#nothing wrong with people being that way but I feel like variety and diversity would make the series so much better

[vaultureculture]

Rereading the Fairy Oak saga again and I still absolutely adore it. These books were my childhood. The ambiance in them is delightful

[rosethreeart]

im gonna be honest but your response to being told that your china's features dont look very asian is kind of wild, especially considering op was an asian person. Like, the fact a non-asian creator received criticism by an affected minority and basically told them that they were wrong about how their own ethnic background looks is kind of insane?? Especially when like, they offered advice on how to make it look more accurate. I know that your intentions likely weren't to do that and you were just being defensive because,,,, who isn't when accused of racism, (like i feel you) but I think you need to realise that there's nothing that screams "I don't care what minorities think" more than... effectively telling a POC you know what their people look like more than they do. Really, all it took was being open to criticism, and being willing to play around with his features to see if they could be adjusted (hm,,, maybe make the eyes less centred so they dont look so heavy set, go a little easier on those very obvious eyelids, etc) to look more asian instead of the artistic version of skull measuring (/J) lolol. Anyways thats just my two cents

I might sound a bit incoherent or blunt but I just have a migraine and this day has NOT been good /gen

As I stated before I 100% understand where people were coming from in regards to it and that I don't take the issue of whitewashing/making things eurocentric lightly and that I do take care to make characters look like the ethnicities they belong to.

Sometimes things look wonky! Shit happens!!

Quite frankly I was being defensive but to go ahead and once again assume ill intent and that that defense was some "I know better than you" rhetoric is exactly why I was defensive in the first place.

someone pointed an issue out, I said that I have that noted for future reference and that this was very clearly a one off issue, and that Im also showing that the sketch was poorly positioned but the lower nose bridge is still present and that bad faith and bad intentions should not always be assumed. Honestly this should have really just been a one and done move on situation especially for a sketch I did in less than five minutes.

I'm also just extremely 3-Dimensional in the way in which I think when it comes to the art process which is why I included the drawings not because of some weird "skull measuring" thing (which wouldn't even have made sense in the context anyways and honestly wild to even accuse someone of doing). I just could not word it without writing out an essay or some incomprehensible word vomit. I was just using a tactic commonly found in animation where you use "onion skins" to find the next breakdown/inbetween in the sequence to help show how he would have looked like from a front facing perspective with a neutral facial expression.

I'm not saying that I don't care or that I know more than them, and that is actually pretty close to the opposite of what I said verbatim!

I just felt the need to note that the features I showed are valid features and that simply reducing all people of east asain decent into having the same exact face (or just nose) shape is weird especially considering how much diversity there is. There are a wide variety of features in China and to go ahead and say that only ONE of them is valid and should be depicted is something that SHOULD receive push back not matter any previous context, which is what I was pointing out in the first place.

[thecurioustale]

I Have a Fanatical Stance on Conventions of Body Appearance in Visual Media

In the timelines where I end up making movie, TV, or video game productions of my work, I have always had a list of several defiant guidelines that I will never compromise on, no matter what—even to the point of not making the movies if it comes to it. (Nor am I kidding about that.) Here's the list:

Body size norms for male and female actors = gone. In particular, I want to dispel the ghoulish reality we live in where female actors' upper arms look skeletal and their shoulders look almost juvenilely narrow; and, on the male side, those equally emaciated male actors who look like they're being tortured just as much as the female ones to eliminate virtually all their body fat, while also being forced to have comically broad shoulders and horrifying, steroidal musculature on their arms and torsos (and sometimes thighs). I really hate to use the word ugly, because that's not fair to the people who naturally look that way or deliberately want to look that way and work to achieve it. But I will say that the norm of imposing this shit as a societal default in our media absolutely is ugly.

Body diversity = the new hotness. I don't just mean I would make all the characters fat. I really do mean "diversity": I would ensure that my casting operation selected for a variety of body sizes and types, both within and on top of any my preexisting descriptions in written form.

Female beauty stereotypes like cosmetic makeup, big boobs, and high heels = begone! Just like it says on the tin. It blows my fucking mind that still to this day our media show female characters in war zones / apocalypse conditions / etc. in full lipstick, eyeliner, lash extensions...it's just ludicrous. Makeup for the camera, which all actors receive to "correct" for the biases of being filmed, I would keep, but the cosmetic makeup as a female default is gone. Only if characters (of any sex!) would actually want to wear cosmetic makeup, and only in situations where it would make sense for them to do so, would they be filmed in it. Same goes for the high heels. As for big chests, there would be some of that on the grounds of body diversity, but it would no longer be the norm, and bra padding for size or shape would not happen (again, unless the characters themselves had in-world personal motives for doing it because they wanted it as a part of their own look; that is night-and-day different from the production forcing it onto the characters as a meta-narrative).

Height diversity = lovely skylines. There's been a long trend favoring tall actors over short ones, and male actors are always cast as or else portrayed to be taller than their female counterparts. This artificial uniformity would be gone in favor of a natural variety of body heights.

Body hair = natural by default. Characters who would actually want to wear their hear differently (for aesthetic reasons more so than to conform to social norms for the sake of avoiding scrutiny) would of course continue to do as they liked, but no longer would this be the default. Waxed chests, sculpted beards, shaved pits...it's all an artifice of social convention. Nothing wrong with it, but neither is it the natural state of our bodies, nor is it inherently superior. We need to normalize body hair in our social conscience again.

Splotches, blotches, freckles, warts, and moles = back in business! This stuff is erased for no good reason. Societies hold onto these stupid norms of erasure out of a misapplied phobia toward the appearance of "sickness," and out of a powerful bias toward conformity.

I feel very strongly about all of this, and especially about the body size stuff. I'm really not kidding or exaggerating when I say that I would not sign any movie, TV, or game contract that did not guarantee all of the above. I do not want to participate in the cultural bigotry of homogenizing human appearance. I do not want to participate in the erasure of marginalized bodies, or the lie that what is popular is also better. For me, the items on this list would be as central to the purpose of my works as the actual contents of the story.

[icharchivist]

To be fair, having exposed abs isn't a sign of strength or even necessarily fitness btw

A lot of professional weightlifters actually have a considerable gut, to have a layer of fat protecting the muscles, as it should be

Of course I'm just as thrilled as the next person to see a nice sixpack, and of course a lot of work goes into getting muscles to this definition, but a lot of those impression money shots in especially superhero movies, where a guy takes off his shirt and has the most amazing abs, that actor has been severely dehydrated for days. One time Hugh Jackman, in his role as Wolverine, almost got hospitalized right after they got the abs on camera because of that. It's a genuine health risk and there's technically nothing wrong with having some fat on top of your muscles. We as a society just kind of conditioned ourselves to think that's attractive and made that the beauty standard.

That being said. If we're talking about fantasy worlds like Gbf, it's not that deep, cause they're not real people, y'know. It serves the fantasy. And if the female characters can have boobs the size of buoys and have no body far besides that, then imo it's okay for the guys to have rippling abs. Of course it would still be preferable to have body diversity, but if we're to have unrealistic expectations, then I prefer the sexualization to be going both ways, you know?

There's too many Anime where all the girls have big boobs and the guys are super twinkish, so I am definitely grateful for characters like Wilnas and Belial, who are male-presenting, buff and show off their muscles. It just feels more fair.

Again, Gbf is at least doing better than others when it comes to body diversity

Anyway, sorry for ranting at you like this

oh yeah i know all of that, and i agree with all of it

it's kinda why our angles were more about the unwillingness to include fat characters (no excuse), and when i brought up muscular women, i was specific with bringing up Katalina not having muscular arms while there is a running joke she can destroy her armor by flexing. Or how, while Fiorito has realistic looking abs for someone who specifically trains her own abs like she does, while also knocking people out with her fists, have twig shapped arms.

And yeah considering how muscular and defined some men can be in the game regardless of if it makes sense, it's a shame it's never the same for the women -- who instead have this "unrealistic beauty standard" passed fully on their boobs instead.

It's an indication of the usual beauty standards of the industry. Men are pretty when they're muscular, women are pretty when they have boobs. Doesn't matter if it's realistic.

Granblue definitely fall under this problem, but, yes, it also actually does some efforts here and there on different levels as well, as previously discussed. It's a shame it doesn't actually include more variety, but there is more of a diversity in it than in many more games. But that says more about how low the bar is than about Granblue being great. Kinda winning by default yaknow?

The willingness to sexualize their male characters has always been something Granblue stood out for. Already at the time they introduced Summer SSR for men (Percival), it was "groundbreaking" at the time because RPG gacha aimed at a general audience never sexualized their men like that to not alienate their male audience. Granblue was already making wave at the time. Nowadays the way Belial or Wilnas get sexualized set them completely apart from most games of the same genre.

Like i personally compare Granblue more to its peers and i think it does an incredible job that shouldn't be neglected. it's just jarring that still at this point, this "incredible job" still neglects so many possible bodytypes due to the fear of it being undesirable. And what a sucky message that sends.

For what it's worth it's not something i'm interested in condemning or praising Granblue about. It kinda just came up because of the conversations of the day. But well. shrugs.

[away-ward]

About the DN series, I would've loved a bit more diversity (like between the girls), and especially with Emory (like she would've been another race, another religion...) the drive between Will and her would've been more significant, so more angst and her being way more different than everyone else at Thunderbay Prep (or in the whole town in general). High school Emory mentions that she felt really different because the school or town was full of WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants), so she was a minority. The only times POC were mentioned were in Killswitch (the young black escort) and in conclave (the Asian lady that Alex was taking nude pictures of), which was only about sex work (nothing wrong with sex workers, but as a POC I felt weird undertones about it). I know Kai is a POC (half-Japanese), but it doesn't really feel like it, it was just giving diversity hire.

I also found Rika and Winter really bland. In the sense that they're both blonde, white girls with blue eyes, wealthy, privileged sure they have their traumas, I actually sympathize with Winter more, since she's blind and all. But with Rika, when she becomes Ms ninja, swords and knives, he didn't feel authentic, I just think PD wanted a heroine that they could live through, but chose the wrong girl to do that.

Also, I would have loved it if Damon ended up with a girl as intense as him. I appreciate Winter's character being soft and strong when needed, but she lacked intensity.

Also, is it just me, or does Michael doesn't really have a personality, one that screams him. Kai should have been the leader, it makes more sense.

I would really like your opinions on this and love your WillEmmy fanfictions

(sorry if there are any mistakes, English is not my first language)

You’re English is wonderful; probably better than mine! Please don’t apologize.

So, first, I want to say that I agree with you. I have wished and thought that there should have been more diversity in the books. Whether it would have made sense for the part of the US it’s set in (small town in New England) or not, it’s a work of fiction and including more POC is a choice. There was no reason not to in this case.

Second, I want to say that PD’s choices seem to be… on the safe side. I think they wanted to include POC but, and speaking only from my experience as a white person who writes on occasion, there’s a very real fear of getting it wrong. From personal experience, even having a wide variety of friends that have backgrounds and heritages from across the globe that I am free to consult at any time, I still have a fear that I’ll give it my best effort and still get it wrong, even for a minor character much less a main one. The added pressure of publishing to a wide audience would be enough to make me hesitate and pull back some. The thinking is people will get mad if I don’t include POC characters, but people will also get mad if I don’t portray them accurately. It takes a certain skill level, and honestly, some authors and writers just aren’t there yet. I’m not saying this is what happened with PD. I just don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. All that considered, the result tends to be POC characters that are a bland and neutral and don’t feel like authentic POC.  PD is always going to put sex-positivity first because that seems to be something they’re comfortable with, and it seems to be for them a safe way to include any minor character, POC or not.

Again, not an excuse but a possible reason. I haven’t contributed any negative motives to PD on that area, taking from my own experiences with writing. Then again, I’m not a person of color, so maybe it’s not for me to say.

All of the girls felt very similar. Two blonde, two brunette. PD tried; Rika is technically South African; Banks is half-Russian; Emory is at least a quarter Jewish, possibly half. But it didn’t feel like any of it affected their characters. At least, I wasn’t sensitive enough to it, and that could just be me. Though it sounds like it felt that way for others as well…

As for Emory, she is a minority but with her being agnostic or only taking part in certain traditions, it doesn’t feel as important to her or the reader. Though, that is a very real identity that people have, being Jewish culturally or ethnically but not religiously, so I don’t want to pick on that. I have found myself wondering how deep it goes for her. Like would she get a tattoo? Will is obviously very into them, so would she get one as well? Even a little one? Where are her boundaries? We just don’t know, because she never talked about it really.

I think I would have liked to see Kai struggle a bit more with his cultural backgrounds, but he seemed to struggle more with his class. As he mentioned, his father was poor growing up and his mother was wealthy but knew how to manage money. He seemed to take it all for granted. Somehow, through all of that, he was in touch with his father’s Japanese side and his mother’s Italian side fairly well, which felt odd to me. I would have thought that taking his wealth for granted would have transferred to other parts of his life, such as his heritage. I would have thought he’d try to be more American TM, like his friends. But in the narrative, I don’t remember him fighting with it all that much. I think he probably did struggle a bit to balance them, we just didn’t see it on the page, which is sad.

Honestly, the one I felt was the weirdest was Aydin, a Middle Eastern man, becoming so completely obsessed that he derailed his entire life for what I considered to be an average white American woman. Like? I mean, don’t get me wrong; Alex was obviously gorgeous. But… So are a lot of people. And Alex was obviously confident and appeared to him to be smart. But so are a lot of people. This was a man who was going to be a doctor, but was sidetracked by a 19 year-old white girl?

I guess it’s just one of those ‘you had to be there’  kinda things. TBH, a lot of the romances in this series relied on what feels like an insta-connection that is quickly approaching insta-love. Not saying it doesn’t happen in real life. Just saying it happened a lot here in this series.

Maybe that’s partly why Will and Emmy felt different. At least he had three years of watching and obsessing over her before we got to the start of the story, and even then, she was still resistant and in denial of the connection, unlike the other girls. That made a bit more sense to me.

At times Rika did feel like a self-insert for PD wish fulfillment, but I’m not going to begrudge them for that. We all do it. If they put a lot of themselves into Rika – thinking Corrupt was going to be a stand-alone – then they probably weren’t thinking about where the character was going to go in the long run. At least that is where I place the blame for the progressive weakening of Rika’s character. She really wasn’t meant for more than one book.

Same with Michael. After Corrupt, his personality tends to disappear too. It’s not just you; a lot of readers say that I think.

I will say, if I were to make any changes, I would keep him as a leader but show more of his strategic side. To be a team captain, he’d have to have some sort of mind towards that. And in Hideaway, we see him seeking out Banks’ guidance because he knows he needs to improve in this area and has identified her as someone with the same skill (sidenote: which, oh my god! Why are you seeking out Banks’s guidance? She doesn’t like you! Just dumb.). I would keep him as leader and keep Kai as his second but give Kai more opportunity to display the wisdom he’s supposed to have from his father. That way, he can act as the team’s heart. This isn’t to say that I think Kai’s unintelligent; it’s just a different kind of intelligence. Kai would have to have the skills to follow Michael’s thinking, act on it, but also know when he’s going too far. In some ways, he need to be smarter, both mentally and emotionally, than Michael. I think Kai is to start with, so that’s a good building block. It just also think there was more that could have been done there. These two are supposed to complement each other, work in tandem. I really would have focused on showing that. And even if it was weakened by Kai going to prison, I would have tried so show that too. I’m not sure if I could have executed it any better than PD, but that’s what I would have focused on as far as Michael.

Oof Damon and Winter. I agree with you. I liked that Winter was soft at times, because Damon needed someone that contrasted his own hardened shell, but I kept waiting for that moment where I understood what he saw in her other than her softness. I kept waiting for that moment she showed me she was something different, but it never came for me. So she bit him once and showed him that pain can be redirected? And that’s why he’s obsessed? I didn’t get it. I didn’t see anything else for him to latch on to, other than her being a pretty dancer. But maybe I’m missing something; other people seem to get it. I’m still not sure what she “brings to the table”, so to speak. For me, Winter is still… loading??? Buffering? Processing? If any of those make sense. Idk anymore.

Thank you for your love of the willemmy fics. I appreciate it. Always happy to share the joy.

Thanks for the ask. It’s an interesting topic I haven’t been able to get into before, not being sure how to approach it. I’d be interested to know what other’s thoughts are of the diversity, or lack thereof, in the series. What could have been done better?

[inkabelledesigns]

There are probably more people diagnosed with autism today than there were throughout history, but that doesn't mean we're anything new, or that we didn't exist before now. Just like people who have a variety of sexualities and gender identities have always existed, even though we didn't always have the language for it that we do now. I mean I got diagnosed when I was 7, and in the twenty years since then, a LOT has changed in how we talk about autism, and how many people will get formally diagnosed or self diagnose. The change from using individual diagnoses to the general spectrum, how most people perceive it, the fact that doctors really didn't look for it in girls because they expected boys to have it more leading to the realization that we mask differently across genders/gender identities, etc. I still remember being a little seventh grader and telling my friends from girl scouts that I was on spectrum, and their first reaction was "I'm so sorry," like it was a disease. They didn't know any better, and I don't begrudge them that, but I can't help but feel that the reaction would be very different today.

Like there's a LOT to discuss with how the way we talk about this stuff has changed. And some of it has been really good, and others not so much. All change comes with pros and cons, that's just how change goes. But the other thing to note is that autism is diverse and nuanced. You can have several people in a room who all qualify as autistic, but they can have vastly different ways that their brains work/how their symptoms present. We don't use terms like high or low functioning anymore, for good reason, but for the sake of example, I was labelled as high functioning as a child, and as a result of that, a lot of people didn't take me seriously when I had needs, especially teachers. My teachers and professors had to be fought with at every turn in order for my academic accommodations to actually be respected, because they believed I was too smart or just faking it to actually need help. In reality, I did need help, but I got so used to being denied help that I now struggle to ask for it as an adult and let myself suffer in silence. Just because someone doesn't see that you're disabled doesn't mean you aren't. My symptoms may not present the same way as some other autistics do, and it may not be what you have as the picture of autism in your mind, but it's still autism, and I am still valid.

When I was little and my parents told me about my diagnosis, the way they explained it was that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. There will be some things I'm very good at that others find hard, and there will be some things I struggle with that others find very easy. It doesn't make anyone better or lesser, it just means we all have different ways of functioning, and there's nothing wrong with that. I was never made to feel ashamed of my autism at home, and I'm forever grateful to my parents for loving me and believing in me. I think, that shaped the way I see the world a lot. I often felt bad for my classmates on the times where I was properly accommodated, since I got extra time and a separate room for tests. Even though they didn't have a 504 like me, I felt like it kind of sucked that they'd didn't get something to make the testing experience a little easier. Like, the academic world should care for all of those students and their success, and give them the highest chance of succeeding. But that's not how the world works. Instead those kids were stuck in the echo-y gym, where one cough disrupted your entire train of thought, and the chairs were so uncomfortable and squeaked too much if you leaned the wrong way, and it was just, awful. Then again, maybe it was just awful to my brain, and other people handle it better. I don't know their needs, I only know mine. But it made me more sympathetic to others when people tried to meet my needs. I got so used to going without and struggling through that sometimes, I stifle things I need for the sake of other people's comfort, which isn't healthy. I'm constantly fighting for people to be accommodated and respected in my circles, because I don't ever want someone to feel the way I felt when people didn't take my needs seriously. I want people to be able to unmask and feel listened to around me. I want my space to be kind and comfortable for lots of people, no matter how your brain works.

In the end...it only matters to me a little bit how much we use the word autism. Sometimes I feel it's used a bit too "meme-y" to the point where there are misunderstandings, and we're all reduced to being the butt of the joke as quirky folks rather than people with interesting brains and specific needs. Sometimes those memes are good, and sometimes they're not, like I said, there's nuance. But I think, I'm just glad we're starting to build a world where we're helping each other and trying to make things more accessible for lots of people. It's not perfect, but it's still progress. The nice thing about recognizing more autism in the world is that I now have autistic people to look up to. This is going to sound silly, but to me it's not silly: Kellen Goff over there gives me hope dammit. Kellen Goff, for those of you who don't know, is a very skilled voice actor. He's responsible for a variety of amazing roles. I know him for his work on the Five Nights at Freddy's series, which he does expertly. I will never get over Glamrock Freddy or Sun and Moon with the way he performs them (and those aren't even his only roles). Kellen is the first voice actor in the big leagues that I had seen be open about being on spectrum, and it made a world of difference. I'm a voice actor, and sometimes I worry as a creative that there is no spot for me in that world because I don't see a lot of people like me in it (or at least, at the time I didn't, now I know a lot more people that are like me there). But Kellen is in it. And everyone loves Kellen. He's witty, he's so in love with his craft and gives it his best, and he's incredibly kind whenever I hear stories from people who have interacted with him. He is desirable, he is loved. I never had a story about an autistic person who was desirable before him. Just as I never had a fictional character that I felt represented autism in a way that felt like people I know, until Twyla from G3 of Monster High happened, who, fun fact, also has an autistic VA that does an amazing job! Kayla Cromer you give me HOPE! We are out there, we can be successful, and we have so much power to do wonderful things! I didn't have that growing up. I didn't have anyone to inspire me that was known to be neurodivergent. Now I do. And there isn't a day that goes by where I'm not grateful for it. I am eternally grateful.

Things have changed a lot. More awareness for autism eventually means more acceptance. And I'm so grateful for the people who accept us and love us, no matter our brains. Because we have some truly beautiful minds in there, and we belong here just as much as anyone else. 💜 All this to say, yeah, the conversation around autism has changed a lot. And how we diagnose and how many diagnoses there are has changed a lot. But I hope that's a good thing. I hope that makes the world more understanding than it was before.

Oh yeah, so I keep forgetting about this, but I'm trying to prove something to my mom after a talk we had some time back...

Are there more autistic people today? I pointed out that autistic/neurodivergent people have ALWAYS existed, but she's like 'yeah, but there are more people getting diagnosed with autism' or something like that.

So yeah, trying to prove a point, basically.

[rapifessor]

Nilou, Cyno, and Candace First Impressions

Because it wasn’t enough that we’re getting three new characters in version 3.0, we’re getting three more in version 3.1 apparently. How I’m going to keep up with all of them, I have no idea, but that’s besides the point. Let’s have a look at them.

We’ve already seen two of the three characters in previous trailers and promotional content for Sumeru, and Nilou is one of them. It’s nice to see another Hydro character as the element is currently underrepresented in Genshin’s roster (currently we have seven Hydro characters while Pyro, Cryo, and Electro all have 10, and Electro is soon to get an eleventh!). I have no idea what her weapon is going to be, but I really hope it’s not another catalyst, seeing as how we already have three of those. What I’d really like to see is a Claymore, but I highly doubt that’s the case.

I don’t have any strong opinions about her character design, but I do think it’s very good. I like that she has red hair; Genshin Impact has been sorely lacking in red-haired girls for a long time and given my apparent fascination with such girls as anime protagonists (I quite liked The Ancient Magus’ Bride and Snow White With the Red Hair) it’s no wonder why Nilou appeals to me.

The second character we’ve already since hints of before, and the first of the Sumeru characters that hail from the desert region. Obviously lots of ancient Egyptian and pharaoh vibes from Cyno here, who appears to be an Electro polearm user. Not a bad combo, but there’s no potential for a missed opportunity here since Electro already has its bases covered when it comes to weapon variety. According to the HoYoLAB post, Cyno is an arbiter of sorts, in that he regularly deals with researchers who have broken the law in some way regarding their work. And he’s pretty ruthless about it, too. Sounds awesome.

I really like this character design, it seems pretty badass. Probably something to do with the white hair contrasting with the darkness of the rest of his outfit. It’s also good that we’re starting to see more characters who aren’t of pasty white complexion, although... it could still be done better. I’m gonna take an aside to rant about Genshin Impact’s lack of diversity here.

It’s no secret that Genshin Impact has an abundance of white people, and we all knew that wasn’t going to change with Sumeru, despite it being the nation that’s literally inspired by Africa. Maybe HoYoverse isn’t interested in making characters of color, or maybe they think that such characters won’t sell Genesis Crystals. Given the popularity of characters like Nessa from Pokemon, this is certainly wrong. Seriously, just make the girls hot and nobody except the most insecure manosphere losers will give a shit what their skin color is.

Desert-dwelling Sumeru characters are at least logically coherent, if nothing else. It makes sense that the people who are exposed to the sun constantly would have darker skin, so HoYoverse gets a little credit for that, at least. It’s just a shame that we’ll most likely never get characters with darker skin tones, since these people treat white like it’s the default skin color. Rant over.

And here we have Candace, who came as a complete surprise to me. I was expecting that we’d see Alhaitham or maybe Dehya this next update, but apparently not. Candace is just as exciting though, but for different reasons.

She’s got the same energy as Cyno in her character design, which seems very fitting considering what kind of character she is, but it seems slightly... off to me. Something tells me that her outfit was originally designed to be somewhat more revealing and was thus censored in a couple ways so as not to be too hot for Genshin Impact. It’s not like it ruins the design or anything, and I can’t exactly prove that this is the case, it’s just a feeling.

I believe this is the first character we’ve had with heterochromia, which is pretty cool. It’s a popular feature to use in fantasy character designs because it adds a layer of variety and I think it’s done pretty well here.

One of the aspects about Candace I’m most excited for is that she appears to be a Hydro polearm user, which we don’t currently have in Genshin Impact. We’re one step closer to having complete coverage of every element/weapon combination in the game. She notably also has a shield, which isn’t going to be a unique piece of equipment of course but that’s also something we haven’t seen in a Genshin character yet, and it probably features in her abilities to some degree. That will be really interesting to see, I think.

Candace also sounds like she’d be really powerful lore-wise, since she’s described as having received the blessing of the gods and being able to conjure up an entire sandstorm. She’s fiercely protective of her village, but also gentle and kind to those without ill intent. I’m very interested to find out more about her because she sounds like such a cool character. I hope her gameplay does the lore justice.

Definitely very happy with this batch of characters, I’m very excited for Cyno and Candace in particular because they seem like they’d be right up my alley and their character designs are fucking rad. Sumeru is going to be a wild ride with all these new characters coming out in quick succession, and I am absolutely here for it.

[djdangerlove]

It's a shame the witters haven't given the same care to Buck's character as they have to Eddie's. Buddie fandom is a shell of what it use to be with so many Buck fans no longer watching.

We all watch the same show from different perspectives, diverse life experiences, and with a wide variety of reasons for consuming media at all so to disagree about character stories and development is natural- and honestly, when discourse is done politely and with grace, it makes fandom better because that’s how you get a very diverse batch of content and deeper conversations about a piece of art we all love. All of that is to say, I have to respectfully disagree with you on the topic of Buck.

From the very beginning of the show, the writers have always held Buck’s character in their hands. There has never been a season in 9-1-1 where viewers are left wondering where Buck is - physically or mentally. We’ve always known what’s going on with him both at work and in his personal life. He’s always been in the story.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than okay with that! I love Buck very much because the writers have always given me a reason to care for him, to love him, even when he makes mistakes. There is a very big difference in writers simply making characters do things for shock value and drama versus having their characters live out mistakes that every day people like you and I are capable of so that we can connect emotionally with a consequence driven storyline.

I think it’s often easy for us to become attached to characters so much so that when they do make mistakes or do something we don’t like, we want to defend them because in a way it feels like the writers are saying someone like you or I could be capable of xyz (the thing we hate) because we see so much of ourselves in them. It’s not wrong, but it’s a gut reaction and sometimes we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity of consuming a beautifully crafted story because we are too impatient for the payout.

If anything I think the writers care about Buck the most. I know exactly the type of relationship Buck has with every other character because they’ve shown us enough to know. I know how Buck thinks, reacts, and feels during most situations because they’ve shown us enough to know. I know that they wrote Buck in such a way that I disliked him at the very, very beginning and they gave me a reason to care for him, to love him, to never give up on him even when he makes mistakes. And why wouldn’t they? That’s the crux of his character, right? “Love me anyway.” He just wants to be accepted and loved for who he is despite his mistakes and missed expectations. He never would have said that line if he was the perfect example of a human being and he wouldn’t have made us feel it so powerfully if we didn’t understand that.

I’m sorry this is so long, but at the end of the day there’s absolutely nothing wrong with admitting you don’t find joy in something for whatever reason and moving on. I’m truly sorry if that is the case for you, because I know what it feels like to lose a fandom and wouldn’t wish that for anyone. Take care of yourself, Anon. 🖤

[ahalal-uralma]

The Stoic Vs The Nihilist Hunter: Avoiding The Worst Possible Dynamic & Embracing The Best Case Scenario

“ℑ𝔰 𝔦𝔱 𝔟𝔢𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔱𝔬 𝔬𝔲𝔱-𝔪𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔪𝔬𝔫𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔬𝔯 𝔱𝔬 𝔟𝔢 𝔮𝔲𝔦𝔢𝔱𝔩𝔶 𝔡𝔢𝔳𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔡?”                                                    - 𝔉𝔯𝔦𝔢𝔡𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔥 𝔑𝔦𝔢𝔱𝔷𝔠𝔥𝔢

Some wolves participate in the hunt, the chase, but are too stubborn in their nihilism to enjoy the game, the catch—the kind of predator that often cultivates a power imbalance between himself and his object of desire: one that begins to the benefit of the predator, accumulates to the trauma and injury of the prey and more than not scales back to the greater detriment of the predator, himself.

“Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.”                                                                 - Immanuel Kant

“It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer....”                                            - Arthur Schopenhauer

In an ideal world, we can identify the nihilist hunter for what he is and recognize the steps necessary to avoid a encounter that leads to negative or destructive outcomes; however, not all of existence appears so black and white. You can no more avoid the presence of the Nihilist than any other schooling of philosophy: ie. Stoicism, Existentialism, Hedonism, etc. 

There is a lot of gray area in the education of an individual’s life. A person’s mind is much like a sponge and so much exists beyond the gray substance it absorbs: we have a very complex universe full of diverse varieties and combinations of lights, colors and shades; a universe nuanced with stages of existence and non-existence; and these variables all have a profound impact on the thirsty mind, eager to think and act according to what it soaks in. 

One has to come to an understanding that in the eyes of the nihilist hunter, most of existence is purely painted black; the details of which, and especially, include himself. His is a mind that will only soak in the residue of charcoal; it makes his mind thick and his world dark, never leaving room for the light to filter in. 

He is not wrong, he is just closed to the outer-universe, only leaving room to cultivate and limit his focus to his carefully crafted inner-world--it’s one way of living and learning, and although it does not make him wrong, any forces looking in even for a moment with external education and experiences will suggest that he is, in fact, not right either. He will appear as though a man living in a dream, disconnected from all of reality and it’s inhabitants. But why and does it matter? 

“I've never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life. My only real concern has been my inner life.”     - Fernando Pessoa

“Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question “why” is lacking. What does nihilism mean? – that the supreme values devaluate themselves.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

What is Nihilism?

As a philosophy, Nihilism is the combination of skeptic and pessimistic values and perspectives towards life, believing there’s no further benefit or point in seeking to define existence or increase it’s merit. As for the perspective of a Nihilist: there is no meaning or purpose to existence. Life could seize to be on the grandest scale and it would make no difference. At it’s most extreme, nihilism can lead a man to become isolated, depressed and thoroughly corrupted by the moral belief that his life is completely and utterly pointless.

“I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.” - Fernando Pessoa

“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care.” - Charles Baudelaire

Dependency on this mindset does not offer a lot of space or movement for the physical aspect of one’s life to develop different shades of gray; or even, to permit their dream world to exist and evolve, or essentially, allow the balanced development of negatives and positives within their subconscious. Dreams are, after all, a collective of physical world experiences. 

A stunt of one’s thinking development leads to the stunt of their emotional and sensory development. All a person might begin to sense within the dreams of their stunted mind is the cycles of stagnated thinking: everything moves in a forced repetition, and perhaps, over time dissolves to less than stagnation; or rather, elevates to the worst stage of stagnation: negative space. 

A mind not living, might seize existing. It starts to deconstruct the inner world it so depended upon for comfort--finding that it is no longer comforting, but fading. And where does one go from a fading inner-world, when already they have  denied a rich outer-life? They realize the error too late: there should have been a balance to their conscious and subconscious realities. What once was their only welcomed reality, progressively becomes a “non-reality.” It is a reality that has begun to stop and disappear. They are trapped listening to the words of “seize and desist,” but they’re the one’s speaking them. And there’s no other listener. 

Where does the mind go from non-reality, or will it freeze in a horrifying stasis of it? Like a flower frost-bitten by winter--it gives up on the idea of life, all together. First, is the madness: “What is happening and why is it happening. What is the reason and why does it elude me? What must I strike out at for the answers?” Second, comes the desolation, “Let it happen. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about the reason. I give up the strike. My only answer is a non-answer.” And lastly, the disappearance, “......” the mind has become a fortress holding in it’s only remaining inhabitant of nothingness. All answer of what and why unfound and remaining unexplored. Nothing becomes the only answer to everything of what could have been, but shall not be. 

The mind has died empty of hope and purpose. A nihilist might welcome this fate, but they can’t anticipate the feelings it will invoke towards the end: I am lost and I can’t be found. I don’t feel that I am worth finding. It’s an internal lie that punishes none other than the nihilist, himself; because after he finds life to be worthless, he only moves to discover he finds himself even less worthy than life, itself. It’s the worst possible tragedy, to demean one’s existence beneath the presence of the thing they oppose most. The nihilist saw life fit to mean nothing and in doing so, defined himself to mean less than nothing. 

In the mind of the nihilistic hunter, however, there’s only one swatch that paints everything. A swatch they feel mirrors their sense of worthlessness. It is black like the void. Anti-matter. Anti-existence. The ultimate form of non-being. Their worth in their mind: it belongs to this void. A manifestation of their worthlessness. This does not change for them. The void is it’s own entity and place. It’s belief is rather ironic; because, it is a manifestation of something that serves a purpose, when they believe so heavily that nothing does. 

They are convinced they will not and can not ever deviate away from the fundamental belief of worthlessness as their entire identity has been formatted around it. And what that single swatch paints is vastly dictated based on the nihilist’s own personal moral compass, education, prejudices, values, etc; much of which, are an accumulation of negative perspectives and experiences. Anything that rivals the mindset and principles of the Nihilist is considered to be an invasion, a threat---so in comes their greatest nemesis: The Stoic.

Stoic....it’s like a curse word in the book of Nihilism. But, what is a Stoic? To understand what they are, we must first learn of their schooling....Stoicism.

What Is Stoicism?

As a philosophy, Stoicism is the combination of harmony and reason towards life and experiences. It’s the belief that actions should be achieved with logic and indifference. Life has a purpose that can not be altered from it’s original course. It is observed that everything happens for a reason and the reasonable reaction is to accept this observation as immobile truth. Life is anything but worthless or pointless in the eyes of the Stoic. It has meaning. A fundamental value the Nihilist greatly detests. Life stands for something rather than the nothing the Nihilist believes. 

Life has to be approached with a sense of discipline and rejection to negative thoughts. Another task the Nihilist finds a truly challenging one. It is believed by the Stoic that negative thoughts lead to negative experiences which then lead to destructive outcomes that then can negate life’s purpose. A Stoic rejects actions that promote negativity and destruction--where a Nihilist understands the value and necessity for adversity within the environmental universe. What is created is always susceptible to destruction. Destruction is necessary to the Nihilist. A Stoic does not like to focus their energy on “becoming nothing,” but rather centers it on “being something.”

Where the palette of the Nihilist is black, the palette of the Stoic is white: where one is the absence of light, the other exists as the presence of light. Stoicism is the existence of all light and color; everything is painted in array of complex shades and iridescence. Black is acknowledged, but it’s importance is no more dominating than the color’s projected by the sun; in fact, it’s seen as less important than being the backdrop of the universe. It is merely a landscape, but nothing more. It potentially holds or relinquishes, but it does not create or define life on the surface.

Dynamics Of The Stoic and Nihilist

Indifference - They do not cross paths and when they do, it’s with the mutual agreement of “I don’t know you and you do not matter.” It’s a similar, albeit differently spoken tone of “you don’t serve a purpose in my life.” They appear as strangers of differing feelings and opinions, of which may or may not be expressed in direct, but nothing more accumulates beyond that passing encounter.

Platonic/Romantic - In some instances, this dynamic can exist between friends, family or even lover’s. How this dynamic plays out depends on the individual’s narratives and intentions. It can lead to tones of indifference, feelings of mutual passion or actions of hostility. It can be a beneficial or detrimental dynamic all depending upon the ambitions of people involved. It can mean an exchange of “your something heals my nothingness” or “your nothingness harms my something.”

Prey/Predator - If the Stoic should find them-self within an inferior position to the Nihilist, it will follow the tone from the predator of “Your standpoints negate my descent.” If the Nihilist should find them-self within an inferior position to the Stoic, then it should follow the tone of the predator that says “Your standpoints negate my ascent.” One will fall victim to the other’s adversity in a sort of “hunt.” Sometimes, this dynamic can switch to suit a specific individual’s agenda.

Note: Potential relationship’s between the Nihilist and Stoic scholar are varied and complex, but none more interesting than that which plays out in the predator versus prey dynamic, of which we will further explore in this text; more so, from the perspective of the nihilist hunter and stoic prey. 

Quotes on harm from a Stoic:

“If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone.” - Marcus Aurelia

“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” - Marcus Aurelia

Quotes on harm from a Nihilist:

“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

“It seems to me that a human being with the very best of intentions can do immeasurable harm, if he is immodest enough to wish to profit those whose spirit and will are concealed from him.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Addressing The Predator/Prey Relationship

Is it only harmful, or can it be beneficial? It’s an interesting concept: to be the predator and the other the prey. What leads one to hunt the other? And is it necessary or progressive?

To Be One Of The Hunted: Prey is a state of ephemeral “becoming.” One who serves this role, fulfills the message that “I am here only in the present and existence of self, but in the future I recognize the threat: I will be at your mercy.” A prey is always more than satisfied with their existence of being and seldom ever are they welcoming to the role of becoming. However, they may find themselves within unique circumstances that push them into “becoming against their being.”

Their life is spent cultivating a balance of internal and external forces. They seek a balanced focus between “this and that.” They reject becoming “too much of this or too much of that.” Their mentality speaks as that “I am always one, but never entirely the other.” As prey, one can experience empathy and comprehension. Their actions are made on a balance of feeling and thinking.

They understand positions of inferiority, even if they reject them. They will challenge systems and authorities of superiority, but seldom do they find themselves successful. Prey mindsets greatest strengths are weighed by deep "understanding for the circumstances and consequences of ethics,” while their greatest weakness is “to be dominated and have their morals compromised.” To find themselves in the jaws of the predator is to find themselves in their worst state: “my being has been compromised.”

To Be The One Who Is Hunting: Predator is a state of eternal “being.” One who acts on this purpose, fulfills the message that “I am beyond the present and existence of self. My self is hunting the future and those who will be at my mercy within that time frame.” Motivations that drive this desire always vary. They are not concerned with becoming as they are already contented with their being. However, a predator may find that they are too consumed with the magnitude of their being; so much so, they feel drowned within the ocean of their own egotism, if they do not pour themselves out to others. 

They experience a rush from the idea of expanding their egotism to others being; but, never without the challenge and realization they can not hunt on those who are also contented in their being. They like the sensation, to the point of ecstasy, of pushing others “becoming against their being.” This is why they must find their prey. 

Their life is spent cultivating an imbalance of internal and external forces. They do not want the balance of “this or that,” but complete control to sway “this or that” in the favor of their ambitions. They do not reject “too much of this or too much of that” as long as it moves in their favor. They’re only focus is to benefit them-self and the internal world that self resides within. This role often results in actions that exhibit little to no comprehension or empathy towards others. Their very actions benefit from the imbalance of feelings and thoughts. 

They understand inferiority and will exploit those who display it--always for personal gain--but too often, despite short-term success will face long-term damages that later haunt them for abusing positions of authority. Predator’s greatest strength is “understanding the positions of power over ethics,” but their greatest weakness is “the lack of established morals and measure for accountability.” They will find themselves caught with a bone in their mouth and the thought, “I am becoming accountable for my being.”

How To Survive The Relationship

Avoiding the worst dynamic and arriving to the best possible scenario

How does one survive and live through the hunt of the nihilist hunter? It is best to focus less on surviving and more on living. I exist and so do you, and that is all. It is the indifferent that are met with challenge or desire by the nihilist; but, here is where lies the great irony of existence; the indifferent stoic is neither challenging or rejecting to the nihilist’s desires, and so none of the nihilist’s process of elimination can be transacted; the desirable can only be desired, forcing the one who desires to face this non-reaction with a new reaction.

After observation, and a failed process of elimination, the hunter will be faced with a new task: to meet himself where he is disadvantaged. In order to achieve any success, he must observe the object of his desire more diligently, or must otherwise reflect upon the source of his desires: himself. 

He must ask himself why he desires and see if there is a deeper known source that inspires his cravings. Is it a true need for revenge or just a distraction from an insecurity? Is it passionate love or just a blind lust for control? He must take appropriate action to the knowable source. If he should discover none exists, then the only appropriate reaction is non-action. Amid all this he needs to reflect and weigh on his cause and effects--are there only benefits to the hunt, or are there detriments he didn’t measure in the initial chase? Will this experience build his being, or is it unbecoming, leading only to a path of his own destruction? 

“The unexamined life is not worth living” - Socrates.

“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!”                                           - Jean-Paul Sartre

A denial of intense observation is a denial of meaningful introspection. “I am acting on a forced purpose with no beneficial outcomes.” This is empty and this is where many predators go critically wrong. They run, but they don’t catch. They bite, but they don’t feed. 

One day the Nihilist find’s himself condemned to the grave, alone and with an empty belly. What a sad and anticlimactic finish to a potentially exciting start. How does the stoic survive? It depends on the goals of the stoic--to eat or be eaten? Do you wish to become the hunter or remain the hunted? Know the depth of your own appetite and understand the expanse of your enemy’s taste. Who is more hungry? Do you like to receive or give pain? Is there a purpose to the suffering? Personally, I can not give the answers, because the answers are one of many. I know myself, and I’m always hungry to be devoured. 

Or alternatively, to echo the words of Nietzche: “Is it better to out-monster the monster, or be quietly devoured?” I am both the devoured and devourer. 

[lunannex]

Writing Latino characters 

Before I get into these tips/things to avoid when portraying a character who's Latino, please keep in mind that I'm speaking for no one but myself. I'm just one voice, and there's so many other things that go into writing Latinos that I'm sure I'll forget to mention. And for anyone who might see this, please consider reblogging as these are some things that I feel like all non-Latinos should take into consideration.

—————

•Latinos aren't just from one country alone. We come from a large variety of places (ex. Puerto Rico, Cuba, Perú, Costa Rica, México, Argentina, etc.).

•Not all Latino cultures are the same!!! I cannot stress this one enough. We all have different cultures based on where we're located. This means that we all have our own traditions, national holidays, dialect, names, last names, foods, music, etc!

•To expand on the food topic more: stop associating all Latinos to tacos, burritos and nachos. And additionally, just because a character is from a certain country doesn't mean that they only eat foods that are native to that place.

•Just to clear this up real quick: Latino is NOT a race!!! Stop treating it like it is!!

•When writing a story, it's important to think beyond just the plot and story you wanna tell. You have to think about how and why you're using the characters that you are. Make sure that each character is there to serve a purpose. Representation for the sake of feeling woke and inclusive is tokenism, plain and simple.

•On that note, representation points do not count if that “representation” just means that the minorities end up dead. Or even if they're just there to be tortured or mistreated. I hope I don't have to explain why this is a shitty and racist thing to do.

•Don't rely on cultural symbols in order to sell your character. I get that you might want to emphasize the diversity and show just how inclusive you are, but you have to slow down and think, "Is this detail actually important to the character, or is it detracting their development/the plot?". Because believe it or not, while it's an important part of who we are, our personalities don't center around our cultures—shocker! 

•If you feel like you're portraying something in a racist way then...you probably are. Some little details aren't obvious at first, since a lot of racism tends to be a lot more subtle than you'd think, but it's always good to double check. It's difficult to authentically tell stories with characters that exist outside of your own lived experiences. A lot of these things are easily googled and capable of being researched, but make sure that these sources are from actual Latinos because non-Latinos do not get to decide what does and doesn't count as racism to us.

•A problem that usually arises when writing characters of colour is falling into racialized stereotypes or making them one dimensional. It's an easy trick to fall into but please try your best to avoid it. 

•One of the most well known Latino stereotypes is making the characters sexy, flirtatious and promiscuous. All it does is perpetuate this unrealistic perception of our already romanticized culture. This doesn't mean that your character can't flirt, but centralizing their entire personality on their sexual appeal is harmful. 

•The stereotype that the majority of Latinos work as janitors, maids, and gardeners couldn’t be farther from the truth. There is nothing wrong with having these types of jobs, but they aren't the only ones that we're capable of acquiring and it drives me up a wall to see just how much it keeps getting reinforced throughout all different types of media. It's placing us in a very limited box which is extremely damaging. Latinos are capable of having all kinds of occupations, whether it’s as doctors, lawyers, actors, artists, journalists...—you name it!

•For the love of God, don't make them or their parents abusive. We've had enough of the angry Latino trope and if you're the type of person that portrays minorities as violent and aggressive for absolutely no reason whatsoever then I'll automatically assume the worst of you.

•Some other stereotypes include: the drug dealer, the immigrant, the lazy Latino, the Latin lover, the fiery Latina, etc. Just by doing a quick Google search, you'll get a large number of sources that'll inform you of all the stereotypes and tropes out there that you should do your best to avoid.

•I've noticed that a large portion of the Latinos shown in media are portrayed as though they know every single aspect about their country and that's...honestly pretty unrealistic. Many people, regardless of where they're from, mostly just have a general understanding of their country's history and that's it.

•Latinos are diverse. Afro-Latinos exist. White Latinos exist. Mixed Latinos exist. Muslim Latinos exist. Jewish Latinos exist. Plus-sized Latinos exist. Curly haired Latinos exist. LGBTQ+ Latinos exist. Disabled Latinos exist. Write about them. You shouldn't just focus on representing the types of Latinos that you and the rest of society consider "acceptable".  

•Not all Latinos speak Spanish. Don't forget that Portuguese is another one of Latin America's main languages or that there are a lot of Latinos out there that don't speak either of those languages. That doesn't make them less Latino in the slightest, whatever languages they do or don't know shouldn't determine how valid their identity is.

•When writing bilingual characters, do NOT use Google Translate. We can tell when you do because it is glaringly obvious. Reach out to someone who actually speaks the language if you want dialogue to flow more naturally and accurately. And if possible, reach out to someone who shares your character's nationality since the expressions and dialect tend to be different depending on where they're from. 

•Most bilingual people don't switch languages mid-sentence nor do we "forget to switch back". This is a MASSIVE pet peeve of mine. Yes, it CAN and DOES happen –mostly when we're around someone who we're very close and comfortable with– but most bilingual people tend to just speak English to non-Spanish or non-Portuguese speakers. These "language switches" tend to translate in a very awkward and stilted way when written into actual dialogue, especially when it's done by non-bilingual people. 

•Language switches usually happen when someone forgets a certain word or phrase in the language they're speaking in. Ex. "No encuentro el –¿cómo se dice?– el screwdriver." (This is something that's personally done by me at least multiple times a day. And it's not the best shown example, but it gets the point across)

•Do NOT have your Latino character say something flirty/sexual to someone who doesn't understand the language they're speaking in. That counts as fetishization and it's disgusting. 

•If you're writing a romantic relationship, please don't have the Latino call their significant other mami or papi. It's what we call our moms and dads respectively.

•As I mentioned before, people are far more than just their culture. So, just treat your characters with the same respect and importance as you would any other character. Minorities should be allowed to have just as many layers as white characters. Humans are complex beings, and just as you should give a white character a reasoning behind their actions and behavior, writing minorities warrants the exact same thing.

•And lastly, it's okay to mess up. All you have to do is own up, take accountability and work towards bettering yourself so you don't make the same mistake again. 

[supercantaloupe]

okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

[x0401x]

Jeweler Richard Fanbook Short Story #11

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Delicious Recipe

I would soon be at an age where I could envision my 50’s. My only daughter was a college student. I didn’t think of myself as too much of a passionate clerk, but I was fond of my current job at a mass retailer. Said shop was on the line of so-called “luxury supermarkets” in a way, so it had many products that weren’t available at supermarkets in my neighborhood, which meant stocking shelves was a hassle, but it was fun to look around. It had things such as assortments of high-quality cheeses or pouches of cold soup called vichyssoise. Since the shop was within walking distance of one of the largest stations in Tokyo, its clientele was diverse and there were many first-time customers, but on the other hand, that was exactly why it was so easy to remember the face of repeating customers.

“Hmmm...”

The young man glaring at the syrup shelf for a while now, who seemed old enough to be a university student, was actually a regular customer as well. Said regular – who stood out like a sore thumb in this shop, which had an overwhelming elderly customer base – always asked for simplified receipts. The name on them was “Jewelry Etranger”. Must be from a jewelry store. I believed him to be about as old as my daughter.

He was pacing back and forth in front of the shelf. Even though he usually came to buy snacks such as youkan and cookies, he was groaning in front of the cocktail syrup shelf today. Was it for private use instead of an errand? While I was staring at him, our eyes met, and with an apologetic face, he came over to my counter. There were no other customers.

“Hum, excuse me.”

As I welcomed him with a “yes, what might it be?”, he asked for a strange piece of advice.

“I want to make melon soda.”

“Haa.”

“The kind that you can quickly make into cream soda, with vanilla ice cream floating on top...”

“Haa.”

Then wouldn’t it be all right if he just bought the melon-flavored shaved ice syrup and carbonated water over there and mixed them in the appropriate proportions?

Before I could say this, he cut off, a crease rippling between his brows as he furrowed them, “I want it to be tasty. Very tasty.”

“Haa.”

A tasty melon soda. A very tasty one, no less. What kind of melon soda would that be?

I fumbled around my memory for the latest experience I had with a melon soda. The last time I had gone to a fast food was when my daughter was about ten years old. It had already been quite a long time. But I didn’t think there were any revolutionary changes in taste since then. It was carbonated, green and simply sweet. It didn’t have the same variety as tea or coffee. As if pressed with a stamp, melon soda was just melon soda. It was different from those confusing flavored-tea leaves.

He had actually already bought the melon syrup, he told me. But no matter how he changed the proportion of carbonated water, it didn’t have enough of a punch to it.

“I did some research at bars about how different the taste was from the melon sodas that we drink out there, but I kind of couldn’t tell... I think it might be best if I mix it with something. That’s why I’m looking for syrup, hmmm...”

With the exception of standard syrups for shaved ice, all syrups we handled were meant for cocktails. Bottles of vivid colors, in flavors such as apricot and mint, were lined up there. But I didn’t know whether any of them could be the secret ingredient for melon soda. The prospects were dim.

For starters, why had he decided to make something so troublesome by hand? To the point he was thinking of purchasing a bottle of syrup that was by no means cheap.

Of course, I didn’t say such things in front of the customer, but as if seeing through my hesitation, he smiled, as though a bit embarrassed. “No, hum, I have a friend who likes cream soda. She will be coming to the shop I work at one of these days... so I wanted to surprise her. Ehehe,” he laughed, looking happy.

I would guess that I did nothing but blink silently for a moment. It was an astonishingly good motive. I didn’t know what kind of friend she was or what kind of shop she would be visiting, but if nothing else, she seemed to be someone important to him.

If it were me, that would probably become a memory to last a lifetime.

A secret ingredient for a sweet juice. What suddenly crossed my mind was a time when my daughter was still little. A time when she caught a cold. I once made her a sweet juice when she didn’t want to take her medicine. I had a memory of being troubled as she was reluctant to drink water, saying it was painful. This had happened either in September or October, so there was still some leftover shaved ice syrup from the summer in our fridge. Making sugared water using it as colorant apparently gave it a special vibe, so she cheered up and drank it. Was it just sugared water? Hmm, if I wasn’t mistaken, in order for it to feel refreshing in the mouth, I had added—

“Ah, lemon juice.”

“Eh?”

“Mr. Customer, I’m not a bartender or anything, so I might be giving a wrong guess, but...”

Lemon went surprisingly well with sugared water.

As many cocktail recipes had lemon juice in them, I believed it strained the flavor that tended to unilaterally turn into “sweetness”. I didn’t think there was freshly squeezed lemon in the melon sodas of fast food shops, but if he was in pursuit of tastiness, wasn’t it a possibility?

When I told him this, he looked at me with a happy face, bowing his head with a “thank you very much”. And so, when he was about to leave the store without buying anything, he came back as if remembering something, lining up in front of the register and buying a package of specialty cookies from a certain place. When I was about to make the receipt, he told me he didn’t need it today, so I could tell it was his own pocket money.

“Really, thank you so much,” he said with an uplifting face, and this time, he exited the shop for good.

I didn’t think the suggestion I gave him warranted such consideration, and yet, what a proper child he was. His mother certainly must be happy to have a son like that, I thought, but afterward, I changed my mind, as he might surprisingly not be like that at home. My daughter, too, was an unfettered general at home, but the boyfriend that she discreetly brought over at the end of the previous year said some dreadful things about her, such as that she was a “refined young lady”. I thought they wouldn’t last for long, but it seemed they were still dating. It might be that people possessed many sides, just like those stylistic syrup bottles. Like the gemstones sold in jewelry shop. And he had showed me a wonderful, brightly shining side of his.

As a clerk, I wished from the bottom of my heart that his peculiar act of hospitality would go well.

   On Thursday morning, while I was extremely busy with stocking items, someone called to me with an “excuse me”. Even though I wished people wouldn’t talk to me at times like these, I couldn’t let it show on my face. When I turned around with a “yes, what might it be?”, my facial expression froze up. A blond, blue-eyed man was standing there. He was such a beautiful man that you’d end up asking yourself if it was okay to be breathing the same air as him. My face stiffened. He was speaking in fluent Japanese.

“Do you have canned cherries?”

“Eh, hah—aah, cherries?”

“Cherries. I need them urgently,” he said with a sour face.

Whatever might be the situation that required such a pretty young man, who looked like he had fallen from Heaven, to purchase canned cherries, it was beyond me. Anyway, with a manner of walking that looked like a frantic penguin, I guided him to the canned fruits corner and bowed with an “it’s this way”. He smiled as if relieved, leaving me floored.

“Much obliged.”

You’d think of it as an ordinary expression, but it was difficult to describe this with any word other than “bombshell”. His smile was like the glowing summer wind. As a result, you’d find yourself wondering about even unnecessary things, such as if this person had lived a life full of hardships. Was he an actor? Could be a model. His beauty was so removed from this transient realm, so I couldn’t think he was someone from the same world as myself. If a person like him were playing the hero in a tragic drama, I had the feeling that the audience would be a bit turned-off. As in, wouldn’t the role of charismatic villain suit him better? After a brief moment of escapism from reality, I came back to my senses and returned to stocking the items.

Once the checkout of the canned cherries was finished at the register, the elegant man left the shop while cursing someone’s carelessness with an “honestly, that heedless guy,” using a word that even a Japanese person seldom would.

At that moment, for some reason, the figure of that regular customer boy suddenly surfaced in my brain. The one who had told me he wanted to make melon soda. The kind that could quickly be made into cream soda, with vanilla ice cream floating on top. Melon-flavored soda aside, if you wanted to make a cream soda, the cherry was the last thing you should forget - that was what I had always been thinking, but unfortunately, he hadn’t showed up in the shop yet ever since then. Well, someone who had been so obsessed with the melon flavor probably wouldn’t do something like forget about the cherry, but there were instances such as the blond Onii-san of today. If he ever showed up again, I would make sure to mention the cherries.

On that day’s afternoon, I finally gave it a thought, and just as I was going home, I went into a family restaurant for the first time in ten years, and while tasting an awkward embarrassment, I ordered a cream soda. I had actually been wanting to drink it all this time ever since I saw him. My first cream soda in a while had the painfully sweet flavor of childhood.

[henshengs]

About Rule 63 fanworks

I was asked yesterday to elaborate on my genderbend opinions, as a trans person, which I’m happy to do, and I’ve thought about it a bit today to make sure I’m not saying something off the cuff and not thought through. Still, this is a sensitive, complicated topic, and I’m open to discussion on it.

This also got long, so I’m putting it under a cut.

So, obviously I can’t speak for all trans people. No minority group is a monolith in our opinions and this is particularly the case for the transgender community because our experiences are so very diverse and individual.

I am very rarely hurt or offended by genderbends/genderswaps/rule 63 fanworks. I know people for whom this is not the case, and I believe the pain involved is very real. The thing is... living in this world is inherently kinda painful when you’re trans. This world’s not built for us. All kinds of random things can cause me pain throughout my day. Store mannequins. My own reflection. Lesbian poetry. Pictures of other trans people. When something triggers my dysphoria or feelings of alienation, I have to stop, acknowledge the feeling, and then consider whether the thing is, outside of hurting me, contributing to the ignorance of and hatred of people like me by its very existence.

I don’t think the basic act of asking, “What if this character who is a cis man, was a cis woman instead?” does that. I think if anything, it opens the door to then ask “what if he was a trans man? Or a trans woman? Or nonbinary?”

Asking “what if this story was about a cis woman” lets cis women talk about their experiences and see themselves in stories, something I think is valuable! and also can lead to stories exploring sexism and misogyny, things which affect all trans people too!

In the rest of this post I’m going to use the terms “rule 63″ and “genderswap” to refer to the act of creating a fanwork changing a cis/presumed cis man to a cis or not-specified-to-be-trans woman, because this is the vast majority of the work under that label, because most fictional heroes and iconic characters are cis men, and because people who create cis man->trans woman or cis woman->trans man content, in my experience, usually use terms like “trans headcanon” instead.

(A lot of rule 63 fanworks don’t explicitly specify that the now-female character is cis. We can presume that most artists aren’t even thinking about the possibility of the character being trans, but we can presume that for 99.99% of all art, anywhere. It’s not a unique evil of rule 63.)

The claims that rule 63 is inherently transphobic, rather than just something where it’s good to be extra careful to avoid transphobia, as far as I’ve seen, use two arguments: A) that making the character a cis woman is wasting an opportunity to make them a trans person, and this is transphobic, and B) that rule 63 fan art is gender essentialist and cissexist, because it ties gender to physical characteristics.

Argument A doesn’t hold up for me, 

because couldn’t one then say that reimagining an abled white cis character as an abled white trans woman is racist and ableist? that reimagining them as an abled trans woman of color is ableist? No transformative reimagining can cover every identity. We say “write what you know” and talk about Own Voices, and that includes cis women who want to write about the experience they know. 

It’s also not fair to tell trans people that we must always think about trans experiences, even in our fiction. A lot of the time we don’t want to have to write or think about dysphoria and discrimination and we want to live in the heads of cis characters or even just characters whose AGAB is not mentioned! 

And it is also, imo, not a great idea to pressure people who may not be educated about trans experiences to write about trans characters just because they want to explore sexism or write about lesbians. 

many, many trans people first begin exploring their gender identity through creating cis rule 63 content, because it’s ‘safer’ than directly engaging with trans content.

With argument B, I agree that a lot of rule 63 art looks like this

and this sucks. To me, though, it’s important that it’s not the genderswap aspect that makes it suck. Artists who do this are also designing original characters with sexist, gender essentialist designs. Artists who don’t draw sexist art in general, also don’t draw sexist rule 63.

(yes, I know She-Hulk is not a rule 63 of regular Hulk. But you guys know the kind of art I’m talking about.)

I’ve also noticed a genre of fanfic that’s like, “if these characters were girls, they’d be sensible and conflict avoidant and none of the plot would happen!” or “what if these violent, tragic male characters were Soft Lesbians who braided each others’ hair” and again, I assume these authors write canonical women the same way. The genderswap part isn’t the bad part, the sexism is. 

Non-sexist rule 63 actually, in my opinion, fights gender essentialism and cissexism. When a character is exactly the same except for the ways a gender essentialist world has shaped and pressured them based on their AGAB, that’s a strong statement on the constructed nature of gender! 

But the argument that making /any/ change is gender essentialist, is... I understand where it’s coming from. I am a trans person who presents androgynously and I am a hypervisible freak because of it. I would love to live in a society where visible gender markers weren’t a thing! Unfortunately, we don’t live in that society. We live in one where we are constantly under pressure to conform to one of two profiles. There are almost no gender non conforming male characters in popular media. And changing a gender conforming cis man into a gender conforming cis woman seems to me to be a neutral action at worst. Not to mention characters from historical canons, who would be under a ton of pressure to conform. 

For physical body type characteristics... 65% of all speaking roles in Hollywood are cis and male. It’s harder to get statistics on other forms of media, but it’s undeniable that overall, most stories are told about cis men who do not have breasts or wide hips. Changing the story to be about a cis woman who has those features is introducing more diversity! 

I typed “rule 63″ and “genderswap” into the tumblr search bar today, and I saw a lot of art of women with a variety of aesthetics and body shapes and characteristics, who looked like people I’d see out at the mall.

Again, I sure do wish we lived in a post gender society. But we don’t, and in our society, everyone, myself included, looks at a picture of a person and gender categorizes them based on appearance. It is not wrong for someone to draw “Geralt the Witcher as a hot butch woman” and give her some physical markers generally agreed upon to denote ‘butch woman’ rather than ‘gender conforming man’ to tell the viewer that that is what they have drawn. Just as it is not wrong to draw “my OC who is a hot butch woman who fights monsters” and give her those markers. 

Finally, both arguments against genderswaps are, in my opinion, flawed because they implicitly posit the act of creating fanworks of the original, cis male gender conforming character design, as neutral. I think this is incorrect. I think that if you’re going to argue that drawing a cis male character as a cis woman is transphobic, you have to also argue that drawing the character as a cis man is transphobic. But I’ve only seen people do this when a trans headcanon becomes extremely popular in a fandom.

Again, I’m just one person. I’m also biased, because firstly, as I mentioned, rule 63 doesn’t usually trigger my dysphoria; secondly, I almost always come down on the side of “don’t limit what people can explore in fiction; ask them to explore it more sensitively or with more content warnings instead.” 

I definitely encourage creators to seek out and listen to a variety of trans opinions. But this is mine: I love rule 63, I make a lot of it myself, and I think if no one created it we’d lose something awesome. 

At the end of the day, what I really want is more trans content*, but I’d rather have cis rule 63 than just stories about cis men. 

Also: I personally have nothing against the terms genderswap or genderbend. I don’t think it reinforces the gender binary to acknowledge its existence by saying you’re ‘swapping’ the character from being cis with one AGAB to being cis with the other. But I can definitely see the argument against it, so I don’t blame anyone for going with rule 63 instead.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading; I hope you have a nice day, and have fun creating and consuming the fanworks your heart desires. I’ll end by linking this comic, which is just eternally relevant.

(*by which I mean: trans content created by other trans people, that matches my hyperspecific headcanons, likes and dislikes, and doesn’t set off any of my often changing dysphoria triggers. See what I said at the start, about transgender existence being constantly mildly painful. There are many awesome aspects to being trans! This is one of the less awesome.)

[raayllum]

One of the things I like about tdp is how diverse it is, and not only with LGBTQIA+ people/couples. Nothing wrong with that ofc, but some shows that market themselves with "representation" only have that as the main focus, and its nice to have a show that has that AND more without all the dumb stereotypes. And honestly as a woc i'm just glad to see an asian who isn't short or nerdy for once lmao (I hope this doesn't come off as homophobic or anything btw, and sorry if this got posted twice ;w;)

Oh, you are preaching to the choir, and you are absolutely right. I’ve written before on how fandom prioritizes queer rep — specifically “same sex” presenting rep — above all else, particularly race. It’s super evident in the way interracial couples (canon or fanon, but it’s especially annoying when the ship is canon) is bemoaned as “can’t a guy and girl just be friends” often so the white character of the match can have a same sex relationship with another white character. It very much reeks of competing representation needs that queer white people in particular (which as one, I think I can say) don’t realize are competing. I’ve written more extensively about it before and it’s beyond annoying.

Especially bc I’m a white pan queer in a same sex presenting relationship (neither my partner nor myself are women but we’re still socially perceived that way), so like, I get it. But I will always be just as happy about a cute & healthy interracial “het” relationship as I would be about a queer ship.  (Because my relationship is also interracial, too.) Because Yes, it’s wonderful seeing my queerness in things like The Dragon Prince and the Owl House — I’ve shed happy tears over it before — but it’s also important to see beyond my own personal representation horizons to pursue and support others.

It’s also frustrating how much representation has become synonymous with queer rep when like, no, it’s not the only rep that matters. Disabled rep matters, neurodivergent rep matters, religious (ex: Jewish, Muslim) rep matters, racial rep matters. And we need stories with all of those things even when they don’t overlap, and to celebrate when they do.

Like I love the How To Train Your Dragon franchise, but an antagonist in the tv show falls into antisemitic caricatures (so does Tangled, twice unfortunately) and what little racial rep it has also isn’t great. But the two main leads are disabled with another two disabled characters, and that’s all awesome and important. Again, more diverse stories for variety is key.

Hot take, maybe, but TDP would still be groundbreaking with its racial and disabled rep even if there was no queer rep, which is a lovely — and is groundbreaking in its own way. The Dragon Prince has two same sex kisses in 27 episodes — one of which takes place only fifteen episodes into the series. What other kid’s animated show can say that?

And TDP’s Asian rep is also something I don’t feel enough people praise, tbh, particularly in regards to Callum and Ezran in some ways? Like Amaya and Sarai are heavily praised, and rightfully so, but Callum is also an Asian lead (and arguably the Main lead of the show) and Ezran is Black and Asian. 

It was a source of frustration when people felt like they had to justify shipping something “het” like Rayllum by making it “woke” somehow, based upon gender roles and insisting that Rayla had to be taller and Callum had to stay shorter (because one inch is that important, apparently?). And I’m totally fine with that headcanon, I have no problem with it. I do not care. But it ignores the interracial aspect of Rayllum’s relationship and that Asian men being shorter is the stereotype. Just like how women being shorter is a stereotype. In fandom, they can coexist, and whichever one canon goes with (if either) will be subversive in its own way. But the whole thing and the way it pops back up from time to time is absolutely a symptom of people not knowing how to look at race just as much as gender or queer rep in fandom.

Most of the Dragon Prince is good about it, though, which I appreciate, and I think it’s a great reflection of how the show treats representation, too: all important, overlapping, and intersecting.

[rpbetter]

Hey, can I get some advice on improving my descriptions / becoming more literate? I feel like I'm really dull when it comes to my writing and would like some advice! Thank you!

You absolutely can, thank you for asking! I apologize it took me a bit to get to this, tumblr didn’t show me notifications and I’ve been rather busy. Hopefully, I can offer some good advice!

Please, keep in mind that, as always, it is just my advice. If these things do not work out for you, don’t feel bad about it! You just need to find what does work for you. And, if you have anything that jumps out at you that you wish me to elaborate more on, or even that simply occurs to you more specifically to ask as you read, please, do ask! I am always happy to have those questions, of course.

Being more literate in itself can help. It can also be a hindrance, however, as we tend to compare ourselves to others negatively. I’d say not to do that, but it’s something you have to unlearn, not something you can simply stop doing. We’re taught a lot of self-criticism by comparison in both the educational system and our society. You’ve got learn to approach material you enjoy as just that, something you enjoy, not a standard you need to uphold. All writers should be unique, they’re all individual people! I think the death of a good many unwritten works hinges on that, honestly; the writer couldn’t live up to their own expectations, born of comparison to their literary heroes.

That being said? Read.

Read new and diverse things, and revisit old favorites. Learn as many words as you can in whatever way works best for you; through reading alone, through word of the day apps, or looking up novel words you run across/looking up words as you write to compare them to synonyms. I know, tumblr has gotten really nasty in recent years about writers who seem to have “regurgitated a thesaurus.” There is always a bad way to do something good, there are always excesses when you’re passionate about something. Don’t replace every third word with an exotic one simply because you think it looks better. Do replace words that are, legitimately, better in how they evoke the setting or mood you are going for. Remember that word flow is important, perhaps especially when it comes to descriptions.

If you do not tend to read much material that is description heavy, I’d suggest doing so. Try to find works that are still descriptive, but fit with the genres you like to both read and write the best to get you started, but don’t stay there exclusively. It doesn’t need to be something like...let’s say, Tolkien. Not to piss anyone off, I’m not anti-Tolkien or anything, but I could never get into his works, regardless of interest or effort, because they’re so description heavy, and in ways that don’t pique or hold my interest much. So, if you find that you are not into description laden works, that isn’t a poor reflection on you! It’s more likely that you simply aren’t into those specific works, you need to find something that is more of interest to you, personally.

If you do tend to read many works that are descriptive at all, take up a few of your favorites and pick some passages within them that you enjoyed the most. Ones that you could feel. When they described an outfit, you not only saw it, you saw the way it moved on the character, knew what it would feel like to touch it. When they described a setting in nature, you had a sensory experience there as well; you could smell the hyper-specific scent of wildflowers on a warm breeze, or the electric chill of a sudden summer storm moving in.

Ask yourself what does this for you so that you can experiment with doing it yourself. Is it the words, the word flow? Is it what the author isn’t saying, leaving the reader to automatically fill in with their own sensory recollections? There are so many ways of being descriptive in writing, as many as there are writers, and as many as there are things to be descriptive about.

So, it’s, again, a bit of a situation of finding what naturally pulls you into those descriptions yourself. While there are always good rules that can apply across the board with writing, it is a creative art. If you’re only following the rules others have set down, you can end up feeling negative about the process, yourself, and the product...or your readers/RP partners feel like the work is lacking or boring. Even when people can’t quite put their finger on something, forced work feels forced, unnatural, or lacking substance.

Diversify what you consume.

I know, I just said that thing about the familiar stories! Once you’re better able to identify what it is that stands out as evocative to you, though, you can better feel that in unfamiliar works. You can get a better idea of how language itself works as a living thing. Read some things out of your usual genres, ask for recommendations from friends or family who read, check out some older works, and even follow some blogs that post a variety of poetry quotes or full poems.

Reading song lyrics and a variety of other spoken-word style things like slam poetry and rap is helpful as well. They’re all doing the same here, evoking imagery and emotion. That is what you are trying to do as well! These formats, additionally, use highly evocative words to describe in a shortened way. They are great for realizing unique ways that familiar words can be paired.

By going outside of your usual bounds, you may encounter words, writing styles, and other descriptive qualities you hadn’t considered before. If you don’t, you still end up with a fuller grasp on writing itself. Everything is a potential learning experience if you are willing to approach it that way! Use it to play around with words and styles, Use this as experimentation, and realize that it is perfectly alright for it not to work out. That’s part of the exercise of finding what works for you; realizing what doesn’t work.

When you have some ideas of what makes you experience the things being described, practice. Pick anything. In fact, incredibly mundane, irrelevant things are perfect for this. If you can describe a sock in good detail, in a way that isn’t either inaccurate or boring, giving it relevance and life, you can describe anything.

Use ask memes and writing prompts, and write them out from your character’s perspective.

Even if you are not writing a first person account, it helps you to use narrative language that the muse might use, or that gives the reader a intuitive feeling for the muse. Don’t try to fill the whole thing up with descriptions. Sometimes, just simplifying is a good thing, and will help more relevant details stand out.

For example, I will often use things in the environment around my muse to help pair with, further denote, and give the reader a feeling for the muse’s emotions, psychological state, and so on. If that muse is in a hectic state, I’m not going to describe something in the environment that isn’t, like a peaceful meadow. I’m going to describe the seeming chaos of some ants in the grass taking apart their food, the erratic seeds or spores on the wind, or the clatter of an old farm truck on the roadway that breaks up the peace of the surroundings.

It’s a very different effect than describing the entire meadow in high detail, in ways that are perceptible to my muse and not, down to a blade of grass or a rock. It then takes over too much of my reader’s imaginative process and agency without giving them anything of nonnegotiable importance about the scene or the muse. Details that reflect a state of internal distress, like the ants, seeds, or truck, then fall by the wayside of this massive scene-setting I’ve done. And, as unfortunate as it is, if you are writing RP especially, your audience is looking for details that are pertinent and impactful. They’re likely to, intentionally or otherwise, skip several paragraphs of descriptions no matter how beautiful they are.

Since you just said “descriptions” and “writing” {nothing wrong with that, I just want to be sure I’m covering as much as possible that might be of help to you}, I’m not sure if you are meaning external descriptions or more internalized, character-driven ones, and not sure if you are writing only RP, only traditional writing, or a combination thereof.

As I said above, using descriptions that reflect things about the muse is useful and interesting, regardless of how or what you are writing. So, even if you were not meaning internalized descriptions, doing the things I’m about to talk about relating to this will still be helpful!

Internalized descriptions include things like: mood, thoughts, memories, and sensory perception.

To do these things any justice, you have to really know your muse, be able to experience things from their unique perspective and not just your own - or just what you wish the reader to experience through them.

If you didn’t have inspiration for the muse, you wouldn’t be writing them, but inspiration isn’t the same as knowing them as well, maybe better, than yourself. To do that, it is a process of learning and experimentation...and practice.

Those memes I mentioned above? Those are useful here, too! It doesn’t matter if it isn’t an ask meme you want to reblog, or if no one sent you anything from it; you can find a variety of memes, save them, and ask yourself the questions.

On sentence memes, or “starter memes,” ask yourself what your muse’s internal reaction to having that sentence said to them would be, how it might externalize (or not), and if these things are true, or just your perception/what you would like to have happen. If you’ve developed this muse from scratch or spent time learning them from canon, you should have some pretty good ideas as to how they’ll feel. Expand on that instinctive or learned idea. Does it change if a different muse or character type says this? Say it is an inflammatory sentence, something accusatory, derogatory, or pushy. Do they react the same way if a loved one says it instead of a stranger? How about a person who is obviously intoxicated, or a person who is under the influence of youth, so to speak? Take that, and write out two different scenarios.

On ask, or “headcanon/development memes,” pick a question and answer it yourself. Just answer it in depth. Now, have your muse answer that question. You may notice that the muse didn’t want to answer as clearly, is lying or omitting things, and/or had other thoughts generated by that question. If you didn’t already do it this way, answer the question again as a story in which your muse goes through those thoughts. Describe their emotions using words that carry the same emotional resonance, not all descriptions need to be lengthy if the right words, right word order, are found for optimum impact on the reader. Write out the thoughts they are having, just as messy as they are naturally having them.

Outside of memes, you have yet more options for helpful exercises that get you in touch with your muse and your writing.

Try out photography and inspiration blogs. Pick a some pictures that drew your attention, and write about them descriptively. Write out how the picture makes you feel, what it makes you think about. Practice not just describing how something looks, but how it would feel to be there. Using the same pictures, write as your muse in the same way. Put them in this scene to give their experiences. It helps you get a grasp on putting impressions and experiences down in creative ways that allow others to experience it the same way, and it helps you more easily step into your muse’s mind and experiences.

Seeing things through your muse’s eyes (through the lens of their life experiences, preferences, biases, emotions, and thoughts) is critical in giving authentic descriptions. To do more of this, you can practice in every day life. Even if you cannot write it out, or write it out yet, you can consciously think as your muse. If your muse was watching this TV show or hearing this song, what would they think? Don’t just answer as, “they would/n’t like it.” Answer as to why they would or would not, what it makes them feel and think. You can continue doing this with your muse’s impressions of different environments and people.

You can even simply contemplate an emotion and how your muse feels and expresses it.

Adding on underlying and overarching emotions to the mix as you go along; emotion, and thought, is complex. We very rarely are only angry, sad, or happy. We are very rarely only thinking of a single thing, and even rarer, thinking of it out of nowhere. It’ll help you identify the way your muse experiences emotion and thought, as well as how best to describe these things.

For example, I write a muse that can easily present as simply being quiet and angry. Additionally, as the character develops, his actions and general behavior can seem to not match well with his overall, genuinely kind nature. It’s necessary for me as a writer to identify where the anger comes from, what its components are; it isn’t just anger. It’s built on the things anger so often is; frustration, sadness, and fear. It gives the reader insight and helps delineate the muse’s expression of “anger.” When the anger is coming more from a place of insulation and protection than it is frustration, it presents differently.

I describe the sensation of the most obvious emotion, the anger, but also the underlying states that have led to it being apparent. How it really feels to be a wounded animal in a corner. I describe an experience or two pertaining to the emotional pain and fear, keep it relevant throughout the text in callbacks (what set him off is related to those experiences in some way, and during or after the experience of anger, those other situations are referenced again). Maybe it is an outright flashback, maybe it is less thematically stated. The descriptions I use, again, of his surroundings-not just his expressions, tone of voice, or movements-denotes that he is in this particular state of mind. He might notice similarities in the environment relating to a previous bad experience, since he is in that mindset, or he might be noticing things in a more critical way than he normally would. Things he might see every day are being processed as hateful in some way; garish or otherwise visually displeasing, might be seen as outright harmful, or even menacing. Bold colors, sharp lines, stand out. Things come into high relief and are painted in large swaths of color, the minute details missing suddenly.

Further, you can think of things that make your own similar state of mind so much worse in these situations. Is there a repetitive sound in the background? Is the person he is speaking with seemingly blowing him off in some way? Is he hungry, tired, thirsty, in physical pain? I then write those things throughout as additional, building irritants. 

Using your personal experiences isn’t a bad thing, I really wish tumblr hadn’t gotten into that mindset. Unless you really have written a 100% self-insert character, they shouldn’t experience things exactly as you do, no. However, you have a basis to go off of already when you are describing their inner life; your own.

Maybe you have never been so wracked with grief that you collapsed, but you have been caught up in a significant loss of some sort that you can build upon. If you can better imagine what your muse’s experience is, you can describe it not only better, but also in a way that reads as legitimate. It’s not a description of grief that you could have gotten from anywhere else, doesn’t have cliché lines in it about grief, such as, “though he was drowning in an ocean of loss, he knew he had to be strong for his friends, so, he put on a brave face.” (There are other issues with that, but that’s a whole other post!)

My point is, you have the tools of accurate inner life within you, and you should use them to build that accuracy in your writing. Again, play with the words and structure, make sure you are building the feelings or otherwise being immersive about them. Keep them throughout the thread, do not have a muse magically become the opposite of what you’ve described because it is no longer convenient, and do not forgo little reminders that the muse feels the way they do, no matter what their actions might be saying.

When you describe your muse’s actions that are being influenced by an emotion, good or bad, use words that evoke the emotion while describing those actions.

If the muse is very sad, do not use words that bring to mind vivacity and passion. Don’t use metaphors that bring to mind those same things. Your muse doesn’t slink like a jungle cat to the table when depressed, but they might move in a daze, like a shadow, or a have to put maximum effort into their every step as though heading to their own execution.

I don’t think anyone should describe, let alone to an extreme, every action their muse undertakes, but when you are imparting these things with emotional tone or thought processes, it really shouldn’t be done. It’s exhausting for you to write, and just as exhausting for your reader, who is very likely going, okay, we get it, she’s angry. Like the descriptions of the surroundings, try to keep it to important and telling actions. You needn’t describe your muse’s every eye movement, but if they are so embarrassed they’re having trouble keeping eye contact, or so annoyed they glare, that is a description you want to add.

Writers never seem to forget facial expressions or dramatic body movements, which is reasonable, considering how visual a species humans are, but quite often forgo tone of voice and word pronunciation entirely. These are great ways to denote what your muse is feeling. Consider how your muse speaks most often, whether they work at proper pronunciation and hiding an accent, or if they simply let their most natural speech flow. Then, consider how different emotions might impact that. I’m not talking about the only go-to many muns on tumblr have, the “my muse speaks -first language here- when angry” thing. I’m talking about your muse entering into any emotion strongly enough to drop crisp pronunciation, outright mess up familiar and easy words, stumble, stutter, or pause. Write emotion into your muse’s speech, and don’t keep it to adding things like, “said angrily.”

That’s telling, not showing, and is the death of descriptive writing of any sort.

Doing any of the above in a document is highly recommended. Not only are you less likely to encounter tumblr eating your drafts as you work on them, you have more freedom to open it up later and play around with the structure. Additionally, writing directly on the platform can be distracting in more ways than just the desire to dash scroll! It can make you feel like you need to be doing what you owe instead, need to be responding to messages, posted memes, comments. Taking it off site feels more like your own space and time for experimentation.

I know this was long, and covered many points (though, it could always use more). So, I’m going to kind of rehash some below!

For learning and inspiration:

read things both familiar and not in order to figure out what sort of descriptions speak to you, then practice doing them yourself

read a variety of works, not just books, and not just new books; oftentimes, the lessons in older books will stand out to you even more for using descriptions that are no longer common. Those lessons still hold, like the very act of using common, highly recognizable objects and settings to describe a person, place, or thing. In those cases, see what you can rewrite that would give the same feeling using things that are currently so recognizable

don’t count out things like music and poetry, they flow with emotion and it is imperative that they give emotion and setting in unique ways

use ask/starter memes, pictures, and even common situations occurring around you to experiment with both writing descriptions and getting into your muse’s mindset

think on your own experiences with your environment and emotions

consider how your muse’s perceptions may change based upon thoughts and emotions, and/or how you can describe the setting to reflect and drive home these factors

really get to know your muse by exploring headcanon memes, giving yourself a refresher on their canon (yes, even if you wrote it), and comparing and contrasting your experiences with your muse’s on the same topics

experiment with new words, their use, and their flow

seriously, practice! Outside of writing you intend for anyone else to ever see!

Things to Remember:

you are unique as a person, therefore, you are unique as a writer...and that is a good thing, you just need to find what works for you

describe things that are important in setting the scene in ways that are not just visual; be emotive, and pick things that have bearing on the immediate topic

don’t forget that your muse’s voice and spoken words use can, and should be, impacted by thoughts and feelings

just like you, your muse is unlikely to see the same objects in the same light under any manner of strong emotional influence

also just like you, who is saying something and in what context is extremely important in how your muse reacts internally and how that is presented externally; if your muse feels and reacts the same way no matter the other party, they’re a little cardboard and you’re not being descriptive or thoughtful enough

listen, if you just really need to describe something utterly irrelevant to live another second? That’s fine, but you need to make it relevant. Perhaps, your muse noticed the cracks on that rock because they’re in an altered state - be that by way of a substance, or an emotion

there is a reason why we use clichés, and I am not going to say they should never be used, just that you should try to be more creative with them, and they should always be viable ones that truly match the mood

the same is true of words, we have some words that are just so commonly expressive of sensations and emotions that they come up quite often, but again, try to find something similar if possible, and always make sure it’s still evoking the right thing

I repeat: get in touch with your muse, even if you do not write them from first person. The language you use as a writer to describe them and their world is better if it feels like them

no support for tumblr’s anti-wordiness, but huge support for optimizing word use for maximum impact

to that end, if you’re a RPer, even a fic writer, please know that your desire to write descriptively isn’t going to be appreciated by some people. That’s their fucking loss, and you are better off without them. You will find the audience that will properly appreciate what you’re doing!

I hope some of this helped to give you some starting points you might not have thought of!

[itsclydebitches]

Voyager. Now that’s a kettle of fish. Obviously watch/enjoy whatever you wish, but I do recommend also checking out SFDebris’ reviews of the episodes (he’s the rwde of Voyager). He is a lot smarter and more eloquent than me.

Putting these two asks together since my thoughts on both are all jumbled! 

Now, I want to emphasize that I’ve only watched the first 16 episodes (Season One + Season 2 premiere), so idk if Voyager is going to go seriously downhill later on, but right now I do really like it. And not in a, “Lol yeah compared to the other crap on it’s good, I guess” way, but in a completely honest, “It has its flaws, but is overall a solid, compelling show with lovable characters” way. Out of curiosity I watched SFDebris’ review of “Phage,” though I’m afraid I didn’t agree with it. The only part were I was like, “Yeah okay” was pointing out that they had the Doctor using a keypad when he supposedly wasn’t solid, but that’s precisely the sort of continuity error that, in an otherwise strong show, I’m willing to shrug off. For all the major points, it sounds like SFDebris is concerned primarily with the show he wants Voyager to be, rather than the show Voyager actually is. Which I know sounds familiar--I’ve heard that criticism leveled at my own work: “You just want RWBY to be a totally different show”--but the difference is that Voyager is a part of an established franchise, following three other TV shows, an animated series, and a collection of films. It’s not an original show (like RWBY) that can take itself in any direction the story may need/claim to want (again, RWBY). It has a brand and those established characteristics seem to be bumping up against SFDebris’ critiques: 

Hating Neelix as a character - You’re supposed to hate him. Or at least find him frustrating (I don’t personally hate him) because that’s what all the characters are grappling with too. From Tuvok forced to have an awkward conversation while Neelix is in the bath to Janeway dealing with him taking over her dining room, Neelix’s conflict revolves around how others learn to accept him. Star Trek as a franchise is about “Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” Voyager begins with the problem of how the trained Federation officers are supposed to work with the more violent Maquis. Difference doesn’t just create “Wow, you’re so amazing!” reactions, it also includes frustration, disagreement, and outright hostility. Creating an outsider character with a kind heart but incredibly overbearing personality is a great way to test the other characters’ convictions. Do they actually care about all life in the universe? Or do they only care about life when they personally find it palatable? Having Neelix around is a great reminder for them--and the viewer--that just because someone annoys you at times doesn’t mean they’re any less worthy of love, respect, and companionship. It also doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer: he keeps the crew fed even if his cooking is horrible, he provides information about this area of space even if he sometimes gets it wrong, we roll our eyes at the “Morale Officer” stuff, but Neelix does provide much needed perspective for characters like Tuvok. If Neelix made fewer mistakes, stopped bugging the crew, became a “cooler” character for the audience to root for rather than be frustrated by... a lot of the point of his character would be lost. 

Frustration about discoveries not carrying over to the next episode - AKA, the crew finds inanely powerful, alien tech and then (presumably) never uses it again. This would indeed be a big problem in a serialized story (like RWBY) but Voyager maintains much of Star Trek’s original, episodic nature. Though we have continuity in the form of them inching towards home and evolving as characters, the world still resets to a certain point at the end of each episode. This is what allows Star Trek to explore so many different questions and have so many different adventures. If you demand that serialized continuity--this character needs to have an arc to deal with this traumatic experience, the crew has to follow the thread they just discovered, our Doctor needs to do something with the new tech they just found--then you lose the variety that Star Trek is known for. Instead of a new story each week (or, occasionally, across two weeks) you’ve got a single story spanning months. Neither form is better or worse than the other, it’s absolutely a preference, but there’s a very specific, structural, intentional reason why the characters “forget” about the things they’ve discovered and, at times, experienced. Unlike Ozpin forgetting that he has a nuke in his cane for seven volumes, or Ruby forgetting to use her eyes at crucial points, Star Trek deliberately sets things aside to ensure there’s room for new ideas and questions next episode. 

Janeway doesn’t kill the Vidiians to get Neelix his lungs back - No Starfleet captain would. At least, not during this period of Star Trek. Sisko has development in that regard (making morally gray choices), but that’s built into the heart of the show from the start: he’s on a station, not a starship, that is jointly run by the Federation and the Bajorans, and built by the Cardassians. The rules of the Federation always had a tenuous hold there and Sisko as a character always pushed the boundary of the Federations expectations (Q: “Picard never hit me!”) Janeway, in contrast, is 100% a Federation captain and, more importantly, has explicitly told her crew that they will be operating as a Federation vessel, despite being so far from home. That’s the conflict between the officers and the Maquis. That’s why Tuvok accepts the alien tech in “Prime Factors,” recognizing that Janeway can’t. That’s why Seska is a compelling antagonist, pressuring the crew to abandon their ideals for survival. The series (or at least that first season) revolves around questions about identity and whether they’re willing to give that identity up now that they’re out from under the Federation’s thumb. Overwhelmingly, they choose not to... which would make murdering the Vidiian a complete 180 for her character. We’re not necessarily supposed to agree with Janeway’s choice, we’re supposed to acknowledge that murdering another sentient being is not some simple choice to make, especially when you’re a leader devoted to a certain set of ideals. We’re supposed to recognize the challenges here (many of which SFDebris doesn’t acknowledge) like how you’re supposed to keep a prisoner for the next 75 years when you’re already struggling to feed and take care of the crew you have, or the fact that they claim to take organs from dead bodies and this was a rare time when they couldn’t. (It’s only in “Faces” that we learn this is complete BS and they actively kidnap people to work as slaves and then be harvested.) The frustration that Janeway doesn’t act here stems from wanting her to be a character who is, fundamentally, not a Star Trek captain. 

Granted, I only watched one review, but that’s what the whole thing felt like: wanting a series that’s not Star Trek. Something without a token, challenging character, without hand-wavy science, that’s more serialized, and doesn’t adhere to a “do no harm” code. (I just started “Initiations” and Chakotay asks a vessel to stand down three times, while actively being attacked, before finally retaliating and then he tries to reestablish communications and then he warns them about their engine and then he beams them aboard his shuttle. That’s what Star Trek (usually) is: that idealized love of life, even when that life is actively hostile). And like, that’s obviously fine! As you say, Flawartist, “watch/enjoy whatever you wish,” but just based on this one review I wonder if SFDebris just wants something other than Star Trek. 

I think one of the reasons why I feel passionately about this (beyond my love of context and recognizing when shows are actively trying to accomplish something specific) is that I went through this with DS9. For years I heard about how horrible the show was. It’s trash. It’s a mess. It’s not TNG, so don’t even bother. Or, if you do, be prepared for disappointment. There was this whole, strong rhetoric about how silly it all is--Star Trek is, by default, silly, so supposedly only the Shakespeare loving, archeology obsessed captain is sophisticated enough to save it--and then... I found nothing of the sort. I mean yeah, obviously Star Trek is silly as hell (that’s part of its charm), but DS9 was also a complex, nuanced look into everything from personal agency to the threat of genocide. There’s so much wonderful storytelling there... little of which made it into my cultural understanding of DS9. And now I’m seeing the same thing with Voyager. When I did some quick googling I was bombarded by articles saying how bad it is and now I have an ask comparing it to a show I don’t think has even a quarter of the heart the Star Trek franchise does. Which is is not AT ALL meant as a knock against you, anon. I’m just fascinated by this cultural summary of Star Trek: TOS is ridiculous but fun if you’re willing to ignore large swaths of it, TNG is a masterpiece and that’s that, DS9 is bad, Voyager is bad, and to be frank I haven’t heard much of anything about Enterprise. It’s weird! Because I watch these shows and I’m like, “Holy shit there’s so much good storytelling here.” Is it perfect? Not on your life, but it’s trying in a way that I can really appreciate. It’s Star Trek and Star Trek (at least at the time) meant something pretty specific. Criticisms about divisive characters or idealized forgiveness feel like walking out of a Fast and Furious film and going, “There was too much driving and silly combat. Why didn’t they just fix the situation in this easy way?” Because then we wouldn’t have a film about lots of driving and silly combat! If you make all the characters palatable, make Janeway harder, extend the impact of all the discoveries, remove the ridiculous science that doesn’t make any sense... then you don’t have Star Trek anymore.