#don't ask me the mechanism

[altraviolet]

I'm curious, is the "Acid into energon, never energon into acid!" line that Toaster says like the thing about pouring the milk before cereal? It just seems so familiar 😅

hehehe

this is based on a phrase from chemistry. when adding a strong acid and water together, you need to do them in a certain order or you're gonna have problems. the original phrase is "acid into water"

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[whetstonefires]

Hey you said something about the my hero academia creator being unhinged about sexism, do you mind explaining?

I tried to write like, a thorough explanation of this and it just got longer and longer and longer and I have not touched this series in actual years and yet I've still got all these receipts a;lkjk;lfasd.

So rather than trying to build the whole massive case, here's a pared-down version. It's normal to have sexism in media, and shounen manga especially. Everyone does it. The level and mode and intentionality and so forth all vary, but of course it's there.

What's not normal is to have lots of varied and interesting female characters with discernible inner lives, and on-page discussion of how sexism is systemic and unjust and holds them back in specific ways, and then also deliberately make consistent sexist writing decisions even where they don't arise naturally from the flow of the narrative.

Horikoshi is actively interested in gender and sexism, he's aware of them in a way you rarely see outside of the context of, you know, fighting sexism. He is hung up on the thorny issue of what women are worth and deserve and how power and respect ties into it. He genuinely wants, I think, to have Good Female Characters, and not be (seen as) A Sexist Guy!

But. He doesn't actually want to fight sexism. He displays a lot of woman-oriented anxieties, and one of the many churning paddlewheels in his head seems to be that he knows intellectually that morally sexism is bad, but emotionally he really feels like it ought to probably be at least partly correct.

There are so many things I could cite, and maybe I'll get into some of them later, but the crowning item that highlights how the pattern is 1) at least partly conscious and deliberate and 2) about Horikoshi's own weird hangups rather than simply cynical market play, is Mineta Minoru.

The writer has stated Mineta is his favorite character. Mineta is also designed to be hated--that is, he is a particularly elaborate instantiation of a character archetype normally deployed to soak up audience contempt and (by being gross and shameless and unattractive and 'unthreatening') make it possible to include a range of sexual gratification elements into the narrative that would compromise the main characters' reputations as heroic and deserving, if they were the actors.

Good Guys don't grope girls' tits and run away snickering in triumph, after all. Non-losers don't focus intense effort around successfully stealing someone's panties. Nice Girls don't let themselves be seen half-dressed. And so forth. You need an underwear gremlin for that. So, in anime and manga, longstanding though declining tradition of including such a gremlin, for authorial deniability.

Horikoshi definitely uses him straight for this purpose, looping in Kaminari as needed to make a bit work. And yet he has Feelings about the archetype itself.

The passages dedicated to the vindication of Mineta, then, and the author's statements about him, let us understand that Horikoshi identifies with the figure of the underwear gremlin. He understands the underwear gremlin as a defining exemplar of male sexuality, at least if you are not hot, and finds the attached contempt and hostility to be a dehumanizing attack on all uh.

Incels, basically.

It's not fair to write Mineta off just because he's unattractive and horny (and commits sexual harassment). Doesn't he have a mind? Doesn't he have dreams? Doesn't he have human potential?

So what's going on with Horikoshi and gender, as far as I can figure out, is that he knows damn well that women are people and are treated unjustly by sexist society, but however.

He also understands the institutions of sexism as something protecting him and people like him from life being nebulously yet definitively Worse, and therefore wants to see them upheld.

So you get this really bizarre handling of gender where obviously women's rights good and women cool, women can be Strong, and the compulsory sexualization imposed by the industry isn't them or the author, and so forth.

But also it's very important that in the world he controls, women never win anything important or Count too much, and that jokes at their expense that disrupt the internal logic of their characters are always fair game, that women asked about sexism on TV will promptly get into catfights amongst themselves, and they are understood always in terms of their sexual and romantic interests and value, and sexual assertiveness and failures to perform femininity well enough are used to code them as dangerous and irrational, and that the sexy costumes are requisite and will never be subverted or rebelled against--at most they might be circumnavigated via leaning into cute appeal.

And that Yaoyorozu Momo, who converts her body fat into physical objects, is being frivolous when she wants to use money to buy things instead (rather than as sensibly moderating her Quirk use) and is never encouraged to eat as much as possible at every opportunity to put on weight and even shown being embarrassed by hunger (even though Quirk overuse gives symptoms that suggest she's been stripping the lipids out of her cell walls or nervous system to keep fighting) and always, no matter how many Things she has made, has huge big round boobies.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

What can I say? They're my favorite.

[iammorethananame]

Me: *financially independent and uncomfortable accepting monetary help*

Also me: *fiercely anti-captalist and anti-rich people*

Still me: *staring wistfully at @theidiotwhowritesthings's sugar daddy!Joel Miller AU* I want one

[aceofspades-sml]

You can tell the newsies cast are all unemployed right now just by the way they are joining cameo one by one

[the-finest-clockwork-soldier]

Would you like an inter dimensional internet hug?

Of Course! I Would Always Be Happy To Have A Hug, Whether It Be An Interdimensional Internet Hug Or Otherwise! (|:}]

Though I Do Warn You, My Body Is Made Of Wood And Not Always Particularly Comfortable To Hug.

[ifthestarsarewilling]

i get women with my pure looks (deranged grin wide eyes and unbrushed curly hair) and my skill in flirting (mechanisms facts and the amazing devil lyrics)

[rawliverandgoronspice]

I don't get why people hate the timeline so much, its not like you can't pretty much completely ignore it when you play the games. The only time it even approaches mattering to the story is when there is an explicit sequel like botw and totk or zelda and zelda 2

Hey sorry your ask got lost in the sauce of my broken tumblr, but: yeah!

I mean, I get why in some sense. It's been a heated point of debate and I think some people understandably resent the space it has taken not only in fandom discourse, but in how people began to understand the game and its narrative aesthetic choices. There is such a thing as over-rationalizing everything to hard logic, and sometimes it's just not the fandom for that --especially when you begin to forget it's all just fan theory and start to forget what the games are supposed to be like and evoke beyond just strict facts displayed in a linear way.

What I think bugs me with TotK in particular is that it both evokes and relies on continuity and the idea of a timeline, of archeology, of history itself, while being so loose and vacant with it that it both is doing Timeline Shit while also completely failing to understand why some parts of the fandom were invested in Timeline Shit to begin with.

But that's just my two cents of course!

[polyarmory]

[little-elf-wanders]

Friendly reminder if you're the type of person to mod that dog collar on Astarion, don't talk to me

[satanfemme]

[ID in alt]

me & my wife's new baldur's gate 3 character. not much else to say about him, he's just kinda epic :o)

[skimmeh]

Can't draw :( taking a break in hope my wrist will hurt less

Mean can't art :(

QnA? Time :)

[fisheito]

SCREMS my snautsticic child he is trying ok!!!!!! one tiny snake human hybrid built from the cave-ground-up, , attempting to learn all the implicit rules of humanness?! as if it isn't already tough enough out here!!!!

[birdie-ghost]

Guys we're so back I remembered how to love drawing

[silvertws]

I was road down memory lane today so I drew the Protector's guild symbol on my hand using eyeliner. :DDD I think it looks good for a first attempt... Even though the quality of the picture sucks :'))) I wanna do all the other guilds as well even tho Grimshade is kinda complicated to draw on my body with one hand... Since my hands are shaky af.. I will draw them on paper next time and use them as a way to make the outlines better :3