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fansplaining · 5 years

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Any advice for writing summaries for Fics?

Hmmm! Well first to tag recent Fansplaining guest @bettsfic, who has written many more fic summaries than me (this is Elizabeth) and probably has great advice on the subject (or perhaps has already written tips and can link to them).

But I do have some thoughts as a two-decade-plus reader of fic, and many years as a professional writer and editor who’s written a lot of, as we say, display copy (things like deks, subtitles, summaries, etc).

[Please take all of this advice with a grain of salt, because it’s fic, so people can do whatever they want!]

1) Fake it til you make it

If you’re having trouble writing a summary, the number one thing I suggest is DO NOT TELL US ABOUT IT. I may be a slightly choosier reader than some, but “lol I suck at summaries” in the summary (or the tags) is a huge turn-off for me as a reader. I know why people do it! It’s a bit of ironic cover, ~I’m worried this is bad so I’m just gonna beat you to the punch and say this is bad nothing matters ha ha ha.~ Many (all?) of us are guilty of this kind of thing somewhere in our lives, but you don’t need to do it! Just pretend you think you’re great at them, and plow ahead—and the reader will be more likely to go with you.

2) Quote yourself

The tried-and-true, most straightforward summary method is obviously a quote from the fic—an exchange of dialogue or maybe a short paragraph that really captures the essence of what happens in the story. Choosing a good exchange or passage is obviously easier said than done! A few things I’d recommend:

a) Don’t pull, like, huge blocks of text. I’d suggest this no matter what summary route you’re going, but I find people tend to do this with quotes *a lot*. Especially in the past few years, as phone-reading has become so prevalent, being hit with a paragraph the length of your phone screen makes most readers slide past, just because of the way our brains process information.

b) Don’t be afraid to mix and match, or to play around with your own words. You can pull out a bit directly from your story, or you can modify it, you can pair it with a fresh sentence that isn’t a quote at all. It’s fic, there are no rules.

c) Get another human to read it! Ideally a beta! Someone who’s read the story! A second opinion—someone who can say if they think the passage you quoted is misleading, or isn’t doing your story justice, or feels just right—is invaluable.

3) Distill your story into a tweet

This is a tip from my journalist self, originally suggested by a wonderful editor that I worked with for years. If I found myself spinning my wheels 2/3rds of the way through a piece, she’d say, “What will we eventually tweet to promo the piece?” I actually recommend this for all kinds of writing if you’re stuck. What am I arguing or showing or exploring? How am I going to convince other humans that the thing I’ve written is something they’d want to read?

Fic is obviously different from reported features or whatever, but I can’t think of a single fic I’ve read that I couldn’t promo in a tweet. I’m not saying you need to summarize the entire plot in 280 characters. But in a sentence or two, can you tell me what it’s about? That might be wholly emotional description—lots of fic has very little plot, of course. But it’s still about something.

Once you have this distillation, you can expand on it. Is this the information you want to give your readers in advance? Do you want to hold some of it back and tease? Do you want to give them more? You’ll be surprised how much clarity you have on your own work—what you’re trying to put out in the world—when you can describe it succinctly.

4) Situate the reader

So fic is different from other fiction because we already know who the characters are. But, importantly, we don’t know where you’ve placed them—where are they, in relation to the source material we probably already know? If they’re in an AU world, where will we find them at the start of the story? If it’s canon-divergent, tell us about that divergence—that’s the “what if” intrigue that will bring us in as readers.

Think about who has the POV, and if it’s only one person, decide whether you want to limit the summary to the way the world looks from their perspective. I recently finished writing a fic, and in my haste to get ~all the fun details~ into the summary, I included information that the protagonist would not have access to until the very end of the story. I want the reader to be deep inside her head, only seeing her limited perspective—and I want the summary to reflect that.

Even though you’ll get plenty of readers who don’t know the source (all our surveys show plenty of fic readers do this!), you can also send out signals to the people who do know the source/ship/etc. The protagonist doesn’t know the other half of the ship yet—can you use teasing language so *we* know who this stranger who comes into their life is before they do? Fic is full of this kind of pleasurable dramatic irony, and summaries are a great place to lean into it.

I could go on and on, but I should probably cut myself off at some point lol. If anyone has any other resource/tip posts—summaries *are* hard, for all kinds of writing—please leave them in the replies!

#fic #asks #fanfiction #writing #summaries

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onthevirgeofdestruction · 4 years

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35 Q’s for Fanfic Writers

From this post

I’m having a shitty, rude alter-y, crap night so I’m just going to answer all of these to distract myself and focus and to not bother anybody just making my own post and putting it under the cut btw, notice to anyone not aware: since I’m moving I won’t likely be updating anything until I’m done doing so.

1. From one to five stars, how would you rate your writing? (No downplaying yourself!) 3/5? Could use more editing and description and can be weirdly paced.

2. Why do you write fanfiction? Because it’s better than focusing on pain 24/7.

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works? I don’t seem to have a specific narrative voice that people recognize but I’m pretty proud of mostly organic dialogue.

4. Are there any writers that inspire you? as a rule i never look up to anybody for inspiration but there’s some stuff in my ao3 bookmarks I fawn over.

5. What’s the fic you’re most proud of? Right now, none of them. It changes normally, anyway. If get too proud then I’d get my ass kicked by RSD if someone didn’t like it so it’s safer this way

6. What element of writing do you find comes easily? Dialogue.

7. What element of writing do you struggle with most? Organic description, poetic language kind of stuff. I can paint a scene but I’m not so great with bring out out a feeling with description alone.

8. Which character(s) do you find easiest to write? Janus and Virgil are probably tied. They both have things I struggle with but I don’t have to go back and do much adjusting of language and tone with them. Though admittedly my Virgil is signifigantly more foul-mouthed than canon and I tend to prefer pre-AA feral asshole Virgil.

9. Which character(s) do you find most difficult to write? Patton. I write him the least, so people can probably tell. I love Patton, I really do, but it’s so hard to keep away from fanon Patton.

10. What’s your favorite genre to write for? Angst w/ H/C obviously. Or if you’re talking about regular book genres, Fantasy. I fucking love fantasy world building.

11. Who or what do you find yourself writing about most? Trauma. I blame Daeram. As if Ayri isn’t a giant Angst Demon.

12. Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about. Slopes. I’m really into it. I’ve got three one shots running right now. Patrons can read the first part of the unnamed cat remus one, there’s also a coffeeshop au tropey nonsense one like eglantine & lycoris, but Slopes is addiction angst. Mmmmm. Virgil is addicted to coke and alcohol and will listening to his friends even be in time? Who knows, especially not me, but there’s already over 30k.

13. First fandom you ever wrote for? InuYasha. Or was it Harry Potter? Or shit, The Blue Sword? Fuck, I’ve been writing for a long time, I really have no idea.

14. What’s your favorite fandom to write for? Sanders Sides. The characters are the perfect dynamic for writing since they exist in balance of each other and the popular, easy to project on archetypes featured are incredibly fun to do basically any scenario with.

15. What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve ever written for? Weird storywise? Kingdom Hearts? I can’t even follow the plot anymore. Weird Fandomwise? Sanders Sides. Its simultainiously the fluffiest and angstiest nonsense at the same time.

16. Any guilty pleasure trope(s)? Vampires. Gay ones. Gay Vampires. I also love calm tol and angy smol.

17. A trope you’ll never, ever write for. Any tropes that normalize incredibly toxic behaviour or tropes that are inherantly ableist, but I can’t think of any.

18. Wildest fic you’ve ever written? Incorrigible continues to be complete nonsense.

19. Do you prefer canon-compliant, AUs, or something in-between? AUs. I mean closest I even have is canon-divergence other than a single short.

20. Gen fic or shippy stuff? I like it when there is gay nonsense along with a plot that is treated as more important than the relationship the most. But I like both. There’s more shippy stuff in tss so i read more shipping action by default.

21. Favorite pairing to write for? (platonic or romantic!) Anxceit/Sleepxiety, but in general, give me darksides or give me death/j

22. Do you listen to anything while you write? Almost everything I write has a special playlist I listen to to help me write it, but otherwise I listen to my Nyan playlist, an alter is picking the tunes, or a voidfam playlist. I never have music off. When my internet is down I just listen to the songs I own or Anxiety’s theme on loop.

23. Do you prefer prompts and challenges, or completely independent ideas? I’m fine with all of them. I love working with prompts but I tend to deviate. And I’ve never done a challenge since I can’t do deadlines and bad things happen bingo never sent me a card and I applied three times.

24. One-shots or multi-chaptered works? I am generally multi-chaptered stuff, but I’ve been working on a few one-shots lately that are much longer than most one shots.

25. Have you ever daydreamed about side adventures/spin-offs from your fic? Tell us about them! I was originally thinking of doing some little 13-year-old Dreaming!Roman (y’know, the one with a job) shorts but it turns out I just had an alter of that little bastard and that’s why I inexplicably know more about him then I ever even considered. I still might do them after Dreaming is done. But that’s paced so slowly who knows when that might happen. Otherwise I put stuff in my notes and just do shorts of it if I’m like “oh you know what’s cool???” but since I can’t daydream maybe this question doesn’t apply to me.

26. Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try? I want to do more autism stuff, and I’ve had it demanded a few times, but I’m scared of being that explict about it for some reason. Possibly because I might be, possibly because I’m scared of doing it wrong even though I’ve accidentally coded multiple characters autistic. I’m scared of explictly tagging them as such, too.

27. What’s the nicest comment you’ve ever received? That I can remember off the top of my head? I’m going with one from @a-genz-with-trauma-and-kins. It really helped me out and was just so kind and literally the best christmas gift I got in 2020.

28. How well do you handle criticism when it comes to your writing? I can handle it alright but Daeram is a little fucking pissbaby about it. Constructive criticism helps people get better, so I appreciate it. I can’t handle critism that is incomplete, though. “i just don’t get it” or “I don’t know I don’t like it” kind of things. If I can’t understand the why to fix it then things get out of control. And then I spiral and RSD for like four days minimum. If it came from an anon or a troll, too, It might not bother me for as long. Things that are just like “this is shit and you should feel bad” just make me laugh. Couldn’t even bother to read it long enough to insult me proper? I don’t care.

29. Have you ever gone outside of your comfort zone for a fic? How did it turn out? I have a few times. Mostly in shorts and prompts, I think. I think they turned out okay. They’re not particularly inspired or anything.

30. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst? Depends on my mood. Am I triggered? give me the fluff. Am I vibin? Angst.

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them! Fuck, fam, no, I can’t, I have so many. I have multiple original stories and some of them have very large casts and like holy fuck. Or do you mean in Sanders Sides fandom? Um, Morgan and Thorn in PD. The lesbian and her himbo dynamic. I love them. They’re dorks. Morgan is strong person with sharp tongue and soft romantic heart and Thorn is just so kind and so dumb and so exciteable he’s like a puppy. They were just filler characters and I got attached to them. Felton even gets redemption for being an ass later in PD, like oof i never intended to include so much OC content, especially for names I just picked randomly.

32. Summarize a random fic of yours in 10 words or less. nope I’m doing all of them because these are fun plea for my new self: 2 gay vampires, 4 humans, 1 braincell dreaming while I wake: trauma child needs therapy and so do you break: big oof, oh dragons, oh why, go virgil go rebuild: virgil is so not okay there’s more virgil to deal painful death: gay teens drink themselves into a new religion stargazing: whoops we didn’t realize people actually cared whole castle: everyone will throw down for kid!patton, even you incorrigible: found family with a shot of psychological horror and crack dangerous instincts: wholesome crime syndacite action slopes: addict gets mugged and thinks that’s just fine with him conflagration: logan avoids everything ever like a champ cat!remus: bored fae shifts gay pining from one person to another caffeine cyptids: caffinated gay panic goes faster than regular gay panic eglantine & lycoris: more tropes than you can toss a shoe at storytime: overpowered virgil also overreacts literally always

33. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process? an alter and I write together and I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen, what I’m writing about, or even what year it is. I often don’t even remember what I wrote. There’s no outline. I have an idea and I pick things at random for it. There’s just notes and an evil gleam in a demon’s eye. The only reason I know more than readers is because I take a long time to edit and some of these stories have fucking alters up in my head who can tell me things. Daeram tells me nothing. The writing demon supposedly has all this knowledge but I have absolutely no clue because he does not talk to me, he just fronts and slams out 9k in a few hours or we cofront to write and I’m like “oh no she didn’t” while typing

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of. i’m fond of the entire painful death series and I tried to find something I really liked without spoilers in stargazing and I couldn’t so here’s a random thing from incorrigble: “So, what do you do with your friends?” Patton continued on with a megawatt smile. “Grand larceny,” Virgil deadpanned and glared at Patton, who was taken aback. Remy and Andy just broke out laughing while Virgil tentatively sipped his still-too-hot-cocoa.

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want! slopes my dudes slopes i have learned so much about cocaine! like wow! I thought for a minute it was going to end with MCD around 30k but it swtiched from whump to hurt/comfort and I still don’t know if it’s going to be MCD but look at that funky little coke/alcohol addict go, it’s a medical wonder he’s alive! It’s not like there’s what seems to be a little talked about interaction between alcohol and cocaine that causes a toxic chemical to build up in the liver which can result in liver failure and sudden death at basically any moment! Which is part of why it may result in MCD but this time no ghosts! maybe it’ll be h/c with whump elements or maybe it’ll be whump with h/c elements we can’t know for sure

#ayri writes #tw drug mention

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another-mexico-oc · 4 years

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The most used Mexico´ cliches in fanfiction and comics (And surely this can apply to any other OC)

Traducción en Español: AQUÍ

DISCLAIMER:

This post DOES NOT intend to throw shit and attack specific authors or their work, so out of respect we will not mention names. If you have read my other posts you will know that this only has the purpose of entertaining and to give a personal opinion.

Also, this does not intend to be a manual or guide on how to write a good comic or fanfic. It is only a compilation of repetitive elements found throughout these works.

Now, let's continue ...

Hi! How are you doing? I hope you are safe at home, and in case you have to go outside take your precautions.

I have been in Hetalia's fandom for more than a year, and the Countryhumans' less than a year, and both my cousin and I have seen and read enough material from Mexico's OCs, enough to compile in a list the most popular cliches when reading a fanfic or comic which involves this character. As I said at the beginning, this is not a guide of what to do and what not, but we invite creators to find new ways to tell the same stories (or even new ones) differently and to not fall into the predictable.

( Perhaps it is because in my university career one of my teachers was very demanding with coherent scripts and stories, and that she tended to review them 10 times before giving the approval, that I became very demanding with the creation of stories and characters. But that's my personal issue! )

Sarcastically, this should be called "The clichés that cannot be miss for your Mexico´ story" :

1. The Mexico´OC was created ONLY to be the love interest of another character (the author's favorite):

In the same way, the author´ comics and fanfics will be of the romantic genre, and it will involve his favorite ship (or his various ships if he/she is a multi-shipper). Making a brief conclusion, there are few works in which Mexico stands out as a character, without having the love interest, or the famous harem, as the main plot.

And if you were curious, here is a chart that shows the most used ships in the Hetalia´ case, although in 2020 it may have slight changes:

(Denmark and Norway?! I have never found any fic about them being paired with Mexico)

2. María Sue and Gary Estuardo:

More cliché this could not be. Even when I´m mexican myself, I realize that the representation of my country has received the Mary Sue treatment by the fandom, both in Hetalia and in Countryhumas, and mostly by the latino and mexican community. I already talked about this HERE, but I'll summarize it:

Regardless of whether Mexico is a man or a woman:

- They will be the center of the universe, all the characters will kiss the ground they step on, they will be the most cute person in the world, without flaws, and their greatest virtue will be his or her ethereal beauty that will make everyone to fall in love with them, with just an eye blink.

- It´s never their fault and they will never face the consequences of their actions, e.g. causing WW3. What's even more, he or she is just a poor victim of the evil countries that want to take advantage of his/her territory.

- Having got laid or dating half of the world will not cause them serious consequences or a negative reputation.

- Personality? Oh my, that´s very complicated to write, instead I will narrate how my female Mexico arrived at the restaurant with a dress that highlighted her feminine attributes and how her long and abundant hair made more than one person to sigh; Or how my male Mexico wore tight pants that showed his perfect toned legs, and that when he smiled he made blush every country.

If it was a parody, I'd accept Mexico to be a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu. But usually the authors want you to take the story and the character seriously. So... nope.

3. Plots taken from soap operas, or telenovelas:

Believe it or not, there are authors who have admitted that their Mexico´ fanfics are based on mexican telenovelas. And the worst thing is that telenovelas have the most cliche stories in the world! Think about it, you have a good and humble, but kind of dumb person, who in this case is going to be Mexico, who falls in love with a handsome and rich person, who will obviously be a first world country, but there is someone who wants to finish their romance. You also have forced marriages, fights, misunderstandings, slaps, super dramatic scenes, passionate scenes, cheesy titles...

Mix all this elements together, and you will get:

For comedy purpose, we will be using my OC)

4. The fanfic or comic always, ALWAYS, has to start with a world meeting:

I propose a challenge for you and your friends. Gather together and search for Mexico fanfics, no matter the fandom where you all came from. Take a shot, or put a coin in a jar, for every time the first chapter begins at a meeting.

And almost always it is here where the author builds the romantic story, examples:

“It was a normal day in the boardroom, everyone was arguing while Germany (United Nations if it is a Countryhumans fic) tried in vain to put order and discipline. Only a nation was waiting for a certain person with brown skin and delicate features, to enter through that great door… ”

“Suddenly, a brown skin girl with black and curly hair (Seriously guys, where did you got the idea your average mexican girl has natural curly hair?!) entered the room, and the entire room went silent. Everyone who was there had something to do with that young lady, and seeing her there, turned into a full woman, left them stunned. She was gorgeous.”

Another cliché, but this one can be in any story, is: "Realizing that it was getting late, he got up, took off his pajamas, groomed, combed his hair, and put on his yellow shirt with his ...". There are several ways to start the story without the famous world meeting and the character's morning routine.

5. The harem and love triangles (or any other geometric shape):

This cliché could not be missing either. There are a lot of Mexico x TheWorld´ fanfics. As I said before, I am not against the shipping and the harem of Mexico, each one is free to ship whatever they like, as long as there is respect between the community.

But even when an author wants to focus on a single couple, let's take for example Canada x Mexico, he necesarily has to include USAMex and RusMex as secondary couples, and at some point it gets exhausting and reforces the Mary Sue treatment. It seems that for many authors, Mexico's international relations automatically translate into a “romantic relationship”, and not into a friends or business partners one.

And also, the construction of the relationship it feels sometimes very empty. The author doesn't give time to show how they become a couple or how they found the chemistry in the other. In the third chapter they are already making out!

6. The toxicity:

Oh yeah.

I don't blame this clichá, my cousin and I concluded that healthy relationships are rare in Hetalia and Countryhumans. Practically all countries have one or two flaws that at first sight makes them look toxic. And in Mexico's fanfics and comics, particularly those involving USAMex, the character gets involved in a possessive and codependent relationship.

If Mexico is not a dominant male or a femme fatale, it will be a submissive character who will allow all kinds of abuse. Or in each chapter he or she will doubt about his/her relationship, and will make their partner jealous.

To write a healthy relationship, you must work on the characters' strengths and make them both face their flaws, but instead, the authors take these flaws and make them the basis of the relationship.

7. The party´ chapter in which things get ... heavily crazy:

Okay, so we have our first chapter at the world meeting, where we establish the main couple. Now what we need is the stage for the lovebirds to confess their love ... while being drunk. In many works we will find the countries gathered at a party (usually a Latino party), and the author will narrate all the crazy events that occur, including how Mexico and his sweetheart, will confess their feelings after having taken a few bottles, and sometimes this gets to ...

8. The chapter (or chapters) + 18

This is almost a requirement for many fanfic´ writers, and is always written in the same way. The author will narrate you in detail from the moment they begin to undress until the climax moment.

9. Spain will never stop calling Mexico "New Spain", despite the fact that more than 200 years have passed since the country's independence and its recognition:

And in the case of Hetalia, Mexico must have the same last name as Spain: Hernández Carriedo. Yes, in the same way that United States last name is not Jones, but Kirkland, like its ex-colonizer England; or that Belarus last name is Braginski as his brother Russia, and not Arlovskaya.

Also, although Spain continues to call Mexico "New Spain", he will never call Argentina "Rio de la Plata" or Colombia "New Granada". Similarly, England and France will never call America and Canada "13 Colonies" and "New France" respectively. It seems to be something exclusive for Spain and Mexico.

10. Repetitive references and jokes, or lack of knowledge about the country.

Paco the chihuahua dog, Mexico and Sudamericans fighting over the avocado´s name, Mexico having flashbacks of his/her past with the Aztec Empire and with the USA when they were colonies, Mexico complaining about his/her rulers and corruption within the country, Mexico crying over Texas, Mexico demonstrating his/her beautiful culture to other countries …

Not to mention when someone makes an Mexico OC and his knowledge of the country is very basic: tacos, sombreros, Day of the Dead, always hot climate, the wall issue with America, Aztec and Maya as the only ancestors of Mexico, Texas, burritos... Sorry if I sound rude but, those people need to read and investigate more, and watch less movies where Mexico has that yellow filter.

11. Bad translations

Okay, this is something exclusive of the spanish speaking fandom, but I´ll tell you what´s their issue.

Some author had the brilliant idea to make the dialogues of the countries in their respective languages, followed by placing the Spanish translation in parentheses, and from there many followed suit. The problem is when you notice that they don´t speak or understand the language, and instead they use the Google translator, obtaining results like this:

There have been several occasions when I am reading America and England´ dialogues, and it makes me want to write in the comment section: “DON´T USE THE GOOGLE TRANSLATOR! ” I wouldn´t know what to say from the rest of the countries, since my French is very basic,and I have hardly learned one phrase from the others languages.

My advise for these authors is to find a person who is fluent in the language and who can help them with the dialogues. Or even better, try to avoid this cliché, because at the end of the day people will only read the translation, and it is already implied that each country speaks in its respective language. Also doing this is very pretentious.

The less you can do is to add in the dialogues well know words, like adiós, hola, bonjour, ciao...

12. Changing the canon personalities. Or worse: turn a loved character into a villain.

I already said this HERE too. Basically, for the author to make his Mexico an empathic character and to make other countries to fall in love with him or her, they must conveniently change their canon personalities. This applies more in Hetalia than in Countryhumans, since this last one belongs to the community and nobody can establish what is canon and what is not. On the other hand, in Hetalia the characters already have their own personalities, and neither plays the role of villain. And there is a big difference between being an antagonist or a villain, but I´ll let you to investigate it yourself.

This cliché is closely related to the Mary Sue treatment, because if I want readers to empathize with Mexico, I must turn another character into an evil person who is going to put him through hardships. And normally this character is the United States or America, whatever you call him.

If I want Russia or Germany to fall in love with Mexico, I must rewrite their characters and throw out the unstable part of Russia, and Germany's little experience regarding romantic relationships, just to make them the most romantic and sentimental people in the world.

✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥ ✥

There you have it! I think I already roasted 80% of Mexico fanfiction and fanart, but is not like they are going to dissapear with this post. On the good side, for every time I cringed reading some of these works, I have saved a good amount money, you must try it. I should try an aside blog where I criticize bad fanfiction... But at the moment, that´s all for today! See ya!

#mun says #personal opinion #hws mexico #aph mexico #hetalia mexico #countryhumans mexico #fanfiction reviews #clichés

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chantsings · 4 years

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What does it mean that you're pro-ship? Sorry if this is rude

it’s not rude don’t worry. this will be a bit long and still not at all comprehensive! and it’s basically me summarizing great posts and talking points i’ve seen about, because i am at heart a historian and all i know how to do is pull and put together sources in a new way LOL

cw / pedophilia & incest mention, purity wank, discourse

let me start by debunking. the pro-ship label is a hot topic and it’s often horribly misconstrued on social media, where some people will say that being a pro-shipper = being a pedophile and having an incest kink. like, they’ll say that every pro-shipper are these things, and thus dangerous in fandom spaces and especially dangerous around minors. which is plain wrong.

because the crux of being pro-ship just means that we don’t care what people ship and we’re against harassing and bullying fans for the kind of content that they enjoy, even if it’s “problematic” or bad. “problematic” ships includes stuff like shipping siblings, underage, age gap, “unhealthy” ships, abusive ships, or ships that make your skin crawl for whatever other reason.

i usually say “i don’t welcome anti-rhetoric” as a more comprehensive statement, because anti rhetoric posits that it’s ok to actively ban certain content from ever being shown in media ever again, that fiction is an accurate way of predicting someone’s morality, and that fictional characters are equally or more important than real people. endorsing extreme censorship in fiction is like... a whole nother topic that i won’t get into, but it tends to harm vulnerable people first. you cannot get a 1:1 read on someone’s morality solely through the kind of fiction they consume, just like you’d never say that an fps game lover is ready to go outside and start doing gun violence. doing so is a false equivocation with pretty poor logic. it’d be like saying:

“gun violence is bad” > “because gun violence is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad” > “anyone who creates content with fictional explorations of gun violence is also bad” > “since people who create fictional explorations of gun violence are as bad as people who do gun violence irl, it’s okay to harm them”

...not super logical, right? replace “gun violence” with anything else and it’s the same fallacy. yes, even pedophilia. so many antis misuse the word or maybe truly think that immoral art or fiction is the same thing as csem (child sexual exploitation material. cp or child porn is the wrong term, don’t use it). authorities at child protection agencies have had to come out and ask that people stop reporting art because it literally wastes their time & resources because they’re too busy being flooded by non-actional images like artistic images & cartoons, when they could be helping real children in abusive situations. they don’t care if you really hate Ship because Adult Character A is badtouching Child Character B - your sense of censorship, your ego, your distaste for immorality in fiction does nothing to help real victims, and in fact puts victims at further risk for wasting resources that could help them & get rid of real abusers. saving real children is fundamentally more important than you worrying about your local smut artist.

and to double back even more on the point about censorship being most likely to harm vulnerable people first... there have been many instances of people getting doxxed by antis and fans contacting an artist’s workplace over their problematic fanart, making very harmful accusations directly to their employers (who may not bother with verifying if an influx of “your employee is a pedophile” accusations are true or not), thus putting their livelihood and honestly their lives at risk too. just from a trying to enjoy fandom standpoint, seeing this happen is not enjoyable.

my attitude of being pro-ship is that “don’t like, don’t read” and “dead dove, don’t eat” mentality that used to be more of a norm before the influx of purity culture ~2014. meaning if some content isn’t your thing you leave it alone instead of confronting the creator, or saying such-and-such content should never exist at all. it means that even if you do consume problematic fictional content, as a coping mechanism or just because you enjoy exploring darker themes, it doesn’t mean that you condone it irl... or that you wish to, like, spread around a harmful agenda to random innocents in the fandom.

there’s also a common misconception that pro-shippers can’t also be uncomfortable by problematic content. haha. this is wrong. anyone can have squicks, anyone can find a certain trope/ship/character gross or disturbing or triggering. anyone can want to not see a specific creator’s content because it makes them uncomfy. i have a handful of squicks and i try to avoid them, but i don’t automatically go off to condemn whoever made it.

because, in conclusion, indulging in bad fantasies does not equal having bad behavior... fictional explorations of something are not the same as the thing itself... and immoral does not mean illegal.

personally! you will not see me talk about the problematic or nsfw stuff that i enjoy or create on main lol. i have my own people and places for that, y’know? if you scroll through my blog you’ll see that it’s totally sfw, if that’s something that you were worried. some pro-shippers are very open about posting whatever especially if it’s what they like to draw or write or if they’re just very into engaging in discourse. i am...... Not.

so! hope this helped a little!

#discourse tag

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pixel-cat-1 · 5 years

Text

I just finished The Outer Worlds

I don’t really ever use this blog for more than reblogging stuff, so this is probably coming out of left field for anyone who follows me, but as you see in the title, I beat The Outer Worlds not a couple of minutes ago. I have some thoughts I’d like to talk about while their fresh, and this is as good a place as any to do that lol

So, what did I think of it? Overall, I think The Outer Worlds is okay game that ultimately fails to meet up in many regards to not only Obsidian’s golden child, Fallout New Vegas, but in some departments even regular ass Bethesda games from years ago. And that’s honestly such a shame, because TOW had so much goddamn potential and yet I finished it and felt practically nothing for the entire last level and final ending sequence.

The main issue I think is that ultimately speaking, TOW doesn’t necessarily do anything different from any other RPG I can think of, and it doesn’t do anything like that super well.

For example, the combat’s good on a technical level. The controls and mechanics are fun to use (especially the dodge system), but the enemies tend to either range from “complete curb stomp bitch babies” to “bullet sponge that’ll kill me so fast I won’t even know what happened.” Most fights weren’t particularly engaging, and I was basically handicapping myself but not using the companion abilities for about 75% of the game (I don’t know why I never tried pressing the d-pad buttons, but yet again, when I can just shoot shit and huff an inhaler, I didn’t need to think too hard). The disparity of how difficult the game can be is often confusing, and I was more often limited because of my ammo count more so than my ability to play the game.

The RP aspects can be good at times. There are plenty of skill checks that reward you for being a smart little egg, and a part of RPG’s I like is being able to avoid combat and make people happy, and generally make myself useful, so that was fairly fun. Overall the dialogue options and the performances by most VA’s left me not feeling like I was being hindered in acting and responding to situations how I’d like, so at the very least, that didn’t let me down.

The music was overall enjoyable, although very forgettable, and sometimes a bit all over the place: there’s Western-y guitar ambient tracks, also some more techno-y ones? Elevator music that sounds like they got it from a royalty free website. This kinda wish-washyness ties into multiple issues I had with the game I’ll get into further on.

The graphics are good, which isn’t necessarily shocking anymore because every game looks good. There are some aesthetic choices I liked, that being things like the Art Deco style architecture and advertisements from the loading screens. Terra 2 is gorgeous as all hell, with the skybox being particularly amazing (I’ve often fantasized about Earth having rings, so this partially fulfills that fantasy). Monarch is overall also very well done, with making it look and feel like a hostile shithole with ravenous wildlife. The looming gas giant overheard also does a good job of making me feel dread, which is about as much of that feeling I ever got. However, the game never really maintains a distinct “style”, rather it collages a bunch of them at once. Because for all the aesthetic of the Art Deco style that they do for cities like Byzantium. there’s like 10 levels/areas that are just generic as all hell “sci-fi space shit” that you’ve seen before. And then there’s Scylla, which is so fucking boring in design I don’t know why it’s even in the game.

This creates an issue where it’s like they wanted to make the game look Bioshock, but some people wanted something out of Mass Effect. But some people played Borderlands, and wanted to go for the wacky space bandit and hostile environment feel. But they also wanted to stick it to Bethesda, so they made is vaguely look like a Fallout game as well. It’s hard to describe in text, so I’m just gonna post these and show it best I can

^ It looks like space Bioshock here

^ And here it reminds me more of Borderlands than anything else (it’s a lot easier to see if you look at it from the ground, rip)

Scylla is literally just a rock. As far as I can tell, you could probably fucking avoid the damn thing if you avoid side quests. There’s fucking nothing there. Just enemies, a few side quest things, an empty town and a giant terraformer thingy that’s interesting to look at for like 4 seconds. And despite what you’d think, no, there is no low gravity. That would’ve at least made this place have some interesting gimmick or mechanic, but no. It’s just a fucking dumping ground for side quests. God. Fucking. Damnit.

All science-y buildings just look like this for the most part across all levels. It’s not bad, just very generic and same-y.

The Groundbreaker’s fairly interesting, until you realize that all it is is essentially a giant corridor front to back. Actually, scratch that, it’s two corridors! One of which is this Back Bays area overrun with criminals. How do you get to this clearly dangerous and isolated part of the ship? Well a fucking elevator smack dab in the middle of the pavilion of course! So anyone can just go up or down into this apparent no man’s land part of the ship by literally going into it via an elevator. Dear god.

^Monarch definitely has one of the best looking environments in the game, tied with Terra 2 down below

But what absolutely fucks the game overall is despite how much effort they put into making everything look nice (regardless if you actually like it or not), the overall level design in terms of function and whatnot? Mind numbingly boring.

All levels are really small maps with (at most) a handful of major buildings or towns depending on the scale, and the rest is just a bunch of abandoned buildings with some enemies, or a crashed ship or something. There's just...nothing going on with half of these dungeons.

Also the vast majority of buildings have a “Quarantine” sign out front or is locked in some capacity, which means you could have 4-5 buildings in a random batch of them along a road, but only 2 you can explore. And since all the fucking interiors across multiple planets look the exact same, it leads to an incredible feeling of sameiness in a game that has you running around an entire solar system. How the fuck even??? I’d argue fucking Fallout 3 handled this better. At least there was more to do! More overall dungeons and levels! Did I miss something? Am I just fucking stupid and I missed the all the good shit?

Combine this with the wish-washy aesthetics and music, it leads to an incredible feeling of not really knowing what to make of things. You’ll just be sprinting around, shooting all the red things on the compass just to get it over with by Monarch. And when you realize that LMG’s are just...the best weapons in the game as far as I could tell, and there’s no real downsize to them, you’ll just fucking run around gunning everything down while some forgettable track plays in the background until some enemy with a weirdly large health bar forces you to think for a bit before you get back to running around and shooting shit again.

Despite this though? I still overall enjoyed the combat. I liked running around and becoming the 4th Horseman. Plus with the mechanics overall being fun to use, it wasn’t really that bad. But I can’t say on an objective level I think it’s good for a game to feel like that. Because despite how heavy handed I’m being right now (and will be throughout the rest of this impromptu review), I don’t hate this game.

Sound design is overall very good. Guns make satisfying shooty shooty bang bang noises, and as I said before, the VA’s are overall very good all around. Parvati stands out as the most interesting character to listen to in general. She has a lot of informal speech patterns that makes her distinct, and is generally a treat to listen talk. At worst, you get a character like Nyoka, who doesn’t sound bad by any real means, but for a lot of her dialogue, I felt they should’ve slowed it down and focused on getting her emotions down. But it certainly wasn’t bad.

Storywise? This game wasn’t particularly interesting. I’m gonna put the keep reading thing here because I want to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t played yet and cares about them. Long story short, I think the game was good, but very disappointing given what it could have been. I enjoyed myself for the most part, but often found the lack of anything super special to really hold it back from achieving something I think the gaming industry needed in an era of, ironically enough, hyper greedy corporations with no morals to speak of.

So, what did I think of the story? And I guess by extension, the side quests. Overall, I think the main story was...not very good. There was a lot of good stuff inbetween though, and a lot of side quests and little things definitely were enjoyable. But the plot is just not nearly as engaging as it should be. Given how short it was though, that might’ve been a mercy.

The story, as roughly as I can summarize is, is that you’re a colonist frozen on the colony ship “Hope.” It’s been adrift for 70 years, but you’re woken up by a guy named Phineas Welles (he’s basically Doc Brown, but nicer). The Board (which consists of the 10 companies who own and run the colony/solar system) try to stop him, but they fail, and you’re escape podded onto Terra 2, near a dying town called Edgewater. The pod accidentally kills the contact you were to meet, so now you’re gonna steal his ship and use it to do shit basically.

Along the way, you pick up a ragtag band of miscreants and general shitheads and kill a lot of people and wildlife in a quest to stop the corrupt Board from running the colony harder into the dirt than they already have. It’s very by the numbers, more or less. I guess.

The immediate issue is that, despite being able to join the Board and betray Phineas if you want, there’s absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Not a single goddamn reason, other than for the evulz. This creates an issue where I feel no reason to deviate from the Phineas side of the story. And I know what someone might be thinking “But Pixel! The Board is supposed to be evil!” And I am absolutely aware of that. But the thing is, so was Caesar’s Legion in Fallout New Vegas. And yet, that faction is often considered just as interesting and compelling a faction for the game as the NCR or Mr. House. People will, to this day, still argue over who had the best idea for solving the Wasteland’s issues. Because despite how evil the Legion is, they still had very valid points about the NCR and how horribly corrupt and bloated it was. And there was absolutely an argument to be made about how safe they made their lands for those under their ownership. Stuff like that that makes you actually consider and think about whether or not you're actually making the right choices for the whole of the New Vegas wasteland, and by extension the rest of the Western part of America.

Here? There’s no contest. There is no necessary evils. There is no good reason the Board does anything. No logic, no reason. All they can do is fuck shit up even more, and that makes them such a boring, vague antagonist that there was never a moment in my mind I actually considered working for them. Any potential moments they had to sway me or dashed aside by them constantly proving how they could never actually fix the problems they made. And if that was the intention? Then Obsidian fucked up.

People remember the villains that raise a point a hell of a lot more than they do villains that are just evil for the sake of it (there are obviously exceptions, for an RPG? you need a compelling villain). And that’s why no one will remember this game in a decade. It pales so hard in comparison to New Vegas, it’s not even funny. It’s on par with Fallout 3, at best. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing if the whole point of this game was to make a statement against an increasingly morally bankrupt Bethesda.

Let’s look at, per se, Skyrim. Paarthurnax was a supporting character with an interesting backstory: he’s Alduin’s brother, who is the main antagonist. He is a dragon that secludes himself on the top of the tallest mountain in Skyrim, who meditates and focuses on suppressing his inherit evil dragon nature. Despite this nature, he chooses to be good. And he asks a very compelling question.

"What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”

In a single sentence, Skyrim asked a more though provoking question than the entirely of The Outer Worlds. And if you played F:NV, then it’s probably weird to hear that, because F:NV was full of moral and philosophical quandaries. So where did it all go?

The thing is, people forget that the Obsidian that made F:NV is dead and gone. The actual people who made that game have all moved on from that company. This is the child trying to replicate the success of it’s parents, without entirely understanding exactly what the parent did to achieve what it achieved.

The biggest difference between F:NV and TOW is that F:NV really forces you to think. TOW just doesn’t require that, at all.

Phineas good, Board bad. No thinking required.

I think the real warning sign is at the beginning of the game as well. Edgewater, the first town in the game, is dying. People are leaving and the town's also dealing with a disease epidemic. The town’s leader’s answer? Cut off power to the deserters, and force them to work harder despite the fact the town’s basically dying because of the overworking and disease. Despite the fact there’s not even enough medicine to heal everyone, and they have to play favorites with who lives and who dies.

What the fuck logic is this? Why would I ever choose that?

The only other choice, unless I missed a compromise solution (which I would’ve wanted) is to route power to the deserters and finish off the town more or less. The deserters wouldn’t take in everyone though, so a lot of people would die anyways. But even then, she’s still clearly the more competent leader. There’s not a goddamn contest.

It just continues like that the whole game. I rarely had to think about who I’d side with. because the solution is obvious. The literal only reason I’d side with the corporations is if I was being evil, nothing else.

The best the story gets is when you need to make a compromise on Monarch between MSI (a corporation who got the boot from the Board) and the Iconoclasts (Religious people who are anti corporation). If you work with the second in command of the Iconoclasts, you can depose their extremist, dipshit leader and work out a truce. Which is good! It rewards the player for this too, when these factions come to help in the final level of the game (and when you see specific characters you could save helping out, that also make it feel like your decisions had an impact). You see the two factions...standing next to eachother, which isn’t much, but it’s about as much change you see in the game.

Which is also another thing that TOW fails to accomplish: a sense of longevity with my decisions leads to me feeling that, despite making the right choices, nothing really changes.

Going back to Edgewater, you’d think after a while, I’d come back and the town would be entirely gone or something, right?

Nope.

Some NPC’s stood outside the factory forever, as did some guards. There weren’t any lights on. That’s about it.

Well, certainly the Deserters must give me more quests to help out, which can lead to me establishing them and helping them help the Edgewaterers, right?

No. Very quickly you realize there’s very little do or talk about with NPC’s after you do monumental decisions. The only functional difference is an opinion slider, which is another imitation from F:NV that means fuck all. The only in game things it affects is: a) The prices of venders of that factions

b) Whether or not that faction will shoot you on site.

That’s it as far as I noticed. The best idea they had, that being that factions can love you, but also fear you just doesn’t do anything. As far as I could tell, at least.

I’d love to be wrong, because I was so excited to see what would happen to entire settlements and after I helped them. After I made important decisions that’d change the face of the colony. And I felt so disappointing when it became apparent little actually mattered.

The companion sidequests aren’t too much better. The pacing is so weird, sometimes, depending on how available certain planets are. Parvati’s was especially jarring, despite it being the best written by far.

It basically is you helping her get with an engineer chick from the Groundbreaker. It’s pretty adorable overall, and without a doubt has some of the better writing character wise, but the pacing was so fucking weird. It initially starts with you getting Parvati to talk to her about engineering stuff. They say they’ll email and stuff about engineering stuff. which is neat. So I run around, finish up all the side quests on the ship as I can, then head back to my own ship. I did not go back to my ship at all during this.

When I come back, Parvati immediately tells me that she and the engineer, Junlei, have been messaging and getting flirty and now she has a crush and it’s just like “Dude, were you texting her while we murdered all those bugs in the engine?”

It’s doubly funny as well, because Obsidian wanted to avoid the player having romanceable characters. Which makes about as much sense as you think. Once source said the reason was that they wanted you to focus on roleplay, and not trying to bang anyone you found hot (okay?). Another just said they weren’t ready for it. And I believe it. As much as I think romance would’ve been another good thing to add depth to this game, I bet you they’d have fucked it up. It’s just funny. Even Fallout 4 had pretty acceptable romances.

Granted the system was fucking basically “Kill shit together until you wanna bang” but fuck, it was something! It also doesn’t help there’s a bunch of cuties all over this game: Huxley stands out as an adorable muffin who becomes a generic NPC at the end of the MSI/Iconoclast questline, despite the fact you can even repair her journal terminal with zero indication at you can do it, which is good! Let me just do things to be nice! But she literally just sits there after you rescue her with a few dialogue options which goes away after the peace deal, and it's so fucking frustrating that I want to enjoy the characters more, but none of them seem to have more than a paragraph's worth of depth to them and it's so sad.

Even the companions are like this. At the beginning I’d try and talk with Parvati about anything, but the only dialogue options would be about getting her out of the party, and that’s it. I can’t ask her what she thinks of things, or of the current quest/situation. There’s such a weird lack of depth in a weird amount of areas, that it felt almost worse than playing a Bethesda game.

I think the penultimate disappointment of the game is, fittingly, the final level, Tartarus. Which is fitting, because it feels very hellish. Not the planet mind you, or the prison which it takes place in, but just the complete lack of anything super special. It’s just the same kind of environments you’ve already run through, but bigger and with more bullet sponge bad guys. Which is funny, because jumping around and killing an army on a purple hell planet that has perpetual lightning storms would’ve been sick as fuck, but nah, gotta run around on Scylla instead of anywhere else compelling.

In my playthrough, MSI, the Groundbreaker, and the Iconoclasts came to help me deal with all the fucking goons, which was mostly cool because I didn’t have to deal with the tediousness of killing every last one of corporate goon myself.

This is about as big of an impact your decisions come to as far as I’ve noticed. Which isn’t saying much.

You meet the Chairman of the Board here, by the way. I just shot him and kept moving. shrugs

There’s also a last minute villain in this Sophia person, who is also apparently on the Board? It’d help if there was a list of the Board people, which could’ve been on a terminal somewhere. Maybe I’m dumb and never found it, which is plausible.

The final boss fight, (I hesitate to call it that) is just somewhat large robot. It’s a bullet sponge with respawning combat drones flying everywhere and they’re very annoying. I died once after around 10 minutes of fighting, then using Parvati and Felix’s (he’s another companion, he’s also okay I guess) combat abilities I knocked it down and layed into the robot’s weak spot. He died very quickly.

So depending on how you do it, the final fucking boss is either stupidly hard or mind numbingly easy. I don’t know which is worse.

So you go past the dead robot, gun down Sophia in one shot, and save Phineas. You basically become the leader of Halcyon, there’s a F:NV-esque slideshow and commentary about your actions that somehow is worse that New Vegas’s, credits roll, and you sit there thinking “That’s it? That’s really it?”

Yeah, that’s it.

It’s such a let down, especially because this was supposed to be Fallout New Vegas’s spiritual successor. But all it does it make me want to play that game instead of this one.Which is probably what you should do regardless if you pick this game up or not.

There’s a bunch of other mechanics and stuff I never brought up. There’s technically a character customization screen, but you literally only see your character in the select menu, and there’s no third person. There’s a barber in Edgewater who’s also a doctor, and yet you can’t even get a haircut from him (again, failing to match up to even Fallout 3).

There’s these Mods you can put on armor and guns, and you find them by the bucket full so you’ll always have those. Just get an aim stabilizing one for an LMG and you’ll be fine. You can also tinker your armor and weapons, making them stronger if you spend credits on it (why not the armor and weapon parts, I’ll never fucking know). You can repair your stuff at a workbench, which is advisable. Just take all the weapons and armor you pick up, take it apart for parts, and never worry about it again. You’ll get money from quests, so buying those parts is meaningless and a waste of money

There’s also hacking and stealth and stuff. Stealth is such a non...thing in the game. There’s no silencers, but since all enemies decided to put cotton into their ears, there’ll be plenty of times I shoot someone, and a guy ten feet away heard fucking nothing. Plus there’s this disguise mechanic where you pick up ID guards and get a hologram disguise that wears out as you walk (passing speech check from suspicious guards restores it), so it’s not like sneaking around was ever a priority. Just put your points into the speech. Stealth is a dump stat more or less.

Oh yeah, Parvati’s an ace lesbian. Which is nice that they handled that way in a non-dipshit way (you can also identify as ace in certain dialogue with her in her companion questline, which is funny considering they never let you fuck anyways, so it’s weird that you even have the choice). My only complaint is that they should’ve put this representation in a better game.

What’s funny is that, despite everything, I don’t even hate this game. I feel a remarkable numbness, followed by a desire for something better. I spent about a week burning through it? If I had more free time, I could’ve finished it sooner probably. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it. It was pretty fun for what it was, but knowing that this is somehow supposed to match up to what F:NV was is sad, and a sign of how bad the gaming industry had fallen.

The only difference here is that unlike the Outer Worlds, I can’t purge the rot of the gaming industry with a haelstrom of plasma bullets.

Would I recommend this game? I guess. There’s still some fun to be had, but don’t expect anything too major or interesting. Get it on sale, it;s not worth $60 right now. There’s apparently DLC coming out for it eventually? I might play it, and I might post an update to this review, or make a seperate post for that eventually. Depends on how well this one does? Or if the DLC makes me feel enough emotion to type something out like this in 2 straight hours.

#the outer worlds #fallout #obsidian #bethesda #skyrim #review #parvati holcomb #felix millstone #phineas welles #huxley #i might make a post about other miscellaenous grievances #but don't count on it

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ghostmartyr · 6 years

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Hi Immi. I'm new to the fandom--joined around the drop of ch107. Since then there's been a big buzz about historia, regarding her sexuality, her character regressing and her relationship with ymir. i'd seen snk s2 and honestly never occurred to me to ship yumikuri because i hate ships but being on tumblr, well, it's everywhere. I see people get hate on shipping her with males but i'm not sure where i stand. Is she explicitly lesbian? If not then why is it so bad? Is the tumblr fandom just toxic?

Hi.

Uh.

Hell, dude, you pretty much summarized all the reasons I stopped checking the tags. I’m not exactly in the fandom anymore. I do my stuff, but I am actively avoiding mostly everyone, and that’s just because of the immediate aftermath of the chapter. So uh, welcome, I guess, I’m not here.

I answered–well. No, I covered a bit of what I’m going to go over here in my chapter post, aka the unfun section of it. Making this a bit of a rehash, but most things I type are anyway.

The most obvious thing is that people should not be getting hate. That is a general statement, disconnected from anything that’s going on. It is applicable in every fandom, in every situation. Even in the cases where someone is doing something that poses a very real danger, the solution is not sending hate. Sending hate is exactly what it sounds like, and people should behave themselves better.

Where you end up standing on any of this does not make the behavior magically okay.

And again, I basically left the fandom. I have no idea what’s going on, and frankly, I do not want to, so none of this is based on anything that’s happened in the past three weeks.

My perspective on fiction is that it is entirely selfish. People want what they want from it. While I don’t like most of what other people like, the fact that they’re capable of enjoying things should be celebrated. Go them.

That doesn’t mean I think stories are beyond reproach, or what happens in fiction can’t be offensive or damaging.

Fandom is not the same as canon. A personal pet project is very different from something being consumed by millions of people. Fandom currently has a very black and white style of thinking, and so it neglects that difference.

For an easy and relevant example, Kurt and Rachel from Glee getting it on in a fanfic is not equal to it happening in the show. One is someone’s random fantasy, the other, unless it’s handled with the kind of respect Glee has never dealt in, is going to be very inflammatory.

(See: Blaine and Rachel (for different–-but still relevant!-–reasons))

A lot of people do not agree that the difference between fanon and canon is relevant to some of the things people end up enjoying. The reason being that stories never feel that different to the individual experiencing them. Who creates it, or how wide its reach is, is not automatically something that matters to the emotional experience. It will hurt in roughly the same way, so often the argument that one is excusable and the other isn’t is done before it starts.

I’m meandering a little because I do not really know how to handle this delicately. So far this is all just foundational. stuff.

I guess I’ll go with blunt.

yumikuri is a canon romantic bond. Ymir is implied to be a lesbian because one character says she looks like one, Historia is a complete blank slate outside of that relationship because Ymir is her sole love interest.

The status of Historia’s sexuality is that she is romantically interested in Ymir, a girl. That is the entire sum of what the manga’s covered.

107 heavily indicates that Historia is coerced into having sex.

That should never have opened up a discussion into what her sexuality is. Someone being forced into sexual intercourse is indicative of nothing except that they are being forced into it. That is the exact opposite of desire.

Yet it opened the door to people reminding everyone that it is absolutely okay for a character to be bisexual.

That is a true statement.

(Editing in emphasis, because it really is.)

I do not know how to adequately describe why the context makes that statement so tone deaf and infuriating.

The manga has been running for almost ten years. In that time, there has been no indication of Historia having interest in anyone outside of Ymir, a girl. That could cover a lot of different sexualities, and there’s nothing wrong with someone wanting any of them.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t incredibly insulting ways of going about introducing them.

Historia’s first major appearance after her girlfriend is killed off-screen (if you believe that, which all but three people reading this and the person writing this do) is all about forcing her to fuck a guy to make babies.

Even in some hypothetical where her pregnancy is the result of a happy relationship, it would be insulting. As far as we know, it isn’t, so we are dealing with the full brunt of how disrespectful that summation is.

There is this common thing that happens in stories, where you have the gay relationship, one dies, the other lives on to go have a happy life with someone of the opposite sex. The subtext is that this weird one-off sexual thing may have happened, but don’t worry, they’re still normal.

I don’t know how to say that convincingly, because it’s a subtext that I’ve picked up on throughout hundreds of different stories. I don’t know how to cram that history into one post.

Girls liking girls is seen as an aberration, even in stories about liking girls. The relationship will be an exception. The more femme character won’t really like girls, just this one. The concept of a girl liking another girl as a normal facet of her sexuality, which exists outside this relationship, is commonly disregarded, or given to the non-POV partner.

This should be a problem that it’s easy to agree on. Lesbians like girls as a rule. Bisexuals like girls as a rule. Not exclusively, but Likes Girls is still very much a part of the identity (unless we get into discussions of bi covering multiple genders but not necessarily binary ones).

Then there’s fandom.

I can’t count the number of times I have seen the argument that Historia only sees Ymir as a friend. I have been invested in her character and that relationship for five years. Barring the last month, which I don’t want to know about, probably at least once a week, someone would make the case that okay, maybe Ymir likes Historia, but Historia doesn’t like her back.

Many, many times before I left the tags last month, people were saying that Historia’s pregnancy isn’t an LGBT issue, because Historia’s interest in Ymir was never canon.

I get twitchy when people are staunch supporters of her being bisexual. Because as much as I want to trust people, and as much as I know that every marginalized identity is desperate for scraps, the conversation about Historia has always felt like, “it’s important to remember you can’t prove she doesn’t like men.”

When it’s not full on, “it’s important to remember her liking a girl is in your imagination.”

Because she’s the pretty one in the girl on girl couple.

I want her to be gay or ace. Nothing disproves that, but I feel like an idiot for wanting that, because the classically pretty one isn’t going to be a lesbian, and years of consuming anime and manga should have taught me that. Beyond the first sentence, none of that perspective is particularly healthy.

Queer fandom can be really complicated to navigate, because some of the things people want to see–-which are fundamental to their identities, and that’s why they want to see them–-run exactly counter to what other people want to see.

There’s a post from Yuri on Ice fandom that I think encapsulates this. I don’t know the background, or what has been shouted back and forth since I saw it, but here’s the gist. Someone suggests that one of the figure skating gays could be ace. Dozens of people go, “bad post op,” and it’s treated humorously.

Asexual representation sucks. An episode of House, noteworthy for using the word and having someone quote the statistic occurrence of asexuality, ends with one half of an asexual couple having a hormone imbalance, and the other lying about her interest in sex so she could date him.

Yeah.

Gay guys also have a hard time with their sexuality being policed. Holding hands is okay (sometimes), but kissing? Sex? The dirty homosexuals are depraved for enjoying such things. Gay women can have degrading sex because it’s hot.

People want their identities respected.

That is not an unreasonable thing.

What tends to happen on Tumblr is that people forget that they aren’t the only ones being treated like crap. There are layers of pain and anger they bring to every fight, and over and over again, people who should know what that pain is like, and help each other through it, sharpen theirs until they can use it to chop off someone’s head.

107 is insulting in a lot of ways. The aftermath was worse for me. From what little I saw, many people were very eager to say that the part where a queer woman was dealing with a coercive pregnancy shouldn’t be judged for the queer part. Because there are people issues, like war and tragedy, and then social justice issues, which aren’t about people. They don’t really matter in a war story with internment camps and genocide.

I’m being glib, but… that’s what it felt like. That’s what a lot of people I liked shrugged and agreed with.

I want Historia to be a lesbian (or ace), but for right now, we do know she’s queer. That is a part of her character, and it is one that people have been talking over for years. Having post after post reminding everyone that her being queer does not matter to the story? That her being queer is not a lens worthy of being looked through when it’s clearly not about that?

I don’t agree with… basically any of the fandom behavior I’ve seen touching this. I think people should behave themselves better, and treat each other more kindly, and pain is no excuse for bleeding all over everyone.

But where that pain comes from has been repeatedly dismissed, and where it comes from is not insignificant, no matter what route you want canon to go.

…And as far as Historia’s character goes, this is a regression, and the writing should be ashamed of itself. It violates the themes of her arc with such direct intent that it’s painfully easy to believe there’s a twist to it, but for now it’s just infuriating, because the girl who fights fate has been made its tool, and Ymir, aka her love interest, is very relevant to the whole arc where we covered this. 107 is bad and should feel bad, and I am extremely not happy that I think that is exactly the feeling I am intended to have, because being emotionally manipulated is much more annoying when it works.

Hopefully that gives your questions an answer.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #SnK 107 #attack on asks #an educational romp through maddening things

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fullfrequencycollective · 6 years

Text

What is the purpose of a small, independent record label in 2018?

That’s the question I’ve been turning over in my head these past few months. I think I have an answer, but it’s gonna take some explaining. Stick with me.

Why Bother Records, the record label I started with my best friend Christian back in 2015, slowed down considerably over the past two years. The last release I was substantially involved with the release of was the Halogens / Staten split at the end of 2016. After that, I used the name to help Justin Fernandez release Staten music in a much more hands-off manner. Things slowed down because I was a senior in college, preparing to full-time student teach the following spring, and thinking probably a bit too much about my “future” or whatever. It felt like just one more thing I had to deal with during a period when I had an exceptionally high number of things to deal with, so I put it on ice.

Now, in my second year of grad school, my fourth and final semester, nearing a career path in education that seems manageable if slightly creatively unfulfilling, I feel decidedly stable. A month or so ago, I caught the feeling that I should bring the label back. That’s when I started thinking about what a small independent record label looks like now, after the time I’ve spent away from one.

I guess it starts with what a record label like Why Bother does. When I was operating Why Bother a few years ago, after an artist agreed to work with us, I did a number of discrete things. I hand-produced cassettes that I was able to produce for cheap. I redesigned and laid out album artwork to fit the unique cassette layout, then took the art to the printer and cut inserts to fit by hand. I assembled the product. I did publicity for all of our releases.

So what was all of that for? What was the purpose? I think it falls into three categories.

1. I wanted to financially support artists.

I got the idea to make WBR a cassette label after reading this Pitchfork op-ed back in my very first week of college. A selection:

“Speaking of vinyl, which is an expensive gamble for a small label, I like that cassettes are inexpensive. I buy them in bulk from National Audio Company in Missouri for around 50 cents each, and jewel cases are about 22 cents each. Usually I end up doing my own artwork and labels. Runs of 50 or 100 are small by any standard, but if you want to do everything, they take more time than you might think. I don’t like the word “cheap” here, but I like the situation that not having to worry about money puts me in. It’s just a cassette. I don’t feel bad about giving them away to people. Most people I don’t expect them to even listen; I doubt they have cassette players. But I’m interested in those 10 or 15 people who end up trying. Those 10 or 15 people are more interesting to me than Soundcloud plays.”

Tapes are inexpensive. You can turn a profit from them much more easily than you can from CDs or vinyl. I think we usually broke even on a tape run after we sold 8 or so. Toward my desired goal of putting more money in the artists I liked’s pockets, I think the math works best with cassettes at this scale. So I liked that part of it as a broke college kid.

But there’s more to the story as well. That’s not the only reason. Another selection:

“Music released on cassettes doesn’t feel desperate or needy or Possibly Important. It tends not to be concerned about The Conversation. It resists other people’s meaning. That’s what I like about the cassette. It whittles down our interactions with music to something bare and essential: Two people, sometimes more, trying to feel slightly less alone.

…

I like the community of labels. It’s small, humble, not exactly well organized. You meet people in a stumbling, haphazard way, which is refreshing in the age of the targeted ad. Steve at Moon Glyph. Tom at Mirror Universe. Emily at Love Lion. Opal Tapes, Trilogy Tapes, Leaving Records. I usually have not heard of the artists, who usually do not have publicists “working” the record. I often buy five or six tapes at a time, whatever releases are available. Sometimes they come right away, other times they take three weeks and two of the cassettes don’t have music on them. I listen to cassettes on a small Sony boombox (with Mega Bass), usually when I do the dishes or get ready in the morning. The music feels like a secret between friends.��

That brings me to another important ideal:

2. I wanted to build a community.

Music communities changed my life. From those first Marlboro Rec Center Now or Never/Feverview shows, to hearing “Red Floral Dress” for the first time in a basement filled with my friends, to all of those weekends at the Asbury Lanes, to every friend I’ve made at grad school that started with some conversation about how Against Me! kick ass. All of those moments are what draw me to music. Music communities are the rope that tethers me to this world.

When WBR started, we had the Mayflower Collective. We had friends who were all into the same things. We had something. I wanted WBR to co-exist with that something. One of my most firmly-held beliefs is that there is power in numbers. We take what successes we’re blessed with and use them to lift the family around us. We take care of our own. To elaborate on that Springsteen reference:

“In art and love, one and one makes three. In music, if it makes two, you’ve failed, my friend.” — Bruce Springsteen

To make three:

3. I wanted to curate what I thought was the best of the best.

One of my more vivid memories from the NJ scene was On Your Marks’ album release show at the Lanes in 2013. Standing there, watching whatever band was playing, I looked around and noticed that the place was damn near sold out. That my friends who were just trying to play shows with their friends and write dope songs, had somehow convinced two-hundred or so locals to pay money to see them play. I tried to scale that in my head—how long until it’s the Stone Pony? Then Starland? Then the Arts Center? What was the ceiling?

That was the moment that I felt an obligation to show my friends off to the world. That was the moment that I decided that I wanted to write about music. I started my dinky little blog later that week to get some work done that summer.

I carried that mentality with me when I decided to start the label. “How can I show the world this awesome thing my friends did? What’s the best way of doing that?" I only ever reached out to artists who I genuinely believed in. The musicians making songs that I felt in my body. The people I knew were good people. I only worked with *music* and *people* that I had faith in. I can’t speak to how much money we would have made if we didn’t pass on a few opportunities, but it kept the drive going. It still does.

This is running long, so I’ll summarize here. I want to reboot the label with those three concepts in mind. I want to get to the base of them. I want to try something new. Full Frequency Collective is that something:

The new Why Bother Records will have two facets:

1. A traditional record label that will dub cassettes to financially support our artists

2. A podcast that serves to explain why I love the music we release so much

Because I don’t want to make money off of this, and instead focus my efforts on supporting artists and causes I believe in, Full Frequency Collective is primarily going to be subscription-based. I’ve launched a Patreon where subscribers can get in for $1 or $5 each month. They can get in or out whenever they choose, but I’m hoping some folks will stick around. I am aiming to release a tape from a Featured Artist every other month. The podcast is going to be weekly, with every other episode being subscriber-exclusive. After the manufacturing prices, hosting prices for the podcast (extremely low), and whatever unforeseen cost it takes to create this endeavor, all money from the Patreon will be split between the Featured Artist and a charity of their choice (pending my approval—we ain’t shipping money out to hateful causes and we ain’t getting scammed).

To elaborate a bit on what you’re getting for your money:

If you pay $1 each month, you’ll get access to the subscriber exclusive podcast episodes. The regular podcast will come out every 14 days and consist of interviews with the featured artist about the creative process, the making of their records, their artistic ideals, etc. I’ll also get guest on to talk about the world of music news, music we get down with, happenings in the arts communities. Kind of structured. The subscriber exclusive episodes would be something more like “Jake and I talk about Karl Marx and economics for an hour,” more freewheeling and off-off-topic.

If you pay $5 each month, you’ll get every tape we put out, every subscriber-exclusive podcast episode, a shoutout in the podcast each week, a copy of every zine I make, and the satisfaction of knowing that you’re contributing to both the arts community and charity.

Here’s the thing—

I know this is weird. I know this is not a “traditional” record label business model. But I think it works better. I think it’s a way to put money in the hands of artists who make the work I feel passionate about. I think it’s a way to give back to the communities that need us. I think it’s a way to put your music in the inbox of people who may or may not have heard of you before. I think it’s a way to combine the parts of the creative process into a larger, more complete picture, like the channels in a full-frequency stereo sound system. I think it’s a way to build a new type of community.

Thanks. You can subscribe here. If you have any questions, reach out. Let’s make something.

#day 1 #full frequency baby #it's finally launching #hell yeah dude #hellllll yeahhhhh dude

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gunnerpalace · 7 years

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Thanks for being kind to my wallet man. Anyways, I'm sorry if I offended you in anyway by saying "you Ichirukis". I just came by your blog and you seem to be a pretty knowledgeable dude and thus I asked you a question. Hostile little shit? Really? I'm being called a godamn hopeless imbecile here. Maybe you've just read my msg in a different tone as there is an absence of non-verbal communication here. I didn't say anything about you owing me shit man, you just interpreted that way.

And when you are referring to normal people, there tends to be cross cultural differences sometimes. So whatever you consider as being a normal person might not be the same for somebody else. In your terms I sound and act like a hostile IH so I’m not considered a normal person right? I wasn’t paying too much attention to the Bleach media from start to finish so I don’t know all the nitty gritty details such as sales and such. But yeah you’re right. If you don’t want explain you don’t have to.

Oh my god, an apology. Well, now I’ve seen everything.

Alright, look. I’m having a bit of an experience at the moment, perhaps most accurately summarized by Jules from Pulp Fiction going “The truth is…you’re the weak, and I am the tyranny of evil men. But I’m trying, Ringo. I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.” So I’m going to accept your apology, and take it for granted that you didn’t mean to come across nearly as condescendingly as you did.

Given that, I too will apologize for my behavior. When I see aggression, I get aggressive. It’s just habit. Trigger-happy IFF. So, I’m sorry for insulting you with gratuitous ad hominem. Let me advise that you consider your tone more carefully in the future.

With that said, let me attempt to answer your original question sincerely in a compact fashion without writing a goddamn thesis, because I still don’t want to put in the time to do that. Bleach had exactly three things going for it:

The uniqueness of the IchiRuki relationship and their individual characters. Ichigo and Rukia are unique because they are somewhere between being deuteragonists and Rukia being a supporting protagonist. I would say that she is a “hidden deuteragonist,” in that her influence is constantly felt, even when she isn’t present. Ichigo is not a normal shounen protagonist, like Gintoki, Luffy, Naruto, Goku, or Kenshiro. He doesn’t have a vision or a goal, and he’s a terrible tsundere. Rukia, however, does. Rukia sets Ichigo on his way and enables him to do what he does, and she repeatedly keeps him in check when he flounders. She is what enables him to function. He is what enables her to influence things. They are two parts of a whole, and neither is operational or very effective without the other. This “split soul” phenomenon is unique to them, was a hallmark of the early manga, and echoed on throughout. Although its promise was by no means always lived up to, it was there, and it’s a major part of why IR is a thing.

Character design in general. I’ll give Kubo this: he’s usually good at fashion and drafting relatively memorable characters. (Even if he starts to recycle faces after awhile; it’s not like Dragon Ball/Z/GT/etc., One Piece, and so on don’t.) They tend to have unique designs, if not wholly unique or fleshed out personalities. He’s very good at creating the illusion of depth using them. Over the run of the series, pretty much everyone was able to find a character they liked, if not several.

Mystery. A lot of the shit that happens in Bleach is unexplained, or was kicked down the road for as long as possible before being explained. A lot of it was never explained, stuff like “What was Yoruichi’s bankai? / What was her zanpakutou? / Why can she turn into a cat?” “Who were the other two Great Noble Houses?” “What was the deal with the Soul King?” “How did Soul Society really get started?” “What was up with Komamura?” “What was up with Don Kanonji?” “What was up with Ururu and Jinta?” The list goes on and on. Mystery is alluring, as the writers of Lost quickly figured out.

You will notice what I didn’t mention: fighting, worldbuilding, and plot. So let’s go over those quickly.

Fighting: Bleach’s fights suck. Someone dramatically teleports behind someone else leading to a shocked expression. Someone slices someone else’s arm off. Whoever reveals how their powers work first loses. Everybody gets new, “hiddener, worser” powers. It wasn’t so bad through the Soul Society arc because it was still fresh, but the more power-creep set in, the worse it got. Bleach doesn’t use powers in interesting ways like One Piece or JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It doesn’t handle a constant ramping up of the stakes as well as Dragon Ball/etc. It doesn’t have the technical interest of Naruto. It’s extremely boring and repetitive. As a battle manga, it’s shit.

Worldbuilding: Bleach’s worldbuilding is a shadow puppet show. It’s literally Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: the illusion of depth and meaning which you only process as such because nothing calls it into question. This isn’t to say Kubo didn’t plan some things (I would say that the theological essence of Soul Society and its cycle of reincarnation makes more sense than most organized religions, since it answers a lot of basic questions like “Where do new souls come from?”) but there were many things he simply couldn’t be bothered with.

Plot: It’s rather apparent, and has been for a number of years, that Kubo reshuffled the plot on the way to the conclusion of the Soul Society arc. That said, the plot was still good up until then. The Arrancar arc was serviceable, Hueco Mundo was bad, and things went downhill from there. The reappearance of the Quincy in Thousand-Year Blood War was a massive retcon and plot hole that makes no real sense.

Now here’s the thing. The Mystery aspect of Bleach was bound up in the Plot and Worldbuilding. The more the latter two fell apart, the more the former became threadbare and could be clearly seen as an effort to string readers along. So much of Bleach’s “promise” turned out to be a polar bear on a tropical island.

The Character design also became wrapped up in Worldbuilding and Fighting, as characters often had no other means to advance, grow, or define themselves, and were relegated to bit parts other than to turn up every two years in some insignificant tussle. The continuing cast bloat only made this worse, as did the dramatically skewed nature of fan favorites.

What didn’t change was IchiRuki. I would argue it didn’t advance as it should have, and rather more objectively, every effort was made to push them into the background in favor of the other five elements, but they were at least consistent throughout, which is why so many people looked forward to their interactions, no matter how fleeting. It was solid all the way up until the final 5 or so chapters, once Kubo had clearly decided to implement his subversive “ending” (what with Tsukishima taking Rukia’s primary role, and so on).

Anybody who wasn’t around for that reason was holding onto vain hope about the Mystery, because of sunk cost fallacy, or were just trying to support their favorite characters or other ships. That’s the god’s honest truth. Bleach’s numbers started to tank after Soul Society and were abysmal by the time of Lost Substitute Shinigami. The sudden end of Bleach was Shueisha finally pulling the plug and disconnecting life support.

Now, you can say that nothing I’ve said here is proof, and that would be true, this is all summary. The proof is out there though (although I cannot be bothered to assemble it all for you), and I think any honest reader would admit the truth of my analysis even without it.

tl;dr IchiRuki is the only consistent positive of Bleach, which is otherwise a subpar fashion manga which never deserved to be counted among the big three on any other merits.

#Asks

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