#but I genuinely want to analyze this

[meltedmush]

Keep making the Binghorse. We gotta ward off people from entering this fandom. We need to keep it pure. I fr don't want this fandom to become famous. I'm scared that there will be toxic fans left and right.

HAHA I absolutely understand the sentiment. I feel a bit contradictory since I want more people to appreciate SVSSS, but the at the same time I like small tight knit communities and I personally can’t handle large fandoms whatsoever. 😭

Although I do feel as though describing the SVSSS as pure is very funny for how lawless this fandom is. But behavior wise, it is definitely a very positive and supportive space!! I haven’t met anyone or seen anything unpleasant since I’ve entered the fandom. Albeit, it’s only been a few months since I’ve started interacting with the fandom, and over half a year since I first read SVSSS, so I have no clue what horror stories the SVSSS fandom has. (I honestly haven’t interacted with that many SVSSS fans tbh…. Even though I want to.)

In addition, funny enough, I feel as though the book almost acts as its own barrier of entry. SVSSS isn’t the type of book you can read once unless you’re good at reading against the grain and noticing all the nuances and subtext. I know the first time I read SVSSS, SVSSS disturbed and confused me so badly. I talked to a few other people who read SVSSS once, who said that LBH and SQQ’s relationship felt like Stockholm syndrome. But people who’ve read SVSSS several times will know, that is not the case, and that SQQ is an INSANELY UNRELIABLE narrator.

I honestly find it funny how effective Binghorse or all the other skin creatures is at filtering toxic fans.😂

There’s always a general reaction to the skin creatures: “Omg, cute!!”, “wtf, but I like it”, “wtf”. Or getting blocked, or death threats. (I haven’t received any…? I don’t think…? One message I received is definitely debatable since I can’t tell if it’s sarcastic or not….😭)

But regardless, I’ll definitely keep drawing Binghorse!!! It’s actually really enjoyable!

[chiimeramanticore]

it's cool if I ramble about yes man unprompted right. ofc it is. i wanna talk about his capacity for violence bc I think it's one of the most interesting parts of his character

yes man is nice. obviously he's nice. but yes man is not a kind character. he helps you, sure, but that's mostly just because he likes you specifically (and even that's debatable depending on how you play). i feel like this is exemplified w his pre-combat lines– "a pulled trigger's a happy trigger!" and "woo! bang bang!" like, he's clearly having fun! he takes glee in killing people, but not because he's sadistic, but because he just doesn't realize the weight of taking a life- or if he does, it just doesn't matter to him.

he was programmed without a sense of morality or an understanding of mortality. to him, violence is second nature. to him, violence is no different from play. he's like a guard dog– he doesn't care who he's shooting or why, he's just excited to do the thing he's good at.

and on one hand, he is a fantastic guard dog. but on the other hand, six must watch how... efficiently he kills, and wonder if they'll ever wind up on the receiving end of it. he wouldn't do it as long as he likes six, of course, but... if yes man was given good enough reason to believe six deserved to die, would he even hesitate? would their history and relationship mean anything to him? or would six just be another target, forgotten about as quickly as a radroach you stepped on?

six can only hope they never need to find out.

[somewhereincairparavel]

i have ALWAYS promptly looked forward to jason grace's povs in the hoo books to the point where'd I'd flip the pages till I find the words "JASON" and would count the amount of povs he has in the whole book before I even finished reading, so I feel excited knowing that I'll get to his povs soon. there, I said it.

[naggingatlas]

'thats not his role in the story!' hm i wonder what the point of it is then. hm i wonder what the dead pixel scene means. hm i wonder what wrong organ are trying to say with the context of 'awesome male friendship' and 'corporate hell where the only woman onboard is constantly under ridicule, abused or forcibly forgotten yet is the catalyst' if not this. hm i wonder how curly's physical agony being a direct parallel to anya's mental agony, stripped of voice, agency, just like her, and being forced to watch what happens while not doing jack shit, just like he used to, plays a part in this. i wonder what the moral of him being the final girl says about living with the consequences of your inaction, because of sentimentality, because of status, career and social. hm i wonder whatever the fuck this game was trying to say. hm i wonder what else is on this person's blog Oh Lord there's yaoi penice.

[erabu-san]

What kind of Introvert is Kinich do you think?

The introvert that is shy of People or "eww people?" 🤔

HMMM I don't believe he is shy, but it doesn't mean he dislikes people

It is kind of canon that he felt sometime alone, because he had no friends 😭 i think it is more "huh. People can't deal with me. Welp... that's how it is" his straightforwardness, rational thought and impassive face clearly doesn't help him. He talks only when he thinks it is necessary ??

[immortanfuriosa]

this is the second ever fictional man who has changed my brain chemistry

[dykedvonte]

In the article, when Kasurinen mentions that irl people like Curly can and do cover up perpetrators- do you think that implies Curly would have kept Anya’s SA under wraps?

Curly is such a conflicting character AHHHHH. He’s my favorite but makes me very uncomfortable sometimes. He’s ignorant and mitigated at a very wrong time, but I hoped he at least had the decency to let the story slip out post-delivery. Jimmy doesn’t wanna face responsibility but does Curly not want him to either?

I think what people are missing about that line is the intentions part. What is specifically said is “good intentioned downplaying” and the belief he was taking the right steps. It’s phrasing is important: the discussion of escalation and the idea that it’s not intentionally malicious are idea you have to keep in mind when taking to the problems at play with Curly’s choices.

I do not think he was gonna cover up the assault but his actions during the events of the pre-crash sections were likely fueled by ignorance, disbelief and his own issues. His inability to outwardly address it lead to it being downplayed and covered to an extent but it’s not something he didn’t want to deal with more accurately he didn’t know how to approach and when he tried to came at it from the completely wrong angles.

When people see these they conflate them with him being willfully ignorant, refusing to believe Anya and self absorbed. It’s such a one note bad faith interpretation imo that it doesn’t acknowledge that in a lot of cases people genuinely think they are doing good in the mean time. Good intentions don’t mean he did good, or didn’t cause harm but the point is that he never intended to to Anya. The sad fact is he was trying to find a happy ending for both parties because he still thought he could. He thought he was doing something where everyone would win and in the end it was a total loss.

I say it again about Curly but so many people take the dead pixel conversation as a refusal to look closer when it’s more like a comment to on rose tinted glasses and Curly personally. Him moving on is not his saying “it doesn’t matter” but saying he still wants to try and apprixate the parts that aren’t bad. It’s a misguided and unintentionally dismissive comfort toward Anya. You can see she realizes that he doesn’t really understand but it’s not from a lack or trying. It’s a lack of being ready. Doesn’t excuse when she becomes more direct with him but it helps us with his insights.

The issue with Curly and Jimmy and responsibility is that Curly takes too much responsibility and blame for many things that aren’t his responsibility and/or fault. I think tow reflective scenes are right before the crash and in the cockpit when he blames himself for Anya not getting a psych evaluation and letting Jimmy blame him for his actions. It is not his responsibility to provide that eval to Anya, that is the companies negligence to allow one of their employees to go with out one. You can argue he could’ve fought for it, but you can also argue that P.E held that standard in the first place and you can’t patch cracks you don’t see. With Jimmy, none of what he did is Curly’s fault outside not punishing him for the act after. Even then punishment is vague but he should’ve taken more precautions. He did not force Jimmy to crash the ship, to rape Anya, to lash out and misconstrue his words. His responsibility is the crew not their individual actions and that’s a very hard point to discuss.

When Daisuke gets caught in the foam he is upset because that action got him hurt or could’ve damaged something vital to them. He is not responsible for the action but he is in ensuring Daisuke, under Swansea, doesn’t cause anymore damage to himself or the ship. That’s what I’m trying to get at despite the difficulty. Jimmy’s speech is gaslighting, conditioning to make Curly believe it’s all his fault: The firing, the assault, the tragedy of it all when those all link back to things that were over his head or actions/choices of others.

There’s a lot of debates on what Curly as the individual was at fault for, should be blamed for and what where outside factors. I personally think in the end he wanted Jimmy to take responsibility but he himself can’t tell what’s his responsibility to take vs Jimmy’s. A key point of this is when Curly is about to run in and starting saying what he should’ve done, or could’ve before screaming at Jimmy and asking what did he do. He realizes all too late what is his responsibility and what isn’t in terms of their dynamics and the blame/guilt he takes on for Jimmy but as I said again it’s too late.

If he was gonna cover up the assault than Jimmy would’ve never felt the need to do something so drastic. He would’ve known Curly would’ve helped and I think his uncertainty of that was a driving force but also to give us that uncertainty in terms of what Curly would’ve actually done.

He makes us all uncomfortable and conflicted because we all want to say we’d do better, we’d know better but in the end we could all make the same mistakes thinking that our good intentions were enough. He’s fun to roll around in your head and this specific topic gets a lot of unsettling things rolling.

[smartzelda]

Sorry guys I gotta speak my truth on this one

I'm not kidding when I say that I think that blaming shit media literacy from fans on shipping/shippers avoids the actual root of the problem to throw people you can easily throw under the bus (simply because it's not unpopular to consider people who post about ships or ship characters in media as having lesser or derivative tastes by default)

And here's why.

I think when you blame people who are "shippers" or "consume media through shipping lenses", the true root of it all is a mindset problem.

In actually, putting on shipping lenses can be helpful when trying to analyze a piece of media. When analyzing media you're supposed to approach it through a number of mindsets and put on different lenses (both to deepen your personal understanding of the media, and to pick it apart and see what you can find there (whether intentional or not on the author's part)), and different ships can be some of those lenses

When it comes to ships between main characters (for those who are genuinely willing to see what the narrative is showing with their relationship and what it's doing), there are times when analyzing it from a shipping lens may be helpful. As someone from KH fandom, I have seen people come to deeper understandings and pick canon apart in the process of analyzing a relationship that is genuinely integral to the story (platonic or not). I've also seen people get into rarepairs of characters who barely interact or who just suffer little screen time, and I've seen them come to better understandings of those side characters and how they potentially fit into the world of the media simply because people are now focusing on these characters and how they fit into the narrative.

Frankly, I resent the idea that the only way to truly objectively analyze a piece of media is by turning off the part of your brain that gets excited over relationships and individual characters. Don't get me wrong, that is a way to approach a piece of media and a valid one at that, but the truth is that we cannot be free of bias.

For instance, I was watching House MD with my parents circa last year. At some point I started heavily tuning into what was going on with House and Wilson's relationship. My parents, on the other hand, were largely watching casually. They're not thinking of character relationships or getting heavily invested in most characters, they're watching because they like watching. One of them in particular did try to analyze things that were happening in the show as they happened. However, when it came to the scene late in the series where House threw out Dominika's letter approving her American citizenship, my parents could understand that he was doing that because he didn't want her to leave, but not much beyond that. I ended up explaining to them that House's fake marriage for Dominika was an explicit parallel to when Wilson was living with House in the early seasons. Both situations started with House being none too happy about it but ultimately letting them stay, spending a considerable amount of effort getting them to leave/getting this situation to be finally over so he didn't have to deal with it anymore, and then by the time a piece of news comes through that would mean the person in question actually leaves, House hides this news as long as he can. Because he doesn't actually want them to leave and has grown attached. And by doing this he became a self fulfilling prophecy. By reacting to the truth of Wilson and Dominika leaving him the way he does, he seals his fate and they ultimately leave anyways. Maybe I ship Hilson, but becoming open to how their relationship was handled allowed me to transition to doing character studies and recognizing patterns/parallels that I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't particularly care about the characters or their relationship.

Likewise, I've seen mutuals complain about how people who don't like or don't care about certain characters often overlook these characters (what they're actually like and their place in the narrative), while the mutuals in question (by default) are able to come to deeper understanding of what the writers/story is trying to do because they care about this funky guy

You can't eradicate bias when you're engaging in media analysis, but you can consciously put on a range of lenses and observe the media through different povs with the goal of understanding the media better or bolstering your reading of it. And those lenses/povs can include focusing on specific relationships or the perpective of certain characters

And this is why I say it's actually a mindset problem. Shippers and people who have this one blorbo they like a lot aren't inherently terrible "fandom brained individuals" who are the root of media analysis problems. The problem only arises when people's readings/analysis of a piece of media are inherently restrictive/narrow and self centered. Your problem is with people who view a piece of media through a ship they like but don't keep an open mind about it, and whose "media analysis"/views on canon cannot be split from fanon and their comfortability levels. These are the people whose "media analysis" starts and ends with justifying their fanon as canon, whose views on media revolve around sorting characters and relationships into categories they personally enjoy rather than trying to understand what's going on.

Here's another example.

Here we have a fictional ship we'll call uhhhh...Blanebin. this fictional ship I made up on the spot for characters that don't exist named Blane and Corbin

Person A is super into Blanebin. They're part of the main cast of characters and canonically childhood best friends, so person A (as much as they enjoy fanart and fic) is also enjoying analyzing how narratively important to each other they are. Recently, Corbin started dating another character in canon, but Person A is enjoying watching how Blane is reacting to this. "Is this potentially a tell that Blane is jealous or is having complicated feelings about this? What if he was, how would that contextualize his behavior this season? Here's what I think based on how Blane dealt with explicit jealousy last season in a different situation". It's not impossible that person A is still missing further understanding due to their obsession with Blanebin, but at the end of the day this obsession has allowed them to start picking through the characters both in and outside this relationship. It has allowed them to see potential subtext and theorize on what might happen next with these characters' relationship. Not to mention that with addition of Corbin dating someone else, instead of trying to erase this fact or state that Corbin canonically isn't into that person, Person A is trying to factor in how Corbin's current dating life affects his relationship with Blane (irregardless on personal views on the nature of Corbin's relationship with the person he's dating).

Person B is also super into Blanebin. They really enjoy fanart and fic of the characters, love obsessing over their moments together, and just feel like there's really something between the characters. To person B, every moment between them is just further proof that the writers are ship teasing them. But Corbin getting together with someone else this season? Oh that pissed person B off. They cannot believe that even though Corbin and Blane are CLEARLY gay for each other the writers had Corbin get with someone else this season. Perhaps, they think, it was even a decision specifically made to spite fans. How evil of the writers to tease a perfectly good ship and then have them not get together first? They must have been just doing those teases to get views from Blanebin shippers those scoundrels. To Person B, since Corbin started dating someone when he obviously has some chemistry with Blane (even though the series is far from over) means that Blanebin can never get together now and Corbin x person he's dating is ruining Blanebin by existing. In fact, they think, this is terrible writing for Corbin to be dating someone else because they don't like that relationship and don't see the point. Obviously if the writers were good then Corbin would have started dating Blane instead because this was supposed to be the Blanebin show.

Person C despises Blanebin. Don't get them wrong, they've always enjoyed the character's childhood friendship, but they actually have always thought Blane would have been better off with Victoria. They have a lot of moments too! But they're tired of seeing people ship Blanebin. Corbin just got together with someone else, so obviously that's not gonna work out. Plus Corbin and Blane totally has always given person C bro vibes. In fact, person C thinks, sure Corbin and Blane have a close friendship, but people shouldn't be shipping them. Person C likes Blanetoria and Blanetoria can't be canon if Corbin is in the way of it. So Person C likes to read Blanebin as siblings anyways. Sure they're canonically friends, but obviously their friendship turned into brotherhood. This means that nothing can be in the way of Blanetoria and Corbin can keep dating the person he's already canonically dating. Actually, now Blanebin just straight up makes Person C uncomfortable. Don't the pesky shippers understand that Blanebin are sibling coded because they're childhood best friends and that they're important to each other because they're brothers? It's obvious to anyone with eyes.

Sure, ships are involved here, but is the root of this problem shipping? Character A isn't as knowledgeable of other characters in the plot due to this lens they're using, but at the end of the day they're dedicated to analysis. Their love of the characters is pushing them beyond what they like or dislike to try to understand what might be happening through their lens. Not perfect, but they are slowly broadening their horizons. But Person B and C's problems here are their restrictiveness. What is or should be canon to them is tantamount to what they personally like or find comfortable. Is person C actually analyzing the this fake show when they decide to "read" Blanebin as basically canonically siblings (and this all of their moments are totally a bro thing) just because they don't like Blanebin and the idea of them getting together over Blanetoria makes them uncomfortable? Is person B actually analyzing this fake show when their "analysis" of Blanebin goes only as far as asserting it's being ship teased and deciding anything short of canonizing Blanebin is a targeted attack or "bad writing" because it's not what they wanted personally to happen?

This is what I'm talking about. This is the mindset. Shipping isn't the problem. The problem is when people marry fanon and canon to the point where they have a vested interest in superimposing their fanon over canon as "a reading" and trying to make "collective decisions" on what is canon (or what canon is trying to say) based on what does or doesn't make them uncomfortable. The problem is people being restrictive and centering their own likes and dislikes in the conversation, so they can only interact with canon "analysis" wise by deciding what is canon or should be canon "as obviously agreed on by everyone". You can't simply claim you like media analysis. To be able to analyze media and bolster your views on any given canon, you must be open to looking at it through multiple povs, to studying characters without trying to pretend things you don't like don't exist or do like do exist. There is a balance that must be kept between trying to keep objectivity and putting on specific focus/bias based upon the lenses you're putting on. You have to be willing to try to figure out what a media is doing or saying, not saying you're trying to figure out what it's saying while in actuality trying to define the narrative around what people believe it's saying in ways that suit you.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[wernerherzogs]

Is it a coincidence that Ryan is interacting with weird Christian/trad wife/men and women are different yet need each other/right wing content as buddie canon is seemingly imminent?

anon genuinely. don't do this to yourself friend. you'll never know what's going on in his life and how he feels about it and whether he's in a good place right now, or a bad one. you can only hope for the best, but you'll never have a say in it, and i'd recommend largely ignoring the celebrities' real lives

[mrbluesummers-moved]

I'm too tired to write the full Essay™, but someone said in the tags that Stampede took away Knives' fear and it made me realize that the core issue I have with Trigun Stampede is the fact that the characters lack the emotional depth of Trigun Maximum. Like, I'm enjoying Stampede, and it's emotional, but Knives and Vash especially have had their emotional complexity watered down in comparison to the manga.

In the manga, they were as much at war with themselves as they were with each other and world around them. Knives was expressive, animated, and always playing up the megalomaniac god complex in public, but in private he was exhausted and scared and even expressed guilt towards his sisters for being careless in how he orchestrated the fall. Vash was an upbeat pacifist who was constantly fighting his own urge to take the "easy" way out and kill to solve problems.

It's what made the manga so heartbreaking. Neither of them were entirely right, but neither of them were entirely wrong. Knives shouldn't try a genocide, but he was also a deeply traumatized child who was shown how cruel humans could be to plants. Vash should try to do as much good in the world as he can, but holding onto the ideals of pacifism in a hostile environment does more harm than good and he learns that when he's finally pushed to the point where he has to choose between killing and saving someone important to him.

I don't think it's impossible for Stampede to recover in Season 2, but the foundations aren't great. Changing Nai to being cold as child seems like such a small change, but Knives starting out as the optimist who loved humanity is so central to that internal conflict... I don't know. Maybe they'll come back to the point of Rem being important to Knives and make use of the fact that he intended for her to survive and that might save it. We'll have to see.

[angelsdean]

the average deancrit post: completely misinterpreting something that happened in canon, ignoring important framing context for the situation, and / or just making something up that didn’t even happen or falling back on fanon characterizations

deangirls: simply pointing out the missing context and / or debunking the misinterpretation

the average “cascrit” or “samcrit” post: literally just people discussing canon plot points and things that happened with the nuanced context that is once again often overlooked in favor of watered down fanon that woobifies and flattens their fave

bitter casgirls and samgirls: is this an ATTACK?!?! 🤨

Like sorry we literally just like talking abt the actual show and the things that happen in it in the context that they happen lol

[deoidesign]

Can you make a tutorial on how you world build and make ocs? I can't seem to make any people in my brain, but then when I try to come up with environments jobs, beliefs and little details to slowly come up with someone, I think: well I don't really know how people have influenced the world- it's a weird loop

To be honest, I don't think I can! Writing is an extremely personal process. The way I write is directly related to how I process things, what I find important in stories, years of my own analysis of my and other's writing, etc... The way you write will be unique to you, as well. But I can explain how I personally think of it.

The short answer:

Write. Write anything and everything, it's a tool to explore your ideas. Analyze your own writing, and write more. Then, as you discover which ideas you want to develop, write more to explore them more. You won't know what you want otherwise!

The long answer:

I think this kind of loop is common. It's easy to feel like everything needs to be done "at once," because our job as writers is to make elements logically fit with each other for our readers. But as you've discovered, developing multiple elements simultaneously isn't really possible, or at least is extremely difficult.

Personally, when I think of writing, I break it into three major elements; characters, world, and plot. As much as possible every scene explores one or more of these, and as much as possible these three things tie back into what I personally consider most important: theme.

Everything I do is in service of the themes I want to present. Without them my events feel aimless. It can take a while to discover them, but they're the core of my work. You will have to discover what you feel is the core of yours. Analyzing other media helps with this too.

Concepts in your brain exist in a state of infinite potential. But when you start writing you have to start making choices, which removes potential as you move forward... But you have to move forward anyways. If there's ideas you want to explore later, you can always explore them later.

What this ends up meaning, to answer your question, is that I don't think of my characters as "people in my brain" or my worlds as something people have influenced... Not at their core, at least. They are tools that I use to represent specific ideas. Obviously they're also my blorbos, but mostly they're serving a specific narrative purpose.

So above all else... Write. Write, and discover what you're writing about, and then start over and write with that in mind. Keep doing this. But you have to write!

[transmascutena]

thinking about how akio sees his younger self in utena and wondering if there's any fondness there. doesn't change the horror of what he does to her obviously but i do wonder

[fuckmeyer]

hot take? but the Twilight fandom needs to stop citing Mormonism for everything that happens in this hell series.

the characters aren't Mormon. the plot isn't Mormon. the wardrobe isn't Mormon. this series was WRITTEN BY a Mormon woman whose religious indoctrination influenced her work. there are themes, plot points, characterizations, etc, that are related to or in line with LDS teachings. saying the book/characters are Mormon is not the same.

the more you label everything in text as Mormon, the less likely you'll be able to identify the actual religious influences

and if you think you are somehow immune to the influence of something you cannot correctly identify, think again

[freebooter4ever]

I always enjoy it when people come up to me while im drawing as long as they're nice about it, and especially kids. And while the last two weeks only seemed to have obnoxious parents (at one point a kid was pointing like 'i want to be able to that!' and their parent replied 'you can't' and i was like ???? Wtf), this week there was a mom and two daughters who were really interested in art and were standing behind me while i sketched for a long while. Neither of the girls could have been much older than 10, and they were super shy, and were asking their mom questions, and i answered one of the questions. And the mom laughed and said 'see, she can hear you, don't be afraid to ask her questions!' and then i turned around and introduced myself a little and explained what i was drawing. And then they just stood and quietly watched me draw for like ten minutes, it was so sweet. 🥹

[snomillions]

another duster thought:

i genuinely think duster wanted to remain in DCMC, and wanted to retain the identity of Lucky.

if i'm remembering correctly, the DCMC is implied to have been brought to the nowhere islands due to porky's time shenanigans. which would mean that, after the end of mother 3, if the world really was reborn, there is no DCMC again. duster cannot leave tazmily to be a lucky bassist again.

it is 3am as i'm writing this and i'm not as eloquent as i would've liked and i would've added more but what gets me is the thought of duster being unable to escape the narrative.

imagine duster being able to break free of the narrative that was forced upon him by adults before he even knew of himself. imagine duster not having to be a thief anymore but instead being a bassist in a jazz band and having the time of his life. one must imagine duster being happy without some grand, overwhelming, identity-suppressing duty being imposed upon him.

or, alternatively, letting duster remain a thief because of his own choice.