#but don't go around making creators feel it's cringe when it really isn't

[the-keep-under-gresit]

PLEASE BY ALL MEANS MAKE THEM!!! 🙏🥺 Don't care what anyone says, it's not cringe! It's never been cringe! Heck, the Castlevania series itself has a bunch of canonical OCs (Lenore, Striga, Morana to name a few with no game counterparts). For the most part, canon characters in any narrative are someone's OCs so what's really so bad about fans adding a few extras to the mix? 😁

Not everyone is a fan of them, as likes and dislikes go, but make them, and the right crowd will find you. Some of us crave fellow OC/fan character creator content!

Guys, is making oc content on ao3 (and maybe here) cringe? Not that I care about being cringe, but I fear that, as I've already stated, fandom culture has gone to shit and I won't get a good response.

[genericpuff]

say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.

[astridthevalkyrie]

"Hey there," Armin purrs, cheeky grin on his face as he crawls his way over to where you're lying down.

"Don't hey there me!" you whine, wrapping your fingers around his neck, digging into his nape as you pull him down for a kiss.

He hums into your mouth, and the lovely clean smell of his sweater sweeps your senses as he kisses you once, then again, then again. You're trembling, shivering from the cold, and Armin's lips are warm, even if the rest of him isn't. It's no wonder he's always in one sweater or another, considering he feels like an ice cube most days.

But you don't really mind. His cold is better than your cold, and the goosebumps on his skin that transfer to yours only makes your skin heat up, especially when he detaches himself from your mouth and presses those warm lips straight to your pulse point.

"You're so incredibly annoying," you breathe, biting back the neediness in your tone, "who approved you?"

"Like, in this world?" Armin questions. You nod, and he huffs out a laugh, breath hitting your skin and rippling shivers down your enter back. "Um. Gonna have to ask my parents and the Creator about that."

"'My parents and the Creator," you reply in a crude mockery of his voice. In response, Armin buries his face in your neck entirely and you squeal, driving your knee up to hopefully hit a critical point. He grunts, but his hands find your thighs and he presses you down on the bed, rising up to look at you with an expression too happy for someone who only takes morning classes.

"You're mean today. Why?"

"You have a bullyable face."

"That's actually very traumatizing for you to tell me." He blinks with nothing but sincerity in his eyes. "Since I used to be a bully victim in my childhood."

"In your youth?" A sharp gasp escapes you.

"In my adolescence," Armin half-moans.

"Poor little 'minmin." Placing a hand on his shoulder, you push him back, knocking him down so that he's on his back and you're the one straddling him. "Always the bullee and never the bullyer."

For a second you think he may cringe at the purposefully terrible vocabulary, but he merely grins up at you, cheeky as always. "I think I could be the bullyer in this relationship, since you're always the submissee and never the submisser—"

"Nuh uh! 'Submissee' implies that you are the one being submitted to, so 'submissee' would be the dominant party."

"Wrong," Armin claims right away. You wonder how many times he's been punched in that beautiful face. "If you flip it around, the 'dominer' would be the personal doing the dominating and 'dominee' would be the one being dominated. Similarly—"

"Similarly," you mimic, pushing up imaginary glasses on your cheek. Armin laughs and it makes you laugh, even as he reaches up to press a wet kiss to your lips again.

"Similarly, the 'submisser' is the one doing the submitting. The submisser and dominee are the same person."

With a throw of your hands up in the air to the heavens. you concede. "The dweeb gods deem you worthy, Armin Arlert!"

"Dweeb gods look beautiful from here," Armin murmurs, and you know that dip in his voice is on purpose, you know that he knows that you're going to kiss him for it. And kiss him you do, lazily rolling your hips against his and letting your hands find home on his collar.

Might as well pul the most from this before the nerd goes back to debating with you. And, you know. You'll probably debate back just as hard. Armin always knows what he's getting into, at any rate.

[masquayla-the-splendid]

(Not) small ramble.

This is why I love Tumblr, I can make text posts that aren’t on Twitter.

This whole situation with the Talbert files and the Pinkypills thing made me realize how immature the fnaf fandom has become. Like I thought I felt something change by the time Security Breach came out, but it became glaringly obvious when the Scott Doxx happened a while ago.

As soon as that happened, people were more quick to be angry at Scott's decisions that should not be public in the first place, than at the person who leaked that info "for the lolz." Like okay I understand if you're concerned where your money's going after knowing that, but then that should be the case for all transactions ever.

Then, the "in regards to whether the books are canon or not, yes." And then people got mad at him for not answering directly, or it just went over their heads and now they think the books are canon. Like guys, he's a troll, that's how he always is.

And in 2023, we had all the Fanverse drama, and people getting way too heated over different theories.

The Movie hate I have a theory for.

If you were in the fandom around 2015/2016, you might remember how often fnaf got generalized 'for kids' online, or that a large portion of the fandom were kids, so therefore it was cringe. (This is at cringe culture's peak btw.) Years later, the "fnaf vhs horror" videos introduced a more mature portrayal than the source material. I don't have tiktok, but I imagine clips of these got reposted like crazy. This lead to fans that left a while ago and 'cringe haters' to be like "oOOh what did I miss?👀" They are now in a state of "SEE, FNAF ISNT FOR KIDS, SEE?? SEE???" Cringe denial. Then, when the movie came out, they had their expectations ramped up for a gore fest in a similar style, but failed to realize Fnaf was always campy with little to no gore. This is why the table fort scene is "so controversial." Then, some other people who liked the movie, just not that scene, were coping with, "THEYRE JUST KIDS" or "THEY TRYING TO TRICK ABBY INTO TRUSTING HER." The former is more believable, but you can easily just chalk it up to, "They're entertainer robots. They're built to have fun. The murdery is the twist."

Then VR2 happened, which like a bottle of soda pop, went flat really fast. We were still doing things in VR1 longer when that came out.

And now we're at our second drought. The first one was in 2017 before fnaf 6. And again, people are throwing a fit about Scott "defending" pinkypills, and not at the person pretending to be Scott. It's not as bad as the first time, but it's notable. Which by the way, the way he handles these types of situations is very serious and mature from any other content creator. However, I feel like he just doesn't know where to draw the "okay what in tarnation??" line, because he fired the other artist for doing the same things.

Overall, the fandom has become really whiney about every little thing recently. I think it's because from 2014-2016, we were very centered with fan-creativity, and now, since there is too much content to digest at once for newcomers, we have become very centered with theories and lil blues clues. It also doesn't help that there isn't any new content to dwell on, so we're all stuck with eachother.

Twice in Dawkos interview, Scott says something along the lines of no matter the lore, all he cares about is that is characters are enjoyed.

[monstersinthecosmos]

Do you think the show really will be cancelled? And do you think the awful part of the fandom that sprung up from it will go away anytime soon if it does?

tbh I really don't know enough about the show to have an opinion on that. I'm not really interested in hate-watching or lurking in fandoms that I don't belong to LOL so I'm not really on the inside of any gossip about how it's looking behind the scenes and I don't really want to speculate because I know I don't have all the information. I think this question is for people who are more invested or have more industry knowledge than I do!

As far as the "awful" part, if you mean fandom casual normies who travel from fandom to fandom like locusts to harass people until all the creators give up: Yes, they will move on. I think sometimes in fandoms you get like, casual normies who discover there's a subculture of nerds they can harass, and they do that for a couple years until it either gets boring or their personality grows enough to have more productive passions, and there's also fandom lifers who actually like, care about their thing (probably in a ND fashion tbh) and are usually the ones who stick around and make all the content that everyone else wants to consume.

The casual normies also just tend to have such underdeveloped senses of self that they join tumblr bc it's the thing to do, and pick a fandom because it's a thing to do, and they spend their whole time fandoming in such a deep state of denial that this might be a real hobby and there might be real people participating that they just neg everybody and shit on it the whole time for being cringe without realizing that they're here too lol. Like the amount of times a bully has tried to shame someone for being too passionate, and used "it's not that deep" as a conversation stopper, etc. These folks will move on because they're here because they're bored, not because they actually are POSSESSSED by the THING. (and hey, if you joined a fandom because you're bored THAT'S GREAT that's how we all got here in the first place, but don't shit on the carpet lol please be respectful to the space you just intruded upon!)

So a show going off the air isn't going to deter the people who actually love it. I mean, my other fandom is Sheith and that show was A. Terrible, B. Over in 2018, and the fandom is still going strong because a lot of people genuinely love the characters. I'd even say the same of VC book fandom, especially considering how much of the fandom falls off after the trilogy, and that ended like, 30 years ago LOL.

The thing about fandoms is that they're self-generating, right? And if you're one of the deep fandom nerd lifers you'll learn this if you haven't yet. Even AMC fandom; S1 ended a year ago and fandom is going strong. Part of it is the hope and hobby of watching news drip out - SURE! But it's also the fanart and fics and meta and conversation. The season is what, like, 7 hours long? And I'm SURE that the deep nerd lifers have spent way way way way way more hours than that reading fanfiction by now. And fanfics can really supplement a canon and give people ideas and deepen their love of the source. So I'm positive that there are people out there who have been moved to tears by fic and feel so strongly about THOSE stories, as well, and it just deepens their love of the show when they return to rewatch.

From 2016-2018 I exclusively read Yuri on Ice fic and there was only one season. And that season is even shorter! It's like 4.5 hours of canon! But when I think about YOI I am thinking about like multitude of NOVELS I've read about it, not JUST the 4.5 hours of canon, right?

All fandoms are like this. Fanworks are the lifeblood. And even with book fandom's lack of fic, I still feel that the friends I've made are the experience here, and how we can chatter all day & night about Armand forever and never get tired of it because we're all ND weirdos lol. I mean my Armand friends and I just spent a week in New Orleans together, it was the best! And as a fanfic writer, I will ALWAYS want to dedicate my free time to writing stories and talking about the blorbos, and I share those stories because fandom is self-generating and I want to do my part in keeping it alive. People create stuff and make friends and stick around well past the death of canon because they are POSSESSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I hope that one day when the show is finished that the bad actors get bored and move on and the creators and true fans stick around and keep making stuff, because bullying people and being a cunt uses up a LOT of energy that could be better spent on productive and creative hobbies when they're ready to heal themselves and grow up. It's just not sustainable! :)

[windandwater]

I know various people have talked about how insular people around here are but like. we need to actually incorporate this fact into our behavior, and change it. and what I mean by this is. people who aren't online all the time have an extremely different perspective on almost everything we take for granted here.

like. my parents watched Sherlock. they enjoyed it a lot and my mom still makes jokes related to it without any irony or self-loathing. to them it was just. a fun detective show, a modern take on an old story. watch once and move on with life. she and my dad didn't spend several years knee-deep in navel-gazing meta that ruined it for everyone so now they can't talk about it without feeling like everyone's going to judge them for ever liking it in the first place.

partially this is a function of a lot of people here being teens & kids when it came out, but we (my parents & me) were adults. I was having a good time in fandom and look back on the 2010s pretty fondly while a lot of people here are still going through the process of hating their past selves, and you tend to project that onto the things you used to like. I did that too. and then I came around to forgiving & loving my past selves--all of them--which is why I have no problem admitting to all the things I loved in the early 90s & early 2000s but would have had a hard time admitting to 15 years ago.

but it's not just that. the weird refusal to pretend certain things never happened--Harry Potter. a smaller example, Firefly. etcetera. people think if you even mention HP at all you're automatically terf? like...if you go into the outside world, I'm sorry, but JKR's shit beliefs are not common knowledge. and like it or not that book kinda changed the world. and not all for the worse.

(I will NOT go off here on why Joss Whedon seems to get a pass for Buffy & Avengers but someone mentioned a bad thing about Firefly and now we can't talk about it at all--not to mention that it's apparently still okay for him to actively profit off of his work--but. that's off topic.)

(for the record my views are thus: neither of these creators should get any more money or attention as creators, but we shouldn't pretend that the stuff they made had zero effect on us as a culture or as individuals.)

this isn't really about any of these pieces of media specifically, it's more like. this weird insular culture that believes certain things are common knowledge and therefore if you ever talk about them except for in the Approved ways, You're Bad. it's not healthy here and it's not healthy if you ever plan to have a conversation with any living human.

I'm tired of like. if you post a gif of the wrong show you're cringe. if you reference a the wrong book you hate queer people. if you quote the wrong show you're racist. no matter what the actual gif or quote or reference is. it's not like that outside the internet and on the internet it feels like walking on very stupid eggshells.

I know how we got here but it's dumb. the past happened. it wasn't always perfect but we were still part of it. if we erase it we'll never learn from it but we'll also never get comfy with good the ways it shaped us.

we're so busy molding ourselves into a perfect future that we don't realize that the imperfect past got us here in the first place. let it exist. in all the ways it was.

[hot-take-tournament]

HOT TAKE TOURNAMENT!

PRELIMINARY #242

Submission 51

Balloon Boy is a good character and does not deserve hate.

I would like to be very vulnerable despite my anonymity and put forward a letter of sorts I wrote to the FNAF community when I was around 13-14 years old and even less medicated than I am now. I never posted this letter anywhere and it has sat in an old kids' PDF book creator app on my iPad for almost ten years. It's cringe. It's dumb. I was frustrated with a community I was hardly a part of. But even today I still don't think Balloon Boy is as terrible as the fandom made (and still makes) him out to be. Maybe I'm just more resistant to repetitive sounds, I dunno. He was a major comfort character for me, for whatever reason, so I must confess my continued bias. The following is that weird manifesto I wrote in a "fit of annoyance."

And I quote,

"A message to all Balloon Boy haters: We're the ones that know true sympathy. Of course, there ARE the ones who are truly evil, but then there are the ones that did not realize their wrong until it was too late. You, my fellow FNAF lovers, still have much to learn... Sure, you can say that you are not fond of a certain object, place or person, a noun, but that does not mean that you must tell the world in great detail. Saying it once or twice, okay, now the ones you've told know you don't like who, what or where. But if you keep bringing it up, that can lead to loneliness. Abandonment even. We all have our differences. This is true, and I respect all of that. But just because there's a divide doesn't necessarily make us different. We all have opinions. But just because it's your opinion doesn't make it a universal fact. Respect the other peoples opinions. 'WHAT???!! How can you like that??!!!' Try not to ask questions like that with so much intensity. A simple 'Why?' can suffice. Don't go into detail. Once you learn the reasons of the opinion, then maybe you can understand our sympathy.

It's not just because he's 'cute' or whatever. Think of if he had feelings. Sure, you can say 'But he's just a fictional character! Stop sympathizing!' but that would rule out your opinion too. By saying we cannot sympathize because he is not a real person, you basically have to cancel out any emotion directed toward him except neutrality BECAUSE YOU JUST SAID HE IS FICTIONAL. If he is truly fictional, then we cannot have any type of feelings whatsoever towards him, whether love or hate. Everyone has their faults. Just because someone is annoying does not mean they are evil and the devil. Being annoying isn't really evil. Think if he was the actual one to kill you. Sure, they could be intentionally annoying just to irritate someone, and do it a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are evil. I respect everyone's opinion, and I am not aiming to convert everyone to respecting BB, but at least give him some credit. He does his job, doesn't he? If you hate him, alright, that's fine, but it's not very courteous or friendly to make a big deal of it and shun us BB lovers. Your opinions are opinions, not facts. I will admit, BB can be annoying, but at least feel sympathy a little and respect everyone's different opinion. Also, just because I view stuff where BB is considered 'part of the illuminati' or 'the enragement child' doesn't mean I'm a BB hater myself. I take those remarks as JOKES. Even if I'm wrong, I make it seem to myself that those people aren't hating Balloon Boy, they just found aspects of him to fit into certain jokes that would be considered humorous.

Thank you."

Obviously I was incredibly dramatic. I was waxing poetic to hundreds of thousands of people who would never read my words. I don't think it would have changed anything in the fandom and I probably would have been kys'd off the internet, so it's probably good I didn't post it anywhere. I didn't even have any proper social media past Google+ at the time anyway. Do I still agree with my younger self? For the most part, yeah! Their wording left something to be desired, obviously. I don't think "We're the ones that know true sympathy," is all that impactful even if it sounds fancy. It's just fandom drama, younger me. I wasn't wrong, though! The hate towards Balloon Boy due to his game mechanic and annoying laugh was incredibly blown out of proportion. In FNAF fandom culture at the time he was almost only ever characterized as The Worst Child Ever(tm) and bullied to all hell even though his characterization was next to none...just like every other animatronic, really. Maybe that's just a general fandom problem, but I digress. He could have still been the annoying kid without becoming the antichrist or whatever.

Balloon Boy is a cute little kid who happens to be a troublemaker, basically. That's all he is. Maybe calm down and lessen up on animating Freddy smashing this poor kid's head into the wall in SFM, I dunno.

Sorry it took so long for me to post this. I know it takes guts to be vulnerable on the internet, even anonymously <3

Propaganda is always encouraged!

And remember to reblog your favourite polls for exposure!

[iamanartichoke]

I posted this as a comment on a Reddit thread earlier thread but decided to delete it and make a post bc it's tl;dr for a comment. Then it became tl;dr for a Reddit post, too, so I'm bringing it to my tumblr. Disclaimer that these are just my thoughts as a fan and an observer re: Watcher's shift to streaming.

So I've long thought that YouTube isn't the right platform for Watcher, bc their biggest problem is that they don't function the way that "modern" YouTube requires. Back in the day, it was easier to turn a profit on YouTube but these days, to be successful, you have to utilize the tools YouTube gives you to make money, which are channel memberships, livestreams, and sponsored ads. Watcher doesn't do any of those things which hurts them as those are huge opportunities for revenue that are just being ignored. Their video game series is perfect content to be held via livestream, for example; so are the debriefs. Even if they did a monthly livestream with Superchats and memberships, they'd rake in so much money. I don't know why they don't.

But on top of that, Watcher doesn't work with The Algorithm, which - I don't like The Algorithm, but it's a fact that content creators have to lean into it in order to build their audience. YouTubers who are successful now not only do the memberships et al. but they also upload consistently, usually once or twice a week. Videos come out pretty quickly after they're filmed, and they're usually centered around a specific thing. The variety of Watcher is a big draw bc it pulls in a lot of people who are there for different things, but it works against them too, bc they only post weekly when they're in an active season of a show, and so the audience that only tunes in for 8 weeks of Mystery Files, for example, may not visit the channel again for another year or six months whenever the next season comes out. It's hard to keep a consistent audience to provide the numbers needed when the content appeals to all kinds of people and their model of "seasons" that are shot in advance and go through a long post-production process works against them.

So I can see why they want to move away from YouTube. They don't want to be just another cookie-cutter channel, and I feel like they especially want to distance themselves from the oversaturated (and frankly cringe) YouTube ghost-hunting genre that's exploded recently (Ryan keeps throwing shade at probably Sam and Colby, plus while I enjoyed the last season of GF, I also found it uncomfortable to watch at times bc Shane's disdain for all of it was just hard to sit through, for me; it wasn't fun). But they don't seem to realize that, in creating their niche, they've really painted themselves into a corner where their content doesn't work anywhere but YouTube.

So instead of trying to launch a whole new streaming service, they need to be willing to change up their model to make it more adaptable to YouTube. A more flexible "upload model" - with memberships, livestreams, and ad sponsors - would give them the revenue they're looking for, but that would also require them to dial back the production value and lose some employees, and their unwillingness to do that is what's going to ultimately make them fail. And it's weird bc their audience doesn't even care about production value! GF would be a lot better if they changed up the format and didn't bring 10 people on location, so it's like - clearly they're the ones who want the better production value, not us. It's not for us but they want us to pay for it? Bruh???

I feel like it's really such a shame, and as much as I love Watcher, I don't want to pay for another streaming service and I'm so goddamn sick of paywalls on literally the entire internet that I just cannot. I'm tired of not being able to use a website or even browse without having to make an account, I'm tired of having to make an account and then only being able to use one or two features if I don't also pay, or getting slammed by ads that essentially make the website unusable bc there's ads all over it, I'm tired of websites that pop up with that godawful "you're using an adblocker, please disable to proceed to our website!" message. I'm tired of things being locked up and inaccessible and while I understand that people should be paid for their work, there are ways Watcher can make money and get paid that don't involve trying to hustle their audience to pay for a streaming service to access like 12 episodes of content a year. Just ugh.

[drowninginredink]

If ur not up for your blog to become a discussion hub you can delete this ask but notthatalex' analogy of "but for some reason, people are really scared to roast you, excluding you entirely from that dynamic" I don't think quite makes sense. Within a friend group there Will be healthy boundaries. So therefore there should be some too when we joke to an audience. People roast and joke their friends because they know each other, have given the ok and know they dont hold ill will - if that isn't the case there's a clear problem that should be ideally addressed! Comedians like the ones in Smosh have a platform which I think is ok to demand it to be used responsibly. There's a difference in making a joke where the punchline is "get it ? it's a gay guy, that's funny on its own" and making a joke that happens to include gay guys/their experience for example. Also as much as we want them to, jokes can't exist in a political void. It's already been well documented that memes, jokes, comedy can be absolutely used as a propaganda tool and that some "jokes" are actually meant to represent the creator's political stance. A good example from not too long ago is Sacha Baron Cohen who lately appeared in the news for his Zionist beliefs, while he's built his career around making fun of "arabs" that people have been giving him the benefit of the doubt for for years saying it's "satire".

I mean my intention was never to be a discussion hub, but only because I never expected anyone to care enough about what I have to say to send me asks. So sure, let's do this!

But yeah, I would say I'm a bit more in favor of restricting comedians than Alex, but I think what you're saying is kind of misreading him. He made it pretty clear that there are good jokes and bad jokes you can make about anything. And my biggest opinion is, aside from the fact that yes, "I'm a gay guy and that's funny on its own" is problematic... It's also not funny. If you ask me, the biggest thing that makes something funny is surprise. And bigoted jokes are hacky. They're not creative. "Haha this group is bad/weird" is a thing we've all heard before. It's not unfunny when my family makes a joke about Chinese people eating dogs because it's racist, even though it very much is, it's unfunny because I've heard that joke a million times.

But I think the friendship example is actually perfect because roasting a friend requires knowledge of said friend beyond hacky stereotypes, so it's going to have to go beyond easy bigoted jokes. Again, I do agree with Alex in the sense that you can joke about anything, but you've got to do it well. And again, bigoted jokes just aren't funny. They're all overplayed. The only reason people find them funny is because they agree with them.

And yeah, it does suck to be the person in the friendgroup who feels like they're being treated with kid gloves. It's all about knowing people's lines. I know seeing the TNTL roasts of Angela made me so uncomfortable at first because I basically am Angela and the particular points they were hitting are things I'm super sensitive about. So if I were her, I would have felt like absolute shit. And then I saw her say how much that made her happy because she felt seen, and how it meant so much to her. And that's made me actually really embrace that view of it and encourage my friends to roast me like that. Because you know what? This is who I am, and I do want you all to see me in my cringe glory. Because being cringe is a good thing. So like, to me, that's what Alex is saying. You've got to know the lines, but imagine how it'd look if they never went after Angela.

Also I don't exactly keep up with Cohen, but I have seen... Whatever the name of that movie was over my brother's shoulder and needless to say, it was a yikes and I don't know how we let anyone who made it say he was at all progressive. I mean, to be fair, of course it was a yikes. If my dad likes a thing, that's always a red flag.

[manonamora-if]

I love that the itch.io IF game community has grown immensely and has created mobile templates to make development easier. HOWEVER, as a mobile UX designer, I hate the mobile design of almost every single game I've played because the user experience is terrible. Interactive elements are generally too small and difficult to target with a touch screen, features are arranged non-intuitively, icons are not explained in a user friendly way, font sizes are too small, etc etc. So many of the choices I see are artistic ones and have been made for aesthetic purposes. I hate to be the one to rain on a parade, especially because I love the games I've played, but sometimes the experience makes it so difficult to enjoy the story being told. Since I'm not a beta tester, it feels like it's not my place to bring this up to devs since I feel that it is unsolicited criticism. Tl;Dr: IF games are amazing. Please find someone who designs UX for mobile apps/games to make the experience even better. Thanks for letting me confess in your ask box, gl with your writing!

Thank you for confessing Anon,

Since you are someone who designs mobile UX, it's def normal to be more sensitive when it comes to play mobile version of IF. I am sure editors who read IF must cringe a lot reading our unedited stuff, or UI designers for desktop must cry about how our page looks.

Accessibility is tricky. It requires knowledge about what could need accessibility (colours, font, placement of things, etc...) and about how to implement it (code). Having the knowledge of one still need the knowledge of the second for it to work. I think the strive for more accessibility is quite recent in the IF (Tumblr) space, especially with Twine games. With more code/information being shared, though templates and tutorials, it's been a bit easier to think of this and have more people implement it. Still, it involves a lot of learning (on top of learning the IF program), which for a lot of hobbyist creators is not always available, or funds if you want to go the hire a designer route, which same. I think believe, while it could be better, we are slowly getting there.

I guess there is still a collaboration route, but that requires time/communication/willingness to share projects...

And honestly, there isn't as much useful information out there to create good UI, especially mobile version, that would work with IF programs. And, as much as I like to splash around in the puddle (it makes sense in French), I really wish there were more tutorials for mobile creation. Every system/format has their own tweaks, which makes some things incompatible or needing more specific knowledge.

For example: Twine/SugarCube has a built-in UI, which includes a decent-ish mobile UX, but if you want to change things, you need to learn to work around the built-in CSS; a lot of which is not compatible with Twine/Harlowe. So if you find code for Harlowe, it probably won't work for SugarCube.

Even with the templates, you need to know how it works to be able to edit it.

Though... It does seem you would be open to help us creators get better and help readers have nicer experience overall. I guess here are some ways you could do that to avoid ruffling feathers (or rain on the parade) :P

Participating in beta

Reaching out to creators and see if they want pointers (i.e. not just a list of what is wrong, but maybe solutions?)

Creating UX templates that is mobile compatible*

Creating tutorials focusing on UX and what to keep in mind for mobile viewing (like a do/don't do)*

*would probably need to make sure those are compatible with IF programs. but damn those would so useful

Also not every IF have to be mobile compatible. TTTT def can't.

~~~~~~~~

SEND ME YOUR CONFESSIONS ! RELIEVE YOUR SOUL!

Thank you for the luck :)

[anxietycheesecake]

Gay sex jokes can be funny, tasteful and valid rep. But when it's all a show really delivers, there's definitely teasing of the only potential mlm couple (that nobody forced them to put in there; people shipping something they know is just a fun dynamic that won't go anywhere isn't that) and then going all "oh, but it's deeper than sexual™" and "I don't know if we're teasing it" is definitely... queerbait adjacent.

There are homophobes who are super comfortable watching this show to this day. They have an homophobic explanation for every single joke or hint we've enjoyed. It doesn't make it an homophobic show, of fucking course not, but it hasn't alienated the homophobic audience as much as you think. It probably will happen in season 4, but not yet.

Baiting the only mlm relationship when the only rep as for today are casual jokes is queerbait-adjacent. Going on unrelated weirdly sexual tangents when asked genuine questions about something even the press has read as text should leave a taste in your mouth, especially when compared to stuff that's been said before season 3 was a thing (and I'm willing to bet they're barely aware asexuality/demisexuality is a thing, if they've heard of it at all, so don't come for me). This doesn't feel like a "wait and see" type of answer, but ok, let's wait and see.

And if by the end of the show nandermo goes fully unaddressed (NOT CANON; the bar is as low as ADDRESSING it, I'll be ok with however it goes from there), I'm sorry, but I won't be as uwu about it as you are being.

I'm glad you feel seen and validated and like you're getting the rep you want, but when you consider how little risks the network is truly taking by doing stuff this way and how they'll definitely keep doing it in the future if they can get away with it... I mean, it's kind of insulting? I wouldn't give it a pass. I think it 100% would set a very unfortunate precedent.

(I know people are going to say "oh, but there's a lesbian couple in this other show, they're super ok with that". Cool. I promise you a board of guys with ties sat around a table to study every possible ramification of putting those lesbians in that drama or whatever. But you know what I want? More sitcoms with wild concepts and queer relationships. More sitcoms with queer relationships in general. If they can get away with baiting the only gay ship and still get praised for queer rep for jokes about how horny everybody is, expect most shows to handle it exactly like that. One is ok, sure, but there will be more and it'll get boring very quickly.)

I can't believe I have to say this, but don't fucking harrass the creators. Express your negativity about a product you consumed in general terms like a normal person and act in consequence.

Anyway, I love this show and where it's heading, not so much how it's being handled in the month and year of our lord June, 2022. Hope to come back and cringe at this someday lmao

[5uptic]

here from ur main. why don’t you like him today? 👀

i'm putting a keep reading on this one because this is the most negative i will get about 5up here, just as a way to express myself about how my perception of him has evolved from the last time i touched the subject. i also don't think i'll come around so probably this is also the last time i'll talk about this, at least as candidly as i plan on doing lol. and i do want to make it clear that this is no form of "cancellation", that this isn't me urging 5up to change or do anything, or to say that i will come back once x or y things change. this is just a matter of personal taste and just my opinion on the guy, which comes down only to my likes and dislikes.

but yeah, the wording of my tag post is that yesterday i just fully accepted that i don't like 5up. it was just a buildup of a lot of things... i have my gripes with every streamer i watch, because of course i'm not gonna like every aspect about their online personality and presentation - no one is meant to, that's just how humans work. so i did genuinely love 5up for a long time, while things about him and his community did bother me, because i enjoyed a lot of things on his streams and i had a lot of nice things to say about him. it's just that i no longer see those things that i used to like that much, or it's a case of the bad things outweighing the good ones.

of course there's the case of 5up's ego which is easily my biggest problem. i like other streamers who have a bit of an ego, like punz for example, but there are many instances where punz either accepts he's not performing so well, chat doesn't take him seriously and he plays along the teasing, or actually does something to back it up. and when it came to watching 5up the instances where we could make fun of him became few and far between. just something very memeable, like the whole colors thing, ends up being annoying just because he refuses to let go of the idea of superiority around something that 70% other people in the world experience too. and that's just one example: if you are familiar with 5up's streams, you can name a lot of other things 5up is overconfident about. and if you are familiar with 5up you are aware of the way he deals with those situations and can understand why someone might feel annoyed at the constant ego showcase.

personally, there are a lot of guys around my life who have an ego problem and mansplain me and shit, but in that case i'm able to stand my ground and tease them about it or call them out. but it's just an impossible thing to do with 5up because well, he's not my friend very obviously lol, so that just leaves me feeling powerless and annoyed on the other side of the streamer/chatter interaction.

this is also a big problem when 5up has pretty much branded himself around the idea of being great at every game. of course i don't deny his skill in lots of games he plays, but as someone who is into dbd content creators, the constant gloating when he was playing the game feels unwarranted because he's an average survivor at best, and relies heavily on good perks and killers on the other side of the 1v4. i really loved to see the og core 4 playing dbd because of the interactions and dynamics of 2 of them being complete noobs at the game, but the need to feed 5up's ego when he looped novice killers was so unnecessary and it made me cringe a lot. the phrase "breaking their ankles" is forever tainted because of it. this is just another case of 5up performing averagely and having an ego around it despite so many people being able to do what he does. and also the claims of "i could eaaaasily be rank 1 if i tried hard enough", the overconfidence and lack of self awareness is a big eye-roller. same thing with mcc: again, i don't deny 5up has skill and experience to back up some of his claims, but the overconfidence that he can bring his team to victory every time is annoying when he never does vod reviews or practices on the server. i remember when pogchamps was happening and 5up was going to be in mcc that same week, people were complaining that he never practiced and i was like "how do expect him to do it when he's competing in a chess tournament atm?". but then it turned out he barely did any chess practice outside of his streams with anna, and i had nothing to defend him with. and i know i can't feel crazy about this, because everyone is laughing at 5up's question of "what games does sapnap beat me in?" and just his lack of self-awareness when it comes to his perception of himself.

another criticism that i never voiced before is his inability to commit to let's plays or certain games. you know, stuff like it takes two, resident evil 8, deltarune chapter two, no umbrellas allowed (which was also the last time i genuinely enjoyed watching his stream) that so many people were able to coordinate and play across multiple streams, he just won't do it. if he didn't play "little nightmares" in one stream, i have a feeling he would've never finished it. the fact that he was so spread about his schedule annoyed me because i wanted to see 5up finish certain games, only for him to complete drop it the next stream and then claim that he wouldn't be continuing the game days or weeks later. again, not something i would fault him for, because who knows if there's a real reason why he does it, but it feels baity and i couldn't even get excited about 5up playing certain games because if i got too attached, he could just drop it immediately and forget that it exists.

there's also what i noticed yesterday, although i can't really have the novelty of saying that it's something that only i know. when people were messaging me when i first talked about how i didn't like 5up anymore, i got asks talking about his lackluster interactions when he's on calls with other streamers, and after yesterday's crab game lobby i have to agree. there was such a novelty in seeing so many people interact with each other, mcyts with otv and the crewfu, etc. punz hiding with scarra, steve and celine agreeing that costco chicken is top tier... but every time it was 5up interacting with others, it just felt stilted and awkward, and he just repeats things back and doesn't add anything to the conversation. back then i did pick up on this, although not as explicitly as now, and i didn't love streams where the catch would be 5up and co playing a new game and interacting. but yesterday i was finally able to catch it and that's what made me officially admit that i straight up don't like him.

sigh. it's sad. i'm still somewhat fond of him, and it's a very weird thing i've never experienced with other content creator. part of me wants to be able to like him and let that be the end of it, but i genuinely tried it. in the past months i sometimes watched his streams, no volume and no chat, just to try and have that bond again, but as soon as i turned on the volume he would say something that would make me roll my eyes. it's hopeless and i'm sad that it is, because i do love every other member of the crewfu and i like so many people in the streamer circle around 5up. it feels wrong for him to be the one exception when he was the one that brought me in.

well, all that said, i'll never be antagonistic to 5up on this blog so you won't have to worry about it. it's a me thing so i'll keep it to myself (maybe occasionally vent on my main if i feel like it). but i'll still post as i've been doing it lately and remain active in the community, so if that's what you're worried about, well then, no changes will be made to my blogging in these last few months :)

[proship-bill]

I've seen like two or three youtube videos and one tumblr post at this point about indie horror games with childlike themes or settings becoming popular with kids and the opinion of all of them seems to be that it's a bad thing for some reason?

The most notable example is probably FNAF, and one of the things I've heard people say is that they believe FNAF and games like it are designed around themes which are appealing to kids in order to deliberately but not overtly market to them, which I think is really just not the case for FNAF. FNAF blew up in a way that pretty much nobody expected and I would say that the first few games weren't at all made for anyone under like twelve years old. After it gained as much traction as it did I imagine that all the devs making those bizarre knockoff app games on the google play store just saw dollar signs and they were definitely the ones to deliberately market to children but that isn't specifically the fault of Scott Cawthon or anything.

Other popular examples are BATIM, Poppy Playtime, and Hello Neighbor. I think pretty much the only example that really seems to fit what these people are saying is Poppy Playtime because FNAF, BATIM and Hello Neighbor all at least started off as games with an older demographic. Maybe some of them did pivot to a younger demographic when the creators realized that was the audience they had attracted, but I don't think it's something that's really all that concerning. Kids have been interested in horror since before these games existed. Back in like 2012 or whatever there were whole battalions of pre-teen kids obsessed with Slenderman, and the concept of Sirenhead had a similar impact fairly recently. It isn't just the horror with childlike themes or settings, it's that horror is just? A genre enjoyed by many people of many ages?

And it should go without saying but like. Nobody is being forced to play these games with a gun to their head. It's okay to not enjoy them personally, but I feel like this whole little outcry about the icky evil indie games is just cringe culture with extra steps. Like "oh ew the children are enjoying things I don't happen to like, isn't that embarrassing??? but I can't just say that outright or I'll look like an asshole so I'll make it like a moral panic sort of thing so it seems like I'm actually a good samaritan!"

What's more is the insinuation that horror stories should never utilize themes or settings that evoke childhood even though horror has been doing that since forever. Child's Play is a prime example. I really fail to see what the fucking issue is and why so many people have the need to shoot down these things.

Although I guess to be fair, Poppy Playtime, FNAF and Hello Neighbor all have been a tad disappointing, but I don't think that means that nobody should be allowed to enjoy them. It just means you should pirate games from developers with bigotry in their track records. It also means definitely test your games thoroughly for bugs before you release them and maybe don't start showing your game off too much before it's all done, but that's less relevant.

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

Hi! I know this may sound like a weird ask, but as a bisexual f in a relationship with a m I found myself struggling to find good representation (in fanfics and medias) of bisexual people in m/f relationships. Specially in fanfics I always find the trope of the bisexual person cheating on their opposite gender partner to f*ck with someone of the same gender ""because they're bisexual"" and ""It's hot"". It kinda bothers me how many people find it hot to have the bisexual character being a cheater just to have some ""forbidden"" m/m or f/f smut, and the line between "bisexual representation" and "harmful trope of the bisexual cheater" gets very blurry, to the point where I have to pray that the bi character won't be written as a cheater each time I come across one. I literally saw people (mostly cishets) who encouraged cheating "because the character is bisexual" and while I understand some fellow irl bi folks still in the closet may struggle to find same sex relationships and would have to hide, I'm still here trying to tell my partner that no, I'm not going to cheat on him with a girl "because bisexuals cheat", and cringing at how so many authors use bisexuality as a way to jerk off on cheating tropes.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any example of good bisexual representation in m/f couples? Thanks 😔💕

I understand where you're coming from. It really is annoying and hurtful that these stereotypes keep being repoduced - by media and then as well by people in real life who are likely influenced by said media. The thing that annoys me most about is it that bisexuality is used as the explanation for why someone cheats, rather than it just being separate from it. Because yeah, some bi people cheat. But so do some people of any other sexual orientation as well bc what makes someone a cheater is that they're a cheater, not what gender(s) they are attracted to.

I'm much more concerned though that your partner seems to be suspicious and you say you have to keep telling him you're not going to cheat on him. Doesn't matter where he picked up that prejudice - it's hurtful to you nonetheless that he doesn't trust you and thinks that you being bi is cause for distrust. I can only hope that he learns how hurtful and unfair this is to you. I found that this kind of misconception about bisexuals also comes from the idea that we can never be happy with one gender because we would always "miss the other". But once people unpacked that they'd realise how ridiculous it is. Like... I love men with curly hair but I'm not gonna cheat on my straight-haired boyfriend because I miss curls, am I? And the idea that one gender could "give me something" that another gender couldn't? Isn't that pretty gender essentialist? I cannot think of anything that I desire that a man could fulfill but a woman couldn't, or something a woman could bring to the table that a non-binary person couldn't....

I feel like my thoughts here are all over the place. Essentially what I wanna say is that I understand your frustration with these narratives. Unfortunately I cannot really recommend you any "good representation" (whatever that means, I have my problems with that concept as well bc it's always dangerously close to purity culture). Maybe all of the above is actually a reason for it or maybe I'm just not that interested in it but either way: I barely ever care about "representation" in media. I mean, I might enjoy it when it's there and well done (and I might hate it if it's not) but I don't search for it. And if I do find myself excited for an m/f ship then I also don't really care what their sexuality is. Though I might, if not explicitly stated otherwise, just headcanon one or both of them as bi anyway. But since the kind of media that I am interested in usually doesn't revolve around either queer narratives or romance, it's hardly ever the focus of the things I read/watch. I just make the things queer that I like, whether the creators intended it or not. So maybe one advice I can give you is to steer away a little from trying to find explicitly bi m/f depictions in media and just consume the stuff that interests you and interprete the characters whichever way you like.

Maddie

[girl4music]

BUFFY REWATCH - S06E12 - Doublemeat Palace

*Cut to Willow's bedroom. Willow lies on her stomach on the bed, marking a book with a yellow highlighter. The door is open. We hear knocking*

WILLOW: “Come in.”

*Amy appears in the doorway*

AMY: “It's me. Dawn said I could come up.

*Willow looks surprised. Amy comes into the room*

So, is she pissed at you too, or just at me?

*Willow doesn't reply*

What did you tell her about me?”

*Willow stops highlighting, takes a few deep breaths before looking up at Amy*

WILLOW: *Do you want something?

*Fidgeting nervously with her pen*

AMY: “Um... yeah... actually. I mean, I, I don't, don't know if you wanted to keep it, or...”

*Amy looks to her left. Shot of the cage she lived in when she was a rat*

WILLOW: “You want it? Really?”

AMY: “Well, yeah, you know, I mean... it's not much, but it's home. Or it was. I don't know, I guess it's stupid, but...”

WILLOW: “No, i-it's not stupid. You can have it, of course.”

*Amy pauses, then sits down on the bed beside Willow*

AMY: “Hey. So I hear you got this whole cold-turkey thing going on.

*Willow nods*

How's that going?”

WILLOW: “It's good. It's really good. I mean, i-it was hard at first... frustrating... doing everything the slow way. It was like, 'is everything gonna take forever, forever?'”

AMY:

*Sympathetically*

“Yeah.”

WILLOW:

*Still fiddling with her pen*

“But, uh, it's better now. I'm... getting my focus back.”

AMY: “Mm. I can see that.”

*Amy indicates Willow's book. We see that Willow has highlighted all the text on the entire page*

WILLOW:

*Defensively*

“It's a pivotal page.”

*Sits up, closes book*

AMY: “So this is it, huh? This is... gonna be your life from now on?”

WILLOW: “What?

*Uncertainly*

No.”

AMY: “Well, you're never gonna do it again. Ever.

*Gets up*

You're never gonna... feel how it made you feel.”

*Amy kneels to look at the rat cage*

WILLOW: “Don't think that's the way to look at it.”

AMY: “Hey Will? It's your birthday.”

*Stands up, picks up the cage*

WILLOW: “Um, no it isn't. But now that you mention it, Buffy's is coming...”

AMY: “Potestas.” (Latin translation: "power" or "you have the power.")

*Blue light shoots from Amy to Willow. Willow gets up quickly. Her eyes are all-black with magic, and little streams of blue magic crackle around her hands*

WILLOW: “What?

*Looking at her hands. Amy just watches. Willow stares at her hands, turns and touches a vase on the bedside table. The vase peels away in sections like a flower. She touches a lamp on the table and it sparkles and then disappears*

*Alarmed*

Amy...”

AMY:

*Smiling*

“It's a gift. It's magic... and it didn't come from you. It came from me. Completely legal.

*Pause*

Enjoy.”

*Amy leaves, carrying the cage. Willow stands there panting and looking anxiously at her hands*

‘Doublemeat Palace’ is an odd and questionable episode for me. It is, to me, ‘BtVS’ creators inept attempt at satire. It is satire of the fast food industry and experience. In this episode Buffy, now in desperate need of money, gets a job working as a fast food worker at a local fast food restaurant called ‘Doublemeat Palace’. Similar (and inferior) to ‘Smashed’ and ‘Wrecked’, what usually is written as a metaphor is pretty on-the-nose, and this time it doesn’t work. The main story for this episode might work for some people... but it just doesn’t for me. I find myself cringing just watching it, so it’s an unpleasant experience for me. And not in a “you’re meant to feel this way” way, as is the case with other satire I have watched and have thoroughly enjoyed. I just don’t like the way it is written. It lacks the clever artistry of previous episodes that have also tried satire. It’s too obvious and therefore too silly to pay any attention to. So I would like to focus on other narratives and themes going on in this episode for this recap.

I am much more interested in what’s going on with Willow in this episode. (No shit, Sherlock!). Amy makes an appearance again - visiting Willow to ask her, for some insane reason, for the cage she lived in when she was a rat. Don’t know what that’s about but it gives the character an opportunity to create chaos for Willow once again. I often talk about the issues Willow has with the theme of consent. Amy is another character that clearly has no idea what consent means and why it matters. Amy does a really shitty thing and forces an experience on Willow that Willow never asked for and never wanted in the first place. She’s been doing so well in her recovery from magic addiction so far and Amy just walks back into her life and intends to fuck it all up for her as easily as muttering an incantation. She gives some of her magical power to Willow as a “gift” and thus Willow struggles throughout the rest of the episode to control herself with it.

Watching the scene in her bedroom, I could see that she was already nervous just at the sight of Amy walking in, not knowing what her intention was to be there. Understandable after the negative influence she had on her the last time she saw her and all that went down because of it. I have mentioned several times now in previous recaps that it’s possible Willow has an undiagnosed variant of OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), and she displays symptoms of it once again in this episode. With the distracting and the fidgeting,... which you could by all rights put that all down to her struggling with her addiction. But to me it looks like the character is having tics,... which is a common occurrence and often misunderstood observation in people who have OCD. It isn’t intentional. It’s subconscious. They distract themselves and fidget with objects and materials in effort to control their extreme anxiety in the moment and to keep their mind away from their obsession. So it still could very much be about Willow struggling with her addiction, just with the condition of OCD added on to it.

There are key moments that stands out to me that I think gives evidence to this interpretation. Willow visits Buffy at work with the rest of the Gang, and you see her mindlessly playing with the straws at a kiosk, not paying any attention to Buffy at all. Touching and fidgeting with them. Completely without focus to what’s happening in front of her until Buffy asks her if she’s okay and she snaps out of it. Later, just before the scene with Amy, she’s highlighting text in a book. Then when Amy is there and she asks her how her cessation from doing magic is going, Willow tells her that it’s going good and she is getting her focus back. Amy then notices that she’s highlighted every single word on the page and makes a comment that makes Willow completely abandon the task and quickly close the book, not comfortable with Amy watching her and practically ridiculing her for her coping strategies. Amy can see that Willow is not at a stage where magic won’t affect her anymore and that’s what makes it even worse what she does to her. She takes advantage of Willow’s vulnerability in recovering from an addiction to magic and makes her do magic again, claiming that it’s “legal” because the power has come from her instead of Willow. I mean making someone do something they don’t want to do is already cruel enough, but to be aware that they’re refraining from doing it in the first place because it’s an addiction for them, and to use their vulnerability in that to justify you making them do it… it’s just downright evil. It’s evil because you know they’re vulnerable to it. You know they won’t be able to control themselves.

Amy commits evil in this episode and I am extremely proud of Willow for putting her foot down and adamantly telling her to stay away from her when Amy comes by Buffy’s house again to “borrow detergent”. Willow was effectively triggered in this episode to a degree that would be beyond any recovering addict’s ability not to succumb to. The very fact she still gets through the day without using any magic of her own is remarkable. Despite what happens and the guilt Willow feels over it, she still didn’t relapse. It would be totally understandable if she did considering the immense impulsion to give in that she must have felt. You see, what Amy did to her was extremely wrong and she certainly should be severely reprimanded for it, but she was right about something she said. That it was legal. It does absolve Willow of the crime that it was Amy’s power and not hers. So any magic used at any point in this episode is not Willow’s fault. She was forced to use it and therefore it’s not on her to take accountability for it. It’s Amy’s. In my insistent opinion - Willow didn’t relapse and she shouldn’t feel shame for being unable to stop herself from using Amy’s magic and for thinking that she needs it. She does something extremely brave and inspirational in telling Amy to piss off. Removing herself from what is the biggest trigger and enabler of her addiction of all. Her magically-inclined friend and longtime foil who doesn’t seem to understand that what she’s done is evil. I’m completely in solidarity with Willow that she needs to fucking go. Amy is not her friend. Her final appearance in the show is in ‘Killer In Me’ in Season 7 where she tries to convince Willow that she’s turned over a new leaf but a rat will always be a rat and maybe that’s why she felt homesick without her cage.

Going forward in the show, Willow continues to refuse to use magic at any point. Even in moments where it was most justifiable and beneficial to use it. And it just makes me smile that my favourite character is finally getting back on track from her detour from reality. I know she’s only a fictional person. She’s not a real person. But as I keep saying - fictional people represent real people. And if I was honest - she reminds me of somebody who is real and struggles with an addiction and is also doing very well in her recovery.

[averinna]

I think I will push the self indulgence further and write snippet of myself just hanging around with characters I like to make their life better or worst (we all know who is who)

Like really like the idea of self insert but if I can't find platonic one where I just wrap Yuji in a blanket and keep him warm until he fall asleep (and get him to call me big sister) I will just do it myself

You see the things about cringe culture and Mary sue and shit... I think that my generation when we were middle schooler and doing all of that.

That was actually great. Like writing for yourself. Even if you destroy canon and characters.

Because while I defend the right of fans over character, I totally forget that side too.

I will complain of bad writing, but you know what? It doesn't mean that what I criticize should stop to exist.

I put out there why I dislike something. But it have the right to exist because while it doesn't benefit me it benefit other. And what it should benefit the most isn't the readers of that thing but the creator himself.

The issue with fancontent at that time wasn't the existence of it, but that both fantasies and more serious work where available all together without a distinction.

As a writer you can be free to write one, the other or both, what matter is your enjoyment.

And this way fantasies were criticized like they were serious works. But they weren't mean to be. It was just your young writer writing themselves dating their fave. That's totally fine.

And they don't even need to actually write better or write it more seriously like I did. They can keep writing something that I would think is crappy forever, because again what matter is that they're enjoying themselves.

It's recreational.

And my little fics of me taking care of Yuji forever while beating Sukuna's ass will be.

I hope cringe culture will still be beat the fuck out.

And while bad writing is still funny, I think it's actually worth laughing when the author does too.

I sadly lost all my first work, but if I still had it I would gladly take it back to poke fun of my past self. And even if I do, I want it to be in good fun for her. I think there should be a way to gently poke fun while still cherishing the young writer I was.

I still manage to do that today when I think about my first real fic. Writing it was one of the happiest experience of my life and it was full of a lot of mistake. I can still recommend the sentence "they go up to the attic" and there's probably more! But I am still very proud of 12 year old me because without her 24 year old present me wouldn't be there today.

I go on analyzing myself a lot and not everyone have the time to reflect on their feelings, but I hope that everyone in fandom get to do their things. To feel their emotions but keep being aware that what they should never does is being an asshole to someone else.