#i get the problem when characters are just the tropes and not fully fleshed out individuals

[tea-cat-arts]

(Not arguing, just adding on)

I feel like a lot of these arguments also conflate subbing/doming with topping/bottoming and think that these characters' dynamics apply to all aspects of their outside of sex. It gets weird

Like, "Xie Lian's a martial god! He tops! He's not a fem boy!" and I just stare into the void because 1) so what if he's a martial god. Pei Ming's also a martial god and that's not gonna stop me from saying he gets pegged. 2) Why does it matter if he tops? Like, he probably does at one point or another just cuz he and Hua Cheng live for thousands of years so I'm sure they've tried a lot of things, but this isn't ancient Rome- it's ok to be gay and a bottom. 3) "Xie Lian is genuinely feminine and finding that balance between femininity and masculinity is a massive part of both his character and Xianle religious traditions," comments aside, the fuck does being feminine have to do with topping or bottoming? Like, Luo Binghe and Lan Wangji are both significant more traditionally feminine than their partners and they both top. Not to mention, Hua Cheng is also a pretty traditionally feminine guy himself.

But ya, I just think this fandom gets weird about these characters sex dynamics and tends to occasionally act like the only correct way to be gay is to actively go against stereotypes of femininity and masculinity

I think we all know by now that I'm a pretty staunch canon purist, but one fandom thing I really don't understand is the insistence of people who prefer Hua Cheng and Luo Binghe to be bottoms that their preference is subversive, and that those ships' canon dynamics are the more non-subversive, "heteronormative" dynamics. like okay.. definitely more subversive for the god to top his believer and for a teacher to top his student, sure. and while in hualian, Xie Lian in general seems to be the more feminine one (though these same people also hate/dispute that, so maybe this point wouldn't even matter to them), Luo Binghe is the crybaby feminine pretty-boy between bingqiu. Binghe and Hua Cheng also both favor care-taking as a primary expression of their love, with Binghe especially pretty much taking on the role of househusband, doing the cleaning and cooking, etc. regardless of the fact that queer couples can't be heteronormative, how many times am I going to have to say that, their sexual dynamics are ALREADY subversive in lots of ways, just based on their inherent characteristics and each couple's history/past power dynamic with their respective partners.

it's fine to have a preference for a certain dynamic, or for your ships to switch, or whatever you want. but this new thing people have for making sure THEIR preferences and THEIR ships are the most moral and politically correct and subversive as possible is so tired. you don't have to justify everything you like.

I hope I don't need to say this but if you're going to respond to this arguing with me, I don't want to hear it! I'm not here to engage in discourse I'm here to yap from the comfort of my own blog, thanks <3

[artemisia-black]

Musings on writing female characters

I see this conversation come up a lot in fandom, especially about how female characters (particularly in the Marauders era) are often seen as dull or not fleshed out enough. And we don’t apply that same criticism to male characters. Evan Rosier, for example, is mentioned once in canon, and yet people manage to build him into a fully realised character with backstory, motivations, and depth. But we don’t often see that same level of effort applied to the women, which, yes, speaks to a certain level of fandom misogyny, but I also think it points to a bigger issue with craft.

Fandom isn’t activism, and it shouldn’t have to be. People should be able to write for passion and fun, not to tick diversity boxes. But at the same time, if you can’t engage with 50% of the population in a way that goes beyond misogyny or basic tropes, there’s something lacking. I get that fandom is a hobby and there’s no pressure to constantly get better, but if someone struggles to write three-dimensional characters for women, that’s a pretty big gap in skill.

Being able to invent traits and flesh out characters is a skill in itself. The way people take male characters with barely any mention in canon and build them into complex, layered individuals shows this. For example, I generally prefer writing women (outside of Regulus and Sirius) so having a preference for one group of characters isn’t the issue. The problem is when women or female characters aren’t fully realised at all—it’s not just bias, it’s lazy writing. It’s a missed opportunity because women are just as complex, messy, and interesting as the men. The writing could be so much richer if more people took the time to explore female characters in the same way they do with male ones.

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

My problem with Sallie May—a discussion of representation:

There’s been some discourse around Sallie May lately that’s gotten me thinking more about her. Not really as a character, but what her purpose is in the narrative and how she’s treated by the fandom and the show’s creators.

Sallie May is an interesting case study in representation without depth, and I wanted to talk a little more about what that means.

OPINION DISCLAIMER—I’m gonna be talking about how I personally view lgbtq+ and queer representation and what I consider to be well-rounded representation vs. empty or shallow representation.

Also. I am only one member of the queer community—I don’t speak for all lgbtq+ people, and I am DEFINITELY NOT trying to talk over other’s experiences. My opinions are my own, and if you agree with me, cool! And if you don’t agree with me, that’s great too!!

Also also. I don’t think I should have to say this but, this is NOT a personal attack on ANYONE involved w/i the production and creation of Helluva Boss. This is my own analysis, b/c I like to talk about media and the ways we interact with and interpret it.

So, with all of that out of the way, if you’re interested in my analysis, let’s talk about Sallie May!! (TLDR @ end of post)

First do want to make it clear that my issue is not actually with her like…existing. Or with her general characterization. Mostly because, even with Hell’s Belles, she still doesn’t really have a very strong characterization to begin with, and isn’t a fully-fleshed out character.

In her initial appearance she was a bit-character, bordering on just being a straight up background character. She had three lines in her debut (and to date, ONLY) appearance in the show proper.

Until Hell’s Belles we knew next to nothing about her other than that she likes violence and also that she has a neighborhood body count? Which. I don’t know if they were trying to imply that she’s a serial killer, I doubt that was the intent. Or maybe they were. I can’t know.

Regardless, I honestly believe they didn’t really think the implications of that writing decision through at all. There’s a very real and very harmful “trans serial killer/murderer” trope in media, and while the impact is definitely lessened by the vast majority of HB characters being violent murderers—it still feels weird having the only trans character we’ve seen at this point be literally INTRODUCED to the audience by the fact that she’s a murderer, and to then be given NO further information on her.

Luckily, we DID get more information about Sallie, even if it was still very little and surface level. In Hell’s Belles we learn that Sallie May and Millie used to be a lot closer, and that Sallie May felt left behind when Millie moved to the big city.

In the short, Sallie May expresses her frustration with having to pick up the slack around their family’s ranch, and that she’s been lonely without Millie there. Millie and Sally have a little heart to heart and are able to make up, and the short ends.

This is a nice little piece of backstory, and does give us slightly more insight into Sallie May and what her life is like, but because the episode is a short, we still really don’t get to know her as a person.

Like Millie, Sallie May doesn’t have any real depth. We only know starter information about her, like that she cares about her family, and that she’s violent.

But unlike Millie, Sallie May is a minor character. She has (at the time of my writing this) appeared in ONE episode of the actual show, and one short. She is a minor character, and the ONLY transgender character in the show with a name and lines.

So. Okay. Why does literally any of that matter??? Who cares if Sallie May is an under-developed minor background character??

Well, in my opinion, it matters because the show-runners frame and treat Sallie May as if she is a main character, without actually writing her—or any trans character for that matter—as a main character.

This really rubs me the wrong way, because it comes across as tokenism.

In my opinion since she was introduced, Sallie May has become a token transgender character—an excuse for the HB writers to not write or develop more transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse characters and stories, because they already have one.

I worry that, if anyone rightfully points out that HB is severely lacking in gender-diverse characters and storylines, the creators and fandom will point to Sallie May as “proof” that they do have representation.

If HB is as radically queer and LGBTQ+ friendly as it claims to be, why do we only have ONE named trans character in the show’s 5 years of existence?

Due to all of the above, I find I can’t agree with people who praise the show for its representation, because of how stunted it is. I just don’t think I, or anyone, should have to read sources outside of the narrative to learn important parts of a character’s identity.

I feel this very deeply as a lesbian and nonbinary person—I understand that most of the women characters in Helluva Boss are sapphic, but I ONLY know that because of the HB Pride Print that came out just this year. I have not actually gotten to SEE any of these character’s sexualities fully represented, and it’s because of this that I struggle to see myself represented in HB in any way.

I do need to clarify that what I am NOT SAYING is that no one can feel represented by Sallie May, or that if they do, they’ve been tricked somehow by writers into thinking they got more representation than they actually did.

Sallie May is a very popular character, and because of that I honestly would like to see more of her. I want to see more of her because she’s the only trans character on the show, and I want her to be properly developed.

I talked previously about how I enjoyed Hell’s Belles, but wished we had gotten to see more of Sallie and Millie’s relationship in the actual show. Their relationship has a lot of potential to show the unique ways in which siblings interact and navigate conflict, but we only got to see a few seconds of them interacting in Sallie’s debut. The short gives us an idea of what Sallie’s personality is like, but it’s so brief that I still don’t feel like we really KNOW her on a deeper level.

To me, three lines + one short with a brief backstory doesn’t feel like the sort of amazing representation that fans of the show laud Helluva Boss for.

As a series that often boasts about its queer and trans rep and inclusivity, I can’t help but feel like Sallie May should either have been a main character from the very beginning, or that she shouldn’t have been trotted out like some sort of bastion of trans representation, when the only indication she is trans is her horns/white roots.

And yes. As a genderqueer gay I KNOW that it can be extremely tiring to have all of our stories revolve around our struggles and ONLY be about being LGBTQ+. I also want to see a variety of stories about queer people like me going on adventures and getting to do things that don’t revolve around our struggles. But I also want to still actually see myself represented.

Not just know outside the story that, “oh that character is nonbinary, but it will not be mentioned in the narrative in any way and will not ever be important in the context of this character I’m supposed to see myself in.”

Madeline Maye talked about this specifically in her critique of Helluva Boss, and her pointing this out was kind of what made me realize that, yeah. Anyone watching Helluva Boss for the first time would probably have NO IDEA that Sallie Mae is a transgender woman.

It also made me realize that the only reason I knew that Sallie May was trans was because her VA, Morgana Ignis, who is also a trans woman, tweeted about it, and the official Helluva Boss Twitter retweeted it.

The original tweet is hidden now (Ignis has since left Twitter—idk why, I genuinely hope it wasn’t due to harassment—that’s never okay) but I was able to confirm that this was the case based on the HB wiki, and the official HB’s retweet still being up:

The only confirmation we’ve ever had that Sallie May is transgender has been outside of the show—either from social media Q&As and the show’s wiki or merch—

Sallie May has a LOT of merch. Like a lot, this isn’t even all of it. And yes, SOME of the merch is from the recently released “Hell’s Belles” short, but the vast majority of it is from the 3 years since her initial introduction.

The vast majority of it is also highly sexualized, and highlights Sallie’s penis through her swimsuit. Now, I’m aware that Morgana Ignis requested this, and I honestly don’t have too much of an opinion on it. I’m not a trans woman, and I’ve seen multiple opinions from trans women on this design choice for Sally’s merch. I’ve seen some trans women say that they liked and felt represented by this choice, and some say that they felt objectified and that it made them dysphoric. This is one of those situations where I don’t think everyone can be pleased—like I said at the beginning of this post, LGBTQ+ people are as diverse in their opinions as we are in our identities and self-expression, and I think everyone’s feelings regarding Sallie’s portrayals in the merch are valid.

I bring it up because, other than the wiki explaining that Sallie May has “male horns”, this is the only other way to confirm that Sally is trans, as it is never acknowledged in the story. I bring it up because I don’t think merch should be the only way an LGBTQ character’s identity is validated.

I assume that all of Sallie Mae’s merch is because of her popularity, but I also can’t help but wonder if this has contributed to the impression that Sallie is a main character, when, in the narrative so far, she is still a minor one.

I don’t believe that when she was originally created to be a “token trans” character, but since her introduction, there have not been any main characters that are transgender, nonbinary, or genderqueer.

We’ve only had one other trans character with a speaking role—this imp:

Who is FTM. He seems to know Blitz from a while back, and talks Blitz into staying at the party. Then he watches him drunkenly make out with random people with another (I assume) trans imp who is probably MTF:

(Also—as an aside, this scene kinda bothers me?? I don’t THINK this was the intention at all, but having a VERY CLEARLY drunk off of his ass Blitz, who can’t meaningfully consent at this time, being watched, and almost like…leered at by two of the only visibly trans characters in the show…it feels gross. Like why are two of the only other confirmed trans characters voyeuristically watching a drunk man who can’t consent making out? It would be one thing if we had a story full of different trans characters who acted in all sorts of different ways, but at this time these two are 2/3rds of the show’s ENTIRE trans rep. With the other 1/3rd being introduced to us as a serial killer. Like. Guys. What is it that you’re trying to say?)

Apparently Sallie May’s VA has stated the below on Social Media, and stated that there’s a lot more coming for Sallie May in the future. And that’s great!!! I really really want to believe that.

But I look at the above and can’t help but wonder…if this is the case, why did it take three years for her to get another appearance? In just a short? Why wasn’t she given more focus and importance from the very beginning, in her introductory episode? If her original appearance wasn’t representative of her and Millie’s relationship then why did they even write it that way???

I want to believe all of the above—that Sallie May actually WILL get to become a main character. But I look at the way she’s been barely portrayed, and the way that she’s basically been used to just sell merch, and it makes me sad.

I would love to see more of her, more of any trans characters that aren’t 2 second background characters, but I honestly have a hard time believing we ever will when the episodes take as long as the do to come out, and the when the episodes focus so heavily on shipping pre-existing pairings.

As a lesbian, I would love to see Sallie May get a girlfriend, but given Spindlehorse’s track record with lackluster sapphic pairings and representation, I don’t have much hope of seeing that either.

I just. If you managed to get all the way through this heinously long post, thank you for reading. If you didn’t, that’s very fair (lol) and I’ve got the tldr for you here—

TLDR:

—My issue with Sallie May is not actually with Sallie May at all. It’s with the fact that we don’t get enough of Sallie May, or any trans characters, for that matter.

—You can, of course, feel represented by any character, but I think it’s important to ask yourself how you are being represented, and if you are actually being represented.

—Not every queer/trans/lgbt story has to explicitly be about being queer. The stories in which we are represented should be as diverse and vibrant as all the members of our community. But, I still want to actually be able to tell and to see that the characters are lgbtq+. If a character is a lesbian or sapphic, I want to see her show an interest in other women. If a character is transgender I want to see that acknowledged by the narrative, whether it’s the character mentioning their transition or just saying they’re trans. I want to SEE myself and other queer identities. Not just know that they’re there.

[ceilidho]

Sorry to dump this here, but no one in my immediate and/or accessible circle reads as much as I do and this conversation came up at the right time.

I don't read a lot of romance and I started reading some popular ones last year to ease my way into it. I feel like such a snob to say this, but the plot and writing are never fully fleshed out nor are the characters. None of the romantic actions I see people swoon over are ever explained well enough for me to understand the hype. A scene in which there should be an emotional inner monologue is shorted to a paragraph and if the character is toxic (I understand a lot of people enjoy toxic/dark men, but romance books never write them well enough) and destroys the other character's life/says a relationship-ending lie/any other cliche, there is never enough explanation, justification, groveling, or any thought process behind the reconciliation.

It's always just one half-written and half-baked trope after the other.

Again, apologies for dumping it here, but I think there are such damning consequences for women (the main demographic of romance readers) who read things like this and don't give constructive criticism or thought when facing these problems.

no but you're 100% right. i mean, this is one annoying bitch's opinion (mine LMAO) but trad publishing is in the absolute pits right now. that's not to say that there aren't still some good books coming out because of course, every now and then you're going to get a gem. but i think the environment has become outwardly hostile to good writing.

i mean, i know this has been discussed a ton, but the "fast fashionization" of books has become a huge problem. every time there's a new microtrend or whatever, every author rushes to push out a book to meet the demand (see: the hockey romance trend). this, obviously, means that the editing time is severely compressed and you get books published by like harper collins and penguin with typos, grammar issues, and more.

i got some flack for this when i posted about it on twitter ahah but i honestly do not understand why the sequel to "fourth wing" came out so soon (not even getting into the messy qualities of the first book). sequels used to take a year or more to come out to allow for the book to go through several rounds of editing and fine tuning! what happened??!!

i think authors now feel compelled to get their books out as soon as possible out of fear that booktok/readers will simply move on after the initial hype and they'll lose their reader base. there's like an anxiety about being left behind in the current publishing world.

this is kind of in line with what i was talking about the other day with Bo actually - writing romance and smut is actually way harder than people think. you can't just use the same 5 recycled porn dialogue lines and call it a day. you have to care a little about the story you're trying to tell, not just churning it out to make a buck or to make people pay attention to you. i'm not saying belabour every single action and decision made by your main character or go crazy on description (i still think the sweet spot for a published book is between 250-300 pages, and maybe more if you're writing a genre specific book that involves a lot of worldbuilding), but as a writer you need to want to be writing that book in the first place.

no one who's legitimately excited about what they're writing is going to resort to cliches and overused tropes - they might lean on tropes they like, but there's inevitably going to be something original and exciting there.

also my lil controversial opinion about the state of trad publishing lately is that i think it's 100% influenced by this weird pervasive strain of purity culture that's on booktok where people feel like any enjoyment they get from reading a particular thing has a direct reflection on them as a person and their values. rather than it just being a book.

(by the way i actually completely agree with you that even dark romances are as bad as everything else we've been talking about - that's another conversation lol. i also kind of agree with the idea of more romance books coming with content warnings on the front page - this hasn't really caught on yet except with some dark romance authors but i think it's a really good idea)

i don't think there's anything wrong about people getting excited about books on tiktok and instagram and youtube btw. i think it's a fun way to share recommendations, commentary, and interests. what i think is the big problem is that the publishing industry has almost become beholden to trends and online perception because they've seen how much profit they can generate by catering to it, and i think that's why books now just feel bland and soulless. they're tapping into a FOMO on both the authors' and writers' side, of either being left behind and not being able to make a living, or missing out on what everyone else is reading and talking about.

[ranchthoughts]

thoughts on genre, tropes, Bad Buddy, and My School President

and here she is! the full text all together, not split into the three parts previously posted here: part 1, part 2, part 3

I also go more in detail about a lot of the terms and concepts I use here (indexes, conventions, genres, intertextuality, etc) in this post here, in case you would like more context

[strap yourselves in, this is loooooong]

The BL “genre” has so many conventions - in narrative, characterization, themes, settings, iconography, filmic techniques, and of course, tropes.

Bad Buddy and MSP do not lack these genre conventions (both are stories about boys in love, both are set in schools which is very common in Thai BLs especially, both explore a budding relationship and other social and emotional problems of youth, both hit familiar plot beats like confessions and narrative/emotional climaxes, both utilize many editing and sound effect techniques seen in other BLs, and both deploy many BL tropes like cheek kisses, head pats, forced proximity, looming, etc.). However! Bad Buddy and MSP are atypical in their deployment of genre conventions, especially with regards to trope usage and pacing - they go against genre and trope expectations to subvert seme/uke roles and dynamics and they space their narrative beats differently than other shows. As a result, the shows feel familiar but also fresh to BL audiences.

Bad Buddy, MSP, and tropes

BL tropes index so much information to audiences familiar with the genre (e.g., the nature of the relationship between characters, the seme/uke dynamics, other social information, etc.). Bad Buddy and MSP take these familiar indexes, with their well established meanings, and mix them up, give them new contexts, and use what they normally tell us about the characters, social context, relationship dynamic, etc. to tell a new story.

There are SO many examples of this so I have decided to focus on two “subcategories” of tropes: the faen fatale and tropes which are strongly associated with seme/uke dynamics.

Faen Fatales

In most BLs, the faen fatale (thanks to AbsoluteBL for the term) is a character (male or female) whose sole purpose is to drive a wedge between the main pair, often serving as a catalyst for their relationship/confession, and who generally does not get much character development or identity of their own.

In Bad Buddy, Ink seems like a classic faen fatale: she is introduced as an old high school friend that Pat was interested in and Pran was jealous of because of that fact, and now in the present day of the show Pat pursues her again and Pran is once again jealous, especially since it seems Pat is succeeding (they get food together, they hang out a lot, Pat wears the bracelet Ink gave him in high school, etc.). Pran believes that Pat likes Ink and that they are well on their way to being together, if they aren’t together already. Pat even tells Pran he likes Ink. However, it becomes clear quite quickly that Ink is not a typical faen fatale. Her interactions with both boys feel platonic, she shows just as much interest in fostering a friendship with Pran, and when Pat uses Pa’s patented “Four Ways to Tell if Someone Likes You,” Ink fails in every category. She does act a a catalyst to Pat and Pran’s romantic relationship in some ways (e.g., Pat using Pa’s patented Four Ways he learned to assess Ink to realize his own feelings for Pran), and she does act as a barrier to their relationship as some of Pran’s hesitation post their ep.5 kiss comes from his understanding that Pat has a crush on Ink (though of course their family and friends present the main barrier). However, Ink has her own personality, interests, and crucially, her own romantic arc. She is a fully fleshed out character who never had anything but platonic feelings for either lead: ergo, a subversion of the faen fatale trope.

In MSP, there are a couple of potential faen fatales, but neither develop that way in the end. Sound is introduced as Tinn’s rival, and romance media logic would suggest he will fulfill a love rival role in the show, competing with Tinn for Gun’s affections (especially as Sound is interested in music like Gun and he joins Chinzilla). Even Tiw suggests Tinn should look out for Sound moving in on Gun. However, Sound never shows interest in Gun and quickly gets acclimated into the band, only briefly presenting a threat to Tinn and Gun’s relationship when Tiw witnesses them having a seemingly intimate moment but that is sorted by the end of the episode. Like Ink, Sound never has anything other than platonic feelings for either lead and ends up with his own romantic arc. The other possible faen fatale in MSP is Nook, though she is present so briefly. I think other shows would have stretched out her plot line more and had her fill more of a faen fatale role. As it stands in MSP: Gun sees her give a gift to Tinn and compliment him, he gets jealous and snaps at Tinn, and then the show/Tinn immediately reveal to us and to Gun that it was a case of mistaken identity (Yo was catfishing with Tinn’s picture). In a matter of minutes, Nook went from being a faen fatale set up to simply someone involved in another character’s arc, part of a problem that Tinn and Gun could work on together.

Neither Bad Buddy nor MSP have faen fatale characters, though there are characters that could, and indeed seem to be set up to, fill that role. Both shows subvert our expectations and BL tropes by having potential faen fatales be uninterested in either lead and possess more character development than most other examples of the trope (including their own, completely separate, romantic arcs). In the case of Ink, this also subverts typical BL handling of female characters, who tend to be few and far between and generally relegated to the under-developed role of faen fatale.

Seme/uke Tropes

Most BL shows can be read through a lens of seme/uke dynamics, which originated in yaoi. The seme is the “pursuer” character and the uke is the “pursued”. There are certain physical (height, skin colour, etc.), social (age, wealth, social capital, etc.), and personality (active vs. passive, extroverted vs. introverted, flirtier vs. shyer) markers which are typically associated with either the seme or the uke. For example, semes tend to be taller, wealthier, older, flirtier, tanner, more active, and have a higher social status, while ukes tend to be shorter, poorer, younger, shyer, paler, and have a lower social status. “Seme” and “uke” roles are also sometimes conflated with masculinity and femininity (semes are “masculine” and ukes are “feminine”) and sexual preferences (semes are dominant and tops and ukes are submissive and bottoms). There are also tropes associated with either the seme or the uke, like ukes typically give cheek kisses and semes forehead kisses.

Thus, things like height, age, wealth, personality, presumed sexual preference, and the role they take in tropes can index the character’s status as a seme or a uke, and in turn the character’s identity as a seme or uke in the narrative (pursuer vs. pursued) indexes a character’s personality, sexual preferences, etc., however unrealistic and simplistic that is in real life. In a BL, we would expect the seme (pursuer) and uke (pursued) characters to exhibit most, if not all, of the associated seme or uke traits and roles in tropes, though this is not always true (and some BLs have little to no seme/uke dynamics at all).

In terms of physical, social, and personality markers in Bad Buddy, Pat exhibits slightly more “seme” traits than Pran, like his larger size and more “rugged” and “typical” masculinity compared to Pran’s neatness. However, both Pat and Pran take the seme or uke role in tropes about the same amount of time, with Pran having several significant moments where he embodies the seme role (looming over Pat, licking his fingers, drying his hair, etc., not to mention the post-sex scene in ep.11) and Pat many significant moments where he embodies a uke or even “feminine” role (casting himself as the girlfriend at the bus stop, being clingy, pretending to be sick so Pran will give him a sponge bath, etc.). In fact, tropes often happen twice, with Pat and Pran taking turns in the seme and uke role (e.g., both take turns cleaning the other’s face, both cook for the other, both kiss the other’s cheek, etc.). Furthermore, and I’ve spoken about this before here: both Pran and Pat deliberately take on the seme role during their ep.7 Flirt-Off bet (”whoever falls in love first loses”). To win the bet, they have to be the pursuer (i.e., seme), and thus spend the episode taking it in turns to exhibit the seme role in tropes (Pat takes off his shirt multiple times, Pran looms over Pat, they wash each other’s faces, they take the seme roles with Ink and Wai at the noodle shop to make the other jealous, etc.), thus also spending the episode taking it in turns to fulfill the uke role in tropes. The fact that the seme and uke roles in Bad Buddy are so interchangeable and balanced (they sometimes ever play the narrative roles of pursuer and pursued at the same time) demonstrates the show’s upending of traditional seme/uke dichotomies.

In MSP, Tinn and Gun are pretty much the perfect seme and uke in terms of physical and social markers: Tinn is taller, wealthier, has a higher social status, and even has a female “faen fatale” (more typical for seme characters), while Gun is shorter, poorer, from a marginalized club at school, and has a male “faen fatale” (more typical for uke characters). Some one on Tumblr (and I cannot for the life of me find this post again) mentioned that Tinn is a little “feminine” coded when it comes to romance (he is the dreamer, the romantic, always imagining romantic situations), while Gun is more what we’d think of as “masculine” when it comes to romance (more brusque, less sappy), though I am not sure how applicable these types of divisions are to BL. In term of preference markers, there isn’t much sexual content to go off of, but MSP does mention the TinnGun vs GunTinn divide in ep.12, never coming down on either side, and one of the things the homophobic teacher says is that he thought Gun was more “masculine” so he is surprised to see him dating a boy. Overall, the show deliberately eschews and criticizes the association of top/bottom or masculine/feminine with the pair. Furthermore, Tin talks a lot about wanting to be Gun’s boyfriend, to belong to Gun - and as @cinna-bin​ points out here, for a genre that equates seme with dominance, the one who shows and has ownership of the other, it is pretty subversive to have the seme character in the narrative express a desire to be “owned”. Like Pat and Pran, Tinn and Gun are fairly egalitarian when it comes to which role they take in tropes (Tinn catches Gun when he falls, Gun touches Tinn’s chin constantly, they both kiss the other’s cheek). I’ve talked about this here too, but often Tinn will imagine a moment with himself in the seme role (e.g., wiping Gun’s face) that won’t come to fruition, but when it does happen in real life, the trope is reversed and Gun takes the seme role (e.g., when it happens in real life, Gun wipes Tinn’s mouth). In MSP, the deployment of tropes is more about natural moment and real life, and less adhering to strict role divisions. This back and forth feels more accurate, more high school - they both take it in turns to boldly initiate and then to be shy (all the aborted kiss chances, etc.).

Finally, I’d like to add that there are many moments in both Bad Buddy and MSP where the characters are aware of the romantic tropes and intentionally utilize them to further a romantic agenda. We aren’t exactly subverting tropes here, but we are playing with them deliberately and consciously in a way you don’t get in a lot of BLs so I thought it worth mentioning here. Most of these instances come in the Bad Buddy ep.7 Flirt-Off or from Tinn’s day dreams and include:

Pat employing the “drinking from a water bottle/pouring water on yourself” and “shirt off” tropes to try and get Pran hot and bothered in ep.7

Pran looming over Pat during the bet

Pat and Pran trying to make each other jealous by employing various classic tropes with Ink and Wai respectively while eating noodles (opening their water bottle, feeding them, wiping their mouth, etc.)

Pran symbolically losing the bet by wiping Pat’s mouth

Tinn imagining himself wiping Gun’s mouth

Tinn imagining a Ghost moment while cooking with Gun

Tinn making a joke about a “hot underwater kiss”

Pacing

Both MSP and Bad Buddy are also slightly unconventional when it comes to pacing. Both shows hit the standard BL narrative beats (falling for one another, confessions, first kiss, confirmation of relationship, conflict, beach eps, etc) but at unconventional timings, they utilize a lot of time skips, and they also condense plot lines which in other shows might have been much longer.

The Placement of Narrative Beats

I will focus on two of the main places where both Bad Buddy and MSP diverge from the usual BL placement of narrative beats. Firstly, the first kiss on both shows: while there is a lot of variety in the timing of first kisses for BL shows, Pat and Pran’s rooftop kiss at the beginning of ep.5 is perhaps a little earlier than usually, especially since the two do not truly confess or get together until the end of ep.7; and in MSP, their first kiss comes quite late, especially given the numerous near-kisses that happen throughout the latter half of the show. The first kiss for MSP coming in ep.12 is not unheard of for a low-heat BL and really makes sense given the tone and setting of the show (lighthearted, high school), but combined with the early confession of feelings (hinted at as early as ep.3, and fairly confirmed in ep.6) as well as those fake-out kisses makes it feel unusual.

Secondly, both shows eschew the typical ep.11 of doom structure of a BL, where ep.11 sees peak emotional angst and the narrative/plot climax, in favour of a ep.10 (and even ep.9 in Bad Buddy) of doom, an ep.11 denouement, and an ep.12 conclusion. Eps.9 and 10 in Bad Buddy are when Pat and Pran’s friends and parents, the two biggest barriers to their relationship, find out about them. Pat is shot, they learn the real story behind their parents feud, there are a lot of emotions, etc. In ep.10 of MSP, there is the finale of Hot Wave and Gun’s mother’s illness (culminating in her receiving surgery at the end of the episode). Neither show has the main couple break up in their eps. of doom, like is common in other BLs’ ep.11 of doom, though they do have their relationships tested. Ep.11 in both Bad Buddy and MSP are instead the denouement, a quieter, more introspective look at the emotions and plot event of the previous episode(s). Pat and Pran run away from their families for their “honeymoon” on the beach and come to terms with everything they’ve learned, and MSP focuses more on the aftermath of Hot Wave and the tensions and emotions among Chinzilla, though there is of course parts about Tinn and Gun’s relationship in the face of disappointment. The final ep. for both show is thus given a bit more breathing room than in other BLs - they don’t have to wrap up the emotions and plot lines of an ep.11 of doom AND conclude the series, and can instead focus on wrapping up the series and even introducing new ideas and a look into the future (there are timeskips in both ep.12s, Bad Buddy does their PatPran breakup fake out, and MSP explores homophobia).

Time Skips

While time skips aren’t unheard of in BLs, especially in the final episode, Bad Buddy and MSP’s usage of them interject a level of realism into the series that isn’t always seen. The time jump of 6 or so months at the beginning of ep.7 in Bad Buddy means the tension build of the Flirt-Off doesn’t happen over a matter of days or weeks but in fact months. Pat and Pran are stubborn, this won’t be resolved quickly, and it give time for the tension to realistically reach a breaking point. MSP features several time skips in ep.9, ep.10, and ep.12, stretching both the Hot Wave competition schedule and Tinn and Gun’s budding relationship over a much more realistic full school year, instead of pretending the competition and build up of tension or feelings could be happening over a span of weeks. Paradoxically, the fact that the shows use time skips instead of showing (either in full, in part, or in a montage) the parts they skip (the Flirt-Off, the weeks of Tinn and Gun coming closer together and Chinzilla practicing) connects to my next point: the shows aren’t afraid to speed things up sometimes. The use of time skips both slows down the narrative and emotional arcs over a longer period of time while also demonstrating that the shows feel confident in their narratives: there is no need to stretch story lines out over episodes and episodes.

Condensing Plot Lines

The most striking thing about Bad Buddy and MSP’s pacing is how fast they move through plot lines, especially compared to other shows. In Bad Buddy, the plot line where Pat and Pran are anonymously and unknowingly flirting with each other through gifts and notes left at each other’s doors could have been the plot line for most of a show, if not a whole show, but it is introduced and resolved within ep.2. Ink is introduced in ep.4 and seems to be a potential faen fatale, but by the end of ep.4 this seems somehow unlikely and by halfway through ep.5 it is confirmed that she won’t be. The Flirt-Off happens in large part off-screen, in the 6 months or so time skip between eps.6 and 7, and is shown to us and resolved in ep.7. Other shows could have spent episodes if not half the show exploring that plot line.

I've talked at length about the pacing of MSP here and a bit here - like Bad Buddy, MSP moves quickly through plot lines that might have spanned episodes or even a whole season in another show. By the end of the first episode, MSP establish that Tinn is soft and pining hard over Gun (instead of keeping up the premise that he is cold and out to get the music club), the finale of Hot Wave comes two episodes before the end, the plot lines around Gun’s mother’s health are resolved in about one episode (the conflict around Tinn keeping Gun’s mother’s illness from him is resolved in a couple of scenes, and she has surgery and is pronounced ok by the end of the episode), any jealousy plot line around Nook is resolved in two scenes, the conflict introduced by Sound joining the band is resolved in one episode, and so on. Pretty much every problem introduced at the beginning of an episode is resolved by the end.

Bad Buddy and MSP feel confident, like they know they have narrative material to spare and don’t need to stretch plot lines out with twists, miscommunication, and jealousy. Thus, they move through plot lines much more quickly than other shows would.

Both shows feel so fresh because of this - they keep things moving, they surprise us by resolving things faster than other shows would, they don’t linger in jealousy and miscommunication like many other shows do, they skip over parts that other shows might have lingered on for the biggest punch, and they break the patterns that us, the audience, have come to expect from BLs (like the ep.11 of doom). Even the progression of the relationships, which we know will be romantic and probably happy in the end (these are BLs after all) and conform vaguely to enemies-to-lovers and will-they-won’t-they conventions, stay fresh: Pat and Pran have kissed and all but confessed their feelings, but they now embark on a months long Flirt-Off bet that delays them actually getting together. We know Tinn has a crush on Gun from the end of the first ep. and we begin to see hints that Gun might like him back from ep.3 onwards, and at first the show seems like it is going to go the typical romcom route wherein Gun doesn’t realize Tinn’s crush is on him (especially with him offering to help Tinn flirt with his crush), but like I talked about in my post here, they don’t and instead have Gun know it is him Tinn has a crush on, he’s just uncertain and a bit scared. Bad Buddy and MSP are both quicker and slower than other shows: they move through plot lines without lingering, but they use time skips to create realistic long term development of the core relationships, allowing the characters to build tension, live in hesitancy, and in the case of Tinn and Gun, be realistically slow in the physical progression of their relationship.

Conclusions

Bad Buddy and MSP subvert audience expectations with regards to tropes and narratives - like their handling of the faen fatale trope (both shows give us characters that could be faen fatales, and probably would be in other shows, that do not fulfill the narrative role of a faen fatale and receive character development and arcs of their own unlike other faen fatales) and how they play with expectations surrounding seme/uke dynamics (those who embody the seme or uke role in tropes aren’t necessarily the ones who exhibit the most seme or uke physical, social or personality markers; tropes iterations are balanced and reciprocal). Both shows change up the usual BL timelines and expected pacing - they hit their peak narrative, emotional, and angst climaxes before the standard ep.11 peak, plot beats come quicker than in other shows, and story arcs that are usually dragged on in other shows are concluded more quickly. On the other hand, both shows are “slower” than other BLs in other ways, like their usage of time skips to create realistic progressions of the core relationships. As a result of these subversions of BL genre conventions, the shows are familiar but also fresh to BL audiences.

But what does this say about Bad Buddy and MSP, and the BL genre in general?

Firstly, these shows remind us again of the importance of intertextuality. Texts (and this includes television shows) are intertextual; they all refer to one another and cannot exist separately from other texts. BLs especially are very intertextual - they have so many shared elements (tropes, characters, locations, etc.) they always (deliberately or unintentionally) draw parallels to other BLs. We would never notice how Bad Buddy and MSP diverge from other BL shows if we did not by necessity/automatically think of all previous BLs while watching them.  Furthermore, where and how Bad Buddy and MSP divert from genre conventions and previous examples of the genre demonstrates their relationship to the genre and underlines the messages the shows are trying to send. Bad Buddy and MSP subvert the particular genre expectations they do and in the way they do to make a point - by giving new meanings to familiar conventions and juxtaposing typical meanings of genre conventions with their own (either explicitly, or through the audience’s intertextual analyses) the shows ground themselves in a different world view than other BL shows and give a more nuanced and realistic look at human and queer experience.

For example, the way Bad Buddy and MSP move quickly through plot points (avoiding extended plot lines centering on jealousy or miscommunications) and the reciprocity of their trope usages (deliberately balancing the seme and uke dynamics of their lead pairs) is unusual in the world of BL. It serves to emphasize the reciprocal and egalitarian nature of the lead pairs’ relationships which we also see in their treatment of one another (communicating, understanding each other’s needs and taking turns acquiescing to make the other happy, e.g., ep.11 where Pran agrees to run away and stay on the honeymoon to make Pat happier and then Pat agrees to return home to make Pran happier, or Tinn and Gun being so supportive and understanding of one another’s dreams and physical boundaries, etc.). In this post @miscellar argues the lack of miscommunication as a plot device in Bad Buddy is inherently queer and that the show as a whole does away with heterosexual/heteronormative tropes. In their reciprocity, egalitarianism, and communication, Pat and Pran and Tinn and Gun eschew the standard power dynamics of BLs which come as a result of BL’s encoded seme/uke dynamics, which in turn come from heteronormative and misogynistic ideas in the het romance genre and beyond about men and women. Defying genre conventions in some ways (e.g., subverting tropes) strengthens and underlines how the shows defy genre conventions in other ways (queerer, more realistic stories; fairer treatment for women; less heteronormativity, etc.) - these smaller, more obvious subversions of genre conventions and expectations indicates to us, the audience, that we should be prepared for larger, more subtle and implicit shake ups of genre conventions and expectations, ones that might rewrite the BL genre code for the future.

By reflecting on what Bad Buddy and MSP change, we can understand and identify the standard BL world view and set of assumptions. For example, by weakening and subverting seme/uke dynamics and their associations with things like dominance/submission, masculinity/femininity, and top/bottom, Bad Buddy and MSP reject the heteronormative and misogynistic assumptions that underlie most BLs: that gay couples have a “man” and a “woman;” that the penetrated must be feminine, weaker, sex averse, etc. like women are in heterosexual relationships; that there is always an unbalance of power (social and/or sexual) in relationships. While these are “just” romance tropes, or you might say that it’s odd to be so absorbed by the dynamics between two characters (particularly when it come to analyzing seme vs. uke and top vs. bottom), in a world where these tropes and their execution, and the preferred sexual position of a character and what that says about their personality etc., are so tied to other things and issues like misogyny, homophobia, etc., refusing to engage and deliberately obscuring are pretty radical things that say a lot about the message and view point of the shows.

Bad Buddy and MSP feel more realistic than a lot of other BLs. This is not to say that shows have to be realistic to be good, or even that viewers/that I prefer realistic shows, but it is certainly something that strikes me when I think about Bad Buddy and MSP. The relationship progression is slower, there is less dwelling in miscommunications, they even have not entirely happy but hopeful endings (Pat and Pran are continuing to hide their relationship from their parents, but it seems they are coming around; Tinn and Gun face homophobia from people in their lives, but also receive support from their classmate and parents). And beyond being realistic to the “real world,” they also feel more realistic to the queer experience: queer relationships don’t usually have such strict relationship roles and power dynamics, adhere so strictly to heteronormative ideals, or exist in world without homophobia or disapproval. They are varied, often deliberately contrasting and rejecting hetero norms, and sometimes involve being scared to come out (even to accepting parents), facing homophobia, and living in a “glass closet” limbo.

Many people have talked about how Bad Buddy walked so MSP could run - Bad Buddy was more heavy handed and noticeably deliberate with its trope subversions, intentionally trying to correct problems that have existed in the BL genre since the beginning, and this allowed MSP coming later to be more subtle with their changes, working them even more seamlessly into the style and the tone of the show. After MSP, what will be next? Where is GMMTV, and BL as a whole (in Thailand and beyond) heading? I’m excited to find out.

Bibliography

@absolutebl​, specifically these posts: 1 (faen fatales), 2 (seme/uke), 3 (seme/uke tropes), 4 (GMMTV correcting for its mistakes), and all their posts about BL tropes

Agha, Asif. 2003. “The social life of cultural value.” Language & Communication 23: 231-273.

Ahearn, Laura. M. 2012. Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1982. “Discourse in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, 260- 422. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics for Beginners. http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel//Documents/S4B/semiotic.html

Chandler, Daniel. Genre Theory. http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel//Documents/intgenre/intgenre.html

@cinna-bin: https://cinna-bin.tumblr.com/post/704496825511641088/his-boyfriend-words-matter

Irvine, Judith T. 1996. “Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles.” In Natural Histories of Discourse, edited by Michael Silverstein and Greg Urban, 131-159. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Laineste, Liisi, and Piret Voolaid. 2017. “Laughing Across Borders: Intertextuality of Internet Memes.” European Journal of Humour Research 4, no. 4: 26–49.

@miscellar: https://www.tumblr.com/miscellar/674021449476997120/here-are-a-few-things-off-the-top-of-my-head-1 AND edited to add this post, which is so crucial to understanding how intentional all this is when it comes to Bad Buddy: https://www.tumblr.com/miscellar/710442440997371904/hello-in-a-convo-we-were-having-about-qls-that

Proctor, Devin. 2020. "Intertextuality." In The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society, edited by Debra L. Merskin, 849-50. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

@ranchthoughts​ (myself): 1 (signs, symbols, icons, indexes, genre and BL), 2 (Bad Buddy and seme/uke tropes), 3 (MSP and imagination vs. reality), 4 (MSP being a good-natured show), 5 (MSP and narrative structure and pacing), 6 (Gun and knowing about Tinn’s crush); and everyone I referenced in those posts as well

Wiggins, Bradley E. 2019. The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture: Ideology, Semiotics, and Intertextuality. London: Routledge.

[moranice-solvej]

Answer the Questions and Tag 5 Fanfic Authors

Thank you for the tag, @rifle-yes <3

1. How did you get into writing fanfiction?

Got introduced to fanfic through an old forum dedicated to a TV-show I was low-key obsessed with as a teen all the way back in 2008. Around the same time I started to get an urge to express myself in writing as I was an avid reader and always had a vivid imagination, so the sheer fact that people just wrote stories to celebrate their favorite stories captivated me.

Since then, there were many attemps to write fanfic and original works alike, very few completed, and only my obsession with Rogue One that started after watching the movie and reading the novelization had put me on the path of publishing my writing and finally being able to complete writing projects.

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

Started in a TV-fandom a long time ago, but never had anything I wanted to publish, so mentally I don't even count it. None of those scraps of written down ideas remain; I deleted them and never once looked back. That leaves Rogue One and technically Star Wars as my sole writing fandom. I dearly love many other shows and movies and games, but none of them make me want to write in their universes.

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

Technically 16 years. Yes, comprehending this number makes me terrified.

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

I used to read tons of fic before I came back to writing in earnest. Now most of my free time goes into writing.

In addition to that I have ran into a loathesome problem of not being able to find stories that I'd love to read. The ceiling has gotten too high. Now that I can finally shape the kinds of stories I want to read to life, I crave more stories with such premises, themes, writing styles, and character archetypes, and these days I struggle to find them in fanfic and in original books for that matter. My gremlin brain simply cannot connect to the vast majority of tropes that dominate modern-day fandom and culture. :(

Thus, I'm firmly in the mode of be-the-change-you-want-to-be-in-the-world and producing stories for myself to satisfy that need. Even if it routinely takes me over a year, usually two to finish a single story with a monster wordcount and create something I can one day re-read with glee.

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

I am now able to move an idea from a general concept and a set of pivotal scenes to a fully-fleshed out story and actually finish it. This used to be my achilles heel for ages and it feels mightily gratifying to finally get rid of it.

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

Origins of blood transfusions in human history. Plus a large variety of niche questions of when thing a or thing b was first invented. Most of the times the setting of my current writing project allows me to disregard our reality and wing it for the sake of the vibes or plot, but I still like to research what we as a species develop and when to try and create a somewhat believable ancient fictional world without modern technology.

7. What’s your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

I have a soft spot for readers who pick on teeny-tiny details of my writing and show their appreciation for it. I end up with monstrous word counts because I'm an extremely context- and detail-oriented writer, and knowing that my passion for it is noticed and enjoyed brings me joy in return.

8. What’s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

My current project centers around a warrior woman in her mid- to late forties who makes peace with her trauma of motherhood and loss, finds new friends and love and new home, defies her nation's traditions and becomes the force of change for her people that will bring them out of stubborn isolation and little by little shatter their callousness and mold it into empathy.

I am well aware that the sole audience of this story is myself and my best friend whom I'm lucky to have along for the ride, but it has took over my heart and it will not let go until I finally bring this epic saga to a close.

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

I am simply incapable of writing a traditional short story. Every one-shot I ever made was a stepping stone in a larger verse, and even so the smallest one is over 8k words. Anytime I try to write something small, I either need to put it down because it gets out of hand, or I need to finish it and by that time it grows into a monster.

My last attempt to write a short story within a story has spawned an epic saga that currently sits at roughly 380.000k words and will likely end up over 500.000k words when I'm finally done with it.

10. What is the easiest type?

Monster-sized epics. I think my creative brain cannot function in any other way but go-big-or-go-home.

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

I've used MS Word for writing ever since I got my first laptop and keep at it. Started using Scrivener lately for establishing character sheets and writing down my notes.

For years now I write almost exclusively over the weekends, with occassional editing in the evenings after work. Between working, needing to keep my apartment clean and myself fed, and dedicating time to mastering my fourth language, I have no brain for creativity after I'm done with all these chores and I use whatever remains of my evening to read, or watch shows with my best friend, or do some gaming.

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

In the story I am currently writing, one of the secondary main characters is an ex-slave and a rape survivor. There is no shortage of hurt/comfort stories about a female character's experience with such kind of abuse, and in all my years of reading fic and books I often find that trauma stemming from it is either glossed over or healed through the power of true love. Even when a story follows a road to healing, it often ends in sunshine and rainbows after the all the travails. Well, for a long, long time now my gremlin brain wanted to explore what such trauma can do to a stoic male warrior, as well as to study how sometimes there is no easy healing from such ordeals, how deep these souls scars lie, and how they will keep poisoning the relationship he will pursue down the line and present major obstacles to both non-sexual and sexual intimacy with the woman he falls in love with. I'm a sucker for happy endings and I will not turn away from it, but this is going to be a scarred happy ending because those ghosts are never going to stay completely quiet in his soul.

I am daunted by the prospect of writing this spin-off like I've never been before, scared of not doing it justice, but something in me has latched onto this idea and really, really wants to at least try it.

13. What made you choose your username?

I needed something unique as a username and I have a habit of making up new names out of thin air for my writing. I liked this one and it had stuck. :)

If any writers who follow me would like to join in, you are welcome.

[majoringinsarcasm]

https://www.tumblr.com/majoringinsarcasm/752029441556922368/rwby-will-always-be-a-passion-project-that-grew

Think what strikes me about your point is that it REALLY highlights the intense hypocrisy and two-faced behavior, especially when it comes to the subject of indie media and the way social media reacts to it.

For all of their disdain for "corporate media" and the "sanitization of media", supposedly "pro indie" people don't hesitate to act any differently towards media that doesn't conform to their expectations. They outwardly praise unique stories and ideas, but if you step out of line in some arcane or unclearly defined fashion that only exists in their minds, you can literally go from hero to hated in pretty much the flip of a switch.

It truly makes me wonder what categories RWBY falls into to get to this intersection. Because there’s now subsets of the hatred and dislike ranging from Ruby is a static protagonist (which she isn’t completely but also that’s not a bad thing in story telling), ANY kind of queer rep and how it’s Pandering but also Done Wrong at the same time. It’s a female led cast who are fully realize people with different personalities and hopes and hobbies and thoughts.

It changes. We leave the safety of school and venture into the outside world and it’s not so simple anymore. It’s hard. Being a teenager who is tasked to save the world is not easy. But the idea that rwby and co mess up or their plans fail is seen as plot armor and not Story Conflict will always make me laugh. Like wow their big elaborate plan at the end of volume six resulted in problems? That’s so crazy it’s almost like every show ever has done that.

It started off with short episodes and a colorful cast that was fun but at the time didn’t have a lot of explored depth. Some people probably just wanted Month to animate fight scenes for 12 seasons. But that’s not what they got and as the crwby have said over the years that wasn’t even the intention of the show.

One dimensional tropes and aspects folding out into fleshed out characters was the GOAL of the show and the beauty of the story they were holding together. People are upset that this flashy nothing burger concept turned into a whole ass narrative with lore and world building and didn’t just stay in a go fund me campaign I style limbo of cool art with nothing else behind it.

And it sucks because now SO MANY PEOPLE will loudly talk about how it was overhyped or rushed or bland or ruined. So many videos on YouTube are how the main cast is bad or the true villains or how characters lost their potential and I wanna scream WATCH THE SHOW. Don’t look at it under the guise of “it could have been this”. Watch what the actual show is saying listen to what it’s telling us.

I love this show a lot and disliking it doesn’t make you An Enemy. Acting like a shitty know it all while bashing the real human creators and claiming you can tell a better story while not being under the same budget and work limitations makes you kind of a loser though

[chuckletons]

here's me talking (or rambling) generally about the jb comics in cn starring/cartoon cartoons and block party. i'm not a huge fan of most of the stories. some of this is also more series bible talk except with a focus on bunny, johnny and suzy as opposed to just johnny and carl. also longg post underneath the cut. some scattered trivia and notes at the end too if you're interested in that sort of thing

the most notable instance of bunny making johnny do chores is the beginning to "i, fly." we never really see it happening otherwise. however, this is a reoccurring theme in the comics. it also matches up with the pre-retool bible stating that johnny gets an allowance from bunny each week.

in most of the comic stories, bunny has a low tolerance for johnny's behavior and often threatens to kick him out and otherwise fully embodies the "aggressive nagging mom" trope. this is even noted by "charles d. brown," a fan that sent in letters. there's also a running gag in a few stories of bunny chasing him with a bat? that is completely absent from the show (and likely wasn't allowed even if they wanted to.) bunny instead takes the role of beating the tar out of any man that threatens her son. van's bible and the retooled version seem to be similar in the way bunny uses guilt to get johnny to do what she wants. that specifically was not a retool invention. although s1 bunny wasn't very fleshed out, nor did she appear a lot, van was planning to do more with her before he got fired. the retool was going to harness a much more edgy identity, so it makes sense.

back on topic: comics also feature certain panels such as bunny asking who would be stupid enough to give johnny a driver's license.

my biggest problem with these stories is how frankly miserable some of them feel. johnny and bunny's relationship is a big part of that. in the beginning to the smarty pants story, we see bunny pouring a super-sized box of antacid into her mouth as soon as she sees johnny hitting on a random woman, telling him that she's the "eighth 'betty' [that] week [he] decided [was] 'the one [for him].'" she then gives him genuine good advice that he doesn't follow, a la suzy.

overall, the amount of awareness bunny has just makes me feel terrible for her. what makes bunny work in the show is her pretending (or being blissfully unaware) that her son isn't as bad as he seems. like the rest of the cast, she's a very flawed person. the show works because johnny's friends are also fucked up in different ways without being the exact type of cynical that he is. characters like pops can be very, very mean to johnny, but characters like bunny carl and suzy have their mean moments as well. but some comic stories take this to an extreme and i think the show achieves a specific vibe of mean that mostly worked.

the world revolves around whatever johnny subjects his friends to, but they are his only support system. they feel like a group of horrible people that work well together, united by one idiot. i like that a lot about the retool, it's a huge reason why i got this into it in the first place. but, i love that there's a balance between, say, episodes like "johnny's guardian angel" that acknowledge how the status quo is johnny's fault or episodes where his friends don't care as much about him, and ones where they do and they pay for it. it's not too static. if you don't love one, you have the other.

retool bunny is notable because of the heart she brings to the table. again, she loves her son and will fight to protect him, she's way too clingy and longs for the past when he was still a child, she makes plenty of mistakes as a mother, but at the end of the day, you know she wouldn't threaten to kick johnny out on a daily basis or treat him like a total freeloader. either the retool or the comic writers misinterpreted what "bunny guilts johnny" was supposed to mean. for meaner jokes with her or carl etc., you could at least go "that's kind of funny in a dark way" or at worst "this feels ooc" and move on to the next episode. when we get the gist in the comics that bunny is always suffering this much, what joy is there seeing them interact?

the majority of the stories were not written by the show's writers, but there is a difference between comics and tv censors— comics seem to get away with more. some examples of comic writers taking advantage of this were funny, some were not. one example is in the "you cast a spell" story. i'll let you guess which panel. very S1 in nature, honestly.

(left) this one-page comic where it's obvious a woman hired actual hitmen to kill johnny after he stalked her is like... the show didn't do this because 1. again, i doubt they were allowed to and 2. it's uncomfortably realistic. the stalking part. i feel weird criticizing a one page gag like this, but the concept of hiring hitmen to kill johnny IS funny— and that very well could've worked in the retool's world, don't get me wrong— it's how it's executed. the bollywood movie did a better hitman/assassin type concept.

(left and right) much like bunny, johnny feels uncomfortably self-aware in ways he shouldn't be. "'sides, it's full of stuff the babes can throw at you!" this should not cross his mind. he'd likely tell you anywhere BUT some place that tongue-in-cheek. it's a very easy joke. "always be a gentleman on the first date, save the real you for later!" johnny doesn't play dumb or polite to deceive women, he's just a jackass. "charm school johnny" and "tyler perry's guide to love" are the main examples of this, as johnny can't be a gentleman (or pretend to know what one is) without someone guiding him along. CSJ is a cel-era S2 episode. johnny isn't smart nor devious enough at any point in the show to say something like this. his everyday self is wildly inauthentic as it is.

to me, it feels like these lack what really makes johnny funny when he IS funny. i can't tell if this is a misunderstanding of his character or if the bible was a bit off in terms of what retool johnny became. kupperberg's stories seem to have this problem the most, however... all in all, it kind of feels like an exaggerated parody of the retool and what could be viewed as its worst qualities

one of the other comics i found interesting was "go cart go," a story about suzy building a go cart for a derby and asking johnny for help. johnny uses a nickname for suzy as opposed to forgetting her name and otherwise acts nice to her. he kind of sees himself as a role-model to her, and he has a "tooth or consequences" style change of heart when he sees how sad she is after he enters the derby with his own cart. he cheats his way to get her to win. it's arguably the sweetest official johnny and suzy story i've ever seen and it was very likely an episode premise in the bible that got reworked into the aforementioned tooth fairy ep. johnny is completely selfless and it's played straight even when he gets beat up at the end. is it in-character? is the tone accurate to the show? not really, but it's really nice to see. i like it! retool johnny WAS supposed to be a "jerk with a heart of gold," it's just a shame we barely got that.

other random notes:

johnny uses a lot of "flirty" food nicknames. "pop tart" he uses at least twice. very much the same type of thing as "etruscan honey bun" from the gladiator short. definitely toned down in the actual show

like the s2 model sheets, master hama is referred to as 'master hong,' something that was likely changed early in production to lessen possible complaints of racism / (over)stereotyping

only two of the comic stories were written by one of the show's crew members (john crane.) partible pencilled for a comic / covers but wrote zero of the stories, even post-retool. retool-era storyboard artists such as dave schwartz (the man with the idea for a suzy spin-off / "the great bunny book ban," whom unfortunately passed in 2021) and neal sternecky pencilled a few comic stories. lovely work

unlike "johnny bigfoot," a john crane story, miss williams/winkleman is referred to as "miss butterworth" in "to sea or not to sea." further confirmation that she's the retooled version of ms. babe (suzy's teacher in S1), complete with johnny trying to woo her repeatedly— something he only does twice in the retool as she appears three times with two different designs and last names.

one penciller, anthony williams, was particularly on-model / used plenty of model sheet poses and expressions in the stories he illustrated. since none of carl's model sheets have been shared online yet, the williams-drawn comics are the closest thing we have to those.

besides the short bursts of "HUH?" bible-influenced moments with carl, he's written pretty decently in the comics. consistently. i like the majority of his appearances a lot.

in a car story, suzy gets jealous of a woman johnny persues. that sort of thing is absent from the show entirely— instead, she uses johnny and women to persuade him to take her places. suzy seems to have no hard feelings toward the women, not even in "rashomoron" (where carl is used to fulfill that purpose instead.)

john q bravo???

[frankiebirds]

started binging criminal minds, i was gutted when elle left & now watching the next couple of s2 episodes i really felt her absence. especially in 'the last word' when a women has to pretend to be dead so they can catch one of the serial killers (they so needed to have a frank convo about making elle relieve her trauma + this couldve been a great intro to that). i read your post, i agree it did make sense why elle left considering her background as a sexual offence specialist & what she says to reid but i found the writing lacking. her exit felt rushed + not final bc she only really shared scenes with hotch. also she also seems the type to not wanna give up the bau bc that would mean the fisher king wins + is a determined person so it would've been better to see her slow realisation she cant do the job she desperately wanted in s1. also the fact her relationships with the rest of the team + their reactions weren't fully explored is annoying since she was quite friendly with everyone particularly close to morgan, reid even gideon. especially since gideon inadvertently caused her get shot as he didnt want to follow the rules then said elle would understand?? so a confrontation w gideon similar to the one w hotchner wouldve been nice. i miss morgan's fun bantery friendship with elle in the later eps when she wasn't there to partner up with him (idk they seemed to be a go to partnership to me) & the elle/morgan/reid trio is sorely missed. ive largely enjoyed everything so far (just finished 2x09) but i wish they'd more deeply explore the characters' history. like the inclusion of reids mom was interesting & really liked how garcia respected reids privacy to keep her illness a secret. it was a missed opportunity i felt not to see elle & morgan not bonding over losing their cop dads or hotch and gideon talking about fatherhood when hotch is missing out on his babys key milestones (ik there was that bit in s1 when hotch tells gideon to get in touch w his son but more of those moments wouldve been nice). whilst i feel the team all like each other and there's some interesting/fun friendships (reid&gideon , garcia&morgan etc) id be nice to have some downtime scenes showcasing them as a makeshift found family (sorry i love that trope & c'mon they spend more time with each other than with their acc families). anyway sorry for the long rant this show is eating at my brain lord my brain mass will be equivalent to a pea by the time i finish this show. <3

thats fair and i get what you mean! there are definitely moments when i felt elle's absence and there are definitely things about her leaving that i would change if i had the power—i absolutely agree that the reactions from the rest of the team to her leaving and the actions leading up to it were sorely lacking, and a slower realisation that she cant do the job anymore would have been very cool to see, although i think the latter was less due to writing problems and more to the fact that elle left the show because lola glaudini chose to leave (ie they couldn't write a fully fleshed out leaving arc for elle because it was driven by out-of-show events and therefore not planned/they had limited time to execute it). the lack of reaction from the team is a writing problem though, so again i very much agree with that!

i hope you enjoy the rest of the show and get some of your wishes, and if you dont, you can find some good fics to fulfill them <3

[dracoandthehounds]

Fanfic Writer Ask Meme: K, Q, S, T

thank you for sending this in!!!! :)

K: Guilty fanfic pleasure--

hehe okay this was kinda a hard one bc i don't rlly have a lot of tropes that i feel like "guilty" about liking or anything, but I do think I have one!!!

Sometimes in some media that's super sad... i really like searching out the most like self-indulgent fix-it incredible/magic fics that undo all the bad lmaoo. Like the sort of stuff that would not make it a good story hypothetically bc it just magically fixes every problem just so I can like imagine a little world where everything had a happy ever after lmao. I guess it's sort of a guilty pleasure too bc it's not even something I want in a story lmao I want those characters to suffer lol for The Plot but sometimes I like to just read one story where just this once, everyone lives. lmao.

Q: Do you like getting prompts from your readers?

YES! I love it so much. I wish i had more time to respond to some of the ones I have sitting in my ask box or half written lmao. But I love it bc it can be so helpful for me thinking abut the characters in a different way. Like, really, go crazy with it. Send me ten different ones. (100% guarantee i will not get to all of them lmao but it would be fun to pick one out where I get an idea with it that just rolls lmao)

S: How do you feel about fanart inspired by your writing?

Ummmm like crying??? lmaooooo. it's absollutely incredible and i have no words for it at all. It's like..... unbelievable. One of my favorite things is the idea of like what it means to communicate (bear w me lmao). but like the idea that communication is like (idea in your head) > (how you speak it aloud) > (how the other person hears what you say) > (idea in their head) and how like each time the idea has to go through one of the ">" -- it changes. So like when someone draws fanart of something I've written, I get to see how the idea that began in my head ended up in theirs and is now being portrayed again. It's just like............ so unreal lmao. so. so so sos so sos sosooooo cool.

T: Any fanfic tropes you can't stand?

Oooh okay interesting... okay I feel like i can answer this better in the context of like general fiction tropes I can't stand. I cannotttt vibe with relationships being portrayed as like the... this character needs a love interest so let me put this cardboard cutout of a love interest into the show/movie/book whatever and slam them together until it works. Like... what I enjoy about romance is the concept of two characters with fully fleshed out personalities/identities slowly over time melding together until them being together feels inevitable.

I feel like that's why I enjoy fanfic of non-canon relationships bc it is more of a way to bring together two characters who *weren't* made just so they could be in a relationship together. Like they are very much their own people before the romance, so it feels more natural and more exciting. I want to feel like their relationship will last because they've developed and grown into each other if that makes sense.

so like even in canon media, I feel like a good example of this is angel/buffy vs. spike/buffy (.... no hate to angel/buffy shippers pls omg....) but this is why I'm so much more of a fan of spike/buffy bc those characters were NOT written to be together. Their relationship came about bc James Marsters did such a good job portraying Spike as this lovesick puppy (Joss Whedon did not ask him to do that lol and planned on killing him off after a seven epsiode arc), that everyone demanded the character stick around. And then the chemistry between him and Buffy just like leapt off the screen and it just made sense through their journeys that they would inevitably collide together. (unlike buffy/angel where angel was written to be her love interest and like she was into him after three episodes bc he was hot and mysterious lmao).

So that extends to fanfic sometimes I feel like bc sometimes I don't see a reason behind a pairing in the story and it can take me out of it. Like I want to understand why these characters would end up together... I want to see what they see in each other and I just can't do it when it feels like two dolls that are just being slammed together for the sake of making sure they don't end up w/o a partner. I'd rather have them single than that tbh.

[poorlittleyaoyao]

i think my personal problem with wangxian – and, in fact, with the vast majority of bl couples – is that on their own they are well developed, fully fleshed-out and interesting characters, but the second they are together and interacting they either become caricatures of themselves or just downright out of character. or if this doesn’t happen as soon as they start interacting, it does when they finally get together. like the number of times i’ve shouted ‘HE WOULD NOT ACT LIKE THAT’ at an mxtx novel when the protagonist is with the love interest is……..innumerable. it happens to all of them and it makes the canon couples so flat and uncomfortable. idk, have you noticed this as well?

I can’t speak to the genre as a whole because I haven’t read any other danmei! But what you described is why romance isn’t a genre I read/watch in general. It’s not that two people falling in love can’t make for a gripping story, but there are so many out there that care more about hitting a set of genre tropes. All mass-market genres have tropes that savvy marketers try to hit, obviously, but they grate more in romance because romance is about PEOPLE. Romance is inherently character-driven! So when the characters are flimsy vehicles for the tropes, it’s flat. And when you do have rich, interesting characters but then tropes start being piled onto them with no regard for that wonderful characterization that made you read in the first place… yeah, as you described, that’s what frustrating! Like reading a generic fanfic, except it’s the original work. :/

[mahoutoons]

toh final thoughts

so the owl house has finally come to an end. and with me watching the finale, here are my thoughts on it + the show as a whole

i feel like the finale tried to fit multiple plot lines in one episode. which i cannot fully blame it for since season 3 was shortened. if we got a full season 3, then maybe we'd have more fleshed out plot points.

but like i said before, one thing i am so glad the finale did was blow the "if you kill the villain you'll be just as bad" trope out of the water. i'm glad luz didn't sympathise with belos when he tried to manipulate her. she just stood there, not wasting her words on him. and luz, eda, king, and raine beating the shit out of him later was so satisfying lmao.

as for my thoughts on the show as a whole..... i can't lie, i did kinda fall out of love with it because of its white favourtism problem. any character of colour not named luz didn't get much focus and character development. raine is the best example of this since their only purpose seemed to be "eda's love interest" or "character who gets tortured to further eda's development". and as a brown person, the more i noticed the way the show treated its characters of colour compared to its white characters, the harder it became for me to love the show as much as i used to.

but that's not to say i dislike it. i still do have a fondness for it. i love luz and her entire character arc. the lgbt rep was very well done. the character development was fantastic. and it did the disability metaphor with eda very well.

i'm still definitely going to miss this show, especially luz.

[tempestmothstorm]

Ok I have a whole section about this in the ddlc theme analysis that will take months to actually finish but the way the theme of nihilism plays directly into the game’s meta existence as a dating sim parody aughhughhhhh

Like most parody visual novels and parodies in general don’t expect you to get invested in the world it presents. Like who actually cares about the in-depth worldbuilding in the kernel sanders dating sim? Like unironically. Its setting either exists to make fun of the world or subvert it, never actually taking its base concept seriously.

And ddlc is like it too, making all the characters the embodiments of their tropes and having a dozen dumb contrivances to fill its cutesy quota. And the player base before playing the game expects it too, either joining for the hype, the horror, the lore, or the parody. Heck even I was like that, knowing all about the cool scares and meta stuff but none of the actual good writing until literally this year. Like no one told me about it the span of seven years. Apparently it wasn’t a selling point. This game has actual heart in it but from an outside perspective it was just another indie horror genre parody. Nobody came in actually expecting to get attached to the world of cute anime girl game featuring beloved anime tropes such as the tsundere and yandere.

And when Monika has her own epiphany she ends up having a pretty similar view too. A lot of things fuel her apathy and overall disillusionment with her life, but I think a big part of it is the fact that not only are the club members fictional, but they’re also badly written anime tropes. It’s like an insult to be compare to that, and yet here she is having to tolerate her existence being a poorly written joke. Nobody would actually want to care for unrealistic cliches, getting attached to badly written characters means you have bad taste allegedly. Why should she care for these tropes that are supposed to be her “friends”, when they have no meaning and can’t care about someone on a real deep or intimate level. Unlike an actual person, a cliche parody can’t have enough substance to mean something. They don’t feel real. They don’t even feel real emotions. Why would they change your life? Why should they mean something to you?

And being forced to live with npcs lab grown to appeal to the very specific fantasies of a stereotypical anime fan while they involve you in their insignificant shenanigans that mean nothing in the end where they get to enjoy the one thing you want more than anything while not being able to understand how lucky they are compared to you?

…Yeah it kinda sounds like hell. Especially for miss manga hater. And when you’re in hell looking at heaven, why wouldn’t you do anything just to get a closer look?

(Also shoutouts to AM in that one audio drama of ihnmaims specifically)

Uh. Problem with all of this. None of it is actually true with the club. They’re fully fleshed out people with depth and complexity. They are just as sentient as Monika is, and by the end of the game a lot of people cared about these characters, this world that was meant to be a parody ended up meaning the world to people. A world that is meaningless in the grand scheme of things holding value nonetheless. Because even if the world wasn’t made to be cared about, people still cared.

This was all probably intentional btw. Maybe not ddlc being labeled a viral mascot horror, but it did help in a different way. While Dan Salvato mentioned a lot about making this game as anime tropey as possible, he also wanted to tell a good story with good characters. He ended up putting his and others’ real human experience into these characters and making them real, characters who are still supposed be the embodiment of their tropes. It’s clear he love and cares about all of them, and it’s even clearer that the internet loves them just as much. Despite being cliches, they had real impact on people’s lives, teaching people new perspectives, allowing people to grow into something better, etc. By ddlc+, they ended up as characters that grew beyond their tropes and became their own people, something that was a big focus within its art and the side stories.

There’s something so genuine about these games that I never got to see as an outsider looking in, and I feel like a lot of people think about it the same way. The same way as Monika. The way that goes against the whole point of the secret ending. Even if they were a parody, the world still loved them. Even if they’re a bunch of ai in an existential science experiment, they could still love and care for each other. Even if they aren’t real. Even if nothing else is real. Even if their existence is meaningless. They can still love each other and find meaning in that.

And I think this meta narrative is just really sweet man. The game still ends with everyone in a bad situation, but that little spot of hope means a somewhat happy ending wouldn’t be antithetical to the game’s themes like other games with sad endings. Because even if the world goes against it and everything else sucks, they can still be happy, together. They deserve it. It’s ok to want them to be happy. There’s the chance for something better

Ok that’s it Ddlc is cool idc if it sounds cheesy I like it

[musecaravan-info]

Meet My Muses

So, I've recreated this section to the best of my ability. But because there's so much info for each of my muses, and because of the way I've organized the original page (and made it easily sortable) I really recommend using the web version of this link if at all possible. :) That said, if you absolutely have to use this mobile version, then I've chosen to alphabetize by fandom and then by first name. Any fandomless OCs can be found in the 'Fandomless' section. For more information about a muse, click on their name. That will take you to a separate post with oodles more info. :)

American Revolution

ISAIAH THOMAS Faceclaim:   Zachary Quinto Type:   Historical Figure Species:   Human Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Isaiah was apprenticed to a printmaker at the age of 5. By his 20s, he was in deep with a group calling themselves the Sons of Liberty. They often used his printshop for meetings, and his paper, The Massachusetts Spy, was constantly on the verge of being suppressed. Isaiah was looking to become a part of history... and he did.

Dream Daddy

ROBERT SMALL Faceclaim:   (If Needed) Jay Tavare Type:   Canon Character Species:   Human Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Robert is a rebellious, quick-witted widower who's reluctant to take anything too seriously. Emotional availability isn't really his thing, and he'd rather spend his nights drinking or cryptid hunting than deal with his problems. He's the epitome of the 'jerk with a heart of gold' trope, but getting to know him well enough to find out isn't easy.

Dorian Gray

BASIL HALLWARD Faceclaim:   Ben Chaplin Type:   Canon Character Species:   Human Gender:   Male Orientation:   Homosexual Basil is the artist who painted Dorian Gray's infamous portrait. Trapped in a society where even he was never able to fully accept himself, the artist expressed his forbidden love in the only way he was able. A love which eventually led to his ruin.

Fandomless

ALEJANDRO MANOLO RAMÍREZ MONTOYA Faceclaim:   Antonio Banderas Type:   Original Character Species:   Pesanta; Demon Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Alejandro is a demonic creature born of a human and a succubus. He needs to feed in much the same way as his mother, only instead of feeding off of lust, he feeds on fear - or more specifically, nightmares. After spending several centuries as a slave to a dark wizard, Alejandro now struggles between what he is and who he wants to be. 

ARTHUR CIRRAKOS Faceclaim:   Alexis Georgoulis Type:   Original Character Species:   Werebear Gender:   Male Orientation:   Homosexual Born in Ancient Greece, Arthur began life as a relatively normal human. But the gods work in mysterious ways. By the age of 35, he was immortal... and a were-bear. (It's a long story.) Soft-spoken, and a little people-shy, he often prefers the company of animals, but if someone need's help, there's no one better to ask. 

CARRADOC ILAR VAUGHN Faceclaim:   Gwilym Lee Type:   Original Character Species:   Dragon Gender:   Intersex (Identifies as Male) Orientation:   Pansexual Protect the clutch! Those were the last orders Carradoc's Queen gave before dying. But dragon eggs take a notoriously long time to hatch. While he waits, Carr is doing his best to stay safe, but the scars on his back require him to seek out help now and then. How will he EVER manage FIVE dragonlings when the eggs finally hatch?! 

CLÍODHNA Faceclaim:   Lea T Type:   Original Character Species:   Kelpie Gender:   Trans Female Orientation:   Pansexual Kelpies are dangerous creatures, and not just because they feed on human flesh. They have a charisma - an aura that exudes both grace and power... that makes humans long to possess them. Clíodhna is no exception - and she knows it. She's a woman who knows what she wants and takes it - a woman not to be trifled with. 

CONOR Faceclaim:   Vidyut Jammwal Type:   Original Character Species:   Barghest Gender:   Male Orientation:   Heterosexual Once, Conor was a houndmaster. One day his new lord beat one of the dogs to death. In a fit of rage, Conor beat the man bloody and then set the dogs on him. Before he could flee, Conor was found out and put to death. The next night he was resurrected as a barghest... with an entourage of ghostly hounds at his side.

EALDWINE Faceclaim:   Idris Elba Type:   Original Character Species:   Witch Gender:   Male Orientation:   Demisexual Ealdwine is a witch - none of this ‘warlock’ stuff, thanks. And no, he didn’t have to sell his soul to anyone to get his powers... sort of. It's a long story. These days, Ealdwine runs a pub called “The Tree of Life” where he mostly keeps to himself. However, for the right price, he can brew you up something special.

LLYR Faceclaim:   Kevin Ryan Type:   Original Character Species:   Selkie Gender:   Male Orientation:   Homosexual Llyr made the mistake of falling in love with a human man. As soon as his lover discovered where he hid his skin during their trysts, he stole and then sold it (and Llyr) to a traveling witch. Llyr wasn’t able to escape until a young human girl gave her life to kill the witch. He’s never forgiven himself for the girl’s death.

RHYS MADDOX Faceclaim:   Ioan Gruffudd Type:   Original Character Species:   Human; Psychic Gender:   Male Orientation:   Demisexual Rhys is a psychic who doesn’t look at all like what you'd expect. He's used to people not taking him seriously (even others in his own field) but doesn't really mind (and it never stops him from helping if he can.) Treat him with kindness and you'll have a friend for life, treat him poorly and you just might find unexplainable clawmarks on your ankles... 

SAM WARREN Faceclaim:   Valorie Curie Type:   Original Character Species:   Human Gender:   Genderqueer Orientation:   Asexual Sam's childhood wasn't an easy one, and she grew up determined to never show weakness. Devoting herself to self defense, she now prides herself on being a skilled fighter in multiple techniques. Although she often comes off cold, Sam really just needs people willing to take their time with her, willing to show her she's safe with them.

Harry Potter

GAIL ADDAMS Faceclaim:   Janeane Garofalo Type:   Fandom Original Character Species:   Witch Gender:   Female Orientation:   Demisexual Gail is a Slytherin witch who's DONE and DONE with the Wizarding World. She's perfectly happy to spend her life with Muggles running a (mostly) normal bookshop. However, she also longs to free her twin brother of his lycanthropy and spends all her free time working with potions in the hopes of finding a cure.

REMUS LUPIN Faceclaim:   Joe Anderson Type:   Canon Character Species:   Werewolf; Wizard Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Remus Lupin has spent his whole life fearing what he is... what he's capable of. Although some are willing to overlook his curse, too many more shun him for it. He lives his life expecting to be treated poorly, and pleasantly surprised whenever someone is willing to accept him - curse and all. 

SEVERUS SNAPE Faceclaim:   Adrien Brody Type:   Canon Species:   Wizard Gender:   Male Orientation:   Demisexual Severus always felt like life had it in for him. He accepts that some of his failures are due to his own choices, his own flaws... his own mistakes. Now, he tries to atone for them... but war is coming and he must walk a very fine line between 'professor' and 'deatheater' if he's to be of any use when the time comes.

Labyrinth

SARAH WILLIAMS Faceclaim:   Jennifer Connelly Type:   Based on Canon Species:   Human Gender:   Female Orientation:   Heterosexual At 16, Sarah was whisked away on a magical journey. Now she's a grown woman working to make the most of her life. Things may not feel as magical these days, but her books about a distant labyrinthine realm are beginning to sell... and at night she still dreams of winding passages and someone who's just out of reach.

Mythology

CATH Faceclaim:   Colin Farrell Type:   Original Character; Based on Myth Species:   Cath Palug Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Cath was Morgan le Fey's familiar. Some of the stories about him are true… some aren’t, but he served his mistress faithfully for many centuries. Now that her death has freed him, he has little desire to aid another. These days he works freelance - using magic to manipulate the Black Market just enough to keep himself comfortable. 

FINN ILIOS Faceclaim:   Amy Adams Type:   Original Character; Based on Myth Species:   Dragon Gender:   Female Orientation:   Pansexual Twins are a bad omen. Abandoned by their clan, Finn and her brother Ty had to fend for themselves. Eventually, she became the protector of Apollo's main temple... while her brother went down darker paths. Now, those days long behind her, Finn tries to live in the moment... but worry for her wayward kin is always in the back of her mind. 

GELERT Faceclaim:   Paul Bettany Type:   Original Character; Based on Myth Species:   Dog Shifter Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual He began life as a normal dog, but the Fates wove Gelert's life into something wholly unique. After being murdered by his master, the hound caught a faerie king's eye. But faeries are fickle, and he eventually found himself immortal and cursed. Now Gelert lives a mostly nomadic life as he tries to make the best of what's happened to him. 

GWYN AP NUDD Faceclaim:   Richard Armitage Type:   Original Character; Based on Myth Species:   Faerie Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Gwyn is the kind of faerie the stories warn you about. He's clever and cruel, and will use any means necessary to bend you to his will. And if he can't bend you; he WILL break you. He rules his realm with a bloody fist and an iron grip. No one is more skilled at making cruelty seem like kindness. 

OBERON Faceclaim:   David Bowie Type:   Original Character; Based on Myth Species:   Faerie Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Once the faerie king of Hollow Earth, an attack on his homeland thrust an iron-weakened Oberon into the Human realm. Unable to return home and missing a HUGE chunk of his memories, the former king has settled into a mostly quiet life in the Smoky National Park region. 

OWAIN AP NUDD Faceclaim:   Richard Armitage Type:   Original Character; Based on Myth Species:   Faerie Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Twin brother to Gwyn, Owain grew up never realizing who he was. Faerie? Yes. But all else was kept from him - just as his existence was kept from his brother. When Gwyn discovered Owain's existence, he saw only a threat, and acted swiftly. Cursed and trapped, Owain still knows nothing, and has yet to find someone willing to help him. 

TYPHON ILIOS Faceclaim:   Jake Hold Type:   Original Character; Based on Myth Species:   Dragon Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Ty is a dragon who revels in everything life has to offer. He makes the most of his wealth and has no qualms about using it to get women and men into his bed - sometimes at the same time. On the surface, his life is an eternal party, but underneath it all, he's riddled with insecurities and will fight fiercely to keep anyone from uncovering them.

Overwatch

COLE CASSIDY Faceclaim:   (If Needed) Josh Holloway Type:   Canon AU Species:   Human Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Years after a deal with the feds went horribly wrong, Cole Cassidy is just an ex-con trying to keep his nose clean. He spends his days working in a tattoo parlor, and his nights trying to forget the past. He’s not looking for trouble - can’t afford it. However, more often than not, trouble seems to do a damn fine job of finding him. 

GABRIEL REYES Faceclaim:   (If Needed) Oscar Isaac Type:   Canon Character Species:   Human (mostly) Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Escaping an ill-spent youth, Gabriel joined the military young, and it put him on a path he never could've anticipated. Super soldier - Omnic Wars Hero - Blackwatch Commander. Gabe's life has never really felt like it was his own. Now, 5 years later, even he's not sure what his motives are anymore... or where his loyalties lie.

Quantum Leap

SAM BECKETT Faceclaim:   Scott Bakula Type:   Canon Character Species:   Human Gender:   Male Orientation:   Demisexual In 1995 Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into his quantum leap accelerator and vanished. Trapped in the past, facing mirror images that aren't his own, he's driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. Leaping from life to life, Sam strives to put right what once went wrong, and hopes each time his next leap will send him home.

Red Dead Redemption

ARTHUR MORGAN (High Honor) Faceclaim:   (If Needed) Roger Clark Type:   Canon Character Species:   Human Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Arthur will be the first to tell you he's not a good man. He's beaten, robbed and even killed people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But even a bad man has the capacity for change... doesn't he? If he wants it bad enough? Past wrongs can't be rewritten, but maybe he can still leave this world better than he came into it.

Supernatural

BENNY LAFITTE Faceclaim:   Ty Olsson Type:   Canon Character Species:   Vampire Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Vamps with Benny's story are a dime a dozen. One day he was just living his life, and the next he woke up with a hunger he couldn't sate. Then he met a human woman who made him CARE again. But all good things... Now that Dean Winchester has given him a second chance at life, Benny is trying to make the most of it. 

DEAN WINCHESTER Faceclaim:   Jensen Ackles Type:   Canon Character Species:   Human Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Dean Winchester hunts the stuff that everyone else refuses to believe exists. If he doesn't do it, who will? Ghosts, vampires, demons - he's seen it all. Most of the time he's got his brother, Sam, by his side... and most of the time that's enough. But even someone like Dean can long for something more now and then. 

GABRIEL Faceclaim:   Richard Speight, Jr. Type:   Based on Canon Species:   Archangel Gender:   Male Orientation:   Pansexual Heaven is a prison and Hell is a tomb. Gabe decided he didn't want to be a part of either - so he hid. Assimilated. Laughed and loved and tried to forget. It wasn't enough, and he paid the price. Now, he doesn't even remember who he used to be. He's just a baker with some odd powers that he tries to keep on the downlow. 

RONNIE BRENNAN Faceclaim:   Zooey Deschanel Type:   Fandom Original Character Species:   Shapeshifter Gender:   Female Orientation:   Demisexual Ronnie is a shapeshifter with an aversion to shifting. She'd give anything to just be human. Since that isn't possible, she does her best to live a human life - using her 'chaos-causing' skills to digitally go after deserving individuals. Always on the move, she uses her free time to enjoy the natural beauty of America. 

TONY CASTLE Faceclaim:   Silas Weir Mitchell Type:   Fandom Original Character Species:   Human Gender:   Male Orientation:   Demisexual Born and raised in the small town of Jefferson, Texas, Tony was content with a laid-back career in law enforcement and the love of his high-school sweetheart. They were expecting their first child when a shifter shattered their world. With nothing left to lose, Tony began delving into a hidden world, challenging everything he thought he knew.

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[ranchthoughts]

thoughts on genre, tropes, Bad Buddy, and My School President

This is a monster of a post (almost 5k words) so I’m going to post it in pieces, and then in full. This is Part 1 (of 3): part 2, part 3, full.

I also go more in detail about a lot of the terms and concepts I use here (indexes, conventions, genres, intertextuality, etc) in this post here, in case you would like more context

The BL “genre” has so many conventions - in narrative, characterization, themes, settings, iconography, filmic techniques, and of course, tropes.

Bad Buddy and MSP do not lack these genre conventions (both are stories about boys in love, both are set in schools which is very common in Thai BLs especially, both explore a budding relationship and other social and emotional problems of youth, both hit familiar plot beats like confessions and narrative/emotional climaxes, both utilize many editing and sound effect techniques seen in other BLs, and both deploy many BL tropes like cheek kisses, head pats, forced proximity, looming, etc.). However! Bad Buddy and MSP are atypical in their deployment of genre conventions, especially with regards to trope usage and pacing - they go against genre and trope expectations to subvert seme/uke roles and dynamics and they space their narrative beats differently than other shows. As a result, the shows feel familiar but also fresh to BL audiences.

Bad Buddy, MSP, and tropes

BL tropes index so much information to audiences familiar with the genre (e.g., the nature of the relationship between characters, the seme/uke dynamics, other social information, etc.). Bad Buddy and MSP take these familiar indexes, with their well established meanings, and mix them up, give them new contexts, and use what they normally tell us about the characters, social context, relationship dynamic, etc. to tell a new story.

There are SO many examples of this so I have decided to focus on two “subcategories” of tropes: the faen fatale and tropes which are strongly associated with seme/uke dynamics.

Faen Fatales

In most BLs, the faen fatale (thanks to AbsoluteBL for the term) is a character (male or female) whose sole purpose is to drive a wedge between the main pair, often serving as a catalyst for their relationship/confession, and who generally does not get much character development or identity of their own.

In Bad Buddy, Ink seems like a classic faen fatale: she is introduced as an old high school friend that Pat was interested in and Pran was jealous of because of that fact, and now in the present day of the show Pat pursues her again and Pran is once again jealous, especially since it seems Pat is succeeding (they get food together, they hang out a lot, Pat wears the bracelet Ink gave him in high school, etc.). Pran believes that Pat likes Ink and that they are well on their way to being together, if they aren’t together already. Pat even tells Pran he likes Ink. However, it becomes clear quite quickly that Ink is not a typical faen fatale. Her interactions with both boys feel platonic, she shows just as much interest in fostering a friendship with Pran, and when Pat uses Pa’s patented “Four Ways to Tell if Someone Likes You,” Ink fails in every category. She does act a a catalyst to Pat and Pran’s romantic relationship in some ways (e.g., Pat using Pa’s patented Four Ways he learned to assess Ink to realize his own feelings for Pran), and she does act as a barrier to their relationship as some of Pran’s hesitation post their ep.5 kiss comes from his understanding that Pat has a crush on Ink (though of course their family and friends present the main barrier). However, Ink has her own personality, interests, and crucially, her own romantic arc. She is a fully fleshed out character who never had anything but platonic feelings for either lead: ergo, a subversion of the faen fatale trope.

In MSP, there are a couple of potential faen fatales, but neither develop that way in the end. Sound is introduced as Tinn’s rival, and romance media logic would suggest he will fulfill a love rival role in the show, competing with Tinn for Gun’s affections (especially as Sound is interested in music like Gun and he joins Chinzilla). Even Tiw suggests Tinn should look out for Sound moving in on Gun. However, Sound never shows interest in Gun and quickly gets acclimated into the band, only briefly presenting a threat to Tinn and Gun’s relationship when Tiw witnesses them having a seemingly intimate moment but that is sorted by the end of the episode. Like Ink, Sound never has anything other than platonic feelings for either lead and ends up with his own romantic arc. The other possible faen fatale in MSP is Nook, though she is present so briefly. I think other shows would have stretched out her plot line more and had her fill more of a faen fatale role. As it stands in MSP: Gun sees her give a gift to Tinn and compliment him, he gets jealous and snaps at Tinn, and then the show/Tinn immediately reveal to us and to Gun that it was a case of mistaken identity (Yo was catfishing with Tinn’s picture). In a matter of minutes, Nook went from being a faen fatale set up to simply someone involved in another character’s arc, part of a problem that Tinn and Gun could work on together.

Neither Bad Buddy nor MSP have faen fatale characters, though there are characters that could, and indeed seem to be set up to, fill that role. Both shows subvert our expectations and BL tropes by having potential faen fatales be uninterested in either lead and possess more character development than most other examples of the trope (including their own, completely separate, romantic arcs). In the case of Ink, this also subverts typical BL handling of female characters, who tend to be few and far between and generally relegated to the under-developed role of faen fatale.

Seme/uke Tropes

Most BL shows can be read through a lens of seme/uke dynamics, which originated in yaoi. The seme is the “pursuer” character and the uke is the “pursued”. There are certain physical (height, skin colour, etc.), social (age, wealth, social capital, etc.), and personality (active vs. passive, extroverted vs. introverted, flirtier vs. shyer) markers which are typically associated with either the seme or the uke. For example, semes tend to be taller, wealthier, older, flirtier, tanner, more active, and have a higher social status, while ukes tend to be shorter, poorer, younger, shyer, paler, and have a lower social status. “Seme” and “uke” roles are also sometimes conflated with masculinity and femininity (semes are “masculine” and ukes are “feminine”) and sexual preferences (semes are dominant and tops and ukes are submissive and bottoms). There are also tropes associated with either the seme or the uke, like ukes typically give cheek kisses and semes forehead kisses.

Thus, things like height, age, wealth, personality, presumed sexual preference, and the role they take in tropes can index the character’s status as a seme or a uke, and in turn the character’s identity as a seme or uke in the narrative (pursuer vs. pursued) indexes a character’s personality, sexual preferences, etc., however unrealistic and simplistic that is in real life. In a BL, we would expect the seme (pursuer) and uke (pursued) characters to exhibit most, if not all, of the associated seme or uke traits and roles in tropes, though this is not always true (and some BLs have little to no seme/uke dynamics at all).

In terms of physical, social, and personality markers in Bad Buddy, Pat exhibits slightly more “seme” traits than Pran, like his larger size and more “rugged” and “typical” masculinity compared to Pran’s neatness. However, both Pat and Pran take the seme or uke role in tropes about the same amount of time, with Pran having several significant moments where he embodies the seme role (looming over Pat, licking his fingers, drying his hair, etc., not to mention the post-sex scene in ep.11) and Pat many significant moments where he embodies a uke or even “feminine” role (casting himself as the girlfriend at the bus stop, being clingy, pretending to be sick so Pran will give him a sponge bath, etc.). In fact, tropes often happen twice, with Pat and Pran taking turns in the seme and uke role (e.g., both take turns cleaning the other’s face, both cook for the other, both kiss the other’s cheek, etc.). Furthermore, and I’ve spoken about this before here: both Pran and Pat deliberately take on the seme role during their ep.7 Flirt-Off bet ("whoever falls in love first loses”). To win the bet, they have to be the pursuer (i.e., seme), and thus spend the episode taking it in turns to exhibit the seme role in tropes (Pat takes off his shirt multiple times, Pran looms over Pat, they wash each other’s faces, they take the seme roles with Ink and Wai at the noodle shop to make the other jealous, etc.), thus also spending the episode taking it in turns to fulfill the uke role in tropes. The fact that the seme and uke roles in Bad Buddy are so interchangeable and balanced (sometimes they even play the narrative roles of pursuer and pursued at the same time) demonstrates the show’s upending of traditional seme/uke dichotomies.

In MSP, Tinn and Gun are pretty much the perfect seme and uke in terms of physical and social markers: Tinn is taller, wealthier, has a higher social status, and even has a female “faen fatale” (more typical for seme characters), while Gun is shorter, poorer, from a marginalized club at school, and has a male “faen fatale” (more typical for uke characters). Some one on Tumblr (and I cannot for the life of me find this post again) mentioned that Tinn is a little “feminine” coded when it comes to romance (he is the dreamer, the romantic, always imagining romantic situations), while Gun is more what we’d think of as “masculine” when it comes to romance (more brusque, less sappy), though I am not sure how applicable these types of divisions are to BL. In term of preference markers, there isn’t much sexual content to go off of, but MSP does mention the TinnGun vs GunTinn divide in ep.12, never coming down on either side, and one of the things the homophobic teacher says is that he thought Gun was more “masculine” so he is surprised to see him dating a boy. Overall, the show deliberately eschews and criticizes the association of top/bottom or masculine/feminine with the pair. Furthermore, Tinn talks a lot about wanting to be Gun’s boyfriend, to belong to Gun - and as @cinna-bin​ points out here, for a genre that equates seme with dominance, the one who shows and has ownership of the other, it is pretty subversive to have the seme character in the narrative express a desire to be “owned”. Like Pat and Pran, Tinn and Gun are fairly egalitarian when it comes to which role they take in tropes (Tinn catches Gun when he falls, Gun touches Tinn’s chin constantly, they both kiss the other’s cheek, etc.). I’ve talked about this here too, but often Tinn will imagine a moment with himself in the seme role (e.g., wiping Gun’s face) that won’t come to fruition, but when it does happen in real life, the trope is reversed and Gun takes the seme role (e.g., when it happens in real life, Gun wipes Tinn’s mouth). In MSP, the deployment of tropes is more about natural moment and real life, and less adhering to strict role divisions. This back and forth feels more accurate, more high school - they both take it in turns to boldly initiate and then to be shy (all the aborted kiss chances, etc.).

Finally, I’d like to add that there are many moments in both Bad Buddy and MSP where the characters are aware of the romantic tropes and intentionally utilize them to further a romantic agenda. We aren’t exactly subverting tropes here, but we are playing with them deliberately and consciously in a way you don’t get in a lot of BLs so I thought it worth mentioning here. Most of these instances come in the Bad Buddy ep.7 Flirt-Off or from Tinn’s day dreams and include:

Pat employing the “drinking from a water bottle/pouring water on yourself” and “shirt off” tropes to try and get Pran hot and bothered in ep.7

Pran looming over Pat during the bet

Pat and Pran trying to make each other jealous by employing various classic tropes with Ink and Wai respectively while eating noodles (opening their water bottle, feeding them, wiping their mouth, etc.)

Pran symbolically losing the bet by wiping Pat’s mouth

Tinn imagining himself wiping Gun’s mouth

Tinn imagining a Ghost moment while cooking with Gun

Tinn making a joke about a “hot underwater kiss”

To be continued in parts 2 and 3

[dirtypuzzle]

I'm honestly so glad you reblogged because I'm so late to this show and there's nobody I know IRL to discuss it with lol. This isn't me fully disagreeing with you, either, and not meant to be hostile or anything. I'd be really curious on your thoughts, so I wrote way too much about why I felt the themes didn't really come through.

I think, for me, the cop procedural - while an interesting narrative structure and established genre to pull from when you have a tight pace - really brings a lot of baggage that wasn't addressed in a way meaningful to the theme. The cop procedural - and not the broader detective genre, which predates cop procedurals and doesn't have a lot of the same issues - is still mired in eugenic ideas even if they aren't blatant and aren't direct about it. Common tropes that Psycho Pass pulls from frequently include: the detective that can spot a perp at fifty paces just by the cut of their jib, the by-the-book hardass who gets in everyone else's way by enforcing regulation, the rookie who's seen as naive for having some semblance of standards of behavior, the cop in hot water for getting obsessed over a criminal they couldn't catch, the CSI hacker/analyst who can find any data in any small amount of time, etc etc.

There are some obvious narrative flaws with this: there aren't really "investigations" so much as there's "I know what happened epiphanies" and the show doesn't have the time per episode to flesh that aspect out; a significant chunk of the dialogue is exposition related to tracking down a criminal, but because we can't follow the investigation in any meaningful way it comes across as really stiff and boring; and by putting the first capture of Makishima in the middle of the season and not at the end, you trade off pacing for more time to have characters converse about the theme.

I do understand the economy of TV anime, so not all of these problems are actually "solvable" in a sense - but to me that's why the cop procedural, at least without major deviations from its prototypical structure, hamstrings the story from a narrative perspective.

Thematically it's worse, though. All the tropes that the characters are embodying come with a lot of baggage, specifically Kogami and Masaoka, which was mostly left by the wayside. Much of the bedrock of crim psych - which the professor character references a lot in talks with Kogami - is rooted in the idea that there's a way to identify the evil in a person through whichever means that method champions. Masaoka, who was a cop before the Sybil System, talks about the good old days a lot, and how the discretion of cops was removed and they don't investigate at all anymore, framed as the "old-timer whose wisdom has been ignored by the system." Which is funny considering the state of 21st century policing and how flawed it is.

Masaoka's type of policing is just a less systematized, messier version of Sybil - hell, we already do use a version of a Crime Number in the US for pretrial and sentencing purposes, and it's no less inherently bad. Sybil is just a hyper-efficient, technologized version of what the CJ system in many countries already is - which has been proven time and time again to Not Work. Asking "but what if it did, though? would you be okay with it if it Did Work?" is just,,,,not the question that I think is interesting or philosophically complex. Especially when the characters don't grapple with that. They're constantly talking about how awful things used to be, that they can't imagine how bad it was before Sybil, as if tomorrow wasn't predicated on today and today wasn't predicated on yesterday. Sybil is exactly how the Before Times used to be, just more.

Just as crime is not correlated to police presence in the modern day, it's never questioned whether the lack of violence in society is actually because of Sybil or because they, you know, feed and house and employ most of the population. Japan is 99% food secure and self-efficient. Is Sybil actually even needed to continue seeing these small crime statistics? Because it's never addressed, the characters just assume the answer is yes. Under Sybil they still do have some small amount of violent crime, even before Makishima, or else there would be no more police, so how is a small amount of crime under Sybil any different than a small amount of crime not under Sybil?

We get a lot of talking in Psycho Pass, where I think actions would have served better. The very existence of enforcers, what with their varied backgrounds, could've really been used to subvert the expectations of their character archetypes without needing everyone to literally say what they believe all the time.

Which, to me, is why I'm not a huge fan of the direction they took Makishima. Because he's a serial killer, none of the characters are put into a position where there's truly a dilemma between siding with or against the Sybil System. Kagari admits he's resentful of Sybil, but it's not enough to sway him from doing his duty, which I'd complain about except Makishima is a serial killer, so really is it that much of a choice? His whole schtick is that the human soul has no value if people aren't acting of their own free will, but he doesn't actually care about human life at all, nor does he seem to care about what people Sybil deems unfit and why (which is notable because he also doesn't care what people the other murderers kill or why they kill them - he cares specifically that humans are making the choice "freely" and not Sybil). Considering this, it's also kind of glaring that for all his talk of philosophy, he never interrogates what he considers a "free" decision beyond it being made in defiance of Sybil and in line with the decision-maker's desires - which is not actually "free" by all definitions; being a slave to your own desire is one of literature's most common refrains throughout human history.

Because of this, I don't feel the explicitly eugenic fundamentals of Sybil are actually explored or interrogated. We are shown the types of people that can get institutionalized and executed, but nobody interrogates how that decision is made. It's taken as a given that Sybil can be unfair/unjust as early as the first episode, but not why that's the case, or how a system could come to the conclusion it did.

Ultimately, this is because Sybil itself as a worldbuilding element, seems to be constructed like a hypothetical instead of a real Thing. "What-if we had a way to quantify people's state of mind? How much do we want a peaceful society for the price of quietly removing the disturbed people and implicitly threatening everyone else?" What this fails to acknowledge is that the tech itself is completely impossible, at least insofar as Sybil is presented. We can scour the genome, we can find neuropaths in the brain that indicate depression in most people, we can give people a bunch of puzzles to see how good they are at them - but all of these methods, no matter how advanced any of it becomes, will not be neutral, objective, complete, or even accurate numbers.

IQ demonstrates this problem. Even to try and quantify something like intelligence, you as the human being designing the test, have to decide what you're measuring and what "normal" looks like - which are value judgements made by people with biases. Sybil pretends to solve this with the vats of hundreds of brains, but it actually makes it worse - because to get a Crime Number or a Mental Health Number, those human brains with human biases still have to decide what they're measuring, how it's being measured, and what normal values are. Making it by committee of 200+ doesn't solve the fundamental issue, as IQ or BMI or any other of these types of numbers weren't usually invented by just one guy.

Makishima and some others not being read by Sybil should be proof that any of these numbers are impossible - that if you choose what to measure and what normal values are, you will get outliers, and most people will be individually inaccurate while not outright unquantifiable, which is another thing not addressed.

Just taking for granted that the tech behind Sybil works the way the show says it does actually fundamentally buys into eugenic ideology by accident - that we can figure out what a Good Human Objectively Is, and eventually when we can measure it well enough, the question is whether we'd prefer a chaotic, violent society that allows Bad People to live and people to be "free", to a peaceful, orderly society that removes the Bad People. Assuming that we can objectively define a Good Human, either numerically or scientifically or philosophically, is the very bedrock of eugenic ideology. (It's also why so many people are actually lowkey okay with eugenics if phrased just right.)

I think that's why nobody talks about eugenics in reviews. Even though it's the primary goal of the system, nobody really questions what the cymatic scan is actually measuring - and how that measure will always be inherently flawed. We take the show's premise as a given, which kind of means we have to focus less on eugenics and more on the question of "how much eugenics - and the inherent totalitarianism needed to enforce it - are you willing to put up with to have a society without much violence?"

For me, that's where I got disappointed. I think the show is fundamentally asking the wrong question.

am i fucking crazy or did all the people who watched psycho pass not understand that the sybil system is eugenics??? and that a huge portion of crim psych is based in eugenics? which it inherits from the police procedural genre?? i’m watching reviews and i feel insane, the question of “can eugenics be good actually?” will just never die, huh.

the idea that any type of science or tech can give people a Crime Number that accurately quanitifies someone’s “predilection” towards “crime” (wow what a useless word to use in an “objective” measurement) as young as FIVE, and then remove those people from society, subjugate them, or execute them IS EUGENICS. no matter if it’s via Crime Genes or Criminal Thoughts or The Hivemind That Determines Crime, THAT’S EUGENICS. even if you call the goal “the betterment of society” and not “remove all the evil people” that doesn’t make it not eugenics!!

the villain is supposed to be the free will foil who is a free will absolutist—to the point he murders a fuckton of people—but to me this seems like a complete non-sequitur?? and not a good foil thematically? this has fuck all nothing to do with free will and whether you’d give up liberty for safety (which is what the show wants to think it’s about).

don’t even get me started on the baggage that police procedurals as a genre bring to the table to completely fuck up any potential thematic coherency! like fuck.