#it boggles my mind when people say how great the story was because it really wasn’t

[golvio]

Yeah, like…the thing that disappointed me the most, which also seems to have been the thing that killed the YouTube Zelda Theory Speculation community that popped up around BotW overnight, was that there was no follow-up to the most compelling ideas introduced in BotW. The only thing that was held over was Zelda and Link’s relationship and some mentions of the Champions, but only Mipha’s story felt like it got any sort of true closure while the other Champions only got brief references. But even the relationship between Zelda and Link feels like it was interrupted to fit Zelda’s isekai plot and the demand to replicate Rauru and Sonia’s relationship over what was established in BotW, particularly the erasure of Zelda’s light powers into a copy of Sonia’s time powers with zero buildup/foreshadowing, because god forbid we make The Girl Rauru’s direct successor instead of a maternal, nurturing, supportive figure who cheers The Boy on from the sidelines! 🙄

Also, do not get me started on how Zelda felt like she’d been reduced to a supporting character in her own story, to the point where Ganondorf only spoke directly to Rauru (and Sonia five seconds before she got fridged to motivate Rauru with Man Angst) instead of her, despite how Zelda being set up as his ultimate enemy from early childhood defined her whole life in BotW, and TotK’s final fight made a big fuss visually about Zelda being Ganon’s opposite without any actual narrative payoff.

The thing that disappointed me the most was the jettisoning of everything that had to do with Calamity Ganon except for a cursory shoutout during the Demon Dragon fight. It introduced a really intriguing reinvention of Ganon’s tendency to create body-doubles of himself, now with them being literal extensions of himself, with Ganon becoming a sort of eldritch entity, but in TotK that gets jettisoned in favor of making him Big Scary Punch Guy. Even his hijacking the Guardians got obscured by the unwillingness of the story to give him traits beyond Big And Scary, to the point where a lot of players assumed his motive was “Me Big Strong He-Man, Hate Scrawny Nerd Technology! *grunt*” And I loved certain aspects of Ganon’s “Demon King” design and thought the Gloom was interesting, as a relation to the way Clammy Gan sapped peoples’ life force in AoC to sustain himself, but the connection itself wasn’t that strong or elaborated upon beyond being a gameplay mechanic whose purpose was to make the Depths more challenging. Link’s arm still containing traces of Gloom didn’t matter beyond the Light Shrine cutscenes, even though we’ve seen Ganon possess other beings in BotW/TotK.

But, basically, TotK made me feel like a moron for even trying to speculate how it would be connected to BotW, because none of the ideas I found really interesting about BotW’s backstory actually made it into this game. I like how the NPCs were fleshed out, but that makes how basic and retcon-heavy the main story felt even more obvious.

I probably still wouldn’t have been a big fan of the game, but I don’t think I would have been NEARLY as upset about TotK if BotW didn’t seem like it was so obviously setting up plot points for a sequel. Like, you’re very clearly MEANT to wonder what malice is, and how Ganon became the Calamity instead of just the Demon King. Fi is awake again, where are they going either that? What’s the deal with the Triforce-shaped symbol on Zelda’s hand? There were a LOT of other things like that, and many of them had to do with overarching lore for the series.

I get it if they want to reboot the series, but “BotW 2” was the single worst game you could have done that with. It could have been an amazing conclusion to the original continuity.

EXACTLY, you, you get it

botw felt like the introduction to a vast world with secrets and hints to things that were planned to become a bigger thing- a big giant game as a big giant set up, and then ... like totk likes to do alot, it lacks a pay off, and that is something it even does within itself, cosntantly, set up and no pay off, or set up and the most boring and uninspired pay off you can really not even call that, from the bigger things like the whole dragon thing being hammered into your head as irreversible and then it IS reversible.. out of nowhere without you having to do fuck all, the whole thing with the ancient hero beign a big mystery with lots of interesting ideas attached and then its some weird ass dog creature that doesnt resemble any other race with, of course, sonau armor, bc there nothing that isnt sonau in that game, even finding the old treasure maps you can find that then lead to amiibo stuff from botw id call that

botw wasnt that great with rewards either but exploring the world and wondering about those, surely intentionally, placed mysterious and intriguing designs and places did alot for making it so interesting to think about, totk fumbles it all and even the new stuff doesnt even come close to that environmental storytelling botw was so great at, sonau ruins? ha they look entirely different than in botw actually, bc those were built by hylians you see, the actual sonau stuff is in prime condition considering the time thats passed and its all the same blank blocky blocks that serve no purpose but to be a place for you to find a thing or exchange some currency- the most you can think about it is ... that the sonau hollowed out the entire underground of hyrule, every inch of the map, ... which is WEIRD and doesnt exactly make them look that good but ... thats all there is

at least with the shiekah it made somewaht more sense and it felt much less .. invasive? and you didnt have anyone from that time to talk to, other than dead monks whos only purpose is to give you their last piece of their own spirit, but in totk ... raurus ghost and mineru too are both just there to talk to but DONT tell you shit but vague hints that were already clear, the sky islands used to be on the ground? oh you dont say, you see them there in the stupid memories! and dont get to know how they got up there and theres nothing that can clue you in to that, its just sonau magic yet again i guess

dont even get me started on the whole malice/miasma thing, it made so much SENSE that there was a source of it, someone that has keep kept in a horrible place just between life and death for thousands of years trying to break free by their hate and anger manifesting to such a degree its literally spilling out and building creppy eyeballs, mouths and ribcage like structures like they are trying to rebuild themsleves outside of their awful prison no one knows about is so damn compelling, but no, actually, the guy trapped there was the msot evilest evar, was sealed bc him evil and no other motive, and the previously mentioned stuff is pretty much utterly unceonnected, and his magic beign miasma with red instead of pink and no creepy body parts was the true version of it, that pink one was its own thing heehooo SHUT UP argh

it doesnt help that really, i dont feel like the sonau were set up either, they were a tiny part in botw, really only serving to make the world seem more ancient and more full of history, having ruins from a past civilization there you know nothing about and cant find out more is so good, its compelling and sad and makes the world feel more real, just shoving them into everything, being the center of attention all of thes udden and not even the architecure fitting feels so ... forced, i really truly believe the og sonau werent meant to be more than that, but in their fear of the game being too similarly looking like botw they took the sonau to replace the shiekah with them- imo the shiekah were the ones set up to be deeper explored in botw, with their whole misstreatment by the royal family in the past, monk miz kyoshia reacting the same way a yiga commander would was deliberate and brings up even more interesting ideas, the comments about where the mysterious energy the ancient shiekah used to power everything being concentrated in certain regions?? thats a big ass set up, the fact that the center of what is signaling everything to reactivate being below hyrule castle? the fact the whole arena thing was BUILT INTO THE CASTLE or it on top of it is so??? cool??? and sso damn intriguing, we are scratching the surface of their history- but then no, actually, the sonau are the cool new shit those other ones just uh ... disappear, also the sonau did everythign the shiekah did but even better wayy before them haha

its like they didnt want to tackle the more complicated stuff with the shiekah, their relationship to the royal family and how the yiga ... have a point and a good reason- so they replaced them with entirely new purely goodest good guys that did the same stuff before them with none of the history attached :))

this is why im so insistent on it not really being a sequel, thers no follow up on anything that was set up, NOTHING, and no, a couple having a kid now or whatever isnt a follow up on an interesting set up, how hard is it to understand that-

.... listen to me rambling, you probably know all that already nhjdfkbnkd

(i know i always bring up the shiekah but ... they were so central in botw, while also not taking up every single corner- unlike some other ones >_____>, with so much interesting stuff to connect and think about, i cared about them so much i felt kicked down the stairs by their treatment in totk)

[evolutionsvoid]

So you find yourself trudging through the jungle, perhaps looking for a rare specimen or maybe duped into searching for some "lost temple" or whatnot. It is hard work navigating this labyrinth of trees and fighting your way through the understory. The sheer heat and humidity ain't helping much either! So you stop in a clearing to catch your breath and drink some water, when suddenly rain starts to fall. If this journey couldn't get any worse! Sadly, it isn't even a refreshing rain, cool and clear, but a warm suffocating one. And it seems....a bit sticky too. As you see these thick gooey droplets fall upon your shoulder, you realize it isn't raining anywhere else around you, and this stuff is coming down in awkward globs. You touch this goop with your fingers, as apparently that is the only way to confirm if it is water or something else, and indeed find it to be warm and sticky. At this point you immediately drop everything and make a break for it, knowing full well that something is lurking up above you. No time should be wasted in getting away from that spot, only investigating further when you are somewhere more secure. Well, that is what you would do if you weren't an idiot, but if the stories and pulp novels were directing this scene, you would somehow find no need for haste.

You would instead fondle this odd goop in your fingers, and maybe take a whiff because why not. Certainly gathering critical information by doing this! And then once more falls down around you and you finally come to the conclusion it isn't just water (probably because you stuck it in your mouth), you decide to look up. But slowly! Wouldn't want to ruin the tension! Just stand locked in place and very slowly tilt your head upward, just in time to see a massive slug drop down from the branches and ruin your day (and probably life). What a load of rot! Do people seriously read these things? The pulp novels, I mean, not my journal entries. The sheer stupidity that some of those characters display is mind boggling! Why aren't you getting away from the saliva shower? Why do you have to touch blood to determine that it is indeed blood? It's ridiculous! Am I the only one irritated by this kind of writing?! I thought Eucella would find it all dumb too, but whenever I am in her office and talking about it, she always puts her head in her hands and makes a comment about how she has work to do. Really likes avoiding that subject, so she probably secretly likes that stuff. After all, she did write some pretty pulpy mushy stuff back in the day, so that might actually be her bread and butter. Oh, I am rambling again! Right! Back to the entry!

So why did I make this tale about someone getting dropped on by a giant slug? Because this entry is talking about a giant slug! The Spotted Keelback, to be exact! The Spotted Keelback is a species of, well, giant slug (doing great, Chlora), but it would be better to say that they are actually related to Carcolhs! Now do note, I did not say that they are Carcolhs, rather that they are related. As you can probably see, one group has a big ol shell on their back, while the Spotted Keelback very obviously doesn't. It seems they once shared a common ancestor, but eventually split and became the two different groups we see today. The Spotted Keelback does share some similarities in size and general anatomy, especially with that fierce radula of theirs! Developed into a very toothy mandible that can easily shred through skin and flesh. The main difference you can see is that they do not have the oral tendrils that Carcolhs have, rather their snout ends in stubby orifices or nozzles. These are why I talked about the warm sticky saliva up above (is it weird if I keep writing that? Not sure), as from these orifices come large amounts of gooey mucus. This stuff is similar to what coats the Lou Carcolh's oral tendrils, as it is like a fast acting adhesive once it makes contact with a surface. The difference here, though, is that this mucus is capable of forming long strands and webs, with incredible strength that can support the weight of the Spotted Keelback or human sized prey! Of course, it depends on the thickness of this gooey rope, as thin ones do more to entangle than actually lift up its food. This glue slime doesn't just come from their oral tubes, but from their foot and breathing pore too! It should be noted that while this mucus can grip prey and surfaces tightly, the Spotted Keelback can slither through this stuff effortlessly! It wouldn't be effective if they could get caught in their own trap!

From my earlier tale and talk of the glue snot, you can probably already guess how the Spotted Keelback hunts. Their mucus is used to snare and entangle prey, slowing them down or trapping them for the slug to come in and finish them off. They choose to hunt by ambush, typically waiting up in the thick branches above for prey to pass by down below. Their actual techniques in trapping prey can vary, as they have a few tricks. One is to find a clearing and drop thick puddles of this mucus on the ground, perfect for catching the legs of those who step in it. Another is to hang long strands of mucus down from the branches, often coated in leaves and detritus to look like random vines. Those who blunder through them will find these "vines" holding them fast, and their confusion and struggling is often enough to tie them up more and give the Keelback time to slink in. There is also the tactic of waiting in the branches and then shooting out a wide spray of mucus to shower down on prey like a gooey net. All very valid strategies! In most cases, the Spotted Keelback has created itself a long thick strand of mucus that it uses to hang itself from, suspending it in the air right above the target. When victims get tripped up, the Keelback will release its grip on this mucus rope and plunge down onto its meal. Its boneless nature means nothing gets broken from such a fall, but the same typically cannot be said for their prey. The sheer weight of a Keelback dropping on you can knock the wind out of you, break bones and leave you in a very bad situation. Its coating of mucus from its foot will affix them to prey, and their muscly body won't wait to coil around the victim and hold them tight. From there, fangs filled with paralytic venom will be jabbed in to fully stop their food from fighting back. And once they are rendered immobile, the fang-filled radula will be used to shred them into easy to eat chunks. 

Since the jungle and rainforests are active places with a lot of hungry mouths, the Spotted Keelback will typically take its kill somewhere else to enjoy. They will coat it in mucus then slither up a tree carrying a long strand still connected to the carcass. Once up in the branches, the food is then pulled up and suspended mid-air. Now the slug can slither down and enjoy its meal in peace, as no large predators or scavengers can reach them in this position, and smaller ones risk getting caught in their glue trap! Kind of a beautiful way to eat, hanging in the air like that! Though elegance is far from the mind once they start digging in, as blood and meaty bits start flying and raining the ground down below. Smaller critters do love that part, darting into this meat shower for free scraps.  

The slime strands they create and rappel from play a large part in their lifestyle. Obviously, it is big for hunting, but it is also how they escape predators, hold onto kills they cannot finish in one sitting and also do their whole reproduction thing. Like Carcolhs, Keelbacks are hermaphrodites, so any two of their species will do when it comes to mating! When the breeding season is on, the Keelbacks will lay down pheromone laced trails of slime wherever they go, as others can use it to follow them when they catch the scent. The individual as well will be looking for goo trails to track down mates, following it until they run into the secretor! Once two slugs meet, it is time for mating, which I must say is an incredibly beautiful display! It is truly a show you have to see to believe! Hopefully I am not sounding too weird about this. Actually, am I allowed to go into detail on this subject? Ah whatever, full speed ahead! Eucella will cut it out if she finds it inappropriate, but that is nature! Animals have sex, how do you think we get more animals?! So the two Keelbacks will create a long thick strand of mucus that hangs from high up in the trees. The two shall dangle from this strand and intertwine their bodies. Once they are suspend and wrapped around one another, they will evert their large, long and surprisingly colorful penises to inject the other with sperm. I would include a drawing of that, but I feel like I am already testing my luck with this description (I can already feel Eucella's red inked quill hanging above this whole section)! Like I said though, it is shockingly beautiful, and the end result is hundreds of eggs laid by each slug. These egg clusters are hung from sticky strands where predators cannot reach them. When the young hatch, it is up to them to fend for themselves. 

Spotted Keelbacks are opportunistic predators that will happily try to eat anything that enters their trap, so that means humans are on the menu! Dryads are technically in danger too, as they will drop on any moving thing down below but won't know it tastes awful til they have their radula buried in our neck. With this, the species is feared by both locales and outsiders. Some folks call them "Jaguar Slugs" due to their large size, spotted pattern and carnivorous diet. Their glue slime is collected by some to serve as an adhesive, good for fusing two things together or repairing damage to homes, canoes and other things. Their meat is considered to be incredibly tender and delicious, and their hide is worn for ceremonial garbs or just straight up bragging rights. Hunting them typically calls for offering them a sacrifice, driving another animal into their trap so the Keelback descends upon them. Once it is distracted by this bait, the hunters rush in with spears and drive them in deep. Whatever weapons are used for this hunt should be ones you aren't afraid of losing, as when you plunge them in, good luck ever getting them out. One of the dangers of eating Spotted Keelback is finding a spear head or arrow tip in the middle of your meal. Some say finding one that was lost in a failed hunt is a sign of bad luck, which I find to be an understatement when you suddenly find yourself chewing on a spearhead.

Chlora Myron

Dryad Natural Historian

--------------------------------------------------------

"Spotted Keelback"

What else we need for Halloween? Snails and Slugs! Or more so just slugs!

[anonzentimes]

Chiaki to me is kind of an odd character in that I think she actually has good potential, especially in possible interactions with Nagito (seriously, Komanami is probably the ONLY really great Chiaki ship in my eyes). I've seen some great fanfics that play around with her. Especially ones that explore a Despair!Chiaki. But canon just...doesn't really do a great job with her.

In fact I actually find her role kind of detrimental, in that it almost vindicates elements of Nagito's worldview. With her being an angelic embodiment of hope. Which is just...not a very healthy way to present a character in my eyes.

To go back to that stuff about Despair!Chiaki, a really neat interaction that a writer friend is considering implementing into an AU is her and Nagito talking after being rehabilitated. And her admitting that the embodiment of hope he was desperate for was something she could never be. Chiaki says something like "I guess...I'm sorry I could only ever be a girl, Nagito.". To which he responds "...And I'm sorry that wasn't enough for me."

hmm, If I'm very honest I don't ship any mlw ships with Nagito lol! It's mostly because I think the idea of Junko finding a gay man who's lonely, terminally ill, traumatized, and desperate for someone to love him, then exploiting and warping his affection, one of the only things that remains healthy about him, warping it to where he can't understand his own sexuality anymore is pretty brutal. Nagito loving despair is something he can accept, but loving Junko is so fundamentally mind boggling that he goes spiraling when he thinks about it. The idea of Junko convincing a gay man he loves her and robbing an important part of himself from him is super interesting. Also just him never really showing any interest in a woman but showing interest in hajime and Izuru gives that impression. But don't let me discourage you that's just my opinion! His sexuality is not confirmed in any way and that is my interpretation. Just wanted to touch upon that to give insight on what I think just in case it makes me sound too biased at any point in this discussion.

I think making Chiaki real and using her again plot wise to use the same strong suit of her character, empathy, can be seen as a little clumsy. Although I do thoroughly enjoy the fact that Hajime heard her advice but only truly understood it in Danganronpa 2 after she was gone. It's really tragic and I enjoy that Ai Chiaki and Real life Chiaki are indeed different. It's a little indecent but I enjoy the story of the franchise overall.

If I'm honest I think a lot of things about hope's peak in general are detrimental to Nagito because his world view is specifically influenced by Hope's peak. Nagito believes Chiaki is an "embodiment of hope" for the class and likes her status and impact on everyone. Junko sees her the same way and wants to crush that so called hope to create despair for the class! I think that all makes sense and is decently done considering the characters and world. It's important to remember hope is practically absolute good, and Chiaki was just an absolutely good person to the class and when that's lost it creates despair. Even those who she wasn't really That close with, like Nagito, respected her and her impact a lot! Enough to be devastated and have the brainwashing work more.

Chiaki serves a purpose and I think criticism with the fact that she mostly is there to be the support role and impact for everyone else is absolutely valid. My only personal criticism is I'd like to have seen the different ways the class cared for Chiaki, basically just how close each person individually was with her. I'd like to have seen more of their hangouts to know that, but I understand it's an anime recapping a story with limited time. They spend episodes expressing how much they all cared but not how personally close they were, so the fact all of them cared so much isn't entirely sold for a lot of people including me at first. You kind of have to infer a lot which is a little sad? It's for a lack of words a missed opportunity I think.

Fanfics do a really good job at showing those things the anime misses about real life Chiaki, and honestly overall I'd say Chiaki is most often well characterized in fanfics! I think a despair Chiaki is an interesting idea too like you said, you'd have to explain how they became despairs without her though. But fanfics are all about being creative and it's an au in the first place so I'm sure people can figure it out and have fun! All of it is interesting fun ideas and I'm glad you and your writer friend are having fun and enjoy the ship.

I do think the dialogue they've come up with is pretty interesting and a cool approach to an au like that. "...And I'm sorry that wasn't enough for me," feels a little odd for him to say to me at least? I mean, I definitely don't know the direction or the entirety of the work that led to that interaction though of course, and I think it's definitely interesting dialogue, but for Nagito to say that feels a little off for me personally. Like, I think after rehabilitation supposedly it would go something like the Dangan Islands where he learns Hope was inside him all along through spending time with Hajime.

"You provoked the hope that was already inside all of our hearts Chiaki, and for that I am grateful. We all fell to despair, but the hope always wins, Right?" or something like that feels better to me personally but I'm just being silly and don't know the full context anyway

Thank you for your ask, please let me know if I misinterpreted anything you said and didn't respond accordingly, It was nice reading somebody else's take on things and trying to respond with mine as respectfully as I could <3

[crystallinestars]

Yeah English isn't my mother tongue so thank you for the compliment 🥰 Honestly I saw the way you write (it's scrumptious) and the Argenti header and thought "damn I need to be on my best behaviour!" haha

Also never apologize for going off on a rant, I truly love your input!

Oh I do agree that it must be a mix of multiple things and that virtue signalling is definitely part of it! And the point you make about people creating a safe bubble for themselves and others really does make a lot of sense! I'd even be so bold as to say that this initial sentiment has unfortunately spiralled into having kneejerk reactions against any kind of perceived threat (for their identity, etc.). While I understand the need to be careful about who you let into your circle, it's a shame that instead of meaningful conversations (I'd imagine something like "I enjoy X thing in this story", "oh that's great, I have a different hc / interpretation but I'd love to hear your reasoning!") we're having a lot of passive aggressiveness or even full on pissing contests within the communities.

And if I had to sum up why I dislike, let's say between 60% to 90% of 'fandom culture' depending on whether or not it's a good day, I'd say that it's because of how often I have to see the utter glee and contempt this subsection of the fandom radiates whenever they feel like they've won their one-sided arguments / they can lord a win over someone's head for the dumbest things. It just boggles my mind. What happened to basic courtesy? I feel like people have grown so accustomed to living their 'bad bitch' fantasies on the internet without having to shoulder any responsibility for it (because of anonymity) that they've started to become waaay too comfortable coming into your space and being rude at best.

This is a bit of a digression, but for the sources, an example that comes to mind is a post I saw a while ago about the maple leaves associated with Dan Heng and (no shade to the person, it was an interesting read). However, they presented their argument in such a way that you just KNEW it wasn't just about Dan Hend, but about Blade too. They gave a list of symbolism for maple leaves, and the last point (the one highlighted by the structure) was "they also symbolise lovers!". It's in cases like this one I'd love for the OP to provide a source for their analysis, because the uni student in me just cannot accept claims on specific fields without credible evidence. Like is your analysis based on a discussion you had with a native? A paragrapgh you found on a blog named "sakurasdreamygarden.com"? A book you've read? Please, I'm not here to troll, I want to educate myself 😭 In this case it was also worth noting that someone in the comment added that 'maple leaves' is the literal meaning of Dan Feng's name (丹枫), in which case (this is just me adding my two cents) you could also argue that the maple leaves, specifically on Dan Heng's splash art, could symbolise the shadow of a past he cannot completely get rid of.

I was feeling like sticking my head in a lion's mouth when I wrote the 4th point 😂 And since I still do, I will just say that Mihoyo's pandering extends to hetero relationships too. Remember how I said these games remind me of Kpop? What I meant by that is that what they do is basically "All for the glitter and the aesthetic with zero commitment to the bit". So far in Genshin and HSR, they seem to focus especially on giving players shiny little toys to play with (attractive playable characters). And I say that their pandering extends to hetero relationships because as of now the only playable character with a semi-canon relationship is Welt, who's a Honkai Impact character (at least that's what I've heard, I don't know anything about Honkai Impact). I'm thinking especially about Yukong when I say this, because when she became playable in 1.1 I think, they wasted no time to clarify in 1.2 that actually Qingni is her ADOPTED daughter, which is basically like telling players "don't worry, Yukong hasn't been tainted by any man and is just as much of a shiny little toy freshly out of the box as the others!" Like, what am I supposed to believe with that? That for HSR the censorship this part of the fandom loves to bring up was magically extended to the heteros?

Also, I know nothing about Hi3 but since I love semantics, identify as a relationship fiend and still feel like getting shot by the fandom today, I'd also like to ask people to please explain to me how a kiss (yes, even on the lips) is objectively an undeniable act of romance. I'd argue that it's a sign of intimacy because it involves letting someone else get super close to you in a vulnerable moment, but that does not make it inherently romantic. Truthfully I'm just being facetious here but my sentiment is genuine: I would be eternally grateful if we stopped taking certain things for granted "because it's obvious" or whatever, and if we truly started to take the argument that many things in relationships are social constructs seriously. (PS: I mean "intimacy" here as "the state of having a close personal relationship with somebody", based on the first definition given by the online version of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

Oh yes, Childe. I had heard of him before I started playing Genshin and when I arrived in Liyue I was like: "really? Is this the little guy you've decided to call daddy??" Childe's case hurts me less than Aventurine's solely because I decided recently that I would get Arlecchino and then uninstall the game for a while but I also really feel you! For HSR I'm here mostly for the lore and the Aeons and it really doesn't help that while I don't particularly mind shipping, it's something I indulge in sporadically, when a pairing scratches my brain just right. So I'm sitting here on the outskirts of the fandom watching people get mad at fictional corpos (the IPC, especially Topaz) but then jumping through so many hoops and getting up in arms to protect Mihoyo, or acting like the social justice police 😐

Oh and the fanarts you're talking about. I've been lucky enough not to see anything like that but like. Out of all the characters they could rough up they chose Aventurine?? Now it's reminding me of that one slave owner fanfic and I just have to wonder what it is about characters like him that always attracts the most unhinged fans.

They complain about Paimon hogging the spotlight in Genshin but then are taken by surprise whenever they fail to pick up hints, it's lowkey disheartening to see.

Honestly for Kaveh I feel like people had massacred Alhaitham's character even before Kaveh was introduced, to make it fit into any sexual fantasy trope. I just remembered this but whenever I hear about haikaveh or any shoe-horned ship for that matter, I start hearing this post:

https://www.tumblr.com/what-even-is-thiss/739539118572371969/sometimes-someone-just-isnt-into-you?source=share

The answers trying to make the character played by OP admit they've got hidden feelings is really how people with shipping lenses glued to their heads behave 😭

I'm also glad to see people focusing on characters individually and picking up interesting things about them! And I'm going to be honest: I mean this as disrespectfully as I can but if someone is surprised by reveals like that in a story like that, I'm just assuming they've never read anything else in their lives. Like, if your first reaction to anything in a story is to neatly categorize it as a trope (especially a romance trope) I genuinely need for this person to start educating themselves and engage with other media because there's just no way 💀 I can understand making assumptions / theories and then be proven wrong but this just on another level.

I hope I was coherent enough with all of this, and that you have a great day, evening or night too!

🪻

I’m so happy you like my writing 😭💚 I believe you can write amazing things as well. You’re really good at expressing your thoughts. The Argenti header is there because I like him and think there’s not enough of him in fandom haha.

The gleeful attitude some people have when their bullying succeeds is honestly repulsive. I only saw a bit of it, but it’s nasty how they act as if they accomplished a good deed. I daresay they even purposely go after people with differing opinions just to bully them into submission and feel good about it. As you pointed out, basic courtesy went out the window a long time ago due to anonymity of the internet.

Haha the Dan Heng maple leaf bit is proving my point! While people do try to be informative about symbolism and whatnot in character design, it’s also a means of validating their headcanons/ship. If Dan Feng’s name means maple leaves, then it makes perfect sense why maple leaves are a big part of Dan Heng’s design. Not everything about characters is linked to a ship, and I would love for more neutral discussions regarding the symbolism and culture behind their designs 😔

About Welt. I actually played Honkai Impact 3rd and read some of their comics (I was on the hunt for Su and Sumeru lore in preparation for Sumeru’s release). HI3 has a lot of canonical NL and GL pairings. Welt’s love is Frederica Nikola Tesla. There are more moments between them in the comic than the game, but it’s very obvious they’re in love with each other.

But of course, when he was introduced as a playable character in HSR, that part of him was buried. You can see Tesla in his splashart, but that’s about it. Same with Yukong. I was surprised they made her a mother since that’s a very bold move for a gacha game, so I knew there had to be a catch. And sure enough, she’s just an adoptive mother.

Gacha games are notorious for marking their characters single. If playable characters have a confirmed relationship, a lot of players would get very angry and jealous, and the company would lose profit. For example, I heard that back in 1.1 or so, Mihoyo wanted to release a lore book about Zhongli and Guizhong. I haven’t read it, so I can’t say if there was any romantic implication between them in the book, but Zhongli fans threw a fit, so Mihoyo scrapped it. Similarly, before Inazuma released, a leaker falsely said that Thoma was Ayaka’s fiancé, and again, the community got angry and cursed Thoma to hell. Ironically, it seems like players are far more accepting of same-sex relationship between characters than of opposite-sex ones 😅

I think kissing is strongly associated with romance because we have been conditioned to perceive it as such. Movies and other media make kissing a big deal between characters, there’s a lot of emphasis put on it as a turning point in their relationship. It also doesn’t help that practically every aspect of physical intimacy gets relegated to romantic relationships (hand-holding, cuddling, etc).

In our modern era, a lot of people feel isolated. Physical intimacy between an individual and their friends and family is rarer, so they think that if they get a significant other, they’ll receive the physical intimacy (and not only physical) that they crave. It’s a social construct for sure, but it’s very wide-spread and hard to break out of. At any rate, this is all just my conjecture.

Aventurine is a tragic case. I’m glad the amount of abusive fanarts of him has died down, though Childe doesn’t have that luxury 😔 I suppose the fuckboy type makes people think the character is up on a high horse, so they want to knock him down a peg. Some also perceive the trope to be inherently masochistic for whatever reason. I doubt we’ll ever know.

Lmao that post you linked! So true! That’s exactly how they behave! Gaslighting everyone, even the author, to convince them there’s romantic feelings between the characters when there are none. Characters used to be interpreted as friends, enemies, family, etc, but nowadays every character relationship gets seen as romantic. I miss the days when characters could be just friends or found family.

And I agree, Alhaitham was already butchered since the Sumeru Archon quest. People see a hot, muscular guy and focus only on how sexy he looks, and how hot it would be if he was dominant or aggressive, despite it not being his character at all. I get that people are free to imagine whatever they want for the sake of fun, but with how widespread some of those interpretations become, the character gets quickly reduced to tropes, and people forget what they’re actually like in canon.

To this day, there are still people surprised that Alhaitham is actually very nice and kind, even to children. He took in a broke man he didn’t particularly get along with and hasn’t seen in years, so if that isn’t a big fat hint that he’s a nice person, then I don’t know what is. As we have both agreed, a lot of people don’t pick up on the nuance of character writing 😔

Thank you for stopping by 🪻anon! I also hope you have a great day, and take care 💚

[please-picturemeintheweeds]

Not to be creepy but your right to compaigne for us as a (Swfitie) society to give up on The One Muse One Song frame work, like a, every love song has been sung to whoever she was loving at that moment (affectionately) and b, at this point most of her songs can apply to mutiple situations. High Infidelity / Fresh Outta The Slammer (Tom-Joe, Joe-Matty), Some people think Joe was giving Jake when their relationship was on its death bed. WCS/Ivy being for Matty and John theorectically. I could go on. Your right and you should say it.

Yeah i agree! I guess to me it just feels sooo reductive to believe that Taylor, the human woman, is only capable of comprehending one muse/set of experiences at a time when writing, recording, and performing a song. I think the way that the majority of swifties approach this framework is a symptom of the lingering undercurrents of sexism that we all carry around with us that encourage us to flatten her humanity. “Watch out, she’ll write a song about you” haunts swiftie discourse in really subtle ways, I think. She is an artist! She writes about complex feelings! Has nobody else ever had an experience that made them reflect back on other times you’ve felt that same way? And like… I think there IS value in “paternity testing” (for lack of a better phrase) but we tend to get bogged down in the almost crime scene investigation framework, rather than looking at patterns and story arcs that are full of meaning. One of the most interesting things to me about Taylor’s work is that a song written in a moment of time contains within it the seeds of entire patterns and psychological analysis, and bc we are so lucky to be let in on her life for all these years, we get to see her grow and change and experience the patterns and learn from them and then recontextualize them as she goes! Her art is very much living and breathing and she relates to it in a lot of the same ways that fans do, but also in a 100% unique way bc her art is her own creation and she embodies it at every stage! Ivy/WCS is a great example, and I’m so glad you brought it up- the conception of Ivy feels like it unlocked something in her brain around shame and secrecy and lust and danger and relationships as self harm. That is to say, WCS could not exist without Ivy. And that whole process mirrors so well what I experience in my own brain of cycling through memories and understanding them differently every time something gets triggered for me. The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived is a good example too, I think, of a song being about a string of specific muses/experiences but only crystallized as an emotional entity because of a specific recent experience that triggered all the other stuff.

Idk man!!! Thank u for validating this for me! I feel like it should not be a swiftie crime punishable by vague posting if you happen to pick up on threads that implicate stuff about the real people involved in these stories. But that can’t be where the conversation ends- how do all the stories fold into each other? How does the art re-imagine itself as time goes on? The window we get into her thought process from these mashups is truly mind boggling to me. Like! What a cool way to play with her own art and use it not just as a coping tool, but as a re-processing tool! It’s fascinating to me!!

[docholligay]

Lone Women

Non-spoilery: I wanted to like this, and the blurb made me think I really would, but boy is this book equal parts mind-boggling, boring, and pandering. It makes PERFECT sense to me that most people who have read this got a free copy or a Book of the Month copy.

Spoilery:

OY and also GEVALT. Jesus herschel Christ, okay so, first of all this book is a textbook example of what I’m talking about when i say sometimes representative fiction and media risks becoming a Pokemon ‘gotta catch em all’ situation. The story centers around a Black woman, Adelaide, which is fantastic and absolutely relevant to the story given that Montana was very “sure fine whatever” about giving Black homesteaders land. But then, it just...keeps adding up. Another Black woman and a Chinese woman who are also lesbians, obviously, and lesbianing together join up with Adelaide and her new friend, a single mother with a young trans son that she is 100% accepting of. This is in a 250ish page book, and at a certain point you just start sighing because it’s this author is just ticking stuff off a list at this point. This would be very doable in a longer book or maybe a better written one, but this is a piece of genre fiction par excellence, and none of that is on offer here, so you end up just trying to figure out how he’s gonna shoehorn in another minority. Because none of these minorities have problems with each other, by the way. Obviously. There is no such thing as inter-minority oppression and hatred, there is “majority” and “minority” and the white straight people who are the villains are truly mustache twirling in a way that is damn near hilarious. I think that actually identifies a big problem: None of these characters feel like people. I was sitting here thinking about having read and interacted with MANY other properties that play the ‘gotta catch em all’ game, and as a person who can often be included in ‘em all’ I am often not bothered, but the issue here is none of them FEEL like more than the Minority Experience he has highlighted for each of them. The villains have no internal life. Everyone is the flattest possible version of what a person can be.

That’s all very truly annoying, but I think I could forgive it if the horror was good. I have forgiven MUCH MUCH bigger sins in other books because the horror was enjoyable. Please don’t let the above make you think I am discerning in my horror tastes.

But oh my god. what the fuck.

The whole story centers around Adelaide having this secret she keeps locked up in a trunk with her. It’s heavy and burdensome, but she MUST carry it with her. It contains a murderous thing, a thing that killed her parents, and she dreams of being free of it. It nearly kills a man she falls in love with, and he goes away. Sounds great, right? Me sitting here wondering what I think this whole thing could be a metaphor for, for generational trauma or what have you. When it killed some mean white people I thought maybe it was a metaphor for Black anger. It’s a faceless monster described only in terms of its sharpness and its lust for men and horses (which did throw my theory about black anger out the window.)

But, at the end, it turns out the thing she’s been carrying around was born at the same time as she was and is, I shit you not, a literal dragon. Lavalle has intentionally avoided ever calling it a dragon throughout the book, I suppose because he thinks this twist is exceptionally clever. The dragon is Adelaide’s sister, and the secret is for her to learn to love her sister and also after they beat the bad guys--where, it must be said, they attempt to hang the lone women on the stage of a grand opera house-- everyone goes and lives in a secret town for “lone women” where everyone gets to be happy.

I read that, reread it, and quietly uttered “What the fuck”

I would be much angrier about it if I were a slow reader, but I’m not, so I don’t care. Read this if you’d like to read a book that feels like a bold attempt to cash in on people’s desire for representation in stories that also understands very very little about racial and social politics in the American West, which unfortunately I know a lot of, and also the big twist is SHE IS CARRYING AROUND A LITERAL DRAGON WHO IS ONLY DANGEROUS BECAUSE IT DOESN’T GET LOVE.

[roxannepolice]

adsgbdb hello i’ve been wanting to say hi for a while since we’ve been mutuals :) i checked my notifications and saw your tags 😭💓 i think we have very similar opinions on doctor who things and i really love that! you’re so right about the doctor trusting martha and growing to respect her and that being what sets her apart from rose and donna. seeing all of these tags made my day :D

Thank you for your kind words and for reaching out, you've made my day in turn! 😁

And thank you for reblogging the opportunity to rant a bit about Martha discourse, because the extent to which she's either coddled or demonized by the fandom is just mind-boggling to me. Personally, I really think she has one of the best companion stories ever, and while I understand the "character deserved better" sentiment, end of the day a great story is the best any character can get... And I also understand wanting the Doctor to be nicer to her, but, idk I guess I value honesty over niceness, and I just love how honest Ten is with Martha, both in the sense of not being into her romantically, but also when he straightforwardly dismisses the possibility of "You are not alone" not concerning her - or any other companion. Again, this just tells me that he respects her in the sense of knowing he doesn't have to coddle her.

I ranted some time ago in tags about how the best Doctor-Companion stories have a Virgil-Dante element to it, in the sense of the former acting as a guide, but not being able to reach the Paradise as the latter does (and I completely brush aside the baptism element of it). And Martha Jones fulfills this model better than anyone else. The viewer can tell that by the end of s3 Ten is not only regretful of maybe, yes, not being nicer to her, but also admiring of her decision to leave... and maybe even almost jealous of her still having people to care and be responsible for...

Again, thank you so much for reaching out, it's always so good to have someone to rant about DW with 😁

[askkrenko]

Magic to me has always been about the worlds, the fantasy aspect, and getting immersed in these fantastic places. It's about games that tell a story and moving pieces that make sense to move together. Sure, there's always the snakes-with-boots problem, but historically Magic has usually felt pretty consistent on what the setting of Magic is. There's outliers, but there's usually some set of standard fantasy races fighting with fantasy powers and when things get 'weird' it's because we're now doing a more Japanese-style fantasy or we're pushing more magitek than usual but you can still reasonably expect a game to tell a narrative about a battle that makes some sort of sense. Standard used to be the BEST at this because Standard for a long time only ever had base sets and two worlds, and even after Blocks stopped, we spent most of a year on Ravnica or went to places like Eldraine or Kaldheim that were really just that same sort of high fantasy Magic always was. Neon Dynasty was wild, sure, but there was still a lot of traditional stuff in there, and we followed that up with a year of sets focused on the Phyrexians.

SOME of the Universes Beyond stuff seems to fit in flawlessly as well. Sure, Forgotten Realms is a different world, but everything there just fits into Magic, and Tolkein's DNA is so firmly baked into medieval fantasy that a Lord of the Rings set is full of cards that fit in seamlessly (though Kithkin really need to be eratta'd to halflings now.) Honestly, Final Fantasy seems like a great fit here, and while Warhammer 40K is weird, the connective tissue of the raw number of demons at least says 'this is a magical world setting with aspects that we do see on other magic worlds.' But sometimes Optimus Prime shows up and whatever narrative is happening in the world of the cards grinds to a screeching halt because there's no reasonable explanation for how my magical wizard duel game suddenly has a sentient alien robot truck. Despite the card playing fine, every time I see him or one of his friends hit the table, it grinds my immersion into this carefully cultivated multiverse to a screeching halt in a way that even the most intentionally absurd in-universe cards don't.

And having UB become a huge part of standard, coupled with Spider-Man being an upcoming UB set, means this is going to be happening basically all the time now. I'm genuinely not that worried about Final Fantasy for the same reason I'm not phased by Lord of the Rings (though some of the more recent ones are uncomfortably Sci-Fi), but when standard is full of Spider-Man cards, it's going to mean many of those games are going to have that complete shattering of the immersion of anything making sense at all.

Honestly, the only way to make it work is to OPEN the Multiverse and let Chandra meet Spider-Man, which is something that's been avoided in the UB stuff before. At that point you can say yeah, this is a Multiverse, Plane-Hopping story, and Marvel is just another Plane in it, but right now I'm having a serious issue maintaining immersion when I'm assembling my horde of fantasy creatures and then The Doctor shows up with all his weird space stuff.

And that's not even getting into the absolute mind-boggle that the Assassin's Creed set causes me. REAL people, even long dead ones, should NOT be Magic Cards. Optimus Prime may be my poster boy for this issue because I play against him the most, but it's Sokrates and Da Vinci that I really just cannot get past.

I’ve always felt the core role of this blog has been one of information. We make a lot of choices in design, and I try to use my various communications, including Blogatog, to walk the players through what we were thinking when we made key decisions.

The challenge with this approach is that it’s very logic-focused. It uses intellectual justifications to explain actions. But the problems I’m often responding to are emotional in origin. I have a good friend who’s a psychologist. He refers to this (using the words of author Robyn Gobbel) as an owl brain solution to a watchdog brain problem.

When someone is hurting, hearing about why the thing that is causing them pain is the result of intellectual decisions falls flat. That’s what has been causing some tension lately here on Blogatog.

It’s clear that for some Question Marks changes over the last few years represent the loss of something key to what makes Magic special to them. To them, the game is losing its heart.

While I can’t necessarily do anything about that, I want to better understand what you’re going through. So I’m using this post to ask players who are concerned with the recent changes to help me understand their feelings. Let me hear your stories about how your lives have been affected by these changes.

[emptymanuscript]

Wow...

I feel like what I just had was the best meeting my Thursday Writing Group has had in ages...

And my Thursday group is kind of what I feel like is my best writing group for dealing with WRITING writing anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my every other Tuesday group. I would even say the average piece of writing in the Tuesday group is better than the average piece of writing in the Thursday group. And it's just plain more soul nourishing because so much of it is based around our social interaction outside of read and critique. It's a more experienced and more professional group. But part of the explicit point is to just hang out and enjoy each other's company.

At which point I have to say, don't get me wrong, again, I LOVE my Thursday group. I'm very fond of the people in it. I genuinely like them. They're good. We are friendly. I wish I could combine the two groups, if I'm honest. But, at the end of the day, Thursdays are truly about slapping writing down on the table and getting it critiqued. I'm not worried about getting BS critique, I'm not worried about cushioning my critique, I trust my Thursday group with my writing in a way I don't think I have ever trusted a writing group before and that is saying something.

Even my every other Monday group, which I haven't been to in months >_< is a great group that is superior (mostly) about earning the trust of attendees and work. I've been in a lot of GREAT groups.

And my Thursday group feels like the best for working on writing. AND today was extraordinary. I'm kind of just mind boggled. I want to buy and send thank you cards for today.

AND

I think there is a lesson in this that I've heard before but never experienced quite so powerfully.

Hiding is a weakness in story work because revelation ENABLES strength.

Obviously, that requires some judicious care. Don't share everything with everybody always. And you have to know how you work. But, when things are right, really sharing what you are doing and how, enables others to really pick up and fiddle with the clockworks and structures of your story which powerfully shows the fundamentals of it. Like here's my theme, here's the original writing, here's what I'm trying to do on the whole meta level.

And that was REALLY valuable today.

This is the best I've felt about book two since... I don't know when. Since before I published The Hidden and the Maiden (Book 1) in 2015.

So... yeah... wow.

That was something else.

[the-firebird69]

They say they should make it out of metal and her son and daughter agree just change the panels it'll be lighter and you probably won't have to mess with the suspension she's the tires and they said this is crazy stuff and the tires and rims you can extend out with themselves they know how to do that you just sent them and you sent to them and they said this it's a crazy idea that would work right now and then 4 door stupid dodge is a **** car on Earth. As we too much power for something such a dog and then make the cradle they made a cradle and it works pretty good into adjusted a little I think it finalize that and it'll work perfect nick can actually make them on that chassis and they have a bunch of those chassis sitting around in the upper Midwest doing nothing so we think they try and do it and they can't really get it out there but we're gonna try and do it. We have a lot of those chassis. So we're gonna try that but this is a very very big project and it's getting bigger and bigger and we have projects starting in kick cars are being created and we're involved in all of it and we're getting it going. Along with him in the motorcycles we have a lot of RTA going out we have a lot of bikes that we have a lot of bikes that we're gonna start building. We have a lot of ideas one of them is conversion from the electric E bike motorcycle look the dirt bike and electric dirt bike to enduro or st bike. Seems to have crazy power they all go like 150 miles plus and you can gear them and put sprockets on and they go a lot faster and further. The makers are nuts and they're not they can't get away with these hey people supposed to get it. Wanna try try making conversion companies and pronto and he thinks that we should probably push real hard on motorcycle engines that are electric because the first thing that fails for real you can't do anything about the engine and it's going crazy for real that one's the biggest and he knew it and then the other ones you can start up nearby. It's an outstanding plan they want to do it that way too and he says that is terrific and we're already starting where we are and we're making tons and tons and tons of them and people see them and some people have to buy them and we say how much and there's a brand name and a phone number so we're getting calls and it's working. He says boy that's great so they buy the campers or anything else you want out there and they take him out there with them it's like 20% my capsule and then one day and half so I said wow and it was like 10% when 5% 5% but still they got all these campers and we started selling them again and they went nuts buying them and they're out there with a name in the brochure and everything. Now it's going along pretty good so people ask you to buy to buy your stuff all the time and we see them smiling saying OK they want to sell these so it's working and we have people working for us and it's going on now we know what we're doing we have hatched huge plans this way so far we have sales of the electric motorcycle conversion it's from a ninja 750 the most common form and they have so many that it's mind boggling wherever you go you see this thing and it's kind of a smaller bike to us and our son and daughter say it is but he's really not that big so the conversion kit would work but we converted and you kind of rejuvenated and it goes faster than used to with the chain it goes top speed of about 380 miles an hour and they're made for it and zero to the 60s like 1.3 seconds and the quarter miles like 3.4 seconds. It'll go and 70 miles an hour it'll go about 300 miles a charge and it's 15 minute charge. People want it now so we're gonna print this is a lot more success stories happening there's a lot more going on and we're sending stuff and there's fighting and we're making it and it's still working and we have to keep doing it these are positive stories we want people to start making stuff. If you want to make things

IF YOU WANT TO START PRODUCTION AND SELL TO THEM TO GET SALES START YOUR PROGRAMS SUBMIT NOW OR TODAY OR ASAP. WE WILL APPROVE. LETS GET GOING ON IT NOW

Thor Freya

We look at every project seriously but we do it quickly we've been talking about for a long time and we'll we mostly approve everything if not it's some changes or different date but most of the time we approve it right away and even if we don't we expect to get your stuff ready and we'll say that to you on the note in other words it's always going to be yes one way or the other.

Olympus

So we got a yes in ours but ours is a dangerous flycar and they want us to start making parts and we're gonna go ahead and do that and we're gonna yes on the kangaroo too and it's an imitation car and they want us to start on that pretty soon the Bradley GT one and two we're making parts the new motorcycle company we are making parts the clown motorcycle company and we're making parts and a hard knock we're making parts they say it's imminent. He wants to drive a few around of each see what the reaction is we've done that and we know what it is. No you said We're gonna set up a schedule that's great let me get like a rally so we can try and get on a time and if not we'll see why. That's a good idea.

Hera

we do that now and have alot lol good he says she does too wow this is fun we say it now too

Nuada Arrianna

We're looking for professional drivers and we need tons of them right now. Spotted and they do not like it we have to escape.

Thor Freya

and us too great

trump

Olympus

[meiterium1976]

mother venting part 1

sometime in the 1870's a little boy, who was about three at the time, pulled a pot of boiling water on to himself and died. this happened in Brunstatt, Alsace, Germany. That little boy was my great-great uncle. his sister, who wasn't even born yet at the time of his death, was born in 1879 and she was my great-grandmother. the story of this child's death is ancient and known family lore.

today my mother was having a little bitch session about food and the older generation of people in her family when she was growing up. while I can forgive the lack of class consciousness that is so evident from how she talks about her aunt making weak coffee and her parents generally eating boring food (while her first husband encouraged her to explore exciting food, which he probably did because he came from a higher class background, one that traveled internationally in the fucking 1920's) I had a really hard time with this:

"my grandmother wasn't much of a cook, and she always had this thing about soup being too hot and maybe hurting someone, so she always served soup that wasn't warm enough"

I had a moment and said "well, there was that ONE time!"

and she just stared at me and said "what?"

and I said "yeah, like that time where her bother died? because of the boiling water?"

and I shit you not, she said "but that happened before she was born!"

to which I said "she would have heard about it! it was probably really scary!"

and she coincided that that *might* have had an impact on my great grandmother always serving lukewarm soup

most of the time I just smile and nod and just let it go when my mother does this kind of thing, she's 100% checked out from anyone else's life experience. but this honestly boggles my mind that she never, in her entire life, connected the "little boy in the family who DIED because of boiling water" story with lukewarm soup decades later...

funny bonus part, she went on and on about how much she liked to cook and liked way more interesting food than her parents and I can say with full authority that my mother's cooking was generally boring and meh. she did make good bread though.

[ablooglie-wooglie-woo]

Greta's Barbie

I watched the movie yesterday with my sister, and after letting it stew in my mind for a bit, here my general thoughts about it:

First things first, this movie is an accomplishment of production design: from the outfits to the sets, the whole thing is such an authentic recreation of several Barbie's products that it genuinely boggles the mind. I don't know which Oscar category is responsible for these, but if this movie doesn't win at least one, I'm calling bullshit.

I didn't really care for the soundtrack, I can barely remember any of the songs and most of those are there more for the joke than to fill a Amazon Music playlist, anyway.

(I got a free three months after buying a new controller, don't judge me)

All the actors are great in their roles, but biggest kudos goes to Ryan Gosling as Ken, who is a fucking blast every single second he's onscreen, and Gosling is clearly having the time of his life playing the character, joyfully chewing the scenery like a starving dog.

People on Twitter are saying Best Supporting Actor will come down to him and Downey Jr. this year, and while I have yet watch Oppenheimer, I can certainly see the case for Gosling.

Part of it, I think, is because Ken himself gets the best part of the script, his journey from innocent teenager to dude bro to positive bro being great from start to finish.

I'm not saying Barbie herself doesn't get a good arc, mind you, she isn't the personality-less purity incarnate she was in the CGi movies (yes, I did watch those growing up), but it's also much more traditional: what Barbie gets is a coming of age story of a little girl growing out of the bubble of innocence of childhood and embracing all the joys and hardships of the real world.

And it works, it's very well-executed for what it is, but it's also noticeable the way the movie never gives her many significant flaws nor does the narrative ever makes her do anything that puts the audience against her. There's just less to chew on, is what I mean.

Which ties into a criticism I heard that the movie clearly holds back on criticizing the brand of Barbie and even her parent company: for all the movie points out that Mattel's ruled over entirely by men, the CEO is more of a likeable buffoon than someone with any real malice, the entire diatribe the teenage character (whose name I forgot, I think it was Sasha?) is more played more as a joke on how she's a very meanspirited and terminally online bully rather than the perfectly justifiable complaints they are, and so on.

Personally, though, I feel it is to Greta's credit that she knew exactly how far she could push it when it comes to this movie. I've seen way too many stories that attempt something daring only to crash into the wall that is the fact the genre/medium/franchise they're running on doesn't allow for those to be fully materialized, which only ends as the story being worse than something more traditional.

And besides, while the movie might be Feminism 101, it's important to remember that the internet is not the real world, and whichever is your favorite radical feminist author simply has far less reach than a blockbuster movie. It's good that a movie like this can tackle these topics and be this blunt about it, change gotta start out somewhere.

Having said that, while I found those funny, I do think the several self-aware jokes are likely to grate on at least some of you.

All that aside, as someone who watches a lot of movies being parodied in that scene, the Ken War segment made me feel personally attacked.

So that's Greta's Barbie: just a really great time all-around, very worth the price of admission.

PS: There is an inexcusable amount of horses in this movie, fucking overhyped, overrated domesticated pricks is what they are.

PSS: Michael Cera is in this movie. He plays, as usual, a Micheal Cera character. I don't get the hype over him, honestly.

[citadeloftherisingstar]

First of all I agree with everything you said - obviously. After seeing the show I thought about writing a post like this one myself but that show is so bad that when you try to break it down, you just start listing everything. You just sit there rocking back & forth thinking 😅😅 everything is wrong, where do I even start?

So, let me address some of the point you made, in no particular order, and put in my own two cents.

Silmarillion, which is essentially Tolkien's Game of Thrones.! It is! Actually it’s similar to the Dance of the Dragons in a way that both are written more like an account of events rather than a novel, and there are there gaps that the show runners could fill in with their own ideas or interpretations. I hate to make that comparison because I hate GRRM and his flippant comments about Tolkien and Aragorn's tax policy  (😅) but unfortunately that damn House of the Dragon show is great, so I have to give credit where credit is due, I will probably keep going back to it while addressing other points. The writers of that show took all these two dimensional, trope'y characters from the book, made minor changes here and there, and these changes gave the characters more depth, made their relationships with each other feel real & complex, and their motivations - relatable. The casting director on that show did an excellent job, and so did the costume & hair department.

Given a similar treatment the Rings of Power could have been adapted into something amazing and unforgettable. But no one cared enough. Most of the time I stared at the screen in utter disbelief knowing that Amazon threw away  1 billion dollars to make this. It's mind boggling how little they cared.

Male elves with short hair. This is annoying exactly for the reasons you gave. Also, giving them short hair made the characters look ... like regular people, and - way too modern? Nothing about their character design, hair and make-up says "these are ancient powerful beings who aren’t human". They just look like some dudes you could pass by on the bus. They chickened out from giving us beautiful elf lords I guess so that 'dudes' would find them relatable, assuming an average male viewer would run away waving a 'no homo' flag seeing a beautiful man with long hair?? 😂 Which is of course a complete bs. And we’re going back to the House of the Dragon (didn’t take long). The main characters there are beautiful men with long white hair who look more like elves than any elf lord on The Rings of Power. Having long hair didn't prevent them from being badass warriors, and for people to fangirl/fanboy over their long hair and war braids. Aren’t long hair & braids what we associate with ancient/fantasy warriors?  Amazon really dropped the ball on this one. Another thing, that is kind of related, which annoyed me tremendously, was make up on female characters – visible make-up. Again, it made them look way too modern. That lady whose name I don't remember, the one who lived in the Mordor-to-be little village and was in love with the black elf, for some reasons looked like she should be in a lip gloss or mascara ad on youtube, and for some other reasons she walked around with bare shoulders and with her cleavage showing??? 🤔🤔🤷‍♀️ Any time she appeared on screen it took me out of the story.

How the f*#k does Gil-Galad have the authority to force Galadriel to go back to Valinor, - that is a fantastic question isn't it? No one calls her lady. She isn’t TALL.  She is treated like a rebellious teenager who needs to be shipped off to a boarding school for beating up fellow students & joining a motorcycle gang 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ I mean, considering how she is written & portrayed I can hardly blame them, I would want to get rid of her too.

How is it that Celebrimbor, who is a master smith, doesn't know how ores work?  - Celebrimbor on this show is what we call is a complete and utter idiot. (oh my god 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️😅). And Amazon thinks that we - the audience - are also idiots. Did they really think that we wouldn't know that he should know how /ores/ work?? And not only that, he is so dumb and naive in general. This definitely-not-Sauron guy, he had never seen before, walks in and he just starts telling him their very important plan to save all elf-kind with that piece of an extremely rare and valuable metal they shouldn't even have. This is the kind of information you give to complete strangers instantly upon meeting them.

Don’t even get me started on the idea that they need mithril to save them because there is a black goo infecting trees and mithril makes the goo disappear. 😄😄 I get the black goo symbolizes the return of evil & Sauron but it’s so ephemeral, impersonal and dumb. Again I have to make the comparison to the House of the Dragon, there is no villain there, no Dark Lord, the entire conflict and tragedy comes from the fact that the main characters are family and at some point genuinely cared about each other, and they will all go down in a fratricidal war for power that was easily avoidable, and they are going to take an entire race of magical ancient creatures with them. So here the Rings of Power could utilize what you mentioned: the Oath, different kingdoms and different kinds of elves, their beef with dwarves. I think legally they might not been allowed to include the Oath 🤔 in their storyline, I don’t remember exactly which parts of the Silmarillion they have the rights to use. But the point still stands - if they were smart they could have found a way to construct a story to show elves as beautiful and at the same time “proud, ruthless, dangerous, sometimes murderous”.  They had 1 billion dollars to spend! I’m sure for a fraction of it you could pay for services of a seasoned screenwriter 😂 Btw. beautiful, proud, ruthless –describes Targaryens in a nutshell, and people love that about them. If Amazon wanted to compete with the House of the Dragon/GoT they should have gone that route.

Okay, I could go for hours but I have to stop, this is already very long. Apparently I also needed to vent ;)

Thought I would make a list of all the things that bug me about RoP, because I need to vent to someone.

As you can see, I'm an elf fan, so my rant is focused on what I thought they got wrong about the elves. No doubt fans of Numenor have a similar list for what they got wrong there, but I don't know enough about Numenor to make a similar list for them.

Male elves with short hair. Why is this really annoying? Because Tolkien went to the trouble of saying that their long hair is a sign of vigor and beauty for them. Finrod, Fingon, Fingolfin are all high Noldorin lords, and even their names revolve about how beautiful their hair is. In other words having long hair is very important in elvish culture. Why sacrifice that for no good reason?

Why do Celebrimbor and Gil-Galad look so much older than Galadriel, when in fact Celebrimbor is about the same age as her (?) and Gil-Galad is her nephew? And specifically, when canonically, elves do not show signs of age until they are absolutely ancient. Is this like 'oh no, how will they look properly authoritative if we don't make them middle aged?!' What about 'elves are immortal and beautiful' is so hard to understand? And why exactly are we not allowed to have beautiful elf lords but it's so vitally important to have beautiful elf ladies? (We know why, but I'm still rolling my eyes.)

How the f*#k does Gil-Galad have the authority to force Galadriel to go back to Valinor, when she is an Exile and her inability and the other Noldor's inability to go home is a huge, HUGE, important plot point throughout the Silm and LotR both. Way to completely miss one of the overarching tragedies of the entire Noldor people.

What is this nonsense about the elves all being about to die or forced to go back to Valinor without mithril? See above about how their Exile and their Oath is still making that completely impossible. Also, mithril is a precious metal that is more beautiful than silver and harder than steel - that's enough for it to be politically important and something that people covet. Way to turn it into yet another magical item and somehow absolve the elves and the dwarves both of the responsibility of their greed.

I mean there is a lot of stripping of the Silmarillion elves magnificent jerkishness. It's a different book from LotR and the Silmarillion elves are proud, ruthless, dangerous, sometimes murderous, but you would not know it from this series, where they all behave just like LotR elves.

There's no acknowledgement that there are different kingdoms and kinds of elves who are in strained diplomatic relations with each other. Where is there any awareness of the kind of politics that is going on in the Second Age?

Where is any awareness of what the beef between the elves and dwarves is actually about? Is it really better to present it as some kind of irrational prejudice, rather than the result of elves having hunted dwarves for sport in the past, and dwarves having sacked Doriath and killed King Thingol fairly recently? I know that introducing that would complicate the whole "elves and dwarves are all good people!" thing, but complication is what you get when you choose to tackle the Silmarillion, which is essentially Tolkien's Game of Thrones.

Argh! How is it that Celebrimbor, who is a master smith, doesn't know how ores work? For goodness sake, people, make some attempt to depict forging accurately in a story where smithcraft is also a huge plot point.

Galadriel was in effing Lorien when the three rings were made.

Forever sore that we did not get the story of Celebrimbor usurping the rule of Eregion from Celeborn and Galadriel that we should have got, which lead to Galadriel and Celebrian fleeing Eregion through Khazad-Dum to go and prepare a refuge in Lorenindorinan. While Celeborn stayed in Eregion and was on hand to fight Sauron when he revealed himself and came against Eregion with an army and the body of Celebrimbor impaled on a pole as his standard. Instead we get this wishy-washy crap where the entire army of Numenor decides to go and rescue a small village in (what will become) Mordor, despite the fact that nobody on the spot has even asked for aid.

Am I less annoyed now that I've got this all out? No, not really.

Here is a series of blogs by an actual historian talking about the many things that annoyed him

[echo-bleu]

Okay but. Geralt with auditory processing issues.

The mutations wreck havok on the senses. Sure, they make his hearing range incredible, but they don’t help with the processing, and he’s constantly hearing everything at once. It’s worse for Geralt than the other witchers because he’s had the Grasses twice. (Or because he’s autistic, duh.)

It’s half the reason he communicates so much with grunts, because most of the time he’s only got half of what the other person said and he just lets them interpret his grunts however they want.

And sure, he’s heard Jaskier sing so many times in taverns and courts and his songs are catchy enough, but he’s never actually managed to catch the lyrics. It’s just all gibberish to him. As soon as there’s the lute, and noise, and they’re in a city or a town so there’s people around, he just doesn’t understand any of it. It doesn’t make his “fillingless pie” comment any less insensitive, but it does give it some context.

Every winter the other witchers will make comments about the songs they’ve heard on the Path, about this or that adventure, and Geralt is just like. That. That’s what the song was about. Oh. Eskel isn’t great at auditory processing either but he’ll ask the bards to play over and over until he’s got most of it, and since they’re songs about witchers, the bards usually comply. It’s nice to hear good news of his brother. Then he’ll tease Geralt mercilessly all winter about it. That’s the only reason Geralt even knows so much of what Jaskier sings.

However, he likes hearing snatches of song while Jaskier’s composing, when they’re camping out in the open or in a forest and there isn’t too much noise around. Then he can actually understand the words, sometimes.

He’s very, very good at pretending he can hear just fine, and he’s been doing for so long, but he does feel a little guilty about making Jaskier think he doesn’t like his music. He just doesn’t know how to explain, doesn’t think Jaskier could get it, because no one ever has. Then while they’re all in Kaer Morhen after the mess with Voleth Meir, the other witchers start asking Jaskier to sing, even though he doesn’t have a lute. They’re all completely quiet during his performances, and every time Ciri or Yen or anyone makes a noise and they miss a line, Eskel will ask Jaskier to start over. (Eskel isn’t dead, obviously.)

And one day Geralt finds Jaskier hunched over a desk, with a pile of parchment beside him and his notebook open in front of him, frantically copying something.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“I’m making copies of my songs,” Jaskier answers. “I’ve actually published the whole songbook in Oxenfurt, you know, but we can’t get it here, and Eskel said that having the lyrics would help, so I’m trying to make enough for everyone.”

Geralt’s mind is boggled because yes, having the lyrics written down would help immensely but he would never have thought to ask, let alone that Jaskier might actually be willing to write them down for him, and what’s that about a songbook? He almost just grunts and leaves him to it, but he remembers that he promised himself to at least try to communicate better with Jaskier after the mountain, so he asks in a very small voice, “Can I have one?”

And Jaskier’s jaw hangs slack for a moment before he coughs and hands him a stack of parchment. “I wasn’t sure you’d want it,” he mutters almost to himself.

“I always want to know what you’re singing,” Geralt says.

Jaskier’s eyes are wide and shining when he hugs Geralt, and his voice cracks a little. “I wish I’d realized sooner that you couldn’t hear it.”

That night he sings his entire song cycle a capella in front of the fire, his eyes boring into Geralt the entire time, as Geralt follows the lyrics along for the first time.

And Jaskier’s songs are really fucking good, actually. Geralt is hardly an expert, but he can see the way he bends and stretches language to make it flow and how he weaves the stories together and he can feel the love in how Jaskier sings about him, about them, and---

Is that what he’s been missing this whole time?

Brought to you by: the long-ass time it took me to get into The Amazing Devil’s wonderful music because I couldn’t fucking hear the words until I sat down and listened to every song while following along with the written lyrics.

[mclennonlgbt]

My favourite Lennon and McCartney's quotes where they express love to each other

I don't know if they were soulmates, lovers, something else or all of the above; there's no doubt they loved each other. I know there's a lot of quotes but these touch my heart the most <3

PAUL

- ‌Me and John, we’d known each other for a long time. Along with George and Ringo, we were best mates. And we looked into each other’s eyes, the eye contact thing we used to do, which is fairly mind-boggling. You dissolve into each other. But that’s what we did, round about that time, that’s what we did a lot. And it was amazing. You’re looking into each other’s eyes and you would want to look away, but you wouldn’t, and you could see yourself in the other person.

- ‌I was thinking the other day, ‘I wish I had sat and just hugged John all the time when we were together. (…) I’d just sit around and hug him forever. That’s the depth of my feeling for him.

- ‌But the great thing about me and John was it was me and John, end of story.

- ‌When I painted him recently, I found myself saying "How do his lips go? I can't remember". Then I would think, "Of course you know. You wrote all those songs facing each other".

- ‌John and I were perfect, really, for each other.

- ‌We grew up literally in the same bed because when we were on holiday, hitchhiking or whatever, we would share a bed.

- ‌I dream about him.

- ‌I mean, we had a wonderful... I had a wonderful time with one of the most world's talented people. - John and I were two of the luckiest people in the twentieth century to have found each other. The partnership, the mix, was incredible. We both had submerged qualities that we each saw and knew. I had to be the bastard as well as the nice melodic one and John had to have a warm and loving side for me to stand him all those years. John and I would never have stood each other for that length of time had we been just one-dimensional. - We wrote our first songs together, we grew up together and we lived our lives together. And when we’d do it together, something special would happen. There’d be that little magic spark. I still remember his beery old breath when I first met him here [Woolton church fete] that day. But I soon came to love that beery old breath. And I loved John.

JOHN

- ‌I've compared to a marriage a million times and I hope it's... understable. For people that aren't married. Or any relationship. It was a LONG relationship. It started many, many years before the American public, or the English public for that matter, knew us. Paul and I were together since he was 15, I was 16.

- ‌How can you be suprised by your brother since you were 15?

- ‌We were recording the other night, and I just wasn't there. Neither was Paul. We were like two robots going through the motions. We do need each other alot. When we used to get together after a month off, we used to be embarrassed about touching each other. We'd do an elaborate handshake just to hide the embarrassement... or we did mad dances. Then we got to hugging each other.

- ‌I think it's [writing songs] partly something natural - and partly something that Paul and I spark off in each other. [...] Some people say it's a speculative stock because no one knows how long Paul and I will stay together. But we intend to stick together and if you can write songs, you can write them all your life.

- ‌Throughout my career, I’ve selected to work with – for more than a one-night stand, say, with David Bowie or Elton John – only two people: Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. I brought Paul into the original group, the Quarrymen, he brought George in, and George brought Ringo in. And the second person who interested me as an artist and somebody I could work with was Yoko Ono. That ain’t bad picking.

- ‌Nobody ever said anything about Paul's having a spell on me or my having one on Paul! They never thought that was abnormal in those days, two guys together, or four guys together! Why didn't they ever say, 'How come those guys don't split up? I mean, what's going on backstage? What is this Paul and John business? How can they be together so long?

- ‌But the only - the person I actually picked up as my partner, who I'd recognised had talent, and I could get on with, was Paul. Now, 12 or however many years later, I met Yoko, I had the same feeling. It was a different feel, but I had the same feeling. So I think as a talent scout, I've done pretty damn well! - I’d like to thank Elton [John] and the boys for having me on tonight. We tried to think of a number to finish off with so I can get out of here and be sick, and we thought we’d do a number of an old, estranged fiancé of mine, called Paul. This is one I never sang. It’s an old Beatle number and we just about know it.

[every-dayiwakeup]

You may have seen this recent addition in the Billy tag but oh my goodness people have no brain cells anymore. Here’s just a part of the post

I couldn’t fit all of the buffoonery in this post in one screenshot and it took me so much self control to just block the user and not leave a comment on their grammar or their logic.

Like, dang, ignoring that Jason literally shot at and beat Lucas up, reducing Billy to nothing more than an asshole racist, AND saying that Jason was a good boyfriend when Chrissy felt like she couldn’t even talk to him about her problems?

Yeah, I've seen it 😃🤌

It's all over, my friend 😑

I was hoping after that scene with Jason and Lucas, perhaps antis would give it a rest... but then I started seeing Jason apologists pop up.

Now, Jason is a fictional character, like Billy. If people want to... like him... they can. What really upsets me is their hypocrisy, and the unwillingness to acknowledge that the Duffers' shitty writing also applies to the characters they just love to hate.

If you want to like Jason, you can. But despite the tiktok edits, love didn't make him crazy. He wanted an excuse to go after Eddie, and I'm certain he would have gathered up a mob for he and Lucas even if Chrissy was alive.

I'm glad you brought up the fact that they're saying Jason is a "good boyfriend". Yeah, he's so great that he doesn't notice something is off about her. What he cares about is that Eddie (someone he hates) was who she chose to confide in.

I think Chrissy was afraid of Jason, and I say this because Jason has a vendetta against "freaks", and she doesn't want anyone to know about her visions because she doesn't want to be another "freak" in Hawkins.

No hate to Jason's actor, he did great. But Jason Carver is worse than Billy. I'm actually disturbed about how antis aren't using critical thinking.

They're so used to hating Billy, that it's a learned thing, and as you mentioned they clearly lack the brain capacity to unlearn that behavior.

Jason scares me more than Billy ever could- because we don't see Billy gathering up a fucking mob to kill people. We don't see Billy unleashing the basketball team on Erica and Lucas.

Jason's behavior is eerily similar to that of racist extremists and right wing movements, and for people to ignore the fact that what Jason was ordering Lucas to do is straight out of a fucking cop's mouth mind boggling.

I've seen enough dashcam videos of racist cops on the news that when he pulled out that gun and started talking I forgot this was a Sci fi show.

My point is, Jason felt real for a whole another reason than Billy did.

The Billy Hargroves of this world don't scare me. It's the Jason Carvers and the Neil Hargroves that do. And people that go on rants about hating a teenage abuse victim with no proper grammar.

Antis can't make this connection because the Duffers aren't able to either. They are as smart as their audience. They wouldn't have thought of making Robin gay without Maya. They wouldn't have thought of Billy being abused without Dacre. That brings me to my next point; THEY DON'T THINK.

Stranger Things is not as complex as they think it is. Notice how complex, real characters with any hint of a troubled life are shown (Billy, Eddie, Chrissy etc) they're killed off. Because the Duffers cannot write complex characters. And by extension they cannot write social issues.

Racism is not an aesthetic. If you bring up even a hint of it, you cannot gloss over its ugly effects. Once the Duffers attempted to bring social issues into a Sci fi story, they could have gone into depth about it. But like I said, this is a Sci fi story. And it was never supposed to feel real. If that was their intention? They failed.

I related to characters like Billy and Max more than I did El, and not because El has powers. Because Billy and Max (and their sibling dynamic) brought a new kind of darkness to the show that the creators didn't know how to handle- reality.

In a show about monsters and kids with special powers, Billy and Max were among the only characters who were more than stereotypes. They had real issues, and as I mentioned, the Duffers gloss over social issues.

The difference between them and say, Stephen King? For one, King can write and address social issues and still scare the pants off of readers. Because reality is scarier than any fictional monster. Plus he didn't try to humanize characters like Pennywise. He actually spent more time on developing his main characters, and he didn't gloss over their trauma.

In all seriousness, I blame the antis' lack of critical thinking on the Duffers. They backtrack everything. They wanted Steve to SA someone. They wanted Billy to say the n word. But if this had happened... I still wouldn't trust the Duffers to know how to handle either.

I love how fans are just now realizing how shitty the writing is- but it's not just because of Byler or Stancy. Apply the same logic you use on Eddie and use it on Billy. These characters are only amazing because of the actors, and they need to realize that.

Where was this defense of Dacre when he was being harassed online for playing Billy? The creators (and I use that term loosely) just sat back and let him take the blame for a character they only wrote to be Henry Bowers 2.0.

They wanted Dacre (as Billy) to say a slur, and he didn't. The writers wanted Billy to be racist so that he could be hated. They wanted him to spice up the story line, and further Max's character (which they failed).

This is a knock off of Stephen Kings method: that only irredeemable characters are racist or homophobic. He tells readers from the get go what characters to root for by doing that.

Plus reducing Billy to what the writers wanted him to be? They really should appreciate Dacre's push to make him more.

Also good for you, because self control is something I myself struggle with when I see this bullshit from antis. You're better than I am. I personally hate it when someone not only rants with no sense but bad grammar 😭