#breasting boobily etc etc

[caranoirs]

[altfire]

got a google photos notif abt some pics i took a year ago today and holy fuck. we were seeing barbie and i looked so good lmao i wish i could post them

[floweroflaurelin]

I haven’t watched this show yet but I keep seeing her everywhere and I think I hauve Covid

Bonus sketch:

Notes app strikes again! heart eyes

[conradrasputin]

[escapedaudios]

Writing hot take: I think acting like treating writing characters of the opposite sex as some kind of enigmatic riddle is so silly. I know people complain about men writing women as boobily breasting sex objects (or conversely women writing men as feral brutes), but I fear there's an over correction when people think that means there's some kind of challenge in writing the opposite sex.

It's literally so easy. If you just write them as human beings that you yourself can relate to, you're already like 90% of the way there. You can figure out the other 10% with the tiniest bit of empathy and attention toward real-life people who aren't exactly like yourself.

I feel like writers will put pressure on themselves and be like "ok, I wrote a female character, now how do I woman her up?" and then oversteer themselves into making that character's personality revolve around their gender, get too touchy about how they're representing them, stress themselves into shitty writing, and end up making things even worse than if she had just titted breastingly down the stairs.

Same goes with writing people of different races/sexualities. Like the self-induced pressure to conspicuously represent that aspect of their character results in some stiff writing that feels unnatural and limits their characterization. This also applies to writing characters in time periods you never lived, characters who have professions you never worked, etc. Just start with a three dimensional human and work from there, don't gag yourself acting like it's more complicated than it really is.

[spearxwind]

i think also a huge part of why artists majorly refuse machine-learning (bc that’s what it is, i refuse to call it ai bc it’s inaccurate and gives tech bros too much credit) is that the people currently championing and developing those tools actively want it to replace artists. They loudly and proudly hate the arts and want every creative professional put out of work. They want every creative HOBBYIST to give up. I have seen machine-learning art generators call us artoids (like ‘femoids’ incels or unhealthily online misogynists use to refer to women. To give you the idea of the kind of hate-fueled superiority we’re dealing with) and circle-jerk to the idea of art no longer being a career and no one being able to ask for commissions anymore.

Machine-learning tools are currently a symbol of people who see creativity and art as an enemy, a boogeyman to be slain. They are designed accordingly - stealing human work to create the data, designing it so that people can generate ‘sketches’ or ‘doodles’ to deceive the layman that it was hand-drawn, using real-world likenesses without consent, etc. When tech bros get tired of weaponizing machine-learning because they think we need to get ‘real jobs’ or that furry porn artists charge too much for comms and need to be stopped, it will probably be a lot easier for artists to embrace it as it’ll be a lot easier to develop ethical tools. On top of making development easier, it could become a great tool to make the visual arts accessible for people that have disabilities affecting drawing ability. It could be a wonderful technology.

But as it stands we’re not there yet.

WHATTTT.... ARTOIDS 💀.............................. that is THE most cringe fucking word ever im gonna start calling them fucking inceloids or something

Arent these the people who also have hentai addictions and collect all sorts of images of anime women breasting boobily? Do they think before AI that those images just popped up from the aether? They should also get real jobs that arent living in their moms basements and being a hateful little bitch

It's kind of hilarious that they think machine learning models will be the the end of art though. As if art hasnt been a core human function from prehistoric age and as if it hasnt survived hundreds of purges, demonizations, and attempts to erase certain styles and movements and people. We're going to prevail no matter what and they can die mad about it

[buckgettingstruck]

Breasting boobily just runs in the Buckley genes I suppose. Tits that don’t quit, etc

its actually insane of both of them

[tentacledwizard]

tumblr user tentacledwizard reviews: Employee of the Month

 

  So recently [read: a few hours ago], @cgtg hosted a sort of movie night. The movie was Employee of the Month, starring Dane Cook. I joined it because I am always willing to expand my cinematic repertoire and also cgtg’s Davekat stuff is really good. Like I don’t even ship Davekat that much but their content is excellent. And the Sandler rap perfectly encapsulates my opinions on Adam Sandler as an actor, because ever since my dad played Billy Madison my life has been ok I’ll just do the review now.

So okay, I was prepared to have an ironically good time. I was convinced the movie would be 100% shit tier, just like Dave Strider said. But I should have known that Dave is not a reliable source. Because this movie was fun. I had a great time. When it comes to official reviews, I’ve seen mainly lukewarm/frosty attitudes towards Employee of the Month but *clears throat* Whatever. 

Now, those who know me know of my passionate love for Home Depot. And if you didn’t know about this, now you do. I wrote a Home Depot/necromancy story in like 7th grade. Home Depot is paradise on earth. You could survive a zombie apocalypse in there. It has everything you need for survival- shelter, crops, energy drinks, etc. This movie basically takes place inside a Home Depot. I forget what the store was actually called. It doesn’t matter. You just need to understand that I love Home Depot so I will generally enjoy movies set inside Home Depots. That was a pretty big factor in my enjoyment. Never mind the fact that this was filmed inside a Costco.

Now onto the actual movie. By rom-com standards, is this a good rom-com? Ehhh. No. The main romance between Dane Cook and “Blond Tart” was half-baked. I saw nothing that distinguished the fair-haired love interest from the other rom-com love interests before/after her, except maybe her big ears. The pair had like nothing in common, mainly because I don’t really know about their interests? Gotta say that Dane Cook had far more chemistry with the other blond tart (aka the antagonist). I wasn’t rooting for the main couple. This is also partly because of the movie’s intense homosexuality. I am not even kidding. Their date was cute though, I just wish they actually had some things in common and we learned more about the love interest.

So basically the plot is that this guy Zack (Dane Cook) works at Fictional!Home Depot and he seems like kind of a “slacker.” He is rivals with a smarmy blond Eminem cousin named Vince (Dax Shepard), who seems like a “stand up guy.” Obviously he is a douche bag who flirts with everyone in a very unprofessional way. There’s some kind of subplot about the store trying to beat another retail place. Then this new employee (Jessica Simpson) waltzes into the place. (I could say she “breasted boobily,” but nah.) Her name is Amy and she allegedly has a thing for employees of the month. So Zack falls in love, but obviously Vince starts making some moves on her. Now Zack has to win Employee of the Month to get the girl, or else Vince will. (There was nothing to worry about though, he dates Amy without even getting the position yet. Also Vince is super awkward/gay.) 

So let me just bullet point this. I’ll cover the characters/plot points/romance plots.

CHARACTERS:

Zack: The main character, Dane Cook. For everyone watching, there was this process of thinking oh no he’s cute and then falling in love with him. Look, he is actually pretty cute. I don’t make the rules. That dorky smile of his is great. He does have his flaws, like being focused only on his own problems. Dude just apologize. But they do get addressed. He’s a pretty good main character, and he really knows how to treat a girl. Home Depot date? SIGN ME UP. That’s going to be me some day, ok? I will meet some dude who shares my love for Home Depot and together we will wander the dusky aisles filled with all manner of appliances. Welp I kind of lost the plot. Anyway he has great date ideas. His little yellow car thing is a complete travesty but I will let it slide. Jorge has the better yellow vehicle but of course he does. Jorge is gangsta. 

(guy has that Kubrick stare)

Vince: The main antagonist besides the nebulous “corporate.” At first he seems like a blond flashlight that draws in the ladies like moths. He truly seems like a suave douchebag. As the movie goes on, you learn that this is untrue (the “suave” part). He is really awkward. Probably the only person in love with him is my main guy Jorge (Efren Ramirez). More on that at ten. Anyway, Vince is really good at cashiering. He does an unprofessional little circus act with the products that makes the ladies allegedly swoon. He gets Employee of the Month many, many times. Can Zack possibly usurp him?? Who knows! So yeah, Vince is a sopping and pathetic fellow. At some points you want him to shut up, but at other points you feel this deep well of pity for his plight. Negative points for using the r-word once >:( but also hey this is 2006. 

Amy: Uh. Ummm. Well she seems very friendly and… like a love interest. Uh… I’m sure there has to be more to her. Right? Oh well. Her big ears are pretty cute. Sadly, she doesn’t exactly have a personality or agency over the plot. I don’t really like plots that are just two guys fighting over a girl, except that turned out to not really be part of the movie so it’s fine. At least she called out Zack when he was being stupid, but that was mainly just to milk some drama. I think she and Lily should date.

Jorge: Jorge, the man that you are. Look, he is amazing and I cannot lie. What even is a salmon churro? The entire chat was yelling every time he was on screen. He first appears as Vince’s lackey, and he mainly helps out Vince with his various sabotage attempts. But he turns out to have more depth than that. He is like a short bug. He is willing to stab an old lady. Jorge is what we call “gangsta.” Everything he does is cool in a Jorge sort of way. He really made the movie. You can fight me on this. 

Lily: The Human Resources manager. Okay, so she doesn’t have dialogue (I think) but I wanted to include her here because she is cool and really pretty and I had a minor sexuality crisis once she arrived on screen (it happens every other day. Don’t worry about it). I like the lily in her hair. She was so real for accepting a bribe and eating that Butterfinger. <3

Grandma: She could be referred to as feisty. You could also say she’s bisexual. Kudos to her for keeping it real with Zack. The “seed of love” speech was…really dubious!

Boss man: Whatever is going on with him, it’s very gay. He outright says that he thinks/has thought about kissing guys. Maybe there’s something between him and the policeman? Anyway, I feel pretty bad that his older brother emasculated him. Not much else to say. He’s not exactly a paragon of professionalism, which is what makes this movie fun. He totally wants to be the fatherly boss but he fails. His lackey’s name is Dirk. Strider reference? You know it. (This was made 3 years before homestuck started).

BOSS Boss Man, aka Corporate Incarnate: Boss Man’s big brother, in the age sense. Okay, this guy kind of scares me. He is way less relaxed than Boss Man, and he certainly can drub people with canes. He runs a tight ship, so obviously he won’t stand for the main character mayhem going on. 

Iqbal: I don’t remember a ton of stuff about him, but he is like a lot of my family friends. He deserves good stuff because he had to put up with Zack’s crap for longer than necessary. Do I have to cover every single character? How about we move onto the main thing: shipping. It’s not really the main thing, but I'm going insane over it so for me it is.

SHIPS:

  Oh man okay, here we go. I already covered my very few thoughts on Zack/Amy so here are some ships that I find interesting.

Zack/Vince: Basically, the plot of the movie revolves around these two and their rivalry. I kind of doubt their hate is platonic. At one point Vince compares them to a pair of “old gay sailors.” Zack’s face really says it all, honestly:

Their scenes together had a ton of sexual chemistry. Intense Kubrick stares. Toreador-ish mop fights. Breaking into the other person’s house to make them late for work. You know. Like that. We all agreed that they are best summarized as “toxic yaoi.” Essentially, they are kismeses. Also, Vince is a complete mess around Amy but seems way more comfortable antagonizing Zack. I don’t think Zack is really into Vince, but it’s an interesting thought.

Vince/Jorge: Now this. THIS is the true romance of the story. You think I’m kidding? This is pretty much canon (or at least heavily implied). Where Zack and Vince had some sexual tension, these two have a Home Depot’s worth of romantic tension. They have so many little moments, like when they just kind of solemnly listen to music in a car (which turns out to be a bookend). They’re constantly around each other, and their relationship actually has an arc. Vince starts out kind of using Jorge as a henchman, but then Jorge goes against that. There’s a temporary breakup, and Vince kind of loses it. He has no one to talk to now. But he’s willing to pull himself together and give Jorge the space he needs to think things through. And THEN they have this big moment where they get back together as equals and it’s beautiful and okay it’s easier to just show you. 

(Previous image) Here we have Jorge helping Vince with his dorky-ass heelies because Vince is trying to be a coolkid like Zack.

And then we have that whole moment over there. They’re holding hands! (Hurt/comfort moment tbh)

THEIR VICTORY DANCES?? HELLO?? This is adorable i can’t

Okay, this is blatantly romantic. The words “please, come home” imply that they share a home. Perhaps they are even… roommates? But look, the normally rude Vince is actually being considerate. And he calls Jorge “homes.” Jorge normally calls him that!

Full access to the cashier’s lounge? Jorge you mad lad. 

Awww-

Okay I gasped aloud at this part. They are married. Or like they will be at some point in time. “It just feels right” yeah they are SO married. Look at the height difference. They are everything, as of four hours ago. This is cinema.

I can’t do this man why did I start reviewing this. They use each other’s pet names. Shit. Fuck you, Dane Cook movies. I hate feeling emotion like this.

yes, Jorge and Vince were the real romance subplot all along. They’re literally the last scene of the movie.

Look at the smile on Jorge’s face. Jegus. This ship is everything. These two were the real emotional core of the movie. Without them, I’d just be like “eh whatever at least it was fun.” But damn, they really delivered on the romance subplot.

Uh… Yeah I can’t really think of any other ships that I like. Vince/Amy sucks and they had nothing to say to each other. I like the idea of Amy/Lily, though! I think either of them could make employee of the month. I guess Amy/Zack is good for now though.

OTHER THINGS:

That clubhouse is awesome. Probably a big hazard considering it’s on top of that big shelf. But hey I want a Home Depot buddy lair too!

Vince saying he can get a little anal…. >:? Sir what.

Amy’s really out there auspiticizing for Zack and Vince huh? She deserves good things for having to put up with that

Why did it suddenly turn into a sports movie for a few minutes? Why were they playing softball against another hardware store? We may never know.

Banger soundtrack. 10/10.

And that’s a wrap everyone, catch me crying over the hug or making “ironic” fanart of Dane Cook and co. I really enjoyed this and I will hopefully be there for the next flick. Wow I wrote a lot about this movie. Uh. Consider it ironic, I suppose.

[avelera]

Giving Sanctuary "Behind the Scenes" - On Masculinity

Inspired by Ep. 1.03 of "The Last of Us" in which there is a line when one canonically gay male character tells his also canonically gay male partner, "You were my purpose."

I was so excited by this line because I saw it as confirmation that I'd written men in love well, or at least as well as I could. So much so that I turned to my partner and explained to him that it felt like something of a personal victory to see these two very masculine gay characters in the show defining their love for one another as specifically a purpose, much as I have Hob inch his way towards admitting he wants to be (effectively) married to Dream in Giving Sanctuary by calling looking after Dream "his purpose". I was also very pleased when my partner confirmed that, yes, as a man, it felt very true and authentic to him to have both the characters in the show and Hob as I've written him define their relationships that way, within the bounds of masculinity and masculine pride.

I watched the episode with my partner (a big TLOU fan), with whom I have a lot of discussions around masculinity because as a writer, particularly of adult m/m ships, I want the men I write to actually feel like men, and my partner is wonderfully open with me in these discussions of how to make male characters actually feel like men, instead of feeling like men written by women. I doubt I can ever achieve men-written-by-men levels of accuracy as strictly as if the male characters I write were written by a man (all gender language in this is meant inclusively, btw, assume I always mean "female/male-identifying" etc) but I think there are a lot of common tropes and pitfalls the largely-but-not-exclusively female writerly space of fanfic tend to fall into, which I try to avoid.

One is that while there is the joke that male writers tend to write women "breasting boobily down the stairs" ie, always focused on their physical characteristic, there is the reverse weakness that's less talked about of women writers writing male characters as more willing to be emotionally vulnerable than most men usually are/are socialized to be. Not saying it's a good or a bad thing, just that male characters written by women writers are, on the balance, less concerned with masculine pride or against displaying emotion than actual men tend to be. I wrote about this extensively elsewhere.

When I started writing Giving Sanctuary, I knew it was going to be a sentimental, emotionally charged, and vulnerable story, but I didn't want to go overboard and have Hob or Dream, both canonically proud men, fall overboard into woobification.

So, how does one get these two proud, male-identifying people/entities to do something so emotionally vulnerable and sentimental as decide to move in together so they can talk about their feelings and form essentially a two-man grieving father support group? You make it an exchange. Not crassly transactional, as such. But Dream is far too proud to simply accept someone doting on him, he will push back and while he has people like Lucienne and Jessamy in his life, he often ignores their attempts to care for him, and clearly having them around hasn't been enough because he can always pull rank on them and blow off their advice.

Likewise, Hob is at his lowest. He'll accept any material help given at this point, but that's him at his absolute lowest point. Once he got his feet under him at all he would begin to demur and push back against Dream just giving him things. He would want to pull his weight. He would feel awkward about having been so emotionally vulnerable in front of someone as proud as Dream, even if Hob at 300+ years old and having gone through as much as he has is someone (as I write him, at least) who is very in touch with his emotions and who has a half dozen lifetime's worth of practice at emotional resilience. He's good at it.

But by making it so Hob looking after Dream is repayment for Dream looking after Hob, it allows Dream to chill out a bit about someone telling him what to do, or look after him. It's now couched in The Rules and An Agreement. Dream sees that Lucienne is afraid of him (in ch. 3) and realizes that, combined with how good he felt being able to open up to Hob about how much losing Orpheus hurt him, brings him to the revelation (without the fishbowl) that he doesn't like the person he's become and he wants to get better. Hob has shown emotional wisdom and so Dream is willing to admit that having someone more skilled at navigating emotion and healing take charge of his personal life for a bit is a "practical" way of getting out of this hole he realizes he's in.

Likewise, by classifying it as a transaction of sorts, Hob feel less like a charity case and more like he has a job. Given that he has no material goods to pay Dream with (not that he'd need/want them) this means a lot to Hob. Hob is (in my mind, but there's canonical evidence to back this up) very much a materialist and a hedonist. He feels like absolute garbage that he can't fulfill the role of a provider towards Dream, or anyone at this point. He defines his worth by the value of the stuff that he owns and the amount of gold in his possession.

Crass as he might have been in 1589, Hob was at the top of the world and the happiest we ever see him as someone who has reached an inconceivable pinnacle of wealth and status for someone of his birth. The man was a bandit, you can't tell me he doesn't take having money very seriously. (This is also a story in which money, class, and resources is not always necessarily central but it's always present as a concern for Hob, even as it's barely something that even occurs to Dream, and that's very deliberate. The fact that part of Hob's healing is accomplished by fulfilling his physical needs and giving him a safe space and privacy to heal is not an accident.)

So anyway, all of this is to say, that before Hob is ready to admit (what in his time period is legally impossible) that he wants to marry Dream, and what given their past relationship seems emotionally impossible, that Hob would be allowed to love Dream the way he wants to, it's easier to define looking after Dream as the more neutral "purpose" in his life. This is something he can speak of openly with Dream even before admitting any romantic feelings. Very close friends could, in theory, make a similar pact to look after one another. Men who do not want to admit emotional vulnerability can openly speak of having a job and a purpose and couching this emotional caretaking and vulnerability in those terms makes it easier within the bounds of certain cultural definitions of masculinity to do so. It's Dream and Hob saying, "We're not just babying one another, we're not just gushing about our sad feelings to each other, rather, we're recognizing that our emotional states do matter and they've cratered enough that we can't pull our actual lives as we want them back together until we deal with this." It just so happens, in this instance, that this emotional vulnerability leads to romantic love.

And, as I said, I felt incredibly gratified when this very male character, written and performed by a man, used similar words to define the act of caretaking as a "purpose" to someone he loved because while Hob as I write him isn't nearly that emotionally reserved, he does have that backbone of masculinity and the need to be a caretaker and a provider within a masculine framework so the resonance of terminology meant a lot.

[ramblesanddragons]

Libraries and their Collections

I’ve had this rattling around in my brain for a bit. I want to share some insight on how libraries work when it comes to the books they have. 

Let me start by saying I work in a metropolitan system. We’re huge with a pretty decent budget. My branch alone has about 50,0000 on the shelf. So I can’t speak to smaller systems.( I am also not technically a librarian. I don’t have the fancy master’s degree. )

So with so many books there is NO WAY we’re curating all of them. We’ve got books in this system that are older than I am. 

I mean we try of course. We weed on condition (spines falling apart, water damage, stains that may or may not be blood) and we do pull lists. I just weeded some books on disc yesterday that hadn’t been checked out in four years. 

That still leaves a lot of stuff. 

How new stuff is added is based on best seller lists, patron requests, book trends, thinking about what subject we’re lacking in etc. 

This means we carry shit I don’t agree with. Let me tell you I thoroughly enjoy weeding a ‘conservative socialism is bad Trump wasn’t all that bad’ think piece with a GOP politician's face on it that was ghost written by a very tired intern. However, if that book is in good condition I just sigh and put it on the shelf. Because that’s what a library does. It has something for everyone. 

That includes poorly written “she breasted boobily down the stairs” fiction or the dark stuff or the weird stuff. 

So when someone requests the GOP book I politely help them. 

That doesn’t mean we can’t promote the good stuff. I make a Pride display every year. If a demographic has a day or a month attached to it we do things for it. We’re really working on Banned Books stuff hard this year for the obvious reasons. We have resources to help the community. 

(Also, and this is personal observation I have no stats to back this up, the folks at your local library probably tend to lean to the left politically. I don’t see a branch having a pro-capitalism display anytime soon but you bet there’ll be one with diverse authors.) 

So if there’s a book you want to see at your library ask them to purchase it! Search their website for events and resources. Pay attention to local elections because local governments are where most libraries get their funding from. 

Support your local library because it’s a information hub, a safe place, a part of the community and a space for everyone. 

[tropylium]

saw a post about having someone as their trusted provider of pictures of anime girls and. that got me thinking again: sure I've read a few mangas in my time, I understand there's an appeal to watching anime even if I don't care myself, I get fanart… but the concept of consuming / reblogging pictures of random "anime girls" who are not even from any actual anime never made sense to me. if you want to simply See Sexy Girls (or Boys as the case may be) shouldn't you just be looking up porn or at least hentai instead? like let's not kid anyone you're not out for Appreciating Artwork or the Human Body In General if the target is specifically boobily breasted anime girls to the exclusion of any modern western art, traditional art, portrait photography… just seems like a weird compromise between being unapologetically nsfw-on-main vs. so-called having class about what you post. and yet something of this sort appears to be quite popular among a few categories-of-nerd I've been for long adjacent to

I'm not even ruling out psychosexual-anxieties type explanations here, it's very likely I'm underestimating how much hangups about sex Americans (or Catholics, etc.) have exactly, but even then. am I expected to believe all of these people are just horny and unashamed enough to put reams of skimpily dressed anime girls on their blog (or forum thread or whatever) but not horny and unashamed enough to go outright looking up and/or collecting entirely undressed anime girls even privately?

one other option to come to mind, yes as noted I don't know porridge from gruel about anime, maybe much of these "random" anime girls are in fact some form of fanart and no one's just bothering to tag or talk about it. doesn't seem highly likely either though and most probably I'm just missing some Common Human Experience that fuels this stuff

[dwreader]

“He breasted boobily” -Lestat talking about Louis

He would describe him like straight men describe women in novels, her supple breasts bounced firmly like a pair of melons etc

[oflgtfol]

Okay same venom 2003 anon again. I dont have anything else to add to what ur saying as again i didnt read venom 2003 So im just nodding respectfully and wisely to everything your saying but re ur tags is the artist you mean Humberto Ramos? Bc if it is if it helps he's a pretty unpopular artist amongst people (though usually for criticisms about his art being “too cartoony” instead of anything meaningful like the objectification of women which i personally despise when people do that. No more realism sexy super models i want hyper stylisation ONLY in my comic books just to piss those people off). I also personally do not care about him as an artist no hate nor respect towards him but again the bar is so low 😭 ive seen so many genuinely boring deeply misogynistic artists who treat women the exact same awful objectifying way but who get passes in comic book spaces because their art is more Conventionally Likeable. Like if im gonna be forced to see a woman be drawn as only one body type and face and breasting boobily id much rather take the uglier style or the more stylised style just to have something Interesting To Look At then Another Boring Generic Guy Drawing Semi Realism with Soft Shading Based off 1950s Pin ups but thats just me personally as a lifelong comic book guy

YES HUMBERTO RAMOS. i hate the venom 2003 art but in the past two hours i've come to realize that humberto ramos is my real enemy here and the only real fault of venom 2003 is its resemblance of ramos's art (of course in addition to its own home brewed sexism).

i really love stylized art and i hate realistic styles. i love the classic ASM look because it struck a nice balance between the two: the 1960s-80s need to depict the human form in a standardized, realistic way (likely due to toy sales, at least if its caused by the same phenomenon of 80s cartoons, a la he-man, having that same look to them), but the flat colors, limited color palette, and cell shading were so so wonderfully simple and sleek in a really fun way. gave such a distinct Look to the comic, and the simplicity of the colors also made the realistic lineart not too realistic. it just felt very intentional, very careful, very creative with their technological limitations, and it's such a timeless look that has aged so well even still to the 2020s

so while i love the classique look, i also love when comic styles go even further to really break the mold and stylize further!! herrera in venom 2003, and ramos's whole *gestures broadly* COULD be good, if only they were done a little bit more purposefully, and yknow, minus the outrageous sexism

and yes sexism is overall so entrenched in marvel comics and i wouldn't be surprised if it also infected literally all other comic companies out there, considering We Live In A Society. anyone who dares to argue that misogyny doesn't exist needs to go become a comic geek and read hundreds of marvel comics and see

1. how utterly shallow women are characterized compared to their male counterparts

2. how female characters so rarely get to exist on their own outside of a male character; ie. female characters who are only side characters for a male hero, or superheroines who are literaly just "female version of xyz popular male character!", etc etc etc

3. the way women are visually depicted compared to men. men, especially the superheroes, are still subject to white patriarchal standards of beauty of course, but the huge muscles they're drawn with are a form of power, a "look how cool i am." you will never get that with a female character. they are only ever depicted with the same fucking face, the same fucking body type, the same fucking curves and tasteful cleavage and pouty lips and cat eye makeup.

4. and while the men have these like insane muscles that do not exist irl, they at least get to POSE in ways that are not sexualized. the women characters, even if their designs are not objectifying, will still be posed so that their butts face the camera, they have a pretty side profile to show off the silhouette of their breasts, etc. if you really pay careful attention to the way women are placed in comic panels compared to men it's so insane. so fucking insane

but yknow, all of those things tend to manifest in subtle ways, ways that you really can only pick up when you've read so many comics over a decent amount of time, and when you're otherwise prepared to read for and pick up on sexist elements. so i guess i REALLY draw my line and get pissed the fuck off beyond belief when comic writers and/or artists then begin to just be, blatantly, fucking sexist. a la those terrible panels from ASM spider island. a la that one she-hulk issue. a la spider-man/red sonja. when it's blatant it means you give NO fucks, it means you don't even believe women are people because you don't expect them to be engaging your works and thus you don't expect any sort of audience outcry from your blatant sexism, it means you literally only see women as objects for your male audience to oogle over, it's beyond frustrating

[canmom]

litrpg, once more

i started reading Worth the Candle because @facille posted some excerpts that sounded fun. as explictly self-insert litrpg isekai goes, it's several cuts above most I've seen honestly. the hook of 'a grieving DM with a taste for the grimdark who goes on digressions about game design and its metaphysical implications' is maybe a little too familiar a glove to inhabit, gender notwithstanding. (even though i definitely roll my eyes when the hottest women ever in the protagonist's mind breasts boobily into the story in an early chapter, i have a suspicion the author is going somewhere with it.) also the thing is longer than the phone book so it's not bad illness reading.

anyway that got me to think like. on the surface 'litrpg' is a pretty straightforwardly defined term: a story about a world while roleplaying game rules operate. since there are a lot of different ways one can design a roleplaying game (on the computer and on tabletop), this should be pretty wide open.

but in practice there seem to be some pretty rigidly defined genre conventions. which i will itemise, thus:

'level up by doing' skill system:

Nearly every litRPG story I've ever encountered uses a near identical approach to game mechanics. A character is definied by a list of skills, from dozens (D&D sort of scale) to hundreds (GURPS sort of scale), and all of them have individual experience tracks. The rest of the game structure - character levels etc. - is less well defined, but this seems to be a constant.

It's a natural fit for the genre, since nearly all of these stories begin with the protagonist experimenting with an unknown system, figuring out how to works, then exploiting it. But where did it come from?

In recent Western CRPGs, the main game series that comes to mind that fits this model is the Elder Scrolls series. When Oblivion hooked the spawn tables to the character's level, this actually became a severe drawback, since the player could level themselves up using non-combat skills only to find themselves hunted by high-level bandits in endgame gear. It also leads to some odd quirks of player behaviour, like bunny-hopping to raise your Athletics skill.

Over in the MMO zone, Runescape also follows this model, with independent levels in 28 skills. In Runescape, this heavily orients the game around grinding, with the interesting gameplay apparently found in finding ways to most efficiently play around the server's tickrate.

Let's look further back. Ultima mostly did not use this system (charmingly, in some games you had to ask Lord British to level you up), but introduced something like it in Ultima VIII.

I think the real source though is probably Wizardry series, which had the 'learn by doing' mechanic right from the start in 1981. Wizardry was wildly popular in Japan, spawning its own offshoot series unrelated to what Sirtech was doing. And apparently all of them had this mechanic. For my part I remember standing in Wizardry 8, repeatedly casting the 'open lock' spell on a maximally difficult lock to safely grind my caster's magic stat.

What about other JRPGs? I'll admit, most of my experience is with Final Fantasy, which to my knowledge never used this model. Nor did Dragon Quest, the other of the big two. However, more niche JRPGs with an old-school flavour like Etrian Odyssey have it. It's also a staple of social sim games like Princess Maker.

Then we get to the first JP LitRPG 'trapped in a game world' story that I know about, .hack//sign (2006) - although whether that 'counts' is arguable since as far as i know it's more about psychological drama and I'm not sure how much the story centres on game mechanics. Of course, the one that really exploded the genre was the adaptation of Sword Art Online, so maybe everyone's just imitating that.

Anyway that's a bit of a long digression, but it's one of the biggest curiosities I have about the history of this genre, because it's so specific.

the 'game system' is constructed by an 'administrator' or 'god' figure with sinister motives

This one just makes sense, right? A game system is a pretty unnatural way for a fantasy world to work, and 'someone made it that way' is the obvious answer why. For this reason - and perhaps the recurring JRPG story device - it's likely the protagonist will see the hand of this administrator, or even communicate with them, and perhaps aim to kill or usurp them. This may overlap with antitheistic themes.

manichaean setting, edgy protagonist

The stereotype is 'hero' and 'demon lord'. This one's not exactly a universal, but very common. The protagonist is likely to find themselves forced into assuming one of these roles in some grand recurrent struggle, typically the villainous one. Since time travel is a frequent device, they may even see signs of their own works without recognising them.

The marked preference for 'villain' protagonists, beyond being way more chuuni and thus naturally better, was probably popularised by Overlord (2010-), a web novel turned light novel series which received a popular anime adaptation by Madhouse.

Villains are exciting, usually a lot more proactive, and a natural fit for a genre whose central story is usually a rise to enormous power.

Even a non-villainous MC, such as Sung Jinwoo of Solo Leveling, is likely to have 'dark' themed powers - stealth, assasination, commanding monsters. But hey like chuuni stuff is cool.

a UI which the character interacts with; the 'assess' skill

This one's kind of a necessary bit of nuts and bolts, but worth its own heading. If your world runs on a game engine, and you're writing in the first person, you need some means to communicate information about it to both player and reader.

More specifically, a very common device sees the protagonist select a 'useless' skill that gives them information on skills and monsters at the beginning.

the MC has special knowledge

One of the usual 'hooks' of a litRPG/isekai story is that the main character has some angle on the world that other people don't have, which gives them an edge they can spend the story exploiting. This could be genre knowledge like experience as a gamer or reader of isekai web novels (for your basic power fantasy), or it might be very specific knowledge, e.g. they've read or written the story they're now inhabiting as fiction (e.g. Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint), or we're on an advanced iteration of a time loop (e.g. The Executioner and Her Way of Life). The latter's a device also used in other subgenres, famously PMMM.

We can compare this to real games. In tabletop RPGs, this sort of attitude is for many groups considered not in the spirit of the game - you should be trying to portray a grounded character and avoid invoking 'out of setting' knowledge, which may be called 'metagaming'. For a single-player CRPG, depending on the era, the game may be designed to be completed first time without foreknowledge, or after many runs. For MMOs, player expectations have shifted such that in many games it's considered rude to go into a fight without looking up mechanics, but also no player has 'secret' knowledge of the game that others do not.

the MC has special abilities or items that other characters do not

Naively, I thought that LitRPG would be about a character learning to cleverly exploit a common 'game system' equally accessible to all 'players'. In practice I've yet to encounter a story that actually does this.

For some stories (Solo Levelling for example) the protagonist alone has the ability to level up and exponentially accumulate power. In others, like So I'm A Spider, So What? (KumoDesu), everyone uses the same system but the protagonist is granted special unique skills by the mysterious admin figure that give her a leg up.

Even a story like Bofuri, which an iseaki-loving friend showed me a few episodes of, where the premise written in the title is that the protagonist is exploiting a game inbalance... gives her a special unique shield in short order. (I didn't like Bofuri very much.)

Once again, compare to real games. In an MMO, you would never put a significant advantage that only one player can ever use, outside of perhaps the admin console that you give to your GMs. Everyone has the exact same progression system, it's gated by time and content or perhaps real world money, but in theory with enough skill and hours anyone can get anything.

On the other hand, in TTRPGs, it's a lot more common for a GM to give their party a 'unique' magic item or ability that other characters in the story do not have, since they're the only humans involved. In a single-player CRPG the same is true, with the caveat that every player of the game will find the exact same narratively 'unique' item. However, in both cases, the game will then be designed around the players having that ability: you want the player to be challenged, while still getting to flaunt their cool thing. Still, this device is less odd on a story patterned on this type of game than one where the world is literally in an MMO.

It's fairly easy to see why this device exists. When you play an MMO, you really get to see just how many people are 'just like you'. How your FC discord and your player house are interchangeable with a thousand others constituted by the same social forces. Paradoxically, MMO stories are usually about the player being the most important character in the world, while playing an MMO is to be essentially nobody. Your great hero is only the great hero in their shard of the timeline, and if you want to roleplay, you'd better come up with something completely different.

So, this device says, here's a way to imagine your character being special, and surprising everyone. A natural enough fantasy.

the game is completely unbalanced

'Game balance' is basically not a consideration. Play the game right and you become a god. There may be classes, but they'll be shed on your road to omnipotence.

But for some reason, the players of the game or inhabitants of a setting rarely seem to discover the game's dominant strategies. Maybe they can't since they don't have the protagonist's secret advantage. There is rarely a 'meta', let alone the relentless drive towards absolute efficiency that characters a mature MMO.

player characters look like their players

This is an oddity of MMO-styled stories. I have almost never met someone who tries to make their player character look like themselves, and yet the opposite seems to be true in MMO-styled stories. I guess it makes it convenient to know who's who.

could we break it?

Faced with a set of rules like this, my natural inclination at least is to say OK - how far can you push this without just writing entirely outside of the subgenre?

The thing that gets me about LitRPG stories is that they really don't work much like RPGs beyond tangentially, especially not MMORPGs; they work like LitRPG stories, an odd blend of CRPG and naturalistic setting. Or a TTRPG where people talk in character about classes and levels.

We had better go right for the root. Most of the devices flow from the core plot being 'character overcomes challenges and gets stronger, until they're the top dog'. That's the power fantasy: effort gets rewarded.

I think it would be interesting to take a broader viewpoint. You know those stories about a big historical event, like a war or something, where the narrative constantly hops between characters to give you a multi-level view? I think it would be fun to take that kind of approach, and apply it to trying to imagine a setting where everyone ruthlessly exploits the RPG mechanics as far as possible, creating some sort of miserable dystopia where children are expected to kill each other for xp or something and if you're not grinding constantly for levels or building to the meta you're viewed with contempt, and then... well perhaps someone finds a glitch and all sorts of chaos breaks out. Maybe I should write this thing. Bet it's already been done.

Anyway I don't really know this genre too much so tell me if I've missed something haha

[subjectivemortality]

🔪Say they were put in a classic 80s slasher/horror setting, who would they be? {Example: The killer. The dude who dies first. Etc.}

Oh, easily I would be the very hot woman breasting boobily away from the killer in broken stilletos getting killed within the first two minutes of the movie