#its a comfort media for us . and yes we are aware of how gross the series is becoming . and yes we know the fandom surounding it is Equally

[gender-darling]

heeeyyy ermmm ... maybe dont follow / interact w us if you have "" the coffin of andy and leyley "" fans on yr dni ?

[natsmagi]

I'm sorry but you're wrong. you are wrong. proship is not just "an excuse to draw pedophilic and incestuous things." people have been doing it WITHOUT excuses since the beginning of fandom. some people create those things to process their trauma. of course it might be triggering to some people, but that's why it's tagged and stamped with warnings. so people can avoid it. kids and teenagers can be groomed with literally any media. anything. doesn't matter what it is. kids can be groomed with bluey as easily as with art of underage genshin characters or whatever. what I see as much more dangerous is the idea that there are things that can and should never be explored in fiction, that somehow it's still gross to engage in those things in a space where literally no real human beings are harmed. that's some evangelical thoughtcrime shit and I am not here for it.

I appreciate you saying you would never harass anyone over it, because you'd think that would be the bare minimum, but these days apparently it's not. and on what you said about "you shouldn't have to label yourself proship when you're just anti harrassment" yeah. I agree with that. but you kind of DO have to label yourself that way, because apparently doxxing is just a normal thing people do now and teenagers are getting the idea that harrassment is "righteous" if done to these specific kinds of "bad" people, often minorities and especially queer people.

I'm not saying you have to personally be comfortable with those kinds of content. it is totally understandable to want to avoid them entirely. but I would ask you, what percentage of people who enjoy those things would ever even CONSIDER bringing them into real life? I can pretty much guarantee you that the real percentage is incredibly small, and the proship community is NOT accepting to people who perpetuate real harm against real human beings.

idk. i don't mean to come off as hostile, it just really bothers me that it's come to this. there's nothing wrong with creating content that makes people uncomfortable. and let's just say it's not a coincidence that the people who are vehemently against it are using nazi dogwhistles.

oh jesus okay. i hear what youre saying and i do want to take your words to heart, so ill be trying to be as indepth with this as i can be

quickly though before we start i wanna comment on your last paragraph; the person who sent the ask later sent me a dm and we talked things over so both of us could get a better grasp of the situation. the person is a minor, and while i dont know how old they are, i do genuinely believe that this was an honest mistake on their part. they messaged me out of the kindness of their heart, and while maybe theyre slightly misguided in some areas, i think it is only right to treat each individual with respect and try to educate them when they perpetuate something harmful, especially when theyre young

ok, now lets go over this point by point

"some people create those things to process their trauma." yes! i am well aware of that, and i would never be against people creating vent art of the situations that traumatized them. my issue comes with posting it online for people who are genuinely into that sort of thing to see. maybe its just me but i personally wouldnt want to risk people getting off to my trauma, especially when ive now visualized it in such a personal way. if anything thatd be re-traumatizing for me. i dont see the point in having it so publicly available for anyone to see

"of course it might be triggering to some people, but that's why it's tagged and stamped with warnings. so people can avoid it." which is good! and i think it would be deeply unwise of someone who is uncomfortable with these topics to seek them out and engage with it. if triggering content is being made and it makes you uncomfortable its better to just leave it be and move on. that said; that doesnt make it any less upsetting to see, especially when its prominent. and people should be allowed to state that they still dont support it, just maybe dont harass the creator because of it

"what I see as much more dangerous is the idea that there are things that can and should never be explored in fiction, that somehow it's still gross to engage in those things in a space where literally no real human beings are harmed." in my post didnt i mention that i think dark topics should be explored too? maybe i phrased it poorly but yes i agree with this point. i do not think you or anyone else should be shamed for consuming dark media, even if it consists of fucked up topics like what tends to be the focus of proshipping. the thing is though; these topics need to be handled tastefully. they need to be handled with respect and empathy for the victims, or else itll just feel pornographic. if youre just writing detailed smut about a grown man with a child, what is it we're exploring? is it gonna go into the psychological effects that would leave on the child? was the amount of detail in the smut necessary? was the smut ever truly necessary to get the point of sexual assault across? all these things should be considered when dealing with these topics, because again, theyre VERY HEAVY and should be treated as such

"apparently doxxing is just a normal thing people do now and teenagers are getting the idea that harrassment is "righteous" if done to these specific kinds of "bad" people, often minorities and especially queer people." yes, it is a very unfortunate thing. this is not something i can defend. i can however shed some light on different sides to this though. most often these kids arent doing much more than hitting you with a mean jokey qrt, while only a small portion actually go out of their way to full-on harrass someone. neither of course is okay, but lets not act like this is something only these teens engage in. i have seen many proshippers go out of their way to leave comments on teens posts where they whine about proshipping about how theyre wrong and horrible people for thinking such things, sometimes even spamming them just to try and get a response so they can dunk on them with some Sick Own, as if theyre not arguing with literal kids online. no side is in the clear on this, so lets not act like one is holier than the other

"what percentage of people who enjoy those things would ever even CONSIDER bringing them into real life?" i dont doubt many proshippers wouldnt bring these fictional fantasies into the real world, what scares me is the audience it may attract. i.e. pedophiles and the like. you and your proshipper friends might be lovely people who would never even think of committing these crimes, but what about the silent onlookers? the percentage that actually WOULD consider it? the margain may be small, but should we not try eliminating it to the best of our abilities? now, you could argue that it is not your responsibility nor within your power who consumes your content, and id have to agree with that. but from a personal standpoint thats just not something i can get behind. maybe its my paranoia talking, but since the probability is still there its not something i can bring myself to support. you mentioned earlier that kids can be groomed by anything, and thats true. but my fear lies less with kids stumbling upon the content, and moreso actual pedos finding content to get off on and a safe space to discuss these fantasies, although having it be about fictional characters rather than real kids. yes, they will always find a way if theyre sick enough, but thats why i want it to at least be explicitly known that pedophilia is not respected and you will be shunned for it. so even if proshippers dont actually support it, i fear it gives pedophiles a place to indulge in their fantasies (and for even more claritys sake; i am not calling proshippers pedos)

"there's nothing wrong with creating content that makes people uncomfortable." i agree with you!! its okay to make content that makes people uncomfortable, theres art in that. art can be expressed in so many forms, and sometimes the intent IS to make the audience uncomfortable. but like ive stated; with these things you really have to handle it with utmost care. and i dont think the intent with this type of content tends to be to make the audience uncomfortable either? all i often tend to really see is people talking about how hot they find it, and i dont think that should be the takeaway from topics like this. again; its all about intent.

"and let's just say it's not a coincidence that the people who are vehemently against it are using nazi dogwhistles." but isnt preaching "theyre trying to take our freedom away!!" a right-wing dogwhistle too ?? the constant fearmongering i see in the proshipping community is concerning. making up stories just to make the other side look bad, claiming theyre silencing you, is this not what the right does??? why do i see it so often from the proshipping community???? again, both sides have faults. can we please stop acting like one is better than the other??? i frankly want no part in this discourse.

to finish this off though, i am sorry anon. i never want my account to feel like a place where people cant express themselves and be who they are. but i do still have my own morals and views. i have my own ideals, and i have my own principles. i do not identify with either anti or proship, its just the dangers of proshipping scares me more than the dangers of antis. of course both can get bad. my point was never to argue in favor of the other side, my point was only ever to let it be known that i dont condone proshipping. that is all

if i misrepresented your community im sorry. i am only one guy at the end of the day and theres only so much i can know on these topics while also only being 19 years old. theres much i dont know, so thats why im always willing to learn. but no matter how hard i try the fear of giving pedophiles a place in a community terrifies me. the mere thought is enough to make me scared for those younger than me out there.

it was never my intention to dictate how one should or should not consume media. you are free to do as you wish, i have no authority over you, these are just my reasons as to why it isnt something that i can support.

thank you though for taking your time to write to me. i hope ive made my stance clearer and have it known that i dont mean any malice. im just so deeply scared of more children getting harmed due to personal reasons and its genuinely bringing me to tears. thank you again

[aprito]

hello <3 since i got these asks at the same time i decided to combine my thoughts on them in this post. yet another annoying sjw essay from yours truly on this blog 

before i get into these i think i need to preface why im like. i guess overly hyperfocused on a certain unproblematic base (same age au / platonic canon) for them and avoid the ped0philic content like the plague lol

tw for pedophilia ment, rape ment if that makes you squicky. ALSO THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY

as i’ve mentioned a couple times already, ive been into the ship since i was 12, back when it was very very common to not only post untagged (nsfw) canonverse content of the two in writing and in drawing but also non con and the like, so you can imagine how bad my first impression online was. thinking back on it ...as a child i found it disturbing but didnt really register how problematic it really was?? (i know, but i also lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one explain this to me) 

skip to 2014 aka me coming back to naruto at 17ish and i had kinda become hyper aware of the fact that there was an increasing amount of people online who had come forward with explaining how fictional problematic content, mostly pedophilia, had been used to groom them into starting relationships with adullts. it was also a time where a lot of people didnt believe these victims, not registering how common it was for minors to be online friends with adults who had no boundaries and no qualms exposing them such content. not gonna get into my personal life here but i was lucky to not having gone through this myself. like... it kinda was my first time truly realising how fiction can EASILY be used to manipulate others irl (and yes i will not argue this, if you dont think fictional media can form and manipulate people’s opinions on attitudes, countries, cultures and virtues, pick up a book about the effects of propaganda media at least once please) 

i, being young, still liking the dynamic but not really the romance, would point this out here and there in the fandom and get into fights with grown adults in their mid 20s who assumed i automatically hated the ship(s) and tried to restrict their freedom of speech or whatever, heard everything from the “age of consent doesnt exist in naruto” to the “sasori looks like a child what does it matter” despite people clearly playing on him being older and experienced. it made me so upset that people were just consuming all this content uncritically and exposing children to it tbh?? not really just sos but a lot of minor/adult ships in naruto in general. and thats where i sat down and thought, i do not want to be a grown adult talking down to children that point out how unsafe the fandom is. theyre absolutely right in drawing these boundaries and calling out adults who defend the uncritical consumption and creation of this content. i do not want to consume or create content that predators could use to groom minors, and i absolutely do want to let younger people in fandom know that i am respecting their comfort zones and want them to have a safe and fun experience. after all, naruto is not an adult show and i think a lot of people forget that!!!! i am not perfect in that regard but its something that i, at the age of 23, am very passionate about and strive towards to.

and i guess thats where same age au was born for me and i have been sticking to it ever since. 

so finally we can move to the first question 

aside from the fact that we both dont like canon sos, i dont think it would work out even if i wasnt prejudiced to it anyways. in all honesty, 35 year old canon sasori is not a redeemable character to me, given the fact that he’s easily amongst the cruelest villains in naruto (torturing and killing and taxiderming people for his own fun personal gain, never for a goal that served anyone but himself. how do you redeem having over 300 corpses in your backpack that you felt absolutely no remorse for killing). sasori was legit one of the only cruel villains that didnt had someone else pull the strings, which sends a clear message on kishi’s part, who absolutely loves to redeem villains LOL.

being that old, he obviously had already been very manifested in what he believed in, even if it was shakey, to the point where the first crack in that world view (sakura and chiyo protecting each other) immediately had him give up on his life all together. that, in my opinion, is not a man who’s going to know what healthy relationships would look like, regardless of it being romantic or not. 35 year old sasori to me has the same appeal as an expired can of tuna and he’s probably very happy 6 feet under. he’s supposed to be a failed gaara in that sense that he had no one to look out for him and therefore was never going to experience anything but a bad ending in life. its fine that hes dead honestly, it wraps up his short character development the best IMO.

adding to that, seriously, sakura was obviously interested in knowing why he was that way, and called him out for being seriously fucked in the head, but it’s weird to me that people assume she had any interest in actively rehabilitating him, let alone starting a serious romantic relationship with him. sakura who’s not only very, uhm, immature and straight forward when it comes to her romantic viewpoints also, as a big bootlicker, wouldnt soil her standing in the village by starting anything with a disgraced and far too gone criminal like sasori. shipping that version of sasori with sakura intimately is still going to set her up for a huge power imbalance that would be difficult to handle imo, even if she was the one in the fight ultimately exerting her power over him. i would still look at it and think damn she deserves better than having to play therapist for man like that lol.

additionally, even if you ignored all of this, you cant really ignore that sasori had already known her as a child, and that had been his first and most impactful impression of her. i dont think that sasori would look at 35 year old sakura and see her as a grown woman and not the little green girl she was in the fight. plus, you easily fall into predatory comparison territory between the “childish” and “womanly” and i have seen way too often in fic just being boiled down to her now being fuckable. a lot of of ships do this and i would just like to remind yall thats it not normal for adults to want to start relationships with children they have seen grown up or known as a child when they themselves were fully grown adults. therefore, maybe if sakura hadnt met sasori before it would be less of a problem? but that also obviously defeats the point of the dynamic and the reason he died in the first place. so yeah, it sounds kind of doomed especially if you were to make it romantic. 

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SECOND QUESTION

let me preface this that im not fundamentally against age gaps, even if im not super interested in it. after all, colorblind had a 5 yr age gap (with sakura being 21), even if, say, i wrote similar fics today i probably would make it smaller lol. i think it can be handled well if both parties have enough life experience to deal with it, and the author is cautious of where the age gap starts, i think a 10+ year age gap would be fine in a scenario where the younger party (i guess sakura) was at least 25-27ish, meaning she has completed most of her most formative life stages and probably had been in relationships before, meaning she would be able to handle it without having to fear a huge power imbalance. the older the younger party is the less the age gap is going to matter tbh .TsukiHoshino and AngelOfDeath10 both handle age gaps in their fics really well imo, so i do not mind reading about them.

unfortunately, a lot of people in this fandom think making sakura barely "”””legal””””” (18, not even 20 which is hilarious to me because the source material is obviously japanese) because they both cannot stand her being past her “prime years” of being young fertile and fuckable to much older men as well as thinking a 20 year old is automatically old enough to handle that type of relationship. ive seen a lot of unironic takes that believe it will absolve them of callout posts if they throw around age of consent and “shes 18 now suckers!!!” enough lmfao. absolutely hilarious. aging a minor up without aging the adult down seriously reeks of predatory “cant wait until youre 18″ narratives and thats why i find it similarly disturbing as straight up pedo shipping.

ultimately, sasosaku is and will always be a inherently problematic ship in canon, which is why i think it should always be handled a little more responsibly in fandom spaces, ignoring or outright excusing the main problem factor, which is sasori, isnt going to convince anyone that the dynamic in itself is well written and interesting enough to explore in aus, like giving sasori the redemption most of us wanted him to have by aging him down to a point in time where he was still realistically going to allow being positively influenced, similar to gaara. 

so really, what i think is well handled age gap and how most people handle age gap in the naruto fandom are two different worlds at times lol 

tl;dr

canon shippers have never been anything but gross when i was younger and i didnt wanna be like that, even if youre “smart”enough to differenate, actual creeps dont really care and might use your content to blur the lines, sasori isnt rly redeemable so romantic canonverse realistically wouldnt make much sense and is still iffy, age gaps are fine if they are handled well, but given that the dynamic doesnt really need the age gap to still work im not that invested on making that an essential part of my shipping experience.  

thank you for reading and hope this makes sense!

[firelord-frowny]

I’ve talked a little bit about how at least one ~negative aspect~ of white supremacy/racism that impacts white people is that it can be SO DIFFICULT to avoid being Accidentally Racist over something that really shouldn’t have been that deep, and WOULDN’T have been that deep if not for the pervasiveness of white supremacy in america, and this bit about the lil country band Lady Antebellum and the controversy surrounding their name illustrates that pretty well, I think:

The band members have always said that the band's name was chosen arbitrarily, complaining about the difficulty of choosing a name. Inspired by the "country" style nostalgia of a photo shoot at a mansion from the Antebellum South, they said, "one of us said the word and we all kind of stopped and said, man, that could be a name"[40] and "Man that's a beautiful Antebellum house, and that's cool, maybe there's a haunted ghost or something in there like Lady Antebellum."[41] Haywood concluded, "[We] had a lady in the group, obviously, and threw Lady in the front of it for no reason. I wish we had a great resounding story to remember for the name, but it stuck ever since."[40] The name was always controversial, with a critic in Ms. Magazine writing in 2011 that the band's name "seems to me an example of the way we still — nearly 150 years after the end of the Civil War, nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act; and in a supposedly post-racial country led by a biracial president — glorify a culture that was based on the violent oppression of people of color".[41][42]

On June 11, 2020, joining widespread commercial response to the George Floyd protests,[41] the band announced it would abbreviate its name to its existing nickname "Lady A"[43] in an attempt to blunt the name's racist connotations.[1] The band members stated on social media that, never having previously sought the dictionary definition of the word "antebellum", they now consulted their "closest black friends and colleagues" so that their "eyes opened wide to the injustices, inequality and biases black women and men have always faced and continue to face every day. Now, blind spots we didn't even know existed have been revealed."[44] Fan response was mixed, with many decrying virtue signaling or even disparaging the protests.[41]American Songwriter said, "Given that the world knows what that A stands for, to many this change does little more than add extra insult to this ongoing injury."[45]

The next day, it was widely reported that the name "Lady A" had already been in use for more than 20 years by Seattle-based African American activist and blues, soul, funk, and gospel singer Anita White. The band again admitted ignorance of any prior use, which White called "pure privilege". Interviewed by Rolling Stone, White described the band's token acknowledgement of racism while blithely appropriating an African American artist's name: "They're using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn't have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It's an opportunity for them to pretend they're not racist". A veteran music industry lawyer observed that such name clashes are uncommon due to the existence of the Internet.[46][47] The band members contacted White the next week to apologize for having inadvertently co-opted and dominated her name,[48] saying that the Black Lives Matter movement had inspired them to a collaborative attitude. They nonetheless required retaining the same name, though she believed dual-naming is inherently impossible.[49]She said "We talked about attempting to co-exist but didn't discuss what that would look like"[48] because the band members would not directly respond to that explicit question three times during the conversation or in two contract drafts. She soon submitted a counteroffer that either the band would be renamed, or that her act would be renamed for a $5 million fee plus a $5 million donation to be split between Seattle charities, a nationwide legal defense fund for independent artists, and Black Lives Matter.[49]

On July 8, 2020, the band filed a lawsuit against White, asking a Nashville court to affirm its longstanding trademark of the name. The press release read: "Today we are sad to share that our sincere hope to join together with Anita White in unity and common purpose has ended. She and her team have demanded a $10 million payment, so reluctantly we have come to the conclusion that we need to ask a court to affirm our right to continue to use the name Lady A, a trademark we have held for many years."[50]

On September 15, 2020, White filed a counter-suit asserting her claim to the Lady A trademark and rejecting the notion that both artists could operate in the same industry under the same brand identity. She is seeking damages for lost sales and a weakened brand, along with royalties from any income the band receives under the Lady A moniker.[51][52]

Like????????? this REALLY didn’t need to be a thing. 

And one thing I think black folks and other poc need to chill out with is dismissing any white person’s attempt at Being Better in how they move through a white supremacist world in a way that seeks to undo or at least not exacerbate white supremacy. I can TOTALLY believe that, in their white ignorant bliss, this band really did choose their name without realizing for a moment that it might leave a fucked up taste in some people’s mouths. Honestly like... antebellum IS a cool sounding word lmfao and if it wasn’t so heavily associated with slavery-era america, i’d wanna name something antebellum, too! 

And like, yes, it’s true that it ~shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death~ for anyone at all to suddenly decide that they want to go a little bit out of their way to denounce or at least not seem to promote racism in some small way. But it did. And it does. And every fucking time there’s a gross act of violence and injustice acted out on a person of color in front of the world, there’s always going to be a brand new white person out there who Sees The Light for the very first time. That doesn’t mean their new perspective isn’t genuine, and it doesn’t mean it happened All Of A Sudden. If anything, it was something they’d been thinking about for a long time, but didn’t know how to address it, or what to say, or who to say it to, or how to talk about it in their own community. OBVIOUSLY that problem is WAY LESS BAD than, ya know, actually experiencing racism, but it’s still a real thing that some white folks go through, and being mad about it isn’t going to make it NOT a real thing. it shouldn’t have taken george floyd’s death. it shouldn’t have taken trayvon martin’s death. it shouldn’t have taken the instatement of one of the most vile human beings to ever assault the face of the earth for This Person or That Person to finally want to make a positive and public change, BUT IT DID. It always does. That, unfortunately, is How It Works. 

And so, this band adjusts it’s name in an effort to not seem hostile. OBVIOUSLY it’s not a grand show of solidarity. OBVIOUSLY it’s not meant to convince anyone that they’re Super Amazing White People Who Will Stop At Nothing For Racial Equality. It was literally just a small, simple gesture. They’re just modifying their image, because they were no longer comfortable with knowing how that word makes a lot of people feel. Bc like... let’s be real: probably a solid ZERO of their fanbase would have given a shit if they’d just left the name as it was. Nobody who’s going to a Lady Antebellum concert was pouting about the name. And if anything, they prolly stood a better chance of LOSING fans for ~being politically correct~ than gaining fans for changing their name to something less annoying. 

And it JUST SO HAPPENS that the slight lil adjustment they made to their name steps on the toes of an existing artist, and it JUST SO HAPPENS that this artist is black, and is also an ACTIVIST in social and racial justice. 

Oops. 

And so, obviously people don’t interpret it as an honest mistake. Instead, it’s a result of white privilege. And I mean like??? ok, maybe it is. But I ALSO had never heard of Anita White until I read this fucking wiki page lmfao. So like... my ignorance isn’t due to no white privilege on my part. Maybe it’s a consequence of a white supremacist culture that wouldn’t glorify her and celebrate her and put her name everywhere... but that’s a different thing from privilege. 

So now not only are the bands efforts to adjust to a world that’s becoming more aware of racial injustice being dismissed as disingenuous or too-little-too-late, but now they’re ALSO being accused of Using Their White Privilege to trample all over an artist they’d never heard of. 

i DO think that after finding out the name was already taken, and after talking with her about it and determining that she wasn’t interested in sharing - as is her right - they should have just said “ok, sorry, thanks for talking with us about it” and picked something different. i think it’s kinda ridiculous that they think they should sue her and i think she’s HELLA right for suing their asses right back, and I hope she gets her damn money. 

But I’m also cognizant of how emotionally/psychologically upsetting it can feel to have to just Change Your Name after so many years of living with it. It makes sense that despite their desire to adapt and choose a new name that doesn’t make people cringe, they still want to try to hold on to the feeling that THEY associated with their own name. “Lady A” seemed like a happy medium: They can remain Who They Are while also showing that Who They Are is someone who’s not trying to glorify a disgusting era of history. But if “Lady A” isn’t an option... what’s left? What else could they call themselves that wouldn’t feel like a totally new, alien identity?? 

So, I understand how, on an emotional level, they want to fight to keep it. 

But uh. They really need to just Be Sad about it and let it go. Just consider it one of the small, upsetting sacrifices that white folks may sometimes have to make as we ALL struggle and stumble through this fuckin long-ass road of Making The World Less Terrible For People Of Color, and move on. 

But yeah, like. 

It’s fucking ridiculous that this was even an issue, and it was only an issue because of racism!!!!! If white supremacists didn’t manufacture a culture that oppresses people of color and glorifies the pre-civil-war era SPECIFICALLY for the good ol slavery, then perhaps people could wax poetic about the artistic and environmental aesthetic of that era without it being assumed that they Must Be Racist. Bc like??? idk if yall know this lmfao but i LOVE????? colonial american music. like, the kind of stuff with that Ashokan Farewell vibe. I think it sounds beautiful. And i really fuckin love the black spiritual music that was developed in that time. and i think so much of the architecture and fashion was so???? Nice. Just pleasant! But I can’t even get myself to fully enjoy it because of all the fuckin connotations that have been stuck to it. 

A band should be able to name theirself a name without it being such a goddamn fucking cultural crisis. 

But they can’t! And it is! 

Thanks, White Supremacy! 

[coll2mitts]

Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Thanks to the awesome people who donated to Extra Life (you still can, btw!)  y'all will now be treated to a retrospective on the 1993 classic movie, Super Mario Bros.  When I took on this milestone, the first (and only) person I messaged for ideas on terrible (but wonderful) films based on video games was my friend Max, who has a history of viewing and talking about bad movies.  He suggested this, and while I was aware of this magnificent piece of cinema history, I had not had the pleasure of viewing it myself.  He hooked me up with a copy, and to say this film lived up to my expectations would be an understatement.

I couldn’t help but be charmed by this movie.  It is filled with so many questionable creative choices that were fucking ridiculous.  Mario and Luigi not being blood related?  Sure.  Cheesy Italian accents replaced with a New York ones?  Yeah, why not?  Having all the enemies in Super Mario Bros. be canonically dinosaurs?  I mean... It's a choice informed by the great media dino wave of 1993, but whatever.  Yoshi is a dinosaur, if we want to extend that to goombas and Koopa for whatever reason, I'm down.  Having these dinosaurs live underneath New York City in a parallel dimension?  It's based on a video game, why the fuck not?  Everything is so goddamn bonkers.

The opening credits roll, and we’re told that 65 million years ago, a meteor created said underground parallel universe dinosaur land.  We witness a human-looking woman, who is really a dinosaur, leaving an egg baby on a church doorstep.  Don’t think about it too hard, the logistics of a human giving birth to an egg that size are just... it’s gross to think about.

We’re then introduced to the titular characters, Mario Mario and Luigi Mario.  Yes, their last names are Mario.  Making them the Mario brothers.  Because this movie is interested in answering the important questions.  Mario is the owner of a failing plumbing business, while Luigi is a conspiracy theorist who would have really enjoyed modern-day YouTube.

While they’re out trying to find work, they run into Miss Amy March herself, Daisy, who is an archeologist in charge of digging up dinosaur bones from a New York City construction site.  She’s being forced off the property by the mob, who apparently are annoyed that a blonde lady in cargo shorts is coming between them and whatever the fuck they’re building.  

They try and intimidate her, she storms off to use a payphone to call for security, and is almost picked up by two inconspicuous bozos in a cab who apparently are stealing Brooklyn women off the street for no reason.  Their plan is quickly thwarted by a random moving pane of glass.

Instead, Daisy runs right into Luigi, who forgets how to human once he sees her pretty face.  He asks her on a date, where she reveals even more exposition.  She believes the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs landed in New York City.  Oh, and also, she’s the abandoned egg baby.  Luigi is also an orphan, and this shared trauma apparently gets them both hot and bothered.  They wander off to the dig site, because an underground pit attached to a sewer is so romantic, and it is also where Daisy feels the most comfortable.

What if we made out at the bone pit?

Their touching moment is cut short when the mob sabotages the plumbing in the sewer and water starts flooding the area.  They run to get Mario, because he is a plumber, to fix the pipes, which is so fucking clutch, I love it so much.

While the Mario brothers are distracted, Daisy is captured by the weirdo twins and dragged into the alternate dinosaur universe.  Mario and Luigi follow, and we’re treated to the most fucking amazing transition scene of Bob Hoskins spinning wildly through colorful rocks.

Turns out, parallel dinosaur world, or Dinohattan, is fucking lit as hell.  I am convinced that Futurama based their sewer city on this movie.

King Koopa, who is a dinosaur with badly bleached hair gelled back in an effort to look like Michael Douglas in Wall Street, has taken over Dinohattan.  He is the one who asked the goons to kidnap Daisy, because of the tacky crystal necklace she wears.  Apparently, it is a piece of the meteorite that crashed into earth, and once he puts the piece back into the original space rock, the dinosaur world will merge with the mammal world after 65 million years of his people being sequestered underground, and Koopa will have endless resources at his disposal.  Also, Daisy is a princess, and her dad is a giant fungus taking over the city, so that’s totally normal and not at all weird.

Problem is, the two idiots he sent to grab her didn’t think to check if she was wearing the necklace.  Turns out, Luigi has the necklace, or had the necklace, as they are quickly mugged by a granny, who is then robbed by a lady with a bright red spiky latex coat and springy robot feet.  The brothers are then arrested by the dinocops and are grilled by Koopa for the whereabouts of the rock.  When they play dumb he uh... reacts in a proportionate way.

I am not even going to attempt to explain the devo process...  It is a combination of insane and fucking disgusting.  Whoever in the costuming department looked at the cute fucking mushroom Goombas in the video game and decided to translate them into this scaly, jagged-teethed nightmare fuel deserves to be committed.

Also, there’s only one lizard king, and that’s Jim Morrison, so back off, buddy.

What is hilarious to me is this is the story the screenwriters came up with.  Super Mario, as a video game, doesn’t have much lore, right?  You slide down pipes, you jump on mushrooms, and you save the princess from a spiky turtle.  They took that game and created... This.  A parallel underground dinosaur universe that has a sentient fungus as a king, taken over by a human-like t-rex that devolves other lizards into tiny-headed night paralysis demons.

The middle of this movie alternates between a slog of expositional scenes about Daisy being a princess, and pretty entertaining action scenes of the Mario brothers running from Goombas while trying to find and save Daisy.  Mario and Luigi steal a cop car and drive it off a cliff Thelma and Louise-style; They cosplay as Ketchup and Mustard to steal the necklace back from Big Burtha while asking her to stomp on them; They jump off a bridge into a garbage truck; They break the pipes in Koopa’s building to freeze everything, and get past an elevator full of Goombas by making them dance.

Watching Daisy damsel-in-distress-it in Koopa’s high rise office building and fend off advances by a long-tongued dude who devolved her father into a mushroom was pretty boring and disturbing.  Alternatively, witnessing Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo pretend to jump on giant sheets of fungus really sold this movie for me.  It succeeds when it tries to be ridiculous and fun, and fall flat when it attempts to integrate any sort of drama that I’m assuming was added to make this story more appealing to adults.

Mario and Luigi eventually find Daisy, and she introduces them to her father - a giant dripping blob suspended from the ceiling.  Luigi wants in her pants badly enough that he pretends this is a reasonable thing to do.  Mario heads further into the building to free the other ladies kidnapped by tweedle dee and tweedle dum that they initially thought were Daisy, but weren’t.  The newly assembled group are able to escape by sliding down the frozen pipes on a mattress before they are green-screen launched out of the pipe and back into the greater Dinohattan area.

The amount of times Mario and Luigi use their plumbing skills to overcome obstacles may be my favorite part of this movie.  The plot goes out of its way to justify a really bizarre character trait for the original game.

Anyway, the end of this movie comes at you fast.  First, the sentient fungus king gives Mario and Luigi a bomb, and they decide to wind it up and aim it at Koopa.  This takes about 10 minutes of screen time to matter again.

Koopa’s second-in-command tries to merge Daisy’s stolen necklace with the meteor, and instead gets skeletoned to bits, prompting the best line delivery reaction from Daisy, a deadpan “Yikes”.

Because the necklace has now been returned to its resting place, the worlds start to merge Infinity War style.

“Mr. Koopa, I don’t feel so good.”

Koopa and Mario end up back in Manhattan, and Koopa just starts shooting his devo guns at human mobsters, turning them back into primates, and giving their wardrobe a whole new literal definition of monkey suit.

Luigi uses his super plumbing powers to drill the necklace back out of the meteor, separating the worlds again.  The bomb finally goes off, they devo Koopa into slime, and the citizens celebrate by immediately painting over his ever-prevalent propaganda.

The king evolves back into a mushroom person or something, and Daisy stays in Dinohattan to get to know her father better.  Mario and Luigi return to their lives in Brooklyn as plumbers, and their heroic acts make them conspiracy community famous, as they now refer to our heroes as the Super Mario Brothers.  Roll Credits.

Except not, because Daisy returns to ask for the help of a couple of great plumbers, setting up a sequel that will never, ever happen because there is no god and we’re not allowed to feel joy.

Honestly, Super Mario Bros. is great.  It owned every bold plot and visual choice it made, and I have to respect it.  I could listen to John Leguizamo say Mario like 700 more times.  Y’all are missing out if you think you’re too cool to watch this movie.

I’ll be back to musical reviews later this month.  I have a few seasonally appropriate movies in my big red sack waiting to be placed under the tree...  Yes, I meant to phrase it that way.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #322

“you will hear it when your god cries  /  you will see it when the sun dies  /  upon the altars of change”

What is your favorite nickname that you’ve had? "Bee," from my old best friend. I don't want others calling me it, though. Where did you go on the best date you’ve been on? A big arcade. It was a super fun double-date. Have you ever gotten a professional massage? No, and I don't want one. It'd be so awkward. What’s your favorite milkshake flavor? Chocolate. What act would you be most likely to perform in a talent show? I got nothin'. If you had braces, do you wear your retainers still? I don't. If you had braces, have your teeth moved since you got them off? Yep, because of the whole "not wearing my retainer" thing. Whose was the first baby shower you remember attending, and for what baby? I'm unsure. Possibly my sister's for her first daughter. Do you know anyone personally who’s lost a child? Many people. When was the last time you did something that felt like rebellion? So every now and again, I get a massive craving for soda at night, so I grab one from the kitchen and can hear my sleeping mother rightfully nagging me about it, haha... What is one present you got for your last birthday? Ashley got me this really cool skull bank that says "tattoo fund" on it, aha. I love it. What is one thing that you took to show and tell as a kid? I have a clear memory of bringing a Snorlax plushie one day. Do you remember losing your first tooth? Not my first, no. Are you afraid to pop a balloon? Not really, but it's kinda easy to make me jump just a lil bit when one is popped. When was the last time you laughed when you shouldn’t have? I don't know. Which was better: the first The Lion King or the second? That is fucking HARD. I adore both, but I think the original is slightly better. Do any of your grandparents have a tattoo? I'm pretty sure none of them did. Do you believe that your pets feel love towards you? My cat, definitely. As for my snake, I'm aware that snakes' brains simply aren't developed enough for love, but she clearly trusts me. Are you proud of your body? Fuck no. I'm humiliated by it every waking moment. Watermelon or cherries? I don't like either, but if I had to pick, watermelon. Favourite brand of cookies? I don't really have a favorite brand. Have you ever stuck gum under a desk/chair? No, that shit grosses me out. When shopping at a grocery store, do you return your cart or just leave it? Return your goddamn cart. What is one thing you’d never want your parents to find out? Uhhhh. I guess places I've "done it." When you were little, did you like Dr. Suess books? I did. Do you like eating out at restaurants? Yeah; at least, before Covid. What was your least favorite year of your life so far? Fuck 2016 into the next millenium. Do you like fried bologna? I haven't had it in so long that I don't really remember the taste. I think I would. Have you spent money on a game online? Yeah, very briefly with WoW. Mom was nice enough to refresh my subscription after the breakup (Jason paid for it prior), but from then on, I was rich enough in-game to use monthly game tokens to "pay." Do you put a line through your "7"s? Yes. What about your "Z"s? Also yes. Do you like cold pizza? Yeah, yummy. Do you like broccoli and cheese? Yessss. Toaster or toaster oven? We've always used a toaster oven. What are you most known for? Being artsy, I guess. Do you have any reputations? What are they? *shrug* What was the last thing to leave you speechless? No clue. What is the curviest part of your body? Well, I'm overweight, so it's difficult to tell where I'm naturally curvy... but I guess my hips. Even when I was at a perfectly healthy weight though, I don't think I was exceptionally curvy anywhere. What is your opinion on sex change? You are entirely deserving to feel comfortable in your own body. If you’re still a virgin, how important is your virginity to you? I'm not, though I thought I was when we were together, when we were really just using a loophole. It was a denial thing BECAUSE my virginity was so important to me. If you have lost it already, do you regret it? No. Would you take a break after graduating from high school (like, postpone going to college for a year or so)? I didn't. What regret keeps coming back to haunt you daily? Things I said to Jason. If you could cure yourself of one allergy, what would it be? Pollen. Would you ever post a picture of yourself crying on social media? No. Have you ever held a newborn baby? Yeah, my most recent niece I actually held. I don't THINK I held Aubree or Ryder as newborns because I was so afraid of not doing it right and hurting them. Do you know anyone who has twins? Yeah. Are you following in the career path of any family members? No. What is your favorite country in Europe? Germany. How many times have your comments been top comments on YouTube? A few times. I rarely ever comment, but if I do, it's because I feel like I really have something worth saying. Would you ever wear a wig? I'm not opposed to it. Do you like the moon or sun more? The moon. Do you like turkey or ham more? Ham. Have you ever slapped someone’s butt? Yes. Do you think dimples are ugly? I think they're cute, actually. Have you ever deleted Facebook friends for a significant other? No. Have you ever spent the night in jail? No. Do you consider yourself a good kisser? I assume I am from experiences. Do you watch Pewdiepie? Not anymore, no. His current content doesn't interest me. The most recent thing I watched was his playthrough of The Last of Us 2, because I adore the first game and definitely wanted to see him play the sequel. I think he's pretty funny and have no personal issues against him, though then again I am so uninvolved in the fandom that I have no idea if he's done something stupid again. Do you like "Despacito?" Haha, my mind went to The Dark Den's bearded dragon before the song... I'm not a fan of it, no. Did you ever color your hair pink? No, but I absolutely want to dye it pastel pink one day. :( I even edited a picture of me "testing" different hair colors out, and pastel pink looked suuuuper pretty. Do you drink energy drinks? No, they're too strong for my taste. Do you have any subscribers on YouTube? I don't now how many I have, but I know it's below 100. Do you have a Steam account? Yeah. Have you ever played Five Nights at Freddy’s? No, but I enjoy the franchise. I'm not totally clear on all the lore, though. Do you like religion? Quite honestly, no. Do you swear in front of children? No. What is the next craft you are going to make? There's no telling. I don't really do crafts. What was your favorite Backstreet Boys song? Maybe "The Call." Favorite *N Sync song? I don't remember enough of them, at least not right now. Which of those two bands did you like best? The BSB, baby. Do you learn choreography easily? When I danced, I'd say I learned at a fairly average pace. What’s your favorite candy to receive on Halloween? Reeseeeeeee's. <3 Do you have a bobblehead? No. Have you ever had a lead role in a play? No. Have you ever been insulted or called names by a significant other? No. I wouldn't tolerate that shit. What’s your favorite movie battle scene? Oh man, idk. Maybe something from Troy, though I honestly barely even remember the movie by now, haha. Have you ever been to a same-sex wedding? No, actually. Who takes care of your pet(s) when you’re out of town? Hypothetically, one of my sisters would come to feed and water Roman and clean his box. I'm certain I couldn't talk either into spraying Venus' cage, though... What was the last thing you wrote down on paper? Some group work during therapy. Did you have a Walkman when you were a kid? No. What’s your favorite recipe you’ve come up with? Oh dear, I don't make those. Do you like celery? Yuck, no. By what age could you swallow pills? I dunno. A normal age. Do you like to drink alot of water? I need to drink more. :/ I've gotten better, though. For years, I literally never drank water. How I even survived, idk. How many times have you gone fishing? Countless times. Ever been to a roller-skating rink? Yeah. I loved having bday parties there as a lil'un. What do you refer to your mother as? (Mom, momma, mommy) Mom, Ma, and Mama. Have you ever swam in the ocean? Yeah, multiple times. What is the last movie that made you cry? I think the remake of The Lion King. What would you like to swim in other than water? Nothing? If you could uninvent one thing what would you chose? Damn, just one? Maybe cigarettes? Have you ever read someone's diary? Absolutely not. I respect people's privacy. Have you ever played in a waterfall? No, but that'd be dope. Who has inspired you the most in your life? Probably Mark. Is there a place where everyone who lives near you tends to hang out? Idk. Teens sure do love to hang out at Sonic, though, reving their stupid fucking trucks. Does your alarm clock wake you with music, or with an annoying buzz sound? Music. Did you make it all the way through the Oregon Trail game? Yes; I was obsessed with those as a kid. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Which one are you more scared of? I feel like being alone with a tiger would scare me most. Though let's be real, I'd probably try to pet it. Have you ever changed your favorite color? From what to what? It was originally red, but then became pink when I actually understood it was its own color. Then it was maroon forever, and now it's back to pink. On a scale of 1-10, how competitive are you? Eh, 4-6? It depends on the situation, I guess. At what age did your have your most memorable birthday? My 21st, because I was in the psych hospital for it. Yes or no: Guys in skinny jeans? Yeah, man. Yes or no: Girls with dreads? Some people can pull it off. Have you ever attended a themed b-day party? What was the theme? Oh yeah, plenty. Do you have any Eminem on your iPod/MP3 player? I do. Has anybody ever given you a promise ring? No. What do you think about putting ‘spinners’ on cars? So long as they're not too distracting, I don't care. Do what you want with your car - again, so long as it is not disruptive. What celebrity do you wish would have a big comeback? I wish poor Britney Spears could catch a goddamn break and be happy again. She's a legend that doesn't deserve to feel like a puppet. Were you outdoors or indoors more as a kid? I'd say there was a pretty even split. Do you or have you ever owned a horse? No, but I LOVE horses. Have you ever had a relationship that began via text? (weird, I know, but it happens…) Most of my relationships started through a text message. Did you believe in unicorns as a small child? I don’t think so. Would you ever date a guy with longer hair than yourself? Yeah; I have short hair anyway, and I also like long hair on guys. Do you watch the show Wizards of Waverly Place? I used to love that show. Have you ever been to the rainforest? No; humidity aside though, that would be so amazing. Bats are not spooky or are they? I think they're precious. Do you like the song "Womanizer?" I sure do, actually. Do you like ice cream cake? Not really, but I'll eat it. Do you know how to change a tire? Nope. What kind of headphones do you have? Just cheap earplugs. Do you experiment a lot with new looks on yourself? No. What were some fun experiments you did in science class as a kid? Dissecting a frog was my favorite, and doing the same with an owl pellet was also very cool. What was the last strong emotion you felt? Guilt. I lied to get out of group therapy early because I was just NOT feeling it whatsoever that day, and I hate lying. Do you use dry shampoo between washes? No. Have you ever lived with someone you didn’t get along with? No. What types of animals have you had as pets? Jeez, what haven't we had... We've had cats, dogs, snakes, rats, gerbils, a rabbit, hamsters, lizards, fish, guinea pigs... Hell, I'm probably forgetting one or two. Can you name three good things about your most recent ex? She's so creative, a real advocate for proper reptile education and appreciation, and very kind. Name three bands/artists that you hate. Uhhh The Talking Heads, Bob Dylan, and The Police. What’s the best memory you have of your father? Playing softball with him in the front yard, and when he taught me to ride a bike. Should tattoos be meaningful? You get a tattoo for whatever reason you damn well want. I don't plan on all of mine to be meaningful. Some stuff I just want because I think it's cool. Are you afraid of the dark? No. Have you ever been through a trap door? No. What's the most recent good news you’ve heard? Hm. Who was the last person in your family to have a baby? My older sister. When’s the last time you used the microwave? Last night. What’s the worst thing in your life right now? Financial struggles. Have you ever owned a tire swing? No. Does anyone you know own a bird that can talk? No. Have you ever been someplace tropical? Yeah, Florida. Have Jehovah'ss witnessess ever called to your door? Yep. when was the last time you went to mass/church? I have no idea. It's been many years. Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis? Thank heavens no.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Their Hero Academia – Chapter 55: Friends Helping Friends

Presenting the next chapter of my on-going, next-gen, My Hero Academia fic, Their Hero Academia!

Due to scheduling things, this is being simultaneously posted here and AO3!

This chapter and earlier ones can be found here

“So who should we do for our project?”

Kenta looked up from his math textbook and the notes spread out on his desk.  He, Takuma, and Kimiko were all studying in his room.  It was the least cluttered and busy of their three rooms, without Kimiko’s plushies and martial arts equipment or the eye-searing and garish decorations that filled Takuma’s.  Other than Shoji’s, it was probably the most boring room in the dormitory. At least he had stuff in his, mostly a few posters and some family photos. Pretty basic, but it was his.

“I asked what we should do for our project,” Takuma said.  He was sitting on the floor, a book on his lap and a notepad next to him.

“What project?” Kenta asked.

“Our Hero History project?” Takuma prompted.  “From Skyline’s class today?  A presentation on a Pro Hero who made a significant contribution to society, either through good actions or bad behavior?”

“Oh, right,” he replied. “That.”

His pink-skinned friend held his gaze for a minute.  “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Kenta let out a sigh. “Yeah, sorry, nothing.”

Kimiko, sitting on his bed, gave him a look.  He couldn’t see her eyes or expression, of course, but he could practically feel the concern radiating off her. There was a slight denting on the collar of her shirt, which told him she was tilting her head.  One sleeve came up.  Was she maybe pointing?   “You okay, Kenta?” she asked.  “You’ve been kind of spacey ever since you got back last night.”

He frowned.  “You guys have your sessions with Hound Dog yet?”  

“During English today,” Kimiko said.  She tensed. “You did notice I was gone, didn’t you?”

Kenta swallowed hard. “I didn’t.  Sorry, Kimmie.”   He felt bad about that.  Kimiko tried so hard to make sure she was noticed, and he hadn’t even realized she was gone.   Sure, he’d kind of been sleepwalking through the day, but he didn’t feel like that was any kind of excuse.

“Kenta!” she yelled, arms flailing, “how could you just miss me like that!  I oughta….”

She trailed off.   Kenta guessed he must have looked distressed enough to prevent a full on rant and swat.   There was some small blessing in that.  Kimiko wasn’t that tall, but she was fit and packed a lot of power behind her smacks.   He was surprised Takuma didn’t have brain damage from all the times she’d gone upside his head.

Though she never did seem to smack him as hard she did him.

She arms dropped to her lap. “It was fine.  I really didn’t see much of anything.  Just one of those things when me and Doctor Izumi got closer to the hospital.  I made us invisible and Mister Aoyama zapped the hell out of it.  Thing sure was ugly though.  But I got cleared right away.”

“Me too,” Takuma said. “During Science.  Tsukuyomi did pretty much all the lifting and just tore the one we were fighting apart.  Scary, kinda gross.  But I wasn’t in any danger.”

Keta wondered if wasn’t noticing how his voice was shaking with that. But his best friend’s lighter nature returned almost immediately.  “Please tell me you noticed,” Takuma continued.  “Because I sit right next to you.”

Kenta squirmed uncomfortably.  

“Bro.” Takuma gave him an incredulous look.

“Seriously, Kenta, what’s going on?” Kimiko asked.  “This isn’t like you.  You’re usually the one keeping us focused.”

Well, how was he supposed to answer that?  That he’d used his Quirk on what he’d thought had been a living thing?  That he couldn’t get the taste of its freakish (false?) flesh out of his mouth?  That he’d been scared he was going to die?   That if he had a better or more impressive Quirk, he wouldn’t have nearly died?

How about the fact that he’d been planning on asking Kimiko out before everything turned to shit? He’d gone from riding a victory high after helping to beat that gunk villain to being scared out of his mind just days later.

Suneater and Nejire-Chan said he’d saved their lives.

So why didn’t he feel like a Hero?

“It’s nothing,” he said, trying to change the subject.  “So, you said we’ve got a report?”

Unfortunately, his attempts at diversion did not work and just got both of them staring at him intently.   “”It’s not nothing,” Takuma said, crossing his arms.  The frown looked badly out of place on his pink face.  “You’ve been out of it all day.”

Kenta looked away.  “I really don’t…”

“Bro,” Takuma said again.  “I’m your best friend.”

“Hey!”

“Sorry, Kimmie, but it’s true.  You’re a real close second, though.  But Kenta, we’re your friends.  We’ve been through some shit together.  That time we tried to hide a kitten in your room.  The cookie fiasco.  Mrs. Tendo’s math class.”

Left unspoken was the death of his mother, but Kenta knew it was there all the same.  Takuma, Kimiko, Akaya, they’d all been there, as much as five year olds could, when his mom had been killed.  And the friendships there had stayed ever since.  

“Talk to us,” Takuma said, softly.

Kimiko moved over to his side of the room.  “Aw, Kenta,” she began. Some inner warning system told him to flinch, which was wise, because the next thing he knew, she was hitting him, smacking him across the arms and shoulders with her hands.  “If you don’t tell us what’s wrong, I’m going to beat the stuffing out of you!  We’re your friends! If there’s something wrong with you, we wanna know about it!  Why don’t you talk to us?!”

“Kimmie!  You’re gonna leave bruises!”  Takuma grabbed her arm before she could hit him again, and pulled her slightly away.  

Kenta rubbed his arm where she’d been smacking him.  “No, she’s right.  You’re… both right.  I shouldn’t…”

He looked down.  The floor was more comfortable than having to look two of the people who mattered most to him in the eyes.  “I nearly died, guys.”  He heard gasps from both of them.  Kimiko didn’t even protest that she was “not a guy.”  

Kenta sucked in a breath. “That Nomu knocked out Suneater and then Nejire-Chan. She hit her head.  I was pretty sure she was dead, until I saw her breathing.  But it kept coming. I thought for sure it was going to kill her, then me.  Or some combination of that.  So I… I took a bite out of it.”

He shook his head.  “I was pretty sure it was alive.  Or as alive as something like that could be. Not a robot.  But I still did it.  Because I thought it was the only way to get out of there alive. And then I tried to hightail it out of there with Nejire-Chan.  But it kept following us, even with half its calve missing.  If Deku hadn’t shown up… she’d be dead, I’d be dead, and then it probably would have gone back and finished off Suneater.”

He was aware, suddenly, that he was sobbing. Kenta held his head in his hands.  “We’d all be dead and Dad…   Dad’d be all alone…  Maybe if I was stronger or had a better Quirk or…”

Arms wrapped around him, Takuma’s wiry ones and Kimiko’s fit ones.  A group hug.  “Oh, Kenta,” Kimiko said.  “We had no idea.”

“Dude,” Takuma added, “you can’t just keep this stuff to yourself.  We’re your friends.  We’re the ones you’re supposed to tell this stuff to.

“And besides,” he went on, causing Kenta to look up, “do you know how much time we’ve invested in your social media presence?  All of that’d be wasted if you got killed.”  He had on his “good idea grin,” the one he always did when he was trying to convince someone to go along with his ideas and trying to push the charm. It rarely ever worked.

This time, though, Kenta found himself laughing.  Slowly at first, but then faster, louder, until he was laughing as hard as he’d been sobbing, and the tears of pain he’d cried turned to tears of joy.  When Kimiko and Takuma released him, he wiped his eyes.  “Oh, man,” he said, feeling lighter for the first time since Saturday morning, “I needed that.  Thanks, both of you.”

“Anytime, Bro,” Takuma said.

“What’re friends for?” Kimiko asked.   “But if you ever pull anything like that again…”   She raised an arm, menacingly.

“’Make Kimiko go whacko, you get the smacko,’” Kenta repeated from memory.

“Damn right you will,” she said firmly.  

“The three of us,” Takuma said, “we’re together to the end.  No matter what.”

He could still hear the Nomu’s roar.  Still smell its fetid breath.  Still taste its putrid flesh in his mouth.  Still feel the fear threatening to drive his heart from his chest.

But now, it all felt just a little more distant.  And maybe, just maybe, he was a little more determined to tell Kimiko how he felt. After nearly dying, there were way worse things than maybe being a little embarrassed.

Worst she’d probably do was smack him.

***

“Thanks, both of you, for coming,” Kana Tetsutetsu said, walking up the stairs to the fourth floor of the Class 1-B dormitory.  She let out a weary sigh. “I’ve tried talking to him, but he practically hid from everyone at lunch and he holed up in his room immediately after class.”

“Anything for ‘Ro,” Mika said.  “He’s been ignoring me too, for what it’s worth.  I was about to send him some steamy pics when you called.  See if that worked.”  

She had a really great bikini for it too.  Combined with her rocking bod, it was guaranteed to get some kind of response out of anyone female-attracted. She should still probably send some of those to Shinji.  He was on a social media lockdown as part of his punishment for flying to the rescue across Japan (And how romantic was that?), but texts should still count…

“Maybe you should try sending Haimawari some, Kana,” she said.  “Guys like those things.  Keeps the fire in the relationship.”

“We’ve texted and watched some movies together,” Kana said, sounding annoyed.  “He’s a nice guy—and he is cute—but we’re definitely not at that stage yet.  And Mika…”

“Yes?”

“Stop hitting on him or I’ll break your legs.”

Mika like out a frightened eep.  “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

“Should you not tell your Homeroom Teacher?” Akaya asked, trying to drag the subject back to the actual reason they were there.  It wasn’t Mika’s fault so many things lead to sexual or relationshipal thoughts!  “The welfare of students is his job.  Or perhaps your mother?  She is a close family friend.”

Kana shook her head, setting her orange-red ponytail swaying.  “Getting Fujii-sensei or Mom involved is just asking for trouble. Plus it might end up on the record, even with Mom.  The line between family friend and teacher gets a little weird.  Plus Mom’d tell his parents and Shiro already feels like he’s here hanging on by a thread.  Who knows what would happen if he thought it was getting worse.”

Mika was definitely glad her mom wasn’t a UA teacher.  She needed freedom to pursue her various interests, like boys.  And girls.  And other individuals to which she was attracted.  Having that much scrutiny around all the time during your teenage years couldn’t be good for you.

“Understandable,” Akaya said.  “But if Shiro is so deeply troubled, I would prefer he get the help he needs, regardless of what it may mean for his career.  Still… perhaps we can convince him to seek the help himself.”

“Thanks,” Kana said, opening the stairwell door.  “Fukidashi says he’s “undergoing character development,” but that’s pretty par for the course for her nonsense.”  Even Mika would admit that Anime sometimes didn’t make a lot of sense.

“Think it has something to do with his Internship?” Mika asked.  

Shiro had interned with Red Riot.  Considering Shiro was hung up on Kirishima-Bakugo, that had to have been awkward.  Wasn’t he supposed to have done some kind of dramatic confession before they started those?  If it had gone well, he’d probably have bragged about it to everyone who would listen, so she could only assume she’d turned him down, but still…

“I asked Shoji what happened,” Akaya said.  “But he said it was not his place to discuss it.”

“Of course he did,” Mike said, rolling her eyes.  “He makes minding his own business a Sports Festival level event.”  Understandable, but not helpful in this particular situation.

Two of the four doors were open, one on either side nearest the stairwell.  In one of them, a very attractive guy who looked like a humanoid bat was strumming on what looked like a heavily modified guitar with his long fingers.  His fur was white, save for a mane of wild blond hair.  She could just imagine him folding his wing-arms around her and…

A tug on her arm brought her back to reality.  “Help friends now, carnal pursuits later,” Akaya cautioned her.    

“I’ll introduce you to Koumori later, if this pans out, okay?” Kana said, giving her the same look other people did when they were fighting the urge to roll their eyes.

If he was interested in music though, maybe she could pass up a hot guy this one time, introduce him to Chihio?  Her best friend was nearly flat as a board, so she needed a different hook to get a guy… Chi did have good legs and a great ass (She noticed these things, even if she’d never hit on her best friend), so throw in a mutual interest…

From the doorway of the other open room, a large young man—He had to be nearly three meters tall!—poked his head out.  “Everything okay, Tetsutetsu?” he asked.  

“I don’t know yet, Fukui,” Kana told him.  “Have you seen Shiro today?  Outside of class, I mean.”

The big guy shook his head. “I think I saw him go down and get some food, but that’s it.  He was doing that sneaky ninja creep thing he does.”

Kana just sighed and pinched her nose again.  “Of course, he did.  Thank you, Fukui.”

“Yes, thank you,” Akaya added.  She gave him a little wave.  “Hello, Fukui.”

The big guy smiled and returned the wave.  “Hi, Koda. Still planning on joining us in the garden this weekend?”

“If time and weather permit.”

Mika looked between the two. She knew they were friends, but were they friends or “friends”?  None of her usual radar was going off, so probably just the former.  And also not relevant to the task at hand!  If she didn’t get any action on this trip, nobody did!

***

Shiro’s room was at the end of the hall, on the left.  Kana knocked on it.  “Shiro! Open up!”  

Silence greeted her.   She knocked again.  “Shiro, this is me as your friend, not as your classmate or Class Rep.  Open up. Please.”

A muffled sound came from within.  It sounded a bit like “Go away.”

Kana threw her hands up in the air.  “Argh. He’s power sulking, I just know it. He was doing this before the Internships too.”

Yeah, that definitely suggested whatever had happened with Kirishima-Bakugo hadn’t gone well.  Poor Shiro.  There was a sweet guy under all that ego.  He’d definitely treated her like a princess when they’d been dating.

Kana turned to Akaya. “Okay, your turn.  We’ll try reasonableness.”  

“Shiro,” Akaya said, with that soft voice of hers, like wind through reeds, “Shiro, please.  We are worried about you.  Whatever happened, allow us to share your burdens.”

This too, was met by silence.

Akaya placed a hand on the door.  “Shiro. Please.  I am asking you not to hide from us.”

Silence again greeted them, until the soft sound of footsteps on carpet followed.  The door opened slightly and Mika peered around Akaya’s bulk to a get a look at him.   She would be the first to admit that she was frequently surprised, whether it was by unexpected hotness or Kirishia-Bakugo showing up out of nowhere to yell at her.  But what she saw with Shiro took her breath away.

He looked like he hadn’t slept in a couple of days, with deep, dark bags hanging under his eyes.  He was slouching.  He hadn’t changed out of his uniform, other than to shuck the jacket, so it was it was wrinkled.  He’d allowed his hair to become unkempt.

That was when she realized just how serious this was.

“Holy crap,” Mika said, softly.

“I’m fine, Akaya,” he said, not looking her in the eyes.  “Just tired.”

“Kana was worried about you,” Akaya said.  “And I see now that she was right to be so.  You are very much not yourself.”

“I’ll be fine,” Shiro insisted.  It looked very much like he’d been crying.  And like he hadn’t even been doing his skin care regime!  “If you’ll excuse me, Akaya, it’s nice of you to check on me.  But I’m in the middle of something.”

Mika could just see into Shiro’s room.  The vaguely French décor, the expansive hair care set up, it looked just like the last time she had been in his room (It had been entirely platonic, despite how she kept dropping things and had to keep bending over to pick them up.), except for the suitcases on the floor.  It was entirely possible, given his depressive state, that he had never unpacked. It would have been unlike his usual collected self, but possible under current circumstances.  Except for the fact that most of his dresser drawers appeared to be open.  And empty.

“What,” she said, “the actual fuck?!”

She quickly became aware that she must have been rather loud, because Akaya, Kana, and Shiro were all staring at her.   Even the other boys on the floor had come out of their rooms to see.  Fortunately for her, she didn’t care.

She pushed past Akaya and shoved Shiro into his room, roughly.  “I’ve got this.”

The door slammed shut behind her.

***

Mika gave Shiro another shove further into the room, and then one more, to knock him onto the bed. She pointed at him and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.  Trembling with rage, she forced herself to be able to speak.

“What.  The Hell. Is wrong with you?” she demanded, going back to pointing.   “Are you giving up?  Quitting?  Since when the hell do you do that?!”

She realized he was staring at her, eyes wide, a frighten expression on his face, shaking like a leaf.   “Hey, no, no,” Mika said quickly, joining him on the bed.  She put her arms around him.  Under most circumstances, she’d have pulled his head to her bosom, but it didn’t seem like it would work here.  “I’m not mad. Okay, yes, I am mad at you. Because you got me all worried. But why are you leaving?”

“Because I don’t belong here.”

“The hell you don’t.”

Shiro gestured to his desk, where some of his things were still out.  A deck of playing cards, a set of lock picks, even a twirling baton. A small pair of hand weights sat on the floor, and DVDs of Heroes in action in hand-lettered cases occupied a significant section of the bookshelf.

“Did you know there’s a running bet among some of the other courses as to whether or not I even have a Quick?  Do you know how hard I have to work, just to keep up with people with real powers?  Just because I can move like Eraserhead or copy Gunhead’s moves doesn’t mean I’ve got any of their strength unless I work at it.  All the time.  So I’ve worked for years to be able to keep up.”

He closed his eyes. “And when I was out in the field… when that monster attacked… my Quirk and body betrayed me.  It might have been a robot, but cloaked in dead skin, all I could see was how profoundly wrong it was.  Not like Ojiro or Fukidashi, they’re just blind spots.  But just pure, unadulterated, unnaturalness.  And I knew, in that moment, no matter what I did… there was nothing I could have done that would have even slowed it down for a moment.”

His eyes snapped open, tears trailing down his cheeks.  “I froze! Shoji had to carry me out of there, like a child!  I could have run, I could have done anything, but instead, I was exactly what they always used to say I was… a useless kid with a useless, fake Quirk, deluding himself about being a Hero!”

Mika blinked slowly, processing everything Shiro had just unloaded on her.  She knew he had plenty of crisises of confidence.  She remembered comforting him after he’d lost at the Sports Festival.  She remembered the many times where he’d wondered if he was good enough.

But she had never seen him as broken as he was right now.  Self-doubt was one thing, he had wanted to be talked out of those bouts.  She wasn’t sure he did right now.

“So I might as well pack my things.  Maybe they can give my spot to a Gen Ed kid like Kocho.  Somebody who’ll do something with it.  It’s not too late to take up a career as a street performer.”

Mika frowned.  Kana would have had some words of encouragement. Akaya would have had something deep and thoughtful to add to the conversation.  Even Kirishima-Bakugo would have known what to say here, though her answer probably would have been “Suck up and get over it.”  Unfortunately, Mika was none of those people, so she was going to have to improvise.

“Okay,” she said, “first, I’m going to need the names of whoever’s organizing these bets.  Because I need to adjust the hoof to ass ratio around here something fierce.”

He gave her an incredulous look.  “That’s your takeaway from this?”

“Look, I don’t have a lot of tools here, Shiro.  So ass kicking on your behalf seems like a good start.”

“You’re impossible, you know that?” he said.  “But even if you beat them all up, it doesn’t change anything.”

She gave him a small poke in the chest with her finger.  “Listen to me, Shiro.  You’re going to stay here, and you’re going to be a big damn Hero.  And do you know why?”

He gave a little laugh. “Because you’ll adjust my ass to hoof ratio?”

“No,” she said. “Well, yes, if this moping thing keeps up.  But that’s not why.  It’s because you’re a spiteful little bastard who never let anybody tell him what he can and can’t do.  And if you think you can’t cut it… then do it to spite yourself.”

This got another laugh, one that was quickly replaced by a frown. “You realize that made no sense? And it still doesn’t change anything.”

“Got you to forget your problems for a minute, didn’t I?” Mika asked.   “You change your mind yet?”

“No.”

Her eyes widened.  “What?”

Shiro shook his head. “As… refreshing as this chat’s been, I’m still the guy who froze up when he should have acted.”  

She was rapidly running out of ideas here.  “How’s your class going to get by without you?”

“Kana is the Representative. She’ll do a fine job, even without me. She might not have quite the same competitive spirit I do, but she’s got enough of one to ensure they won’t fall behind.”

“The term’s not over and you won’t be able to transfer anywhere, even to a non-Hero school, without a complete transcript.”

He opened and closed his mouth.  “…Dammit.”

“Stay at least that long?” she asked.  “Please?”

“For the sake of my academics, yes.”

“Great!  That gives me a few weeks to work with!”

He just shook his head. “You’re really not giving up on me, are you?”

“Of course not,” she told him, leaning over to give him a little peck on the cheek.  

She really didn’t know how to solve this.  This was every problem Shiro had had turned up to eleven.  Being rejected on top of having his perceived weaknesses brought to the forefront…  There really wasn’t a good way to get past that.  At least, not that she could see right now.  Maybe Akaya or Kana or Anime could think of something.

But she could be there. And she’d bought herself a little time.

***

“Hey, ah, can we come in?”

The voice at the door snapped Katsumi’s attention out of her math homework.  Or rather, her attempts at her homework.  She wasn’t exactly having an easy time focusing on the numbers and formulae.  The more she tried to concentrate, the more it all ran away from her and sent her spiraling down dark paths.  

At least Izzy and Toshi were giving her space.  They’d both assured her they were here for her if she needed them, but knew to let her process it all in her own way.  Though Izzy was extremely insistent that she unburden herself somehow, to someone. Still unable to say no to Izzy, she’d said she would.  Which meant she’d have to deal with this sooner or later.  Because while she was many things, she wasn’t a liar.  

“Kirishima-Bakugo?” a second voice, this one male,  joined the first.  “You going to give us an answer?”

“Katsumi.”

That last one definitely got her attention.  She turned and saw Sero and Kaminari standing in her doorway.  She gave them a glare and both squawked.  Sero actually took an awkward step backwards, losing his balance and falling on his ass.  Kaminari let out an equally terrified squeak, her Extension Cords standing upright and sending off sparks.  “Kaminari, we definitely aren’t close enough to be to be using my first name,”

“We used to be,” Kaminari said as she helped Sero back to his feet.

“Yeah,” Sero said. “Bakusquad Generation Two!  What happened to that?”

Her glare must be getting weak.  They were still there and still talking.  “Because you two got dumb as fuck.”  

They weren’t wrong. They’d been friends, once, when they were children and when they were pre-teens.  But then Sero got obsessed with internet fame and Kaminari had started listening to Mineta more and more, where Katsumi remained one hundred percent focused on her goal of being a Hero.  So they’d drifted apart.  Kaminari, she saw more often still, since she was also friends with Izzy, but it was never quite the same.

They weren’t friends, but they were still…  Something. She wasn’t sure what the word was. Classmates, at least.  Family friends, sure.  And she’d put them ahead of Horse-Girl or the Glowstick on the list of people she tolerated, so there was that.

“Right,” Sero said, unfazed by her barb.  “And you got terrifying beyond all reason.  You know, the usual.”

“So can we come in or not?” Kaminari asked.

“Is there any answer I can give that would make you go away?”

They exchanged a look. “Nope,” Sero said.

“Nope,” Kaminari added.

“Nope!” both said at once.

“No,” Katsumi said, because some things had to be tried, no matter how futile they were.  She wasn’t surprised when they ignored her and came in anyway.

“Dig the posters,” Kaminari said, looking at the posters for the heavy metal bands on her walls.  “Scream Girls?  Great sound. You’ve got good taste.”

“I’ve heard about them,” Sero said.  “Loud, angry-sounding lesbians in leather costumes.  I can total see why you dig them, Kirishima-Bakugo.”

Katsumi gave him a look that would peel paint.  He panicked appropriately, flailing his hands in an apologetic gesture.  “N..not that there’s anything wrong with that!  Kind of loud for me, though.  I gotta go with the Nyan-Band myself.  Their stuff’s catchy!”

This time, both Katsumi and Kaminari gave him a look.  “You’re an idiot,” Kaminari said.

“Dumbass,” Katsumi said.

There was a brief pause as Katsumi exchanged a look with Kaminari.  It said “in this moment, I respect that you are not Sero.”

“So seriously, what are you two doing here?” she demanded.  “Other than lowering the average IQ in the room?”

“Look, it’s like you said, we’re not really friends anymore,” Sero said.  “Not close, anyway.  But all our families are still friends.  We were worried about you and your dad.”

“Yeah,” Kaminari said. She frowned, which Katsumi admitted looked out of place on her features.  She was a dumbass, but Kaminari was usually cheerful.  “Um, I just… remember when Dad was hurt.  Back in the day.  And how messed up it all was even back then.  So now…”

Back when Papa had been hurt.  And Uncle Tetsutetsu had been hurt.  And Sato had lost his mother.  Lots of people had been hurt on that one.  Kaminari’s dad had been stabbed.  A lot.  When they hadn’t been sure if they were going to lose Papa…

At least in the here and now, they had a guarantee that Dad was going to be all right.  Him living wasn’t a question.  But how well he’d take to, well, pretty much anything, was still up in the air.  She’d talked to both her parents today.  Lots of physical therapy for Dad, so he could at least be fitted for a normal prosthetic eventually, even if he couldn’t use his Quirk with it.  Papa was also trying to get him to talk to a real therapist… it wasn’t going well.

Of course, she wasn’t exactly looking forward to her own sessions with Hound Dog either.  Because she was pretty sure she wasn’t getting away with just one.  The school therapist probably had a thing about people suppressing their uncomfortable emotions and channeling them for violence.  Some stupid rule about not using “unhealthy coping mechanisms.”

“He’s… he’s healing,” Katsumi said, hoping they didn’t notice the hesitancy in her voice.  The last thing she needed was for either of them to stop being afraid of her.  “Still a way’s away from being discharged though.”

“Eeesh,” Sero said. “Rough.  Mom said Dad’s going home tomorrow.  Gotta take it easy for a while though.”

“Dad went home to day,” Kaminari said.  “He actually got off pretty easy.”

Katsumi clenched a fist and gritted her teeth.  She wasn’t going to snap at them.  She wasn’t going to yell.  She wasn’t going to protest the unfairness of it all.  It was all part of the risks of being a Hero.  But damn, she wanted to.

“Still,” Sero said, “good to hear about your dad.  When we heard what had happened to him…”

“Got pretty scared,” Kaminari said.  “Somebody like him can get hurt like that…  Somebody we know and who took care of us as kids…”

Yeah.  A big name Hero like Dad getting hurt, that was shocking. Brought them down to normal suddenly, deleted the myth of invincibility.   But she’d learned that lesson early.

Didn’t make it hurt any less right now.  Or make her worry go away.

“So…,” Kaminari went on, as an awkwardness hung in the air.  She gestured vaguely with her Cords, hands stuffed into the pockets of her pants. “We just wanted to say we’re here if you need us.”

“Just wanna talk, or whatever,” Sero said.  He held up a finger.  “Or even if you just want to yell at us.  That always seems to make you happy.”

A free pass at that?   A grin slowly spread over Katsumi’s face.  “I just might have to take you up on that,” she said.  “…But not when you’re expecting it.”

“So what you’re saying is we’ve got a free shot at annoying you now?” Sero asked.  “Because I could totally film that.  Simmering kettle, I’ll call it…”

Katsumi just rolled her eyes.  “Under no circumstances.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kaminari said, tugging on Sero’s arm to get him moving toward the door.  “Let’s get out of here before you get us both killed. But we meant it, Kirishima-Bakugo. You need us, talk to us.”

Maybe she would. Maybe she would.

[dukeofriven]

From An Old Internet Veteran: Go, and Sin No More

I wish I could explain to young people how wild the internet was as it went from the ‘weird niche thing for lame nerds’ irrelevancy of the early 90s and the “Boy This World Wide Web Thing Sure Is Nifty”-style painful optimism that describes 97% of Western Culture between 1994 and 2002 to the ‘Mad Max But Statistically Less Australian” culture that was the internet from 2002 to around 2010. I come neither to praise this era of internet nor condemn it. I merely want understanding. I cannot polish a lumpen pile of rape jokes, Chuck Norris glorification, “ironic” racism, and numa numa fat shaming and say that it’s misunderstood comedic genius. Trash is still trash even if it wins a bunch of Emmys. But at the same time I cannot take you with me back to the 90s and get you to feel, on a visceral level, what it was like to live in a place where Bart Simpson was both promoted as a real and present danger to the moral upbringing of the world’s children and was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential icons of the 20th century. And because I cannot do that I cannot get you to understand how freeing it felt to be on the internet in that Mad Max era. Ten years before a yellow boy shouting “Don’t have a cow” while doing a pathetic kick-flip on a chunky skateboard was considered the potential downfall of humanity’s children, but now you could make something so risqué that the old-guard stuffed-shirt in 1994 would have died on the spot, his brain unable to consider anything so outside his moral world view. I cannot easily make you understand a time when nobody just said whatever it was they wanted, not just because they had no platform to do so but because the rigidity of social convention was so strong. Nobody ever had hardcore lesbian sex on Northern Exposure on prime time television. Nobody on the X-Files ever died by having their head smashed in a car door repeatedly like a melon until viscera spilled all over the pavement. You could not have made Game of Thrones or Steven Universe in 1995. Forget the graphics, forget the budget, you simply couldn’t do or say any of that on television for either kids or adults. The Mad Max internet changed that - changed the very firmament of what was acceptable in media for every genre and for every demographic.  Is this a good thing? Not particularly. Is this a bad thing? Not particularly. If this sound frustratingly ambivalent that’s because it is: were we to go back and do it all again, knowing all that we know now, would we do it the same way? No. But then, we would not know all that we know now had we not learned it by making the attempt in the first place.

This poor comfort for someone who dives into some 2006 webcomic with a reputation of a Legacy Touchstone and finds it full of ‘jokes’ about their gender, or sexual preference, or the liberal use of the r-slur, or a kind of hyper-suburban comedic racial ignorance. I am not here to argue that that had any value merely because it was transgressive. But the same space that opened-up to let such ugly things out also opened-up places for marginalized groups to made themselves known, groups who never before had such public voices.

Imagine an apocalypse. Imagine society rebuilding in the ashes. Imagine how many false starts and missteps there would be and you begin to understand just a little of what that period was like. It was embarrassing. It was cruel. It was childish and stupid. But in living through it we grew up. Or, at least, those of us capable of growing up grew up, and learned, and learned to be better - learned what better was. And then we built new places where other people could learn too - and spread the gospel of being better. One of the things that always irritates me when it comes to young people talking about the past is the unexamined privilege of knowledge being at your fingertips. It’s more than just everyone carrying a wireless-internet connected computer in their pocket at all times. It’s more than just a Wikipedia with hundreds of millions of articles and a reputation for fact sourcing. It’s more than just a Google that works. If you never experienced it you cannot imagine what using WebCrawler was like in 1995 against Ask Jeeves in 2005 against Google in 2015 - or even Google between 2005 and 2015. Most people don’t go around thinking about SEO and search engine algorithms but maybe we should because anyone who wants to go “this info’s been on the internet since day one so people have no excuse not to know it” disingenuously argues that information search and retrieval has been consistent across the decades. There was a time - not all that long ago - when to look something up on-line involved getting the tacit agreement of everyone in your household to lose the use of the sole telephone for as long as you were web browsing. There was a time - not all that long ago - when ‘looking something up’ was to burden everyone around you with inconveniences, and while you were doing your web searches there was no guarantee what you wanted could be found with the primitive technology of the day. Do you know how much I’ve learned since joining Tumblr in 2011? On a fundamental level, both about myself and the make-up of our species in terms of social conception? I recently went through a bunch of old posts, removing those with broken links and meaningless content, but also shit that just embarrasses me now - mostly opinions from a period where I hadn’t yet had a chance to learn because the spaces in which to learn it did not yet exist. It’s not just things like communities for [demographic X] - it’s things like “communities for [demographic X] with an ability to broadcast their voices and have platforms able to network their ideas and audience halls able to receive them and a search engine to guide people to that community and a basic understanding that the community even exists in the first place.” And this does not even begin to touch on internet access, something that even now is not a universal thing, and for which getting angry about people’s ignorance reflects a bias all its own. I say all this because I think that a core tenant of cringe culture is a myth of universal access to knowledge and universal awareness of one’s own ignorance. I look back on old posts of things I said and I cringe with self-hatred - cringe enough to rip them down and stuff them in the trash. “HOW DID I THINK THAT?” and “HOW DID I NOT KNOW?” But why should I have known - what, in my life, would ever have put better ideas across my desk? That I can meaningfully speak now about privilege and intersectionality and historiography is because between then and now I was put in a place to learn these things. I was exposed to ideas that I had never before been exposed to, and was given the grace to learn. I am tired of the expectation that every aspect of our past selves should be held to the same standard as the present. (Yes, to all the disingenuous bad-faith trolls out there, I obviously and of course am advocating for complete and total uncritical pardon for everything in the past ever. Were you a neo-Nazi ten years ago? Water under the bridge without question because that’s obviously, obviously, obviously the sort of extreme outlier case I am talking about good on you for being clever enough to notice.) But for the non-dipshits out there who understand how to read without injecting insincere hyperbole into every argument, I want us to be kinder to our past selves when we have learned to be better. It’s okay that you used to like Sherlock - there were genuinely fun things about it, and it’s okay that you didn’t possess an expert grasp of post-graduate feminist critical theory when you were 21. Or 31. Or 41. More concepts of academia have filtered into mainstream consciousness than ever before - and in saying that we should remember the corollary that ten, twenty, thirty years ago that was not the case. We knew less, had access to less, and were exposed to narrower viewpoints than we are today. It is unfortunate - but it was not our fault, and we cannot easily blame ourselves for it any longer. Nothing makes my blood boil more than seeing people taking umbrage that... oh, Farmer Joe McSmithHead of Buttnut, Alabama in 1963 was ignorant of internal Chinese politics and said some untrue things about Chinese Communism. But the only thing Farmer Joe had to tell him of the outside world was a radio that played country music, a TV with four channels and strict content guidelines to only show pleasant, moral, and god-fearing content, and the three books in the Buttnut library, two of which were the Bible. There have, and will always be, certain moral lines so obvious that people of any era should always be held accountable to them. But above that, in the more trivial space of media consumption, absorption, and critique, we have to learn to be more forgiving - to ourselves and to others, so long as in the present we have changed. Did you use the r-slur a lot because it was practically a form of punctuation on 4chan and that’s where you learned the ways of the internet? Did you learn the harmfulness of this practice and cease to do it? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. Did you and your friends used to make jokes about how Mexicans smelled because you saw Seinfeld do that in his standup and the whole TV laughed as though it was funny? Did you realize one day ‘wait a minute that’s actually super gross’ and stop repeating it? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. Have you gone back to a beloved childhood property and found it’s full of woman-beating and weird views on homosexuality? Did you find yourself able to critique this beloved thing and did not defensively double-down on shielding it from all harsh words? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. I will not allow us to dismiss the cruelty and hurt of Mad Max Internet Culture with a flippant ‘well that’s just how it was back then” but nor will I allow anyone to condemn us all as being consciously unfeeling, willfully ignorant, purposefully hateful. Some of us were. But some of us did not know, could not have known, needed to learn - and we were lucky enough to live in a time before cringe culture and cancel culture where we were allowed to have that opportunity to learn and grow. We need that today, for all young people who think themselves as woke as can be and ten years from now will look back and blush with shame for things they said and did in total ignorance. The sin is choosing to never change, not failing to change sooner.

[amycessaz]

Women and their Body Hair: a Disentangling

I have pretty fair and not very visible body hair all over me apart from the dark hair on: my legs below the knees, my armpits, the moustache area, either side of my chin, eyebrows and between them, below the belly button (snail trail), my big toes, my nostrils, my pubic area, my labia, spreading out from the bikini line, around the bum hole, around my nipples, bit darker between my boobs and this one dark hair on top of my right thigh which has sprouted only in the last month. For more detail… I kind of have an ombre effect on my legs where they get much darker at the ankles. I also have a birthmark on my leg where the hair is much thicker and darker and even has lots instances where two or three hairs are growing out of one bit. The hair on my toes and armpits is very dark but pretty sparse. My pubic hair is the thickest and darkest of all and grows very quickly and very long – my leg hair also grows really long but I rarely leave it to see its full potential. In my experience, by now in these conversations, the shame/irritation/giggling has already started. Perhaps the words ‘gross’, ‘annoying’ and at best a sort of guilty laughter around how long it has been since me or the women I’m talking to have left our hair without some sort of maintenance. But when I write it out now I have the privilege of being able to catch these thoughts before they escape, when, of course, I know that my hair isn’t gross – it certainly isn’t unsanitary, in fact the opposite. And that in itself helps me, I get to have a sort of objective look at my body and just write it out – that’s what is there and through mother nature’s lens it isn’t ugly, disgusting, or embarrassing. Unfortunately, if I’m honest I have a much more complicated relationship with my hair than mother nature does. Knowing these facts and the objective truth of body hair turned out to not solve my insecurity completely -but it surely is the first step. I was first introduced to these truths once it was too late and I had already accepted my conditioning into hair removal as a teen. Since I was told it is ok to do whatever you want with your body hair I have steadfastly agreed, while at the same time winding my way through bleaching, plucking, shaving (electrically and manually) or just covering the dark body hair areas as best I could when I hadn’t removed my hair. This hair removal isn’t inherently bad – we are all told that we can be empowered to choose to do whatever we want to our bodies! In practice however I struggled, and still struggle, disentangling (pun) my own body choices from external beauty pressures. My experience with body hair shame was that I was most at ease with being hairy when alone or with close family or out in public where only strangers saw me – but this did not extend to pubic hair in short shorts or bikinis or pants(my guess as to why bikini line pubic hair is different – especially around family – is that not only do I feel a sense of unkempt manliness with it, but also a feeling that it is somehow more explicit, that there is something sexual about it. So that adds another tangle of something to work through). I find more embarrassment and pressure when I am around young men, particularly straight men who I judge and assume will find my body hair to be unattractive or maybe even repulsive. To reject pressure to be the peak of beauty and allure is one thing but to stand up against the feeling that your friends with will be kinda grossed out by you is another. It could be the case that I am wrong and these men don’t think this at all but there is no way to find out – I doubt they would admit it – and I won’t turn away from these friendships because it is likely that many men have been struck by the other side of women’s beauty standards directing their tastes. As of now I use an electric shaver for my legs below the knee and with a guard on for my mons pubis (the bit above the vulva below the belly button), and a smaller more precise electric shaver for my bikini line and labia, and also my nostrils and toes. I sometimes bleach my moustache and belly hair, and pluck my eyebrows and the odd chin hair. I have started feeling much more comfortable with leg ‘stubble’ that’s about half a cm long which is odd because I was expecting a sort of confidence all or nothing. I do these things because right now that is what I feel the most comfortable doing – from a mix of embarrassment, sneaky self-repulsion, pubes snagging and pulling around the vulva, and what I assume is my own personal taste. The problem remains: How can you truly know what you want to do with your body when there’s all this society about? Well my answer is that yes in a world without body hair shame women would probably do a lot less removal and probably largely leave it alone – sort of like what men do. But for now, I'm going to try asking myself why it I'm doing what I'm doing when I remove my hair, and if the answer is out of social pressure and I still want to do it I will. I have learnt that as long as I stay aware of my social conditioning I don't need to create another pressure angle to squeeze myself with; if I'm unhappy to push back against society right now, I don't have to. We all have to forgive ourselves more often when after all it is us that is the victim of whatever shame we have learnt to have, and if you do want to step out of your comfort zone, go for it! My advice would be take it at your own pace - whether it is new to have a go at not shaving your thighs, or if it is new to try putting a picture on social media with your armpit hair out loud and proud. But in this reality there is not only a body hair burden, we also have an opportunity for celebration. I have a feeling that not only should we try to normalise hairy women – we should also celebrate it! Make it sacred! Because why not? A sexy and beautiful alternative to the celebrated hairless woman, not even a replacement. Every day I love my body hair more – and it’s working much better for me than just ignoring it or finding it meh. Congratulations to our body for growing these lovely hairs all the time that keep us warm, sanitary as well as interesting and amazing. In the future I hope to write on each area of body hair and my specific relationships with them because it turns out that the relationship I have with my body is pretty complicated and very important/neglected. I’d also like to set challenges with growing my hair out and having it on show, and I'd love to record my experiences on here – I’m pretty excited about it!

[blessuswithblogs]

Katsura Hashino is a Big Fat Creep and Other Observations

(for the record all uses of the word “queer” in this post are meant in the academic sense as shorthand for a wide umbrella group of gender and sexual minorities and not as a slur i hope that is evident from my past history and status as Big Gay Bitch Who Loves Girls but let it never be said i don’t cover my ass)

A few weeks ago, Catherine: Full Body Edition or whatever gross subtitle it got was released. Catherine has had a very checkered history as one of those games that is just kind of slimy, though it has endured with a cult following and a surprisingly successful competitive community by way of the game's multiplayer mode where you compete to see who can climb The Dream Sex Tower the best. Honestly, I don't know that much about Catherine because it is difficult to think of a game that repulses me more on a visceral level, but I want to do my due diligence and not talk out my ass. One of Catherine's initial claims to fame was that it was by Atlus Japan, specifically the same people who made the much beloved Persona games. This is evident in the game's art, music, overall style of delivery, and being basically hate speech.

The original Catherine was a greasy, misogynistic mess with some really vile politics about trans people in particular. Deadnaming your own fictional character in the credits is some next level petty malice. Full Body returns with, stupendously, a double down on this ideology that is actually kind of comical in how convoluted it gets in trying to decry the Degenerate Queer Lifestyle. The game adds a scene with Rin, who is apparently a gay crossdresser from space(???????), getting slapped away and running away crying from their love interest after he learns The Terrible Truth. In another game, with a different writing team, this could have been a teachable moment about the destructive consequences of taking too narrow a view of human sexuality and gender expression, but as it stands it's just another tiresome example of Trans Panic with a sheepish admonishment from the other characters that gosh maybe slapping their hand away was a mean thing to do.

So we're already firing on all cylinders here, but the best is yet to come. The bulk of the outcry comes from the addition of a weird "true ending" cutscene where Catherine, who is also from space, goes back in time to make everybody's life better. Or something. This is already pretty stupid on the face of it because its Fucking Time Travel Out of Nowhere, but the scene then depicts a pre-transition Erica, the game's trans character who got deadnamed in the credits the last time. There has been a lot of exceptionally tedious discussion about exactly when this scene takes place in the game's chronology and what it means for Erica, and some brain geniuses have tied their thinkmeats into pretzel shapes to prove definitively that all this means is that she delayed her transition in this Better Timeline, that might not actually be better, because Catherine is weird and selfish, maybe. And. Fine. Sure. Okay. Let's accept that for now. Given the game's previous track record, and continuing insistence on using Erica's pretransition name in the credits even in the rerelease, it is meanspirited at best to show her before her transition at all (many real life trans people would be utterly mortified for such a thing to happen to them) and overall just in poor taste and pretty lousy writing at that because it's so unclear what any of this actually means. Since the game has not yet received an official english localization, the context of this scene is to begin with muddled by amateur translators on the internet all with slightly conflicting interpretations of the scene. It's a fucking mess, by and large.

So I would disagree that this is a fake controversy manufactured by those damnable essjaydubyas. Even with the most charitable interpretation possible, it's still just really sketchy and gross. Erica's english voice actress, who seems to be very fond of the character, has been vocal about her dissatisfaction with the new scenes on twitter and has recently come out to say that the localization team is going to try and take some steps to make things less blatantly hateful. Between this and Jennifer Hale's recent tweet about it being time to grab our pitchforks in response to Activision-Blizzard's mass layoffs, I'm starting to think that voice actresses are pretty cool. I mean honestly I always thought that but we're getting off topic. One of the top competitive Catherine players, who was by all accounts really hyped for the release of Full Body, just straight up said on twitter that he was quitting the game because he couldn't support something like that in good conscience. I don't know if he's remained consistent on this position since, but it was a bold statement, to say the least.

Now, whenever an incident like this happens, the inevitable string of More-Progressive-Than-Thou white boys who watched an anime once and thought the bouncing titties were a little much appears to start pontificating about the cause of such untoward elements in media. And it's basically all just a bunch of Orientalist bullshit. Every time. For whatever reason, people still really love to be racist towards Japanese people because it's still sort of socially acceptable when couched in the language of "oh japan!!! ecks dee" and so the neverending procession of softboi neckbeards declared with confidence that Atlus's continual inclusion of Actual Hate Speech towards LGBTQ+ people was the result of the inscrutable Japanese Mind and its Mysterious, Antiquated Culture. Many mentions of the philosophy of Wa, wherein the nail that stands out gets pounded down, and lots of very lovely psuedointellectual claptrap. Evidently, people just seem to think that queer people don't live in Japan, or that they don't fight just as hard as we do for equal rights and protections under the law. They do live there, and they do fight as hard as we do. Obviously. You fucking imbeciles.

In their quest to clearly illustrate their moral and intellectual superiority to the backward, collectivist Asiatic Peoples, these highly reasonable and enlightened manboys forsook a very important logical principle: Occam's Razor. Sure, you could blame jApAnEsE cUlTuRe for Atlus's impropieties and just conveniently ignore all of the fantastic queer media it has produced in recent years like My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, Horou Muskou, Nier Automata, etc. Or you could go for the simpler and more logically consistent option: Katsura Hashino is a big fat creep. Who is Hashino, you ask? He is the director of every Persona game since 3, as well as Catherine, and all of these games' gross shit and self-contradictory themes of self-acceptance and rebellion against an unust society (unless you're gay, ew) can probably be traced to him and his gaggle of accomplices. In addition to the fact that Atlus games not by Hashino's team tend to just. not have these problems to nearly as large a degree or even at all, Hashino himself has gone on record saying some really kind of hilariously backwards shit. Most infamously, when asked why in Persona 3 literally all of your social links with girls ended up with Hot Makeout Sessions regardless of like. Previously Committed to Relationships. Hashino simply said he couldn't imagine friendships between boys and girls. So that's where his brain is at. Since subsequent games in the series graciously allowed the player the option to not be a Huge Cheating Bastard, one can assume either his moral development has progressed past early puberty or somebody on the team convinced him this wasn't actually a normal thing to think. Given the man's output, I would say it's probably the latter.

It is because of this man's decisions and behavior that so many people are simply unwilling to give Full Body the benefit of the doubt. The game's director is, quite simply, a well known louse, and not in the endearing, Roger Smith way. Once again, it requires far fewer leaps in logic to assume that Hashino is just being a bigoted creep again than to go through some fuckin galaxy brain Kingdom Hearts-esque dot-connecting to justify it as just a LITTLE BIT bigoted not REALLY SUPER bigoted, or simply blaming the whole ordeal on some strange ineffable property of the Japanese Character. He's a gremlin! An overgrown manchild with a warped view of human interaction and society put in charge of games about exploring those concepts for.... reasons. My bet is that his dad knew somebody and then Persona 3 was successful enough for the rest of Atlus to just go "alright fine let him do it while we do mainline games". Unfortunately, Persona became so popular that the mainline games sort of switched places and became side-projects, at least in the eyes of the Western consumer base (which let's be real is the only perspective that any of these Serious Online Commentators even pretend to care about).

So I would once again caution everyone against just assuming that Japan is some sort of quaint anachronistic country of weird gameshows and backwards social mores. This is both a gross oversimplification of an entire culture and the struggles of their own subgroups and minorities and simply a grand display of lacking self-awareness. Like have you fucking seen the guys in the White House? The preposterous media that gets routinely greenlit on prime time TV, theaters, and digitally? Don't make me laugh. The West has no claim to any sort of progressive superiority to anybody else. The white cishet bubble of comfortable middle class affluence might distort what you see of the rest of the world, but believe me: we got problems too. Big ones. Even the presupposed bastions of Demsoc Virtue like Sweden have an awful track record of discrimination and eugenics. But Dazzlyn that's different, you cry! All of these groups and forces don't represent the entirety of Western culture! Yes. Exactly. Oppression is not culturally bound like cuisine or art. It is a nasty, universal thing that worms its way into everything, and it will use any excuse it can find to murder and exploit. It's against Christian values! It represents a genetic defect that must be purged! It's ostentatious and immature! The list goes on. And every time you giggle and go "oh those silly japanese" you're just being another expression of the same vile ideas.

I'm going to relate some of my own personal experiences, because as a noted Big Gay Bitch Who Loves Girls, I feel like maybe I have some authority on the matter? Just a little? Enough that if I make a well reasoned argument it can't be dismissed out of hand? Let's hope. So, what's the gayest game I've ever played? Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn. Look yeah I know I'm talking about it again but come back this is important. Final Fantasy is a series that has had a lot of LGBTQ+ undertones pretty much since forever, and while they have largely been in keeping with the times in terms of tact and representation (the Crossdressing Cloud debacle is a deeply bizarre, uncomfortable sequence in a lot of ways but there's also some genuine Good Gay Shit in 7 like Cloud's surprisingly cute and genuine date with Barret. I think. It's... it's been a while.), by God, it was at least there, and 13 had honest to god Lesbians, Harold in Fang and Vanille. I don't want to say it has pedigree, but the series has dabbled. XIV continues on the tradition with a vibrant world that's actually got a lot of characters and NPCs that are just incidentally there and kind of gay. The adventurer couple that befriended the Tonberries in Wanderer's Palace, a vendor that appeared in the Rising cosplaying as Minfilia at her wife's behest, a miqote lady bathing in the oasis that lets on she wouldn't mind having cute girls stare at her instead of grabby boys, every horny Elezen in Ishgard, Samson and Guydelot (shoutouts to Lulumi Lumi), and probably more that I've missed. More than that, though, is that because FFXIV is an MMO, it is by necessity a social space, and in my experience it has been one that has gone out of its way to be inclusive to everybody, from the GMs handling reports of abusive behavior right up to the top decision makers who made same sex player marriages a thing just immediately on its implementation and letting boys wear the gold saucer bunny costume too (albeit after quite a bit of pleading). The game's got a huge queer community of which I am kind of part of sort of. It's one of the reasons I keep coming back to it. Hell, they've recently partnered with a pride group in Australia to have an FFXIV float in a parade. I usually turn my nose up at such things as meaningless corporate grandstanding, but it does seem to be more meaningful than two boy pastas getting married or rainbow colored oreos because like. Cheesy as it sounds, it's more than just a brand to a lot of people, it's a place, sometimes the only place, they can go to feel safe and accepted in a community. Having official, vocal support from the dev team means genuinely a lot, I think.

Now, there is one quality about this game of which I am speaking that might strike you as noteworthy: it is Japanese. It's made by Japanese people, in Japan, under a Japanese company. A middle aged Japanese man goes up on stage in Gunbreaker cosplay to speak in Japanese about the upcoming expansion, while a meme obsessed gremlin translates for him. It's not perfect, there are problems, etcetera, why do I even need to qualify that in 2019, when everything sucks, god. But it's better than most things. I hope that it serves as an example to people that even in the supposedly regressive countries of the world, queer communities are still living, fighting, and sometimes even being heard, and that the only thing you're enriching by dismissing them wholesale as socially backwards is your own internet penis. And nobody fucking cares about that you simpleton. I expect 5.0 to be gayer than ever before because they're taming up with Yoko Taro to do a Nier themed raid and by the 12 Warrior of Light Dazzyn Reed is going to kiss 2B or an equivalent model right on the robot lips.

[tellywoodtrash]

status update:

So, I got a few friendly, good-natured asks on how I was doing, and what’s up with my life (work, Chandler, etc.), so I suppose this is as good a time to tell everyone: I quit my job earlier this week.

Early followers of the blog may be aware that this blog started as an attempt to find some kinda peace during some very trying times in my life. Since then, I’ve been burning the candle at both ends (I guess, in some kinda misguided attempt to move on with life) and... it’s finally caught up with me. I’m fucking exhausted and at a breaking point. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. ('Spiritually. Ecumenically. Grammatically.' Name that movie!) And so, I'm giving myself a break and am going to be taking some time off to focus on my mental health.

However, this hasn’t been an easy decision to make, as it means bye-bye financial independence and my ~~riproaring Sex And The City life (snort, NOT) and that I will now have to pack up my entire life and leave the country I (and Chandler!) call home. So the next few days will be even rougher; full of transition and second-guessing myself. But in the long run, I think I need to do this now before things get much worse.

Poor Chandler has no idea what’s coming up; that he’s about to be unceremoniously stuffed into a box and flown many thousand miles to a whole new country, with strange new smells and creatures (including my relatives who will want to come around every now and then and friendly-ly harass our socially anxious butts.) I just hope we both survive this move!

As for what it means for the blog, it’ll mostly be business as usual, I suppose. I will have more free time, but it’s going to be invested in moving, and settling in, and recovery (first I have to recover from the moving and settling in, and only then can I focus on *actual* recovery) so... I’ll do as much as I can. Yes, there's lots of new shows, most of them better than IB, and I might wanna watch them too, but.... idk, I don't seem to have it in me right now to get invested in a whole... new.... thing. We'll see once I'm properly settled into a restful routine where I don't feel so battered in the brain. On the plus side, moving to India means proper access to Hotstar and Sony Liv and alllllllll the platforms; I won’t have to jump through hoops and diddle around with VPNs to access what I wanna watch! Yaaaaaaay!

There are a few things blog-wise that I just have to address though, because they’re srsly stressing me out a lot lately:

Messages asking me to explain WHY stakeholders in the industry (actors, makers, the channel) make the decisions they do. Bhai main kahan un sab ke ghar ya boardroom mein ghussi baithi hoon, ki mujhe pakka pata hoga???? All I can do is speculate like the rest of you. Which is what I do. I look at the facts that I do have (social media posts, TRP reports, etc.) and put out MY theory. But it’s all it is. A theory. I do not have any kind of information that you also do not have access to. Asking me to explain the inner workings of complete strangers' minds is just nonsensical. I do not have the complete information based on which I can give you an accurate answer. So please just stop asking me these. At this point, idek why *I* do half the things I do, let alone have any surety of anyone else’s decisions.

Complaints. Look, all of us have complaints about the shitshow that is IB, and the Tellywood industry at large, and its affairs both off-screen and on-screen. But just think of my plight when news breaks/an episode airs and I get like 10 anons in an hour, most of which are filled with cribbing. OVER SOMETHING I DON’T HAVE ANY CONTROL. You have all the right to complain, sure, but not IN MY INBOX. I only publish about 30 - 40% of the asks that I actually do receive, and because of that you may think that you’re the only person sending in this to me; but trust that more often that not, you’re not. I most probably have already received least 5 messages about it, in varying degrees of negative, and it’s exhaaaaaausting for me to wade through it all.

"Asks” that are just STATEMENTS, with no real question to them. I get these and whether I agree with your statement or not, my only reaction is “.... haan, toh???” What really is the point of these? I have nothing to contribute to them. It’s just YOU deciding that your opinion is sooooooo important that you must come tell ME it. In my inbox. On anon. Which is not just stupid, but also RUDE af. What you're doing is the equivalent of going and ringing the doorbell of a stranger's house and monologuing in their face about a random topic when they open the door. Like, I literally did not ask?????? Especially since you’re on anon and I have absolutely no personal equation with you. By having an open inbox, I didn't consent to being the receptacle of every opinion wrt Tellywood under the sun. Like, the whole point of this blog is so I can shout MY dumbass opinions into the void that is the internet without bothering anyone else about things they might not care about/agree with. Anyone who follows/engages with me is here by THEIR choice. Why don’t you do the same? Go make your own blog, instead of using mine. There’s only place for one person here on this blog, and that’s me. Please read your messages before sending them and ask yourselves: Does my tone/content leave anything open for discussion? (FYI: Just putting a question mark at the end of a sentence does not make an engaging question that opens up a discussion.) What contribution am I inviting from the recipient with this message? If the answer is “no”/"nothing", then please don't send it.

The rise of combative and contrary asks; ones that don't come out of a genuine curiosity, but with the intent to mindlessly argue, talk in circles without a point and overall, and just belittle the opinions I’ve expressed by engaging in whataboutery. There's a point at which "healthy discussion" ends, and "debating" starts, and I’m not here to engage in Debate Hour. The open askbox (or replies function) is NOT an invitation to pick at ONE sentence of some post (often missing the context; those other sentences are there for a reason y'know) and demand explanations from me, for which I have to then bend over backwards to clarify to some random faceless person on the internet. Not only does it take tremendous amounts of time and energy (for what is largely a pointless endevour: these people aren't really here to have an exchange of ideas or even try to see my point of view, they're just trying to force THEIR contrary opinion ON me), it really sucks the joy out of the blog for me. Look, I am not an idiot. I can correlate writing patterns and associate them with previously seen comments/opinions and make educated guesses on who these may be coming from. I've been holding off on blocking anyone yet, but these comments and asks have me seriously considering it. (And FYI: blocking an anon blocks you via IP address. So don't think ki 'oh ho ho, I can just hide under the anon function, coz that has no consequences.' All you'd be doing is proving my guesses right, as to who is whom.) I don't WANT TO go to such extents, and want this still to be a place where people can approach me, but this gross disrespect of my time and boundaries is beginning to wear on me now. Before coming at me, please think to yourself if what you're saying is actually necessary. If it's just a passive-aggressive counter-argument to my opinion that's all conjecture/opinion (i. e. things without factual basis and based on feelings) then please; you're very welcome to whatever you believe, but I don't care. If I wanted your opinion, I’d ask for it. If I care for your opinion, I will engage with your posts (by liking or commenting or reblogging or sending you my love in your inbox.) I just really really don’t care what anyone's opinion ON MY OPINION is. Please stop being contrary just the sake of it and ruining my day and mood. Go chronicle your opinions on your blog/twitter/whatever, instead of using MY blog as a platform and arm-twisting me into participating in this unpleasant exchange. I just don't have have the energy or interest to engage in this fuckery anymore.

Look you guys, I love getting stuff in the askbox. I do. If I didn’t, I’d just have closed the askbox and called it a day. I’m just asking that you be a little THOUGHTFUL about the recipient, me, AS AN ACTUAL LIVING PERSON WITH FEELINGS AND A LIMITED AMOUNT OF ENERGY AND TIME, instead of some kinda faceless robot who just processes your messages in binary and spits out an answer. Before engaging, please re-read your message to consider your tone and content and the impact on the person on the other end. Despite this request, if you just decide to engage in the above mentioned ways, I’m sorry in advance if you end up getting blocked; but things have reached a point where I have to look out for myself, and my comfort, and what I want from this space. I would like this blog to be source of joy in my (and others’!) life, not something that I feel resentful about, or as a source of draining what little energy I have left.

Sooooooo, that’s how it is! Things should be the same around here barring some periods of inactivity occasionally due to moving/spotty internet (but the queue should be running anyway.) A lot less negativity and gloom, hopefully! Wish me (and Chandler!!!!!) luck and please send us all your good, restful, soft and fluffy vibes!

(The restful slumber of a poor fluffy bastard who has NOOOOOOOOO idea of what the next few weeks have in store for him.)

[i-want-my-iwtv]

New to the fandom and why do people think Ann Rice is crazy

(I have a backlog of asks, Real Life has been taking my life, and this is the one I decide to answer, bc I am apparently a glutton for punishment) (My senpais re: the topic of allowing writers to write dark fiction (and readers to read it) are @restoringsanity and @freedom-of-fanfic, among others, check them out).

Welcome to our little corner of Tumblrland! 

This became a Wall of Text™, but I felt like articulating these thoughts again, as I do periodically. Sorry, no cut, couldn’t find a good place to do it.

Anon, I hope you come into the light and join us, share with us what you like about VC and make our fandom better for being part of it. You might make some of the best friends of your life with us :) I definitely have, and that’s what fandom is about for me. 

I think this question was answered very well by @interview-withthevampire here, with supporting links. I was honored to be tagged as a Certified Old in the fandom, yes, I was around in the Dark Ages of the Internet, for the Spec Massacre, but am I a Respected Old? That’s debatable, lol. I have my opinions about VC, and everyone’s headcanon may vary on all of it.

No sense reinventing the wheel in answering the same way as they did, but I have thoughts to add. @interview-withthevampire started their answer as follows, and I want to start mine the same way: 

“the reason why Anne Rice is a bit quarrelsome (I don’t want to use “cr*zy”) is because, well, the kindest way to put it is that she’s a bit of an ego-maniac.”

^YES. She’s probably a bit of an ego-maniac, but not “cr*zy.” “Crazy” is what we use to “other” someone, to dehumanize them by calling their mental faculties into question. It’s a gentle teasing at best and a bullying tactic at worst.  

One thing you’ll find in VC fandom is that every so often, like a cycle, we’ll get another round of bashing Anne Rice. Whether or not she is a “good” or “bad” person with “good” or “bad” thoughts/intentions, that’s not the purpose of my blog and not what I base my love for VC on. My blog is primarily for entertainment and fandom positivity.

As fandom has begun a shift into examining authors and content creators who create problematic content (also known as ”dark fiction,” which I prefer as a term bc the word “problematic” has become kind of a joke in its overuse), there is a tendency to conflate that content with their beliefs, that they write what they would like to see happen in reality. I strongly feel that creation/consumption of dark fiction is not endorsement of it.

In brief, people might think Anne Rice is “cr*zy” bc of (1) her Real Life actions against her fans and other people, and (2) the problematic content in her books. 

Again, I think @interview-withthevampire covered point (1). In the end, Anne Rice is just a human being who wrote a set of books that have gathered a wide spectrum of fans. I think it took her years (decades?) to understand the nature of her fanbase, and as the internet grew around her, it became easier for fanworks and reviews/feedback to publish into the real world. There were no longer the filters in place of people like magazine editors; any blogger could write a review of her works in full view of millions of fans, and they were not required to pull any punches. 

AR had to acclimate to that and after fighting the ficwriters for long enough, she chose to stop suing, and learn to coexist with it all. I don’t know of many other authors treating their own fanbases the way AR treated us, so I would guess that authors who have published works since the internet really got in gear have probably all embraced their fanbases from the beginning. Therefore, VC fandom’s bad blood (pun intended) with Anne Rice stands out as being downright BIZARRE now :-P

As far as (2) the problematic content. 

What we’re really talking about is whether dark fiction (pedophilia, incest, etc.) should be written about at all if they are not condemned in the narrative. Personally, I believe that creation/consumption of dark fiction is not endorsement of it. 

*Bruised banana analogy*

VC, like any media, be it books/movies/music/video games/etc., is like a banana. It might have gross bruises, those parts that you find squicky or otherwise distasteful. It’s fine to point them out, so that others can be aware, but you are not required to do so. Some areas on a given banana are less bruised than others, and you can eat them. Maybe you eat around all the bruises, even the smaller ones. Maybe you don’t mind bruises and you can eat the whole banana.

I admit, on a subjective level, that VC books have gotten much bruisier for me over the years, and there are several that I find so bruised that there is much less to enjoy, but that’s how it is. I STILL LIKE THE PARTS I LIKE.

[X Banana from fromthedriversseat.co.uk] ^Red would be those bruises that I can’t accept, so I don’t eat them. 

Maybe the whole banana is ruined for you and you can’t stomach it. Maybe you can bake it into banana bread, turn it into something else entirely! That���s a fanworks’ purpose. Like a fanfic where you remove/revise the bruises from canon and write the story the way you would prefer it to be. Fluff would probably be a banana with very few bruises, if any at all.

I’ve made my own headcanons that have “fixed” canon in a way that greatly improved the stories for me. I’ve read fanfic that was basically providing missing pieces from canon. I’ve seen fanart and cosplay that pretty much illustrated my headcanon of the characters. For me, fandom is about taking inspiration from the canon source material to make your own works, sharing that with other fans, and being supportive of those content creators in whatever way you feel comfortable!

It’s every reader’s prerogative, how much of the “banana” they want to eat, if any at all. No one is forcing you to eat it, and other people enjoying the banana does not trample your choice. Your choice not to eat some/all of the bruises does not supersede other’s choice of eating them. 

I’ve said that creating/consuming problematic content is not in itself endorsement of problematic things in REAL LIFE. As far as I know, Anne Rice has committed no REAL crimes, so while I would love it if she had a trusted editor/beta reader, I don’t condemn her for exploring dark topics in fiction. More thoughts on that in my #dark fiction tag.

As fans in the fandom, we can like what we like, critique her work, choose what canon we accept, toss the rest. She put it out there and in that sense, it doesn’t matter if Anne Rice is “cr*zy” or not, or if she is a “good” or “bad” person with “good” or “bad” thoughts. Personally, I believe that AR was interested in sex before she was the age of consent and was frustrated that she was being prevented from pursuing sexual relationships. Those explorations led to bruises in her bananas. Those are her bones to pick, so to speak.

I’ve made some of my best friends in VC fandom, and if they or I had left because of the bruises in our bananas, I might never have met them at all. I consider VC to be a gift to us from AR, no more, no less.

[not-poignant]

Hi! I think your fandom discourse is usually very well thought out and articulate, so I have a question for you: in your opinion, where should the line between representation and fetishization be drawn in fiction, fannish and otherwise?

I started to answer this, and then deleted it all, lol, which was like 600 words.

So now I’ll start with the basic preface: I can only really talk about areas of representation and fetishisation that I know about, that I write about, that I read about: BDSM, noncon-dubcon, relationships, and so on. I’m not going to touch anything else. I’m not going to talk about straight women fetishising gay dudes in this post, since that’s not what you asked me about, lol, and I’m not a straight woman. And because as far as I’m concerned, this is like...something you could write several books on and still not be done.

Also, I firmly believe I can’t draw a line for anyone except myself. I think it’s folly to do otherwise. Everything everyone does - no matter how sanitised or ‘unproblematic’ they think it is, will cross a line, for someone, somewhere. In a pretty big way. So I do not actually even believe in the premise of the question, that a line can be drawn. I wouldn’t even try to draw it for other people. I know where my line is. I have questioned that line, it has sometimes shifted a bit, I have thought about what it means, I have thought about the subjects I write, I know it’s not unproblematic material, and I’m comfortable with where my line is.

I think anyone who tries to draw a firm line for others - and I mean, like ‘everyone else’ others, is foolish, imho.

Now, onto my thoughts in general about representation vs. fetishisation.

I don’t think authors are obliged to write accurate BDSM if they want to write fantasy eroticised BDSM - I do think they’re obliged to be honest and frank that they’re not writing reality, if asked or challenged (or better yet, tag it so that people know it’s not realistic). But I’ve always been anti-banning-content and pro-tagging/warning systems. I’ve been that way since I did my BA in Media and specialised in censorship and media banning systems. Did you know Australia used to have the most censored media in the ‘western’ world? It still, on a lot of levels, does. Do you know how many movies, video games, and more, are literally banned here, even though you can access them almost all throughout Europe, America and more? Like, it’s bad, folks. Books have been written about how fucked up it is. And how do you get on that road?

I ended up with really strong political thoughts on this subject of what should and should not be allowed in the media on account of growing up studying media in a country that is really ‘nanny state’ over its media.

And seeing the ‘nanny state’ culture developing amongst fandom/s is honestly alarming.

But anyway, I can only really talk about what I do fetishise - which is dubcon/noncon/power play/BDSM (for the most part). Sometimes I care about accurate representation, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I care about accurate consent, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I care about accurate trauma recovery, sometimes I don’t. I will happily, gleefully suspend my disbelief for the worst most inaccurate trauma recovery ever if the whump is good and the hurt/comfort is real.

I will say I really strongly disagree with the increasing censorship/disapproval of people writing fantasy relationships and sex scenes vs. ‘realistic representations of relationships and sex scenes.’ That’s what non-fiction is for. And it’s what certain subsets of fiction is for, and it’s absolutely not what all of fiction is for. And I think we’re in a real sort of...horrific nanny culture if this is what it’s come to. Like, guess how much I care that some yaoi has self-lubricating asses? I don’t care. I don’t sit there thinking ‘oh no, this isn’t an accurate educational treatise into anal sex.’ You know what? Even fics that think they’re realistic aren’t, if they’re not dealing with the regular enemas/douching that a lot of people who have anal go through or alternatively not dealing with the realism of poop/faeces for all the people who can’t be assed with enemas/douching and don’t actually care about that.

I’ve seen authors doxxed and called out on Tumblr for not writing accurate BDSM in fanfiction. Like, inaccurate callouts where people go ‘oh no, but they didn’t use safewords, so this person is awful and don’t read their fanfiction and if I see you reblog anything from this person I’ll block/blacklist you too.’ Did you know contextually, in say, the BDSM San Francisco gay world of male sex - safewords (or SSC) is actually not as popular as RACK? (Risk Aware Consensual Kink). Did you know that RACK pretty often doesn’t have safewords, and sometimes you look pretty naive suggesting that all ‘good’ BDSM needs them? I mean it depends on your bubble, of course. But realism and representation trends like a meme in fandom, it’s not actually about accuracy a lot of the time at all.

The problem with arguments on realistic representation is that most people are like...very much in their bubbles where they think ‘accurate representation of BDSM is always safewords’ which is honestly, a good thing to aspire to if you’re a total newbie (which most writers of fanfiction are lol), but it’s only one way of doing things and some people - people with decades of experience in the scene - think it’s utter bullshit. Trust me, you can fuck people up well and proper even if you’ve got safewords. They aren’t some ‘things won’t go wrong / I won’t damage you psychologically’ magic bullet.

So, like, here’s me as a writer of what I write, and I’ve seen fellow authors doxxed for writing BDSM without safewords. I have a problem with that. That’s not okay. It’s fiction. I’m not writing for a bunch of school kids. I’m not writing a plain language FAQ for a local health centre. I’m writing literally masturbatory material (sometimes anyway) for adults who are getting off to fantasy BDSM. I love titillating non-consent depending on how it’s written. I’ve written it. I’m frank about that. I’m allowed to love it. So are other people. There’s no rule or law I’m breaking by engaging my Id in fantasy. And trust me, if you try and hide from your Id, or censor it, or ban it from certain content that it wants to engage in, that tends not to end very well.

But what I write is so vastly disrespectful and gross to some others that I know I’m hated. I literally once got the message ‘I hate you’ over 200 times from a single person (who later owned up to it) on anon, because they hated the relationship I wrote between Pitch and Jack in SAL. Because it had power exchange and BDSM. It’s like one of the tamest things I’ve written just about.

Like, obviously, I crossed their line. Big time. And they felt entitled enough to me and my writing to tell me they hated me over a period of several months. This is where I think ‘MKINYKATO’ - My Kink is Not Your Kink and That’s Okay is something we really need to keep in mind. Some people’s kinks are realistic representations of things, some people’s kinks aren’t, and some - like mine - are a mix. It’s not always vs. or ‘one vs. the other.’ Just because I will deliberately search for rapefics (all kinds) doesn’t mean I’ll turn my nose up at realistic rape recovery written with gravitas and pathos.

But see, this is where the issue of a ‘line’ is such a huge, huge grey area. Everyone’s line is personal. You can’t homogenise or standardise the line, because it’s different for everyone, and because that damages people. Like, that is a thing that literally damages people.

Meanwhile, my fiction doesn’t have to damage people, because I tag it responsibly and will add tags as people find necessary. I don’t shove it into anyone else’s space. I actively encourage people to not read if they don’t feel safe, and celebrate people who stop reading or engage in self care when they need to.

But strangers coming into my space, into my ask-box and telling me they hate me as a human being for writing the Shadows and Light story simply because there was power exchange in their dynamic? Anyone who knows me or knows what I went through during that time, knows how much that damaged me.

I mean I’ve seen the side of this that came through the Hydra Trash Party and BBC Sherlock and other areas, and so over the years I’ve seen some amazing thinkpieces written on this subject (that particularly focus on morally grey areas of consent in fiction, which is generally where I hang out as an author and as a reader to an extent) that has now been reinvented as ‘representation vs. fetishisation’ which is just a new way of attacking other people’s kinks and trying to sanitise fiction.

So I’m going to link them here, because I don’t think I can really convey just how frustrating I find that this is still such a huge deal on Tumblr, after 20 years of being in fandom and seeing people’s lives destroyed because of it (I can’t be rational about this subject, but other people can be, and sometimes with sources, so you know here you go):

- Yes, you’re allowed. 

“Honestly, I think “yes, you are allowed” is something a lot of fandom needs to hear right now. We had, what, a decade of “what not to do” writing advice, starting with anti-Mary-Sue campaigns and on through sporking and fanficrants and RaceFail, and now everything is this cracked parody of social justice and ~this is problematic~ is the ultimate “what not to do.”“

- Fiction is separate from reality.

“Fiction is separate from reality and that is why we like it. What you write about is not what you condone, Stephen King is not serial killer for writing about murder. People are not being “abuse apologists” for shipping two characters in a less than healthy way.”

- On purity culture toxicity (I strongly believe representation vs. fetishisation is the new label to slap on this latest reiteration of fandom wank). - Scroll down for some incredible sources.

- Anecdote about how purity wank allowed someone to realise how much unrealistic/fetishised fantasy helped them.

“Kinky unrealistic BDSM AUs were a way for me to process actual physical abuse that happened to me. I don’t care if the writer was getting off or processing something of their own: the works were there for me and they helped. For every “THIS IS ABUSIVE!!!” person pointing fingers, I guarantee there are people who were helped by that.“

- How fandom focuses on shaming women over accurate representation, and inherent misogyny within.

“And these people, these moral guardians, they’ve gotten really good at couching their fundamentalist views in progressive language. They don’t say ‘you’re to blame if you provoke men to rape’ - they say ‘your fic normalises sexual violence and contributes to rape culture’. They don’t say ‘women ought to be chaste’ - they say ‘your fantasies are socially harmful and you owe it to the world to be more self-critical’. The messages are the same and the desired outcomes are literally identical.”

- Yes, you’re allowed - the extended version.

“Right now I’m kind of bored because recently a majority of the fics that I read are very prim and proper, with disclaimers that are kilometers-long if the fics ever venture into something even remotely shady morally speaking, and I have a marked preference for fics that explore stuff that’s not Healthy or Sane or even Consensual, because to me fandom and fanfics are this big laboratory that really should allow you to delve into the unconventional and the morally grey”

*

Finally, do I think this means that the subject shouldn’t be talked about? No, I don’t. Do I think this is a huge topic that warrants years of exploration? Which it’s easily had for over two decades in fandom all over the world? Yes, I do. I just think the majority of people wanking over it on Tumblr are generally doing so to condemn other people rather than reach any sort of understanding or greater ethical awareness or whatever. I’ve actually already seen the representation vs. fetishisation discourse around the place and it’s almost always been co-opted by the Antis and similar, and hurriedly taken into purity wank town where the quest to be Ideologically Pure (TM) includes making sure no one has ever fetishised anything ever, and certainly never put it anywhere publicly for anyone else to enjoy it.

So yeah, I guess I have some strong thoughts in my little area of the world. Certainly enough thoughts to know that a line is pointless, beyond my personal line, that I police by reading the tags and browsing carefully with that wonderful thing known as Self-Responsibility.

[freshmilko]

Okay so I can actually tell you exactly why the whole killing stalking shitshow went down. And why Yuri on Ice is related when it’s such a completely different genre. It didn’t come out of nowhere, it was just a bizarre series of events that has led to… This.. Disaster.

So basically what started it all was the godsend that is Yuri on Ice. Now I’m pretty critical about the fiction I consume and while I do have some issues with the show, I think they did an amazing job and its a huge step in the right direction for queer representation in media! And people recognized that.

So now you’ve got this show attracting all kinds of different people! Everyone loves an exciting, well balanced show, no matter their usual preferred genre. YOI had excitement, beauty, tragedy, and queer romance all wrapped up in one little single season anime. It attracted a Very Big and Very Diverse fan base Very Quickly.

There was so much love for this anime that EVERYONE felt inspired to create fan works for it! There was a huge influx of art, comics, fics, etc etc. And all of this was loved by the other fans who like and reblogged all these great fan works; so much so that a huge number of blogs basically converted to YOI blogs. And you have all these different types of blogs all becoming relevant to each other because of YOI, so people follow one another and there are all these new connections on blogs, which previously would never have interacted.

And then Yuri on Ice ends. It was still loved, don’t get me wrong, but naturally obsession faded and blogs returned to posting about what they used to post about. And in these post-YOI phase blogs there are also, of course, guro blogs.

Now guro is a pretty controversial subject, so guro blogs tend to keep to themselves and other guro blogs. It’s a pretty closed off and tight knit group on tumblr, for good reason. I’m an outlier, since I don’t reblog any hardcore guro and barely any of the soft stuff, but I follow a lot of these blogs. I personally saw the YOI phase in a lot of them! And I saw them return to previous interests. You know, guro.

But suddenly these blogs have a lot of new followers(many of whom are self identifying fujoshi ((which is a whole other rant))) who came for the YOI, and obviously don’t /mind/ the guro but these new followers don’t know the general philosophy guro blogs follow. Things like always having warnings and tagging potential triggers. Also warning off minors from R18 blogs. And a lot of the time these new followers ARE minors. Hell, I’ve been following porn blogs on tumblr since I was 13. I may be an adult now but I remember being that age and desperately searching for some validation for what I experienced. As an adult, I agree with blocking minors from R18 content for legal reasons, but sneaky kids will be sneaky kids. Especially on tumblr, it’s very easy for immature minors to lie about age for the sake of following this content. And usually that’s harmless, let girls read some josei or yaoi and become comfortable with their sexuality.

But now they have found guro. And all the interests that often go with it. Horror, abuse, psychological horror, you name it. Extremely triggering material for a lot of people. Extremely cathartic material for some (like me). Often kept to the sides of fandom by the use of warnings and tags. And killing stalking is gaining popularity in this little pocket of tumblr. It’s a good horror manga. It’s gross, terrifying, and full of horror. It’s good. But it’s good /horror/. That means it’s not a healthy happy story. Any decent guro blogger will tell you that yes, it’s a good horror, and yes, it’s gross and terrible. But that brings us back to the immature YOI fujoshi!!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all minors. There are definitely many adults who are doing this, too. Because many adults are immature, just like kids. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t hit a magic age that changes you. And you don’t suddenly learn what a healthy relationship is either!! Especially fujoshi and fudanshi who drown themselves in fetishized and romanticized yaoi. It’s these fans that are being exposed to killing stalking, and taking it as another cute yaoi couple that just maybe has a few issues they need to sort out. Such as breaking each others legs and poisoning each other. But they love each other right!!!!!!!!!

Wrong. It’s abuse. It’s horror. Horror loving fans know this, accept it, and when we recommend killing stalking to anyone else? We warn them. We tell it how it is. And we only recommend it to people we know are into this kind of media. The story and relationship are horrible. Horrifying. It’s horror.

BUT!!! It’s not just our little pocket of self aware weirdos anymore. Now there are immature people who “came for the YOI, stayed for the weird porn!!” And they don’t know or don’t care about warnings. They enjoyed killing stalking so why won’t everyone else? They also are so desensitized to abusive relationships in yaoi they think it’s normal. And because of this mindset they have, I see a lot of my favorite non-horror or even nsfw fandom artists and bloggers getting asks that just say “have you read killing stalking? It’s so good!!” And I just cringe so hard because A:this blogger doesn’t read horror and B:this anon did not give any warnings of potentially triggering material.

So now, killing stalking is being romanticized and spread as a “yaoi” to people who are expecting something different and in the first place do not want to read something so gross. And they hate it. And I feel for them. They should never have read something they aren’t comfortable with, and that’s on the anon that sent them the message and gave them false expectations.

But now it’s become a witch hunt. Just like everything else on tumblr lmao. People on tumblr have trouble recognizing the different between reality and fiction, and I have a whole other long rant as to why that is, but I’ll let it slide for now. The point is that these antis equate a person to the fiction they like, which is ridiculous. And so they condemn the people who like killing stalking. Regardless of whether or not the individual actually romanticizes it.

Basically what happened is that whereas before the “morally correct” side of tumblr could just ignore the “less morally correct” sides interests, now ignorant and immature fans are forcing “less morally correct” media to be consumed by people who Don’t Want It. So they blame all of us. And it sucks. But mob mentality is what it is and the only thing we can do now is hope idiots stop recommending the goddamn manhwa to random people and the antis get bored.

Ok so I hope this is coherent at all idk why I decided to type this at 6 am. I just find this whole thing super annoying but also strange and interesting. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

Tldr: probably that fujoshi culture is the worst sorry also children are terrible

Real tldr:WARN FOR ABUSE AND POTENTIAL TRIGGERS ASSHOLES

[d00dt00nz]

Obligatory promo stuff at the top because it sucks and I hate it and let’s get it out of the way! follow me on twitter where I’m active, check me out on spotify for music, or like my facebook for sparse updates on music stuff. Thank you. The Cover art is by Ellie Tison

This one’s a lil bit long so I’ll put it behind a break

A while ago I posted about a song that was called The Howl that Lay the Canyon Bare. I mentioned that there were a few false starts on that song. One of those songs was a ripoff of Jackson Browne's The Pretender. Basically, while I didn't like the song, it became some kind of freakish mushroom creature. It budded its spores and they grew into their own creations. There was another song that came from it but it's not very good and I didn't use it. This song, however, did.

Basically it came from me wanting to write like, a fast paced and kind of old fashioned rock song. Not necessarily a standard blues rock structured song, but maybe something that was had the same force and power. My old song had some lyrics that I liked “I'm gonna get a good job in the city, I'm gonna buy a big screen tv/I'm gonna make a lot of friends and forget their names, 'cause they don't mean much to me”. Sometimes I think it's a shame for lyrics to go to waste because I always have a pretty tough time of writing them. A lot of times I'll just pluck lyrics from unused stuff, which is a little annoying because then I can never use that unused thing.

That lyric was written while I was still working at the RESP place and I was feeling pretty miserable and gross. I felt evil. I wanted to write something gross. More recently when I actually wrote this song proper, I was feeling a little less evil, but still very aware of those same evils. This was back in Febuary when my boss had recently laid off everyone except me. The amount of work hadn't reduced. He'd essentially used Coronavirus as an excuse to save a few bucks on his business. To this day, we don't have any masks, sanitizer, or gloves. The car the company gives me is literally falling apart. I have no right rearview mirror, the transmission is broken so that sometimes the engine just revs but the car doesn't move, the AC is broken, the winter tires are still on, the entire car shakes all the time, and up until recently it'd stall if you took a turn too sharply. If you can recall that time in Febuary, it was also when there was a whole asinine debate in the media about how many deaths were “acceptable” to keep the economy going.

Obviously I know that capitalism is “evil”. We all know that somewhere in the back of our minds, and saying it in that way (especially online) is pretty trite. At some point I started reading books about socialism in my spare time. I don't claim to be an expert, I couldn't make it through Kapital (that fucking thing is like a thousand pages and he spends the first 200 talking about a coat). I just want you to understand that it is something that I don't just invoke for cheap jokes. I think it'd be a good thing. Anyway, the evils that capitalism is based on really started to show their faces around that time. We had to let people die because we couldn't let the system slow down. A lot of liberal leaning people like to begin and end the conversation with “greed”, as if so many problems could be solved if we fixed the individual, personal problem of greediness. Maybe that'd go a long way if we could somehow magically shame people into good behaviour, but the way things are set up means you'd have to convince the people who make the rules to act against their own interests. The whole idea is silly.

The entire idea behind a neoliberal model of capitalism is a lack of true accountability. Kurt Vagnathghet (note to me, fix this spelling later when you have internet. Or don't and leave it in as a dumb hilarious joke) has a little part in Cat's Cradle where a brilliant engineer relinquishes his position as president because he is uncomfortable with authority – he'd rather be told what to do. The narrator wonders why until he begins delegating tasks to the engineer and realizes that the engineer has now managed to detach himself from his own humanity. He simply has become a cog in a system that sustains him. He is free of any real accountability because nothing is his own decision. He simply carries out orders because he must in order to maintain his own place in the world. That's kind of like the model we have today. Everyone is beholden to someone. Even CEO's are beholden to shareholders. Even shareholders are beholden to other shareholders. They cannot act against their own interests because there will always be somebody to replace them waiting in the wings. Yes, they make the rules, but they don't make the rules collectively, which means that if they stop “playing the game” then they'll lose what they have to somebody who is. I'm not saying I have sympathy for these people, I'm just describing the mental gymnastics that this system demands. I don't believe that people are inherently evil or selfish, but I do believe that we have a system that benefits those who are selfish and punishes those who are selfless. It's a self sustaining system where nobody is really in charge of their own life and the only real way to feel any control over your situation is to become vile – and the more vile you become, the more control you feel. It's not a question of staying true to your values, it's a question of how evil will you allow yourself to be.

Of course this only applies to people with that ability in the first place, as in people who are white, from a wealthy family, live in the western world, that kind of stuff. In my more unhinged moments I consider this about myself. I don't know if I could ever be in a position to take advantage of people, but what if I could? How much would I be willing to screw people? How immoral and wrong would I act if it meant a life of comfort? What if I just started scamming and hurting people? What if I “played the game”? How amoral would I allow myself to become before it wasn't worth it? These are questions I don't know if anyone can really answer. It's disturbingly easy to take an opportunity when presented with one. I'd like to say that I would stay true to myself, but would I? Would anyone?

Over the course of history, our ruling class effectively managed to replace the task of governing with a series of complex and often injust or imperfect systems. Over time, even the highest powers in the land have become beholden to something – something that is no longer even human. Something incapable of moral judgments because it does not think. It turns out we were living in the matrix a long time before computers were invented (That's really corny but let me have this one. I want to feel cool okay?). They created this system to absolve them of responsibility, and in doing so have rendered themselves powerless.

I wanted to outline this grotesque reality and my own personal worries in the most grotesque way possible. I didn't want to create nu metal, so I went to the second most grotesque form of music: 70s rock and roll. I wanted to have this angry frantic energy. It was really fun to record because I rarely get to just have straight aggressive 8th notes like I'm some sort of punk. It's also nice to just crank up the volume and the compressor and have a good time with distortion and different guitar tones. I love the dry sound that I was able to get. I do have to say, it's tough to keep that tempo and energy up for an entire song.

Vocally it's not the most difficult song, but a bunch of fun to sing. You get to be really aggressive with your delivery, and there's a bit of a showiness to the melody. For better or for worse, it's got that musical theatre kid energy to it with some old fashioned sounding musical phrases. I kinda like it for that. The lyrics are really unpleasant, so it adds to the fun where I can just say all this ugly shit and have this frantic energy behind it. At one point the compressor I was using did something weird on the vocal take, and it really jacked up a particularly deep breath I was taking. I decided to leave it in because it added to the vibe. I thought it'd be a weird quirk. Like the sound of somebody doing a big fat line of coke. Just getting fucked up.... Real twisted shit.

On the chorus I decided I wanted to add a little bit of variety and put in some sax backing. It was supposed to mingle with some vocals, which would have been a cool effect but the effect never really came through. I'm still not 100% on how to get a good sax sound out of a recording. At any rate, it does give this big echoy chaotic sound which I was pretty satisfied with so I left it in.

The solo section, I'm not so much a fan of. I think the guitar solo I did was pretty bad and amateurish sounding. There's this big buildup and then it's like this stupid meandering guitar solo that sounds like a 14 year old did it. I got my brother to record a guitar solo, which is technically a much better guitar solo, but honestly I wasn't a huge fan of the feel he went with in the context of the song. It felt a little bit too surf-y, and he didn't use any distortion. I kept it in and combined the two, which helped make things feel a little bit better, but I'm still not big on the part. There's also a harmonica bit. I kinda broke down and went back to my old standby of “well let's just make this part really noisy” which is a little bit of a crux, I admit.

In general I like the song. It's fun. It's fast, it's mean, and it breaks up some of the more introspective stuff. As well, I've just been feeling really uncomfortable with releasing an album of introspective naval gazy music. Like, I get it, I don't really have a platform. It's not like many people listen to me. Still though, there's so much awful shit going on in this world right now that I'm fortunate enough to be mostly sheltered by. I haven't participated in any protests either. I feel like I have to talk about it. In the end though I'm just busy with this self absorbed bullshit. I'm glad, then, that there's something political on this album that captures that feeling. I hope to be a little bit more worldly with my songwriting. I've done at least two very personal albums, and two high concept albums, I hope to maybe turn my focus outward into the world next time.

[lazyupdates]

Ever since Shashanka Ghosh’s Veere Di Wedding (VDW) was announced, one name, other than film’s leading ladies, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Swara Bhasker, Sonam Kapoor and Shikha Talsania, that has been making headlines is that of actor Sumeet Vyas. The good-looking actor is seen playing, Kareena’s beau Rishabh in the film. It’s for the first time that Sumeet is seen sharing the screen with Kareena and to say the least, their sizzling chemistry has already become the talk of the town. Despite the presence of four strong women characters in VDW, Sumeet impressively manages to make a cut in his individualistic way. Bankrolled by Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Telefilms in association with Anil Kapoor Films & Communication Network and Saffron Broadcast & Media Ltd, Veere Di Wedding is a story about four best friends trying to figure out their lives and the institution of marriage. The film has already grossed whopping 75 crores globally and nearing the 50-crore mark at home.

It was back in 2009 when Sumeet started his career with a television show titled Woh Hue Na Hamare. Ever since then there has been no looking back for the committed aspirant. The dashing actor has also been part of web series and short films. His last release before VDW was High Jack this May, which was a totally different in genre in comparison to his latest release. But since VDW hit the screens on June 1, it’s been celebration time for Vyas. The superhit film marks his entry into the big bright world of commercial cinema as an actor, who can straddle both genres. Sumeet says with confidence, “I believed I was killing it. I believed I was spot on!” Considering the number of audiences that the film is inviting into theatres and the fact that the celebration continues unabated, we can’t but believe him… Excerpts from an exclusive Filmfare interview below… Read on…

Your film High Jack (director Akarsh Khurana), which was a stoner comedy had a unique concept.

I liked the idea (story of three disgruntled employees of a failing airline who decide to hijack a plane).  After hearing the script, I was thrilled. Yeah! It turned out quite well. (Laughs) I did my best, can’t say much about the numbers though.

Like your character in High Jack, are you also more of a DJ in real life as well?

No, not at all. In real life, I hardly go out. That’s the reason why I was keen on doing that role. I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and attended a couple of gigs. Like how bands like Nucleya and others operate and set up things. That’s the fun of it. Step out of your own comfort zone and do something, which you’ve never experienced before.

You’ve done middle of the road films like Guddu Ki Gun (2015) and Parched (2015) and now commercial cinema with Veere Di Wedding. How does it feel crossing from art to the mart?

It’s a wonderful feeling to experiment with different kinds of cinema. You may not be able to control how well a film does. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying doing different things. I’m genuinely glad that there’s a great buzz around VDW, a great buzz around me being part of this journey. And as you know the response so far for the film and for me has been quite phenomenal.

With two women producers (Rhea Kapoor and Ekta Kapoor) and four leading ladies, did you feel like an outsider on the sets sometimes?

No, not really. I have known all of them extremely well. I have known Swara well. I have known Shikha. I happened to meet Ekta a couple of times. Shashanka Ghosh (director) and I also knew each other. In fact, the day we met, we connected. He called me saying he wanted to discuss the film and give a brief narration of my part. So, when we met we spoke for exactly 15 minutes about the film. (Smiles) After that we kept chatting about random stories.

Have you ever worked with Shashanka Ghosh in the past considering he used to direct ads also?

No, actually it was around 10-12 years back when I first met him. I met him after he had just done his first film. I wanted to work with him as an assistant director. Since then we have been in touch and I have followed his work closely.

In Veere Di Wedding, your character Rishabh is shown extremely committed to that of Kareena’s Kalindi. Please elaborate…

Actually, both the characters are extremely committed to each other. The difference is just that he wants to marry her while she’s hesitant. She believes what’s the need to marry in today’s day and age when everything is going quite well.

Are you this committed in real life also?

(Laughs) Well, I try to be. In general, I am bit of a sucker for loyalty.

Are you a romantic at heart?

I am a romantic at heart. I like to be in long-term relationships. I have not had any flings. I just can’t do it. At some stage in life, I thought I should try it out. But it’s just not me. It just doesn’t work for me.

How was it working with Kareena? Was the chemistry easy to come by?

It was great working with her given the fact she’s so driven. After all these years and everything that she has achieved in life, she’s so welcoming and warm to anyone who comes on the set. She knows her lines well, what scene precedes the one we are shooting right now and what scene will follow… she’s aware of it all. So, that level of commitment is inspiring and needs appreciation. Kareena’s a through professional. She’s not one of those people, who come on the sets to faff around and make friends. She’s there to work and she’s extremely intelligent and efficient, she conserves her energy for work. I have not seen her fool around on the sets. That’s what even I do on the sets, which a lot of people might find boring and snobbish. But I believe I should conserve my energy for the day and give my best to what I have come for.

Tell us about the first sequence you shot with her in Veere Di Wedding…

We shot the wedding card sequence in the house. Actually, that was the first time we met also. Before the shoot began, we didn’t get the time to meet and talk. She was travelling. When she came back, I was busy shooting something else. We met straight on the sets and Shashanka being Shashanka said, ‘Hi Kareena, this is Sumeet.’ Kareena and I greeted each other. (Laughs) The next moment Shashanka started explaining the scene, ‘Okay so let’s get into the scene… you guys have met three years back and you two are really into each other…’ I was like, ‘Dude, give us some breather!’ To her credit, Kareena initially makes the effort to break the ice and make the other actor comfortable. Much of the credit goes to her for doing that.

Are you a Kareena Kapoor Khan fan in real life also?

Honestly, I am a great admirer of her work. Even before I had signed on the film, I believed she was one of the few stars, who could really act. She’s someone, who knows the craft as well apart from looking absolutely gorgeous. So yeah, I have always admired her and her performances. I even told her that. I liked her acts in Omkara (director Vishal Bhardwaj) and Chameli (director Sudhir Mishra).

If you had to pick one, what would be your one favourite film of Kareena?

Well, this is tough. I guess Chameli. I absolutely appreciated her efforts in Chameli. She pushed herself to achieve excellence. I loved her persona and performance in Omkara. But Omkara was essentially an ensemble film. Even in that she made her presence felt. Her character appeared vulnerable and believable, as it was supposed to in the film.

If you had to rate Kareena on a scale of 10 on her acting skills, what would it be?

I believe that will get me in a lot of trouble. Having said that, she’s easily a 9/10. She’s bang on, she doesn’t take time to arrive into her role. That’s what is commendable about her. She’s naturally gifted, she’s inherited the talent.

Okay, tell us about your favourite moment from the film?

There have been several such moments. But the way we shot the sangeet dance sequence is memorable. We were shooting the Pappi le loon number. I spent almost two to three days rehearsing for it. I thought the girls are professionals in doing it while I was doing it for the first time. In my mind, I believed I was pretty bang on and was doing a good job. After a couple of takes, Shashanka came and told Kareena, ‘You’re looking too perfect. While Sumeet is someone who’s a little uncomfortable with this whole dance scenario. So, it would be nice if you could look a bit uncomfortable!’ Then he turned to me and said, ‘Sumeet you’re doing well. This half way thing you’re doing is great. That’s what we want.’ I was like what are you saying, I thought I was killing it. I believed I was spot on. So, that’s a sweet memory. At the music launch of VDW, Kareena said she loved throwing you off the moon in one of the sequences of the film. Comment…

(Laughs) I didn’t love falling off the moon, let me just put it this way. But it was a really funny sequence. In fact, when we were rehearsing, we were coming up with all kinds of weird stories heard from weddings and how things went wrong there. When such stunts go wrong on a wedding day, it’s really stupid. That shouldn’t happen. But yes, this was indeed a funny sequence.

So finally, Kareena and you get married in the film…

Well the film essentially revolves around the wedding and all that happens around it. When it will happen, how will it happen… that was the core driver of the narrative. The film was woven around the marriage between Rishabh and Kalindi… and it finally does happen!

The film’s been trending with its hashtag, #ItsNotAChickFlick. Do you agree with it?

Yeah! It sounds demeaning if you term the film as a chick flick. Firstly, I don’t understand why everyone is making a big deal out of four friends going on a holiday. We are in an age where it shouldn’t come as a shocker that four girls decide to have a good time and take off on a vacation and behave like normal people. Being dubbed as ‘a chick flick’ is limiting it. It’s a story about four friends essentially, their lives, how they fight situations, support each other and hold themselves and their bond together.

Would you say that Veere Di Wedding is finally your big ladder to the world of commercial cinema?

Not really. I don’t like to put all the burden of my expectations regarding my career onto one project. That would be quite unfair. Also somewhere, it would take away the credit of all the work that I have done so far in various mediums. I hope VDW does extremely well. I wish that people like my work. But I don’t wish to burden the film by calling it my launchpad and view myself as the rocket all set to be launched with it. I just hope that people come and enjoy the film. If they have a good time it will obviously benefit everyone associated with the film as well as me.

Sumeet Vyas Best Work over the years:

Parched (2015, Film)

Guddu Ki Gun (2015, Film)

Permanent Roommate 2 (2016, Web Series)

TVF Tripling (2016, Web Series)

Love Per Square Foot (2018, Film)

High Jack (2018, Digital Film)

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