#in the writing itself and in making it accessible to as much of their audience as possible and in trying to take things further

[transmutationisms]

hello! I remember you making a post mentioning Margaret Sanger + eugenics recently… I’m wondering if you might be willing to share more thoughts on the relationship between Sanger, eugenics, and the birth control movement? or if you have any recs for papers to read on this topic? thanks in advance if u have anything to share!

yeah i stuck some reading under the cut for length but basically and reductively this has become a poisoned discursive well because reactionaries of various stripes have discovered that Sanger was a racist eugenicist, and have also discovered that if you say that about a public figure, a certain brand of liberal will immediately rush to condemn the person with little to no reflection on what the significance of their objectionable beliefs might historically have been, so now every family values white supremacist thinks they are the cleverest boy in the world for being like "erm actually Planned parenthood was founded by a eugenicist" and the best response the average liberal can come up with is "[splits hairs] no it wasn't".

in reality what they should be saying instead is more along the lines of: this is because eugenics and white supremacy were incredibly popular politics in the usa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and were ideologies that united public health champions (& political figures in general) from across the 'left–right political spectrum'. additionally Sanger's rhetoric varied over time and by audience, though i'm not really interested in doing rehabilitative work for her historical image and mostly bring this up to demonstrate that eugenics was so popular it was widely rhetorically advantageous to throw support for it, whether you were a feminist demanding access to birth control or a garden-variety misogynist opposed to reproductive autonomy.

anyway Sanger's legacy and the legacy of US feminists in general simply has to account for the fact that both 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice' policy demands can be weaponised either for increased reproductive autonomy or for eugenic endeavours. it's not the [contraception / abortion / etc] in itself that creates the eugenics, and banning contraception or abortion doesn't solve the problem of capitalism nurturing and relying on eugenics (as disingenuous reactionaries already well know). a lot of right-wing writing on Sanger is indeed trumped-up, poorly substantiated, de-contextualised shock tactics—also, she did genuinely espouse a lot of racism and eugenics.

none of this is really relevant to the political question of whether, moving forward, reproductive autonomy ought to be ensured (it ought). but, it is certainly relevant to the question of why the us feminist movement has done a generally middling job of securing access to things like contraception and abortion: in part, this is because it has long been a movement that sacrificed an actual commitment to providing healthcare in an extremely unwise series of faustian racism bargains that (at best) framed reproductive rights in a very negative, libertarian-inflected way, and (at worst) threw over the principles altogether and wilfully ignored or even participated in the establishment of eugenic policies expressly designed to constrain the reproductive autonomy of racialised, poor, and disabled women.

Dorothy Roberts talks about feminist eugenics broadly, including some remarks on Sanger, in Killing the Black Body (1997)

Peter Engelmann's A History of the Birth Control Movement in America (2011) pretty much what it says on the tin; my notes from when I TA'd bioethics say we focussed on the introduction and chapters 1 and 3

Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940: Essays on Ideological Conflict and Complicity (2003) ed. Lois Cuddy and Claire Roche has at least one chapter you'd probably find useful

there's also this annotated bibliography on Sanger but it's from the 80s, so the real value-add is if you want to see contemporaneous writings about her, or you want a list of her own actual publications. I don't know whether this is still considered a comprehensive list of the 70-odd years it does cover!

a couple dissertations, even though these are generally not as valuable citation-wise as published books or articles:

International Intercourse: Establishing a Transnational Discourse on Birth Control in the Interwar Era (2004) by Julie L Thomas, Indiana University

Feminist Eugenics in America: From Free Love to Birth Control, 1880–1930 (2006) by Susan Marie Rensing, University of Minnesota

[lopez-richter-fangirl]

Do you honestly think tcb will reach their goal?

I have to believe that they will but I am fucking stressed and fucking scared

The thing is there’s literally no reason they SHOULDN’T. Yes it’s a bigger goal than they’ve ever had but shipwrecked raised that amount for headless and starkid raised almost double that for returns with a smaller slate of projects. Even in TCB’s own kickstarters they raised 100k for a single staged barebones workshop reading. Yes 200k is a lot of money, but for how much they’re doing with it?? It’s TINY

Two concert screenings, one of them international. A full month international play run. A brand new musical with performances in LA and eventually internationally. A concert performance of a show we’ve never heard live yet. A brand new pilot reading. And multiple performances of a live comedy game show

I do think the niche-ness of the campaign branding means they have to work harder to reach a wider audience, but for people who are already aware of what they’re doing, I don’t understand why it’s not showing in the numbers

Please, if anyone’s on the fence, tell me why and let me convince you why this is worth it

[copperbadge]

I'm getting depressingly good at identifying the formula for Pop Academic Books About ADHD.

Regardless of their philosophy it pretty much goes like this:

1. Emotionally sensitive essay about the struggle of ADHD and the author's personal experience with it as both a person with ADHD and a healthcare professional.

2. Either during or directly following this, a lightly explicated catalogue of symptoms, illustrated by anecdotes from patient case studies. Optional: frequent, heavy use of metaphor to explain ADHD-driven behavior.

3. Several chapters follow, each dedicated to a symptom; these have a mini-formula of their own. They open with a patient case study, discuss the highly relatable aspects of the specific symptom or behavior, then offer some lightweight examples of a treatment for the symptom, usually accompanied by follow up results from the earlier case studies.

4. Somewhere around halfway-to-two-thirds through the book, the author introduces the more in-depth explication of the treatment system (often their own homebrew) they are advocating. These are generally both personally-driven (as opposed to suggested cultural changes, which makes sense given these books' target audience, more on this later) and composed of an elaborate system of either behavior alteration or mental reframing. Whether this system is actually implementable by the average reader varies wildly.

5. A brief optional section on how to make use of ADHD as a tool (usually referring to ADHD or some of its symptoms as a superpower at least once). Sometimes this section restates the importance of using the systems from part 4 to harness that superpower. Frequently, if present, it feels like an afterthought.

6. Summation and list of further resources, often including other books which follow this formula.

I know I'm being a little sarcastic, but realistically there's nothing inherently wrong about the formula, like in itself it's not a red flag. It's just hilariously recognizable once you've noticed it.

It makes sense that these books advocate for the Reader With ADHD undertaking personal responsibility for their treatment, since these are in the tradition of self-help publishing. They're aimed at people who are already interested in doing their own research on their disability and possible ways to handle it. It's not really fair to ask them to be policy manuals, but I do find it interesting that even books which advocate stuff like volunteering (for whatever reason, usually to do with socialization issues and isolation, often DBT-adjacent) never suggest disability activism either generally or with an ADHD-specific bent.

None of these books suggest that perhaps life with ADHD could be made easier with increased accommodations or ease of medication access, and that it might be in a person's best interest to engage in political advocacy surrounding these and other disability-related issues. Or that activism related to ADHD might help to give someone with ADHD a stronger sense of ownership of their unique neurology. Or that if you have ADHD the idea of activism or even medical self-advocacy is crushingly stressful, and ways that stress might be dealt with.

It does make me want to write one of my own. "The Deviant Chaos Guide To Being A Miscreant With ADHD". Includes chapters on how to get an actual accurate assessment, tips for managing a prescription for a controlled substance, medical and psychiatric self-advocacy for people who are conditioned against confrontation, When To Lie About Being Neurodivergent, policy suggestions for ADHD-related legislation, tips for activism while executively dysfunked, and to close the book a biting satire of the pop media idea of self-care. ("Feeling sad? Make yourself a nice pot of chicken soup from scratch and you'll feel better in no time. Stay tuned after this rambling personal essay for the most mediocre chicken soup recipe you've ever seen!" "Have you considered planning and executing an overly elaborate criminal heist as a way to meet people and stay busy?")

Every case study or personal anecdote in the book will have a different name and demographics attached but will also make it obvious that they are all really just me, in the prose equivalent of a cheap wig, writing about my life. "Kelly, age seven, says she struggles to stay organized using the systems neurotypical children might find easy. I had to design my own accounting spreadsheet in order to make sure I always have enough in checking to cover the mortgage, she told me, fidgeting with the pop socket on her smartphone."

I feel a little bad making fun, because these books are often the best resource people can get (in itself concerning). It's like how despite my dislike of AA, I don't dunk on it in public because I don't want to offer people an excuse not to seek help. It feels like punching down to criticize these books, even though it's a swing at an industry that is mainly, it seems, here to profit from me. But one does get tired of skimming the hype for the real content only to find the real content isn't that useful either.

Les (not his real name) was diagnosed at the age of 236. Charming, well-read, and wealthy, he still spent much of his afterlife feeling deeply inadequate about his perceived shortcomings. "Vampire culture doesn't really acknowledge ADHD as a condition," he says. "My sire wouldn't understand, even though he probably has it as well. You should see the number of coffins containing the soil of his homeland that he's left lying forgotten all over Europe." A late diagnosis validated his feelings of difference, but on its own can't help when he hyperfocuses on seducing mortals who cross his path and forgets to get home before sunrise. "I have stock in sunburn gel companies," he jokes.

[describe-things]

This post is made with speech to text because my hand hurts from typing so much today. Please forgive any typos or speech to text swapping similar sounding words.

If you would like to start writing your own image descriptions, feel free to ask any questions.

The main things to keep in mind is that they should begin with some variation of image description start or ID, and end with some variation of image description and, and ID or something like that. This distinguish the image description from the caption or anything else.

Image descriptions should not be written in italics, bold, all caps, or any colors. If text in the image is in all caps, write it in regular case, and simply note before or after it that it's in all caps.

Image descriptions should describe all images in the post, without skipping any. This includes images that are nothing but text.

Plain text image descriptions in the body of the post are more accessible than alt text alone, because many people who need image descriptions cannot use alt text, and Tumblr is known for its glitches, so the accessibility of the alt text all by itself varies widely over time.

It is more accessible to have the image descriptions indented than not, because this helps to visually separate the image description from the caption. Having brackets or parentheses at the end is also helpful for this. This allows people to easily distinguish between the caption and the image description if they need to.

If you are an artist, writing image descriptions for your art will give you full control over the image description, and will allow you to correctly identify details that others might miss. This gives you the opportunity to show which parts of your art hold meaning to you and are important to notice.

If you are describing real people who are unknown to you, unless it is specified within the post or you are already aware, please do not assign any gendered terms to them, or any " male presenting or female presenting" terms like that. This is completely unnecessary and leads to misgendering. It is best to simply describe visible facts about the people. Hair color, length, clothes and style, pose, expression, the light or darkness of their skin, things like that. Do not assume that someone is white simply because they have light skin.

Do not use image descriptions to lie to the audience in any way and do not use image descriptions to make jokes where the audience reading the image description is the butt of the joke.

As an example, if there is a very clearly fake screenshot, do not say that it is simply a screenshot, or if a photo is very blatantly photoshopped, do not say that it is simply a photo. Say an edited photo, a badly edited photo, a screenshot with editing, something like that to indicate the changes have been made and then what you are going to be describing is not the natural version.

As an example, you would say a crab photoshopped to be driving a car. Rather than a photo of a crab driving a car.

Unless you are transcribing a text within the image, do not use meme speak within image descriptions. Do not refer to dogs as doggos for example, unless it is to specify that the dog in the image is, within the image, labeled as a doggo. Do not describe someone walking downstairs as breasted bubbly downstairs, even if it is an actor humorously walking down the stairs to imitate that sentence. Describe the facts of the movements, and then you can make the comparison for clarity.

If someone adds an image description to your post whether this be an original post or a reblog that you have added an image to, it doesn't matter how many notes to post already has, please copy and paste that image description into the original post or your original reblog. If it is a new post that has only a few notes from friends, after you update the original, you can just ask your friends to delete the reblogs of the inaccessible version and reblog the new one. Most people who are good people and care about disabled people will happily do so.

Keep in mind that image descriptions are accessibility tools. Treat them as such.

Anyone can write image descriptions. You do not need any special qualifications or training. As long as you are willing to take constructive criticism if you make a mistake, an image description written by someone who's new to it and honestly doing their best with good intentions is better than no image description at all.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, so please feel free to add on more tips and advice.

[sunny-superstar]

dont make me tap the sign

i know it ultimately trails back to the corporations but i just wanna say i think it’s heinous that old heterosexual men are STILL seemingly always in showrunner positions for major television shows, or at least they are always the ones getting their ideas greenlit. and so the most accessible popular media (the narratives we collectively see) are determined by these dudes who do not relate to You. they don’t care about what or who You’d like to see represented onscreen. sometimes this is affected by diversity in the writer’s room, etc., but for the most part everything must be dumbed down to what THEY THINK an average middle-american audience member can tolerate—and it’s insulting to everyone’s intelligence! It’s nearly 2025 and we’re all supposed to accept that certain kinds of stories are not worth telling (on that scale) because why? because it’s potentially alienating to a demographic that already has decades of screen representation to enjoy?

SO let’s talk about how showrunners/networks are well aware of viewership demographics and the profitability of fandom. Take a show like wwdits, where a lot of its notoriety had to do with its general edginess and, importantly, its appeal to LGBTQ audiences: the creators intentionally featured a mlm will-they/won’t-they at the center of their show, to the point that it was arguably the driving force behind continued viewership. It’s the carrot on a stick. “How will we keep profiting off of these queer viewers? Make them hope. Textually suggest the prospect of a fully realized gay romance and then tease these viewers for making ~homoerotic fanart and fanfiction~ like that wasn’t the plan all along!”

Your fanwork, whether it’s drawn or written, is free publicity for the source material. You Need To Know that. Because the corporate bastards Have Known That. that’s why supernatural was on for 15 seasons. Not because the plot itself was worth that much, but because the supporters of the central gay ship MADE it profitable. And baiting them only fans the flames (basically, it drives people crazy. spn still trends on here like once a week, 4 years later). & they want you crazy. they want online engagement. they want it trending on tumblr and twitter. They believe that if they give you what you want (canon gay rep) then the show will instantly lose profitability.

So. That’s what it comes down to. Your dedication means nothing to them but job security... and if you dare to take the bait and hope for the writers to fulfill what they VERY deliberately set up, they’re gonna straight up mock you. In the end, they’re just gonna fumble all of it, because they never cared about You or even the characters and their stories. Why bother if it doesn’t seem profitable anymore, right?

God it’s all so cynical. Keep writing fanfiction. Keep making fanart. Keep engaging in fandom spaces. Do it because YOU have passion. Do it because YOU care about a story or characters that mean something to you. Do it because we, as the folk, as the common people, need to have some way to control these narratives. We need to create our own hope, even if we get belittled for it. It’s all we have to combat the cynicism.

[ataleofcrowns]

man interactive fiction authors get the most insane asks from anons what is it that has these freaks showing up to bother you all, just for putting out work for free??? 🙃

I'm gonna be honest, we're just way too accessible. Unfortunately for authors who are just starting out, there aren't that many ways to build up a readership outside of dropping regular updates.

Interacting regularly with your base of readers and giving them extra content through (anonymous) asks is one of those ways to cultivate an audience, and I feel gross just writing that because in an ideal world that shouldn't factor into it at all. But in the current online landscape, that's just become part of the culture surrounding it.

Especially since IF itself as a genre is very much online, there is this expectation that authors themselves should be familiar with the online landscape and be easily accessible as well. That accessibility comes with both pros and cons, and one of the major cons is that you get randoms in your inbox who decided to leave their manners at the door just because it's the internet and they're anonymous, so they think they can say and demand whatever they want from you without repercussions.

It's a decision that every IF author will have to make for themselves, in terms of how much they interact with their readers and how much access they allow.

While I do keep my anonymous asks on, I do that as someone who has thick skin and knows the risks of doing so. I'm also relatively active in my Discord server, but that's pretty much where the interaction with my readers ends. I'm otherwise a very private person, and this past year especially have taken added distance because I'm more comfortable that way.

But that's also a luxury I have because AToC is pretty well-established as an IF now, so I can afford to let the work speak for itself rather than twist myself up into a pretzel trying to garner more readers. I absolutely don't envy new IF writers, I can't imagine the struggle for them in this climate 🥲

[ask-whitepearl-and-steven]

would you have any small writing tips to share with others who are attempting to write their own stories?

Sure.

Disclaimer: This is not a full on tutorial on how to write. These are just tiny, tiny little grains of wisdom of things I realized here and there. Do not eat this advice like a full course meal. It isn't one. It's just a dusting of some spices, and I am salt bae-ing them over you, but they are not calorically relevant without a story.

1. Help your readers read your story.

AKA: If you want your readers to build a house, you better take them to a Home Depot and teach them how to use a screwdriver first.

You want your readers to read your story easily? You gotta make your story easy to read. That means learning how to make sentences easier to understand. That means breaking up walls of text into smaller bites. That means - yes - spelling words consistently and using accessible (not Correct, necessarily, but ACCESSIBLE) grammar!

You want your readers to understand your world? You gotta give your readers tools to understand it with. That means explaining new concepts! That means describing stuff a lot! That means using visual language if you don't have actual visuals!

Your readers will not read your mind to know what you MEANT to say. You have to say what you mean. You have to mean what you write. Learn to write clearly. Learn to help your readers.

2. Something that takes you a month to make will take your audience ten minutes to read.

You want to spend an hour drawing one comic panel? Great. You wanna spend an hour writing a single paragraph? Fantastic. You wanna use up a week perfecting a script? Amazing!

Your readers will still glance at that panel for a second before moving on. Your readers will still eat that paragraph in a bite. Your readers will skim that script. If you're lucky.

You cannot control how much your work is appreciated. But you CAN control how much of your time you sacrifice to make it.

Balance the scales.

3. You are not talented.

Neither am I. Nor are any of us.

Listen to me. Listen.

Talent is a beautiful, useful word. But it often lies to us. It suggests that we are born better than others.

This is not often accurate. What talent hides within itself is not pre-ordained inherent skill. It is not something you are birthed being. It is not a statistical difference of physicality.

Talent starts with passion.

Maybe you have passion for stories - so you beg your grandfather to read to you before you can recognize words, and you write a lot in every school assignment, and you pay attention to EVERY story you watch in school plays, and you observe all the characters you see in movies, and you CARE. So. Much. And this moves you to try to write, and then to try again, and then to try harder.

Talent does not exist, because no amount of 'you were made for running' can make you run. No amount of 'you were the son of great authors' can make you write.

But inherent curiosity can push you forward. Inherent curiosity can make you watch, and observe, even before you understand you are observing. Inherent curiosity for your personal interests makes you a fan of writing, of drawing, of world-building. It makes you research how to be a great author before you even know what research is. It auto-tunes you to what you know is good about these things, and it gives you the necessary tools to know what will work and what won't.

So when you think you are talented, understand that this is not something that was done to you in the womb. It was something you raised, and watered like a seed, before you even knew what you were growing.

Don't rely on talent. Understand that you got this far because you CARE about this thing. And don't forget to care. Because that's what has carried you this far, and it is the only thing that can carry you even farther.

also, cringe is dead.

[habunshu]

Hello! Sorry to bother you.

I noticed you are in JTTW fandom and wanted to ask if you know where can I find more info on Sun Wukong's make up and stage performance? I tried to find stuff on my own but quickly realised that I'm just one small weak goblin. I saw some blogs about chinese opera behind the scenes with SW images and couple of videos but that's about it... and since you look like you are way more knowledgeable I came here to beg a favour.

Do you know any videos, documentaries or blogs on this topic?

Thank you for your time ♥♥♥

Hi!

TLDR: Bold text are writings/videos linked to Peking Opera Culture and specifics surrounding Monkey King performances. Post has a mid-length summary of key aspects of his Peking appearances and core thematics. This mainly goes along visual design analysis, as I don’t focus in performance art as much! Read more divide for courtesy

(Also taking a moment to highly praise @/bonesmarinated ‘s Peking opera Wukong pieces!)

The Monkey King/Sun Wukong is a very well covered and well performed character in Peking Opera, I’ll give a short(ish) summary of the key aspect of his design across various performances based on work I can recall from my Undergrad as well as my own experience- and i’ll link any documents/websites/images I have on hand

Wukong’s Lian Pu falls under what is known the Jing role (complex hero) with similar facial decoration also being delegated to the Chou roles in Opera as well.

The dominant school of art in depicting him either on live performers or maskwear, have a fairly universal foundation for his appearance.

The oldest forms of Peking opera stick to Wuseguan (Five Colour Theory) with his Lian Pu sticking to a core 3 of White (Cunning), Red (Bravery), and Black (Loyalty). Even with Modernisation of the Peking Opera and developments in the science behind art and makeup, Lianpu is specific in its purpose of portraying the nature of a character beyond body language and aiding in accessibility for people at the far end of the audience.

The Monkey King’s Lian Pu is reflective of his mischievous and bold nature, combining it with the shape of an Old World Monkey’s furless face shape so that even those “uneducated” in Peking Opera culture can at least see /what/ Wukong is before they see /who/ he is. The White and red placement are linked to yin-yang dynamics relating to the stone he was born from and the energy it cultivated) as well as general themes beyond the tale itself.

Zheng’s “Evolution, Symbolism, and Artistry: A Study on the Colors of Peking Opera Facial Makeup” Discusses this in more detail. ( DOI: 10.23977/artpl.2023.041207) (ISSN 2523-5877)

(General Mask colours in Peking Opera, separate from Lian Pu: The Cultural Connotation and Symbolic Meaning of Chinese Opera Mask Color - Hanbing Tu)

In more modern designs, the key foundation of Wukong’s face doesn’t change much, however some variations do add colour to Wukong’s eyelids- mainly pink or yellow/gold. Both of these relate physically to the ‘whites’ of Old World Monkey’s eyes, with the yellow face paint being representative of “barbarism” or “savagery”. Gold is used on the faces of various immortal creatures from all backgrounds as Silver is.

(Left: Chu Luhao as Monkey King, stedling divine peaches and wine in celestial realm, Kaohsiung ) (Right: Monkey King Wukong in Beijing Opera Journey to the West at Liyuan Theater)

As with Taiwans branch off in culture, This Lian Pu on the left shows the eyebrows as the top of the eyelid makeup, contrast to Chinese style and other Sino-influenced regions. This works in Chu Luhao’s production as it plays towards the character Wukong is before he’s sealed under the mountain and begun the journey- hence more “wide eyed”.

Mentioning Yellow within the Wuseguan, this is why most of his earlier outfits have such a heavy bias towards yellow cloth, barbarism being represented across his whole body (his form, as a monkey over his soul that achieves enlightenment) with costumes later down his hero’s journey adding more black, blue (simplicity).

(Left: Performer playing Monkey in Journey to the West, Chinese Opera performance in Singapore) (Middle: Chu Luhao’s production, Sun Wukong arrives at the Dragon Palace of the East Sea) (Right: CANTON, CHINA – CIRCA JULY 2019: Beijing Opera performance of “Monkey King Making Havoc in Heaven”)

Key Read -> The Artistic Symbolism of the Painted Faces in Chinese Opera: An Introduction, David Ming-Yüeh Liang. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43560653

Book -> Chinese opera: Images and stories, Peter Lovrick, Wang-Ngai Siu

Book -> Drama kings: Players and publics in the re-creation of Peking opera, 1870-1937, Joshua Goldstein. https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XT_1fZ9Jp18C&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=info:49R3XREYwVoJ:scholar.google.com/&ots=3OF1F4SILK&sig=gQyW7bGJzgnxG62Y2TxU01ZPazQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

This analytical paper on Monkey King: Hero is Back showcases modern animated links to Peking Monkey King designs - https://fslmjournals.taylors.edu.my/wp-content/uploads/SEARCH/SEARCH-2024-16-1/SEARCH-2024-P5-16-1.pdf

A blog site I found interesting was an interview with Yao Yudong, the successor to colourful Peking Opera masks, where he discusses creating the mask designs (with a Wukong mask as a recorded example) and a more in-depth written post. He expresses the key two styles of Wukong’s red markings known as “Upside down Gourd” style, and the less complex “Upside down Peach” style attributed to a different art school. In which his mask is directly attributed to items that come into contact with his face.

Jiao Feng, Peking Opera Facial Makeup: The Art of Face Painting: http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/ctenglish/2018/ich/202001/t20200117_800190202.html

Connected is a video of an Opera performer who does his own Lian Pu, which depending on the time period could take up to two hours. Although this design is significantly more contemporary in the use of gold on white sections as markings like black paint. https://x.com/chinadaily/status/1365730927133958144?s=46&t=06bYiE12l6qVJUxPCBuvvQ

In regards to Wukong’s combat performances, he falls into the role of a Wusheng (武生), which is the strand of stage costume used in representation of his staple armour.

(Monkey King in Journey to the West Performance, Beijing Opera)

In this costume, Wukong’s Phoenix feather cap is mirrored by Lingzi (翎子) or Zhilling (雉翎), which likely play back and forth with influencing eachother as time progresses, due to Wukong’s theatrical personality being heightened by the Pheasant tails and their movements as actors play their roles. In his Wusheng roles, he is more likely to be adorned with gold eyelids to highlight his layered immortality and connect to the golden armour he wears. The trait of biting the pheasant tails as a theatrical act of frustration is seen across adaptations, most recently in Black Myth: Wukong’s Chapter 6 Animation.

This animation’s design seems to relay the Lingzi strongly due to the way the studio details the lowest connection points to the crown ornament.

As stated in Bond’s writings “BEIJING OPERA COSTUMES: THE VISUAL COMMUNICATION OF CHARACTER AND CULTURE”, Wukong’s in-game Suozi Set and various adaptations Dragon Palace armours split similarly to the Kao (Armour) on Peking stages, with the falling of the frantic drastically increasing the size of the actor and his silhouette.

Qing-era flags on the costumes of Wusheng were used to express social standing, gender, nature, and ranking. The image above showcasing them has them match the Kao pattern of the clothing, other flags often held zodiac patterns- with the monkey showcasing vain, egotistical, inventive and tricky individuals; and the peach included in a flag hinting towards immortality.

(Ching Dynasty Year of the Monkey Flag used in the Peking Opera) Zaricore Flag Collection: https://www.flagcollection.com/itemdetails.php?CollectionItem_ID=943

Due to the History of Lian Pu, and Wuseguan, despite modernisation of Opera arts vastly widening the colours and complexity of costumes; Wukong sticks to a key 5 colour scheme, with a emphasis on the original trio of red-white-black, and gold being reserved for Wusheng/Wuxiaosheng to showcase immortality and strength. The prevalence of Opera alongside fictional theatre means that the two constantly play off of eachother in mannerisms and influence, both at the time of JTTW’s writing to the 21st century. But as Opera is a physical performance, all aspects of Peking costume design is meant to make the emotional and psychological aspects of characters physical, to a large audience space needing to see facial expressions heightened and clarified by Lian Pu.

Read -> Cultural-based visual expression: emotional analysis of human face via Peking Opera Painted Faces (POPF)

[pluralthey]

is there a good place to start if we want to learn about idletry? im very interested in the story and all the bits and pieces revealed so far but i dont know if youve like, stated the basics both about the characters-in-story and how you’re releasing the comic

hi there. unfortunately, idletry became a passion project very abruptly and many details were added very quickly without regard for how long the project would take. once i did realize how large the project was, i decided that i would not even kid myself on the idea of holding in spoilers for the next 5 years, and those two factors combined make the information available very chaotic and slapdash -- somewhat intentionally.

i don't even have the comics tagged separately for easier access among the idletry content -- although, i could go back and give them a separate tag.

i can summarize the story and say that it's about a funny little talking honey badger/tasmanian devil named jessie gaylord who has for the last 10 years of her life been on heavy psychiatric medication in an attempt to mitigate a pervasive delusion that the world is a fictional story. she also has a notorious aggressive streak. these medications work primarily by leaving her so tired that she sleeps most of the time.

the story begins when her medical team has run out of typical medications to try, and they must order an older, more aggressive type of drug which is not commonly used anymore, and has a lengthier process to manufacturing and approving the drug. during this time, she is not on any medication, and she becomes more urgently fixated on convincing people that the delusion is true.

she ends up attempting to contact the writer, who is referred to as God, and she receives a response. she immediately attempts to write the story herself, and she's granted the ability to do anything within the story so long as she can write it out. (the intricacies and limitations of this power have been elaborated upon in a bunch of fragmentary posts, so i won't try to condense it here)

at the end of the first act, she kills the first writer and becomes the new God of her world. the rest of the story is about what she does after acquiring omnipotence, and it heavily features a character named fate -- or shiloh, as jessie calls her -- with whom she enters an intimate relationship.

she has a happy loving family composed of a father named adam, a mother named evelyn, and an older sister named emily. there is a later minor subplot about a cult following who worships her after she becomes God, and this cult is initially organized by an ant called samanthuel -- or samwich, as jessie calls them. these are usually the other characters i mention and i am too lazy to link them right now

the comic itself is currently being written. the script stands at around 51,000 words at the time of writing this as i work on the second act. after it's written, i will let it simmer for a few months and then write a second draft to start to relieve the story of its bloat. depending on its length at that point, i will either need to write a third draft, or i will start drawing the comic.

chances are, during the second draft, i will start to thumbnail or sketch scenes which receive little to no editing, as i know they will likely remain relatively unchanged even through multiple drafts.

the sketch strips are to tide me and an eager audience over in the meantime, but they've sort of dried up as i focus all of my attention on finishing the first draft and taking care of a puppy that was kind of just forced onto me.

i've made a couple of full-length comics before and they have taken years. it is, unfortunately, just the nature of the process. for idletry, i plan to self-publish the comic. i've never published something in print before, so that is the most daunting part for me.

the plan at the moment is to crowdfund this, but, to be frank with you, i no longer pay rent, and i care very much about having this comic as a printed book. i have no issue with paying the cost of printing out of my own pocket by the time it's done and am even anticipating that outcome ahead of time, despite having a pretty reliable audience by now.

i'm on the fence about releasing a digital book version, as i very much want to retain digital color versions of the pages that are more vibrant, but due to the explicit adult content of the story, i don't want it to be free-access.

tl;dr: it's about a lesbian incel with anger issues who's given omnipotence.

i'm still working on the story because i want it to be good.

i'm planning on printing it as a physical comic book once it's done.

[nereidyke]

hey! I’ve just recently accepted (aka connected all the dots) the fact that I’m a femme but I wanted to get some other femmes takes on how they identify with it to help me better understand it. What are some of the most important aspects of ur identity and what resources/books would u recommend for someone with less knowledge? 💕💕

yes ofc! i won't claim to be the arbiter of knowledge on this topic, but my femme identity wasn't something i had considered until i started dating my butch 3 years ago. for me, femme is dichotomized by my relationship to butches, ie a mutual respect and protection not found within heterosexuality. this is going to be a little long because there is much to say on this topic, apologies in advance (i like writing about and studying gender).

femininity in itself is a system that is naturalized to the convention of woman, sociologically speaking, and is indeed a form of gender conformity for people who identify with or are perceived as women (ofc this varies when accounting for the nuances of transfeminity and race, but generally speaking femininity as a construct is falsely attributed to "woman"). so in a sense, the gender conformity, as in historical accounts of butchness and femmeness, is itself the protection that i offer to my butch. it allows my butch access to a social system that he, as a masculine person perceived by society to be a woman, would not otherwise have access to.

i mostly read radical feminist texts, and to understand the system of femininity, the naturalization of gender as a construct, and the place that lesbianism has in a heterosexual society, i would recommend reading lesbian second wave author monique wittig. the category of sex and one is not born a woman are two essays by her that i recommend to everyone because they explain heterosexuality and how it constructed the conventions of "man" and "woman" around itself and embedded that into the fabric of western society well.

speaking personally, existing as a femme with my butch is comforting because i am allowed to explore femininity in a context removed from heterosexuality, removed from men. femininity is a performance, and when i perform it for my butch it feels right. i don't claim that my "version" of femininity is really entirely different from a heterosexual woman's or a bisexual woman in a relationship with a man, but the performance of it works in opposition to male ownership over my body. i am performing it for a lesbian, a butch, not a man, and that is what makes being femme fundamentally different from women performing femininity for men.

it all comes down to that performance, and specifically who the audience of that performance is. again, at the end of the day, i am gender conforming because women are expected to be feminine in their actions, appearance, and choices, but that gender conformity is a privilege i use as a protection for my butch and other butches i am friends with. i struggled with femininity when i was younger, i never performed womanhood to the degree that i was meant to due to the fact that i am a lesbian (and if you read one is not born a woman she goes into excellent detail on the inherent degendering of lesbians), and that is something that informs my choices and the femininity that i perform.

being degendered by heterosexual patriarchy, and choosing to conform to some of its expectations while rebelling through the act of being a lesbian and through performing femininity for a masculine figure who is not a man is the most important aspect of the femme identity to me. it almost in a sense adds insult to injury for heterosexual expectations. as i said before, femme is dichotomized by butch and the protection offered to butches through gender conformity that they don't have access to, so another really important part of my identity as a femme is how i can use that identity to help and protect butches.

i hope this helped!! like i said i'm not as much of an expert in femme writing (because honestly i've struggled to find my own resources) but i do recommend reading feminist texts first and foremost, because understanding the lesbian gender category in general is paramount understanding how femininity functions sociologically, and how adhering to it is a privilege not offered to certain members of the lesbian community.

[genericpuff]

You mentioned multiple times that Persephone is a self insert of Rachel, how is that so?

Also, I love Lore Rekindled

So obviously it's not like Rachel herself has outright stated that Persephone is a self-insert, but there's a lot of narrative and visual evidence that points to this being so.

Disclaimer before I continue: a lot of this is speculation, take it with grains of salt, but understand that all of the following evidence is why so many people subscribe to the idea that Rachel is using Persephone as a self-insert power fantasy, myself included. This is going to be a long post.

First, the most obvious - Rachel and Persephone look virtually identical, especially when Persephone's hair is short. In a way that's not even reaching at this point, like there are times when Persephone literally looks like she was traced directly off Rachel's face. It's panels like these where you don't even have to squint or fill in the blanks with your own interpretations, Persephone literally looks like Rachel.

There was also that time she dyed her hair pink and her own audience called out how she looked like Persephone (unironically for the most part, which goes to show how much the implications of Persephone being a self-insert of Rachel has gone over their heads, sigh)

She's also made absurd claims in interviews that Persephone and Hades were her "muses" since all the way back in middle school.

I say these claims are 'absurd' because frankly I just don't think that's true, there's nothing from her early-mid 2000's online presence (which is still accessible via the Wayback Machine) that suggests she was into Greek myth content, most of her stuff from back then was medical fetish and lolita art and not a single piece of Greek work is mentioned on any of her profile bios, favorite book lists, or interests, not even once you get to the 2010's when she started shifting away from blatant medical fetish art and more towards marketable storybook-style art.

(she definitely mentions Lolita though 😒)

I firmly believe she's just making up that whole "Persephone and Hades were my muses" thing the same way she's made up her 'folklorist' label to hide the fact that she has no connection to Greek myth whatsoever and was just creating LO on a whim during the era of Hades x Persephone shipping prompts that were popular on Tumblr at the time. It just so happened to become massively popular so she stuck with it and tried to pretend like she always loved Greek myth as a way to justify her success when really it was just luck and circumstance.

But we can go further back than that.

You see, Rachel also really... really likes Mads Mikkelson. Like, beyond just enjoying his work and entering teenage girl obsessive cringe territory. I wouldn't be calling it out if she was a teenage girl or even a young adult, but she isn't - she's thirty seven years old.

Mads Mikkelson is, of course, her dream cast for Hades, and when you see how she views Mads Mikkelson, the rest practically writes itself.

But we can go even further back than that.

Because, you see, Rachel has old art accounts from long before Lore Olympus. Normally I try to avoid posting a lot of this stuff because it's very much old skeletons that we usually understand to leave buried, but this particular piece is very relevant to this discussion.

'Madame issue' was the screenname of her account where this drawing comes from. You may also notice this is very likely where the name 'used bandaid' came from. This character is meant to be Rachel. It was very common for her to draw herself with short pink hair back then and it seems that's barely changed now.

Just wanna also throw it out there real quick that Rachel's birthday is March 21st. Guess what date Rachel chose to make Persephone's birthday? Oh yeah, the first day of Spring, literally March 20th. Which shouldn't even exist yet as Lore Olympus is based on The Hymn to Demeter which outlines the creation of the season. But I digress.

Now, this may be a little irrelevant and nitpicky, but to circle back around to the point I made earlier about her not having any genuine connection to Greek myth, Rachel seems to have always behaved like this, in a way that tries to 'hide' the fact that she's not 'legit'. There are old FAQ's from her art pages that answer questions she's asking herself in a very arrogant "how dare you ask me this" kind of way. Like, she claims to have imposter syndrome, which I'm not saying is a lie, but if she does, she definitely uses blind arrogance as a way to cover up for it. It reeks of early 2000's 'mean because it's cool to be mean' energy and that seems to be an attitude that she hasn't left behind in the early 2000's where it belongs - she's just channeled it into 'girl boss' Persephone instead.

It's become abundantly clear after going through old LO asks/livejournal/flickr/etc. posts that Rachel herself 1.) romanticizes purity culture (again, like the Greek myth 'self-proclaimed folklorist' thing, she's trying to claim she's 'deconstructing' purity culture when her actual beliefs are the exact opposite), 2.) values naivety and youthfulness vs. experience and wisdom, especially with how she talks about Persephone and 3.) constantly tries to act like a 'boss babe' similarly to Persephone.

There's also the fact that the time skip perfectly aligned Persephone's age to be in the same range as Rachel - she's now 30 to Rachel's 37. The time skip didn't have to be exactly ten years, if it was purely to retcon the age gap problems then she could have made it far longer, but she made it specifically 10 years and I feel like it can't be a coincidence when we consider how close in age Persephone and Rachel now are. Recalling that earlier point that Rachel seems to be obsessed with naivety and youthfulness, she probably didn't like the idea of making Persephone 40 because that would be too "old".

That's not even getting into the actual way that Persephone is written. This is the part where I say there's nothing inherently wrong with writing self-inserts, even famous authors do it, but the issue lies in authors writing them as power fantasies and not actual fleshed out characters. Persephone is not a fleshed out character. She does not have flaws - at least none that are recognized as flaws - and she never loses. She does whatever Rachel wants her to do on a whim even if it contradicts previous actions or information we've been shown. Sometimes she's an inexperienced "uwu" teenage girl, other times she's attempting to be a 'boss babe' (but really it just comes across as her acting like a Karen.)

All that said, it's not uncommon for poorly written self-inserts to lack consistent characterization because the author is too hopped up on writing them to fulfill their fantasies, even if those fantasies don't align with pre-existing information. There's also the fact that Persephone herself never suffers any consequences for her actions, even when she's in the wrong, and terrible things that happen to her are more for the sympathy of the audience and less for actual character development, depth, or underlying meaning. The comic's universe and the characters that reside within it bend around Persephone and her wants and needs, and this is something that happens with poorly-written self-inserts a lot especially when they're being written purely as power fantasies and not actual character studies or reflections. Nothing bad will ever happen to Persephone, she'll never suffer real consequences for her actions, and she'll never make any real sacrifices, because Persephone is Rachel and Rachel can't write Persephone separate from herself.

This kind of goes hand in hand with the whole "she didn't make Persephone 40+ because then she'd be too old" thing, but I'd also like to mention real quick that Rachel has never written a female character who isn't like this. All of her main characters from all of her works are women, which is perfectly fine in isolation, but they're all written as the exact same woman, sharing traits of naivety, inexperience, youthfulness and innocence. None of her female characters are over the age of 21. Making Persephone a "doesn't know she's sexy" 19 year old who's often drawn very childlike was very intentional as it's the exact same kind of character she's been drawing for years now, and the fact that she's 30 now is simply Rachel trying to retcon the problematic age gap that she got called out on; with the added bonus that it makes Persephone even more like Rachel.

No, Rachel has never directly confessed to Persephone being a self-insert, but I don't think someone like Rachel - who already speaks with a veil of disingenuous arrogance - would admit to it anyways. The writing is on the wall: how she's written Persephone and every female protagonist who has preceded her is a deliberate choice based around Rachel's own beliefs and values - that women are only desirable when they're young and thin, that the "ideal man" is someone who's above everyone else in power, wealth, and status and will and should use that power, wealth, and status to get what they want, and that women should be as cute and innocent as they can be until any degree of opposition or questioning comes their way, in which they are justified in exercising outright cruelty and abuse towards those in their way, with no in-between.

And that's all I'm gonna say on that.

[purplehairedwonder]

Chapter 1086: Connecting the Dots

It’s been a few chapters since my last write-up, but I couldn’t resist the lore of this chapter.

First things first: the cover page is absolutely adorable.

I especially love Luffy’s and Chopper’s reflections in the puddle. So cute.

Okay, onto the chapter itself. Reverie comes to an end with most attendees none of the wiser of the malicious goings on right under their noses.

We see various parties getting away from Mariejois by stowing away. This panel hit me particularly hard:

Sabo is visibly broken up about witnessing Cobra’s death, which is at odds with his reaction back in chapter 1083:

Honestly, it’s a relief to see that Sabo was affected by Cobra’s death since he seems so cold talking about the death of someone both the Revs and audiences knew to be a good man. 

Speaking of Sabo, the Gorosei’s discussion about him is quite interesting.

They use the phrase “checkered fate,” which we’ve seen used repeatedly to describe those who carry the D, including

and

It also feels related to the flashback in 1085:

Sabo seems to be influenced by the Will of D. as much as any of the Ds that surround him.

Meanwhile, Imu orders the destruction of Lulusia using a Vegapunk invention called Mother Flame. 

This is interesting because we saw in the MADS cover story how Vegapunk was focused on peaceful inventions. He talks about creating an energy source that will be accessible to everyone--thus eliminating conflicts over natural resources.

Perhaps Mother Flame is the result of that research. 

Many of us theorized that Uranus was used to wipe out Lulusia, but Dragon argues that if the WG had an Ancient Weapon, why wait until now to use it?

What if, like the mecha that is defunct in Egghead, Uranus needed a power source? And Vegapunk’s research into energy allowed them to finally power up the Ancient Weapon?

That would also fit the parallels between Vegapunk and Einstein, as Einstein’s work laid the foundation for the creation of nuclear weapons despite his pacifist tendencies.

So, Imu orders the destruction of Lulusia because it’s nearby, and the other Gorosei are... fine with it. They even try to justify it.

It’s cold and cruel.

We also get names and see the planet theme continuing with Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn from left to right. Interesting that they are also called “Warrior Gods.”

Imu is also focused on retrieving Vivi, who we now know is a D.

What does Imu want with Vivi specifically? Mysteries to chew on!

Meanwhile, MORE SEPAPHIM.

Finally, the Doffyphim! Crocophim looks almost sad, which is interesting.

So, we’ve seen Seraphim for all the original Warlords, right? So, are we getting them for any of the others? Blackbeard? Law? Buggy? Weevil? Honestly, I’ll be very surprised if we don’t see a Law Seraphim since Law’s not allowed to have nice things and the importance of the Ope Ope no Mi is directly referenced in this chapter.

We get a bit more insight into Imu thanks to Iva:

Which ties back to Cobra saying he recognized the name. Now we have a family name: Nerona. My first thought was Nero, who was Emperor of Rome at the time of the Great Fire of Rome, which destroyed a large portion of the city. (Remember, Vegapunk’s potential energy source was called Mother Flame.)

Iva’s line about “the world we know today was created 800 years ago” brings me back to this panel from earlier in the chapter:

Particularly Mars’ comment in the middle about “The world moves at the will of the creator.” This seems to imply that Imu was one of the founders of the World Government--making him a creator of the world as we know it today.

Of course, that leads to the question of how he could be alive for 800 years. Iva’s out there like

connecting all the dots like the rest of us.

It’s long been theorized that there had to be someone in the series who had the Perpetual Youth Surgery performed on them, and Imu seems to be the best candidate. 

There have actually been multiple mentions of the immortality operation recently, as if to remind us that Law’s fruit can do that. Remember what Blackbeard said after defeating Law? 

So yes, the fact that Law got away from this encounter matters because a) he’s a D., and b) his fruit is coming into play again.

So, theory time. I know a lot of people worry about Law using the Perpetual Youth Surgery on Luffy, but I don’t think that will happen; among many reasons, Luffy wouldn’t want it, even if Law offered. 

However, if Imu has had that surgery and is now immortal, there needs to be a way to defeat him. What better way than the current user of the Ope Ope no Mi reversing the operation and making him mortal again?

Okay, this has gone way longer than I planned, so final thing:

So, this is interesting considering what we learned about Shanks from Film Red and its accompanying media. Shanks, we’re led to believe, is a Figarland, so this is likely a relative--father? Grandfather? Uncle? (Also, the hair that looks like a crescent moon? Amazing.)

Moreover, he is the former king of God Valley, which is where Roger’s crew found baby Shanks in a chest and adopted him. That God Valley flashback is going to be mind-blowing, isn’t it?

It’s also noteworthy that Figarland says, “Anyone who protects scum is lower than the scum they protect” while Shanks has a notoriously weak fleet because he protects them.

Finally, RIP Mjosgard. It’s sad that he was able to better himself and ended up executed as a result of those morals.

[tobiasdrake]

What are your thoughts on the Nostalgia Critic?

Complicated.

I was a big fan of the NC in my twenties. I discovered him later than a lot of other people did but that's kind of normal for me, and it meant I had a lot of videos to go back and laugh at. By the time I got onboard, the anniversary movie "To Boldly Flee" had already officially ended the NC's run, before he failed out of his attempts to move on and be a filmmaker, and wound up coming back.

At the time, I really liked the format of "Wacky skits and personal plotlines mixed with video essay". Writing a story with characters and storylines and also riffing on existing media at the same time. It was basically a modern MST3K, which I'd never really been able to find accessibly.

But the thing that really grabbed me was Channel Awesome itself. The community of creators who would cross over into each other's videos and do collaborative projects and mix up their storylines together and stuff.

And I loved the movies. I watched all of them like dozens of times. It was so cool seeing these creators that I had parasocial relationships with going on adventures and fighting villains and stuff.

...but then things fell apart for Channel Awesome, and we started learning more and more about how shitty everything was behind the scenes for those creators. And how the channel was never really invested in those creators to begin with, and only cared about propping up the Nostalgia Critic.

It soured me on the whole thing, and made me stop and really think about the series. How a lot of those other creators that the channel was exploiting are doing what Doug does better than he does.

I'm not going to say Doug is untalented. He has a Jim Carrey-esque comedic talent, which is to say that he has a remarkable aptitude for flailing his limbs and making sounds erupt from his throat.

Doug's bread and butter is wildly over-the-top reactions, frantic body movement, and the kind of shrieking that will absolutely murder your throat. Which sounds simple but is surprisingly hard to do yourself and, with good comedic timing, can be very funny. He got big for a reason.

But. At the end of the day, all he's bringing to these movies is CinemaSins- or Zero Punctuation-level critique mixed with physical comedy, while other creators in his space were offering thoughtful, serious analysis.

And I like CS and ZP, don't get me wrong. They can be very funny when you remember that this is not a proper review but basically a comedy roast. I've always found criticism of those videos to be akin to sitting down to an hour-length special that's literally just stand-up comedians talking shit about Tom Cruise and going, "Wow, they are being very mean to Tom Cruise. Do they have to be so mean to him?"

But it's a very different sort of thing from, say, listening to F.D. Signifier explain the complete history of the legendary Drake and Kendrick rap beef for three hours.

Comedy isn't easy. But it's easier than the kinds of thoughtful critique that other creators who walked away like Lindsay Ellis or Dan Olson were doing.

And at the same time they were walking away, the Nostalgia Critic's revival was... underwhelming.

While the other collaborators were leaving, the NC was becoming an island reliant on his own stable of paid actors and divorced from the collaborations that made him big to begin with. And the passion just... wasn't there anymore.

It was pretty clear that he'd fallen back on doing NC because his attempt at branching out, his new series Demo Reel, never took off with audiences. The NC revival was Doug passionlessly returning to what made him successful and paid his bills. And it never felt the same after that.

After Change the Channel, it all fell into place. I wasn't enjoying Doug's passionless new videos because he was just going through the motions. I couldn't go back and watch the old stuff I used to love knowing how miserable the other collaborators were behind the scenes and how much Channel Awesome as mistreating them to prop up Doug. My parasocial relationship with him fractured after finding out how he treated the other creators.

(It's worth noting that his paid employees who he pays to support him came out in support of him during all that. The NC isn't some guy's internet show that he films in his bedroom, it's a company. Doug himself is an employee. He doesn't even own the legal rights to the Nostalgia Critic; He signed it over to an executive to manage him.

Tamara and Malcolm are not his buddies; They're his hired staff, so take their opinions while on his payroll with a grain of salt. This is a professional operation, which makes how unprofessional it all is appalling rather than endearing.)

And there were other creators out there, including the ones he'd mistreated, making the same kind of stuff he was making but better. So I made a choice to leave and never looked back.

[todomitoukei]

how much do you think japanese society and expectations have influenced bnha and how did play a role in making the story go from decent to pretty bad?

Hi there!

Considering that the story is written by a Japanese man born and raised and still living in Japan, it is certainly a product of Japanese culture. More importantly, the story itself is about Japanese people who live in Japan.

That being said, we don't live in a vacuum. Through technology especially, access to other cultures is much easier and influence more accurate than it was before.

We know that Star Wars is a huge influence, both because Hori himself said so and also through the numerous references to the franchise in bnha.

Aside from that, we get characters like All Might, Native, or Nagant, which are referencing the US, and other references to non-Japanese culture such as Frankenstein or Carmilla, Christian influences such as the constant mention of 'hell' in regards to the Todoroki family, etc., which shows that Hori is also consciously aware of other cultures and chooses to reference those in his story.

In short, yes, the story in itself is Japanese, but it also has various influences from other cultures.

The thing to keep in mind here, however, is that people for some reason tend to use the "it's a Japanese story! They have a different culture!" often gets thrown around as a last resort argument whenever anyone dares to rightfully criticize the story and writing.

If we look at other stories that have been produced in Japan - by Japanese people for a Japanese audience - it is obvious that most of those stories are well-written.

If you look at stories like Attack on Titan, Angels of Death, No. 6, Death Note, SpyxFamily, and many more, it's obvious that stories can be dark, can have political themes, can focus on injustice, moral questions, mental health, etc. and be well-written.

They can even include characters committing crimes and yet be well-rounded characters that are being given a second chance because guess what - life isn't black and white!

These stories are filled with consistency. They send messages they want to send and treat their characters with respect. Even characters that die are at the very least being given a decent conclusion.

Bnha problem has never been that it's a Japanese story. This is a problematic conclusion and anyone suggesting that the only reason one might dislike certain aspects of it is due to a lack of understanding Japanese culture is just out of arguments.

Yes, we have to be aware that this is a Japanese story so there will be differences in how this story is told by a Japanese person as opposed to if a non-Japanese person were to write it.

But if the reason it was poorly-written was due to the culture it was created in, then Japanese people would all love this ending.

At the end of the day, we can't look inside Hori's head. We can't say whether he wanted to tell the story in a different way, yet felt like he couldn't. People have suggested that his editors or publishers have influenced the development of the story and that is all very possible. However, as mentioned above, Japanese stories that have done what Hori failed to do exist.

My criticism, and most peoples' criticism isn't in regards to the ending not being a happy one for the villains, it's the way the story is contradicting itself, is being inconsistent, retcons several aspects and undoes certain character's development for the sake of other characters.

Japanese or not, the story is simply not a well-written one and in a sea of incredibly well-written, meaningful stories that have been created in that same culture, that aspect is important, but not the reason it failed.

[anistarrose]

Sometimes when I see people talking about extracanonical confirmations of queer rep, I feel like the phrase "Word of God" gets a little overused — specifically, I think it gets used as a synonym for extracanonical confirmations in general, or sometimes, in a way that obscures how even true Word of God can cover several different things.

And like, that's genuinely not a huge deal, it's not a grave or serious issue — but extracanonical reveals are very much a spectrum. And to me, that incomplete spectrum (in an order that's deliberate, but malleable depending on the circumstances), is something like:

Confirmed in the primary source material (i.e., not actually extracanonical, so included only for comparison).

Confirmed in official secondary canon material. (Example: a spinoff, or a companion book that expands the universe of a show). It's official content, but may not be seen by many of the more casual fans.

Confirmed in an adaptation. Official content, but more likely to have a different writing team, may exist in a different canon, and have a very different audience than the original.

Confirmed in (usually unofficial) tertiary canon, which the creators made for fun or as a gift to the fans, but with actual production value and storytelling put into it. (Example: voice actors perform a script, or creators put together a website for an ARG/other lore). Almost universally seen by fewer people than official secondary canon, itself seen by fewer people than primary canon, but still a genuine piece of the storytelling.

Confirmed by a creator in official commentary, which is promoted/packaged alongside the source material. (Example: official commentary tracks on a DVD set, or a Q&A podcast episode in the same feed as the source material podcast.) Not just any fan will dig into it, but it's right there for anyone interested enough to look.

Similar to the above, exept the commentary isn't packaged alongside the source material. (Example: the creator of a show has a podcast, but it doesn't air alongside the TV show, because... like, that just doesn't really happen.) Can and will escape the notice of casual fans, and yet, completely entry-level stuff for most hardcore fans.

Confirmed by a creator in some official, widely accessible interview.

And... confirmed by a creator in some random, ephemeral post on social media.

Obviously, these all have wiggle room depending on the format of the media, how self-published or "indie" it is, and how much the distinction between official and unofficial really matters. It's also an incomplete list — limited to either things I've personally seen, or things really similar to what I've personally seen. But I would argue, Cases 5 through 8 are Word of God, but Cases 2 through 4 really aren't.

Why? Because they're not just the creator telling you something out of universe. Cases 2 through 4 have some storytelling and production value around them, albeit to varying degrees. And lot of unofficial tertiary canon (Case 4), whether queer or not, has been a particular love letter to fans, in just my personal experience. That doesn't mean I prefer my queer characters to only come out under those circumstances — but compared to the creator just tweeting it or whatever? It's not even a contest. It's hardly even the same conversation.

And of course, this isn't the only axis for analyzing extracanonical queer confirmation — there's quality of execution, there's whether it's confirming subtext from the primary canon, there's how heavy or weak that subtext was, and there's whether trying to fit it into primary canon would've resulted in censorship (the mantle under which I include cancellation).

I've also glossed over Word of God versus Word of St. Paul, which can contextually make a difference to many people. But I just feel like we can have more nuanced conversations — about where representation has made progress, versus where it still has shortcomings — if we expand our mental picture of extracanonical reveals beyond just Word of God.

Have we made progress from "creator tweets a character is gay just to look progressive," to "character is implied to be gay in the source material, and confirmed in secondary canon (where there's less censorship) as soon as the creator gets a chance?" Is there still a problem with asexual and aromantic characters being extra likely to get extracanonical reveals, even in series that are queer-positive overall, but are we at least working our way up the extracanonical sliding scale?

Those questions are easier to answer when we note that not all extracanonical confirmations are created equal. And just personally, I do feel better about a lot of queer representation when I look at it this way — not because I think we should settle where we're at right now, but because it seems widely understood that we won't settle for random twitter replies anymore. And that's genuinely encouraging.

[beesmygod]

Did I misunderstand your earlier post about the watcher situation? it seemed like you were against shane and ryan and that other guy starting their new streaming service, but that would contradict your most recent post about youtubers feeling entitled to add revenue. If youtubers arent entitled to add revenue because youtube hosts their videos, isn't starting your own platform an acceptable solution?

starting a streaming service is a terrible idea not because of the method of monetization, but because of the way they are choosing to do so. if anything, taking money direct from fans is probably the most ideal way for things to work (albeit not the most lucrative and presets some unique social hazards); i get paid via patreon myself. i think it's core concept was revolutionary: let fans fund the things they like to see directly (or as directly as possible lol).

it's the way in which they are approaching the streaming model. actually first of all, streaming itself is just like a completely insane and bad idea for so many reasons including "video hosting is so fucking expensive". the selection of shows they have is way too limited to justify the change in model. other streaming services are openy struggling to make shit work. dropout's success appears to have been a black swan event and not a business model to emulate. its a pretty delusional idea

removing your backlog from public eye (i think they've backtracked on this one already) and making your work less accessible is a disrespectful way to treat an audience. they have a patreon of over 12k members paying at least 5 bucks a month (even if patreon eats 30% of the money and taxes are another 15% [before write offs], that's a lot of fucking money). im not sure why that wasn't considered as a more viable means of raising funds. it would be significantly less shameful to make a video asking for patreon donations and drawing attention to its existence rather than something that is going to take so much time, effort, and money that it honestly beggars belief lol

i dont think starting your own paywall is the solution when they already have a solution that works: the patreon direct support model while hosting vids for free. making your work harder to access helps no one, ultimately.