#like this is capitalism brainworms obviously

[kinnoth]

Disclaimer that I am not a weeb but like

Every time some news story comes out about how "wow, Japanese sports fans clean up after themselves in foreign stadium!" Or "wow, Japanese people took to the streets with their own cleaning supplies after earthquake!" etc etc there is inevitably a bunch of Americans who are like "wah, we could never have that in our country bc we're shit :("

And it's like my brothers in Christ, American culture reviles the idea of service work, in any capacity. You're the people who regard cleaners and caretakers to be the lowest rung of our society. You're the "haha you're so dumb you're gonna be a garbage man when you grow up" people. You're the "leave the mess, it's the waiter's job to clean it up" people. You're the "I am definitely ambulatory but it's my nurse's job to take care of me so it's my right to shit my pants" people.

You're the "I won't wear a mask; it's not my problem if I get strangers sick" people

Like you know who would absolutely have a menty b if we brought the idea of collective caretaking to this country? Fucking you guys.

In Japan, they have their kids do custodial duty every day after school to promote the idea that the school is the student body's ownership and responsibility.

Try handing a broom to baby Timmy and watch Timmy's mommy and daddy immediately pull him out of school because how dare you denigrate my child like this and treat him like some sort of disgusting janitor, oh my god, don't you know my children are above doing such things like caring for a collective space? Don't you know that only people we treat like shit clean up after other people? Are you implying that my Timmy is someone we should treat like shit?

Like rah rah individualism, whatever, but damn, reap it fellas, reap that sow

(This is also, ironically, why mothers are oftentimes the least respected members of a household, because who cleans up after you? Not me, I'm not your mom)

[cozmic-ash]

Reposting this reel I made on IG, cause this subject has been on my mind lately. :)

The obsession with improvement in the online art world benefits nobody. It only creates an environment of insanely high standards and petrifying fear of creating anything less than perfect. If we are expected to be CONSTANTLY improving without rest or end, anything we create that doesn't reflect that improvement means we have failed.

It's pernicious and toxic.

Obviously if you WANT to improve, you should. But no artist is obligated to improve if they don't want to. Like, if you don't WANT to learn anatomy, don't lol. Being an artist, and making art, is not about 'improvement', and to pretend that it is -- that all artists should be constantly striving to improve and reach some unattainable pinnacle of skill -- is capitalism-induced brainworms and nothing more.

Deconstruct the idea that improvement is necessary to be an artist

Kill the art cop inside your head 🥰 (< I can say that on tumblr lol)

[alpaca-clouds]

Dungeons & Dragons - Or: Why Capitalism Sucks at Making Money

If this past year managed anything, it managed to get me really into DnD. Before I did not play DnD much, rather going with Shadowrun or (heavily homebrewed) World of Darkness. But with first Honor Among Thieves releasing - and then Baldur's Gate 3 giving me brainworms tadpoles... Yeah, hurray. New hyperfixation unlocked.

But as I started to read through all the lore, but also meta stuff happening around it. And yes, I quickly understood why basically everyone was frustrated with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. But I also think, that this betrays one of the big issues with capitalist logic and how it often fails to reach an audience - for the reason I outlined before: capitalists are actually super bad at realizing what works and why, because they only judge based on spread sheets.

And yes, the headline is hyperbolic. But let me explain.

A Community-Based Game

I mean, the biggest scandal of DnD this year was probably the entire thing about the community license. And this is very much something that shows quite well, how bad WotC is at recognizing why DnD works and has worked so long.

DnD centrally has been build around this idea of community. Now, mind you: This community was very, very focused on cis white guys for the longest time, but everybody else just managed to get in there and make their own little bit of community. Which also lead to a lot of homebrew stuff, that at times tackled some issues that the rules themselves did not address at all or not well. The combat wheelchair is probably the best known example of this.

But even outside of marginalized communities... DnD always thrived through the community aspect itself. People self-publishing magazines and adventures for it since the fucking 70s. As well as play sets, dice and what-have-you. DnD was always very much about all this and thrived through it. And now in came WotC saying: "Oh, yeah, actually you will now have to give us a big cut. (The big irony was, how Unity made the same move later on.) The fandom outcry was obviously big, there was a boycot, it worked. And WotC went all:

Of course they basically won the world competition in backpaddling (though again, Unity was a big contender this year as well) and quickly went back on this. But of course there is a problem: When your entire product is so much build around community and your community starts mistrusting you, you got a problem.

And this is basically what happened.

The Audience Problem

There is another problem of course. Financially the DnD movie failed - and I actually think this says a lot about how WotC kinda misunderstands the audience.

Now, there will be people trying to tell you, that given that the movie had great reviews and stuff. But the movie had a production budget of 150 million USD and only earned a bit more than 200 million on worldwide box office. Given that the marketing budget was likely around 30 million, the movie barely broke even.

Of course, part of the reason for it was that it just had a bad release date. It released parallel to the Super Mario movie, which ended up being one of the most successful movies of this year.

A friend of mine could not believe that the movie had financially flopped. They were like: "What the hell? Literally everyone I know who watched the movie went to cinema like three times to see it again." But... Yeah, that is true. But the issue is that these people are a very certain group.

Because lets make one thing clear: The people, who adored the movie so much, that they went to the cinema several times and bought the DVD/BluRay on release... were mostly queer nerds. Because this is the group of people who this movie spoke to.

And let's make this clear: I love the movie for this. I love that it so clearly went for this audience. Because I am part of this audience - and I adore this film.

But basically the movie has a general issue in terms of audience. Because on one hand the movie is too nerdy to have a wider audience appeal of people who had never played DnD, while on the other hand the movie was kinda not nerdy enough to go full force for the nerd audience.

A lot of people in the fandom have instantly sussed out one thing about the movie: "Why doesn't Edgin cast any spells? And why do we see so little of the weirder species?" And part of the reason undoubtedly was budget related. But the other reason is that... well, it is currently a well accepted wisdom in media production that you cannot sell a high-magic story. At least not outside of animated media.

Hence... There is surprisingly little magic being cast in this. And we also do have a mostly human main cast - or why Doric is the most classically pretty tiefling you have seen with her human skin tone and all of that. Because media productions do not trust the audience to accept high magic concepts.

Who is DnD actually for?

Okay, let me talk a bit about DnD 5e - and a good decision, and a bad decision. And how that affected DnD.

Everyone, who is somewhat into DnD probably knows that 5e massively changed the game. With one simple goal: Make it more accessible. Which manifested in several ways.

For one, the game was in some ways made less offensive. Because prior to 5e there was a ton of racism, sexism, queerphobia and ableism inherent to the game rules and times to the game lore. This is just a fact. Things like species that are inherently evil and stuff like that - and also some of the real-life racial coding inherent to some of the species. Removing all that stuff is a good thing. Like amazingly good.

And also, they made the rules a lot more accessible. Before the rules were bogged down with a lot of stuff, that was simplified or removed. Again, this is a good thing.

And this worked. It worked really well. Of course, this was also partly due to stuff like Critical Role and other actual plays like that happening and promoting the game. The player base probably increased ten-fold from what it was before.

Yes, it should also be noted that there is probably a good topic for a study on how formerly nerd-thingies became more and more mainstream during the last 10 years or so, but yes, DnD was one of those things.

But in this there was also a rather bad decision made, which ironically also mirrors what happened with Marvel. And this decision is: Because we want to reach a wider audience, every single thing we release for this has to reach the widest audience possible - rather than allowing that certain things might have a more specific audience.

I am sorry to talk about the MCU here, but it is just such a perfect example of this: The MCU basically made two mistakes. Overwhelming their audience with too many releases. But also not allowing the movies to be for a certain audience, but for the broadest audience possible. A good example is how they dealt with the minority-lead movies. They got directors and at times even writers from that minority - but then basically did not allow them to be too specific and be too critical of, for example, a racist system because that might not go over too well with white mainstream audiences.

Now, WotC did not really do anything like that. But they also went with this idea that everything they officially released should have the broadest possible appeal. Hence the weirdly low-magic approach to the movie, of which I assume that it definitely was an executive decision made.

The fact that the movie resonated so much with the queers more than anyone else was also not intended - at least not from the production company. Like, let's be honest. No, Xenk and Ed were not supposed to be read as romantic. And how appealing the found family trope was, probably was not intented at least on the side of Hasbro (not sure about screenwriters and director).

The Lore Problem

This perfectly connects to one of the big issues that all the franchises going for a broad appeal after being very nerd-focused for so long, run into: The Lore Problem. And this is quite ironic, because I ran into the problem earlier this year as well.

See, as I was writing fanfics for DnD:HAT I quickly ran into the problem that I knew next to nothing about the world of Faerûn. Sure, once upon a time (like between 2007 and 2011, while I was living in Austria with my then-boyfriend, who really was into those games) I played the old games of Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate 1 + 2. But let's be frank: I barely remember shit from those games. And getting to understand what actually happened in the lore between and after... Well, there is just a ton of lore. I mean, people are playing around with this world for literal decades. So, yeah. This can very much be overwhelming for someone getting into it anew. Like, where can someone new even start?

The fact that - at least partly for legal reasons - most of the Actual Plays also do not work with the official lore, rather just using the rules to create their own worlds, obviously adds to this. Even the tables I played on so far always preferred original worlds, because the lore of DnD is just very intimidating.

The one thing that actuall ended up getting me into the lore was BG3, because it left open just the right questions to go into the Forgotten Realms wiki and just look for stuff, before also starting to listen to lore podcasts.

But here is the thing: WotC is also not helping with this issue. Like, they absolutel could create a proper accessible compendium on DnDBeyond that would just allow people to get an overview of the world and the timeline of things happening, maybe go into some of the major factions of the world and such. I mean, heck, they really, really want you to use DnD-Beyond rather than roll20. Yet, in DnD-Beyond I do not even have a monster compendium without paying, which roll20 offers.

Like, sure, WotC, it is okay to lock up the adventure modules behind a paywall, no problem. But if you do give me even the most basic tools to run a campaign, I am gonna use roll20, thank you very much.

But yeah, what WotC should make just more accessible was just: Timeline, important places and the maps (heck, make them interactive, you have the fucking money), maybe also a proper list of the pantheons and factions within the world. Heck, add maybe some inspiration there for what players might want to do within one of the scenarios and then, under this, go and link "hey, we made this one adventure about this, if you are interested!"

Something I did not realize originally was how much freedom the lore still leaves the people. Like, often even the important settings and events are just set-ups for adventures that the characters can have in there. There might be a few novels or comics then, that go into an example of a thing certain established characters like Drizzt or Elminster did during the time, but there is a ton of freedom to explore.

But by basically locking everything up behind a paywall, you will never get people even interested in this kinda stuff.

Because here is the thing: I like my lore. I love lore. I adore lore. But... Without BG3 explaining some stuff and giving me specific questions to ask about it, the lore would have been very inaccessible to me.

Just think of people as... people

Of course among it all there lies the central problem that comes with capitalism running something like this. See, whatever CEOs and shareholders are sitting on those chairs with WotC and Hasbro, they do not see the players as players or the community as a community, but as consumers. Just as they see their employees not as valued constributors, but very exchangable wage slaves.

They do not see the value of the community exchange with stuff like fanmade modules and things. While incorporating a bit of homebrew stuff in DnD Beyond, they are absolutely not interested in the wider market of people just creatively interacting with DnD and making a little bit of money from it. If anything they see those people as potential rivals on the market.

Heck, they have issues seeing things like Critical Role or Roll20 as the enrichment for the franchise that either are - but more like potential rivaling forces and money they have lost.

And their employees? Yeah, as we learned... Most people who from the side of WotC helped the Larian team with BG3 have been let go by now. Because WotC and Hasbro do not care for their employees, they only care about having some numbers going up.

I fully admit it. Apart from Buying BG3 and the money I have invested in anything DnD:HAT related, the only money that WotC got from me, was some of the novels I bought on Audible.

But here is the thing: WotC is doing a shite job at wanting me to invest into any of their stuff. Partly because those modules I would like to have are not available anywhere anyway - and partly because... As I said, give me a reason to get something, rather than just expecting me to randomly get something.

And mind you, this is no slight against any of the people just working for WotC. This is mostly about shareholder and executive decisions made. Stuff that basically just sees either their employers or the players just as a ressource to exploit, rather than... people.

[rabbityshen]

not sure who this post is for.

i think i just needed a way to get out some of my brainworms about genazo and some of the observations i've made about it as a movie and fandom phenomenon that's big in japan but basically not at all here. it was originally gonna be a pitch post on my Main, Professional writing blog but it came out kind of too.....silly for that. which is why the grammar and capitalization are generally proper and the tone is more formal (and has images). i wrote most of it back in august/september but have edited it so it's relatively current to right now.

it's mostly a bunch of rambling and info tidbits about genazo. cant imagine who would be interested in it, except genazo fans, but then it's also written as if to be read by ppl who don't know what genazo is. again, very confusing post. my bad. if u wanna read it go ahead, but lol (lol).

but if ur like "what's genazo?" well then this the post for you. maybe.

edit: added some more fun images for myself 😊 and some (spoilery) CWs for the movie at the very end

They say honesty is a virtue so I might as well start off by saying that my curiosity about this movie was not sparked by the anniversary productions being made for Shigeru Mizuki’s 100th birthday or through keeping tabs on the latest anime films coming out, but because I saw fanart and I thought the main character, Mizuki, looked hot.

After some sleuthing, I tracked down the source material and was surprised that it was from a movie, Kitaro Tanjo: GeGeGe no Nazo (which I'll shorten to GeNazo), part of the GeGeGe no Kitaro franchise.

If you don’t know of GeGeGe no Kitaro or Shigeru Mizuki, I’ll pause here to give a little bit of background info. Shigeru Mizuki was a mangaka born in 1922, who made manga at the same time alongside other influential artists like Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and Shotaro Ishinomori (Kamen Rider). Mizuki would ultimately become famous for GeGeGe no Kitaro (which I'll shorten to Kitaro from here on out), a manga series following a yokai boy named Kitaro and his adventures. Kitaro is on par with Asto Boy in terms of being a national icon. He’s credited with popularizing yokai stories for the modern masses, his imagery becoming what people would most associate with the classic folklore. Besides the 2023 movie, there was an anime adaptation that aired 2018 - 2020, which was also a 50th anniversary production based off of the first anime adaptation that first aired in 1968.

I had some passing, bare minimum familiarity with Kitaro, as much as anyone who’s liked anime and manga for decades would have, and I had never seen a character from it who looked like Mizuki. Clearly, the movie wasn't a straightforward adaptation, even if it was taking one of the manga chapter titles as its own (“The Birth of Kitaro,” which shows the origins of the eponymous character). Not only that, but the promotional material was fairly bloody and dour, obviously aimed at a more mature audience than the usual child demographic the franchise was geared towards, as with the 2018 Kitaro anime. The character design for Kitaro on the movie poster was very similar though, so I figured they likely shared the same continuity.

(i don't have enough relevant images to adequately disperse throughout this post so im just adding random screenshots of mizuki for enrichment and personal indulgence 🙂)

Since the anime series had been officially licensed and subtitled by Crunchyroll, I assumed the same had been done for the movie but that was not the case. It had been released in Japanese theaters back in November 2023 but as of April 2024 at the time, there was (and still is) nowhere official and legal to watch it with localized English subtitles. I had little interest in Kitaro otherwise so I shrugged and decided I would let my shallow interest taper off. It did not.

Instead it plagued me for months (my friends can testify to this). I can't exactly articulate why; The heart wants what the heart wants I suppose. So I finally caved in and found…other means of watching it. I'm not sure if I expected that to sate the brainworms already festering in my head, but basically the opposite of that happened. Now having context for what I was already seeking out on Twitter, new depths of investment were opened up. And that's when I discovered this movie was quite popular.

Now granted, this is still in relative terms. This was the year that other animated hit films such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Boy and the Heron came out. Even other anime franchise films such as Case Closed: Black Iron Submarine and Spy x Family Code: White were much bigger domestic and international hits from around the same time. However, while GeNazo never reached the status of being the #1 movie in Japan for the week, it was one of the top five grossing movies for four consecutive weeks (and in the top ten for a consecutive 11 weeks), making over two billion yen (~$17 million). It was also selected to be shown at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in the Countrechamp category. A new version of the film called the “True Version” (真生版), which contains redone cuts and rerecorded dialogue (but no changes to the narrative), as well as bumps up the rating from PG-12 to R15, was released a few weeks ago.

And when you zoom in closer from a fandom subculture perspective, its popularity is undeniable. The doujinshi made for the GeNazo fandom and sold through the retailer Comic Toranoana is not only numerous, but has dominated the female-targeted section rankings for months (both “All Ages” and “Adults Only”), alongside doujinshi for much more internationally popular series like Jujutsu Kaisen and Slam Dunk. (Another way to compare this, Kitaro has a total of 2500+ listed and Delicious in Dungeon has a little over 40 items listed.) In the 2023 poll for yumejoshi (similar to the concept of “self-shipping” fandom) to pick their favorite characters for the year, the two main characters made it to the top twenty (Gegero at #15 and Mizuki at #9), even though the movie was released quite late into the year. Then in Animage’s annual Anime Grand Prix, GeNazo was voted as the top favorite anime for 2023, with Mizuki and Gegero also voted as the top favorite characters. At COMIC CITY SPARK 19, a popular Tokyo doujinshi event held last week, GeNazo is the third most popular fandom represented (above other fandoms including Haikyu!! and Honkai: Star Rail). Several months ago, a film concert event was held and it must've done more than well enough if they're holding the event again for two days in November.

So obviously, I was very much not the only one infested with brainworms! But in comparison, no one over in English-speaking anime fandom circles knows anything. On Archive of Our Own, there’s a tag for “GeGeGe no Kitaro (Anime)”* that only has under 50 works in English when accounted for the movie’s release. (In comparison, there are over 2,500 works in the tag for “ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon” in English when accounted for the anime’s release. For possibly a more equivalent comparison, there are a little under 200 works in the tag for “Bang Brave Bang Braven (Anime)” a show that did receive an official English translation and was ranked second in the Anime Grand Prix.) Every time I peek into Japanese fandom, I feel like I’m stepping into a parallel universe. The gap is striking.

Anime has never been more accessible to foreigners, specifically Americans. Piracy still reigns supreme in terms of frugal personal finances, but it's less convenient and full of pitfalls, requiring some sophistication in navigating platforms and torrents. As a thirty year old with a full-time job, the low-risk convenience on its own is worth the money of subscription. It’s also easy to think in the age of streaming and simulcast—with plenty of titles getting licensed but then instantly buried under the oversaturation of Content and lackluster efforts at marketing—that we have legal access to everything, or at least everything notable. But similar to this year's cult hit Girls Band Cry (until the official English language translation available through Hoopla and, soon on November 6th, Crunchyroll as well), GeNazo fell through the license cracks. 

I shouldn't be too surprised though. While Kitaro is an iconic series with a deep cultural legacy in Japan, its popularity in the USA is much milder. In my experience, people who do know about Kitaro tend to regard it as a piece of classic manga history rather than engaging art or storytelling in its own right. As an older, episodic children’s series fundamentally focused on traditional Japanese folklore, its potential appeal to international audiences is less universal and it's less likely to be taken seriously by manga fans invested in more serialized storytelling. So it is a shame that this movie isn't licensed and officially localized. Tomohiro Harafuchi, the director of Mizuki Productions, said in an interview at the Annecy Festival that he hoped that screening GeNazo there would “inspire the international audience to discover these universes” since Kitaro is less well known outside of Japan. Especially since it stands out as fairly unique work among the other Kitaro movies, series, and other related media.

At this point, you might be wondering what GeNazo is actually about and what my pitch is for watching it besides Hot Anime Guy.

The version that's short and to the point: A nice horror mystery with some decent fujobait and anti-nationalist themes.

The version with a premise like you're reading the back of a DVD case: Mizuki, a salaryman working for a blood bank during Japan’s postwar era, is tasked with visiting a remote village. He hopes to curry favor with a powerful family whose patriarch has just died, causing a power struggle, as well as find out the secret of the miracle drug that they manufacture. Along the way, he meets a mysterious man searching for his missing wife. Violent, strange deaths begin occurring however, and Mizuki soon finds himself wrapped up in a disturbing conspiracy he never anticipated. Find out the twisted origins of one of Japan’s most beloved characters…

My actual, extremely condensed opinion: A fun 3/5 stars movie that I'm kind of ambivalent about.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” you may be wondering, “You wrote all of this about a movie you rated 3/5 on Letterboxd?” The answer is “yes” and I wish I had a better one.

That'll be for another post though, since I can't discuss it without really getting into spoilers.

Note [possible spoilers]: Content warnings for GeNazo include gore, war trauma flashbacks, non-graphic and referenced incestuous CSA, alcoholism, child death.

[knarme-stray]

Whether the sex-negative takes haver crawled out of radfem spaces or the manosphere, either way such person believes "porn ruins people"...

It's real interesting watching these unwell men compensate with a big and very shaped beard and then say stuff like "good feeling in the nether regions ruins your brain". Fascism and conservatism dressed up in the most over-the-top aesthethics as always. In Facebook I often see an unwell man with a brainwormed take and ta-da, you'll easily find like five of them who got these ancient statue ass beards and bad opinions because that beard is the aesthethic LARP for those bad opinions themselves.

(Sorry any big beard havers who aren't brainwormed hate movement people, obviously you exist and it's easy to tell you apart simply by watching behaiviors lmao.)

Anyways, friendly reminder that being "pornbrained" is not a thing, "porn addiction" is not real either. The only bad "porn" that exists is any exploitation or abuse of real living beings and even that should be called "abuse material", not "porn". (and yes mainstream porn sites are full of abuse material which is a capitalism and rape culture issue...)

oh so now the ancient sumerian is gonna preach to us

[shonocondo]

hallo

little blog post

TL;DR / my current interests, updates on art things i do, and a general: Thank You. For enjoying what I do!

it’s nearing the end of the year! congratulations for making it this far and i hope we come to enjoy the years to come

current brainworms: - final fantasy xiv

endwalker!!!! aahhhhh i’m currently on the first lv90 msq, but i’ll come to finish it soon <3 i luv estinien. of course. since i only was like at ARR late august there’s a BUNCH of content i’ve yet to do, i will be stuck here for a while

- baldur’s gate 3

astarion. astarion astarion astarion. saw my friend play it “i know a character you’d simp for” and i was hooked LOL i will want to draw more fanart later.. but.. also use time to romance astarion... oh the choices.... i only got it recently, my own christmas treat ^_^ also this game helps me with dnd 5e mechanics wise; seeing it all visualized this way is so helpful!!!!

- MY OC

now onto . actual stuff

- my commissions will resume soon. been a bit rough towards the latter part of the year, and ngl i have ffxiv to blame and no self control (lol) finishing up some final ones but we should start kickin 2022 :D

- apologies for shop discrepancies ; i despise shipping through the holiday season, and ended up doing it a second time >_< timing created so many delays, especially from the pandemic. i’ll try to manage my shop better next opening: which would be sometime 2022 Q1 (i aimed for january, but i need to make stuff actually. haha). frankly, had to cancel some orders from miscount of stock Q_Q but also as i continue to grow customers = more orders to manage. got around 150 orders this time!! more prone to mistakes. i apologize! and of course, any problems you have, i am always free to talk and even things out!

- freedom... i’ve had constant zine projects i signed up for and had to do. probably for the past 2-3 years. but for the first time i think i’ll have comfy breathing room finally ^o^ i’d have a week or two of zine-free breaks, but now it’s refreshing knowing one due date isn’t in months to come. and obviously, i’m not blaming anyone but myself, i can’t seem to turn down workload so i need to continuously work on that haha!

- streaming...?!?!?! making a comeback???!?! alas the freedom is coming back but i think i’ll come back to streaming more often and work on commissions ^_^ though i can’t guarantee it, cause every time i stream i dont come back for a couple months LOLL but i hope and believe time will work with me

i feel like i was gonna type more but whatever.... errrr lol

just. a Big Big THANK YOU!!! for enjoying my art. sharing it. leaving cute tags. funny tags. yes i read them you guys are insane (affectionate) thank you for giving me money, in any way, tips, purchases, commissions. “money can’t buy happiness” is dumb and wrong we are living in capitalism LOL if you like creators’ works, money is always great :} and knowing that my content evokes any positive feeling... makes me so happy! im no big name artist, ones i’d see w/ like 10k+ following-- and yes numbers dont matter my guy, but it’s inevitable to look at and compare. but more the reason that i appreciate YOU guys for being there. the great bunch of people constantly liking my works. tysm... tysm

idk.. insert more sappy things here. thank you.

and of course my ask box is always there! ♥