#even more stupid when its a main characters 99% of the fandom likes like. what do you think will happen browsing fandom spaces.

[beclight]

im known for being THE bec light fan of the fandom, so i feel like im in the right place to say this: YOU DO NOT OWN FANDOM CHARACTERS AND CANNOT PREVENT OTHER PEOPLE FROM LIKING THEM JUST AS MUCH AS YOU DO, and if that makes you uncomfortable (which is fine, and for any reason), THE THING TO DO IS BLOCK NOT HARASS THEM!!!!!!! ive seen too many ppl in this fandom disrespect others over DARING to say, even as a joke, that they're the number one fan of X character. If someone having the same favorite group of pixels as you genuinely angers you, to the point of feeling the need to insult them and having concerning thoughts about them, then maybe it is time to log off

[misrepresentedmorallygrey]

PROPAGANDA

Dimitri Alexendre Blaiddyd

PLEASE NOTE: THE MOD OF THIS TOURNAMENT HATES THIS PROPAGANDA! THEY BELIEVE THAT IT'S ACTIVELY LYING ABOUT THE CHARACTER AND COMING FROM A PLACE OF HATE FOR SAID CHARACTER INSTEAD OF THE FANDOM CULTURE SURROUNDING HIM. You have been warned

Why is this man so woobified. The literal whole point of him is that he's meant to be a bait and switch for the typical perfect fire emblem lord hero. He's a sadistic killer without a hint of mercy for a huge part of the story, he works with the dictator church without considering whether or not there's something wrong with it, and his route ends in him being just as much of an imperialist as the others (taking over the whole continent and being crowned its ruler), just by a different name. He's SO interesting and SO conflicted and yet it feels like 99% of the fandom can't look past "uwu emo sad boy :((( so damaged :((((" and completely disregards that he's just as brutal as the other main characters from any other route's perspective, that's the whole point of the game!

Yuno Kashiki

Yuno Kashiki is an 18 year old rental girlfriend and sexworker in Japan. She was incarcerated in Milgram for murder at the start of the series in 2020. Since then she has been repeatedly dehumanized by the fandom. Having her agency and statements on her own life overwhelmingly ignored in order to give her a sob story she has consistently rebuked at every turn. Stating from the beginning even if she had to beg for forgiveness like her life depended on it she would. However, it's simply been handed to her as the audience continually goes she was too young and stupid to actually be held accountable for her actions. The same audience that later tries to vote a 12 year old child abuse victim guilty because she has to learn her lesson and she knew what she was doing. Yes the fandom interprets the eighteen year old who chose to work in the profession they did simply because they wanted to something they have no qualms admitting as having less agency than the twelve year old. They treat her like a stupid baby who's only error was not knowing how a condom worked as a sexworker. They say her only crime is an abortion despite her overtly getting upset at other individuals alluded to be clients throughout her songs. Having the literal lyrics of her second song go, ""Poor naive little girl"? So off the mark, what's it to you? It's absurd. Like really who do you think you are? Don't weigh me meassure me against your morality. Just shut it, will you? You know it all." And "Carrssing me with your "good girl". Who needs your self-righteous pardon?" They're so committed to the abortion equating to the murder she's in here for idea that fans got mad at the writer for even writing it that way when at least several other very not fetuses are alluded to throughout her songs and at points literally shown. Her first song even highlighting her clients belongings throughout it with inverted coloring. But instead of thinking she may have just killed a client who was bothering her they've convinced themselves that she's just a silly little outlier who's not meant to be here because abortion isn't murder her body her choice which fair if it wasn't for the fact the only people putting it on the table to compare to murder is the audience themselves. Despite everyone else in here very literally killing actual people with lives, professions, etc as they frame her case as a feminism issue and say if you vote her guilty you just hate women or are anti-abortion. In response to the framing of her situation as she can hear the audiences thoughts on her she's only gotten more depressed and closed off as tge series has progressed blatantly stating to hurry all this up so she can go home. Because it doesn't matter what she says about her situation the audience and the guard by proxy will just end up creating whatever story they want about her so it doesn't matter she's over it. Which in all honesty fucking fair- Wouldn't anyone be after getting treated like that for going on four years.

She's far more morally grey than folks want to admit. She's not evil, not by a long shot, but she's not exactly innocent either. She's innocent of her (perceived) crime in her media, but in terms of her attitude and outlook on life, I feel people downplay her incredibly grey actions. She uses / used compensated dating as a way to feel "warm" without forming emotional attachments. She hasn't killed anyone, nor has she manipulated anyone into killing for her, but that's why she's a good representative of a more everyday morally grey person. Her actions aren't outlandish or extreme, and if anything she can fade into the background with relative ease, yet I still firmly believe she's morally grey. tldr; Yuno has far more depth than the (general) fandom sees her as having. She gets misrepresented and her voice as a character is often unheard.

[1shadowhole]

I also fall into the no Gwen Hate category lmao I love her as I think 99% of people do.

But like I said many times before I really don't like what the writers did with the character after season 2, and especially in season 5

I have gone into detail in the past so I won't right now (I HAVE FINISHED WRITING AND SPOILER ALERT I WILL), but the jist of it is, from season 3 she loses the charm she had for the first 2. Granted it was for character development, but that doesn't change the fact that her little flaws (If you want to call them that which I still find to be a stretch) were what made me like her so much.

Plus the inconsistency with her love interests. Which I get is naturally part of Arthuriana but the writers handled the Lancelot - Arthur dilemma so poorly that it was ruined.

From S4 she falls neatly into the role of Love interest with little more added to her. But while in S4 she still has character (when she faces Agravaine and in her relationship with her friends and brother) S5 strips even that from her. And she is B O R I N G. I'm sorry, but it's true. The moment she became Queen that's all she was.

And the fact that she was stripped of agency 2 whole times is so stupid! When she cheats, it's pointless, because no one knows it's not her fault while only the audience knows the truth, which takes away any possible interesting nuance. And she isn't herself for like a third of the last season! Wtf! That's not her!! What do I do with that! And this ALSO doesn't affect her character in the least.

Plus, Merlin and her have zero moments together. She isn't his friend anymore for some reason???

"at least all the other relationships were sacrificed for a better one with Arthur?" NO. NO BECAUSE THAT HAS LOST HIS CHARM TOO. And don't get me wrong, I never was an Arwen shipper, but at least in earlier seasons I could see it with the banter and little chemistry I could feel (maybe it's just because it was similar to Merlin's relationship with Arthur and that fact is a whole different issue altogether) Now in S5, she's just there. And that's so sad.

And one thing I also mentioned many times is that, compared to the other 3 main characters (who did a complete 180, or partial in case of Arthur) her development is next to nothing. The only change is that she is more confident now... Soooo the only character development she underwent is one that took away what I liked about her. Great. With all the loss she underwent you'd expect her to be a different person but no...

That's what I don't like. And I have my own version of Gwen in my head that I prefer.

But what really bothers me isn't that. Because...eh, the show isn't known for its wonderful consistency. I wouldn't care much. And again, I love that first version of Gwen, it's among my favourite characters...

It's this attitude that I see from a lot of fans. This "you can't criticise her because she's amazing and if you do you only hate her because you ship Merthur/Gwencelot" Or of course, the good old accusation of racism or sexism.

Again I like her character! But this almost worship of Gwen from such a big chunk of the fandom that allows for no criticism is overwhelming.

And it's treated like such a hot take too! Like

"hot take, but I love Gwen even though I ship Merthur"/"Hot take! Gwen is amazing and doesn't deserve any hate"/"Hot take, criticising Gwen just because you ship Merthur is idiotic"/"I know I'm alone in this but Gwen doesn't deserve any of the hate she gets"

WHAT HATE

What

WHAT

I feel like I'm losing my mind these aren't hot takes they are the coolest most commonly shared takes in the fandom stop acting like you and even her character are martyrs! Y'all need to chill! You are creating your own straw man to be mad about

Ok I just wanna say this one thing and then I’m going to bed lol. What is UP with all the Gwen hate?!

Like me of all people absolutely love Merthur and I do think that they had the best chemistry out of anyone in the show but that doesn’t mean that Gwen also didn’t have chemistry with people?

I just saw someone say that she didn’t have chemistry with ANYONE which I think is wack. Miss girl had everyone falling head over heels for her. First of all, while her relationship with Arthur did feel forced at times and should’ve been fleshed out more in my opinion, I actually DO love their relationship and I think they had a lot of chemistry.

But besides that, LANCELOT was madly in love with her. Like, she was his hope in the darkness. And she loved him greatly in return. Their relationship is probably my favorite of Gwen’s relationships.

Merlin in the first season was also at least intrigued by her. Maybe not in love but definitely interested.

Morgana and her ABSOLUTELY had tension and would’ve made great love interests if not for the fact that Morgana perverted her own good nature.

And lastly I know this wasn’t fleshed out very much and she wasn’t interested in him but Gwaine was ALSO interested in her.

But besides all of that she is just such an amazing character. She is polite but stands up for people, she’s kind but can talk back if need be, she is funny and loving and cares so much for Camelot and all of her friends. She had so much love to give and was also FUNNY. What more could you ask for??

Anyway. That was long but needless to say I’m tired of the Gwen haters. She deserves better in Canon and in fandom. First the writers did her dirty in her queen arc and now fans are reducing her to a cardboard cutout that she clearly isn’t!

Ok. Ted talk over

[itsclydebitches]

Hey there! Admittedly I'm a little bit nervous since this is my first ask, but I'll try to not be too rambly.

So, recently the main subreddit, r/RWBY, made a ban on active users of the r/RWBYcritics subreddit. As a result there's been discussion around bad-faith criticism in the latter subreddit. What are your takes on bad-faith criticism?

For me personally, I think a bunch of people are misusing the term "bad-faith" and using it as a way to shut down criticism, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

Hey there, everyone! We woke up to some drama this morning, huh? And hello to you too, Tortoise! I'm so glad you decided to send in an ask, even if it's following some pretty tumultuous events...

Right, I'd like to start with a story. The story of how I personally don't spend time on Reddit, but I have plenty of friends who will occasionally cross-post something for me to see. Yesterday (or the day before? Idk time is meaningless) a friend told me about a post — which, significantly, I'm now having trouble finding — that covers RWBY's inconsistent writing and the fandom's tendency to try and explain away those missteps. They'd thought I'd be interested because I'd just had a conversation here on tumblr where I made that exact point to someone who, also significantly, vehemently disagreed with me, but in a very civil fashion. Given everything going on, I feel like this side point needs emphasis: we debated, we did so in a sometimes heated, but nevertheless respectful manner, it was clear neither of us was going to sway the other, and the conversation ended. The two "sides" of the community interacted without Armageddon coming about.

But back to the purpose of this tale. I went to take a look at this point and found that it no longer exists. There's just some vague message about it not obeying the subreddit's rules. "What happened?" I asked. "Why'd they take the post down?" "People were getting too heated in the comments," my friend replies. So, given that the comments were still visible, I proceeded to read through them, expecting personal attacks, slurs, harassment, etc. Any number of things that would justify deleting the post itself to put an end to such behavior. Instead, I found a thread of people having a conversation. Was the conversation heated at times? Sure. Did one or two individual posters edge into the realm of petulant, "No. You're wrong and stupid" responses? Yes. Was any of this remotely what I was expecting given the post's removal? NOPE.

"This isn't allowed?" I said. "Well then what is? People were being civil! Or at least as civil as hundreds of strangers ever get when discussing a series they're passionate about online."

Then, this morning, I hear that the entire critic subreddit has been banned.

So to answer your question, Tortoise, I don't actually think that "good faith" criticism exists. Meaning, it's not just that fans are misusing the term "bad faith criticism," but rather that there is no unified, agreed up method of writing criticism that will meet their standards. It's not possible and we know it's not possible because fans have been trying to meet those elusive standards for years:

A fan posts nothing but praise for RWBY until changes make them criticize the show as it is now. Their entire body of work is dismissed as the product of a "hater," despite the overwhelming gap between positive and negative reviews.

A fan posts a review that's a pretty balanced mix between praise and criticism. They're dismissed because it's still too much criticism.

A fan posts a review that's 99% praise with 1% criticism. That's still too much, with fans focusing on the single problem they had with the work and using it as an excuse to dismiss the entire review out of hand.

(As an aside, the argument that critics are "obsessed" with only saying negative things and that the only problem here is that they're "too" negative ignores the argument that... RWBY has a lot of flaws nowadays. Few are willing to acknowledge the possibility that it's not fans insisting on making things up to be mad about/ignoring the good parts of the show, it's the that show is, as of now, legitimately more of a mess than it is a praise-worthy product. If I'd been writing recaps in the Volumes 1-4 days, my work would have been skewed far more towards the positive. The critics' stance is that RWBY has gotten worse, which yes, results a higher volume of critical posts. To say nothing of how criticism takes far longer to explain, likewise resulting in posts focused primarily on that side of the divide. I really enjoyed the image of a crying Jaune reflected in his sword. I did not enjoy that moment's context. Saying that you liked an animation choice is a one sentence thing. Explaining the complexities of Jaune securing emotional moments, the problems with Penny's second death, the hurt many fans experienced watching an assisted suicide, etc. takes a whooole lot longer. Hence, you get massive, multiple posts about these nuanced topics and fewer, smaller posts about the details that are working well.)

A fan talks about a topic that has been metaphorically banned by the fandom as a whole. They have something good to say about Ironwood. They dislike something about Blake/Yang. They enjoyed Adam as a character. They have a problem with Ruby's leadership, etc. There's a whole list of topics nowadays that will result in an automatic dismissal, regardless of the point the fan is trying to make or how well they make it.

A fan talks about the minority representation of RWBY — its black characters, its queer characters, its disabled characters, etc. — and as a result has something to say about the biases and missteps of those writing these characters. This is considered an attack on the writers and, therefore, automatically bad.

A fan talks about how they enjoyed RWBY as it was years ago and is having trouble reconciling the dark, complicated story with the simple, hopeful one we started out with. This is seen as an attack on Monty's vision and an unwillingness to accept that "everything is planned."

A fan does as asked and ensures that their post is meeting all the requirements of "real" criticism. They have an argument to make. They have a point. They provide evidence. They recommend a solution. They keep their tone respectful. They don't attack the creators. They provide disclaimers in every single paragraph about how they do not hate RWBY. It doesn't matter. They're considered too negative.

I have, quite literally, seen every one of the above examples on multiple occasions. I have had many of the above accusations leveled at my own work. When fans say that they're fine with criticism provided it's not "bad faith" criticism, they don't actually have a specific post-type in mind; a checklist of behaviors another fan can emulate and, provided they do that, no hate will come their way. Or, if an individual fan does actually go, "Yeah. That criticism I'm fine with" that response is in no way universal. One person's "They make a good, civil point" is another person's, "Omg stop bashing the show!" Because "bashing" has come to mean everything from curse-laden insults towards everything RWBY has ever done, to posts that just happen to say something other fans don't agree with.

It's a rigged game. There is no way to post criticism about RWBY in an agreed-upon, appropriate manner. This recent ban is proof of that. I think it's incredibly telling that almost immediately after I was going, "Wow. A pretty calm debate about the flaws of RWBY in the main sub. That's great to see," all posters from the criticism subreddit were banned. The main sub literally just had the sort of criticism that they claim to accept — people respectfully posting analysis-based arguments resulting in calm debate — and yet they implemented the ban anyway. I'm not going to pretend that I've never gotten too heated on my own posts, never made snarky comments when I'm frustrated, never used exaggerated reaction GIFs that can come across as insulting... but I'd say on the whole my RWBY work is precisely the sort of "good faith" criticism that other fans are supposedly looking for. I never make an argument I don't think I can back up with evidence. I try to allow for the nuance and differing opinions of complicated topics. I try — even if I don't always succeed — to write in a clear, respectful manner. Yet none of that work has stopped people from telling me I'm a "bitter... raging asshole," a "deranged, delusional psychopath," telling me to set myself on fire, threatening to smash my head in, or just messages to straight up kill myself. If someone like me who legitimately works hard to create fair, defendable criticism and who only ever posts on a personal blog that people can easily block, who never engages in debate until someone else starts it first, never seeks out other fans I disagree with to harass them about what they like... if someone like me is still a "bad faith" critic who "deserves" that kind of hate mail... then what kind of criticism do people want?

Nothing. That's the answer. No criticism whatsoever, of any kind, no matter if it's delivered respectfully, is making a good point, whatever. That's why "RWDE" was created. That's why the critic subreddit was created. The community at large has demanded a complete separation between Praise and Anything That's Not 100% Praise, which has now resulted in this ban. Any other explanations we see are excuses, which becomes glaringly obvious when you look at the mods' supposed reasons for implementing the ban:

"Constant arguments with r/RWBY users" - As opposed to the arguments surrounding things like shipping that never, ever happen?

"Vote manipulation and comment brigades" - The subreddit with 3,000 participants, with around 200 on at a time, is manipulating the votes of a subreddit with 155,000 participants, with over 1,000 on at a time? Those numbers just do not check out. If a positive post is downvoted, or a critical post upvoted, maybe that's because large swaths of the community actually agree/disagree with that assessment, not because the incredibly smaller group is somehow manipulating things.

"Attacking and harassing those they disagree with" — Again, as opposed to those non-critics that never, ever harass people? This is an individual problem, not a community problem. Both critics and non-critics have their sub-groups acting in ways they shouldn't. If anything, the main sub will have more individuals harassing other fans, simply by virtue of being so much larger. As the above examples attest, it's not other critics who have told me to light myself on fire and, just to be clear, the asks I've responded to are a miniscule number compared to the amount I've received. I delete the lion's share for my own sanity and to save my followers from reading the really graphic threats.

"Months-long NSFL spam brigades" — I am, admittedly, not sure what this is referring to. Spamming of NSFW content? If so, that's also an individual problem.

"Homophobic, transphobic, and racist attacks towards our users" — See the above points. Again. If someone is being homophobic, transphobic, or racist, then yes please, ban them. Don't ban an entire community for the actions of a few. It's like walking into a store and banning a customer for causing a scene... but then also banning everyone else who happened to be shopping at the same time. It's guilt by association.

The silver lining to all this? The community as a whole isn't pleased. At least according to the main subreddit comments and a few individual voices like MurderofBirds. Despite the increase (from my perspective anyway) of critical voices post-Volume 8, criticism of RWBY is still very much seen as taboo. As this ban showcases. But it's really reassuring to see so many fans, critics and non-critics alike, going, "This was a mistake." A community is meant to include all aspects of engagement: praise, criticism, and the gray area between. If anything, fans like the mods of the main subreddit should be creating a separate subreddit that is specifically for praise. In the same way that there should have been a tag for RWBY praise, rather than trying to eliminate any and all criticism from the main "RWBY" tag. The majority of fans, even those who claim to hate critics and all they (presumably) stand for, recognize that a blanket ban of all criticism is not the way to go, especially when "criticism" has come to have such a staggeringly broad definition. If you want your RWBY experience to be nothing but sunshine and roses (ha), then cultivate your own internet experience to reflect that. Create your own pockets with rules about how this is the space for praise and if you're not up for praising RWBY right now, don't interact with us in this particular space. Don't try to make the entire community — the main tools used to discuss the show online — conform to your preferences. As established, there is no "good" criticism that everyone in the fandom will accept, which just leaves a fandom with no criticism at all. I'm glad to see I'm far from the only one who, when presented with that extreme, is going, "Nope. No thank you."

[meowmeowmessi]

I actually think SPN is a rare example of a show where the online fandom did have an impact on the show's content. The pandering towards destihellers, the meta episodes like Fan Fiction, characters like Becky and Charlie, to name a few things. All of which happens to be the stuff I don't like lol.

I think I'm one of the rare ones who actually liked Fan Fiction 😅😅 (Anyone else notice how they said they'd explore d*stiel in the second act of the play where all the non-canon and stupid stuff was that the goddess outright insulted and basically called garbage? And also how Cass wasn't in the shot where they all sang Carry On Wayward Son? Subtle, spn writers.) Though I don't like Becky and Charlie either ngl (Becky for how creepy she is toward Sam and honest to God deserving a restraining order, and Charlie bc Bad WritingTM made her an annoying Mary Sue). Anyway, back to the main point: I think spn's meta madness is actually all Kripke. It's not that the fandom forced its way into the show, it's more like Kripke is just insane and likes going all meta and breaking the fourth wall? And ngl, I think that's something VERY unique to spn, even now at a time when shows are constantly pushing the envelope. Like, I'm 99% sure that even with the crazy shows that we have now, like Black Mirror and shit, The French Mistake is very unique and something we'll never see again. What I'm saying is that the whole meta thing is very kripke-esque (I mean, dude even put spn references in The Boys, for crying out loud), and all the other showrunners and writers after him just kept up the tradition. Fan Fiction was basically a love letter to the fans saying, "Hey, we know y'all love our show and we appreciate it, and you can interpret it however you want, but at the end of the day it's OUR story (hence the bibro ending with the samulet aka the bros aka the heart of the show). Cool? Cool." Us sane people got that, which is why we didn't start harassing the actors and writers on SM demanding ~canon wincest~ despite the episode HEAVILY hinting at the ship, because we aren't crazy. Too bad the hellers are a few (or rather a dozen) fries short of a happy meal and the message went completely over their heads. So the fault is the hellers for being a bunch of wackos, and of course, M*sha Collins for being a queerbaiting hoe. These are just MY opinions though, so take it all with a grain of salt if you choose to lol 

[hamsterrivals]

ok, so.

I made a youtube video, of me narrating Ashita no Joe episode 4.

I was wondering for awhile if it would be ok to upload a video that’s just directly an anime episode of Ashita no Joe.

I thought partly, maybe it would be ok, since that anime came out like before 1970 or something so maybe it’s free domain,

but nah. It is blocked. I can’t find the video at all.

but, that isn’t going to stop me..

I will do the impossible, (even though I am depressed, about someone I know. irl)

and narrate Ashita no Joe episode 4.

I made a whole video of me narrating it with my voice. but it’s blocked aaaa. I refuse to let it go, though.

giga..drill...breakeriswhat I’d say but I am too depressed about someone I know irl.

Ok so anyways, this was gonna be a YouTube video, especially cuz-- [had to delete the explanation] anyways here:

[deleted stuff.....] ...

anyways here:

oh shizzat its 4am I’m fluffin’ tired. so I’m just gonna skim the episode and post screenshots argh my foot is pulsating as I type that as if my entire body is thinking “wow I know you re-watched Ashita no Joe episodes again yesterday but you should watch the whole episode again its godly” I’m sorry ewotjwte its just almost 4am and I had to wake up at 10am yesterday.

the opening plays. and then:

that one guy that is like my dad reads about my stuff

Jebus freakin’ RICE I’m tired. But I need to do something productive today cuz after I woke up at 10am for my social worker I was tired and drained all day from hearing the voices of the people upstairs and the noise in the wall.

my dad I mean Danpai keeps reading the newspaper (like how in -- gah nevermind [deleted cuz I’m paranoid about what [NEVERMIND deleted the explanation]] and

my freakin’ dad I mean Danpai gets mad at Joe just like

I DELETED [can’t say] like 8 years ago cuz of that time when I [=/ Can’t say the details]

GOSH DARN IT this is just like something irl and I can’t even say what it is because I’m too paranoid about people [deleted explanation here]

ok so basically Joe is super successful and doing good things in this world but no one believes him cuz his stupid azz danpai adopted dad figure is a dumb bummie, and then

and then I wanna explain 99 lines but we’re not even 2 minutes into the episode, so I guess I have to skip some parts; I mean it is 4am after all

and then

ok so there’s this snobby lady (at the time ? perhaps she changes at the very very very very end but I won’t give any spoilers about how the very final episode goes itjewiot btw I literally watched this anime starting from the very last episode cuz someone said this series has best ending in anime/manga of all time, and then I started back at early episodes after that, when I first watched this however years ago,)

and then

yes we printed this article cuz .. you’re trustworthy and popular but Joe is just an unpopular guy who helps out orphans and gives his money away to help out orphans

ya know how when I watched the first 11 episode with [won’t say but the guy that begins with Sau and ends with ce that I was friends with for 15 years and he kept making fun of it multiple times in the chat saying “More like a shit a joe.”] well these guys are like wow Joe is a delinquent cuz he is helping out orphans

wow Yabuki Joe used an alt account or some shiz and made a complete lie to try to help society for the better like making a peaceful game and then I mean boxing I mean waterver and then

no one believes ni the main character Joe who is LITERALLY helping out local orphans; and they’re basically like just jealous of him and twisting the truth to make him look bad is what these snobby popular people are doing t hat actually have friends unlike the wondering loner Joe Yabuki,

this very popular snobby lady who actually has friends unlike ab- Yabuki Joe doesn’t care that Joe is actually being helpful and wants to make projects that will bring peace to this world, she will not give him a chance because she cares more about appearances and keeping up her reputation.

....She takes on the full pressure and responsibilty. But can she handle it?

they’re basically like “uhhh do you have [deleted in case it comes off as offensive, since I know some others that make fun of that stuff >=\ which I don’t like either cuz I get made fun of [the deleted thing] too . It shouldn’t even have to be deleted >=\ but I was in a [DELETED] and they made fun of [the deleted thing] so I guess it has to be [deleted] which is so sad for this world ??] and so

the really cool person who *doesn’t reveal spoilers of the end of the series aa* says please leave Train- Yabuki Joe to me !!

i have faith in him he totally will not somehow break this faith that I vaguely have in him and am kinda too shy to publicly admit..

I wonder what Joe is feeling like right now and doing:

s o anyways Joe keeps laughing 99 times in this episode, and, cuz he knows he’s right and just helping out orphans and people that aren’t popular and too afraid to join the b- never mind.

some of his followers don’t respond to his long rants and are like maybe he is going too far and should back down fro mthe very popular snobby lady

Yabuki Joe laughs again

he says What’s the matter with you!? Stop siding with the very popular lady that actually has friends and a good reputation who is a stuck up and like do what is right instead of what . will make people think better of you even if you know in your hear that maybe it might be wrong.

The snobby lady posted on Twit- I mean irl the anime known as Ashita no Joe the they posted a screenshot of me saying “I have family.....” and they mocked him saying “Um.... I have family too....?” as her followers mocked Yabuki Joe on twitter in the 1970s anime or something,

but family isn’t what matters, everyone has family,

what matters is that you all still have a poor reputation because you have no friends which I think is 100% ok but the stuck-up lady who hates Joe for some reason atm just cares about how they’re rich in [deleted snarky remarks] reputation.

stop caring about the dislikes and haters and appreciate the supporters that you do have;;.

yabuki Joe says F THE HATERS THIS IS Just the beginning of [would say but I wanna here but X_X; [deleted the reason why I won’t] because of [deleted] because of [deleted]]

,y gpa; s 1 million followers cuz then they at least know what is right

in this world.

and then joe is like

and then;

then he’s like yea in my heart I know its good to have that many followers cuz I know the true true truth about Yabuki Joe the anime and manga character from Ashita no Joe, he just wants that many followers to program an indie game about- I mean anyways

they say

[OK WHAT THEH ECK I SERIOUSLY DID RECORD A VIDEO OF ME JUST NARRATING THIS ENTIRE EPISODE AND I uploaded it yesterday on a video sharing site but it is blocked cuz of copyrighted content aaa even though this was from before  1970 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa now I gotta explain in text instead of voice like I already did last night AAAAAAAAAAaa]

they say But what would you do with that much power, that many internet I mean irl followers in 197o in Ashita no Joe the anime/manga series?

and then Yabuki Joe says teh

then he’s like What the gosh darn shiz in yoshville mans,

and then

and they’re like Look Yabuki Joe lives in a Terrible place with Terrible living conditions wher e brick dust keeps falling down and then

and like Joe has no problems like getting kawaii innocent ppl to follow him, but the others are a bit suspicious.. of Joe and his behavior..

Joe is like i’m gonna build a huge online hamster game soon.

and then someone tells Abu in tumblr messages I mean they tell

Someone tells Yabuki Joe as you can see if you flippin’ watch the episode yourself (I don’t blame you. I hope someone will check this series out, though. It’s my favorite anime series, to be honest.) anyways and then someone from his fandom of - anyways someone says

He’s so full of himself.

I guess you suffer from delusions of grandeur?

the bully who is even in the same exact fandom as ab- Yabuki Joe of being an orphan says that, and because they’re so big inside, people blindly listen to them.

the true actual innocent follower that knows trainerab- Yabuki Joe is actually honest and truthful is like, wow shut the fak up brah, and then:

Then the “Are you sure you don’t suffer from delusions of grandeur?” doubtful follower who is keeping an eye on Ab-Yabuki Joe I mean and watching over him to try to keep the orphanage safe falsely then says “This is a clown. See this clown? Abu is hiring th I mean Yabuki Joe had this younger person defend him” Wow and then

one of the only innocent ppl in this show besides Yabuki Joe and a bunch of later characters in this series in later episodes that happen soon, know Joe really is telling the truth and that he really is honest and she’s pizzed awf at that hater troll person trying to Provoke joe and such on [deleted] anime & manga series Ashita no Joe the anime/manga series, and then

then they’re like, uh oh maybe Joe does have some loyal followers who know the real truth and we should hold our distance and see what he does and what he is truly like, first, and then

so, then

so then Yabuki Joe shows them their steam profile and the gam I mean the BY- I mean

Joe is like ok I played retro games my whole life and watched cool cartoons like the Rugrats and I play cool games and twisted trolls like the snobby girl try to make it look like I “change my interests to appease others” but come into my YouTube channel office and c the truth that I really DID play a lot of SNES games and then

I mean Yabuki Joe says this is my office and this is where I live,

I live in a factory that rains brick dust,

and then,

AND THEN I WANNA NARRATE THIS ENTIRE EPISODE BUT IT IS FREAKIN’ 4:35am and I gotta get up soon

I mean I flippin’ already narrated this entire episode and commented on it etc. and made a cool video of it but YouTube blocked it AAAAAAAA even tho it was an anime made in

1970 I thought it would be free domain by now and o.k. to upload a video of it to YouTube with audio commentary GOSH AAAaaaa GOSH I WANNA NARRATE THE WHOLE EPISODE

AS I SAID IN THE youtube video that is blocked on YouTube I think it is a requirement cuz like it really pejeroyjoirjyorejijioe

ok have a nice night.

[seyaryminamoto]

(1/2) What if the reason Bryke left was because Netflix wanted to give Azula a redemption arc? Or maybe somebody wanted to change the first scene of the show so that Katara wasn't with Sokka when he went fishing and so Aang wasn't unfrozen until years later... *whistles innocently* And they realized this route would allow them to make a longer series, meaning more content, meaning more profit. Jokes aside, I realize both of these options are 99% not the reason Bryke left, but imagine if...

(2/2) they were? Like, how funny would that be? Well, the latter possibility would be sort of funny, while the former would be somewhat depressing actually. Anyway, I'm surprised how many people are complaining about Bryke's departure. From what I've seen, people primarily shit on them and any praise in regards to ATLA goes to other writers/artists. I already didn't have any high expectations out of the live-action version, but this latest development didn't really worsen them much.

x’D not wrong about the second option being hilarious, though I’d hope I’d have heard something about it, if just out of sheer decency by Netflix to contact the cruel mind behind not sending Sokka fishing with Katara... (?)

Anyways, Bryke’s involvement in ATLA’s writing is often up-played by casual viewers, and downplayed by hardcore fans. There’s no sure way to know how much work they did on ATLA’s writing, seeing as there’s a fair amount of reports that suggest Aaron Ehasz, imposed on Bryke by Nickelodeon, reeled the story into what it became. I’ve even seen people claiming Bryke’s original ending would have featured Aang leaving Katara and Sokka behind while flying off to find more airbenders after the show ended. Not half as feel-good an ending as the show’s, right? Then there’s also reports that male!Toph was going to be in a love triangle with Katara and Aang... adding Zuko to the mix, as he often was added by extra ATLA content, Katara was likely to have three possible love interests, if Bryke had gone forward with this? Considering how Korra outright had three different love interests in ALL the members of her gang, this doesn’t sound like that outlandish a claim, whether there’s real sources for it or not. If they were willing to do it with Korra, I’d believe they’d have done it with Katara.

Ehasz is indeed credited for female!Toph and Azula, in the art book (I think) Bryke are outright featured saying Ehasz is the main artificer behind Azula being who she was, rather than Zuko’s older brother (Bryke’s original concept for her character). With this in mind, when Ehasz comes out and claims that, in a hypothetical book 4, he would have redeemed Azula to also finish Zuko’s personal character arc, and then Bryke show up claiming there NEVER was a book 4 possibility, you get a clearer understanding of where Bryke are likely standing in regards of Azula’s redemption :’) if that’s what Netflix wanted (... though I question they’d have pitched it since the get-go), it’d be no surprise that Bryke wouldn’t hear of it.

There’s no denying Bryke had interesting ideas, and that they worked to build a pretty complex world, but we cannot know how much of that world was solely their doing, and how much of it was also created by the input of the larger team of writers involved in ATLA’s original show. LOK, on the other hand, features a clusterfuck of worldbuilding that doesn’t always make sense, including no shortage of retcons (not only of pre-existing lore, LOK even retcons itself up to three times regarding explaining why and who decided to keep Korra in a compound for most her formative years), terribly written romance (whenever it’s written), poor storytelling decisions that outright derrailed their show and even turned their protagonist into the B-plot for the bulk of the final season... and what a coincidence that this time Bryke had no one breathing down their necks telling them what to do: they had a lot more creative freedom in LOK than in ATLA. There was no Nickelodeon imposed Head Writer, and they didn’t bring Ehasz back of their own volition. Whether because Ehasz isn’t that great to work with or because Bryke simply didn’t want anyone else to poke their noses into THEIR story, Bryke didn’t want any supervision over LOK. And as many loud fans as LOK may have, LOK’s storytelling quality simply doesn’t measure up to ATLA’s, and I refuse to blame Nickelodeon for that when all evidence indicates Bryke had no idea what they wanted for Korra in the first place.

What I’m saying is... Bryke do seem to benefit from having someone else reeling in their ideas, probably providing genuine structure, making them seriously reason with WHERE they’re taking the story. This, going by ATLA’s much clearer structure, is something I’m willing to believe Ehasz offered, and something Bryke lacked, by their own volition, in LOK. It’s also something they lack in the comics, seeing as, up to date, they haven’t done anything in them that really lives up to their potential, as far as I know. “The comics don’t have any direction and aren’t advancing their world’s story” has become a far more frequent complaint with each newly announced and released comic volume, whether by supportive or antagonistic fans. Why might that be...?

It’s possible, of course, that Netflix’s team simply isn’t the kind of team Bryke can work with positively. Maybe they’re too stiff, maybe they’re not that creative, maybe they’re unable to compromise and it’s not all on Bryke?

But with the precedent Bryke has set (ATLA, with supervision, manages quality storytelling, despite its many flaws, whereas LOK, without it, is a storytelling failure), I wouldn’t be surprised that they were outright unwililng to compromise their own ideas after experiencing the full freedom of working on LOK without anyone telling them what to do, and that upon finding they wouldn’t have that same freedom this time, they quit. 

Does this mean the show will automatically be better or worse? Eh... beats me, frankly. There’s no denying Bryke did endeavor to develop a large, unique world with the Avatarverse, but as much as the fandom believes otherwise, what made the Avatar world unique wasn’t merely that it wasn’t “white”. This particular qualm by the fandom feels really narrowminded to me, and I’m not saying this because I believe there should be white people in Avatar, hell no: what I do mean is that ATLA had an Asian setting, but the narrative frequently imposed western values on it. They recreated many elements of Asian cultures, but morally? ATLA couldn’t be more western. Is that a good or a bad thing? Beats me. But there’s a lot of occidental influence in ATLA’s narrative, even more of it in LOK, and that somehow doesn’t bother people nearly as much as it bothers them that the liveaction cast isn’t western in the least. Yes, it’s true, the cast shouldn’t be western: but there are many regards in which the original ATLA could pioneer a better understanding of many Asian cultures, and it doesn’t. Even something as complex as the Fire Nation’s cultural practices (no, I don’t mean the genocide and supermacy, I mean everything else) is outright blasted by the show’s western moralism from the get-go rather than seen as what a different culture values (already offered a few thoughts about this on this other ask).

Therefore, in terms of casting, which seems the main concern of the bulk of the fandom, I highly doubt Netflix will be willing to repeat the same mistake M. Night’s fiasco committed. They can’t be that stupid. They’ve done a lot of big diversity efforts in the past, whether insincere or not, in many regards, so I seriously doubt they need Bryke sitting in the casting booth repeating “NO WHITE ACTORS! NO WHITE ACTORS!” to the top of their lungs to remind Netflix's executives that this just can’t happen. Seriously, if that’s what their input for the show was supposed to be about, Netflix was better off saving up the money of hiring those two as main consultants or executives and using that coin to pay the likely lousy salaries of the non-white actors they’ll surely hire :’) I doubt, seriously, that Bryke’s problem had anything to do with white casting. If Netflix entered this deal and didn’t do their homework first, then they’re basically dooming themselves since day one and the show would suck with or without Bryke’s involvement. This is not impossible, but really stupid, and an absolutely failed business venture to jump into.

In the end, I don’t know what that liveaction will shape up into. I don’t exactly care much either, which is why I didn’t really debate this subject before answering this ask... I’m pretty detached from canon these days, as things stand. I can’t even bring myself up to reading the plot of the Kyoshi novels, no matter if people keep telling me they’re ~actually good!~, let alone will I want to rewatch ATLA in liveaction when I’ve become increasingly infuriated by liveaction remakes with each new one Disney releases :’) from the moment it was announced, I knew this remake wouldn’t be for me. It’s not likely they’ll do anything with it that I’ll really want to see, or that they’ll change things in a way that resolves my frequent complaints about the show’s storytelling mishaps. Therefore, I’d always meant to leave it be and let everyone else enjoy it...

... And Bryke’s absence from the project doesn’t really change my mind on that front. At this point, crediting them for the entire success of ATLA is incredibly naïve, especially seeing how none of their later projects have even come close to ATLA’s level of storytelling quality. Likewise, it’d be naïve to assume Netflix is guaranteed to do better without Bryke’s “meddling”. If anything, without Bryke’s likely persistence that the show be kept close to its roots, Netflix is bound to fall into its frequent, known tendencies of pandering to certain crowds at the cost of quality storytelling because Hollywood overused and bad tropes are where success is at! They’ll likely flatten characters, turn them into edgy, non-humorous versions of themselves, not unlike in M. Night’s film, and then everyone will hate the show anyways for offering such dull and simplistic characterization compared to the original :’)

In short... there’s no winning scenario. There really isn’t. I assumed there wouldn’t be one anyhow, from the get-go, at least for myself? But now that Bryke are out, the fandom is divided in about four factions: 

The ones who will watch and support the liveaction no matter what.

The ones who think it will suck balls because Bryke aren’t in it.

The ones who think it will be an improvement because Bryke aren’t in it.

The ones who won’t watch it no matter what.

Me... I’ve been in camp #4 from the start. Bryke being part of this project didn’t reassure me, neither does their absence... and I’m still as convinced this show won’t be my thing today as I was when it was first announced. So... *shrug* we live and let die. I mean, first of all we have to wait and see if the show’s production will even survive the pandemic first, so we can worry about how bad or good it will be if Bryke’s departure + COVID-19 didn’t destroy it altogether already :’D

[violetnuisance]

WDHTD Analysis

You know the analysis papers your English professors make you do? Yeah, I did one at nearly 2 am on a fanfiction. Here we go.

It’s currently 1:54 am on Tuesday, July 2, in my lightless bedroom as my right thumb is furiously tapping on my phone’s digital keyboard. Why am I up? Beats the heck out of me; I should’ve gone to sleep hours ago. But one thing is for certain-I just finished @ironiclittlebaby ‘s fic, We Don’t Have To Dance, and I have emotions, so enjoy this little unedited fic analysis.

A preface: A few months ago, I tried my best to read WDHTD, and had only succeeded in reading the first 7 chapters because I was unconditionally bawling my eyes out. At the time, my mental state wasn’t the best, and this fic seemed too cruel to be good, so I left it. However, today was the day I decided to give it another chance since I’m better mentally, and boy am I glad I did.

Now on to the real shiz:

I’m not going to stick to a TPCASTT format for this. It is way too late, and I am way to hyper. Therefore, this might just me be babbling versus an actual analysis but who cares.

1. What is the writer doing?

Blue has created a band au in the sally face universe that has taken the fandom by storm to be perfectly honest. They’re creating an angsty fic that resolves into a happy ending at its very core. But what is actually happening behind the lines?

A reoccurring trait in a lot of fics from any fandom is the usage of pornographic material, because, hey, sex sells. By just adding the singular tag ‘smut,’ you are enthralling one side of an audience. They will be willing to read the fic each and every update for the chance of a sex scene. And, the fact that WDHTD opens up with one, reassures the readers that yes, sex is in here, and will probably be in here more than once. It’s a format a lot of authors go to.

Blue is also keeping the reader in the dark. Why did Larry leave Sal? You have to read the first 10 chapters to just find out the answer to that one question, which also happens to be the main plot point. Humans are curious creatures, and we’re going to keep reading to find out an answer if the story isn’t too terribly off putting no matter what.

However, this blindness also gives the reader the time to feel Sal’s anguish, brew their hatred for Larry, and in general, just feel sorrow at the whole situation. Only to have all these conflicting emotions ripped from you when Larry admits, while puking his guts out, his reasons for leaving. This moment is positively pivotal, and the author needs to sell that this character-you-thought-was-bad-is-actually-a-sweetheart in order for the rest of the story to fill the reader with more raw emotion and give them the prime reading experience. For the most part, I’d say Blue succeeds in this, but we will cover this point more in the second part of the analysis.

The author here is using a buttload of foreshadowing. I dare one of Yawll to tell me in my inbox that you didn’t know Larry was going to OD. We all knew it, we really did, we were just praying that it wouldn’t happen. But with every little incident, Like Travis revealing Larry relapsing could kill him as ScreamFest neared, it creates an incredible sense of dread that leaves the reader on the edge of their seat. It’s like a thriller almost (not really, but indulge me here), and it makes you unable to close Ao3.

The author is also using research. They are knowledgeable about binding contracts, drug usage, and medical conditions. We’ll discuss why this matters in the third point of this analysis.

2. What is the effect of that writing on a reader?

I heavily addressed a lot of this question in the first point, but there’s one thing I want to talk about here. Let’s discuss why it’s very important for the author to convince the reader that Larry Johnson is a sweetheart who was forced to leave his fiancée and not a total jerk who had a choice.

Even when the reader doesn’t know why Larry left Sal, it’s foreshadowed that he still has feelings for the bluenet. Let’s take a moment that happened right after my favorite scene when Larry is about to tell Sal something but is cut off by the screams of rabid fangirls. The whole moment, the whole scene, had been tender. Deep down, the reader is faintly aware that something is up, that this hatred can’t be as searing as it is portrayed. The reader is still wary of Johnson as they should be, but they’re also suspicious that there’s more than meets the eye because Larry’s acting a little lovesick. This helps soften the reader’s attitude towards him before the big reveal.

Then, we get to the turning point. The reason for Larry leaving is out, and all the readers are scurrying off their beds to get tissues. The reader has a very crucial internal fight here:

A) Forgive Larry Johnson (99% of the readers choice) or

B) Do Not Forgive Larry Johnson (like me because I’m a stupid hardass)

For the rest of WDHTD to hit the reader as it is intended, the reader must choose option A in that moment. There’s very little turnover time for any B choosers because Sal accepts Larry back at an alarming rate. So, in most cases, I’d say whatever choice your mind goes to in that instant dictates the reading experience you’re going to have.

In most cases, I’d say Ironiclittlebaby does this perfectly, plays the readers right into their hands, so let’s focus on why they set up this game of “Hey, he’s not a bad guy like you thought he was.”

For one, it makes the reader more vulnerable. It almost feels like you’ve been in Sal’s shoes-everything you thought was true has been erased. Like Sal, the reader’s going to be exposed. When Larry starts showing affection towards Sal, the reader is going to jump on that but also be worried. Because, hey, the truth was reversed once, so the same thing could happen again, right? As well as Sal’s, this strategy makes Larry gain the reader’s trust, making his downfall that more heart shattering.

It also gives the reader a rush of euphoria. It feels like you’ve just climbed a mountain. “Hey, I’ve conquered the angsty slopes, and now I can see the fluff filled valleys below!” This wistful mindset settles in to most fic readers heads, and they’re just so happy for the turnaround. Which also makes the new angst even worse.

Now, why would it be bad if the readers chose option B?

If you chose Option A, go ahead and close your eyes with me. Imagine rereading every one of the 27 published chapters but instead of rooting for LarryFace, you can’t help but feel this disgust for Larry. If you thought he had a choice when leaving Sal, then your mind probably cheered when it was introduced that Travis had a crush on Sal. You probably hoped, even though you knew it wouldn’t work out, that Salvis would become the new ship. If you were constantly rooting for Travis and maybe even felt disappointment when Sal chose Larry, Larry’s demise will not hit you the same. There will be thoughts like ‘he deserved this’ that destroy what the author intended to make you feel. Instead of sadness, your gut is left feeling what every fic author fears that their readers will feel: indifference.

But hey, I’d say that Blue pulls off their intended effect super well. I’d say the obsession the fandom has over this fic really shows that they crafted the trick well.

3. Why does that matter?

First, let’s talk about why research matters.

Most fic readers aren’t going to be very knowledgeable about certain things, so authors can really gloss over topics most of the time. However, there’s always that one group of readers that are knowledgeable about the topic at hand, and having complete bullshit in your story could really turn them away. I’d also like to say that having thoroughly researched your topics just really shows to any reader. We might not know the specifics of the topic, but it warns our heart that the author cared enough to put some time in the fic besides just writing.

Secondly and lastly, why does making the reader sad matter?

I’m going to keep this short and sweet because I can hear dogs barking outside, and it’s time for me to sleep.

When the readers has lows, it makes the high that much sweeter. A fic full of straight fluff gets boring after awhile; there has to be some sort of conflict to make a story interesting. And all this angst is going to make the happy ending of We Don’t Have To Dance just that much more tear jerking.

Not part of the analysis, but I just want to point out that Blue’s writing improves so god damn much as the chapters progress. Like, my breath was taken away by their striking style by chapter 27. They’re going places, and I’m excited to watch.

I’d also like to say it is a devastatingly beautiful piece of work, and personal opinion, it kind of sucks that most fans just dote on the sexual side of it. It’s so much more than just another smut fic.

Alright, thank you for listening to me rant. It’s time to log off and go practice my own writing by working on my fics.

[etherealwaifgoddess]

What He Wants (Pt. 20)

Main Characters: Bucky Barnes x Enhanced Reader

Summary:  On going series of Bucky getting his shit together and falling in love with you.

Warnings/ Content: none, just an unexpected visitor, a protective Bucky, and a very worried Pepper Potts

Word Count: 1554

Author’s Note: Well lovelies, we’re in the endgame now. We have probably two days left depending on how long I decide to draw this out/ how long it takes me to scrub over the last four parts. Yep, we’re going to 24 parts total. Then that’ll be all folks. But let’s not dwell, we still have a little left in this journey. For now, let’s find out who was knocking  at your door so early in the morning...

If you missed the first few parts, you can read them here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

XOXO - Ash

What He Wants, Pt. 20

Bucky opens your front door to reveal a very confused Director of SHIELD. “Barnes, this is a surprise.” he says as he enters your apartment.

“Hi Fury.” you say affectionately, going over to give him a quick hug. Despite what most of the agency thinks, you know for a fact that Fury is a sweetheart. He rarely shows it but you have spent enough time with him over the past eleven years to have built up a solid friendship with the man. 

Fury purses his lips and glares at Bucky but he accepts your hug and reciprocates it. “You didn’t tell me you had collected a stray, Minnie.” 

“I did too! You knew he was flying back to stay with me.” you protest. Bucky moves next to you to pull you in against his side by your waist, it’s blatantly territorial but you let him. 

“Yes, but letting him crash here is very different than the lack of clothing going on here. And I’m betting if I so much as move wrong towards you, lover boy here would have me split in two.” 

Bucky shrugs and nods at Fury who chuckles at his brazenness.

You turn bright red as you realize you’re in only a t-shirt and Bucky is just in his sweatpants. It looks, well, it looks like exactly what it is. “Come on, Fury. I’m a grown up.”

“I know you are. I’m just a little surprised. Never seen you with a man before, Minerva.” 

Your face flushes even harder. “I’m selective.” you bite back at him.

Fury laughs hard and recovers himself quickly. “So what’s the deal here, Barnes? Do I need to ask what your intentions are with our girl?”

Bucky’s grin is wolfish, “Well, Fury, I just got done making her breakfast and once we’re done I was gonna take her back to bed and-”

“No!” you yelp, cutting him off, “Nope, don’t you dare finish that sentence.” 

Fury is laughing again, “I get the idea, Barnes. How long is your little sabbatical going to take?”

Bucky gives you a sidelong look before responding. He hasn’t had a chance to talk to you about it yet and doesn’t want to over step, but he can’t imagine leaving your side anytime soon. “Take me off the list for now. I won’t be doing any more missions for a while. I’ve already emailed Pepper letting her know I’m out indefinitely.” 

This is news to you. You had hoped but didn’t expect him to really step away from it all. “You didn’t tell me that.” you say, your voice hopeful. 

Bucky kisses your cheek, “I was going to over breakfast. I don’t want to get pulled away right now. I’m going with you to work next week, see how it goes.” 

“Okay, we’ll see how it goes.” you agree. Your heart is beating out of your chest and you jump when Fury clears his throat. 

“Well, isn’t this cute.” he deadpans, “Minnie, if you need anything, call.” he says fondly to you before shooting another glare at Bucky, “Barnes, if you need me, good luck.” 

Bucky laughs and you roll your eyes. Fury hands the case he’s been holding to Bucky and he thanks him for the delivery. 

“Yeah, well, I hadn’t seen our girl here in a while.” Fury shrugs and turns to you, “Your paycheck from the mission was deposited yesterday, by the way. And Barnes, the kids at St. Agnes and the shelter over on East 33rd were both very appreciative of the donations. They’re set up nicely for the foreseeable future.” 

You both thank him and Fury says his goodbyes, reminding  you again to call if you need him. 

“I didn’t expect him to show up like that.” you tell Bucky as you sit back down to your breakfast. 

“He’s just looking after you. Probably wanted to make sure you were okay since he knew I was crashing here.” Bucky guesses.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him surprised like that before. He cares though, I can’t fault him for that.”

“Absolutely not, the more people keeping an eye on you the better.”

You pout at him, only slightly offended, “I can take care of myself just fine, thank you.”

“Not saying you can’t, mouse. But it doesn’t hurt to have backup from some very powerful people. There’s something about you that brings out a guy’s over protective instincts.” 

“Like I’m a damsel in distress?” you raise an eyebrow at him.

“No, like you’re the most valuable thing in the world and must be protected at all costs.” 

Your face heats and you give him a shy smile, “Smooth talker.” 

“Only the truth, doll. I would give up my right arm before I let anyone hurt you.” 

You can see the seriousness in his eyes and you drop your fork. A warm, desperate feeling is bubbling up inside you, but it’s too fast, too soon, not even rational. And yet still it forms deep in your chest. You’re blinded by it and its intensity. “Bucky… I…” you flounder for words. 

Bucky sees the emotions flitting across your face and he knows. He sees the emotion you’re trying to stifle down and it echoes what he’s felt forming in his chest since he woke up to you in that hospital room. It doesn’t make any sense to him either and he refuses to think too deeply on it, but it’s there and he knows it’s only getting stronger the longer he’s around you. “It’s okay, doll. Come on, eat your breakfast before it gets any colder. I’m gonna go start on the laundry.” 

Bucky deposits his empty plate and cup in the sink and goes to gather up the dirty clothes. He’s glad you’re tidy by nature, all of your laundry is easy to find in a wicker basket by your dresser. His clothing is strewn between his bag and the floor next to it on his side of the bed. He smiles to himself as he picks up the socks and shirts, he has a side of the bed now. Bucky had noticed the stacked washer and dryer when he was looking for towels in the hall closet and hauls the basket, now full of both of your clothes, over to it. The dials are simplistic and close enough to the ones he had to figure it out on his own. Once he gets the load started he goes back to make the bed, wanting to give you time to eat in peace. He’s finishing up when he hears the sink running and realizes you must be starting on the dishes. Bucky makes his way back to the kitchen and sees that he was right. “Come on, mouse. I’m supposed to be doing all this.” he complains lightly.

You shake your head at him, “No way, you cooked, I’m cleaning up.” 

Bucky grumbles but lets you go. He heads off to find his phone and see if Pepper has responded to him yet. It turned out she didn’t email him back, she called him. Four times. The voicemails range from curious, to annoyed, to concerned. He slips out onto the balcony to call her back.

“Hey Pepper.” he says when she answers.

“Bucky, god, you had me worried!” she yells at him.

“I’m fine, just taking some time off.”

“Time off? Your email said indefinitely. And you won’t even say where you are. What am I supposed to think, Bucky? So soon after Steve, and Tony, and you went on that stupid reckless mission…” she’s genuinely upset and Bucky feels guilty for worrying her.

“I’m sorry, Pep. I get it and I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“So where are you? What happened on the mission? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, the mission was a success. I did get shot but I’ve already healed and I decided to stay with a friend.”

“I’m not even going to start on the ‘you got shot’ part. I know all of your friends, Bucky, they’re here at the compound. So where are you?”

Bucky snorts a laugh at her determination. “I made a new friend. I really can’t tell you where I am though. I can’t do that to her, she’s very private about her life outside of SHIELD. All I’m going to say is that she’s a newly retired agent and I’m perfectly safe.” 

“Wait… you’re with a woman?” 

“Yes, Pepper. She’s a woman.” 

“James Buchanan Barnes.” Pepper says in shock. “Is this woman a friend, or a friend?”

“I care about her very much and I'm leaving it at that. Maybe I’ll bring her out to the compound to meet you guys but don’t expect it anytime soon.” 

“Wow. Just… wow. Okay. As long as your safe. If you need anything from your room here let me know how to get it to you, and you have your card so you don’t need to worry about that. I, uh, I just… wow. Okay, well, be safe and let me know if you need anything. I’ll make sure to take you out of rotation until you tell me otherwise.”

“Thanks, Pepper. I appreciate it. You take care, tell everyone I said hey.”

“You take care too, Bucky.”

They said their goodbyes and Bucky heads back inside to you. 

Tag List Lovelies: @my-current-fandom-is @blacklightguidesnic @amazonianbeauty@ladyemofhousestark@abswritesfandoms @rupestria @dark-night-sky-99

[theclaravoyant]

musings on the evolution of bisexuality in sitcoms and being treated “like a joke”

Not to open up old cans of worms, but for my video project I was thinking about the subject of Eleanor Shellstrop (The Good Place) and various opinions about her bisexuality, the status of it canon-wise, and in particular the feelings amongst some of the fandom (and non-fandom) that it is treated “like a joke.” I have heard similar things about Rosa Diaz (Brooklyn 99) as well regarding the latter point and so that worked its way in, and soon enough this ended up sort of turning into a short ish essay. I’m not really trying to argue a particular point, but merely reflect on some things, and I hope you don’t mind I thought I’d share my musings. It boils down to being laughed at vs being laughed with, which I get to below the cut after a brief exposition (I have some Thoughts)

Note: I am not looking to get into an argument with anyone, and I’m not saying this is the be all and end all answer to rep, but if you wanted to share some thoughts, add on, etc, you’re welcome to do so.

Note II: Just for clarity’s sake, non-LGBT+ people are welcome to interact if you would like to do so.

I must admit, moving back to the topic of Eleanor for a minute, I resonate with some of those feelings I outlined above. For example, I don’t particularly care for the fact that we have never seen her engage in an abiding romantic or even sexual relationship with a woman, whereas her romance with Chidi has been rebooted over and over and is consistently the outcome. It grates on me a bit that in a universe which has been rebooted upward of 4 different times that we have seen (and approx 300 other times shoved into a few minutes) this is the outcome every time. Why not explore another option for a season? I love Cheleanor, don’t get me wrong, and the constant rebooting annoys me from that perspective as well not just the f/f perspective, but in terms of sapphic rep and also considering how often bisexuality is exploited and misrepresented by heteronormative storytellers (eg the tropes “Bi the Way” and “Not Too Bi”), it really sucks.

Edit: I deleted a paragraph here that had some examples I had misremembered and was rushing through. Shockingly writing up a train of thought on a bus leads to some inaccuracies and skipping over of valuable debates. Instead, I will say that I don’t mean by the above, that m/f bi attraction is not real and valuable. It certainly is. What is a pain in the ass in my opinion - and in the opinion of a lot of the bi people I know before anyone comes at me with that again - is when bisexuality is only used to make a character interesting, sexy or rebellious, while still only representing the m/f side of things because that is easier/more comfortable/etc for heteronormative writers and viewers to portray and invest in.

THAT SAID, back to my actual point. I think we (particularly we who are LGBT+ ourselves) are also very accustomed to seeing LGBT+ characters in dramas, where bad things happen and there’s angst and death and gnashing of teeth. I think this being the norm leads us to freak out a bit and not necessarily know how to actually handle positive, happy rep in which we ourselves, our identities, are taken seriously. We are so used to either being a tragedy or being laughed at (rather than with) that it is extremely unsettling to experience what I would call a dawning new era of being respected in sitcoms - including The Good Place, Brooklyn 99, One Day at a Time, and I’m sure there are others as well.

It’s not surprising, with this skittishness trained into us, that some people interpret the treatment of Eleanor’s bisexuality as being a joke. I’m also not saying this knee-jerk reaction is the only reason; again, I’m not saying my thoughts & feelings on this are the be all and end all of rep. I am just saying that it was a major reason why I was uncomfortable at first: it is extremely hard to trust people to joke around about us, and our identities, and especially with the added element of the unique hypersexualisation of bisexual f/f attraction. But recently I’ve been rewatching some older and less progressive, less inclusive sitcoms and in comparison, it becomes very clear, the difference between being the butt of the joke (laughed at) or being part of a joke (laughed with). It might help - not just with Eleanor, but with others too - to give some examples:

In Friends, Monica, Rachel and Phoebe, only use the idea of f/f attraction when they want to get the boys’ attention, distract them, win bets, or the like. They are successful in this explicitly because the men find this idea so ridiculously, mind-bogglingly sexy that they can’t think. Yet NONE of these main characters are ever revealed to have an actual, serious attraction to girls; none of them express it outside of the direct goal of getting male attention. Similarly, in How I Met Your Mother, Lily’s repeated expression of a desire to kiss a girl is put down to her artistic nature and rebelliousness, and is repeatedly called “so stupid”, and again, is only used to get male attention (to wake up Barney). When she finally kisses Robin, it goes away (bi experiment trope), and it is implied that ~lol~ after all that Robin might actually want more, but that is then left hanging and never revisited again. There are heaps more, I could go on, but these are all examples of being laughed at. 

Compared to these sorts of jokes, let us reflect on Eleanor again. Jokes around her sexuality include: being so attracted to her female nemesis that Eleanor can’t insult her profusely without starting to compliment her, and being so attracted to her boyfriend’s girlfriend that in a simulation where she plays him, she goes to kiss the girlfriend instead of her assigned goal, which was to break up. If this sounds more like #relatable sapphic content than a dismissive joke, that’s because it is. These jokes could not happen without Eleanor’s attraction to women, that is true, but the attraction itself is not the joke. The joke lies in Eleanor’s reactions to the attraction as a messy, funny, sexually driven human. In this way, her bisexuality forms part of the joke, but it is paired up with her other personality traits as a comedy character to be laughed with. Similarly, with Rosa Diaz, her stunned moment upon seeing Alicia is funny because it is an example of what we in the biz of gay ass blogging sometimes refer to as “useless lesbian brain” (or in this case “useless bi brain”). It’s cute because the love interest is a girl and because Terry is hyper-enthusiastic that it’s a girl. It wouldn’t work as well as a joke if it was not a girl, and heteronormativity is almost definitely the reason for that, but the point still stands that the bisexuality itself is not the joke, it’s the way she responds to it: it’s the fact that Rosa Diaz, usually so suave and in control, loses the ability to Can. Terry’s overly enthusiastic allyship is also funny, but mostly to people who have experienced overly enthusiastic allyship ie the LGBT+ audience.

(To add one final example: I am not aware of ANY male bi rep in older sitcoms, which kinda speaks for itself, but in the more modern ones we have characters such as Darryl Whitefeather (Crazy Ex Girlfriend). One of the biggest jokes around his sexuality is his coming out as “both-sexual!!” Once again, the joke is not the bi attraction itself, but rather, in the fact that lol this pour bi soul didn’t know the word for it! Another example imo of being laughed with).

I know I’m not saying all that much new here. Probably nothing new, to some people. I also know I’m not addressing every joke or facet of bi or LGBT+ rep even in the shows I’ve just listed. I’m not trying to, I mean none of us have all century. I just think it’s important to highlight what I feel is usually quite a strong difference between being laughed at and being laughed with, and that was the main idea of this post. It’s definitely not always as simple as the examples I’ve outlined above (eg. some of the Eleanor jokes are similar to jokes made in Pitch Perfect, in which I would say it’s about being laughed at), but I am just trying to put some words to some of my thought process on this sort of thing, particularly as I rewatch Friends and think about how far we’ve come with it!

One final time, because people in my inbox don’t seem to get it, I am not claiming to be ‘correct’. This is just an aspect of my feelings and opinions. I am also not trying to ‘speak over’ people who actually ID as bi; in fact, it was bi people saying ‘why can’t you let us have funny things’ that actually opened my eyes to a more comfortable bi-friendly interpretation of the treatment of Eleanor’s sexuality in the first place. I’m not trying to say “this is good rep, actually,” or “this is bad rep, actually.” As I said above, I think it’s both, and I think it’s more complicated than that, and most importantly, I am not actually trying to change anyone’s mind. If you resonate with this? Cool. If not, that’s fine. It’s my thoughts, my opinion. It’s not fact and I don’t want to tell anyone how to feel especially about their own rep.

With that in mind, if anyone is interested in chatting with me more about this sort of thing (by which I do not mean harassing me about it) or asking me what I mean by certain things, or for writing advice, or whatever, you’re welcome to do so - this is just the tip of the iceberg! I just wanted to put this out there in the world for whatever purposes it might come to. Thanks for reading!

[willel]

the-angry-pixie replied to your post “[[MOR] Why are people scared of Mike being a jerk once or twice. I...”

its because of purity and pedestal culture. fandom these days demand characters be perfect and without flaws. not realising that flaws dont make a character bad, they just make them human and relatable. and i personally love how characters handle themselves AFTER doing something "bad". do they apologise? are they stubborn? do they atone? do they not even realise it was bad and get educated??

Yes exactly. I was talking with Person-A reddit the other day. They seemed absolutely distressed that Mike could ever be the one in the wrong for something. Out of one end of their mouth, they’d say they don’t mind conflict. But every conflict I suggested they were unconvinced that Mike could be the one that causes even a little bit of the issue. I felt like a broken record. “If Mike hurts El or Will’s feelings... it’s not the end of the world? He can grow from it and it’ll be interesting to see how. And even if he isn’t the one who causes the issue, he can still grow from it and make things better.” 

I just couldn’t understand why this person was so upset that Mike would ever hurt Will or El’s feelings whether on accident or on purpose. 

And then I chatted with Person-B and we both agreed if Mike messes up (or even if he doesn’t mess up) Lucas could step in and be a good bro and help Mike set things right. It’s set up so perfect. Max is with El giving El some freedom to explore herself and what being a teenager is really like. And then Lucas can come up to Mike, withstand Mike’s occasional drama queen attitude, and maybe give him some sound advice. Lucas can be the mom friend/love counselor because why not??? It’d be so fun!!!

Person-A’s reaction? “Lucas was never there for Mike or Will.” Wtf. And in another responses to someone else? “Mike gets the most hatred out of this fandom while Lucas, Dustin, and El get off scott free.” 

WHAT

Anyway, I’m starting to see that kind of sentiment on Tumblr too and I just want speak to everyone here (under a read more lol). If you, fellow Stranger Things fans reading this, happen to have that opinion...

#1: Mike has never and will never get the amount of hated Lucas has gotten since 2016 for daring to not trust El right away in season 1. Do you know the amount of disrespect Caleb got because people had stupid vile hatred for a little boy who logically concluded maybe they shouldn’t trust a random shaved head girl they found out in the woods? 

#2: Most people, and by most I mean 99%, do not hate Mike. Mike has been rude in season 1 and season 2. Mike being rude to Will (or El, or anyone else) is not going to send a stampede of hatred toward your fav. Even if the amount of people who don’t hate Mike decreases from 99% to 98%, you’ll live. It will never compare to the vitriol this fandom has thrown at Lucas, Jonathan, Nancy, Eleven, or Joyce for bullshit reasons. Trust me. 

#3: There is NO WAY Mike has ever been criticized as much as Lucas or El. Or Jonathan and Nancy. Or Joyce. I just have the need to repeat that ok? What forums or blogs have you been hanging out on because that is straight up wrong. The only kid that’s pretty much skated most criticism even though he kinda messed up bad is Dustin. And hey, even that opinion may be skewed based on the places I visit to read ST stuff (which is Tumblr and reddit)

Mike is allowed to be criticized, and every criticism is not hatred. Take a chill pill and relax. No one is throwing hatches at Mike Wheeler. You’ll write or read a fanfiction about Mike messing up and making up for it, but can’t take it when it’s canon? Whatever they have planned for Mike, trust me, it might suck at first, but the payoff will be good I’m sure. Because it’s Mike Wheeler. 

One last thing, Stranger Things fan reading this, take this as a lesson. If you’re worried that a small mistake Mike makes might turn the fandom against him, ask yourself why? Think about the hatred maybe you might’ve been spreading over mistakes that you KNOW are small but you make them a big deal anyway for the sake of your ship or to put other characters down. Think about the purist culture that creates. 

If you’re worried that Mike making Will cry is going to damage his reputation in the fandom forever, that is because this is the environment this fandom has bred. 

Characters are allowed to make mistakes. There’s a threshold of badness imo and there’s only a few characters in Stranger Things that have met it. You know the ones. It isn’t Nancy who fell out of love with Steve over the course of a year and broke up with Steve. It isn’t Lucas who believed logic over something we all know is impossible in real life. It isn’t Joyce who of course would have hysterical reactions to her son being in danger. It isn’t Jonathan who despite making a pretty huge mistake accepted his punishment and made up for it. 

It’s not too late to change the fandom. So I repeat myself. If you’re worried about Mike getting hate over something that’s probably not going to be a big deal AND you’re one of the people who contributes to the dumb idea that any of our main ST characters have made an unforgivable mistake and has hated on them for it... then reevaluate yourself my friend. This is your chance. 

[proto-language]

Gentlemen Bastards and 1789 for the fandom thing?

Thank you so much!!

Gentleman Bastard Sequence

Favourite Male Character

Kinda generic but I have to say Locke Lamora, closely followed by the Sanza twins, who probably would’ve been my faves if they’d been allowed to live for more than half a book. Locke’s just such an interesting character: so smart and so stupid at the same time, a thief and occasionally a killer but also a pretty dedicated priest in his own way, able to talk his way out of just about any situation (and to hang on til Jean can save him when he can’t) but also awful at talking about his own feelings. As for Calo and Galdo; more than anything, they just made me laugh, but their care for Locke and Jean and Bug was so sweet, even when it manifested itself in the form of a threat to knock Locke out and drag him out of Camorr if they had to to get him out of danger.

Favourite Female Character

This one’s a little bit harder. I think I’d currently say Ezri Delmastro, but I’m also only halfway through Red Seas Under Red Skies (I’m like 99% sure things aren’t going to end well for her), and so haven’t actually met Sabetha yet. She’s so funny and scary and yet sweet, and frankly she and Jean deserve each other, and I can’t currently remember any specific thing she did because my memories of RSURS are weirdly foggy compared to TLOLL, but................ she. Also, I loved Nazca a lot, but again she didn’t really live long enough for me to get attached to her in the way I am to others.

Least Favourite Character

I mean, there are plenty of choices. The fucking Grey King/Capa Raza is one of them, obviously. Outside of obvious antagonists, frankly I’d have to say Sabetha right now. It’s not that I dislike anything about her or her character (or at least what I’ve heard of it), but just that it’s been a book and a half and we’ve heard Locke and Jean and the Sanzas and Locke again going on about her, and never had a single scene with her - I’m sure there’s probably a point to it, but I’m dense, and so it just annoys me.

Favourite Ship

Hmm, I guess I’d have to say Jean and Locke - I’m not actually particularly interested in shipping for this series? The fanart and fics for them are really cute though!

Favourite Friendship

Obviously just the whole dynamic of the Gentlemen Bastards - Jean, Locke, Calo and Galdo’s brotherhood, the way they work together and tease each other and ultimately would do anything for each other. The way they all mentor Bug, constantly take the piss out of him, but in the end he was becoming like a younger brother to them all too. The way that, in RSURS, Jean (eventually) knows exactly what to do to help Locke and get him to start living again. Yes, this is something I think about at least twice a day.

Favourite Quote

Oh man, there’s a lot. The whole liars and bastards ritual:“‘I only steal because my dear old family needs the money to live!’ [...]‘Liar!’ they chorused.‘I only steal because this wicked world won’t let me work an honest trade!’ Calo cried, hoisting his own glass.‘LIAR!’‘I only steal because I have to support my poor lazy twin brother, whose indolence broke our mother’s heart!’ Galdo elbowed Calo as he made this announcement.‘LIAR!’‘I only steal,’ said Jean, ‘because I’ve temporarily fallen in with bad company.’‘LIAR!’At last the ritual came to Bug; the boy raised his glass a bit shakily and yelled, ‘I only steal because it’s heaps of fucking fun!’‘BASTARD!’“

And its reprise before Locke has to pretend to be the Grey King, which is too long to reasonably put here. And, of course, “Nice bird, arsehole”, because Locke has never ever just kept his goddamn mouth shut.

Worst Character Death

Literally all of them!!!!!!!!!!! I’m fine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m totally over it all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In particular, Calo and Galdo and Bug, who I feel I can count as one, because it was one scene. Calo and Galdo because they were my favourites, and it was so damn unexpected - I genuinely thought it was some kind of joke or trick they’d played, until Bug was killed as well. Bug’s death was just so sad in every way: he was only a kid, he doubted his place among the Bastards, Locke was trying so so hard to reassure him and yet he couldn’t. Nazca gets an honourable mention, for both horrificness and shock factor

“This made me so happy you have no idea” moment

Again, the liars and bastards ritual, because it was one of the best moments of interaction between the five of them, and it was so funny and so heartwarming at the same time - pretty much the closest we got to “domestic” life, tied with some of the scenes from Locke’s childhood. Also, the very last few pages. Locke and Jean reflecting on their friendship, their losses, and how shit Locke’s real name is, whatever it may be (I’m still genuinely dying to know)

Saddest Moment

Tie between Calo/Galdo/Bug’s deaths, and the second-to-last-ish scene, after Locke’s killed the Grey King and Jean finds him, bleeding out, and Locke gets all “Jean you gotta leave me here to DIE I’ve MESSED UP I can’t GET UP so DON’T BOTHER” and Jean just picks him up and calls him an idiot.

Favourite Location

Is is valid to say all of Camorr? It’s just such an awesome setting, so vibrant and full of life and wonderful and horrible, and I only realised when I started reading RSURS that it feels like home, and I’m so sad we probably won’t get to go back there.

1789

Favourite Male Character

Mmm, I’m tempted to say Lazare - he’s just one of the most interesting, and easiest to speculate/imagine about, being neither a historical figure nor a main character. His relationship with Ronan is always interesting to think about too - it probably also helps that Nous Ne Sommes is highkey one of the best songs from the musical imo!

Favourite Female Character

Would it be bad if I genuinely said Charlotte? I love Olympe and I love Solène, but Charlotte’s just like... this random sassy child who interferes in Olympe and Ronan’s love life and apparently hangs out with Danton on the regular, and that’s just very iconic of her.

Least Favourite Character

I mean, I have a love-hate relationship with Ronan (like someone else we know. possibly a few people, to be honest. possibly everyone who knows him). Frankly, I see a lot of myself in his tendency to shout and get angry and accidentally mess up with his sister, but they’re also not sides of myself that I like. But I do admire his willingness to stand up and fight for something he believes in, which is something I lack despite all my anger, and I’m still pretty attached to him. I don’t know if he’s my least favourite, but he’s certainly most interesting to write about in that respect.

Favourite Ship

I’d say Lazare and Ronan, with Olympe and Solène a close second. Ronan and Lazare and Olympe and Solène are both couples with such different circumstances, and it makes it really interesting to think of the ways they would (or wouldn’t) work around and overcome that.

Favourite Friendship

Is it valid to say Danton and Charlotte, because that was honestly sweet. Otherwise, I feel Ronan and Olympe, despite being pretty bland romantically at best, would’ve made a really awesome friendship. Unfortunately, 1789: Les Amis de la Bastille, isn’t such a catchy title apparently

Favourite Quote

Not so much a quote, but the reading of the Declaration-Whose-Name-I-Can’t-Recall-Right-Now at the end generally makes me cry, as does “Je veux sourire à tes erreurs”, etc in Pour la peine, because I am Soft and Weak, despite Ronan and Olympe being such an uninspiring couple

Worst Character Death

Ronan/Olympe, I suppose? Did anyone else die?? No death actually affected me too much emotionally

“This made me so happy you have no idea” moment

Ronan and Lazare/Louis and Matthieu’s hug during Pour la peine, and generally all of Au palais royal

Saddest Moment

I’ve surprised myself, actually, by initially thinking of Je vous rends mon âme -  that’s my initial reaction, but I’m not actually sure what my saddest moment would be. As much as I love it, 1789 has never really emotionally killed me quite the same way MOR does?

Favourite Location

The staging of the storming of the Bastille is super cool, let’s be honest.

[tumblunni]

OH FUCK U GUYS SHOULD I BUY ALL THE KINDGOM HEARTS IN A ONCENESS???

Holy jesus i knew they did hd ps4 ports of the playstation games but they ALSO added all the final mix content that engkishspeaking fans never got during my childhood? And they ALSO remade chain of memories entireky in 3d with Very Animated Ice Dad?? And they ALSO remade BBS despite it not needing it nearly as much as the old games and thet ALSO remade friggin dream drop distance which came out on a goddamn current gen console?? Like they seriously just made a non portable version?? Now all the spinoffs are on the same console at last?? Why did you not just do this in the first place?? I mean the psp and 3ds games were basically ps2 equivelant graphics and disc space anyway...

Oh and fuckin ALLLLSOOOOO

Also the final mixes of all of those! Also a movie version of the plot of khux! And also Coded and Days, which is a really big shame cos Coded is indeed sparse enough on content to deserve it but Days was my FAVOURITE GAME and it sucks its the only one that didnt get remade! I mean its in the same spinoff category as bbs and com, its not a cheapo mess like coded. Nothing else in the series deserves to be shoved in the Coded bin, even khux at least has better plot even if the backtracking and lootbox shit makes it harder to get to it...

Anyway ALSO a random new sidestory with Aqua going thru like one dungeon or somethin?? I dunno?? Its like a glorified tech demo for kh3, its just 'hey fuckin look what we can do visually on a proper ps4 game' and wow how have i never fuckin heard of this it looks so pretty!! I mean i dont know if its even more than 5 hours or somethin but.. Pretty!! And apparantly you get unlockable costumes for her or somethin? I hope they keep that feature in kh3! Itd rock if it wasnt just the main character too, and we could dress up riku and kairi and goofy and donald and roxas and axel and every the friends :3 new secret to how they defeat xehanort: slap a bow on his damn head

ALSO ALSO

All of this is available in one big bundle pack for £90 which ALSO contains literally kh3. THIS IS HOW THEYRE HANDLING PREORDERS?? THATS SUCH A GOOD WAY TO HANDLE PREORDERS!! Get a discounted price on this new game but while youre waiting for it you get to enjoy an (also discounted) giant fuckin 300 hours memory lane compilation of every damn thing from the last 15 years in one beautiful updated package. Holy fuck its like they made this for ME SPECIFICALLY!this is the perfect way to get people back into the franchise who dropped off in The Great KH3 Wait cos they couldnt afford all the damn million portables needed to gather that Dank Lore. God fuckin hell it cost more than the price of this bundle just to play any one of those games individually on some stupid retro machine i bought exclusively for that one damn game. THAT PSP STILL ROTS IN MY KITCHEN CUPBOARD YO

So

So so so so so

Guys

Please give me permission to buy this

Or like please convince me not to waste my money if you think i'd waste my money??

I really just DONT KNOW! ive been out of the fandom for so long and my last experience was really hatting BBS and feeling horribly out of place as everyone else raved about it being the best thing ever. And i know NOTHING about what kh3 is gonna be or whether its even possible for me to get back into the fandom and like.. Care about it at all again. I just got fuckin fatigued with it and my teenage years were like me clinging on to the edge of a cliff by my fingernails begging everyone to believe me that Its Still Good, Honestly, Its Worth It while square enix is up there all LONG LIVE THE KING and they push me off. Into a stampede of PSPs. Somehow.

And then aaargh i know i literally only came back to the fandom because organization xiii fuckin eternally holds my heart in their lil grabby hands. It was indeed a good nostalgic moment remembering how i loved them! And getting a new appreciation for Vexen and being blown away by how much he should have been my favourite but i just never got to play COM as a kid and then when i played it as an adult all the way after bbs i ended up quitting before even getting to meet half the org cos this one stupid 'defeat 99 shadows jn 99 seconds' mission kicked my ass. I'M JUST NOT GOOD AT ACTION RPGS OKAY!

Aaaagh thats another Big Worry, yknow? Like asa kid i was Bad, as an adult i'm Barely Better , and as a both i never enjoyed beat em up thingies of any kind at all. And on top of that i was never big into disney, i never saw them as any sort of 'childhood magic' but just some naff cliche shit retelling public domain fairy tales in the safest way possible with a bunch of obnoxious celebrity cameos. Also lion king and snow white terrified me as a kid. Also i associated robin hood with my dead grandma. Also as a kid i couldnt appreciate good artistic ability or voiceacting, i was all about the story, yknow? And most of kh's adaptations are really rushed and barebones versions of an already shoddy story, without any of the visual splendor. ALSO i never saw any of the darker or more emotionally focused stuff like Hunchback and Beauty and the Beast until way after i quit playing kingdom hearts, oddly enough. Wtf beauty and thebeast is actually real good and looks so far beyond its time!! Wtf hunchback has my goddamn evil dad in it!! Why did i miss the only good didneys!! Why did snow white traumatize me and those didnt!!

ANYWAY the point im getting at is that im not inherantly predisposed to like.. Any of kingdom hearts's appeal at all. I didnt know half the disneys and i didnt have any hype for the others. None of my fave final fantasy games made it into it until the sequel and then never again after that. CMON I CANT JUST DEAL WITH ONE VIVI CAMEO Y'ALL! And i haaaate the genre and its an uphill struggle to play a game like that with my stupid inelegant sausage hands. So i just came for the story and then everything after the first game has been conspiring to ruin it for me, sheesh! I felt so much for that short concise self contained first episode and then i fall more and more out of love as they establish this status quo of everything being retconnable so dont bother get attatched to it. Blablabla the entire worldbuilding is different now and everyone was secretly someone else and please memorize a bunch of shit from fifty fuckin spinoffs and also time travel and cloning suddenly exist and ALSO Grandpa Onlyblackmanintheworld is generic motiveless evil and everything was him even of it looked like it was actually a sympathetic villain. *insert dio meme face*

So yeah now im just.. In it for the characters?? And the cute art style and monsters and lovely animations and big fanfic oc potentials stuff. But man even tho i had Big Feel for those things i was able to completely drop it all and forget about the series for years, that was just HOW BAD the kh3 drought was. Steven universe hiatus eat your heart out...

So ffff i dont even KNOW if i'll be able to get feels'd for these characters again or if they actually hold up to modern bunni standards of huggable. And i know all the ones i want to hug the most got like zero sympathy and all died horribly and were also retroactively revealed to be clone oldmanvirus somethingy and aaaaaagh. But also something something people say they all came back and got cured?? And this is why?? I am here?? Again?? And buying?? The thing??

Like man fuck i am already building it up so much in my head aaaa what if i dont actually love axel as much as i used to love axel and i dont love Grumply Science as much as i always love That Character Archetype seriously MAN how was he like THE ONLY ONE I DIDNT GET TO SEE AS A KID

Aaauuuuaggh gahhh like maybe this will reignite my passion for the series or maybe i'll just be all critical and dumb and waste all my moneys

Guys... What do??

[enrychan]

comparison mass effect andromeda / dragon age 2, yeah or nope? i hear that a lot around the fandom

short answer: nope

extremely long answer [lots of MEA negativity and Personal Opinions™ under the cut, you’ve been warned. Please don’t read if you enjoyed the game and/or you are tired of hearing negative things about it, believe me i totally understand the feeling]:

alright i’m not going to act like DA2 wasn’t disappointing because yes, it was. especially after a game like DAO which remains among the best RPGs i’ve ever played. so I would compare MEA to DA2 because they are both disappointments. that said, i still disagree with the part of the fandom that says they are similar because of the “smaller story” and/or “the focus on the characters”. DA2 is a smaller story than DAO, but it’s laser focused on the delivery of that story within a three chapters arc, and through its characters. Exploration is almost non-existent and the fetch quests are few and so unimportant you can skip them without missing anything. The companions are the true narrative and emotional center, and each one of them has a personal mission during each one of the three chapters of the story. Some of them (especially Anders and Fenris) represent a piece of the problems and politics of Thedas and force Hawke to make decisions regarding those problems. Their growth and fate depend almost entirely on their relationship with Hawke and on the choices of the player.

On the other hand, MEA is all over the place. it gives me a number of huge maps filled with nothing but fetch quests that don’t make the narrative proceed in any way and are entirely forgettable. The game also gives me a humongous researching/developing system for weapons and armor with an absolutely ridiculous and confusing as hell UI, which requires three different currencies (milky way tech, kett tech, remnant tech), that you have to collect by scanning things, just to research the projects for said weapons and armor, not to mention the materials to actually build the fucking things - which come in like six or seven different levels, so if you want to update your weapon or armor to the next level you have to gather the materials all over again. That’s insane. At some point I just skipped that mess altogether and went through the rest of the game with my shitty level 2 gear because i was sick and tired of scanning and gathering and researching just to discover lately that i didn’t like how my new weapon worked and i wasted time for nothing. Obviously that meant the combat was much harder for me than it needed to be. There is a more in depth analysis on the researching/developing system in this review, if you’re interested. I’m not going to delve into the ridiculous implications of having to scan the rebels’ tech on Kadara to get milky way tech currency, like on the Nexus they don’t have, I don’t know, archives or books on their own technology?

I’ll also add that while the combat is probably the best part of the game, and it’s much more dynamic than in the trilogy, it’s still much less fun for me because they took away the option to order your companions to use a certain power, preventing me from planning any tactic or combo. this also had the side effect of creating another layer of separation between my Ryder and her companions; like there weren’t enough already, with the mediocre writing and everything else going wrong in this game. Basically I always fought like I was alone and most time i actually was because my two companions were KO and i didn’t care, as they were almost useless to me.

I should probably add that the quest design in MEA is atrocious, the worst of every bioware game i’ve played - and i played most of them. for almost every mission i was required to go to a certain planet, than back to the ship, than back to a planet, then back to the ship… each time going through unskippable cutscenes and loading screens. Luckily for me when i played the game they already patched the galactic map, letting me skip the cutscenes of the voyage between planets, which are very pretty at first but at the fifteenth time they start to really grate on your nerves. And despite the patch, the voyage is still very slow compared to, say, ME3. I cannot even imagine the pain of the day 1 players who were forced to suffer through those unskippable cutscenes hundreds of times. Some missions (the worst ones imo) require you to follow a signal through more than two solar systems, reading a series of five or six “false positives” or whatever, before finally finding the “real one” and conclude the mission; an utter pain in the ass and a complete waste of time. I understand that MEA had huge problems during its development, but this kind of stuff has nothing to do with those problems and everything to do with artificially extending your gaming time with boring activities, just to say that the game is “100 hours long”.

At this point I want to make clear that I would have forgiven everything - the fetch quests, the confusing crafting system, the awful quest design - if Bioware gave me a good protagonist and/or interesting companions. Not even a good story really, I didn’t even care about that, just give me a fully flashed out crew with clear motivations and backgrounds and I’ll be happy. That’s basically the reason why I forgive every shortcoming in DA2 - and there are a loooot of those. But nope, Andromeda fails there too.

With the exception of Jaal and to a lesser extent, Cora, the loyalty missions of the companions are completely disjointed from the main story and universe in which they are set and don’t make us understand more of this new galaxy in any way. This lack of relevance would still be ok if the relationship between the companions and the protagonist and/or the protagonist’s choices actually mattered (like in DA2, where the companions’ loyalty determines who lives and who dies in the end) but unfortunately they don’t, and i mean at all.

Speaking of the protagonist, again the comparison with Hawke doesn’t hold. Hawke could have three very distinct personalities which made them somewhat memorable, for good or bad. Ryder on the other hand has two or more kind of replies that are almost always the same, just with slightly different wording (as this video says: do you know the difference between “now we are building again” and “this is vital to our progress”? - not that i agree with everything said in that review but here i agree completely). Ryder fares even worse if compared to other bioware protagonists like the Warden, who had a wide range of reactions that in some cases could even include outright killing their interlocutor. Combine this with the almost complete lack of choices and/or consequences in MEA and you get the most forgettable and boring protagonist of a bioware game to date; and yeah, I’m including the Inquisitor, because while the choices of dialogue in DAI were similar to those in MEA, at least the facial animations were decent so you could have a connection with your own protagonist on some level.

To be clear, it’s not lost to me what the original intention was with Ryder’s character arc. Ryder is specifically written as inadequate, uncharismatic and sometimes incompetent, because they weren’t the intended heir to the title of Pathfinder. They kinda found themselves thrown into that role and had to adapt. On its own that’s not a bad character arc at all. On the contrary, it could have been even more interesting than Shepard’s, who was a leader even before the first mission in ME1. Unfortunately there is no actual character arc for Ryder, only premises. Ryder never becomes more charismatic or assertive during the story, in fact they make very few choices at all, and even those few have little to no consequences both in the main story and in their relationships with the other characters. Ryder is just kinda there, reacting with various shades of tone to other characters actually making choices. Again compare that to Hawke’s arc, since we are discussing whether or not the two games resemble each other. In DA2 there is a simple premise (Hawke is a poor refugee who runs from the Blight and has to survive in an unforgiving city like Kirkwall) and a very clear payoff (Hawke becomes one of the central political figures in Kirkwall, while ironically still not being able to save their own family and, possibly, friends). With Ryder there is a clear premise but no payoff. At least not on a personal level, which is important in creating a connection with our character. Of course the story goes on anyway, but it doesn’t seem to actually affect my protagonist or change them in any way, so it remains almost irrelevant to me.

Everything said until now would be already experience breaking on its own, but it becomes even more remarkable in Ryder’s specific case, because Ryder comes with an extra passenger, aka SAM - and SAM is a very invasive extra passenger. To the point that most of the time you’re convinced it’s not actually Ryder the one in charge of that brain, or of the Pathfinder team. 99% of the time it’s SAM who solves problems and tells you and the others what to do. Sometimes is becomes frankly annoying. I’m not even talking about the vaults. You have to solve a murder case? SAM doesn’t just gather the evidence, oh no, he also tells you exactly what the evidence means and how it must be interpreted, like Ryder is too stupid to connect the dots. You intervene in a beating or a robbery on Kadara, either to stop it or just to understand what’s going on? SAM tells you not to get involved. And guess what? Ryder does exactly that, instead of, idk, telling SAM to shut the fuck up? SAM also becomes downright unbearable on Voeld and on Elaaden where it keeps telling you that the temperature is rising or falling or that it’s within acceptable range. I don’t know if they finally patched the thing but god was that annoying.

In any case my point is, since it’s actually SAM and not Ryder that does all the work, you have the distinct feeling that you are not actually the protagonist in this story, just a vessel. That could have been a cool premise if, for example, Ryder leaned too much on SAM and then halfway through the story it was taken away or shut down. That could have been a dramatic moment of growth for Ryder, where they were forced to finally rely on their own strenght and actually become the Pathfinder humanity needed. But again: cool premise, no payoff. SAM is taken away only near the end of the story and Ryder almost dies because of that. And even when they can’t access their SAM during the final mission, there is still the SAM inside the other Ryder sibling’s brain to tell them and you what to do. In short, Ryder is almost entirely dependent on SAM throughout the entire story, making them even less memorable as a protagonist, if possible.

Unfortunately, the same could be said of most of the characters that populate Andromeda and particularly the Tempest. Jaal is relevant only because he is an angara, the only new friendly species introduced in MEA (another disappointment), but he is otherwise completely forgettable on his own. It’s repeated over and over again how the angara have an extremely open behaviour towards each other, expressing feelings without many constraints like we do, but the problem is, without good and complex facial/body animations, that kind of behaviour is hard if not impossible to deliver. I think that’s one of the main problems with Jaal’s character. The other main problem is of course the writing, always generic and kind of vague. For example when you ask him about his relationship with the Moshae, he tells you that she “inspires” and he “loves her”, but he doesn’t give you anything that actually communicates that inspiration and that love, even only through the tone of his voice (has anyone given some direction to these voice actors?). It’s only telling without showing. Compare that to Dorian talking about Felix, for example. With just one image (Felix sneaking him treats from the kitchen while he was studying) he gives you an idea of both the person that Felix was and his relationship with him.

Cora is similar to Ryder in the fact that her character has good premises, but no payoff. She has two main character traits: she was trained as an asari commando and has great admiration for them; and she was the second in command under Alec Ryder, so she should have become the Pathfinder, but she didn’t. Aside from the fact that in my opinion she repeats that she was trained as an asari commando a little too many times, like she wanted to be 200% sure we got the message, and that becomes kind of annoying after a while… if we take a look at her character arc we see that there is a great disappointment when she finds out that the asari heroine that she admired the most lied about the death of the asari Pathfinder for her own personal gain. This should have set in motion a series of consequences on her character journey similar to those Liara experienced when she found out that the Protheans weren’t actually the ethereal, moral beings she thought they were, but instead they were conquerors and imposed a totalitarian regime on the galaxy. But while Liara at first gets angry and sad and then she slowly accepts to re-examine her own previous work under a new light, no relevant change can be seen within Cora’s character. More on this comparison can be found in this excellent video. In a similar way, her other main trait (the fact that she was the designated successor to Alec but she didn’t get the Pathfinder title in the end), also doesn’t have any payoff. In fact she is just slightly disappointed/irritated at first but she gets over it very quickly (even if Ryder is clearly not the charismatic figure humanity needs) leaving little to no consequence on her relationship with Ryder. In these conditions, the scenes in which she talks about her hobby ring hollow because I didn’t previously build my relationship with her on anything substantial, so I don’t really care about her plants.

I’d say the only companion who gets a very simple but complete character arc is Peebee, because she starts as kind of an outsider in the group, extremely afraid of commitment (the writers made sure it was super obvious with the “I live in an escape pod” thing), and in the end she learns to relax a little and trust Ryder and the rest of the crew more. Unfortunately I also found her annoying as hell since her first appearance, so that didn’t do a thing for me.

I could go on with the other companions, but this reply would become a bible. I’ll just add that the “good premises - no payoff” thing includes non-companion characters as well, Reyes for example. For the first 40/45 hours I didn’t romance anyone because, well, I found every possible LI either boring, paper thin or annoying af. That’s something I never experienced in any other Bioware game, but hey there’s a first time for everything I guess. Then I went to Kadara, I met Reyes and honestly he was a breath of fresh air. I’m not saying he was particularly deep or complex, but at least he was somewhat charismatic and charming (also, that accent), so I decided to romance him. Unfortunately both his character and his romance get no satisfying closure, as there is literally no change whatsoever, external or internal, if you let him kill Sloane; and you can’t really confront him on the fact that he used you and lied to you, even if you romanced him so it should have been kind of a big deal. bigger deal. whatever.

I’m not preteding that something like this never happened before. Speaking about the Mass Effect trilogy, Jacob is the most infamous example of boring, not entirely flashed out companion. Moving to the most recent Dragon Age, I’d say Blackwall also suffers from something similar, since he has good premises (she is vague and evasive at first because he’s lying about his true identity) but little payoff (even after the big reveal he remains pretty vague and generic about himself and his own story, nor he behaves even slightly different than before), though he’s still more interesting than the majority of the MEA crew. The point is, some shortcomigs are normal and expected and, if counter-balanced with other high points, they can be forgiven. But Andromeda didn’t shine in any way. Outside of combat the gameplay was boring and clunky, basically go from point A to point B, scan stuff, gather stuff, repeat. The sudoku puzzles were boring af and honesly ridiculous. No one ever solved them before you? is everyone in the Heleus cluster a moron?

In fact, the whole foundation of the story is that no one in the Heleus cluster could gain access to the vaults and activate them, despite having known and studied them for centuries. One day a complete stranger from another galaxy comes and solves everything in literally five minutes. And I’m supposed to believe that. I mean my suspension of disbelief can stretch a lot, but this is a little too much for me. Also that makes the angara seem like a bunch of idiots, which is not exactly flattering for the only new friendly species we meet in Andromeda.

The writing in general is poor to say the least. I understand that the writers were included too late into the project due to the huge problems experienced during the earlier stages of development, but some of these mistakes are super basic, like writing from the POV of the omniscient narrator instead of the POV of the characters. So we get dialogues in which the characters know that they are in no real danger even though they have been shot, they are about to get shot, they risk getting spaced, and so on and so forth.

I get that the writers were aiming at something completely different from the grim, fatalistic atmosphere of ME3, but the problem is: if the script doesn’t take itself seriously, why should I take it seriously.I mean I’m all for jokes and lighthearted moments, there were a lot of those in the trilogy and i loved them (most of them), but the entire MEA script doesn’t seem to take itself seriously. The stakes SHOULD be high - the Pathfinders have the responsibility of 100.000 souls on their shoulders - but not for a moment you feel that burden, that responsibility.

Even the real reason of the voyage itself (escaping the Milky Way before the Reapers annihilate every advanced organic society) is kept secret from the player until you gather all the “memory triggers” your father left behind. Until then the whole Initiative - a huge, extremely dangerous and exceedingly expensive project - is presented like a fun stroll through a new galaxy, just because “we are explorers” and we like new beginnings and whatnot. This is another incomprehensible narrative choice that doesn’t make sense, no matter how you look at it. If you played the trilogy, the Reaper threat is certainly no surprise to you so the “plot twist” doesn’t work. If you’re a newcomer to the series you don’t even know what a Reaper is so the “plot twist” still doesn’t work. Not to mention that for some reason Alec Ryder’s “memory triggers” are scattered on planets he never even visited in his life. Instead of placing them somewhere among his things, idk, family pictures, books or music he loved, where it made sense to find them?

And even after you discover everything about the Reapers, and that everyone back in the Milky Way may have been dead for the last 600 years, there is again no consequence in the story or in the dialogues whasoever. Not even Ryder seems to be particularly affected by the terrible news. But we should be happy because we found out that their mom is still alive! Too bad we don’t care about her because we don’t know her. Exactly like in the beginning we didn’t care about Alec’s death because we didn’t know him. Those are extremely basic narrative mistakes. The whole experience is on this same, boring, safe, non-consequential level. Bioware is so much better than that.

(sorry for the long rant. I had a lot to say)

[lemedy]

QUICK THOUGHTS ON THE FLASH 3.23: ‘IRIS WEST HAD BETTER NOT FUCKING DIE OR I QUIT EVERYTHING’

IRIS WEST DIDN’T DIE AND I DON’T HAVE TO QUIT ANYTHING

My heart at the way Joe immediately collapses in grief and shock before the big reveal.

Speaking of that reveal, the way that Tom Cavanagh who is very briefly playing as Iris (WORDS I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SAY), really nails the way she picks up the gun to shoot Savitar, realises immediately what’s happened, and is overcome with obvious horror and probable guilt. His quiet ‘oh no’ is very Iris and not HR – it’s a small thing, and it’s really fucking nicely done.

THE DRUMSTICKS. I KNOW IT’S MEANT TO BE SAD AND ALL, BUT I CRACKED UP. THE HIPSTER DRUMSTICKS REVEAL ALL.

I am again trying to think of something I care less about than HR and Tracey’s doomed romance. I am not coming up with much.

That being said, I am super on board with Anne Dudek sticking around because I have had a crush on her since her House days. Coincidence that my interest in House died when her character did? I think not.

Just assume at any point I am Joe and none of this time travel fuckery makes any sense. Just have the characters say ‘paradox’ a lot and there’s your scene.

So unpopular fandom opinion and all, but I’ve never really felt ‘the original Star Labs trio’ of Barry-Cisco-Caitlin. I know there are fans out there that really dig it and feel like that dynamic’s been missing since season one – but I’ve never gotten the same vibe from these three that I have, say, Buffy-Xander-Willow from BVTS. The problem has always been the Barry-Caitlin relationship, in that it’s kind of….well, it exists, and of course they care about each other. But it’s not a hugely strong connection, and I’d say that for Barry it goes Iris->Joe->Cisco->Wally->Caitlin in terms of other characters he cares about (obviously not including his parents).

My point being not to shit on the people who are into that ship, but to say that I do think the show has really sold Cisco and Caitlin’s relationship which is truly excellent, and I do fully believe that it’s by threatening Caitlin that Savitar could get Cisco to even consider helping him.

BARRY SAVING EVIL BARRY WITH THE POWER OF LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. SOMEONE WAS CLEARLY A SAILOR MOON FAN.

Okay, but who is going to pander to my self-indulgent ass and write a POTO AU with Barry x Iris x Savitar

“HE STOLE MY FUTURE” Tracey, look, I’d love for you to stick around so this show can raise its number of main female characters to three, but sweetie. You knew HR for about two seconds. Sure, he was cute and funny and all, but I guarantee you after date five you would have been pretending to visit your grandmother for the next six months and throwing his drumsticks out the window. You’ll be fine. Date Caitlin instead.

There is seriously not enough Wally in this episode, and I am 99% sure Keiynan had some other shit going on because he has barely been in the last few episodes.

Also Keiynan is one of maybe five Australian actors on US television who didn’t start out as a baby actor on Neighbour or Home & Away. Truly he is exceptional.

“Because we are connected. Jackass”. I love Cindy.

It is good, correct and important that Cisco a) finally reached the Caitlin in Killer Frost b) let her make the choice about taking the cure and c) some of Caitlin came back and knocked Savitar flat on his ass because Cisco is her biggest connection and her best friend and no one is touching his pretty nerd ass with her around.

God, Caitlin’s so much more interesting this way. They finally made me really care about her. Took nearly three seasons, but we’re there.

Yeah okay, I’m done with the Power Rangers reject. Let’s just end it already.

Oh and hey, Dawson’s dad. Yay to see him again.

I was never sold on the Caitlin/Julian relationship, so I give little fucks about that apparently being over. Frankly he should be happy that he’s survived the season, given her track record. I’d like Draco to stick around, because I do really like his dynamic with the team, especially Cisco.

IN THE TRADITION OF KELLY TAYLOR, CAITLIN CHOOSES NEITHER BRANDON OR DYLAN AND CHOOSES HERSELF.

Christ, I am old.

Barry and Iris continue to be one of five heterosexual couples I give a fuck about. LET THEM BE HAPPY.

THREE SECONDS LATER: BARRY GOES TO SPEED FORCE HEAVEN.

GODDAMNIT SHOW, I LIVED THROUGH THIS SHIT ON BUFFY SEASON FIVE WHY DO I NEED TO DO THIS AGAIN.

DOES THIS MEAN CISCO’S GOING TO SACRIFICE A DEER NEXT SEASON TO BRING BARRY BACK.

I APPROVE OF NONE OF THIS.

Oh my god, Candice is killing me with this. Like it’s stupid as hell and comic booky and of course he’ll be back next season, but she is selling it so well.

LET BARRY AND IRIS BE HAPPY NEXT SEASON GODDAMNIT.

[dianaagron]

hello darkness my old friend i’ve come back on tumblr once again (after like one month of not uploading anything or reblogging or answering messages for that matter because im a shit person who is actually very busy)

once upon a time this was called the your fave crack edits maker watched the thing earlier review but let’s be honest im not editing a flying fuck lately so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  (here are part 1, part 2 AND part 3 tho)

warnings: i talk like a sailor, i haven’t been in touch with the fandom or with the whole franchise for like months and if you’re not that interested in the actual plot of the thing and you’re just watching out of love for the characters, there’s a 99% chance i’m even more disinterested than you (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:·ﾟ✧

basically if you’re looking for in-depth analysis and metas yo this ain’t the post for you my friend

good luck reading lmao

it’s a truth universally acknowledged that if a tri movie is coming out, tumblr user dianaagron (clara for friends) won’t know about it until the day after, when she’ll wake up and check twitter after 84 years of not logging in and realize that yesterday was the day. actually, this time i remembered the episodes were out the same day they were released, but still it was because of good ol’ twitter, because with all the mess that’s going on with me (part of the reason why i’m never here) even if i happened to check at the beginning of the week when soushitsu was coming out, i still managed to completely forget about it in the span of a fucking day. also, i’m fucking pissed because i’ve always watched the thing after downloading the various episodes because that way i have all my stuff and i can go back and easily find caps and other stuff like that but nope not this time because i can’t fucking find a single torrent and i’m refusing to download subbed episodes because a) it’s gonna take so long to direct download something and b) what use are subbed episodes when i know i’d be replacing them with unsubbed ones as soon as i can find working dls (this is a cry of help: tell me where i can download the episodes, im dying, thank you)

one thing to take into account: i was extra pissed for various reasons yesterday night when i watched the first two episodes, so i’m not really sure if that’s why, compared to the shit that i had to deal with in real life, the episodes (in the contrary to all expectations) weren’t bad at all. truth is i actually liked this installment? INCREDIBLE, I KNOW. of course it had its nonsense moments and parts that made me roll my eyes (im buying pizza for everyone who can guess which were those moments) and other negative parts, but i really preferred movie 4 to movie 3. i’m guessing this is an unpopular opinion because i remember everyone was so happy with kokuhaku back in the day and i was the only soul going like lmao i didnt even cry but idk, i liked this one, it wasn’t bad. btw, i said i’m guessing mine could be an unpopular opinion because i’m writing this sorry excuse of a review before reading anything else cause i don’t want to be influenced :)))))

(save me ive written 500 words on nothing) (meanwhile i finally found torrent links) (and i had to pause the review because i ended up going out yesterday night so this is me talking one day later from what you’ve read before)

once again, i feel like nothing happened in the course of these four new episodes. now, i know i’m extremely slow when it comes to get plot points and all that (not because i’m that stupid, thank you very much, but because of my attention span varies from 1 second to 2 and a half so it’s hard for me to recall what happened in the previous installments unless i go and rewatch all of them - thing i won’t ever do because this girl right here is lazy as fuuuck) but if you sit down and think about what was revealed, you get close to nothing lmao.

winning points of the movie (for me):

not too many extreme closeups like in the previous installment. it flowed better, the animation quality wasn’t as terrible as it was in the previous four episodes (im saying this just by quickly looking at the caps i took - while in the other i had so many ugly caps here they all look presentable and usable) (i say this from the point of you of someone who makes edits of course, i dont have the knowledge of an animator lmao), the majority of the shots with mimi, which are the ones that i pay the most attention to, are super pretty, but also those with taichi’s!!! his design was super on point, i have many caps im probably gonna insert later of just him looking hella attractive, and sora!!! omg sora was so fucking beautiful in these episodes i was so :)))) yay for nice designs, they make me happy.

the lack of you know who for basically two episodes. it was so good, so nice, so calming. i was loving life and life was loving me.  

HOW THEY HANDLED THE TAIORATO!!!! if you know me or if you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know this already, but i’m saying this in case i have new readers (HI) or, y’know, to swipe some dust off: i’m not the biggest fan of the main three. that comes from the fact that michi is my otp and i love taishiro probably too much for my own sanity, so i tend to be on the taichi/koushiro/mimi & yamato/sora/jyou side of things (which is like, super unpopular because if it’s not taiorato then it’s yamichi, so you get why my life is a constant struggle). anyway, thing is that i actually loved the interactions between the three? it was light and it felt super real, it could easily be relatable. it was also clear to me that taichi’s and yamato’s roles in sora’s life were blatantly different and i also loved to see how the two of them while being in the same situation reacted differently, but i’m gonna touch this topic later. overall tho, good job on the dynamic between those three. im clapping my hands, i wasn’t excited about it when the movie poster came out five months ago but i’m so happy that they made me love the parts with taichi, yamato and sora.

it wasn’t heavy on fight scenes. i know. I KNOW. but as i’ve said, i’m not the average digimon fan so i’m happy with my bonds developing and less fights and all that stuff :))))

meiko exceeding all expectations and NOT CRYING for all four episodes. such sorcery. 

on the other hand tho

y’all, who the fuck is that ygdradude? am i supposed to know? did i miss a focal point? am i that disinterested in the plot to miss a fucking focal point????

also what the fuck was that part with i dont know his name, the teacher, with the white space shit and the talk about libra. what is libra, who is libra, what the hell, what the fuck

pedo gennai dear lord i felt so fucking uncomfortable 

remember when i said meiko didn’t cry? she didn’t cry because they replaced her with her partner and made meicoomon whine for 3/4 of the movie instead 

the opening scene ????????????????  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ artistic choice ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the fact that they basically wasted half an episode (the last one) on three evolutions. they really need to cut down the timing of those, for real

i can’t think of anything else rn 

they could’ve kept meiko away for other three episodes if it was me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

then again they could’ve just kept meiko away from tri in general if it was me

warning: i have 98 screenshots ready to use, i’m gonna try to cut some stuff because that’s too many, but here we go 

they were pulling some hikari shit right here (as well as some charlie chaplin sorcery for the whole sequence)

that’s what i’m saying

OKAY LISTEN, that fucking egg with the circular thing under it made me highkey hope for some sort of magic shit happening and bringing the 02 kids back because it looks like a digimental egg or however those things were called. like my hope was so highkey that i fucking ended up dreaming the night between me watching the first two episodes and the latter two that miyako was back. unfair. i hated it. i want my kids back. 

taichi being handsome: exhibit A

mimi being beautiful: exhibit A

sora being incredibly pretty yet sad: exhibit A (i told you guys the design was extra better compared to the last movie) 

random caps taken merely for the fact that taichi and mimi were next to each other looking aesthetically pleasing to the eye  (also do you ever cry about the skin tone difference between these two because i tend to do that a lot) 

i can’t stand them hahahahah

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) frankly they could’ve shown yamato in the next scene so that way the foreshadowing would’ve been blunt and people wouldn’t still be bitching. or maybe they would anyway lmao. also look at the girls being all pretty together im so :))))

just pretty mimi and taichi + koushiro talking i was :)))) i love them all i love my kids, especially kou when he goes on about his tea

and i also FINALLY appreciated a koumi scene!!!! it happened!!!!! honestly, as i’ve said, i’m not entirely sure if it was because i was facing so much rl shit right before i watched the thing or what, but this time i was just enjoying what tri had to offer me without caring too much about other stuff like “ugh they’re pushing the fanservice with ship baits” and such. this was just plain cute, mimi was terribly in character, koushiro as well, and it was just the kind of interaction that i love. i love my kids pt. 2974521248 like, of course i would’ve loved for mimi to feed one to taichi, but i’m still somehow sane and i know they’ll never show something like that in canon? but still, it’s nice cause i know how differently from koushiro taichi would’ve reacted in a setting like this and i just can use it in my fanon world. goodbye.

this is why i’m team taichi, yamato

taichi being handsome: exhibit B

JUST IMAGINE HIM LOOKING AT MIMI LIKE THAT BEFORE THEY KISS IM SO ??????????? im gonna make a manip just wait for it

AH YES The Interaction™ also known as one of my fave parts of the movie lmao but it’s so nice whenever mimi talks it’s taichi the first one to answer im happy goodbye

cutie patootie be looking at his cute patoote

legit thought palmon was going to transform into sailor palmoon or something

why so ugly good lord

AAAHHHHHH!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHH THIS!!!! THIS THING RIGHT HERE!!!!  let me put it into context in case you don’t remember: this was taichi asking his LEGIT CANON BEST FRIEND IZUMI KOUSHIRO TO NOT PUSH HIMSELF TOO MUCH AND REST. can anything be as beautiful as this? this made my heart defrost, im alive, y’all need to reevaluate your “taichi and yamato are bffs” business because. of. this. right. here. (im slamming my fist on the table, in case you were wondering) 

hikari being smug af with takeru tho, that gave me life as well. also jyourato sitting next to each other <33333

AND THE SISTER IN LAWS <3333333 under a blanket that it’s so mimi’s 

penis shot

taichi you fool...

a word on the so called triangle that of a triangle it has nothing but whatever: it was clear to me that yamato and taichi hold two very different spots in sora’s life, while both being important to her. there are multiple times when we see yamato trying to make taichi break the ice and talk to sora, and that’s because he is her best friend, so he should be the one who is supposed to know how to make her feel better at all times. another thing i noticed was how it was yamato to be the most sensitive to sora (unsurprisingly so): you see it especially when taichi is busy with agumon and he’s still monitoring sora, worried

here

and of course this whole exchange was beautiful, and i don’t have much else to add. truly iconic. 

[insert penis joke here]

can we please take a moment to appreciate sora and mimi? they are so important

DA BACKHUG DOE guess who also watches kdramas lmao

minute 18 of episode 2 say goodbye to all your dreams of greatness 

CRYING HE’S SO PRECIOUS I LOVE HIM SO MUCH imagine him holding a baby 

i’m too lazy to go back and take another screenshot, but jyou with both palmon and patamon holding onto him was something else

🙄  🙄  🙄  even here mere expression makes me 🙄  but at least she wasn’t crying

i wasn’t

actually, as studies say, mimi is, in fact, a libra

why you know who tho when we all know it was sora who was supposed to be in the picture

why you know who pt. 2 

GET OFF THE RAILS YOU FUCKING FUCKS IS2G THEY FUCKING WAITED UNTIL THE LAST MOMENT TO GET OFF LIKE YAMATO AND KOUSHIRO U PRICKS IF YOU DON’T SEE THE OTHER TWO MOVING WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING, A HAND FROM THE SKY? THE TEA TO BE SERVED????

the fluff tho

the contrast between hikari being the calm one and having accepted the situation vs taichi still being unsure and lost was nicely done by making her facing the light and him staying in the shadows, good job with the cinematography im clapping my hands

F U C K I N G  W H Y  no, but seriously, i was already uncomfortable before with him being on top of her but this just just like yikes to a whole new level like i just don’t get it???? was it necessary???? just ew

i love mimi and the lowkey koukari pass it on

who the fuck is ygdrasil tho

ah yes, chosen children be so fit, they be running from huge monsters wanting to kill them off, they be escaping just with their two legs. incredible. 

digimon au: cruise OR digimon au: titanic (spoiler: meiko is jack) 

tag urself im jyou speaking the words of wisdom

takeru was cute here

weird lighting aka good luck to those who gif these scenes lmao

teach me this choreography guys don’t keep it to urselves 

this was some weird shit right here let me tell you

ah yes again with the superhuman strength, surviving after a fucking huge machine slams you repeatedly against a mountain or smth like that

ur the one saying it gennai get a fucking grip 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! MY JYOURA HEART, JYOU BEING DASHINGGGG how can they not believe him when he says he has a girlfriend i mean have you seen the dude? he’s going to be a doctor, he can fucking catch a girl falling from 20 meters up in the sky i meAN 

THE REAL HIGHLIGHT OF THE MOVIE. GALS BEING PALS. (for real tho, i felt so blessed? it’s in moments like these that i just feel all the love for this anime, im so :)))))) )

and jyou comforting sora as welllllll~~~~

and that’s it with the pics you guys!!! a couple of further points

if they didn’t waste half an episode on three evolutions, they could’ve just gone further with the plot, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

im not saying meiko grew on me, because i still want her out, but i can deal with her if he doesn’t cry as much as he did in the first three installments 

what’s up with that ygdradude and libra talk is my question

they still need to address the 02 kids mystery and i need my babies back 

the triangle is not, in fact, a triangle

i love my kids 

and the episodes weren’t bad, come on. they went a little further with the plot by showing that the chick whose name i don’t remember had a partner that died and so that was the reason for the reboot, so they did give some answers, and at least the pacing of this movie was faster than in the previous one. 

also, as i’ve said, idk what’s the popular opinion but i loved sora’s arc, it was nicely done and i don’t have anything to bitch about (except for meiko’s unnecessary presence). i felt for her and i wanted to wrap a blanket around her and just give her all the love.

and that’s it i think? 

im blocking out the memories of the scenes with gennai because im feeling super uncomfortable whenever i do

we’re talking first kiss between wang so and hae soo in scarlet heart levels of uncomfortable

the ending sequence was so cute <3333 especially sora and piyomon, they were my faves closely followed by taichi and agumon

and im done

thank you for reading

i’ll probably go back to my hibernation now 

ily all 

if you got to this point i’m truly buying you a pizza 

and let’s not forget the winning screencap, you can use it every day at every hour, every moment in your life