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valle-de-sombra-de-muerte · 1 month ago

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Homestuck Reread: Act 5-2, Part 3/5 (p. 2236-2391)

Read the previous post here.

Apologies for the long delay in between posts. I initially wanted to have these reread posts be on a weekly schedule, but that just ain't happening now. The combination of work and fatigue from constant Homestuck exposure is starting to wear on me. So I'm just going to write them when I can find the time. Thanks to everyone who likes and reblogs these posts, I appreciate all of you.

I also went back and added cuts to all my past reread posts because I realize scrolling through these long ass walls of text/images when on my blog isn't an ideal browsing experience. Let's move right along.

Vriska really wants to make it seem like she'll be redeemed for all the bad she's done by reconciling with Aradia. In the meantime, she would very much prefer it if everyone else stopped talking about her terrible deeds. The only way she can think of to make them shut up for good is to do this performative gesture of goodwill. She's not trying to change as a person and atone for her actions: she just wants to rehabilitate her awful reputation.

Terezi's comment about Aradia is noteworthy because she's the only troll who seems to actually care about what happened to her. Everyone else kind of ignores Aradia, but Terezi expresses distress over how Aradia has "changed" since the incident.

From her earlier conversation with Sollux. Terezi will consistently remark how bothered she is that Aradia isn't the same person anymore. It's a shame how their fractured relationship isn't given that much attention outside of these throwaway lines. Like even after Aradia becomes God Tier and regains her love of life, she and Terezi could've bonded and repaired their friendship. Maybe they could've if Hussie wasn't so fixated on forcing this "doomed yuri" dynamic between Terezi and Vriska during the later stages of the comic. Aradia was part of the FLARP group with them too, so why sideline her?

I don't think many people talk about how Terezi was an active participant in helping Vriska kill all those trolls. I'm don't want to sound like I'm drifting into "Vriska Did Nothing Wrong" territory, but it's not like Vriska was wantonly killing people just for the hell of it. She was essentially forced to do it because if she wasn't feeding her lusus those trolls, she would've been eaten/gotten culled for having a dead custodian. Either way, she would've died if she wasn't killing others. A real "kill or be killed" situation.

What was Terezi's motive for helping out? To live out her dumb vigilante fantasy? For Vriska, securing victims for her lusus was a matter of life and death. But for Terezi, it was nothing more than a game. "Oh, but only the bad trolls would've been executed!" Bad according to whom? The Alternian law that sentences people to death for any arbitrary reason? Sure, okay Terezi.

Vriska does call her out on this, at least. But I wonder how many people actually take her words seriously. Too often I see this reductive reading that Vriska is always sinister and deceitful, and Terezi is positioned as her foil by being honest and noble. So by that logic, we as the audience must distrust Vriska and take Terezi's words at face value. That's laughable.

You know, maybe Terezi is a great manipulator after all. She successfully manipulated a good chunk of the fandom to perceive her as trustworthy and one of the moral backbones within the cast.

Terezi actually reaches out to Aradia, both to ask about Tavros's condition, and also to check in on Aradia herself. She repeatedly warns Aradia not to escalate the situation with Vriska, three times in fact. She really doesn't want her to suffer the same fate as Tavros.

I can't help but wonder how much of an involvement Scratch had in the Team Charge Debacle. Vriska draws a line between her friends and the trolls she sacrifices to her lusus. Her victims are a means to an end, but her friends hold sentimental importance to her. She seems hesitant on actually harming them, only giving in after Scratch insistently pushes her in that direction. Killing her friends definitely seems counterintuitive with maintaining a rivalry with Aradia and her long-term aims with Tavros, after all.

Vriska's whole fixation with Tavros is obviously based on what she read in Mindfang's journal. She projects herself onto her ancestor so hard and wants to be just like her. She named her FLARP character after her, models her in-game self as a ruthless pirate, and aspires to have the same romantic relationships as Mindfang once had. She forms a relationship with Eridan (Dualscar) and wishes to do the same with Tavros (The Summoner).

But Tavros is not the Summoner. While the latter was brave and inspirational, the former is cowardly and unambitious. He is not the troll Vriska wants to be her "future matesprit," so she seeks to mold him into someone who can meet her standards.

She hates Tavros for not being the troll she's "supposed to" fall in love with. Scratch uses this hatred to convince her to kill him. She throws Tavros off a cliff, but when he ends up surviving she claims it was for his own good, that she was "toughening him up" and trying to help him be more like the Summoner. This is one of many instances of Vriska performing mental gymnastics in order to justify her actions, even if she doesn't sincerely believe her own explanations. She's trying to convince others, as well as herself, that she is always right.

Vriska is shitty and intensely messed up, but Scratch is much more insidious for using a broken child to do things she wouldn't do otherwise. Even though he is omniscient, he should not be treated as a reliable narrator since he does have his own ulterior motives.

Mhm. Such a waste of her amazing talents. Talents we have yet to witness firsthand. If Vriska really does brag to Terezi about using her magic cue ball to predict the future (and knowing just how obsessive and paranoid a person she is), it really doesn't take a genius to know that's exactly what she'll do when faced with a cryptic threat.

It's interesting that Terezi believes Vriska "went too far" only after killing Aradia. It's her death that spurs Terezi into murderous action, when before she simply wanted to talk to Vriska after what she did to Tavros. We can see who Terezi's favorite member of Team Charge is.

Even though Vriska admitted to Scratch that she didn't want to kill her friends, she puts up a front with Terezi and claims that she was simply eliminating their rivals like a good FLARPer should. And again, she really doesn't want Terezi to keep bringing this up. As long as she acts appropriately guilty, she believes that should be punishment enough for her crimes.

Vriska flips from expressing self-loathing to acting justified and deserving of praise in an instant. She's in a constant state of feigning the emotions that she thinks is most appropriate for any given situation. She'll exhaust every angle she can think of to try and get someone to respond in the way she wants.

Of course, Terezi doesn't back down because she is adamantly set on avenging Aradia no matter what Vriska says. Even though she says she's hoping Vriska can change her mind, she knows her well enough to know that won't happen. It's all part of the bit of framing her revenge plot as dispensing justice.

Vriska becomes increasingly paranoid and indignant when her plans fall apart. She can't accept the fact that all her efforts had been undermined by forces beyond her control, so she's convinced that Aradia had been planning to sabotage her in secret. It's more palatable to her if she's the victim of a worthy opponent's schemes, rather than admitting that her plans were doomed to fail from the very beginning.

I do relate to Vriska a bit when she says she's "not very good at acting like a friend." I hardly ever reach out to people I consider friends, even though I value their companionship a lot.

But in Vriska's specific case, she's so full of herself and doesn't realize how her actions impact others. Whenever someone is close to her (Aradia, Terezi, Kanaya), she takes them for granted and assumes they'll always be by her side no matter what she does. When she does find out they're angry with her, it comes as a surprise to her and she doesn't know what to do to mend that relationship. She's fully aware of what she did to Aradia and her friends, but she thinks she can rectify all of that just by offering an apology and a gift.

Perhaps, on some level, she really does want to go back to the "good old days," but she's too emotionally stunted to understand why her performative apologies don't work. No matter how cunning or charming she attempts to be, she truly does not know how to interact with others because she cannot be honesty. She's always putting on an act, never realizing that people see right through her insincerity and are rightfully put off by it.

If Aradia won't be Vriska's friend, Vriska tries a new angle and tries to re-ignite their "rivalry." And she's absolutely livid that Aradia does not put as much stock in this one-sided dynamic as she does. This reads as an unrequited pitch crush more than anything else in the comic. It's too bad Hussie never really gave that much of a shit about developing troll romance (especially the pitch and ashen quadrants), otherwise he might've done something more with this.

It's a little sad for Vriska, honestly. She can't have Aradia as a friend or even a rival. She's obviously obsessed with Aradia and sees her as a big fixture in her life, but Aradia doesn't view her as anything except a minor nuisance.

Equius initially wants to assert himself as superior to Aradia in accordance with their positions on the hemospectrum. But her overall indifference to his racism, her superior psychic powers, and her ability to manipulate his surroundings as his server player all give him pause. He quickly drops the domineering act and allows Aradia to "do whatever things" she wants (all while under the pretense of "ordering" her to do so, because he can't allow himself to drop his act for a moment).

Because Equius views Aradia as a filthy commoner, a member of their society's lowest social class, it sets his submissive fantasies alight when he realizes the true power she holds over him. The one thing that rivals Equius's love of highbrow culture and maintaining class order is his desire to twist and pervert those same institutions in the name of sexual gratification.

Equius, eternally obsessed with appearances, wants to keep the nature of this "vile" arrangement with Aradia a secret from the others. He is very repressed and feels deep shame for going against the class structure he fervently idealizes. He doesn't want this "degenerate" side of himself to be known, even though nobody else cares about the hemospectrum as passionately as he does and Aradia even points out that her status as the "secret leader" was already an established fact.

Equius acts as if it didn't occur to him that she'd be angry at him for trying to manipulate her emotions. Who would've thought lowbloods had feelings?

Fun fact: This page was actually the newest page when I first started reading Homestuck back in July 2010.

This whole sequence is about the full extent we get about how a pitch relationship would look like. Anger suddenly shifting into passion. What a stupid concept. Troll romance really is just the most unintuitive, markedly unromantic model for relationships and people eat that shit up anyway. I think it was Hussie's intent to design this system to be overly complicated, emotionally draining, and borderline abusive because trolls are supposed to be weird and misanthropic. Yet nobody really comments on this in the text other than a brief "this sure is weird!" before moving on.

Even the trolls themselves don't seem convinced that any of this is "normal." There's never a point where there's an attempt to develop the quadrant system to make it appear normalized in troll society. Instead we get shit like pale relationships that either are doomed to fail or come across as one-sided and dominated by a mentally unwell partner, and pitch relationships that are unfulfilling and end in one partner ditching the other after things get too dysfunctional.

I'll never cease to be amazed that people online will still claim they have real-life "quadrants" despite all this. What sort of brain poison did Hussie inject into this work that affects peoples' behavior like this? Where can I get some to put in my own writing?

Another instance of the early establishment of GamKar in this page. We haven't even reached the quadrants section yet, but we see them being placed in the same relationship category as Nepeta and Equius. Using context clues from the conversations we've seen thus far (both dynamics involve characters with polar opposite personalities having a dysfunctional yet close relationship that is described as "friendship") it's clear to see even at this point why they'd be lumped together.

One detail I like is Nepeta writing "oh nooooo" under the Vriskat panel. Does she think Vriska has feelings for Karkat, and would therefore see her a rival? I mean, considering the last log between them, she might be right to think so. And Nepeta is pretty good at detecting the sincerity behind peoples' words and actions, so... there might be something to that.

Speaking of Vriska and Karkat, let's proceed to the very next page...

In their previous log, we saw Vriska governing the conversation by acting smug and overconfident. Now the tables have turned and Karkat has the power to boss Vriska around. This is a rare occurrence in their dynamic, and Karkat seeks to relish it as much as possible.

But even though he was making a big display about mocking Vriska and acting superior, he does stop and show sympathy when she tells him about her dead lusus.

Karkat describing his hate potential as a "finely tuned instrument" is laughable because he treats everyone with the same amount of aggression and rudeness. Hell, Eridan mistakes his insults as pitch flirting at a later point. So it really seems that Karkat isn't too dissimilar from Vriska when it comes to hating up everyone.

Karkat acts like he wants nothing to do with Vriska, but here he is dumping a whole ton of information regarding her romantic aspirations. Although he frames most of this information in the form of dunking on Vriska and saying she's too immature mentally to handle a romantic relationship, it does come from a place of sincerity and seems to be an earnest attempt at helping her understand her own psyche. Karkat may be empathetic and willing to help others, but he's also tactless and blunt in his manner of speaking. He doesn't shy away from being brutally honest.

Even though Vriska acts uninterested in his ramblings, it's worth noting that she implements her romance scheme with Tavros soon after this. It's almost like she took some of this to heart and really did want to see if she could forge a matespritship with someone, to prove to Karkat that she isn't broken.

Vriska has just received a well overdue lesson in humility and a complete verbal thrashing regarding her entire mental state, but Karkat still offers her a chance for her ego to recover by telling her that he needs her powers for his plan to work. Vriska is surprised at first, but seizes the opportunity to resume being her arrogant self.

The Mobius Double Reacharound. Stupid shit. Hussie never makes good use of this "two team" dynamic because everyone seems to cotton onto the session's true nature pretty quickly. At no point does this supposed competition between them ever feel genuine. There's no real rivalry between the teams, there's no threat for what might happen when one team loses to the other, and there isn't a big climax when the mystery is revealed. It's all just pointless fluff.

I think it would've been neat if the Red Team was framed as these underdogs pitted against an insanely stacked Blue Team. Equius, Nepeta, and Feferi are physically strong; Aradia and Sollux are powerful psychic; and Eridan is an expert marksman. Aside from Vriska (and Tavros, despite not making good use of his powers), nobody on the Red Team has any noteworthy abilities. Karkat could've been aware that he was in charge of a band of misfits and undesirables and use that as motivation to be a stronger leader against a much more powerful opponent.

Have I mentioned already how much I hate the pacing for Act 5-1? At times I feel like I'm reading some idiot's abridged version of a better story that doesn't exist.

Dear, precious Kanaya... Let's try and set the record straight with you.

I think it's funny how Kanaya's intro lists topiary as one of her principal interests, yet this is never alluded to after this point. It's just a flimsy excuse for explaining why she uses a chainsaw as a weapon. And then it goes on to say that the chainsaw would be an ideal weapon to hunt the "broods of the undead" that stalk the planet during the day (another detail that is never relevant), but she never uses it for that purpose either. I don't understand why Hussie gave her this weapon when, in reality, she never uses it for either of its intended purposes. She really doesn't have much of a reason to own one at all!

No, her real passion is her interest in dark, romantic literature. She loves reading stories to indulge in her thrilling and illicit fantasies. Despite the fact that she could easily experience the kind of intrigue depicted in her stories just by going outside and fighting zombies (a task she even has the perfect tool for), Kanaya is much too cautious and afraid of danger to actually do anything aside from holing up in her hive, reading books, and decorating.

It's this trait, not her love of fashion, that has the most bearing on her character. Her risk-averse nature and love of forbidden danger is reflected in her relationships with Vriska and Rose. She admires their confidence and willingness to take risks, but also naively believes she can rein them in with her sensible and calm nature.

Also, can I take a moment to point out that this is yet another parallel between Kanaya and Tavros? Both of them use fiction as a means of escapism. Tavros reads fairy tales because he wants to be whisked away to an idyllic fantasy where he has no responsibilities and the government isn't trying to kill him. Kanaya reads dark fantasy romance because she wants to read about daring, dangerous lovers taking her on thrilling, erotic journeys all while remaining within the safety of her own hive.

But of course the difference is that Kanaya's taste in literature makes her erudite, cultured, and a perfect match for Rose. While for Tavros, it just makes him look juvenile and like a total sissy because Peter Pan is "gay." Totally not a match for Dave, the manliest and coolest character in the comic who totally doesn't have any insecurities to cover up...

Kanaya has a changing wardrobe just like Jade. But since Kanaya's big special interest is fashion, it makes sense that she'd be constantly changing clothes. Does Jade give a shit about fashion? It wasn't part of her laundry list of hobbies, so I say no.

We really needed more chats between these two. Feferi's excessive hyperactivity pairs well with Kanaya's deadpan responses.

Out of everyone, Feferi is the most excited for the world to end because it means she'll finally be free of the responsibilities saddled on her. She'll no longer be expected to inherit the throne and try to reverse the Condesce's cruel regime, she won't be perpetually bound to her hive in fear of assassins, she won't have to constantly keep Gl'bgolyb fed, and she won't have to be responsible for Eridan anymore. She truly believes the game will usher in a fresh start for everyone, herself included.

Eridan is an exhausting person to deal with. Even though Kanaya loves to tout herself as helpful, she really doesn't like Eridan at all. Eridan wants instant, tangible results that coincide with his grand delusions. These are not what he'll get from Kanaya's vague platitudes and take-it-slow mindset.

Even though Eridan is often socially unaware, he correctly infers Kanaya's true feelings for Vriska. Must be from all the romance talk he and Karkat indulge in.

Despite Kanaya's dislike of him, Eridan considers her a friend simply because she's one of the few trolls who will bother to talk with him. He's so desperate for attention that he'll just laugh off her passive aggressive insults as witty banter.

Kanaya really wants to prove to everyone that she's helpful even though she's actually ineffective at best and bothersome at worst.

Far from being the sagacious mentor she wishes to be, Kanaya is really more like an overly cautious busybody who just wants everyone to take things as slow as she likes. Nobody takes her seriously because she has no power to enforce her will. All she can really do is stomp her foot and be passive aggressive if no one listens to her.

To the "Vriska Did Nothing Wrong" crowd, how on Earth do you justify this? "Say you're sorry for being a cripple" there's no excuse for that!

It's funny how Kanaya very slowly moves objects around because she doesn't know how to work the controls.

Kanaya constantly trying to worm herself as a positive influence in Vriska's life is motivated by her huge crush on her. She never actually acts on this crush in a proactive way. She really only talks with Vriska to "keep her out of trouble" but never admits to how she really feels. She sort of blindly thinks everything will work out for her, until she sees Vriska kiss Tavros. And then her response is to act cold and distant to her once they're on the meteor, much to Vriska's confusion.

Like Kanaya really had no business being that mad at her. It shows just how shallow Kanaya's true feelings for Vriska really were if she just ditches her as soon as it becomes clear that she won't get laid.

Can I get a "so true" for Vriska? All the planets are so insubstantial to the overall story that I couldn't be arsed to care about any of their "hidden lore." Most of them are only around for two or so panels before we move on. Medium cosmology continues to be superficial window dressing, what else is new? Let's continue.

Vriska getting agitated that Tavros won't easily roll over and do what she says. She has a plan in her head and won't stop until she sees it come to fruition.

This whole sequence is so twisted. It only really serves to show how badly broken Vriska is and how she doesn't know how to connect with others even when she earnestly tries. She only ends up causing more harm than good. No matter how crafty and elaborate she makes her schemes, she cannot force people to see her in a different light just by willing it into existence.

Anyway, this is pretty much the end of the stupid ass Tavros/Vriska romance plot. It feels good to finally flush that shit down the drain. This section of Act 5-1 is kind of a slog to get through since it has two of the worst romance plots of the whole story. I think the rest of the Act goes along much more smoothly, so I guess we'll see when I get to that (however long that takes).

#homestuck #homestuck reread #vriska serket #terezi pyrope #aradia megido #doc scratch #equius zahhak #nepeta leijon #gamzee makara #karkat vantas #kanaya maryam #feferi peixes #eridan ampora #tavros nitram #ararezi #aravris #gamkar #vriskat

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crownedinkcomix · 3 months ago

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Joker 2 is not about its fandom. At least not on purpose.

I agree with many of the criticisms leveled at Joker 2, and I almost didn’t bother writing this review since much of what I have to say echoes the general consensus. However, there’s one particular critique I’ve seen that I strongly disagree with: the idea that Joker 2 is a repudiation of the audience that connected with the first movie.

Many have argued that the sequel turns against those who found resonance in Arthur Fleck’s transformation into the Joker, especially as the character became a symbol in real-world political protests, much like the Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta was co-opted by Anonymous. But I believe this interpretation misses a key point that aligns with the themes of the original film.

The film becomes more engaging towards the end, particularly when Arthur’s followers reject him once he rejects the Joker persona. Some argue that this mirrors the way audiences connected with the first movie, using the Joker persona as a symbol during protests. However, this rejection of Arthur is consistent with the character’s portrayal in Joker (2019). Society didn’t care about Arthur as a person—an isolated, mentally ill individual—until he accidentally became a figurehead for a movement he never believed in. His followers, like society, only care about the Joker as a symbol, something they can project their own ideas onto.

While I don’t think Joker 2 is a strong film overall—it’s messy, and at best deserves a 2/5 rating—I do think it captures this idea well. It continues the theme that society values icons and symbols over real, complex individuals, much as the first film did.

Unfortunately, the first two-thirds of the film are a slog. The musical numbers, for example, add nothing of substance and slow the film to a crawl. I typically enjoy musicals, but Joaquin Phoenix is a poor singer, and the songs don’t advance the plot like they should in a good musical. Instead, they feel like pointless interludes. In the best musicals, songs are integral to storytelling, not interruptions.

The connections to Batman mythology, which were subtle but effective in the first Joker, feel more forced and distracting in this film. In Joker (2019), Gotham felt like Gotham, and there were enough subtle nods to Batman’s lore to justify the film's title. Here, however, it feels as though someone simply took an original screenplay and used a Find and Replace tool to rename elements: Arkham Asylum, Harvey Dent—they feel shoehorned in. Especially jarring is the fact that we're supposed to believe a character's Christian name is Harley Quinn (harlequin, get it?) in what is meant to be a world that is so grounded, I can't buy Bruce Wayne ever even grows up to be Batman in this continuity.

In the first film, even though Arthur Fleck’s story was largely inspired by Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, it still included some elements from The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns, giving it a legitimate connection to the Batman universe. The riot at the end, leading to the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, was a clever tie-in to Batman’s origin, even if it required some suspension of disbelief regarding the age difference between Bruce Wayne and this version of the Joker.

Joker 2 is ultimately a confused film that doesn’t know what it wants to say for much of its runtime. While it offers some interesting thematic continuity regarding society’s elevation of fictional personas over real people, it’s bogged down by poor pacing, weak musical numbers, and forced connections to Batman lore. While I’m glad I saw it for the final third, which genuinely resonated with me, I can’t recommend it to a general audience.

#dc joker #joker folie a deux #joker movie #joker 2019 #arthur fleck #joker 2 #todd phillips #movie review

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eisforeidolon · 6 months ago

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The thing with doing 'so and so consumes x media' content? Is that you have to consistently bring something to the table that is more interesting to your audience than them just revisiting the media themselves. It can be something like BTS insider information, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that big of a something. Just enthusiasm and surprise as a new viewer can do it. In-depth media critique can do it. Snark can do it in the right circumstances (though that doesn't really apply with a podcast you're selling to fans). Etc.

I haven't and am not going to listen to the Now & Then podcast, but from the people who've talked about trying it that I've seen, I get the impression Rob & Rich don't really understand that. Or they mistakenly think that listening to two middle-aged dudes who appeared in a bare handful of episodes yammer at each other is in and of itself a draw. Uh, guys? Tuning in for you specifically as opposed to deciding to see you at a convention they're already at are very different things.

I feel like they tried to bill the podcast as being an insider take, but they themselves aren't insider enough to do that so they're intermittently hosting some guests from cast and crew who were. Except they fill time between the guests with them doing a first time react to the show. Which could work ... except it sounds like they're doing it badly. They don't actually seem to like the show, but are trying to sell it to SPN fans who are, you know, fans. They frequently miss or fail to understand major moments, themes, and plot points. In short, they fail to make it consistently entertaining to the general audience they were presumably trying to pull. So most of the fans that actually love the show and were tuning in hoping to enjoy them watching it as a way of revisiting it? Have tuned back out. Which leaves who to give them money for continuing to do it? Oh, right, the weirdos who would happily throw money at studio janitor #5 or random non-speaking extra #207 if they told them D/C was real and canon. R2 haven't 'seen D/C is real, OMG!'. They've seen that they can continue to make money off having been on SPN without even bothering to rewatch the show and pretend to enjoy it! All they have to do is go down a checklist of 'D/C moments' and hint they can see how shippers would be into it and hellers will happily throw money at them. They'd already lost most of the fans who tuned in hoping they actually had interesting things to say, so why not?

All that is dumb enough, but Insisting this means that if Jensen rewatched the show he would totally [understand D/C was canon/make it canon] is an impressive level up in absolute batshit stupidity. Jensen isn't some rando who was in a handful of scenes in 10-20 episodes across 15 seasons, only trying to pretend he cares about the show for money. No he hasn't watched the entire show back over, but he's read every script, talked to the writers and directors, and every fucking thing (bar a few flashbacks/de-agings) Dean Winchester ever did on screen did it through Jensen acting out what he saw as Dean's motivations. Despite their constant self-delusion on this point, the GA and most of the fandom did not watch the show and think there was any kind of romance between those two characters. So insisting Jensen himself would entirely change his mind on who Dean was and what he felt despite his prominent role in determining exactly those things by watching the show back as a whole?

It's the same old fixated obsession with their own fanfic and denial of rationality that has lead them to make these same stupid predictions queerbaiting themselves over and over and over and over and over and over and over and ...

#anti richard speight jr #anti rob benedict #destihellers

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worlds-least-responsible · 2 months ago

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I HOPE THIS HURTS.

[Polle says, "Sorry!"] ... Don't ask how I got here. Curly convinced me that it'd be fun and I need better entertainment than just staring at the walls. You can call me Jimmy. I'm the co-pilot of the Tulpar. Our crew consists of him as captain, me, Swansea as our mechanic, Anya as our nurse and Daisuke as Swansea's intern, I guess. Who's idea was it to bring five in a ship of four? Don't talk to me about sardines. Or horses, for that matter. Some of you need to learn how to take a fucking joke.

//ooc info

TW FOR BLOOD, MENTIONS OF VIOLENCE/VIOLENT TENDENCIES, REFERENCES TO CANNIBALISM, DEREALIZATION, SUGGESTIVENESS, ARACNOPHOBIA/BUGS/INSECTS, MENTIONS/REFERENCES TO SEXUAL ASSAULT, MENTIONS/REFERENCES TO SELF HARM AND/OR SUICIDE, MILD HORROR. Pre-crash Jimmy blog. Maybe not for much longer. Made to pair with @ponyextulparlog. ;; except i'm way more active here i'm sorry . main is @hellishkittycat, if you follow me here i might starting following you back from there. uhh. all things i've listed as rules for the Curly blog are valid here too but stricter. you can be mean to him, sure, go ahead. but do NOT get me involved in it. i am merely here to have fun, i DON'T condone this man's actions and i hate him as much as you do. THIS IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER AND WHILE HIS CRIMES ARE REAL HE IS NOT. HE ISN'T REAL!! NONE OF THESE PPL ARE!! >DO NOT MAKE SA/RAPE JOKES. you aren't funny. you all know how Jimmy is in canon, aka a rude asshole who only cares for people when they benefit him. literal parasite. he is USUALLY NOT going to be kind, or even remotely nice. neutral at best. please don't be startled if he's mean to you!! that's just how he is and any/all threats are in character entirely. (see tolerance points for info.) JIMMY EMOTIONAL STATUS GUIDE: Green dialogue is just his usual sarcastic self. Blue dialogue is in mention of Anya, or things relating to Anya. Orange dialogue is in mention of Swansea, or things relating to Swansea. Pink dialogue is in mention of Daisuke, or things relating to Daisuke. Non colored dialogue is in mention of Curly, or things relating to Curly. Purple is related to tolerance or defensiveness. Red is related to aggression or a strong, compulsive emotional reaction to something. DO INTERACT!: fellow mw rp accs, whether it be canon, ocs, aus, you're all cool here. hell, even accounts from other fandoms too as long as you know where you are. the jimmy enthusiasts™, are also allowed here (as long as you don't condone what he did, ew). cry about it. DO NOT INTERACT: anyone under 16, anything that usually falls under dni criterias. i check everyone that interacts here, and if i find out you fall under any questionable labels you'll get blocked. nsfw accounts and accounts with major gore too if you don't filter your shit. jimanya, jimsuke and jimsea shippers. if you exist. EXTRA INFO: This Jimmy is 36, 5'11, metalhead, unlabeled closeted queer, 'Merican, arachnid/reptile enthusiast. mod talk will always begin with //. Jimmy talk will have the dialogue font and be colored green. tags for this blog include:

takeresponsibility: for in character posting/rp starters yimpy's yapping: for asks/ continued rp yimpy approved: for art/rb yimpy's art/doodles: might change this later but it's for mod-posted art. recent art pieces only jimsby: why did i word it like that it sounds like i'm in a pokemon game. uhh. (jimby reacts to asks) toleratedmuch: above the #yimpy's favorites tier, you are now willingly tolerated. exclusive to those with 15+ tolerance points. yimpy's favorites: tag exclusive for those with 5+ TOLERANCE POINTS. dear god what have you done goodnessgracious: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU (50+ tol pts). officiallyresponsible: i hope this hurts. TOLERANCE POINTS: if ya interact one too many times often, or just do something cool, ugly little roach here might be slightly, SLIGHTLY less of a dick to you! only proceed if you're okay with the consequences of such acts being you as this parasite's next host, though. inspired by another blog. THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED (most recent update: 12/28/24).

#mouthwashing rp #mouthwashing rp blog #ask blog #takeresponsibility #jimmy mw #jimmy #NOT using main tags for this #mw #yimpy's yapping #pinned post #blog intro

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surgepricing · 8 months ago

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RWBY Final Thoughts: Legacy

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. ... [Basically,] they behave like a cult.

This is a repost of a post I made February 1st, 2024 on another site. At the time, it was the final post of a deep-dive recap of RWBY and the history of the show, its fandom, and its direction under Rooster Teeth.

I felt this out with some of my peers and the feedback I got in relation to posting in on Tumblr was that, well, why not? It was my main haunt to begin with, and I may as well, since Rooster Teeth is closing its doors. I'm posting this mainly as a shot in the dark just to see how it gets received. Only minor edits have been made; I'm sure there's some stuff in here that would make people mad, but that applies to pretty much anything someone could say about RWBY. Click the read more to get a glance at how my time with RWBY ultimately wrapped up.

Nine years ago today, Monty Oum died of an allergic reaction. Today is a day of mourning for fans of his work, including RWBY. There’s no sense in waiting. Let’s finish this and heal.

The Showrunners

Miles and Kerry often received the brunt of the attention when it came to RWBY. As the writers of the show, they bore responsibility for the largest chunk of why it eventually went into the shitter, and fan anger against them was almost certainly not helped by the damn near idolization heaped on them by fervent stans. They are, undoubtedly, the focal point of RWBY fans’ parasocial relationship with the show.

Of course, despite sharing about the same credits space as his partner in crime, Kerry tended to fly under the radar a lot, with it being Miles who received the brunt of the fandom’s fury with each successive volume. It’s not hard to see why; the character Miles voices has been consistently over-exposed and is in many ways an obvious creator’s pet, with denials as to this fact falling on deaf ears as Jaune’s screentime continued to balloon past its merits, whereas the character Kerry voices could just about wrangle an average of ten seconds of screentime every three years. Certainly Miles has been in trouble with fans more often than Kerry for the shit he’s said and done. The Ruby body pillow and the Tifa Lockhart ‘prostitute’ comments come to mind. Oh, and the slurs, that one too.

But perhaps the reason Miles gets so much more flak than Kerry is that Miles just...acts like an asshole a lot of the time. Even aside from above examples, Miles’ flaws come out in his writing: he’s petty, holds grudges, can’t take criticism, and just overall has way more power over the story than someone of his caliber should. He’s very poor at disguising his real feelings and often lets them bleed through, and when he actually decides to voice them on purpose, things get ugly—refer to that Cameo about Ironwood.

But as tempting as it is to treat Miles as an out-of-control cockwaffle on the rampage and Kerry as his sympathetic ineffectual shadow, the reality is that they’re co-writers, have been for ten years, and anything Miles gets away with doing is as much Kerry’s fault as his. If the Gray Haddock situation has taught us anything, it’s that more people tend to harbor blame than the one individual that makes an easy scapegoat.

Since aside from aforementioned n-word business, Miles and Kerry are almost never connected to moral outrage, this makes it easy for the stans to uphold them, since all they really have to defend them from is accusations that they didn’t honor Monty’s “vision” for the series. This is only easy because the stans are fucking insane, but that’s for later on down the page.

“Vision” is in quotes because that’s how fans treat it, we all know they don’t really care. Miles and Kerry’s vision matters, and we know that much because of Calixyn’s interview where she all but begged to be told that RWBY Volume 5 was as bad as it was because the “good bois” had control of the show ripped from them. Nope, turns out all that racism, homophobia, and plain shitty writing is all on them. But at least they’re nice!

(Miles was 26 when he said the n-word. I’m 26 now when writing this. I think it’s pretty fair to call him an asshole.)

But the truth is that it’s objectively stupid to think that the direction of RWBY hasn’t changed since Monty’s passing, it’s impossible for it not to have. There are more writers on board than before, and it’s been a long time since he was alive to contribute his thoughts. The real question is whether they at least tried, and I don’t think they did.

I mean, Shane Newville never names Miles and Kerry in his letter, but he does state several times that the choices made for the show were not only not what Monty wanted, but “straight up just shitting all over what Monty made”. I find it very difficult to believe that that insinuation, and all of the people caught up in the net it casts, wouldn’t include those two. And like it or not, but the person who is able to compile tons of clips and interviews over the years as some sort of seeming immutable proof that “CRWBY” are good-hearted people determined to preserve Monty’s vision, isn’t really looking at any more evidence than the person who’s come to the conclusion, based on what they’ve seen, that that the opposite is true. And they’re certainly looking at less evidence than the people who actually did work there around Monty, Miles, and Kerry. The facts sometimes boil down to ‘if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and is implicated in the walls of text like a duck, it’s probably a duck’, guys.

Even in the best case scenario in which the work of Monty Oum turns out to have been treated with dignity and respect (and was just really shittily written from the beginning), the fact remains that Miles and Kerry did not put a quality product into the world. I will be very surprised if either of them manages to get a lead writing position ever again, because once the popularity of RWBY fades, so too will the goodwill they’ve somehow amassed among its fans. RWBY, much like Twilight, is inevitably going to taint the people who were in charge of writing it.

But Miles and Kerry are just two dudes. What exactly is going to happen to those fervent fans who hung on their every word and insisted they were the embodiment of everything pure and innocent? What, exactly, is going to happen to the RWBY fandom that once seemed to be unavoidably populous on the internet?

F, N, D, M

We already went over “constructive criticism” and “worldbuilding”, so let’s add another eternally-misused word to our roster. You know, something I’ve occasionally thought about in terms of online spaces is that no one knows what a “comfort show” is. It’s one of those terms that became too popular almost as soon as it was introduced, to the point that it became meaningless, much like “hyperfixation” and “anxiety”. I see people refer to RWBY as their comfort show and I’m just like...how? A comfort show is supposed to be the show that always puts you in a good headspace, a show you rest easy with because you’ve always connected with it because the love was always there. A comfort show is a show that you watch in your down moments to feel better, not a show you think is just the greatest thing ever, the bees’ knees if you will.

A comfort show is not a show you force yourself to like, it is not a show you defend at all costs, and it is not a show you only still cling to because enjoying it once coincided with a time when you felt popular and among friends. Which, increasingly, seems to have been the case for RWBY fans.

RWBY’s Fandom

Very rarely would I ever consider a fandom on its own worth its own section of a Final Thoughts. But I’m doing it now because the RWBY fandom, though now it’s a shadow of its former self, is still a sizable chunk of people and took a lot longer to die than most other fandoms.

The RWBY fandom itself was an especially big and very online fandom, and the show produced an abnormally large amount of big name fans who continued to use their own influence to push its success and keep its momentum going. As I’ve said before, the RWBY fandom is something that Rooster Teeth were able to extract an excessive amount of praise out of for minimal effort; it simply seems to be in RWBY fans’ nature to speculate and theorize and over-analyze and fill in blanks, and to perceive good writing and animation where there is none. But you know how fandom operates—the bigger its size, the more infamous it becomes.

Long since famed for being especially toxic, those who are in the know consider RWBY fans a different breed, really. They create and move narratives at high speed and act quickly to correct any perceived dissent in the ranks, casting out anyone that feels disillusionment with the product and insisting everything is peachy even as their world crumbles around them. To RWBY fans, the “CRWBY” are always separate from the “problematic” aspects of Rooster Teeth (which is basically the whole company) and it doesn’t matter how many of its flaws get highlighted; RWBY and the people that make it are always great, innocent of any harm done and fantastic, and anyone that dislikes them is a villain—even if those people were at one point part of the “CRWBY” themselves. Loyalty is everything. In other words, they behave like a cult.Those acronyms themselves have always bothered me, and I’ve grown a strong distaste for them. Originally they were just a quirk of the show; a format for team names that spawned the name of the show and eventually stopped being relevant altogether. But RWBY fans are simply unable to not use them. It’s not “the fandom” it’s “the FNDM”. They’re not “the RWBY team” or “the RWBY crew”, they’re “CRWBY”. Even people that the fans are actively trying to shame, shun, and harass don’t get to simply be people—they’re “RWDE” and, when that became an actual community of sorts unto itself, was switched to “HTDM”, short for “hatedom”. They remind me distinctly of code words that get formed and passed around in cult movements, identifying terms that quickly provide boxes to put people in and make it easier to sort loyals from disloyals. “Hatedom” itself is another one of those terms that spread and got so prolific it really doesn’t carry any meaning anymore. Real hatedoms are surprisingly rare, guys. Every fandom that becomes big enough for its respective product to become criticized eventually comes to believe it has a ‘hatedom’ because how could someone dislike something I like so much? But a hatedom on its own arises out of very specific circumstances and environments, and causes the spread of hate for a product based on broad foundations that are often unfair to the product and which creates perceptions that spread faster than the work, so that the work is often talked about in mocking reference rather than true dissatisfaction.

RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom guys, it never did. The Last of Us doesn’t have a hatedom. Fairy Tail didn’t have a hatedom. Blackpink doesn’t have a hatedom. Even Marvel doesn’t have a hatedom.

Paris Hilton had a hatedom. Nickelback had a hatedom. Hell, the website Tumblr itself had a hatedom. These were examples of people or products whose reputations spread too quickly and eventually swallowed rational perception of them, with people who have never experienced them or their work dismissing them and the fans who enjoy it wholesale.

Using the term “hatedom” is understandably common because (and in spite of the fact that) it allows for easy miscategorization. A hatedom is not composed of people that were actually exposed to the work, found it lacking, and expressed that. A hatedom does not occur in the wake of a product that was so bad it pissed off its fans and caused them to walk. People don’t hate Metroid: Other M because they can’t stand the sight of a woman being vulnerable and don’t understand challenging drama, they hate it because it was poorly written, badly designed, and tarnished a long-running and highly cherished gaming heroine’s reputation. People didn’t hate Fifty Shades of Grey because of some bias against women expressing their sexual freedom, they hated it because it was a wildly misogynistic and badly-written piece of dreck. People didn’t hate The Last of Us Part II because of homophobia and transphobia, they hated it because it was a misery fest with a tired moral theme that posited itself far more deep and compelling than it really was. And just because people with the above disingenuous views also hated these things does not discount the fact that the works got the reputations they did because they were getting back the exact amount of love and respect that was put into them.

Similarly, RWBY doesn’t have a hatedom. It does, in fact, have an ex-fandom. Those are also things you don’t see very often, but when you do, they almost always follow the same pattern, don’t they? A work which got wildly popular very quickly, took really deep nosedives afterward, and became disowned by the people that had formerly propped it up.

But that’s a discussion for later. What exactly makes RWBY’s fandom so toxic and cult-like, and why and how did it get that way? I think it’s a combination of several key factors that were baked in and collided badly.

The first was ease of access. RWBY was sold extremely well early on, and shared enough similarities with both anime and video games that it attracted many curious people from those communities. Combine that with vibrant colors, an attractive visual aesthetic, an air of badassery, and good music, and it gained a lot of loyal fans quickly—fans of anime and video games, specifically, being fans that tend to get more attached than to other mediums and are known for spending a lot on merchandise. These, in turn, morphed into nostalgic elements ripe for misremembering—people often have difficulty acknowledging that something they once liked isn’t good anymore even on its own, and I think RWBY fans in particular put way too much energy into the show to be able to admit that all the time they spent defending it (and harassing people who criticized it) was for nothing.

That skyhigh rocket to fame early on, of course, was attached to the reputation of Monty Oum, and once he died, he quickly became a martyr, which galvanized the loyalty of the show’s most toxic fans even further. To this day, talking about Monty at all, even for the right reasons, is seen as disrespectful or distasteful unless you’re trying to use him to prop up Rooster Teeth, a double standard I’ve unfortunately run into even in seeming safe spaces. I think if we’re comparing RWBY fandom to a cult, then Monty Oum and his memory can be compared to a central mythologized figure, the center around which are formed all of the pretty lies the members of the cult will tell you. Monty’s name is irreplaceably tied to RWBY, and as such, in order to defend Monty, its fans have to defend RWBY...and you can see where this leads. Attempting to talk about the mistreatment Monty and his family went through at Rooster Teeth is seen as using his name as a weapon—nevermind the fact that Rooster Teeth and their fans regularly use his name as a shield.

Of course, what this really reveals is that many such people don’t care about Monty, who he was, or who he went through, but rather his name alone. In fact, I’ve straight up seen RWBY stans say that people shouldn’t “take Monty’s name in vain”, as if Monty were in fact some sacred religious figure. It’s both bizarre and harmful.

A third factor was popularity. For a lot of the same reasons as, say, Supernatural, the perception of RWBY skews much more broadly between fan and ex-fan than that of the typical over-hyped show. The truth of the matter is that when a show gets popular, or really any work gets popular, enjoying it becomes a cliquey sort of thing. People that enjoyed being into something well-respected and widely known and basically the hottest trend are far more prone to become overly attached, put too much of themselves into it, and remain unequipped to deal with the fact of that trend’s eventual passing, especially if it’s a fall into disgrace rather than a quiet entrance into history. You can still find certain especially toxic big names from the RWBY fandom active and posting, pretending not to notice that their audience has become smaller and smaller over the years. Let’s face facts here, a lot of people that enjoy being part of the “in” crowd never manage to figure out how to accept losses and will do anything to try and regain lost popularity, or fool themselves into thinking they’re still on top of the world.

But we can reason and explain all day. Another truth of the matter is that it shouldn’t be other people’s problem that fans can’t accept reality and adjust, and that the RWBY fandom quite honestly deserves its reputation as abysmally toxic. The way terminal fans of the show have treated anyone who dissents, most prominently Shane Newville and other ex-employees, let alone other ex-fans of the show, is quite frankly disgusting. RWBY stans are difficult to look at in all of their bewildering, teeth-gnashing toxicity and forgive...so I’m not going to. People that still insist there’s nothing wrong with this show or the company making it are, as far as I’m concerned, beyond help, and are part of the problem. Many an ex-employee certainly thinks so.

In a lot of ways, you could call the fandom one of the driving forces of the show’s failure, mostly because they had an abnormally large amount of influence over the show. Pleasing the fans has always been a major goal of the RWBY team (unless you like characters Miles Luna doesn’t, I guess), but it’s almost disturbing how the Rooster Teeth strategy has been to lead them along and bat their eyelashes at every turn and how the fandom laps it up.

Of course, Rooster Teeth feeds the parasocial engine by engaging with the fans as equals, and I was given a disturbing reminder of how many of the people who worked on the show—the ones who aren’t pissed and digging themselves out of trauma ditches—behave exactly as the fans do, tweeting twenty times a day about their favorite ships and memes. By creating the perception that RWBY’s team is just like the RWBY fanbase and wants the same things they want, they tap that line of excess energy that’s kept this fandom going so long despite how far it’s fallen. It’s that “hey! my friend said my ship is going to be canon and he works on the show” feeling.

Of course, a probable reason as to why so many employees who worked on RWBY behave the way RWBY fans do is because a lot of them started out that way. As in, student hires. This has long been an open secret of Rooster Teeth’s M.O. for a while now, hiring people who look up to them and engage heavily with their content. Many an ex-animator has lambasted this tactic because it’s insidious, and purposely designed to make the incoming staff feel honored and indebted and excited so they won’t notice how they’re being fucked over. Arryn Troche, who made the ‘gays greenlighting volume 10’ tweet, rings up as a particularly eerie example considering they have the same rather-uncommon and unconventionally-spelled name as the voice actor for a ship they’re obviously very attached to. A quick search reveals them to have been a longtime fan and cosplayer for the show before being signed on as a junior animator.

And it is the fandom who ultimately makes the legacy for any given work or body of work. So what is RWBY ultimately going to be remembered for?

Legacy

I thought about it for a little while and found five things that are most likely to be associated with RWBY in the public’s memory after its death. The first should come as no surprise to anyone.

Bumbleby

The only part of RWBY that will likely be carried on by fans who stuck with it until the end is, of course, the only part of it that mattered, to many of them. You’ll know from my earlier recaps that shipping was always a big deal in fandom, but due to key choices (or if you prefer, mistakes) made during Volumes 2 and 3, one ship grew larger and more promoted in fandom circles than any others.

This is a combination of the unique features of the RWBY fandom and their one-track mind. The fans are well-known, as I said, to fill in the blanks in a pattern that best suits their narratives, and this works out with Rooster Teeth because it means that any sudden changes in direction they make will always be excused and praised rather than critically examined. Unsurprisingly, Bumbleby’s fandom, now that their victory has been cemented, have doubled down on their narrative that this was the intended goal from the beginning, despite it being plainly obvious that early RWBY was angling for Sun Wukong as the love interest and threw the occasional bones to Blake/Yang shippers to try and play nice.

This used to be one part of the fandom, of course, but as the show continually bombed with viewers and made more and more decisions that pushed them away, all competitors were slowly filtered out as their fans left, until Bumbleby shippers were the fandom. It’s no coincidence that Blake and Yang suddenly started acting unusually touchy and sentimental in Volume Six, following on the heels of a volume of RWBY so wildly unpopular that it woke up the company execs and forced them to acknowledge that the biggest part of their fanbase was only going to remain loyal in exchange for one thing: their ship.

The sad thing is that you can tell Rooster Teeth wanted to explore other options. Volume Five features a rather sudden shift into Yang and Weiss interactions in what I remain positive to this day was an attempt to sway shippers into a potential second choice while Black Sun was still in the oven, and this really represented one of the major errors of Rooster Teeth, in that they failed to understand the audience they were trying so hard to please.

Bumbleby became what I call a “Big Red Button” ship, and it is only the second of its kind that I’ve seen. The first? Destiel.

Yes, there’s a reason I kept comparing RWBY to Supernatural whenever Blake and Yang’s relationship came up. I admit I wasn’t a part of the Supernatural craze in its heyday and have never really enjoyed the show, but I’ve watched enough of it to connect the dots from what cultural osmosis I had to the eventual downfall we saw in November of 2020.

Both Bumbleby and Destiel were held up as the gay ship that would change everything, the biggest ship in the fandom and the one that would’ve been a major push for LGBT visibility, at least during their heydays. The problem was that its fans were not really that interested in LGBT visibility and were simply obsessed with the ship itself, applying it value as a win for LGBT audiences purely to bolster its perceived importance. Fans like this were not ever going to accept any alternatives regardless of the sexual orientations or gender conventions involved. Hence, the metaphor that is “the big red button”. You have a big red button that says “canon gay ship but not the ship you want” and ask the fans you’re trying to court whether they’d press it or not. Whatever they might say out loud, you know none of them is pressing that fucking button, ever.

Both of these Big Red Button ships became what they were due to showrunners being forced into courting an audience they really didn’t care for, and how could you blame them when both were infamously very, very over-active and annoying in general. Just like with RWBY’s well-intentioned but misguided Freezerburn phase in Volume 5, Supernatural also tried to gently shut down fans who then managed to obliviously ignore any and all hints that their ship was not meant to be endgame, and I can say that because “he’s like a brother to me” in any fandom but Supernatural would’ve been a tactical nuclear strike that sent the shippers packing. Once it failed, the gay bait came out in full force. It’s well known by now that, contrary to what one would imagine, the CW was not pulling a profit off of Supernatural’s minor mainstream success pushed by a cult following, so it’s no wonder they eventually resorted to desperately baiting the one audience that was going to stick it out no matter what, provided they had the right relationship dangled in front of them. RWBY went through the same thing.

The main problem with these two ships is that for all its diehards insisted that it was all about the gay representation, their respective shows teased and baited for so long that the world outside the little bubble these shippers lived in had moved on by the time they came to fruition. Gay visibility in media these days, at least western media, is easily available, to the extent that sometimes people believe homophobia is totally over when it really, really isn’t. If you’re looking for gay representation, you can find it plenty of places, and the first place you look probably isn’t going to be Supernatural or RWBY. So the huge wave of viewers that these shippers expected upon their victories was never going to occur, which might could’ve been avoided if the writers had simply grown a pair and made moves towards canon much sooner than before the shows were on their last legs and due to be scrapped.

Or, you know, just been honest. Diversions and alternatives were never going to work. The only thing that these shippers were ever going to understand was a hard no, a “sorry, this ship isn’t going to happen”. But the execs in charge of these shows were never willing to take a hit like that, so instead they dug their own grave.

And where does that leave the shippers, those people who devoted their whole lives to these fictional characters, only to find the show that bore them into the universe dead in a ditch? Well, nowhere good. Much like Supernatural, RWBY is heavily associated with its booming period, the heavily online portion of these shippers’ lives in the early and mid-2010s when it was all the rage, and yet in modern day, it’s seen as a bad neighborhood to hang in, an abandoned mansion at the corner of the street where awful things happened. These shippers don’t have many friends except each other.

Just like RWBY, Supernatural also exists primarily as an ex-fandom now. Much of its former fanbase remember the good days fondly but make no secret that they stopped following it once the writing tanked, and this left the shippers without many allies to associate with since so many of them had been pissed off with the way their shows ultimately became the Destiel Show and the Bumbleby Show, respectively. Contrary to an unfortunately popular idea, these shows did have actual LGBT fanbases, only a lot of their LGBT fans were not on kool-aid and avoided being sucked into a trap called “if you don’t ship this, you’re homophobic”.

You will find that the Bumbleby fandom are often looked on with disdain by quite a number of viewers of RWBY who have accused them of speaking over minorities, sexual and otherwise. Many fans have noted that, aside from Blake’s bisexuality being a seemingly late addition (Arryn Zech is noted to have cast her as straight when discussing Ilia Amitola’s ill-fated crush on her as late as 2019), Blake was very swiftly removed from all faunus characters who held romantic connotations in favor of Yang, implicitly saying that Blake was better committing to a white human woman than to an ethnic faunus male. There are obvious reasons why this left a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. Not to mention, other LGBT fans that invested in the show were not exactly welcomed with open arms.

Fair Game, or as I tend to call it, Qrowver? Qrow x Clover? Yeah, that was huge in Volume 7’s airing days. It very much experienced a rapid ballooning in fans and fandom love...but we all know how that ended. Many a fan who felt heartbroken and, importantly, betrayed by Clover’s sudden and rather pointless death turned on RWBY and Rooster Teeth and accused them of gaybaiting, which is of course exactly what happened. They received no sympathy from Bumbleby shippers—because of course they wouldn’t. If Rooster Teeth would gaybait with Qrow, a popular male character, that would mean they could potentially be gaybaiting with Blake and Yang, too. That was unacceptable, and so ironically the part of the fandom that had always crowed about the importance of extending a hand to LGBT viewers turned on LGBT viewers, valiantly defending Rooster Teeth as they always had.

And because Bumbleby fans had no room in their hearts for anything about RWBY except Bumbleby, and were hostile to anyone who didn’t ship it, they ended up being their own best friends and everyone else’s bad memories. When RWBY has faded from the public’s memory and is no longer a source of active income at all (so, basically right now), one of the only relics you’ll find of this show will be the two women making out in all the fanart you’ll find on the occasional Tumblr blog.

The Bigotry

You could call this section “the Racism” since that’s the biggest part of it, but we’d be remiss in neglecting the harm done to other minorities as well. We’ll get to them in a minute, but race is the thing that’s going to pop to mind when we talk about one of the other things RWBY left behind in the common memory.

One of the longest-running subplots that RWBY ever went through with was the racism subplot. Its basis is one of the things that so severely dates RWBY: creating an in-universe stand-in for people of color through the existence of people with animal traits was something you would absolutely not get away with after 2020, and even by 2016 was something liable to be seen as tacky. Nonetheless, RWBY openly used the faunus as stand-ins for black Americans and the struggles they faced in a white world.

Except that the company, based in Texas and headed largely by white staff, did not feel the importance of that. What slowly started out as a main character’s attempt to redeem an organization she felt had been driven too far and was no longer her home was slowly transformed into a means by which some incredibly racist people could spout off about what they felt were the real issues to be talked about, which were the condemnation they felt was deserved by activists that turned to violence, labeled, a little too quickly, as terrorists.

The 2010s saw a shift in social values, and much as with gay audiences and gay characters, black audiences and black characters—as well as other racial minorities—were experiencing something of a renaissance, with efforts to put the voices of these people into the public’s feeds. It wasn’t just George Floyd in 2020—the unexpected and frankly traumatic reign of Donald Trump as president of the United States galvanized the divide in America and social awareness became a bigger thing than ever, and since Trump was a flagrantly racist person with racist beliefs who enacted racist policies and was uplifted by racist Americans, people pushed back as they felt their lives and existences being threatened by a racist establishment...an establishment which Rooster Teeth came down on the side of very firmly.

No quarter is given to the fictional stand-ins. Sienna Khan’s policies are never examined in-depth, and the only close looks we get at the sorts of activism the White Fang does are at Adam, who is obviously condemned by the narrative and made into everything but a mustache-twirler, with delusional and frankly baffling beliefs of faunus superiority spelled out at length. No matter what concessions Rooster Teeth might’ve tried to make with Sienna’s beliefs before they stuck a sword in her, the fact of the matter is that their beliefs came through in the voices of Ghira and Blake, who made it very clear that the individual motives and experiences of people like Ilia, Corsac, Fennec, Yuma, and the rest simply don’t matter in the face of what they’d been driven to do by them. The whole ‘blacks can be racist’ tone of the final scenes involved in this subplot are both miles removed from the more cautious and neutral tone of early RWBY, and also just a very alarming red flag overall.

I went over this in my Volume 5 Final Thoughts: the shoddiness of the volume does not lie solely with the animation department. Miles and Kerry are known to have had generally sole control of the show up until Volume 7—but we also know that they didn’t have to, if they were writing anything company execs felt wasn’t to their tastes. The sudden twisting of Adam into a homicidal incel ex-boyfriend, along with his mutation into a faunus supremacist, when he was the face of the faunus movement as a whole, along with Sun’s blatant ill will towards the White Fang when he’d previously been willing to give them a chance on Blake’s word, all imply that Miles and Kerry endorsed the worst possible interpretations of racial activists and felt free to condemn them and place responsibility onto the faunus—and by extension, the real-life minorities they represented—to take a stand against the bad seeds within their causes, and the fact no one stopped them from airing this implies the higher-ups felt the same way.

People didn’t just leave RWBY after Volume 5 because of some really badly animated fights—they left because they’d felt too much of the authors’ racism coming through in the narrative and couldn’t comfortably continue watching. Every member of the faunus that had “bad” views was either killed (Adam, Sienna, Fennec), arrested (Corsac, Yuma), or “redeemed” by choosing to fight the first two (Ilia). All of these combined factors, with no room for charitable interpretations…not a good look.

And once Adam was defeated in Volume 5, and the White Fang reformed, that was the last anyone saw of that subplot, which had taken five years to wrap up and somehow still ended too early. Miles and Kerry had washed their hands of it, and references to Blake’s place in society were sparing from then on. This subplot’s inescapable presence throughout the show, combined with how it was dropped out of existence, left no room for redemption, either. No one was going back and saying “maybe this looks really, really bad”.

And so, that’s what a lot of people carried with them as their final and most relevant memories of RWBY: it’s astounding levels of racism. This is a bitter subject for many an ex-RWBY fan, many of whom aren’t white and, even among those that are, it’s simply inexcusable. Meet someone on social media who talks about RWBY at all, and isn’t one of the Bumbleby stans we’ve already discussed? You will find some mention or other of RWBY’s racist elements somewhere within their sphere. And so, that becomes a part of RWBY’s legacy, as a feature of the show that was simply too big to ignore and too poorly-handled to forgive. People don’t get over this shit, man.

This is of course not to mention the well deserved shitty reputation RWBY has for its other bigoted elements, as well. Bumbleby, as we’ve discussed, encompassed pretty much every RWBY stan left standing by 2020, but that left quite a few ex-fans that were fed up with the company’s obvious ploys when it came to sexuality and gender. Remember when I talked about Qrowver up above? Its ballooning and immediate fall from grace was a much-condensed version of RWBY as a whole, and pretty much featured as Rooster Teeth blowing their last remaining patience from LGBT fans to smithereens. The fact of the matter is that when you get down to it, every RWBY volume after Volume 4 was not a good time to be a minority. If you were gay, the show seemed to either ignore or despise you—between the background gays that warranted mockery, the mixed reception Ilia generated, and the outrage that finally boiled over when Clover bit it, part of RWBY’s legacy is how utterly unpleasant it has been for LGBT fans who expected and deserved better.

And so despite entering the scene in 2013 as a supposedly progressive show all for being led by four women, the show died known as a low-effort half-baked cringefest whose politics were always on display and always several years behind the trend.

The Good Days

Of course, another major part of RWBY’s legacy is the early days when everyone actually liked it. This is, again, something the show creators brought on themselves and something fans assisted with. I did mention the nostalgia for the Good Ol’ Days as a significant part of the RWBY fandom’s more cult-like elements, after all. The fact of the matter is, on some level, everyone knows that RWBY has spent several years going downhill. The ex-fans lament this fact, and the diehard stans insist that it’s all just as good as it used to be, primarily by doing what they do quite a lot, and linking completely coincidental elements back to things characters said or did in previous volumes as some sort of evidence that this has been the plan all along.

I’ve run polls on this matter before; even though I’ve recapped Volumes 1-3 thoroughly and shone lights on some pretty significant flaws, you ask anyone what they think the best volume of RWBY was and they’re gonna tell you Volume 3. Yes, even with all of the stalking incel Adam and the deaths of Penny and Pyrrha. It’s the last time RWBY felt cohesive and even though some obvious derailing was in effect, and Shane Newville has openly said that the behind-the-scenes matters were pretty ugly, it’s still the golden child. Shane’s only one person, and it’d be a while before RWBY scandals would become consistent and begin to overshadow the show as a whole.

The RWBY team themselves have certainly nurtured that very much on purpose. That tactic started with them, of course. Many elements that were either unpopular or predicted to ruffle feathers were stated to have originated in earlier volumes, even in situations where this wouldn’t have made sense or where it’s an obvious lie—such as Maria Calavera. They know full well their seasons post-Volume 3 were unpopular and receiving blowback, and tried to minimize it by linking them to more well-respected seasons. Suffice to say that this simply didn’t work. But it does make people remember those earlier volumes. Because so many ex-fans lost their energy for RWBY after its most active period, much of the hype from the hype era is all that you’ll see when you encounter one. Nostalgia wins out in the end, and at least RWBY can say that, as a show, it had enough of a headstart to leave an impression that lasted in a positive way. Although that’s only one side of the coin...

The Scandals

Let’s face facts here, the biggest part of RWBY’s legacy, period, is that it fucking died. It didn’t die instantly, but rather took hit after hit, blow after blow, and slowly had its image tarnished alongside that of the company, which failed to contain repeated scandals as ex-employee after ex-employee after ex-employee spoke out about the abysmal ways they’d been treated.

RWBY is Rooster Teeth’s biggest IP by far and, really, their only one worth talking about. Every other show was either eclipsed by it or unofficially canceled after bad reception. So when Rooster Teeth suffered the consequences of their actions, so did RWBY. It really can’t be overstated how the last few years of RWBY’s existence have been absolutely bombarded by a barrage of terrible Glassdoor reviews and bombshell exposure letters. Fans managed to stay strong through the first few rumblings of ill will, but after Volume 5 shook the fandom loose, discontent entered enough of the fandom sphere to be normalized, and once that happened, it was all downhill. Once people were actually allowed to talk about not liking Rooster Teeth’s content, they sure as hell weren’t going to be dissuaded from talking about not liking Rooster Teeth as a company or its practices.

Separating the art from the artist is a very difficult thing to do and only really appropriate in certain situations. Don’t fall for any kool-aid, guys, it doesn’t make you more mature or ‘above all the drama’ to actively ignore the damage done to real people in the process of getting fictional content out into the world.

If you’re still able to enjoy the Harry Potter books and look back on the good times they gave you in fondness, then fine. If you actually purchased and played the Hogwarts Legacy game programmed by antisemites and which puts money in the pocket of the transphobic owner of the franchise, then yeah, people will be right to give you shit for it. There’s a difference between quietly enjoying a product in a manner that doesn’t hurt anybody, and actively ignoring the people hurt to make that product while feigning concern. The gap in the fandom widened as the repeated leaks and scandals continuously ate away at the protective bubble around Rooster Teeth and it became clear that whatever fans might bleat, Rooster Teeth wasn’t going to ‘learn their lesson and do better’. The habitual cycle of using whatever recent scandal had occurred to cast disappointment and anger on a particular figure and uplift the rest of “CRWBY” (see also: the Gray Haddock issue) gave diminishing returns as the bombs kept dropping. This is part of why RWBY has such an ex-fandom, because if they aren’t enjoying the product and people were hurt to make it, why stay?

Crunching employees so hard they struggle to sleep and suffer debilitating health issues? Writing the n-word on a white board knowing a black employee will see it? Goading someone into trying to kill themselves? Calling an LGBT employee a slur and then making up a public-friendly nickname in place of that slur just to get away with continuing to call her that? Laying off people without warning or a means of letting them stay afloat until another job is found? Not paying or crediting employees and cultivating an environment where those in charge do what they want and those in the public eye reap all the benefit while those without a consistent spotlight get treated like dirt?

Just some of the things I thought up off the top of my head. There’s plenty more in the details. And you can’t blame Fullscreen, you can’t blame Warner, you can’t just write it off as something that happens at animation studios, because it isn’t. Yeah, the work environment in general for animation studios in America is lacking because, ya know, late-stage capitalism hellscape, but that’s dismissive of the point. Rooster Teeth are a bad company and hurt their employees and lie when called on it. It’s impossible to separate RWBY from Rooster Teeth (despite stubborn stans’ best attempts, which themselves have been called out by these same ex-employees) and because of that, RWBY’s legacy is one of corporate abuse and utterly vile behavior towards people that just wanted to make something cool.

People have refused to associate with the show over these things and honestly, they’re right to. RWBY’s ultimate legacy, if we’re honest, is the show that became a shadow of its former self, still trying to dazzle with reminders of its former glory and promises of gay relationships, all while trying to squeeze money out of both the employees who made it and the fans who upheld it. It’s the show that cost hundreds of people their physical and mental health and didn’t even have anything to show for it at the end of the day. It will live on in history as the most bitter of pills to swallow, that something you once liked and wanted to succeed can and will be ruthlessly twisted for profit margins and might actively hate you on the side. And speaking of…

Monty Oum

The biggest travesty of RWBY’s legacy is that Monty Oum is ultimately only the smallest part of it. He’s there, but barely—he’s a name in the credits that quite frankly is only there to keep up the facade of loyalty, when the show had stopped being Monty’s show before he even died and by now can be safely said to resemble nothing he would’ve made.

It’s a shame that for all that Monty was held up as a genius of his craft and a genuinely good man who inspired so many people, all he’s going to be remembered for is...this. A show people only attach his name to in an effort to insist it’s actually worth sticking by. Yes, Monty did other things, had other works, but none of them ever achieved even a fraction of the fame and respect that RWBY had from its first baby steps in 2013.

Maybe this could’ve been avoided if the real carriers of Monty’s legacy—Sheena, his wife, and Shane, his pupil—hadn’t been cast off as they had.

Shane seems to have found a new life and is working with Dillon Gu on animation, but I think we’ve all noticed his name hasn’t gone mainstream yet. I’ve tried to get in touch with him; from what I’ve gleaned, I frankly just advise leaving him alone. He wants to move on and I don’t think the RWBY fandom, which was so awful to him for telling the truth, is ever going to be a place he can feel welcome.

Sheena has mostly been quiet and done her own thing, cosplaying and watching anime and hopefully enjoying herself, although I notice posts on her Twitter feed from last year calling for a New Deal in the animation sector and castigating corporate abuses.

She also plays Hades, a much better product than RWBY with more love put into it and much better LGBT representation, which means her taste is excellent. She has a site now that you can go to, and the about section doesn’t mention Monty, her late husband, at all, for obvious reasons: Sheena doesn’t want to be connected to RWBY. Though, there is something there that’s noteworthy, in the last paragraph:

Still desiring a social element to her career, the animator turned professional cosplayer also has a history in the live stream world. Past broadcasts have included creating costume pieces, playing games with community members and subscribers, RPGs and more. No matter the project, peers or problem, Sheena strives to keep moving forward.

That powerful phrase we all associate with Monty.

It’s a shame that this show had to be Monty’s legacy, and that years off from now, his name isn’t going to mean anything to the public because the project he was passionate about and died making outlived him and his passion. It feels like his legacy was stolen, and his own part in the show’s legacy is held up purely as a pedestal on which the show should rightfully shine.

Every time I think about Monty, I think about how much I don’t want that to be me. For all the years I’ve spent here, with my graphics certifications being wasted since I earned them while I slave away in retail, I wonder if I’m the lucky one. If I were to enter the workforce and do what I loved, would it be worth it in the end? Would what happened to Monty and Sheena and Shane happen to me? Not sure I wanna know.

Snipped here.

#rwde #rwby

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sometipsygnostalgic · 8 months ago

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Likable vs Complex vs "Good"

EDIT: Couple people came up to me thinking of alternatives for category 3 "Good" and my favourite is Kimberly's suggestion of "effective". I think "effective" is great because it means well utilized. It's pretty much exactly what I was going for when writing the descriptions in this post.

I feel that when it comes to describing characters, there are strong differences between a

Likable character - Someone you enjoy watching, like to have on screen, might want to share a drink with. Most protagonists. Usually a blorbo with a mass fandom who says they were done wrong if theyre a side character.

Complex character - how many layers does this one have? how much do you have to talk about them to explain them? Do you see people defending them with massive text posts? Do you follow this blog? You have experience with complex characters.

"Good" character - I don't mean a good person. That is more of a "likable" characteristic. I mean, does this character serve a solid role in the story? Do they have a job, and do they perform it well? This can include minor characters you don't care for, and it can actually exclude complex characters if their motivations don't seem to make sense or have relevance to the story.

I think a "good" character can be further broken down into subcategories but it's impossible to define whether a character is good by a basic description for all series. It requires comprehension of the source material and what it's trying to do.

Allow me to illustrate this with some examples.

I was considering what show to use for this. Let's go with She-Ra for now because it's my current thing and I don't want to be roasting SU or Owl House, and I think Adventure Time is a bad fit due to how episodic it is. I'd have to categorise by season for each example. Let me know if you want me to talk about any specific characters.

Sea Hawk

Likable: Yes Complex: No Good: No

Sea Hawk is a side character in She-Ra who gets kinda sidelined. He hasn't got much to do with anything but he makes me smile when he shows up. I don't think Sea Hawk has a purpose other than to make chaotic background noise. I think that's fine? But he's not a good character and the show would lose almost nothing if he was gone.

Edit: I feel kinda bad for implying sea hawk is not a good character so remember that I mean he isn't used effectively, he doesn't have much involvement and presence. I think a key example is his absence from season 5 entirely when he could have been used more effectively and wasn't.

Light Hope

Likable: Not really Complex: Not really Good: YES

Light Hope is Adora's mentor as She-Ra who is actually manipulating her. Light Hope has a tragic story that adds to her complexity but she's deeply overshadowed by other characters in the story.

What makes her a good character is how strongly Light Hope ties to the themes of the story. Her reveal as being "actually evil" could have been shallow and bad in a different series (anyone else playing Halo recently?) but Light Hope having her agency stolen from her, just like Adora, makes it liberating and heartbreaking when she is destroyed alongside the Sword of Protection.

Light Hope represents the oppressive regime of the First Ones and the ways they would control Etheria, while being a victim herself. She heavily parallels Adora. She does not require being complex or likable to have an important impact on the story.

Micah

Likable: Yes Complex: Yes proportional to screentime Good: Not consistently

I really like Micah. He's one of my favourite side characters. So why can I not call him a good character?

It's because he only serves to drive the actions of others, and when he is onscreen as an actual character, the show doesn't know what to do with him.

Micah was "dead" for most of the show and his life and death drove the decisions of plenty of others. He learnt from Shadow Weaver and was an important part of her corruption arc, being better at magic than her but scared away by the dark magic, which ended up attacking her. His disappearance is why Angella and Glimmer's relationship is so strained, why Glimmer is so determined to prove herself, and when he was in the Portal World, both characters had to give up the "wrong future" with him to restore the world.

Micah has a character with way more depth than you'd expect from a dead dad. He has a funny likable personality and is a highly skilled mage with a variety of relationships, who has survived on an island for god knows how long.

However, this kind of speaks to him being the protagonist of his own story, and She-ra is so chock full of characters aiming to a specific goal. Micah actually being alive has very little to do with the story of season 5. He isn't part of the space mission. He has an episode with Frosta, another character who has little to do with anything, and then he gets chipped for the rest of the show.

The reason Micah ended up this way is because he's a complex character in a story that has no room to do anything with him. He's not the only victim of season 5's crunch time, far from it, but he never got any screentime or "arc" and his actions don't tie in to the show very much.

Glimmer

Likable: No Complex: Yes Good: Yes

Edit: I'm guessing this one was what got me flack? But Glimmer is easily in my top 3 favourite characters and imo she is the character i by far most greatly resemble. I used her here because I think she's a much more interesting example of a disliked yet very well written character than Catra for this post. But it's evident, if you look at the fandom behaviour, casual viewers don't like her much. People either love her for her everything or kind of hate her, and she's treated badly in a lot of fanfic. The reasons for this exist in the show's writing and framing and how people interpret her. She's far from the first blorbo of mine to exist in these conditions, i mean just look at PB from AT who is a thousand times more hated but also the best character.

So Glimmer's likability yoyos significantly across the series, she's far from the most offensive abrasive friend character, but she's one of the least likable characters in She-Ra. This is down to the show not having any particularly unlikable characters apart from Shadow Weaver, if I'm honest, and Glimmer's constant rubbing against other far more liked characters such as Adora, Bow, Catra, so on.

Glimmer is annoying as a bare minimum and nasty as shit at other times, going through challenges that turn her against her friends and make her seek power and lash out against others.

However, these are flaws the show is hyper aware of and has baked into her story. They are all part of what makes her Glimmer, they are all what makes her so memorable and interesting.

It is the push and pull of Glimmer's courage, her desire to be there for her friends, with her insecurities about being weak, her failure to protect her mother, that mean... When Glimmer is handed the powers of the moonstone and offered tutoring in magic, you're giving a powerless beaten down puppy a MACHINE GUN. Of course she's going to use that power ineffectively.

Complexity doesn't always make a good character. If you look at Steven Universe or even Adventure Time, you have a lot of complex characters in that series who fail to serve any strong role, or who zigzag in so many directions taht you can no longer make sense of their motivations.

However, Glimmer's motivations are not only internally consistent across the entire series, the show gives her a complete character arc where she goes from a powerless brat, to a responsible commander, to a brokenhearted powerhouse, to someone who understands where she fucked up and is trying very very hard to lead her friends into a hopeful future using the very same character traits that led her to go astray - Her love, courage, and rage.

There are a couple of weaknesses for Glimmer. I would say mainly that the show goes too far to make her snap at Adora in season 4. I don't think she needed to go that far, and it would've been fine if they dealt with it properly in season 5, but Adora and Glimmer's relationship is completely brushed over in season 5. Adora and Glimmer aren't the only victims of this - there is Micah, and season 5 is the difference between Scorpia being a good character vs an "ok" character - but it is a very very good story, and it's hard to say how it could've improved these characters with the timeframe that it had.

Entrapta

Likable: Yes Complex: No Good: Yes

What makes Entrapta different from Micah and Glimmer and Sea Hawk is that she's a very basic, likable character, but she has a severe impact on every single season on the show. Entrapta is second to Catra, in my opinion, in terms of making a "good" character in She-ra, but she doesn't require any of Catra or Glimmer's complexity to get there.

Entrapta's character does not change much, but she does have challenges, which tie strongly to the base themes of She-ra - understanding, acceptance and love. Entrapta is thrown around the plot like a pinball but her movements are being noticed by all the other characters. When she joins the Horde, it changes both the Horde and the Rebellion. She puts Hordak on his path to independence. She's a big reason Catra descended into desperation, going through a repeat of the cycle of abuse. She's also why Adora and Glimmer went into hardcore martyrdom, though that has less to do with Entrapta herself and more to do with how her "death" triggered their prior conditioning. She did the runestone experiment, and created the portal. And when Entrapta is removed from the equation, it is a major catalyst for other characters to step into the hole she left behind.

But while these feats are impressive, they don't say much about Entrapta herself. What makes her a good character and not just a plot device?

Well, Entrapta has an internal logic and a strong sense of personality that is present throughout the show. While other mad scientists might act randomly and not have much character going on, Entrapta has an entire arc that has less to do with science and is instead focused on her goal of connection. She has a deep love for science but also for friendship and she wants to connect those things together, she wants to express love through her science and be liked for who she is.

That's what makes her compelling and likable. It's not that deep but it ties in to everything she does. It's what connects her to the other characters.

That's why Entrapta can seamlessly work with the good guys, and the bad guys, and be ideologically opposed to the true big bad of the series just as the rest of the characters are, without having to change much as a person or to be that complex. The show moves her around where she is most effective at serving its story themes as her current self, and she never has a period of inactivity in the story even when absent. And she never has to do anything that contradicts her previous actions.

I have strong opinions on other series. I'm thinking a lot about SU, because it's full of complex characters who get discarded, but also I'm thinking about Princess Bubblegum. I think I'd rate Princess Bubblegum differently for every season of Adventure Time.

#she ra #spop #glimmer #entrapta

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ofbreathandflame-archive · 1 year ago

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Mor is “Lying by Omission” and not Nesta when she lies to those men she was sleeping around with about her virginity? Nesta stans and y’all constant contradictions and stupid talking points

alright — you only come up with a response like this if you’ve fundamentally misunderstood what the problem is here.

(1) i think its an argument that can absolutely be made -- and considering sjm's writing history, i think we can at least draw parallels. i don't know you sent this as a gotcha -- the whole point im making is that writing that does into these characters is a consequence of sjm not writing them with care. that means that all of the characters fall consequence to the shitty writing. if you believe so -- then sure, make the argument. the problem is that the issues outside of the characters are being exploited. i really do dislike the the theme in her stories of people withholding pivitol pieces of information from people under the guise of love.

(2) the situation you're referencing isn't quite the same thing. not for the argument i was making, at least. first cassian immediately stops having sex with mor when he realizes what happened -- that in itself displays the difference between these two situation.

nesta doesn’t owe her sexual partners a summary of her sexual history. she’s just having a one night stand. second, the circumstances around nesta having sex aren’t being altered. the fear is centered around cassian finding out -- which means nothing because as of that point in the story, nesta has vehemently expressed no interest in cassian. nesta isn’t lying about being engaged to cassian, she isn’t specifically having sex with someone with the intent to accomplish something else. but in theory, if you wanted to make the argument, there’s definitely room to make it. morrigan specifically chooses cassian bc she wanted to lie down with "the greatest" which definitely a conversation for another day. she does choose him though -- to make a point to her family. which IS complex and NOT bad writing inherently. does mor owe cass a summary about her sexual history? - no. the problem isn't the virginity, its the lying. inherently the virginity thing isn't bad; but the story goes to great lengths to reiterate that this situation specifically enormous. AGAIN cassian IMMEDIATELY stops having sex with mor once he realizes she lied. he immediately recognizes the problem. he would not have even had sex with had he known the reality of the situation:

he’d done it, and regretted it at that very first thrust, when he’d felt her maidenhead yield to him, and realized the enormity of what she’d done

(3) the point isn’t that mor isn’t a victim, or that her situation isn’t worthy of empathy. the problem at hand a purely a writing problem. that’s really the point. the situation is (at the very least) complex. morrigan situation is complex and of intrigue. the problem is that the writing doesn't hold these issues to be dear enough to write with care.

(4) morrigan is badly written because she is constantly thrown away and minimized by the writing. huge swathes of people literally left the fandom because of how badly conceptualized more became after acomaf (subjective ofc - but this has been an issue in the fandom since the release of acowar).

(5) i just want the issues to properly acknowledged, i don't quite care about the feelings for the characters, i just think that sometimes people should take a step back and understand the concepts behind the characters. esp bc earlier in that thread people were literally justifying tamlin's abuse of lucien bc they argued that his actions during his abuse negated any ideas of victimhood, and that feyre is allowed to get her 'deserts' by having tamlin beat the hell out of lucien. like the argument being presented wasn't consistent and it just fell into abuse apologism. which is...definitely not conscious, thoughtful scholarship.

#anti sjm #anti sjm: morrigan #anti sjm: cassian #anti sjm: nesta archeron #anti acosf #great deal of typos srry

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theweeklydiscourse · 8 months ago

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I think one of my biggest grievances with ACOTAR is how the family dynamics is written and how the author offers no explanation at all, just expects the readers to move on. Feyre's father not even acknowledging the existence of the youngest daughter who was keeping them all alive, nesta's general cold indifference to feyre's life and an obvious preference for elain (we honestly don't see any prove of that aside from some words, typical of sjm) should've been explained by now yet we still don't get an answer for any of it and if we do the books as well as the fandom gaslights you into thinking you're just "hating" "move on" or "feyre forgave so it's okay" like idc about forgiveness I just need answers! I think the readers totally deserve to know why the main freaking character was treated in such an abusive way as by her family when their treatment of her is what shapes her and her falling for the first man who took care of her, a direct consequence of their treatment. Your MC's backstory is too important to just brush off like that.

Nesta's strained relationship with Feyre was such a huge part of her character like she was almost defined by that so it absolutely boggles my mind that she and feyre don't have a single meaningful conversation that gives the readers some answers and of nothing else then a resolution (kind of what we got in book 1 before sjm destroyed it). I feel like it's the lack of resolution between the sisters Nesta & Feyre in particular, that has made the fandom so divided.

But their relationship isn't the only such thing, SJM has a habit of mentioning things that absolutely should matter and then forgetting about them just because wasn't feeling like it. For instance: the weird triangle between Cassian/Mor/Azriel, how Cassian was pissed that Mor never went back to him after one time and her telling him to not "be her keeper" in acomaf (or was it acowar?) none of it is ever explained. As soon as Cassian as a new shiny mate all is forgotten and we're all supposed to move on to without getting any proper answers. It's so frustrating to read a book like that yk. No wonder the fandom is ready to implode.

It’s not just a lack of resolutions because there are resolutions to the emotional conflicts between the Archerons, the issue is that Maas consistently rescinds the development that occurs throughout the story to instead write indulgent and gratuitous retreads of emotional beats that already happened.

But the true issue at hand here, is that it just doesn’t make any sense.

Sure, if we take the family dynamic in ACOTAR at face value then yes, it’s horrendous for Feyre who is essentially running herself ragged to support a family of spoiled and ungrateful individuals. Taking it at face value would mean accepting the plausibility of Feyre, a young illiterate amateur huntress, supporting 3 other adults for 5-8 years with her efforts alone. But I don’t believe that scenario to be plausible, and Maas does not do a good job of convincing me that the Archeron family dynamic is believable.

The family dynamic is manufactured for the deliberate purpose of serving ACOTAR's wish-fulfillment narrative. Feyre's suffering is supposed to be indulgent and gratuitous because it makes the eventual reward of luxury and power in Prythian that much sweeter. The problem though, is that Maas expands upon established characters later on in a manner that contradicts her initial characterizations of them. So, she doesn't consider that readers actually remember previously established concepts and characterizations and feel the friction of the story's retroactive continuity. So even when Feyre DOES forgive her sisters, readers feel frustrated because the conflict never stays buried for long (because Maas constantly retreads the same plot threads) It’s not surprising that many people cannot let go of Nesta’s previous mistakes when the narrative is still grasping onto it with a cold iron grip for NO REASON.

Also, Nesta’s obvious preference for Elain is not only nonsensical, but never truly explained. I could believe it if maybe Elain was sickly and Nesta took on the role of her protector, or if they had a degree of separation from Feyre like a significant age gap, were half-siblings or if Feyre was adopted, but there’s nothing like that in the text. I just find the idea that Nesta would treat her youngest sister like chopped liver while prioritizing the elder to be unrealistic and unnecessarily frustrating.

You’re right about this lack of resolution being a factor on the division of the fandom. People debate and argue over what information they’re supposed to take seriously and remember and what can be disregarded due to its inconsistency.

#I’m always a Nesta stan so this needs to be said #much of the frustration readers feel towards Nesta is exacerbated by SJM’s shitty writing and retcons #feyre archeron #elain archeron #nesta archeron #a court of thorns and roses #a court of wings and ruin #a court of mist and fury #acotar meta #ACOMAF #sjm critical #anti sjm #pro nesta

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dearweirdme · 2 months ago

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While 2023 was amazing to see Taekook together so much, basically every month we got them hanging out (and there was ofc more times that we don’t know, rightfully so) - I also couldn’t help to notice a difference to how they used to be around each other while the band was still doing stuff together. Maybe they feel more free or less observes when there are 5 more? Or they grew up which makes sense, they will be different due to age and also length of being together I suspect. While there were some very cute moments, there was also times where it felt a bit more awkward or JK seemed a bit annoyed by Tae / wasn’t as openly fonding / caring towards him. Sometimes even snippy. At times in this dumb AYS documentary and also during the Suchwita episode it came across that way. Maybe cause the older he gets he wants to protect it more or knows the consequences and tries to even it out a bit (for the both of them)

Hi anon!

I didn’t really see it that way. I think your comment about it being them without the other five members makes some sense though, as well as Jk being protective of his relationship.

From the top of my head (so there could be more), the only remark Jk made towards Tae that I consider something akin to snappy is when he said he wasn’t going to talk about something if it’s going to be edited out on Suchwita.. and I don’t really think that incident is something to make a big deal of. People disagree or get annoyed even when they’re in a relationship, it’s healthy even. To me Jk’s comments in AYS and the others in Suchwita were him joking/bantering. I know the other side loves to run with the ‘Jk was putting Tae in his place’ but that’s not actually what happened.

I do think it might’ve appeared somewhat different from other years.. and that’s probably due to Tae and Jk not generally being the main/solo talkers. I feel both of them usually play of the others a lot, and they weren’t able to do that much now. Fandom discourse has also been very leading in how people saw them together. Last year we had a huge push from former Tkkrs saying Jk treated Tae terribly and they took the smallest moments and overanalyzed those to the extreme. Anti’s, Jkkrs push those ideas like crazy still.

I have seen Jk annoyed at fandom comments about Tae, especially the Inkigayo one. And yes, I do feel that’s him being protective.. but also annoyed at fandom prying into his private live when he’s just there to talk about his music. Imagine being closeted and having to remain closeted and yet people in your comments keep asking you about your partner. It’s not fun. I think Jk shares what he wants about Tae on his own terms and not on anyone else’s… as does Tae btw.

I feel what’s most impactful about Tae and Jk last year is the shear volume of times they met.. and that we know of. They have been consistent, they have made seeing each other a priority it seems, during Ays we could still see how physically close and how drawn they still are to each other. What we saw of them last year, was so very much their own choice and not a result of editing.

Jk has edges, I mean.. he can absolutely be bratty and sharp and I don’t think for one second that he never points that sharpness to Tae. But, I think that’s normal. When you compare how he interacts with Tae to how he interacts with other members, I think it’s a definite that in general he interacts with Tae much more softly than he does others. I’m also pretty sure Tae doesn’t always treat Jk with gloves on either, which is also normal.

So, for me .. I think Tae and Jk were in a really good place last year. I think they probably felt enlistment hanging over their heads a lot, but it seemed to me like they really tried to make the most of the time they had.

#taekook #fandom shenanigans

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mdhwrites · 1 year ago

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The issue with Owl House is that it’s cliche in the most boring way. A show can be filled with overused tropes yet still be entertaining yet the Owl House just…isn’t.

This is why I can’t rewatch the show because it’s just not exciting enough to do so.

So I'm mostly going to focus on the rewatch value of the show here rather than the trope elements, I feel like I covered that only a couple blogs ago. For why it's a bad rewatch though: I've said before that TOH is REALLY good at introducing elements and TERRIBLE at follow through. Amity was presented with a lot of great potential in just two episodes because of how clear it was that her current relationship with success was toxic but that you also didn't necessarily want to see her fail in her goals. Then she becomes just a love interest who entirely forgets her goals and has pretty much everything we had introduced in the first two episodes she appeared in swept under the tacky rug named Odalia. Literally two of the first 5 episodes... Wasted. Almost entirely pointless because you could jump in at Lost in Language and her character reads WAY more consistent... But less compelling. She wants to be good at school but it isn't consuming her mind, even at that point despite Luz not really having discussed that part of her at all. She's much closer to a normal, driven girl rather than one demented by the need to succeed. That is frankly just less interesting, at least without ANY explanation as to why besides 'girl crush'. It's akin to how by Escaping Expulsion, she's let her grades slip and only seems to care because her parents are saying she's not allowed to have friends because of it. Or, more importantly, Luz.

That's the thing: Most of the character arcs and elements in TOH don't build on one another. Instead, you start with this really well built house that could use a few additions but it's quite serviceable as is... And then each episode takes a sledgehammer to it. Even the world counts for this. An interesting dystopia fueled by greed where being normal is prioritized over being good? Where everyone is looking for a dime and would threaten to kill you for their own gain because they know they'll get away with it so long as they do it in a normal manner? That's FASCINATING. And that is explicitly the Isles we get for about three episodes.

But then with Covention, it shrinks. Suddenly people are just a little suspicious of Eda but you start realizing that she does run a market stall in the middle of town. That without posters, people practically don't care about her bounty. Cheating is seen as unacceptable rather than what should be the norm with the lack of morals on the Isles. All while it hasn't actually examined the world it implied early on besides honestly a pretty normal con artist and the fact the school was willing to kill an intruder.

Just think about any element really. The EC/Lilith? Presented as really cool and something that could genuinely be a philosophical debate against Eda. Then their second episode is Once Upon a Swap, where they end with their leader as a dog and can't control a witch who has pretty much no control over her magic. So interesting. -_- Hunter is FAMOUS for this. The Golden Guard is an entirely different personality from Hunter himself and implies a LOT of fascinating things about him... And then they're all immediately dropped by Hunting Palisman, even small details like him being a prodigy respected in the EC. Willow is an unexpected one as her first real return is Hooty's Moving Hassle which bungled her power issues so badly, it took Sport in a Storm for the majority of the fandom to realize they were resolved in the sixth episode.

It's also why the show keeps having to add elements rather than having anything to actually expand on. Eda gets pretty much her entire character finished up by the end of S1. She could still teach Luz about potions and genuinely examine the struggle she has with the difference between little magic and no magic but... Instead she gets glyphs and a super form rather than proper character development. Then she gets a love interest that is what she focuses on for a couple episodes of the season. They even have to escalate the curse, despite it being toned down being part of the S1 climax, just because they have so little to actually do with her at this point. They've accelerated her character so quickly past all the things she supposedly cared about that they have to grasp at straws for what can be pulled back. It's why Willow and Amity take effectively an entire season to follow up on the end of Understanding Willow because at that point, they're desperate for Amity to be able to do ANYTHING that isn't just Luz. It's why she suddenly gives a shit about her father out of NOWHERE. It's why Gus has to have the same problem rehashed three times but tackled at with his only two character traits and then sudden anxiety issues that technically aren't out of character but still feel like they came out of nowhere. Because if the show isn't adding something to a character, it only has so much room to go, at least from how the writers seemed to have thought.

It's actually part of why Luz is so incredibly stagnant in S1. Her character is actually really basic and the show itself has NO INTEREST in multiple elements of it. She can be described in the first episode as a bullied girl who is an outcast from normal people with a desire to live out a fantasy instead and has a good heart. Now that first half, the bullied girl who is an outcast, is jettisoned for the sake of making Luz's transition into the Isles easier/selling the idea of the Isles as a place she/the viewer want to be in easier. She never has social anxiety or the like, or even struggles to make friends and connections, because that would get in the way of seemingly what the writers actually care about like their romance plots and her wish fulfilment. So if you don't have those elements then all you have is her desire to live out a fantasy and that she has a good heart.

And for like half the show, that pretty much doesn't change at all. It's why a lot of the episodes with her effectively come down to her making a mistake because she wants to live out an Azura book, implicitly (Teenage Abomination) or explicitly (Covention), but then her good heart makes her set things right. And that is fine for your MC. It actually worked to keep her unobtrusive from the other characters as they worked through their arcs and lessons. MCs like this work well in general honestly. I've referenced Danny Phantom and Randy Cunningham as characters who fit this archtype, who also are pretty basic as both are teenage boys who would like to be popular but also have good hearts that will cause them to do the right thing even if it humiliates them, and those shows are great! There are issues with the style, and Luz has PLENTY OF THEM, but they work for a base.

But part of her stagnancy and issues with the trope is that she never seems to learn anything. That's because of TOH's problem of only tearing a character apart... Until it replaces. Lilith isn't Lilith anymore. She's now the cool aunt. Eda was practically never criminal or anarchist. She's just Momma Eda. The Golden Guard never existed, there's only the sad but mad boy. Etc. Etc.

The old character and their history do not exist and the new one... Is usually summed up really easily. Usually just with the statement of "A generally nice person." But having excised all of that old potential also means they can't do a lot with these characters without seeming to go back on their character development. This is why we get Hunter as a new Amity so someone can do her angst a second time since they decided to race past it all. It's why we get romance added more heavily because there are still tropes they can do with that genre and even love interests they can add. Why nothing gets explored because the show was so impatient to get to the big moments it wanted, even before the shortening since that mostly didn't affect the first half of the series so stuff like Amity's rushed development was not something forced on them, that it lost out on the chance to do the actually interesting ideas they pitched in the first place. Remember how Luz and Eda were pitched at the beginning as student/mentor? Theoretically, as the two main characters? And how after Adventure in the Elements, they have two plots together where they speak for more than like a minute with each other. Stranger Tides and Titan Where Art Thou, the latter of which actually rehashes a concept from literally a season ago (Grom) because they just forgot about Luz wanting Eda's approval until then.

All of this, all of this rambling, makes it so that while I am a firm proponent for the journey meaning more than the destination... It's hard to want to go back on that journey. To constantly be like "This is the best this character will ever be," through the first half of the show, if that, and then have only a couple character climaxes to look forward to. Worse yet is that even these introductory episodes HINGE on payoffs down the line, like Understanding Willow. That potential was part of what made them good when honestly a lot of them are kind of boring without the novelty of the potential story they're setting up. Knowing there's no payoff just makes the setup INFURIATING.

It also makes it really easy to understand why so many praised it so much harder early on. It comes out of the gate swinging but its punches have no follow through so when S1 was done and everything was introduced, the potential for the show was laid bare, we got HUNDREDS of animatics. We got thousands of comics. The fandom has NEVER thrived harder.

But by even the hiatus in S2... There's a reason why a LOT of people jumped onto Clarvee like ravenous hounds. A reason why a lot of people jumped onto Huntlow when it started being teased. Kept jumping to new elements being added because the old ones were left to rot, if they weren't actively sabotaged.

And the finale for a lot of people so actively contradicted one of those early statements, one of those early novelties people pointed to for why an okay episode was better than it was, that it really feels like it fractured the fandom. A lot of people saw Luz become a chosen one, literally empowered by God with no consequences and little work, and one of those things that people praised from episode 2... Shattered.

And suddenly they realized that strong house they thought they'd lived in the entire series had so many holes in it from the sledgehammers that it all simply fell as if it were always a house of cards.

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

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

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

A Twitter you can follow too

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

#the owl house criticism #toh critical #toh #the owl house

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