#but so often she's a fucking caricature

[somelazyassartist]

What do I have to do to never see graphic novel Taako ever again (/nbh)

[md-intermission-archive]

"Murder Drones: Intermission": A Story of Understanding

Uzi Doorman: Understanding Loneliness

I feel like during the development of this episode, Uzi was the hardest character for me to wrap my head around. To my understanding, she’s feisty, angsty, and plays up this persona of being apathetic. A sort of lone wolf thing.

She’s snappy towards her classmates who ostracize her, snappy towards adults in her life, and overall gives a middle finger to anyone who isn’t on Team Uzi. It’s a very “me vs. the world” type of thing. That, to me, just felt like the callous shell of someone who’s painfully fragile and has been hurt so often.

I will admit, I may be projecting slightly, but I honestly read her as like… a neurodivergent kid who didn’t know how to navigate social circles, so she just became incredibly bitter. Her father didn’t help her situation at all because he also treated her like a freak, literally calling her a disappointment in his business ads. Then on top of all that she had no mother figure to look up to. All of this accumulates into a habit of isolation. “No one will love me, so fuck it. I’m on my own”. She acts like she’s fine on her own, when in reality she’s so starved for genuine connection. With that in mind, in Intermission I wanted to peel back those layers a little bit. I wanted to explore self-isolation and that hunger for love. 

Some people clocked this I think: the way Uzi’s attitude is toned down in Intermission. I didn’t want to play up her angsty teen act as much (and I capped her at one “bite me”) because then I’d risk falling into the trap of making her into a caricature of herself. The way I framed her in my head is “if she wants connection, then she’d be happier around people who she sees as her friends. If she’s also fragile though, she’ll make an immediate 180 at the slightest hint of meanspiritedness”. This was the guideline I gave myself when it came to bouncing her off of V and N. N melts her icy demeanor. He’s very gentle and encouraging with her. One example being how N kneeled down to her eye level when speaking to her when she was putting up her walls again. As someone who’s constantly ostracized, she needs a gentle touch in order to relax.

I made sure to keep that in mind, that while she was being treated gently, she should show more signs of happiness. Comfort. Part of that comfort is also reflected in being mischievous/playful. As for the 180 she makes if shown any sort of cruelty, that’s reflected in acts of self-isolation. 

This is something I’ve observed from myself and people in my life. If someone is already deathly afraid of rejection, they won’t reach out for help and their immediate instinct will be to isolate. In the beginning of the EP when Uzi’s having her Solver flare up her immediate thought is “I’m going to put up a firewall (repress) and just not even mention this to anybody”. Then when N offers to help, she still shows signs of being uncomfortable because she’s not used to it. It isn’t until V’s comment calling her a lost cause irks her that she decides “screw it let’s give it a shot”. She hates being underestimated, so this reaction made sense to me. Meanwhile the climax of the episode is where I wanted the most overt display of her fears to be presented.

As I said earlier, Uzi’s sensitive to rejection. She attacked the only people in her life who care about her, and the worst part was it wasn’t even her fault. Uzi is a person who really wants a sense of control over her life for the sake of security, so that loss of control and the idea of “oh my god they hate me now” was the final straw for her. So, she isolated. She ran off (or in this case, flew off), she barricaded herself, and she cried.

During the scene when Uzi's found, I had a bit of an issue figuring out where to go from there with her. I had two options: I could once again lean into her badass persona and have her fight back, or I could have her fold. I decided the latter. To her, she just lost the only people who cared about her, she's a monster to worker drone society, her father doesn't care about her.

What's the point. She's doomed to be alone.

If V didn't have her revelation, Uzi would've let herself die. While I understand that's an upsetting choice to make in the narrative, given Uzi's circumstances it felt like the appropriate reaction. Which is why the events following were so important.

While Uzi's at her lowest point she's shown pinch of kindness.

While it’s true V’s initial intention was to off Uzi, her showing compassion and sympathy was what helped calm Uzi down. Rather than making her put up walls like V usually does, V was able to break through them a tad. That interaction, N pouncing at her with a hug, and the final scene was meant to cement in Uzi’s head that she finally wasn’t alone (even if V still struggled to not be prickly with her). The three are still incredibly messy, but there’s that sense of trust that Uzi now has people in her life that actually care about her despite her messiness. The mischievous attitude even comes out when she says, “you found a nanospark of warmth in your heart to care about me”. She now feels more comfortable with V to an extent, and she finally has a support system.

I think…the reason why I love Uzi so much is that she’s sadly reflects the experience of what it's like not being able to fit into society's mold of acceptable. Even if she might not be neurodivergent, the bullying and isolation she experiences is very familiar. I wanted to do her justice as much as I could with that all in mind and with the resources I had. I wanted to give her one happy ending to a day when every other feels like utter hell.

The angsty teen may be badass, but her heart is still fragile.

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

This entry is the prime example for why Van Helsing makes me so fucking crazy. He is so good, so kind, and so sexist, and they're all so interwined! His sexism affects how he is kind and his kindness affects the sort of sexist he is. It makes me foam at the lips a bit bc so often in a story someone who is deeply sexist is a Gaston caricature or whatever but often that's not the case!! VH from the top to bottom of him honors and respects and is impressed by Mina. And the way he sincerely expresses his regard is by effusively telling her how she is a woman that will be a light to men and a wonderful mother and that's just it. It would never ever occur to him that wasn't the highest compliment he could give her. Do you understand me??? Do you understand why I go feral??? Men like him existed! Men like him exist! They're good men and that's never been enough!

[txttletale]

Could you say a bit more about your thoughts on zygon inversion?

the whole two-parter is about how refugees (the zygons) who are being settled by the british government, and how some of them are Good Refugees who just want to assimilate and be Normal Human (read: British) People and some of them are Bad Refugees who join a scary terrorist group that use this fucking banner:

it is, i think, completely impossible for anyone with even the slightest understanding of european political discourse to not immediately scan this as being, if not a 1-1 to metaphor exactly, about as damn close to being About Muslim Immigration as it gets, playing on the everpresent fear of the european white supremacist right that asylum seekers and refugees from west asia are all secretly suicide-bombers in waiting. and this episode takes the liberal stance on this, which is that yes, obviously some of them are insane violent evil militants who just want to kill people, but some of them are The Good Ones, and we should figure out a way to find and punish The Bad Ones without impactiung the Good Ones Too--this is, broadly, the liberal stance on immigration in the UK, and it is obviously also prima facie accepting of islamophobic ideas! jack graham did a great piece on it.

the doctor's little speech at the end of the zygon inversion essentially boils down to 'war is bad, you just want war because you're an arrogant idiot who won't be affected by it'. which would be all very well and good in an episode like the frontier in space, where the confrontation is between two competing imperialist powers full of bluster and bravado and jingoism--but in talking to UNIT and the zygons, he's textually equivocating between refugees who are unhappy with their mistreatment at the hands of the British government and the British government agency mistreating them (yes, i know UNIT is nominally plurinational but that is not the portrayal of them we are getting here.) the fundamental problem with the scene is that bonnie (as elizabeth sandifer has pointed out) is only there to say vacuous nonsense that basically amounts to "i love war and violecen and i think its good" so that the doctor can heroically say, "actually, itsNot good." she's written as such an embarrasing caricature for the doctor to knock over that it imo makes the whole speech profoundly unearned.

of course, peter capaldi sells it, like he often sells garbage he's given to say! it's even a moving speech against war, when taken out of context--but taken in context, it's just equivocating between the oppressed and their oppressors and treating them both as equally responsible for making peace, and i think that's morally repulsive.

[lemonwood31]

I have an assignment due this week, so naturally I’ve spent all day thinking about a relatively minor aspect of Halsin’s characterisation: his sense of humour.

I haven’t often seen Halsin being funny in fanfic, and while there are probably good reasons for that (writers, including me, love to put him in angsty situations – or just PWP – where humour doesn’t necessarily fit) it makes me a little sad, because his sense of humour is something I really love about him. So I thought I’d do a little bit of analysis of his sense of humour as it appears in a few moments in canon.

First up, this comment he makes to Karlach, saying that being in the Underdark ‘dampens one’s sense of fun’ because ‘noises such as laughter tend to attract predators’:

He’s ostensibly talking about the Society having a dampened sense of fun, but of course it’s also an allusion to his own time in the Underdark, and so I think it’s reasonable to read the 'dampened sense of fun' line as referring to himself as well. I have Thoughts about what this quote says in terms of his time with his drow captors and what a formative experience it was for him, but keeping on topic, it points to something that’s backed up by the rest of canon: his sense of humour is dry, it's not performative or showy, and while I think he’s quite often joking he’s not often telling jokes.

Secondly, we have a moment from one of the conversations you can have with him in act 3 about his dislike for the city. He talks about his dream to find a better way where everyone can be cared for, and then he chuckles and says ‘Listen to me, preaching like an initiate in his cups.’

To me, this is quintessential Halsin sense of humour. He’s not telling a joke, he’s not even really trying to make the PC laugh; he’s just poking fun at himself in a wry sort of way. He’s also using humour as a defence mechanism here, I think; he’s minimising the impact of a potential dismissive response from the PC by undercutting his own speech before the PC gets a chance to do it.

Thirdly, we have his interaction with Lae’zel about the chimera:

I know some people seem to take this quote as him seriously admitting he’s fucked a chimera, but I will die on the hill of ‘he was joking’ (a chimera is functionally an animal! it has an INT score of 3! Halsin is canonically on record as uninterested in having sex with actual animals and has the scars to prove it!)

So this is one of the few instances I can remember of Halsin making an outright joke. Note though that it’s still in keeping with his particular sense of humour: it’s dry (to the point where it’s easy to miss that he’s joking at all) and it’s also self-deprecating, in a way: he’s playing with the conception of him as someone who’ll fuck anything that moves, leaning into that characterisation and by doing so, making fun of both it and of himself.

And finally, the other instance I can recall of him outright joking: when the PC tells him he’s quite large for an elf and his response is ‘I am?!’ I really love this one, both because it’s such an obvious example of him deliberately being funny and also because for once, the person he’s poking fun at is the PC (for stating the obvious) rather than himself.

Looking back at these examples, what strikes me is how much his sense of humour shows itself in relation to other people’s assumptions about him. It’s clearly an important way he copes with people misunderstanding him or being dismissive or seeing him as a caricature. Much of the time he seems to be joking to himself rather than anyone else, which makes sense given the interpretation that it’s a defence mechanism rather than a means of connecting with whoever he’s talking to. (I also have a theory that humour is one of the main ways in which he feels safe expressing anger – c.f. the interaction where he tells Shadowheart that she bleats too much – but this post is long enough as it is.)

In any case, I’d be interested to know if anyone else has thoughts on this, or if there are any canon moments I've missed that might contradict these theories.

[steveharrington]

have you ever thought about how tommy steve and carol became friends? do you think it was like since they were all babies or like they knew each other peripherally but only became close during middle school or something? i love anything that involves tommy and carol and i wish they would show up in the last season somehow

my little made up history for them is that steve and tommy have been friends literally since like. pre-k mostly because their moms knew each other from like mommy groups in the community and set up play dates. i know it’s easy to make steve’s parents into these 2-D evil caricatures but i do think often about steve’s mom being stuck in this loveless marriage that makes her more and more paranoid about her loser husband being unfaithful….im sure before that she tried to make hawkins work…i think she was good friends with tommy’s mom and they spent a lot of time together which is how we get the steve-tommy dynamic in season one where they almost seem like brothers. steve smacking him and rolling his eyes when tommy says something shitty but still continuing the conversation as normal and hanging out with him the same as always, almost as if he feels like tommy is just a permanent fixture in his life and his cruelty is just a part of the deal

i think carol moved to hawkins a little later in middle school and as soon as she stepped in the doors a little censor went off in her head that guided her to tommy immediately because their genetic bitchiness is a 100% match. i think steve adopted carol in and essentially also sees her as a little sister (forever thinking about the Choice in s1 of showing us steve giving carol his applesauce and meatloaf off his own plate….) and overall i think that’s how steve rationalizes their behavior in his brain. he’s like “well… yeah maybe they shouldn’t have said that….but what can i do, they’re like family! that’s just the way they are! what am i gonna do, cut them off?? it’s tommy and carol!”

to me that’s more compelling than steve just sticking with tommy and carol for Status. that doesn’t really make sense because it’s not like we see the three of them flanked by their peers at lunch, or inviting masses of people to their party. i don’t think carol and tommy are particularly popular and that steve clings to them because They as people determine his social ranking, but more because they’ve been his best friends for so long that he just can’t really fathom existing without them. maybe he parties a lot and has a lot of girlfriends and is a star athlete or whatever, but when steve invites people over on a tuesday night, he only invites tommy and carol (and later nancy and barb). they’re his only Friends, clearly, who mean anything to him. so as they get older and tommy and carol get crueler and sharper and more prone to escalate situations, steve just kinda averts his eyes to avoid this cataclysmic break up between the three of them

tommy and carol so endlessly fascinate me. in such a short time we learn so much about the depth of their history with steve, the way they feel comfortable joking and laughing about his parents relationship (in a way that to me almost feels like siblings laughing at the antics of their shared parental unit), the way they seem determined to kinda press on the wound of steve’s insecurity about cheating and infidelity until he freaks the fuck out on nancy and jonathan. there’s like a possessiveness that they seem to feel when steve actually starts to form a close bond with nancy that is so interesting…. ugh i could yap about them forever. they are such an important part of the tapestry of steve’s life……and chester rushing said tommy is in gay love with steve ❤️

[carlyraejepsans]

Hey, if you don’t mind the question. What’s your opinion on Undertale Yellow?

8/10 game. pretty good at being a game, not so much at being an undertale story. the gameplay itself was fun, the area/puzzle designs too, the soundtrack was untouchable it literally gave me the same rush i felt hearing sburb initiation for the first time. minor NPCs designs were fun but the primary cast was too monotonous, tbh. (all the main characters have tall gangly very detailed designs save for like, axis). its attempts at landing Undertale's humor were quite often successful, but it held back on exaggeration and caricaturing its original characters which took away that oomph from the canon game. the character writing was... lacking. which is a pity.

i love fucked up women so i was really disappointed that every single one of ceroba's actions/ideas/influences on the story were nothing but an extension of her dead husband. when you take chujin away she's just... A Good Wife and Mother. or starlo's past love interest ig. i mean both dalv and martlet's backstory were tied to her family and we never see them interact at all. but they do have an established dynamic.... with the dead husband. again. UGH. she's just really wasted as a character (she and chujin should've BOTH been scientists and she should've continued the project AGAINST his wishes after he died. she's the main cast character, she should be the driving force in the narrative, not him—even if chujin sets the plot in montion by inventing the serum first).

I'm not a huge asgore fan—not that i dislike him, he's just not a character i care about all that much—so congrats to this game for making me say "he would NOT fucking say that". the "fuck the royals" subplot thing was really unnecessary. actually, that was a bit of a recurring thing in the game. suddenly introducing these Huge Social Dilemmas like labor exploitation, anti-monarchic sentiments, misogyny (bro who on earth "needs to take a wife" this is Undertale) everyone realizing that clover is a child, over exaggerating the violence at stake... while also attempting to maintain Undertale's careless, bouncy treatment of the situation. that's... not how things work. undertale is able to maintain its light tone BECAUSE it doesn't let you take those topics seriously, they're not meant to be. the fairytale-like king, the battles, the child protagonist, they're all set dressings for the REAL story and REAL power imbalance it wants to highlight: that between player and game characters. everything is in function of that. you take that layer of separation and make everyone aware that theyre violently attacking and killing a literal child... that's not. a good thing dude. if it's not gonna impact the tone of the story, why acknowledge it in the first place? it's just unnecessary

anyway flowey neutral run was really, really fun. his dialogue writing all throughout the game was very solid and i had a blast having him around. however, they shouldn't have tried to anticipate his character development. this game is a prequel, you can't do that without undermining his arc in the canon events. pacifist should've had him doubling down on his frustration from the neutral ending. i do all this work for you keeping you alive and you make the same mistake i did sacrifice yourself for them??? are you BRAINDEAD???? what I'm saying is he basically should've thrown the biggest tantrum of his LIFE. oh and in the NM run he should've been terrified when he lost control of the SAVE file. this is the first time it's ever happened to him and now he's gonna die for good. he wouldn't have gloated like he did.

if you want to hear more criticism along the lines of what i said then this post by the fantastic @andreabandrea covers a lot of what i also felt during the game. i know this might sound like a lot of negativity, but the fact remains that UTY was an absolutely phenomenal work of fan creativity the likes of which we have never seen before in the fandom. considering the quality and polish, i thought it only fair to approach it as the piece of art it is and give it my genuine thoughts on the matter.

overall, still a really fun way to spend the afternoon with a pal. so. thumbs up

[hamartia-grander]

can you elaborate on gale being manipulative? i dont have him in my party very often so i havent really talked to him much

Yeah absolutely.

So to be fair, I didn't notice it until my second or third playthrough because I never played with him in my party either until I got the mod for no party limit. But once I had him in my party - and would choose different dialogue routes/attempted to romance him (but couldn't go through w it because I don't like him) - that's when it became super noticeable. Astarion's manipulations are overdramatised and overexaggerated because he's a caricature of real manipulation that larian obviously never took seriously. Gale however is real manipulation that is at times so effective it seems whoever was writing the dialogue tree fell for it themselves, given the lack of range in responses.

Gale is very straightforward when he wants something. This is usually an admirable quality. He doesn't hide when he needs something and he isn't afraid to ask for help. But that turns into manipulation when, if he doesn't get his way, he begins putting words into the player character's mouth and assuming their intentions behind denying him what he wants. For the romance path, I noticed this when I began romancing him, but quickly switched to Wyll once I realised I couldn't go an entire playthrough pretending to be attracted to Gale. And when you choose Wyll, Gale has this dialogue:

This. Shocked me, to say the least. Gale immediately equates the player's affections to being a signifier of what makes a man "good", and shifts a simple preference of the heart to be the player saying "you're not as good of a man as Wyll, and you're also unworthy of my love", things that the player never said nor is even a logical thing to conclude from anything I would have said previously. He's putting words in my mouth, he's assuming the worst of my decision. Now this can be interpreted in two ways: either he has no idea he's being super manipulative right now, and is simply lashing out in hurt, or he knows full well what he's doing and is doing it on purpose in an attempt to convince the player to choose him over Wyll in his hurt. Regardless of the intention, the result is that he is twisting the player's intentions and feelings into something that satisfies his own insecurities, either as a reflex or to try to warp the player to giving him what he wants. It's manipulation.

Another instance I noticed this was when I was discouraging him from pursuing the Crown of Karsus after reading The Annals of Karsus. I chose the extreme dialogue choices for this one - outright discouraging him, telling him I don't want him pursuing the crown/godhood - because my first playthrough despite passing the roll to convince him not to take the crown, he still did, because of a bug, but I didn't know it was a bug and just thought I'd done it wrong. So the next time, I tried it this way.

First, I reminded him that the Karsite weave - and the crown itself - is what caused Karsus' downfall and led to an absence of magic. Gale brings up how Mystra wanted him to sacrifice himself to save the realm, and says:

This isn't directed at the player, but it is still a manipulation tactic nonetheless. The player does not know Mystra. We do not interact with her, ever, and we do not ever hear her side of it outside of a brief conversation she has with Gale in the tabernacle. Now, I am not commenting on the act of Mystra wanting Gale to kill himself - obviously that's fucked up. But Gale is, again, completely assuming her intentions behind her request, and twisting the image of her into something purposefully cruel and power-hungry (the goddess of ALL magic… fears not having power? sure, Gale. But there's also limitless power in magic? Which one is it Gale?). He's angry with her, he's angry with the player for trying to discourage him from his hubris, and so he lashes out by warping Mystra's image to the player. He also assumes that Mystra knows for a fact the crown of Karsus can be used to overthrow her, when it literally failed to do so in the past. He is going back to his old habits, he's completely forgetting that the existence of the orb is entirely his fault in his arrogance and in actively ignoring Mystra's boundaries, and he goes on to blame her for it:

by saying she 'took' something from him. (Also, he brings up being cured, as a way to say 'hey you care about me and want be to be cured, so you should be okay with me pursuing godhood, because it means I'll be cured :) Mystra doesn't want Gale to have the crown, and so when the player suggests not wanting Gale to have the crown either, he tries to get us to let him have his way by pinning Mystra as the bad guy. Even though before, he was perfectly willing to acknowledge he was in the wrong:

(this was back in the Tabernacle, after speaking to Mystra). There's also more dialogue in Act 1 where he openly admits to actively ignoring Mystra's boundaries, to being blinded by his hubris, leading him to pursue the pocket of magic only to have that pocket be consumed by him, giving him the orb. Something Mystra took no part in, and actively discouraged him from doing.

When the player says they don't want him to pursue godhood, Gale says:

Just. Wow. Okay. So suddenly, the player disagreeing with him wanting to pursue Godhood means they have no faith in him as a person - something that was never said - and that they think he is automatically inferior to anyone else who would try - again, something that is never said. He lashes out, he twists the player's words and intentions, he assumes everything in bad faith, all to shield his hurt over not getting what he wants and to try to get the player to give him what he wants. (He also, again, reduces his own mistakes as "youthful enthusiasm" despite knowing the risks and taking them anyway. And he intends to do the exact same thing again, here).

He appeals to our empathy by suggesting we mean to say he's worthless, he's not a good man, we have no faith in him, he's inferior, etc., as a way to get us to be on his side. He doesn't see our hesitance to be the understanding that it is - that we know Gale is blinded by his hubris once more, and his seeking godhood will end badly no matter what - and instead twists it into something purposefully cruel and ill-intended. He can be mad all he wants with my decisions - that's normal, that's human, and it's understandable given I'm discouraging him from pursuing something he wants. That's not being argued here. But it is how he acts when being denied something he wants, it's how he twists people's words negatively against them to fit his lack of self-worth that makes it manipulation. He's not taking the player at face value, he's not having faith in the player as his friend and companion, he is shoving us into the 'adversary' box by assigning harmful intentions to our disagreement so that he can feel better about himself.

[wingsdippedingold]

I couldn’t reblog this normally since I have the og poster blocked, but this is a pretty common sentiment in the community that I want to put my comment on:

Now I’m not gonna sit here and argue that there aren’t people who like Feyre more in the first book and consider her to be “better”, because people do, and I think it’s valid to think that as well as valid to not think that. To clarify I think neither, but more on that later. This is also a decently long post, I tried to make it concise but it’s anything but that 💀

I think comparing her character in the first book to her sisters (this post is specifically Nesta, but I’ve seen it done with Elain) is purely made in bad faith. Equating them in this manner blatantly ignores the obvious differences in characterization and nuance in their writing.

It is widely known that SJM has said that Elain and Nesta were just made to be caricatures and cartoon evil sisters and that she didn't initially plan for them to become anything more than background characters. They were meant to be flat and evil, because that’s all the purpose they had at the time. They were there to give Feyre a hard time and make us sympathize with her, and they did that.

No one is saying that that it’s silly to get hung up on Nesta’s actions because they “happened a long time ago and she had development”, they’re saying that because her actions were literally meant to be cartoonishly evil and not to have any actual depth or reasoning to them.

However, Feyre at the time was still a fleshed character that was supposed to be in the spotlight. Her character traits and depth were continuously shown off, whereas her sisters only existed to give her a backstory and struggle. Her character in the first book cannot be written off to the same degree as her sisters, and it’s false equivalency to think that it can be.

At the time the way Nesta and Elain was written was fine, but in deciding to change them to be actual characters with thoughts, feelings, and backstory, Sarah majorly fucked herself over. This is why she had to retcon things and add their own struggles later on and why you’ll see a lot of people defending them for their cabin actions; and as a side of the fandom who take her retcons as canon, you can’t pick and choose which ones you don’t want to take as canon solely because they change the your notion of the character. It’s a packaged deal, either you’re down with SJM’s narrative and story, or you’re not (I’m not), because guess what? The other characters around said character will also comply by these retcons.

But when you hammer it down so hard that these girls are horrible people in the first book because you couldn’t give the time of day to make sure you’re actually creating a cohesive storyline, rather than just trying to push out a character for people to immediately sympathize with, it’s hard to rectify that, and I often find it the mark of a bad writer (and poor planner) regardless if you weren’t planning on ACOTAR being a series.

I 100% understand Nesta hate, it’s hard to change your idea of a character when you’ve already been made to dislike them and like the character they initially antagonized. If she, or any other character, is not your cup of tea, that’s fine. Like what you like. Hate what you hate (assuming you stay in your lanes and tag correctly, which many of you do not do, and instead tag specifically to push your anti content into pro spaces and make people mad, but that’s a different topic) u, this circles back to my original point that you cannot equate the validity of the characters and writing of Nesta and Elain to Feyre in the first book.

Now do I agree that Feyre was her '"true self" in book 1 vs the others? No.

I think a lot of people, and a lot of antis, earlier Feyre lovers, and probably some of my mutuals, will disagree with me on this, but Feyre's character progression has always made sense to me. That's not necessarily to say that I like it, but considering her circumstances, the people around her, the environment, and her own personality and beliefs, her change and progression from ACOTAR to ACOSF makes total sense to me. I do think there's some inconsistencies, and I definitely think there’s a lot of situations where ACOTAR Feyre would react differently than later Feyre, but that’s just a product of her being a character with an arc and overall I can understand how she got from point A to point B.

I won't get into the details here, but if anyone's curious on why I think so, Imk, l'd love to talk about it

There’s also a good chance that the original poster of this will try to argue my way directly from my account, which is weird because I have you blocked, so I won’t see it, nor do I care to… so don’t? Idk man, save your energy, the stalking is crazy

[lectorel]

Fucking around with fandom specific tropes: Harry Potter is Skull de Mort, expanded addition

(original linked here.)

***

Skull de Mort starts life as a game, half mockery and all spite. He's one part caricature of young Malfoy to two parts gleeful muggle counter-culture trash, wrapped up in a name and a persona designed to send Voldemort spinning in his non-existent grave.

Skull is a braggart and a coward, the embodiment of every half-baked rumor and hypocritical criticism ever aimed at Harry - selfish, self-centered, short-sighted, in love with his own ego and incapable of admitting when he’s wrong.

Skull makes his career in pissing people off and pulling bullshit stunts, until he can send someone over the edge with a single whined complaint. A saint would try to strangle him after being locked in the same room for 15 minutes.

He is, without exaggeration, the funniest thing Harry has ever done. Skull has more fun in an afternoon than Harry had in his entire childhood before Hogwarts.

***

More than that, though, Skull de Mort is Luce's friend. Another prophecy child, the older brother she'd never have, her fellow confident and conspirator. When she confesses the future she's bound to, the curse that she'll bind the future arcabalano with, he doesn't turn away.

Skull is the best thing Luce has ever been able to keep.

***

Skull is tiny when he sleeps, bombastic personality pulled back under his skin. Luce finds it fascinating, how someone who takes up so much room is so small when still. Even sprawled across her bed, carelessly wrapped in a bathrobe and sweatpants, he's still so much smaller than when awake.

Skull would have made an excellent mafia boss, in another, poorer, life. He lies like he breathes - reflexive, thoughtless. People see what he wants them to see, whether that's the cowardly braggert of his public persona or the varying twists of his more temporary roles. Truth is a precious commodity to Skull, and he shares it only grudgingly. Their fellow sacrifices have yet to earn it from him.

Luce doesn't blame him. The weight of prophecy makes her a liar too, blandly smiling at the sacrifices laid out on the altar. She’d feel worse about it if they weren't all, as Skull so delicately put it, a bunch of ruddy wankers high on their own egos. Lal is the closest thing to innocent of the five, and she left the army to become a freelance criminal.

And they're all, to a one, completely fooled by Skull. Strongest does not correlate with any degree of observation skill, from what Luce's seen of them. Otherwise they might have noticed how often he was laughing at them.

[abarbaricyalp]

🃏 - Are you joking right now? For the SamBucky ask.

🃏 - Are you joking right now? I feel like this is a phrase that gets passed around between them quite often

There was a book that Sam read to the boys that made them screech with laughter, even as Cass got older and AJ got more discerning. It was about a maid who took things literally (which would be a joke in the book where she stole items away). Even Bucky found it amusing when the author managed to find a turn of phrase he hadn't thought of. Also, he just liked the sound of Sam reading with an exaggerated posh accent and feigned shock.

In reality, Bucky liked literal people a whole lot less, especially when it was some wizard who was such a caricature that it almost had to be on purpose. He even said bippity-boppity.

Bippity-boppity fame, let's play a game. What's in a name? Bippity-boppity lame.

Whatever the hell that meant. That wasn't even a spell. Still, all that glowy-magic-shit had swooshed around the air and all of a sudden, nothing was as it seemed. Where Bishop had just been standing, there was a hawk with robotic eyes. A disgustingly large spider had appeared where he'd last seen Belova, and Khan had turned into...a mini galaxy?

What the fuck?

Bucky did a quick scan of himself and was thrilled to find he was still apparently human. It wasn't until he tried to take a step and nearly face planted in the ground that he realized his feet had become frozen to the ground. And when he threw his hands up to brace his fall, ice and snow shot from his palms.

"Sam!" he called out, breath fogging in front of his face. "What the hell are we dealing with?"

Bucky wasn't sure why he was surprised to hear the rustling of feathers. He turned on his heel, breaking more ice in the process, and looked at Sam, who had been right on his six just a handful of seconds ago.

Now a giant bird stood there, shaking out wings and puffing a chest, all of which were colored like his Cap uniform, blues and reds and whites that still cut an impressive figure on a bird's body. A bright star of feathers expanded and contracted as he breathed.

"Oh, you have got to be joking," Bucky breathed. At least he wasn't an eagle, Bucky supposed.

"Fix them!" he called up to the wizard. "I'm not dealing with this bullshit!"

"Winter Soldier, what to do, what to do? You're in charge. That's new," the wizard called back, voice echoing around the cavern they were in. Because of course the ridiculous wizard had a cavern. "Are you sure? Are you going to shoot the cure?" he asked, appearing in front of Bucky long enough for Bucky to swing out, disappearing before Bucky could make contact. A slab of ice fell to the floor and shattered.

Bucky half growled, half shouted. He shook ice from his feet again and bounced on his toes to keep more form forming. When Belova started to move--on too many legs--he held up a hand to her. "Don't even think about it. You stay way over there."

She rolled eight eyes at him, but didn't move closer to him.

"I'm not in charge," he called. He swallowed his pride, squeezed his eyes shut. "You are. Tell me more."

The wizard appeared behind Sam and Bucky whirled around in time to watch Sam propel into the air. The gust of his wings was enough to knock Bucky out of rhythm with his hopping. "Who are they? Who are you? This will be a long day."

"You are so fucking annoying," Bucky snapped. He looked at Sam, who had settled on the ground again. "You're Sam Wilson," he told him. "Son of Paul and Darlene. Brother to Sarah. Uncle to Cass and AJ. You're Captain America. You're my partner, my best friend."

Birds didn't have eyebrows, but it seemed like Sam had raised an eyebrow at him. Nothing happened. Bucky shouted at the ceiling again.

"Yelena Belova. Sister to Natasha. A Black Widow, a savior of Widows. Kate Bishop, Hawkeye, Bishop takes King. Kamala Khan, Miss Marvel, Little Miss New Jersey, ray of cosmic light. Little Avengers. New Avengers. Brat Pack. New Age Heroes. An Annoyance of Heroes. What do you want from me?!"

"Time's up, wrong line up." the wizard said, appearing in front of Bucky to shove him backwards hard. Bucky went flying back, which he wasn't expecting. He hit the rock hard and let the air get knocked out of him. It cleared his head, felt like it realigned him.

"Bucky!" the stars that made up Khan shouted. Bucky didn't know she could do that.

He pushed himself back to his feet and heaved in a breath of freezing air. "Right. I'm Bucky Barnes," he said. "I'm not the one known for saving people, am I?" He touched the wall behind him and sent ice crawling over every surface.

The wizard fell from whatever perch he was on, then scrambled to find his footing. Bucky caught his legs in ice before he could. "If you wanted a fair fight, you should've left Sam in charge of negotiations." He stalked across the ice, hoping he didn't slip because that would put a dent on this whole picture. "Turned me into a snowman or something. Left him with the vocal cords." He put his left hand against the wizard's throat and held his right just over his mouth. "Fix them, or you're gonna lose your vocal cords instead. I won't even have to use ice for it. I'll save that for making sure you can't scream."

"Oh my God?" Bishop squawked. The hawk flew down beside him, hovering for a second before she perched on his shoulder.

"Oh my God, it was just a joke!" the wizard cried, trying to thrash away from Bucky's hold. He popped his knee in the process and let out a string of curse words that definitely didn't rhyme. The old man charade faded off of him, revealing a scrawny teenager, still pockmarked with acne. "Stop, stop, stop!" he cried.

Bishop came out of it first. At least, Bucky noticed it first, because there was suddenly an arm around his throat as she fell off of his shoulder and tried not to hit the ground. They hit the ground anyway.

The ice was gone and the wizard had scrambled away as soon as he could. Belova had crossed her arms over her chest, standing behind Khan by a few steps, pretending not to assess her status. It was kind of ridiculous how well her unimpressed expression had transferred to the spider, actually.

Khan's eyes were bright and she was practically vibrating with excitement. They were never hearing the end of this. Bucky kind of didn't mind the concept. He might've missed her voice when he thought he wouldn't get to hear it again.

"Okay, but can I keep the wings?" Sam asked.

Bucky untangled himself from Bishop so quickly he almost stepped on her hand in doing so. "Sam?" he asked, almost scared to approach.

Sam held out his arms to prove he had them again. If they were alone, it might've acted like a magnet that sprang Bucky up against him. However, they weren't alone. Everyone turned to face the wizard, who was spitting new curses and scrambling to free himself from where Belova had ahold of his wizard's clock collar.

"What was the answer?" Bishop asked. "He said our names. He knew us. We knew ourselves. Well, I knew me. He could've known me better. Really, a newspaper headline?" she asked Bucky over her shoulder.

"There was no answer," the wizard half exclaimed, half sneered. "I was just supposed to distract you."

"Distract us from what?" Belova asked and shook him. "Who are you working with?"

"I don't know!" the wizard defended. "They just gave me a magic relic to do it. I didn't ask questions."

"Uh, guys?" Khan said, from the entrance of the cave. "I think our jet is being stolen?"

Quad identical groans echoed through the cave.

"Come on," Sam called, jogging ahead of everyone. "I'll stall them. You get down as fast as you can."

He got to the edge of the cliff and spread his wings to take to the sky. Bucky watched bits of fabric and feathers flutter in the downdraft. He watched Sam's falcon wings catch the wind, send him a little off course before he corrected.

"Oh, you have seriously got to be fucking joking," he repeated, jogging after Sam. "Khan, restrain him and bring him with us. Can you make a bridge down to the ground? Belova, you go ahead. Bishop, you stay--"

Sam still had wings. Subtly, Bucky pointed his palm down at the ground. He probably was just imagining the tingling against his skin and the way his foot slipped on the rock. Probably.

[hungee-boy]

Feel free to ignore if you’re uncomfortable with or just don’t want to answer but how would you change isebela to not be caricature without changing the whole character? Would it be more fashion changes or physical or something else?

Kinda like: how would you change her if you were her character writer/designer for the new game?

isabela at her core i think is a very compelling character and is relatable to a lot of romani experiences, especially with her doing whatever she has to to survive

i would definitely keep her stealing as castillion's responsibility, him making her steal the tome of koslun under threat of death for example would be fine because if he wasnt in the picture, chances are she wouldnt have stolen it in the first place

other forms of thievery besides just like looting bodies and picking chests (as those are gameplay mechanics for all characters) shouldnt be for her enjoyment or greed, only for her survival or just not done at all

her staying a pirate is fine imo and i like the idea of her being an ethical pirate (like her freeing the slaves castillion had her transport) but we all need to look at how pirates are depicted in fantasy and how much of that is anti-roma racism and caricatures

her being so sexualized and her comments on "life back home" are where i have the biggest issues honestly

like romani women have always been targets of fetishization and sexual violence, as well as many women being sterilized without consent to prevent more romani children being brought into the world

getting some damn clothes on her would be a great start, like some pants at the very least. i would like to incorporate more romani clothing in her design tho like maybe a traditional blouse instead of her usual top

maybe a romanced isabela can have her replace her blue dikhlo with red, since wearing a dikhlo is usually reserved for married women of certain vitsas (most common with eastern european roma if im not mistaken) or giving her a red hipcloth (again specific to certain vitsas)

romani dress is usually modest and loose fitting, with women commonly wearing long skirts and blouses with jewelry and adornments to symbolize her wealth and status and im not saying isabela should be covered head to toe, shes an open person and not every romani woman should be expected to dress one way over another, its just her look is way too impractical for the sake of being sexy and again romani women are very often sexualized regardless of what they wear

isabela's attitude towards sex and being open to intimacy is not an issue on its own, what is the issue is how the writers make fucking jokes of her sexuality at every chance they get (like the std joke in anders' clinic, aveline's slut shaming, etc. etc. etc.....) and this is just my personal opinion but there are times that she comes on too strong to like hawke or carver or fenris that seems unrealistic and just like an attempt for the writers to further hone in on how horny shes supposed to make you feel

like yes have her be open and not ashamed of being intimate but put more love and respect on it. i love an isabela that is repressed in her own feelings and the only way she knows how to have meaningful connections is through sex cus thats what was expected of her. like oh my god do you know how many people relate to that, if its done right it could be a very compelling arch to her character and maybe something she learns isnt concrete the more platonic/romantic meaningful time she has with everyone in da2 and beyond

as for her comments about rivain and the people there, like the phrase "even deny a fortune teller and theyll run you out of town" to merrill, just makes rivainis out to be greedy and shameless swindlers and that projection is obviously also put on romani people since that is a VERY common stereotype

like the phrase "getting gypped" literally means to be cheated and comes from the word gypsy. theres no denying the intention the writers had when they wrote that line for isabela

and honestly i love the idea of rivain (i say the idea cus we only hear accounts of the nation, we havent seen it in person yet) i love the idea of a matriarchal society that is religious and spiritual but does not tolerate the chantry's bigotry and openly accepts society's outcast such as mages and qunari

romani culture irl is patriarchal and often anybody who is not romani is typically not trusted, but if rivain was treated as an idealistic fantasy romanistan, where our values and traditions are implemented and we make a better world for ourselves and other outcasts then it could be very compelling

thats the thing with representation, sometimes it doesnt have to reflect reality 100%, but it still requires knowledge so that you can make new ideas based on the facts and reasoning of the group youre representing

[nekropsii]

Ask Game Speed Round!!

[For the Unpopular Opinion Ask Game!!]

These are all a bunch of smaller ones I thought would be too cumbersome and spammy to post on their own... Enjoy!!

Content Warning: Long.

While I do really like Dave's character as it exists in the comic- no clue what version of Dave most of the fandom is talking about, but I don't know him- I kind of like the themes in Davesprite's character more than I do Dave's. It's another Hal situation.

Dave's character tackled a lot of things very personally relatable to me in ways I'd never seen illustrated before, but Davesprite is more interesting to think about, and seems a little more fun to write. Dave was great representation for me, as someone who grew up in a very bad home, but Davesprite just has that extra oomph with his talk of humanity and individuality. Really like that guy.

---

@lupinecalibrator

This may come across as crass, or stepping out of my own lane, but I don't think giving them either multiple sets of pronouns, neopronouns, or both actually rids them of the bigotry in their characters. Lipstick on a pig situation. It just seems like a lazy, incurious fix. Yes, trans headcanons are great, but more and more often I see people use it as a cure-all to the issues a character has, either in a Doylist or Watsonian way. Queer friendliness does not eliminate racism. If a character is a bigoted caricature of a specific group of people, then slapping on a leftist layer of paint by saying "actually they're a minority icon in this other way" doesn't actually... Get rid of the problem. It's just kind of... Tone deaf.

We see this often with Transmisogynistic Caricatures getting claimed as Gay Icons, and people just saying that because they've just claimed them as a campy gay queen, the transmisogyny has been nullified- you can't talk about it anymore, they're the real good leftist in the room, you're a killjoy, and they've defeated bigotry. Not how it works.

---

Kind of tired of how some act like her only character traits are Silly Ditzy Furry Girl. Jade is an incredibly, incredibly intelligent young girl, an excellent marksman, and so, so deeply lonely. We need to talk about Jade's chronic loneliness more.

Also, I think she's some kind of Psychotic. One of the flavors. It just feels right to me. It feels canon-adjacent. Or, at least, a textually valid way to read her character. I have a whole post about it somewhere. Mituna and Jade shaking hands on the Psychosis.

---

Taking this opportunity to defend Aranea. Some people really need to stop acting like she's worse than Vriska. We all know what Aranea did was justified. Maybe not correct, but justified. And fucking awesome to watch.

Like, look. She spent an unfathomable amount of years being shot down and ignored and belittled by people who were supposed to be her friends... Aranea had to literally pay Meenah, her own best friend, to listen to her infodump, and even then Meenah couldn't afford to give her own best friend enough respect to just listen to her talk about something she's passionate about for 5 minutes.

I need you to think to yourself, genuinely. If you spent thousands- and I mean thousands upon thousands- of years getting ignored and walked on by everyone around you, even your own friends... If you spent thousands upon thousands of years getting called boring and a doormat to your face by even your own friends... Wouldn't you go crazy, too? Wouldn't you snap? Wouldn't you want to do something drastic just to get people to look at you? Just to be seen as something other than weak and boring? Just to be seen as worth even an iota of interest, a shred of someone's time? Wouldn't you? Because I think any normal person wouldn't take thousands upon thousands of years. I don't think you would last a decade. I wouldn't either, and I'm a pretty patient person.

Y'all are just jealous you can't play billiards with planets using your mind when you're mad. That shit was so awesome.

---

@searedtroutpeacharugula

This is not an Unpopular Opinion, or even an Opinion, I'm just pointing this out. Do you ever think about the fact that we hardly got any conversations between Rose and Jade? I do. This haunts me. This fucks me up so bad. We get plenty between John and Dave, and Dave and Jade, and Dave and Rose, and Rose and John, and Jade and John... But hardly anything between Rose and Jade!! This is so fucked up. We were robbed. I need to watch them hang out.

---

Okay, this is less of an Unpopular Opinion, and more of an Unpopular Fact, but... Mituna doesn't just throw slurs at people. That's one of the things people jump to when they're talking about Defanging Mituna- they always say something about how he "calls people slurs every two seconds". He literally doesn't. That is legitimately not a thing he does. If you heard that before and believed it, you were literally lied to. That is straight up demonstrably not true.

Like, if you're trying to think of something Mituna does every two seconds unprompted, it's either sex jokes or apologizing. Slurs aren't a thing he just slings around casually. He said a grand total of one slur... To Meenah... And it's a fake troll slur. And then we get it defined to us... Aaaand it's the troll equivalent to "Cracker". That's it. That's the crime he's committed- calling someone a word that is immediately after defined to us as "Someone who is at the top of and benefits from the furthering of the oppressive Fuchsia-Down power structure, and the Lowbloods that help enforce it." That's the slur he used. That's what made people start declaring that "he would totally say the N Word" with full and complete confidence. Absolutely ridiculous. He's called no one else any kind of genuine slur. He just called Meenah a Wader once, and then she and Kankri got upset about it, because they are both, by definition, Waders.

---

Leijon Hot Take Party Pack: If you think Nepeta shipping her friends together is fine, or even adorable, but then sneer at or get grossed out by Meulin doing the same thing, you're a hypocrite. I don't care if you say "Meulin's writing Friend Fic, though, that's weird!!" the problem with Shipping Your Friends and Writing Romantic Fanfiction Of Your Friends is at the same root.

The problem with these things isn't the presence of writing, it's the presence of, you know, shipping your friends? If you're fine with Nepeta doing it, you've gotta be fine with Meulin doing it. Be fine with both or neither. It's the same damn thing. I'm pretty sure both friend groups are fine with it, too, so it's not like this is a boundaries issue or anything. Both or neither. Pick one.

---

Observation: I do think it's cool how Jane and Jake are related and have similarly opposing relationships with their gender. Jake's oft presented with Feminine themes and imagery, and Jane with Masculine themes and imagery. Very cool. Wish more people made that correlation.

---

Okay, that's all for now!! Thank you for reading, if you did. Have a nice rest of your day. :)

[onyxisnotuniqueenough]

i'm getting really tired of this constant dunking on angela for everything she does.

i feel like smosh constantly insults her smarts and her voice i hope she doesn't mind. i love angela and i feel like i would crumble in her place, with everyone constantly making fun of my every move and infantilizing me all the time. i really hope smosh doesn't make fun of her as much off-camera, that they check jokes with her beforehand, etc

i also wish fandom would treat her like the smart and talented and beautiful ADULT she is and not caricature her as this immature, loud, dumb person. she is not a "smol bean", nor is she "a rabid goblin" or whatever the fuck nicknames i've seen around on tiktok/tumblr

for smosh,

i know she explained that she feels like the young sibling/sister at smosh and feels like she's part of a family, and that roasting/teasing makes her feel seen and noticed, but i have older siblings. i know teasing is fun. but if it's constantly all the time on every video on every shoot day??? i bet it can get through to her!! just like it eventually gets through to me when my siblings tease me too much!! i genuinely hope that she feels comfortable with all this, bc i often worry about her

like she is the most roasted cast-member on smosh

she is made fun of for her voice, her smarts, her skills at specific games or activities, her appearance, etc. the only other people that i've seen being roasted are ian, shayne and spencer and it's not a quarter as bad.

ian is teased because of the anthony thing and OCCASIONALLY his old style, shayne is teased about being SO funny, SO talented, SO nice, SO muscular, SO well-read, etc so i feel like everytime they roast him it's just egoboosting, and with spencer i feel like they toss around the occasional nerd/videogame/chosen joke but even that he fuels as well.

with angela it feels like every single smosh games bit is about her not being skilled enough at the game, not knowing the rules, forgetting she's even a certain role, etc. and it feels, especially in videos like the latest werewolf one, like everyone is just suddenly all eyes on her, on this mob-mentality-kick, of "ha ha look at classic little angela! she is so funny when she makes a mistake! she is so bad look at her! we are all so much better than her at this game, collectively!" as if they all had this private group joke going on and she wasn't a part of it. it takes me back to when i was with friends with whom i felt excluded and made fun of.

and every five minutes it's "angela looks like joe pesci" (a NOT CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE MAN) or whoever the hell, "angela is too loud", "angela needs to be parented by chanse" (the "angela." chanse joke feels so...condescending), "angela is clueless", "angela is annoying", "angela has childish humor", etc.

maybe this is stupid, or i'm reaching/seeing things that aren't real, but i see a lot of myself in angela sometimes and i don't like that i also see the way i was teased by bullies in middle school. i really love her and i think she is so talented and pretty and so so smart with her humor and i am very annoyed atm after watching a video where the jokes were particularly angela-targeted.

[creature-wizard]

The problem is, she says that across all cultures misogyny is part of the unconscious collective, I tried to tell her that the 15 cultures she knows aren't the majority, but she didn't listen. Also she says that the unconscious collective is shared by all human beings, like just one big clump of consciousness. I'm not too familiar with Jung's work but that sounds very far fetched

Okay so I'm gonna preface this with a "transphobes fuck off" because I know one of them is gonna find this post sooner or later.

So, I'd say that whatever form of collective unconscious exists is shared by social networks, in which memetic drift is a very real factor. The only thing you can really count on to be universal is stuff that's informed by universal human experience (for example, "water is wet").

Misogyny unfortunately exists in many places for many reasons, one of which being being the universal human capacity of devaluing, caricaturing, and objectifying people whose existences and experiences we don't fully understand. This is one of those problems that can be exacerbated by certain labor expectations, and it's easy to pigeonhole the people who are theoretically capable of bearing children (most of whom are women) into roles associated with childbearing and childrearing. Add in the fact that what's intrinsic nature vs. social construct is often far from intuitive, and you get people thinking that if somebody can theoretically bear children, then doing so is their "natural" role in society, and deviating from it is weird and wrong.

This of course is very very basic and there's zillions of other factors in play, too. Which brings us to another thing - misogyny exists in many places, but it doesn't always take the same form, because it's building off of different experiences and different worldviews. For example, within modern western capitalism, where people are explicitly or implicitly taught that life is all about maximizing those profits, misogyny can take the form of assuming that people theoretically capable of bearing children all subconsciously want to maximize the amount of children they can have. From here, people who are critically out of touch with actual human minds and hearts begin interpreting all kinds of behaviors as existing to maximize the amount of children born, and suddenly it's "oh my god, she's showing her ankles, she must want to fuck me and bear my spawn... but she will leave me as soon as she sees a Better Mate who can provide her with More Money To Optimally Raise Her Spawn and also Better Spawn In The Future."

(Now just to be clear, capitalism gives people mindworms in the other direction, too, with assumptions that anyone who can theoretically impregnate other people wants to cause as many pregnancies as possible. "Trans women are actually men trying to sneak into women's spaces to sexually assault them!" is ultimately an extension of this thinking. If you want to see a real example of a movement started by men who legitimately want to cause as many pregnancies as possible, go look at the Quiverfull movement.)

So yeah, misogyny is a very real problem in many different places, but to act like it's all a monolith is both incorrect and unhelpful. Misogyny has to be understood in the context of each culture it appears in, not just lumped together as if it's all some singular mass. Jung's collective unconscious is really just a terrible framework for this.

[gryficowa]

From what I learned, Walt Disney was a shitty person, but he wasn't an anti-Semite, and he had a friend who was (Because you know, you have to respect other people's opinions… Tia… I don't understand people who think that friendship with a bigot is Approx)

And contrary to appearances, it was not an anti-Semitic representation

Or rather, there is a lot of inspiration from Baba Yaga here

Baba Yaga is a character from Slavic mythology, her house had chicken feet (The inspiration can be seen in TOH)

In the old designs of Eda and Lilith in the form of harpies, you can see characteristic faces clearly inspired by Baba Yaga

Unfortunately, Baba Yaga is confused with anti-Semitic creatures due to her characteristic nose

And it pissed me off, it really pissed me off that Baba Yaga and things heavily inspired by her were considered anti-Semitism, seriously, no, it's not anti-Semitism, it's fucking Baba Yaga

If you think that only Jews have such noses, then seriously, WTF

I am a person with a longer nose, not the longest (It is slightly long, a bit like Pearl's nose from SU) and no, I am not a Jew (From what I know, I don't know what's going on with my ancestors from many years ago, because I am from Poland and Europeans and the Slavs themselves did not care about a pure "Race" like Americans)

And yes, many pensioners had such a nose, heck, my grandmother had a similar one, because the paradox of aging is that the nose can look different when you have wrinkles (Now the chance of such a nose is smaller, because people have access to medical help and it is many factors, but then? Oh, my grandmother was born a few years after the war and the funny thing is, I saw a photo of her from her youth, she had the same face as me, which was abstract to me)

But yes, Baba Yaga was created years before anti-Semitic creatures were created, and the character herself is a character from Slavic mythology

"Baba Yaga - a character appearing in Slavic beliefs and folklore"

"The figure of Baba Yaga, originally probably important in Slavic mythology, has survived only in a degraded form as an element of folklore. She appears there as an old, hideous witch (sagging breasts, one bone leg, blind or visually impaired), living in a hut on a chicken's foot deep in the forest[1]. Baba Yaga was often accompanied by a black cat, raven, owl or snake. She kidnapped people wandering in the forest (especially children), then murdered and ate them. She was also credited with sending diseases and other ailments[2]. At the end of the story, she usually fought a fight with the positive hero and died. Occasionally in folklore there is a motif of the gracious Baba Yaga helping people"

We can fuck Disney too much (In Walt Disney's time for misogyny and all that other shit, nowadays for supporting Israel, for filming "Mulan" in labor camps in China and for mistreating workers, but not for anti-Semitism, because what's left is considered "Anti-Semitism" it was not, and it was confused by the work of evil people who spread hatred towards Jews)

Slavic mythology, unfortunately, has been heavily affected by Christians and many other things, and it's not very well known, so it's depressing when you see mythology from the places where it comes from and it's confused with anti-Semitic shit

Unfortunately, beliefs and cultures are attacked, ironically by Americans, I don't remember the name of the demon, but it was confused with blackface, because the actor painted himself black, even though the demon itself was not supposed to be a black character, but a demon and part of a certain culture, so yes, it was confused with blackface, even though, as I mentioned, he didn't represent a black person, so yes, such things happened, I would understand if it was supposed to be a caricature of black people, but it was a fucking demon

Characters representing cultural trends in Japan were also confused with blackface, I don't remember what they were called, but the person had tanned skin and light hair and lips painted with pearl lipstick

From what I heard, Pokemon considered blackface was supposed to represent this cultural trend (White hair was supposed to be proof of this)

So yes, Baba Yaga wasn't the only victim who was mistaken for something she wasn't

Which doesn't change the fact that it's irritating when they confuse Baba Yaga with anti-Semitic depictions of Jews

I think I understand why many people say that white people don't have their own culture, because if they mean white people, they mean Americans, seriously, they are exterminating other cultures and it sucks

And then it ends with other cultures being considered anti-Semitic or racist, because oh God! They have mythology!

Because yes, will you introduce Baba Yaga? Anti-Semitism! (By the way, I post my works on the blog because I deleted my deviantart, because it was bought by an Israeli company in 2017, I gave the character of Baba Yaga and signed it, although I was put on the anti-Semitic list because I am an anti-Zionist), you have the character of a demon who is black and does not represent a person black? Racism!

This is what pisses me off about the US, the erasure of other cultures because "They think it represents what I think it represents and to me it's wrong so they shouldn't have it", just bruh

And this information for you Americans, the basilisk looks like this:

Yes, as much as I love Vee from TOH, this fact amuses me

I often have the impression that when Americans create a basilisk, they forget that it is also a bird, not just a giant snake

I think the only good depiction of the basilisk was in MLP

From what I see, it is not a basilisk, but a Cockatrice, a creature that is similar to a basilisk

It's a bit depressing to think…

The basilisk and the cockatrice are very similar to each other (I'm speaking as a person raised in Europe who has seen animations about legends from Poland), so it's strange that both creatures are so different in American productions

I don't know, when you create a basilisk, add chicken wings or something, because the basilisk doesn't have to be half hen, it can be any bird, so as to distinguish it from the cockatrice

Whatever you do, make it have the characteristics of a bird and not just a giant snake

Heck, even Vee has a feather on her tail and I think that hair is also feathers (I don't know), she may not be the perfect image of a Basilisk, but at least she has the features of a bird in some way

Yes, the basilisk often has dragon wings, but I haven't seen them required (From the description), it's supposed to be a lizard-bird

It doesn't even have to have wings, but the most important thing is that it has feathers or other bird features, and yes, basilisks freeze with their eyes, but when they see their reflection, they become rocks themselves

A basilisk does not have to have only two limbs, it can have four, it is often depicted in the way I have shown, but it can be presented in a different way to distinguish it from a creature similar to it

Please, please stop drawing him as a large snake, because it is a misrepresentation of this creature

The way Harry Potter showed him is wrong (Like everything Rowling wrote, honestly)

Okay, I've rambled on, but yes, this witch and the concept art versions of TOH characters are not anti-Semitic, they are strongly inspired by Baba Yaga

Unfortunately, our mythology has been harmed by Christians and their "Conversion to the right religion", and Slavic mythology itself is unfortunately not very well known (Even for many Poles), so it is seriously depressing to see something that is not anti-Semitic being associated with anti-Semitism

As I said, Disney has a lot on his conscience, but anti-Semitism is a stupid accusation and also harmful, yes, Disney had a fucked up moral compass, because the very fact that he was friends with a Nazi is so sus

Racism makes sense because Disney did a lot of racist shit (Maybe not as much as WB, but still)

Do you know what things can be considered anti-Semitism? Fucking Gargamel from The Smurfs, he was clearly inspired by anti-Semitic shit, just black hair and that nose… It's just awkward to see today's reboot

Why are people silent about the actual anti-Semitic shit that is Gargamel fucking? I'm seriously asking you, he seriously looks like an anti-Semitic creature, his nose, his hair, his clothes (Full of holes and patches) and he lives in a castle (Not in a cottage, so there's no Baba Yaga inspiration here, and his cat is red)

I'm still shocked that no one is talking about it and there is no outrage, because yes, The Smurfs had a 3D reboot and as you can see, Gargamel's appearance has not been changed

I'm still surprised that there was no drama about Anti-Semitism in this case…