#i want a character with a different kind of neutral stance. something like

[kiyo-cant-write]

I kind of forgot I did ask you about your favorite character and dorm. Sadly is not align, but is okay. I do want to request for Jack 👉👈🥺

About his chef card, imagine his crush is the judges and trying to impress them. While they would like to see Jack perform.

jack trying to impress his crush in culinary crucible ✧･ﾟ

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Thank you for requesting! I actually love Jack!! I love the whole cast a lot and while he isn't my bias, I think he's cute. So this was fun to write. I like the concept of beastmen but I am a dog owner so xD

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Summary: Jack is participating in the Culinary Crucible with his childhood friend, Vil Schoenheit. To his surprise, one of their judges is... [Name]??? Things just got interesting.

TW/CW: None

Notes: gender-neutral reader, the reader is Yuu/Ramshackle Prefect, they/them pronouns for the reader, the reader is implied to be a first-year

Guest Stars: Vil Schoenheit, Rook Hunt, Idia Shroud

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Jack Howl

Jack was already going to try hard, now he's trying harder.

Vil actually has to stop Jack and tell him to breathe.

Jack is appreciative to have an upperclassman paired with him for the Culinary Crucible because he is sweating bullets at the idea of [Name] eating his food as a judge. What are the odds?

Will they like it? What will they say to him?

He wanted to do a good job for them.

Vil comments that his tail is wagging up a storm.

Jack denies it but Vil just laughs softly like the radiant upperclassman he is, knowing Jack's feelings for [Name].

Jack is trying so hard that he's almost messing up the recipe.

He is making macarons and Vil says they are hard to do.

He really wants [Name] to like them.

Jack always strives to be his best and this is no different.

He will impress [Name] with his awesome cooking skills!

Vil thinks that it's going to be quite some time before those two realize they like each other. All the same, though, he's sure they will be happy when they do.

Jack had been starring off into space for far too long and Vil wasn't having any of it. He had joined the Crucible to learn more about cooking, to see if it was something he could do while maintaining his beauty. It was hard to focus on such a task when he was watching this lovesick little puppy staring toward the judges' table where Idia Shroud, [Full Name], and Rook Hunt were sitting.

"Jack, I have had just about enough of this nonsense," Vil told him.

"Huh? What?"

That snapped Jack out of his daze. This caused him to almost mess up the task he had been mindlessly doing. It was a miracle that nothing had exploded in their face thus far with Jack's spacey mood as of late.

Vil sighed. Why were all of the first years like this?

"Jack, I need you to focus. Your behavior reflects on me as well, you know. As an upperclassman," Vil told him, pausing his own task of mixing for a moment to shoot Jack a pointed look.

"Ah, sorry," Jack offered before his eyes drifted back to [Name] again.

They were so pretty. And they were going to be judging his work? Then he had to do a good... No! A perfect job! He would impress them with his work and then they would say what a good job he had done. It was all worked out and planned for. Perfectly, if he said so himself and—

"Jack."

"Huh? What? Sorry, Vil. Did you say something?"

"I said, you'd best focus on the task at hand... My word."

Jack could sense Vil's annoyance with the situation and he was frustrated with himself too. If he was distracted, he wouldn't be able to impress the judges. He had to focus. Shifting his stance, he got back to work making the macaron batter.

Vil continued his own preparation across from Jack, watching the younger boy every once in a while to ensure he was working and not daydreaming about [Name]. It was a good thing they were allowed to use magic in this event or they would surely fall behind on time.

[Vil & Jack - Cooking Montage]

As it would happen, they completed the macarons without any kind of disaster. Vil was thankful that it was all nearly over. Wasn't that a good thing? He would have this experience for his career and not get splattered in cake or lit on fire because of Jack's lovesickness-induced negligence. The things upperclassmen do for their underclassmen...

"Ready?" Vil asked Jack.

Jack nodded, ears perking up as they were about to present their creations to the judges. Vil smiled at that. He just couldn't stay upset with him. He knew Jack meant well by all of this.

"Let's do this!" Jack said, grinning.

Together, the actor and the first-year presented their culinary masterpieces to the judges. The array of judges had varying reactions. Rook stood up immediately and praised the simple staging of the food, ready to give 100 pts on sight for the beauty of it all. Vil shot him a look as he did this.

"I'd like to know how it tastes as well as how it looks, Rook," he chided.

The Pomefiore Vice Housewarden nodded as he tried both Vil's cake and Jack's macarons, eyes sparkling the entire time. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the food with his animated reactions to it.

Next came Idia Shroud who attempted to eat macarons with a fork (one of the ghosts mumbled about this being a "crime"). He prodded the food with the utensil and ultimately only took a few bites, pushing the plate away after that as he attempted to avoid the eyes of both Vil and Jack alike.

Finally, there was [Name]. They tried a bite of the cake Vil had made and smiled at the taste of it, giving Vil a thumbs up. [Name] might have been the only person on the judging panel who knew what they were doing. They moved to the macarons, picking up one that was a bright shade of orange and taking a bite.

"Mm, this is good!" they said, smiling.

Their reaction was enough to make Jack's heart soar. He had done it, or he thought he had. Still, the scores could tell.

In the end...

A 10 from Rook (obviously, he was about to faint from the mere thought of eating the food almost as soon as he had seen it).

A 2 from Idia (now Vil was ready to throw down but he hid it).

And a 10 from [Name], melting Jack's heart in a single motion of holding up their score marker.

Vil sighed as he went to speak to the ghosts, followed by Rook Hunt for some reason but Jack didn't ask questions about it. Vice Housewarden stuff? Maybe? Probably. Jack had other things on his mind. Tail wagging behind him, much to his chagrin, he made his way over to [Name], calling out their name to get their attention.

"[Name]! Hey. I'm glad you liked... what I made," he told them, a bit sheepish about it all.

"I did! They were good!"

[Name]'s smile was the sunshine that came through the clouds after rain, that was what Jack was feeling when they praised his work.

"Uh, I have some extras if you want more?" Jack offered.

"Eh? Really? Sure!" they said, "Grim wanted to try some, or I think he would like to. That cat sure loves his food."

"Ha, sure!" Jack agreed, "Let me go get that for you."

"Thank you, Jack! I really appreciate it!" [Name] told him.

Jack's face reddened at the words. It was so simple but it got him.

He made his way back into the kitchen, tail wagging up a storm and face growing redder with every passing minute. It was painfully obvious what this was but Jack couldn't figure out why his heart was racing and he felt so... floaty?

Vil watched from a few feet away with the ghosts (and Rook). He sighed, he might have to step in if Jack remained unawares.

A minute later, Jack walked back to [Name] with some packaged macarons for them.

"Ah. Here you go, [Name]."

He handed them the package.

"Thanks again!" they said as they put the package of food in their bag, "I'll tell you what Grim's thoughts are too if you want."

They giggled as they spoke.

Jack only nodded, trying his best to calm down the heat on his face.

"Sure," he told them.

"Alright, it's a date!" [Name] said before heading off to their next period.

The wolf watched as they left the dining hall. What was he going to do? What would he say? Was it a date? Had he been on a date before? He tensed up at the thought that there was some protocol for this.

Who would he ask? Ace would laugh at him. Deuce wouldn't be able to help. Grim wouldn't be able to either. He didn't want to tell Ruggie and Leona... That left...

Sighing, he walked up to the table where the two Pomefiore students sat, taking an empty spot next to the dorm's housewarden.

"Hey. Vil... I'd like to, uh, ask you something," he said, trying not to seem as nervous as he was about asking an upperclassman something like this, "If it's not a bother."

Was he supposed to ask his upperclassmen about these feelings? They did say they would be there for their underclassmen... Right?

"Oh? And what might that be, Jack?" Vil hummed.

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…Imagine the rest yourself~ <3

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Thank you for reading! Likes and reblogs are appreciated! Do NOT repost my writing/headcanons as your own >:c Check the top of my blog for the inbox status and read the rules before requesting. This is not a twst-only blog! ^^

[olderthannetfic]

This NaNoWriMo stuff with AI is largely unsurprising to me. I don't know how many people have gone beyond reading the viral clipped out bit about classism and ableism, but there was a follow up statement on that, in which they claim to take a very neutral stance. That their initial intent was apparently trying to curtail harassment of those who are using AI and they at least apologized for their confusing and unthoughtful wording of their original statement. Which seems legitimate enough to me. I'm sure they are sorry, considering the swift and unforgiving backlash they received. What I find kind of bizarre about this whole thing is, like, if you are running an event surrounding writing and making guidelines for what is and isn't okay in general-- then wouldn't it be a perfectly reasonable addition, to set out some level of encouraged practices for how one should or shouldn't use AI for during said event. Guidelines that are encouraged, that follow what everyone believes to be the spirit of the event (sitting down and actually writing a little every day for a month) would seem like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, to me. Like, am I off base here? With the rise in AI this seems like the natural progression. Even if only in spirit, not allowing generated works specifically seems like it would be a completely understandable guideline that keeps the event fair to those trying to do it the way it's meant to be done. And if you wanted to be neutral about it, it could be presented alongside a more lax policy around using AI to say, generate a plot bunny when experiencing writers block or create names for places/characters. People have been using tools like that for ages so there's precedent to allow "thoughtful" use of AI for these purposes. Anything at all, even if it can't be completely enforced, seems like it would have been better. The random endorsement of AI for people in certain circumstances from their follow up statement, and how it can be life changing, if one were to take their meaning in the most charitable way possible, does not feel like it's on topic here. Like, all this effort to be "neutral" on their part is not really coming across that way it's all just so damn clumsy. I try to always assume positive intent, not attributing to maliciousness (such as capital gain at the expense of creatives, which is one of the major problems with AI generated work) what can be better explained by ignorance, but even taking all that they've said in such a fashion, it largely feels like they didn't want people arguing about AI but also didn't want to have to make rules around AI that they would then have to, even if only in spirit, enforce. I can sort of understand that, considering it would be (most likely) impossible for them to differentiate between generated work and stuff that was written by a person. But again. They could have just said that it wouldn't be possible for them to police AI usage, blah blah blah, honor system (which again is already part of how NaNo works-- an honor system) but that targeted harassment campaigns of individuals for any reason would not be allowed within these spaces, up to and including suspected use of AI. Like there were so many different ways this could have been approached to accomplish what their stated goal was. Without??? Accidentally taking a very strange and not well thought out direct stance on AI that they later had to halfway walk back and apologize for. I don't think NaNoWriMo ever intended the message to be "We allow AI generated works now" (unless there's something I missed) -- That's not explicitly something they said, but rather the at large and reactionary interpretation of it. Now, I just have to wonder, what the hell happened to their September update post from last week, that was apparently addressing other issues. One thing I'll say for this whole mess, is it's at least amusing to watch the absurdity of their slow motion collapse hitting the speedrun stage toward total implosion. The org has had major internal problems for years now.

--

Honestly, I think the reaction is at least as much about longstanding issues with the organization as about people's fears of AI. Poorly thought out corporate idiocy feels in-character.

[sukunasweetheart]

NO BECAUSE SUKU IS GENUINELY A VERY INTERESTING CHARACTER

A lot of people say that he's evil for the sake of being evil but I don't necessarily agree. I think that description fits Mahito so much more, considering the fact that he went out of his way to be a menace and curse to others. He actively chose to do evil deeds to cause pain. Evil for the sake of being evil.

Sukuna doesn't care enough about others to actively cause them pain. He, quite literally, does whatever he pleases because he sees himself as the most important. And a lot of his actions just happen to be evil. But it's much different than in Mahito's case. If he wants to traumatise Yuji, he will. If he wants to praise someone for being strong, he will. If he wants to be a goofy silly kitty, he will. Just cause he can.

I think it's an important distinction

THIS THIS THIS THIS THISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

oh my goodness :( u read my mind so good, likee literally... sukuna DOES NOT CARE enough to tamper with someone's emotions (the exception being yuuji! i wonder what the two's connection is...) i may be a fan of bully!sukuna in au fics BUT i really dont depict canon sukuna to be fond of picking on the weakest people, in fact, he hates them so much that he doesnt even bat an eye towards such individuals. he truly thinks that they are boring and not even worth that kind of time.

that is not to say he doesnt like bullying those weaker than him (see with jogo, and megumi in s1) but he really does not give a fuck abt those that cannot even put up a decent fight against him!!! he just offs them quite painlessly if they dont act accordingly around him haha

that, and the way even his horrendously evil actions ooze so much charisma... sukuna is DRENCHED in natural charm and swagger, there is no one that comes close to the presence he holds (in my personal opinion). the tiny mannerisms he does, like the hands in his pockets, his natural and relaxed stances, he always just has that sense of composure around him.

and yet also... i see that sukuna isnt afraid to show his expressions of surprise/shock/goofiness, which i think gives him a lot of that flavourrr,,, like he isnt a boring villain, always having the same smirk or neutral face. i liked seeing him get thrashed around too and struggle against gojo!!! AWOO my sadist heart was jumping for joy.. he is not afraid to TANK hits and eat those punches up... (something throbs in me whenever i see sukuna get punched or bloodied)

he literally just does what he wants, when he wants. he fr cares abt nothing other than himself... the WELL BACKED UP confidence... the way he's just a man acting on his whims and whatever he's in the mood for. lawd have mercy, i could talk about him forever but i will stop here LMFAO

[canmom]

to beat on old drum, why should translation always be to a 'default'/'neutral', relatively formal version of a language? well you could make arguments from accessibility, injecting things that 'aren't there in the original' (or 'writing fanfic' as an angry nyaa commenter might put it), or losing nuances from the source.

but tranlsation is never going to be able to capture every nuance of the source, it's always a tradeoff. you can try to sound idiomatic in the target language, you can risk sounding plain or go for more approximate but lively expressions, or conversely you can go for something that doesn't sound like something a native speaker would write but develops a particular 'work in translation' cadence ("it can't be helped") which is worthwhile in its own right. you can even laboriously explain every missing nuance. there's no need to be dogmatic either - you can adopt a blend of strategies depending on what you think is most important.

the idea of a single 'correct' translation is an illusion. a translation is a new work designed to communicate as much as it can about the original. and if you don't have enough facility in the original language to follow along, the next-best thing is to have multiple translations that capture different facets according to what's picked up by different translators. and if you do know enough of the source language to pick up on an especially creative translation, that's a delightful thing.

this seems to be well understood in like, classics or philosophy, where it's reasonably common to produce new translations of a work. in translating modern media like anime... less so. I feel like it's a huge shame that original fansubs are made much less often today, and that so many arguments about translation seem to assume there must be one strict orthodoxy about the right way to translate. broadly speaking that orthodoxy has shifted - today the handful of still-active fansub groups like Good Job Media look with derision at the 't/n: keikaku means plan' past, and heavily prefer idiomatic translations.

is it ever 'necessary' to include honorifics when translating Japanese? probably not, you can probably find circumlocutions when they matter (e.g. have the characters argue about using titles). is that the 'best' way to translate? depends on your audience and what you want to communicate to them.

for example, in English, there's not really a 'thing you routinely say you routinely say before eating' as there is in many other languages. if we do say something before eating together, we'd probably use a loanword like bon appetit, but that would be rare and probably come across as a bit pretentious. in Japanese by contrast, people say いただきます itadakimasu as a standard ritual before-eating phrase. translators come up with all sorts of substitutions to try and find a substitute that sounds natural in English, potentially breaking the 'translate line by line' convention to insert something from elsewhere in the scene in the subtitle for itadakimasu.

and like, my feeling (from the stance of 'Japanese learner who watches a lot of anime') would be that if I knew most of my viewers would know at least that little bit of Japanese (and if they're downloading it from a fansubbing site, they probably do), I would just leave it untranslated. but leaving はい untranslated as in the above meme would be silly, because a good translation is simple and obvious (though 'yes' is not always a correct translation for はい!). however, I appreciate that there are various takes on this. it's fun to see the different ways people will translate いただきます! it becomes like a game. (the scene in Your Name where a bodyswapped character has to figure out the right personal pronoun is another fun one.)

so in this frame, I think translation targeting specific accents and dialects is really cool, because it can draw out all sorts of fascinating parallels. for example, the sentence ending particle ね is kind of like ', right?' - indicating that you think the speaker already knows what you're saying and you're looking for agreement/confirmation. it's a very common particle in Japanese, and it has a bit of a feminine connotation. how does that compare to the british slang 'innit'? or indeed the Singaporean 'lah'? you'd probably figure out a bunch about Japanese, British English and Singlish by thinking through when it would make sense to translate ね as 'innit', and likewise for 'lah'!

[imthepunchlord]

Interesting that Marinette ended up tipping over Juleka for the Mantis the same way Kagami ending up tipping over her for the Ladybug LOL. I do personally hope that Juleka wins the Butterfly over Rose now; while I’m still neutral on Centipede!Rose too (though that anon articulated their thoughts very well, hats off), that ask reminded me how much better Rose canonically is at staying chipper and bouncing back from circumstances than Juleka. It’s not so much that it would be BAD if Rose got Bugettes!Nooroo, they would blend together pretty well, but that’s just it. In terms of character growth, it’s Juleka who frankly NEEDS something/someone like the Butterfly Miraculous and Bugettes!Nooroo to help her navigate and benevolently mature through life’s situations far more than Rose does and would therefore *benefit* far more from winning, which would thusly make the overall plot richer than if we got a Butterfly!Rose that stays more or less the same in personality and behavior. This is especially when considering the focus on SPECIFICALLY JULEKA in the everyday Couffaine family dynamic, Jagged reveal drama, and even school and social struggles (she got to have the spotlight in Reflekta and Reflekdoll, but there’s also the fact that she was canonically held back one year to explain her and Luka being twins but in different grades which didn’t get more than a B plot focus in Confrontation for such a sensitive topic that affects so many real-life kids) that we were denied in-show. That being said, I DO appreciate that we got to actually SEE Luka being a genuinely good brother to Juleka at the beginning of Reflekdoll; it’s the little moments like that of him being a sincerely good dude even outside of the main characters’ narrative that put him on the positive side of neutrality in my mind instead of annoyance like with the other characters created specifically to stir the plot pot whom we’re simply TOLD that we should be sympathetic towards by the story (ex. Zoe). Coming back to the main point of this ask, do you personally hope that Juleka or Rose will win the last Bugettes!Miraculous poll?

I mean, so far, last I saw, the majority are in agreement for Butterfly!Juleka. Which I am the same, and I will say, of the classmates that would've potentially been elevated to a major leading role, Juleka is one of the few that stood out to me.

While she was dealing with low self-esteem and anxiety, you could see she wanted to let her voice out, and that there was a lot of bottled up anger that was quite explosive when let out (like wildly firing at other students instead of just Chloe).

So between her and Rose, she's the natural pick given she's got the foundation on how she can grow. Rose doesn't really have one. If she does win, I'd probably go a route of her stance on love and trust is challenged, that she's regarded as "weak" or "naive" and her thing should be to show that it actually takes true strength to keep the mindset of having faith, kindness, and compassion. Kinda like the sort of route they went with Green Lantern in DC Superhero Girls where she's against violence and has a lot of faith and optimism.

While that is something to work off of for Rose, I'd still Juleka between the two. I just see more going for her.

I will forewarn though, I don't know if I'm going to stick to the canon Couffaine set up as I don't like it.

Before we got the slapped on decision of Jagged being the Couffaine's dad (ad doing more rich daddy issues), I theorized that, if he was related to the Couffaines, that he was actually Anarka's younger brother. By appearances, Anarka looks older than Jagged. I thought Anarka was in her late 30s to early 40s while Jagged was in late 20s at the earliest to in his 30s.

The other factor is that I find Luka kinda throws off how Juleka is. Most likely, Luka constantly offers Juleka a lot of support and encouragement, and she also probably gets that from Rose as well, so why is Juleka so bottled up still? Is Anarka just actively but unintentionally tearing her down and undoing all that encouragement? We don't really have much on Juleka with her whole family so I can't say for sure (at least to my knowledge she seems to be shafted a lot in the Couffaine family focus).

Maybe through Roaar they're implying that Juleka just needed some tough love to really push her forward but idk. It just doesn't help that Juleka was really focused on, so what's thought she really needs is speculative.

I will say, if it was just Juleka and Anarka, to me, it would've explained a lot to how Juleka is. I can speak from experience having a parent who is bold, talkative, and has a big presence, it can shape you to be muffled and quiet and have a hard time getting words out, especially when said parent has a tendency to cut in and cut you off when you're trying to speak, and take over a conversation. If you never get a word in, it's hard to talk.

Even more so when you don't have anyone else paying attention and would draw the conversation back to you, asking what you wanted to say.

Which I would expect Luka to do so as he lives there and is on the boat so much. Not say Juleka would be talkative with him, but I'd expect she'd be in a better spot than where she is.

Additionally, given that Jagged is clearly more tied to Luka than to both of them, I wondered if it'd be better if they were just cousins (who were born on the same day, but have a two year age gap as I didn't care for them being made twins, I think same birthday is funnier). It would work off Juleka not having an active support at home, it would work off Luka coming in so late, and it would work off Jagged just straight up being more tied to Luka than to both of them. From what I've seen, Juleka really seems like an after thought in this revelation.

So given that canon slapped this detail together and clearly the whole family doesn't matter, yeah I am not really inclined to keep this family as is.

[splickedylit]

please tell me more about the stuff in the tags of your last fic, I love xenolinguistics! What if brother and sister were just correlated do to our gendernorms? What is sister in Alternian?

I mean, to be clear, that post is an excerpt, and far from the full fic which is still in process! But uhhh let's see. So in the tags you're addressing, I said

"what if 'motherfucker' and 'brother' are translated different but they're related words in alternian…. #what if 'brother' and 'sister' aren't different words theyre just translated in english based on gender but there's no distinction actually #it's all the word I tend to translate as 'kin'/'family'/'fam' but gendered by english-speakers for comprehension"

My thought wasn't that there was a word for "sister" in Alternian, any more than a word for "brother"! In keeping with the minimal amount of gendering I try to do when I write trolls, I was thinking there could be a single word that just basically means "troll who is part of my 'family'", (although "family" here is its own kettle of fish on Alternia, more on that later). To a conversational learner of Alternian, it would be fairly natural to translate it according to the gender of the person being addressed, since calling someone "brother" or "sister" has more linguistic precedent than the gender-neutral address I've used in clown-fics before, which is "kin".

(I don't think I got that from canon, as far as I remember I came up with that because I wanted more queer characters and needed a gender-neutral church term of address for them, lol).

Bear in mind my worldbuilding is also partially predicated on the way I tend to write the clown church, which is a little more based on real life juggalos than some clown churches I've seen written in fics--I like the idea that purplebloods are still violent assholes to each other, but that they have a weird kind of cohesion, a default allyship with each other via the church that isn't quadranted and isn't necessarily in cahoots, but just expects a certain amount of kinship. "Family", or "troll-closer-than-friend", something that's not quite a quadrant but is closer than the average troll gets to have with other trolls, usually. I like the thought of other blood castes finding that deeply unsettling--and I also feel like it makes a certain amount of sense; both for the sort of weird troll equivalent of an ethnoreligious group and also for a comparatively smaller ruling class that has to keep the much more numerous, psionically-gifted masses in line.

But also as individuals they will certainly still challenge, undercut, and murder each other sometimes haha. They're Alternian trolls after all. ANYWAY

Terms of address in Alternian are actually a really fun concept, especially if I was playing around with the concept I talked about a little in later tags on that same post--that you can present yourself as a superior, inferior, or intentionally give zero inflection either way, which is risky in its own way if the person you're speaking to doesn't agree that you're equals. That actually meshes nicely with one of the few bits of xenolinguistics we do get in the comic, which is that apparently the troll word for "friend" is the same as the word for "enemy"! Which you could work in a couple of ways!

the word just essentially does mean "friend"/"troll I'm close to"--if you are actually friends, then cool. If not, it becomes more like a guy in a bar calling you "pal" and stepping into your space. Humans have their own dominance and submission tone indicators, and imposing closeness or familiarity on a person you aren't familiar with to that degree can be a threat in any language, so it would feel right to me if Alternian had the same thing but much more aggressively codified.

The word is understood as "friend" when it's said in a submissive/friendly/fawning stance, and "enemy" when it's said by a superior or dominant troll. This is actually also fun because it means that unless a highblood is explicitly lowering themself to use a less dominant tone, they're speaking to their social inferiors with pretty overt hostility.

To bring it back around to the original topic, I honestly like option two a little better--if any term of address can be dominant/hostile, submissive/fawning or neutral/equal, then Gamzee when he's introduced using the "equals" inflection of "brother/sister/etc" would carry on his canon vibe of not really acting like A Real Highblood. And then when murderstuck hit, he could drop all the way to a supposedly super friendly and harmless inflection on the "it's me :o)" sentences and an aggressive one on the "AND ALSO ME :o(" sentences.

"Motherfucker" is a fun one because carrying on the thought I was having in those tags, I was imagining "motherfucker" would be a very similar word in Alternian to "kin"--but smushed together with the Alternian for "fuck" and used in all sorts of ungrammatical ways. "Motherfucker" would make sense to me as an Anglicization of a word that in Alternian might mean something more like "(friend-closer-than-friend)fucker". After all, trolls don't have mothers--I think I've written before with the alternate headcanon that it refers to the Mother Grub, and is kind of profane/gross in that sense, but I also like the concept that part of the reason that we see so many purplebloods throwing "motherfuck(ing/er)" around is because they're also the ones who have a concept of "family" via the church, and a nonexistent translator was like "for readability I have not translated this literally but have instead used the nearest human equivalent" lol.

[ladyluscinia]

Ok, it's been hours, I've done a bunch of things, and I'm looping back to the Izzy Hands topic of the day because it turns out I do have something to say. So.

For anyone with a robust blocklist - short version: the "Izzy hates Stede for being a girly gay" vs "Izzy hates Stede for rich fuck crimes" is back. I will not be addressing this directly, because that's not what I care about today (and my stance is obvious lol). Instead, I want to elaborate on this short post since this particular debate is actually a really phenomenal example of what I'm trying to get at.

Because how do you insult a rich man?

I'm talking about a super straightforward, "I'm somehow in an elevator with Musk and I have one floor to say something mean to him" kind of insult? Or, to frame this correctly, how would you convey in a story someone insulting a rich man, so your audience can recognize quickly that A has a problem with B? Based on viral posts about Musk himself, some popular options are small dick, bastard, stupid, pig, rat, crybaby, toddler, unlikable, fragile ego, loser, etc. etc.

But like... What are those insults about?

See, insults are not neutral language (shocker). They're weighted with what our society sees as "bad", and rarely touch on what our society sees as "good". There's a million ways to call someone ugly (vs attractive), or weak and womanly (vs manly and respectable), or fat (vs strong and healthy), or unlikeable (vs socially accepted), or stupid and lazy (vs productive member of society)... I can go on for a while.

Being rich is one of those "good" things, so we straight up do not really have insults to say "you are bad for being rich and successful" (though we have plenty for "poor".). "Billionaire" might deserve to be a dirty word, but it's not. That's not how language works 🤷‍♀️ The closest is maybe "greedy" but that tends to quickly overlap with fat / lazy or comparing them to animals (i.e. subhuman). Or using wealth to imply a different failing - if he has to buy his friends it's because he's not charismatic, and that's the insult. Maybe in recent years bigotry has gone out of style enough that it can be a somewhat effective target, but even that's still context specific.

Insults are - at their core - about holding up some valued aspect of society and saying "you aren't doing this right". And a lot of those aspects are discriminatory on their face.

Pointing to a character insulting another character and saying you've found implicit internalized bigotry is some "fork spotted in kitchen" shit, especially about emasculating language. Men have spent all of human history coming up with ways to say they are better at being men than their rivals. From an audience perspective, the mere presence of a bias-informed insult (or a bunch of them) is realistically not going to convince everyone this character has an explicit bias being written into them, because they've gotten used to that going nowhere as a character trait.

Often, the asshole character is just being written as an asshole.

And to be clear, writers deal with this linguistic struggle. Sometimes they make up nonsense insults to try and create a culture that doesn't have our biases. They can use more direct examples and obvious slurs to denote the intended bigots, and conversely use more softened or otherwise defanged insults for the generic dicks. Insults like "bastard" are common as their moralizing is archaic. The insulted party & allies' reactions can cue you into how serious an insult is. And yeah, no shit it's all pretty subjective and individuals will disagree on reads, but it's still worth considering because while "being mean" is usually a character flaw, it's approached entirely differently than "being bigoted". Both of which are again different from "this work is reflecting the creators' bigotry." It's the same reason we need to be able to tell the difference between "justified killing" and "unjustified murder" in a story - it matters a lot in the storytelling.

Plus, fans who don't think about this are more likely to apply it by deciding the characters they like are lovable bastards 🥰 and the ones they don't like are undeniably bigots 🤬 and this is obviously, objectively true because don't you know "ponce" is a homophobic slur for men who aren't masculine enough?!? Clearly this is not about him being British upper class!

[raviposting]

So I’m not going to really comment on the parent arc for the Buckleys and Hans since that’s not over yet, but I do find the reactions in the show on Chimney working it out vs not really interesting!

Looking at Hen, Buck, and Eddie here (not Albert because I love him but I think we all recognize that his character motivations boil down to “whatever is most convenient for the writers” lmao).

Buck is someone who’s already actively decided that his parents aren’t the people that matter on his life. They’ve never cared, they aren’t going to, and he can keep them at arms length and be respectful because he doesn’t even really consider them as important people. And it’s in that where he might muse if Albert is right - the same way he wonders how their life would be different if Daniel were alive - but he ultimately meets Chim at his level. Yeah, maybe Albert is right, but yeah, maybe Chim is right. He’s overall fairly neutral, as someone who’s removed himself from that relationship but is still in contact.

Eddie outright says Albert might be right, that Jee needs her grandfather - and honestly I don’t think he’d so wholeheartedly agree to that last season. Eddie is all about what’s best for kids, absolutely, but we know that he’s already reconciled with his father. They’re both putting in the work and their relationship has improved, and Eddie takes that and goes hey, yeah, maybe Albert is right, because I would have said no a year ago but now this relationship has improved so much more. The difference there of course, is that both people are putting in effort, while as Chim points out, his dad came because of Albert’s suggestion, but this is about Eddie’s perspective.

And with Hen - she doesn’t tell Chim he’s right or wrong, but what I love is how she focuses on what’s best for him. It’s not about reconciling with his dad, the way she did with her mom, it’s about making sure there was nothing left unsaid the way she had with her father. She’s not saying make up with him, or tell him to fuck off forever - she’s not making that choice for Chimney, because whatever he wants to decide is his choice alone.

It’s also interesting how these also tie into them as parents - Buck is taking that semi-detached (note: not in a negative connotation) route for being a donor; he’s excited and happy to get the sonogram but specifies it’s Connor’s baby, not his. He’s Chris’s dad but he’s also never said it - it’s a very in between world for him and his response in kind is also in between. Eddie puts Christopher first, even above what makes himself happy like we saw in season 5, and he encourages Chim to do what’s best for Jee. Hen has had this struggle with Denny’s bio parents, and with Nia, where she can see the benefit of both - she’s experienced the struggles and the beauty with both her kids and their biological parents, and she doesn’t take a stance on which is better. Hen focuses it not on what Chimney should or shouldn’t do as a parent, but what he should do as the child, for his own healing and betterment.

It’s just very nifty to see - it’s something that originally took me aback for some characters like Eddie to say this, but makes so much more sense to me in hindsight with how these characters view things in accordance to their own relationships with their parents and their experiences as parents themselves.

[ruthlesslistener]

Not all who headcanon the vessels as adults mentally are doing it for ship! I do it cause I hate how everyone already infantalizes them, disabled little bugs. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to see, because disabled people always get infantalize even in fiction. So you believing that those who headcanon them as adults are sus also makes me uncomfortable. I'm just trying to enjoy my favourite character...

By your "proof" that the vessels are children mentally cause time doesn't matter or something like that... then Hornet is a child. She looks pretty short to me, and looks like she isn't done growing. In a land filled with infected bugs and animal bugs, I'm sure Hornet didn't get a lot to eat to grow. There is a chance she's a child mentally as well, who just talks in a mature manner.

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Don't hate on those who headcanon differently for the vessels. Cause at the end of the day, its a headcanon. And no, not everyone headcanons that for shipping. Heck, you saying that its Canon that the vessels are children mentally ignores the fact that TC didn't take real life reference when writing HK. It's all "rule of cool" for them. I'm pretty sure your own preferences and biases are sneaking through in your little crusade against "problematic fans". This is all for fun and fans like you who insists that those who headcanon differently are sus are redtagging them as enemies like the antis.

.

Those "followers" you are referring to in your vessel child headcanon are the antis. You... side with them...?

.

Bruhhhh some fans headcanon the vessels not being children cause they like the idea of a cool tiny dude in case you are wondering. Calling them sus isn't fair for them 💀💀💀

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Siding with the antis makes you an anti. I absolutely hate proshippers, but even I know to never hold hands with the antis just because we agree on some things. It not a good think for you either, since you have such a big platform.

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Siding with your anti followers makes you an anti though. Which is how you are acting now. I don't support those things either and agree with you on your stance. But I wouldnt side with those antis even if my life depends on it. Even if we agree on some stuff. Neutral forever baby.

.

My take is that Team Cherry didn't write an age in mind for The Knight. Because they are normal people lmao. If they wanted the Knight to be a child, they would have made that more obvious. All the vessels though, died as children so thats true.

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Hmmmm I wouldn't side with those kind of fans of yours. Too much of them are rancid and for someone who claims to hate antis... you sure do sound like an anti in a small way. Sus if you ask me.

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But by your explanation... then Hollow is a child mentally too. Therefore a child. We don't have proof they either aged rapidly or aged normally, but either way - Hollow is the same age as the other vessels. They died at the same time as them.

...

Compiling all of these here so I don't have to deal with all of 'em. First and foremost: I actually legitimately had no idea that people thought Ghost was mentally an adult until I started talking about it in a writing discord I'm in and more and more people explained that they always thought they were an adult but didn't ship them with anybody. There must have been a shift in fanon since the last time I interacted with any Ghost content, them being seen as a small child was the norm. I was actually the outlier in that I viewed them as an autistic 11-year-old who was more than capable of taking care of themselves out of a mix of neglect and them just being a bug. So my apologies to anyone who just thought they were an adult, because I legitimately didn't realize that was a popular hc. Serves me right for not diving into much Ghost fan content! They're more of a sideline character for me so the only times I saw people arguing about their age in the past was when it was shipping discourse, which left a bad taste in my mouth. My bad.

After some thinking about it, here's my verdict on mentally adult Ghost (no shipping content/nsfw): Neutral leaning to bored. It takes away a lot of the tragedy for me and turns them into Just Another Short Silent Protagonist, which isn't bad but just kinda blends them in with Link and all the Fromsoft protags to me.

Shipping: hell to the fuck no for me. They still have an immature body. I'm not going to do anything but block and avoid content that I don't like, because at the end of the day sending death threats over fake fucking bugs is incredibly childish and harmful behavior (nor have I ever felt the desire to do so). But I am still very uncomfortable with it and me saying that it's fucking weird isn't me siding with antis at all. This is why I fucking DESPISE shipping discourse- because you cannot dispute or share an idea with one side without people AUTOMATICALLY ASSUMING that just because you happen to have a discomfort that others weaponize, it means you're an anti. I'm not, because as it turns out, when someone has been writing a character as a child for fuckin years its pretty goddamn normal to assume that they would also be uncomfortable with them in a shipping context, which is EXACTLY THE TYPE OF CONTEXT in my original post.

Also some notes about vessel aging:

-The vessels at hatching all had soft, blobby bodies and round faces. This is canon. So that is the marker of immaturity

-PV is physically an adult. This is canon- they were 'raised to prime form'. They show clear evidence of a hardened carapace and have the sharply angular face shared by PK, WL, and Hornet. Their limbs are also long and slender rather than short and stubby, which indicates 'adult' more than it does 'grub/nymph'

-Hornet is also an adult, or very near to being an adult. She very literally has the same proportions as Hollow and is the same size as PK. So unless you want to argue that PK is also a child, I really don't see how anyone can see her as being younger than, say, 16 at max. She's in her 20's to me but that's pure hc. PK's height and the tapered facial structure do indicate that she's hit maturity though

-Lost Kin is where I would mark as being a teenager, since they have PK's proportions but still retain that stumpy body and round baby face. They might have been one moult away from full adulthood or so, but that's just speculation

-Ghost still has the stumpy, round body with the round face. They are physically stunted and still in the body they were at hatching. What you want to do with that information is up to you. Personally, since I use a 'void mimicking biological bug' model for writing the vessels, that would mean that they are still mentally stunted as well, but that is entirely headcanon. Doesn't change the fact that they are most certainly stunted though.

I'm not gonna tell anyone how to live their lives bc its fucking fake bugs, and I'm not a cop. Different takes exist, and that's fine- I've never hated on people who write Ghost as an adult, and I'm not going to do so now. But it's also fucking fake bugs and a fanon thing to do for fun, which means being an adult and staying the fuck away from shit that bothers you. For me that's just avoiding or blocking the tags of shit I don't like, and not following the people who make that sort of stuff. If you don't agree with me, then you don't need to follow my blog.

(If I really do have followers that are antis though, don't use this as an excuse to harrass people for 'pedophilia' though, because this sort of scenario of a goo-adult in a child's body doesn't exist irl and thus is of no actual risk to real children. Go outside and touch grass instead)

[melancholic-entrails]

a lengthier intro that explains things in simpler terms :) heyo! you can call me star or sil!

i use any pronouns including neopronouns, i especially like it/it's and they/them. just make sure to add some variety sometimes if you're going for less neutral ones :)

i am a minor- i occasionally horny post/ etc however. reminder, this does not equal consent. but i normally tag them #suggestive cw or #cw suggestive if i remember.

i don't always remember to tag possible triggering things, so please proceed with caution!

a little bit about me:

i am a self shipper ( with fictional characters ) . i'm always okay with "sharing" fictional characters, because i believe in the multiverse theory when it comes to both selfship and otherkinity. the multiverse theory basically explores the idea of the multiverse with fiction- different versions of the same fictional character. meaning that in my eyes, "sharing" fictional characters does not exist because we all see them in different ways. of course, it is perfectly alright for you to be uncomfortable with sharing, but that is what i personally believe.

i believe in ship and let ship. nobody should be harassed for their taste in fiction. people can be groomed with fiction, but people can be groomed with anything. yes, this includes whatever "disgusting" things you are thinking of. it is okay if you despise them, just block and move on. don't send hate.

we are all living breathing human beings with thoughts and feelings and wants and dreams. don't send hate.

i do not believe in thought crimes. yes, this includes whatever you're thinking of. thought crimes are not real.

there is nothing wrong with having paraphilias, because oftentimes this is a result of trauma or you simply cannot control it.

however, i only stand for consensual contact in real life. meaning that i am anticontact on sexual zoophilia, pedophilia, etc.

if you find my stances personally disgusting, block and move on, please.

for trans-identifiers: most common being transgender, less common being trans-species, trans-race, etc:

bottom line, as long as you are not using these labels to mock fun of the community you are taking on the labels of, it does not matter.

people may take on these labels as forms of empowerment, simply relating to them, or any other reason.

and for the topic of system origins, such as the origins of a dissociative identity disorder, i will only say this:

i am not a doctor. i don't know the inside of your brain. so i cannot know if you are faking or not. the same goes for any mental illness. this means that i am not someone who knows enough about dissociative identity disorders and the like to properly say that endogenic systems- systems not formed by trauma- are real or not.

what i will say, though? exclusionism isn't fun. it's not nice. if the endogenic person(s) are simply existing, it is simply mean spirited to mock them.

something else i have noticed is: there are endogenic systems or plural people or etc that label as nondisordered, but i personally think many are disordered rather than they claim, simply because dissociative disorders are not researched enough.

bottom line, i don't care what you call yourself- i care how you conduct. and that includes for all sorts of discourse, including the proship vs antiship discourse, the traumagenic vs endogenic discourse, and everything else.

internet safety things: please, please, don't share a list of your triggers or diagnoses online. it is simply dangerous.

post-script:

no matter how vile you believe someone is, because you disagree with them, find them annoying, or anything else?

it is never a kind thing to doxx someone or send death threats because of their opinions on the internet.

especially for proship discourse on tumblr dot com.

just think twice, kay?

[mogai-sunflowers]

Thoughts on being neutral for any kind of discourse?

i think it depends. some things to me shouldn't be discourse topics, like i hate that mspec lesbian/gay and lesboy discourse still is a thing, to me i don't necessarily trust when i see people say they're neutral on mspec lesbians because it makes me think that im not completely safe with them.

however, that's just my personal boundaries with certain "neutral" stances- in terms of being neutral or having a neutral stance, i think it's perfectly respectable. especially with online culture and mob mentality, so many people feel pressure to have all the right beliefs and say all the right things even if they're not educated enough on the subject to form their own opinions. a lot of my "stances" used to be much more based on not wanting to be harassed, than by me actually putting thought into what i believed. but it all gets so stressful that we forget that it's completely normal to not understand everything. it's impossible to know every little niche discourse from every community you or others are in, and to me, it takes a lot of strength of character to take a step back and acknowledge that you're simply not knowledgeable to form a solid opinion on something. there is never any shame in not understanding something.

plus, "neutral" could mean a lot of different things. like, i guess you could call be "neutral ship" because im not proship or antiship, but i'm not at all "neutral" on the subject. i heavily dislike proshipping and proshippers, but for different reasons i equally dislike antishippers. i'm not neutral on the subject, but neutral describes me more than proship or antiship, so that's what i would put if i had to. neutral can mean you don't know, do know but don't care about that particular discourse, that you see and respect both sides, that you aren't knowledgeable enough about the subject, that they prefer to stay out of discourse, and so many other things. plus, no one owes anyone else an explanation of all their beliefs in order to exist online, especially if that kind of discourse is triggering to them.

so long story short, being neutral on discourse is completely fine and natural, i just don't personally feel safe around people who are neutral on *certain* topics that are important to me, but that doesn't mean i think they should change at all, just that my boundaries are to not interact with them that much!

[spareparts-vn]

Reading the tips page for part 3 and they’re all so tall. Is there shorty representation planned

ok i gotta be totally real, i think i made a big mistake when calculating all their heights. i figured those out pretty shortly before the demo released, and my thinking was as follows:

lucy was given a height in episode 1 (5'8") so i have to stick with that

i can use that to determine everyone else's relative height

to do that i have to use each character's most neutral-stanced sprite

and then i can use some fullbody art of lucy to determine how far her legs go beneath the bottom of the screen

now i can divide that pixel height into 56 segments and those are my inches for a proper height chart

now all i have to do is line up everybody's sprites and that'll give me their heights!

......i guess!!!!

basically i wanted their height differences in sprite form to be consistent with their actual height differences because i'm really neurotic about certain things... but since i had to make certain characters tall enough to be visible over the text window, they turn out a taller than i imagined them to be. hanne is the best example of this, she was supposed to be very tiny but in-game she's only slightly shorter than lucy, who also should be shorter than she's listed, but i'd already assigned a height to her years ago and it felt like i couldn't go back from that, so... everything just kind of...... cascaded from there.

i have this problem a lot, where i try to solve a problem by taking everything too literally and it just doesn't. work. but i do it anyway because it'll damage my brain otherwise......

i'll...probably...change the heights at some point. it hurts me to do that bc i hate changing details after i've already released something, but it doesn't really effect the story, so long as they're all taller and shorter than the same people...

so i guess to answer your question, hanne is actually meant to be like 5'0"ish and lucy should be like 5'5".

that's still only two really short characters, but there's still plenty that haven't been introduced yet, so you'll meet some more eventually. i think i gravitated toward taller characters near the beginning of development because i wanted lucy to be shorter than everyone she was meeting at the time, and i was afraid of anyone's sprites losing a lot of visibility if they became too small, but. i'm much less precious about that kind of thing now, so.

......that's too many words about something very trivial, but i guess that shows how much it had been eating away at me. thank you for accidentally giving me the chance to confess my sins.

[starrbar]

The word "proship" is about as descriptive as "mutt" nowadays.

Lil disclaimer: This is only about me and my personal experiences. Call yourself whatever you like. It's your actions I will judge, not your label.

There are two reasons why I try to avoid directly labeling myself as "proship" or even "profiction" despite sharing many, if not all, of the views those terms are supposed to stand for.

I wrote about the first reason here.

This is the second reason:

I have seen the terms proship/proshipper/profiction used by real people in the following ways, NOT counting the things antis claim it means:

"Ship and let ship" / "Your kink is not my kink (and that's okay)"

"Not caring what other people like"

"Minding your own business"

"Curating your experience"

"Scrolling when your see something you dislike instead of making a fuss over it"

"Being into taboo subjects"

"Supporting all ships, including pedophilic or incestuous ones"

"Being against thought crimes"

"Anti-harassment over fiction"

"Anti-censorship"

"Fiction doesn't equal reality" / "Fiction isn't reality"

"Fiction doesn't affect reality at all"

"Being able to tell the difference between fiction and reality"

And then on top of that, a lot of neutral people are lead to believe it just means "pedophile / incest supporter", or someone who genuinely thinks minor/adult 'relationships' are healthy and fine.

➛ It's worth a brief note that it didn't originally mean literally any of these things (as documented on the Anti-shipper and Anti-anti Fanlore pages), but you didn't come here for a history lesson.

I've also seen the following behaviors from people who used being "proship" as a shield or justification for them:

Defending MAPs

Defending or participating in invasive RPF

Defending bigotry

Supporting real life incest

Doing "problematic shipping" with child characters played by actual minors

Making lust posts about characters played by child actors

Creating, consuming, or supporting uncomfortably realistic "lolicon"

Getting way too defensive against ANY criticism of a story, even when it's not framed in an aggressive, moralizing way.

And my favorite: Fucking harassing people for perceived "anti" views. -_-

I'm certainly not writing this with the intention of making all proshippers as a whole look bad, but I've had to come to terms with what that word has evolved into and what it means to people. It's gone out of my control despite how desperately I had wanted it to just mean what I think it should mean—what it did mean originally.

When one of my core identity labels can conjure up the image of any one of these things, especially when many of them are god awful, I feel a lot less comfortable using it for myself.

I use "anti-anti" comfortably enough because it doesn't refer to my potential stance on paraphilias, what ships I'm into, censorship or ""censorship"" (the bullshit right-wing boogie man version), or even simply the way fiction affects reality. It instead only refers to my stance against what antis stand for and what they do.

And we all know what they do.

I used to have this explained on my Carrd as a mere supplement to a long, long list of my specific beliefs regarding fiction vs. reality, kinks, and all that jazz. Then I realized how futile and silly it is to preemptively explain my entire moral compass on my literal central hub of Me-ness, because who am I really convincing of anything by having a BYF page that huge? It had a bunch of claims about what I believe, but no further essays linked that might back up how thoroughly I do believe those things. So it would end up just... kind of hollow.

So whenever I'm feeling spicy, I might just write more essays about various aspects of the discourse and keep those in a totally optional directory of sorts, probably still linked on my Carrd. I have a burning need to share my thoughts and writing with the world, but I certainly don't think someone needs to know all of that just to click Like on my art.

(Also some day I might make dedicated posts to each of the links I shared, but for now I just want some level of backup to my words in this post.)

[tonya-the-chicken]

To be fair I feel it's unfair coz what made Muscular the way he is? And how is a simple convo that would go the same with Shiggy enough to convince? Rappa is a good guy coz hes a chaotic neutral trope but he couldn't care less about Eri being tortured but coz he just is a meathead who is implied to have fought with parents and run off to be a fighter he's a good guy suddenly. Also we know Overhaul's tragedy but he's a nobody? And why forget Moonfish, Mustard and the other "good"er Yakuzas?

On one hand, I always felt the manga will go this way. Deku is a better hero than All Might, that's established from the start. A number of themes were raised to show society's flaws like abuse, poverty, and prejudices that pushed people into villainy. It could be guessed that one of the way Deku's time would be different from All Might's is that the approach to fixing society would be more structural and not symbolic. Villain rehabilitation is hinted at here and there. They are not all evil and some of them just ended up in bad circumstances

On the second hand, Hori doesn't go all in with delivering this message. 1) Maybe because the manga is so overfilled with characters and themes or 2) maybe he doesn't want to make stances that would end up too political. Criminal rehabilitation is an actual real-life thing, writing it openly and clearly as a good thing is making a statement. It's a bit softer to talk about "saving" the bad guys and making villains way too sympathetic. 3) It also feels like a lack of knowledge on how exactly such things work. Like he never encountered an absolutely tragic person, who suffered greatly because of their stupid harmful actions and yet refused any help. It's naïve to expect you can save anyone and he tries to put it with Muscular's case but then. The line between who can be saved and who can't is unclear. It's blurry. Why is one character treated this way and another pretty the same differently? This hypocrisy is fine in storytelling (they are just not important as a character) but bad if you want to drive a message across... And 4) showing something as a better solution will require you to criticize the previous solutions. That Horikoshi doesn't do at all. He wants to keep All Might as a symbol of perfection while showcasing all the dirt under the rug. His solution was purely cosmetic, why not say it out loud? It didn't fix anything, it just made people safe for as long as one (1) man is alive and well. The worst security system I have ever seen. In conclusion, Horikoshi doesn't go all out, doesn't apply the "rules" to everyone, and ends up inconsistent, like he doesn't understand how certain thing works, making it all sound unbelievable

On the third hand, is shounen action manga with plenty of violence a place to say violence is bad at all? There are a lot of "rules of the genre" and heroes fighting villains is a classic one, yet Horikoshi ends up making a statement against violence or killing villains. But then they have to kill AFO without any questions. He points out that the thing™ is bad but our heroes were doing the thing™ from the very start and they don't end up overthinking their ways. He questions the rules of the genre without subverting them. It's a one-time thing that doesn't change anything globally so we end up with big major points that lead to anything. It feels like a conflict between what Horikoshi tries to say and what kind of story he writes (probably tied to previous point)

On the fourth hand, I was in a twitter argument about this ones and I really enjoy winning it post factum

Muscular is bad because he is bad, born this way perhaps but Toga is bad (born this way) and we pity her. Muscular is bad because he enjoys suffering but then so does Dabi and he is given more sympathy than ever. They deserve saving because they are the main characters is what I am thinking and Muscular is there to be shown a lesson. I wish it was one of the main cast who could be used for it, that would drive the point better but that would mean having a good nuanced position on something and making a statement and being smart

I would say Rappa is in the gray area, not really a good guy but he plays this role in Vigilantes. Curious. I wished that Shie Hassaikai would join the heroes at the end to showcase the growth perhaps but ugh eh why do this

I need to wrap this whole thing up. I think Hori wanted to write a smart manga with criticism of society but ended up writing some Naruto-style mess where so many things are happening that nothing really matters. You give up trying to find a point but then there are so many hints here and there that fandom arrives at the opposite ideas and fights all day long. LoV are revolutionaries let's go

[quillyfied]

Hellaverse Theories: Hazbin Hotel S1E3

Welcome to Quilly’s Hellaverse Theories, where I overthink the entire Hellaverse! It’s been a little bit; life got busy, I have a semi-major medical procedure at the end of next week, and my reverse seasonal depression is hitting real hard this year, so let’s jump into the madness.

Starting tonight with s1e3!

Short diversion to say: Lucifer sending Charlie out into the world with Razzle and Dazzle (who can turn into dragons) and KeeKee (who appears to be a powerful tool of creation that Lucifer uses, though all the theories I’ve seen people swapping around say it’s something more integral to the hotel itself rather than to Lucifer, but just based on what’s in the show…sure looks like Lucifer gave away a heckin powerful magical artifact to his daughter) is sensible but also warms my heart so much. And I would love so much to know if that was Lucifer’s doing at all, or Lilith’s, or a joint venture from the both of them. I am so ready to learn more about their relationship without the Charlie Blinders on.

Y’know. There is a very strong trend I’m noticing about my own fiction preferences right now wherein a bubbly blond of privileged status undertakes an impossible task to make a difference in the places they choose to be, meet a colorful cast of queer characters, and continually fail while also somehow succeeding at the bigger and more important task of creating a space where a bunch of traumatized folks with a lot of baggage can feel safe to work through those issues and bond with each other and form wonderful found families. Charlie and Stede Bonnet from Our Flag Means Death would have a DELIGHTFUL afternoon tea of swapping lesson plans, is what I’m saying.

(And Angel and Lucius would probably have a field day swapping stories but anyway)

Charlie and Vaggie’s relatively harsh sex-negative attitudes strike me as unusual for the show, which IMO itself has a pretty sex-neutral to sex-positive stance, depending on the angle. It begins to make more sense with a later episode and I’m sure I’ll talk more about this then, but in case I forget: they both appear to be operating off of what they THINK is the standard for getting into Heaven, which…is baloney because NOBODY knows how a soul gets into Heaven (and once they’re there they still bone with frequency and impunity, or at least Adam does). But if you’re going off the basic Christian-centric idea of sin, I can see where Charlie and Vaggie are coming from. Though Vaggie should know a little better what the Heavenly culture is like around those kinds of things, but tbh until we get more information, my assumption is that Vaggie hung around Exorcists pretty exclusively and they seem like a separate class entirely from other angels, if their jobs are a secret from the rest of Heaven and they purposely go into battle fully helmed. They’re two sheltered girls without a clue.

(The way Charlie turned out does make me heavily question what Lilith was actually like and how she expected Charlie to act. I want to KNOW dangit.)

Zestialllllll. I adore him. And I adore that he is, outside of Lucifer, most likely the most ancient being in Hell that we see. Certainly he’s the oldest sinner, and given that there are at least three methods of regular mortal turnover in Hell, that makes his very existence highly impressive. He’s survived hundreds of years of Overlord politics, turf wars, and Exterminations (assuming they’ve been going on for a while, GIVE ME A NUMBER VIVIENNE I NEED TO KNOW), and is so well known that people SET THEMSELVES ON FIRE to get away from him and Alastor walking together down the street. And Alastor gives him something much closer to actual deference, as opposed to what he gives the literal ruler of Hell next episode (a high-charged rivalry anthem on par with Loathing from Wicked, how have I not seen anyone do an edit or a comic of that one yet).

“Some have spun tales of you falling to holy arms.” Followed by Alastor pulling a major bluff, complete with shifty eyes. So Zestial’s information isn’t entirely inaccurate. Which still means just about anyone could be holding the other end of Alastor’s leash, but the major theories of it being Lilith (my personal favorite but also too easy and coincidental, feels like a red herring) or Eve (bound up somehow with Roo, I can just feel it) still feel most plausible to me. This could be foreshadowing and Zestial is wrong, since Alastor does nearly die due to holy arms in the finale, but…those shifty eyes. Zestial is definitely close, guessing a little too near the mark for Alastor’s comfort. What the HECKIE happened that put the Radio Demon and the Queen of Hell down for the count for the same amount of time? It is MADDENING. The incidents are obviously related, but how did that end with Alastor showing back up in Hell and Lilith up in Heaven?

(My cracked fanfic writer brain just went “Lilith decided she was done and passed her Queen duties to the deer man, Lucifer just found out he’s essentially married in power to Alastor, now discuss” but that is getting stuffed to the back of the mental closet where I will only ponder it late at night when I need a good giggle. Especially because it’s far more plausible that if Alastor and Lilith have any kind of deal whatsoever, it has to do with guiding and helping Charlie.)

(…could it be possible that Lilith’s deal with Adam involved trading Alastor somehow? Unlikely, since Adam had no idea who Alastor was, but Alastor being used as a pawn instead of being a major player would be such a delicious burden for his arrogant ass to bear and I kinda want to see it.)

Anyway.

Seeing an Overlord meeting is so fascinating, because watching Velvette come in and immediately challenge Carmilla and Zestial very much establishes something of a generation gap; the oldest Overlords in the room versus the youngest. But before I get ahead of myself and how BRILLIANTLY MANIPULATIVE Velvette is, a little stage-setting: no Overlords appear to have the same business dealings as the Vees, though there is genuine friendship between some of them (Carmilla and Zestial, Alastor and Rosie). No Overlords are locking horns at this meeting before Velvette shows up, no hint of political undercurrents or rivalries. The Overlords in the room are also high-rollers, it seems, the more powerful of the bunch, if only SIX of them own MILLIONS of souls. However, there are some hints after Velvette’s musical number to further shed some light on what Hellish politics are like, but before she comes in, all seems fine. Alastor gets his pride wounded (much to my personal amusement), but overall it’s perfectly civil.

Enter that hashtag bitch.

Her entire performance from top to bottom is a calculated strategy. Step one, show up late, ruffle some feathers with her lack of decorum, make it very clear up front that she’s showing up despite having better things to do. Put Carmilla on the back foot right away. But Carmilla is a professional; she’s a ballerina, used to dancing around her opponents. Step two, pull out the angel’s head and keep a close eye on Carmilla’s reaction, and start to push when Velvette meets immediate resistance to her “full assault plan” (I will eat my hat if they had such a thing at all; the three of them are safe in their fancy tower and they know it, and Velvette attending this meeting was never about the Vees working together with other Overlords at all). Step three: annihilate the meeting, push Carmilla into either admitting what she did and starting an uproar across all of Hell or shutting down the discussion before it can come to light, and the result is: the Overlords don’t actually sit down and make a plan about what to do about this accelerated Extermination. The Vees’ power remains unchallenged as the other Overlords scramble to keep theirs. Velvette planned this from the beginning.

The lyrics in the finale number confirm it, too “After the battle, masterless cattle, Overlords hanging by a thread…nature abhors a power vacuum, it leaves room for you and me. The future of Hell belongs to the Vees.” What better way to secure power than making sure your enemies can’t organize, even if it isn’t against you at first? The Vees are formidable, practically untouchable, because they work together. They can’t have other Overlords doing the same thing, because uniting against one seemingly impossible threat and succeeding has ripple effects. It becomes easier to unite against other threats. And if every other Overlord in Hell decided to band together to take down the Vees, the Vees wouldn’t win that encounter. Much easier to let Overlords’ natural distrust of each other continue to keep them alone and vulnerable while the Vees work in the background to take advantage of that vulnerability.

The Vees are a union-busting corporate tech giant monopoly, is what I’m saying.

Annnnyway.

Side note about character design: Velvette and Carmilla and Carmilla’s daughters all having very similar, if not the same, eye design is fascinating, but I’m not sure if it denotes a connection between them, since they also have the same eye design as hellhounds (seen more in Helluva Boss but there are a few in the background of Hazbin Hotel), and I’m not sure what to make of that tbh. Though Velvette being a doll and the Carmines being ballet-themed, possibly music box ballerina themed, does strike me as interesting too.

Okay, Zestial’s response: “Mightn’t they purge all of Hell for daring an uprising?” He’s the oldest guy in the room. He’s the most cautious, the most cunning, and one of the most powerful Overlords in that room, so probably in all of Hell. And what he just said is EXACTLY why the Exterminations are happening in the first place. Which begs the question: do the sinners know why Exterminations happen? Charlie knows, or at least knows a version of the story; Zestial being so ancient and also throwing out this incredibly obvious possibility that is already currently happening…I’m not sure if this is a writing continuity error or a hint that Exterminations have been happening for longer than Zestial has been around, so long that the original reason for it is lost to time for those who weren’t old enough to be there. The cautious way that Zestial and Carmilla are determined to stop Hell from trying to go to open war against Heaven makes me think that even if they don’t know the reason for the Exterminations, they’re smart enough to guess, and to want to keep their heads down and their people as safe as they can possibly be during a yearly bloodbath.

Also it continues to beg the question of why Lucifer “granted a pardon” to the Hellborn in the first place, if it was so long ago that Charlie probably didn’t exist yet, because a Hellborn sanction wouldn’t protect Lilith. She isn’t Hellborn. Technically neither is Lucifer, but I assume they figured that as an angel, even a fallen one, he wasn’t going to be in any danger anyway (since it apparently took ten thousand years for them to figure out on a wider scale that angelic steel kills angels too) (though it wouldn’t surprise me if the Seraphim all knew and just didn’t say anything). I’m rambling now but hOW LONG, VIV. HOW LONG HAVE THE EXTERMINATIONS BEEN GOING. I’M GOING TO START SCRAWLING ON THE WALLS.

“That was a productive meeting!” Okay, that’s my indication that expecting anything actually useful from this was probably a high bar to reach, but Velvette throwing an angelic bomb in the mix and then working Carmilla up to a bloody froth didn’t help, either. Overlords don’t collaborate, they don’t band together, they don’t share power. Even the Vees’ brand is held together with a lot of mutual self-interest and each one of them thinking that they’re the top of the operation. Though, personally, with this one scene, my money is on Velvette for being the top of that particular dogpile. Since. Y’know. She just single-handedly destroyed any chance of the Overlords working together to try and protect Hell.

(Also please tell me there’s at least one fanfic out there where the Hotel crew actually gives BDSM a shot. I don’t need to read it; I just need to know it exists. With a more nuanced and fair view of what professional BDSM is that isn’t just “weird deviant sex.”)

I can also see why a lot of people think Carmilla is a fallen angel when she’s placed so very obviously in narrative parallel with Vaggie. Part of me thinks this is merely foreshadowing to Carmilla becoming Vaggie’s mentor, because Carmilla being an Overlord and having daughters both seem like things that angels don’t do (and Carmilla’s daughters sharing physical similarities with her indicates to me that they might not be adopted daughters, but perhaps her actual daughters from life, since Sinners can’t reproduce). But there are plenty of little tidbits that would lend themselves to Carmilla being a fallen angel as well, such as the winged shape of her face markings and her general coloration being similar to Exorcists. Not to mention her deep knowledge of how to beat them, but that could very well be the decades or even centuries of observance Carmilla would have gotten in as one of the few demons willingly out during an Extermination Day. I lean towards Not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she was, either. (How Carmilla and Vaggie both speak Spanish if they were both once angels is another question I want answered, tbh, but that could be something as simple as Heaven/Hell being multicultural by design and maybe they just sort of picked it up. But that doesn’t feel right tbh.)

“I just thought this would all be easier.” OH HELLO MAJOR THEME OF THE SHOW. Charlie’s naivete can be so charming sometimes, but so deeply saddening other times. Watching her grow up and start to shed some of that is a satisfying and subtle character arc and I can’t wait to keep watching her go.

Pentious having minions that have nothing to do with his power makes me more inclined to think that the little creatures that Alastor summons are souls he owns, but again, there’s literally no way to tell just by watching the show right now. Sigh.

Okay, only took two hours to get through this episode, so let’s take another two for the next one! It’ll be fine!

[lemontartyellow]

BBC Sherlock watch through: A Study in Pink

You read that right. BBC Sherlock in the year of lord and savior 2024. To be fair to me, I was 8 when the show ended, and therefore could not watch it in its heyday.

Two disclaimers before we begin with its first episode.

1. Despite me not watching a single episode up until this point, I do know a decent amount about it from watching videos about it (Hbomberguy’s video, Sarah Z’s video about the Johnlock conspiracy, and as much as I’m ashamed to admit it, a decent chunk of the TJLC explained videos). That being said, I will attempt to go in to it with an open mind in all regards.

2. Much like what people do to his actor, I will intentionally be getting Sherlock’s name wrong. Why? Because I think it’s funny. It’s probably not gonna be funny to a lot of people but I’m gonna do it anyhow. Mmkay?

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

-What kind of bed is that lmao. You roll over a little bit and you fall off

-That transition from John saying that nothing happens to him to the intro was definitely a bit awkward

-These transitions are getting on my nerves. Can we find a smoother way to get from one thing to the next please?

-They’ve all got a point. Why would they be linked just because they took the same poison? Investigate the poison, not the suicides.

-If you’re so sure that they’re suicides why are you investigating them????????

-Why is Shamrock an asshole.

-Here comes the 10 billion gay jokes.

-Yeah, Shamrock definitely seems…eager for John to like him.

-Ok, now he’s bossing Mrs. Hudson around for no reason. There’s a difference between “unsociable” and “asshole” guys cmon now.

-I just want to say that despite my whining, I think it’s been…fine so far. I just haven’t found anything nice to say about it yet. It’s not boring me to death, that’s something I guess.

-Four suicides?? In a big city?? Crazy. Must be something wrong there.

-BBC Sherlock says All Cops Are Incompetent! That’s something going for it.

-Ah yes, the struggling to plug in his phone line. One that haunts many I hear,

-Completely neutral on Johnlock right now if anyone was curious. I don’t really think they have any of that kind of chemistry really and that’s most of it I’m pretty sure. If they had some more chemistry I’d probably jump on it.

-I like Sally. Everyone else is fine (although Shamrock is on thin ice), but I like that she’s mean to Shamrock. And she’s funny about it.

-Ok. I don’t like Shackrock. Get his ass out of here

-He is such an asshole?????

-I know from the Hbomberguy video that the victim was attempting to spell Rache as in the German word in the original story and…..wow. They really are just dismissing it as stupid aren’t they? For what, so Shackrock can have more opportunities to be an asshole?

-Mycroft’s stance???

-Mycroft is alright I think. Him and Sally, that’s two characters I like

-I’m gonna count how many references to Shackrock and John being gay/gay jokes in general there are. That’s 2

-Weird brothers. Kind of funny. I like them

-3 gay references. We’re doing great for not even being through the first episode.

-Genuinely though, why does nobody believe John when he says that him and Shackrock aren’t a thing. It’s only happened once so far but I know it happens in the future a few more times. Theres no apologies or even any “mhmmm sure ;)”, they just straight up ignore him.

-I think Shellrock likes men at the very least. Between everyone around him thinking that him and John are a thing, and him being based on the the adaptation that wanted to make him gay, he’s probably at least a little bit of a manliker at the very least. Not sure if it’s intentional though.

-4 gay references. You think we’ll be able to squeeze one more in before the episode ends?

-How do I still have 30 minutes left. Ugh.

-I think….I don’t like this show. I will continue on. But I don’t think I like it.

-I am growing a fondness for John and Shellrock’s relationship though. They’re a little cute.

-Why is he so insistent on Shellrock not being the type to take drugs. He literally found him slapping on nicotine patches like it was nothing.

-Am I supposed to like Shellrock. Am I really supposed to.

-Can Shopshock shut the fuck up.

-This cabbie thing was actually kind of good.

-Yeah, Shopshock and John are pretty cute. And a little gay but I don’t know if that was intentional on the writers part.

-Shopshock is a little funny. Not enough to counterbalance the assholeness but a little funny.

-Did she ask who just so they could end the episode with Mycroft saying Sherlock and Dr. Watson. Really.

Finally, the episode has ended. It’s been 4 million years. It got a little bad in the middle but it managed to pick itself back up by the end. Because of this I have no idea how I feel about the episode over all. Anyway, join me next time for The Blind Banker.