#literally all the discourse

[nucleos]

if you are complaining about dragon age veilguards artstyle being inconsistent with dragon age's overall artstyle then I know for a fact, that you have not played all the games. You are lying, because consistency?? in dragon age?? this is Alistar in all three games

[bonefall]

Anyway. Bi and Mspec Lesbians aren't a hotly "debated" topic or even new to queer culture, it's just the newest thing that bullies who REALLY want to be homophobic and even racist use to justify harassing gay people they don't like.

It's the thinnest possible veneer of progressive language wrapped around TERF and reactionary rhetoric so that they can feel righteous for forming an angry mob against vulnerable targets. If you're gullible enough to fall for the newest wave of bigotry within the queer community, and turn on your allies because they're "confusing" or "invading your spaces," the SAME way they turned on bi/pan labels, trans people, xenogenders, neopronouns, and aroace people before this, then get lost.

[mossy-aro]

tbh as much as i do think it is worthwhile to discuss the topic of shipping aromantic/asexual characters and the nuances of it all (as well as the general attitude allos have towards aspecs in fandom spaces). it also makes me sigh equally because like... what characters. i'll be real guys we don't even have characters to discourse over. literally there are like 3 ever and none of those have fandoms anyway and the ones which do are like 'it was confirmed on twitter in a nebulously worded post by the creator'. its so bad out here

[ceratedfish24]

(This post has been altered to be more general. Please respond to replies and reblogs accordingly. Thank you.)

If I see one more post that villainizes Scott for attacking Joel, or anyone else, for that matter, I’m going to flip my lid.

First of all, it’s a death game. They don’t need a reason to kill each other. Scott and Joel are very close friends outside of the game. They used to be neighbors. The people who are closest tend to go after each other the hardest, because they’re the most comfortable with ending each other’s seasons.

Secondly, it’s not at all unreasonable. Joel’s whole thing is being a menace. He was upset when someone on reddit said that he’s “lawful good” in the Life Series. He said that his goal is to be “chaotic evil”. Joel is a constant menace to Scott and many of Scott’s allies. As a Joel viewer, you might see that as Joel being clever or powerful, but he is just a menace to almost everybody else and that is literally his goal. Of course Scott would want to push back a little.

Third, sure. Joel often doesn’t effectively do much to Scott. This is NOT due to a lack of effort. Joel tries incredibly hard to irritate Scott. It’s his love language. Joel and Scott are close, and Joel thinks it’s hilarious to get Scott riled up. It’s like targeting your brother in a game for the crime of being your brother. Joel failing to do harm to Scott is not the same as Joel doing nothing to hurt Scott. Joel has repeatedly made his intentions clear.

Fourth, the poster specifically mentioned that Scott killed Joel in Secret Life “without a reason”. Joel spent a whole episode of Secret Life recruiting three people to kill Scott. I think their rivalry is a pretty good reason, but, again, they don’t really need a reason. It is a death game. They are friends. They were on different teams. They are bound to attack each other. That’s how the game works.

Joel fans, you don’t ever have to defend Joel from Scott. If you were a real Joel fan, I think you would know that Joel loves Scott dearly and that’s why he’s such a menace to him. Don’t attack Scott for his mutual friendship with Joel. They know each other’s boundaries and have never stepped on them. The members of the Life Series have stated again and again that everyone in the Life Series shows a healthy and mutual respect and love for everybody else in the series and that, if it made it into a video, everyone is okay with it. Joel and Scott literally take time out of their day to excitedly talk about their sessions with each other by themselves. Take a chill pill. Scott and Joel are just fine.

[joejhang]

the way the aftg fandom babies and uwufies jean is insane. like they see a man with so much trauma and their first instinct is to infantilise him. like "oh no jean can't see jeremy get angry or break down!" girl he is a grown-ass adult. stop treating him like he's fragile or a child just because he's deeply hurt. god.

[trixxedheart]

It is amazing how the "people that love and uplift transwomen" website will instantly fucking maul a transwoman if she even remotely insinuate that using radfem rhetoric harms trans people

[cozmic-ash]

Gordon/Barney/Alyx is really really funny to me conceptually bc it's like, two hot geniuses in their 20s who look at the 40-something smartass who hangs around and go 'yeah that guy. we both want him carnally'

[marshmellowtea]

"it's not realistic for all the characters in your fic to know about/be cool with age regression" i cannot overstate to you how much i do not care about that. you think when i'm writing these agere fluff and/or hurt/comfort pieces i'm looking for maximum realism NO i'm looking for the catharsis of my blorbo being loved on by their friends in their most vulnerable moments do NOT @ me about realism rn

[originalartblog]

Topzai or bottomzai?

As proof that you've been paying attention in class I'm gonna need a minimum one-page essay about my opinion on the subject complete with sources and examples from my blog, though having to ask at all should give you a clue about it

Here are some works for you to study for your assignment, enjoy!

[sunnibits]

potentially hot take but this is a pet peeve of mine

[coffeegnomee]

genuinely i think alot of kaboodle's actions on lifesteal can be explained by her scripted lore background. the world of scripted lore is fraught with the idea that "lore" is just... being miserable. it was something that made it difficult for me to get into ksmp (though i did eventually enjoy it), because it felt just so awful all the time. pointless arguments didn't tug at my heartstrings, it made me frustrated. but that's besides the point

i think maybe one of the reasons she takes everything way harder than she should and exaggerates relationships and disagreements is perhaps because she is drawing in past experience to be a good entertainer, in the way she is familiar with. which is so fair! we are formed by our backgrounds. it does unfortunately make it difficult to watch her if you're accustomed to the more ""live action"" sort of format lifesteal is usually in, where people seperate their characters from themselves a little less. but she has a good size audience that seems to fw it, so i dunno

that's just my take on the overuse of the word "betrayal" and such

agree but disagree. yes scripted is usually just being miserable but zam is just miserable all the time and his lore actually makes sense and is very entertaining to watch and he also separates himself from his character (to a degree). but when he is miserable he is consistently miserable while also doing some fun things to distract from the misery or making some impact on the server like cleaning up spawn while being miserable to chat. kab just sits around and talks and does fuck all. sorry. hating. a lot of hating below.

and it's annoying because she is miserable but then will go be fighting her inner demons of destruction, but then won't destroy because she doesn't want to be mean and she cares so much, but then she plans to destroy anyway but then she doesn't do it and doesn't have any consistency in any motivation or characterization and she's all over the place. every hour her emotional state is different and there's absolutely no effort at a throughline and everything before is just thrown out the window.

And it pisses me off that she does come from scripting because surely her characters on ksmp had some throughline and consistency.

and yet her inconsistency on ls does make sense bc in scripted you can plan and succeed with every plan you make when you are literally scripting the outcome.

but on lifesteal you can plan for something cool and fun and it can be taken away in an instant by the very same people you were trying to impress and that is hard and will send anyone into being tilted.

and trying to decide how to react to that is wildly difficult and i dont really envy them having to figure out what to do, but i do wish she would DO something. but that's also unfair because she is doing something, she's rebuilding. but while rebuilding she's going between wanting 4c to help her while also trying to convince him to betray his team while also trying to convince him to give her a heart without a fight while also planning to kill him while also reminding herself she has to be nice to him. so she's just using him. just say it with your full chest. you never cared about him and you just want someone else to do the work to get your own selfish self-pity plan back on the server.

you want to complain and then have someone swoop in and save you. and you dont want to make any effort to actually care about that person.

it's miserably sad and annoying to watch because lifesteal is about caring about people, and she goes on and on an on about caring *so much* but she doesn't give a shit about anyone but herself. and she lies to herself and and chat and insists that she cares.

and yes that's a rather consistent characterization to through at ls!kab but damn if it doesn't read like that at all and she went from genuinely apologizing to 4c to just using him flat out and reminding herself that she needs to use him and cant just kill him.

maybe its just that she's vilely unlikable. maybe that's the point in her scripted mind. make a hatable character. and yet her actions also speak to desperately trying to make a likable character whom youre sympathetic to, she tries desperately to guilt trip and pull at the heartstings about how shes just been betrayed so many times and life is so hard for her and shes so weak and how could you be mean to someone so pathetic and wounded.

but she's not likable at all. she doesnt care about a single other soul or what they care about. the second they put a boundary up she wants to run and leave, which, fair enough, actually a cool characterization of trauma but like also so abusive-coded. but in the end she chose to not abandon bacon as far as we can tell, but i can tell you give it two seconds and that thought will come back and she'll decide to betray him anyway. because nothing is consistent and nothing she says has any long term value. she just goes on the past five minutes to decide what she will do.

she's just so fake and that fakeness can be attributed to the character, but it only feels even more fake because she insists it's a character and not her as she turns around and does something that makes more sense for her to do as herself than the character. she is being two people existing on the same account, swapping out whenever necessary. but that's stupid. take responsibility for your actions and your emotions. stop blaming others.

and yes. it all goes back to how painfully different scripted mcrp is from unscripted.

and i know for damn sure that this will not be like this next season because she will learn from this season. or she doesn't. and that's what's so frustrating. the possibility that she never learns why lifesteal is lifesteal.

the possibility that she keeps writing asshole abusive characters that just get more abusive because of her own internal mental problems that lay unresolved and shoved under the rug like they aren't part of the character even though they are part of herself. she refuses to look at herself and acts like if just just acts hard enough they won't affect anything. they effect everything. you can't run from yourself when you are making unscripted content.

and yes. i am being really mean about someone who clearly has a lot of baggage. yes i am being mean about someone who is abusive as a defense mechanism and hates boundaries because of fear of being alone and all these things that are basically the bully being bullied at home type beat.

but she embraces none of it. doesn't even see any of it. thinks she has written a cute story with kazam, a cute ship that may be a little messed up but is at it's core cute.

it's fucking abusive and shit. it makes my skin crawl. zam is screaming to be let out of it and she thinks it's sunshine and roses. she is, to use the word literally, delusional about her actions. she thinks they are one thing when they are anything besides that.

but we do have one success story. and the trend goes that every lifestealer learns what lifesteal is by their second or third season. they all eventually get it. vi chose to do a very distinct character vs streamer in s4 and he crashed and burned to a degree unfathomable. and he learned from it. and he now says that was his favorite story he ever told. he see's how he's grown as a person because of it.

there is only hope in the future when it comes to kaboodle. lifesteal genuinely changes you and makes you grow. not because you choose to grow, but because it forces it out of you.

but in this moment im just constantly a ball of rage and constantly sent into sadness every time i watch. and she keeps interacting with my mains so im not going to just miss the story, and the progression is already happening, the kablantis shock is a genuinely lifesteal trauma moment for kab and is already changing her in good ways. this is the story, this is part of watching lifesteal. the meta conflict is what makes this server painfully unique. this difficult encounter with players that piss you off. because people in life are like this. people can suck and hurt each other and don't look at their internal mental state, they shove things under the rug and think they're fine and cause sorrow and pain when life gets difficult. that's life. encountering it as story really helps understand the people around you. to be more compassionate, be able to see when theyre hurting and chose to be kind anyway. to learn how to feel the negative emotions and process them and not run from them yourself. or learn how to stick up for yourself and put up your own boundaries and learn that you can. to figure out who you are. it's the best. and the worst. and leaves me hating until i realize it is interesting even though i hate it.

[fromtheseventhhell]

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

[hopalongfairywren]

Okay now that he's openly saying slurs can we talk about how this man's cultish fanbase was a pretty good bellwether to the general trends among gen z that incidated an ever expanding internet radicalization pipeline and general susepctibility to cults?

[ingravinoveritas]

Michael Sheen: Repeatedly mentions his attractions to other men, talks about his first crush being on a man, describes one of his characters as "pansexual," talks about how gorgeous/easy to fall in love with/slinky-hipped David is, and otherwise screams into the universe about being bi without saying the word "bisexual."

Misha Collins: Accidentally "comes out" as bisexual at a convention, then walks it back three days later and comes out as straight.

One of these things is not like the other...

[yangscowlick]

Because the “shrodinger’s queerbait” nonsense will never go away, indulge me an analogy (and a long post).

wlw ships are the “made from scratch” cake in a world where we only ever expect cake mix from the box.

Say you have a show where, in the first interaction between a male and female character, there is a red box. It could be a Betty Crocker box of cake mix. Because all it takes is just one smile — one wink — one raised eyebrow— and the fans don’t question it. We’re clearly making a cake here. The box is red.

Meanwhile, you have two female characters building their own relationship that have elements that could build to romance. There are eggs in the fridge. A few more episodes, there’s flour in the pantry. Sugar. Baking powder. Queer fans start whispering…we could be making a cake here. Other fans scoff “you will read into anything. They’re just eggs! Everyone has eggs in their fridge!” Maybe so, maybe not. They are written off as discrete ingredients, nothing to see here.

That red box is still sitting in the pantry. Obviously we’re going with that one, and it’s definitely cake mix. That guy and girl stood next to each other again.

The wlw relationship is now full-on batter. It was a cake recipe all along, but it’s not baked yet. The crowd that wrote off every ingredient is now saying the writers are just going to “squander” that box that could be ready-made cake mix or that they’re being “forced” to bake a cake with the very ingredients the writers deliberately bought and put in their pantry.

Now it’s in the oven, the cake is baking. That crowd will still insist it’s forced, or maybe its actually something else, or it’s rushed, or it’s pandering. Whether the writers painstakingly built a pantry to make the cake they truly wanted or they were cultivating good ingredients and realized they had the fixings for a more decadent cake and went there, it doesn’t matter. It’s still a recipe. One that fans who always have to piece together ingredients had hoped for or saw from the get-go, despite being scoffed at and disparaged. Just because that crowd didn’t see (or refused to see) those ingredients as part of a whole, doesn’t make it any less of a recipe.

And wlw fans shouldn’t have to keep writing essays to demonstrate that the wlw “cake” has all the ingredients every cake mix does, or keep pointing out that fans were ready to believe a cake was being baked when they saw a nondescript box, but that they’ll do anything to discredit or doubt the cake from scratch that’s now cooling off on the counter.

It is partly a function of heteronormativity from the audience in immediately seeing romance in any whisper of interaction between m/f characters and passing off all charged interactions between female characters are sisterly or platonic. And it also comes from writers, who are either being cautious so as not to spook corporate overlords or audiences, or who are preserving plausible deniability.

To take the analogy further, box cake mix is fine! It works! It is, practically speaking, what a lot of folks know by default. I thought I was a Duncan Hines girl once myself. Vanilla cake mix has the ingredients measured out, it’s a safe bet, it tastes like cake.

But it doesn’t mean every red box is cake mix. And it doesn’t make the cake that had to be pieced together from scratch due to censorship, caution, time, narrative build-up, what-have-you, any less of a cake.

[nevermeyers]

There's absolutely no way people are now saying that all the gege-hate train is just an internal joke of the fandom. There's no way you're this out of touch with what has been happening.

I've been in the fandom since 2020 and it doesn't take a lot of smarts to see there's been a change in tone in the way some people say that in the last year. Since this new arc of history began, destructive criticism, massive hate and threats have overflowed into hundreds of profiles. It's no longer "oh, I hate Gege akutami" now and for a while now it's "I hate Gege akutami - his manga is horrible I'm gonna drop it (they never do) - he doesn't deserve popularity - he doesn't know how to write - he pretends to have an illness."

And yet, it's not normal to make jokes about wanting to kill someone, hon. Go check yourself if you find that funny, you're no better than let's-joke-about-sensitive-issues reddit incels