#not a fan of the concept of the live action either i think it’s entirely pointless and a very obvious cash grab

[dotcircledot]

toothless doodling

[saintsenara]

How are you able to enjoy toxic/unhealthy/“problematic” ships/characters without feeling weird (for lack of a better word) about it?

I ask this because I want to be able to do this myself as it seems like a much more enjoyable way of engaging with fiction to me. I can get over some ships just being toxic and the characters not being good together and still enjoy their dynamic but I have trouble with the other ships that feel morally wrong. I know it’s just fiction but I can’t seem to get over the ick feeling I have when I think about those ships/characters. I feel like I’m being too puritanical about these things but I don’t know how to stop feeling like something is gross when I feel it’s gross…

Do you have any tips to stop jumping to moralizing ships/characters?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i'm going to be upfront that this reflexive gross feeling isn't something i've ever really struggled with - both in fic and more broadly. this is due to various personal idiosyncrasies, above all the fact that i've got disengaged boomer parents who didn't police our media consumption [my favourite book when i was eleven? lolita...] and that i'm a doctor, which is a profession which requires you to develop a very high threshold for what you find disgusting. the human body - at all stages of its life-cycle and its cycle of decomposition - produces a lot of different fluids... and it's also the case that [just as if you can think of it, there's porn for it] if an inanimate object exists, somebody somewhere has got it stuck inside them...

and so the situation that i find myself in is that i consider it infinitely less weird that i enjoy the odd bit of hot tomarrymort action than that i actively enjoy cutting through bone with a saw...

but, obviously, "get a medical degree" isn't particularly helpful advice...

i am a ride-or-die fan of the concept of stepping outside of your comfort zone. this is why i'm such an avowed multishipper - i think it's good for us as fandom citizens to examine the potential of our faves in relationships [romantic or otherwise] which are either not their canon endgames or which aren't our preferred pairings, and in situations which don't align with their canon experiences [whether that means making them suffer or giving them full-on fluff]. it draws out the multiple aspects of a character to consider them from these different angles - and it prevents us from getting so stuck in one interpretation of a character or configuration of a ship which means that it puts our backs up to stumble across stories which approach things differently.

but stepping outside of your comfort zone doesn't mean that you have to go enormously far. it may be that a reader decides - having only ever read teen-rated fics where characters' sex lives don't extend beyond hand-holding and forehead kisses - to take the plunge into an explicit piece filled to the brim with watersports and age play. it may be that a reader decides - having only ever read teen-rated fics for one canon pairing - to read a teen-rated fic for a non-canon alternative. both of these are entirely valid approaches.

by which i mean, our comfort levels and our thresholds for discomfort are subjective, they're personal. if there are ships or themes or characters you don't want to read about because they don't feel good... you're not doing something wrong if you avoid them. exposing yourself to fics you expect to make you uncomfortable can be useful - and fiction is certainly a way to explore discomfort which gives you much more control over the experience than encountering it in real life - but it's not something you're obliged to do to be active in fandom.

the thing you are obliged to do to be active in fandom is to be nice to other people, no matter what their tastes in fiction. this means, at its fundamental level, that when you see people who ship pairings or like themes which make you think "ew"... you keep it to yourself/the group chat rather than putting it on the timeline.

but, once this is something you've got the hang of [which takes a bit of time! but practice makes perfect!], something i feel can be a really useful way of overcoming a tendency towards knee-jerk moralising reactions is to just vibe in the vicinity of people you know like the content you instinctively feel is gross.

this doesn't mean you have to read any of this content - but you'll learn just by hanging out near them that the people who do are just... normal. one minute they might reblog a rec for a pairing you think "absolutely not" about, the next they might reblog a cat picture which makes you squeal with delight. you'll like some of their content, but not all. you'll agree with some of it, but not all. you might like progressively more of it as you spend time in their orbit - maybe they'll explain why they like the pairing or character in question and you'll think "huh, i've never looked at it like that" - or you might not. this is absolutely fine.

all of us - at one time or other - have made a black-and-white moralising pronouncement: people who think x are gross; people who like y are fucked-up, you'd never catch me doing z. and these pronouncements are different from our wider, societally-influenced moral codes - which are good things, otherwise we'd live in the purge - in that they're fundamentally ways for us to feel good about ourselves and our families and our friends by defining ourselves as better than a faceless other. we say "you'd never catch me reading that, it's foul" when we know [or think we know] that the friend we're talking to would agree with the statement. we are far less likely to say it if we know that the friend - whom we see as a human being who is beautiful in their imperfection and inherently worthy of love simply by virtue of being alive - was reading and enjoying that just the other day.

and so the best way to train yourself out of reflexively moralising ships or characters or tropes is to put a face to the faceless other who likes them. be intentional in sharing a space with fans of the stuff you feel uncomfortable with and, eventually, it just becomes background noise. you'll scroll on tumblr, say "well there we are, jane's written some more of her sirius/harry piss kink fic - although i'm not interested in clicking on it" and go on with your day.

because the other thing i think it's really useful to do is to train yourself into reframing your disgust as disinterest. there are plenty of things which i don't seek out to read - and some of these topics are completely benign and some are darker [i don't enjoy reading explicit non-con, for example] - but this is because i try to frame it as that i don't think these things would interest me.

this is still the maintenance of a personal comfort zone, but thinking of the content outside this zone as something you are disinterested in turns it into something neutral. when you think of it as something to be disgusted or grossed out by, it naturally provokes a visceral response which makes you look through a moral lens. thinking in terms of disinterest, instead, gives you sufficient detachment from this visceral response to recognise, interrogate, contextualise, and control it.

and - in time - this neutral reframing may result in you feeling more interested in taking the plunge into the ships and characters and stories you currently don't vibe with, once you don't have an instinctive disgust response as a barrier.

or it may not. and this is absolutely fine.

[awryval]

death of an author, reclamation, and you

"We never are what we intend, or invent 'Cause I make little lies and then I pull them apart Think something dark's living down in my heart And if I wanted to die before I got old I should've started some years ago digging that hole"

Brand New. "At the Bottom." Daisy, 2009.

Brand New was among one of my favorite bands in high school, and I still listen to them today. Their music is important to me and shaped a big part of who I am. Their lyrics about being tortured, burnt-out, and choking on the weight of your own self-perceived flaws are relatable! Their compositions ooze with a level of self-hatred that can only be genuine. It's utterly depressing, and I adore it!

That's not not the full story, though. Jesse Lacey, the vocalist of Brand New, is a sexual predator. This informs everything about how the music of Brand New is. It's self-loathing for a very good reason. I love Brand New. I condemn Jesse Lacey. These two statements coexist. I used to be a part of the /r/brandnew subreddit, and when the allegations against Jesse Lacey came out in 2017, many redditors of that sub were quick to claim "death of the author." After all, the band had broken up immediately after the news broke, and they had also cancelled their tours. Currently, the people using that subreddit mostly talk about buying old BN merchandise and discuss what their favorite concert memories were. Jesse Lacey himself confirmed that the allegations against him were true, so there isn't much debate to be had. The subreddit serves as a monument for fans who still enjoy the music, and as a platform to speak about it with like-minded fans.

In my opinion, claiming "death of an author" is a slippery slope. We can't always claim that Miku is the creator of Minecraft. But often, we see that that is the response people have when a creator is outed to be problematic; "I still like the thing So-and-So made, so I will ignore that the creator exists!" The reason that this worked for Miku Minecraft is because, by the time that Notch was publicly making transphobic comments, he did not own Minecraft anymore. The joke is quite literally that he does not own the thing that people like. He sold it to Microsoft, so he doesn't get royalties from it anymore. You can play Minecraft devoid of supporting its original creator. This joke works so well because it is an actual case of the death of an author! That's great and all for Minecraft, but what about other instances? What happens when we claim "death of the creator" erroneously? And why are we so obsessed with this concept anyway?

So like, back to Brand New... they released their last album, Science Fiction, back in August 2017. The allegations came out later that same year. I own all of Brand New's discography physically, including their last release. I bought most of it off eBay when I was 15. I was not supporting them post-allegations. But that leaves me with a lingering question- what do I do with all these CDs that I still very much enjoy the music of? From how I see it, there are two firm camps on this topic:

Camp 1: You know about Lacey's crimes now and his music cannot be separated from his actions. Solution: Throw your CDs away.

Camp 2: It's something you bought without knowledge of Lacey's crimes, so you should enjoy it anyway. Death of an author! Solution: Continue as usual.

I'm not fond of either of these answers. They come off as too polarized for a situation that is the entire Pantone swatch library of grays. "But, how are there any shades of gray when its clear that Jesse Lacey is in the wrong?" I want to provide some counter questions for you to think about:

What about the other people in the band? You might not be directly supporting the sexual predator anymore, but there are other victims here too- effectively his band mates lost their jobs overnight. (Another example would be LOSTPROPHETS)

Is it feasible to destroy each object you own because it was created under problematic circumstances? When or when isn't this the case? Does it apply to your cup of coffee? Does it apply to the clothes you wear? What about any product with palm oil in it? What about the hardware in your computer? If you look into any company, you're going to find some horrific things you don't like about it. The takeaway here is that it isn't beneficial to treat situations like these as black or white. I don't think that destroying my CDs is going to do anything to take away the abuse that Jesse Lacey caused. Nor do I think ignoring the context of his music will do anyone any favors. The music he made is a product of his crimes. To ignore that fact would be disingenuous to why people enjoy his music and why the music exists in the first place. There's another element here, though. I, and many others, are no longer monetarily supporting Jesse Lacey. You can't even officially support the release of Brand New's music anymore as their record label (Procrastinate! Music Traitors) doesn't even seem to have a functioning website anymore? Regardless, I wouldn't want to support his music in a way that supports him, anyway. Yes, I enjoy the music and the themes of it, but I do not want to be directly supporting abuse that happened BECAUSE he was a vocalist in a band. And I can safely do this with CDs that I bought secondhand, right? This is death of the author. So what's the issue?

I believe there is an issue when people claim “death of the author” far too quickly and scramble to reclaim the media for themselves. It’s an increasingly popular trend these days to pluck characters/concepts from an author deemed to be problematic. "I'll save [Character I like] from this shitty piece of media!", they claim. I don't think people realize how multifaceted in effect that is, though. For instance, if the author is actively making money from their creation, you can't truly "reclaim" a character from them. It's more like you're paying homage to them with fanart.

My best on-going example of this would be Floraverse. There are a multitude of reasons why people do not like the author/s of Floraverse, which I will not go into here. To put it simply, though, since its inception in 2013, many artists and writers involved with Flora either left or were kicked out. These artists either directly contributed to the art and worldbuilding of the webcomic, or were heavily influenced by it. To this day, there are many times someone links me to art on Discord and I’ll say “oh I remember that person, they used to be a Flora fanartist!” and the other person is absolutely floored that that artist was ever linked to Floraverse. Anyway… There have been multiple attempts at people trying to reclaim Floraverse from the author, and this never works out. Like, it really doesn’t work out. Any time that someone tries to reclaim Floraverse characters for themselves whilst condemning the author, that person is dogpiled by the Floraverse community. Which is a weird behavior for a CC BY-SA webcomic, but I digress. Here are some highlights:

In 2019, there was a thread dedicated to Redesigning Floraverse that immediately got taken over by Floraverse itself a month later.

An artist got harassed for multiple years (I think it was 2020-2023) for having an oc based on Beleth, a character in Floraverse.

Just 2 months ago, an artist got harassed for drawing fanart of the characters

Historically, reclaiming Floraverse characters from the author hasn't worked out. And I mean.. why would it? It's an actively running "webcomic" (I'll be charitable) and with an active community that supports the author's current works and views with their wallets. It's one thing to enjoy a piece of media with a problematic author and want to reclaim that media for yourself. It is another for this reclamation to actually be effective. Attempts of "reclaiming" Floraverse get written off as fanworks that the community dislikes. You cannot reclaim Floraverse characters as they do not exist in a vacuum. Listening to secondhand Brand New CDs does work in a vacuum; Jesse Lacey's career is dead in the water. The same cannot be said for reclaiming the art of Glitchedpuppet and co. Floraverse characters and stories are not divorced from the abuses they cause. Characters will be used as strawmen to abuse community members, past or present. Or entire works will be up dedicated to making light of your childhood trauma! These characters were made by an abuser, and will be used to abuse. That is a simple fact about Floraverse. Except... in that statement, I'm not even talking about Glitchedpuppet, the current author of Floraverse. I'm talking about Marlcabinet, the previous author of Floraverse. This statement does however, apply to both of them. Hey, wait a minute, that's weird! I've been talking about "death of the author" for this entire post, and I just said that reclaiming Floraverse characters can't work because the way the characters were used to abuse real people doesn't exist in a vacuum. So like, why does this work within the Floraverse webcomic itself? Marl is the abuser of Glip, but Marl is also the author of the majority of early Floraverse. Isn't the story itself, as it currently stands, an act of reclaiming characters used to abuse community members, minors, and any detractors? Then who is to say that those who contributed to Floraverse and were similarly abused are not also allowed this same privilege? Their real-world suffering is what fuels the comic. When I was 13-16, I adored a Floraverse character named Cayenne. His whole deal was that he was an autistic child slave and was horribly abused by everyone around him. Weird character to connect to, but he’s the character that made me figure out I had autism! I drew a LOT of fanart of this character and I even own a (gifted) life-size plush of him. The authors only ever treated him as a joke and it was a joke even within the Floraverse community that I was the only person who actually liked/cared about him. Sometimes I think about reclaiming him for myself. But I also don’t want to get harassed, and I know I could design much better things, and write better things. Conversely, I also think about how this is the exact character that made me get into contact with Marl when I was 16. It’s a heavy weight to carry knowing that this exact character was the reason I was almost in the clutches of a child predator. Glip personally deferred me to him. Reclaiming Cayenne would hold emotional value for me as a reminder of my triumph over a predator. Would it be wrong for me to reclaim an abused child character from a comic that abused me and many others as children? I've no clue. And I don't think anyone can answer that. I've waffled on it for ~2 years now. Reclaiming Cayenne would give attention to an individual that profits off abusing others, myself included. I'd say that reclaiming Floraverse characters wouldn't be a case of "death of the author", but the original creator of them was a child predator that's no longer on the internet. Floraverse is already practicing death of an author, and it is a shell of its former self. That being said, it is not a story that only has one author. Its other authors are still active, and these authors include every person that it has abused in its wake. After all, it's a comic that relies on you to know about its dramas with and traumas of real people. Tell me: Does a death of the author matter when its being written about you?

[practicalsolarpunk]

is material consumption ok if it's for hobbies?

I want to start by thanking you for asking this question. It's an important one, and it leads to an idea that we don't really address much on practicalsolarpunk. But we definitely should discuss it more, and this is a good place to start. This may or may not be what you want to hear, anon, but I hope this helps a little bit. (Long post ahead.)

When I started this blog, most of the solarpunk content I could find was aesthetic, fiction, and political action. All of those are very important! Political action and resistance is how we will actually make changes on a systemic level. Aesthetic and fiction content are essential because it lets us imagine a better future, and it's impossible to create a future we can't imagine. But what I wanted was a blog of small things I could do right now or soon to reduce my consumption in general, learn new things, opt out in tiny ways, and make both the world and my own life a little better. This blog is about little things (and sometimes slightly bigger things) that we can do as individuals. Composting, gardening, foraging, and building community may make your life and the lives of those around you better, but they won't change the exploitative and destructive foundations of capitalist society.

practicalsolarpunk is not the definitive guide to solarpunk. It's not even the end goal. In my view, solarpunk has three interlocking aspects: Individual actions towards making a better future, building communities to make a better future together, and political action and resistance to move societal structures and systems towards a better future. On this blog, we mainly focus on individual actions and a little bit of community-building. Individual actions are great, but they can only go so far.

Coming back to your main concept, consumption: It's easy to come to the conclusion that consumption is bad, evil, wrong, destroying the environment, etc. If you hang out in solarpunk spaces, you've probably heard the "There is no ethical consumption under capitalism." And that's true - it is impossible to find anything created under capitalism that is not somehow exploiting the environment or people. However, consumption is required to survive. Eating food is consumption. Wearing clothes is consumption. Living indoors is consumption. Using any method of transportation besides walking is consumption. Even outside of capitalist systems, we must consume to live.

We are prone to black-and-white thinking. We want to sort things into "entirely good" and "entirely bad." When we have those boxes, we can do all of the things that make us good and none of the things that make us bad. It seems especially important to know what's good and what's bad to do when the future and the fate of the world are at stake. But in reality, almost nothing is fully good or fully bad. Everything is somewhere on the spectrum in between.

My guess is you want permission to buy things for your hobbies. (That's my guess because I have wanted the same thing - I hoped permission from someone who knew more than me about what was going on would help me feel less guilty about consuming.) And the reality is that I cannot give you that permission. There are reasonable arguments for either side. Material consumption for hobbies is good because hobbies are great for mental health and you can't change the world if your mental health is terrible. Material consumption for hobbies is bad because even though the consumption reduced is small it can build up to a greater effect over time.

Overconsumption is destroying the planet. We must consume to survive. There is no way to consume ethically under capitalism. All three of these statements are true. That means there is no "right" answer to your question. You can only make a decision based on your values, your needs, and your knowledge. I know what my choice would be in your situation, but I can't say what the best choice is for you.

I'm a huge fan of Maya Angelou's quote,: "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." Make the best decision you can with the information you have. If and when you get more information, you may need to reevaluate it. Perfection is impossible. Even when the stakes seem terrifyingly high, your best is good enough.

And one final note, because this question has reminded me a lot of myself and I don't want you to fall into the same trap I once did: Don't let guilt dictate this decision. Guilt tells you that you're doing the wrong things, you're not doing the right things, and you're definitely not doing enough. It says that making yourself happy is a moral failing, that it's wrong to do things just for fun while people are suffering and the world is burning, and that you are partially to blame for the state of the world because you chose to consume. Guilt is a liar, and you will destroy yourself before you ever do enough or sacrifice enough to satisfy it.

Ultimately, solarpunk is about creating a better future for people. A future where humans are extinct might save the environment from human overconsumption, but that's not a solarpunk future. Excessive material consumption isn't solarpunk, but denying yourself consumption that would improve your life isn't solarpunk either.

- Mod J

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #8 – The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham James

This has been on my tbr for long enough that I entirely forget what originally put it there – the only thing I actually knew going in was that the author was ‘the My Heart is a Chainsaw guy’ (I have not read My Heart is a Chainsaw yet either). Given the genre, that was honestly probably ideal. As was the fact that a blizzard hit a couple days after I started it and I’ve been reading it looking out on a frozen snowscape – it’s very much a winter sort of story.

The story’s told in five parts of wildly varying lengths, each with it’s own endearingly cheesy b-horror movie title and each following a different protagonist. The first four each follow one of a friend group who, as a bunch of fuckup teenagers, trespassed on hunting grounds that were really supposed to be reserved for elders and shot a bunch of elk they had no right to – including a pregnant young cow who was for one reason or another special. Ten years later, the Elk-Headed Woman drags herself back into the world, and begins getting her vengeance for the death of her and her child on each of them (and everyone they care about) in turn.

I have a longstanding opinion that a full-length novel is just too long to sustain a real horror story – by 300 pages things have fairly reliably collapse into urban fantasy or action or farce. The breakup into different parts solves this very well – they’re all very much connected and interwoven, but each feels like its own distinct narrative unit with its own tension and rising action.

And this is very much a horror story in the classic, just barely short of shlocky sense. A trespass against vague but understood sacred laws that leads to horrific and bloody retribution against everyone involved is as close to archtypal horror as you can possibly get, after all. The last section is even focused on a Final Girl! Specifically, it’s a subgenre that I can’t really name but feels very familiar to me – and one I’ve always been a huge fan of, anyway. It’s somewhere downstream of The Count of Monte Cristo, a story where the agent of supernatural doom spends the majority of the story consciously working in the background, manipulating events and exacerbating the protagonist/victim’s flaws to lead them to a contrived but tragic end? Think the netflix Fall of the House of Usher, but like about the exact opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

Class is very much something the book cares about. All four protagonists grew up poor on a reservation with little in the way of wealth or opportunity, and by the time they’d turned eighteen all four of them were the kind of young asshole who made life just a little bit worse for everyone around them dealing with the same shit. Ten years latter the three of them who’ve survived that long have gotten over themselves and matured in their own way (and to their own degree), but none of them are exactly flush with cash or living lives of bourgeois respectability (though Lewis comes close). The precarity and only tenuous connections to the society around them just make them better prey for what’s hunting them, of course – in every case, death comes after the (either metaphorical or very viscerally literal) destruction of the few close ties they have, and the only one to survive is also the only one who could really expect people to come rushing to their rescue.

Speaking of close ties the protagonists have – the book’s conception of gender is fascinatingly weird, or at least fascinating in the sense that I’m not at all sure how intentional it is. Of the four main victims, one dies alone at eighteen, and the other three who survive the next ten years are all pretty much explicitly saved (or at least improved and uplifted) by a relationship with a woman who, if not flawless, is basically strictly his moral and practical better. Even the most consistent fuckup of the group has a redeeming feature of being willing to do just about anything for his daughter (despite having lost the chance to really be a big part of her life several times over). With one exception, these women all then die, messily, entirely and explicitly to fuck with and ruin the lives of their men. It’s like someone read Women in Refrigerators and went ‘well there’s an idea...’. It’s blatant enough that I feel like it’s got to be making a deliberate point, but (unless it’s just genre emulation) what the point is does escape me slightly.

Also on the note of stuff I’m quite sure is going over my head at least a bit – basketball! It’s a pretty vital thread running through the entire book, to the point that one of the big set pieces of the final act is literally a basketball game with the monster. Which, like, I watched enough bad anime as a small child to find contrived game-playing under unclear mythic rules with things that really want to kill you instinctively endearing, but I can’t really do anything with this except just point at it.

So as the title might imply, this is a novel that’s concerned with race – all but I believe exactly one character is either is either Blackfeet or Crow, more than half the book takes place on a reservation, and a chunk of the rest is spent having to deal with racist assholes of varying severity. Now, I admit that I have at this point a probably overly cynical view of books that end up on breathless ‘socially conscious horror’ or ‘s/ff from diverse creators you NEED to read’ lists online, but I was still rather pleasantly by how matter-of-factly this was handled? I suppose the best way to put it is that culture, upbringing and racialization deeply inform everyone’s characters, but it never feels like the book is preoccupied with providing some assumed naive and impressionable audience any Important Lessons or provide Good Representation to valourize or emulate? Which is probably just a sign I need to raise and re calibrate my expectations, but.

The monster doesn’t exactly work as, like, a coherent character in terms of her skills and abilities, but as a monster the Elk-Headed Woman is great. But then I love contrived fucked up tragedies and am a longstanding partisan of Spooky Deer Horror, so I suppose I would say that.

So yeah, fun read!

[troius]

I just want to say a few things before you get to the end. First up, it's been a pleasure to read your thoughts on the series; like any fan, you have your own unique interpretations and it's always good to read how fans see certain scenes. It's also been fantastic to see fellow fans respond to your posts adding on to what you've written, again bringing your thoughts out more and generating discussion.

Also, seeing your thoughts has made me appreciate scenes and characters I never thought I would -- Yamamoto for instance, who would've thought?! They've also reminded me of why I fell in love with the series as much as I did, from the artwork to the themes to the incredible bonds between the characters. You've reminded me that BLEACH has it's flaws that can sometimes take you out of the story, but when it hits, it 100% HITS! It's a manga that's about the bonds we form, how they can help us overcome challenges and be a source of light in our lives. It's about the ways we overcome grief and the fear of death, whether it's literally fighting your way through it or slowly coming to a state of acceptance as time goes on. It's about the 'hearts' of people, about what they look like and how they're shared between those you choose. I could go on and on, but then this would become an essay and we'd be here all day.

All of this is to say, thank you for choosing to create a Tumblr account and deciding to read the series and give your thoughts along the way. I can't believe you've finally reached the end, it almost feels like I'm saying goodbye to the manga again!! I don't think I'm the only one here who sees you as a big and valued part of the community on here, so I hope you'll be sticking around! :)

Thank you so much Rays! Response under the cut because it went long.

This won't surprise you, but I too have grown in my appreciation for the series over the course of the uh three years that I've run this blog. Bleach has character concepts I've never seen elsewhere. It has moments of storytelling brilliance. It has truly, phenomenally astonishing art.

But more than anything else, I, like you, am impressed by the heart. For a story that's largely about the afterlife, Bleach is shockingly humanistic, locating virtue not in any system of belief, in any group or faction in the various conflicts that provide the setting for the manga, but in people. All people, whether they're our extremely relatable teenage protagonist and his friends, the occasionally sketchy adults in his life, or the various adversaries ranging from evil monsters to supernatural samurai to a regular-ass gang to a foreign apocalypse cult. Bleach never, not once, lets the viewer fall into the comfortable childish space of believing that there's good people and bad people in the world.

There's just people. Sometimes these people want to do bad things, like execute their sisters, or kidnap your girlfriend, or isolate you from your family, or destroy the entire world. Bleach doesn't flinch away from that either. But it (again, very humanistically) locates those bad actions not in the individual human beings, but in our relationships with one another through the systems and structures we've created to organize ourselves.

And yet in the face of the idea that humans do their worst work through other people, that's also where Bleach locates its greatest virtue. Alone, we're nothing. It's the bonds that we have with others that are what make life worth living, that are the source of everything good in this world. And navigating that dynamic, between spiritual bonds and structural shackles...that's really what adult life is all about, isn't it?

Anyhow, my adult life has been greatly enriched by all of you on here. But I'll take the chance to thank you specifically Rays, for being such a source of joy. Your positivity and passion are the sort of thing that makes a humble blogger want to come back for more, and I've deeply enjoyed hearing all of your thoughts, not just on my liveblog, but through your own posts and writing. I'll be sticking around for sure.

[theheirofthesharingan]

Anti Itachi people are weird and I honestly don't understand them. I saw some ppl say Itachi doesn't deserve sympathy because he killed Gaara, joined Akatsuki and tortured Kakashi.... outside of abusing sasuke. So they don't get why he's so popular among fans. 🙄

People really just single out Itachi so randomly among the many characters to shit on because of morality and then crib about their favorite characters as if their favourites are saints. What is it that they feel entitled to hate on Itachi because of his morality and then defend people who did worse than him? Gaara himself is one fine example.

Who'd tell them morality isn't a binary or one-dimensional concept in a fictional world where child-soldiers are common and kids are subjected to being a victim of it and causing it from a very young age.

He killed Gaara

Okay? Gaara killed people for fun. He and his siblings attacked Konoha, killing people. What this fandom believes in is that the lives that Itachi took — no matter who that is — are more important than the lives that other characters took. Which is why Madara, Obito, Pain, Gaara etc., shouldn't be seen as villains and they act all pissy because Itachi isn't seen as a villain.

Here, people, I'll yell it out for you: conscience. Itachi was burdened by his conscience and never justified his crimes. It's literally canon. He wouldn't go out of his way to kidnap a child, manipulate him so the said child could fulfill his dreams after he was dead. He wouldn't unnecessarily attack an unsuspecting village with innocent population and murder them because he hated the world and was heartbroken that his childhood crush who didn't like him back was dead because she chose to. He also wouldn't make the world worse than it already is because he thinks his pain is worse than others.

Endurance, admission of one's mistakes, regrets/guilts etc., are some of the many redeeming qualities Itachi has. Of course people can see that and love him for them.

joined Akatsuki

Unbelievabl that people think this is a bad thing, lmao. On one hand they simp for Obito, Pain, and Madara who are the main ideologues of this extreme philosophy which works on nothing other than violence, then simultaneously have the audacity to be upset why is Itachi a part of this group. Make it make some sense, people. I can't see past your hypocrisy.

and tortured Kakashi... outside of abusing sasuke

Look, there's no justification for any of what he did to either Sasuke or Kakashi or anyone else. But when he came to the village, he had a reputation to uphold, that too that of a criminal who had single-handedly murdered the entire clan that was supposed to be the strongest of its time. He avoided fighting Asuma and Kurenai. He only took on Kakashi because Kakashi was the only one with Sharingan (and Mangekyo Sharingan). Idk if something in an Uchiha's brain goes off when they sense Mangekyo in someone else, or Itachi just did it to keep up his façade. But Kakashi did start to use his MS after his encounter with Itachi.

Either way, Itachi coming to the village, then avoiding fighting the mediocre jounins, taking on only the strongest one, inflicting enough pain to paralyse (in this case coma), but not killing him... That's what one would expect from a "dangerous criminal" like Itachi. Kakashi straight up wonders why Itachi didn't just kill him.

In regards to Sasuke - Itachi didn't plan to meet Sasuke. It doesn't excuse his actions afterwards, but the narrative that he's irredeemable and his love must be questioned as a result is pure unadulterated bullshit. If he wanted to hurt Sasuke he would have done it at that dango shop. When it was only going to take less than a second, then why not do it right away? The only people present there couldn't even touch him with Kisame by his side.

Gai and others also wondered why Itachi was taking so long to kidnap Naruto when he knew what Naruto looked like. Simple. He wanted to get out of the village. He didn't want to come across Sasuke. Traumatizing him again was the last thing he'd want to do.

they don't get why he's so popular among fans

Good thing is, those who love Itachi doesn't exactly need permissions or certificates from the people who don't like him. It's as simple as that. They don't have to get it. We don't care.

[mdhwrites]

The Grimwalker as a concept was so weird. Mainly that Hunter was all 'ohhhh no we cant tell them im a spooky Grimwalker!' But... why would anyone care? The only reason given is that hes a reincarnation of a guy nobody even knows or cares about. Theres not even like, a spooky myth about Grimwalkers because its got such a vague ruleset and premise. He's barely different from a demon.

That COULD have linked to the demon discrimination plotline youve talked about, but there is none so it cant be that. Which i understand was partially because Dana wanted the gays to just exist, so she scrapped discrimination in general. But, a big part of forming cultures and identity is 'Otherness'. People compare themselves to others and define themselves by how theyre different. So scrapping discrimination ends up making the witchs and demons feel like nothing. They have nothing to compare their identity and culture against because theres just no conflict to spark comparison.

This lack of substance also means the fans don't care about Grimwalkers. See the moring comic where the Grimwalker was turned into ANOTHER way to say 'haha Boscha so cringe amirite? point and laugh because she has nobody who loves her.' even though the grimwalker is to reincarnate the dead.

OH MY GOD I'M SO HAPPY SOMEONE ELSE NOTICED THAT! *SCREAMS BLOODY MURDER* Like I know Mark just writes Boscha how the entire fandom sees her (which hasn't helped me enjoy A Hint of Blue, not that I think it's good regardless) but seriously what the fuck!? Why do that to her except just to be mean!?

*sighs* What were we talking about? OH RIGHT! Grimmwalkers.

So for why Hunter has anxiety, it actually is because TOH is doing a very basic clone/artificial human storyline with Hunter and those arcs are actually a lot more internally motivated than externally motivated. Clone lives a life believing they're their own person, then one day finds out they're not, perceives themselves as less because of this distinction but then in the end decides that regardless of their origin, they are their own person and so throw off their shackles, embrace who they are and become better for it. It has nothing to do with race and while it is baby's first clone story, I also still like it conceptually because, well, there's a reason why it's the default clone story. It especially is good for kid's media because while the clone can struggle with the anxiety of it, their friends never have to actually be bad or discriminatory against them because the point is loving yourself for who you are and not who you were made to be.

But I've talked before about how this basic framework actually has a Catch 22 built into it when it comes to Hunter... Which apparently Tumblr wants to tell me I've never done before. Thanks search function. The short version is that this template requires not only a rejection of what they were made for but for them to become distinctly different, usually opposite, to their purpose/original. For Hunter, he only knows Belos so this takes shape in trying to be the opposite of him. The problem is that the opposite of Belos... Is Caleb. Who Hunter mimics in every action he takes after getting away from Belos. There's literally no way to follow this template without adding complexities like him accepting his true origin and being okay/happy with that, something that was probably unlikely in general but especially wasn't going to happen with the shortening, which I will actually give people for. Because the Grimmwalker twist happens so late, they either had to cut it or had no time to actually do anything with it which like... Why not cut it? You did nothing with it and it actually made sure you didn't have the time to actually have Hunter reject Belos' morality so that his redemption doesn't come across as self serving and for survival more than an actual, you know, change to his beliefs.

As for how interesting Grimmwalkers are... They're just clones. Boilerplate, boring clones. Make a body based on another person, put memories in, BAM! Got yourself a clone. Doesn't get more classic than that. It's hardly even magical honestly besides the components, especially with how it actually doesn't give them magic despite those components, or have weird quirks since they're not actually made of flesh and blood, elements that the fans have had a lot of fun with that the show never does, though admittedly part of that is due to how late it happens. Then again, all magic in TOH is boring so it's not likely they would have anyways. Also, you know, a lot of shows will do a single clone episode and have more fun and magic to it than TOH does with one of their core cast members being one so *shrug*

Now, for the final part, I do want to also touch on the 'other' aspect because while discrimination is one way to do it, you can get this across in other ways. One such way is the core defining trait of the Grimmwalker from a tangible standpoint: He doesn't have magic. In a society that mostly has magic, him not having it is a big deal. It's literally what gives him and Willow their first connection as a couple, as insulting as that scene actually should be to Hunter.

And then Hunter is 'fixed' when he gains his magic. His 'other' status removed because he's a real boy now. *SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH*

I have so much more I could say about TOH and 'The Other' (made a blog about a lot of it between writing this draft and publish) but I'll leave it at that so it actually stays on topic instead of the half a dozen tangents I've deleted. None of this makes it good by the way and with how TOH tackles most subjects like this, it's incredibly unlikely that more time would have made it better. After all, being a Grimmwalker is only one of like a half dozen TANTALIZING character/arc concepts for Hunter that are never addressed. The fact that he is trained to kill witches and likely has. His relationship with the Isles because he doesn't have inherent magic. The fact that he is filled with such care for the nation and its government that it blocks out all else in his world. How a sheltered child reacts when they suddenly have freedom and are thrust into the wider world. Etc. etc. that are just footnotes to the writers more than anything to actually build a complete arc around or else they wouldn't have just keep adding to the angst bucket without actually resolving any of it.

So of course Grimmwalkers are bland while being a fine to good concept that's then made terrible by narrative implication or neglect. That's EVERYTHING to do with Hunter.

======+++++=====

Sidenote for this one: It is funny that Dana wanted there to be no bigotry in the Isles when her villains entire scheme is through religious persecution. You know, bigotry. Whole other blog I could go into.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[controversial-blorbo-bracket]

Controversial Character Tournament Round 2: Alois Trancy from Black Butler vs Eichi Tenshouin from Ensemble Stars

(remember that these characters are fictional and your fellow tumblr users are real. i will block you if you harass others in the notes, please consider sending your unhinged harassment to my inbox instead)

Propaganda under the cut, may contain spoilers:

Alois Trancy:

LOVE:

- "everyone wants this guy dead. he is the villain of his narrative for the simple hubris of wanting to live and be loved after surviving traumatic events one after another for his whole childhood, and in the end the narrative kills him for it. being an anime-only character, many fans dislike his character as well, seeing him as unnecessary or controversial/contradictory to the well-established lore of the main storyline. he's gotten rejected from other poll tournaments, even, for his backstory containing a Lot of controversial and dark material (so yeah heads up for that). i personally care very deeply about his character, because someone i am very close with in my real life relates a lot to him, and has experienced similar traumatic events. in the end, he just wants to be loved, but he is bound to the hatred of his fellow characters, of the writers and his universe itself, of the fans of his series, of... everyone but a select few people clinging to him. which is to say, he is broadly hated, but i think the balance of the few that truly and deeply want to break him out of that fate and love him with the fervor of a thousand suns.... i think that makes him a great candidate for this competition."

Eichi Tenshouin:

LOVE:

- "Eichi is so silly… he started an entire war for his crush… then “killed” said crush in public (it was a metaphorical killing). He’s responsible for ruining the lives/mental health of SEVERAL if not dozen of people. He doesn’t know about the concept of “love.” In all honestly, I just see him as a very naive person with too much money to spend (he’s extremely rich if I didn’t mention it). People either love him or hate him, though I feel like the fandom has been coming around to him lately, especially in the past few years, so he may not win the poll, but the discourse around him has left such a strong impression on me that I HAD to submit him. Personally, I love him he’s one of my favorite characters; I have a plushie of him :)"

- "Okay first of all I don't love or hate him I'm actually pretty neutral about him BUT I will defend him til the day I die because people who hate him hate him for like. the wrong reasons. Okay he started an idol war like he was 16 and wanted to change the idol system at Yumenosaki and none of the teachers did anything to like. actually turn these kids into idols and Eichi took things into his own hands. This guy is a rich chronically ill nepo baby and gay as hell which is incredibly important to the whole narrative and I still stand by the fact that like. if the adults at the school had done their job this wouldn't have happened and Eichi has shown a lot of growth and self reflection in the time since then (even though he is......essentially creating an idol factory to mass produce popular idols. anyway) and he regrets a lot of his actions during the war but also. objectively at least for one of the characters, if someone didnt do something about what was going on in that unit it would have ended incredibly badly (Shu Itsuki and Ex-Valkyrie which is another long story I am not going to get into but you can read Marionette if you want to know more about it and even as a Shu Producer I think it was necessary for his own character arc and development, as well as Nazuna and Mika's arcs. Anyway this isn't about them this is about Eichi) he's very complicated and I think people who hate him just because of the war are missing whole pieces of his character, yknow? He was just a kid with ideals and a lot of money and drive to create change and nobody was around to guide him in the right direction. I still don't understand how the teachers at this school have jobs if they just allowed four kids to get metaphorically executed on stage though."

- "i love him very much he’s kind of a bitch though so like i think he’s divisive enough to win it"

- ""how controversial can this idol gacha game boy possibly be" I have seen people unironically censor his name it's so funny. his haters are so. they hate any complex morally grey character and none of them can be normal about it. the amount of people I've seen making jokes about his terminal illness and how they can't wait until he dies is something else, and I've seen soooo many people unironically call him irredeemable and evil and that enstars would be better if he wasn't in it (as if eichi isn't the single most important character in enstars' plot like. literally most of the cast would never have met and bonded if it wasn't for him) and etc etc. his fans are also kind of rabid and hardcore but I respect that. he gives me brainworms too. I think the controversy might maaaaybe be largely only the western side of the fanbase...? bc his merch is still some of the most expensive in the entire series lol. an expensive boy few can afford... literally the character of all time. please appreciate him in this cat hoodie: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ensemble-stars/images/5/5d/Eichi_Tenshouin_Namja_Town.png/revision/latest?cb=20200109223739"

- "He is my special little guy my blorbo my funny little war criminal however he very much did commit a lot of crimes and people rightfully do not like him for it. However. To me, personally, he is my poor sick little meow meow. He is so fucked up and I love him for it. Men who were born all alone in a wet cardboard box am I right ?"

[poisonousquinzel]

Listen, I'd have less of an issue with Elseworlds concepts for Harley in live action if we'd EVER gotten an accurate showing of her origin story, the manipulation that runs throughout every second of every session they had together and the sheer and graphic brutality of the abuse she's endured at his hands, but we haven't.

And I doubt we're going to.

Regardless if you want to face it or not, the live action films reach a much larger audience than the animated shows or movies or comics. They're popular, but these live action films have a chance to bring in a Huge outside audience and that's apparent with Harley's surge in popularity after Suicide Squad.

And right now, every version of her origin that's been shown in live action is either a watered down little montage with heavy censoring that can (and Did) leave audiences with a horrifically skewed perspective on the actuality of their relationship, or is reported to be a completely changed and altered dynamic where she's not even a fucking psychiatrist at Arkham, she's a fellow patient.

Like, an important aspect of Harley's origin and the entirely of her character as a domestic abuse survivor is that it's showing that no matter who you are, no matter how much you think "I wouldn't fall for that, I'm smarter than that", or believe that you'd easily pick up the red flags, or that you're trained to see these things so it couldn't happen to you-

That's just not always true. You can still fall victim to these types of people.

Anyone can fall victim to an abusive, manipulative mastermind.

"You little fool. The Joker doesn't love anything except himself.

Wake Up, Harleen.

He had you pegged for a hired help the second you walked into Arkham."

"That's not... No... No!

He told me things, secret things he never told anyone!"

"Was it his line about the abusive father? Or the one about the runaway mom? He's gained a lot of sympathy with that one."

"Stop It! You're making me confused!"

"What was it he told that one parole officer? Oh yes, "there was only one time I ever saw dad really happy, he took me to the ice show when I was 7."

"Circus... He said it was the circus."

"He's got a million of them, Harley."

/ also I think it's important to point out based on Batman's "You and the Joker?" reaction that, despite her relationship with Joker being near the 7 year mark in this episode, he did not Know this "thing" with them was anything more than the standard henchmen/henchwoman type relationship most rogues have with their goons.

And the minute he does, he tries to get through to her. He tries to get through to Harleen. And then in the end, when he's almost got it, she's almost convinced and seeing the truth, he calls her Harley. He calls her by the name she's going by now, not the woman he believes to be trapped inside, but the one in front of him who's crying while her world is crumbling before her eyes.

It does not matter how trained you are, or how prepared you believe yourself to be, it can happen to Anyone. And it's No One's fault except the abuser for the actions the abuser takes.

But you can be the smartest person in the room and still be abused.

However, now, instead, we've got yet another film that's going to completely miss the mark and make a mockery of her journey. And instead of it being a first Live Action appearance for her and many others and whatnot like Suicide Squad was, this film is different.

This is a sequel to a film that's already got a fan base full of apologists for him. A fan base full of incels who have taken him on as their icon, as their role model, and we all fucking know it.

However they portray her character in this is going to stick with people and a lot of those folks are going to happily believe and treat this as if it's the true reality for her origin. No matter what other medias say, this is the accurate one. This is the one that's finally just allowing them to be together and not toxic. This is the one that's "not butchering his character so she can be the victim", he just gets to be his goofy little self and isn't changed so her story can exist.

And the only other live action movie that these people will or have watched that's got her character is Suicide Squad, as it's apparent so many of them clearly do not care about the 3 decades worth of evidence showing their actual relationship.

Cause facing the fact that that crusty ass disgusting man Is, and Has Been, a domestic abuser would make their constant woobification of him all the more difficult.

And why would they do that when they could just keep pretending he's not the fucking problem.

[moistvonlipwig]

i think fandom people are generally not very good at analyzing the behind the scenes workings of tv productions largely because fans (like most people) tend to make assumptions & inferences that support their own biases. the reality is that the television industry is a mess and there are many hands in the pot and all of them have different agendas -- network execs, showrunners, producers, writers, actors, etc. sometimes decisions are made for storytelling reasons, sometimes they're made to make money, sometimes they're made because one of the execs/showrunners is a petty bitch and wants to take it out on someone.

the other reality is that it is very rare for (network) live-action tv shows (though this is changing w/ streaming & it's different w/ animation) to have a longterm plan and that's not a bad thing. jms had a 5-year-plan for babylon 5 and then the network that aired the show looked like it might go under after season 4 and he rushed to fit everything into the end of season 4 (+ tv films) and then the show got renewed for a fifth season anyway and he had no idea what to do. babylon 5 is well-regarded by sci-fi fans but to tv writers jms is a cautionary tale. when people speculate about what the "original plan" was for a tv show they are most likely talking out of their ass. either that or one of the writers mentioned a half-baked concept they tossed around in the room for five minutes at a convention one time and the fans took that and ran with it. there is almost never an "original plan". and again. that's not a bad thing if you understand how tv is made.

oh and i also think fandom people are way too quick to spread narratives crafted by other fandom people without evaluating the source of the narrative. i have seen so many myths get repeated -- some of them obviously false, some that are quite possibly entirely true -- that have nothing to back them up except that people in fandom keep believing them. and i don't want to be too harsh but uh. i don't like that sam i am!

[sol-consort]

question about your femshep: how would she react if confronted with her private affairs by the media and what do hackett and anderson think of her having multiple children and affairs/ how did they react?

I love your character, so different from what people normally do with paragons!🩷🦑

thank you! I like the concept of characters who make the best heroes yet are bad in their personal life.

It really makes you feel conflicted about how their scaled heart would weigh against a feather. On one side, they save people's lives, on another side, they break their lovers' hearts.

They make mythical legends, great leaders, even good friends, but terrible partners.

One of the benefits of going paragon is the high persuasion. A paragon Shep is effortlessly charming, the media's darling even. When it comes to the extranet viral interview vids, it doesn't matter what she's really saying as long as how she's saying it is seemingly convincing.

A reporter tries to corner her about another spouse who filed for divorce after catching her in bed with another? Femshep mentions how, yes, that did happen, and she takes full responsibility. That it's their right to divorce her if they feel like it, that's their freedom, isn't it? The same freedom she's been defending for decades, the freedom everyone almost got robbed of by the reapers not so long ago, the entire galaxy would've been wiped wasn't it for her stepping up and convincing everyone to put their differences aside and work together.

Do tell her, reporter, do you have a family? Are they from earth or an outer colony? Who do you think kept it safe? Kept your family and friends safe while you were spreading high-school lockerroom gossip about her. You should be ashamed of yourself. She is not perfect, yes, but who is?

Or something along those lines. As if those unrelated things excuse her actions.

Evading the question, speaking with confidence, appearing charismatic on camera, and she's got every viewer in her pocket. Die hard fans ready to defend her wrongdoings because "She is commander Shepard!" and "we should be asking what the ex-spouce did to cause her to cheat? It can't be her fault." as if it's ever the fault of the person who gets cheated on.

-

Admiral Hackett

He is shown to have looser morals than the rest of the alliance multiple times in canon. He understands how messy the real world can be, how you can't achieve results without getting your hands dirty and sweeping things under the rug.

Not only did he massively stall the alliance investigation on Shepard back when joining Cerberus, replying to every email sent to him—presented with hard evidence of Shepard's treasons—requesting permission to open an offical case, with "negative."

He is a seasoned vetran, a decorated admiral who has seen everything the world has to offer. If the saviour of the galaxy is a serial adulterer, then so be it. He genuinely could not give less of a shit what Shepard got to in her own free time, as long as it doesn't make the alliance look too bad, as long as her legacy remains unblemished, then everything could be overlooked.

But he still went to Shepard for help when it came to rescuing an old friend. In the aftermath of the mission, he promised to keep the government officials off Shepard's back until the collectors threat is no more.

Hackett is one of the first people to completely dismiss and shut down any interviews with him trying to expose Shepard's infidelity. He denies every all and all allegations, offers no comment, and ensures no printing press would ever accept these "baseless" articles or host them online.

Thanks to him and the alliance PR team, Shepard's inner life conflict is kept hush-hush on the down low. The average person wouldn't know about it, you have to really dig deep and look through courtroom records and deleted inteviews and articles to find out about it. To do that, chances are you're either an obsessed fan or a nosy reporter, reporters can be bribed and fans are too deep in denial to face reality.

This isn't the first or the last time an important public figure fucked up, a little corruption is needed to grease the wheels of the goodness machine. Shepard's risking her lives for people and doing it with the efficiency of an entire fleet. As long as she keeps at it, Admiral Hackett has no qualms cleaning her messes.

Paragon or Renegade, in his views, the world needs a Shepard. If anything, he's relieved it's just being a shitty partner & cheater and not like money embezzlement from the government, legal matters are always annoying to cover up.

-

Captian Anderson

He feels...immensely guilty, as if he failed Shepard, as if it was him who led her down this scummy path. Especially after their conversation in ME3 ending, where he tells her she'd make a great mom.

She is a mom now, an even decently good one... but at what cost? Being a terrible wife.

He always defended her against the crew, always sang her praises in front of superiors. How could he not? She was the textbook definition of the perfect soldier, diligent and hardworking, she was the best XO he has ever had.

With that rough uprising she had on earth, he expected her to have a million problems he'd have to sort through, attitude, stubbornness and prejudices... yet to his surprise, there was nothing. Shepard was a squeaky clean slate, even when he tested her faithfulness to the alliance on multiple occasions.

Turns out, it was a different kind of faithfulness she lacked. The kind that breaks families, he should know, the mention of his ex-wife's name still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

So he blames himself for not knowing, for not paying much attention to the different people she'd mingle with during shore break, only to abandon them for a new shinier person. Maybe if he was more observant, he could've prevented this, he could've had a serious talk to her about it.

the way he views it, of course, it is his fault, for how could it be hers when she never had a father to sit her down and explain love and trust? How could it be hers... no, it can never be Shepard's fault. It must be his own.

He was there for her as a captain, but he failed her as a friend.

Is what he tells himself to take the blame from her.

It's never mentioned why he divorced his wife, but from the huge amount of responsibilities he had, I assume she left because she was feeling neglected.

Only for him to find out she "met" someone else back when they were still together through a Facebook post where she's gushing about their anniversary, the timeline not adding up, until things click into place in his head.

He used to be in denial about Shepard's "predicament," just reporter drama. Until catching up with one of his old crew—be it Kaidan or else—and hearing first hand of how Shepard broke their trust and betrayed their love. How she showed no remorse yet still maintained a friendly relationship with them after the breakup, how it didn't take her much to immediately move on to a new person. For the cycle to start all over again before their eyes.

The immense disgust and disappointment he felt in that moment, the stained glass painting of Shepard in his mind shattering into a million pieces. It was almost as if it's his own heart she broke, a person he proudly called a friend, one of a kind.

It stung even more with the knowledge that Shepard kept repeating the same mistakes despite Anderson entrusting her about what happened between him and his ex-wife, venting to her like an old friend, how uncharacteristic it was for her to just sit there and not say a word, changing the subject afterwards.

And now he carries that guilt with him akin to a ball and chain, mulling it over a glass of whiskey...or three. Nursing his glass as he wonders if it's too late for an intervention, Shepard is well into her 40s by now...is it too late for him to step up as a guardian again?

Does she even see him as a father figure anymore? They drifted apart after the reapers incident. A peaceful life was never Shepard's style, and so she was determined to make the most out of her field days before old age forces her into a retirement or an admiral uniform.

-

As for Shepard herself, she doesn't grant herself excuses or justifications, the charismatic speeches she gives to reporters don't work on her own mind.

She is forced to stare into the brutal truth of her being rotten at the core, that despite all of her virtues, her mortal sin resonated in the most hurtful way possible to the people closest to her hearts.

Whatever new relationship she starts, she dreads the eventual breakup once her old habits creep up again. She doesn't know why she does this. It simply feels right during the moment to give into temptation. The mere idea of her being chained to one person makes her skin break out in hives.

Their love is never guaranteed. In her perspective, it's better to just hop on whatever new opportunity presents itself.

She is guilty over her lack of guilt when it comes to infidelity. How it feels like second nature for her to shamelessly break her oaths of devotion and love for a one night stand with a lovely woman she just met at a bar.

Because deep down, she knows she's lying through her teeth when she admits to her partners about her cheating being a bad habit.

Deep down, she genuinely has no problem with it. She's only saying what she learned to say to appease the other person, to mediate the situation.

[scratchyemporium]

as requested by one of my followers, i come with some body-and-mind-based sundowner headcanons! (again, i am not an expert at this, as i haven't reached the sundowner fight yet or an expert in whatever i discuss! i might be completely wrong in some cases!)

1. sundowner was definitely in new york during 9/11. wild start, right? well, think about it. he's been in the iraq war and afghanistan when he was still in the military, obviously due to america's war against terrorism. hell, he's a die-hard war fan! (sundowner quote to back this up: "business ain't been the same since they shut down SOP. "a clean break from the war economy." well some of us liked that economy. how's an honest warmonger supposed to make a living?") he's all about war since he claims through words and actions that war is the only thing that pleases him anymore, and this terrorist attack pushed him even further to his obsession with full-out war. if he wasn't there when the twin towers fell, he has at least watched it on the news and got all excited about it.

2. sundowner has always been bald (or on the verge of it. always. of course he's bald with a codename like sundowner. he's destined to have instant hair loss. even in his childhood and before he was a cyborg, he's either had a buzzcut or eternally bald from when he was just a baby. besides getting his name from the blood on his blades looking like a sunset, he only names himself sundowner just because he wants the sun to not shine on his bald head!

2.5. irrelevant headcanon that i made just because i want to make fun of sundowner: despite being bald all the time, he does have peach fuzz. he's no hair but all fuzzy. no top, all bottom! i'm getting off topic now.

3. sundowner is heavily based off of a shogun, or samurai leader. obvious, right? shoguns are powerful leaders from feudal japan with mass control over land and armies. who else also has that power? sundowner, of course! even though he doesn't have the slightest clue of what a japan even is, he does share many qualities with a shogun, like powerful military and territorial control, as he is the leader of desperado after all. what's even cooler is that he's supposed to be a heavily armed samurai, like mentioned in the concept book of metal gear rising!

4. sundowner's QR-code is actually scannable and it leads to a website. i wouldn't put a code on my forehead for no reason, and i wouldn't put sundowner as a guy who just has a code on his head for literally no reason. i actually have two theories as to what the code leads to...:

it leads to the manufacturer of the cybernetic parts sundowner uses' website for a free promotion (and even just an advertisement for the curious folks, really).

it leads to a youtube video, specifically a rickroll or another meme song to insert his dominance over others.

obviously, it could be so much more than just those two, but c'mon, if the codes were blank, that'd be an entire endless trolling opportunity wasted!

5. sundowner's machetes can be at least 111 degrees fahrenheit (about 44 degrees celsius) but could be at most 550 degrees fahrenheit (about 288 degrees celsius). oh wow, finally some actual science? well, not really. remember sundowners introductory scene, where he killed the two guards and kidnapped n'mani? remember the second guy he killed, where he cut his entire head off? this is where the theory about the burning blades kicks in. in the cutscene, there's a distinct sizzling sound from where he's cutting the guy's head as a trail of steam or smoke came off of where said cut was. this is proof that sundowner is actually cauterizing (the act of burning someone's wounds with a very hot tool) the poor guy while he's already getting his head cut off!

with such facts, it can be assumed that his machetes are as hot as the sun.

6. sundowner hasn't grown up from his childhood (yet). i know this is a low blow, but what if he was taught to love war by his parents, specifically his father or another male adult figure in the family? what if he was bullied by the kids at his school because of his average grades in school and his family's financial status hindering him to have such fancy toys as the others? what if he was actually the bully at school? as he says right before his intense battle against raiden...:

7. another biased one, as always: surprisingly, unlike monsoon, sundowner could've be saved, but there's a low chance of that ever happening. consider his struggles against monsoon when they were both young. sundowner has been in more wars, but hasn't experienced as much stuff as monsoon in my opinion. sure he may be the leader of desperado, but that's because of how tough and strong he is compared to the others. at his fight with raiden, it's well established that the others have been killed off (rip misty and monsoony), and that only he's left. sure, he may have sam, but sam was recruited only because of monsoon. he's alone against jack and he knows this. but... this does give him an opportunity to live, albeit a small one. "either step down from desperado or die" could've been proposed, but one; raiden's a cold-blooded killer, and two; sundowner will very likely make up his own terrorist group again... but imagine the possibilities...

about 11 hours later and this post being wiped out once after i was almost done with it, i'm finally finished! this was surprisingly more entertaining and fun than what i expected. maybe sundowner isn't that scary of a guy after all...

(i'm joking. he still scares me.)

of course, you can ask me about who i should do next through reblogs or replies! i'm always eager on researching characters for the public!

[eternal-echoes]

There are definitely anime that are as sexual as American live-action TV, and there are American cartoons that are as wholesome as some anime. To compare anime to American live-action TV isn't necessarily fair, nor is it fair to ignore some of the anime that exist out there that is entirely sexual fanfare.

True. I was just saying my experience about watching This is Us because that’s around the time when I relapsed to watching anime again. Tho it was mostly due to because I got into a conversation with a co-worker about anime. It was lent and I was re-watching Cowboy Bebop so I mentioned I was watching that and he commented that I like “old-school anime.” I wasn’t really it just that Cowboy Bebop has existential themes so I was re-watching it for that during lent. But that conversation made me wanna explore the animes from the ‘90’s and see what made them classic and so I started watching Trigun, then discovered Rurouni Kenshin and that led to tuning in to more new animes currently trending right now so now I’ve decided to post my analysis of them on here to draw anime fans into my Catholic blog and hopefully lead them to convert to Catholicism someday.

Anyways, I guess if we wanna seriously compare American cartoons to Japanese anime, I would say American cartoons are more about being silly for younger kids and sarcastic for older people, whereas Japanese anime do seriously explore human life experiences through otherworldly storytelling. Like Spongebob is silly and Rick and Morty is sarcastic (I don’t really watch it but I’m sorta basing this base one scene I saw) while anime that I’m currently into right now My Happy Marriage is about having lived through abusive childhood and finding love after (literally a re-telling of Cinderella). Japanese anime in my opinion is not afraid to explore authentic human experiences and serious mature subjects (by mature I don’t mean rated-r for sex and violence but just concepts that’s hard for kids to understand) and adding a little bit of mystical imagination to it. Like Naruto is about friendship and perseverance with some action scenes and magic added into it. I don’t really watch sexual animes though. I did watch one that had nudity and violence (but no sex) that my cousin mentioned which got me curious and the story was just a pretty mediocre thriller and it just honestly catered to male audience. Nana had some nudity but sex is usually like PG-13 level of implication. I feel like it was more about Nana Osaki’s career and the emotional aspects being in a relationship.

I tend to get turn off by stories (either animes or live-action) when there’s a lot of fan service even though it’s not explicit because it just feels like the writers rely on those to try to draw people in but there isn’t much in the story.

If we’re talking about animation movies, someone else mentioned that Disney movies touches the heart while Studio Ghibli touches the soul. I’m not sure if that’s an accurate description but if you compare Up to Spirited Away I think we can both agree that they do speak a different language, and I don’t just mean that literally but that they do explore different themes of life. Like Up is more about the meaning of love and relationship while Spirited Away is about experiencing authentic loving friendship (on a platonic kids level).

[jesuis-melodrama]

TV Show Proposals

Just in case a TV show executive is scrolling through Tumblr searching for their next big hit, here are some proposals from a humble yet rabid media consumer.

More Than Meets the Eye

What do you know about Transformers? That this 1980s cartoon TV series started off as a ploy to sell toys, but impacted their audience so much children were walking out of movie theatres crying when Hasbro literally executed their first line of products in order to introduce the second?

The beginning of Transformers were conceived in the same faith multiple other 1980s cartoon were made – as product advertisement to sell children toys. My Little Pony, Carebears, He-Man, G.I. Joe – they appealed to the violent and action-oriented or cutesy and fashion-oriented subnature of young children, so they could in turn badger their parent to splurge money on figures of their favourite character and any future accessories at the local toy mart.

The fan reception to the Transformers film (1986) allowed studio executives to realise Transformers had something more to it than advertising potential. And fastforward thirty years later when Micheal Bay took the reins to produce the multimillion live-action series, firmly cemented Transformers in its place in American pop-culture.

Although Transformers was always political – the entire Autobot vs Deception concept was based off the Cold War tension at the time of writing the original series – over the years this mostly negligible baseline has been heightened, especially in IDW comic's publishing. From apartheid society, right to self-autonomy, and state-mandated divide of class based on function, certain part of Transformers lore has become 'realistic' enough to be uncomfortable. Even when the characters are giant mecha-alien robots, there is an undeniable human element beneath all the armour.

I am not proposing a TV show of all of IDW's comics, just the More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light series.

I acknowledge, foremost, that there are already serious issues with only animating this singular storyline alone. IDW, after all, has a near two-decade long history, and animating a stand-alone chapter that happens in the middle of the series is not going to help any new fans or consumers. Additionally, many beloved Transformers legacy characters are not going to appear in the narrative at all, bringing up the question of More Than Meets the Eye's marketability. Inspiring-Prime Rodimus will be leading a 200-bot ship of famously C and D-list characters (many who has since reached fandom fame for the roles they played in MTMTE and Lost Light); and when Bumblebee, Starscream, and Shockwave does come into play, finally, their position in the plot will be extraordinarily confusing unless the reader already knows the comics backstory.

Either way, I think that if some studio executive want to take a risk, they should do so anyway. More Than Meets the Eye was the first Transformers comic I actually read, when I knew absolutely nothing about the IDW lore and was only basing all my knowledge on the Bayverse films, and even though I didn't know who most of the characters are, it took barely five issues to get attached. I found myself intrigued by the witty writing, clever characters, gorgeous art, and the ever-desirable camaraderie that formed between this unlikely found-family group of bots.

More Than Meets The Eye was honestly magical to read, I genuinely believe my life and life philosophy had become better after consuming those 54 issues.

Other issues in producing a More Than Meets the Eye TV show relates to the lack of human characters, as human characters has become a prime template for the human audience to project themselves upon, and More Than Meets the Eye is also notoriously un-child-friendly. From characters such as Overlord to Tarn, or Megatron himself. Torture, murder, concentration camps, cannibalism – the comics illustrate the worst of what a galaxy-wide war between a hard-scrabbling general and a genocidal warlord could produce, and it does not shy away from the details.

More Than Meets the Eye is also a story of redemption. Multiple characters throughout the series – literal war criminals, self-deprecating, suicidal, cruel in the way that those who have given up are cruel – learn to give a damn, to realise how to live for a better tomorrow.

And the two defining titans of the entire franchise meet some of the best writing that has ever been given to them. They don't appear until the second half of the story or they don't appear much at all, but don't let their scarcity convince you of the quality of their characterisation. The writers of More Than Meets The Eye love every character, those who were destined to fade into obscurity and those who were never meant to be in the limelight, and it shows. IDW's Megatron isn't a true villain in the way that Optimus Prime couldn't live up to his untouchable hero image, but this does not mean that Megatron hasn't willingly and gleefully committed evil and Optimus hasn't done the best and the most righteous a leader in his position in the middle of a robot holocaust could've.

Making a More Than Meets The Eye TV show is risky. One hundred percent. It's in the middle of a series that a reader need background knowledge for, it has no human characters, its robot characters aren't exactly winning any popularity contests, and it cannot be marketed towards a general audience.

But More Than Meets the Eye has won two Comics Alliance award for good reason, and it has certainly convinced this Transformers-curious reader with no prior knowledge to become a lifelong fan of the entire franchise.

And I am not the one who sees the potential in a TV series. To any executive who has somehow read till the end of this post, check out these fantastic animations by passionate fans and artists:

魏威安's animated summary of the entire IDW comic history, just to give you an idea of the scope you're dealing with here.

Spooky Unicornus's heartwarming Christmas-themed short, with some fantastic lighting and movement.

The Alexicon's mock trailer.

This disconcerting comics-accurate short by OMUSUNDA featuring some brilliant voice-acting by a Scottish Skids –

– and a compilation of Ultra Magnus featuring his Animated voice from the same artist.

The Arcane-fication of Overwatch

I am not a gamer. I don't own any console systems, my iMac is pretty but cannot run computer games, and my favourite game is actually this mobile app called Bullet Echo, which I will proudly announce I am quite good at. Shout out to my main hero, Mirage.

But I have watched literally every single one of Overwatch's animated cinematic shots. And I am fascinated. The storytelling, the animation, the characters and their designs. I love all their accents, the little nods to their culture, and overall, the camaraderie between Overwatch members, although their interactions are brief.

I'm getting the slowly coagulating imagery of a truly fascination techno-dystopian world, a classic tale of a future gone wrong and heroes that rose up to the challenge.

I have heard and read some criticism about Overwatch's lore, that it's simplistic and is weak, lacking in any kind of depth. If this is true, I will claim ignorance to the fact that I have not played a single game. As an animation-enthuasist, I have simply watched the cinematic shorts over and over again, and is enchanted by the short bursts of story I've seen there.

I've never played League of Legends either, and I can bet most of those who watched Arcane never did as well. But Arcane was enjoyable for both hardcore gamers and first-time fans anyway. It had something for the general unfamiliar audience while throwing out some service to those that followed the franchise for a long time. And the trick to maintaining this balance is simple: good writing, writers that care.

So – Arcane-ficiation of Overwatch. Am I going to play Overwatch one day? Unlikely. But would I sit down and watch a TV series about it? Definitely. Comments on Overwatch's cinematic shorts always snarkly points out that the movies are better than the game and the producers should realise where to throw in their funds. I won't cast my own judgement upon these opinions as I, once again, have not played a single game. But I hope some Blizzard executives are warming up to the idea. After all, video game-based TV series has been gaining traction over the past few years. Just look at Arcane, or The Witcher, or The Last of Us. Dungeons and Dragons even managed a big feature blockbuster, with a pretty star-studded cast.

A brief list of my favourite Overwatch shorts, judged by not ranked on story, animation, and voice-acting.

Percy Jackson

An animated Percy Jackson series.

I know there's a live-action series of Percy Jackson coming out next year, and so far, it seems pretty hopeful. The actors are age accurate, the set design looks amazing, and Rick Riordian himself approves of the series.

Thing is, I grew up reading Percy Jackson and was violently passionate about the series once, back when the live-action movies were the ire of the fandom and the fanart, especially those of Viria's, were so popular they were considered canon. Canon enough that the official Percy Jackson wiki page actually eventually hired Viria to make their official character art.

There was even this petition to make an animated series with Viria's art that I remember signing a couple years ago.

Nowadays, artists likes velinxi has also become fandom staples in defining the stylised appearances of the characters, especially regarding the likeness of the Big Three.

This is one TV show that I'm not too invested about – as animated series with Overwatch and More Than Meets the Eye could be considered inevitable to the franchise at this point while Percy Jackson is significantly more popular and enjoy more medias, blockbusters alongside comics books, a musical, and the upcoming DisneyPlus+ TV series.

Just saying, fans manifested Viris's art being canon enough that the prophecy has been fulfilled. And if 50 000 fans signed a petition to make Viria's art an animated TV show – who knows?

Hamiltion

This is the long shot, I know. Hamilton is probably the most successful musical of this generation, and for good reason. I personally has never seen so much passion, clever lyricism, historical significance, and art stuffed within two hours.

My knowledge of musicals is that usually maybe about 40-70% of the show is sung while the rest is acted. Not for Hamilton, the actors truly push their physicality and vocal cords to the limit by turning it up to 200 percent for the entire performance. Renée Elise Goldsberry sang and rapped and delivered a masterful rendition of emotion during Satisfied (one of my favourite songs, ever) alone. No other musical has come close to Hamilton's set design and sophisication in my humble opinion, and I bet it will be a very long time before another musical that is released will come close.

Here, I am not only proposing the possibility of a TV show, but also a movie. There are many loose-ends in Hamilton that Lin-Manuel Miranda mentioned could not be covered in the play due to time constraints, such as the question as to what happened to Peggy.

A TV show could give the producers plenty of time to expand on fan-favourite moments, such as the Winter Ball or the battlefield scenes along with typing up loose ends. More time could also introduce more songs, and embellish the visual design further with on-site landscape, although the question of whether or not this will elevate the musical's appeal is debatable as Hamilton's single room, rotating dais set has become synonymous with the show and an archetypal of ingenious on-stage set design. Again, like with Percy Jackson, not too fussed about the possibility of Hamilton making it onto the big screen. But just throwing the idea there.

[todayisafridaynight]

The whole giri-ninjo part of the discussion you guys were having scratches a particular itch in my brain! I love all of it but I personally have been caught on that one line for quite a while with Mine.

I'm going to defer mostly to Tenno's interpretation since I'm not particularly studied, but I have some brain-worms about what exactly the concept of giri-ninjo means to Mine specifically.

Giri is a fun word to try and define. It's not just moral obligation, it's societal expectations and informs the kind of loyalty and friendly behavior that comes with business, duty, etc. In gift-giving, there's the obligation to return a gift with another, sending cards out for holidays, etc. It's not negative but it is again, obligation, and built a lot on either reciprocal action or simply the rules of society. Ninjo is quite literally "human feelings", so it encompasses emotions such as love and compassion that can inform giri, or even be in conflict with it. The giri-ninjo value system of what we owe to each other, reliance on one another, is inherent in the dependence bonds that Tenno mentioned.

I believe Mine says something along the lines of how he hates people (Kiryu) who live their lives only on that principle alone. This is really interesting to me, as in a way giri-ninjo seems to define exactly the type of bonds that Mine specifically sought out in the yakuza. Why would he despise it?

For one, he could think Kiryu foolish to believe that he can build his life entirely around these bonds that Mine finds to be fallible and subject to be taken away at any moment. I feel like on top of rejecting interdependence for individualism, there's also the matter of giri mixed in. Mine is quite familiar with relationships built entirely on obligation, especially in a business setting. Relationships where people are kind to one another not because they particularly care, but because it's simply something that you have to do as part of society- the kind of thing that results in the betrayal Mine felt at his former workplace.

Mine wants to care about someone and be cared about, not a concern compelled by duty or the sense that you owe each other. I suppose one could read relationships like this as not only unreliable but also as false. It's the most uncharitable interpretation of giri, but not one that I would put past Mine.

There's a lot more I could spam abt it but it's ground already covered and this is getting long anyway haha. Again don't take this like 1000% seriously I'm only really a native speaker in household conversational and had to learn the rest by aggressively pestering my family for their takes on scenes in Yakuza, and even then people have their own personal reading of things. I just wanted to send bc these thoughts have been spinning in my brain ever since I heard the line the first time.

This kind of interpretation's pretty sensible (if that's the right word anyway) honestly; it's definitely a fair and just assessment, and makes a whole lot of sense in regards to Mine, his wants, and his philosophy! I'm definitely a fan of this exploration of the subject..