#but other than that creators really don’t seem to be engaging critically with the impact that the very nature of what they’re doing has

[bythehearts]

not to bring tiktok drama on tumblr but like every time a ‘scandal’ comes out with one of these ‘production companies’ that make fan films i always hope we’re finally gonna discuss how they professionalize something that should be an hobbyist endeavor… and yet every single time i’m disappointed.

[thisisadonaldduckblognow]

i wish i had the energy and eloquence to fully and properly get into the family therapist mikey thing tbh it’s so hard to just. explain what i MEAN. 

(ftr i am an adult who does regularly touch grass. i understand interpretation and ymmv on characterization. i understand the catharsis of vent art and vent fic and projecting issues onto characters to process them. i don’t read through stuff i’ve found issues with and then seethe about it, i keep scrolling or hit the back button and find something else. 

i am still gonna talk about trends i’ve noticed and things that i don’t get or that rub me the wrong way. please don’t come into my posts about my personal thoughts and opinions to, however well-meaning or politely, judge me for expressing them. consider doing what i do and keep scrolling. i won’t engage with that. i would ask that no one else engages with that in replies or comments.

i also legit don’t Get tone indicators just ftr. they elude me.)

bc so much of the draxum moral realignment stuff was mikey being motivated largely by what mikey wanted. he wanted to see barry as family, he wanted barry to become part of the family, he wanted the story of their mutation to be less uh. objectively crummy.

now, mikey’s wants in that area served as a CATALYST for other development, him pursuing that (often very hamfistedly and despite many objections) wound up paving the way, but it was ultimately in the spirit of his personal desire. which ftr im not criticizing that’s very much part of the character.

he brought draxum to the big hidden city day out because it was a Family Event and he personally considered draxum family. splinter and draxum kinda coming to a truce, splinter reconciling that his mutation (despite the horrific trauma and long-lasting impact of it) was still what gave him his sons who he loves more than anything, that was all splinter and draxum. mikey’s action of bringing barry along was a catalyst, he was able to speak to his own feelings about it to splinter when it came up, but he wasn’t sitting there going “tell me how that makes you feel and we’ll talk through it” yknow?

and it’s the same with the dr feelings thing with donnie, which is arguably as close to Playing Therapist as mikey gets on screen. bc that was just a very Extra way of confronting donnie about the shelldon stuff. like. that was mikey inserting himself into the situation so he could give his personal opinion about how donnie was messing up, just with a sweater and a powerpoint. like. an intervention i guess. if donnie hadn’t gotten the picture from the slides he was probably all lined up for a dr delicate touch meeting.

which like, was also not being donnie’s therapist as much as a once again very hamfisted way of addressing something that mikey felt in the right about?

i’m wondering if maybe what i picture when i hear about a child having to play therapist for the family isn’t the same as what modern fandom means by saying it. because i picture like, what steven universe went through. which was practically singlehandedly, as a child, walk a bunch of adults through their own grief and insecurities and shortcomings with unending patience and support, to a point of pushing all his own needs and emotional issues aside.

where steven seemed convinced there were things that he wasn’t allowed to express or outright things he never got to learn to express, mikey is probably the most emotionally open and honest of all the brothers. he feels more outright sheltered. 

especially where his big brothers are concerned. the entire episode about his first solo mission he was chafing about being unnecessarily overprotected by raph. there’s a lot tied up in his relationship to raph if we take what the creators said about them growing apart as they’ve grown up into account. 

so i guess for me, in my understanding of the trauma of playing therapist at a young age, i can’t really reconcile what canon gives us with the idea of any of the other brothers or splinter (who is notably emotionally disconnected from his sons at series start) genuinely dropping their issues on his lap. 

but in that vein, for as much as he’s emotionally open and honest, i’m sure there are also insecurities and issues that mikey doesn’t express. or. that canon for some reason just decided to not dig into in any of the episodes that actually got made.

but ohhhhh that’s a whole separate can of worms.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

I think the idea that the show wont bring in new readers is a little ridiculous tbh. Like when a new season of the Witcher TV show comes out the books are always on a waitlist at the local library, the same thing happened with Shadow and Bone when Netflix adapted it. I dont think turning up our noses and sneering pretentiously at show fans will encourage them to read the book. It happened to me with Shadow and Bone and I'll be honest, I almost didnt read the books because of it! We really should try to not pass judgement on the impact of the show before it even comes out, prophesizing doom will only cause us to bring that doom on ourselves. (This is directed at the other anon not you, your responses have been lovely ��)

(This is directed at the other anon not you, your responses have been lovely ❤)

Thank you very much! I'm trying to provide a release valve so that people can feel comfortable sharing their opinions without retaliation, and it's not easy to do, so this means a lot. This is another difficult one to answer, thank you for specifying that your criticisms were not directed at me.

---

BTW, with these anons, I'd like to keep better track of them to be able to refer to specific anons, so if you all could sign off with a few emojis, initials, or numbers, or a combination, then I can have a "name" to reference in these follow-ups!

---

I think the idea that the show wont bring in new readers is a little ridiculous tbh.

Possibly a little bit ridiculous, but I think it's a fair prophecy, to use your word, made by someone who, to my reading, seems disappointed more than arrogant. Maybe there’s always a vein of arrogance embedded in feelings of disappointment.

I hope it's alright that I share my perspective on that anon of 2022.06.30, who said: "in my estimation i don’t think [the TV series adaptation] will be a gateway [to the books]. the world is going to shit and people read less and less everyday. i don’t know a single person among my friends or family that bothers to read books of any kind."

^The feeling that I get from that is disappointment that the new series won't draw more people to read the books because the anon doesn't think people read anymore in general; I didn't interpret that as the anon turning up their nose and sneering pretentiously at show fans. It read more as genuine disappointment to me. I felt sorry for the anon.

TL;DR: I think the 2022.06.30 Anon was lowering their expectations so as not to be even more disappointed when the TV series airs, and we don't see a big influx of fans of the books.

And, @nicolodigenova commented on that post in a way that seems to me that they also picked up on the anon's disappointment, I think, by reassuring the anon that people do read!:

We really should try to not pass judgement on the impact of the show before it even comes out, prophesizing doom will only cause us to bring that doom on ourselves.

Well, you're right in the sense that passing judgment, especially on incoming fans, is another thing that ignites fandom wars, and can turn people away entirely.

On the other hand, considering/judging the impact of the TV series is clearly on people's minds, and it's not something we can just stop thinking about. Just because we might agree not to talk about it, we’re still thinking about it! Will the TV series draw in interest in the books, and therefore bring more content creators/intellectual engagement into the fandom? I'm curious to find out, too. By saying that the TV series fans won't read the books, maybe (I'm only speculating here) 2022.06.30 anon and others could be worried that the fandom will die out if people abandon the books. That's a real concern to have, but I don't think people will abandon a 40+ year fandom based on the books because of one adaptation.

Like when a new season of the Witcher TV show comes out the books are always on a waitlist at the local library, the same thing happened with Shadow and Bone when Netflix adapted it... It happened to me with Shadow and Bone and I'll be honest, I almost didnt read the books because of it!

I'm not familiar with the books from those 2 series, sorry. It makes sense that people would want to read the books they're based on, to find out more, quickly! Similarly with Game of Thrones which I think was still being written during the series' airdates, and the Walking Dead was based on a series of graphic novels, most of which I think had been published when the series aired. I went to the library and stores to check out TWD books a number of times, I was drawn to the source material to find out how certain scenes were depicted as illustrations rather than live action, what plot point might be happening next, or to see what changes the TV series had made, which characters had been entirely invented for the TV series, which had more character development in the canon, etc.

I'm asking as politely as I can, I don't mean any offense at all: If you feel comfortable, can you share a bit more about how you were discouraged from reading the Shadow and Bone books? Perhaps that would help us not repeat the same thing, and be more inviting of the potentially incoming TV series fans.

Maybe it's because I grew up in a time before social media 2.0, so when I wanted to read something back then, or now, it's always been a personal experience, I don't look for anyone's approval. In fact, I love the Good Omens TV series, and if I saw a post, "Ugh, the GO TV series fans don't read anymore, they have no attention span, they'll never read the book, they're awful stupid people." I'd just scroll past that comment, and go find a copy of the book. There's a spectrum of responses on every media you could be interested in, there'll always be snobs/elitists, but I didn't read the 2022.06.30 anon as being that, specifically.

I think the 2022.06.30 Anon was lowering their expectations so as not to be even more disappointed when the TV series airs, and we don't see a big influx of fans of the books.

[jadelotusflower]

Roundup: August 2021

This month: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Don’t Call it a Cult, The Secret Garden, Showbiz Kids, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Lucifer.

Reading Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) - I’ve been meaning to read the Wide Sargasso Sea for a long, long time, but first I thought I’d revisit the source material. I find my opinion hasn’t much changed - I still love the prose, still love Jane as a character, and still find Rochester extremely unappealing. The section with Jane at school is the most engaging for me, and her early time as a governess at Thornfield, but as soon as Rochester shows up I just find him so irritating I have no idea why Jane loves him so much (other than he was the first man to ever show her a scrap of attention). I mean, I know to an extent - I've read the Takes, and part of fiction is accepting what you want for the character as a reader and what they want for themselves can be two different things, and that's not the fault of the text. I can be satisfied by the ending because Jane gets what she wants, I just can’t help but wonder about a Jane who was found by John Eyre before she went to Thornfield, or who took her inheritance and made her own way after Moor House. Byronic heroes just aren't my thing I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys) - The first Mrs Rochester of Jane Eyre strikes an uneasy tone to a modern reader; she does not utter a word in the novel, is depicted as animalistic and almost demonic, her story only told in a self-serving manner by Rochester, and conveniently disposed of so Jane can return to claim him. Rhys reimagines Bertha as Antoinette, a “white Creole” of Jamaica in a postcolonial take on the racial/social prejudices and hierarchy only hinted at in Eyre, where Bertha being Creole primarily an aspect of her Otherness, and in which Rochester describes himself as being desired as a husband because he was "of good race" . In Sea, although Antoinette is white (passing, perhaps), he sees her "not English or European either" and this contributes to his rejection of her (and perhaps his willingness to believe she is mad). The novel is surprisingly short - it skips over the meeting and courtship of Antoinette and Rochester (tellingly unnamed in the novel) entirely, jumping directly from her childhood/coming of age to the couple already married, and over much of Bertha's (renamed by Rochester) sad life in the attic. Still, there's a density to the writing, much is implied beyond the sparse use of words and recurring imagery - subjugation, reflection, and of course, fire - when freed slaves (Rhys changes the timeframe to after the passing of the Emancipation Act of 1833) set fire to Antoinette's family plantation, a pet parrot whose wings have been clipped by her English step-father Mason, cannot flee and falls to a fiery doom, in a grim omen of Bertha's fate. It did, however, leave me wanting more - I understand Rhys' stylistic choices and restraint, but in her effort to give voice to the voiceless, Antoinette/Bertha remains somewhat an enigma. Don’t Call it a Cult: Keith Raniere and the women of NXIVM (Sarah Berman) - I continue to be disturbed but intrigued by the NXIVM case, not only because of my abhorrence of MLMs/pyramid schemes, but my bafflement as to how this thoroughly unremarkable man was able to hold sway over so many women. My mild criticism of the two documentaries on this subject was that they tended to jump around in time so you never really got a good idea of what happened when. This book provides a well researched, detailed summary of events and linear chronology of Raniere’s perverse pathology reaching all the way back to childhood, and so is both an excellent supplement to the already informed, and broad overview to those new to the case. Berman is a Vancouver-based journalist who was present at Raniere’s trial and gives insight into witness testimony, supported by her own interviews and extensive research. There's less of a focus on the sensationalised celebrity members, with greater emphasis on the lesser known victims - including the three Mexican sisters who were all abused by Raniere, one of whom was kept confined to a room for years. It's difficult reading, consolation being the

knowledge that Raniere is rotting in prison and that his crimes finally caught up with him. Watching The Secret Garden (dir. Marc Munden) - Spoilers, if one needs a spoiler warning for a 110 year old novel. One of those stories that is adapted every generation, and generally I have no problem with this, since new adaptations can often bring something new or be a different take on old material (see Little Women 2019). But a part of me can’t help feel why bother with this when the perfect 1993 version exists. There is an Attempt at something new with this film, moving the setting forward to 1947 (Mary’s parents having died during the Partition), and turning the garden from a small walled secret to a mystical, huge wonderland full of ferns and flowers and endless sun. But in doing so, the central metaphor is lost - rather than Mary discovering something abandoned and run wild, gently bringing it back to life with love and care, she merely discovers a magical place that requires no effort on her part. There’s also less of a character arc for Mary, remaining unpleasant far into the proceedings, forcing Colin to visit the garden instead of it being his true wish, and generally succeeding by imposing her will on everyone else. In many ways she’s more like Burnett's other child heroine Sarah Crewe - the film opens I’m with her telling stories to her doll including Ramayana, which is eerily reminiscent of Alfonso Cuaron's (also perfect) 1995 adaptation of A Little Princess. But I suppose a sliver of credit where it's due - Julie Walters' Mrs Medlock is less of an antagonist, with Colin Firth's Lord Craven being Mary's primary obstacle. There's also a subplot with Mary's mother's depression following the death of her sister being the reason for her neglect (and Merlin alum Rupert Young shows up briefly as Mary's father) but like shifting the time period, there just doesn't seem to be a point to it. The climax of the film involves the Manor burning down (writer Jack Thorne stealing from Rebecca too, lol), with Mary and Craven have a very calm conversation as fire and smoke surrounds them. It’s all very bizarre, but also…rather dull? Don't bother with this, just watch the 1993 film again. Showbiz Kids (dir. Alex Winter) - a really interesting documentary on the titular subject - Winter was himself a child actor on Broadway before his film career kicked off in The Lost Boys and Bill and Ted, and has been able to assemble a broad range of interview subjects - Mara Wilson, Evan Rachel Wood, Wil Wheaton, Jada Pinkett Smith among others - former child actors, those still in the business, and some up and comers like Disney star Cameron Boyce (who I was sad to see in the coda has passed away). We also follow two young hopefuls - Marc, attending acting classes and auditioning in pilot season, yet to book a job but his parents are invested in "his" dream, and Demi, already established on Broadway but having to start to make choices between a career and a childhood. There's no voiceover, no expert opinions in this, letting the actors speak for themselves, but there is a telling juxtaposition of Marc returning home, jobless but having fun in the pool with his friends, while Demi has to cancel the summer camp she had been so looking forward to because she has booked a new role. The film is fairly even handed, but ultimately I took away that there just seems to be more harm than not in this industry, and abuses of many kinds. It does make you wonder about the ethics of child acting, at least in the current system where the cautionary tales are plentiful. Masters of the Universe: Revelation (episodes 1-5) - Mild spoilers I guess? I was never really into He-Man as a kid, other than the Secret of the Sword movie, so most of the in jokes and references in this went over my head. I have to admit, it was actually seeing all the outrage that made me want to check this out and see what all the complaining was about. I actually…really enjoyed it?!? I’m sympathetic to the complaints of a bait and switch (creators really need to learn to say

“just wait and see”), but other than that in my view the rest seemed completely unfounded. Adam/He-Man being killed in the first episode and the impact that has on Eternia and those left behind is actually a really interesting premise. This isn’t a TLJ situation; in contrast everyone (except Evil-Lyn) is always going on about how much they miss Adam, and the whole point of the first arc is him coming back. There’s also a nice little detail of Adam in Preternia (heroes heaven) choosing to remain as he is rather than as He-Man where all his predecessors have chosen their “ultimate” forms. I love him and his Magical Girl transformation. As for Teela - female characters can’t win, it seems. If they are perfect, they’re Mary Sues, if they have flaws, they’re unlikeable. Teela is Going Through things and is on a journey, but I often feel (and it seems the case here) that people confuse a character arc with author intent. No! Just because a character says/does something it doesn't mean you're supposed to agree with them! Some of Teela's actions may be petty and her demeanor less than sweet, but people make bad choices as a response to grief, and I actually thought her anger over Adam never telling her his secret and how that manifested was a pretty interesting take. I'll be interested to see the next half of the season, and ignore the ragebait youtube commentary. One more thing - Evil-Lyn (perfectly voiced by Lena Headey) was an absolute delight. Lucifer (season 5 part 2): They’ve basically given up on the procedural side of things by now and are leaning heavily into the mythology, which works for me since the case of the week is always the least interesting part of any show. It also struck me this season that there’s gender parity in the main cast (Lucifer, Amenadiel, Dan and then Chloe, Maze, Ella, Linda) - and actually, that’s more women than men. How often does that happen?!? I can’t say I’m particularly engaged with the Lucifer/Chloe pairing, but am happy to go along with it since that’s where the whole plot revolves. The best scenes for me this season were with God’s Dysfunctional Family, even if the lead up to the finale felt rushed (I understand the need to wrap things up in case of cancellation but still). I would have liked to see more of the sibling dynamics between the angels and less romantic drama, but hey. The character death got me, as well. I didn't see it coming and I didn't realise how much I had enjoyed that character until they were gone and well...it got me. I see the last season is coming soon, I'm not exactly sure where they can go from here, but looking forward to it nonetheless. Writing I was actually quite sick this month with a throat infection, so wasn't in the best frame of mind to get anything finished like I had planned to. I'm going to hold off posting the word count this month and roll it over to September when hopefully I've actually posted things.

[marcilled]

[this is gonna be a big long post about minecraft youtuber drama... press J to scroll past this if you don’t care about that. lol. sorry]

idunno if anybody took my post the other day as me “cancelling dream for cheating in a videogame”, i posted it mostly out of bemusement of the whole situation, and because that video was really well put-together. (context: his 1.16 speedruns were disqualified by the minecraft speedrun.com moderators & there was a video & document explaining why).

I definitely don’t correlate cheating a speedrun w/ ableism, racism, etc etc. I already knew about a lot of nasty shit dream has done, like the video he did with Notch, and how all of his early content was about pewdiepie, just further normalizing those two to his young audience. I’ve always disliked him for those things, which I’ve been aware of pretty much as long as I’ve known of him, and he has never apologized for those things. It’s why whenever I posted about him before (which was... maybe once or twice?), I always say “don’t stan him or anything he sucks”.

I had no idea there was so much more to it honestly. It’s kind of galling seeing the full context now, because whenever I’ve seen any kind of criticism against him, it’s been him presenting it in an apology. I dunno why I wasn’t suspicious of this given what I already knew about him, but the guy seems to be very clever with how he damage controls any sort of possible controversy regarding him. He presents a really heartfelt, honest apology for whatever happened and gives a few cherrypicked examples of things that people said about him and says how wrong he was and how he doesn’t want to alienate his viewers.

The fact that it’s Dream presenting the evidence of his controversies, means that he gets to control how the conversation goes. Instead of a popular “mcyt” stan account getting to control the conversation, pointing out the shit he’s said and done, he addresses it in a livestream, and does not provide the original context. Huh, I wonder why. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want everyone to see that his mistakes are more than just little “oopsies”, it’s him being actively malicious and getting so defensive that he tells off anybody who could possibly disagree with his view of things.

While his actions and words are pretty horrid on their own, I think the thing that has me most concerned about Dream is... He seems pretty fuckin’ good at manipulating peoples’ perception of him.

-----

After the video about his speedruns being cheated came out the other day, he had this to say on twitter (this is his second, “personal” account):

Now, as I said before, cheating in a videogame isn’t at all comparable to racism or ableism. What I’m trying to point out here is his response to any sort of criticism.

The video he’s referring to is this one, published by Geosquare 2 days ago (dec 11th). What’s interesting to note here is how he singles out Geosquare specifically in this tweet. If you click on the video, the first few seconds establishes that it’s a video made by the entire Minecraft java edition speedrunning mod team (which is made up of a team of over a dozen people). The video and document was a true team effort from every single one of them, and it only got posted to Geosquare’s account (& got his narration) because he’s already a youtuber with a pretty comfortable amount of subscribers.

So, instead of pointing his ire (and those of his many, many fans) at the whole speedrun mod team, instead, he points it squarely on Geosquare, so that people have a convenient name to latch onto. He then accuses Geosquare of using his name as “clickbait” in order to get “easy views”, sowing the seed of this idea that Geosquare is doing this in an opportunistic grab for personal gain. If you clicked on the video and saw the description/pinned comment, you’d see that not only did Geosquare disable monetization on the video, he disabled monetization on his entire channel for as long as this drama goes on (and he knew there would be drama, dream made extra sure to threaten the mods with a video of his own in retaliation if they ended up banning him).

Then, in a reply to the first tweet, he says that there are “multiple moderators” messaging him saying the verdict was “biased” and that they may quit the mod team. He provides no evidence for this. However, if you click on the tweet and view any of the thousands of replies from his fans, it doesn’t matter that he gave no evidence, his word is enough. If you’re wondering, Geosquare and a few other mods have stated many times that it was a group decision on their part, and nobody had any question in their mind that Dream must have cheated. So... Dream, who are these “mods” that are messaging you? He won’t say.

Lastly here, I want to point out that in his next tweet on the matter, he makes this very bitter comment about how useless it was for them to investigate a “16th place run”. It’s a minor detail, but I think it’s worth mentioning; this kind of downplays how impressive his run was at the time. At the time he submitted his sub-20 minute speedrun, it was a top 5 run, in a very competitive category of speedrunning the game. In the 2 months since, several people have passed his time using new strats, but that doesn’t diminish the fact it was a pretty amazing “run”... if it weren’t cheated of course. But, I’m just rambling on about how petty I am about him cheating at this point so let me get back to the main point here.

If you see the numbers on these tweets (hundreds of thousands of likes), you’ll understand why this is pretty scary for those speedrun mods. The same day this happened Geosquare joked around “I’ve only gotten one death threat so far!”. Dream’s fanbase is unparalleled in minecraft youtube, and incredibly sizeable for a youtube channel overall. If you’re not familiar with this new wave of “mcyt” minecraft accounts, it’s... it’s pretty much exclusively because of Dream’s fame. He’s the driving force of minecraft youtube content right now. Any youtuber who even breathes near the guy blows up in subscribers & views. His minecraft server, “Dream SMP”, is like... it has a legitimate cultural impact, whether that sentence disgusts you or not. Especially for young gen Z kids.

The point I’m trying to make is, ever since he came onto the scene in early 2019, he’s grown and grown at exponential rates, and I can’t understate the kind of influence he has on not just his own fans, but the fans of like. Pretty much anyone who is plugged in to anything minecraft youtube related right now.

People have discussed this before, but Dream’s sudden rise to fame happened shockingly quick. So quick that it’s almost impossible it were by accident. He’d spent something like a year or two studying how the youtube algorithm works, how famous youtubers grow their popularity, etc. He spent a lot of time studying, and it paid off for him. It makes me wonder if he’s studied how youtubers deal with controversy as well. Because it seems like he’s doing everything right to keep his fans “loyal” to him.

So I think it’s not unreasonable to say that it is pretty goddamn concerning when he reacts to criticism like this. His immense fanbase, who are often worryingly obsessed with him, of mostly impressionable kids... It’s a recipe for disaster, in the hands of someone so entitled and immature.

I think what really has me worried, though, is a video he published to his second channel the other day. Recently, he published a video about his “stans”. The entire video essentially boiled down to him disputing claims that “dream stans” were toxic, or that stanning people or “stan culture” was creepy/unhealthy. He spent a lot of the video comparing stans of content creators to passionate fans of football teams, and expressed repeatedly how he thought it was normal and OK to be totally obsessed with a content creator and engage in “stan culture”, as long as you weren’t being a legitimate stalker. He pretty much only talked about the positives of being a Dream Stan, and how positive the “community” is. The whole video painted this really idealistic image of what it means to be a Stan of a person, and fandom in general.

Now... I don’t know about everyone else reading this, but I found that video to be... incredibly creepy and weird. It completely ignores any actual arguments about how stan culture can be unhealthy, and how engaging so heavily in parasocial relationships can be quite damaging, especially to younger people.

But, mostly? It seemed like the whole video was basically designed just to reinforce the most unhealthy impulses of his stans, and reward them with the positive encouragement that he actually enjoys it when they are obsessed with him so much that they can’t imagine he could ever possibly do anything wrong.

And that? That is fucking dangerous for a person with such a huge fanbase to be peddling to their fans.

Surely, he must know- a great deal of his fans are so obsessed with him, that they think they know him as well as, if not more than, a personal friend. So that when he does something disagreeable and wrong, and he claims “no that’s not how it happened, they’re biased and trying to cancel me because they’re jealous”, they just take that at face value, because why would he lie? He’s so honest and genuine in his videos and livestreams!

This sort of behavior from Dream, along with his tweets I posted earlier, reads to me as if he knows exactly what he’s doing. I think he is purposefully insulating his fans from the truth of his actions, so that he can present this idealistic picture of him in their mind, so that it seems absurd that he would do something wrong.

I think it’s only a matter of time before it comes out he’s done something much worse, honestly. What it is, is hard to say- he’s already done so much that anyone reading this should rescind their support for him, imo. But, I know that none of this matters to his millions of fans. While I worry for them, I also worry for anyone who becomes a target of Dream. I could see this speedrunning drama being the start of a downward spiral for him. Things could get real ugly with all that minecraft clout getting to his head... I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

TL;DR, dream sucks, and not just because he cheats at videogames.

I apologize again for writing a multi paragraph post about a minecraft youtuber. I will not post about this anymore (probably) please do not unfollow me .

[boycottyashahime]

Alright, so I’m bad at Tumblr, and though I wanted to just reblog the original post from @strawberrycreampiefluff and put most of it under a cut or perhaps find a way to trim it, I couldn’t find a way to make it work. So, we’re starting a new thread. Here’s the link the other one if anyone reading hasn’t been following the discussion and want to catch up: https://strawberrycreampiefluff.tumblr.com/post/625063196626223104/what-do-you-think-of-this-whole-ppl-shipping

Anyhow, since we discussed this beforehand, I’ll start from the beginning, only working with the storytelling elements from the series, and I’ll leave out the latter part of the post regarding moralizing (which I mostly agree with anyway, so it’s no loss to me).

“I  was trying to convey that considering the methods of storywriting and telling,  it would break the “pattern” Rumiko Takashi built up and lowering the  impact of Sessh character growth he would later experience.  A father-daughter bond is not inferior to a romantic bond, but it  would seem out of place, to have both his father and brother form a  romantic relationship with a human and then Sessh breaking that pattern  by introducing a new kind of relationship-dynamic - when he is the most  crucial character in the series when it comes to demon-human relations.”

I’m still quite unclear HOW the impact of Sesshomaru’s character growth is necessarily lowered from not having a romantic bond with a human. Why is the continuation of this pattern so important, in your view, to the character’s development? From my perspective, introducing a new relationship dynamic into and breaking patterns is actually a good thing in stories - It’s a great way to add variety and a different point of view to a narrative. Having characters take a pattern in a different, unique direction can add meaning in a way the reader couldn’t see coming, give the story unexpected dimension.

And you’ve already said that you and other shippers like yourself don’t see anything romantic while Rin is still a child in the original series, so that is effectively what happened. Since we agree that the relationship wasn’t actually romantic within the context of the original Inuyasha series, Sesshomaru took a love of a human in an entirely different direction than his father or his brother did. Which conveys complexity in how youkai can relate to humans that wasn’t in the established pattern. As a reader, I find that kind of thing fun and engaging, though you may disagree.

“A father-daughter relationship would still put Sessh in a superior position to Rin (as the father), not adding a lot to his character development other than him caring for one other human being.”

I have to wince here, because while yes, technically Sesshomaru is in a superior position to Rin in a father-daughter relationship, the implication here is that this can be compared to the sense of superiority he had over humans as a whole that you referenced earlier. Is a parent-child relationship really comparable to a racist outlook? I feel like these two things are quite unrelated, having two ENTIRELY different connotations from the word “superior”. One is an entirely natural superior position, using one’s greater experience, knowledge, and ability to facilitate the growth and guidance of someone still on their way up. The other is a wholly unnatural and malicious disregard for a person based on superficial features. Sesshomaru’s superior attitude toward humans before he met Rin was not based on a paternalistic concern, but complete disgust and the notion that they were entirely unworthy of consideration. The two connotations of “superior” here are just not analogous in the greater narrative.

“In a romantic relationship, both partners should be equals (anything  other is unacceptable), for this to happen Sessh would’ve had to lower himself  (his pride) to Rins level, since he was the one with the big ego and  humans were regarded as one of the lower creatures of the food chain.”

Again, I think it is entirely possible for Sesshomaru to learn not to regard humans as “lower on the food chain” through a relationship that ISN’T romance, but that aside, this whole notion brings up a question: why didn’t Rumiko Takahashi write Rin into the story as a young adult? We’ve already discussed how romantic implications to the relationship couldn’t exist while she’s still a child in the series, and why Sesshomaru and Rin are definitely NOT equal during the series. So if it was so important for Sesshomaru to be otherwise equal to Rin so he can lower his pride and truly consider her such, why was Rin not written as a fully autonomous adult so we could cut to the chase? It seems that if what you’re describing was really Rumiko Takahashi’s intent, it would have been a lot easier if the girl was already grown up. At the very least, our dear author could have ended the series when Rin was an appropriate age to actually make the point instead of leaving it hanging.

“Doing the exact same thing he criticized his father for, which  for him would’ve been humiliating in the beginning of the series. The  sequel (if you regard it as canon) goes even farther, making him create  his own half demons - the very reason he hated his brother in the first  place. His mother even said he becomes like his father in the strangest  ways - and the only “strange” thing we know about his father was his  romantic relationship with Izayoi.”

Since English isn’t your first language, I’m guessing you’re just mistaken in the map of this sentence, but the word “strange” here is referring to Sesshomaru’s behavior in relation to his father’s. What is strange is how Sesshomaru is like his father, not his father’s ways. This actually makes the opposite point - it seems to refer to the ways in which Sesshomaru is behaving as odd, maybe in relation to a pattern his father fit into.

“That’s why I think it wouldn’t fall apart if we draw the parallel in a wider context as you say, because other characters didn’t have the same starting point  as Sessh. I very much agree with you, that Inuyasha’s platonic bonds  would also count as a dog forming close bonds with humans, but in  Inuyasha’s or Shippou’s case, they didn’t need the same character  development like Sessh, since they had a different attitude towards  humans or “lesser-beings” in the first place (Inuyasha was even past the  stage of lowering himself, also out of romantic reasons btw, since he  was ready to become human for Kikyo).”

I’m curious as to how the parallel and pattern matter if it’s null and void because Inuyasha and the other characters we talked about have different character arcs. Of course they aren’t starting from the same place as Sesshomaru, characters never do. They’re varied and diverse because it would be boring as tar to write them all going through the same issues. My point about the parallel was that even if it could be said that there’s some similarity in how dog YOUKAI form bonds with humans to actual DOGS, it’s not really a good parallel, because there are other “species” of youkai much less friendly with humans doing it too. I’m having trouble understanding what this argument has to do with that.

In reference to the above, I agree, the example characters you cited didn’t have the same level of dismissive racism as Sesshomaru did (I say “same level” because Shippou does carry a bit of prejudice, even as a small child), but when that’s apparent, why is the pattern even relevant? Since the characters aren’t set to all learn the same lesson, their relationships shouldn’t really resemble each other’s in the long run either, should they? Writers use relationships as tools for character development, and they usually want to use the right tool for the right job. Maybe romantic love with a human was right for Inuyasha because he had issues with vulnerability and reconciling his half-heritage. What if SESSHOMARU benefited more as a character from an unconditional bond (free from the conditions of sexual/romantic attraction) to demonstrate to him how even the weakest creature is incomprehensibly valuable for reasons impossible to articulate, and they are worth using his incredible level of “superior” power to protect and defend them? It’s a different kind of humbling oneself than what you were talking about, but I think it’s just as meaningful, and it fits Sesshomaru’s character development neatly into the the original text. It doesn’t require Sunrise make a sequel more than a decade later to wrap up the character development that Rumiko Takahashi meant to do when Rin grew up even though she could have just written her in as an adult in the first place.

“But Rin will obviously not always stay 8/11 years old, she will grow  into her own person and become a woman (while living apart from Sessh),  creating a completely different power dynamic with Sessh. One that would  still be an imbalance, but much different than when she was a child.”

As far as the narrative was concerned, Rin COULD very well have stayed a child forever, though. She was written as a character in a story. When the story is done, so are the characters. You’ve said before and here that Inuyasha is just fiction, and it is, but accepting that means accepting that Rin doesn’t grow up without some prompting. She doesn’t age but through the hand of a creator, fanfiction authors or Sunrise. When you say she’s not going to stay 8-11 forever, what you mean is that actual humans who experience actual time are not satisfied with her age as it stood when the story ended, and actively impose time upon her.

And since applying time to a fictional character is something that has to be intentional, so too do the conditions you mention to create the perfect environment for the ship. The different dynamic that isn’t father-daughter, but still a little bit of not-weird power imbalance. The “lowering” of Sesshomaru’s ego in that specific romantic way (that I’m still not sure I understand, but we’ll go with it). The way in which the romance is developed without either character realizing it so that Sesshomaru can’t be accused of using the power imbalance to manipulate a girl he’s had authority over since she was eight. Returning to what catalyzed the change in Sesshomaru in the first place while carefully treading around the fact that it was built upon an unconditional relationship that now suddenly has conditions on it. That’s a lot of mental legwork to do, which is fine, because that’s part of creative expression. But you have to acknowledge that none of this would be necessary if the pairing were “obvious”.

It certainly wasn’t very obvious to some of us. We came to a very different conclusion, saw everything a bit differently. Now we’re being punished for having a less popular interpretation of this relationship, shut down by SUNRISE and told that we don’t get to have that interpretation, because they’re considered an authority on what is canon in Inuyasha, and they’re taking sides to squeeze more money out of the Inuyasha franchise with a next-gen sequel. It doesn’t seem to matter that Sunrise was never really very good at telling Inuyasha stories, or that next-gen sequels never seem to be any good for lack of stakes and boring plots.

Sunrise’s interpretation is still considered to be more “valid” than ours. And that really hurts. So, if you found yourself wondering why there’s so much vitriol coming from the anti camp, it’s a combination of this, and the fact that they don’t really have the option of avoiding the content they don’t like anymore. It’s kind of EVERYWHERE now.

So, there we are. I don’t want to give the impression from the above that I’m trying to tear apart your arguments to somehow discredit the pairing. Shippers gonna ship, whether it makes sense to me or not. But I did want to highlight how any of the things you bring up can very well be interpreted entirely differently.

Hope you’re doing well, and you did well on that exam. :)

[itsclydebitches]

Is buying the new Harry Potter game supporting transphobes because I've been seeing a lot of that on twitter? Not playing it. Pirating is fine, but actually paying for it.

Hi, anon!

I’ve seen a lot of the same and had initially thought to post my thoughts on the issue… before I got a very angry ask condemning me for a post where I admitted that I thought the game looked great and was excited to play it. I can no longer link to that post because I deleted it: a late night, impulsive decision made in an effort to try and protect myself from further flaming. Thus, I considered ignoring this ask under the same justification… before realizing that it might not matter in the long run. The Harry Potter: Legacy trailer has been out for just a few days and already I have gotten that furious ask, been told off by a friend for mentioning the trailer, and was questioned (antagonistically) about why I had added a Harry Potter related book to my Goodreads list. They’re small and potentially coincidental anecdotes, but it feels as if any engagement with Harry Potter is slowly coming under scrutiny, not just the (supposed—more on that below) crime of purchasing the new game. Given that I will always engage with Harry Potter related media, if there’s any chance such subtle criticism will continue regardless of whether I make the “right” choice to boycott the game or not, I might as well explain my position. Especially for someone who asked politely! Thanks for that 💜. 

Which leads to the disclaimer: Any anon hate will be unceremoniously deleted. This is a complicated issue and I intend to write about it as such. I ask that any readers go into this post with good faith and a willingness to acknowledge that this situation isn’t as black and white as they may prefer it to be. If that’s not something you can emotionally handle—which is 100% fine. Some subjects we’re simply not inclined to debate—or if you’re just looking to get in a cheap shot, please hit the back button.

Right. Introduction done. Now here’s the tl;dr: saying things like “Buying this game is inherently selfish/transphobic” isn’t the hot take people want it to be. Is boycotting Legacy one (very small—we’ll get to that too) way of showing support for the trans community? Yes. Is buying the game proof that you’re a selfish transphobe?  No. This isn’t a bad SAT question. Legacy boycotters are to trans supporters as Legacy buyers are to  ___? The argument that someone is selfish for buying the game is basically that you are choosing a non-essential video game over the respect and lives of trans individuals, but the logic breaks down when we acknowledge that purchasing a game has no real life impact on a trans individual’s safety, support, etc.   

“But Clyde, you’re giving Rowling money. She is then using that money to support anti-trans organizations. Thus, you have actively put more harm into the world.” Have I? I’m not going to get into whether/how much/what kind of money Rowling is receiving from this project because the fact is we don’t know and we’ll likely never know. Suffice to say, she probably will get some portion of any $60/$70 purchase. The real question is whether those sales have any meaningful impact. Reputable information on Rowling’s net worth is hard to come by, but it seems to be somewhere between 600 million and 1 billion pounds. Or, to put it another way: a fuck ton. And money keeps rolling in from a franchise that is so, so much bigger than a single video game. It literally doesn’t matter how much money you might put in her pocket via Legacy because she’s already so goddamn rich she can do whatever she wants. If Rowling wants to give a million dollars to the heinous “charity” of her choice, she can. She will. You are not directly contributing to this horror because that money may as well already exist. Every person in the world could refuse to buy this game and she’d shrug, going about her disgusting life because it literally does not affect her in any meaningful way. You’re refusing to give the murderer a knife when they’re got direct access to a knife-making factory. Horrible as it is to hear, you can’t stop them from doing something horrific with that tool. 

For me, this is the straw argument of the Harry Potter world. Not straw as in strawman, but literally straws. Remember how everyone was talking about plastic straws, swore off them, and subsequently deemed anyone who still used one to be selfish people who didn’t care about the environment? It didn’t matter if you had a certified “good” reason for using one (disability) or a “selfish” reason (carrying straws everywhere on the off chance you wanted a drink is a pain in the ass)—you’re a horrible person who wants the planet to die. Same deal here. If you can swear off straws, great! Do what tiny bit of good you can. But if you can’t or even don’t want to give them up, the reality is that your “selfishness” doesn’t make a significant difference in the world. The amount of plastic corporations are pouring into the ocean makes your actions inconsequential. It’s not like voting where every small, individual act adds up to a significant total. This is your lack up against others’ staggering abundance. It’s not adding a few drops of water until you have a full bucket, it’s trying to un-flood the boat with a teaspoon while someone else is spraying it with the hose. Have you, on the most technical level, made a difference by moving that teaspoon of water out of the boat? Yes. Is it a difference that holds any meaning in regards to the desired outcome? Not really. Now apply all that to Rowling. She is so phenomenally wealthy—with additional wealth coming in every day—that your purchase of Legacy is a teaspoon of water in her ocean of funds. It’s inconsequential.

“But Clyde, buying this game would support her and supporting her sends the message that what she believes is okay.” Exact same argument as above. JKR’s fame is so astronomical that no video-game boycott could ever make a dent in it. For every 100 people who swear off her work there are another 1,000 who continue to engage with both her writing and the writing related to her world because she is that prominent. Harry Potter is one of the largest franchises of all time, second only to things like Pokémon and Star Wars. This isn’t some indie creator who you can ignore into silence. The reality is that Rowling is here to stay and we have to take far more substantial acts to counteract that influence. 

Even more importantly, buying the game is not evidence that you support her views and the black and white belief that it does is an easy distraction from those harder “How do we improve the lives of trans people?” questions. I started compiling a list of stories with problematic authors only to realize the number of incredibly popular texts with awful histories attached to them unnecessarily increased the length of an already long post. Everything from Game of Thrones to Dr. Seuss—if you love it, chances are one of the authors involved has a history of misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. Which I don’t say as a way of excusing these authors, nor as a way to silence the justified and necessary call outs on their work. Rather, I bring this up to acknowledge that engaging with these stories cannot be concrete evidence for how you view the minority group in question. The reasons for consuming these stories are incalculable and at the end of the day no one needs a “correct” reason for that consumption (my teacher forced me to read the racist book, I only watched the homophobic TV show so I could call out how horrible it was, etc.) If fiction were an indicator of our real life beliefs we’d all be the most horrifying creatures imaginable. I may be severely uncomfortable with the queer baiting in Supernatural, but if a friend says they bought the DVD collection my response is not, “How dare you support those creators. You’re homophobic.” In the same way, someone purchasing Legacy should not generate the response, “How dare you support her. You’re transphobic.” There’s a miles’ worth of pitfalls in connecting the statements “You purchased a game based on the world created by a transphobic author” and “You yourself are transphobic.” 

So if buying Legacy does not add additional harm to the trans community from a financial perspective, and it doesn’t make a dent in Rowling’s platform, and playing a game is not evidence of your feelings towards the group the author hates… what are we left with? “But Clyde, it’s the principal of the thing. I don’t want to support a TERF” and that is an excellent argument. Your morals. Your ethics. What you can stomach having done or not done. But the “your” is incredibly important there. People need to understand that this is their own line in the sand and that if someone else’s line is different, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically a worse person than you. For example, I have made the choice not to eat at Chick-Fil-A. Not because I believe that me not giving them $3.75 for a sandwich will make a difference in their influence on the world, but because it makes a difference to me. It helps me sleep at night. So if not purchasing Legacy helps you sleep at night? That’s a fantastic reason not to buy it. But the flipside is that if someone else does purchase it that is not a reliable reflection of their morals, no more than I think my friends are homophobic for grabbing lunch at Chick-Fil-A now and then. Sometimes you just want a sandwich. 

“But Clyde, why would you want to buy it? Rowling is such a shit-stain I don’t understand how anyone can stomach supporting her—whether that support has an impact or not. Maybe someone eats at Chick-Fil-A because it’s close to them and they’re too busy to go elsewhere, or it’s all they can afford, or they don’t know how homophobic they are. There are lots of reasons to explain something like that. But you’re not ignorant to Rowling’s problem and there’s no scenario where you have to play this game, let alone spend money on it. So why?”

The reality is that I will likely be buying Legacy, second-hand if I can, but new if it comes to that, so I’ll give some of my personal answers here, in descending order of presumed selfishness:

5. Part of my work involves studying video games/Harry Potter and as a researcher of popular culture, my career depends on keeping up with major releases: good and bad. I often engage with stories I wholeheartedly disagree with for academic purposes, like Fifty Shades of Gray.

4. I find the “Just pirate it!” solution to be flawed. I’ve spent the last four months struggling to get my laptop fixed and I currently have no income to buy another if it were to suddenly develop a larger problem. I am not going to risk my $2,000 lifeline on an illegal download, no matter how safe and easy the Internet insists it is. 

3. We’ve been told that Rowling has not been involved in Legacy in any significant manner and I do want to support Portkey. No, not just financially because I know many others have insisted that everyone good has already been paid. Game companies still need to sell games. That’s why they exist. There’s a possibility that a company with just two mobile games under its belt will be in trouble if this completely flops. Is my purchase going to make or break things? No. Same reality as whether it will put new, influential money in Rowling’s pocket to do horrific things with. But I’d like to help a company that looks as if they put a lot of heart and energy into a game only to get hit with some real shit circumstances outside of their control. Even if they’re not impacted financially or career-wise… art is meant to be consumed. I know if I wrote a Harry Potter fic and everyone boycotted it because they want nothing to do with Rowling anymore, I’d be devastated. Sometimes, you can’t separate supporting the good people from supporting the bad. Not in a media landscape where thousands of people are involved in singular projects.

2. I’m invested in reclaiming excellent works created by horrible authors. That’s fandom! We don’t know much about Legacy yet—this is pure, unsubstantiated speculation—but this new story could be a step forward from Rowling’s books, giving us some of the respect for minority groups that she failed at. That’s the sort of work I want to promote because Harry Potter as a concept is great and I think it’s worth transforming it for our own needs and desires. The reality is that as long as Rowling is alive she’ll benefit from licensed material, but if that material can start taking her world in better directions? I want to support that too.

1. I literally just want to play it. That’s it. That’s my big justification. I think it looks phenomenal and I was itching to get my hands on it the second the trailer dropped. And you know what? I’m not in a good place right now to deny myself things I enjoy. I don’t need to tell anyone that 2020 has been an absolute horror show, but for me certain things have made it a horror show with a cherry on top. Not a lot gets me excited right now because we’re living in the worst fucking timeline, so when I find something that makes me feel positive emotions for a hot second I want to hang onto it. I have no desire to set aside that spark of happiness in a traumatic world because people on the Internet think it makes me selfish. Maybe it does, but I’m willing to let myself be a bit selfish right now. 

Which circles back to this issue of equating buying a game with active harm towards the trans community. It honestly worries me because this is a very, very easy way to avoid the harder, messier activism that will actually help the queer community. When someone says things like, “You’re choosing a stupid video game over trans lives” that activism is performative. Not only—as demonstrated above—is purchasing a game not a threat to trans lives or ignoring the game a way of protecting trans lives, it also gives people an incredibly easy out while still seeming ‘woke.’ Not all people. Maybe not even a significant portion of people, but enough people to be worrisome. “I’m not purchasing that game,” some people post and then that’s it. That’s all they do, yet they feel like they’ve done their duty when in fact they’ve made no active difference in the world. Are you donating to trans charities? Are you speaking up for your trans friends when someone accosts them? Are you circulating media by trans authors? Are you educating your family about trans issues? Are you listening to trans individuals and continually trying to educate yourself? These are the things that make a difference, not shaming others for buying a game.

All of this is not meant to be an argument that people shouldn’t be absolutely revolted by Rowling’s beliefs (they should) and that this revulsion can’t take the form of rejecting this game wholeheartedly. This isn’t even meant to be an argument that you shouldn’t encourage others to boycott because though the financial impact may be negligible, the emotional impact for you is very real. I 100% support anyone who wants to chuck this game into the trash and never talk about it again—for any reason. All this is meant to argue is that people shouldn’t judge others based on whether they purchase this game (with a side argument that we can’t limit our activism to that shaming). That’s their decision and this decision, significantly, does not add any real harm to the world. Your fellow Harry Potter fan is not the enemy here. We as a community should not be turning our visceral on one another. Turn it on Rowling. She’s the TERF, not the individual who, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to play the game only tangentially related to her.  

If Twitter and Tumblr are any indication, I can imagine the sort of responses this post may generate: “That’s a whole lot of talk to try and convince us you’re not a transphobe :/ ” For those of you who are determined to simply things to that extent, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind. Please re-read the disclaimer and consider whether yelling at me over anon will benefit the trans community. For those of you who are still here, I do legitimately want us to think critically about the kinds of activism we’re engaging in, how performative it might be, whether it harms the community in any way, and (most significantly) whether it’s actually moving us towards a safe, respective world for trans people to live in. Personally, I don’t think telling Harry Potter fans that they’re transphobic for buying Legacy will generate any good in this world, for them or for the trans community. 

At the end of the day only you can decide whether you can stomach buying this game or not. Decide that for yourself, but make that decision knowing that there’s no wrong answer here.  

[lokiondisneyplus]

Over five popular seasons, the story lines of “Better Call Saul” have unfolded across nail salons, fried-chicken joints and other strip-mall staples of American life.

When new episodes begin premiering next year, though, the locations that give the “Breaking Bad” spinoff its texture could be reined in or done away with altogether. The culprit? The novel coronavirus, which is limiting where the New Mexico-set AMC show can film, potentially altering both its style and substance.

“Like a lot of other people, we’re going to have to be very creative in where and how we shoot,” said Mark Johnson, the veteran producer who oversees the Vince Gilligan hit, whose writers just began collaborating on the series’s sixth season. “A lot of places just won’t let you in.”

Across the entertainment industry, casts and crew are beginning to return to work after a five-month hiatus. In states with loosened restrictions, such as Georgia and New York, production is starting to crank up under tight controls that alter how sets operate. Instead of crew members freely mingling, they’re being divided into “pods" that limit how production departments such as wardrobe or lighting can associate. Covid-19 officers monitor the health of the cast and crew to determine who is allowed on set. “Zones” dictate where those cast and crew can go.

These changes might seem technical, but they hint at the far-reaching effects the virus will have on final screen products. Interviews with 12 executives, writers, agents and producers across the Hollywood spectrum suggest a dramatically transformed world of entertainment. Until a vaccine comes along, they say, covid-19 will change what Americans watch as dramatically as it has where they work, shop and learn. Forget the new normal — movies and TV are about to encounter the new austerity.

Crowd scenes are a no-go. Real-world locations will be limited. On-screen romance will be less common, sometimes restricted to actors who have off-screen relationships. And independent films — that tantalizing side dish in the U.S. entertainment meal — could be heavily scaled back.

“A lot of people believe this is just about getting back to work,” said Mark Gill, a producer and former head of Warner Independent Pictures, the studio unit responsible for independent hits such as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.” “They don’t realize the massive cultural impact we’re about to face.”

For most of its history, Hollywood created entertainment based on a simple premise: Shuttle in large numbers of people and move them around at will. That’s certainly true of crews. But it especially applies to extras, the low-paid day laborers who pack sets and off-camera holding areas in order to create dense crowd scenes — and, in turn, lend the work real-world atmosphere.

Such scenes have of course been part of some of the most memorable moments in Hollywood history. From “Ben-Hur” to “Braveheart,” on-screen entertainment has become indelible thanks to hundreds of people you’ve never heard of packing tiny spaces, then moving as one when the cameras roll.

Yet the virus has essentially made these hires impossible. Many don’t want to risk their health for a $100 paycheck and remote shot at background glory, and producers don’t want to take on the liability even if they did. “Braveheart" used about 1,600 extras, many from the Irish Army reserves. Experts say the movie couldn’t come close to being shot today.

“Those of us in the entertainment business are not used to being told ‘no’‚” said Lucas Foster, a longtime Hollywood producer who counts the 2005 romantic-action hit “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and last year’s Oscar-decorated blockbuster “Ford v Ferrari” among his credits. “And when it comes to things like crowds, there’s going to be a lot of no.”

Foster understands the challenges personally — he’s one of the first producers to have made a movie in the age of covid-19.

In March, the Los Angeles resident was in Australia, several weeks into preproduction on a new version of “Children of the Corn” when the pandemic began to spread. Millions of dollars had already been committed to the movie, adapted from the same Stephen King story that yielded the 1984 cult hit. So rather than shut down, he decided to proceed — cautiously. Foster created a production bubble, consulted doctors regularly, procured large amounts of tests, and engaged in elaborate workarounds in realms like crowd scenes.

He said it worked, but with major accommodations.

“I had to figure out how to do a crowd with no more than a few people at the same time. And with very specific camera angles. And by taking actors who would normally be close together and making them not close together,” Foster said. “In the end, I’d get the scene I needed but it looked different than it would have before the pandemic.” (Computer-generated crowds, he and other producers say, only work for more distant shots; anything requiring close-ups needs the real thing.)

It helped, he noted, that many of his actors were children, who are believed less susceptible to the effects of the virus, and that much of the movie was shot in cornfields and other vast outdoor spaces, a luxury not all films have.

Producers say the added cost required to implement all the safeguards could also result in a lower-end finished product. Films and TV shows achieve their level of shine through an endless period of refinement, with actors and directors often attempt 10 or more takes of a scene. With everything now going longer — and thus costing more — they may not have the luxury.

One producer of multiple studio hits said he expects the number of takes to drop significantly as the virus balloons budgets. He also expected a diminution in night scenes, which tend to be more involved and expensive than day scenes. He said some productions will be able to make the switch, but not all will be as lucky.

Also unlucky, say Hollywood veterans: movies where characters seek to get lucky. Many insiders say romantic scenes will be a major challenge in movies. Two agents separately reported they had high-profile clients who told them they wouldn’t shoot love scenes during the pandemic.

“I think every agency right now is looking down their client list to see which actors have spouses who are also actors, because then we could try to get them cast, too,” said one of the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their company to speak to the news media. “I’m joking. Sort of.”

The added wrinkle is even if the actors trust each other in real life, many of their characters would still have to take precautions on screen.

“How do you send two characters on a first dinner date when people aren’t really going on first dinner dates?” said a creator of romantic comedies who asked not to be identified because they did not want to be seen as criticizing colleagues who are attempting new projects. “You can send them on a socially distant walk, I guess.”

Writers say that leads to a broader dilemma: how much to incorporate the pandemic into their stories. On one hand, they say they don’t want to pretend the virus doesn’t exist. But acknowledging it poses its own challenges.

“Do you really want your stars wearing masks because that’s what characters would do? Do you want to have people engaging with each other in groups no larger than six? Do you want to write stories where everyone is at a safe distance?” said Mark Heyman, the co-writer of “Black Swan” and “The Skeleton Twins” and creator of the CBS All-Access historical drama “Strange Angel.” “Because a lot of those things won’t be very much fun to watch.”

Yet if creators aren’t willing to do that, he said, it could lead to those shows or movies getting shelved out of a fear that audiences will judge them inauthentic.

Heyman was working on a series set in a high school for Netflix when the lockdowns began. That project has now been put on pause. “It’s not easy to make a show about high school,” he said, “when there is no high school.”

To avoid reminding viewers of the pandemic, creators may take an approach that will lead to an unusual trend.

“I think over the next few years you’re going to see a lot more movies set in the past,” Foster said. “Even movies written for the present will be changed. They’ll make it the ’90s because then you don’t have to deal with these questions. And then you can just put in some cool ’90s music, so everybody wins.”

A few creators have gone the other way, leaning in to the pandemic.

Writers on Apple TV Plus’s “The Morning Show,” set at a news program, have torn up existing scripts to make the pandemic a part of the story line, according to a person familiar with the show who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. But with a lag time of months between shooting and airing, experts say that creators also risk looking out of date by the time episodes release to the public.

Sensing an opportunity, horror filmmakers have also tried to embrace current events.

“The horror genre is very suited to the pandemic and lockdowns — we’re always trying to create a feeling of being trapped anyway,” said the horror filmmaker Nathan Crooker.

When quarantines hit this spring, Crooker gathered nine noted horror filmmakers and had them shoot an anthology film — short fictional movies connected by the larger virus theme — and titled it “Isolation.” He required filmmakers to use only the materials and people they were in lockdown with, even prohibiting Zoom and other technologies.

“I think we’re going to get a very cool effect that mirrors what people are going through,” Crooker said of his work. “But I don’t know that every movie that gets made would want to look like that.”

One consequence of the virus could turn out to be the movies that don’t get made at all.

Some of the most beloved films of the past two decades, from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” to “Whiplash,” “Little Miss Sunshine” to “Fruitvale Station,” were independently financed. But before rolling cameras, independent productions require insurance policies to protect them from workplace lawsuits, along with completion bonds, in which a guarantor assures they will step in with funds to finish the movie if production is halted.

Experts say no company will cover covid-19 with either policy, effectively preventing production.

“Covid is an absolute disaster for the independent-film industry,” said Sky Moore, a partner in the corporate entertainment department of the Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Glusker who has spent several decades putting together film financing deals. “The lifeblood of independent-film financing is loans, and loans need insurance. Now you have this massive hole in the middle of all of it.”

Moore believes the toll will be vast.

“I think 50 percent of the independent industry goes away,” he said.

(Movies financed by large studios do not buy these policies; Netflix or Disney would just absorb a shutdown or lawsuit as the cost of doing business.)

Even if they can work around the insurance issues, many independent films won’t get made because they simply won’t have the money. “It’s already hard to get funding for a lot of these movies,” said Shaun MacGillivray, a producer who makes large-scale independent documentaries. “And now you’re telling investors the budget is going to be 30 percent higher?”

The independent-film world is trying to push ahead, slowly. The Sundance Film Festival, the epicenter of the indie-film business, where companies like Hulu and Netflix sometimes pay more than $10 million for an independently financed movie, will hold a partially physical, partially virtual edition in January, albeit at just about half the length.

“We are reminded daily of the power of what is made newly visible to us, the importance of what we look at,” Tabitha Jackson, the director of the festival, said in a letter to staff this summer explaining why the festival needed to go on. “My hope for this edition of the Sundance Film Festival is that through a multiplicity of perspectives held by artists and audiences in their various communities we will also come to feel the power of where we look from.” Left unspoken: What happens in 2022, when the well runs dry because new movies can’t be insured and produced?

Whatever entertainment can get made, experts say, will have a more hermetic look. Even television shows, once shot heavily on sets, now often rely on the authenticity of locations; a police procedural feels like it does because detectives are popping into pizza places and apartment buildings.

“We don’t want everything to be a chamber piece,” said Johnson, the “Better Call Saul” executive producer. “But if many shows look different, I think that’s okay, because the world looks different.”

Then, considering the challenge further, he added, “And if that doesn’t work, then at least our show has a lot of deserts and open roads.”

[angels-heap]

Okay hello I feel like you are Wise and Know things... it’s kind of hard to explain but is it wrong to just... Enjoy Things? With all the HL pisscourse going around it’s making me nervous about liking things like TF2 and missing something critical and huge in the media I consume and being labelled as a bad person for doing that. ESPECIALLY for liking characters like GLaDOS or Wheatley from Portal. I want to just Enjoy Things but there’s guilt tied to not being critical about every single detail

Thanks for reaching out, friend, and I’m so sorry to hear the current nonsense has you feeling this way. I have a hunch you’re not alone, and although I don’t claim to have all the answers here, I hope hearing my thoughts on this helps alleviate some of that guilt. This got long and I’m not putting it under a cut because it’s important. 

The short answer to your question is no; it is not wrong to just enjoy things. You don’t have to constantly examine all your favorite media under a microscope and incessantly highlight or dwell on its faults to be a good person or a good consumer of media, and here are a few reasons why:

(CW for brief mentions of all the squicky/potentially triggering things that tend to come up in ship discourse conversations.)

1. It is virtually impossible to find a truly unproblematic piece of media.

And that’s okay! Media is both created and consumed by people, and people are notoriously imperfect and complex. Sometimes creators choose to explore dark or taboo themes that are always going to squick some people out, no matter how well (or poorly) they’re handled. Sometimes content creators are actually terrible people who deliberately try to perpetuate their messed-up ideas through media. Sometimes creators’ deeply internalized prejudices seep into a work in a way they may not even consciously realize. Sometimes consumers’ experiences or prejudices color the way they perceive a piece of media and may lead them to a very different interpretation than what the creators intended.

Point is, there are a lot of shades of gray here. We should always strive to do better as creators and consumers, but the goalposts for “perfection” are always moving.

There’s almost always going to be something about your favorite media—no matter how benign it is—that rubs some people the wrong way, or (perhaps unintentionally) perpetuates harmful stereotypes, or starts out okay but doesn’t age well down the line. Period. That’s an uncomfortable truth that we all have to sit with. But don’t despair, because…

2. It is still okay to engage with and enjoy media that you know is problematic. Even if it’s really problematic. For real. I promise. The media you consume does not determine your worth as a person. 

Since you specifically mentioned Valve games, I’ll start out by clarifying that (as of July 2020), Valve games and their fandoms are pretty benign overall. Perhaps in the future, more of the humor will start to age poorly, or Valve will make some extremely questionable design choices with their next game, or Gabe Newell will be outed as a prolific serial killer, or whatever, but for now, there’s really nothing about Valve games that should make the average person go, “holy shit, you’re into that?!” when you bring them up in polite company. (And anyone who insinuates otherwise re: Half Life shipping discourse is either very confused about the definition of certain words or is maliciously trying to stir up controversy.)

That said, everyone has a different threshold for what they do and don’t want to see in media, and those boundaries are totally valid! But it is absolutely possible to enjoy even notably problematic media (e.g., Game of Thrones, the new Star Wars sequels, old movies where the directors were huge assholes to the female cast members, etc.) without being a bad person or a bad social justice activist. Instead of rambling about that at length, I’m going to link you to this excellent blog post on the subject.

The big takeaway here is that you can love a piece of media while also acknowledging its faults. In fact, I’d argue that a key part of loving something is being able to think critically about it and trying to hold its creators to a higher standard whenever possible. However, that doesn’t mean you have to be constantly analyzing it or prefacing every single public acknowledgment of your love for it with an “I know this is problematic and I swear, I just like it for XYZ” disclaimer, because…

3. Tumblr’s black-and-white thinking about media consumption is not healthy, “normal,” or (usually) present to the same degree in other virtual or real-world spaces.

I think most of the people on Tumblr who seem to be on a constant (and ultimately futile; see point 1) quest to find the One True Unproblematic Media have good intentions. I really do. And I applaud them for actively trying to understand and un-learn their own biases while becoming critical consumers of media.

Unfortunately, for a bunch of complicated reasons I still don’t totally understand and won’t get into here, some online communities tend to take these things to such an extreme that, in their quest to create a safe and/or inclusive environment, they actually end up creating an even more hostile one. To reference the recent drama again, nowhere is that more apparent than with “pro-ship” vs. “anti-ship” discourse.

Basically, “pro-shippers” believe that fiction is entirely separate from reality and therefore, “problematic” content (up to and including p*dophilia, inc*st, noncon, etc.) has just as much of a right to exist as any other content; this makes some sense on a purely intellectual level, but in the real world, obviously things are much more complicated than that. “Anti-shippers,” on the other hand, claim to be specifically against the aforementioned Big Three Bad Things in theory, but in practice, they’re basically the fandom purity police; they strive to criticize and shut down any media or fandom activity that could be even remotely construed as problematic, because they seem to have a (perhaps well-intentioned but ultimately misguided) perception that discussing anything “bad” in fiction will glorify/condone/promote it in real life and that all creators of “bad” fiction are inherently malicious. Often, they’re willing to twist definitions and jump through some very strange hoops to justify why something is “bad.”

The truth lies somewhere between those two extremes; fiction absolutely can (and does) impact reality, but not in such a clear-cut cause-and-effect way. People can see or read about dark/complicated/problematic things without condoning or enjoying them in real life, and conversely, people can dislike even relatively benign things without having to have an extreme, profound reason for feeling that way. People can also enjoy “bad” media while being fully conscious of what’s wrong with it and taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t negatively influence them, or they may lack the knowledge/context to understand why something is “bad” at first and change how they engage (or don’t engage) as they learn. There’s a lot more nuance to this issue than Tumblr is willing to acknowledge, and as a result, a lot of innocent people who just want to enjoy things in peace get sucked into some truly absurd drama that can be really hard to deal with. And that sucks. A lot.

So, TL;DR: Almost all media is at least a little problematic, but that’s okay, because the media you like does not determine whether or not you’re a good person. (And especially if your primary interests are Valve games... you’re good, mate. Seriously.)

The fact that you’re even asking me this question shows me that you’re being a thoughtful, responsible consumer of media, and that’s all anyone can reasonably ask of you without being a gigantic hypocrite—because whether they’ll admit it or not, everybody who’s perpetuating this discourse both on and offline likes something “problematic.” It’s impossible not to, unless you live under a rock and consume exactly zero media. Take care, and try not to let the discourse get to you! Go forth and enjoy things! (As always, my inbox is open for follow-up questions.)

ETA: Here’s another excellent tumblr post on this topic! And another one! 

[theoriesontheory]

Say it again, but make sure it has feeling

Intertextuality and the perceptions of aura and authenticity in film reboots and musical covers

In their video essay Intertextuality: Holywood’s New Currency Nerdwriter1 offers a harsh and pointed criticism at the mainstream movie industry for relying on what they call ‘weaponised intertextuality’. (2016) By which they mean, using cultural touchstones and references to illicit a response in viewers rather than write a compelling plot with engaging characters. (ibid.) The essay referenced several movies including the Beauty and the Beast live action remake, the new StarWars trilogy, the Hobbit, Star Trek, the list goes on and looking at the list of films and series mentioned, I must agree. Lots of these films seem to rely on viewers liking the IP already and once you have paid to consume the media they don’t really care if there’s a story there.

After watching the essay, I was left wondering, where do we see intertextuality in music and music production? The answer seems obvious, remixes and/or covers would be the most direct parallel with a reboot, with the practice of ‘biting’ or ‘sampling’ being a more subtle reference made.

In their video essay How Coltrane Broke “My Favourite Things” (feat. Adam Neely) Polyphonic praises John Coltrane’s 1961 modal jazz cover of the musical song “My Favourite things” calling him a genius more than once in the video. (2020) They explain the way the structure of the original song lent itself to experimentation, the compositional thinking, fractal theory, all of the innovations that Coltrane made on this recording. But at its fundamental level, it’s a reboot.

But then the question stands for me, in discussions on film theory this is seen as the fall of modern cinema, yet a great remix or cover is celebrated in the music industry. Why is intertextuality weaponised in Hollywood but utilised in the studio?

The primary difference to me as a creator (primarily of music) but also as someone who loves to absorb media is that in the music world, covers or remixes that achieve success on a mainstream level are usually some form of new expression on some sort of fundamental creative, human level, whereas lots of film or television remakes seem to lack some sort of heart or ‘aura’ to use the term in the way Benjamin would. (1935 as cited in Taylor, 2021)  

While many reboots of film franchises are recognised as cash grabs, because more often than not they are, there is seemingly little money to be made as a great covers musician, that trend left in the late sixties and early seventies with the rise of the original composer. Covers generally feel like a new expression of a similar idea whereas cinematic remakes feel like there is very little thought put into it.

I thought an interesting experiment to do would be to breakdown what I consider a great cover and look for the intertextual references and understand how they are used differently from the way they are used in film. The Cover I will look at is the Alex Lahey ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ by My Chemical Romance cover done for Like a version.

The cover is a spectacular example of a cover in my opinion, earning itself a spot in the hottest 100 of 2019 as well as a shout out from My Chem on the internet. Doing a purely audio and music theory analysis of the two songs there are very few differences, the timbres, melodies, instrumentation and structures are all similar enough that one song is unquestionably a version of the other, a well-made version but a version none the less. The primary technical differences were the use of orchestral percussion and four guitar players. I think the primary difference between this cover and the way movies are remade is the cover is perceived to have more authenticity than the Hollywood remakes. The authenticity is recognisable in some way, Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance praising the feeling of the song even though he was in the U.S., saying that it gave him chills. (Langford, 2019) If the source material, being the lyrics and chords and structures are all the same, one must conclude that it is the method by which these things are put together that give it the aura or authenticity. I feel like in watching the cover and seeing how the musicians were performing and expressing, it all felt very real. All the additional parts were not only there for their compositional appeal, but the band was made up of a group of young Australian musicians from other bands who all grew up listening to My Chemical Romance and now get to play it on national radio Additionally there is knowing the cultural touchstone that My Chemical Romance and particularly that song has to so many emos of a certain age demographic that the song hit’s all the right notes for so many people as it is. I think that the sense of authenticity also comes from the frequency with which covers come out from musicians. A performer might have one cover that has any kind of impact in their entire song book for their entire career, whereas it feels as if studios like Disney are almost made to churn out reboots now. If Alex Lahey decided to become a My Chemical Romance Tribute act permanently (after some initial interest) fans would start wanting the old Alex back, we know how Gerard Way looks at the world, we want to know how Alex does it now.

In looking at the ways that film reboots are different from music covers, I have found that one of the key foundational differences is the feeling of authenticity as perceived by the audience. In film the social knowledge that remakes are primarily made to make money has made the concept of intertextuality a weapon and a fighting point. Contrastedly , in music due to the authenticity often felt in the performance and recognised in the context of the rest of the musician’s career intertextual references are often a time for celebration.

References:

Langford, J. (2019 September 24). Gerard Way Praises Alex Lahey For Her My Chemical Romance Like a Version. Musicfeeds. https://musicfeeds.com.au/news/gerard-way-praises-alex-lahey-for-her-my-chemical-romance-like-a-version/ Nerdwriter1. (2016 May 16). Intertextuality: Hollywood’s New Currency [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeAKX_0wZWY

Polyphonic. (2020 December 4). How Coletrane Broke “My Favourite Things” (feat. Adam Neely) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg1RGmyl-_A

Taylor, J. (2021). Art Pop and The Culture Industry [Google Slides] SAE Campus online https://campusonline.gscm.sae.edu/mod/page/view.php?id=108482

Embeded video:

triple j. (2019 September 20). Alex Lahey covers My Chemical Romance 'Welcome to the Black Parade' for Like A Version [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC_k8j8YwjU

[peachdoxie]

I get where you’re coming from on the likes/reblogs post but also you aren’t really a content creator (correct me if I’m wrong) so this issue doesn’t effect you as much? I don’t think it’s wrong to ask people to think about how we as a community interact with and support artists on tumblr and to consider if there’s anything else we could be doing. It’s really hard to make it as an independent artist and I don’t think it’s wrong for artists to advocate for themselves

It's not an issue of content creators advocating for themselves and asking people to reblog their posts. I take issue when they basically guilt trip people into reblogging posts by saying things like "We're doing this for free. The least you can do is reblog our content." or "Tumblr has moved from a culture of sharing to a culture of consumption." or "People aren't reblogging original content anymore which is why tumblr is dying."

The first statement is technically true in that engaging with content encourages creators to produce more, but so often the posts I see act entitled about it, that if I see something I like I should automatically reblog it. No. There are any number of reasons I or anyone doesn't want to reblog something, and they're all completely valid.

The latter two statements are complete bullshit. Consumption culture has always been part of the internet. Having the ability to share something doesn't change that. We consume so much content every day on the internet and it is literally impossible to share everything we like. Tumblr has a post limit. Twitter has a post limit. I'm not certain if Facebook does, and to my knowledge Instagram doesn't, but there are other restrictions in place for posting activity on various sites. It's far easier and economical to like posts than it is to share them.

As for "tumblr is dying," I've seen this repeated for at least half a decade, and it's still debatable whether or not that's true, or even what "dying" means. And even if tumblr is "dying," I doubt much of that has to do with people not reblogging content so much as people leaving due to shitty policies implemented by the staff or people spending more time on other, newer websites that offer different styles of interaction. Like, maybe people not reblogging things is a small part of it. But the posts I'm arguing against often act like users not reblogging things is entirely due to the users being only about consumption and not about sharing, which is a take that entirely lacks a nuanced perspective on what impacts people's reblogging choices.

And also, the popularity of different websites waxes and wanes. There's a limit to how popular a website can get before something changes and users navigate to somewhere else. Yeah, those of us who like tumblr want it to stay popular and functional, but how many other social media sites popular for content creation with fair lack of corporate oversight have "died" in the last thirty years? A lot of them. That's just how the internet works, whether we like it or not.

My exasperation with those posts are that other people are trying to dictate how I and others cultivate our tumblr experience, which is very antithetical to my personal stance on internet activity as well as antithetical to a lot of other ethos that circulate on tumblr. I'm not so ignorant as to pretend that tumblr is one cohesive whole in terms of how people approach posting on this site, but there's a common trend of posts that talk about how to shape your tumblr experience. "If you don't like something, it's best to unfollow people that post it or block tags." "If you aren't seeing a lot of something you think is important, you should probably search for blogs and tags that do talk about those things." "Be careful sharing and engaging with depressive posts because constantly surrounding yourself with things that dwell on your depression is a dangerous coping method." This goes all the way back to my early tumblr experience in the early 2010s with the fandom vs hipster divide and the push against it that encouraged people not to feel shame in reblogging posts from the "wrong" side of the divide. It's likely existed before I joined in 2012, and has probably existed since like, the beginning of time, actually.

Like I started this post with: it's not an issue of people advocating for others to share their content. It's entirely true that more engagement with content encourages people to create more. That's part of how content creation works. But I take issue with five specific things that I see constantly arising in the posts I'm criticizing:

That if people enjoy something, they should reblog it no matter what

That users no longer care about sharing content, only about consuming it

That tumblr is "dying" because of bullet point 2

The guilt-tripping that blames users for bullet point 3 because they don't always reblog certain things

The utter entitlement that these posts have that users are somehow obligated to share things in order to support content creators posting things for free on tumblr

I don't like people demanding I reblog specific things. I don't like people acting entitled to attention because they're doing something for free. I don't like people making claims about tumblr's userbase that lack nuance. And I certainly do not like guilt tripping. It's a shitty, shitty thing to do.

Sharing content is good! Engaging with posts is great! It helps encourage content creators to make more content, which benefits both the creator and their audiences! But don't you dare demand that someone must reblog your posts just because they like them. Don't you dare solely blame other people for why you aren't getting the attention you want. And don't you dare guilt trip people into reblogging your content.

For what it's worth, I am a content creator. I don't draw or paint, but I do produce a fair amount of content. I make gifs. I make memes. I make videos. And I write, a lot. the difference is that I don't use tumblr as a way to market myself, and I don't get upset when something doesn't get the number of reblogs I want it to. I love it when something I make gets a lot of notes, yeah, but I also understand that there is an inevitable amount of randomness that dictates whether or not a post becomes popular, no matter how "good" it is or not. That's just how content creation works, and it's not unique to tumblr.

I'm not saying any of this to go "oh look at me, I'm so much better than all those other people" because I'm not a pretentious douchebag. I'm trying to model an approach to tumblr that I believe is considerably more realistic than the one found in the posts I'm describing. People seem to think, since tumblr is good for sharing content and helping users establish themselves as content creators, that that's how tumblr users are supposed to use it, even though there's inherent obligation on how people should be using it. One of the best things about tumblr is that it's very easy to shape your own experience and what kind of content you see, and I think it's wrong to demand people act otherwise.

[peepingtoad]

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

My muse is:   canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom?  YES / NO / 50-50 (There’s a lot of love and a lot of hate, but I think many are actually pretty neutral on him too!)

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom?  YES / NO / 50-50 (I’d say he may be an... acquired taste? Of course a lot of people I know here find him sexie so it’s hard to say for certain, heh. We may just be the weirdos of the fandom :P )

Is your character considered strong in the fandom?  YES / NO

Are they underrated?  YES / NO (Not in terms of ability, but underrated for just how complex and multi-layered he is, I’d say)

Were they relevant for the main story?  YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main character?  YES / NO /

Are they widely known in their world?  YES / NO.

How’s their reputation?  GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL (I honestly think he’s a man of many reputations, both in canon and in fandom :’D)

How strictly do you follow canon?  —  I’m very much a ‘use the bones of what we got in canon and do my best to flesh them out’ kinda roleplayer. There are some things that can be taken too easily at face value that I see fit to build upon. For example, I think Jiraiya’s feelings on the prophecy and his relationship with Konoha is something that could be too easily played off as simplistic, or like they were immovable constants. But that’s unrealistic for a man of his years and many experiences, so I try to put myself in his emotional setting at various points in his life, and trace how his feelings and behaviours change, if that makes sense? 

I try to avoid saying that any of the writing was straight up wrong because it’s disrespectful to the creator. But especially for Jiraiya, who had such a significant role to play in the narrative that it sometimes took precedence over his actual character, I do find some of his actions, and the way some interactions were handled in the canon to be a little OOC... so I’ll work with it and try to spin it in a way that I feel fits how he was characterised.

Basically, I’d say that I follow canon, but I like to enrich it in areas that were lacking detail or a nuanced view that took in all the surrounding events of the time. After Jiraiya’s canon death, of course, that’s when more divergence comes in to my portrayal... otherwise I wouldn’t be able to play any post-war scenarios! But the essence of his character is the same, which I try to keep as close to canon as possible.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals.   —  A man of many experiences! You can bet that any topic that comes up, he’ll have some sort of amusing anecdote to share, or be able simply to talk shit about it. He's seen so much, and has a sensitive soul enough that he’ll give anyone a chance; he’s very open-minded and non-judgemental, and honestly is a humanitarian that wants to help those in need. Might leave your muse a little baffled as to how he could hold the status of ‘legend’, only to show it when they least expect it. You never quite know what you’re going to get with him: he’s generous and selfless, yet has many vices that seem selfish at times; he’s both a lover and a fearsome fighter; he’s immensely resilient at the same time as incredibly vulerable and damaged; he’s a himbo and a bit of a jock with the soul of a poet. Love him with no restraint and invite his love in return, and you’ll get not only a lover, but a devotee. Wears his heart on his sleeve... or does he? Chip away at him and find out!

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?).  —  The pervy, flirty, jokey schtick could get grating, or come across as disingenuous. In romantic situations, he’ll keep quiet about putting a label on whatever it is, and beneath his overall sweetness and devotion there may be an underlying reek of commitment issues and a fear of admitting he is afraid. He also has a habit of deflecting negativity in general, and playing things off as if they don’t matter or they’re a joke, making him actually rather a difficult person to get to know the heart of. One might feel as if they’re getting nowhere with him...

... Either that, or they get the complete opposite. Yes, as equally as he can be guarded, he can overshare like crazy, and has a tendency to become codependent with those he gets attached to, which is inconsistent with his free-spirited nature, and how adept he is at keeping others at arm’s length from his less sunny side. This inconsistency might make him seem unreliable—if the fact he’s always off who-knows-where doesn’t do the trick already.

What inspired you to rp your muse?  —  I’ve been a big fan of the Sannin ever since I first read the Deadlock, but being a very young person at the time I perhaps couldn’t relate enough to people who had experienced so much to do them justice in my teenage fic-writing endeavours, so I remained on the sidelines enjoying content by other people (there may also have been a little bit of ‘what the fuck, why do I dig the old dude so much’ denial in there haha). I’ve picked up and dropped my obsession with the series several times over the years, and my love for those three seemed to grow each time. They really are ‘the lost generation’, and as the sole survivors—alongside having a huge impact on the plot, how the shinobi world is shaped, and the three main protagonists—there’s a lot of juicy material there, a lot of emotional background, along with decades of history that basically goes untapped in the canon. 

Anyway, I digress. Coming to the Naruto RPC for the first time around this time 2 years ago at the age of 25, I made this blog and my Deidara one on a whim, but focused on the latter at first. Villains were always comfortable territory for me in my other RP experiences, and I think it made me doubt that I could possibly do someone who is frankly a lovely guy any justice, no matter how much I loved him. I even had the intention of making him fully Akatsuki/Missing-Nin AU at first. Yeah. That’s how stuck in my villain/anti-hero zone I was! But, I think in the end, the fact he actually isn’t a two-dimensional typical ‘hero’ was something I chewed over and realised would be incredibly enriching to write, worth stepping out of my comfort zone for. And being a little more mature and less angst-ridden myself by that point, I found I could resonate with his feelings and ideals in a way that I know I couldn’t have as a teen... but I was still tentative. 

Anyway, after leaving his blog empty for a bit (with its placeholder URL ‘frogdaddy’, which sadly got hoarded by someone else), I cosplayed the old bastard, along with my partner as Orochimaru. We’d been stanning that particular ship and talking about how great the Sannin are in general for quite some time by that point, but being casually in character for fun while drunk off my tits at a boat party, was a bit of an epiphanic moment. Not long after that, I threw myself right into writing this chaotic-good old bastard with gusto, and here I still am :’)

What keeps your inspiration going?  —  Taking breaks to recharge as and when I need to. Seriously. The death of all my other blogs has been pressure (mostly from myself) to be there and force myself to put out regular content, so I went into this not thinking that way and it’s really helped! 

Of course, there’s also the fact that there simply seems to be no shortage of areas I can delve into with this guy. Again, it’s his age and all the missing years in canon... but I think it’s also how much love he has and his genuine eagerness to engage with others that makes him one of the most naturally bountiful muses I’ve played. Because honestly? Most of my villain muses wanted people to just fuck off :’D this guy is open to everything.

That aside, I guess I just gel with him more than I ever expected to. I’ve changed a lot as a person and gained more confidence since various areas of my life got better, and I really just vibed with this chill, funny, romantic, pervy, big-hearted energy. I enjoy angst, but my real love is peppering the serious and heartbreaking with romance and comedy—and isn’t that just befitting of him? Writing through his eyes also helps to keep my outlook positive, so that keeps me stuck on him as much as the seemingly limitless content potential. 

And this is without even going into my cross-fandom AU ideas I have on the back-burner. Honestly, they’re there but I want to put a real effort into them while keeping his essence the same, which for some, involves brushing up on my lore!

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice?  YES / NO.

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO.

Do you sometimes write drabbles?  YES / NO / RARELY. (depends on whether I get a flash of inspiration—which mostly comes with random asks that happen to stir up an idea for a scene, such as this one (NSFW warning))

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day?  YES / NO.

Are you confident in your portrayal?   YES / NO.

Are you confident in your writing?  YES / NO.

Are you a sensitive person?  YES / 50-50 /NO. (I tend not to take things personally but am also very passionate—call it my innate Leo-ness!)

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal?  —  Hmmm. I haven’t actually had any critique on my portrayal, so I’m not sure haha! I’d say if it’s constructive, then I’ll take it into account and consider it, especially if it’s a case where it helps me realise I’ve perhaps not gotten across what I intended to very well. But I’m also quite fond of my portrayal in its essence, so I may end up just thanking the person for their opinion and carry on as usual :P

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character?  —  Absolutely! I’ve had some wonderful ones recently and it’s exactly the kick I need to get ideas out, some of which I’ve had on the back-burner but not had a framework within which to write it without it getting derailed. I definitely appreciate a question that will keep me at least a little on-topic, otherwise if I go off on my own volition I really tend to... well, go off! Even if a question is a similar topic to something I’ve already done, it’s a good exercise for me to go back to the similar headcanon and see if I can build further on it, deviate, and link it to show what past thoughts I’ve been working with. A great way of keeping some consistency in my portrayal while making improvements, I find! And then of course I’ve had some questions that are entirely new morsels for thought, and it leads me to something new and fresh, which I greatly appreciate.

Basically, any questions at all, fire away! I may take a while but I will get to them eventually!

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why?  —  Yeah. I mean I think it’s just polite to present a reason as to why not, instead of just being like ‘this is wrong/a bad take’ or whatever. Source material is down to personal interpretation, so if I draw different ideas from it to another person after discussion, then we can simply agree to disagree on it. 

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it?  —  They are welcome to disagree with me I guess? So long as they’re respectful and don’t then treat me as if my interpretation is ‘AU’ or talk about ‘canon Jiraiya’ as if he’s obviously a different entity to my own, then disagree away. But if prompted enough, know that I will most likely defend my portrayal with what I consider to be justification from the source material :P I did pay close attention to it, after all, and I do consider my portrayal to align well with it.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it?  —  Depends on the nature of it and the conduct, really? Like, people are allowed to dislike characters. I myself find a couple of characters pretty annoying or don’t particularly care for them (granted, usually it’s in a love-to-hate or simply a ‘this character doesn’t interest me’ way), but that doesn’t affect how I behave towards the RPer of a character. It’s just manners, really. People tend to RP characters because they like them, so why would you take negativity right to their doorstep, in this space they’ve made as an expression of enjoyment for, and to develop said character? 

There’s been some people who admitted to me that they didn’t care much for Jiraiya, but then began to like him more with my portrayal and that’s more than fine; I take it as the highest compliment in fact. It’s also the kind of open-minded attitude I like to have with portrayals of characters I don’t necessarily like or have much interest in, because by and large, people do tend to add more depth and nuance than the busy and character-packed canon allowed.

However, if it’s the type of hate that’s got its own devoted circle of bitter bitches, who seem to use so much energy hating a character... then please, don’t engage me. Doesn’t matter who the character is, don’t expect me to follow/keep following your negative ass if it’s constant on the dash—and if the target character is any of the Sannin then frankly I’ll have probably blocked/blacklisted in a heartbeat. The ‘critical’ views of them tend to diminish them as humans, diminish the context and events that surrounded their choices, and in a way that I find is a gross double standard compared to what people will allow other (read: young, attractive, fandom faves, ‘babies’ or ‘beans’) to get away with and excuse the behaviours of. I don’t need that kinda negative energy sullying my hobby, nor do I need moral superiority that isn’t applied consistently across the board.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors?  —  Absolutely! I meticulously fret and check, and cringe when I get a reply and happen to spot errors while rereading what I wrote before it! I edit a lot but don’t always pick up on errors, so I’m more than happy to have it pointed out. Chances are, I’ll be far more brutal to myself about it than anyone else would be!

Do you think you are easy going as a mun?   —  Overall, yeah. I’m not possessive or clingy (I don’t think) and don’t expect the world from people, nor for them to focus on or favour me or be super fast. I just expect the same respect in return. Having said that, I will express it when I don’t like something or it makes me uncomfortable, provided we’re familiar enough, because if we’re strangers I’d feel like I was coming across as entitled to your energy and emotional labour. I do my best to be diplomatic about it though, and rest assured it doesn’t mean I’m forever mad at you or turned off in any way just because I have a small grievance. I just find that being honest with each other rather than letting things pile up and fester makes a friendship more solid, and basically more genuine and long-lasting.

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

Tagged by: @dokuhebi​ Tagging: Whoever hasn’t done this yet!

[writingonjorvik]

Can We Discuss Ambassadors?

One of the things I’d like to see SSO utilize more are its ambassadors, but it also feels like a system that’s barely been touched since it was released. So what would make this system more impactful?

I should lead this with while I would love to be an ambassador/work with SSO, this is in no way me gunning for the position. I do know from other MMOs I’ve been a part of though that community ambassadors can be a big part of growing and building community, and it feels like, at least from my experience, that’s less so how the ambassador position is used.

It is true that I don’t personally follow any of the current SSO ambassadors and maybe that’s something I should change moving forward. However, I feel like most of the ambassadors that SSO has (and this could be because of when the ambassador program was set up) were just semi to just straight popular creators who spoke nicely about the game. Which shouldn’t exclusively be the case. Ambassadors have the great position of directing a lot of constructive criticism towards the game, by having a platform that is acknowledged by the game creator and a large audience. And that’s not something I’ve seen a lot from the game.

To be honest, I haven’t seen a lot period from the ambassadors until recently. It was only really with the tease of the bosals and a story yesterday about the ambassadors creating their country flags as full outfits that I’ve heard any kind of communication between the ambassadors and projects with SSO in...years? Which means that there’s really no reason to be following ambassadors. And while I don’t think that you should have to follow ambassadors to get sneak peaks for the game, there should be some reason ambassadors are ambassadors and not just creators. They should be promoting projects with SSO and supporting community engagement. Running contests with gift codes handed out by SSO on a semi-regular basis. Something, anything, that makes them different than just your regular SSO creator.

And then there’s the fact that I’ve never even met an ambassador in game. I haven’t met a game master either, but in the years I’ve been playing, I’ve never run into an ambassador. There should be a couple ambassadors per server, particularly for populated ones. And they should have name indicators like game masters do. If they’re there to promote community, then they should be visible and active, running events and engaging with folks.

It would help too if SSO had a page on their website that both linked to creators (so parents could find SSO approved creators for their kids as well as reference for the rest of us), and also a method of becoming an ambassador. The process seems entirely elusive currently. Ambassadors feel like a holdover, incomplete position because of it, and that really under sells the position. Even if it’s still difficult to become an ambassador, needing a certain size community or reputation with the company, there should still be a public way to become an ambassador. Because the more people SSO has actively promoting the community for them, the better. So it would follow that there should be a public process for achieving that for aspiring players.

[rgr-pop]

Re: canvassing for Bernie. I guess mostly advice on being effective. I went canvassing in Va before Super Tuesday and felt pretty ineffective, we used the minivan app which just showed us dem voters which makes sense right before the election but I’m wondering if I should widen the net going forward? Idk I’d be canvassing in md and wv thanks in advance you truly are the only smart person on this site

i actually did not have the best experience today, but some of my friends did. my friend the one from flint who went on msnbc to tell chris hayes he didn't vote for hillary because he's from flint, he had a really good day and he felt really good about everything. he gave me some good points, which i will share with you in a second. the reason you didn't feel effective in VA is because everyone in VA is a CIA asset and you shouldn't internalize that. i'm thrilled that you get to talk to people in WV and I think policy and talking points are really going to be on your side, and the people are going to be cool as hell (even if they are not-already bernard voters). 

 i think bernard kinda fucked over michigan in a few ways this year (no beef but it's true), but i am lucky because my city has some extremely experienced campaign people, and i have never really had to experience doing canvassing for any kind of campaign that wasn't run by them, so i was kind of confused about how little direction you were given. they keep asking me to do higher-up stuff like drawing up the voter lists and strategizing and hosting canvasses, but i keep being like, put me on the doors dude that's where i belong. (my palestinian libra dirtbag is exactly the same, he did like three turfs today lol.) i can probably ask my campaign people for tips if you feel like you don't have any guidance. 

since we're so close to election day, we'd normally be only targeting likely/confirmed voters to get out the vote, but because things are so crazy, we're also hitting up voters identified as undecided or previously soft-opponent or i think even independent and we're actually still trying to change minds. this is not super usual but it's crisis time! so, to answer your question, i would say i think you should widen the net, especially in WV. the dem voter problem isn't a huge issue where i am because people in lansing flint and detroit are literally just always democrats no matter what, but in other states i think it's more nuanced.

most of the following advice pertains to actually talking to people, but it should cover the range of voters you may encounter. i think i feel the least effective when i "fail" to engage people in a conversation, so i recommend talking to them in more open-ended ways. i share some of our script down below, but in general i like to ask people questions to draw them in, rather than telling people what we're about. get them to talk about themselves, and they will remember bernie sanders as the candidate that listened. i swear to god that works. 

today they gave me a sheet (i gave it to a new girl so i can't remember exactly, but) that focused on swinging those voters. it's still "don't shittalk opponent" territory but it's a list of ways to explicitly contrast sanders and biden on the policies, and it made me realize that we're extremely lucky to be put in this position because those contrasts are stark, and they are convincing to poor people in particular. 

what's interesting is that i'm no longer leaning into medicare for all to do my arguing, and i think that's gonna make me more effective. obviously bernie is stronger (literally: strongest) on this issue, but the messaging around biden's work on the ACA and his recent dodging about the issue doesn't help us convince anybody. healthcare is the most important thing on the table but it remains inscrutable: i would say dig into it with voters only if they bring it up as an issue that matters to them, or if they're healthcare workers (non-doctor probably), or if you are going to talk about an experience of your own. when you do talk about healthcare, especially in WV, remember bernie's position on medical debt. this is one of his clearest contrasts with biden. make sure you're familiar with biden's history with bankruptcy and debt, because i'd be willing to bet that that's something that's gonna resonate with WV and MD voters. 

the trade deals and NAFTA are, simply, the most important thing to talk about at this point, and imo (based on the critical states, michigan most of all) that's what's going to win us this election, if we talk to people about it. hillary clinton lost the election because she did NAFTA--simple as that. biden, too, did NAFTA, but the thing about him--as i'm sure you're noticing--is that people seem to forget absolutely everything about him, and no one knows that he did NAFTA. joe biden is behind loads of policy that was outright bad for industrial workers and ruined lives. it is simply enough to argue "bernie sanders did not do NAFTA" but you'll want to look into his trade deal positions and history, contrast these with both biden and trump. if you're worried about the xenophobic underbelly of this problem, frame it as exactly what it is: a position that resists giving corporations free reign to do whatever they want, to abandon communities, and stomp all over workers. 

look over some of bernie's positions on unions and labor in general. neither of the states you are going to are strongly right-to-work states right now, but where i live that's a really important thing. both biden and bernie, interestingly, have proposed a ban on right-to-work laws (it rules that we are in a place where this was mainstream for candidates, but it remains to be seen who will actually pursue this! the literal birthplace of the UAW went right-to-work while biden was VP soooo.) bernie also wants to end at-will employment and has a slate of proposal to strengthen unions. you should tell this to almost everyone. biden claims to support many similar plans, but he has not historically been especially strong in these areas, and his plans are generally less encompassing. 

you should be prepared to confront concerns that bernie's strong environmental positions will hurt workers in WV. talk to people about a "just transition" and really emphasize the point that industry, and coal companies in particular, have been empowered to come and go as they please without any consequences. bernard's plans in general are job creators, and the idea is to bring sustainable--as in, sticking--jobs to appalachia and the rust belt, as well as universal healthcare for people made sick by their jobs. universal healthcare is an engine for jobs. 

the war in iraq, support for veterans, and social security are extremely huge issues for poor people, probably specifically in WV. 

you will also talk to another major electorate: people who just want to beat trump. this is advice from the msnbc friend, who knows: give them all the bernie beats trump lines. only bernie beats trump. convince them that biden will have all the same problems hillary clinton had against trump. if they bring up the alleged low youth turnout on super tuesday, remind them that the south has particular voter suppression issues that impact young and college voters, and that thus far young people actually have been turning out in the north and west. and the youth turnout on super tuesday was still higher than average! remind them that a democrat without the so-called youth vote has never beat a republican in the general in this century. most importantly, remind them that because of our flawed electoral system, you could win every single person on the west coast, but you're essentially never going to win the election if you can't win macomb county, michigan. and macomb county, michigan is full of working class voters who were really hurt by the policies of joe biden and hillary clinton and, increasingly, donald trump, and they are interested in bernie sanders, and it's life or death for them. tell them you have a friend in michigan who has seen this first hand :). (hoping march tenth bears this out for us lol.) 

gonna round out the hard issues section here by suggesting you read this, which i think is pretty convincing: https://newrepublic.com/article/156819/rebooting-bernie-sanders 

 today i talked to a guy who said, "bernie sanders, i think i heard obama likes him." and i said, yep, bernie worked really hard to pass some of obama's best policies. and that's true :) 

in general, the sanders campaign relies really heavily on the "bernie story," the personal narrative. i think it probably works. it really works for me, because i can talk to people about the stuff that isn't just the green new deal and loan forgiveness--although you will definitely also end up talking to educated people who will need to be reminded that bernie sanders wants to forgive their loans and joe biden wants them to be saddled with them until the end of time. remember to talk to people about where you work and where you live. work and homes is the most important thing to absolutely everyone. tell them you have a teacher friend lol. talk to people about other people you've met. tell other people's stories. 

 in case you need guidance in this area, try a script that looks something like this (sorry if this is condescending and you already have seen the scripts, but i kind of modify them based on my strengths as a canvasser): 

i'm so and so and i'm with the bernard sanders campaign and we're out reminding people to vote on [date]. 

do you plan on voting? do you know who you're voting for? can we count on you to vote for bernie? [remind people of the stakes of the election, it's gonna be a close one, talk to your friends and family.] [then get them to think about their election day plan: do you know where your polling location is? what time are you going? do you have transportation?] [try to have support info available for them if they do not have these things. if they're worrying about not being able to get off work, commiserate/be empathetic and don't blame.] [let them know how they can get involved in the campaign.] 

if they say they are not voting, sometimes you can respect that (shoutout to jehovah's witness), but if they're on your list, they're probably registered, so you can ask them what kind of issues prevent them from voting. a lot of people will tell you that voting is stupid. you should agree with them (they are right). remind them that you would not normally be canvassing for a democratic candidate or any presidential candidate. you're working with tons of people who never canvassed, or maybe never even voted before. this is the first time in my entire life that i had the opportunity to vote for a candidate that addressed the issues that weigh on me on a day to day basis. a major candidate that hates the two party system and refuses to submit to democratic party nonsense. who has a plan that might actually work. a candidate that has a plan to make everybody's life better, even people who aren't out here canvassing for him. poor people. remind them that bernie sanders is the strongest candidate among non- and first-time voters! this area is a strength of mine because all of this is 100% true for me. i hate electoral politics and i hate the democratic party! if they have other reasons for not voting, see if you have any info that can help them. also remind them that this is a close race, an uphill battle, a difficult fight, and their vote is going to REALLY make a difference. but if we try, we will win. 

if they say they "think" they know who they're voting for, they're probably thinking about someone else. you'd be surprised--i am so surprised--how many people have no idea, even up til they get to the polls, or they change their mind last minute. try to prepare a few sentences that are really personal but probably relatable that they can chew on. mine looks something like this: i'm from flint michigan and i've seen the way the government has started to let companies get away with absolutely anything, abandon families that have worked for them for generations, and weaken unions. i want fair wages, fair taxes and for companies to be accountable to their workers and the communities that make them run & make them rich, and that's the bernie sanders platform, and i fear joe biden's ideas are moving us in the same direction that we're already moving. my husband's family worked for GM for four generations but we can't get jobs in flint much less find a place to live. being from flint, and in my own working life, i've watched the power of unions just totally erode. i myself am in a teacher's union and just recently, for the first time in my life,i feel like we can move in a direction where workers have real power in their workplace. especially watching teachers and support staff rally behind sanders, or these huge strikes. sometimes here i also say something about schools! etc.! ! sometimes that's all you get, but sometimes people want to hear more! in either case, this will stick with them. 

if they say they are undecided, ask them what kind of issues motivate them to vote, or ask them what they think about sanders. refer to all of the above, but don't argue, use bernie's positions to add to what they are saying, be a good empathetic active listener etc. but also make sure they know that you have shared experiences, agree with them. 99% of the time their issues will be better addressed by bernie, if they are working class people. sometimes they will reveal that they are nervous to vote for sanders. remind them of the size and energy of the base, and the electability arguments listed above. one of the reasons we want to canvass is to remind people--especially in conservative communities, where their neighbors may not even be voting in this primary--that it's okay and in fact very popular to vote for bernie, and we're competitive, and if we make it to the general we're gonna win. but it's not going to be easy [talk to your friends and family get involved go online etc.] 

if they are leaning biden but undecided, sometimes it's fine to ask them why, ask them for a pitch. you can tell them that you agree, and that we have had a really strong contest this year, and maybe in another year biden would have been the strongest choice, but bernie's just better in all these areas, etc. 

please lmk if you want more ideas! i'll try to take a picture of some of our documents tomorrow when i'm out.

[sevensoulmates]

Yeah!! you're right, also that part of the toxic fandom does not realize that if they continue like this they will achieve the opposite of what they want (that is, Buddie becomes canon) and that Oliver and Ryan feel annoyed with the ship (something that I am sure they are starting to feel or already feel)

So I took some time to ponder over this because I’ve been seeing this general assumption/fear going around not just in the 911 fandom but within other fandoms as well, past and present. And I just became curious as to why we as an audience feel like if we make a wrong step--like being too pushy about something we do/don’t want--that creators will do the opposite to spite us.

In this day and age, it is very easy to access content creators, even ones who exist as part of a larger corporation. I did some research about how fans have generally been able (or unable) to impact how a show or movie has moved forward with any particular story and it seems that those who have (shows like Arrow that changed up storylines/pairings to suit comic book fans or fans of other ships) have been met with backlash and ultimately no satisfaction for anyone. I’ve also read of some shows (example like BBC Sherlock) adding in meta-level “fans” to their show, or writing in “undertones” to please fans, and that backfiring because the show didn’t actually want go forward with it, so when they backtracked (or didn’t make certain plotlines/ships canon) people were upset because of the false hope they were given.

We’ve also seen the rise in fan support saving certain show from cancellation. We watched it happen with One Day at a Time and with Brooklyn Nine-Nine. What was important to realize on that end, was that the shows weren’t “saved” by their original networks, but were instead bought up by other networks who believed the show could fit their brand and wanted to continue it and still felt like they would find those fans shifting to watch wherever the show went. These shows were saved not because of fan support (although that was a big factor) but mostly because the networks that bought them saw potential in continuing the show.

On the flip side, we’ve seen fan petitions to do things such as re-make the entire last season of Game of Thrones, or remake Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Neither of these fan petitions ever even came remotely close to influencing creators. But then we have the negative backlash of things like Sonic the Hedgehog where fans literally bullied the animation team into redesigning (and therefore re-making entirely) their film. But in that case the creators didn’t necessarily change up the story but rather a character design. Still, it showcases that fans DO have some sort of power to influence things that happen higher up. But how much really? In my opinion, way way less than we think we have.

From what I’ve read (and you can google ‘fan impact on tv shows’ if you want to read some older and newer articles), when it comes to the writing of shows, most creators and their writers are not writing to give the audience every little thing they want--but rather, they write to create the story that the writing team wants and the story that they best feel suits the characters. And this might not always line up with what the fans believe best suits the characters. Of course, TV shows WANT fans to enjoy what they make. They want to have fans in the first place. But because of how active people are online, and how easy it is to have your voice and opinion reach someone high up, fan voices are beginning to be drowned out--purposefully. 

When you have large-scale protests, such as the huge backlash The 100 and several other shows received for perpetuating the “bury your gays” trope, these criticisms are not petty complaints about ships or contradictory lore, these criticisms are about socio-cultural level problems that NEED to be addressed due to the harmful and deadly ramifications they can have on real world people. These protests are needed so that going forward, other media are AWARE of what ramifications may come from such decisions and can make better choices when telling their stories. Shows that have failed to comply often face heavy backlash--or are quick to get the boot (looking at you The Magicians). For problems like this, creators absolutely should be listening to their fans. For things like shipping, or other minor disagreements that are based heavily on individual fan preference, creators can very easily let that roll off their backs.   

My point is that with the ever-closing gap between fans and creators, fans voices have grown louder, yes, but creators ability to tune it all out has grown stronger. TV shows want passionate fans. And those who have been in the field for a while know that comes with having obnoxious, disrespectful, and rude fans as well. At the end of the day, unless a show is writing in storylines or character stereotypes that are disrespectful or harmful to groups of real people, they should not have to bend to every will of every faction of fans. And most won’t. Because you can’t please everybody, so the writers and creators are going to choose to do what works best to them. At the end of the day creators/writers are going to do whatever they want and take the storyline wherever they think is the most interesting (and logical) for their characters. (An aside to say I’m talking about shows that actually know what they’re doing in the writers room--not shows like Riverdale (no offense)).

Shows (like Supernatural for example) are always going to choose to do what they want to do above anything the fans say they want. If they want to make a certain ship happen, they’ll do it. If they don’t, they won’t regardless of how vocal fans (or antis) are. What show writers do and don’t want may shift over the course of time. It happens. (Like for example, in my personal opinion, I don’t believe the writers were at all trying or necessarily wanting to write Buddie as a legitimate thing/possibility in s2, but with s3 I feel that has changed). When writing to please fans, you can risk certain decisions coming off as pandering (like in Star Wars:TROS). And when certain decisions feel inauthentic to the show or underdeveloped/OOC for a character (even things that people claim they really wanted) it can feel disappointing even to the most loyal of fans.

For 911 specifically, we’ve seen that the show can and does focus on character’s love lives. It’s not unreasonable to expect that from them like it might with say shows like The 100 where the plot-heavy sci-fi action has always been the priority for the show’s writers, above whatever romantic side-plots they have with their characters. And we’ve seen that 911 is generally positive when it comes to how they represent queer characters (as for other minority rep, 911LS has some issues on the muslim rep, but I am not qualified to speak on that as someone who is not muslim). The show is not perfect in it’s writing, they’ve made mistakes or done things that not all fans have liked, but from my perspective (and I think a lot of other people’s perspectives too) the show does its best to remain true to its characters and tell a genuinely interesting and engaging story. The show (both the writers, producers and actors) seems to care for their characters and the stories they give them a whole lot.

So, tldr, no. I don’t think the writers would simply choose to not make buddie a thing if they genuinely thought it would work for their characters and the story they want to tell. Even if the shippers are obnoxious and annoying. Even if the actors may occasionally get frustrated with shippers online. If it was right for the show, and right for the characters, I do feel like 911 would go for it. Hell, they might feel like buddie is right for the show/characters but not right right now, and that’s where character development, plot development and relationship development comes in. Ladies, gents and non-binary pals, that’s where patience comes in. 

In the meantime, show your enthusiasm! But be respectful, always.

[cantskank]

i think i’m having to accept that tma is just not the fan space for me.  i enjoy it now, but the only reason i got into was for the ace rep.  i’m not a fan of horror OR scripted podcasts (like i am neutral to actively dislike them pretty much).  i was not expecting it to be a romance.  not to be the grouchy aro but i thought getting into a horror podcast would be like “safe” for not having romance.  and i really like the pairing actually!  and like literally everyone else i project so heavily onto martin.  my relationship with romance in fiction is usually like- i like the part where they’re falling in love/getting together.  then the actual relationship itself is...like dicey at best for me (in terms of enjoyment).  it depends how it is portrayed really- sometimes i get it, and a lot of times it just seems so unappealing.  and like now is not the best time for either of them so i don’t really...get it.  honestly it just feels like they’re getting on each other’s nerves but are still together?  idk why that aggravates me- i acknowledge this isn’t a rational way to feel about this fictional relationship.

ANYWAYS.  idk i guess i hoped getting into tma that i would really relate to jon’s experience.  but we don’t even get his experience!  we find out secondhand, and it’s not even clear what we find out- so much so that it took someone asking a question and the creator’s response to clear it up.  even then, it was some “HE might not think of it that way but that’s what it is i guess” which is some straight BULLSHIT (pardon the pun).  i just wanna state for the record that that is WEAKSAUCE FUCKING REPRESENTATION.  at least don’t be so much of a coward that we can barely tell you’re trying to out him as ace (without him knowing) and then skirt the issue

and i don’t think he really got how important ace rep is so i maybe can’t fault him for that but...it sucks.  at least like...educate yourself on ways it might be good to portray aces in media.  again, though, my expectations are a me problem.  i just think that like we don’t have enough extant ace rep to like...casually make a character that misses the mark in those ways.  like yeah there’s a vast wealth of ace experiences and there are tons of aces who would probably not be like super ready to accept that they are ace!  like i’m basically not out at ALL irl and so i get it!  but at least like you could maybe not make that one of the few ace characters we have to represent us?  ace rep is not at that point yet!  we need characters that are open and unashamed to be ace.  todd chavez was a really weird character for me to watch!  i was like way thrown off by how comfortable he was with talking about being asexual (even though it did take some time for him to accept it!  which is totally reasonable!).  but i think it was necessary because it weirdly went such a long way to normalizing it for me?  like i’m asexual!  i spent a large formative part of my late teens/early twenties interacting with almost all asexuals on the internet (aven).  if anyone is accustomed to asexuality it should be me, right??  but actually seeing a character be asexual and even discuss it proudly made me realize how much of a shameful secret i thought of my asexuality as.  i’ve definitely framed it as a forbidden or taboo topic and really separated my active, open asexual persona online from my irl persona.  anyway the fact that that one character had such an impact on me just goes to show how much we still need that kind of representation and not some bullshit rep.

okay onto fandom shit:

i just find there’s so much fan content (mostly fic!  because i don’t really engage in any other way and i don’t really have any desire to!  because it’s even worse for this than fic i have a sense!) that doesn’t want to think critically about what an asexual relationship means/looks like.  either they are not ace and have heard “oh okay aces ‘can’ have sex, well jon will just have sex!” or they are ace and idk have internalized that message as well?  either way i fucking hate people who don’t think about how that relationship might diverge from an allo one.  THEY ARE DIFFERENT.  ASEXUALITY IS ITS OWN THING.  IT IS NOT A THING WHERE YOU JUST DO WHAT YOUR PARTNER WANTS.  IT IS NOT A THING WHERE YOU SAY “OKAY SURE” AND NEVER DISCUSS BEYOND THAT OR BOTHER TO SET BOUNDARIES.  IT IS NOT JUST ONE CONVERSATION AND THEN DONE.  like an asexual relationship can be those things but i don’t think that’s an ideal relationship anyways?  (even for allos tbh..)  and idk why you’d want to idealize that in fandom anyways?  like you can make that relationship look like whatever you want!  why would you make it look like that?  (not to generalize or like invalidate anyone’s experience but i....feel like there is some internalized shit there.  especially when these things are presented without question?  like it’s one thing to present things one way and it’s another to do it without questioning.  one of my favorite ace fics (notably, not tma) is all about the ace character exploring his sexuality!  and having sex with his partner!  but it’s presented with such attention to all characters that i have no trouble at all.  having sex as an asexual is not inherently negative, but i cannot deal with media that doesn’t consider and address the implications of having sex as an asexual.

and honestly there’s so much discussion around the Issue (that i don’t even get involved in but it swirls around my peripheries of my fandom experience) that that aspect distresses me a lot!  because the people who disagree with me make me feel like shit.  i’m sure it is really confusing and difficult to be an asexual who is okay with sex, or interested in exploring sex, or whatever people would consider themselves.  it just feels antithetical to the asexual activism of ‘sex can be cool but it’s not necessarily for everyone.’  like, if you’re an ace who has sex or whatever, cool!  and i hope you can find your corner of the ace community that vibes with that.  i cannot, and like.  compulsory sexuality does not need propping up.  if sex is for you, then congrats!  you fit into the norm in that way!  you might not fit into the norm re: sexual attraction and i’m sure that’s not easy to reconcile.  however, i am not personally in a place where i can be the person who supports that uncritically when i’m still working within myself to understand where compulsory sexuality and amatonormativity have worked within me.  because i have been hurt by both of those things, MY primary goal is to work on dismantling those things (at least in myself, ideally in the world around me).  and people who do not have that as a goal and who instead want to mirror allo-ness in writing an ace character just don’t get the same consideration from me, unfortunately.  i guess this has helped me see that i should just fuck that noise.  if you want to make that the big thing you complain about on the internet i won’t stop you.  and...it occurs to me that’s what i’m doing!  so i’m going to refocus and stop just moping about my aro aceness and how i’m being ignored.  i’ve got better things to focus my time on than haters online.  i will not be dragged down to their mopey level!

also i feel weird and way too old for the fandom demographic (even though there are certainly fans waaaay older than me in the fandom!)  i think i’ve outgrown a lot of the fandom mentality.  wait is hockey fandom for old people?  (i’m fully not old but i’m probably old-ish for tumblr/fandom.  certainly old for tma fandom)  it occurs to me it’s sort of a graduation into a societally-acceptable form of fandom and it probably doesn’t appeal as much to younger audiences.  AND things can be as sexy/romantic or platonic as you like.

anyway all this is to say that i thought getting into media with aspec rep would be good for me but i think i must conclude that it has NOT.  it has actually just upset me way more than it has helped me feel good about being ace (which was the whole goal!).  i will be glad when it is over.  AND i’m glad i’ve really just been engaging with rqg fandom.  it is much more fun and a much better story!