to form.

I think you could make that argument. One clear way in which the two are foils, right, is that both of them are legacy groups descended from pre-war American institutions- U.S Army for the Brotherhood, Ivy-League Academia for the Institute- but there's an underremarked-upon further similarity in that the founding stock of both factions aren't the best and brightest preserved as part of a considered plan, but instead a tiny pocket from each larger body who got reeaaaal fuckin' lucky and let it go to their heads. The Institute got started by a bunch of CIT faculty and students who hid in the basement when the bombs dropped- which’ll net you a higher-than-average engineering/r&d acumen than any other basement, and it would certainly select for the self-importance that crops up in those spaces, along with the MIT-specific funny student prank neurosis, but they are, fundamentally, still just A Bunch Of Guys In A Basement. The state of their complex 200 years later feels like an performative effort to justify to themselves that they really are the best and the brightest, but you find out from the maintenance guy that it’s a patina over old-world systems they have to keep repaired, and you can find elements of the old-world architecture and office complexes that they didn’t have the spare plastic to makeover. (The FEV lab is notably and pointedly in this style- and from this I think you can extrapolate that most of the institutes fun toys are probably pre-war research projects that they picked up and ran with vs something they were soooo uniquely intelligent to think of and produce post war. I do think SOME level of actual thought went into the Institute and how it happened and What It Is Thematically but not enough of that made it into the game in actual spoken words the player hears.)

In conclusion, the secret good fallout 4 that lives in my head would have been much more aggressive about drawing a through line to pre-war academia, and would have also made pre-war academia’s presence in Boston (college town of college towns) much more salient in the environmental storytelling and narrative- making it clear the extent to which the institute is essentially the still-walking zombie of the-pre-war governments research and development division, making their tussle with the Brotherhood closer to a civil war between fragments of the same beast. I have a lot of thoughts about how I’d rework the institute but this is getting long.

[archon-maenad]

a lotta people don't like my kill order take and I think that's very valid of them since all the points being made are realistic and salient to all the ways such a concept in the real world gets misused by people in power.

I am also going to continue to hyperfixate because growing up feeling at odds with the thematic elements of batman and the general superhero black-and-white morality means that kill orders were a breath of fresh air in the genre when I discovered worm. of course it's fucked up, half the reason I love it is because I get to study the details of exactly how the world got to where assassinations became legalized. but the other half is definitely the vindication of my ten year old self who wondered why nobody had killed the joker once it was proven that he couldn't be held in captivity, getting to see a superhero world where public safety weighed heavier than the standards of morality.

I know the idea only works in a vacuum where you don't acknowledge the ways such a concept would be taken advantage of. that's why I'm writing unhinged takes on earth bet's kill orders and not agreeing the death penalty should return in my state.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

You re-sharing your pinned post reminded me that Taylor and Aaron had done a bunch of writing at the very least for Midnights that got scrapped (or possibly pushed back?) and what we got on Midnights...was the subject of your post and Renegade. TTPD Anthology has the same really heavy stuff from her past littered everywhere as well. thanK you aIMee, Cassandra, The Manuscript, The Bolter, etc. all fit that theme that was just so heavily on the past that it could have been revisited works from a time when she didn't want to touch it yet because of what it said.

I think this is really interesting!

(I hope you don't mind me posting this publicly as I don't often do that and also never see my inbox unless I'm on a computer, but it really gave me food for thought.)

Obviously we have no way of actually knowing this, but I always felt like Would've Could've Should've was so important to the narrative of what became Midnights, and then when we found out that it was actually one of the *first* songs she wrote, months before Midnights was even a fleshed-out concept, it kind of reinforced to me that whatever she unleashed in that song kind of opened the floodgates for a whole other facet of her songwriting. (I've said many times that I think WCS is going to turn out to be one of the blueprints of her discography thematically, not unlike All Too Well. I think The Manuscript is going to be another one.)

Which is not to say she didn't write deeply moving, painfully honest songs before obviously, but I think the honesty to which she delved into that experience (and trauma) really paved the way to broach the themes on Midnights, and most certainly to the raw emotion we got on TTPD. I wouldn't be surprised if WCS maybe even informed the concept of the "sleepless nights" of Midnights, because a song like that could certainly make you think of other experiences that have marked you.

Obviously we have no way of knowing this, but there are kernels of WCS in sooooooo much of her work, and at least musically, it feels like opening up about that experience has helped her open up about others. It's glaringly obvious on TTPD too (Smallest Man, Clara Bow, The Manuscript, pretty much all of The Anthology in some way etc.) and it's even been fascinating seeing how she's used it on tour (e.g. mashed up with ivy) and how she's also reframed her existing songs in other ways. Much like how the rerecordings seemed to have also unlocked some new perspectives and feelings, I think the Midnights/3am/Vault music has unearthed a new level of understanding of herself and her music.

The Anthology really does feel like a sequel of sorts to the 3am tracks on Midnights to me in many ways. I think I said it in that post that the standard Midnights album might have been the things that kept her up at night, but the 3am tracks felt like the things that kept haunting her when she was awake and the fallout from those experiences. The Anthology feels like those themes finally coming home to roost. Sometimes in clarity, sometimes in anger, sometimes in grief, sometimes even in gratitude.

I don't know if these were concepts she'd been mulling before Midnights (I'm assuming they were actually written after, as she said), but I wouldn't be surprised if she had been mulling the themes/experiences during that time and when she kept writing after Midnights went into production, revisited them as they felt salient to her.

Thanks for this!

[understandingbimbos]

further 4chan notes

Regarding transformation preferences:

Well the issue is how much it changes the character. People have been calling certain type of women bimbos since well before a lot of modern surgical stuff was around or in style. Maybe you ideal bimbo has a late 80's to mid 90s look? Personally I don't mind some IQ loss, but if your character isn't starting out super smart just some personality changes can work too. An extremely perky nympho qualifies as a bimbo to me.

This is a very subjective fetish overall

/aco/, 2021. Tips on writing a good bimbo:

Depends on what specific bimbo type you're going for, but the most common mistake is to write them as a literal retard or a child in an adult's body. Sure, a bimbo might be dense or childish, but it's their all-consuming interest in looking good, getting the cutest accessories, the hottest make-up and using all that to look their best to go have fun with friends or lovers — that is the basis of the character.

The "stupidity" is often simply the fact that important or "intelligent" thoughts or knowledge is being superseded in their mind by the thoughts and knowledge on the aforementioned topics and desire to have fun. It's those hedonistic interests that also make them disinterested in mental cultivation (hence denseness) and careers, and make them dependent on sugar daddies (hence childishness).

But the base core values of a bimbo are:

Looking good according to their bimboish cute and voluptuous sense of style, which might not even stop a bimbo from being a gym bunny or a goth, just depends on what they find cute or good-looking

Having fun: usually by partying, shopping, socializing (including sex), but even stuff like science can be placed here if the bimbo is naturally smart and thinks it's fun)

Being outgoing: they want their good looks to be enjoyed by others and are stereotypically outgoing, preferring to have fun with others

Being naive: is actually a side-effect of the previous three, but is so set, that I decided to add it; the fact that they are pretty, happy and outgoing, makes other people treat them nice, which makes her just assume that everyone has good intentions. That doesn't stop some bimbos from having an almost supernatural women's intuition.

Finally: alignment. Bimbos gravitate toward chaotic good, but are easily shaped by their environment: a bimbo that hangs out with mean girls, might easily assume that bullying is just good fun and doesn't hurt anyone; a bimbo that is spoiled by her sugar daddy can easily become a brat.

/aco/, 2021.

On identity death and bimbofying established characters:

The most salient traits of the personality are "bimbofied" as well as the body, and made to accommodate the new owner. When these traits are pleasant or neutral, they become slutty, and when they are unkind, they either become slutty as well or remain expressed but unable to prevent the body from acting sluttily, thus making the sluttiness even hotter by trying fruitlessly to react against it.

Identity death is for people who are too lazy to work the little details of the old life into the bimbo's new life.

Figure out what kind of sex the character would enjoy most, and make that her goal.

Figure out what the character would do to themselves to get to that goal.

Preserve/Add a few details of the character that don't get in the way of that goal.

/aco/, 2021.

"What are your favorite tropes to see in bimbo art?"

Maybe this is cheating, but I like to see hints of bimbofication. Suppressed twinges of regret or disappointment or something that this is how her life turned out. That or a gaping abyss in the soul threatening to pull other girls in. In any case - keep it visually restrained, and keep the thematic eyes on the prize. This is a fetish for bimbos, not for tits and ass large enough to eat a city. Lip enhancement is nice, but it shouldn't leave the girl looking like fucking Birdo. Don't confuse the signified and the signifier; it's all so much garish clown makeup, sure, but it still can't do that much to hide that it's the same girl underneath it deep down, even as her soul is being eroded by her facilitated interactions with the world around her. The most extreme physical transformation that makes sense here is things like breast implants, and even there, less is more - the size change doesn't need to be that extreme to convey that it happened.

/aco/, 2023.

"What element of this fetish is more important to you?"

For me it's wholly the physicality of the bimbo as an objectified, 'fake' hyperbole of the natural woman. The idea that a woman would willingly undergo such a transformation, such that no aspect of her, at no time, can ever be conceived as 'non-sexual' again is super hot to me. Her very existence is sexual at all times, she cannot hide it due to how absurd and eye-grabbing her proportions and aesthetic are - she has deliberately undergone a transformation to fully become a sexual object for mens enjoyment.

The whole "IQ loss" or "dumb girly submissive" aspect is mostly immaterial for me. For WOMEN I've met who share this fetish, though, this seems to be the main compelling component. Which is fine, so long as she gets the fake tits and slutty outfits to go along with it.

/aco/, 2023.

On the difference between bimbos and gyarus:

Visual trappings are different, and gyarus are more bitchy/aggressive than dumb and slutty.

This, gyarus can even pass as tomboys or delinquents but bimbos are like barbies, human sex dolls.

Gyarus are culturally bound to prostitution as well, as long as we're splitting categorical hairs. It's not just fashion/sex

/v/, 2023.

"Who the fuck gets a hard-on at the thought of fucking an imbecile?"

I do, kinda. I mean, not as in "Me so horny we want fuck" kind of retarded way but in the "Like, oh mah gawd, Kim Kardashians ass is, like, totally hawt? I'm gonna ask my doctor to, like, give me one just like it, fer sure" kind of way. You know, the totally vapid and superficial kind.

Hobbies and speech patterns are not indicative of a person's intelligence. I know people with a Ph.D. and Master's with similarly stupid hobbies. I also know quite smart and capable people who own their own businesses who talk in very similar way, it's more about where a person grew up, quality of their education and who their friends are than about intelligence.

Sure, but I think a bimbos interests would be kinda limited to shallow, superficial stuff. You know, stupid pop music, Reality TV, fashion, Make-Up and, of course, sex… and they might actually have fairly extensive knowledge about these things but not much beyond that. Basically, a bimbo is someone who might very well be able to give you a perfect recap of every episode of Big Brother but would have trouble solving a simple math equation.

/co/, 2016.

"What tickles your pumpkin?"

It seems to be a bit unusual but I like Bimbos being dominant and sexually aggressive. There's just something very appealing to me about the idea of being dominated or forced to serve a girl who's much dumber than me. Mind you, that doesn't mean that I want her to be a bossy bitch, she should still be nice but also kinda spoiled and selfish. Basically, she's still addicted to cock but more for her own pleasure than for that of her partner.

I'm also into the idea of bimbos humiliating normal, smart women.

/aco/, 2016.

On PegasusArt (degradation, maledom, misogyny, and self-inserts):

The moment you put your obvious cringey self-insert and try to link the fiction back to yourself (Instead of just dabbling in fictional characters), you take a step back from the fantasy aspect and make the latter power fantasies weird and gross seeming. That applies to any intended effect in fiction.

Bad bimbofication content is more about how great it is that the guys are getting laid, rather than the hot slutty extremely-fake women. I think sucking off guys is great, but I think most fans of bimbos would consider this a 'gay' interest. I'm much more interested in the blonde slut with the giant silicone filled tits.

imo the bad bimbofication is the shit where its obvious that the pic is more about the girl being degraded and made nonthreatening as opposed to being pumped full of silicon and covered in makeup

It's really just storytelling 101. His content is bad because it isn't actually about the bimbos, it's about his idiotic self-insertion, the bimbos are essentially completely irrelevant and only serve as props so his manlet can get his rocks off by being a colossal piece of shit. Good bimbo content is always going to put the bimbo first and forefront, so he fails right at the starting line.

I like when the girl is degraded and made nonthreatening. I especially like those works where the girl doesn't even know she's being mocked. That being said I still think Pegasus is trash. He's such a turbo autist with no self awareness. It's seriously cringeworthy to see Mind Control Manlet insult the defeated women. I think the key is that women NEVER look like they're enjoying it. It's just an angry faggot raping a sad woman. I like my bimbofication darkly comedic.

/aco/, 2013.

On dollification, drones, and degree of stupidity:

Bimbofication generally allows enough thought for the bimbo to be able to talk, though generally not enough for any real self-awareness. A complete loss of thought is more a facet of dollification (though I tend to prefer my dollification with the person being completely immobilized but completely aware).

Either way, where's the fun in playing with a broken toy? The best of both bimbofication and dollification allow the fantasy of the person being aware of what's happened and being helpless to turn things back. In the case of bimbofication, nothing gets me off quite like the moment the bimbo finds they can't do something they used to be able to, or those distant notions of "something isn't right… shouldn't I be able to read?" barely manage to form before being shattered by something that occupies their tiny minds more clearly, like a dick.

Things bimbos are known for: Not being smart, but certainly being capable of some degree of independent thought. Like, y'know, they're, like, dumb? But, like, they can still, like, at least think thoughts and junk.

/d/, 2013.

On degradation, maledom, and conflicting definitions:

I personally don't like the derogatory interpretation of bimbos, where they have to be braindrained and become so lobotomized that they become sex slaves essentially out of force and cohesion, because they're too stupid to not be taken advantage of. To me that signals a humiliation/degradation fetish where the kink is trying to destroy her personality/soul and make her into a sex object, and nothing kills my boner faster than that.

There are a lot of sluttification fetishes, like corruption, hypnosis and ganguro. But I don't feel any of them gave to do with 'bimbos' persay. A slut might routinely be a gold digger, or some kind of business pro cocksucker executing sex with precision, intent and purpose (To get a promotion, reward a free expensive dinner, earn a rich boyfriend, ect) but not care much about sexuality in itself.

My ideal bimbo is always sex positive, but still keeps her availability even when she's not actually commited for sex otherwise. Sometimes she might act like a cute ditzy flirt, other times she may go all in with sex and make your wildest dreams come true. And yet others, she might just feel like going shopping, seeing a movie and hanging out in the mall like a pink-loving blond girly go. She might load herself on sexual potential (big pouty pink lips, skimpy clothes), but whether or not she acts on it is her prerogative. It's not something she feels ashamed or reserved about, just something she does or she doesn't.

The most important aspect of bimbos for me is is they ENJOY sex and being sexy. Not for money, gratitude, or any form of degradation. If it's just a character forcibly becoming a sex slave that has nothing to do with bimbodom, what's the point? Also being ditzy and openly signaling sex isn't always mutually exclusive with empowerment.

Now for me some degrading lobotimized exploited sex slave scenario is fine as long as the bimbo herself is happy dappy. I figure the main point of any sex is satisfaction, no matter how you arrive at it.

Now, I find the stereotypical sluttification stories are a bit more negative in tone. I don't like those very much either. Like with corruption it's dependent upon a self-awareness of the degradation, bimbofication however is all about the shameless lack of self-awareness and living happily in the moment. No harm, no foul.

It burns me that there's so much confusion between the two given the different extremes of feelings they can inspire.

If anything it's the submissive/derogatory bimbo fantasies that are the fake bimbos.

Go back and watch some of the 80s comedies that fueled the stereotype. There are A LOT of bimbo characters that would actually be considered dominant or intimidating.

They're full of things like the uptight college lecturer trying to teach, but the scantily clad blonde in the front seat chewing bubble gum and twirling her hair around her finger keeps distracting him and giggling at his discomfort.

Yet here you get insecure idiots with no understanding of history and who can't cope with the idea of a woman enjoying sex thinking they can dictate the one true bimbo.

Characters like Orihime or Usagi. They may not be sex obsessed or fashion flirty cocksucking tramps but the archetype and personality is the same.

I'd say as much so for Marilyn Monroe. It's more a wide range of traits about a girl being either fun flirty and ditzy, or huge and busty + upbeat. There's no exact definition or ideal bimbo, I love the mental aspects as much as the physical ones.

For example you can have a shy "nerdy" girl, who when she tries to socialize actually comes off as spacy, innocent and kind of cute in that bimboish way. Her personality at heart is similar to a bimbo and makes her one, despite her look. That one chick from the anime HxH, Shizuku comes to mind.

On the other hand you could also have a huge well endowed, thick and extremely busty woman with lots of makeup and sexual appeal, but she's smart and mature with a kinda fun personality. The body is what makes her bimbodom.

If having a high libido is all that it takes to be a bimbo, then the term is meaningless. As was discussed at length, all dictionaries and wikipedia associate bimbos with low intellect - it's the one common trait amongst bimbos. Remove that trait and you no longer have a definition for bimbo since we have already ruled out that physical qualities aren't set in stone for a bimbo… so there's nothing else to define them by other than intelligence.

/aco/, 2015.

On lip expansion:

I'm of the opinion that lips, especially the bigger and plumper they are, are the secret ingredient to make any girl look more like a bimbo with minimal effort. They just ooze femininity, I agree.

The nice thing about lips is that a single change can make big lips go from just being big to totally bimbo, and that's changing it from being shaped to having none, removing the natural bow and making them fat and shapeless. Good lord it's hot.

It takes very little to push their size over what's typical into bimbofied. When they get to be that fat, the lips always seem to droop into that natural O-shape for fellatio somewhat, and it looks like she's always puckered and ready to slurp on some yummy cock.

And, a pair of overplumped kissers can make nearly any expression look a hundred times more air-headed and clueless. It manages to be both totally cute and smoking sexy. I'm glad you know your LDM's too, he does the best mouths.

/d/, 2017.

[invested-in-your-future]

Is the pacing of RWBY storylines bad overall?

Six Years ago I wrote this little piece about the problems with narrative structure in RWBY Volume 4

Ironically, I think most of that still applies not just V4 but V5 V6 V7, and, really, every single volume since V4.

The show wastes time on unnecessary elements and then rushes or offscreens crucial elements of narrative and plot an audience would WANT to see.

The narrative of MilesWBY has exactly two modes - NOTHING is happening or EVERYTHING is happening.

Well, using "OR" here might be incorrect because...

Sometimes both of those writing modes are happening at once and while EVERYTHING is happening offscreen, NOTHING is happening.

The show essentially has, unintentionally, perfected saying a lot while saying NOTHING.

I think ANN review/retrospective of RWBY overall hits the point on the head well:

"This, in essence, is the biggest paradox of RWBY's writing. It tries so hard to cram in as much plot as it possibly can, but ends up saying far less than it did when a tidal wave of creative ideas was the main focus. Characters that could have had interesting and engaging storylines are either truncated to the point of not making any sense or are relegated to plot manipulators with one-dimensional characterization who get a single moment of interest directly before they become irrelevant for the rest of the story. It speaks to a lack of inventiveness in these new plotlines being written, creating the image that they care more about hitting the most salient story points and then moving on to the next batch of plot rather than finding intriguing and creative ways to flesh out the characters and aesthetic that drive said plot forward."

The only part I'd disagree with is V4 being different - I think V4 is exactly the same way its just that Miles and Co genuinely had no idea what to TRY to say or what the plot will be.

Like this perfectly describes the issue with MilesWBY writing overall. I think the key moment is when RWBY staff said after V4 that they offscreened Yang's journey with the arm because "it would be boring". That epitomises the crucial misunderstanding the showrunners have with the story. The story is not interested in those characters or their emotions or their development or reactions to the world around them. The story is not interested in making a point or making characters OR the world change or develop. The points of interest within the narrative are reversed from how you'd write the narrative. Focus is given to the parts you'd generally don't really focus on and the crucial character interactions, development, self-reflection, growth AND conflict are offscreen.

As it stands, that makes MilesWBY into a show which hasn't really said ANYTHING of note since the Fall of Beacon happened. The cast jumped through multiple continents and Kingdoms and yet none of the crucial characterization plotlines or thematic elements had ANY development.

The fact that Ever After trainwreck haphazardly attempts to use character flaws from volume one and two to do SOMETHING with characters speaks MILES (ha) about how much the writing staff doesn't care about having actual proper character progression. As well as how much thy are willing to completely ignore Volume 3.

You could literally cut out everything between V3 and any "Newest Volume" and just have characters randomly be dropped into it through magic and nothing would change. Even the "dead" characters don't mean anything - after all there's zero difference in MilesWBY on whether a character has genuinely died or if they merely were forgotten offscreen.

This might sound kind of mean but MilesWBY volumes are an equivalent of AI generated text paragraphs.

[crystalelemental]

Okay guys, we're on the honor system not to reblog this one, it's a vent post about fandom stuff, sort of Pokemon specific due to the catalyst but also it's broad, just move along unless you want to hear me complain for forever.

I feel like Geeta Pokemon is like...the perfect encapsulation of why I don't engage with fandom spaces pretty much ever.

On the mild end, it's just how much is shipping stuff that I don't like. I know I will sometimes click with a pairing, but generally I'm just not that interested in shipping stuff. This is entirely personal and not really a problem, but it's such a huge chunk of general discussion that it's hard to feel like there's a clean entry point when that tends to be where people start. And yes, I'm sorry, this does mean I don't care for Geeta/Larry or Geeta/Rika, I don't really ship Geeta with anyone, it's just not a thing I gravitate toward.

But on the worse end it's just...okay I'm finding out how to turn off reblogs, honor system over.

Geeta discourse is just insane. We're still on about how her fight is bad, or she's a bad boss for (insert innocuous thing about having a job here), or some other character or design flaw that's just asinine or trivial. And the most recent catalyst was someone complaining that there was obvious foreshadowing for Evil Geeta, but the DLC didn't capitalize, which is just...you are in another world. Like you want to vilify her so bad, and for what?

And like, I realized I have never really seen any proper dissection of Geeta as a character, really. It always seems to be these sort of weird accusationally toned posts, then the defensively toned posts about "nuh uh" and little else, or like...fanart that seem disproportionally suggestive of her specifically for some mysterious reason. And not really any actual analysis of her character. Like the most I've seen recently is one post just making the fandom standard assertion of "X character is autistic/(insert sexuality or gender presentation here)," but also stating "don't ask me how it's just vibes."

And maybe this is also a me problem. It's an innocent enough headcanon, people can generate that interpretation for the representation they want however they please, but like. Has anyone ever really noticed there's never an explanation to these? Like I'm not asking for much, but what in their presentation rung true to you that you made this interpretation? Was there anything, or are you conjuring it from thin air? I personally don't care for the readings people do with Red, but there's at least stuff they will point to and go "that," but it feels like there's never anything substantive to these posts. It's just words. You don't even need to engage with the actual character at all, you just say whatever you want and either it doesn't need an explanation because it's just a headcanon or what's used as evidence is just...wrong. That's why we have takes like Geeta being a bad boss or a weak champion, because people took a general gut feeling, examined nothing, and made an assertion based on made up nonsense. And it makes the experience of just looking in a fandom's direction frustrating, because it's not that there's nothing, it's that there's negative value; you took away the parts that were good to just...fuck, I don't even know half the time. To try really hard to vilify a woman of color? Because her vibes were off or something? And this is just Pokemon! This is narrative Easy Mode because there's barely shit there! I cannot imagine what it would be like if I took to the fandom fields of something denser and more thematically salient in earnest. I see occasional Dungeon Meshi posts float by that make me think I am so blessed for not talking to fucking anyone outside of my followers about this one.

I know none of this is new. I know others make these complaints too. I even know that at least some of this feeling is a bit of arrogance as far as "my interpretation is the correct one." But also I've been feeling sick for days and am coated in sweat despite feeling freezing cold and am very cranky over it so I need to bitch about something else for a minute. Vent over.

[multitrackdrifting]

I'm not wholly against sad backstories for villains but I like how it is handled in Signalis - the sad backstories you read about don't really justify most of the things that happen but that also doesn't matter*, there's things that are extremely human flaws that resonate with a lot of different people in different ways and like, just the unapologetic cruelty of the world and technology of the times all of them live in makes discussions about morality far less intersting than just like, sinking your teeth into more salient discussions about theories, or enjoying nods to literature & other media.

going X character is less fucked up than Y is like doing a tierlist of who is adjusting best to being in superhell. That said, I genuinely enjoyed all the characters you meet in that game, yes even Adler, I like how he is written.

Honestly for me I was really enjoying how the visual layout of the game was literally MGS [Camera POV, menus], the thematic & mechanical elements & sound design were inspired by RE/SH1 and that is all tied down by a really unique scifi world that is unapologetic about its political overtones. It was genuinely such a great game to play & stream.