#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!

[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 ??

[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.

[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. 🥹

[13eyond13]

I think the moment Light's crush on L first smacked him in the manga (like when it finally rooted and started blooming in his guts) was when L was like "you're my first ever friend" whilst smirking into his teacup. And not because Light fully believed he was being sincere about being friends, but because he KNEW L was slyly teasing him and speaking to him on more than one level at once. Nothing more unexpected funny flattering and intriguing than that for him right then

[wof-reworked]

The way this fandom treats Sunny and Qibli really frustrates me, and I know a lot of the time it's because this fandom (unsurprisingly) skews younger but it really demonstrates to me that people really don't understand what trauma can do and how when people say "traumatized people can act very differently", people don't actually internalize what that means.

[kimbapisnotsushi]

you seem to have a good read on HQ and your takes are great, so i have a question...and if you'd rather not go there, please ignore this! but i see oikawa get called "arrogant" quite often and i'm curious, would you say he is? what is it that makes people think that? imo he has a plenty of flaws, but i truly don't think arrogance is one of them. self-centered, sure, but not arrogant i think. i'm open to being wrong, i'm just legit so confused by that particular criticism, it makes me doubting my reading comprehension. i feel like that one post that's like "free my man, he didn't do that. he did a lot of other stuff tho" LOL. if you do answer this, then thanks for your time!

oh, dear anon. this is a very very big question and i'm honored you think i am capable of providing an answer that does it justice!! i don't consider myself an oikawa expert by far, but i'll do my best because he's still very beloved to me, and i hope whatever i say helps!

(but also - maybe take what i say with a grain of salt LMAO)

anyways, to get the main point out of the way: i completely agree that oikawa isn't arrogant! i actually haven't seen any commentary about that myself (bless!!!), so i can't say for sure why some people might think that, but my guess is that they think his pridefulness = arrogance — they think that the confidence he has in himself and seijoh contributes nothing to their actual power and is utterly meaningless if they don't win, especially in the face of ushijima. which, like, come on. what kind of captain would he be if he wasn't confident in himself and his teammates? is he supposed to tell them that they're going to lose??? is he supposed to discourage their hard work and effort???

or maybe it's because oikawa acts like he's all that, but doesn't have anything to show for it. who does he think he is? what does he think his pride is worth? what right does he have to go around making grand declarations when he has nothing to his name?

(which isn't entirely true, either, but we'll get into that, promise.)

now, do i think that he can, occasionally, be flippant, shallow, and/or petty? yeah, sure. he's got one hell of a personality about it. even iwaizumi says as much. oikawa is great at being a little shit. it's one of my favorite things about him!

but is oikawa genuinely arrogant, or self-centered? well . . . i don't think so.

see, here's the thing about oikawa: he knows he's good, but he doesn't think he's good enough. i think it'd be easiest to really explain what that meant if we broke this down into two separate parts, so let's give it a go, shall we?

(buckle up, friends, because it's about to get LONG. also: TIMESKIP SPOILERS!! and there's a tldr at the start of the tags because. WOW.)

so, first things first: if people are calling oikawa arrogant, then i'm like 99% sure that they don't actually know what the word "arrogant" means.

"arrogant" is used to describe someone full of themselves. it's used to describe someone conceited and pompous. it's used to describe someone so assured of and invested in their self-importance that they don't care for other people, and if it seems like they do, then it's usually wildly off the mark and still serves to inflate their own egos.

oikawa has never once been like that. he's been pretty much the exact opposite, in fact.

and yeah, sure, by his third year of high school, he knows he's good at volleyball, and that's fine! it's perfectly all right to claim you're good at something if you have the skills/experience to back it up. confidence is healthy as long as it isn't in overabundance, and we actually see a lot of this throughout the series!

(not to mention that this was where ushijima fell short. he was overflowing with confidence. he did not believe, for even a single second, that hinata shouyou and his meager, scrappy little flock of crows could beat him.

but oikawa? he knew. he knew what it looked like to make something bloom.)

the key to oikawa's confidence that made him better was that he could pinpoint others' strengths and weaknesses just as well as he could with his own. and (bear with me, please, i might get kind of boring here bc it's nothing that hasn't been said in the manga before) i don't mean it in the way we see the coaches or more analytical players do, as observations to be taken advantage of by everyone else; i mean that in the sense of how vital it is to his position as a setter. that was always the biggest difference between oikawa and kageyama: no matter how much more raw talent kageyama had, no matter how much better oikawa believed him to be, kageyama, especially in the beginning, struggled to do what oikawa could with a team. kageyama struggled to bring out the best in each player. and it wasn't because he didn't know how -- oikawa freely admitted that kageyama had the skill for it, that kageyama, once he got his shit together, could win against him -- it was because kageyama didn't have that same confidence in himself.

(not until much later, anyways. but that's another story, for another time.)

so, oikawa's confident. he knows he's good. he can bring out the best in each player. he's got a killer serve (and a killer smile!), a mind for tactics that borders on machievallianism, and cherishes the trust he is given like it's something precious. his coaches let him lead without leaning on them. his team has the utmost respect and admiration for him. he has a reputation. from karasuno to shiratorizawa to the whole of miyagi -- there is not a single character who knows oikawa tooru and would believe that he is, in any way, bad at volleyball.

but it's not enough. despite all of that, oikawa still doesn't think he's good enough. and that, friends, brings us to the second point.

oikawa tooru is nothing if not passionate.

so were the others, of course. kageyama kept going after his grandfather's death. hinata kept going while being a nobody from nowhere with no one to back him up. atsumu kept going while osamu didn't. it's not even about just those who went pro -- kenma, kuroo, noya, and everyone else found things that they were passionate about and kept going with it. the entire story revolves around loving what you do and trying to keep that love alive, and, sometimes, that can be really, really difficult when it seems like it doesn't love you back.

oikawa was so insecure over kageyama to the point where he nearly decked the poor kid. oikawa got crushed by ushijima-- who kept telling him that his team was not good enough, that his choices were not good enough, that there was nothing good enough to be proud of -- for years in a row. oikawa was taught that there would always be someone better than him no matter how skilled he was, but if he let that stop him then he didn't fucking belong on the court in the first place.

oikawa tooru is intimately acquainted with not being good enough, but he keeps trying to be. he keeps going. he tries to keep the love alive even if he's not loved back. he pushes and practices and takes a plane far from home to become even better. even if he doesn't have the skill, even if he doesn't have the talent, even if he doesn't have the love -- he still has his pride. and what does that mean, in the end? how far does that take him?

in the end, oikawa tooru walks across a world stage and sees people who believed in him on the other side and calls it a family reunion. in the end, he gets to play the volleyball that reminds him of why he loves it and how it gives him so much love back. in the end, his pride is unyielding and unbreakable, a product of the forge. he molded it with his own two hands. he will not let it falter so easily.

arrogance would not have taken oikawa tooru this far. i hope this has proven that he is anything but.

remember: instinct is something you polish. talent is something you make bloom. and never, ever let anyone else tell you what your pride is worth.

[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.

[rolex-kaard]

it's actually so stupid