#because the fucker JUMPS

[omarfor-orchestra]

I didn't succeed in making the fox but my knees sure felt it

[batsplat]

In fact Open is a mandatory book for vr46 boys :)

ohhhhhh thank you!! that is SUCH impressive archiving, I'm always in awe of how much material you've amassed. and very based of them, big W for italian motorcycle racing. it's a great book!! I love that they've read it! there's a lot of sports autobiographies that take care never to stray from the generic when telling their stories... but this one has so much character that even knowing other professional athletes have read it makes me want to quiz them about what they thought

seeing as I've been given an opportunity to proselytise about this book, here is how it opens:

it's a book about having a deeply complicated relationship with the thing you've been forced to dedicate your whole life to, about being in constant pain and asking yourself if it's really worth it, about never having been given the time and space to develop properly into your own person... about hating tennis and never quite being able to walk away from it. the misery of winning and the refusal to countenance losing. the burden of having the whole world narrativise your career and your life, denying you the chance to do so for yourself, of being constantly judged and being constantly found inadequate. about rivalries!! having your whole career ending up being inadvertently defined by One Guy who you just don't really understand and who you can never escape

what agassi does is put words to a lot of the underlying narratives and themes of sports that other athletes also come into contact with in one way or another but are far less capable of articulating. you'll be hard-pressed to find another book that captures the humanity of sports so well, its twisted appeal and why it's so compelling

like,, idk there's so much going on in that book that when I find out another athlete has read it, I do want to basically go through it with them chapter by chapter (obviously I have a full set of notes and a highlighting system with one colour dedicated just to the sampras rivalry, so I'm well prepared for this task). it's cool that they've read it! good healthy interest in sports narrativisation on their part. in this post I brought up one of my favourite excerpts from the book when discussing the vale/casey rivalry -

- and idk, this kind of thing is just so fun and interesting you kinda want to go around and get everyone's thoughts on it. also obviously on a personal level,, enjoy the motogp guys, adore agassi and that whole era of tennis, so it's a fun crossover for me specifically. yay

btw, a new interview with agassi was published in the nyt a few days ago that I'd defo recommend to anyone with even just a passing interest in the sport (once you scroll past the bits about the worst event in tennis). starts with the line “as far apart as you are on a tennis court, you can actually feel the other one very intimately". even when he's delving more into the nuts and bolts of the sport, he just kinda gets how to explain it in a way that taps into the fundamental narrative appeal of what you're watching

oh yeah that's the good stuff

[barksbog]

yeah yeah i get it mosquitoes and ticks are really annoying whatever at least you aren't covered in deer louse flies

[canthandlethishit]

reading fish fucker 2000- i meant uh pet fosh of tyrant sth novel and shitting myself laughing wtf this is pure crack

[rio-rakuen]

Since Ranma 1/2 does show martial arts, does Lia know any Brazilian martial arts?

Ps. If Lia fell in any cursed spring it would be the spring of drowned bear cause she a mama bear☺️

“um…no…?”

it’s…complicated.

lia’s relationship with martial arts is one of her bigger story arcs— ranma (and pretty much everyone else) clocks her as a martial artist, the bigger mystery is why she so adamantly denies it. she will not fight, evade at most, even at the cost of her own safety. why this is, i’m still figuring out how to show, so i’ll keep that under wraps for now.

but the short answer is yes.

ps - this is real cute, but it also got me thinking of an au where if lia did become a jusenkyo victim, she’d be an otter. maybe i’ve been watching too much kotsumet.

[downsteepy]

the trend continues of me refusing to rate anything below 3 stars and not mark it as liked

[californiaquail]

in other news there's a chance a flea may have landed on me and of course i just did laundry yesterday but guess i'll have to dig up something else to wash with my clothes from today because if i give reese fleas from work i'm simply going to have to burn the entire house down

[uselessgaywhovian]

... i'm worried about my cat sue

he keeps trying to run out the door every time i come in

and spends most of his time lately yelling out the windows

i tried getting him some new toys, including treat puzzle toys, but he's not interested

i also got them a shelf thing that suction cups onto the window so he could look out the window at new and exciting angles, but he also didn't care

he only wants to yell out the window

been thinking of trying to build them a catio, but i'll have to design it myself since my windows are up so high i don't think a normal kit will work...

[mememan93]

killing and biting and killing and biting

[whatudottu]

You know I’m starting to fixate on something where I actually care enough about it to ramble something something- so let’s give it up for NSR! *tiny applause of me doing whatever the hell i want to do on this blog*

An odd thing for me though is that I’m specifically doing a whole character ramble and practically ONLY a character ramble so no biology stuff here (only slight astronomy). Please welcome to the stage, my scrimblo bimblo: DJ Subatomic Supernova!

As I once again shove aside my not only in-progress work but the ‘actually read to post’ work too, I’m here to spew words about my favourite egotistical space orb and not only am I going to do that, but also compare them to someone else of a unique mind. Because of both of their particular quirks about identity, self-importance, and ultimately expression of art, I like to think DJSS may share some grounds with Eve, perhaps enough to decently get along with each other if not even form a friendship.

If you’re one of my typical followers interested enough in reading this to get to here - the second paragraph UNDER the readmore - I will give a summary of the DJ and the Diva. DJ Subatomic Supernova, a space themed NSRtist with an ego so dense it can cause a singularity (which may or may not be an actual literal thing that has or did happen) and underappreciated ex-professor of university grade astronomy, strives to preserve their name and music to extend not only beyond their own time but for the future beyond humanity’s own existence in order to stave away fading into obscurity and truly becoming everlasting. In this battle of existential dread and their entire ‘Avatar of Earth’ schtick, we have a character who’s ego comes with a twist of not being selfish even though it is significantly self-centered, their motivations though using the medium of themselves being to create a legacy for humanity that will spread to the furthest reaches of the galaxy and back.

Eve meanwhile - real name Nadia - views the world in ways that seems only she can, seeing herself as the only one to understand the way she thinks and feeling so incredibly lonely in that fact - a realm of existentialism in of itself - especially since the one person that had begun the attempt had ended up losing thanks to his hair being set on fire. Expressing herself not only through her psy-dub music, Eve is an artist of multiple mediums from sound to visual, of sculpture, fashion, and paintings, many themes of her work centering on her personal experiences and insecurities, of eyes staring at her peculiarities and of turning those eyes against the viewer.

And what do you get when you cross an egotistical existentialist with a suffering surrealist? Maybe you get a little common ground to stand on. Perhaps not enough to satiate Eve’s personal desire to find like-minded brothers and sisters, perhaps not enough to bring Nova back down to Earth to appreciate the present for what it is. But perhaps enough that at least among coworkers, there’s even remotely enough broken ice to hold a conversation, perhaps enough that if in friendship, Eve may look towards the stars and Nova may look at the self of another.

Of course, this is not simply a character analysis based solely on canonical information, as it is now that I will elaborate (at least from the perspective of DJSS) with some headcanons of my own.

I’ve always been particularly an NSR lurker, not really doing much of actual engagement with the fandom but certainly sitting by the wayside and looking in. A thing that I have seen for folk’s take on a younger Nova is that they weren’t always a supernova one Bunkbed Junction away from going singularity- instead, they were a star. It’s always been one of the larger blue stars, but here I’d like to just go out and make it an O-Class main sequence star and be essentially a miniaturised equivalent; and when I say equivalent, I mean EQUIVALENT!

If you were an object head of maybe a G-Class main sequence star (the star itself significantly smaller than what it would actually be), you’d have on your head a miniature sun that would be a little portable and ultimately dimmer version of our very own Sol (or specifically if you had a G2-Class star which is more accurately our own sun). But if you had the misfortune of having an O-Class (O2-Class in this case for reference) star, with 800000 times the luminosity of the sun you’ve got a very VERY significant issue about just existing if you don’t wear something for the protection of literally anyone and anyTHING with eyes or cameras.

The ‘not yet named Nova’ Nova had to grow up early on wearing a super shaded helmet for the entire time they were star - already a thing one might be self-conscious about - up to and including the very moment they went supernova, another thing I must touch on. Depending on the size and general energy output of a particular celestial object - such as; a star - the point in time in which it collapses in on itself and, in the sake of stars, supernovas changes. And this particular case, let’s change a rather heard of saying for the sake of elaboration; the bigger you are, the faster you fall-

Not only was most of Nova’s early life spent hiding their star for the sake of other’s, anyone from astronomers themselves to any old star object head would say it was simply an inevitability that their star would collapse in on itself and become someone completely different, not a matter of if but when... and most certainly ‘young’ while it’s at it. Insecurities from being beheld a wonder to being seen as weird to even having adults already mourning their existence as a star, Nova may in fact turn to the stars above and retreat from the stars below in order to even begin to attempt to cope with their inevitable demise, embracing the existentialism and relying on their inherent knowledge of the astral sea to pursue a career in education. To teach people not to fear the end, the whatever theorised death of the universe, the collapsing of stars. To say that they shouldn’t be feared and shouldn’t be mourned just because they will change - and they will - and that the supernova that has been the subject of so much misplaced misery is in fact a dispersal of resources that can build to something much greater than the some of its parts.

And they are left unheard in the vast emptiness of space, of the classroom, of the home.

The inevitable happens, sparked early (far too early even for an O-Class) by a numeral amount of factors that would cause their world to spin, the light to bend, and an insurmountable level of stress and pain and misery and insecurity influenced supernova.

Too many lights and sounds and senses, DJ Subatomic Supernova particularly hates the design of Akusuka and Metro Division. Cast Tech, the district they hold Charter to, is low lit for a reason. Natura does not induce the swirling of senses, but DJSS has no particular interest in the gardens, for all the worth they put into Earth as a whole. And Dream Fever, something about the eyes that stare and the oddities that twist and turn.

Perhaps it is not their first choice to take in the work of Eve - of Nadia; the artist behind it all - it is not a reflection of their own story, nor does it reflect where they stand now. But there is meaning, meaning they can take in, take pieces of and relate them back to the past. The past that no longer exists, not if they have anything to say about it, not that they had any say in the first place. The artist Nadia, the diva Eve, the balance of the insecure and the expression. Reveling in the dual tones a much younger Nadia tried to hide (concealer rubbing off to reveal a hot pinkish red), the criticism of the viewer, to make the audience feel what had been felt constantly not entirely that long ago. A desperate plea to find someone that will listen, someone that will understand, someone that will hold their memory and share their story ad nauseam.

Perhaps there is something to share solace in, knowing that back on Earth there was another like Nova themselves seeking to engage to the world beyond them.

Though for different reasons, perhaps the two find even a slight solidarity with each other, whether friends or simple coworkers.

[virgil-upinthestars]

my french host brother: if you eat lunch in the school cafeteria, you will know what hell sounds like

me, very new to living in a small town: really? wow

~three months later~

me, sitting in this small ass cafeteria eating the best school lunch I've ever had, relieved that people aren't staring at me, but at the very loud 12 y/o morrocan kid next to me:

me:

me:

me: this is the least overstimulated I've been in years *continues to eat cake*

[crossbackpoke-check]

what are ur thoughts on the winners room trope?

ooooo okay surface level analysis: i like winner’s room fics :)

etwas tieferes: i think it’s cool that it’s (afaik) unique to hockey fandom and i enjoy the way it integrates a lot of unspoken rules in hockey with desire/makes them a physical/tangible reality… also the narrative potentials/world-building it opens up can be fun because there’s not really a set of rules for the “winner’s room” trope. are there in-universe rules? who gets chosen? who’s exempt? who gets to pick? where’s it going down? is it the entire room or one guy? what if your (ex)boyfriend is on another team? does somebody need to be taught a lesson or do you need to remind someone who got traded you still love them? also, most important, winner’s room gives you the chance to put two random-ass guys you saw interact for 0.002 seconds and went “hmmm. interesting” about into a Situation and i love that

[ofcowardiceandkings]

at first i was like eh maybe not over Link calling Zelda by her name before the Calamity, perhaps too restrictive an environment for a fundamental shift like that, especially as repressed as they are lol

but know i could ?? see it ?? theyve clearly had some very personal conversations, which doesnt mean he HAS dropped formality 100%, but the level of familiarity is really high even before the world ends at them lol

[phantomrose96]

Extremely generic, typical isekai anime where the main character is a high school boy who's so good at video games in his day-to-day life, but people don't respect gamers :( so he's a loser :( ...until he ends up isekai'd into a fantasy world that RUNS on video game logic.

Except this main character is a speed runner.

World record holding speed runner.

Elf-woman in the introductory episode shares the long, sad history of her realm at odds with the Demon Lord and his reign. She looks up just as she's about to describe the moment the Demon Lord killed her husband, and main character is... gone.

Several many fields away.

Naked as the day god made him because equipping the intro clothes takes 3 seconds between menu opening and character re-rendering.

The Wall of the Unfathomable, which has sealed these villagers within their own walls for generations unknown, sees its first breach in a millennium as Main Character scales it ass-backwards clipping and ragdolling up its scaffolding by abusing the collision detection logic and its impact on speed reversal.

NPCs launch into speeches which bewilder and confuse even them because they should NOT be saying anything about the deep sacred mana that can defeat the Dark Demon Lord but the fucker standing in front of him in tighty-whiteys with a level 99 helmet and the Hero Sceptor (which he should NOT have yet but) is compelling the NPC for reasons they cannot begin to comprehend.

The Demon Lord is alerted by holographic message from his most trusted underling that some disturbance has just rippled through from Elf Realm and that some portal may have just opened from the human world, which warrants some caution as the prophesied hero is said to--cut off by the MC catapulting past all 18 floors of Demon Tower security using the infinite speed jump glitch and one-shotting the Demon Lord with a single rag-doll spastic thrust through his heart which launches the Demon Lord along with MC into a 500mph spiral into the stratosphere... And somewhere, the end credits play.

[vampiromano]

I just don't think having a partner exempts you from the simple rule of any concert worth going to of: go to the front if you wanna die in a crowd of violent people. stay in the middle if you wanna stand still and have a decent view. go to the back if you wanna vibe to the music and don't care about seeing the stage first hand.

like I don't think it does. I don't think just because you're with someone else you get to stand still where you're supposed to jump and/or record. and also be a fucking wall to anybody wanting to get through in this essay i will---

[shivasdarknight]

i feel like we also got to address character C and character D and how person C and person D (...and E and F) interact with them because there's still a level of harm that media can inflict, and that depends on the intentions of the author and the type of fan who engages with them.

character C is a character is an offensive caricature part of an otherwise standard show. they are played off as normal through the show, but everything about them is harmful in terms of how the audience engages with them and how they continue to portray (blank) group in offensive lights. the author may not realize that character C is offensive, but to the audience - especially the group that they reflect - it's glaringly obvious. person C recognizes the harm that this character can cause but they also find themselves liking this character in spite of it. person C's engagement with character C is still positive, but due to understanding the problems with character C's portrayal, most of their engagement with the character comes in as mitigation (rewrites, redesigns, etc.), while also acknowledging vocally what is wrong and never condoning it.

person D also likes this character, however they do not recognize what is wrong and continue to play into how the piece of media portrays character C all the way down into intentionally/unintentionally adding in more offensive material because "it fits." person D can go one of a few ways: denying that the text is offensive and continuing to act blindly; acknowledging that it's bad and learning from it to follow person C; or doubling down on their beliefs and even sometimes finding tokens of the targeted group that agree with them to use them to justify their uncritical love of character C. a person D who takes the last route often doubles down on their interpretation and finds themselves at odds with a person C for their denial of harm. they also use the argument that because it's fiction, that they should be allowed to enjoy it when a person C is still enjoying it while acknowledging the arm it can cause and trying to work around it.

you can also extrapolate this into a person E, who likes character C because of the harm they cause. they see character C as emblematic of (blank) group and are often attracted into fandom spaces by a person D who creates enough of a fuss from being asked to be careful, critical, and respectful when engaging with the sensitive topic of character C's design and existence. a person E often first appears as a defender of a person D who comes into conflict with a person C to portray person C as someone who is trying to take away their right to like fiction, while reinforcing the uncritical love of character C, who perpetuates the harmful portrayal of (blank) group. This causes person D to double down, and slowly be dragged into spaces that person E occupies, where they curate harmful ideas through this media (see: how antiblackness manifests in many fandom spaces and how white supremacists and nazi-types take uncritical (mostly white) fans and turn them against black fans in these kinds of conversations).

character D, on the other hand, was intentionally made to be offensive or represent an offensive idea (see: Rita Skeeter being an early reflection of Rowling's transphobia; the entire dichotomy of AoT, Eren's ideology towards the end, and how titans are designed + later revelations about them) and it's difficult to remove them from the views of the author (Hajime Isayama is a staunch Japanese imperialist, and has gone on record to mock and discredit the existence of comfort women during Japan's occupation of Korea; his characters are named and modeled after notable Japanese imperialists). no matter which way you look at them, they are offensive and harmful, and often times they exist to expose uncritical audiences to their rhetorics (often eugenics, transphobia and general queerphobia, the great replacement theory, antisemitism, antiblackness, and pro-surveillance state sentiments (the last two especially in copaganda media). things like misogyny definitely come up a lot, but they're often red flags for much deeper issues that the author fully endorses; if misogyny is the focus here, it's a lot deeper than just shallow sexism and goes into femicide, the glorification and sexualization of sexual assault, and the reinforcement of "traditional" values. antiblackness functions similarly in that it permeates everything shallowly, but the levels of it can be a red flag for deeper issues - like dehumanization, justification for violent hate crimes, etc. - but im also not qualified to get into this too deeply because thats not my lived experience). they can look kind of like character C, but the important difference is that the author did this intentionally. a place of ignorance can be extremely offensive, but the intentionality of it tries to sneak by audiences and trick them into agreeing with them.

person C may like the character in theory, but it's impossible to deny the reason why the character exists as such. like with character C, person C may try to mitigate the damage, but this more comes in the form of talking about how character D is handled in the source material. there isn't a lot that can be done by these fans because again: the character is meant to harm. they may play into a bit of uncritical fandom, but for the most part just talk about them. person D does not recognize the harm that is does and acts similarly with character D as they do with character C. the problem is, character D is meant to cause harm where character C likely wasn't. so when a person C tells a person D that character D is extremely harmful and you follow those three ways a person D could go, you now have someone who is parroting talking points that may even be antithetical to their own views. they're usually the targets of authors who write character Ds so that their rhetorics get broadcasted to audiences that wouldn't knowingly engage with them.

to bring back person E, this is exactly the kind of person and character they're looking for. people who really like character D are usually like person E - or, they use character D as a way to publicly air out their -isms with the plausible deniability of fiction. entirely depends on the angle of character D. if they're an eren, then person E is one of their biggest fans; if they're a rita skeeter, then person E is using character D to air out their grievances about (blank) group through them and they loathe character D.

we can also introduce person F here. they more align with person C, but the crucial difference is that they will not engage with character D on the grounds of the harm. they can acknowledge the writing all they like, but they will never like, engage with fanworks, or anything unless it's criticism of the character and the author. if anything, they think person C doesn't go far enough in condemning the harmful nature of character D by the fact they still engage with fanworks involving character D and the media they come from as person F views positive engagement (even when it's just a tiny bit, like in person C's case) as tacit endorsement. they are explicitly against people like person E, and often try to work to educate people like person D into moving away from that and more towards person C (ideally further), but often are at odds with person D for the reason that they will double down on fiction and fall in line with person E who reinforces their "right" to consume all fiction. Because the important thing to remember here is that character D was made intentionally to broadcast the author's shitty viewpoints. This means the character is meant to cause harm, as media perceptions do skew worldviews, and it's more complicated than just how people engage with a character in fandom spaces. To reconcile with a character meant to cause harm is a difficult thing, and naturally there are people who choose to divest entirely because of the tangible harm it can cause (again: see copaganda and the perceived rate of solving crime (i think it's around ~75-80%) versus the actual statistics (~30% if you're lucky and more often ~16%); see also the military entertainment industry)

And yeah! It's all extremely complicated because people, their beliefs, media, and media literacy are all really complicated! It's way more than just if a bad character is portrayed as bad and everyone reacts to them as bad - sometimes that bad character is the protagonist and the author wants us to view them as a hero and not a genocidal freak like Eren Yaeger is. Because no, that is not how you portray a "fall from grace", given how many people associate him with sigma male goals and im not joking nor using that term out of nowhere - i recommend this video on the subject, but here's the specific part about eren and the idolization of him and a very fun roast since this is about role models for boys, unhealthy power fantasies, and how anime ties in with all of this. FD's got two other videos on this ("two" and "other" are two different links) on his side channel. Eren's just one of the worst case examples of this since his base full of uncritical enjoyers who don't realize that they're in community with literal fascists who idolize Eren's goals. there are other extreme examples that at least thankfully arent as common as the usual stuff (like Wyll's treatment by Baldur's Gate 3 fans and specifically Astarion fans - links to their wiki pages for people unfamiliar with the characters but tl;dr: wyll's a black man, a sweetheart, and literally has the folk hero background; astarion is a white man who tries to kill you upon first meeting, dislikes it when the player helps people, and is frequently manipulating those around him. it's more complicated than that obviously - especially astarion's motivations - but it still stands that people take wyll's traits and act as if astarion is like that, villainize wyll, and the cherry on top is that wyll has 8 hours of content while astarion has the most content out of all of the companions and the devs won't add more for wyll while astarion (and the others) continues to get more. as an aside, lae'zel - a mean woman who isn't conventionally attractive by virtue of being a fantasy alien - was made to be Less Mean because people didnt like her...not being nice, and fans frequently boast about killing her).

Intentionality is really crucial here, and the way people behave with characters says a lot. You're allowed to engage with not-so-great characters, but you also have to keep in mind other factors such as your own biases and the author's biases - whether they got in intentionally or not. to summarize really quickly:

character C comes about from an author's own ignorance to their own biases about a marginalized group. they are harmful, especially in the fact that the text treats this as normal, but their treatment is like any other character (but depending on the marginalization, they may not receive as much screentime as their less-marginalized counterparts, or are more likely to be antagonistic). authors may or may not be receptive to criticism - those that are will adjust character C in future media or even retcon and republish old media, while those that arent may just ignore criticism or double down and attract people who agree with those harmful tropes

character D is intentionally placed in the text by a bigoted author, and their offensive nature may be either overt or covert. the intention of this is to spread their rhetoric to those that consume that piece of media and introduce it to as wide of an audience as possible - one of the most common forms of this being copaganda portraying the police in a positive light and marginalized people as threats to white society (see: how frequently white women are the victims, while black men or arab men are portrayed as extremely violent and often are the perpetrators). it's not like character A who's mostly just an asshole, or character B where they're bigoted but that can serve a purpose in the narrative: character D exists to do harm - be it as an offensive caricature, or as a bigot to be idolized - through their actions in the text and how that reflects real world issues, or how the text informs people on how to view real people that are like character D (eg: idolizing the police or military, or viewing all black men as thugs). the existence of character D is problematic, but what often exacerbates this issue is when people argue that because they are fictional, they can't do any real world harm. if that were true, then we wouldn't be pushing back against examples of minstrelsy in media or continued use of blackface in fiction. positive representation in media is important and also proves that media has an impact on real people - you can't just say that it doesn't affect the real world suddenly when the portrayal is negative. negative, harmful portrayals do impact people just as much as positive ones - if anything, they impact people more when they're negative. to engage with a character D is to engage with the stand-in of the author's views, and to stand by their reason for existence is to agree with the author who intentionally made them that way (again: people who think Eren's right).

person C is someone who acknowledges that characters can be problematic and tries to engage with them as best they can. they try to give the benefit of the doubt in cases like character Cs, and often try to reconcile with canon in whatever way they can to mitigate damage. while character D is harder to reconcile with, they will still talk about the problems of character D while still engaging with the media that character D is from. they acknowledge harm, talk about harm, and will critique their favorite media while still enjoying said media - even if the character they engage with is intentionally or unintentionally a harmful stereotype.

person D is someone who refuses to engage with media critically and take characters like character C and character D at face value and will often defend them and their right to like them. they do not view them as harmful, and will often expand upon the character without thinking about what other harmful tropes they may be adding. a person D can go a few routes: continuing in ignorance or choosing to remain ignorant, doubling down on their views and arguing that it's not actually an issue (and even going so far as to find tokens of that group who agree with them to back them up), or stopping and considering their actions and taking more after person C. the second route can often lead to them becoming more like person E, even without realizing it.

person E is someone who recognizes the harm in these characters and embraces that because these characters line up with their way of thinking and their world views. they prefer a character D to a character C, while often portraying character Cs as worse than in canon. a person D doubling down on their right to like character Ds will often attract person Es, and they will attempt to pull person Ds further to their side. these are thin blue line people who love cop shows; these are antisemites who love Attack on Titan and Hogwarts Legacy; these are transphobes and literal nazis that get giddy at seeing Rowling becoming more extreme in her bigotry with every passing day. if you are in community with a person E, you need to examine why that is.

person F is someone who recognizes the harm that character Cs and character Ds cause in the real world, and while they will openly criticize character Cs and their authors, their main targets are character Ds. a person F will talk about character Cs to try and educate people on harmful tropes and often fall in line with person C here, though they tend to more focus on the author and the harm this can cause to try and get it to change (rather than keeping that change in fanworks only). a person F will talk about character Ds, on the other hand, to get people to drop them. they view the harm they cause as more important to address rather than their own fandom interests. these are people that will abandon media when they introduce a fascistic character to idolize, or when they continue to play into offensive tropes even after being made aware that the author was doing it. they care more about impact than personal enjoyment in fandom, so they measure things in terms of how the text and metatext can impact the audience. where a person C will continue to read AoT while talking about its harm, person F abandoned the franchise well before it ended and only keep up with it from a distance to discuss its continued harm. they often don't think person C goes far enough when it concern character Ds; they can often be at odds with person Ds because of how person Ds prioritize their personal fan experience over harm, while person Fs prioritizes harm over their own enjoyment; and are antithetical to person Es. this does not mean that they don't enjoy media like a lot of people love to accuse; they just would prefer to drop something they like once they learn the harm that it causes - it's mitigation just like person Cs, but to a much more drastic degree.

yeah, you are allowed to like things. and yeah, who and what you like does says something about you as a person. but the problem is that the third factor - real world harm - isn't discussed much, especially with how people engage with things that cause it. because to like and engage something that causes harm is to perpetuate it. you can try and reconcile with the issues in that character or piece of media, but a lot of people ignore it. and to ignore it is to create a space that lets in people who thrive on it and seek that stuff out - your person Es.

character B exists for a reason and the text criticizes them. the text may not criticize everything, but still shows they are meant for critique. character D does the same things as character B, but the text portrays them as correct and that you should like them. person B will like both regardless and end up a lot like person D, but the both of them are susceptible to being pulled further into bigoted ideologies by the existence of person E who seeks out things like character D and anything that looks like them - like character B, and character C.

we need to examine things outside of the framework of "character is bad and text portrays them as bad" more often. it's not as simple as that. there are a lot of things that show someone doing something would generally be considered immoral, but the author agrees with it so it's portrayed as good. there are things that are portrayed as bad, but when you pick apart why it's bad you suddenly realize they're bad because they're marginalized - or, they're a standin for a real world group and made into the bad guys (eg: how many games have "barbaric" "tribal" enemies (like moblins from LOZ or the hilichurls from genshin) which are just offensive anti-indigenous caricatures, or how goblins (especially in harry potter) are used to perpetuate antisemitic sentiments and conspiracy theories). a fascist can be portrayed in a sympathetic light or have their ideologies be repackaged to sound appealing. a civil rights advocate can have their views warped to make them look like a threat to the white majority and be portrayed as an antagonist often by playing into stereotypes around "barbarism" and violence. there's a difference between having a fascist be a hero and is never condemned (jjba, marvel's zeemo), having a fascist be weakly criticized but be considered sympathetic or even your friend when they're an unrepentant fascist (many characters in ffxiv, this is literally the plot of hetalia and so much nazi chic), and having a fascist be held accountable for their actions and sometimes even maybe working past what made them fascistic to begin with and have them stop being one (terran emperor philippa georgiou from star trek discovery i adore you) - and that difference is the intention of the author in creating that character, the intention behind portraying their ideology for a wide audience, and what ends up happening to them in the end. An author can even kill their fascist off and still be in support of them because they frame it as martyrdom and try to make you feel bad for the character (jjba, ffxiv) - so it's not at all simple.

This is why being critical of the stuff you enjoy is important. No one is saying don't enjoy villains, and I'm certainly not because I'd be a hypocrite. What I am saying is: consider how the characters - protagonist or not - are being portrayed and how it relates to real world harm. Consider the intentions behind them, the impact they have had, and how they can be used against marginalized groups to hurt them and change how others view said group. Again: you are allowed to like things but what you like and defend says a lot about you. I do not disagree with OP. I just feel that the facet of harm and intention behind said harm needs to be considered because you may be putting investment into a character you don't realize is harmful (or you're ignoring is harmful). They don't even have to be a villain in the story to be harmful because again: look at copaganda and the military entertainment industry.

What you like has impact outside of you. How you engage with it impacts others around you. Some people try to mitigate, others try to ignore, while others still double down and get solicited by people who intentionally seek out things that support their bigoted viewpoints.

When the character is just an ass and the text treats them as an ass, that's not an issue. When the character is bigoted for a reason to explore and deal with, that is also not an issue. But if you find out that your blorbo is the focus of critical discussion because they were written to be a harmful stereotype/a means of idolizing bigoted rhetoric, you need to ask yourself this: are you willing to take the steps to mitigate harm - even if it means not engaging with that character or piece of media again - or are you going to continue on as if nothing's wrong and risk alienating those around you that are impacted by the harmful ideologies that are inseparable from this character/media?

What I'm not saying: Don't like villains. What I am saying: Every character - regardless of if they're a protagonist or antagonist - has the potential to cause harm because of the author's biases or bigotry. It is on you to recognize that harm and mitigate whenever possible, and choosing not to reflects on you as a person. You still can like villains. But how you like them and for what reasons says a lot about you, and people may choose to avoid you if you decide that your "soft feelings over the imperial leader working to colonize what is now the empire" are more important than understanding why people are uncomfortable with you, your blorbo, and their rabid uncritical fans.

You're allowed to like villains. What you like reflects back on you. You need to take real world harm into account when you engage with media, because what villains you like reflects on you very differently based on the real world harm that those villains can cause.

hot take but i think that "fictional characters are fictional and liking or disliking them have no real life effect" and "the way you treat certain characters can be an indicative of your character in real life" are statements that can and should coexist

example: character A is violent and makes misogynistic comments. they're still charismatic and their arc is interesting to read/watch. person A acknowledges that the character is bad but they still enjoy consuming content from the character and they do so unapologetically. they're allowed to like the character, especially considering that literally everyone the character has harmed is also fictional. they don't pretend the character isn't violent, or misogynistic, they just like the character despite that. they post about it constantly. this is a neutral action that shows nothing about person A.

character B is a white man that makes racist comments, treats a black person in the show badly and gains money through anti-ethical means. they're still charismatic and their arc is interesting to read/watch. person B claims the character is flawed but overall misunderstood and all their actions are entirely justified. they're allowed to like the character, especially considering that literally everyone the character has harmed is also fictional. person B claims the black character that character B treated badly either had it coming or overreacted. all of person B's favorite characters are white men. person B goes out of their way to justify that all of their favorite characters are actually misunderstood and good people, and more people should like them. this shows that person B likely has some favoritism for white men.

just. you're allowed to like fictional characters even if they're awful fucking people but. and im not sure why this is controversial. the way you interact with media says something about you. this isn't necessarily a bad thing. does this make sense please