#criticism and rejection

[andi-o-geyser]

POP A BOTTLE Y'ALL THE DND COUPLE OF ALL TIME HAD ON SCREEN SEX WHILE EVERYONE ELSE AROUND THEM GOT 0 (ZERO) DICK AND SOME MINOR HEARTBREAK GET FUUUUUCKED PERC'AHLIA WINS

[applejuiz]

Fjord Stone, truly one of the characters of all time… Travis Willingham locked tf in for three straight years and slowly developed one of the most complex and dynamic character arcs in any actual play show and we don’t talk about it nearly enough!!!!!

[utilitycaster]

[hoarding-stories]

What I got from watching the C2E2 panel:

[deadpoetsandlivinglegends]

Something something every time Charlie isn’t fighting to be the center of attention, he is always looking around to others to gauge their reactions and silently observing them all something something he is searching for connection, to fit in and be loved but he doesn’t know how to ask for love so instead he gains their attention by acting out in ways he knows they’ll notice and tries to pretend their attention and love are the same thing

[divorcedwife]

melencolia

[tackykachowch]

This is what they should've added to Jinx's design in season 2. Btw

UPD: I also want to add this screenshot of my tags on my first ever post about Jinx because I still agree with what I said

[luckthebard]

Ashton’s wholehearted and uncritical faith that the primordial titans deserve power and no one else does is. Well it sure is something.

[burr-ell]

show me yours and i'll show you mine, meet me in the woods tonight

↠ perc'ahlia week day 4: scars/tomb

[rawliverandgoronspice]

re: sympathetic ganondorf vs evil for evil’s sake ganondorf, i think this is misrepresenting and underselling what’s actually offputting to people

“i’m evil because i’m evil” or “i’m evil because demise is evil” and the associated lust for power simply for its own sake has always been lame and low effort. there’s a reason it’s “shit tier” on the classic “villain motive tiers” thing

“i’m evil but there’s enough nuance to make the player at least somewhat sympathetic to me even if i’m still ultimately a bad guy” is a good thing that people like? i’ve never personally interacted with a zelda player who thinks windwaker ganondorf ruined the character or anything - he’s generally regarded as the gold standard of villain writing both in and out of zelda. this is roughly “high tier” on the tier chart

“actually TWIST i’m not evil at all, it’s the good guys who were evil all along, i’ve done nothing wrong and i’m completely justified in my righteous quest against the status quo, you’re the real secret true villain for being complicit in preserving it” is technically regarded as “elder god tier” on the motive tier chart but i would personally label it as “oscar bait tier”. these things *can* be compelling in conversation with the existing landscape, but often it comes across as a deliberate effort to subvert the audience’s expectations for the sake of being unpredictable (or worse, for the sake of proving you’re the smartest one in the room). in separate works where this conversation/critique is the entire point (eg. Watchmen or The Boys), that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the audience sets their expectations accordingly. in an established, long-running franchise, however, this almost always reads as dripping with contempt for the audience, like walking into a room and going “you morons like this shit? let me, a person much smarter than you, explain what it’s Actually about, because you’re an idiot if you’ve been a fan of this series before now”

on top of that, in the context of a series like zelda, this type of story feels myopic and disrespectful to the future of the series. “welp i burned down the 20+ years of lore behind this character so i could do a deconstruction, good luck using them in any capacity in the future, sounds like a you problem”

all this is to say, i think it’s a bit disingenuous/strawman-y to suggest that people put off by this want ganondorf to have 0 depth at all. there’s a lot of room for different kinds of depth, it’s just that the trend of the last decade has been for “depth” to mean “condescending deconstruction”

Hey!

Thanks for taking the time to write this ask, I think it warrants an interesting conversation. To me, there's like, a lot of things about what you're saying, and tbh I do see where you're coming from --in part.

First thing first... No yeah unfortunately some people Are hostile to even WW Ganondorf. It's been a rising trend in the fandom since TotK was released --people being very against the concept of any additional complexity to the character, either not getting it or considering anything he says pure manipulation that doesn't even warrant a conversation, literally making fun of people who were intrigued by this and wanting more out of this particular thread. This position not only absolutely exists within the fandom --less so on tumblr, I'll agree there-- but it's not even hard to stumble upon as a pretty regular opinion that gets tossed around. I had some interesting asks thrown my way, let's say. The idea that Ganondorf is a remotely interesting character that deserves more thought than what he gets is very much Extremely not the norm, and the very fact that you, as a fan, likes him as a guy is perceived as weird and missing the point by a lot of people. Like a lot a lot of people.

So I'll just... I guess I haven't clarified my position in a while, so I will reclarify my position on our favorite evil dude: I do like him perfectly fine as a villain, I do not want him to be "redeemed" by the narrative, I think he works fantastically as an ongoing threat, I think they could make him even scarier and more offputting and that would be super fun and thrilling... and I also think he already is complex. Like, inherently. Everything Nintendo has been putting into him since his first appearance is complicated --even their attempts at flattening him back in TotK do not fully work because they can't scrub him of the extremely loaded ideas they injected into him from the get-go. Nobody forced Nintendo to do a Mega Orientalism when inventing him, nobody made them write the NPCs to have this super weird antagonistic relationship to the gerudos in OoT, nobody made them have all this lore of the one man born every hundred years, raised by twin witches --and then nobody made them press on that tension point in Wind Waker explicitely, and then, in a more subtle fashion, in TP too. Nobody forced their hand when it came to having the strange "round ear" situation, suggesting (confirmed even, in additional canon) gerudos are born unblessed. The fact of the matter is: everything to make the relationship between Hyrule and the gerudos complicated has been there since 1998. There's no need for a Switcharoo to prove that anyone is smarter than the audience: everything messy has always been baked within the worldbuilding itself. It's in the cartridges already!!

Perspective on it is what could change, though --because, except in Wind Waker, we never get even a hint of a sense that we should think, as an audience, that Hyrule's super weird relationship to the gerudos is maybe questionable. Worth thinking about at least. Which, given the optics, is wild to me that to bring this particular can of worms up is still very largely considered crazy talk within the fandom (that, or the Sheikah situation across the series, also insane in many ways). And yes, it would perhaps lead to themes that are a bit heavier than what Zelda has been overtly dealing with (though, again, Majora's Mask exists --and I do find a lot of unpacked ideas in the Wild Era, like the very unquestionned gerudo bridal pipeline, very uhhh unfortunate already if I'm being honest --even moreso because it is unquestioned). But Zelda, when well handled narratively, can do wonderful things with evocative subtext, open doors never fully crossed, a lynchian pressure on what should feel offputting. We don't even need a sad monologue about it. It doesn't even need to be handled explicitely. But I think the pressure point is just better when understood and incorporated in some form, instead of being denied so hard the world itself start to feel incomplete and unlived.

I do want to say... I get what you mean with the whole "oscar bait" thing. There has been, historically and in recent years, a tendency to be driven by an external, almost panicked sense of morality rather than by the internal drive of a story, its internal thematic logic. I also do think it can feel very corporate, very "Disney looking back at its own movies and scrubbing off everything Buzzfeed deemed problematic in 2014 while making everything glossy and lifeless and awful" and it's not that great!!! and tbh I can't say I would trust Nintendo to handle any appreciation for the fact that the story of an eternal golden kingdom cheering on beating the evil outsiders who want to corrupt everything good and pure and blonde about that perfect inherently good place, is like, extremely not neutral. It absolutely is a delicate thread to weave, and I agree that putting a definitive end to Hyrule is probably not the smartest IP move to do. But, Hyrule doesn't have to be condemned as Bad, it can be merely complicated. And ongoing, regardless. To keep on with the Disney parallel: The Lion King would feel weird if we started to peel off the internal politics of the hyenas, it's just not the right place for it, when everything about this story revolves around the Righteousness of the Divine Right to Rule. But if the Lion King was an ongoing series that had been looping on itself for a while... wouldn't it make sense to figure out how to achieve majesty by studying other angles too, eventually? Is it that strange to suggest the exercise is like, possible? That it can be handled with artistry and soul?

I feel like... Yes, to acknowledge Ganondorf's humanity --not even to coddle it, just to acknowledge it-- implies taking in everything that makes him who he is, and that might rattle some foundational ideas about why this ancestral fight is even happening in the first place. I also do not think it means that he must be Good now. He can still punch a child and cackle maniacally, he can still be unredeemable --he can still destroy himself and others out of the most unconstructive spite ever, and we can still see the purpose in defeating him while basking in the "yea....." left in his wake (Wind Waker did that!!! Wind Waker did that and then we had more Zelda games!! crazy how that happened). This is hardly undoable. It does take some narrative skill, and some commitment to taking a bit of a risk, but Ganondorf is genuinely unmanageable as a character if you insist on your refusal to acknowledge his foundations --and I think it's partially why TotK's story is such a mess. He sells a TON, but you can't have him breathe slightly too loud without risking the entire world falling apart. They did try in TotK, so very hard, and to me they still failed--as insane as he behaves, Hyrule still doesn't come out of this looking good or particularly justified, because the very central core of Ganondorf's character is to be subjugated, and then rebelling in a destructive and brutally selfish, uncompromising manner that ends up robbing him of humanity --and the discomfort of that premise will therefore always haunt the conversation. Nintendo dug themselves into that mess. I feel like a lot of the Ganondorf fans I know merely... point at that. At the mess. And I feel like the longer the games avoid this mess, the more coats of spinach green they slather ontop of his skin, and the more nonsensical characterization they pile up, and the more Ganondorf will become a parody of who he once was, and what made him compelling to begin with.

And to top it all off, as if he wasn't contentious and complicated enough to handle already, they leaned into the internet turning him into a sex symbol for some fucking reason??? Yeah I genuinely have no idea how Nintendo will manage this dude moving forward, because to me, he is, at best, an endless source of (very lucrative) headaches, and at worst a ticking time bomb. I'm not sure how long they can get away with that TotKification strategy, is what I mean.

(Also: I tried to not overdwell on all the incredibly complicated conversation re: race and orientalism, but it's borderline impossible to have this conversation without acknowledging that I have never seen a major pop culture villain receive more pushback against "woobification" than him, and I don't think it's a complete coincidence let's say :) )

[utilitycaster]

Robbie's been playing Dorian as fairly quiet since coming back (as Marisha-as-Laudna pointed out), and I think this episode put a lot of it into perspective.

Dorian is profoundly unsure of his place - in general. The Crownkeepers are scattered and while Dorian is welcome in Bells Hells - is a member of Bells Hells, without question - he's been absent for many of their adventures.

He is also, suddenly, the heir and not the spare to the leadership of the Silken Squall, a responsibility he did not expect to have and which he fled shortly before the events of EXU. He mentions his feelings seem unimportant, a reflection perhaps on both how powerless he's felt as of late regarding the events of the solstice, and much more long-standing acknowledgement of a childhood that pushed him into a role that did not fit him. Bells Hells make him feel important - which is more of the same issue. When Dorian is important, his feelings can't be because perhaps more so than anyone else in the party, he knows of the sacrifices of leadership. And now, both because of Bells Hells' involvement in world events, and Dorian's new and unwanted role as the crown prince, those sacrifices feel more necessary to him than ever.

He introduces himself as a bad liar, and now he's simply honestly stating that he's not sharing information. He also says he knows it will come from him; he's not just no longer a liar, but no longer a runaway. Even on the run with the Crown Keepers, something found him; what's the point.

It is unsurprising (and entirely understandable) that Dorian has no desire to make deals with the gods, given how that turned out for Opal, but his view towards the gods is a much more nuanced one than Braius or Ashton's. He remarks that the simple harvest-based cultural reverence Whitestone holds for the Dawnfather is perhaps the heart of worship - an opinion that lines up with, at least, Nick's interpretation of the Dawnfather. He seems affected by the revelation - new to him - that when Predathos first came to Exandria, it killed two of the gods, whom he knows from the Occultus Thalamus see each other as family.

There are two questions Dorian not only doesn't answer, but doesn't acknowledge. He doesn't answer Laudna's question about whether he feels responsible, but I think we know his answer. And he doesn't answer whether he would bring back Cyrus, if he can (and he might be able to). I don't know if he knows; something, certainly, is keeping him up at night.

The most piercing questions Bells Hells ask of each other this episode center around what they might do in a desperate situation: whether Braius will choose to harm the Platinum Dragon instead of stop Ludinus (as Asmodeus chose in Downfall); what terrible things Fearne might do to protect those she loves (as the Primes did in Aeor). Fearne declines that answer. Orym and Imogen express their doubts that they can ever know what's right. Only Ashton displays any confidence, at least outwardly; but only Dorian, I think, has previously been forced to consider a future where he might hold the fate of a group of people in his hands, and it has abruptly become a reality not just for the current crisis, but for the rest of his life.

[longing-for-rain]

So we can dismiss this comic as “out of character” but every little scrap of “new content” Avatar Studios pumps out to retcon everything about this atrocious relationship that fans have complained about is fine?

These people are hilarious, you can’t hide behind canon if you’re going to blatantly ignore everything that makes your pookie bear look bad.

[yaralulu]

”We want a rejected mates trope !!” who the hell is we 🤨⁉️.I cannot think of something more depressing to read about than two mates rejecting their bond.Especially when one person still longs for the other and has already lost the person they thought was their mate in such a tragic and brutal way.Now their actual mate wants nothing to do with them to the point where they want to reject their mating bond? Fucking ouch.Just something about two people whose literal souls are tied to one another ending up with other people doesn’t really read as romantic to me.

I understand that sjm might want to explore the rejected mates trope but why does lucien have to be the guinea pig?? I cannot think of one character less deserving to go through this trope than lucien.Not just because of his history with jesminda but because he genuinely hasn’t had a moment of peace since the beginning of this series.He does not deserve to have his mate reject him on top of everything else he just doesn’t.I want elain to be happy but if that’s gonna cost my favorite character his happiness and possibly his sanity then i’m allowed to be a little annoyed.

If elain really does reject the bond with lucien I don’t wanna be here to read that scene and I definitely don’t want a lucien pov of that.Can you imagine the fucking anguish and heartbreak of a scene like that yeah no thank youuuu.

[ladyofchroyane]

few things annoy me more than some of this fandoms 1. weird pro-slavers anti-dany bias and 2. stripping a woman’s experience from female characters because they don’t ’woman right’ enough

i don’t even really want to discuss point one because it disgusts me so fucking much. not only is the logic convoluted and always hinges on interpreting dany’s actions in the absolute worst light possible. it is also very, very misogynistic due to the double standards necessary to condemn dany to such a degree while none of the male characters committing the same or worse offenses get even a smidge of criticism from these same people. i’m just going to say one last thing: if you are using pro-confederacy talking points to condemn dany then you are a vile person.

as for point two, this is much more insidious in my opinion. much of it is based on the idea that these specific (normally gender nonconforming) female characters were ‘indulged’ so therefore their experiences do not meet the necessary ‘standards’ to equate to a woman’s experience. it’s insane logic meant to demean a female character and condemn her agency and the choices she made. it’s the type of logic that always veers into the ‘arya was indulged and therefore her experiences are less valid’ or ‘dany’s power and agency makes her experiences less valid because she’s not suffering this specific way’ or ‘lyanna was indulged and is therefore selfish and her experiences are less valid.’ for some reason it is always. always. these three characters getting attacked in this specific way. all three female characters faced the same exact challenges as every. single. other. female character. the same barriers, they share similar experiences with male characters to varying degrees.

arya and sansa were both ‘indulged’ by ned. i agree that ned had an easier time connecting to arya (like how cat had an easier time connecting to sansa), but both girls were indulged (like most noble girls!) and this is framed as a good thing. please don’t turn it into something bad, especially when both instances fostered character growth. after neds death arya continues to have a variety of experiences, and through arya we actually learn what a peasant girls experience looks like! no, arya does not have a boys experience. a girl hiding as a boy in a war zone is a common occurrence in the real world, and it is not just valid to explore but key to understanding george’s views on war. so far though arya we see 1. a non-conforming little girls life whose father was kind but still held gendered expectations for her. 2. a common girls experience without family or class protections going through a war zone. 3. a servant girls experience under feudalism where servants have basically no rights. 4. arya also gives us a multitude of experiences after becoming an acolyte at the hobaw. all of these experiences (including the erasure of arya’s identity and her holding onto it) are important looks into different classes and how outsiders view westeros. people not respecting arya’s very female experience makes me fear that there’s a bit of a aesthetic/male gaze epidemic going on here. arya’s suffering isn’t pretty enough or isn’t in a romantic setting so it gets dismissed. it’s dirty and violent and crass and doesn’t conform to passive suffering. there’s also a classism angle to all of it, though that would require an essay of its own to cover everything. but please remember that at the core of arya’s storyline is a simple truth: the world is hostile to girls.

dany is oftentimes hit by two different anti views: 1. a focus on her lack of agency but no focus on her rise to power 2. a dismissal of the validity of her experience as a female character because she’s risen to power. both views are incredibly self serving and are meant to chip away at character relatability. focusing on her lack of agency is tasteless (imo), and suggests that the person sees dany’s experiences with men/women as a ruler as inherently invalid because she has power that places her above the pecking order. this makes me believe that you cannot handle a female character whose path to power stands as different from the rest. it’s odd to say the least, and tells me that you think there is a right way to gain power just like people believe there is a correct way to end slavery without upsetting the poor economy. as for point two, this is similar to most anti rhetoric levied at arya and lyanna. because the experiences explored through dany and arya and lyanna are outside the norm, and because they are incredibly active characters, they also make waves and are involved in things like… violence *gasp* death *GASP* adultery (this one just relates to dany and lyanna. arya’s three apples tall so this doesn’t apply to her) *GASPGASPGASP*. people seem genuinely unable to handle complexity in women’s lives. some people seem to have a very narrow view on what counts as a woman’s experience, but if a woman steps outside those bounds she is therefore stripped of her womanhood and is fair ground for attacking. this is something i see so clearly in every anti dany post. i’m exhausted tbh.

as for lyanna… well... some people seem to believe that lyanna making active choices (knight of the laughing tree, running away, having a bastard) therefore mean she was ‘indulged,’ which is both true and not true. all noble girls are indulged more than their common girl counterparts, but lyanna was still placed under gendered expectations like all the rest of her peers. lyanna clearly just didn’t let these expectations prevent her from playing around with sticks and riding in a tourney as a mystery knight to defend the honor of howland (who would’ve been considered a nobody to most). her actions were clearly driven by her morals, morals she placed in higher esteem than gendered expectations. trying to strip a woman’s experience from her is just wrong. these people are practically telling on themselves and show that they cannot sympathize nor understand a female character who steps away from the beaten path, and does something considered ‘morally wrong’ in her world and in our own: having an illegitimate child with a married man. oh nooo… anyways. this just proves to me that many women cannot sympathize with a woman who does something they consider ‘wrong’ and that women will take it so far as to invalidate the womanhood of those they consider ‘not right.’ i think of lyanna as a litmus test tbh. i will absolutely judge you for your views on her. if you fail then i am NOT trusting your views on dany and arya.

i want to add onto this actually. catelyn is another character who’d place high on this list, though i’m actually really happy with the direction the fandom is going with her on this issue at the moment. many people struggle with cat because she… *GASP* doesn’t mother jon. cat’s a very active character, but thanks to fandom’s standards, she has the benefit of fitting into our preconceived notions of how a mother should behave—expect in how she treats jon. and then it’s a goddamn bloodbath. i’m glad most people now seem to agree that cat’s character is not only made better, but that it’s completely valid of her to not have mothered jon or theon. still, cat is often criticized for the choices she makes as a mother to protect her children. here, i see a dismissal and even a mocking of motherhood and Love as valid motivations for risky behaviors. and that does disappoint me. however, catelyn didn’t make my top 3 because she experiences confinement—she is stripped of power and agency—and this, i fear, is why she ends up meeting the criteria for what some fans view as a ‘valid’ female character. all because she lost power to her son :/. hopefully it’s obvious that i’m not dismissing this arc, because i do think it’s important to explore. but it’s still vexing to me that a woman’s loss of agency is so often treated as peak feminism (a trend i see a lot in modern feminist literature and one i honestly cringe at).

i believe i covered everything i wanted to. i’m just struggling with this fandom and the way people treat womanhood as some narrow thing with criteria one must meet. womanhood shouldn’t be something that feels so excluding. well, to me it should be embracing and kind and supportive of girls from all walks of life. being a woman makes you a woman. that’s it. that’s all the criteria you should need to meet to be embraced, and that logic should reflect back onto the female characters we all love and care about. thanks for reading :)

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

okay but is the man still inside of bakugou

[undead-knick-knack]

Sadly Veth did not want to call him C-Poppa 😔