#i don't really make an impact on people's lives i think. nothing good at least 🤔

[vulchak]

So. I watched the live action Lilo and Stitch. (Completely unrelated but Jack Sparrow is one of my favorite Disney characters, anyway-) The original is my favorite 2d Animated movie. I wanted to wait a couple days just to get my thoughts in order but I think the notes I took while watching are more accurate to how I feel about this insult to animation, storytelling and character

It got long so TL;DR, This whole movie feels gutted. Gutted of the themes, of the atmosphere, and of the heart. A downright insult to the original. How this badly acted, lit, and animated thing is getting good reviews is beyond me. It doesn't hold up neither as a remake, nor as a movie in its own right

Right off the bat the pace is 5 times quicker than the original. Nothing has time to sink in, I feel like I'm watching the movie at double speed

And they've moved things around for no reason, Stitch is shown first, then Jumba is brought in, which just dampens the impact of both their introductions

Jumba sounds 20 years younger and way more boring than he should, he sounds like a stock random guy, not an experienced and unhinged genius. His grammar is fixed but his accent is also gone which just makes him sound less unique. I don't blame the VA, he did great as the Lego Joker but he was just miscast here

The grand councilwoman is done so dirty already. In the original she sounds genuenly hopeful Stitch can show signs of goodness and be spared. Nope, here she's so monotone it's like she's obligated to ask him to say something

She doesn't ask for an expert, Pleakely comes running in himself. In a cowboy hat for some reason. She also has a bizarre amount of modern slang like "crikey" and "you're kidding" which feels extremely out of character and forced

She also gets Stitch's biology wrong? "Water increases his molecular density" the fuck it doesn't, HIS OWN molecular density is great, which makes him sink. He's dense, that's the point. Water doesn't affect him he just can't swim cause he's heavy

She doesn't seem to care about her own people because she doesn't tell no one to back away from Stitch's ship when he engages hyperdrive. Which in the original was also a built up dangerous thing he did, here it's blink and you'll miss it. We don't even see him properly escape anything. The guns just blow up the door, we see him running down a hall for 2 seconds, next time we see Stitch he's on the ship, that's it

Pleakley is excited to go to earth and Jumba is the one who SUGGESTS it, he basically blackmails the grand councilwoman, saying he'll capture 626 in exchange for his lab back. Pointless changes that only serve to make the story less impactful and more childish. And this whole thing goes by in 5 minutes, in the original I swear it was at least twice as long. (Edit: I checked, it is twice as long)

The social worker scene, completely different, no "my friends need to be punished" line. Overall just, worse version of the original, not much to say

Nani is now outright stated to be studying to be a marine biologist instead of the subtle environmental storytelling of her being a champion surfer from the original. Not a bad idea? But it should've been more subtle, so far it feels like this movie thinks you're stupid and need to be told everything, despite supposedly being "the more mature version for adults"

David is cringe now and that's his whole joke. He's not really endearing anymore

Stitch wrecking his own spaceship is just stupid

Lilo and Nani's argument and subsequent make up talk have absolutely zero impact compared to the original. The constellation thing is cute I guess

When Nani is being shoved out the room so Lilo can make a wish, she didn't even fall on Lilo, and Lilo's wish is worded much worse than the original. More long winded. Stitch coming out from the crash site is SO UGLY compared to the original

If I had a nickel for every movie that's got a blue CGI character crashing a wedding and Uptown funk in the soundtrack I'd have two nickles. Which isn't a lot but at least SONIC 2 WAS A GOOD MOVIE

Lilo meets Stitch. MISSED. THE POINT. OF THE SCENE. ENTIRELY.

First of all he's supposed to go "Haaaiii" after he heard Lilo way hi to him first. How the fuck does he know to say hi when all she did was scream? Second, he's tiny, Lilo picks him up. He's supposed to be so dense adults can barely hold him, how the hell is Lilo just, carrying him around? And if it's water that makes him heavy for real. Then that's just stupid

Also love how no one is freaking out about it, the lady working there casually leashes him and sounds so disinterested. Every person in the movie (except Lilo she's doing very well) sound like they don't wanna be there

They're giving Nani less to do and making her worse. In the original, they were at the dog shelter because she heard Lilo's wish and wanted to make it come true. Now its the neighbour taking Lilo, and not even to the shelter, not to adopt a dog, they just kinda. Do. Without Nani's permission which is another problem

Cobra being CIA and involving the authorities as a whole is. Dumb

Oh so Nani came up with the name Stitch. Wonderful. One stupid decision after another

"I read her text messages." People in present day still keep diaries there was no need to change that. Hello fellow kids ass line

Nani being mean to Lilo after losing the job and making it very clear it's Lilo's fault, instead of comforting her and going along with her bug imagination. Way to ruin the best big sister in your history, Disney

They turned the "Ohana means family" scene comedic. WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA AND WHICH SLUG-BRAINED MORON APPROVED IT?

Nani being a jackass again. "We were left behind" that's exactly what you say to your grieving 6yo sister about the parents who tragically passed, Nani, way to go. Makes it sound like they ditched them on purpose

Telling us about the room full of trophies instead of showing us. This movie is for babies in a way the original never was

Stitch spelling out he has no family instead of the again, much more mature and subtle dialogue of the original

The teaching Stitch hula thing was alright I guess

Nani doesn't even see Stitch being a record player is lame. Followed up with a fart joke

Remix of Hawaiian Rollercoaster ride is worse than the original in both sound and placement. It was a personal moment for the family. To take their minds off the bad day of not finding jobs. Now it's just. Full of tourists, and Nani teaching/being at her job

Also Stitch being the one to ask to go in the water first. Goes against the story, he's supposed to be shown it's OK first, by being taken in by Lilo. But no, just sees a dog, decides he wants to. FUCKING STUPUD

Whole hospital insurance thing seems so showhorned in. Not having a job was reason enough for that contract

And Stitch not being directly blamed for it. Again. Zero. Impact. They've literally turned this into a stock "CG character stuffed into a plot with live humans" movie. And it's disgusting to watch

Jumba is turning into a villain. Lame. His dynamic with Pleakely is also fucked

The hammock scene is again just. A worse version of the original, I don't know what to say at this point. This whole movie is somehow so fast and so sluggish at the same time, it's impressive how bad the pacing is

Stitch doesn't even see the ugly duckling book, doesn't talk to Lilo, doesn't go to the woods with the ducks just. Goes to his crate??? For some reason??

And LILO finds HIM. NAH, missed thr entire point, AGAIN

Wedgie joke, butt joke. More completely unnecessary childish humor

The portal gun is an alright gimmick but. Meh. And no song playing over it. So immediately less memorable scene. Elvis as a whole is very absent from this movie

NAH WE AIN'T DOING A LIAR REVEALED WITH STITCH, WHAT EVEN IS THIS MOVIE

Stitch himself feels like a non character in his own movie somehow, he's just there to be a dog, a cute CG character to sell merch. So many of his important scenes are missing or so watered down it barely feels like the same character

Reference to the other experiments is neat but thats not how 627 is made, you can't just turn one experiment into another

Cobra being the one who turns and helps them. Stupid. He was supposed to be a good guy the entire time

The climax is so anticlimactic compared to the original too. Painfully obvious they were out of a budget

Lilo having to leave Stitch to drawn should hit hard. It doesn't. That thing spent the whole movie being annoying, stiffly animated, and frankly I don't care if it drowns. That's not Stitch. It's a badly made imitation

Oh and now they're recussitating him. With jumper cables. And he threw up the important family photo. This isn't Lilo and stitch. In writing, acting, or soul. And I swear they're reusing voice lines for Stitch in some scenes

The reason for Stitch staying before was such a beautiful simple solution. He was adopted, as a pet, he's Lilo's. But now. Overcomolicated, stupid, and again, the councilwoman used to geneunly want to give Stitch a chance and let him stay. Now she seems much more reluctant and it doesn't work as well. The mosquito thing didn't come up, Stitch doesn't let his antenna and extra limbs out for Lilo to see

David is being so fucking stupid- they turned one of the best Disney men into an annoying stock moron. Oh and Nani doesn't have a job and can't be in charge of Lilo. Sure putting her with the neighbours and letting Nani go study is fine, I guess? But it isn't nowhere near satisfying and misses the entire point of Nani's character

Not sure if there's anything past the credits, I didn't watch those.

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[cripplecharacters]

I'm feeling kinda guilty... I love your blog, I'm glad I'm searching for information and I care about good representation (of any kind of minority). But, at the same time, I absolutely love The Phantom of the Opera. I'm in love with this story, I love Erik, and actually he was the character that opened my eyes about people with facial differences when I was a litte kid. And I want to make an adaptation of POTO myself. And to make it, obviously, Erik is a tragic, traumatized person with violent tendencies and that wears a mask, and because of his trauma, he hates his own body... I want to give him a happy ending, a chance to heal, and genuine sympathy for his mental state rather than a lot of versions (and even the fandom itself) does. Is there any non offensive way of depicting this? Because, although Leroux intented Erik to be a sympathetic "villain/anti-villain", the story is outdated (1910!) and a lot of Erik's "villainy" is pretty forced. Help me pleeeease😭

Hey,

so, in discussions of disfiguremisia and offensive media portrayals of facial differences, Phantom is like the gold standard when it comes to comparisons.

"How bad was it?" "Phantom-of-The-Opera-bad." "Oh OK."

It's kinda what you just mention when you want to say that something sucks, since Phantom has basically no redeemable features when it comes to depicting disabled people. It's the OG disfiguremisia in media since it's both old and really popular.

I don't really think Phantom is fixable. Don't get me wrong, there are some versions of it that I have genuinely liked, but ultimately, it's a flawed story from the concept. You can make it better, but I don't think you can make it good.

So, how to make it better;

give him an actual, specified facial difference and research how it works,

make him explicitly a human being,

get rid of that stupid ass mask,

get rid of that stupid ass scary disability reveal,

tone down on the freakshow backstory,

IDK you can maybe make him live in the Opera because he's phrogging/squatting it because he's experiencing ableism when it comes to employment and is therefore homeless if you want to keep that part since it's kinda important,

at least imply that he has known other people before who weren't comically evil towards him for being visibly disabled,

don't make him a murderer,

like, make him less evil. I don't know.

I don't see any other way of making Phantom better rather than fundamentally changing major parts of it. It's fundamentally ableist, what can you do.

You need to be aware that you're an outsider (I presume so, at least, apologies if I'm wrong) trying to fix a story that is based on being disfiguremisic. Would you be comfortable trying to "save" a story that was biased against a different minority? Because it's not really a matter of "finally fixing POTO", it's extremely popular*. It's something you're doing for yourself, and, presumably, for people with facial differences. You need to be aware of what you're getting into and if you're actually willing to do that. If you aren't then that's fine, there's 1000 adaptations out there already.

*- that is to say, one more less ableist or more ableist retelling changes nothing in terms of the Phantom's impact, that much has been done. You can just adapt it.

Followers with facial differences are welcome to give their suggestions.

mod Sasza

[meta-squash]

I think two of the most important things about Jack Harkness, two things that inform almost everything he does and the choices he makes, are this: that he is a soldier NOT a leader, and that his entire life since childhood has been awash in survivor's guilt (and his whole existence after becoming immortal is an even more extreme version of survivor's guilt).

Jack is not a natural leader. He can think on the fly and he's good at getting people to listen to him, but he's not good at control, or at being objective. He's a natural second in command, he's a soldier. He was brought up to do what other people told him to, and to improvise if he had to (Time Agency, etc). But I really don't think he wants to be the leader of Torchwood. Unfortunately, everything about him means that he has to be. He knows from experience that others having control over him is dangerous, others knowing about his immortality while he's a subordinate to them is dangerous, and he also knows that his own immortality gives him an advantage as a leader. But I don't think he's good at leading. He tries to be. But he's fumbling along, in a time period he's not native to and a planet he's not native to and an unfathomable lifespan, and as charming as he is I think he's often not good with people. He's detached where he should be personal and emotional where he should be detached (or at least more level-headed). He's often too extreme or not harsh enough when it comes to things like discipline or dealing with the problems/traumas/mistakes of his employees or even civilians. He can't handle his employees seeing him uncertain/vulnerable and it makes for huge problems over and over again.

But all of this does make sense because I think in the back of Jack's mind there's always this wheel spinning, these gears turning and turning and calculating the impact and trauma each of his actions or decisions or the events around him are going to have on his own emotions for far longer than normal humans tend to consider. Because the catalyst for any part of the life we see him leading is survivor's guilt. He lost his father and his brother on the same day, joined the military and lost his best friend, joined the Time Agency and lost his memories (and maybe thinks he did something terrible). Then he died, and when Rose brought him back, he was all alone on the satellite with nothing but the corpses of the people who had fought beside him and zero explanation as to why he survived, and he had lost Rose and the Doctor besides. And then all his life on earth since, he has lost coworkers and lovers and civilians he tried and failed to save and probably also aliens he tried and failed to save. And I think by the time he becomes reluctant leader of Torchwood, every action is, whether conscious or subconscious, taken with the intent of minimizing that kind of trauma and the impact of loss.

Except that I think that the survivor's guilt has another layer to it, which is that feeling of needing to sacrifice or absolve himself in some way. No one else is willing to make the difficult decisions, no one else will move forward with the painful and unpleasant actions, even if there's no other way, even though they will someday perish and no longer see the ripples of their actions. But Jack - who cannot die, who must live with the guilt or the pain or the trauma of those actions and decisions for the rest of his very very very long life - is the one who realizes that he must take on those painful responsibilities and must do certain things even though they're terrible, because it ends up being the sacrifice of one over the whole world. And every single time, he's guilty about it, and that makes him want even more to sacrifice his own hurt for the grief and loss of others.

So it's this strange cycle of wanting to protect himself from hurt and from loss and from the survivor's guilt, but being driven by guilt towards painful and/or self-sacrificing actions. Which then makes him fear being seen as vulnerable or uncertain, and he struggles to do things on a smaller scale or in a more level-headed way, because he's not supposed to be leading like this, it's not something that comes naturally, and if he makes emotional connections by being a leader, he'll end up trapped in survivor's guilt yet again each time one of his employees or friends or lovers dies.

It's just a terrible cycle and he's trapped in it for the rest of his existence. Although if he really is the Face Of Boe, then I imagine at some point he eventually finds peace with it all or something, but I think so long as he has a human-form he's stuck with this cycle of leadership and loss and sacrifice and mistakes.

I think it's really important that Jack is not good at his job as a leader. He makes a ton of mistakes, he fucks up so much and his employees or even civilians end up collateral damage, whether physically or just emotionally. He wants to be a good leader, I think, and he's trying, but he's fallible, and he's a stranger in literally every sense, and I think a really big part of his character is that he constantly is forced to live in this bizarre dichotomy where he has to be both very distant and cold and detached, and also very emotional and intense and personal. And any other person would collapse under the stress of repeating that over and over and over again for decades, but he has to figure out how to navigate this weight as an infinite existence that can't ever collapse or let it burn him up and kill him.

[allwormdiet]

Worm Cast Impressions (Arcs 1 to 7)

Easy money says some of these characters are about to fucking die so I'm pausing now to jot down my impressions of everybody who's managed to make an impact (and one or two characters whose lack of impact is kind of impressive)

Undersiders

Taylor Hebert: Character of all time. Simultaneously sanest and least sane person in the entire universe. Deeply concerned about keeping hold of her moral core, constantly innovating in ways to inflict violence on her enemies real and imagined. Has never fully finished thinking her actions through once in her entire life, people keep thinking she's the most cautious girl they know. Her first kiss was partly because she liked the boy and partly because she wanted to piss off her bully. I am cheering for her more often than not and I am so scared of what this story is going to do to her.

Brian Laborn: I want to study him in a lab. Team leader entirely by default, as near as I can tell. Hates using violence as a means of control, really good at using violence as a means of control, seems to default to using violence as a means of control when he's upset. I don't think he's normal about women. Desperately trying to be so so so boring, thinks he's perfectly rational even though he is just as unhinged as his teammates, I suspect that he has built a mental prison with twenty layers of protection around all thoughts that would suggest he is anything other than Normal and Strong and Reliable. Maybe turned on by efficient displays of violence?

Lisa Wilbourn: She is so charming and I am so scared of what's actually going on in her head. I think Taylor's best friend but definitely her biggest enabler. Stop lying and let me know what is going on in your head, I know more about Alec and Rachel than I know about you. Concerned that she's only nominally concerned about Coil being a heinous fucker. Desperately hoping the air can be cleared so I stop worrying about whether she's going to destroy Taylor or something. She has to know Taylor is a wannabe hero.

Alec: The fact that he's really only done one thing that I consider morally in the wrong is kind of incredible when looking at the fact that he's a recovering sex cult enforcer who started living something approaching a normal human life as a homeless preteen. He's had three years to jury rig a sense of humanity and morality mostly on his own and the end result is a selfish lazy jerk, and yet the fact that this is what he's managed to come up with on his own is, without sarcasm, worthy of a fucking prize. He's actually really good at this all things considered. Actually a little bummed that he didn't oppose Coil for the whole Dinah creepfest.

Rachel Lindt: Rachel Lindt is maybe the best character so far. Autistic dog girl who only tolerates human society so she can better feed and care for her animals. I'd say something like "I'd kill for her" but there's no way I could do that any better than her dogs and she'd call me stupid. Only thing against her at this point is the slur usage, which is rough to deal with, but I suspect part of that is just being written in 2011.

Loved Ones

Danny Hebert: You sad bastard. Please survive long enough to reconcile with your daughter. I know he can't provide any material support for the problems his daughter has been dealing with, that the bullies are too well-protected and there's basically nothing that he can do about parahuman shit, but I wish she would allow him to be there for her. Maybe he'd be uncool about it, sure, but maybe not. Makes me sad to think about.

Aisha Laborn: This girl is in dire need of someone to have her back and also, like, pay attention to her; Brian is the closest one to actually doing it but I don't think his best efforts are enough. I know she's gonna be an Undersider in the future so hopefully I get to have a more thorough impression of her, and one that's not marred by the fucking Mercedes metaphor, Jesus Christ that was a rough passage to get through.

Protectorate

Armsmaster: I'd probably like him more if he wasn't so up his own ass about being in charge and earning glory. My suspicion is that he's basically a good guy with some bad habits that nobody can check him on, which has spiraled out of control. Might unironically consider a teenage criminal his nemesis, which is funny but not a great sign of his priorities.

Miss Militia: My prior complaints about her possibly inappropriate response to holding Regent hostage are entirely subsumed by the fact that the last twenty-six years of her life have been lived on terms set by the Protectorate. She was nearly devoured by the machinery of empire and now she's become a component of empire that feeds upon others, and she hasn't even realized it. She never had a goddamn chance.

Velocity: Nothing to really say about him, except there has to have been a way to design his costume so that a teenager with unaugmented strength couldn't take him out with a single blow to the testicles.

Assault and Battery: The name theming feels a bit weird (what, if they got a third would their name be Coercion?) but whatever. I like the idea of a duo with complementary powers, I guess, but there's not really much else here.

Dragon: On the one hand she's in charge of the Birdcage and is friends with Armsmaster, but on the other hand she clearly hates the Birdcage for what it's made her complicit in, and maybe Armsmaster is good to have as a friend. Jury's out, unlike on Canary.

Wards

Gallant: The best way I can think to describe this guy is "blandly nice." It's like if "inoffensive" could be a personality trait. Glory Girl could do better than him, probably, but to be fair she could also do a lot worse.

Clockblocker: I think he's the funny one? Or at least the deliberately unserious one, which is the same thing. The first character confirmed to have developed entomophobia as a result of Skitter, probably not the last. Stopped a bomb from destroying the East Coast which feels like it should get more attention.

Vista: World's most powerful thirteen-year-old. Who deployed her to stop that bomb and fight those Nazis. I want names.

Kid Win: No sense of proportion on this kid, my god. Shooting a laser cannon meant to deal with threats that are theoretically rated higher than Lung into a bank filled with hostages? He's lucky nobody died.

Shadow Stalker: What the actual fuck is going on with her. Who hunts other human beings with broadhead arrows? That's for making someone bleed to death. If she was doing it to the fucking Nazis then that'd be fine, but no, it's Grue and Taylor we've either seen or heard about her getting rough with. Either the Protectorate knows she's a maniac and is letting it rock until she gets herself caught, or else they don't realize what she's doing in which case someone is not doing their job.

Browbeat: Absolute nonentity, to the point it's almost distracting. The description of the bank fight suggests he lost to Regent, which I think means that Regent got close enough to a guy with super strength to knock him out with a taser and didn't get his block knocked off. No wonder the Protectorate wants to trade him out, dude's got nothing going on.

PRT

Director Piggot: I don't like the organization she works for, because the vibes beyond the city level feel rancid, but for Piggot I mostly just sympathize with her. She's trying to corral a bunch of teenagers and adults, who all have some kind of horrific trauma shaping them and also giving them powers that are baseline as dangerous as a fucking gun, into something resembling a fully effective government agency, with no signs of support from the other cities or the higher-ups despite the fact that the literal fucking Nazis have her heroes outnumbered and have apparently had it that way for decades. Let this woman take a vacation or something.

New Wave

Glory Girl: Absolute nerd who seems to love being a superhero, and also making Nazis ragdoll in her spare time. I'd love to end it there, but unfortunately she's got some bad habits; girl desperately needs to kill the cop in her brain and get her impulsiveness under control, the fact that she ragdolled the Nazi on accident and threatened to pull favors in the judicial system to send a first-time offender (and Tattletale) into the Birdcage don't reflect great on her ability to keep a lock on things in high-stress situations.

Panacea: Pathetic girl who is clearly sitting on a pressure cooker of issues. I know what those all are but I'm not going to comment on any of it until we're actually there. For now it's mostly just a pity thing.

Azn Bad Boys

Lung: I was harsh on his characterization at first but I'll admit with time and context I'm not nearly as quick about that. He definitely still sucks, the guy literally murders his lieutenant as a matter of bruised pride and making his life more convenient. Also still cannot shake the feeling that he was basically idling in Brockton Bay for most of his career with the kind of power he has on tap.

Bakuda: She's a monster, but that also kind of oversimplifies things. She's clever, arrogant, grandstanding, and gleefully violent, even as she has the capacity to admire the architecture that another Tinker has crafted and to treat Lung as something resembling a friend. I don't think there's a world where she triggers and is, like, a good person, but I think this was one of the worse lives she could have wound up living. Also, y'know, she's dead.

Empire Eighty-Eight

Kaiser: Rancid smug piece of Nazi shit. Stupid too btw, why are you bothering with street-level robberies and extortion when you own a fucking pharmaceutical corporation? Why are you fighting out in the streets and meeting with other Nazi capes when you could be acting through proxies and bankrolling far-right parahuman cells across the country? Like I'm glad he isn't smart enough to think like that but fuck me.

Purity: Like, actually for real dumb as a bag of hammers. Kaiser barely has to try to wrap her back around his finger and she divorced him; Tattletale barely has to try to get her to back down and she thinks Tattletale exposed her identity to the public. Truly nothing in that skull of hers.

Hookwolf: Nazi capes fuck off

Stormtiger: Nazi capes fuck off

Cricket: Nazi capes fuck off

Rune: Nazi capes fuck off

Night: Nazi capes fuck off

Fog: Nazi capes fuck off

Wait does Coil's gang genuinely not have a name

Coil: Everything about this guy just pisses me the fuck off honestly. He presents himself as some kind of lesser evil, a firm but gentle hand that can guide all facets of the city to a brighter future, but he doesn't have the intelligence or vision to back any of it up; he displays nothing but brute force manipulation tactics involving bribery and blackmail, he's tunnel-visioned and cruel to the point that it ruins his own long-term plans, and before I forget everything about his thing with Dinah gives me fucking hives and I want to beat his skull in with my bare hands. I hope Taylor gets to kill him. Oh, or maybe Dinah.

Nameless sniper: Actively cooler and more competent than Coil.

Travelers

Trickster: genuinely cannot trust a man wearing a top hat in the year 2011, not even as a bit

Sundancer: what the fuck went so wrong with your life that your power is The Fucking Sun

Faultline and Co.

Faultline: Ironically not a super strong read off of her in terms of personality. Seems generally pretty cool going off of how she interacts with and leads her team. Very funny that she has a rivalry with Tattletale.

Newter: Little worried that he's selling his body secretions as a drug to other teenagers but if a parahuman only has one red flag that's pretty good actually

Gregor the Snail: This dude rocks, actually, love the vibes he gives off. Shame that people hate him for being fat and a mutant.

Labyrinth: Would like to see more of her when she's back in reality, otherwise not much to go off of. Cool power.

Other Parahumans

Scion: Fucking creepy

Marquis: probably Panacea's dad, calling that shot.

Paige McAbee: Justice For Paige McAbee.

Dinah Alcott: not really a character yet so much as a particularly horrifying MacGuffin but Jesus Christ what an awful fate

Uber and Leet: Gamers should be more oppressed. Also they beat the shit out of sex workers on a livestream and aren't considered serious enough threats to be consigned to the Birdcage, which feels pretty bad.

Heartbreaker: Haven't even met this guy and he sounds fucking awful. Please god somebody take him down.

Normal Humans

Emma Barnes: I need to understand what's wrong with her. Something happened that gave her the temperament and skillset of a CIA torture technician before freshman year of high school and she turned that onto her best friend for reasons totally unbeknownst to us.

Sophia Hess: I don't know I feel that the one bully who does the most physical harm and acts the most aggressive is the black one. Pretty bad I think. She's also clearly got something going on in her head but tbh that feels like it's going to be more straightforward than whatever is wrong with Emma.

Madison Clements: I feel like she's just here so that Taylor could be bullied without overusing the other two. What's your stake in this? Why do you give a shit? Does it matter? Probably not.

Mr. Gladly: I hated every teacher I ever knew who acted like this and I hate him even more for being utterly useless in protecting a student from blatant harassment. Fuck off.

[explosionshark]

Lets see, for the shipped ship I wanna know about Buffy/Faith and uh... for the don't ship Sevika/Vi or Buffy/Angel.

Okay so Buffy/Faith I just answered here

For the others...

Buffy/Angel - okay I do ship them actually. Another one of my With Caveats opinions

Ship It

What made you ship it?

I mean they ARE canon. Out of all of Buffy's canonical boyfriends, I like Angel the most. Like, just as a character I like him the most and when it comes to storylines I also like his romance arc (or at least its impact) the most

What are your favorite things about the ship?

I looooove two things about it and they go hand in hand - 1) they make huge, indelible impacts on each other and completely alter the trajectories of each other's lives 2) it's fucking DOOMED

I love the tragedy in it, I love how it's always going to be a wound that never heals right 🥰

Like, for real, they inspire so much good character growth in each other, but it's that growth that makes them fundamentally incompatible. I'll elaborate below

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

This is probably unpopular among true Bangelheads but like I said above I like that it's doomed. I don't think they should ever get back together. I think it should always hurt a little bit, but by any measure, a real attempt to be together again would be a huge backslide for them both with catastrophic results. Beyond the curse aspect even, I think they're fundamentally incompatible and "I Will Remember You" is a brilliant showcase of why - Angel will, on some level, always feel compelled to make decisions on Buffy's behalf if he thinks they're in her best interest. Whatever appeal Buffy ever found in that "well-intentioned" paternalism early on, you can see she was already chafing against it by the time they broke up for good in season 3. There's no way she could deal with it later after being fully in her own power for so long

Sevika/Vi

Okay I agonized over this a little too. I think I could switch my answer up by my own metrics and ship it based on the "wouldn't that be a fucked up and interesting thing to happen to Vi" but ultimately I think I'd rather soapbox about Sevika for a moment lmao

Don’t Ship It

Why don’t you ship it?

Okay I wanna be clear that I'm not REALLY a hater. I think Sevika is hot as hell and I absolutely get why people want to ship her with various women. But here's my fundamental issue

There's a lot I can get over or forgive a character for, a lot of fucked up shit I can accept and even enjoy as part of a character's dark past or a conflict in an enemies-to-lovers ship but the thing IS if we're taking this seriously Sevika did fully rock up with Silco's murder squad fully prepared to kill children that she knew.

Like, full stop. She was an ally of Vander's, hung out in his bar, she knew his kids. And they were YOUNG, too. I get that it's gritty, mob land rules shit, you have to take out the whole family to sell Silco's lie about Vander abandoning Zaun, but that's still child murder. That was Vi's family! I don't think she'd ever get over that

What would have made you like it?

Well. Sevika not partaking in the child murder plot. or making some kind of gesture or attempt to wiggle out of that part, showing some remorse, maybe.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

As I said above I don't think that there's NOTHING here, I just think it's really fucked up. I could ship it in like. A whumpy way. If I wanted something painful and toxic for Vi to angst over, an extremely unhealthy feel-bad hookup with the woman who betrayed your family as an act of self-harm would do the trick. But honestly there are so many other ways to hit Vi with hammers and she's so sad already I think I'd reach for something else first

Also, okay, fine. It would be hot. It would be crazy stupid hot, we all know this. Sevika could fold Vi up like a lawn chair and regardless of the ethics of it all, that's hot

[chiaraislost]

As a form of entertainment and escapism I overanalyze fictional characters, used to do it on the dumpster fire social, now I'm here and it's the turn of Penelope Featherington (and the possibility of a friendship with Sophie Baek).

Much has been said about the character and I agree with the takes from people that dislike her show version (why the writers had to butcher like this a character that was lovely in the book? Why?). For my contribution, I would like to add two additional people that are not discussed as being impacted by LW's pen (and I admit it's a little bit of a stretch). This two characters are Amanda and Oliver Crane.

The thing is we've been told various time, especially through Lady Mary, that the ton has a long memory (spanning more than 20 years) and that it has the tendency to look down upon those of lower birth, we've seen it with the comments about Edwina and Kate's father in S2 E1.

If the "shame" of her elopement followed Lady Mary for so long, then the scandal of their illegitimacy will follow Oliver and Amanda just as much. Thanks to Penelope publicly shaming their mother because she was jealous of Colin, they will always have the mark of not being fully part of the ton. And while this may not be that much of a problem for Oliver because he will inherit the estate, it will definitely make Amanda's life more difficult.

Now, I'm aware that this is kind of a stretch but I've been thinking about it in the context of the relationship that may exist between Penelope and my beloved Sophie Baek. FROM THIS MOMENT, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FROM BOOK 3, BE WARNED. Sophie is an illegitimate child, her status as a bastard daughter brings immense suffering upon her and immense dangers (I would argue she is the Bton character that suffered the most), she is extremely aware about how illegitimacy, especially for girls, can be a sentence to a life of suffering because she lived it and she would have done everything to avoid the same fate for her own children. Another trait of Sophie's (definitely one of the least important traits to the character) is that she enjoys reading the book version of LW because it gives her a glimpse into the life she could have had had the circumstances of her life been different. Now I've seen people inflate this trait by saying that Sophie was a LW's stan, that she should go to the ball because she wants to meet LW or work for P as she is her greatest fan and I cannot stress enough how much I hope they won't create a friendship between Sophie and Penelope.

Why I hope so? Because Sophie's greatest characteristics are her unshakable morals and her kindness, she is what one would call a girl's girl. And I cannot fathom her wanting to strike a friendship with someone that shamed a woman (Marina) for being in a situation not dissimilar to her own mother and attached a mark of shame and ridicule to two children that is the same as her own. Amanda and Oliver, much like Sophie, will always have to deal with the fact that they are sinners of a crime for which they have no fault.

Now, I know that I shouldn't hype this hope too much because this show's tagline should be "everyone must kiss Penelope's arse and we don't care about how out of character that is" so they'll probably overinflate Penelope's importance once again and force the friendship to happen but a girl can hope (and when canon doesn't deliver, fanon always does).

PS: seeing the discourse I've seen going on I need to make a disclaimer, I have absolutely nothing against Nicola, quite the opposite I like her and I think she is a really good actress. I just don't like the show version of Penelope, a fictional character.

[drdemonprince]

I am feeling very conflicted because I want to do more activism but I live in a very isolated area, and the one organization that works here that I even remotely align with politically has had some issues with the people it's supposed to serve (immigrants in this case) complaining that it doesn't provide many services needed and some people in it are dicks. Also, the options they have to collaborate are very much not autistic friendly. At the same time, I hate the thought of sitting back and doing nothing -beyond what I already do, which is limited to people I know- because the option to do something is not perfect. What would you recommend?

It sounds as though the organization you are looking at is a nonprofit that provides social services. I would not consider working with such an organization to be activism, usually. They will present volunteering your time with them as "activism," but it's really just free labor, somewhere on the spectrum between being charitable with your time and labor exploitation.

There is very little that most nonprofits do to advance any kind of social or political change of any kind. For the most part, nonprofits function to maintain their own operations, with a side hustle of dispensing very limited resources to marginalized people who will remain just as marginalized afterward.

More on this:

If you'd like to be involved more in your community in a way that feels meaningful and that works with your disability, I would encourage you to think far more broadly than merely joining an existing easily-findable organization. That kind of search will tend to skew toward liberal, nonprofit-led, politically toothless efforts. Instead, think of what you can do to make greater contact with the people in your area who are marginalized and share struggles with you.

Can you give homeless people meals in the park and ask them how they're doing? Can you get involved in your local parks or nature reserves? (there if you're volunteering your time, at least it can be for something enriching and beneficial). Is there a local Food Not Bombs chapter? A local Muslim community center that could use safety marshalls? A local abortion clinic that could use the same? Do you have neighbors who are single parents and need childcare help? Dogsitting? Does the senior down the street need their lawn mowed?

Is there a local Facebook group where you can offer help to people in your community in need? Start saying hello to people. Asking them about their day. Asking about what's going on in the neighborhood. What needs done, who needs help, what problems are plaguing the area that nobody is doing anything about? Are there any local businesses that are discriminatory and need to be taken to account publicly? Are there forests you can help protect from deforestation with tree spiking? Is there a jail near you where you can provide jail support, handing out food and clothes and water and letting released prisoners make phone calls?

Some of this stuff might not seem like activism in the most obvious, in-your-face, picket-signs-and-banners-in-the-streets sense. But it's a lot more impactful than a lot of that is on its own. It's community building. I'd also recommend reading some stuff on the Anarchist Library website about building one's own affinity groups. You don't need a big formal organization to make a difference -- in fact, for many structural and economic reasons, it can be harder to make a difference within a large group that faces public exposure and the risk of legal censure. A few new homies in your town who care as much as you do can do a whole lot of good.

Some reading:

[generalluxun]

I know it wasn't intended by the writers and even from a purely in universe perspective it was likely not a conscious decision but...

It really does feel like Andre was setting Chloe up for failure.

There's obviously letting doing Sabrina most of Chloe's labor for her thing.

But we also have that whole aspect where he taught her explicitly to cheat, extort, threaten and bribe her way to victory. A strategy that works for him because he's not doing that stuff to the people he wants to vote for him, but that ends up making Chloe hated by her peers.

Similarly, there's encouraging her Audrey impersonation, which even if we ignore the creep factor. Still means he is rewarding her for engaging in damaging and anti social behavior that only serves to make her miserable and more dependent on him.

His total tolerance for Audrey's overt cruelty towards her can also feel like it feeds into this. Again I don't think he is necessarily aware of or planning it, but this still serves to, A, not make Audrey upset with him, and B, mean he remains Chloe's primary source of affirmation and affection.

Add in him in season 1 being willing to act against her if she impacted 'him' negatively and it really does kind of feel like he, at least subconsciously, wanted Chloe to need to hang off of him forever and to generally lack other support networks or avenues of self sufficiency.

I mean, yes. There's a reason I'm very much on the 'Audrey's behavior is bad and abusive, but André's is worse' wagon.

Audrey is openly abusive to those around her, that is clear. She also wants absolutely nothing to do with kids. She removes herself from her daughters lives. She does it out of selfishness, but the net result is she she does not *make* herself a role model.

André on the other hand loves having a kid! They play great with the press. They make for awesome photo opportunities, and now and then he can play family just like in movies! What he doesn't like is *raising* a kid. He himself is horrible an self centered, so he doesn't think that maybe he needs to change his behaviors for the child, so he passes all of his Andreness on to them.

I know guys who were pretty useless until they had a kid, I know guys who are pretty useless with anything that *isn't their kid, but both groups still realize that *parenting* is something you have to do right, something worth changing or at least concealing your worst-self behaviors from. André can't even go that far.

André goes past 'oops haha silly me' or 'overworked parent' tropes too. The man is filthy rich. He could *make* time for his daughter if he wanted to. He also fails so completely on the very basics of parenting when *he has the resources to get help*. It shows he hasn't even really tried.

Well, he tries like a 4yr old tries when they don't want to do something. One half-hearted attempt, then they whine.

How do we have obvious proof, canonically, that this is on André? Look at Zoé. She had as much if not more contact with Audrey, and we are not giving her credit for being a *good* influence, are we? So then it comes down to the influence of the other parent, and what differences does canon show us there? Hmmm.

Look like André is a net negative in a child's life.

Oh and miss me anyone who claims children are just 'bad seeds'. That line of thinking can go jump in a wood chipper.

[anyoldfandom]

I am actually. I am so emotional over the Salazar parents and I need to share this to tumblr too.

A lot of stories where the MC is adopted I feel. Either dismiss the biological parents and the impact they have on the kid's life, or makes them evil and abusive, framing the loss of the bio parents as a good thing, or at least something we shouldn't think about just look at this new family.

But Genrex doesn't do that. From the start, Rex wanted to find out more about his parents - it's one of his primary character motivations, next to helping people. He loves them, even though he doesn't know them.

And the more he finds out about them, the more he realizes they loved him. Rylander is consumed by guilt but as Rex's first connection to his pre-Event life, the first thing he does is hug him. And when he tells Rex about his parents, the two things Rex knows is that 1) they were scientists, and 2) that when he was in danger, they were desperate enough to use their secret, experimental technology to save him. Technology built from their desire to help the world, to save countless lives and end countless suffering.

And then. When he finds out that they were dead, he doesn't stop caring. It'd be so easy, too, to tie it up there - his parents were good people, he got his answer about them, the end. But they don't. He doesn't. Because the show is saying once again that they are his parents. He still calls them mom and dad, even as the show makes it clear Holiday and Six adopted Rex as their son. Even as the show even parallels Six and One with Rex and Six (and I will talk about that more later if I don't forget, trust me), to really drive home how much they're family. Rex even says he considers the two of them family, and later that he considers Noah, Claire and Annie family.

He has new family, the show tells us, but his old family still matters to him. He's upset that he never has the chance to meet his parents, that everything he hears about them, about his time with them, is secondhand knowledge. It tells us clearly that not only does Rex still love them, but that he still wants to know them. And everything we find out about them reinforces the love that they had for each other.

We see Abuela and the family in Mexico, who connect him to his birth family and tell him that he was so loved back then, and still is now. We see their office in Abysus through Rex's eyes. The picture of him and his dad on his desk. The drawing Rex drew, proudly pinned to the wall.

We see it in the familiarity of the drawing. That that robot, that build, was what Rex created when he was lost and scared and alone - that it was made to keep him safe. That it first appeared in his mind in a place he felt safe.

The show says, tenderly and softly, that the love is still there. That the fact these people died was nothing but a tragedy, that their love is a big part of what made Rex who he is today - that every molecule in his body is filled with their final gift to him. That every time he cures someone, every time he uses a build, every time he makes a machine - we see the love that they had for him.

And the way he quietly absorbs his father's face. The way he freezes and whispers "Mamá?" when he finds out Zag-Rs has their mother's voice. The fact that she even has her voice as a testament to Caesar's love, too - that it was meant to bring comfort and safety. The way Rex yells at Caesar when he finds out they have a family property, a connection to their past, the way he fights to protect it.

And, none of this takes away still from Six and Holiday being Rex's family too. None of this removes the work either set of parents did for him, the love either set has - the show says that it was unfair that the Salazar parents were lost. That Six and Holiday are not replacements, that they still love him as parents but play different roles in his life. They can not, and have no desire to, replace the Salazars. But Rex needs parents, he needs protectors, and so they will do what they can for him - at first out of necessity, to keep this kid they barely know safe, but then out of love. They aren't replacing what was lost, but are doing their best to do what Rex's bio parents would do. And they do mess up in it - they mess up in ways Rex's bio parents might not have. Six is clearly bad with showing affection, affection we saw the Salazars give Rex so easily, and Holiday is overworked and stressed constantly, sometimes breaking under the pressure and snapping at Rex and Six, things we never saw the Salazars do.

It's just. It's about how sometimes things will not be the same. They will be different. That doesn't mean the people you lost aren't still with you.

[petervintonjr]

"I was working for Mr. T. L. Kearny on the morning of the day of the election, and did not think of voting until he came out to the stable where I was attending to the horses and advised me to go to the polls and exercise a citizen's privilege."

Good god, people. I sure misjudged a hell of a lot of you; it is obvious more studying is called for. Way more. As in, "lessons-that-may-soon-be-illegal" way more.

Since we're already fresh on the subject of elections, let's get right into it with a look at the life of Thomas Mundy Peterson. Born enslaved in 1826 New Jersey, Peterson and his family were later manumitted upon their owner's passing, and moved to Perth Amboy. Peterson married and worked as a custodian and general handyman at Perth Amboy's very first public school. Active in local politics, at the age of 46 Peterson had been a participant in a local ballot initiative to revise the town's existing charter; in this instance, whether or not to abandon their 1798 charter entirely and reincorporate as a township. (Spoiler alert: they did neither and became a city in 1844.)

On March 30, 1871, less than two months after the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, Peterson voted in favor of retaining the town's existing charter --thereby making him the very first Black American to cast a ballot in any kind of post-Civil War election.

But for one unsurprising anecdote about a white voter at the polling place crumpling up their own ballot in disgust at the sight, Peterson's civic action went largely unremarked-upon (in fact Peterson even went on to be elected to the local city council). It was as true then, as it is now, that local elections are where the most immediate consequences happen. But gradually over time, the symbolism and the larger historical impact of Peterson's quiet moment took on much greater national significance. In 1884 the community raised the equivalent of $1800.00 to present Peterson with a medal featuring Abraham Lincoln's profile in recognition of his milestone --this medal is now part of the collection of Xavier University. In 1989 the public school at which Peterson once worked (P.S. No. 1), was renamed after him.

====

And further to the above subject: Fascism is a hell of a drug, people. One really doesn't see it for what it is when it finally arrives --no concept of just what it is that you've invited into your lives, just because eggs are inconveniently pricey or because you'd rather your kids not be exposed to history lessons like this one. Fascism never merely visits; it takes up permanent residence. Our Black brothers and sisters (especially the sisters) understood that deep in their bones prior to the Civil War, during Reconstruction, during Jim Crow, and during the Civil Rights movement. The rest of us need to internalize that, too. The past 400 years aren't "just" Black history, as if it all only belonged to a specific segment of the population. It is our history. All of us; inextricably connected to it. If we don't study it and learn about it; if we pivot to the deliberate ignorance that fascism so gleefully celebrates, then we all lose.

Racism (and all its cousins: anti-Semitism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.) has been emboldened, running unchecked --to say nothing of truly terrifying old-school misogyny. (And yeah, go look up the word misogynoir if you haven't already). Of more immediate concern we've got... what, 70 days or so? 70 days to recalibrate, retool, get at least some guardrails up. In that time interval, please reach out to one another --check on your communities and keep a close eye on local issues, not unlike Thomas Mundy Peterson. Offer what help you can spare. Lotta desperation and panic floating about; folks are afraid of losing a lot of things in 2025 and beyond --you know, minor trifles like health care, insurance, income, savings, civil rights, autonomy. They're going to be looking for a connection. If studying these Black biographies these past 4+ years has taught me one thing, it is that authoritarianism flourishes when people isolate --whether forced upon them or on one's own. The moment folks break that pattern and start connecting with one another, the bullies proveably take a cautious step back. (Notice I didn't naïvely use the word retreat.) So look out for one another and keep each other afloat; the bullies hate that.

In the meantime for my part I'm going to keep doing the two things I know I am legitimately good at: teaching and drawing. Therefore I'll keep providing this resource until I am forcibly stopped from doing so.

If you're new to this series, start here.

[sporesgalaxy]

I know this is something u were probably asked before but as the guy that has a good relationship with art....how do you do that??? I mean I get that this question is vague but how do you not care if it looks bad? Do you just?? Keep on going till it looks like you want it to look? Despite the agonies? You seem like you enjoy talking abt this thats why im asking, dont feel the need to answer if u dont wanna

hmmmm. You know, I don't think about the agonies much these days. But it's not that I don't care. I guess I've become a freak who sees beauty in the agonies, sorta? It's kind of complicated! I will do my best to explain!

First of all, I know that I have the unfair advantage of having no ambition. I don't have a goal for my art besides making art when I feel like it. That makes it easy to be less judgemental-- I remember having a rockier relationship to my own art during the time when I thought I would make it my career.

This is why I like talking about my perspective, though!! I think it's important to try not to let yourself be consumed by self-criticism as an artist, even if self-criticism is necessary for you, and hopefully my carefree way of looking at things can help balance things out haha.

Anyways, ambition or not-- and I know how this sounds but bear with me-- art doesn't ever look bad.

(Barring ethically harmful art, ugh, I don't want to get into ethics so just-- surely you know what I mean!!!)

Art gets a lot less stressful if you can tell yourself that no art is bad, and remember the reasoning behind that until you really believe it. It isn't a fast process, but it's very worth the work.

The truth is that art either looks how you want it to look, or it looks different from the way you want it to look, but both are ultimately neutral. You CAN make art that looks different from what you wanted, that you still feel pleased with.

When art looks different from how you wanted, the gut reaction you have is often to call it bad or get frustrated. And of course it's frustrating! Maybe you feel it's not as effective at communicating something as you'd hoped, or you feel it's not as visually impactful as you imagined...but it's important to remember those things are only your perception. Not an objective fact. And art is a two-way street! A communication between creator and observer! And communication is really weird and complicated.

•••

Other people's perception of your work won't ever be exactly the same as yours. Sometimes this is desireable and sometimes it isn't! Maybe your art will communicate the thing better to someone than anything they've ever seen-- even if a more effective version could theoretically exist, the "imperfect" version that actually exists and communicates is all that matters to the observer. Or, maybe a feature that turned out exactly how you wanted it to will fly completely over an observer's head, and not have the effect you wanted at all. A lot of the time, you'll never even know.

An artist can NEVER fully control an observer's perspective, so at a certain point you have to live with what you have. You already do this, to some degree, if you have ever EVER decided to stop working on a piece of art and share it. You can always keep adding to something. You can always keep editing. But sometimes, you stop. And perfection doesn't exist, so when you stop it must be because the art is good enough for now. And nothing about "good enough" is objective!

And is that really so bad? Surely people who grow fruit understand that a fruit which is smaller than they imagined can still feed somebody-- that at the very least it will feed bugs and microorganisms and be useful as fertilizer to grow more apples. Your art still means something, still accomplishes something, is still worth making whether it turns out how you imagined or not.

A lot of art is learning when to quit and move on. As a habitual perfectionist, this was something I had to learn early, to stop myself from erasing holes into every piece of paper I drew on.

There's this rule I was taught in middle school drama class: if you fuck up, act like you didn't fuck up. The audience doesn't have your script memorized, so odds are they won't have any idea you fucked up unless you tell them. Other art works the same way. No one knows what you wanted to make but you. And more importantly, a "perfect" version of your art doesn't exist (no "perfect" version of anyone's art exists, or ever will).

The version you made exists, so you have to find what's worth loving about that version. You have found what's worth loving in the imperfect art of others many times. Many observers will treat your art the same way you treat others' art. Why not treat your own art that way, too?

It sounds really REALLY corny, but I try not to think of this as embracing "mistakes." I think of it as celebrating coincidences.

I really really like coincidences. I like that every circumstance wasn't guaranteed to happen, that everything comes down to chance. I think all the little random things are beautiful because they turned out however they did, and not any of the millions of other ways things might have turned out. It's a coincidence that my genes expressed the way they did. It's a coincidence that my parents met in college. It's a coincidence that my oldest friend and I both got to middle school early every day, and stayed close even when we didn't share any classes.

Art is full of coincidences! I try to draw a straight line. The line does not turn out straight, because of the way my hand is shaped and the way my muscles contracted, because my body is not exactly like anyone else's in the world. No one else would have drawn that slightly not-straight line just exactly how I did. It's mine, and it's crookedness is what makes my art mine. Okay, maybe it's a little too crooked for what I want this time-- I'll erase it and draw a new crooked line at a bit of a different angle. There we go, I like that! Now it's my beautiful, irreplaceable crooked line! And the ghost of its predecessor guides the eye just so, and no one else's two crooked lines would guide your eye the same way, only mine! Isn't that nice on its own? Just to have made something that can't ever be replicated? To have made something no one else has ever made before?

You can also apply this in a bit less dreamy and more practical ways, I promise haha.

For example...I've never been a canvas flipper, as a digital character artist. I don't mirror my canvases to see if they still look preportional to me from either direction. I also don't usually draw visual novel character sprites that need to look good mirrored in either direction to serve their function, so it's never been a practical concern of mine.

I consider many kinds of distortion on a character I've drawn to be a good part of the visual flow of the image. Like a smear frame in animation, distoriton in the right places can make character art look dynamic and energized because it can lead the eye through a certain visual flow over the form of the character. If I were to flip the canvas, that eye-leading effect might hit differently because my American eye is used to reading from left to right-- perhaps it doesn't feel as "smooth" going in the opposite direction. This doesn't mean I need to change the distortion necessarily, it just means I prefer not to flip the canvas.

Often, these distortions aren't intentional. They're a coincidence of how my muscles move as I draw, and the areas my left-to-right American eyeballs instinctively pay more attention to. But the effect is still desireable to me. So, happy coincidence!

I think...that's the best I've got for now? Feel free to ask for clarification. I hope it's not total nonsense!

[onfirebyday]

#1 the invasion

wow, I haven't actually read these books in so many years. I've listened to so many animorphs podcasts and am super familiar with the plot and characters, but actually physically reading them again is such a different experience!

Jake - I'm really excited to read the next few books and see how the narration changes, as I was really surprised by how character-full this one is. I suppose this is a side effect of consuming so much animorphs media - other people's opinions have definitely rubbed off on me. A lot of people's reactions to rereading the invasion (in podcasts at least) is that Jake is quite bland, but I think he has a really defined voice in this book, even when he's unsure of himself. My mental image of him is of worn-down-by-leading Jake, and he's so lively in comparison to later in the series! He's brash and impulsive and is much more ready for violence than I expected this early - of course, that's because he doesn't understand the cost yet.

Tobias - bird foreshadowing etc, but I was surprised by just how much his eagerness to be involved is a driving factor in the animorphs even engaging in the invasion at all. it's not hard to imagine that without him there caution really could have won out, especially as Rachel is not that gung ho yet. Tobias' arc is so internal throughout the series that the really active role he plays in this book was unexpected

Marco - my favourite, full disclosure. he was great in this book, and showed many of the character traits that get turned up to 11 over the series. he's very analytical, and the dichotomy between his jokester and serious sides is very clear from the get go. I like how clearly the book compares his family situation with Tobias, and the extremely different impacts that has had on the characters. marco was loved and cherished until his mother died, and is now extremely aware of the importance his life has to his father. Tobias is the opposite - he has never had true familial love, and outright says that no one cares about him, so putting his life on the line has no drawbacks. we also get a little bit of the contrast between Marco and Cassie styles of manipulation - Cassie tells Jake he isn't scared, and that inspires him to act despite the fear. Marco goes on the offensive, relying on a completely different emotional response:

Marco smiled. He's my best friend and all, but sometimes Marco really makes me mad. "We're pretty sure the cop is a Controller. And I don't care what you say, Jake, I think Tom is, too. So, here's the deal. You want to get into this fight against the Yeerks?" Marco asked me. "Fine. Let's see how much you want to do it when it turns out it's your own brother you have to destroy. That stopped me cold. "It's not exactly some video game, is it?" Marco said. "This is reality. You don't know anything about reality, Jake. Nothing bad has ever really happened to you. You have this perfect family. Like I used to have." His voice cracked a little. He never talked about his mom's death. I realized he was right. I didn't know about reality. Not the way reality had happened to Marco and to Tobias.

Marco repeats the 'your own brother you'll have to destroy' line a few times, along with the video game analogy. Of course, this ends up backfiring:

I grinned. Or at least I showed my teeth. "Yeah, it is, kind of. But I'm pretty good at video games."

Marco's attempts to manipulate are largely based on jabbing a weak spots and using the kneejerk reaction from that. As soon as Jake decides that he has to free Tom, this strategy doesn't really work on him.

Rachel - to be honest, Rachel really didn't do it for me as a kid, and it's probably because I am a bit more of a Marco (even if that is not a very flattering thing!). I'm hopeful for this re-read finally lighting that spark. Many people in the tag have already pulled great quotes about her from this book, and you can see her strength and protectiveness in this book, but overall she (and Cassie) isn't that present in this compared to the boys.

Cassie - love her. Also not hugely present in this book (splitting up at the gardens, captured for the climax of the book, not part of the first time morphing scene), and I think we see a little less of who she really is in this book than we do for Rachel. We know she loves animals and that's about it.

the scene were they realise the cop is a controller is genuinely scary, even though the pacing means it's only about a page long. same with Elfangor's scene, the description of events is scary, the kids reactions really add to it, and it's very gripping. this book does a great job setting up the contrast between the two types of danger the kids face: full on violence with aliens and lasers, and the the threat of detection, and invisible undetectable enemy searching for you.

[mdhwrites]

Sushang: HSR's Lovable Dumbass

What makes stupid good? It's a tough question in writing because intelligence is such a coveted trait but some of the most beloved characters in all of creation are utter morons. Even the MC for Star Rail is mostly characterized by being a deranged menace to society who's two braincells are composed of a trashcan rubbing up against a Stellaron. Most anime protagonists are some of the dumbest, densest rocks in existence that would make a diamond tell them to loosen up so why do we love them?

Well, I wanted to talk about Sushang and I feel like she's actually a good insight to this paradox, especially since people do like to bag on her and for good reason. She is one of the characters in HSR with an explicit Third Impact parallel, down to the name, and the comparison is uh... Not flattering from what I understand. In Third Impact, she's a leader of people, a grand warrior and someone to look up to. In Star Rail, Sushang is at best suffering from some sort of learning disability, potentially even dyslexia due to her trouble reading, and literally can't wield her sword properly despite having been training for potentially over a century. Reminder: The first time they ever met, Guinaifen, the street performer, disarmed Sushang like it was nothing. This is not some grand warrior we're dealing with.

No, we're dealing with a hero instead, potentially the most true version of one in the game. Luka is probably the close second but Luka by his own admission is in it more for the fight than anything else. He wants to inspire and help but those are secondary to throwing everything he has into the ring and I love him for that. But Sushang is markedly different and it actually explains a LOT of what's kind of odd about her.

Sushang grew up on stories about her mom and the High Cloud Quintet. She technically trains to be a Cloud Knight to follow after her mom but she treats the job VASTLY different from literally every other Cloud Knight we have ever met due to the fact that she views it from the lens of her stories. She adopted a philosophy of helping one person every day from that. Why does she keep getting wrangled into Guinaifen's performances? Because she's in lo Because when someone asks her for help, she wouldn't even consider saying no. How many times has she been distracted from military strategy lessons or personal exercise because a nice old lady in her neighborhood asked her to help her with a few things, or even just to chat because she was lonely? Nothing about Sushang says she'd say no to that, bolstered by a carefree spirit that doesn't diminish playtime just because she has lofty ambitions of being a great knight.

Essentially, she's a Herbo, the female version of a Himbo (at least, if you're like me and don't think Bimbo fits as the female version of one.) And that's a good thing! Himbo has come to be such a beloved term because someone who's lacking in brains but has a big heart is usually the most reliable, sweetest, most honest person you can meet. They also don't ever back down from when they're needed and yet keep things light when otherwise the stone cold badass with rippling muscles might be as bland as a brick. This is why Sushang is afraid of ghosts, because it helps add a silliness to her that is just charming, especially when you remember that she's a knight while the person who didn't pass out is a literal live streamer.

But this also can very quickly make someone look bad and that certainly is the case for Sushang too. She has taken a LOOOOT of Ls during her time on the Loufu and not had a lot to show for it. Guinaifen has had more wins... But I don't think that's a bad thing. She and Guigui in most material are used for comic relief after all and make for a really compelling duo. The short lifed species member who is uncertain of her place in the world trying to find the form of her passion that makes her the happiest and doing unhinged shit while she works on that and the long lifed species member so intently sure of what she wants to be that she's let what others may consider the most important traits for her job slide. One makes the bad ideas while the other gives them a happy victim. Straight man and Punch(or sledgehammer)line. It's not there isn't more to these characters but it's not the focus.

We also do get glimpses into the fact that Sushang is potentially just a late bloomer. She is able to wield her family's ancestral sword and call upon its spirit, despite her other issues as a fighter. She went against Yanqing and even though he was holding back, she managed to buy the rest of the Ghost Hunting Squad at least a couple dozen minutes and come out okay. No one would have expected her to last a minute even with him having one hand tied behind his back. I think the lightcone Swordplay is even trying to hint that the problem is less the wielder but the weapon for what is holding Sushang back. She currently thinks the weapon, its heft and destructive force, is more important than how it is used, hence why she mocks Luocha's rapier for potentially not even harming something struck by it. However, imagine what she could do with a weapon she could properly move with. One that she wasn't always having to fight against the weight of. She must know something about combat after all to have survived the St. Medicus troops she fought with Dan Heng and held her own against Yanqing and she's doing it with a weapon that is actively harming her ability to fight. It's like how a Greatsword user in Monster Hunter knows how every monster fights better than literally anyone else because if you don't know what it's going to do and where it's going to land, you're never going to hit with a weapon that makes you immobile while you hold it out.

Sushang is in a similar position so what could happen with some proper strength training? Or with a different weapon? Or just anything to help her not be slowed down? She has the heart of a hero so is she just waiting for her own blade, and not one that casts a shadow over her like her mother's? And do you need to think about any of this to enjoy the fact that right now, she summons a giant chicken for her ult because that's delightfully silly and fits with the general vibe of the character? No. Because she's HSR's lovable dumbass and I wouldn't want her any other way. See you next tale.

======+++++======

I do love how Guigui is the real easy one to go "Look, HSR is willing to give a 4 star character depth" but Sushang brings that home with, "No, they're cooking SOMETHING with even the most jokey of 4 stars, you just have to be willing to look a little deeper."

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[joyswonderland1108]

Drama. Drama everywhere.

Hello Loves, hope you are all doing okay and having a good life.

Quite honestly i was not going to talk about this because i was trying to stay drama-free for the longest time as i've been busy with uni but also wanted a bit of a break from all the bullshit while i continue to support, appreciate and wait for our boys peacefully.

My reactions for this situation were :

This shit is funny af because here we go again making a scene out of basically nothing.

As much as the situation is funny it is also unfunny when we're looking at the whole scene from different angles.

So to begin we all know why this shit is funny, same story, different day. People will continuously feel pressed about Jimin or Junkook or Jimin AND Jungkook, people always have this obsession of bringing down their bond because for some reason people can't even accept them as two bandmates, it HAS to be two strangers or nothing to them.

The whole "we do not support content that has shipping material" argument is silly to me because darling, if you see member X with member Z doing something totally normal that anyone can do and can still call it "shipping material" that's a you problem, you must be having serious untreated problems and should seek help from a therapist ASAP.

To think that "Tteokbokki by JK" caused so much fire and for what? We've all been knew that the members have been eating together many times before and it wouldn't be the first time that a member would've cooked something that was appreciated by other members. We were even able to see through the moments the boys decided to share with us that Jungkook did in fact cook for Jimin and if anything to me whether it was Jimin who said it or any other member, picking the Tteokbokki by JK as his favourite dish, that to me at least is a really good praise for JK because this could only mean his Tteokbokki is a banger!!

Now moving on to why it is also unfunny and i'm not even going to get into the details that we talk about every single time about how both Jimin and JK get unnecessary hate but i'm going to talk more about the fans.

We should all keep in mind that stan accounts are run by actual people not bots, so this whole thing about making a big deal out of a very small thing and making up lies to justify this hate is absolutely mental. People are receiving death threats through their dms, they're being lied about, they're being doxxed and basically their lives could be in danger and over what? Childish behaviors that are not assumed.

What irks me is those with big platforms who can't bother to do things correctly, and i'm not saying they should not do any mistakes, we're human we do make mistakes and it's okay but what's not okay is knowing damn well we are wrong and not apologizing for it, being able to fix it and not even try but instead proceeding to block the people they were wrong about.

I don't want anyone to tell me that those people behind those big accounts are not responsible, when you have a certain amount of followers you become responsible of the behavior they show after they followed YOUR advise. Like any influencer on the internet, they are responsible for their audience, as the word itself is "influence" which means that the behavior, decisions, actions, etc.. of the audience can be diverted by this person.

Seeing how these big accounts caused a lot of damage to many people over false information that they did not bother to fact check before but even worse didn't even think about making a follow up post apologizing not only for the misinformation but also to the people who have been impacted by it, this says a lot about what kind of people they are and the type of values they grew up with. Because those accounts are owned by real people too, which means that the posts are also influenced by their personality and values, knowing damn well that because of YOU people are being sent death threats and not even a simple "Sorry"?

It is quite sad actually because we're seeing fewer and fewer big accounts in this fandom being completely honest and unproblematic. Ship whoever you want, stan whoever you want, heck if you want to be a solo go ahead no one is stopping you as long as there is no disrespect out there, as long as there are limits, literally no one gives a fuck what you chose to do or believe in.

A this point i feel like i used up all of my energy in writing this post and if i go any longer it would no longer make sense so i'm stopping here. Please, let's do better for our boys, i know there's like a whole year for us to wait for all of them to be together again but i swear a year is not as long as you think it is, so in the meantime please let's work hard for them, if we can't be present on social media as in actively posting and all that's fine but at least let's be supportive and let them know that we did NOT forget them and we are still here for them, we still love them and we will continue to do so.

With that being said, take care of yourselves and have a very nice day.

[alexanderwales]

Anime Review: Rising Impact

Rising Impact is a shonen sports anime about a third grader who is really ridiculously good at golf. This is a review, along with some thoughts on shonen sports anime and what makes them tick. Spoilers for the first season follow.

I don't watch a ton of anime, so tend to just go in blind to things whenever something looks good to me on first blush, having not read any discussion, review, or sometimes, not even a blurb. I sometimes get surprised with something great like Frieren, and more often drop out after three episodes when there's no spark of artistry.

I usually don't have a problem with a sports anime, so long as it's above a certain quality waterline. I've watched Yowamushi Pedal, Kuroko's Basketball, Yuri on Ice, Keijo!!!!!!!!, most of Haikyu!!, some of Bluelock, I'll include Shokugeki no Soma, I read the manga of Prince of Tennis ... probably a smattering of others, including a ballroom dancing one that I watched with my wife, enough that I think I have a grasp on the genre, even if I'm not "well read".

So far as I understand the average shonen sports anime, the first step is explaining the sport to the audience, which can last for at least half a season. The mechanism for this is that there's a character who knows basically nothing about the sport in question and can get slowly introduced to it as we go. And because it's shonen, usually our protagonist is absurdly talented, which also helps to propel the plot forward: they're so good that they immediately get wrapped up in the sport, mentored by teammates who see their potential or accelerating through all the beginner stuff without all that much effort.

Rising Impact takes this to its logical endpoint in a few ways. Our protagonist, Gawain, is in third grade with an ambition to hit a ball as far as humanly possible. Once he gets shown by a passing professional golfer that maximum distance can be obtained with a golf ball and a driver, he's all in despite the fact that he doesn't know the first thing about golf. He practices with neurodivergent fervor until his hands are blistering and bleeding, honing his ability to send a golf ball flying, then his grandfather sends him off to Tokyo to seek his fortune.

I had thought and hoped that after the first episode we'd be in for a time skip, but nope! Our protagonist is just a third grader for the whole series, in spite of how little sense this makes (even for shonen anime). This choice is easily the worst part of the anime, because I am a father to a third grader and kept imagining him being sent out to become a professional golfer, and it beggars belief. I generally find myself aging up people in my head anyway (most of the main cast is like ... 6th grade), but can't really do that with Gawain, who really does act like an impulsive child.

After coming to Tokyo to live with this random woman he'd come across, he gets embroiled in some golf happenings, first challenged to see if he can hit the ball the furthest, which he wins, then challenged to putt the ball in, which he loses because he has never tried to putt and didn't know that it was a part of the game of golf. This is the first time he suffers any kind of loss, and it's an important part of the setup, because it's showing speciation.

Everyone is good at different kinds of things, and sports anime will always take this to extremes. Rather than having someone with a good drive, they will have The Best Drive. Someone can't just be good at putting, they have The Best Putt. Initially it looks as though our protagonist has The Best Drive, but actually he has a (named) ability called Rising Impact which is an ability to see the exact point of contact between the club and the ball, which makes him really good at golf. And also he has insane stamina, upper body strength, lower body strength, and luck.

I haven't watched Jojo's Bizarre Adventure but I'm assuming that all this was influenced by Stands, which are (for my purposes) a unique superpower that an individual has. In sports anime, everyone has a Stand, but specific to the sport, because of course everything revolves around the sport. How entertaining this ends up being sort of depends on the sport and the variety of mechanics it has, but also the creativity of the author. Part of why you want to keep going is to see how the different Sports Stands stack up against each other, how they work in different scenarios, and what wrinkles they have. When evaluating a sports anime, one of the first questions I'm going to ask myself is "how are the Stands?"

In the case of Rising Impact, the biggest problem is that the sport of golf kind of sucks, at least from a narrative standpoint. Golfers aren't going against each other, so the different Stands can't actually interact with each other. Sure, some guy is the Wind Master who can read wind really well, and there's a woman who sees the Serpentine Path when putting, but when they're golfing they're individually going for the lowest score and counting strokes. It largely would not matter if they were playing sequentially instead of being on the green together. With that said, the first season had enough creativity to hold my interest and did enough to ensure that the matches were interesting, so my complaint is mostly about the sport, and I think "should have made an anime about something else instead" is probably not good criticism. They should have though.

After an early tournament, Gawain goes to Camelot Academy to learn golf with other (older) students, leaving behind pretty much all of the established characters. From a writing perspective, I kind of hate this, but it's super common for anime: we've said everything we wanted to say about those characters, so they're dead to us, at least for a little bit. Partly this is because new characters have new Stands and it's interesting to see fresh ideas, but I don't know, it also kind of smacks of someone writing with a gun to their head, and also that gun is going to go off the very moment someone loses attention.

The whole cast of new characters didn't really grip me, though I will say this in favor of Rising Impact: one of the things it gets right is matching the Stands to the characters. I don't think it's rocket science, but you do want these two things to work in harmony with each other (or working against each other in a narratively satisfying way). After the first week of study, we get introduced to another cast of character who also go to Camelot, and they're ... mostly fine, though one guy's Stand appears to be cheating, which is dumb as heck, and also he makes monkey sounds.

Most of the conflict in these episodes is about who's going to be going to the UK for the Camelot Cup, and this is also one of the staples of a sports anime, which is that we have to have constantly escalating stakes in the form of bigger and more important competitions. The first season has its climax between two master putters with nearly identical Stands, and the final episode stops just before the start of the Camelot Cup arc, which I assume would be the whole of the second season. Personally, I think it might have been better to escalate a little bit more slowly, but I haven't read the manga, so maybe this is escalating slowly.

Rising Impact really seems like it wants to go as hard as it can as soon as it can, and I can't blame it for that, because ... well, it's golf, what else are you going to do to make it fun? The courses they play on get ridiculous very early on, with all kinds of bullshit you would never see in a real golf course, like they had been designed by the same people who did Green Hill Zone. They're not shown on screen in the first season, but there's apparently a set of legendary clubs which I would assume have special abilities of some kind. I tend to admire this kind of approach, and it's part of the reason I watch anime, but this one accelerates toward absurdity with full force, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Something I've noticed in a few sports anime is that as the series goes on, it gets more and more decoupled from the actual sport. Part of this is because we quickly exhaust the author's knowledge of the sport, even if it's their hobby, and part of it is the need for escalation, but eventually you reach a point where there's full separation from most aspects of the sport. Especially if the show has any mythology to it, we eventually have someone looking at players with a jeweler's loupe and saying "ah yes, his skill Eagle Talon, which will allow the Golden Minute" or whatever. Toward the end of the short first season, Rising Impact is basically already there. It's a dangerous place to be, because that means it needs to be carried by its "fight scenes" and character work, and as I've said, the choice of golf as a sport handicaps the "fight scene" approach to depicting sports.

As for the character work, Gawain is essentially just comic relief and "wow I can't believe he's so good", and the only other character that has a significant story is Lancelot, the quiet and thoughtful master putter. He has a golfer sister in the hospital and ... I just did not care, which doesn't bode well for my interest in future seasons. If I'm watching, it's for the golf.

And look, the issue is the golf. I think it's a dead boring sport. I've played maybe two rounds of golf in my life, and it was fun enough, but it's got so little narrative to it. There's very very little strategy or tactics, and instead it's heavy on the biomechanics. The central question of golf is "how efficiently can you hit a ball to the hole", and there's just no meat there. I think in a different life I could be a guy who enjoys a weekly game of golf, but there's just no story in it.

I guess I can vaguely imagine a shonen golf anime that I would enjoy more, but I think a lot of the ways Rising Impact heads deep into the genre trappings right from the beginning makes up for golf being a narratively poor game. I'm still not sure that I can actually recommend Rising Impact, but I had fun with it, and it was thankfully light on the "anime weirdness" stuff that often puts me off. If there's a second season, I'll probably end up watching it, but I'm not going to seek out the manga like I sometimes do if an anime has really gripped me.