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fountainpenguin · 4 months ago

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Riddle watches New Wish - Post #25

Fairy For a Day

FAIRY CON!!! Third appearance SWEEP!

Okay, now THIS is more useful to me in setting up a timeline. Definitely saving that.

"Cosmo and I look forward to this convention all year!" -> Yeah, you've gone 3 times since meeting Timmy; I bet you do.

I actually own a Cosmo Con button IRL and it's precious to me <3

?? So... "Cosmo Con" and this episode both went with godkids not being at Fairy Con, but we know from the Season 10 "Fairy Con" episode, Timmy's gone every year. Hmm.

If we see the same tents that appeared in both "Cosmo Con" and "Fairy Con," I'm gonna lose it.

Fairy Con is at the CASTLE?? Are they allowed to do that?? We never get to go inside the castle!! I wonder if the Fairy King is still implied to be either dead or abandoned his throne, or...?

Hey wtf, Jorgen put his office on top of the Castle?? I missed that, if that's come up before.

oh my gosh, I can't believe even in the spin-off, King Northiae and Prince Eastkal are still out of the picture... Lmao??

"Eastkal appear onscreen when he's not dying" challenge (Impossible)

Disclaimer, they don't have canon names. These names come from my 'fics where I've written them alive and interacting with people until the war, so these random background characters have significance to me <3

We did see the title Fairy King in "Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour 1," but he was mysteriously absent then and any other episode about Fairy World, and "Balance of Flour" (the episode this screenshot is from) confirms the people I'm talking about were important in Fairy society even if we didn't have their names.

slkdfjskdljf, they're still getting their tickets scanned. And everything goes off without a hitch?? Somewhere out there, Chloe - who lost her ticket and was banned - is staring into the void.

Hazel looking at her cosplay options: Hmm, what's my fairy vibe? :)

She's so cute.

I'm glad Cosmo and Wanda's friends just... have accepted their goofiness and it doesn't damage their friendship.

Hmm. Godkids were able to attend in previous years, but not this time. I have suspicions Hazel will run into another godkid even though she snuck in.

Presumably Dev, but this would be a fun place to reveal a new kid (or see nods to OG characters)

OMFG, I know these are probably meant to be candles, but I said in Post #5 that I've always used these interior decorations in worldbuilding as memorials and/or representations of the soul:

- and they're so important in Fairy culture that in Frayed Knots Chapter 27, Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Sanderson used their presence or absence to check which Fairy homes had been evacuated from the fire. So... I just find this very funny :'D For incredibly specific reasons.

(Hazel's little hand gripping the pole)

SDLKFJSDF. Memorial for people lost to magical back-up this year.

I mean... I didn't think it was that serious considering Cosmo and Wanda have survived exploding from magical back-up multiple times, but... Good to know sometimes you don't survive?

Holy flip, this makes the Fairies dropping H.P. and Sanderson on earth and forcing them to drive / bike home without using magic so much darker. hey wtf.

Technically I did headcanon Pixies as getting inspiration back-up if they didn't inspire people to innovate rather than the magical back-up route, but... basically the same thing.

I just saw the Musical ending to get this screenshot and ?? I'm so glad Flappy stayed long enough to see Gary and Betty take over and make changes to the Learnatorium? In my memory, he ditched them instantly, but I'm glad he was there to make sure they'd be okay without him <3

F in the chat for Betty toppling over from a heart attack and Gary freaking out in the background while Flappy is partying onstage. lol.

I wonder if this is how Fairies pass when they're old as well, like if whatever magic they have at that age becomes too much for their physical forms.

Hm. Okay, so is the canon we're going with for New Wish that Fairies leave confetti when they die? In the OG series, it's heavily implied Fairies turn to dust and that's why Jorgen freaks out when he finds glittery dust on Cosmo and Wanda's beds in "Fairy Idol," but I'll take it! That's clever, and it's close.

Interesting move considering one of the Season 1 episodes depicts Cosmo exploding from magical back-up, because it's not like it was buried randomly in Season 7 or something- It's one of the things that people are first likely to encounter.

But I'm not really picky; just noting it down as a reminder to myself that this show is a spin-off and AU and I shouldn't try to jump through hoops to see if it will fit in my canon-compliant-with-OG-series Cloudlands AU. It's still fun to watch and this is a creative spin on the OG magical back-up!

I'm glad we're still playing into "Fairies don't leave skeletons and all the skeletons we keep leaving in jails are fake." lmao. Iirc, the canon from "Wishology" was "Halloween party that never got cleaned up."

I think bones are just really freakin' scary to people who are elastic and turn to dust. Like, what the heck is a skeleton? A dead human?? omg. doin' me a frighten.

Oh, maybe confetti is for this death specifically and other deaths can still be dust. Yeah, I'm good with that.

I was totally prepared for some kind of familiar face to show up on the board, like Mama Cosma or Big Daddy or Juandissimo, but I'm glad it didn't. But Cosmo and Wanda are going to be in trouble, probably later this episode...

Presto, old manager from the diner? Gonna make a note.

I like this tent dedicated to sleight of hand.

skdjf, you get a close-up on this tent in a moment and this guy also has the Shakespeare for Mimes book that kids always have at school. Reused assets...

?? There was one tent in the background I saw that made me say "Huh, they didn't put any detail inside this one except some boxes that haven't been unpacked," but I like how we get a new angle on it and it's just called Mystery Crates. That's fantastic.

I am OBSESSED with the fact that we are in the Pink Castle courtyard, so of COURSE there are still crossed wand symbol tapestries hanging on the walls. I love how much thought was put into the location.

I like the tent that says [word]-Free Books. I wish I could see what that first word was. I hope it's something like Curse-Free Books.

I'm LOSING IT at Hazel once again reminding us she likes paperwork.

Oh, and Wanda backed me up on that! ... PLEASE let her meet the Pixies, I am begging.

Surely they're setting us up for that someday. There's an established species that does paperwork and writes contracts. It's right there... We even have the cube head model already in play! My favorite boys are so close, I can taste it... and yet, so far.

I will actually have a meltdown if I get to see H.P. again. It's such a foreign concept, I can't even imagine. I just really miss him... I watched "Oddlympics" recently and it made me sad.

I wonder if Hazel likes official documents because she likes researching rocks :) Girls only want one thing and it's wonderful

Wow. I can't believe it's that easy? You can just sign a paper and be a fairy? Lol.

???? This feels like such a dangerous plot thread to play with. There's a million ways you could swing this. Are some Fairies former humans who chose the magical life?

Where is Timmy. Did he find out about this? I'm stressin' out...

Actually, wait... Godkids aren't supposed to be here. It's probably fine.

Now that Hazel's made herself a fairy, she's gonna experience magical back-up if she's not careful.

Oh, I love her dark, sparkly purple hair.

Holy flip, batgirl-

That's not the direction I thought this episode was going??

Oh no... And right after Dev's gone looking for Anti-Fairy info? He's gonna flip... This spells trouble...

I'm delighted Lezah was born in a gray smoke cloud like Foop :>

?? I like that she has a snaggletooth. I personally gave Teen & Adult Foop a snaggletooth in my design for him, but I think I like Lezah's blatant "the rest of her teeth are flat and she only has this one fang" vibe better than what I went with for him.

I think I already said this in Irep's debut, but... If Anti-Cosmo shows up, is he going to debut with the name Osmoc; is that legit the direction we're going? Lol.

At this point, seeing as Irep's griping implies he didn't have a choice in changing his name, and Lezah is the 2nd Anti-Fairy to have a backwards name (With Hazel and us as audience only knowing these guys in New Wish), I feel like they HAVE to commit to Osmoc and Adnaw.

I feel like they're trying to make it easier to distinguish them or at least so they can have cool names or something, but I feel like that's actually harder on the audience?? At least without subtitles.

A lot of people headcanon Nega-Timmy as Timmy’s anti when they do fairy designs of him, so… Ymmit??

Anxiety girl...

Lezah: You're not cool and it's about time you knew. Hazel: If anyone already knew I wasn't cool, it was me.

oh no <3

Huh. That's a lot of blue structure. I like it.

I appreciate how Lezah, in traditional Anti-Fairy fashion, got bored in 2 seconds. I think that's the best part of Fairy-Pixie-Anti-Fairy dynamics to me:

- Fairies are nervous and jumpy, but they calm down when they have structure and rules. So the Pixies always take over by giving them new rules to follow and no one makes a fuss; Timmy always has to step in and rescue them because the Fairies (except Binky) just go along with it. - Anti-Fairies are super restless and bad at sitting still. They can't handle boredom, which means they can't focus on rules or plans. Even when they make plans, we know Anti-Cosmo gets so distracted that he switches pen colors throughout his notes, implying he leaves and comes back 4 or 5 times before completing one sheet of paper... which is probably why Anti-Cosmo defers to the Head Pixie, who gives off "knows what he's doing" vibes. lol. - Luckily for everyone, H.P., is always down to relinquish everything he took over for raves and soda <3

Shout-out to the totally real upcoming plot of Lezah kicking every rock she sees into the void because Hazel loves rocks

Saving Hazel's signature for my collection:

I like how Timmy and Hazel both sign fae contracts with only their first name. I hope this means H.P. would also call her Hazel at least sometimes... He used to call Timmy "Turner" most of the time, but he called him "Timmy" when he was prank-calling him <3

Holy flip, I can't believe Cosmo and Wanda touched butterfly nets so they could catch balloons. I think it would've been funny if they caught each other on accident.

Purple road gives me the same energy as Fairy World's purple grass in "Odd Squad."

Okay, so... the Big Wand is now inside the castle? Interesting.

??? I'm curious about what the logic is in designing Irep with a cube head. Lezah doesn't have one.

Me, who has an established square mutation in my 'fics, but it's for Pixies and not transferrable to Anti-Fairies :'D

Hm. Well, it is a kids' show. Maybe they weren't sure kids would recognize him without the cube head.

I'm sorry, I hate to be the one to say it, but... Since Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda were alone when Foop was born, do you think anyone ever thinks Foop has a Pixie parent? At this point, I'd be shocked if the Pixies didn't have square heads in this show, so ??

If A.C. and A.W. show up without cube heads when cube heads are established in this universe, I just feel like there would be questions of legitimacy??

Does Irep just look like that on purpose because he likes it? He WAS a cube for (implied) way longer than other anti-fairy babies, and the only other anti-fairy baby we've seen wasn't a cube but was of ambiguous age, so... Hmm. Is it just HIS biology? Does it run in his family? Huh. Well. Okay.

You want to give us pixies; you wanna reuse your cube head model for pixies so bad...

Them...

Those eyelash designs are super clever. Also, I like how the lightest parts of Hazel's sweater match the darkest parts of Lezah's shirt.

I'm really glad Fairy-Hazel is not immune to getting upset by her counterpart. I'm glad she's not trying to befriend Lezah; I'm not the biggest fan of counterparts getting along well. It's great. Give me weird complexity and bullied children <3

I was going to make a joke about how I couldn't believe Lezah had better magic when she was just born, but then she screwed up her magic and that's hilarious.

Hazel: I don't want more of me! I want less of you!

Brutal.

I like how we've been going the direction of "Hazel is a person who overthinks things." I'll definitely keep that in mind, because I didn't see that in the early episodes, but it seems to be a thing recently.

Lezah is 3 seconds away from dying. oh no.

She GONE!

..... I'm really uneasy about where the magical backup lore is going since it wasn't relevant in this episode. We've got a storm on the horizon, I'm sure. :'D Also that chip powering the Big Wand is definitely coming back.

I assume Lezah is a one-off character. I really like how much thought and detail was put into her design in spite of that.

Fingers crossed for Anti-Wanda to get a mild redesign (Ex: new clothes) if she ever shows up.

Me staring into the void: Hey, why were we shown the Hocus Poconos earlier in the season, and should I be worried that we're making new, detailed characters and ditching them?

slkdjf ?? Literally on the floor that King Northiae and Prince Eastkal have a second chance to indicate to me they're not totally dead, but we're not taking it. SKLDFJSDF.

I mean ?? I don't know what I expected since it's heavily implied the Fairies and Anti-Fairies called a truce to end the war after Eastkal's death, but...

Nobody cares about these background characters who appeared only once in a flashback in Season 7, but I care!! Eastkal, my baby!! D:

Stuck In My Head

For some reason, it's funny to me that Dev eats cafeteria food despite being rich and lactose intolerant.

I was going to make a joke about Winn being allowed to wear a hat in school, but I don't think I can when we had Timmy Turner.

I really enjoy these characters with new hair styles, especially after 3 notable characters with the same hair for so long (Timmy, Cosmo, Vicky, Anti-Cosmo). I always struggle drawing their hair and I'd like to draw some new guys :)

Dev has had some bad times lately, but he's SO ready for lunch.

Hazel, on the heels of the overthinking episode: I am once again overthinking myself into oblivion.

I love Hazel's parents. I love how Cosmo and Wanda are totally down to dance. They used to love dancing <3

I like how the Hazel museum has Hazel's drawings from past episodes.

Oh, I'm sad we can't treat everything here seriously. The fact she wants to be a comic book artist is likely true, but her inventing the sun... I don't think so.

I wonder if Hazel's going to learn something she doesn't even know about herself.

Oh no... Hazel's anxiety led her to try getting rid of stuff that embarrassed her by throwing it down the trapdoor she was warned to never, ever open... That’s so funny… She is 10.

The mind worm concept is funny and engaging. Nothing much to say except I enjoyed the bit with the bird and all of Hazel's negative thoughts.

Mind Worm: wow, what a loser thought you are. can't even exist outside a child's mind. lmao. cringefail.

Hazel loves and trusts her mom so much <3 She's saying things her mom's surely taught her.

Another good moral, and more fun Hazel lore. Hazel's got a good home life and we still get to see some messy parts of her, so I really enjoy that.

Winn and Jasmine adore Hazel and her creativity so much.

Mind the Gap

Uh-oh, Hazel's friends just made it clear they notice Hazel's tooth gap all the time...

Geez, Hazel was doing (mostly) fine in the early episodes of the season, and ever since her fight(s) with Dev, she's gone from 0 to 300 in the anxiety department. Girl, are you ok?

Crying, I love how Hazel's hiding spot is the janitor's closet. She's been going there ever since Episode 1. I'm so glad we get to see her struggle.

Tooth Fairy!!! I knew she'd be here for a tooth episode, and after Cupid's redesign, I was wondering if she'd change much. She looks the same and tbh, I enjoy that.

??? I was going to make a joke during Lezah's ep, I think, about how the DMV keeps coming up and it's always different. I should've made that joke. It clearly wasn't just me.

I'm disappointed they made a "Seal the deal" joke with the tooth exchange program and did not seal Hazel's tooth into her mouth with dentistry.

Jasmine: Did you get your gap filled? How'd you get a new tooth so fast? Hazel: Uh... the Internet?

slkdfj, oh no.

omg, H.P. and Sanderson would think Guzman is the coolest. I miss them so much...

I like how Hazel's mom was disappointed with her (Hazel's tooth) for booing her dad, but instead of snapping at her, she just gently suggested Hazel spend some time alone in her room. She's so good. I love her <3

I'm glad Cosmo and Wanda went to get their mail in human form again. They love mail so much.

skldfj, oh... They actually DO love mail.

If there's candy and soda at the tooth party, I'm going to lose it.

I am SO GLAD Jorgen is at the Tooth Fairy's gala! He supports his WIFE!!!!!!

SLKDFJSDLKF, there's soda at the party! Cosmo and Wanda are gonna get so drunk... They won't onscreen, but I'll know.

This is the final episode before season finale. I hope they get some good rest or they're gonna be hungover at a very bad time. oh no.

AAAH, it wasn't just coincidence! I was unsure since the gala was full of familiar models, but Jorgen IS here on purpose! He even dressed up nice for it!!

He loves his wife!!

#Riddle watches FOP #New Wish spoilers #Pending Hazel tag #Pending Lezah tag #Dragonfly parents #FAIRIES!#screenshots #Fairy For a Day #Stuck In My Head #Pending Dev tag #The toughest tag #Long post

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xserpx · 1 month ago

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Arcane's Viktor?

How I feel about this character?

I love him! I think the best things about Viktor are how understated he is (he's a quiet guy who gets a lot done!), and the way his disability is portrayed. It's clear that despite being so close with one another there's still a ton of unspoken guilt and frustration between Viktor and Jayce, and I like how Viktor never lets Jayce off the hook when he makes ignorant comments. The political/class commentary in the show is good in part because of how well written and nuanced Viktor is, because of how he has a foot in both Piltover and Zaun. I also love how we get to know more about life in Zaun through Viktor's childhood, and he provides additional emotional weight to the problem of the environmental impact and carelessness of Piltover's excesses. As much as he thrives in Piltover, he's always in Jayce's shadow, he's never going to be on that same level, and even though he never voices a complaint about not sharing the credit/limelight, nor do I think he would genuinely want it if it was given, I still feel like it's an inequality and that Viktor deserves so much more praise for his achievements.

Also his opalescent Machine Herald eyes are the prettiest eyes I've ever seen in an animated show tbh. I could stare at them all day.

All the people I ship romantically with this character?

Jayce, obviously. Not opposed to the MelJayVik poly romance either. I also like Skye and Viktor, requited or not, Skye was so incredibly sweet.

My non-romantic OTP for this character?

Possibly Mel & Viktor in a platonic sense, bonded by their love for Jayce. Interestingly I don't feel the same about Cait & Viktor, despite Cait's friendship with Jayce, I think the class issues are kind of too big a barrier to overcome there 🤔 Sevika and Viktor could be great together as well. She would adopt him immediately.

My unpopular opinion about this character?

Not sure how unpopular it is but I much prefer Jayce to Viktor 🥲 And I really do love Viktor, but I just think Jayce is the better, more interesting character overall. Oop.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I really wish we'd seen more of Viktor & Skye before the stuff that's going on with them in Season 2. As much as Viktor presumably read her diary and whatnot, the glimpses we get of Skye beforehand aren't quite enough for me to buy into her being his companion in the Arcane realm. I think it would hurt so much more if they'd actually been on the cusp of a relationship, rather than it being wholly unrequited.

I'm intrigued to see how much of Viktor's story will end up as a Faustian cautionary tale. My theory is that Viktor is a Faust-esque doomed scientist in that, like Singed, he's trying to extend life with a finite amount of power gifted to him by an unknowable force that will ultimately destroy him, and Jayce is a Frankensteinian doomed scientist in that he's haunted by his own terrible invention and they are doomed to destroy each other, but we'll have to see if that theory still holds up next week.

#arcane #arcane spoilers #viktor arcane

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candyskiez · 5 months ago

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shigeo kageyama for the ask game!

I'm assuming you mean Mob, also I have another ask for ???% because. It is my brand apparently. We stay winning. Anyway onto the actual ask let's go

How I feel about this character: Absolutely love him. First character I've ever related to so much. Literally nothing about him I can't somehow connect to myself. He means the world to me. Had me crying by episode five. His arcs so good and says so much on its own that I feel like theres nothing really to say because it said it all itself y'know? You already know why Mobs arc is so great and well written. You already know why his arc made me burst into tears.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: Terumob and Emimob, but tbh I am a multi shipper by trade. If you write it well enough or pitch it well enough I can be convinced to pretty much any ship to ever exist.

Non romantic relationships: Literally every single platonic relationship Mob has is great. I cannot possibly choose. Mob psycho has so many great platonic relationships that I'm incapable of choosing that's a first and also great. Tsumobi and Mob has been on the brain lately though...thinks about Mob having someone who he hasn't spoken to in years yet her kindness and acceptance shaped him permanently and he completely forgot about it. Like? Augh? OUGH?

Unpopular opinion: I wish people focused more on Mob's side of Terumob. Like it's all about Teru's side of it and I like that, I do, but also. I feel like Mob having to sort through his lingering resentment of Teru and also try to figure out Does he actually want a relationship or has he made up a version of someone again. How DOES he feel about Teru, what does he want with him, how does he tell how he feels about Teru and why he feels it? I feel like Mobs whole tendency to repress all his feelings about someone, good and bad, is really interesting to explore and I dunno, I wish the complicated aspects were explored more. Mob and Teru's canon relationship is FASCINATING. I like messing around with different scenarios of them.

Thing I wished happened in canon: I wish they'd kept him smacking Reigen with the cake. This is not just me wanting Reigen to get owned. I believe it added a lot. But also haha funny cake scene. Y'know.

#mp100 #mp100 spoilers #candyskiez asks #mutual spotted

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cloudninetonine · 2 years ago

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*hands you a mug of coffee, blinks at the wink and nudge and squints while downing my own mug* ... Well I now have One (1) Sleep Deprived Fear and way too many theories. Though I wouldn't want to bother you with them and sleep deprivation won't let me articulate them xD

On another note, hope you're doing good today. And on a scale of one to ten, how concernedly would Player react if I just, took one of my two guitars, and smashed it hard against both Chrono's and Paradox's heads and knees to vibe check them? Out of curiosity (I have a hot pink one as a gag gift and spare, may as well put it to good use), or a heated frying pan? Also an absolute mood on regards to Leon.S.Kennedy.

Something something, Craein and Player piece in the works (I feel bad for Wild's and Twilight's villain doubles, but at the same time not really, go get some fucking therapy before trying to get near the Guide you crazy hyenas doomed by the narrative, also Craein and Player literally just being the spiderman meme for a couple of seconds) along with the Lora two shot because I have no self control (confirming Oh Hellos and Celtic Woman songs will be used). Snippets incoming once I'm less sleep deprived.

Something something, Fairy Instinct moment for the boys can be when Player is wearing green because funnily enough it's actually a color the Fae are very protective off and they can get offended if people they don't approve of wear it, so Hyrule, his shadow and Time just gravitate towards Player even more than normal when they wear green because not only is it a color associated with the heroes but also with the Fae, and some cultures have the medieval custom of braiding flowers in the intended's hair during courtships or of placing flower crowns, so Player just nonchantly braiding flowers into a Link's hair while they frantically and internally PANIC because they can't tell if Player is saying they want something serious or not, honestly the one's most affected would likely be Hyrule and Wild due to the nature of their eras (Downfall and Post Calamity specially, y'all telling me rings wouldn't be rare/expensive make unless someone brought the materials beforehand? Specially promise rings and the sorts if you don't go to the right place? Actually maybe Twilight and Time too, I don't know why I can see that as an Ordonian or Kokiri custom, throw in Dawn on that ring too, Flora not so much because she literally missed years of culture evolution holding the calamity back, she probably still slips into pre Calamity customs), Add in the fact it's basically an unspoken promise and the boys just internally die. Also Player taking a cue from Princess Bride and just saying "As you wish." Whenever they chicken out of actually saying I love you to the Links or Zelda's and the sheer and utter bafflement or confusion, though I feel like some of them might be able to put two and two together.

Anyway, I'll be napping now, see y'all after TOTK probably.

-Just an Awkward and Tired Summertime Musician.

Sum, if Player saw you beat both Paradox and Chrono with your guitar they'd probably just join you via their boots and kick some teeth in- these men will experience no mercy with them IOUFDHFI

Leon Kennedy, once again, could tear my heart out and I would only ask he be gentle with it as it now belonged to him. (God I am so down bad for this man)

Also I'm excited for the fics! That your time tho (By now tho you've probably written a novel 💀💀💀 I'm sorry ya'll)

Also from your idea with the green comes another idea- (Not this isn't canon before anyone asks) Green being a very prestigious and expensive colour to wear due to it's association with the fae (and is often a gift from fairies to Hylians and is why most of the boys wear green) so when other fairies find out about the "Guide's return!" there's just baskets of bejeweled, blessed and such clothes left for Player all in the colour of green.

#cloud answers

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anaalnathrakhs · 7 months ago

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i've had to unfollow a couple of aro-positivity blogs bc they hammer how at the same time they complain about friendships being deemed lesser than romance, and also about romantic shipping somehow ruining every canon or fanon friendship/platonic/etc thing those characters had.

"Why do you ship those characters???? Do you hate platonic friendships????" Well you see, they're friends in canon, and various relationship settings are interesting to explore between characters who have a strong bond. The same way people write pre-dating pining/falling in love/backstory/just being friends stories for canon couples. Just like sometimes people decide those two were matched in a way that doesn't jive with them and break them up in their fanfic.

"Shipping a character who doesn't have a love interest in canon is arophobia!!!" Yeah and you can only have one OTP else the characters are cheating on each other. Each pairing can only be written with a dynamic as close to canon as possible, else you just don't understand the source material. Writing an interpretation of the source means that you think that's exactly what the original writer implied, and the only correct interpretation.

"Shipping an aro character is just like making a gay character straight!!!" Neither of which are actually inherently bad and poorly handled things. Excluding making a case for characters being romance-positive/demi/gray/in qprs/etc while incorporating canon/subtext/word-of-god aro elements, because ppl writing those posts are often (rightfully) cool with it, it's also just. yknow. fine. Case-by-case, if you will. Sometimes a character dynamic would be interesting because characters are more than their orientation and also NOT REAL PEOPLE with no internal lives, likes and dislikes, boundaries, etc. You can modify things about them. It can be done in a poor manner, and denote a misunderstanding of aro issues and identities, or straight up bigotry. It can also just be that it's interesting to write about. Like genderbends for example. Many of the same arguments can be used there.

Anyway. Of course amatonormativity is real, and very present, and overwhelming, and exhausting. But the thing is that no fanfic interpretation REPLACES the original text or another interpretation. Friendships and other platonic relationships are not valued enough, given enough spotlight in media. But the answer to that isn't to chastize people for being creative and violating the integrity of a fictional character's identity. Encourage depictions and explorations of less normative relationships (not in the romantic sense of the word, all kinds of relationships), as well as the weight they hold. Educate people on aromanticism, amatonormativity, etc. I know you're already doing it, and it's not working, but trying to shame people for being creative is not gonna make it work faster.

Also re: in most cases, characters should not use therapy-speak to communicate or think, because that's not how people function in real life. Same thing applies. Just like internalize homophobia is a staple of many gay fanfics that wish to deal (however superficially and however in-depth as they'd like) with the topic, amatonormativity is going to be a feature of many fanfics about characters living in a world that, modeled after ours or not, was still created by people living in the same amatonormativity as we are. Usually, unless they actively work to insert non-amatonormative elements in their worldbuilding or specific story setting, writers will create a world through the prism of our society's amatonormativity, thus creating an amatonormative setting producing characters that think amatonormatively. It doesn't stop them experiencing things outside of the realm of that "normality", but it does influence the way they'll think and act about it.

There's few situations in which a long internal monologue about which modern queer lingo is appropriate for their feelings doesn't feel a bit shoehorned (and no hate if you want to write or read a feelgood piece instead of detailing internalized bigotry in all its complexity, to be clear, but that's a writing choice not a moral requirement to signify that This Author is Aro-Positive). Thus, characters will think about, act, narrate their story, etc, as they experience it, with the knowledge and vocabulary they have. Every action is only as romantic/platonic as the people doing it intend to make it, and every action you see on screen is up to your interpretation because characters don't have intentions.

I can write about two characters having sex, and not include a huge paragraph about how totally romanticism-less this whole thing is, because it would be completely out of character for them to apprehend these concepts in these words, and I don't want to tackle the WHOLE damn split-attraction model or every possible non-amatonormative way to conceptualize fuckbuddies arrangements, because I'm writing prose and not an educative guide. They fall for amatonormative ideas that are restrictive and don't encompass the full spectrum of human relationships. Hell, maybe the writer does too, even if they do challenge some other amatonormative ideas. But in any case, it does not erase any narrative of platonic feelings for those characters. The flavor-text reiterating amatonormative ideas ("this COULDN'T have been friendship" "relationships fixed them and they were so so sad and miserable before", etc) is annoying, but 1st of all educating is always better than chastizing, and 2nd of all sometimes prose is just hyperbolic like that, idk, there's notes of biphobia in how some stories highlight the character's first gay experience, but it's also just resonating and amplifying the feelings some people really do feel in these situations. That's a writing thing. Not universal to every style, but common.

yeah. non-amatonormative rep is good. less creative endeavors is bad.

#etc etc grain of salt: am i arospec? other miscellaneous infinitely nuanced answer.#that being said i AM a shipper and my experiences don't fit amatonormativity enough that i has influence the way i think abt relationships #thus you can imagine i am invested in the way i depict the subtleties of the relationships i write about #even if they are not (in text or even in metatext) assigned specific modern queer theory labels #anyway peace and relationship anarchy on planet earth. it'll take a while but progress marches on. aromanticism will be better known #and people write whatever the fuck they want #inspired by that blog who makes sweeping generalizing statements and then defends to the death how not-generalizing they are #broadcasting my misery #before you ask. yes i just like to write poorly organized and unedited thinkpieces as a hobby.

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mousegard · 2 years ago

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For the character ask game: Dorothea Arnault

ooh, dorothea! i love dorothea but man i have written so little about her...

favorite thing about them

dorothea being a classically trained singer and opera star is my absolute favorite thing about her. mainly because i have an older sister who got her degree in classical singing and is like literally dorothea irl (she works in cybersecurity now and sings on the side, what a career path)

least favorite thing about them

no a-supports with bernie or ingrid :( like i get that ingrid is offput and made uncomfortable by dorothea's reflexive flirtiness and it's a compelling flaw in her characterization that she doesn't know how to "turn it off" sometimes... i just wish that at the very least they'd had an a-support where they could kiss and make up

favorite line

does it count if i just put down "every time she sings something" because man allegra clark just kills it

brOTP

as much as i'm disappointed that her supports with bernie only go up to b i do love the idea of her and bernie as platonic friends. dorothea being the first commoner friend bernie has made since the yuri incident just feels so sweet... i love how dorothea helps bernie get over that wall and escape her father's control so she can be a bit more adventurous

OTP

there are so many dorothea ships that i just love to death that i don't know where to start. dorothea x petra and dorothea x edelgard have a lot of the same appeal. after a life of having to rub elbows with the nobility and hold her nose while she cynically searches for a spouse she can tolerate who will take care of her when her beauty fades, she finds the pinnacle of nobility—literal princesses, later a queen and/or an emperor—and they love her not for her beauty or her voice but for her heart, and she loves them not for their wealth or security but for their hearts... she earned a fairytale ending she didn't think was possible

also! also! i love dorothea x hubert, which really doesn't get enough attention. i got their paired ending on my first playthrough of crimson flower and i love the idea of her and hubert operating a spy ring together out of her opera company. it'll always hold a special place in my heart

nOTP

i don't think there are any dorothea pairings that i just viscerally shudder at, but there are plenty of possible pairings in canon that just leave me cold. felix x dorothea is just kinda... there? the two characters never really feel like they have any chemistry between them, but they get a paired ending anyway. weird.

random headcanon

i didn't invent this but my headcanon is that dorothea has stretch marks. she was underfed and undernourished on the streets, obviously, but getting scouted would have given her body a sudden influx of nutritious food and caused a growth spurt that definitely would have left its mark on her

another headcanon: if you look closely at her list of liked and disliked foods, she dislikes every fish dish in the monastery. in fact the fish dishes are the only dishes she dislikes. since enbarr is a coastal city, you can infer that fish (most often quite past its recommended sell-by date) comprised a lot of the food dorothea had to choose from as a child on the streets. my headcanon is that she got horribly sick off of bad fish once and was lucky to survive

unpopular opinion

since i'm not clued into the fandom attitudes about dorothea i have to just assume that an "unpopular opinion" would be that every barbed insult dorothea throws at a male character is something they deserved, at the time

yes, even ferdie. her insults help him grow as a person

dorothea did nothing wrong. i'm just assuming that's an unpopular opinion in the fandom because. you know. that's what fandoms are always like

song i associate with them

youtube

one of the most famous arias from one of the most famous operas, "vissi d'arte" ("i live for art") from puccini's tosca, is a song i think fits dorothea very well. the eponymous character of floria tosca had to be at least a minor inspiration for dorothea!

tosca is a tragic story about a celebrated singer living in a time of political turmoil and caught between her lover mario cavaradossi, a painter with radical sympathies who has offered shelter to an escaped political prisoner, and baron scarpia, the corrupt chief of police who is determined to both capture the prisoner and seize tosca for himself at any cost... i'm sure a fe3h tosca au would be a pretty natural fit for a fanfic :P

I lived for my art, I lived for love, I never did harm to a living soul! With a secret hand I relieved as many misfortunes as I knew of. Always with true faith my prayer rose to the holy shrines. Always with true faith I gave flowers to the altar. In the hour of grief why, why, o Lord, why do you reward me thus? I gave jewels for the Madonna’s mantle, and I gave my song to the stars, to heaven, which smiled with more beauty. In the hour of grief why, why, o Lord, ah, why do you reward me thus?

favorite picture of them

_ONEINCHSWING

i like it when dorothea shoots lightning at people :) tosca would have had a happier ending if tosca could do that

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somethingshifted · 2 years ago

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as i wrote, this became longer and longer, so i'm sticking it under a readmore to save your dash, i'm just waffling about the plot

as someone who feels like the band taking their own plot too seriously with plastic beach pushed the writing into a box ever since then, i still find myself wanting to connect each phase to each other. like surely there was an underlying point to be made between murdoc painting the plastic beach pink and the last cult's main color being pink. why is russel struggling again after they've set up shop in LA, his birth country but the other corner, in what i consider tumultuous times that in the end has Del return (even if unacknowledged). but then i kind of shrug my shoulders as canon is still a hodgepodge of 100 things marching in a circle. it's still easily entertainable in my head and i can't help but pick out tidbits i thought have meaning, and re-arrange them in my head like a dollhouse. i may actually dislike it if they did try to connect the two album phases officially and go down a serious route again but PB existing just makes those connections in my head. a fan interpretation is always fine but i think it's best left to the fans. that sounds haughty to say but, for the band to stay a band, i prefer it that way.

so whats the point of this post. the thing is, i'd genuinely be satisfied if gorillaz continued not taking their own plot so seriously, with the disclaimer that i do wish they'd be steadfast with characterization. like it'd be nice if any of them actually held commentary on cults practices considering theyre usually open about their view on world events, but i think enough griping about CI promo material is out there i have nothing new to say other than falling back to CI being a spur of the moment album with a release schedule out of the creators control plus the shitty fact that russel & noodle have been kind of nothing for almost 10 yrs OOPS. they could explore more avenues if they were freed from having to address past events as if they're characters in a storybook and not symbols that change with the times. and maybe if they remembered they can give characters new traits as russel's done things like pick up taxidermy and cooking but only one is referenced for several albums as his sole trait and *zips my lips*

i really feel like a bitch for wanting to harp on the lost chord as it's a beautiful, beautiful song outside of the characters, and additionally i'm a sucker for moments murdoc is faced with how he used to act, but i don't think i'd ever take it as part of a linear plot? which is why i can't fully feel like he's gone back on his word being a cunt to 2D again and falling back into the grandeur lifestyle and all that with the cult stuff.. like, let me wear my pretentious hat for a second but the lockdowns leading people to reminisce about so many things so openly and retreading memories in lieu of making new ones due to being cooped up, resonates more with my feels on the last chord, rather than uh blowing the island up and such and using portals. see, Song Machine can be written around easier bc you can say they're filming the MVs and they're metaphors, even the art reflects this (i didnt listen to the podcasts yet). but then it references the events of PB so openly that you can't just go "well thats the fake MV they shot" and that, incongruence, is hard for me. so was it refreshing to have CI not walk in circles of Murdoc is trying to say sorry guys? yes? i don't know what redemption would do for his character, as the topic of abuse and trauma (when explored with tact) is pretty important to me story wise honestly, but it's kind of... getting repetitive at some points. or maybe too much focus on murdoc 'redeeming' himself at the cost of 2D having traits stripped away and noodle & russ being silent. i don't want the events of plastic beach to be erased from both his and the band's history. having him be the villain of the plot du album is also meh, which is why i can appreciate the less serious canon on him where recent writing is concerned. 2018 is like yesterday to me and they (writers) were still poking fun at murdoc being not only assaulted in prison but also being in the psychiatric ward of prison. like what was that all about, i really really prefer peepaw livestreaming for attention to them taking harrowing events and making them the butt of a joke. i feel like it was handled better in pirate radio even if that itself wasn't meant to be all doom and gloom. it just made more sense. and theresssss my problemmmmm

all that being said i will always adore plastic beach. some of the plot heavy things contain my favorite moments and i'm easily baited with nostalgia so this isn't a bashing post at all... just looking back and wondering if the written material is best when they're dropping tidbits and leave it for fans to imagine up scenarios, rather than adhere to a canon timeline all the time. it's so hard to sum up my feelings on this and stay in perspective of the band because my genuine feeling is that i actually love a lot of the murdoc storylines and i can't reconcile that with feeling put off that it requires believing some MVs and story beats are "real". because i'm shaking the gorillaz dollhouse regardless. and writing angst in my head revolving around how recovery isn't a straight line. and how tbh russel's journey is a direct foil to murdoc's. because all the ingredients are there

like read that and call me a hypocrite, i am! i just have a lot of thoughts. i think if i knew how to write fanfic i'd just shut up and do that but my dialogue writing skills make me uncomfortable due to not being BRITISH.

TL;DR, i'd be satisfied if plot being canonically recognized wasn't a drawback on the band because they honestly suffer when they do fall back on addressing the timeline and treating the characters as Vessels who Had Someting Happen To Them rather than whatever symbol for the current topic of the album. i do think the current writing gets repetitive and sanded down. at the same time i will always encourage fan interpretations regardless because i find those very fun. in being non linear it opens their world up to diff. perspectives. and i #support peepaw listening to weyes blood

#text #and again warning for some negativity but always a disclaimer that it isnt all negative #i just dont know how to condense my thoughts welcome to my mind toilet

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mischief-and-tea-by-the-sea · 1 year ago

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❤️ , 💥, 🎁 , 🎨

❤️ What is your favorite line that you’ve written in a fic?

I answered this one here, but this just means I get to give another favorite line! (Edit: It helps if I actually put another favorite line in here. Norns.)

Okay, this one's a little dirty, and it's from Here comes the sun, and I say it's alright (Bucky/Tony one-shot):

“Handsome, I had your dick in my mouth at least four times last night. I’m pretty sure morning breath’s not a deal breaker,” Tony retorted, giving Bucky that cheeky, one-sided smile.

💥 What is one canon thing that you wish you could change?

I answered this one, but I think if I could change other canon things, one thing I'd want to change is the whole Civil War Tony-Steve-Bucky bullshit. Steve would've trusted Tony enough to tell him ahead of time that he suspected that Bucky killed Tony's parents but that Bucky was under conditioning and torture and control while doing it. Tony would've had that moment to be angry about it, and then Tony would've proven that he's got the biggest heart in the universe by telling Steve that they'd find Bucky together and help him. This is what I would change, and it's not going against Tony's character to believe that he'd do just that if Steve had just been a fucking grown-up about it and been honest.

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

From my Scott/Logan Halloween adoptable "The House in the Mist." I can't wait to finish this one. The adoptable prompt is "Lovecraftian horror."

While they approached the turn off from the main road in, Scott stretched his arms over his head and yawned. He shook his head to clear away the last of the cobwebs from his nap and started to feel the aches and restlessness from the long drive in which he’d remained the passenger, no matter how many times he’d offered to drive before he’d finally passed out. As he brought his arms down again, his left hand brushed through the back of Logan’s hair and down to rest against the back of his neck, his thumb absently stroking along the side where he felt a momentary quickening of his boyfriend’s pulse. Scott looked out the window in front and to the side, taking in Black Rock’s residents going to or from work, biking, walking, heading into shops or restaurants along the way, catching the way they watched them and thinking they weren’t obvious about it.

Scott had been stared at a good chunk of his life, though, especially when he had to start wearing permanent ruby-lensed glasses, which made him a little more noticeable. Not as much as Kurt or Hank were, but nonetheless, he stood out.

“So, why were we sent in to investigate this place?” Logan asked just as he took the Greystone turn.

“Because Em said she picked up –“

Logan shook his head and interjected, “No no, I get it. She picked up an intelligence she thinks might be mutant. I mean, why us specifically? She could’ve come in herself with Steve if they still wanted to play the couple angle. Tony and Loki could’ve come in. Barnes and Barton...Nat and Banner.” He paused, thought about it, and laughed. “Yeah, maybe Banner wouldn’t’ve been ideal. But there were other couple choices.”

Brushing his fingers along Logan’s neck a few seconds longer before dropping his hand to once more rest against Logan’s thigh, Scott turned his attention to this new street, studying what shops and eateries lined it.

“We aren’t as well-known. Or recognizable, to be more precise. Everyone knows Steve on first sight. Same with Tony, and it’s not as if Loki hasn’t picked up his own fame along the way, especially once he and Tony started dating. Though he can shapeshift if he needs to look like someone else, but still. Tony’s on the cover of so many magazines that he couldn’t do unrecognizable unless his boyfriend spelled him to...or unless either he had tech to change his appearance or he trusted S.H.I.E.L.D. to tart him up a bit,” Scott answered.

Letting out a yawn as he followed the curving road around the edge of town, Logan cast a quick side-eye at Scott before huffing out a chuckle.

“Don’t say ‘tart him up’, darlin’. Sounds weird comin’ out of your mouth,” he teased and laughed louder when Scott swatted his denim-clad arm.

“Be nice. Don’t make me have to ruin our cover by requesting a different room for our anniversary,” Scott fussed playfully, eyeing Logan across the front seat. He stroked his knuckles along Logan’s jaw, his heart beating a little faster when his man tilted his head to nuzzle into his touch.

Logan made a noise reminiscent of a frustrated Rottweiler, but he turned his head just enough to nip at Scott’s fingers before brushing his lips to the tips of them.

“I’ll be nice, but you’ve gotta admit that when we met, that wasn’t the way ya used to talk,” he conceded, giving his boyfriend the side-eye.

🎨 If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

I also answered this one here, and I don't think I'd add a lot to the other list of what I'd want to see fanart of, though suffice it to say that I'd really be honored and squeal a lot if people felt inspired enough by my writing to do fanart of any of it.

Fanfic Writer Asks Game.

#Fanfic Writer Ask Game #stormxpadme #Thanks for the asks!

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fridayyy-13th · 1 year ago

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WIP snippet game

woahhh tysm @ollieofthebeholder for tagging me with the words star, hope, green, watch, and thread!! now to scour my absolutely ridiculous number of TMA WIPs (most of which are really just notes, which narrows it down a little bit) to see what all i've got.

star: ohohoho right off the bat we've got one from my favorite WIP! it's a multichapter fic i've been calling Minutes to Midnight. it's still in its early stages, writing-wise (in actuality this thing has been in my brain for over a year...), but this bit occurs somewhere around the middle of the fic.

Martin glanced at Jon out of the corner of his eye. The other man had his head tipped back and tilted to the side, staring into the foggy night sky. What was he thinking, Martin wondered. Did he think if he stared hard enough he’d be able to see the stars? Jon huffed, and in one swift motion he pulled the ribbon of his mask undone, setting it gently in his lap and looking back up with a frown. “I wish the skies were clearer tonight,” he told Martin, “the view of the night sky from here is…honestly, one of my favorite things in the world.”

hope: this one actually shows up kinda a lot! but i picked an excerpt from a safehouse fic i'm working on, that's got a sequel w/MAG 160 canon divergence (and as a result, a lot of ow). this one, though, is a lot more like the stuff i've already written—that is to say, it's bittersweet. and also currently untitled.

Minutes later, bed passably-made and jackets dropped into a heap on the floor, the two shuffled under the heavy green blanket Jon had found. From there...Jon wasn't really sure what to do. Well, go to sleep, obviously. But before that. Martin lay on his own side of the bed, and Jon lay on theirs, hands inches apart in the space between them. And they wanted to reach out, more than anything, but something gave them pause. Hell, they'd been holding hands near-constantly since leaving the Lonely, but it...it felt more intimate, the thought of taking his hand here. Like if they did, it would be tantamount to telling him I'm hopelessly in love with you. The last thing they wanted was to cross a boundary.

green: ah yes, the WIP where i shamelessly project my aroflux-ness onto jon, lol. it's another safehouse fic!! i call it Friday I'm in Love, bc if there's one thing i hate that i love to do, it's steal song names/lyrics for titles. and also i just really like the song. yes most of the information in italics is cribbed from various wikipedia pages and is probably gonna be narrowed down at least a little bit in the final draft.

“Camellias are probably my favorite, I think,” said Martin. “They look a bit like roses? I don’t know if you know them.” At that moment, a slew of information forced its way into Jon’s mind. Camellia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae, and it is native to eastern and southern Asia. There are somewhere between 100 and 300 species, with disputes over the exact number, along with around 3,000 hybrids. In floriography, it generally means gratitude and perfection. Red camellias mean unpretending excellence, or “you’re a flame in my heart.” White camellias mean “you’re adorable,” or perfected loveliness. Pink camellias mean “longing for you.” They are evergreen shrubs that grow up to 7.62 meters tall, with simple, serrated, typically glossy leaves. They—Jon shook his head, stopping the flood of information. “Ah, um, I Know them now.” “Oh.” Jon rushed to say, “They’re- they’re nice, it’s just…” “Yeah, I- I know.” “Er, I like…gardenias,” said Jon, rather lamely.

watch: this here is part of a fix-it AU that essentially boils down to "hey. hey what if they were all friends before the Archives transfer. what then." this WIP in particular is specifically qpr!jonsasha, and the groundwork for that.

The next morning, there was a to-go coffee cup on her desk, with some packets of sugar and creamer right beside it. On the side of the cup was a yellow sticky note. Thank you again, for yesterday. Figured I'd pay you back; I hope this is sufficient. —Jon She smiled at him, as he was not-so-subtly glancing at her to watch her reaction. “Thanks, Jon.” He returned to his work with a poorly hidden smile. The sight of it filled her with warmth.

thread: eyyy we've got Spider Trauma™️ (and not-shown-here hurt/comfort). this one's really putting the "rough" in "rough draft" though, i decided to play around a bit with switching character perspectives as well as switching between 3rd- and 2nd-person POVs and verb tenses. but it is a oneshot! so hopefully it'll be done sooner rather than later.

Jon was not doing well, all things considered. He'd shut himself up in his office, once again ardently wishing his door had a lock. Not for the reasons he used to; he'd long since grown past the days of shutting his friends out, figuratively and literally, and now was intensely grateful they'd decided he was worth keeping around despite...everything about how he'd acted when they all first transferred, really. No, right now he wanted privacy because— Old cardboard pages under your hands, sticking to your fingers and not letting you go, gossamer thread leading you closer and closer to the door where a monster awaits its next meal—

tags (no pressure!!): @three-magpies-in-a-trenchcoat @gentlemancrow @radical-dadical-rafael @dramaticdads with the words flower, space, read, blue, and sing!

#friday chats #friday's fics #tag game #now let's see if i can actually finish any of these anytime soon lmao #some of them are still in their planning stages so probably not but i've got plenty more works a lot closer to completion #but alas! also! school's about to start again. so. dunno how that'll affect how much i post #bc sometimes—rarely—i can whip fics up within 2-3 days ('here nowhere somewhere with you' was finished *really* quickly #ESPECIALLY given it was written during the school year)#and then you've got stuff like 'minutes to midnight' that has bounced around my brain for a long time and still needs a lot of work #but here's hoping. i really like a lot of these AUs and i look forward to sharing them :D

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hbosscreations · 5 months ago

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I don't know that I would have voted for Jason to die at the time, I've read some of the comics from his era and I liked him well enough, but I was not a comic reader during either his or Dick's era, so I don't know how those readers felt about the transition.

What I can say, is that looking back on what has come from Jason's death, it was the correct move for the company AND Jason's story. It shook the country, and no I'm not joking. This shit was on the national news, radio, tv, newspapers, the works.

It was also a fantastic story. It hurt. I cried reading A Death in the Family, having been introduced to Jason Todd AS Red Hood.

I get it. I get upset, when I see a character I like being written or handled poorly, because that is now an unfortunate piece of canon to add to the character's story. When a character I love is killed off in a piece of media, it fucking sucks. It hurts. It feels bad, and it should, that's a fairly normal reaction to have to reading.

But this was not a case of a death being handled poorly. They'd have gone whichever direction won, so they worked to make sure it would be GOOD in either direction. It shows.

And to the point above, you would not have Red Hood without Jason Todd's death. And this was long before the extended Batfam was a thing. You know what would have happened if they hadn't gone the Death in the Family route? They'd have had him go civilian. He'd have become a cop or something like that, and he likely would have died anyway as a shock death in a crossover. Happens all the time to lesser known and less popular characters.

One reason some people struggle with the idea of a character's death is because we (the collective we of fans rather than specific individuals) are not writers. We want our favs to be happy, to have fun, a good life, the way we would want for anyone we cared about in the real world. We get invested in them, because we see ourselves in them, or something we want to protect. The thing is, they aren't real, and if their lives were nothing but happy, we'd be bored.

Writers want the story that's compelling, shocking, that keeps people engaged so they can keep making money to survive.

And then of course, there's the morality police angle. 'You're a bad person if you' XYZ. You can't actually SAY that you thought the story was better served by the death of a child, because that's BAD and WRONG! All children should get to live!

Yeah? All real children should get to live. I should be able to Fus Ro Dah children in Skyrim because they're not real.

No one is saying Jason Todd, a real human child filled with blood and dreams of the future, deserved to die. I don't know that anyone is actually saying Jason Todd, the annoying teenager, DESERVED to die. I think the argument that something was narrative more interesting is being conflated with wishing actual harm.

I'm so sorry for the word vomit.

Why does DC hate Jason Todd so much??? He's literally Babey!!! 🥺

You probably aren’t me expecting to respond to this factually but fuck it here we go. Because he was a little rat fuck who replaced their favorite Robin character for a shitty carbon copy.

I wasn’t in the comic scene, or alive, when that happened in comics, but Jason originally was a carbon copy of Dick. He grew up in a circus, was in an acrobatic troupe called the Flying Todd’s, and his parents died by the hands of Two-Face.

The next Crisis had his backstory changed but the fans still viewed him as the bad Walmart version of Robin.

(For the readers:)He was a shitty replacement for Dick Grayson that had been Robin for so long and readers didn’t like the new guy taking over the role.

He doesn’t have a memorable Robin stand-alone series, he was uncharacteristically ruthless for a robin, he replaced Dick and didn’t have any of the Grayson charm that made Robin so loveable, he was arrogant at times and bashed in general. People wanted Dick. Not this other guy.

Nowadays why they hate him?

Simple and yet layered reason:

He went from a very wonderful villain in the comics and got later boiled down to an anti hero. Most people I know that dislike Jason now preferred his villain arc. I prefer it too honestly but if we didn’t have anti hero Jason, we wouldn’t have the interactions he has with the batfamily at all and I really enjoy those scenes in the comics.

His characterization is all over too. He goes from absolutely batshit insane in some comics to angsty ninja boy, to essentially a little bit feistier Ric Grayson (I’m so sorry it’s my take DC fans please don’t fight me).

Also, his death was a BIG thing in comics and him coming back ruined the meaning behind his death.

Back in the day there were three deaths in comics that always happened and never changed. They were deaths that grew other characters around them. Those three were:

- Bucky Barnes from Captain America

- Jason Todd from Batman

- Uncle Ben from Spider-Man

Their deaths hold major stepping stones to character arc changes and how the main character acted for the rest of the comics. They were always the main characters greatest tragedy and a core part of their lore.

Of course two of these are now changed. Bucky Barnes is back as the Winter Soldier and Jason is back as Red Hood.

But that death was sacred for a while. For 20 years he was dead. He was Batman’s greatest tragedy. You did not fuck with Batman’s greatest sorrow. And they did it after (incel) Superman Prime punched the universe so hard Jason Todd came back to life.

Additionally, lots of comic writers just don’t fucking want to deal with him. Same with Damian I feel like. They throw both under the bus because they’d rather be writing other characters.

Most of this is my observations but if anyone else has any other comments to add feel free.

#I have a lot of feelings on the topic of bleed onto characters #I am the person who gets ENRAGED when a writer does a shit job of writing #But also I recognize that me not liking something isn't an indicator of quality and that sometimes things that upset me are good actually #I don't know if it's just because I'm old now or what but I find the morality policing around Jason's death to be strange and offputting

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newwwwusername · 2 years ago

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Y : The Last Man (Hulu) - Sam & Hero - Mental Health Awareness Month Prompt 13 : Schizophrenia

Prompt : Write a fic in which a character has Schizophrenia (canon or not canon). DO NOT PORTRAY THIS CHARACTER AS "CRAZY" OR DANGEROUS! This is a negative idea about the disorder that this challenge does not wish to perpetuate Headcanon : Schizophrenic!Hero Author's note : I, the author, am not Schizophrenic. This is written based on my research off the internet as well as hearing from my friends with Schizophrenia and similar disorders. I by no means claim to be an expert and constructive criticism is always welcome

Sam and Hero had only been friends for a few weeks before Hero's little secret came out.

She was Schizophrenic.

It's something she kept on the down-low as much as she possibly could, horribly afraid of how people would react if they found out that she had what so many people wrote off as the crazy person disorder. Hell, no one really respected her as it was. She couldn't imagine how much worse it would be if they all knew.

It had caused her plenty of problems growing up. Her hallucinations would leave her petrified and, until her parents learned the truth about where they were coming from, they would always get written off as a desperate cry for attention alongside the delusions.

Yorick had always tried his best to be understanding, which helped, but she grew resentful towards him over time and eventually the closeness they had when they were young vanished.

As an adult, she didn't have her little brother to run to when things got bad. They hardly interacted anymore and, when they did, it was never a particularly positive experience on either end. Maybe that's why she'd fallen to drinking and narcotics- To hide from it all.

Sam found out a few weeks after they'd first met because things were getting bad again and she messaged him a string of unintelligible, paranoid ramblings before the alcohol had kicked in enough to calm her down. Concerned, Sam had immediately driven to her place to find her drunk and inconsolable.

He stayed at her house that night, making sure she was safe, and she explained to him the next morning that she had Schizophrenia and how it was fine and how she wouldn't go crazy and hurt someone like in the movies and how it had just gotten the best of her the previous night but she wasn't dangerous and-

Sam... Stayed.

Sam didn't run at the word "Schizophrenia". He didn't leave her or ask stupid questions or tell her she was faking it or get weird or ridicule her. He just nodded in understanding, thanked her for telling him, and went on with his day.

Huh Hero thought. This is what having a real friend is like...

Do not repost on other sites! If you want to participate in this month's challenge, there are 15 mental illness prompts that you can find here

#y the last man #hero brown #fanfiction #fanfic #fanfic challenge #mental health awareness month #schizophrenia #fanfic prompts #prompts

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melrosing · 2 years ago

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Hi I love your blog. I am a new convert to JxB, but I’ve just finished the show (everyone said not to haha but I did) and I was going to read the books afterwards but the show it’s made me feel like I don’t want to get excited for the ship again even if things look more optimistic in the books. Will I come out of them feeling much more reassure?

hi welcome to the fandom! kind of! and sorry you've seen GOT that really sucks :( sorry especially that you were rooting for JB, that REALLY sucks.

what I'll say first probs goes without saying but bears repeating anyway: GOT and ASOIAF are not of the same canon. GOT has scarcely resembled ASOIAF since about the S4 finale, and even before then it was plain to see that D&D's vision fundamentally did not align with GRRM's. looking for the show in the books can end up contorting what is really just a very different story, and the Jaime and Brienne you'll find there are very different characters. if you want to enjoy the books.... personally I think the best thing you can do is just forget GOT. it's just this rotting carcass that's been stinking out in the corner of book fandom for the last few years..... but soon enough it will be only bones :-)

and in terms of forgetting GOT. I will tell u something I wish we had been saying back in 2019: by S8, there was no fitting ending that could have been written for Jaime and/or Brienne. no fix-it can fix the mess that D&D made in all the seasons leading up to that finale. in the show, Jaime seesaws between 'well-meaning' and 'bastard man' without rhyme or reason. Brienne is just chilling in the woods till she completes her mission by accident. Cersei loves Jaime more than anything except when she's requesting his assassination. these are characters without vision, without arcs, without themes, without personalities. any ending D&D could've given them would've contradicted one plot point or another, because these characters were incoherent. the most natural ending they could've written would've been the lot of them dying in a meteor strike, because there were no arcs to conclude. it was all just based on whatever D&D felt like writing on any particular day.

as it happens, the ending they did ultimately choose was just the most unpopular of the bunch. and they could've given JB the happiest ever after and more fans would've been pleased with it... but let's be real. look at the absolute state of Jaime and Brienne's characters in the show. it wouldn't have made much more sense.

I guess the ending they wrote was an insult to the investment of fans who could just feel, from the barest framework of GRRM's writing underneath all that, that something besides what did happen was supposed to happen. book fans especially know that JB's ending does not go that way. it was insulting to watch D&D work directly counter to those sentiments in favour of their own particular tastes. but they'd been doing that for a long time.

anyway I always think of it like this: GRRM made a really great sponge for them to work with and then D&D iced it with liquid shit. I am no longer going to eat that sponge. no, not even if they put a little cherry on top for me at the end.

ASOIAF is better. eat ASOIAF

#ask #asoiaf #anti got #jaime x brienne

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sl-walker · 2 years ago

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A character of your choice can't sleep because of events from earlier in the day/week or just because it's one of those nights where there's too much to think about. Can be sweet or sad.

So, I actually already wrote this one some time back. It leans very heavily on canon events, so people well-familiar with TOS will recognize what's going on, but everyone else will just have to take what they can from it. It's pretty heavily stream-of-consciousness, and it's probably either an aside of a longer tale not yet written, or an actual part of it. It also refuses to ignore that being possessed and used as a murder weapon would be pretty damned traumatizing, and the mission-of-the-week reset wouldn't erase that in anything like reality.

2267

The transport was in fair shape; just another connection in the long string of embarking, disembarking, aiming true for Earth and trying to grapple with the fact that he wasn't aboard the Enterprise. Scotty had taken precisely two long-term vacations away from his ship mid-mission in his career; the first for a birth, and this one for-- --for a death. His own. And for three others. Kara, Lieutenant Tracy, Sybo. The transport was in fair shape; her engines were smooth and steady, but he had a hard time right now not listening for the Enterprise's harmonies and melodies. Seventeen years now, absent time in refit or repair, and usually he did all right even when he was aboard someone else's ship in the short term, but right now, he kept listening for the Enterprise, even though he'd left her of his own accord, abusing the hell out of his large bank of accumulated personal leave time. The captain had approved it after raising both of his eyebrows looking more'n a wee bit shocked by the request; he had requested it three days after Argelius II, which was exactly the amount of time it took him to stop shaking long enough to do anything besides work, which, of course, had been the only way he managed to remain functional during that three days; work, and the knowledge that he was going to go home, to his other home, for a little while because-- --because he had to. So, the captain approved his leave and then he had to wait a couple more weeks so that they'd be anywhere near a transfer point, and then he got himself killed. Scotty didn't remember that part. Funny enough, despite being spooked by it some, it was a whole lot easier to cope with in his head than Argelius II had been. Mostly because he didn't really remember it. And because he didn't have to wash blood off his hands after it. He crossed his arms tighter over his civilian coat, pressing his right shoulder against the bulkhead, and stared out at the streaked view of warp speed. Grateful it was a high speed transport -- not cheap, but he didn't want to waste time -- and still wishing it could go faster. Then again, he was fairly sure even the Enterprise at maximum warp couldn't outrun what was chasing him. The transport was in fair shape; the hum of her warp and impulse drives, tandem, through the deckplates under his feet, but he kept listening for the Enterprise. Seventeen years. Seventeen years, and he knew every note, every melody and every harmony, and the way they blended, and how sometimes they sang so perfectly that the hair on the back of his neck would stand up, following the current through the soles of his boots, the buzz through his skeleton, and the hum through his spine. There was no song like it, in the universe. And he'd left her. Scotty hunkered down a little into his coat, trying to breathe off the panic. He could feel it all down his arms, from his chest, and he knew that if he gave into that particular compulsion, he'd be back in his tiny temporary cabin scrubbing his hands red. He'd already done that more times than any sane, rational officer of the line would ever do. He'd left her. His ship. His song. He'd left her. He'd left her, and aye, his engineering crew was damned good. The best. But with all they were facing, all the time it seemed without a break, it was hard to reconcile. Every bit of the Chief in him, at war with every bit of the rest of him, the part that couldn't sleep for more'n an hour or two without jerking awake in a panic and the part of him that needed to get away from her, long enough to get himself back together. To go back to his island, to go back to his family, and heaven help him, to start really considering exactly what he was going to do with himself. The transport was in fair shape; he kept going back to that, in his head, a touchstone that she was running fine and that she wasn't the Enterprise. Both of which he needed to remind himself of. His head was muddled; he still had a pretty steady headache from exhaustion and a concussion that would be awhile yet in healing, and he couldn't keep a bloody grip on anything, right now, except that if he didn't retreat, he wouldn't survive. And every bit of the officer in him was telling him to buck up, to go back and just deal with it, and he couldn't. He ground his teeth together, like he'd done a million times in the past few weeks, and he held on by his fingernails until he could breathe right again, and he outright refused to fall apart sitting in a high speed transport surrounded by civilians. Every bit of the Chief, of the Starfleet officer, pulling backwards for his ship and home. Every bit of a man who'd had his body used as a murder weapon, who'd been killed and resurrected, driving forward to safety and home. Three hours later, after having startled out of another cold, dark nightmare, he scrubbed his hands practically to bleeding and then spent the rest of the ship's night with his penlight in hand to try to chase it all away, hanging on with everything he had to everything he could so he might just make it home. The transport was in fair shape. Maybe she'd even be fast enough.

#scotty #arc of the wolf #st:tos #i have opinions™#like i have not ranted about them in many years #but they are still opinions™

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shihalyfie · 3 years ago

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Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

#tri negativity #shiha's ask box #springcrafter

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