#is it because people cared more about my opinions or I had more meaningful contributions?

[quibbs126]

Id say it's more nuance. Like they are two halves of the same whole. The themes show a messy tragedy in the making. The whole "they can make them worse" and general toxity makes for interesting potential. The craving to place the lil guys in angsty situations that break further and further until SOMETHING bleeds

Itbjust depends on the creativity of the person making the content lol

Just some old people with beef

I’m sorry to the anon who asked this originally, but I was going through my inbox for something, and I came across this

And I no longer have any context as to what this was about

My brain is like “…is this about Transformers?”, but this is too old to have been an ask about that, not to mention I don’t really get Transformers asks

Honestly my best guess as to what this could have been was Golden Cheese/Burning Spice or just generally Beast/Ancient related. Some of the other surrounding asks seem to date this around the Burning Spice update, so that would make sense, but I’m not sure why I’d ask about that because I’m pretty sure I’ve made my stance that I don’t really like those ships

Oh wait, it might have been about me wondering why mysticcacao and goldenspice weren’t that popular/generally disliked ships, but shadowvanilla/vanillamilkshake was. I’m remembering now I didn’t really understand that (tbh I still don’t but I don’t really care that much anymore)

[thebreakfastgenie]

I'm not anti-vote or anything, but I think some of the liberals on here greatly overrate how much damage a bunch of bored kids (most of whom probably can't even legally vote) talking shit on social media can actually do to the Democrats. So what if they turn out braindead "Genocide Joe" memes by the thousands per week? No meaningful voter would pay attention to those, and anyone who does never had a vote worth chasing in the first place.

The problem is that it's not just a bunch of bored kids. It feeds a larger social media ecosystem. Remember "cancel culture?" Remember how that became a right wing talking point that conservatives whined about in mainstream settings? That has its roots on tumblr. If you ever doubted that fringe social media movements affect mainstream politics, 2024 should have been the final nail in the coffin. JD Vance has very signifcant (and, frankly, underreported) ties to online far right communities (known as "groypers" to the terminally online) and it absolutely influenced his campaign and now he's bringing those interests to the vice-presidency. Elon Musk (the owner of twitter) and Vivek Ramaswamy want to run a government office named DOGE after a meme. We're sharing the internet with the people in power; we're all playing with live ammo. It's often a ripple effect or butterfly effect, so it's very difficult to predict what memes and posts from "bored kids" will make it to real life politics and how they'll be transformed along the way. Because it's so hard to predict, we need to be aware of the possibility and act with care. "Genocide Joe" memes contributed to a general feeling of dissatisfaction with Biden that, intentionally or not, played into the Trump campaign's "everyone hates Biden" narrative. A similar thing happened with Hillary in 2016.

Elections are also won and lost on the margins. Campaigns spend billons on ground games that persuade a very small percentage of voters, but it's better to persuade that percentage than not to. If you don't know if something is going to make a difference, you act as if it is when the stakes are high. Is the drag from a constant negative social media narrative going to hurt a campaign? Maybe, and either way it's definitely not going to help, so it's better not to have it. 2016 and 2024 were both very close elections.

Liberals also tend to interpret bored kids' posts as statements of action. If someone says they don't want a Democrat to win, will try to stop it, and will tell other people not to vote for that candidate, liberals are going to object to that.

It's usually not "meaningful voters" who decide elections. It's low-information swing voters who make up their minds on the way to the voting booth. These voters are, consciously or unconsciously, often influenced by perceived popular opinion. A lot of people don't have deeply held values that they've spent time examining, but have moral compasses more akin to "if everyone I know thinks this, it must be right." The danger of social media is that is also distorts the meaning of "everyone I know." Your meme about how you hate Joe Biden finds its way into an algorithmically-generated bubble and someone says "gee, it seems like everyone I know hates Joe Biden, I generally trust my social circle, he must be really bad." And it's self-reinforcing. They start sharing it or making similar posts of their own and it spreads to their contacts in their own bubbles.

I don't think the exact mechanisms or limits or this phenomenon are fully understood yet because social media is still too new, but it's very real.

[earhartsplane]

Since we're all talking about plagiarism now, I'd like to share this video which came out last year about a paper accepted at the CVPR 2022:

For the people not in the know, the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference is the biggest conference in computer science. Last year, in 2022, the paper featured in the video got accepted. A few days later, this video was posted. The first author, a PhD student, apologized and the paper was retracted and removed from the proceedings. Hilariously, the first reaction of the co-authors, including a professor at the Seoul National University, was to say that they had nothing to do with it.

My point here is that scientific papers are not rigorously checked for plagiarism, and a background in academia tells you absolutely nothing about whether or not someone will be diligent in avoiding plagiarism. The biggest difference is that there are consequences if you're caught.

I also don't want people to be too harsh on the first author of this paper, or to think the situation is equivalent to the whole Somerton debacle. For starters, you don't get paid for publishing papers, you (or more commonly your university) pay the publishers. But the phrase publish or perish exists for a reason, and everyone in the field wants to get published in the CVPR, because it's supposed to show that you're great at research. Additionally, the number of papers and the prestige of the venues they're published in criteria on which you will be evaluated as a researcher and a university employee.

The way I see it, there are basically two kinds of plagiarism that are shown in the video. The first one concerns sentences that are lifted completely unchanged from other papers. This is bad, and it is plagiarism, but I can see how this would happen. Most instances of this appear in the introduction and on background information, so if you're insecure about your mastery of English and it's not about your contribution anyway, I can understand how you would take the shortcut of copy-pasting and tell yourself that it's just so that the rest of the paper makes sense, and why waste time on phrasing things differently if others have done it already, and it's not like there are a million way to write these equations anyways.

Let me be clear. I don't approve, or condone. It's still erasing the work of the people who took the time and pain to phrase these things. It's still plagiarism. But I understand how you could get to that point.

The second kind of plagiarism is a way bigger deal in my opinion. At 0:37 , we can see that one of the contributions of the paper is also lifted from another paper. Egregiously, the passage includes "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first [...]" , which is a hell of a thing to copy-paste. So this is not only lazily passing other people's words as your own, it's also pretending that you're making a contribution you damn well know other people have already done. I also wasn't able to find a version of the plagiarized article that had been published in a peer-reviewed venue, which might mean that the authors submitted it, got rejected, and published it on arXiv (an website on which authors can put their papers so that they're accessible to the public, but doesn't "count" as a publication because it's not peer-reviewed. You can also put papers that are under review or have been published on there as long as you're careful with the copyrights and double-blind process). And then parts of it were published in the CVPR under someone else's name.

I think there's also a third kind of plagiarism going on here, one that is incredibly common in academia, but that is not shown in the video. That's the FIVE other authors, including a professor, who were apparently happy to add their name to the paper but obviously didn't do anything meaningful since they didn't notice how much plagiarism was going on.

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia, I was talking to a friend the other day and we were debating whether it was ok or not to enjoy media made by people with different political views than your own.

She said it wasn't but I said it depends on the person but also because I think we shouldn't self-censor ourselves or judge the quality of the media by the opinions of the person/s making it. As someone who's studied media what are your takes on this? Thanks in advance ( ^_^)

Anon, this subject is way too broad for me to answer in a single post response.

It also highly depends on what the media is, and what the politics are. There's a difference between consuming something (and giving money to someone) who's just a mild asshole, and someone who is a literal rapist and has never experienced consequences for it, or someone who is literally giving money to movements that will indirectly cause the deaths of trans teenagers and is still actively doing that / not dead yet.

If you're the kind of person to give money to someone who will contribute - and has contributed - to the deaths of trans teenagers, well it's a free world and you can do that, but maybe don't expect to keep a lot of your trans friends and trans ally friends, and you yourself would not be a trans ally. You're not self-censoring, and the world isn't stopping you from doing that, but you might be someone who needs to feel more empathy for the people around you, or work on understanding why giving money to folks with monstrous politics leads to more monstrous politics.

If you don't want to live in that kind of world, you have choices you can make. But they're your choices.

It's not 'censoring' myself to choose not to participate in the works of something by someone who is doing things that could lead to a less safe world for me and fellow trans people as an example. I'm making a choice because I care about other people and because I genuinely would not enjoy the works of a person who created stuff who has said online: 'If you participate in my created works I'm going to assume you support my views (and so will everyone else).'

Making personal choices like this is not censoring, anon. (And I'm pro-censorship, lol, so even if it was, I'd still be like 'yeah contextually sometimes you have to' - censoring =/= banning). Technically censorship is something that can only be done by controlling bodies and government authorities anyway.

But we have to make choices all the time. If your friend is raped by another friend of yours, but that second friend buys you dinner all the time, do you keep seeing that second friend because like, hey free dinner! If your answer to this question is 'of course I would' - then like, well, I don't know what to say to that. We probably can't have a meaningful conversation about compassion or humanity.

Different levels of politics have different ramifications to different areas of society and different people. I'm trans, so I'm not going to support transphobic creators. It's really that simple for me. I don't want my fellow trans people to keep getting hurt by anti-trans rhetoric, and I'm pretty tired of it myself, so I avoid it, and I avoid the people who support folks who literally enable it to keep happening. It's an active issue with active and current repercussions. We're not talking in this instance about the politics of a dead author who can't hurt anyone anymore, or someone in prison, or someone who is so old they have disappeared offline into the ether.

If, on the other hand, I find out someone's a Republican but in all other ways they're mostly just living their life and not trying to actively harm people by funneling all of their personal money into things that will like...cause suicides due to promoting say, transphobia, then yeah, I might still engage with their stuff or support their stuff.

Likewise, if I watch or give money to a movie made by Weinstein, I will often think of all the other crew members and actors who had nothing to do with that behaviour who still deserve residuals or royalties.

Some cases are complicated, but some aren't. Some really are 'this person has said they will give their money to causes and governments that want to hurt us and eradicate us' and supporting that is the action of a transphobic person, even if that person doesn't feel transphobic. If the actions cause more hate towards trans people, it's a transphobic action, and it's kind of that simple.' And trust me, you can be trans and still be transphobic. We see internalised phobias all the time, everywhere.

Yes, I'm talking about JKR here, because I find this kind of question is usually about some obviously monstrous living person who is still doing monstrous things in a very ongoing way, vs. just a regular 'hey I found out this writer is pro-fracking and I hate fracking what do I do' or 'hey this author writes a ship I don't like should I hate them.'

(Look this might not be about JKR but it's certainly the first thing that's going to come to most trans people's minds and I'm trans, anon).

[starryvioletnight]

False Positive

House MD fanfic, Greg House/James Wilson (hilson)

A scene that keeps playing in my head. Probably should be part of a larger fic, but I don't wanna. Dubious timeline, I've only seen up to half way of season 5. Fluff, getting together, usual House/Wilson prank stuff.

Summary: After an incident during lunch, House has been agitated, more so than normal. Enter Wilson, trying to make things right. Enjoy!

-

The sky is dark, and long past time for him to go home. And yet, House finds himself still in his office. Using the handle of his cane, he balances his red and white oversized tennis ball. He gives it a little toss and catches it on the handle, silently mulling over what had happened earlier.

A knock on his office door brings him out of his thought process. He looks up to see Wilson through the glass. His jaw tenses and he rolls his eyes, going back to playing catch.

The door opens, and Wilson lets himself in. "Hey, can we talk?"

"Aren't you worried about being in a room with me after dark? Apparently there's a rumor floating around that I'm gay." House doesn't look at Wilson when he talks. He focuses on his cane and ball. "Wonder what caused that."

Wilson shuts the door. "I said sorry."

"Never said you didn't."

"And you're still here sulking." Wilson sits down in the chair closest to the door. "It was one kiss. One kiss to avoid the attention of someone I... didn't want to talk to."

"Your boyish charms causing problems with women doesn't mean you get to kiss me in the middle of the cafeteria unprompted. You knocked my cane out of my hand, I could have fallen." He tosses the ball to Wilson.

Wilson catches it, spinning it in his hands a few times before tossing it back. "So if it was prompted, it would have been okay?"

House catches the ball on his cane and stills. He knows he needs to choose his next words carefully.

Even taking half a moment to think is too much, and Wilson pounces on it, "Wait really?"

House takes the ball and puts it back on his desk. "Help you trick someone? Yes, obviously! I just need a heads up so I know to hold onto my cane tighter."

"Oh ho, as if that was a problem!" Wilson gets to his feet. "I'm sure my bicep is bruised with how hard you grabbed onto me!" He walks closer to the desk, crossing his arms.

House gets up. "Of course I grabbed onto you, my cane was on the floor!"

House tries to walk to the door but Wilson side steps, now directly in front of House and staying there. House in turn takes half a step back.

Wilson, of course, notices it. "I have... a few theories as to why you're upset. I could use a differential."

House's jaw sets and he grips his cane tighter. With his free hand he gestures for Wilson to continue.

"Theory one, you're upset I did it to you. You like being in control, you would have wanted to have an excuse to kiss me, so I'm all surprised and then the rumors are about me being all lovesick."

"Good theory." House mumbles. "Doesn't cover everything."

"Okay, theory two, you're homophobic." Wilson steps closer to House.

House snorts. "You're an idiot." He fidgets with his cane.

"Right, of course." Wilson nods. "So theory three... you liked the kiss. You're upset because something you ended up finding meaningful, I've played off as a joke."

"And the others gossiping, does that contribute?"

"You've never cared what people thought before, I doubt you'd start caring now." He steps forward again, and this time House does step back. "What's your opinion? Got a favorite theory?"

"The first one sounds like me. I think it would have been funny to see your dumb face all shocked and..." House trails off as Wilson steps closer again.

"Right..." Wilson uncrosses his arms. "Well, we should run a test. Rule out a couple theories and find our diagnosis."

Wilson starts to lean in. He's close, closer, until House just has to barely lean in. Wilson's eyes close, and he's waiting. It's a trap, Wilson wants House to cave, to admit he cares, and- Oh fuck it.

House closes the gap, harder than he meant and way more vulnerable. It's worth it when House hears and feels a pleasant noise against his own mouth. Wilson's hands are on his hips. House drops his cane, resting his on Wilson's arms. He feels Wilson's mouth open just enough for House to let him suck on his bottom lip.

Finally House is the one to break the kiss. He's breathless, heart racing. He opens his eyes, still being held by Wilson, who still has his eyes closed.

House exhales through his nose before he pulls back a step. "There. You ran your test."

Wilson blinks and takes a breath. "Yeah, yeah I did."

"You got your diagnosis, you can go." House doesn't look at him now, moving to pick up his cane.

"Why would I do that?"

House pauses and faces him again. "Obviously you were testing if I liked you. Congrats, you got your answer. Go."

Wilson stares at House and puffs a laugh. "House I knew the answer before I walked in here. That test was, well," He scratches the back of his head. "It was for me."

That grabs House's attention immediately. "For you? And you... liked it?"

"Well, unless this test is a false positive." Wilson smiles. "We should... retest, to make sure?"

House stares and tilts his head. "Dr. Wilson, are you coming onto me? I may have to file a sexual harrassment lawsuit."

"You bastard." He laughs in reponse to House's empty threat. "Fine. No retesting, I'll go." He turns around and heads to the door.

"Wait," House blurts.

Wilson stops immediately. "Yes?"

House fidgets with his cane. He looks around the office then at Wilson. "Are you going to make me say it?"

"Yes. I am." Wilson nods. There's a gleam in his eye, and a sweet smile on his face that House has never had directed at him before.

House takes a breath, and as if it pains him, he mumbles, "I want you to stay. Please."

The silence is comfortable, and Wilson is relaxed as he walks back to House's side. "Since you asked so nicely, I'll stay."

House nods. "Thanks, Wilson."

"Anything for you House."

[starlit-mansion]

you know. there's a character in a piece of media i'm watching that i just don't really like. However. I don't hate them either like. they fit in the thing and are integral to the themes and plot. I'm just not really excited by them as a person and i'm genuinely at a loss as to what other people see in them, why they want to draw fanart of them, etc. and i feel like saying that implies that i feel negatively but i genuinely don't. it's like trying to drum up a passionate feeling about the sprigs of arugula in a sandwich. it's be missing something if it wasn't there but it could also be bean sprouts or spinach instead and i'd feel about the same.

related, i watched a stage production of les mis for the first time a year or so ago, and to be honest. i felt very little for cosette though the whole show. she didn't bore me or excite me, i didn't relate to her or have warm pink feelings about baby's first romance. and yet, the fact that she and marius were alive and married by the end was such a great sweep of narrative meaning that it transcended any feeling that i had about her as a person. it was maybe the most meaningful denouement wedding i've ever experienced in a story.

and idk. i feel like that was the most representative moment of a serious shift in the way that i started to think about things. it doesn't apply to every piece of media. there's lots of stuff that lives and dies on if the characters are likable. and it's fun to like characters. but it does help to stop judging every single thing on whether i like every single character. i've also just never really personally projected onto characters. it's more interesting to me to pilot them around a bit when i do stuff with them, like my identity stays separate and contained but my style comes through in the movements.

and because of the way i engage on here. i see, say and reblog stuff that's kind of negative about the "fandomy" way of engaging and. to be honest, i'm trying to be a little bit picky about it now. trying to only engage if i think it could genuinely contribute to a discussion rather than being like 'you people love your little tropes, don't you' because like. who wants to hear that? i am just a little bit of a hater at heart but i don't really aspire to be mean. i just think that it's more interesting to form an opinion that doesn't fold under the slightest prodding than to clasp my hands together and say 'live and let live <3' about every possible thing another person could enjoy.

i am also. actually genuinely put off by a thing that i've started to see everywhere, which is engaging with fiction like it's a set of natural laws that can create other discreet effects when you run experiments in it. it's a cool thing when a series makes you feel like that could be true, but it's not the norm. i don't care if the mona lisa burning to reveal canvas instead of wood in glass onion 'proves' that the painting was not destroyed and miles only had a copy. that's not what the moment was about within the narrative. vampires wouldn't react to seemingly random stimuli with the same agony as garlic or silver or crosses because vampires are not "allergic" to those substances and their weaknesses are symbolic of what they represent (death, disease, infection, predation). sometimes there's a plot hole because it's tiresome to wallow in the fact that a sequel has to rewrite the past a little to make room for itself. sometimes that character originally meant the thing they said but now at this point in the story, they're a mentor rather than a minor impediment so their past actions have to be waved away as a confusing lie

i'm not saying there's never any value to exploring that space, but i do start to chafe when an unavoidable technical problem starts to be treated as malicious authorial intent, or worse, treated as something that i'm foolish for having a problem with because the collective fanon already wiped it away (like that mildly homophobic joke being interpreted as a sincere expression of queer interest, or an expression of internalized biphobia that the character is working through)

idk what i'm trying to say as a whole. but i sure am saying a lot of it.

[leonard-chia]

MDA20009 Digital Communities Fifth Blog post week 9

Topic:

Finding My Place in a Fandom: A Journey of my Community and Connection

Hey everyone! Super excited to share my story with you all again! So, today’s topic is all about fandoms. Honestly, I used to be the type of person who wasn’t into any of that—no fan groups, no following fan pages, none of it. But, as they say, time changes people, and here I am now, fully embracing the fandom life!

Discovering the Fandom Community

So It started with a single interest, a piano piece compose by Chopin that caught my attention and slowly grew into it more the I aspect. Suddenly, I was part of something bigger, an online community is a Instagram page of people who shared my fascination, my theories, and sometimes even my strange sense of humour, my behaviour captures the essence of fandom: a community driven by intense enthusiasm that interacts with society, shaping new cultural meanings and values through shared social experiences (Fuschillo, 2018). Now I realise that Fandoms have this unique way of turning all people who have same interest into friends, and for many of us, they become spaces that offer acceptance, understanding, and an endless source of connection.

Why I Feels Like Home in the fandom communities

My Fandoms communities often feel like a home away from home. They’re places where you can express excitement without judgment I mean sometimes, We share our quirky, unpopular opinions and crack up over inside jokes that only fellow fans would get. For instance, we speculate: if Chopin, the legendary piano composer, had lived longer or if Poland hadn’t been invasion by imperial Russia, would his musical style have evolved differently? Would some of his iconic pieces even exist if history had taken a different turn? It’s all part of the fun! I found myself surrounded by people who saw the little details and appreciated them as much as I did. Being in a fandom meant finding a group of people who not only enjoyed the same things I did but understood why I cared so deeply about certain things.

This sense of connection goes beyond just shared interests. Fandoms can offer a unique type of support. If I posted a question, I’d get responses from fans who wanted to help, offer insight, or just share in my curiosity. In those moments of excitement, when someone shares a piece they’ve just discovered, I feel thrilled to explore something new along with them. And whenever someone learns a new piece and posts it on the page, I share in their happiness because I know firsthand the effort and dedication it takes to practice and improve.

Finding My Voice ( My Species )

One of the best parts about joining a fandom has been discovering ways to contribute. Watching others create fan art, write fanfiction, or discuss music theories really sparked my own creativity. Whether it was doodling, writing, or making memes, I felt inspired to join in on this collaborative, creative space. Even though I don’t often post my own content, I find myself quietly enjoying and appreciating everyone else’s work. It’s funny, but despite not engaging much, just liking and sharing posts makes me feel connected and part of the fandom community in a meaningful way.

A World Without Borders

Another remarkable thing about fandoms is how they bring people together from all around the globe. I’ve connected with fans from different countries, backgrounds, and life experiences, learning from perspectives I wouldn’t otherwise encounter. And because our bond is rooted in a shared passion, the usual social barriers seem to fade. Whether a friend is from across the street or across the ocean, our shared fandom makes us feel close.

This is also thanks to the development of social platforms that provide convenience, The growth of social media encourages fan culture to become a participatory culture, changing roles and actively impacting society and the economy (Jia, Li & Ma 2021).

Conclusion

In the end, being part of a fandom has taught me the true power of connection. I used to feel hesitant about identifying as a “fan” of anything, but now I see that fandom goes far beyond pop culture or celebrity followings like K-pop or pop music. Fandom can encompass a love for classical music, historical figures, or anything else that sparks a passion. I have a deep respect for all types of fandoms, and I truly admire anyone who has found a community they can call their own.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed diving into the world of fandoms with me! Keep exploring, creating, and sharing what you love, because fandoms are all about building connections and celebrating our passions. Until we meet again—see you all !!

Reference

Fuschillo, G 2018, ‘Fans, fandoms, or fanaticism?’, Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 347–365.

Jia, B, Li, J & Ma, J 2021, ‘Transformation of Fan Culture Under the Influence of Social Media’, www.atlantis-press.com, Atlantis Press, pp. 2173–2178, viewed <https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/ichess-21/125967353>.

[davidjordanphoenix]

Everything good I contributed to this world is gone. I threw it away for stupid reasons.

There's no hope. I'm too damaged as a person. I'm a monster. The little bit of good I had in me is gone. There's nothing left but bitterness.

Anything good that I was I destroyed myself. I will never contribute anything of value. I failed the one person who's opinion of me matters above everyone else's. And I shouldn't CARE about their opinion but great fantastic I do.

It's all my fault. Everything is my fault. I lost my most precious and irreplaceable merch item because I was stupid. I lost my Tumblr account that had so many beautiful interactions from wonderful people and posts I was proud of that I can't recreate. I lost my only sense of community and now I feel completely unable to connect with anyone at all. My family no longer trusts me because I went crazy. My depression is worse than ever and I am having health concerns after being forced to take a medication that wasn't safe for me. I might become diabetic because of that medication, when I wasn't even prediabetic before taking it. Even my fucking dog doesn't trust me anymore because of how insane I was. I wasted all my money on bad equipment and things I can't even use. My best friend doesn't trust me and I lost my other best friend.

I've lost the little I had and I didn't even learn anything from it. Im still a lazy useless pile of shit. I can't even turn this into something hopeful because I'm not fucking strong enough to turn my life around. I'm not strong enough to do anything of value with the time I have left. My life is most likely half over already and I don't think I have the energy to make the rest of it worthwhile.

I failed already and I can't turn this failure around into something meaningful because I'm too fucking lazy. Even though I WANT to work hard I WANT to move forward I can't because I have spent this entire fucking year doing FUCK ALL even though I PROMISED myself I would do more.

I haven't done enough and THATS why I will never fucking succeed at anything. Because even when I have ALL the motivation in the world I CAN'T FUCKING MOVE!!!!! I CAN'T DO SHIT I CANT WORK HARD I CANT BE PRODUCTIVE I CAN ONLY SIT THERE AND FUCKING ROT LIKE THE MAGGOTMEAT THAT I AM!!!!! IM SICK AND TIRED OF BEING THIS WAY AND NOTHING I DO CHANGES THE LAZY FUCKING PERSON I AM!!!!!

[onlinealiasnu]

music in narnia - pt. 3

what is music to me now? although i have fallen out of the constant obsession with music i had a few years ago when all i could do was listen to music, i still immensely appreciate what it can do for me. even though my minutes of listening have dropped down from over 99,000 minutes a year to around 85,000 a year (thank you to spotify wrapped for these statistics), the roles my favorite artists and songs play in my life have never been diminished.

even still, i can track my growth through the music i listen to and have listened to over the years. from obsessively looping mitski songs to playing old 2010s and rnb songs now, i’ve realized that i’ve matured and stopped caring about other people’s opinions. i’ve let myself become who i am and listen to the songs i want to, disregarding the popular opinions from everyone else of my generation. 

music not only signifies my growth, but still contributes to my everyday life in a way that makes each day more meaningful that the next. i think one of my favorite hobbies over the summer has been talking long walks from 30 minutes to an hour long each, while listening to my favorite songs. this was something that i started doing after all my closest friends started moving away to attend college and there was no one to hang out with or busy myself with anymore. during that time—being one of the last to leave the neighborhood—i spent time by myself. i painted more and read more and walked more and did some more walking, all while listening to music. it’s almost like music occupied its own little section in my brain.

through music, i learned to listen more closely to what people said—at first being through lyrics, then through actual words that came out of people’s mouths. i learned to be more emotional, something i’ve had trouble with for a long time, and more empathetic, which has served me well in understanding the world and making friends. i learned how to appreciate the people i love as well as seek people that i know are important to me. i learned to appreciate the little things, to admire the beauty of small things that people don’t normally pay attention to. i learned to be more observant, picking up smaller details that no one else notices. i learned to forge strong bonds with people, finding friends that i will have for a lifetime. i learned of a vast world that i’ve barely stepped foot into, barely had any experience in. most importantly, i learned to appreciate myself and be confident in what i know i can do without overlooking my own talents.

so when i say i love music, i don’t mean i’m a musician in any way. i most certainly am not—i can’t play any instrument and my singing is subpar at most. but even with those technicalities, music is still vital to my being and something i love with my whole heart. i mean, i guess it would be nice to learn an actual instrument. if i had to choose one, it would have to be bass or guitar. who knows? maybe one day, i’ll be up on that stage performing songs either solo or with a band, singing my heart out to songs that i create with mountains of meaning associated with them. or maybe, i’ll just be an ordinary office worker coming home from a nine to five, easing into the evening with a glass of wine and a slow ballad before making dinner for myself. i guess the only way to end this off is to say i’m both completely uncertain where life takes me and certain i’ll do fine whatever happens in the end. so thank you to music for making me self-assurant enough to believe that whatever happens will happen and that in the end, everything will be okay.

because seriously, everything will be okay.

[keefwho]

March 17 - 2023

8:24 AM

I had a dream I got fucked super hard in high school science class. It was by someone I didn’t have a very high opinion of when I went there but I didn’t necessarily dislike him. I remember it felt awesome, I got manhandled GOOD. But after that the dream kinda sucked because I was going around trying to not look like I blew my load all over myself and didn’t have a good change of clothes. I also got locked out of my locker and the front desk lady couldn’t help me because I had an expired ID. At some point after school I went to go buy soda for myself, had some awkward interactions at Walmart, and came out with a 24 pack of diet coke by accident that I couldn’t return. 

I had other dreams before this that I forgot because I got woken up at 6am. This morning I feel kinda tired still and am not looking forward to commissions or my workout but I’ll try to get it all done. Maybe I just need a real sturdy breakfast. 

6:29 PM

I’ve been pretty tired the past few days and I don’t know why. Maybe it is just the slight lack of sleep but I’m not sure. I guess I’ll try extra hard to get better sleep the next few days and see if that helps. I’m not ACTUALLY afraid of this but what if it’s because of an underlying condition? I wouldn’t start to suspect that unless it doesnt get better or got worse. The leading theory is I really need to get my 8 hours and I’ve also been pushing myself pretty hard this week. Even though for 3 days this week I skipped an hour of work. I dunno. 

11:52 PM

I feel kinda sad tonight but I’m gonna try no to judge myself for it. Im just gonna write it out and let it be what it is. I feel kinda lonely, largely due to my parents not being here for the next week. Even though hardly anything is fundamentally different with how I operate, it is unsettling having no one around physically. And I gotta take care of the dogs which is annoying. 

I also have those classic feelings of “I’m not very good” or “Im falling behind” or “People don’t love me as much as I think they do”. Obviously all disputable claims but I am not here to dispute. Sometimes that doesn’t help. The truth is I think it’s okay to be feeling these things, I feel them for a reason. When I find the reasons I can end up changing my behavior around it. Or I can wait until I know I’ll feel better. I am becoming more and more aware of my patterns and it’s hard to keep falling into them when I see them happening. So tonight I’m defusing from those big negative thoughts but allowing myself to be aware of them and still feel bad about them. Im just trying to prevent overthinking or mental reverb so it doesn’t get so out of hand. 

On a brighter note I’ve had 2 successful encounters where I basically brute forced social interaction with a stranger by asking them questions. Like they wouldn’t have much to say and I’d carry the conversation moment by moment until they opened up and started contributing themselves. Its been interesting and I’m starting to hone in on a more clear goal. My objective is to hunt for people I get along with by getting to know strangers. Sounds straightforward and obvious because it is but for awhile now I’ve been in a rut where I was failing to recognize the social potential around me. Everyone felt like an NPC and I didn’t like that. They still do but I’m working on it. But I’m realizing that the only way I can find more compatible people is to actually go around and locate them. Along the way I can learn to socialize better and have meaningful interactions with people I might not ever see again. 

At the end of the day I know I always have my homies which is all that matters to me. I’m trying to expand my social circle for the sake of being healthy. I don’t want to replace anyone and I want to stop feeling guilty like I am. In my perfect world I’d want to stick with the homies I got for the rest of my life and thats it. Of course I’ll still try to make that happen, but I wish I didn’t have to make new friends. I like the ones I have. 

[nothankyousirr]

my opinions on the different mbti types (from an intj)

enfp - you can be good to hang around in moderation. i appreciate your charitable nature; how you aren’t one to pass judgement, but that also leads to a lack in understanding one’s depth. i appreciate how easy it is to befriend you, you’re able to keep the conversation without any expectations on my part to contribute, and although you can be stupid and impulsive, it’s to a point where it’s almost fascinating, which makes it somehow nice to be in your presence. in moderation, of course. you can be very draining at some points.

entp - you’re funny to watch, but actually conversing with you can be...confusing? i do appreciate your ability to see things from other perspectives, but sometimes you need to take a step back and understand the overall reasons behind those perspectives. confidence is important, but don’t get too over zealous, we all have things to improve on.

enfj - i cannot understand you. at all. you’re so nice, it seems like you have some sort of ulterior motives. i do not trust you, you are just so warm i feel like i’m being judged every time i talk with you, or are even in the same room as you. your general demeanor is just so kind it’s threatening, you need to be less optimistic.

entj - a lot of people hate you, which i can understand on their part, but i appreciate your approach to things. with every entj i’ve met, no matter my friend’s/peer’s opinion, we’ve always had a mutual understanding of some sorts. although, i do see a lot of naivety; which i’m 99.9% sure none of you will ever admit. i admire your drive, your confidence, and things along those lines, but some words of advice; you can’t change anyone. as hard as you try, some people are just stuck the way they are, unfortunately. it’s something i’ve had to learn as well, but a lesson i think would do you well.

infp - you are adorably killing yourselves with every move; like small puppy who’s favorite toy just happens to be laid perfectly in the middle of ongoing traffic. your impulsivity hurts me deep inside. please, just try to be aware of your surroundings, at least a little. i know, ironic coming from me, but it’s all i could ask. think out your actions, just a bit. i know life may suck, but take it upon yourself to change that, instead of just falling victim to your own hurt. i wish i could just pick you up and live your life for you, it hurts to see you do these things.

intp - i like you. your humor is refreshing as well as your insight, you just cannot stay organized. you take pride in your discombobulation; your lack of care, which confuses me. because of that, it’s hard to empathize with you when you have troubles, because it could’ve been easily prevented. it makes me upset for you when i see you do this. it doesn’t come from a place of trying to overly pressure you, rather a place of care. i hope that can be acknowledged.

infj - i enjoy your presence, you are just are hard to get. i always seem to upset you in some way, so i implore you to be better at communicating those things. your productivity and insight is very much appreciated, i feel your anxiety is holding you back. we all experience anxiety, it’s a valid human emotion, of course, but don’t let it dictate your life. confidence is important, you’re allowed to acknowledge your accomplishments. also, i implore you to think deeper in terms of morality. why do you believe those things? what is the axiomatic rout of those morals? by understanding that, you gain a better understanding of the people around you. the people you deem to be bad, may think they’re good by their own definition.

intj - from one intj to another, i feel like there is a lot to grow on. we tend to be very book-smart, but oblivious when it comes to how people work, including ourselves, but just because those things are acknowledged from mbti posts and whatnot, that does not give any excuse to avoid improvement. knowledge is important if we ever want to achieve our goals, and having that insight can make things a lot easier. as much as it seems like time is easily slipping away from us, taking control and trying to pick up on those details we may normally be ignoring, may teach us something valuable. it’s also important to take care of ourselves. i find routines are an easy way to remember to do so. having designated times for everything helps maximize the amount of time to get things done, while also taking care of your needs. and give yourself breaks. having fun, relaxing, etc. can also be productive in itself. not everything that’s productive isn’t what’s directly seen as such.

esfp - you can be a lot. its very hard for me to truly understand you, and i get the impression that you feel the same about me. i feel like there’s a lot of miscommunication. we’re practically complete opposites, not just literally (intj-esfp) but in practice as well. what you find fun and what i find fun is so drastically different from one another, i feel like it’s impossible to truly have a meaningful time with each other. from both parties.

estp - i like your confidence. your humor as well. i feel like we get along quite well, although it can be hard at some points because i tend to live in the future a lot, while you’re the “go with the flow” type. that is appreciated, though, and i feel like there’s a lot to teach each other. that’s just a matter of taking the time to communicate with one-another and be understanding.

esfj - i like you, from the sidelines. i appreciate the way you think, i’m just not sure if that is reciprocated. i tend to come of very strong, which i think is quite anxiety inducing for you, but you’re very passionate about the things you enjoy. i do think it’s important for you to have more insight, though. the world is vast, and an understanding of it can be very beneficial to you. 

estj -  your drive is commendable. you’re very confident, know what you want, which i appreciate. i do think it’s important to take a step to think about things further to acknowledge the nuances in things, instead of dismissing them as confusing. not everything is as blunt as you’d like, and may take a bit of critical thinking to truly understand. things happen, yes, but why may they do that? is there anyway to prevent the things you don’t like from happening? those questions are something i think are important to keep in mind.

isfp - for lack of a more kinder way of saying this, i dislike you. i wouldn’t go as far as to say i hate you, but i am very frustrated with you. you tend to dismiss things for the main reason of someone just “being that way” without taking into account any other factors that may come into play for that behavior. with the isfps i’ve met, you’ve seen my behaviors as “trying too hard to be a certain way” or “pretentious” without truly understanding why i act the way i do. it gets frustrating. your very confident, but in thoughts that are lacking in insight. take a second to learn about what you’re talking about before you say things. for my own sanity.

istp - even though you seem like you’re about to kill yourself with your approach to things, you always some how get it done, which is respectable, yet fascinating. you’re surprisingly very fun, even though from the outside i wouldn’t think we’d be at all close friends. you’re not one for deep conversation, rather the kind of conversation that always leave’s me feeling refreshed. it’s important to sometimes take a break, and you’re the type of person that i can easily have that with.

isfj - you’re very adorable. your moral standpoint to most things can be a bit frustrating at some points, but you make up for it with your kind demeanor; a genuine kindness as well. your happiness and drive to help people is a commendable quality, just don’t let people walk all over you. you tend to be a bit too charitable, when sometimes it’s okay to recognize that people just aren’t the right match for you. it’s okay to take care of yourself. i know i come off strong and that can be a bit intimidating, but i promise that it comes from a place of care. be confident in yourself. to truly be able to take care of the people around you, you need to take care of yourself first.

istj - i respect you and your approach to things. i think there are a lot of things we can learn from one another. your ability to easily figure things out from your surroundings is admirable, and it’s interesting the way your mind works. i haven’t met many istjs (of my knowledge) but i think we’d get along quite well from the information given to me.

[elise-jupiterstyle]

this is a very cynical bomb that i’m about to drop with absolutely no context but they really did just fetishize rio to gain viewership without actually ever giving a shit about his value as a character, and i’ve gotten myself into a bit of a spiral stewing about it.

tw: my opinions again

like i didn’t want to think about my favorite show so negatively before it ended so i tried to steer clear of any posts that discussed it for the sake of my own enjoyment but after how short the finale season fell from my expectations, it’s hard not to be pissed off. because ever since they had beth shoot rio in season two i’ve been waiting for them to reconcile such a gruesome choice by developing the characters further, their relationships, their knowledge of themselves, but it just didn’t happen. beth never took accountability for the shooting, rio never took accountability for kidnapping and pressuring her, and dean never took accountability for his infidelity or faking cancer, which were the three main points of conflict that the writers should’ve focused on resolving before ever even thinking of introducing new conflicts.

i’m not saying i wanted rio to forgive beth, or that i wanted beth to forgive dean, or that i wanted any of these resolutions to happen immediately after their conflicts took place. and sure, you could say that beth’s character compartmentalizes and that beth and rio aren’t good communicators and didn’t have a strong bond of trust to begin with so it wouldn’t be in character for them to discuss what happened, but that’s where character growth is supposed to come in! you’re supposed to write characters with these flaws so that they have a better version of themselves to work towards that is slowly developed as they encounter each conflict. they’re not meant to make them into worse people until the show is entirely unbearable to watch because all of that old resentment and tension is just rotting away beneath the rug it’s been swept under.

it’s not a creative choice to have characters directly create conflict and then never address it again while they move onto the next big thing -- it’s lazy writing, and it makes it crystal clear that they were written in solely to shock the viewers and create tension between the characters, not to cultivate growth, and that is very frustrating when you have a group of characters whose inherent morality is constantly insisted upon.

what’s especially frustrating about this is that it not only means there is a lack of depth to all the characters, but there’s a lack of value to the ones that the writers did not favor. based on the season one storyline that culminated in rio shooting dean and letting beth live -- essentially getting even with her in a way that didn’t involve killing off the protagonist, even though that would’ve been the most likely course of action based on the consequences that other disposable characters suffered (i.e. eddie) -- it’s my belief that the writers didn’t expect to keep rio on the show past season one (honestly, it kind of feels like they didn’t even expect to get another season, based on how messy the storyline felt as the seasons progressed), and therefore didn’t value rio’s character the way the audience came to by season two. 

when i say the writers didn’t (and honestly, i still think they don’t -- not in the same way they value the girls, dean, stan, or even fucking boomer) value him, i mean they didn’t see him as being worth the effort of giving a character arc, a background story, personal relationships, etc. they threw in marcus at the start of season two to be like “he’s a dad! that means he has depth!” and then never really touched on it again. there was like, one other scene with marcus that i can remember, and then he, too, was sidelined until they needed to humanize rio again after he got shot. all of the other kids -- the bolands, sarah, harry, and ben -- are regularly featured because they are a driving component of the women’s motivation to survive and succeed. with rio, his kid is only used to relate him back to the women, to make him seem human for a moment, but marcus’s real value as a character lies in how he makes beth feel as she grieves rio, not how he contributes to rio’s behavior, motivation, and overall character.

and yes, i know that rio is technically a side character, that the children of the protagonists are going to have more development, but if they actually wanted to add depth to rio’s character through the facet of parenthood, they would’ve shown more than one interaction with him after he spent supposed months away from him without a word. that kid would’ve been traumatized by that, and seeing rio’s reaction to his kid mourning his disappearance would’ve provided a much more real and interesting angle than them all smiling and happy, like we’ve seen in every other scene with him and marcus. it would’ve showed that the writers care about rio’s pain, about how his absence affected those he loves, but to be blunt, they don’t. they showed beth grieving him when she shot him, but we didn’t see him recovering from that traumatic event. they didn’t even care enough about him to give him fake scars, for christ’s sake. 

everything that happened to rio throughout the show was either done to further the other women’s development or appease the viewers, and they made zero effort to hide that. they walked his characterization backwards so many times (him threatening beth’s family when it had been insinuated thus far that that was the only line he wouldn’t cross; him touching her and making suggestive advances on her in exchange for bail money when she was clearly uncomfortable; him returning all of her stuff and happily accepting her as his superior when there was no development in their relationship to suggest he’d forgiven her or would be receptive to her having power over him) and almost every single instance of them using him to promote the show exploited his outward appearance and the fact that so many viewers have fetishized him as this “exotic” bad boy without any regard for how minimizing and insulting that marketing tactic is. 

looking through their instagram, i saw no other instance of an actor’s picture being posted next to a bunch of thirsty tweets or captioned as being “another reason to watch good girls.” it’s fetishization disguised as playful, well-intentioned endorsement, but if they were really referring to rio’s character rather than his appearance as a reason to watch the show, we wouldn’t be seeing his face on nearly every episode promo and highlight with him only occupying about five minutes of screen time every 50-minute episode.

there’s not really a neat bow-tie conclusion to this, but what i’m getting at is that the writers wanted it both ways. they wanted the viewership and fan engagement that manny’s character garnered, but they didn’t value him enough to give him the screen time and characterization that he deserved. this resulted in all of the revelations that were made about his character -- his son, rhea, his dynamic with turner, his backstory, his hobby, his grandma, nick -- feeling pretty underwhelming because they were never touched on again. they were there because they had to give us something, but they weren’t important enough to the writers to be expanded upon, to be used for personal growth or connecting with the other characters. i think that’s why it felt like such a hollow victory -- we got exactly what we wanted in theory, but there the foundation of it all was too weak for it to feel truly meaningful. 

we wanted rio to be acknowledged and written as a permanent fixture on the show, but instead the rest of the characters were hell-bent on getting rid of him and his primary aspect of redemption was what he meant to beth, not what he meant to the show. even in the finale when she finally came to the realization that she won’t ever be able to give up crime, rio’s role in contributing to her self-actualization was passed over by a character who has been in seven episodes, and i think that really spoke for itself the loudest in terms of how much the writers truly valued him.

[thevalleyisjolly]

Hi there! If you feel up to it, would you be willing to expand a bit more on the idea of white creators creating poc characters who are ‘internally white’, especially in a post-racialized or racism-free setting & how to avoid it? It’s something I’m very concerned about but I haven’t encountered a lot of info about it outside of stories set in real world settings. Thanks & have a good day!

Hey, thanks for asking, anon!  It’s a pretty nuanced topic, and different people will have different takes on it.  I’ll share my thoughts on it, but do keep in mind that other people of colour may have different thoughts on the matter, and this is by no means definitive!  These are things I’ve observed through research, trial and error, my own experiences, or just learning from other writers.

The first thing I guess I want to clarify is that I personally am not opposed to a society without racism in fiction.  It’s exhausting and frankly boring when the only stories that characters of colour get are about racism!  So it’s a relief sometimes to just get to see characters of colour exist in a story without dealing with racism.  That being said, I feel like a lot of the time when creators establish their settings as “post-racial,” they avoid racism but they also avoid race altogether.  Not aesthetically -they may have a few or even many characters with dark skin- but the way the characters act and talk and relate to the world are “race-less” (which tends to end up as default white American/British or whatever place the creator comes from).  Which I have complicated thoughts on, but the most obvious thing that springs to mind is how such an approach implies (deliberately or not) that racism is all there is to the way POC navigate the world.  It’s definitely a significant factor, particularly for POC in Western countries, but it’s not the only thing!  There’s so much more to our experiences than just racial discrimination, and it’s a shame that a lot of “post-racial” or “racism-free” settings seem to overlook that in their eagerness to not have racism (or race) in their stories.

A quick go-to question I ask when I look at characters of colour written/played by white creators is: if this was a story or transcript I was reading, with no art or actors or what have you, would I be able to tell that this character is a character of colour?  How does the creator signal to the audience that this is a character of colour?  A lot of the time, this signal stops after the physical description - “X has dark skin” and then that’s all!  (We will not discuss the issue of racial stereotypes in depth, but it should be clear that those are absolutely the wrong way to indicate a character of colour).

This expands to a wider issue of using dark skin as a be-all-end-all indication of diversity, which is what I mean by “aesthetic” characters of colour (I used the term “internally white” originally but upon further reflection, it has some very loaded implications, many of which I’m personally familiar with, so I apologize for the usage).  Yes, the character may not “look” white, but how do they interact with the world?  Where do they come from?  What is their background, their family?  A note: this can be challenging with diaspora stories in the real world and people being disconnected (forcibly or otherwise) from their heritage (in which case, those are definitely stories that outsiders should not tell).  So let’s look at fantasy.  Even the most original writer in the world bases their world building off existing things in the real world.  So what cultures are you basing your races off of?  If you have a dark skinned character in your fantasy story, what are the real world inspirations and equivalents that you drew from, and how do you acknowledge that in a respectful, non-stereotyped way?

(Gonna quickly digress here and say that there are already so many stories about characters of colour disconnected from their heritage because ‘They didn’t grow up around other people from that culture’ or ‘They moved somewhere else and grew up in that dominant culture’ or ‘It just wasn’t important to them growing up’ and so on.  These are valid stories, and important to many people!  But when told by (usually) white creators, they’re also used, intentionally or not, as a sort of cop-out to avoid having to research or think about the character’s ethnicity and how that influences who they are.  So another point of advice: avoid always situating characters outside of their heritage.  Once or twice explored with enough nuance and it can be an interesting narrative, all the time and it starts being a problem)

Another thing I want to clarify at this point is that it’s a contentious issue about whether creators should tell stories that aren’t theirs, and different people will have different opinions.  For me personally, I definitely don’t think it’s inherently bad for creators to have diverse characters in their work, and no creator can live every experience there is.  That being said, there are caveats for how such characters are handled.  For me personally, I follow a few rules of thumb which are:

Is this story one that is appropriate for this creator to tell?  Some experiences are unique and lived with a meaningful or complex history and context behind them and the people to whom those experiences belong do not want outsiders to tell those stories.

To what extent is the creator telling this story?  Is it something mentioned as part of the narrative but not significantly explored or developed upon?  Does it form a core part of the story or character?  There are some stories that translate across cultures and it’s (tentatively) ok to explore more in depth, like immigration or intergenerational differences.  There are some stories that don’t, and shouldn’t be explored in detail (or even at all) by people outside those cultures.

How is the creator approaching this story and the people who live it?  To what extent have they done their research?  What discussions have they had with sensitivity consultants/readers?  What kind of respect are they bringing to their work?  Do they default to stereotypes and folk knowledge when they reach the limits of their research?  How do they respond to feedback or criticism when audiences point things that they will inevitably get wrong?

Going back to the “race-less” point, I think that creators need to be careful that they’re (respectfully) portraying characters of colour as obvious persons of colour.  With a very definite ‘no’ on stereotyping, of course, so that’s where the research comes in (which should comprise of more than a ten minute Google search).  If your setting is in the real world, what is the background your character comes from and how might that influence the way they act or talk or see the world?  If your setting is in a fantasy world, same question!  Obviously, avoid depicting things which are closed/exclusive to that culture (such as religious beliefs, practices, etc) and again, avoid stereotyping (which I cannot stress enough), but think about how characters might live their lives and experience the world differently based on the culture or the background they come from.

As an example of a POC character written/played well by a white person, I personally like Jackson Wei and Cindy Wong from Dimension 20’s The Unsleeping City, an urban fantasy D&D campaign.  Jackson and Cindy are NPCs played by the DM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, who did a good job acknowledging their ethnicity without resorting to stereotypes and while giving them their own unique characters and personalities.  The first time he acted as Cindy, I leapt up from my chair because she was exactly like so many old Chinese aunties and grandmothers I’ve met.  The way Jackson and Cindy speak and act and think is very Chinese (without being stereotyped), but at the same time, there’s more to their characters than being Chinese, they have unique and important roles in the story that have nothing to do with their ethnicity.  So it’s obvious that they’re people of colour, that they’re Chinese, but at the same time, the DM isn’t overstepping and trying to tell stories that aren’t his to tell.  All while not having the characters face any racism, as so many “post-racialized” settings aim for, because there are quite enough stories about that!

There a couple factors that contribute to the positive example I gave above.  The DM is particularly conscientious about representation and doing his research (not to say that he never messes up, but he puts in a lot more effort than the average creator), and the show also works with a lot of sensitivity consultants.  Which takes me to the next point - the best way to portray characters of colour in your story is to interact with people from that community.  Make some new friends, reach out to people!  Consume media by creators of colour!  In my experience so far, the most authentic Chinese characters have almost universally been created/written/played by Chinese creators.  Read books, listen to podcasts, watch shows created by people of colour.  Apart from supporting marginalized creators, you also start to pick up how people from that culture or heritage see themselves and the world, what kind of stories they have to tell, and just as importantly, what kind of stories they want being told or shared.  In other words, the best way to portray an authentic character of colour that is more than just the colour of their skin is to learn from actual people of colour (without, of course, treating them just as a resource and, of course, with proper credit and acknowledgement).

Most importantly, this isn’t easy, and you will absolutely make mistakes.  I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that you will mess up.  No matter how well researched you are, how much respect you have for other cultures, how earnestly you want to do this right, you will at some point do something that makes your POC audience uncomfortable or even offends them.  Then, your responsibility comes with your response.  Yes, you’ve done something wrong.  How do you respond to the people who are hurt or disappointed?  Do you ignore them, or double down on your words, or try to defend yourself?  Just as importantly, what are you planning to do about it in the future?  If you have a second chance, what are you going to do differently?  You will make mistakes at some point.  So what are you going to do about them?  That, I think, is an even more important question than “How can I do this right?”  You may or may not portray something accurately, but when you get something wrong, how are you going to respond?

Essentially, it all comes down to your responsibility as a creator.  As a creator, you have a responsibility to do your due diligence in research, to remain respectful to your work and to your audience, and to be careful and conscientious about how you choose to create things.  It’s not about getting things absolutely perfect or being the most socially conscious creator out there, it’s about recognizing your responsibilities as a creator with a platform, no matter how big or small, and taking responsibility for your work. 

In summary:

Research, research, research

Avoid the obvious no-no’s (stereotypes, tokenization, fetishization, straight up stealing from other cultures, etc) and think critically about what creative choices you’re making and why

Do what you’re doing now, and reach out to people (who have put themselves out there as a resource).  There are tons of resources out there by people of colour, reach out when you’re not sure about something or would like some advice!

Responsibility, responsibility, responsibility

Thank you for reaching out!  Good luck with your work!

[woodswolf]

You said on the other post that you’re open to disagreement or discussion, so hey, I’ll take you up on that! Sorry that this is terribly long; I didn't realize how much I had to say about my feelings about this game until suddenly almost 9 hours had passed defending it.

I agree with you on a fair bit of things here, but the places where we disagree could not be more pronounced. From reading what you said, though, I think we’re approaching the question of “is Talos 2 good” from different directions, and that at least contributes to our diversity of opinion. I’ve been concerned more with whether it’s a good game; you’re more concerned with whether it’s a good sequel. This isn't a bad thing.

To make my own stance clear is difficult, because I still don’t entirely know what I think of it (edit: at least until I fully wrote out my thoughts); I’ll probably have to go back for a few more playthroughs to really dig into things, especially some of the stuff that I could tell I missed (I’ll get into this in a second). For what it’s worth, though, I’ve very much enjoyed the time I had with the game, and while I very strongly agree with some of your criticisms, there are some that I very strongly disagree with, and some that I don’t think are criticisms at all as much as (often warranted) grievances about (likely) intentional design choices.

To start off, I might as well give my chops. I’ve also 100%’d Talos 1 and Road to Gehenna, and it’s also one of my all-time favorite games. Road to Gehenna is my favorite part of Talos 1 for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I find its story more interesting than the base game’s.

As for my path through Talos 2, it’s… interesting. Overall I chose choices that favored individual and societal freedom, preferring raw forward progress to most of the other alternatives presented (more on choices later). I ended up with Byron as my mayor, and Lynerks was present at the dam (though I’ll admit this felt a bit random, other than the fact that I regularly agreed with her in other conversations). I did all of the normal puzzles, all of the golden puzzles, and saved Miranda. For my final choice, I chose that we needed to keep and use the Theory of Everything.

As for the Somnodrome storyline: five people were interested in me from my answers to DOGE, but I was auto-matched with Helga. However, due to choice weirdness, I can’t say I can do an honest review of anything to do with the Somnodrome story because I unintentionally aborted it before I was able to make any meaningful choices in regards to it. Specifically, in the lab in one of the southern areas where Hermanubis talks to you about it, I chose that I was entirely uninterested in it, and the game interpreted that as “okay, you obviously want this technology basically destroyed, then”, and after that conversation it never came up again for the rest of the game.

This is one of the things that I agree with you about. While I don’t think Talos 2 is naïve, it very often conflated otherwise unrelated concepts, e.g. “society should embrace progress which means that life is inherently beautiful and space colonization/terraforming/bioforming(?)/etc. is inherently good”, or in this case, me being personally uninterested in the Somnodrome technology with wanting it disposed of or destroyed. From the prior conversations that had been had about it before I made this choice, I had come to interpret it as “psilocybin for robots”: potentially interesting or fun, but also potentially dangerous, and ultimately pretty worthless. However, Rand in particular kept insisting that this technology was the greatest thing since sliced bread and a lot of woo-woo bullshit that I found profoundly unconvincing and uninteresting, even as much as he tried to dress it up with “we’re built on an inherent moral logic and we can use this to solve it” and so on.

In the only real conversation I had with regards to it, I chose to “give it to the scholars” because “I literally don’t care, but since it has the potential to kill people at LEAST make sure they know what they’re doing before they do” was not an option. Then, in the lab with Hermanubis, I was presented with a choice of “use this untested drug technology right now” or “don’t use this drug technology, and if you insist you don’t want to, we’ll essentially destroy it instead, but we won’t tell you that we’re going to do that until after you insist you’re not interested”. Yes, it’d obviously be bad or unsatisfying game design to not give the player plot armor against any potential bad side effects of it (which definitely are very real, based off some of what Athena said in the ending), in a similar vein to how they’re able to do all of those datastream overloads just fine while Byron was taken out by just one, but I was still entirely uninterested in anything about the “psilocybin for robots” until after I already made the choice to “destroy” it and there was immediately a terminal entry saying “actually this could be a very useful control scheme for the Megastructure”.

It’s definitely frustrating when it happens, and it happens a lot, but not in a way that completely ruins the game, at least for me. Ultimately, there are a lot of sacrifices that have to be made in regard to choice-based narratives like this, and the moment you give the player a finite number of options, nuance will always be sacrificed, especially with the range of options it’s trying to cater to — trying to condense every range of viewpoints from expansionist progressivism to scientific liberalism to religious conservatism into three to six options will always fall short. Talos 1 has this problem as well, though it’s able to hide the seams better due to its smaller scale and more specific focus — there are many dialogue choices with Milton where the option I would want to choose isn’t there, or is interpreted very differently than how I meant it (and only part of that is due to Milton’s occasional less-sound criticisms); similar problems exist in Road to Gehenna. Could Talos 2 have done more to allow nuance and avoid conflating often very disparate ideas? Yes. Would it have been reasonable to do so within the constraints of writing everything else? Probably. Would it have been completely able to avoid this kind of thing? Definitely not, even in an ideal world, because there almost certainly would be at least somewhere that this would’ve gotten stuck.

Frankly, I think that the script would be perfectly fine as-is if it was a choice between factions instead of personal philosophy. It essentially boils down to this already, but making it that much more explicit would help for a lot of reasons. The only way you can be perfectly happy with your faction choice in Fallout New Vegas for instance is if you side with Yes Man, who will set out to do everything exactly as you please to — you’re almost certainly going to be compromising on something-or-other to side with any of the NCR/Caesar’s Legion/Mr. House. I think Talos 2 could have benefitted from having its characters more explicitly sided into factions at the beginning of the story like this, as it’s another alternate way to cover up the seams where there’s a lack of nuance: it allows the player to distance themselves from the things they don’t agree with and focus on the things that they do. It’d also lessen what you pointed out about the characters feeling like mouthpieces for ideas (though I personally don’t have much of an issue with this — I actually really like the main cast in particular, even if I don’t really agree with e.g. Yaqut/Miranda that the existence of life is inherently beautiful and that more life = more beauty and so on, and even if there were more than occasional moments that felt a tad preachy).

To sum up my thoughts on the narrative, I think Talos 2 would be an even better game if the Somnodrome plotline and whatever’s going on with secret societies was entirely cut. As soon as I saw in the credits that the “main story” and “Somnodrome story” were written by different writers, and how drastically things changed as soon as I said I straight-up wasn’t interested in the Somnodrome plot, it was very clear that it was the much weaker plot overall. Making this choice had a lot of effects on the ending that felt very odd as well — Rand was straight up gone in the finale, I never had any of a “secret society plot” beyond the initial interactions with DOGE, and being matched with Helga had no effect beyond one conversation shortly before I told Hermanubis no. If anything, when I do another playthrough, I want to see if there’s a way to say I’m not interested in it even sooner than when I did, mostly because it would be truly baffling from a narrative design perspective if that were the case — it’s already pretty baffling that the option to completely ignore it existed and that it had no effect (I was thinking I’d at least be able to have a conversation with Rand where he’d be mad at me or something, but nope).

That being said, I do like the main story a lot, and I’d argue that there’s a lot more depth there than you’re giving it credit for. While I don’t vibe as much with a lot of the Miranda stuff, I still don’t think it’s bad — but more importantly, I literally could not disagree more with you about the decision to make Athena a diegetic character and her role in the plot. In fact, I think it’s the most interesting choice Talos 2 made, and the most well-executed by a country mile. The player may not get to make (m)any decisions in her story, depending on whether you count saving Miranda or the final set of choices as such (I don’t), but they don’t have to — her story works entirely on its own merits, and if anything, it’s given me an even deeper appreciation for Talos 1’s base game.

I surely don’t have to explain that Athena and Alexandra Drennan are set up as foils or parallel characters; they’re viewed as more important than other characters, they’re both deeply troubled by the implications of the work they’re doing, they even have the same voice. This was even established in Talos 1, in RtG’s Jerusalem, with the three (primary) playable characters being Alexandra, Arkady, and Athena — allegedly the main character from the book we were given chapters of throughout World A in Talos 1’s base game, but recontextualized as Talos 1’s player character via Talos 2. (I’m going to try so hard not to turn this into a spiel on the parallels between Jerusalem and Talos 2, because Jerusalem is straight-up my favorite thing about Talos 1 and the ongoing parallels between it and Talos 2 made me INSANE through my entire playthrough.)

What’s interesting about Talos 2 is that, by making Athena her own character, they’re able to ask a lot of interesting questions about Talos 1 that it didn’t really have space to: about how an experience like the Simulation would affect the new humanity being sprung out of it. We don’t know what choices Athena made or how she ended up where she is — the only thing we know for sure about her experience is that she found the cat secret in B7 (and even that’s not necessarily the case; for all we really know, she could have found Milton the cat at some point afterwards rather than fresh out of the dam) and achieved the Transcendence ending. Everything else is left ambiguous about her specific experiences; all that the writers left themselves with to infer her character from were the more or less universal experiences involved in achieving that ending. What can you really infer about a diegetic player character from those, and from her experiences with life after the Simulation ended?

Turns out, they’re able to dig into a lot. Athena is a very deeply flawed character and at times even straight-up hypocritical. She herself started off as a very idealistic character, driven on by Alexandra’s hopes, to make the choices that she did. She’s always striving to move forward and discover new things, to build people up and move things always onward and upward, setting lofty goals for no reason other than to have a target to meet and (hopefully, one day) exceed. She wants there to always be something bigger and better, but in being such a powerful driving force for the new civilization that she helped to found, she accidentally trapped herself in a myth as the “ultimate savior” and “the only person who knows anything worth anything”. She trapped herself in the exact thing that she was running away from: an assigned role as one mean to overthrow every structure and carve an original path forward. An assigned role as the one meant to kill God and take its throne. Everything that the Simulation forged her and her ancestors to be.

Athena ran away and did everything that she did on the island for the same reason that all of the other First Companions more or less stepped down from public life (minus Byron, and even he has strong reservations; if it weren’t for his friendship with Alcatraz, who actively doesn’t mythologize him, he might not be involved in the game at all). The people of New Jerusalem stopped seeing them as people and only engaged with them as the only thing worse than celebrities: as a messiah and disciples. It’s set up such that the player will be inclined to see them as this, too, but like Alcatraz I simply don’t vibe with that for a lot of reasons, and I was rewarded for it in the ways that characters grappled with their preconceptions of her in one direction or the other was incredibly interesting.

By the end of the game, my own opinions on Athena were very mixed, because I could see how she got to where she is with all of the trauma and heartbreak along the way, but I also couldn’t entirely forgive her — because as much as she was a victim of mythologizing and deserved an apology for what New Jerusalem turned her/the Founder into, she (and the rest of New Jerusalem) owes an even bigger apology to Alexandra Drennan for doing the same thing to her in turn. Just because Alexandra is dead and can’t see the literal monument she’s been turned into doesn’t mean that she deserves to be deified, and Athena most of all should understand that. (I have a lot more thoughts on Athena and how she ends up being an incredibly interesting blend of Alexandra, EL0HIM, and Milton, but that’s a bit beyond the scope of what I want to say here and going into it would make me go insane again.)

The Talos 2 story we got, overall? It’s pretty good! I enjoyed it, and there are a lot of little things that offer more nuance to the situation — for instance, in Byron’s ending, Neith and Schuyler are able to avoid any personal introspection and growth about what they want to do with their lives, because they’re allowed to go back to doing the same things they were doing before. But if it really dug in and made its story explicitly about Athena and how the new humanity has been affected and essentially traumatized by their origins? That could have been literally incredible and played more with a lot of really fun themes, both originating in and expanding from Talos 1. If Talos 2 chose this plot, it’d be a perfect sequel; Talos 2’s actual story is also very faithful in my opinion, but even if it’s not as good of a sequel plot, it’s at least serviceable, and I’d say it’s a rather logical extension of Road to Gehenna.

As a final note on the story, I don’t see the fact that it involves a Theory of Everything as a flaw as much as just, well, a plot point. I also don’t think it detracts from the philosophy at all, and only serves to raise the stakes — Athena discovered something that could literally destroy the universe if used improperly, and that’s more than enough reason to be conflicted about sharing it with the world! Especially when New Jerusalem had already deified her to the extent they had. But I also really like more existential stories such as the Science Adventure series or Umineko where a Theory of Everything as such is actually rather trivial compared to the weight of concepts that are often thrown around. I have definitely seen cases where the inclusions of such weighty concepts are done poorly, but Talos 2 is very much not one of them — two examples I can immediately think of off the top of my head are the ending twists of Drizzlepath: Genie and Peregrin, two of my favorite games that I love to ignore the ending twists for. The difference in this case between these two and Talos 2 is that the Theory of Everything is introduced as a mid-story twist rather than a cop-out right at the ending, and that it serves to enhance the story rather than detract from the way more interesting stuff that it had going on. Both DP:G’s and Peregrin’s base narratives are so, so, so much more interesting than what their endings imply, because in those cases, the larger concept is used to break the foundation of everything that was established before; Talos 2 uses the Theory of Everything exclusively to add depth, and for a few players, the scale of that discovery could have changed their mind on whether using the island’s technology was a good idea or not. That is a good use of such a weighty concept.

As for the puzzles, I also agree that they’re often too “easy”, but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not — I’m very conflicted on it. On the one hand, something I found myself thinking for a fair number of puzzles in Talos 2 was that “this would not be worth a sigil in Talos 1”. The puzzle that specifically comes to mind as most emblematic of this is N2 Rainbow; it’s entirely trivial to solve even if you’re asleep at your keyboard, and that’s only a bit under halfway through the game. There were a lot of other puzzles that felt like this, too, it’s just that that one specifically stuck in my head due to exactly how trivial it is. There were almost never second or third steps in puzzles, except in a few cases towards the end of the game (and almost but not exclusively in the golden puzzles). I did get stuck a few times, but more often than not it was because I was overthinking the clear conditions (e.g. that I need to get an extra piece to the end when I didn’t) than because there was something I genuinely hadn’t thought of. (For instance, I kept thinking that I needed to open the laser gate in N1 Drilling Party from the back for some reason — I genuinely didn’t realize I’d already solved it by getting it open in the first place until I came back later.)

I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, I was disappointed by the lack of difficulty in the puzzles — I never encountered anything that was “Talos hard” as I think of it, but when I was thinking of “Talos hard”, I was thinking of C7 Prison Break, which I always have to look up a guide for every time I replay just to make sure I don’t softlock myself and have to reset — but there were some puzzles that were acceptably difficult or required particular leaps in order to complete, and they can always add more difficult puzzles via DLC like Road to Gehenna did. It’s also a case of particularly high standards (as most puzzles in Talos 1 and even RtG are not anywhere near as hard as C7 Prison Break).

But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s a terrible change for three reasons. The first is that, in the cases where I really got into the rhythm of it, this faster, more frenetic style of puzzle solving is actually really satisfying. Just going bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, one puzzle after the next after the next, is really, really fun. There were only a few instances where I really felt this, but when I did feel it, it was great. It felt really good to just immediately, intuitively understand the concept and go on solving a ton of puzzles back to back to prove that I know this mechanic really well. There were still less satisfying moments in there where the puzzles were too simple — again, N2 Rainbow — but when the puzzles were both fair and fast, it led to a state entirely unlike anything I’ve felt in, well, any game, really. This game would be extremely fun to casually speedrun, because it lets you do that.

Because the second reason I like it is that, while Talos 1’s puzzles were almost universally more complex than Talos 2’s, they were also a lot more bullshit in places, and Talos 2 fixes that. I’d always had the opinion that some of Talos 1’s puzzles are better than others (B6 Egyptian Arcade and A* Nerve Wrecker my be-loathed), but it wasn’t until I played Talos 2 that I realized exactly how bad both the recorder and mines were as puzzle mechanics. The recorder made it so much harder to experiment while solving puzzles, and as much as I miss the fact that the fun tricks such as duplicating items via recording are no longer possible with the new body-swapping mechanic, the body-swapping mechanic feels so much better to actually play with than the recording ever did. (Even though I know the solution to, say, B5 Alley of the Pressure Plates perfectly well, I still can’t help but groan every time I have to solve it on repeat playthroughs because the recording just feels so miserable to use.)

Mines, on the other hand, are completely gone in Talos 2 (except for the part where you save Miranda) and I honestly couldn’t miss them less. All mines ever really did in Talos 1 was slow you down and force you to wait for their cycles (or to create cycles via jammers in many cases, which just doubles the amount of waiting required). They never made puzzles any more difficult, only more tedious and frustrating, which felt like difficulty until Talos 2 showed that a puzzle need be neither tedious nor frustrating to be difficult, as in N2 Vantage Point, W2 Hollow, or S3 Thrust Vector. (Again, B6 Egyptian Arcade and A* Nerve Wrecker my BE-FUCKING-LOATHED. There are no words in any language strong enough for how much I hate those two puzzles in particular.)

And the third reason that I like it is because the decreased difficulty makes it easier (or will make it easier in my case) to replay the game and experiment with the narrative side of the story. This is where I think our differences in approach come out the most, and to really get into this, I want to step back and take a look at Talos 1 first.

I really like Talos 1’s story, both in the base game and in RtG, but one thing that sometimes frustrates me is that, past a certain point, its pacing is inherently tied to how fast you can solve puzzles. This is less of a problem now, since I already know how to solve every puzzle and have done it multiple times by now, but I remember on my first playthrough in late 2016 that it was really frustrating for me — I wanted to talk to Milton more, I wanted to find more barcodes, but past a certain point, if there were one or two puzzles that I was just stuck on and couldn’t manage to solve, I’d just get frustrated because I really wanted to see what else Milton had to say, or anything else. While Road to Gehenna always had something new to offer after every puzzle, on the other hand, the puzzles take too long to solve to really go through and see the consequences of your choices in an organic way.

Talos 2 offers much better narrative pacing. The easier puzzles make the lulls shorter, but there’s also the fact that Talos 2 has more story to offer in a lot of cases — there was almost always something interesting happening right after solving a puzzle, and there are interesting interactions that you can have with your companions on top of that. There’s a lot more story, and as someone whose favorite part of Talos 1 was the story and characters, all the better for me.

The final thing I’ll bring up is that I think a lot of our difference in opinion is due to differing expectations going in, as I slightly alluded to at the very beginning. From the beginning, I approached Talos 2 with a very open mind, and let it show me what it wanted to show me and so on and so forth. I came in expecting puzzles, and the demo taught me that dialogue choices would also be important and relevant, and what I ultimately came away with is that Talos 2 is less a sequel to Talos 1 than “an odd but compelling lovechild of Talos 1 and The Forgotten City/Fallout New Vegas”. I very much enjoyed it for what it was, but I don’t fault anyone for wanting more Talos from it — I very much realize that I enjoy Talos 1 and other chamber-based puzzlers for very different reasons than most people (namely that I almost always enjoy them more for their stories more than their gameplay).

Overall, I really, really liked Talos 2, and I think it’s about on par with Talos 1 in terms of enjoyment, with both having trade-offs relative to the other. When disregarding everything about Talos 1’s DLC, though, since Talos 2 doesn’t have any (yet), I think Talos 2 has a very slight edge for me, mostly because the game feels SO much better to actually play. Even if Talos 2 isn’t as hard as I’d like it to be, I didn’t even realize exactly how much the recorder and mines dragged Talos 1 down for me until I saw Talos 2 look at the same mechanics and entirely fix them. If I weren’t in the middle of a huge fanfiction project right now that I’m spending almost all of my time on, I would’ve definitely already jumped in for the rest of the achievements.

Here's my review of The Talos Principle 2. It's not a flattering one, but it felt like some things needed to be said.

First of all, let’s get all of ad hominems out the way. This is not a review in bad faith, nor is in written out of malice. I’m not politically opposed to democracy, liberalism, individualism, humanism and women’s rights. I’m somewhat a nihilist, yeah, but a rather practical one. Meanings can be constructed for ease of living and efficiency and all that jazz. I’m also not a puzzle genre hater. I’ve 100%ed Portal 2, and the only reason I do not have 100% at TTP1 is because I could never bring myself to kill Milton off. Who I am though is a huge fan of the first game. This is clearly affecting my perception of this one, so this is relevant, I think.

I’m a huge fan of TTP1 and I hugely disliked TTP2. Is this game a sequel, does it continue the story? Yes. Is it a spiritual successor, does it continue the _narrative_? No, not at all. It feels different, hits different, and for me it wasn’t in a good kind of way.

First of all, TTP2 is overwhelmingly naïve. I do see that this is a deliberate creative choice, but I strongly believe it does not fit the series. It was a bad idea to take a thought-provoking piece of art and continue it as a message rather than as a discussion. TTP1 had space within itself to engage with its ideas and to form individual conclusions. TTP2 clearly wants to tell you something specific, but to truly listen you need to suspend your disbelief a lot more than before. Where the first game would have tackled a question with some degree of nuance, this one tends to postulate an answer. Would like to explore space for some other reasons than our moral duty to light up the Universe with cognition and life? Do not believe in such things? Good luck. Do not think that beauty exists / is inherently good / matters? Good luck once again, now with a chance to disappoint your companions. The list goes on, and while I’m all for humanism, technocracy and progress, I still felt trapped in reasonings game offered me for it all.

There’s also a huge problem with the narrative as a whole – there is no whole. Plot seems strangely fragmented, with Somnodrome arc being a bitter mix of an afterthought and a cut plotline. What was it for? Same goes for the secret society plot. And the main story, including Miranda, is just flat. Writers want us to care for their characters, but with characters being mouthpieces for ideas this is rather hard.

Also, there’s a Theory of Everything is this game. It just is. With it, the Universe is _postulated_ as being fundamentally knowable and understandable, which is unsettling for such a huge philosophical debate. (Put your ad hominem down, I do believe that the world is cognizable, I just don’t think making this a knowable fact is a good choice for this particular game). Moreover, with the Theory of Everything the science is solved. By one person, who consciously excluded their peers out of scientific progress. One person solved science and nowhere in the game is anyone upset about it. Why? Because writers needed a magical solve-all-problems device, and without it nothing would work plot wise. But with it the plot just seems plastic and cheap.

This story has no room for me to challenge it from the inside, it forces me to go and start a one-sided conversation with its authors, which I do not like. In short, it feels rushed, naïve and incomplete. But this is a puzzle game, not a text adventure. So, are the puzzles any good?

Well, I did not like them. I’m not sure if it means that they are bad, but in my opinion, they are somewhat boring. Most of the time solving them feels mechanical, not that much of ah-a! moments for me. More of the “finally, get this, stupid new puzzle element” and “after 500 hours in portal my brain solves this without thinking”. The other category is “to convoluted to be interesting”. But there’s non zero chance this is me and not the game.

Really bad stuff happens between the puzzles, in those huge open spaces. They get old very fast, and fast travel option isn’t helping much. Some regions are almost impossible to navigate even with the compass, and solving for stars just becomes a chore.

Well, most of the game felt like a chore to me. There are other things I’m upset about, like making Athena, seemingly our main character from TTP1, a chosen-one with a God complex (she IS that even without the myth around her) or not including Milton, but otherwise good plot could have made it work. This one did not. It disregards a very personal thing for a fan of the first game – their unique experience. Maybe the new audience will find this alluring. I certainly did not.

[the-ferocious-kittyrose]

My complicated opinion on Keith Kogane

Keith Kogane is definitely one of the more popular characters in the VLD fandom. People love brooding emo bad boys.

My feelings on Keith are... complicated. I definitely don’t hate him. I have a lot of problems with the character but I don’t think I could ever bring myself to actually hate him. Mainly because I kinda relate to him. We both have problems controlling our emotions, interacting with people, and making friends.

And we both have trouble believing there are people who truly have our best interests at heart and won’t abandon us because we’re a burden.

What I do hate is the way his character was written and the way it negatively impacted the characters around him.

There are definitely a lot of factors that contributed to VLD ending up the way it did. But to me, Keith and the writers insistence on pushing him to the forefront was the poison that killed the show.

Ok, before we get into this whole rant I feel like I should talk about the things I do like about Keith.

I like the premise of Keith’s character. He’s half Galra and never really fit in on Earth. He didn’t act like the other “normal” kids so kids made fun of him and adults didn’t want to deal with him. So in order to protect himself from the pain of rejection he would put up a tough angry facade and push people away and reject them before they could reject him.

This is something that really resonates with me personally having grown up neurodivergent. It’s awful growing up in a world that isn’t made for people like you and not knowing how to interact with or connect with your peers. Especially when you don’t know why you’re like that.

You learn to avoid social interaction because it always ends up negative. You put up walls because you don’t feel like anybody understands you or what you’re going through.

I know the writers probably didn’t intend to code Keith as neurodivergent. They just wanted Keith to be a hothead with abandonment issues, but nonetheless, this interpretation means a lot to me.

I also really like his relationship with Shiro. Keith is so used to being left behind and abandoned that when he meets someone like Shiro who’s patient and genuinely cares it’s new and strange. He’s so ready for Shiro to abandon him, even telling Shiro to send him back to the home, but Shiro refuses to leave him and tells Keith ethat he’s never going to give up on him.

It’s also interesting to see how their relationship develops over time. It’s clear Keith trusts Shiro, but you can tell that that fear of abandonment is still there deep down. In S2, Keith tells Shiro that he’s like a brother to him, and then in season 6, he takes the extra step and tells Shiro that he IS his brother and that he loves him. And for someone like Keith, telling their friend they love them is a big scary thing.

And also it’s just great to see a platonic “I love you,” especially between two guys. Don’t be afraid to tell your bros you love them!!!

Now let’s talk about the stuff I didn’t like.

Keith doesn’t have much going for him in terms of personality. He’s just sorta brooding and serious all the time. He does make jokes occasionally but it’s rare. The writers were more focused on making him cool and badass rather than fun.

I always loved the idea of Keith as a cocky carefree asshole who doesn’t give a shit about rules/laws and is kinda rude/aggressive but has a heart of gold deep down and would do anything for the people he cares about. (Just like a cat.)

I would also make him more alien esc. In terms of design I like the idea of Keith having red eyes with narrow pupils and fangs. And also just small things like the way he walks and holds himself. He growls and bears his teeth when he’s angry, his hair puffs up when scared, he’s fast and agile, disappearing and reappearing without making much noise, small things.

Then you have his race and sexuality. I have no doubt in my mind that Keith was intended to be a straight white dude. A lot of people see him as gay and Asian but there’s no evidence for this in canon. Acxa was originally intended to be his love interest and his race was never mentioned in canon. His name isn’t even Kogane in canon. (And the race of the voice actor doesn’t equal the race of the character. If that was the case Shiro, Hunk, and Lance would be white.)

They should’ve totally made Keith Japanese like he was in the original. It would’ve been so easy! Just canonize Kogane as his last name and have the book say he’s half Japanese half Galra. They could’ve also done what they did with Shiro and keep his og GoLion name. Just have him be Akira Kogane. Definitely cooler than “Keith.”

And as for his sexuality, I definitely think they should’ve had Keith be gay. But well get to that Later...

I also don’t like how they handled the whole Krolia thing. Not only was it crazy rushed, but it completely goes against the shows theme of found family.

Keith’s arc should’ve been about overcoming his abandonment issues and learning to accept the paladins as family. But instead they just get rid of the abandonment issues by just giving him his mom back.

I know a lot of people love Krolia but I don’t feel like she should’ve been introduced in anything other than flashbacks. Because Keith’s mom isn’t really that important. The show is about found family and friendship, not blood relation.

You can definitely have Keith learn about his mom and his family, but I feel like giving him his mom back was too much.

Personally, I always headcanoned that Kolivan was Keith’s grandfather or just a close friend of Krolia’s, and when Keith showed up at the Blade’s base Kolivan recognized the blade as his Krolia’s. Keith could learn about his mom through Kolivan telling him about her, how she was a great person and warrior who died fighting to make the universe a safer place for her son.

Another thing I didn’t like was the whole Keith leaving the team for the Blades thing. I know why he did it, he felt like the team was gonna reject him, he wanted to be more useful, and wanted to learn about his family, but I feel like you could’ve touched on all that without having him abandon his team.

One of the biggest problems with the show is that they did a bad job at establishing the paladins as friends, they feel like coworkers more than anything, and I feel like Keith being absent for two seasons contributed to that.

And his absence is hardly addressed. The team forms Voltron perfectly without him and no one ever says they miss him. Keith doesn’t even seem like he missed them after being gone for two years.

And a lot of the weight was taken out of that Keith v Kuron fight by the fact that Keith and Kuron hardly interacted.

That whole thing amounted to four things, Keith meeting Krolia (which I don’t think should’ve happened), them finding the colony (which was a dumb plot I don’t think should’ve happened), Keith aging up two years (which was weird and unnecessary), and Keith meeting Kosmo (which is... complicated).

I don’t think this plot was necessary. Keith should’ve stayed with his team.

Then you have his relationship with Lance. I know people are very sensitive about this topic. People have very strong opinions about whether or not Keith and Lance were intended to be romantically coded.

Personally, I do like Klance but I don’t believe they were romantically coded. I think if you want them to get together some things would have to go differently.

For example, the bonding moment. In canon, Lance tells Keith, “we make a good team.” I don’t see this as referring to him and Keith. I think he was talking about the whole team. If you want it to be about the two of them, I feel like it should be Lance telling Keith something like, “ya know, you’re not so bad after all,” and then Keith smiles and responds, “you’re not so bad yourself.”

Another example could be the scene where Lance comes to Keith with his insecurities. (Whether it’s as a leader or a friend.) This scene was weird in canon, Lance comes to Keith for advice and Keith basically tells him to just stop thinking about it.

I would prefer if Lance brought up to Keith how he doesn’t feel like he’s good enough or that he doesn’t have, “a thing,” and Keith is completely dumbfounded like, “what are you even talking about?” He goes on about all the good shit about Lance. Talks about how Blue chose him, how he’s a great shot, how he’s good at dealing with people, meanwhile Lance is standing there in shock as Keith says all these nice things about him.

Over all you would just have to develop their relationship more. More meaningful interactions. And if you want the relationship to be romantic you would have to establish that early on. Establish that one or both has romantic feelings for the other in like S1/S2 because if you wait too long it’s gonna feel forced/out of no where.

And then... you have the Black Paladin arc... I’m gonna be real with y’all, this is the arc that killed the show for me, for a few reasons.

One, even ignoring the whole quintessence bond thing, it makes no sense for Keith to be the bp. He doesn’t fit the role. I adore Shiro but choosing Keith as his successor was a dumb move. I get that he saw potential in Keith but they’re are fighting a war, there’s no room for favoritism.

Shiro should’ve chosen Allura as his successor. Not only does she have actual leadership experience, but you would only have one paladin in a new Lion instead of three.

If a lifeguard breaks his leg and can’t work, he should choose an experienced swimmers to take his place, not his little bro that’s still in water wings in the hopes that it’ll teach him to swim.

Two, Keith being the bp doesn’t help his arc. Keith’s arc is about overcoming his abandonment issues and learning to be a team player, he doesn’t need to be the leader for that.

VLD should’ve been about the paladins growing into the best versions of themselves they could be. Their development shown by unlocking new abilities in their respective lions, new forms for their bayards, and new Voltron bayard power ups. They shouldn’t have to change lions and themselves.

Keith and Red have a strong bond and work great together. Keith and Red are both temperamental, unpredictable, and have issues with trust. Keith having to fight to get Red to trust and open up to him mirrors how others have to fight to earn Keith’s trust and get him to let down his walls.

It would’ve been interesting to see them grow together. Keith has no emotional connection with Black.

We never even get to see them bond. Keith just suddenly becomes the “perfect” bp/leader because he got over his mommy issues

Three, it’s a MASSIVE disservice to Shiro’s character. Shiro put all the work in earning his position as the bp, he literally fits fought Zarkon on the astral plane to earn her trust, yet Keith is the true bp? What?

It sucks. Sendak told Shiro that a monster like him could never be a paladin and the writers went and proved him right. Hell Shiro didn’t even get to kill Sendak, Keith got that too.

And don’t tell me, “but he got the Atlas!” REALLY!? A massive Deus ex machina that required absolutely no effort from him to acquire!? Filled with a bunch of rando background characters no one gives a shit about!? You’re totally right, that 100% makes up for it.

I could go on and on about how the treatment of Shiro in this show (and fandom) is blatantly ableist but that’s a rant for another time.

It sucks. I want to like Keith! He had the potential to be an amazing character but the writers just kept on trying to turn him into something he wasn’t and it ruined him for me.

They kept trying to turn Keith into the main character and ignored that ALL the paladins are the main characters. It’s an ensemble cast! You don’t have to have everything come back to one guy.

[noobsomeexagerjunk]

Always Shine and Redefine Our Humanity

How Eret Contributes to the Dream SMP's Narrative Themes of Change and Self-Discovery

I can’t believe listening to a song from a fairly obscure but growing musical (where I took this post’s title from) would prompt me to inspect Eret’s character more but here we are. I will heavily use @theeretblr's (whom you should subscribe to, btw) Character Explanation thread as a basis, as well as statements about their character from their most recent streams and things that I have gathered from other essays by people who clearly have been watching from the start.

This will include sentiments and theories I want for the character because I kinda got attached to them as of late. Please keep in mind that I have been watching since around Late November-Early December, so my biases would be appropriate to such a viewer.

This essay is a discussion of the roleplay character.

1. Eret is Self-Preserving & Versatile in Skill (and this is why they're powerful)

"Those who are given Power hold on to it."

Something I’ve observed concerning Eret’s Betrayal of L’Manburg was their motivations for doing so. For a time they have believed that power and security mattered. For a time their interests went first. CC!Eret referred to the choice as "an offer no one would refuse" as well. This wasn't just luxury and (they didn't know it at the time, but false) power, it was the protection they would be allowed to have by the admin of the server. It was being allowed to do whatever they wanted, despite the means to it being dishonorable and interestingly enough, demanding of permission.

Eret was willing to do anything to remain secure and equipped, and I argue that they still do until now. The difference is that now, they are more concerned about how they maintain their security in that they wouldn't hurt other people or be extremely unethical in the pursuit of this security.

Also, they're privy to grinding when it's necessary, they know how to build structure and contraption, and they can hold their own fairly well. They're very well-spoken and can deliver on appearances and ambiance, excellent at both comforting and intimidating whomever they choose. They had to have been this skilled for a while.

2. Eret has a Forgotten History (of bringing down powerful groups of people, apparently)

"Those who don't know History are doomed to repeat it."

So remember that interaction with Foolish? I want to bring this up because I feel that having particularly close ties with a God of Undying/Death has implications.

Foolish also brings up "taking care of [a] Wither cult"—an organized group! Wasn't Eret known for taking down an organized group on the server? L'Manburg, at its founding. He was part of the rebellion against Manburg. He was against the Eggpire. Yep, that's a pattern.

What does this mean? Well:

Eret's hands were never clean from the start, clearly before the Final Control room, and it can be inferred that they're redder than they seem

Eret's tendencies towards self-preservation may have been influenced/learned from Foolish

Eret may have had (if they still don't do) an inclination to pursue power through the dismantling of organized groups that also seek/already have established power

Eret's current skills are the way they are due to his past

And we cannot forget the CC confirmation that c!Eret has relations with Herobrine, the infamous Minecraft urban legend known for the horror he brings and how many lovers of Minecraft frame him as this terrifying powerhouse entity beyond human comprehension. This relation is still a mystery, but from what we know, it can tell us a lot about what Eret has forgotten about himself and what Eret is capable of!

3. Eret is Concerned by What People (though only those that matter to him) Think of Her

"I think Respect is a big thing."

In light of her power, we have to remember that Eret regretted pursuing power upon recognizing the loss of respect and friendship that came with the throne. This becomes a much stronger detriment when she realizes that the power she thought she had never actually existed in the first place—one can say she would dread pursuing power for herself again. To subject oneself to the standards of others after all is to subject yourself under constant scrutiny.

In her regrets, she learns and realizes what she wants—to be loved and cared for, to be truly alive with her loved ones. It's why she decides to improve herself, and she works and makes the effort to try! She struggled (and still does) in the process of pursuing forgiveness, illustrating that her determination towards an end is very strong, gradual as it may be.

It's how she looks up to Wilbur! Still! I reckon the two believe they're responsible for the other. Change! What an incredible thing the two are able to do.

4. Eret Knows What He Wants (but is struggling to figure out how to get it)

"That was a long time ago. I've changed things and I know not to break people's trust anymore."

One of Eret’s biggest concerns right now in Season 3 is his relationship with the Crown, mixed and fickle it seems based on his streams during this time. His kingship carries more and more weight each passing day, debating whether forgoing the effort and spilled blood Eret had to get the Crown is worth it. (I mean, he accepted the restoration of his Kingship when George got dethroned.)

The Kingship is still power, and it's become true power after Dream had been put in prison. We know he's admitted being deathly afraid of Dream, so this period of genuine Kingship would be incredibly special to him. Ever since he's been finding ways to make his kingship genuinely meaningful, redefining the evils the Crown used to have by doing good to whomever sincerely, freely, and willingly. He's attempted allyhood with like-minded individuals based on his judgment of their character. Remember his Knights? These consisted of HBomb, Puffy, and Punz, each of which exhibited behaviors (predilection for community, dedication to duty, moral neutrality) he has as well!

But yet, the blood spilled for that Crown still stains him, and it cannot be denied that it will continue to do so for as long as Eret wears the crown. I wonder if he believes this, whether a part of him does deep down. Dream being in jail doesn't just mean freedom to be a king but freedom to quite literally be yourself, whatever it may be.

5. For these reasons, Eret Represents Constant Self-Actualization and Rediscovery

"I'm a strong, independent...whatever the fuck I am."

Given the points established above, Eret is unfamiliar with her full self and wants to shape herself into someone desirable and genuinely contributing kindness to a clearly broken world, a world whose brokenness she also happened to contribute to.

Her enthusiasm for History and the pursuit of enlightenment speaks volumes to this motivation. It's her repeated, dedicated efforts to try and try and try and try, to be better! Not just to be a better person herself but for everyone else to be able to be better too! She's aware that perfection is impossible, but clearly recognizes that constant reevaluation of the self is nonetheless necessary.

It's how she's open to engaging with as many people as possible despite differing opinions and carried baggage. She researches and explores and examines! She does no harm but takes no shit.

Every facet of her, to the terror her eyes have been known to give, to the air of affirmation radiating in her domain of a Pride castle, to the blood that decorates her fingers, to the people she has given support to, to the people she has disadvantaged, to the History she keeps, to the part of herself she no longer remembers, to the power she carries—Eret knows how to be truly alive.