#but when i think about it within the context that its the same company that made last twilight

[beiyuanism]

gmmtv vs not making their blind character gain sight again

[alexanderwales]

I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.

A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.

The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.

The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.

A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.

A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.

Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.

Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.

Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".

[blueskittlesart]

did u not like totk?

i LOVED totk. i think it was well-written and did its job as a sequel to botw very well. HOWEVER. i do think it suffered slightly from the commercial success of botw. as i mentioned in my last post, nintendo does this. thing. when one of their games gets popular where every game after it has to be Exactly The Same so they can make all the money in the world via comparison marketing. (and this is a problem with the wider game industry in general but also a very observable pattern in loz specifically.) I know it's been a pretty long time since botw came out, but before (and immediately following) its release there was some pushback from longtime fans who worried that the open-world and lack of traditional dungeons meant that the game had strayed too far from the classic formula that makes a game a "zelda game." this is to say, botw was EXPERIMENTAL. and the devs had no idea if what they were doing was going to be successful or not. the open-world of botw wasn't a gimmick, and it wasn't the devs jumping on the open-world bandwagon. it was what CREATED that bandwagon. the open-world was a deliberate choice made specifically for botw because it reinforced the story that botw was designed to tell. the game is about exploring a desolate world, about making connections, and rebuilding both the broken kingdom and the player character's shattered sense of self by traveling and learning and building relationships. a large open-world map with only minor quest guidelines and lots of collectibles and side quests lends itself perfectly to this specific story, which is specifically about exploration and rebirth.

the problem is, botw was. almost TOO good. it was so good that every other game company on the planet started scrambling to build giant open-world maps into their next release, regardless of how much sense that actually made narratively. and because of that, when it came time to release a sequel to botw, the devs had a lot to think about. they had HUGE shoes to fill in terms of fan reception, but they were ALSO being asked to follow up one of the best-performing games of all time, commercially. totk needed to SELL as well as botw. And, likely because nintendo was worried about that potential commercial value, totk needed to keep people comfortable. I don't know for certain, but I definitely get the feeling playing totk that the devs were specifically told not to stray too far from what made botw marketable and successful--that being the open world and the versatility of gameplay. so in order to follow that up, they made... 2 more huge open maps, and new gimmick gameplay which was explicitly super-versatile.

do i think that the extra maps and ultrahand were BAD choices? no. however, i don't think they necessarily ADDED anything to the game as a narrative whole. one of my favorite things about botw was how everything seemed to be designed AROUND the narrative, with gameplay elements slotting neatly into the story thematically. totk just. didn't really have that, imo. there wasn't a huge narrative benefit to the gigantic, completely unpopulated depths and sky maps. ultrahand was cool, but within the context of the story it meant basically nothing. in some ways, i almost think totk could have benefitted from a much more linear approach to its storytelling, a la skyward sword, because there are a lot of story beats that have to be found in chronological order in order to have the right emotional impact, but because of the nonlinear open-world it kind of became a struggle to hit all the important story points in the right order. an easy example of this is the dragon's tears in comparison to the memories--the dragon tears have a very specific set order in which they happen, and finding them out of order can make the story you're seeing in them feel confusing and disjointed. the order in which they should be found is technically displayed on the temple wall, but most players aren't going to pick up on that or follow it--more likely, they're just going to explore the geoglyphs as they come across them organically, and therefore will likely witness the story in a completely disjointed way. compare this to the botw memories, which ALSO technically have a set order--the order in which they're displayed on the sheikah slate. however, because they're largely just small moments in time, and not one continuous story, finding them out of order has a lot less of an impact on how you as the player experience the narrative, and it's not hugely detrimental to your experience of the story if you find them naturally as you explore rather than explicitly seeking them out in order. If TOTK had been allowed to deviate from the botw formula a bit, i think we may have ended up with a more cohesive game in terms of narrative beats like that. as it is, i just think the game is torn slightly between wanting to be its own new game with new gameplay and needing to be botw, if that makes sense.

[sea-changed]

i. Reading Looking For The Good War has, among many other things, I think really helped me to clarify and articulate what I find so disquieting about "Points" as an episode. (Which is not all of it! There are certainly plenty of scenes that I find fascinating and/or enjoyable to watch.) But:

"It is much easier to tell a sentimental war story with a happy ending, in which valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything--a comedy, in other words--than it is to tell another, unsentimental kind of story." (page 89)

This is what it is, exactly--"in which valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything" could more or less be the logline of "Points." This is most egregiously evident to me in the scene of Nazi general's surrender, but the scene where Winters tells the Nazi officer to keep his sidearm is also I think highly indicative of this drive towards reconciliation, however rotten, above all else. And Samet articulates that wonderfully, and articulates as well the cost of this type of narrative:

"Yet sentimentality does more than shape the way we commemorate wars. It informs all those cultural and sociological attitudes in the shadow of which wartime and postwar policies are crafted, and it prevents a more productive and enduring sympathy that, in cooperation with reason, might guide our actions and help us become more careful readers of war's many ambiguities and false seductions." (page 83)

ii. The layers of dislike I have for the Nazi general scene are manifold; the mirroring of Winters and the Nazi general and thereby Easy Company with the Nazi soldiers feels incredibly sinister, perhaps most aggressively so in its weird push to rehabilitate the Nazis as soldiers, and thus to both foreshadow (within the world of the show) and echo (in the world of the audience) the archetypal defense that Nazi higher-ups would put forward at Nuremberg and beyond, that they were just following orders.

iii. The mirroring of Winters and Easy Company with the Nazis is clearly intentional, and somewhat bizarrely explicit ("You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat among brothers") and maudlin (the panning shots over the Nazi soldiers' faces and wounds), and by the end the urge to parallel the two leaders and the two armies--indeed, to collapse one into the other, in order to make them functionally the same--seems to cause a sort of scriptwriting amnesia about who these words are actually being said by and to. Once again the greater historic context makes this especially chilling, Operation Paperclip being perhaps the most salient point to evoke. (I am also haunted, forever, by a statistic that Michael C. C. Adams cites in The Best War Ever, that a September 1945 survey of American GIs found that 22% believed the Nazi treatment of Jewish people to be justified. Granted, this survey would not have been taken using modern sampling methods, and who knows what the sample size was to begin with or what soldiers in particular were being surveyed. But still.)

iv. The scene leans heavily into the idea of a unique soldierly bond that unites not only each individual army within itself but bonds the two armies together. ("You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat, among brothers who've shared foxholes, held each other in dire moments, who've seen death and suffered together.") Besides being disquieting for reasons I state above, I think it's notable that the Nazi general's speech emphasizing the brotherhood of soldiers happens directly after the short scene between Winters and Sobel, wherein Winters chides Sobel on a point of military ritual ("We salute the rank, not the man"). Sobel is outside the brotherhood; he doesn't understand how to be a soldier; whereas the Nazis are within the brotherhood, so much so that they are allowed to articulate its terms. (This is egregious no matter what, but becomes all the more so when it is framed as a Jewish man being excluded from the "club" of military brotherhood while WASP Americans and literal Nazis are allowed in.) (Meanwhile, Liebgott occupies a sort of bizarre placement in this scene, there to ventriloquize--indeed, perhaps neutralize, or even legitimize--the Nazi general's words, but not speak for himself.)

v. This gets to another point that Samet makes that stuck out to me, about the inherent tautology of military culture. She quotes William Styron, who in a 1964 review of General Douglas MacArthur's memoir said:

"Anyone who has lived as a stranger for any length of time among professional military men, especially officers, is made gradually aware of something that runs counter to everything one has been taught to believe—and that is that most of these men, far from corresponding to the liberal cliché of the super-patriot, are in fact totally lacking in patriotism. They are not unpatriotic, they simply do not understand or care what patriotism is. [...] A true military man is a mercenary [...] and it is within the world of soldiering that he finds his only home." (Samet quotes Styron on page 233; I'm quoting here from the full review)

The point of being a soldier is to be a soldier; the point of the military is to have a military. She also has this to say--especially saliently, I think, for obvious reasons--about Ambrose, and his perspective specifically in Citizen Soldiers:

"By means of emphasis and convenient omission, Ambrose preserves his focus on unity, not division; right, not wrong; liberation, not subjugation. Paradoxically, given that he makes so much of American idealism, he often subordinates a consideration of causes altogether to a veneration for the magnificence of the army itself. The creation of that army, rather than the victory it made possible, becomes 'the great achievement of the American people and system,' just as the nation's 'greatest nineteenth-century achievement' had been, according to Ambrose, 'the creation of the Army of the Potomac' rather than the end it eventually secured--the abolition of chattel slavery." (page 46)

Here we are back to the first Samet quote from above: valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything. To be a military man--to be part of the club, the brotherhood, the "bond that exists only in combat"--is to "subordinate a consideration of causes altogether to a veneration for the magnificence of the army itself." The country and the cause that the Nazi general and his soldiers fought "bravely, proudly" for become sublimated, while that bravery and pride, stripped of more specific meaning, is extolled. What matters, by the time this scene happens--and it's the last scene in the core section of the episode, followed only by the close of the frame structure with Winters and Nixon and then the baseball scene-cum-epilogue--is not the American cause that Easy Company was fighting for, and certainly not the Nazi atrocities they were fighting against, but rather a reconciliation that views the experience of war as preeminently important. Sobel, who did not experience combat, is dismissed; the Nazi general, who did, is legitimated.

vi. And that, I think, is the core of the message that Band of Brothers promotes. Fandom often refers to the show in passing as propaganda, but I'm not sure that really gets to the heart of what it is, in the end, saying. I would suggest that it's not merely propaganda; it's a recruitment poster. It's not selling truth, justice, and the American way (or if it is, it's doing so only incidentally); it's selling the experience of being in the military as a transformative and ultimately positive one, that unites (a certain subset of) men through the unique crucible of battle, beyond any concerns about what, exactly, one is fighting for. So long as you know when and how to salute, you too can be a part of the brotherhood.

vii. All of which gets back to the scene earlier in "Points," when the Nazi colonel surrenders to Winters. The colonel first makes the explicit parallel between the Nazis and the Americans, and between himself and Winters in particular: "I wonder what will happen to us, to people like you and me, when there are finally no more wars to occupy us." He serves to explicate here more or less exactly what I was saying above: he sees himself and Winters united as military men, above and beyond their particular countries and causes.

Winters doesn't look thrilled about the comparison--but then almost immediately tells the Nazi colonel to retain his surrendered sidearm. I suppose this is supposed to read as magnanimous and fair-minded on Winters's part, but it also serves to reinforce the Nazi colonel's own words, validating the colonel's prioritization of their shared military positions above and beyond their allegiance to the countries and ideologies they were (at least nominally!) fighting for. As the scene itself shows, giving up a sidearm is an expected part of the surrender process, both practically and symbolically; by refusing it Winters is stepping outside military precedent--indeed, bending over backwards--to help the Nazi colonel retain dignity as well as firepower. On its own it is, I think, a frustrating and uncomfortable scene; in the broader context of the episode it sets up and reinforces the Nazi general's speech later on and the ways that Winters and the show itself find meaning in paralleling and reconciling the Americans and the Nazis with one other. (The Nazi colonel knows how to salute; and when he does so, Winters salutes him back.)

viii. Of course it's historically true that American soldiers tended to identify with German soldiers and civilians much more than they identified with people from Allied countries, as Samet herself and even the veteran interviews at the beginning of "Why We Fight" document. (And I don't believe that paralleling the Americans and the Nazis is necessarily something to be dismissed out of hand.) But because the end of "Points" is so overtly sentimental, paralleling the Americans and Nazis serves not as an indictment of American soldiers' amorality but rather as a rehabilitation of the Nazi soldiers and officers as soldiers and a paean to military culture divorced from meaning or cause. As Samet says--"valor eclipses causes and reconciliation triumphs over everything." The military, as an institution, whether it be American or Nazi, becomes the greater good of the war; while the causes those militaries were fighting for become not only secondary, but recede entirely.

[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #2: Penny Arcade

Pages read: 11/18/1998 – 8/20/1999 & 4/13/2009 – 8/19/2009 (including accompanying blog posts); about 180 pages

Reason for selection: Penny Arcade is important. The Gamer Webcomic is kind of the archetypical webcomic, and Penny Arcade is its most famous example. But PA has crossed over into the world of mainstream gaming and nerd culture enough that it’s transcended just webcomics, hosting major gaming conventions, pioneering the medium of TTRPG actual play, and running a successful charity. Their projects are known by people who don’t read the comic itself, and they’ve arguably played a role in normalizing video games as a hobby in broader culture.

Current status: Has updated three times a week pretty consistently throughout its entire run. In 2024 the two main characters are still wearing the same shirts they wore in 1998.

Content warnings: misogyny, sexual humor, general period typical humor including slurs

Overall thoughts: Penny Arcade relies so much on references to real-time video games and nerd culture moments that it doesn’t read well as an archive. I enjoyed the 2009 comics more than the 1998-9 comics simply because I understood a lot of the 2009 cultural references while the 90s ones go right over my head. Without that context, reading it feels like sitting on a bus behind two guys who are having a loud and opinionated conversation about their own lives. Playing the same games and running in the same circles as the creators is near essential to enjoy the work.

Penny Arcade doesn’t do anything with the webcomics medium that wouldn’t be possible in print – they primarily make three-panel strips with text and still images, and since 2002, these have been accompanied by blog commentary from one of the creators. Despite or because of this, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik are the platonic ideal of Guys Who Make Webcomics. Cishet white men in their early twenties (when PA began) who didn’t have any formal training in comics or any previous notoriety, but who had internet access in its early days, a sarcastic sense of humor, and strong opinions that they really liked to share. The first few years of strips have their text written in Comic Sans, and an early strip (‘A VERY Special Penny Arcade!’ February 17, 1999) features Mike (‘in character’ as Gabe) proposing to his then-girlfriend Kara.

These early strips are far better preserved than the average 90s webcomic, and I do think that reading the full archive would be a fascinating case study of how the PA brand was built, and more broadly how a creator develops their skills and grows their audience. The art style has become more exaggerated and distinctive over the years, and the lettering looks like a published comic book. Even though there’s no narrative to the strip itself, there’s this classic American Dream, come-from-nothing narrative to the first decade of the comic’s history that I think is compelling to a lot of people, especially to gamers in the 2000s when gaming is still an often ridiculed hobby.

Capturing this, there’s scholarship on the economics of webcomics that discuss Penny Arcade and how its creators managed to turn the comic into a well-paying day job. I hate thinking about money and can’t stand economics as a discipline so I didn’t read these, but I did read Bryanne Miller’s 2007 Master’s thesis ‘Making “Cents” of Subcultural Capital: The Preservation of Authenticity and Credibility in Penny Arcade Subculture,’ a really fascinating exploration which includes interviews with fans talking about their experiences with the comic and community. According to this, PA fans see themselves as a subculture within a subculture, a particular flavor of grassroots gamer who is skeptical of major games companies and journalism. To them, Holkins and Krahulik are the witty spokespeople for their underdog gamer sect fighting against the mainstream.

The thesis also delves into the major controversies PA has been involved in, where they’ve picked fights with more powerful celebrities, as well as their open resistance to advertising even while participating in it. It also discusses Child’s Play, PA’s official charity, set up with the explicit purpose of changing the public perception of gamers at a time where the ‘video games cause violence’ panic was at its height in mainstream media. I don’t know how calculated vs truthful PA’s image of being against corporations and commercialization is, but I have to give them some credit. PA accepts donations and sells merchandise but is entirely free to read, and always has been. This is in contrast to PvP, another popular gaming webcomic of the 2000s, which has fully paywalled its archive.

Finally, ‘two gamers on a couch’ may be PA’s main mode, but it’s not their only mode. In June 2009 they posted the first pages of Lookouts, a fantasy woodland survival adventure, and Automata, a 1920s noir with artificial intelligence. These are formatted more like comic book pages, with distinct art styles, and both of their first pages are effective at establishing their worlds, which are immediately intriguing and honestly both feel like great settings for TTRPG campaigns. Comparing these to a 1999 strip gives me a lot of hope for how much I could improve at writing and analysis in ten years. Also, ‘No Heart, No Soul, No Service’ is a great line.

Relevance to Homestuck: Without Penny Arcade, Homestuck might not exist – the first MS Paint Adventure, Jailbreak, was originally hosted on the PA forums (as was early Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff). The formal ties go further - Penny Arcade is one of around fifty webcomics linked from MS Paint Adventures beneath the heading ‘No Shortage of Good Websites,’ and Andrew Hussie announced in July that their PA fanart will be featured in the upcoming PA book The Splendid Magic of Penny Arcade. I also found this gem in a forum thread from March (s_o is Andrew Hussie) and while I don’t think this directly incited Homestuck, it was definitely prophetic.

Penny Arcade’s writing style, where the writers use unnecessarily obscure and archaic words to suggest intelligence paired with a tone of aggression and self-superior humor, likely influenced Homestuck given that Hussie was a regular, popular user of their forums. I see GameBro magazine as in part a parody of PA’s blog posts and their ‘gamers against mainstream gaming’ perspectives. I wonder if anyone has ever made something like Dave’s GameBro review blog but for Penny Arcade.

Continue reading? I will definitely read more from a ‘learning about internet history’ perspective, but I won’t read this for enjoyment. To be honest, I see enough gamers yelling on the internet without specifically seeking it out in webcomic form. I do think I'll read the short form narrative comics, like Automata, that the creators have made.

[sojourner-between-worlds]

Not so long ago, another Christian on here shared an article about the "problems" with the Chosen. Now, I fully believe and support thinking critically about the media we consume, especially for something depicting the life of Christ. That being said, I'd like to offer some thoughts of my own about some of the most commonly cited "problems" with the series. (I ended up referencing the above article in most points, but almost all of them I have see elsewhere as well. That article was just an easy frame of reference.) I'm not here to convince anyone to watch it; I'd just like to offer an alternate perspective for anyone who is willing to listen and think critically.

As a disclaimer: no, this show is not flawless. It's a flawed show made by flawed people doing their best. There are times I take issue with it myself. There are valid criticisms. The ones below are, quite simply, ones that I believe are not.

Buckle up; this is going to be a long one.

1.Mormon Influence I can't believe I still have to explain this one, but I still see it listed as a reason not to watch, so here we go: VidAngel/ Angel Studios Mormon ties had no more bearing on the series content for being the streaming distributor than CBS currently does for being allowed to broadcast it. When a company solely has distribution rights, that does NOT mean they are making content decisions. The only time a distributor would have say on content is if they are partnered, which usually means they are paying for production in some way. Angel Studios never gave a penny towards production (this is the largest crowd-funded series to date, remember? They have no studio backing). They never had any influence. And, oh yeah, as of May 2024, they were deemed to be in breach of contract and now the Chosen no longer has any ties to the company. No influence. Got it? Good. Then we can move on.

2."What does your heart tell you?" (This one could be included in point 4, but I've seen it so often it gets its own, haha.) Okay, this one? This one I agree was not a good writing choice. However. I think this one needs a little more thought rather than taking it at knee-jerk. Yes, the heart is deceitfully wicked and cannot be trusted. But there's some nuance here that I think gets left behind when well-meaning people call out the series for this line. The heart, as referred to in Proverbs, is the will of man. The heart, in pop culture, is often synonymous with emotions. Within the context of the scene, its very clear that the second meaning is the one intended. Now, I will say "feelings are fickle" until the day I die (because they are) because they can't always be trusted to reflect the truth. Again, however. Feelings do exist to tell us things. That is literally their purpose. Not always accurately reflecting the truth of something doesn't change their purpose. And that is what the writers were going for in this scene: the emotional weight of the truth Nicodemus has found. Could they have probably found a less controversial way to convey this? Yeah, maybe. But I can say that this wasn't intended to be the Disney "follow your heart" mumbo-jumbo it constantly gets written off as.

3.A Hearsay Gospel This point was taken directly from the referenced article. I'm choosing to address it not because it's a popular "problem" but because it's actually one I'd never seen before and I think it shows a gross misunderstanding of the inspiration of the Gospels and Scripture as a whole. This point posited that it's unbiblical to show Matthew and John taking notes because it undermines the Spirit-led inspiration of their writings. Except that it doesn't. The Greek word used when talking about this is more literally translated "God-breathed." Which is not the same as "God-dictated." If it were the latter (and what the writer of said article implied), then there would only be one Gospel account. That would be all we need because everything would be in it. Or, if there were still four Gospels (given that they were written with different intended audiences), they would all sound the same and have the exact same details about shared recorded events. But they don't. Because God didn't tell them, verbatim, what to write down. This is why there is variety yet harmony. This is why each writer has a distinct voice in the way they wrote. Because God didn't dictate; He led. There is a difference.

There is also the matter of the Gospel of Mark. Many scholars believe that Mark may have used Matthew's Gospel as a reference when he wrote his own because it shares so much in terms of content (93% of Mark can be found in the others). Does that make it less inspired? The obvious answer is "no" (or it wouldn't still be in our modern Bibles).

The episode most criticized for this point was s2 ep3, where a woman runs past Matthew and he desperately calls after her, "Healed you of what?" Therefore making it something he didn't personally witness that he wrote down. But here's the problem with this: that entire episode is based on one single verse from the book of Matthew: 4:24. Which, if you look it up, says only that Jesus healed many people. As any writer can tell you, not every note makes it into the final draft. Provided something like that did historically happen and provided Matthew did write it down, that doesn't mean everything he took notes on would have been in the completed manuscript later. Therefore: no hearsay.

Bottom line: what made it into their Gospels is still being presented as things they personally witnessed, and taking notes doesn't detract from being led to write or from being led what to include.

4.Unscriptural Script There are several points under this one, so we'll take them one at a time. --"House" vs "Business". This one is, once again, directly from the aforementioned article, but I wanted to address it briefly anyway. This is in reference to Jesus, at age 12, staying and teaching in the temple when his family had already started home. The author claims that "the Bible says, 'Be about my Father's business'" and claims that saying "in the house of my father" (as the show does) is Catholic-inspired and unbiblical. I don't know about the Catholic-inspired part, but I can say that it depends what translation of the Bible you're looking at. KJV uses the business wording. ESV and HCSB both use the house wording. (And if you want to mince accuracy, ESV and HCSB are both more literal than KJV/NKJV.) Unless you take only one translation as being the True Translation, then you can't say the line they went with is unbiblical.

-- Apparently certain things demean Christ, such as him practicing his Sermon on the Mount as opposed to it "being inspired" (see point 3 for the rebuttal of the second part). Except it doesn't. Because Jesus was also very human. Which people tend to forget when talking about this point specifically. It's wrong to have him practice what to say specifically. It's wrong to show him with a sense of humor. It's wrong to [fill in the blank; there are many of these]. Most of them amount to "it's a sin to be human." There are a lot of things that are a direct result of the Original Sin that are not, of themselves, sinful. It's not sinful to say something in a way people don't understand (so he practices to make sure people will understand what he means). It's not sinful to be nostalgic (its an acknowledgement of things that were good in the past). It's not sinful to show Mother Mary supporting Him (we all need earthly support in the form of other people; this is literally one of the purposes of the church!). Every single thing I've ever heard anyone say is "demeaning" is actually just portraying Him as every bit the human He became.

-- The first "arrest". Quintus wanted to talk to Him. He wasn't charged with anything. He wasn't imprisoned. Quintus gave Him a warning and let Him go. This does not contradict Jesus declaring it was not yet His time because it wasn't. He wasn't arrested. I don't know how many more ways I can say this.

-- "Nathanael couldn't have been a drunk because Jesus said there was no guile in him." Except the definition of "without guile" is not "sinless". The definition of guile is "deceit, cunning, hypocrisy or dishonesty in thought or deed" and many modern translations use the word "deceit" in that verse instead. Jesus is saying that he is honest and not a hypocrite. There's nothing about drinking in there at all. I'm not trying to call out this author specifically, but when I say that it's important to understand what words mean, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

-- John the Baptist. One of the points I've seen repeatedly is that it's sacrilegious for Peter to call him "Creepy John". I have to ask if these people understand that Peter called him that in anger and before he met Jesus. After that, it's a running joke along the lines of "remember when you didn't believe me" from Andrew. This is peak sibling behavior. That's all I can say about that.

-- "Matthew couldn't have been autistic because it's not in the Bible/ it didn't exist back them/ etc." I haven't seen this one in a long while, and I made a whole post about this way-back-when, but it bares repeating. The word "autistic" doesn't appear in the Bible in part because the word wasn't even coined until the 1900s. I don't know what else to tell you on that front. Since I've already made a post about this, all I'm going to say here is that it's important representation that is made all the clearly by the overwhelmingly positive response it received from autistic fans. Jesus called all sorts, the outcasts of society, the lowest of the low. And, yes, He calls autistics, too. If there's a problem here, that's all on you, buddy.

5. The Music This particular writer pointed out this lyric specifically: "Got no trouble with the mess you've been" and quite frankly I'm having hard time understand the problem with it because he doesn't come out and say it. It is, in fact, a completely true statement. God is not put off by our messes. We don't have to fix ourselves before coming to Him. Its also worth pointing out the past tense here: been. As in, He calls you out of your mess. You don't stay there. So I have no idea what the supposed problem here is; I only know that it's not one.

In general, I don't have a problem with people not liking certain styles of music. I do take issue, however, when anyone tries to assign morality to a style. Music is amoral. It can be used in immoral ways, just like anything else can be, but music itself does not have a morality. It doesn't have "mystic undertones"; it is in a style that you yourself associate with mysticism. If you don't care for the style, that's fine, but don't assign it a morality it doesn't have.

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Know of something I missed? I certainly didn't cover every controversy so let me know and I'll let you know what I think of it!

[emerald-truth]

Gender Presentation and Women's Empowerment in The World Is Not Enough

Hi guys this is something I've been thinking about for a while and this topic is a big reason why TWINE is my favorite Bond movie! I'm gonna talk about how masculine or feminine presentation affect the power, credibility, respect, etc. of the three main women in the movie: Elektra King, Judy Dench's M, and Christmas Jones. I'm going to include examples from the movie plot itself, the context of the making of the movie and reactions to the movie.

Elektra King:

Within the movie itself, Elektra uses a highly feminine presentation to aid in her duplicity by encouraging stereotypes about women as victims who need protection. Conforming to gender norms also helps her wield her sexual power against men (like Bond and Renard) in a heteronormative society. In both these cases she acts as though she is giving up power by giving herself over to the protection of MI6 or the sexual desires of men. Her femininity encourages the association of asking for help with weakness. Highlighting her womanhood also makes sexual desire appear weak in contrast with the virility associated with masculine desire. Both of these illusory weaknesses are intended to make the people around her underestimate her.

But despite using femininity to feign lack of power, Elektra desires and uses power as much as any Bond villain. Despite her physically feminine presentation, she takes on a traditionally masculine role as a businessperson and leader of both her family company and her country. She easily convinces Bond, a strong believer in male sexual dominance, that he is in control of her, when in fact she is manipulating him through the same methods he uses on women, in a strong parallel to Fiona Volpe from Thunderball. However, she goes beyond Fiona's role as a henchperson, by using her sexual prowess to control her own henchman. Many past villains have exercised sexual control to entrap women in aiding their schemes in the way Elektra does to Bond and Renard. For example Kara is manipulated into aiding the villains in The Living Daylights through her romantic and sexual attraction to one of them. By following the example of former villains, Elektra goes beyond the trope of the femme fatale which relies on the perceived danger of women's sexuality to claim a sexuality that is not only dangerous, but powerful in the way a man's is. It has the ability to give her complete control over those who are sexually "weaker" because of their desire for her, inverting the concept of men's desire as strength and women's desire as weakness.

The film itself acknowledges its own bias and that of its audience towards crediting men with more power than women by framing Renard as the villain and having Elektra's villainy as a twist. The franchise relies on stereotypes and its own tropes to make the twist surprising. No one is supposed to expect a woman to have the cunning and strength of will to be a Bond villain. According to Bond movie tropes, a woman is supposed to be either a romantic lead, or a femme fatale henchperson of the main villain, not the main villain themselves. Elektra's feminine presentation plays the same tricks on the audience that it does on the characters. Associations of gender non conformity with villainy also make her conformity less suspect-able.

The way Elektra is perceived is affected by her wealth as well as her gender in ways I'll come back to when I talk about Christmas. But generally, because of her wealth Elektra is able to present in a highly feminine and somewhat erotic way without putting herself in as much danger or losing as much credibility as a lower class woman. She is able to afford elegant clothing which accentuates her feminine sexuality without being considered promiscuous, but also commands the attention and respect that wealth garners regardless of gender. For example, when Elektra enters the casino everyone's attention is on her not just because she is a beautiful and strikingly dressed woman, but because of the money she might spend there.

Overall, Elektra uses femininity and gender conformity as part of her ploy to feign dependence on others and lead them to ignore the power she in fact has over them. To compensate for her disadvantaged position, she exploits the few benefits of a woman's position as long as possible to craft an evil plan that plays to her gender. Both Elektra as a character and the plot of the movie use stereotypes about women's weakness to make it surprising that she had created and controlled the evil plan all along.

M:

M, on the contrary, presents herself more masculinely with a short haircut and more often wearing suit jackets and monochrome outfits. Some of this is a requirement of dressing in what is considered professional clothing for the office, but she presents herself more masculinely than other professional women at MI6 like Moneypenny. You get the sense that she's made this choice in order to gain power in a man's world, and fill the role that, as far as we've seen, has only belonged to men before her.

However, M also wears makeup, skirts, and other feminine accessories. Holding on to some of her femininity asserts power by not giving in completely to the male dominance in her workplace, but it's also part of a delicate balancing act demanded of professional women. In order to reach this high position of power, she's had to conform to both gender standards for women and the masculine standards of MI6 and managerial positions.

In contrast to both Elektra and Christmas, M does not express any sexuality. I think this is partly due to her age, as women are denied sexuality when they are no longer "young and beautiful" and appealing to men. Lack of sexuality could also help M in her position of power because she doesn't face accusations of "sleeping her way to the top" or unwanted advances from colleagues. In order to gain respectable power within the system she had to give up her sexuality, as opposed to Elektra who used sexuality to create villainous power. This dichotomy of power highlights that the power of women's sexuality will always be precarious and open to moral attacks in a way that men's sexuality is not. No matter how much M and others criticize Bond for his sexual exploits, they never put him in danger of losing his job or the respect of MI6. If M had been anywhere near as expressive in her sexuality she might have lost the respect of her employers, and certainly of some fans in the real world.

All of these standards apply to making M acceptable to Bond fans used to a male M as well. Whether M as a character calculated her presentation to the extent that I have here or just enjoys dressing this way, the design of a female M was certainly planned out with even more precision by the movie makers. Whether or not the character of M sacrificed personal style for professional respect, it would have been hard for a female M to exist both in universe and from an audience perspective without the perfect balance of masculine and feminine presentation.

She's taken the opposite path to power from Elektra, by adopting the masculine standards of a male dominated workplace. Her confident mannerisms and steely workplace personality deny any room to be called weak on account of her sex, but unfortunately these are not always enough for a woman to be respected by men. Her carefully constructed presentation backs them up with a masculinity that conveys strength and competence but not deviancy from womanhood.

(there's also plenty to be said about how dench!m falls into motherly tropes in ways that male ms cannot be considered fatherly, but I'm not getting into that here)

Christmas Jones:

Christmas's feminine and sexual presentation mean she is seen as less powerful in a similar way to Elektra, but she does not turn this to her advantage in the same way. There is also a level of class influence on people's opinion of Christmas versus Elektra. Although both dress femininely, Elektra's outfits are luxuriant and expensive and intended for mingling in the high class society she is a part of. Christmas's clothes are more typical of a lower or middle class woman going out with friends. Even when she dresses up more, her dress is simpler and cheaper looking than Elektra's. Christmas lacks the wealth and connections to leverage her femininity for protection in the way Elektra does.

She also seems to lack the desire to use stereotypes of femininity to her advantage, but also the desire to use masculinity to increase her professional prestige as M does. Christmas is not taken seriously, especially by fans, because of her insistence on presenting in a way that is supposedly "pointless" because she does not use it as a tool. Many people say that the reason for the character's lack of motivation for her presentation is that the motivation is in fact that of the movie makers trying to create sex appeal, and therefore Christmas is a poorly constructed character outside of this role. However, in character it is not necessary for her to have a motivation beyond preference. This choice can be seen as a rejection of the standards of dress that M has so closely adhered to to achieve her position.

Although Christmas is intended to be sexually appealing to the audience, we are told that she never has sex with men. Christmas reclaims her sexuality in a different way than Elektra, by dressing "sexily" either for her own enjoyment or that of other women and withholding her sexuality from men. If Elektra follows the classic Bond model of Fiona Volpe, Christmas follows that of Pussy Galore in being robbed of her sexual freedom by becoming just a more challenging trophy for Bond to collect.

Much of the fan response to Christmas was that she was not a believable character because it was not typical or practical for a scientist to dress like she does. Although perhaps it is not practical, I don't think this is a good argument in context because Bond characters, including Bond himself, regularly dress impractically. The conventions of the franchise are that aesthetic is far more important than practicality. I think Christmas's "low class" outfit plays as significant a role in making her an exception as her gender does, partly because this DOES defy the conventions of the franchise where even lower class Bond girls like Plenty O'Toole (my other underrated fav) dress relatively elegantly. Because she cannot avoid certain stereotypes of promiscuity through class privilege like Elektra can, Christmas's dress is considered slutty rather than alluring.

In response to the argument that no scientist would dress like Christmas, I would raise the same points I made about M. The reason professional women do not dress like Christmas is because they know they will not be taken seriously and may be taken advantage of sexually. By refusing to accommodate patriarchal expectations, Christmas has likely given up more prestigious positions in exchange for her right to self expression. I would guess that, although she refuses to answer Bond's questions about her history, part of the reason she is working such a difficult job far from home is because of this refusal to look the part.

Although the character was clearly designed to be sexually appealing, the same is true of every Bond girl. Although the filmmakers intentions with the character were misogynistic, to say that a woman who dresses too provocatively cannot be a scientist is also misogynistic. This combination of sexist and classist stereotypes from audiences prevented more people from enjoying Christmas as a character and exploring in universe motivations for her choices as they might for other poorly written Bond girls. I can understand why people might not want to engage with a storyline that strips a woman of her sexual agency for the sake of a male audience, but personally I find that considering what choices Christmas might be making about her presentation returns some agency to my understanding of her story.

In conclusion!

All three of these women navigate a misogynistic world by claiming power in their own ways. However, in exchange they each have to give something up. Elektra turns her sexual power on those who underestimate it, but in exchange she gives up her respectability. Obviously Elektra is villainous in other ways, but the fear of women's sexual strength plays a part in her fulfilling the movie trope of villain. M gains power within the system, but in exchange gives up her ability to dress either "too" feminine or "too" masculine and her sexuality. Christmas, like Elektra, loses respectability in reclaiming her femininity and sexuality, but because she lacks Elektra's status and refuses to engage sexually with men in any way, she does not gain even illicit power, only personal liberation.

[papercherries]

I've been seeing a post circulate recently about how we're "living in the hunger games" and whilst I think that's true to how we're all feeling culturally at the moment, I think its fair to say that this isn't new. The original post even states that the hunger games was conceived after the writer was flicking through channels during the war in Iraq.

We live in a society that feeds off both ends of a spectrum. One side being suffering, the other being cult like decadance. I believe a good amount of media on tv/radio/newspapers/online can be put somewhere on this spectrum. My point is that for a good while we have rooted our media in both ends of the spectrum. Vietnam war/massive push for culture, Palestine and the Met Gala. For previous events I can only speak for films as they're what I study. But recall the films that come out around certain times, the ones we remember usually relate to the times. 1968, Easy Rider, counter culture Americans exist, people hate them for it. 1976, Taxi Driver. American vet who has been radicalised toward the right because he has been let down by the system. 1992, Boyz n the hood, the lives of black Americans who are once again, being let down by the system. If not being oppressed by it. 2005, V for Vendetta.

I refuse to take content out of the context of their time. But I've cherry picked these films and that's an obvious bias toward the message I'm trying to send. Because with these films, there a million others who are on the other side of the spectrum. Think, within the last year how many movies have released that you feel truly reflect the time we live in.

I can think of a couple but none are based in modern times. When the war in Iraq was happening you had films like American Sniper, The Hurt Locker, Jarhead, fucking die hard 4.0. Whilst we've always had action schlock. American war/vet schlock was hard to avoid then. Some will claim to be anti war, but I believe this to be an impossible feat. They are decadence.

Within the same years though you had Eternal Sunshine, Brokeback mountain, City of God, District 9. All amazing films, but they're closer to the middle of the spectrum, obviously this varies though. But no film can be on the true end of suffering without being non-fiction. Sure, we can wince and squeal at Salo or some Cronenberg nightmare. But it will never compare to the horrors we witness on our televsions and on our phones.

The nauseating effect of true decadence is also only available in the world of non-fiction.

The reason it's progressivly feeling more and more like the hunger games is how we access this information. Or more precisely the rate at which we interact with it and how its presented to us. The Internet is an independent space, It is not ruled but it can be controlled. Checkmarks, verification and paid subscriptions. Ways of being sure that what you're seeing is "real".

A verified news outlet who is supporting the genocide in Palestine will not release an article for Palestine. Most news outlets are owned by the same people. I'm looking at Rupert Murdoch here. This means these "verified sources" won't report a lot on the genocide because it doesn't suit them. They would rather report on the protests and the injuries of the few Israeli occupants. But news outlets are also big companies, they specialise in different things to release a whole package. So you'll have the same places releasing statements on the metgala.

(Though, I'm also not saying we shouldn't have verified accounts and such because this same system can be used for other nefarious purposes. Like making a fake account to pretend your a black American who is voting for their local republican senator).

Now if this were in a closed system, like a newspaper. It would be fine for them because they can have their cake and eat it too. Release something denouncing Palestine and showing the "nationalist might" of the occupants whilst also reporting on the metgala. Their ideals are presented and they've covered all bases. The Internet doesn't allow for this kind of system. The people who are reporting on/for Palestine are the people. Independent online accounts who go against the will of these companies.

And whilst the companies are big, they only have one social media account (per country sometimes) . Which can't fight against the massive influx of pro Palestine posts. So what happens is, you end up seeing both ends of the spectrum at the same time. Both real suffering and decadence, appear before your very eyes.

The same thing was happening to Suzanne Collins. She witnessed both ends of the spectrum at the same time.

But you must remember, this isn't new. We've always had this spectrum. From Lords and gods to celebrities and presidents. Go to war and be a hero! A tale as old as time. The plague and the Holy War.

There are only two ways to remove this media spectrum. Remove one side entirely; by removing all suffering from media, there will only be decadence to watch. Or by removing the systems that create the spectrum in the first place.

The decadent allow the suffering to continue. The decadence cannot survive with suffering. They cannot survive without their wars, their slavery and their theft. Not all suffering is equal, not all decadence neither. But in either case, there is too much.

People with deep pockets tend to fill them with the bodies of men.

[pencil-peach]

G Witch Onscreen Text: Episode 3

This is part FOUR in my ongoing attempt to transcribe and discuss all of the text that appears on screens and monitors in the show! Because it's COOL!!!! HUAHHHH!!!

<< Click here to go back to Episode 2!

Take My Hand..... Let us go....

TEXT (Bottom) No. 001 MOM

This is just the UI that appears during the video call, not much to say, but the fact that No. 001 appears above Prospera's contact name in Suletta's Phone probably means that contacts aren't sorted in alphabetical order, but by the order they were registered into the phone.

Suletta's Mom is No. 001 because she's the first (and by this point in the story, probably only,) contact in Suletta's phone.

Following this same line of reasoning, Sarius is registered 39th in Shaddiq's phone, and his contact name isn't "Dad" or something like that, it's just his full name, Sarius Zenelli. All business with this guy, huh?

TEXT: ID: 5011-01 NAME: PROSPERA MERCURY COMPANY: Shin Sei Development Corporation POSITION: REPRESENTATIVE PLACE OF BIRTH: MERCURY FIELD: PERMET MINING TECHNOLOGY, MS DEVELOPMENT CHILDREN: 1 SPOUSE: DECEASED PERSONAL HISTORY:

Assigned to mercury development group Married in the field Gave birth to SULETTA MERCURY Injuries to half her body from resource mining accident

EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION: Mining accident victim

HOKAY. There's a lot to dig into here.

So first, minor thing but I figure it important to mention, the ID on Prospera's profile is 5011-01. The first half of the ID matches that of Aerial's Permet Id, which is 5011-0083. What this means particularly is beyond me I think. Maybe the first half of an MS ID is in reference to its creator? Maybe it's just coincidence? Who knoooows

It's very interesting how almost all of the data that's recorded here is just straight up wrong. Prospera was not born on Mercury, didn't marry in the field, (well...i guess technically she did. Not THIS field though.)

But what I think is most important here is that Prospera is in fact receiving workman's compensation for a mining accident. It's easy to assume that this is also misinformation, that there never really WAS a mining accident, but lets think about it for a minute.

We first hear about this accident during the Shin Sei hearing, when Prospera claims the accident took her arm and face. We KNOW that she's lying about this, because she lost her arm back when she was a child. It doesn't explain her helmet, though.

Then we see this, and learn that she's actively receiving workman's compensation for the incident. In episode 24, we finally have a name to the condition she has: "Data Storm Infection," and we learn that it's actively paralyzing her body.

So, I think the mining accident did really happen. The resources they were mining for would had to have been permet, which would explain how she became infected with a Data Storm.

This is mostly speculation on my end, but look at Prospera's Permet scar. It's focused around a single point. We can't know what specifically happened, but if I had to make an assumption, during the accident she probably got blasted in the head by a potent chunk of permet at that spot. Or something like that. I could talk about it another time.

Anyway, moving on !

TEXT: (El4n's phone) EXCHANGE COMPLETED PILOTING DEPARTMENT ID No: LP-041 NAME: SULETTA MERCURY CONTACT INFORMATION REGISTERED (When the two are in the process of registering, the tab says ADD FRIENDS instead of EXCHANGE COMPLETED)

Just the contact exchange screen.

Not text, but I think knowing now that Jeturk Heavy Machnery was the top company in the Benerit Group gives new context to how swiftly the company began falling in the ranks entirely because Guel lost the title of Holder. It really does give you a lot of sway within the Group.

TEXT Subject: Regarding the next Duel From: Vim Jeturk To: Lauda Neill

Follow my orders for the next duel. Make sure to look into the attached file.

Regards,>>attachment file

This is the email Vim sends Lauda before the duel, about rigging the sprinklers to go off.

Not going to transcribe all this again, just wanted to point out that when one of the main settings in Aerial is yellow, that means its currently active/online

TEXT: SEMI-AUTONOMOUS MODE [???]

Cant read the sub heading in this shot, but we can see that the Darilbalde is currently on Semi Autonomous Mode

TEXT: INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL SYSTEM LOCATION: 7TH TACTICAL TESTING SECTOR CURRENT STATUS: ABNORMAL STATUS: LOCAL HEAT ABNORMAL. COOLING BY WATER

Here we get a brief look at the environmental control system that Felsi and Petra messed with for the duel. They turned the humidity up to 98

When Suletta wins the duel, she already has the Holder emblem and colors on her Duel card. She also has 2 wins, so her and Guel's first duel is no longer voided.

TEXT: KP001 ELAN CERES CONGRATULATIONS!

When Suletta wins the duel, Elan is the first person to send her an email congratulating her on the victory

She also gets a bunch of other messages from other students at the school. Most of these are repeats of each other, so I'll go ahead and only type out the unique ones: YOU'VE DONE IT! CONGRATS! SO COOL! WELL DONE, MERCURIAN GIRL! HOW LUCKY! WOOHOO! NICE FIGHT! CONGRATS! YOU WON! MERCURIAN GIRL...G... GIRL, DONT LOSE! I THOUGHT YOU COULD DO IT! YOU'RE A SPECIAL... GREAT! GREAT! BEAUTIFUL VICTORY!

When Miorine tells Suletta to set her inbox only to friends, you can see that she does at the top there.

No text here. I just really like this frame.

TEXT MOTION DETECTOR ON

Nothing super interesting here. I just like it

Anyway!!! THAT IS ALL!! WE HAVE MADE IT THROUGH!!! As a reward, here is a funny image

Me when a pretty girl is nice to me one time.

Lots of fun stuff this episode! Please excuse the tangent on Prospera, I just think she's really interesting. I think my favorite email from this episode was GIRL, DONT LOSE..... GIRL...YOU HAVE TO WIN....!!!! I'm still having a lot of fun with this! And I hope you've been enjoying it too! Until next time....hoyaaaahh...

Click here to go to Episode 4! >>

Click here to go to the Masterpost!

[kawaiifansblog]

Hi guys, today I came to explain about cutecore, which is racist, the same thing with cutegore and kawaii.

Many saw on fandom week that cutecore was a musical genre to avoid shadowbans for gore, I don't know what else I'll explain, THAT'S A LIE!

Cutecore is nothing like that!

I will explain everything

It is linked to pedophiles and incest because it became very popular in the ageplay community on Twitter

And racism because is basically the Americanized kawaii jojifuku Soq, that is, whitewashing or racism

Find excuses to defend something disgusting like this, it's sick

Because technology wasn't advanced enough for that

And also basically cutecore only existed because people wanted to exempt incest

Because what they did to hide gore was actually only putting it on for milliseconds at the time

Find excuses to defend something disgusting like this, it's sick

Because they want to defend cutecore and make excuses

And as if that weren't enough, these people also romanticize food problems

Then people all had incest and pedophilia fetishes And also basically cutecore only existed because people wanted to exempt incest

Grew up in that ageplay Twitter community

This refers to erasing a culture Making it Americanized and sexual

"But Japan created kawaii to hide its crimes"

on the historical side of Kawaii, it happened as a form of rebellion against Japan during the Second World War.

But after that, the government itself and large Japanese companies took advantage of the aesthetics. But it emerged among young people to show opposition to political authorities

But nowadays it is spread as a way to forget everything that happened.

Xenophobia because it takes away ALL Asian culture, racism because it has the idea of whitening and standardizing, unhealthy origins that support pedophilia, incest and sexualizes kawaii

Just because you have color is racist

And yes

In addition to erasing not only culture but history, and if there is a term that is Jojifuku, kawaii, kawaikei and so on, cutecore and kawaiicore should not be used

So bro, these people who base themselves on what they see on Tiktok don't have a shred of personality

Everything, any subculture, any different style that enters Tiktok, is totally changed

Refers to erasing culture, making it Americanized and sexual

Besides what that is, the person doesn't even seem to research when using a clueless term, and still pays to know about it.

"I call my boyfriend "daddy"

OH HOW I'M ANGRY AT PEOPLE WHO CALL THEIR BOYFRIEND DADDY, I'm sorry if someone does, but it's strange for you to see your romantic partner as a father figure.

In addition to many racists, those who use it are idiots who don't study or ignore ALL explanations

Exactly bro, There has been a prevalence of people abusing aesthetics to glorify violence, self-harm in their media, as well as general toxic behavior (harassment, suicide baiting, etc.) it's fucked up

And they use characters aimed at children, with blood, things like that.

That famous "kawaiigore"

I disagree with a Brazilian kawaii YouTuber, she made a video talking about cutecore being racist and they told her to kill herself and even sent a STALKER to chase her

I hope I helped

yes, but cutecore was created by people who have a fetish for the wrong things and cutecore does indeed remove the Asian features of kawaii, sexualizing it by putting it in an Americanized and sexual context cutecore kawaiicore cutegore are invalid everything and any subculture and cuk has its name completely changed when it enters tiktok

It has been popularized in communities that romanticize self-harm, incest, and pedophilia. Plus they romanticize eating disorders.

Fact.

When we think about this thing that was created recently that was emerging recently and it unfortunately appeared within Twitter itself and I disagree that it was basically something more succinctly a more fetishistic form, well, clearly fetishistic, you can even notice that they are clothes that are much more shorts that are very sexual characters and to be able to sexualize everything that is cute and adorable and they also changed a lot of Asian things to American things her procedure in a specific part of Twitter which is a part of I I don't know the name but basically it's one that romanticize self-mutilation and incest then it started because firstly because they started this self-mutilation thing and people were interested in the content, people really liked it and

American things her procedure in a specific part of Twitter which and a part of I NN know the name more basically and one that romanticizes self-mutilation and incest then it started because first because they started this self-mutilation thing and people were interested in the content people liked it a lot and it turned out that these people had very specific tastes, which are things that have to do with cutecore, if you have a lot of very sexualized anime, there's something like calling your boyfriend daddy, that's because the cutecore community that emerged was already a problematic community that was that romanticization self-mutilation and within this community these communities are super connected one of them is for example one for eating problems and then there were some hashtags that they used to indicate that they liked minors or older people basically the tags that they used emojizimhos you know what it means z00f1l14 and.. p3d0f1l14 lolicon and shotacon these things like they used these tags so much that these emojis are actually very cute they are cute But for them there was a meaning that they put on their profile according to things that they were attracted to, to look for someone who liked the same things and, in addition, it was a version of jojifuku itself and shibukawaii completely.

Vo1dchan and the 4chan trolls (creators of cutecore kawaiicore cutegore They shared incest pornography and gore with each other I was one of the closest people to him and I met him on the internet.In addition, they advocated Nazism and Adolf Hitler. And there was a fetish for pedophilia and incest Cutecore grew in the ageplay community on twitter On Twitter there was a community that romanticized self-harm and eating disorders. They used emojis that comshippers and proshipers used, they had a meaning

[idrellegames]

Not an ask. But thank you so much for the aspec representation in Wayfarer. It's so refreshing to see an alloaro character like Veyer that is canonically alloaro and isn't the character archetype that sleeps around a lot and you just hope that they are around but then they eventually gets "fixed" by love. Anyways thanks for being awesome.

I so very rarely see alloaro characters handled with respect in fiction since it's so easy to boil their traits down to "noncomittal person who sleeps around until the right person comes around and fixes them". It's the flip same of the same coin as romantic asexuals, where the character gets boiled down to "inexperienced person who has never had sex until the right person comes around and fixes them."

Sexual attraction and romantic attraction are so often tied together as a single experience. And it is this way for many people, but not for everyone. Just speaking generally as an ace person, my experience is that aromanticism and asexuality are more palatable for non-acespec folks when they're treated as something that goes hand in hand. But being aroace isn't the only way to be aromantic or asexual - there's a huge variety of way people experience attraction and calling treating romantic and sexual attraction as the same thing is a disservice to everyone (even for allosexuals whose sexual orientation may not match up with their romantic one!).

Within the context of storytelling - at least in western writing - there's a narrative demand to meet certain expectations otherwise the trajectory may fall flat and be seen as unfulfilling. A committed relationship that includes both romance and sex is typically the desired end goal with fictional relationships (look at any romantic comedy, even going back to Shakespeare - Shakespearen comedies always end with a wedding). You can also look to the prevalence of the OTP in fandom - there's a desire to see your favourite characters get together in a specific way and to have that relationship come to fruition. And it is quite fun! I don't mean this as a knock against it - I enjoy OTPs myself, I love romance in fiction so much. I love a satisfying romance arc. Most of my OCs for video games have relationships and its a focal part of their character development.

But this does mean that aromantic and asexual people often sit on the sidelines because they don't fit perfectly into that type of story structure. So it can be very difficult to include them. They blur the lines of the format. They make it a little messy. They don't match the expectation.

I think with aromantic characters, too, both writers and audiences don't know what to do with them. There's always this lingering sense of disappointment that romance is off the table, that their arc isn't going to culminate in a committed relationship. Even in the world of IF and gaming, we don't have terminology to classify aromantic characters who can have some kind of relationship with the player character because the terminology is Romance Option (RO) or Love Interest (LI). Wayfarer's character roster is evidence of how much of a stumbling block this is - Aeran and Veyer are included on it as "romances", even though they aren't in the traditional sense (Aeran falls into the "conditional" label, Veyer is in the "tryst" one, but neither of them are technically "romances" in the traditional sense).

As for Veyer themself, they aren't interested in romance. They are in their 60s, they've been around the block a few times, they know what they do and do not want. They know what their life is like and what they can and cannot commit to due to outside factors. They may be smitten with people they find interesting or intriguing, but romance or long-term commitment isn't a part of that.

This doesn't mean that they can't be compassionate or genuinely care about their partners or enjoy their company, they're just going about it in a different way.

[namenoted]

❝ i'm sure my absence seemed pretty abrupt. it's what everyone on campus is talking about right now. me being back, where i was. everyone keeps asking ... but ... actually, though? i wanted to talk to you ... ❞

for some reason. even yagami can't put his finger on it, but one of the first things he did when he got his phone back (and out of sight from prying panda eyes) was text the raven-haired girl from school.

❝ i just wanted to say ... i'm sorry for leaving you hanging like that. that wasn't my intention. ❞ that feels lame, wrong even.

because, in truth, he feels like he owes her an explanation for something. something he just cannot quite grasp. it's on the cusp of his tongue, like he's ready to say it, but the words are unable to form, and thus all he can muster is an apology that even sounds a bit dull coming from him. he doesn't even really know what he's apologizing for.

HERE IS THE REALITY: the investigation is at a standstill. nothing is progressing. they can't find kira. studying the yotsuba group has provided enough context to keep the case alive ... but little beyond that. after the task force's probing, yotsuba clammed up and sold most of their assets outright, muddying their stocks and investments along the way, and then the company dispersed itself entirely before L could even try to pull the plug.

finding them all as individuals has been tough, and L was certain up until this point of three things in absolute:

kira is operating within yotsuba ... and that yagami raito was kira at one point in time, likely the original, and presumably gave up his powers to someone else. this power was somehow also given to amane misa, but was taken away, leaving her in much the same position as yagami. it sounds plausible, right?? it sounds too plausible. even with how damning it felt to be put on the spot, yagami had to admit ... he wondered. am i kira? is ryuzaki (is L) right?

still, there's no proof. without his memories, yagami is admittedly only as good as he is normally.

which is pretty outstanding, he would argue, as he's been pretty invaluable, if not a bit argumentative, up until this point. and agreeable, he would further insist. extremely so, given the circumstances i was put in.

his wrist is healing from the chaffing of the cuffs, but a thin red line remains for now. yagami rubs at it absentmindedly, sighing to himself before looking back up to her.

her. jabami yumeko. he knows her, even remembers her, but it's all so ... limited. limited in its scope of what they truly are. he remembers conversations of idle passing — exchanges about their families, dinner invitations, walking the campus together.

but that's where it ends. at least, he thinks it does.

ask him about the ship of theseus and his answer might be different now.

❝ this sounds crazy, but i feel like ... i missed a lot, right? while i was away. but, like, it's more than that, you know? i was hoping maybe you could fill me in? that we could go out together? ❞

i know we used to. i wish i could remember what we talked about. i wish i could remember why i need to see you. all i know is ... i just do. — @snakedevour

[cinnamon-toast-cronch]

the thing is, when a movie is nominated for best picture, what that says to me is that this movie is comparable in overall quality, not only to the other movies its been nominated with this year, but to all other movies that have been previously nominated for best picture. it's the highest accolade you can receive for a film. and barbie just isnt that to me! it was a very fun, very funny summer blockbuster that doubled in popularity because of barbenheimer, and just so happened to fall into the hands of greta gerwig, who takes everything she does as seriously and personally as a production company will allow her to. but it's not this big groundbreaking feminist piece that everyone's making it out to be. it's about as close as you can get to baby's first feminism (which I think works very well in the context of the movie! barbie as a character represents the idea of womanhood that a young girl dreams up for herself, and america ferreras monologue is basically what your mom tells you right after your first day of middle school. barbie is essentially the embodiment of little girls learning that the world is often built against them, and having to cope with that. still more than i expected out of barbie! and fits well within the rest of gretas works that usually center around the "end" of girlhood) but to nominate it for best picture feels like putting it up on the same level as movies like women talking?? which it just. isn't. it feels like putting a real stove next to an easy bake oven and claiming that they can do the same thing when they just cant. something has to be introductory, and that's fine, but the academy awards aren't supposed to be the place for introductory movies.

[dearweirdme]

https://www.tumblr.com/dearweirdme/743956303944318976/so-i-the-jm-lukewarm-anti-is-back-i-saw-that?source=share

I was asked in the comments to contribute my opinion. The other members have said themselves that Jimin is the most traditional and conservative when it comes to the hierarchy of respect. He's said to be the one who adheres to honorifics, for example. He has been seen scolding both JK and Taehyung when he thinks they step out of line in that regard. He takes a big brother, caretaker approach with Taehyung despite there being only a few months between them and despite the fact that Taehyung actually acted in a protector role himself towards Jimin when they first met, they seemed to have settled into that natural dynamic of Jimin acting somewhat like an elder towards Taehyung. This is usually a sign of someone who does subscribe to the traditional culture of respect. You can contrast this with how Taehyung treats JK much more equally, however if the assumption is that they're dating then this might not be the best comparison since their interactions will be skewered by a different kind of intimacy and closeness.

Perhaps a good example might be a pairing like Jin and Yoongi or Jin and Namjoon. You'll notice that Jin very rarely, if ever, reinforces the honorific standard on his own behalf. We saw him undermine Jimin's attempts to remind Taehyung of it during their fight and said it didn't really matter. However, he will 'pull rank' if it's to benefit one of the others, especially the younger members so this strikes me as Jin being someone who either doesn't feel a personal connection to the traditional ways and doesn't see a benefit in them or he actually enjoys rebelling against them.

How a Korean holds themselves does tie in closely with how they lean traditionally. As a conservative culture, strong displays of individuality or assertiveness are not viewed as positives or within keeping with social harmony

Taehyung and Jin, for example, who have shown a more lax approach to honorifics are also known for being the most likely to hold their ground against the company and openly take swipes at HYBE or display sarcasm and boldness and a determination to do what they want. They are more likely to openly rebel against what is expected of them but guaranteed, there are those who will use this to negatively define their personalities the same way agreeability is used to negatively define a person in others.

Jimin and Hobi, who is also said to be quite the disciplinarian with the younger members, are more likely to think carefully about how they come across because how they present themselves ties into their idea of respect and how much of themselves they feel comfortable showing. It's telling that members have pointed them out as having the 'scariest' tempers.

Neither approach is right or wrong. It's just a personal matter. Some people are more guarded than others. Some people are more stubborn than others. You'll find people who admire or condemn these differences in personalities based on their own. I admire Taehyung and Jin's assertiveness. I also think being guarded is a smart choice in their industry.

Regarding the accusations about Jimin being fake or a company man that I've seen throughout the years, that's an unfortunate consequence of carefully and wisely curating how you want to appear to the world but we also have to consider the context to see if its fair to label him as such and I don't think it is because if you take a group of 7 individuals, each with their own ambition and emotions, is it really likely that they're all going to speak so highly of a member who throws them under the bus to advance himself? The members themselves have told us that Jimin is one of their greatest supports, he is their shoulder to cry on---we've seen examples of this with our own eyes.

Does that really sound like someone who never sticks up for his friends or just leaves them floundering to suit himself? Is that the kind of person that anyone would really trust when they are at their lowest emotional point.

Jimin might appear to be the most reasonable member the same way Hobi appears to be super laid back but behind Hobi's sunshine, humor and bubbly personality is a person who can be just as focused and serious when he needs to be.

And I would guess the same applies to Jimin since there must be some reason why the others, even Namjoon, view him as so strong and sturdy that they turn to him for support. This is not the kind of man that trembles and turns his back on his members when they need him most.

Who they show us is unlikely to be who they are behind the scenes. The same way do we really believe Hobi is 24/7 smiles and laughter?

Each member decides which parts of themselves they want to show and which parts they don't but, to me, BTS has always seemed to take their group first mentality very seriously and that means even in the face of the company. I really couldn't think of a single member that I would imagine putting the company above their members or working with the company against the best interests of the group. We have heard how the members take a 7 or nothing approach when it comes to agreeing contracts and re-signing and I think the fact that they are still visibly close and comfortable with each other after so many years is a good sign that they carry it through.

So in conclusion, if Jimin was all the things people say and think he is, why would anyone else in the group trust him or have confidence in them to share their deepest feelings with him? You would think after 10 years of being screwed over by a company man, the others would have learned their lesson and kept their distance but we know that they don't so isn't it more likely that there is no weight or legitimacy to this kind of thinking? Since people tend to even instinctively veer away from people who throw them under the bus not get closer to them.

Hi again anon!!

Thanks for this! So insightful!

[nym-wibbly]

Reading across your fanfictions I was wondering how you choose the right euphemisms for the sex scenes? I mean it's different in your Pet Shop of Horrors to your Once Upon a Time. What makes you choose a word like cock or cunt from the alternatives?

Good question! It's about context, mainly. I tend to write smut from the POV of a participant in the sex, so I think about how they'd use their vocabulary in that situation, extrapolating from how they speak or narrate in other situations. I try to make informed guesses about which words the character would use naturally and which they might choose for effect in a heightened emotional situation. That much is the same whether it's a smutty scene or not.

I ask myself, does the character's use of language usually change with their mood or circumstances, or is it more consistent? Does it alter or slip when they're emotional or overwhelmed, or depending on the company they're in? Is that behaviour second nature to them, comfortable, or is the way they speak part of a mask they wear, a performance they put on to distance themselves from the world a bit? If so, what provocation could make it slip, and what lies beneath? How mature are they in how they express themselves, how mature about intimacy overall, and is that likely to be reflected in their sexual word choices? Crude or sensitive? Shy or bold?

Then I think about the character's mood and intent within the sex scene itself, about how inhibited or uninhibited the character feels if there's a partner with them, how self-conscious they feel or have historically felt about sex and bodies, and whether they have a learned sexual response to particular words or phrases. Does 'dirty' talk excite them or shock them? Inside their own heads, or just out loud? Do they have words that they find distasteful or think of as crossing a line into inappropriateness?

Most of the characters I write smut about are pretty worldly-wise, with full dictionaries to work from even if they aren't normally inclined to use them, so I had to make a lot of mental adjustments for the sheltered version of Belle I wrote in A Bed of Thorns. She was fired up with the discovery of her own sexuality and her specific passion for Rumple, grabbing the physical outlet he offered her with gusto, but she only had a limited vocabulary with which to describe the experience. I found that really hard going until Rumple taught her a few key words!

The final thing I consider is whether I'm writing a scene that's meant to titillate the reader or not. Not every sex scene is meant to be erotic, and not every erotic scene is dominated by the physical description. Is it more of an emotional scene than a graphic smutty one? If so, I'll steer towards language that depicts the character's emotional response - like using 'joining' rather than 'fucking' if it's the intimacy I want to prioritise rather than the physical act. Where is the character's focus right now - actions or headspace? Self or partner? Present moment or future consequences and wider relationship? What's the scene about - the sex or something else woven through it that needs picking up as a theme in the wording?

I try not to project myself onto the characters, but I'll hold my hand up to making every effort to avoid the word 'cunt'. I don't find the word erotically persuasive (although watching four seasons of Karl Urban using it as his character's descriptive multi-tool in The Boys has redefined it somewhat in my fanbrain!)

Leaving aside its disparaging usages, 'cunt' isn't a great word for being clear about what's physically going on in a sex scene. It means 'vulva' but is often used in smut to refer to the vagina or the entire female genital area instead.

"Devoutly, steadily, she fingered her lover's perfect, slick cunt." Where exactly is that finger right now? Sliding between her lover's labia or questing inside for her g-spot? Do I leave that distinction up to the reader's imagination and knowledge of the character's likely vocabulary and usage, add more words to clarify the sentence, or just choose a different word? In the end I go with what feels right for that character in that moment, just as I do for the rest of the piece.

[GIFs top to bottom cuz I don't usually post multifandom: Good Omens; Gen V; The Avengers: Age of Ultron; Once Upon a Time; The Great; The Boys; Gentleman Jack.]

[aohendo]

Prince for Hire Deleted Scene: Part 12

Amount Deleted: 343 words

Reason for Deleting: was working on setting up the kidnapped sorcerers thing (relevant with Batar's story-line and then a bit later with a recurring inquisitor who would make a fantastic drinking buddy), but this is still first half. Focus needs to remain on Prince Thaav, rather than the chaos that Kiris is resolutely ignoring.

Ways to fix: continue emphasizing Kiris' blinding loyalty to Prince Thaav, and continue deleting or winnowing those bits which don't support that. Other plot points should be hinted at and set up, but not emphasized.

Excerpt length: 343

Context: It's Kiris' first night in the Turre's Tesendi fortress - his first night surrounded by legit enemies - and while working out his plan to save Prince Thaav, he gets distracted by torn-out confession journal pages, which contain the last remnants of their owners' souls.

I'll be getting around to updating the WIP intro in a short eventually, so keep an eye out.

As for taglist: since it has been a hot minute since I was last actively posting, please let me know if you'd like to be added or removed to/from the taglist. @whimsyqueen @on-noon @houndsofcorduff @stuffaboutwriting @shrunkupthejams

Kiris was sure that if he were within Prince Thaav’s quarters, he would find the old prince snoring loudly enough to shake Tesendi’s walls. As it was, he could only hear their snapping soul, see it in flickers of sunshine yellow through the haze of ryd, and imagine its warmth. He knew where they were. He didn't know about the journals’ owners. Kiris listened behind him for the guards and found them safely distributed between their chambers and the living quarters, and braced himself against his desk. The pages fluttered like slaughtered things beneath him.

Carefully, Mahehv as a fluttering, scarlet anchor, he lead the realms thinner. Beyond and before Prince Thaav: their fellow princes, servants, and guards. Walls. Turre dead—long dead. Servants like Verosa hustling about in oddly narrow halls.

Farther.

Prince Ysiik, awake. In her quarters, however, and not near Prince Thaav’s: no concern tonight. Those other Prince Thaav-irritated princes, asleep.

Farther.

Ta Ritasa in his quarters, with company. Kiris moved by swiftly.

‘L Tuola in hers, the same dead soul which covered her quiver in crystalline clarity next to her bedside. Within her bed, Kiris corrected, and then moved even faster from her. Downwards.

Aathriok’s parent, weeping on the unyielding floor of the dining hall. Weeping, pulling towards Empathy and singing of dolorous bells, tolling and crying and—

Mahehv twitched against his neck.

—farther.

The green sanctuary goddess, barely existing under the Currents’ skies. Somehow surviving. Her hunger was like cracking ice, her desperation like drums, her—

Farther.

Here.

Polarized fear.

Studies, and restraints.

His people.

When Kiris withdrew from ryd, it beat into his body and collapsed him under his desk, Prophecy pounding for release and promising relief. When he could feel Mahehv’s claws again over his own pain; when he could hear it chirping and its feathers rustling over the lives of countless people and innumerable things; when he could open his eyes and see solid outline; when he could think again, he realized by choosing not to be oblivious, he’d taken a bathtub to his ‘save Prince Thaav’ plan.