#ive been pandered to

[ourselvers]

the new south park special is looking great

[dullahandyke]

Films good movies good banshees of inisherin was good

[pinchan]

[id: chibi fanart of four out of the seven archons, includes: venti. he's skipping cheerfully, pointing his finger towards the sky. behind him is the mondstadt emblem, resembling a windmill. zhongli. he's standing calmly with his hands behind his back. behind him is the liyue emblem, resembling a weight. a chibi art of ei. she's brandishing her sword calmly yet menacingly. behind her is the inazuma emblem, resembling a torii gate with an eye looming above it, and three eyes nestling under it. a chibi art of nahida. she's floating cheerfully. behind her is the sumeru emblem, resembling a branching tree with heart patterns. /end id]

4/7 archons

[myattman]

The frontman for the first opener looks like if connor mcdavid was 10% gayer and 5% hotter and had never played a sport in his life (except for probably tee ball) and he's soooo fuckable for that actually

[coriphallus]

DA: The Veilguard Spoiler review pt2 - The Grime

this is a hard one to tackle without strawmaning anyone because itll be a direct response to alot of defense ive seen for the games morality system so ill just start by saying, iykyk

never a genre has been better equipped to discuss ethics than the interactive medium of games and yes, bioware games have been doing it since baldurs gate and no, theyve not always been 'centrist' and 'conservative'. im not even gonna entertain that idea. do you remember the cultural landscape DA:O released to? the landscape it was developed in? dont give me that just because zevran doesnt write in his little notes -that you can conveniently read- 'gay good. not me but me bisexual'

Thedas is a flawed world and its a world thats just as desperate to hang on to its status quo as our own. every time you play an elf thats thriving, or a human thats queer, or a mage thats not institutionalised you exist in a world that doesnt want you, it is an act of defiance that you do.

im sure we can all see why these games were so popular with the audience they can only weakly try to pander to today.

derailing time again; so one of my favourite paintings of all time is saturn devouring his son. it makes me feel so uncomfortable that it gave me nightmares as a child, and i still cant look at it without feeling this knot in my throat. i hate it. i hate how it makes me feel, how that man looks at me in terror like its begging me for help while cannibalising another. weird story but i was bewitched by that painting as a little kid.

it is not a well drawn painting, the proportions are all over the place, brush strokes crude and inelegant. it doesnt even have a deeper story nor was it intended for an audience. i will never know what goya thought of when drawing it.

i thought alot about that painting later in my life when i was struggling with mental health problems, i thought about goya alot too as an adult and after learning about his life. i stared at his paintings and remembered when i told my dad that i hated [saturns] big eyes and hed jokingly said "it would be scarier if he didnt have eyes"

i know what the drawing looks like now, nearly everyone with a little access to the internet does. if somebody removed saturn from it, we'd still be left with a brutalised headless carcass of a man in a canvas too big for itself. if we removed that too all we'd be left with would be void.

i dont want to live in a world where all i know of goya is his rococo work, i dont want to stare at the painting of a void knowing what filled it before. i hated every second of germinale but i never wanted it to be anything other than itself, the story it tells could never hold credence otherwise.

DAV has done its best to paint over it, but its still on the old canvas and i cant look away from the negative space its left, i know whats under it and it unsettles me, infuriates me. it hands me a palette with baby blues and pinks and tells me to paint over it to make a prettier painting. didnt i hate the eyes? wasnt it gross before?

i am not going to write why we need some grime in art, but its absence is disheartening. and to those who say hanged people in the streets or blighted villagers is dark and mature ill say no. its a kids idea of maturity, its the aesthetic of it with no substance. it means nothing to me if rook can just drench themselves in gallons of blight as they crawl through it. the horror of blight has never been the black goo and slimy tentacles, or the monster woman with way too many tits. it is watching people you love slowly fade away, it is a woman who was forced to cannibalise the contaminated flesh of her friends because the woman she loved betrayed her, it was the sheer scale and inevitability of it.

one area we go to is overrun by it and the game begs me to feel hopeful that flowers are growing again when it never let me lose hope. people have already prevailed, they have roofs over their heads and a steady supply of food on their tables. their spirit is unwavering.

its bad, everybody says. the sky is grey and soil is blackened, as my rook turns some statues to access a haunted house whos inhabitants are long gone and the only story they could ever tell is gone with them.

if the question is do i want to see famine? plague? misery? abuse? assault? the answer is yes. yes. i want to see it all of the filth. i rather face the fucking monster head on with its big bulging eyes and misshapen limbs than stare at the abyss its absence leaves on the canvas.

and if nothing else, this bastardization is disrespectful to the people who gave the IP its fame.

Why choose to be good?

back in the bsn days ive wondered why, even in a fictional universe where your choices have no real-life repercussions what-so-ever, players had more 'good' playthroughts than 'bad'?

what happens when you start killing NPCs, when youre needlessly mean to them? the game actively closes off its own content. you get less out of the game. just as, completely incidentally, you'd get less out of your life if you just started killing everyone around you. The world would be emptier, youd be alone.

in that quote i stole from good place chidi doesnt ask "why be good?" the wording is painfully deliberate. doing good is always a choice, and often not the easy one. what makes the act matter is that you chose to do it, even when given 6 other options not to. did i stop in the middle of an important quest to help a man retrieve an heirloom from a darkspawn infested hut? did i hear what that heirloom meant to him?

i cant stop thinking about that speech ever since playing this game after knowing its predecessors.

So, why do it then? Why choose to be good, every day, if there is no guaranteed reward we can count on, now or in the afterlife? I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.

i cant stop looking at this game that spits on its own legacy and think how could they have missed what fundamentally makes us human so bad, what makes us relate and empathise with eachother. what makes us pick the option to interact with an npc who openly hates what hawke is, and allow us to see the traumatised man underneath.

these characters of fiction are written by real people. i have absolutely nothing in common with a guy from canada yet for a brief moment in time i feel a sense of camaraderie as ive felt with goya that i couldnt articulate as a kid.

Nothing too terrible

DAV says it over and over again -as its wont to do with every piece of its flimsy morality- that people can change, people can be redeemed yet it shines as the game with most static characters in its franchise. it simply says things, and since it has nothing to show for it it makes sure to say it repeatedly, in case you missed it.

so when i first played DAO i was in high school, i started with a human noble because fresh out of dark side edgy kotor fame i wanted to be a posh brat. also because, ya kno, we were poor my entire life up until that point and i wanted to have power.

i committed to it, even as the game stripped cousland of everything he had, because i thought a man like him would. i picked the racist options, the sexist options, the options a man in couslands place would. halfway point of the game as i exhausted the initial dialogues something happened; this man who got paid to kill people, who showed no remorse nor care for his victims, begged my cousland to stil his blade.

and i did. i thought maybe he would be as confused as i was, maybe he had a moment of clarity but from thereon bit by bit he was less of an asshole. the characters grew around me, and my character grew around them. i chose to be good because -textually- we were in this together, at the end of all things.

rook is not a character, theyre a mascot. and quite frankly i think they may be a very evangelical mascot because they remind me of evangelical preachings of jesus more than the man from the bible (and i say this as someone whos only exposure to christianity has been through foreign media and the bible ive read that one time). they are the epitome of do no evil and their existence hinges on the frail concept of moral purity. theyre not a person trying to do good, who wants to be good, they are 'good'

-and lemme tell you its a wild choice to have someone like that locked in a prison of 'regret'-

rook can be mean to only one person in the game, and thats someone they dont even have a personal beef with for the most part. but even then they would be shouting at a wall because the game doesnt only undermine them with its narrative, but also every npc in the game suddenly gets possessed by the ghost of wattpad rejects past for a moment to tell them everyone can be redeemed. and i believe it because i played the other games, i believe it because i know zevran and sten and morrigan, isabela and thom and iron bull and dorian. i know it because i can see the vague shapes behind the new coat of paint but i am not rook.

so no, the game fails to get people-can-change points by its own merit, and it cannot gain points from its prequels because it destroyed them. none of those characters i watched grow exist in this universe. zevran cant exist with DAV crows, fenris` story cant exist in an imperium with invisible slaves only glimpsed through empty cages and broken chains left scattered on the ground. i dont know which morrigan this NPC is, is it the woman who grew to learn kindness, who begged to sleep with her friend just to save them despite knowing it would play into the plans of a destiny she so desperately tried to break free from? or is she the clever puppet her mother groomed her to be who wanted to harness the power of a god? i dont know her, i dont know this dorian or this isabela beyond their names ipso facto this is not a sequel.

bellara asks an assassin why he is trying to save the world and his answer is "ive done some things in the past im not too proud of. nothing too terrible, but some of it was bad." and i can hear the games desperation for me to not engage with its material in that 'nothing too terrible'

lucanis never killed anyone innocent, taash never harmed an animal they could shoo of or reason with, emmrich venerates the dead and is friends with every wisp he pulls to use in menial labour, davrin joined the wardens willingly because he wanted to do good...

rook tells harding that her anger is justified when shes not even allowed anger of her own.

nothing too terrible.

aside from creating boring and nonsensical and static characters it creates a dreadful echochamber that we're forced to sustain. No taash is not valid, their gender is but their behaviour is not and for the character to grow and mature it needs to be addressed. lucanis doesnt need to be pampered in shock blankets he needs to see how repressing his problems and jeopardising his health puts people around him in danger etc etc. they are adults and they need to learn more complex ways of healing. and if rooks flaw is that theyre an enabler, then that needs to be acknowledged by the narrative in some way too, and not mindlessly endorsed because they say some buzzwords.

none of these interpersonal relationships feels real because none of these people feel real beyond some draft of themes and tropes. some interactions literally remind me of two bots in facebook comments

i look at this dialogue wheel with familiar symbols and all im reminded of is hawke telling carver he carries every death with him, of him telling his uncle that he wasnt fast enough, of him begging the person he loves to tell him that his mothers death wasnt his fault.

and they dont. they just sit there with him.

[purplespacekitty]

dude, i can’t get over Li Nalas.

he knew what was going on from the beginning. sure, a moment of brief confusion and then the realization that these people he’s been trapped in a labor camp with for the past ten fucking years, Memory Alpha says, believe his return to Bajor will bring restoration. the realization that they have such confidence in him as to place his life above their own.

he gets shot and then he’s hauled off to a shuttlecraft within minutes, forced to leave behind his decade-old reality. to leave behind people who shared it with him until just moments ago. and he’s dying, maybe. in excruciating pain, so he can’t even object, can’t even think. and Kira looks at him with this intense certainty. like he’s the missing puzzle piece she’s been scouring every last corner of the universe for. only he knows he isn’t.

and then he’s off to sickbay before anyone else despite his protests, where a human operates on him. a doctor who won’t stop regaling him with all the wonderful things he’s supposed to have done, all the battles he’s supposed to have won.

he is on his feet soon after, clean and dressed in warm clothes. he has no time to rest or breathe in his newfound freedom before he is swept up for a tour of the station he knew too long ago. and now every Bajoran he comes across in this ore processing center turned glitzy space mall looks at him the way Kira does, like they know him, like they need him. their words and shining smiles of praise when he reluctantly stands to address a crowd of them tells him just how much they believe they do. he does not forget the ones he left on Cardassia IV.

it is with relief that he hands the crowd off to Jaro. a deep sigh of familiar aggravation just beneath the surface of his skin as Jaro panders to the crowd's enthusiasm for his return.

that scene where Sisko shows him his quarters, i don’t blame him for striding over so tentatively but nevertheless excitedly to the small flower in a vase. Sisko hardly notices it but it is the first thing Li locks eyes on. a plant. a sprig of life clipped and close to its end, kept alive only by means necessary for display. a being which demands nothing of him here besides fresh water and a light to lean towards.

he stows away on a ship, running now, not from the Cardassians, but from Bajor. from the lies others fabricated on his behalf. Sisko - after the Tygarian freighter captain has dragged him by the ear back to the station, after Li has laid bare his truth in earnest - tells Li they are not lies. they are legends. and Bajor needs them.

and Li Nalas, a man encased in a shell of legends crafted by hands which are not his own, is tired. but he accepts the responsibility his people have placed on his shoulders. because Sisko is right. they do need him.

never mind the political unrest on his home world or the ministrations of the politicians, the Kai, the Circle: he can hardly wrap his head around it all, much less speak to it. the Bajor he has returned to is not the Bajor he knows. his people are afraid with a new kind of fear, one of unbearable uncertainty. they look to him and he can barely speak. but he will play the part he’s been told to. he will be a good soldier. that, he can do.

in the moments just before his death, he is Kira's puzzle piece. he is the flower in the vase. he is simple. uncomplicated. dying.

only then does he rejoice. he may finally rest.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

while i would prefer the games having really well written narratives at the cost of no fanservice like most people, ive honestly always enjoyed the fanservice and been totally okay with it bc they have always pandered to both women and men and gay people for years now too. this is leagues ahead of the persona series, which has been allergic to the concept of even a female protagonist since persona 3 portable, and allergic to the idea of depicting gay people nonjudgementally in a non subtextual way since the late 90s (persona 2), whereas fire emblem has had both since 2016! (even if fates was lacking in the gay compartment - gay marriage in 2016, in a japanese game, was insane.) i think the fanservice level we had in both fe3h and fee was perfect. it didn't take away from the story, and in fact added to it in most cases, and female characters could wear pants unlike in fates. thanks to this fanservice, we got (as an example) dorothea saying she wants a husband OR a wife in three hopes. isnt that amazing for a jrpg series? i love fire emblem so much. I cant wait to see who they randomly make gay in the fe4 remake

.

[goodqueenaly]

Was King Maekar or any of his vassals directly involved in the downfall of House Lothston? Also, how much of Danelle's rumored dark magic was real and how much of it was misogynistic propaganda?

Long, more under the cut:

We know virtually nothing about the downfall of House Lothston, other than that “[t]heir line was ended in madness and chaos when Lady Danelle Lothston turned to the black arts during the reign of King Maekar I”. Whether King Maekar himself participated in bringing down House Lothston and raising the Whents in their place, or whether he merely oversaw a local rebellion or indirect royal response against Lady Danelle and performed the executive cleanup afterward, is impossible at this moment to say. Certainly, Harrenhal sits close enough to the border of the Crownlands that those Houses sworn directly to the crown could have participated in dethroning Danelle, either because they had a vested local interest in doing so and/or because Maekar may have seen them as a useful ready force to respond quickly. Additionally, Maekar was certainly not shy about responding personally, and especially militarily, to threats in the realm: his leadership in the First and Third Blackfyre Rebellions, his probable intervention against Dagon Greyjoy, and of course his fatal action during the rebellion at Starpike. Given that history, it’s entirely possible Maekar himself led a royal/Crownlands-supported force to depose Lady Lothston (vaguely akin to Bloodraven doing so during the events of “The Mystery Knight”). However, with the only other specific detail in the end of the Lothston line being that the Whents “were given Harrenhal as a reward for their service in bringing the Lothstons down”, this could easily have been a local rebellion led by the Lothstons’ vassals and tenants, and simply recognized afterward by the crown. 

Do I think Danelle Lothston was genuinely guilty of some level of crime, possibly linked to “black arts”? I think it likely. (Which is not to say there was not also, and perhaps at the same time, misogynistic propaganda against her - more on that momentarily.) Number one, GRRM seems to have written the members of House Lothston almost uniformly negatively, or at least without much in the way of positive or heroic attributes. Danelle’s (probable) predecessors as rulers of Harrenhal, Lucas and Manfryd (or Manfred), are the most clearly villainous: Lucas infamously remembered as “the Pander” for his callous promotion of his wife and daughter as Aegon IV’s perhaps simultaneous mistresses; Manfryd decried as “Manfryd o’ the Black Hood”, marked by his vague but ominous “black deeds”. Falena, née Stokeworth, hardly comes across better, given her disturbing sexual relationship with (that is, rape of) the 14-year-old Prince Aegon; whether Falena actively encouraged the later King Aegon’s dual sexual interest, or was forced to do so by her husband, only furthers her negative characterization or adds the unfortunately familiar context of Westerosi patriarchy to the affair. Even the most sympathetic of the Lothstons, young Jeyne, seems to be presented more as an object of pity rather than as a laudable figure in her own right - a teenager used and abused by virtually (or actually) every adult in her life, then abandoned when she no longer proved useful to those adults. 

While none of these figures was specifically described as using magic or “black arts”, the point of the above is to say that I think GRRM is writing the Lothstons along the same lines as, say, the Brackens or Peakes - in other words, narrative heels, almost always the villains of whatever situation the author writes for them. In light of that dynastic negativity, I could see where the author will actually have Danelle dabble in supernatural practices, given that Westeros is a world where magic, including blood magic, is real, potent, and potentially nefarious. Whatever Danelle may have wanted to gain by such magic (and the potential of sorcery in this world is too wide to speculate with any real certainty, given what little else we have on her), she was in a position where, if she so chose, she could magically exploit the resources of Harrenhal’s vast estate - the potential sorcerous knowledge its library might possess (or that she could obtain from other places), as well as the smallfolk she could summon and use - for that purpose.

Number two, I think the very obvious real-world inspiration GRRM is drawing on for Lady Danelle is Elizabeth Báthory - or, maybe more specifically, the popular conception of Elizabeth Báthory. Whatever the actual truth of  her crimes, the legend of Elizabeth Báthory is one of maniacal, even supposedly supernatural bloodshed and cruelty - a sadistic, pseudo-vampiric figure who tortured and killed her young, female victims in a quest for eternal youth and beauty. As GRRM tends to rely on (often woefully inaccurate, ahem Henry VIII) popular ideas of historical figures, I think he’ll likely do the same here - not delving too deeply into research on the real-life Báthory, more simply drawing on the historical/pseudo-historical legend. Again, because this is a world where magic, including blood magic, is real, it’s even easier for GRRM to take the fantastical version of Báthory that has come down in myth and present her more literally with Danelle Lothston. 

Number three, I think the idea of a malicious, and indeed feudally and sorcerously malicious, figure being brought down by the intervention of the crown under King Maekar fits so perfectly with what I see as the development of our Egg from prince into king. What Egg has begun to observe in these first three Tales of Dunk and Egg, and what I think he’ll see more and more explicitly as the Tales continue, is unchecked aristocratic privilege turned to the worst degree, especially against the smallfolk of these estates - torturing them to death for unclear crimes (as Dunk sees in the opening of “The Sworn Sword”), placing them in the bloody middle of their highborn feuds (as I think we’ll read about, quite literally, in “The Village Hero”), or simply letting them suffer without the expected protection of their overlords while those lieges squabble over titles and position (which I think will be a major issue in whatever “The She-Wolves of Winterfell” ends up being called). Lady Danelle being guilty of at least some level of crime, and perhaps blood magic-based crime, against her people would escalate this issue even more for Egg: here was a great local magnate who, despite her sometime allegiance to the crown (as seen in the Second Blackfyre Rebellion), had exercised her personal power at the cost, in blood and/or lives, of the people she was ostensibly obliged to guard and nurture - thereby proving again to Egg, perhaps, the value of promoting greater rights for the smallfolk during his eventual reign. Likewise having Egg argue, perhaps, for his father to bring down, or at least support the bringing down, of a woman who both so grossly abused her feudal responsibilities toward her people and was potentially notorious in her use of sorcery, the author may foreshadow Egg making a similar, but possibly even more dramatic, decision against Bloodraven - denouncing another sorcerer and sometime supporter of the crown who had nevertheless allowed for great suffering among the smallfolk, and who had committed too great a crime to go unpunished. 

Now, again, does Lady Lothston being guilty of some level of crime mean that there is no possibility of misogyny or sexism associated with her downfall? Of course not. Indeed, the very idea that Danelle bathed in blood - a rumor very much recalling Egg’s report that Shiera Seastar “bathe[d] in blood to keep her beauty” - reflects the (male) Westerosi conception of “older” women (again, by Westerosi standards) as “handsome” rather than beautiful, and even that designation is often a concession in light of their age (see, for example, Alerie Hightower). Likewise, because Danelle was a woman ruling in her own right in a patriarchal aristocracy which expects power to flow from males, through males, to males, Danelle was from the outset subject; again, while I still think Danelle was likely guilty of some level of crime, the largely negative social conception of female rule may have formed additional, sexist context to her downfall - “if only there had been a strong male hand at Harrenhal”, for example, or “well, that’s what happens when you give a woman so much power”. (And of course, I tend to think Hoster Tully may have eyed the later female inheritance of the Lothstons’ successors at Harrenhal, the Whents, with an idea of taking advantage of similar misogynistic unease.) Too, Harrenhal’s historical association with women of allegedly maliciously supernatural reputation - Rhaena, who spent her last years at Harrenhal “feared … as a witch” by locals, and Alys Rivers, the so-called “witch queen of Harrenhal”, who held the castle in supposed draconic defiance of King Aegon III - may have again aided the potentially misogynistic context of Danelle’s downfall. Again, Danelle does not have to have been completely guiltless - Alys Rivers certainly maintained an active rebellion against the Targaryen government, and was - for her to be lumped in with the “witches” of Harrenhal’s past, and to have her crimes take on an exaggerated, sensationally supernatural nature - the stories of sending out giant bats to capture children, for instance. Danelle Lothston being guilty and Danelle Lothston being subject to misogynistic prejudices are not mutually exclusive ideas; the author’s excellent exploration of that dynamic with, say, Cersei is proof of that. 

[cactusringed]

my problem is that i have too much empathy lol. i cant help but sympathise with how... horrifically difficult and stressful it must be, for the ccs. can't do the same as past series whether its gimmicks or alliances or else people will criticise you and call you boring. cant have too wild of a gimmick or else people will criticise you and claim the other players, your FRIENDS, dislike being there with you. cant make an in character comment about a fight being unfair with the understanding as a player that you dont mind and that its part of the fun, because people will drag you to hell and back. cant be a woman in a series without needing to turn off comments on most of your videos to avoid the brunt of people's harrassment. cant play with your friends because people will criticise you for it. cant murder people in the "murder people indiscriminately" series because people will call you out for it. if you don't construct enough of a complex and deep storyline in this silly improv minecraft series then you're a failure, and you're boring, and there's no point in watching you. if you make too much of a story people will call you a tryhard, or cringe, and say it's too embarassing to watch you, or that you're trying to railroad the lore and story. cant make nods to the fanbase or else you're pandering. cant make a series you yourself think is fun or else you're not listening to the fanbase.

obviously people are allowed to be critical, but i just can't, personally, be harsh, when taking all of this into account. it's the thing about consuming media made by people like youtubers -- theyre too real, too integrated in the fanbase, in the community. if i call a show stupid and boring i can go to town knowing execs and professionally trained writers were paid the whole way and are very unlikely to see my tumblr post. but i cant feel that way about youtubers. some of it is a me problem lol. but i don't want to see them as just content producing machines. i think its fine to criticise, you can even be harsh if you want. but i cant lol. and i dont really want to, either. i think it's worth it to put oneself in their shoes and ask oneself, "what would i do different? how would people react to it? is it feasible?" and "when something doesn't work whilst youre in the middle of doing it... what DO you do?". i prefer to keep that softer outlook. i think it's beneficial to do. even tho ive several times been told im an asshole for telling people perhaps they should be nice to each other lol.

[thenightling]

One pet peeve I have about the Interview with the vampire TV show is how obsessed with the vampire's sexuality the show runner and marketing people seem to be. The vampires were physically unable to have sex in the books. Some of you might go "But what about Pandora!" Read it again before trying to use that as proof. We're thoroughly told us they couldn't actually do anything. The Vampire Lestat had Lestat compare vampires to Osiris because of the organ Osiris lost. The idea of making love is part of what tempted Lestat in the novel Tale of the Body thief. The only reason Lestat was able to have a son in Prince Lestat was because he took part in an experiment that temporarily rendered him human via plot device IV drip. In the novels the vampires experienced intimacy through blood exchange but that's besides the point. Everyone who read the book knows that all of Anne Rice's vampires are bisexual (Pansexual as many would call it now) and have been from the start. And yet I feel almost insulted, pandered to where it's like that's all there is to the characters in the marketing for the show. Don't believe me? Check out the official Instagram or Facebook. It's like "Oh, and they're gay. Have we mentioned they're gay." "They're Queer! Did you know they're queer?! Look, they're queer!" And it's like... And? I miss how the books treated it as something nonchalant, natural, and even mundane. By the time you got to the novel Queen of the damned you viewed Armand and Daniel as nonchalantly as you'd view romantic depictions of Dracula with his Mina. (Yes, I know Dracula and Mina were not lovers in the novel but that's not the point.) When you keep having to point it out as an oddity you are "othering" and acting like it's something weird and should be treated as weird. The novels normalized the relationships so that you just accepted that everyone was pan. There's no homophobia, and no constant reminders of "Yes, they're queer!" Even Lestat's "single" that dropped last month had the line "Here come the gays." ...Why? (All the lyrics are terrible, by the way). I was hoping the show would be more like Lost Girl in that the assumption is everyone is potentially attracted to everyone and no one makes a big deal about it. But instead it's like a song lyric from Doctor Horrible. "Next up, 'Whose gay?'"

[magpod-confessions]

tmagp is honestly so genuinely terrible in comparison to tma. ive given it 16 episodes at this point and i give up! i concede. alex is responsible for seemingly almost all of the writing based on the credits and he’s just kind of bad at it to be honest. the statements are bland, the dialogue shifts between ‘okay but boring’ and ‘actively terrible’ on a dime, and the podcast itself is so heavily reliant on its predecessor to build intrigue while actively speeding through any and all intrigue available. while it’s understandable tmagp would feel faster paced due to its shorter total episode count and different writing style, it’s pacing just doesn’t fit a horror podcast. many plot hooks were left unresolved in tma, which added to the complexity of the narrative. tmagp, on the other hand, seems to be constructing an elaborate conspiracy board of plot threads that are hit on nearly every episode just to remind you that they are, in fact, still there, beating most narrative suspense to death with a shovel. also, shitty mascot and ‘how do you do fellow kids’ horror! Jesus Christ Bonzo’s been Bonzoed to fucking death and he wasn’t even that interesting in the first place, and the latest episode with the social media influencer speaking in an amalgamation of AAVE, slang years outdated, and slang years after the episode allegedly takes place is painful to listen to not because it’s ‘effective satire’ of social media influencers, but because it’s just. bad. it’s written so over the top it fails at both at being satire And at being horror, because the only horror is that im still listening to this fucking podcast.

idk. there’s always a chance im glorifying tma as a series because it’s got a certain nostalgia to it at this point, but honestly as a horror podcast listener outside of tma it just fails completely at its medium. the character writing has its moments, i do in particular like Gwen and Celia, though even then half of Gwen’s initial dialogue is just: ‘get back to work’, ‘you should be working’, ‘we work here’, etc etc, and Celia cannot go a single episode without mentioning that she is, in fact, from a different dimension, something which has been ‘hinted’ at so many times it feels like alex assumes the audience is listening with half their brain off, which given the aggressive fandom pandering, might legitimately be his approach to writing this.

.

[spooksier]

hello! ive been following ur art for quite a while (like, since tma was ending time-wise) and i wanted to say: 1) ur art is so beautiful and seeig it evolve is so incredible its so unique and pretty and 2) it has been DELIGHTFUL to see u get into mp100. legitimately. i love this show and seeing more people get into it is wonderful i hope u have been having a fantastic time here. i will leave u with 1 quastion if u would like to answer. what are ur favorite arc(s) and/or characters ? i apologize if someoes already asked that tho LOL

thank you!! im glad i finally decided to watch it everybody was right ive never felt more pandered to by a show in my life, it did some cocomelon shit to me.

picking a favorite character out of all of them is literally impossible every one is a characterization slam dunk in such a ridiculous way. though it may have to go to my number one boy shigeo kageyama (who reminds me of a different ticking time bomb of a boy......

) but the whole main cast is amazing you can tell everybody involved loved these characters (i need somebody to tell teru about the concept of homosexuality though.)

[justanotherhh]

hold up wdym fizz is word of god demi? did a cast/crew member confirm it?👀

hey hello howdy!

before i get into anything i need to disclaim, for my own health, so bear with me:

first of all, i want to stress that word-of-god is fundamentally meaningless in the sense of actual canon (being a teenager under the reign of that book series about a magic school written by a bigot + the whole 2010s fondness of declaring characters to be gay maybe if you keep watching *wink wink* only to turn around and call queer fans deranged for caring too much... ive got no time for that nonsense)

on the other hand, i think there's also something to say for a show that's about 99.999% canonically queer characters and that sometimes narrative is showing not telling... that is to say... even if there hadn't been any kind of word of god, especially in a verse in which relationship structures are built along fundamentally non-heteronormative dominant lines, one gets to analyse different forms of queerness with far more deliberation than one might in a Very Straight Show In Which We Are Aware That This Was Not Intentional

on the... third? hand. specifically aspec identities, still very underrepresented, still very disputed, still very hard-done by, even when the visuals really do lean into a show-don't-tell obviousness (see: all that marketing for alastor being very aromantic and supported by his narrative in the canon, and it's still not "enough," often simply because many people haven't even heard of ace, never mind aro... i digress, but i think, for relevant reasons), so fizzie being read as demi by people who know

what the heck demi even means

have the ability to engage with an aspec-analysis lens

is probably still the vast vast minority!

all this to say. it's not canon, in the way that, say, his being gay is canon, or blitzø being pan is... more canon (in the sense that the word "pan" may not occur to everyone, but it's more obvious within the queer community and those without may at least land on "bi" and be in the correct ballpark) and moxxie being bisexual is 100% indesputably-stated-out-loud canon

in order for it to be canon, it would have to imo:

either be stated out loud in canon (and even then, we get the word "ace" on hazbin and it's StiLl DiSPuTeD okok im calm...)

fizz would have to have a narrative or speech or some kind of important Beat explicitly dedicated to the fact that he Does Not Feel Sexual Attraction unless he's in love (which... honestly... if that were in connection with some kinda beat in blitzø's narrative about feeling like he's unworthy of love... im just sayin.... + it would lean very neatly into exploring fizzmodeus' being an in-universe very non-normative relationship)

in this case, i do think it's a neat little easter egg, without being pandering or *pat pat on the head,* that is supported by the text, and so yeah. fun. if they backtracked on that and in some way decided fizzarolli has had tons of casual sex that he's enjoyed/pursued... i mean, honestly without the word of god, i'd think that was kinda out of character, which leads me back to "yeah, fun easter egg, only canon insofar as it's not disputed by canon!"

disclaimer over:

this tweet stating the creator said these words, liked by the creator, this was my original reblog of it (although I do note the original poster seems to have taken it down since then)

[a-doubleh-x]

Sweet Radio Demon

Hello everyone! I didn't get a chance to talk about it, but here's my first Charlastor fanfic, which Ive been working on for a few months, now!

The story is essentially about Charlie and Alastor getting to know each other after he first joins the Hotel, except she has a crush and he's *very* interested in exploiting it. More than anything, I was invested in exploring the ups and downs a relationship between the two would have at the beginning. All the pleasurable lovebombing and pandering, but also all the heated conflicts and disagreements.

Charlie is a hopelessly romantic, optimistic, goody two shoes who can't hurt a fly and Alastor is a manipulative, confident, sadistic bastard, but somehow, I can't help but think there is something there and I wanted to explore that.

If you're interested, there's a new chapter uploaded every Friday! I'm currently at chapter 6 out of 12. It's been tough for the last few chapters as I've been getting used to my upload schedule, bit I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Hope y'all like it and, as I always say, stay tuned!

[stylezxsilvermoon]

okay yeah ! so i think i am gonna do a xmas theme, also i feel like this "promo" for cool kids / i'm faded is me trying toooooooo hard

(big rant under the cut)

, idk i just get very frustrated at these things so i think im just gonna go back to posting when i wanna, like being so real its always been my dream to be a big account and share with my readers, and at my CORE i still wanna be that but the issue is i dont know WHERE to start, and its not like im a new writer i've been writing since i was like 15 (what i'd consider the writing i like) and im just so ????!! about it, like i feel so physically incapable of being a fandom writer like i can't explain it its everything i want but everytime i work towards it i just self implode and stop posting / stop writing, like i still wanna write OBVIOUSLY but the pressure of wanting to "make it big" destroys me like everytime idek? and it seems so easy when i think about it but then when i do it its like LOL NOPE idc idc how much effort you put in. and yes it could be the fact i've never posted a complete fic so there's really nothing for people to know me for, i just feel like people get "suprised" i write on here LIKE YEAH, i post like insanely haphazardly but yeah i do!! and it feels so preformative and ugh.

also i've struggled for a long time on what i wanna do with this account, i wanna speak up about things which includes RB'ing a shit ton, but ive always had an unhealthy imbalance of what i wanna do on here, i wanna be a writing account but what abt the stuff i wanna bring to light by RB'ing, and yes i have other side accounts but they're all for fun, i dont wanna seperate my intrests because they all belong here, just like i do, its kinda my home atp. i feel like i'm one of those people who you dont miss on dash because i rarely curate my own posts and just silently reblog so ig its kinda my fault. idk, the more ive been thinking i feel like the "big fandom writer" thing isn't gonna be for me, and then AT THE SAME TIME i feel like im shooting myself in the foot everytime i complain and wanna pick up the fight again, but idk ive been whining abt it since i was like 15 and im oh so tired with everything going on in the world so i'm just gonna write my fics.

i feel like i write so diff from everyone else, like when i post something i want it to convey something in you, i want you to feel moved and feel appreciated and loved and happy reading something i make, and i dont even know if my writing is built to do that and i may be just dicksucking myself. idek. i dont wanna post for just notes i wanna talk about what i write with other people and for people to ask me why i chose what i did and why i wrote my stories and how it made them feel or what they like about it, and i just feel like im pandering to an audience that doesn't exist everytime i idek, write author's notes, ask for feedback, talk to people about what they like, i've always taken myself way too seriously and i just feel like modern fandom is so. so.

like i grew up reading 2010's fanfics and thats the kinda vibe i like creating, like 2012 chronically online wattpad stories, with long chapters and chatty authors and a bunch of funny comments, i just idk.

[cube-cumb3r]

even as a donna noble-r i dont really want a tenndonna tv spinoff. well its like i do but i think objectively ive been pandered to enough and i shouldnt get everything i want. maybe one one-off episode once every million years at MOST. maybe a guest appearance for the lols. i think big finish should go ham with it though