#or explore an actually marginalized character

[poebrey]

to post something positive I am really happy about what snw is doing with T’Pring and it makes so much sense and just in general I love the material they gave her in this episode

[prolibytherium]

I feel like the full implications of lavender marriage don’t go as explored in fiction as they Could be sometimes, especially in terms of the woman's role in this dynamic (in the most common context where a gay man is the direct beneficiary of the situation). And a lot of the time it’s outright pretty bad where like the wife has like, a narrative function of just Enabling a gay relationship (if not being a narrative Womb that Provides Babies for a gay relationship) rather than being an actual character. Like is completely and unconditionally supportive, has no complicated feelings about their role whatsoever, etc, they're just a plot mechanism. That extreme tends to be more of a fanfiction thing than in literature but god does it suck.

Like I don’t think there’s anything Wrong with writing situations where everyone’s pretty cool with it (so long as the woman is a full character and not just an accessory) but a lot of the time it feels kind of lazy. Even in the absolute best case scenario (say the husband and wife are bestfriends, quite happy to be in a platonic domestic partnership, and mutually benefit), the cultural contexts that create lavender marriages are not things that just Won’t impact your characters. These contexts tend to be patriarchal as well as homophobic- the wife might have not had a choice to enter into the situation (arranged marriage) or have very little choice (in terms of a marriage being the main option for security). Pregnancy is likely to be strongly culturally encouraged if not an outright expectation. Both members are unlikely to be Devoid of learned misogyny and homophobia. Etc.

It's also a facade that has to be publicly upheld (which will inevitably produce uncomfortable if not outright distressing situations), any side relations have to be conducted in secrecy with great cost for being found out. If a pregnancy is involved (even if the person WANTS to be pregnant and is happy with the notion) it's a physically and mentally strenuous time, it can be outright dangerous or fatal. These are all high stress situations. Even the most devoted and loving friendships can be strained by MUCH less. The situation doesn't have to be toxic and abusive, but I think making it Easy is often lazy contrived writing and just like. a really boring way to engage with such a complicated topic.

[margindoodles2407]

BEHOLD

IT IS POSTED

@whyoneartheven FINAL PUBLISHED DRAFT TIME LET'S GO

[t-u-i-t-c]

so i really like geats :)

[musical-chick-13]

Can somebody please explain to me what the appeal of vampires is.

[fuji-sen]

the 'evil imposter' just wants to be a baker!

Prologue: The Foodie turned Imposter?!

Part 4: hilichurl style stew

[ part 3 ] || [ masterlist ] || [ part 4.5 Special! ]

divider is made by @/saradika-graphics

When you finished the sad attempt of a cup (or rather pot) of Mint Tea, you felt marginally better and decided to try and carefully explore the area again and try to catch or forage for something you could actually eat.

But first. . you sniffed at yourself and gagged at the smell of fish and sweat that clung to you and your now very much torn and raggy clothes. You couldn't help but frown in sadness at the state of your favorite set of pajamas as well as losing your slippers. Your feet were beginning to ache from the rocky and unsafe paths you unfortunately had to cross to get to where you are today.

You backtracked to the pond you had taken water from, it was small but big enough for you to clean yourself in. Looking around, the area was void of any humans, perhaps because this was Stormterror's area after all.

Hearing the sound of something squishing, you turned to the small pyro slime that tried it's best to catch up to you. "Are you going to be accompanying me little one?" you asked and it stared at you, bright eyes blinking before it nodded in excitement. "Alright, you're too cute to be mean too, let me just bathe." You said, and it understood you as it settled itself on a small rock near the pond.

Fighting back a smile you shook your head fondly, strangely feeling already attached to the warm slime. Then you neared the pond, first dipping your foot in the water as a moan of relief escaped your lips from the cool waters. So you went in deeper until your waist was submerged. Then you begun to undress yourself, it's not like there was anybody or rather any person near the area to accidentally peek at you.

Peeling off the now wet clothes, you flung them, watching as they slapped the surface of the water and now merely float about. You'd scrub them clean later, because all you wanted to do was relax and rid the smell of fish off your body.

However your relaxation was short lived as when you tried to go deeper to hid your chest in the waters, you whimpered at the pain from your arms and you finally noticed the scars that littered your body. It was healing, but still the wounds were there. You didn't know electro attacks could leave such hauntingly beautiful scars, you remember seeing it in the internet, from people who were struck by lightning to gain branch like scars that spread across their bodies.

Yours was no different, the librarian had struck you at the side of your left arm, it started at your shoulder before branching out in purple glowing lines. It trailed down your arms and even to your chest.

Hesitantly you let a finger traced the lines but you could only wince at the remnants of electro, it felt like grazing at a live wire, making you jolt up. And letting it touch the water triggered 'electro-charged.'

You sobbed once more, you'd been doing it quite often. . a part of you wondered at how you never seem to run out of tears.

"It's. . *hic* it's bad enough they had to hurt me" you complained to yourself as you tried to ignore the pain and began to scrub your body raw against your better judgement, hopefully the scars disappeared as did the smell of rotten fish. . you did not want to live with a reminder of how the characters you had grown to love had hurt and betrayed you.

It felt like hours until you stopped, staring at the your raw skin, the scars didn't disappear nor the remnants of electro. Bathing was supposed to be relaxing yet now you only felt pain due to the elemental reactions.

Standing up you gathered your clothes, rubbed them in silence in an attempt to clean and rid the fabric of the dirt that clung to it. Then you proceeded to get out of the pond, uncaring that you are naked as you laid the clothes on the rock for it to dry. .

"huh, wheres. ." you frowned worriedly when you noticed your slime friend was gone.

Did they leave you? did something bad happened. .

You started to chew on your nail, your nerves slowly starting to consume you once more until. .

"Unu! Unu!" you flinched turning as a group of hilichurls came, approaching you as they were led by the same slime friend you were worried about.

You felt your cheeks flushed as you jumped into a bush to hide your body from them, embarrassed. The slime was the first to approach while the hilichurls hesitated.

Realizing that you were naked the slime turned and communicated with the hilichurls in a language you didn't quite understand, who knew slimes could talk anyways? that wasn't mentioned in the games!

"mani. ." (to give) a hilichurl was the first to step up, bowing as it held out some fabric, your eyes narrowed, were they giving you clothes? Seeing your hesitance and confusion, the slime bounced about in a way that you could only deduced as encouragement. So you stood up, hand outstretched and the hilichurl took it as a sign to approach.

Slowly and respectfully it placed the gift in your hands and you felt the leather and animal skin to be nice as you wore it quickly and then stepped out of the comfort of the bushes. You smiled warmly at the hilichurls "Thank you."

The hilichurl then fainted with a weak "*Mosi mita. . ."

"a-are you okay" you worriedly crouched down, poking at its mask and was only to be met with silent, the hilichurl was definitely out cold. .

The samachurl facepalmed at the sheer idiocy of the hilichurl, but they couldn't really blame them for they were truly in the presence of their God, their most revered mother. "Olah, Unu" (Hello, Creator) the samachurl greeted, getting your attention as they bowed as well, laying down their staff to ease your suspicions and cautions towards them.

"h-hello" you greeted awkwardly, also bowing causing them to shake their heads, were you not supposed to bow to them? still, you watched as the samachurl motioned the pyro slime to give them something.

You crouched as the slime, remembering something, quickly approach you. What happened next surprised you, the slime had spat out a vial of purple liquid. You remembered it as one of the craftable potions that could help you in battle, raising your resistance to a particular element.

"Ah!" you realized it was to raise a person's electro resistance.

Testing it out, you put some of the potion into your hands and began rubbing it on the scars that now decorated your arms. . the tingling sensation disappeared and the purple cracks of electro were gone. .

you slumped in relief, staring at the hilichurls then at your slime as you grabbed the slime, ignoring the warm burning sensation "thank you. ."

‎𐂐◯𓇋 (๑ᵔ⤙ᵔ๑)

Seeing as the hilichurls were far nicer than the knights of Favonious, it didn't take much for you to agree to follow them to their camp. Your little pyro friend was still in your arms as the burning sensation slowly disappeared. You didn't bother to check your arms to see whether the 3rd degree burns simply numbed all the pain away.

Their camp was similar to the ones you saw through your gadget, except it seemed livelier, and far more large and filled with more things like tents, beds, crates of definitely stolen goods.

You found yourself ushered to be sat down, were the younger hilichurls slowly approached you filled with restrained excitement. They played with you in a game you didn't quite understand, they gave you small gifts like flowers and interestingly shaped stones.

You accepted it all, a part of you was overwhelmed from their actions and affections. .

did you deserve this?

weren't you some imposter of a god that you never knew existed?

Seeing your dampened moods, the hilichurls took it as a sign that they had offended you and dejectedly began to give you space. Your pyro slime friend was called over as they settled themselves in a pile of wood and lighting it up to make a good sized fire.

The other hilichurls began to bring out ingredients as another three were busy hanging up a pot just above the fire your pyro body managed. Curiously you stood up and approached, watching as they began cooking. Their utensils were crude, improvised and makeshift versions of the real deal. It seemed they had gotten stones and carved and sharpened them out.

They had carrots, radishes, meat and more.

Scrunching up your brows you tried to remember some basic hilichurlian speech, awkwardly you got their attention and shyly asked "mi tomo?" (I help?")

"Nye."

You felt an arrow stab your heart 'did they just say no? in a matter of seconds?!' you felt a bit offended, until the samachurl from before guided you away, taking your hands into his own as he looked at the cuts and callouses you obtained from hard labor "Unu. . " it muttered sadly, finger tracing the scratches.

"Oh. . i'm fine, so please, let me help you." you whispered hoping he'd understand, the samachurl shook their head, "nye." No again. You frowned at that, why? did they not want your help?

Seeing your confusion the samachurl tried his best to communicate but you didn't quite understand their language so after wracking his brain, he said with a slow way as he focused on each syllable. .

"please rest,. . . Unu."

You blinked, okay you reacted, that meant you understood him "let your . . . wounds . . .heal." he added taking long pauses between each word. Human speech although familiar to him, he had not used such speech for such a long time. .

"Okay" you nearly stumbled over your words as you sat down and the Samachurl tended to your wounds more. "I'll rest."

The hilichurl's special stew was delicious, you had an extra serving as you tried to decipher the spices they had used. It was mostly filled with meat and had a few carrots and potatoes as well as thin slices of radishes. You couldn't help but chuckle at the hilichurls who seemed to not eat the vegetables as much as compared to the meat. They reminded you of children, so you couldn't help but dote on them. Wiping their masks (as they ate with their masks on, only raising them up to reveal their mouths) when it go messy, tucking the younger hilichurls first and helped clean up the pot.

The pyro slime was fed with fire and combustible objects and leftovers of meat. Once he was full, he left the fireplace where only ashes and flickers of flames remained. "Are you full?" you asked watching as the pyro slime let out gulps of smoke, was he burping? that was an interesting sight at least.

Calloused fingers pet the top of the slime, "thank you for getting help."

The day had ended better than the first, you slept with the hilichurls bundled in warmth, wearing fresh clothes and with a full stomach.

*Mosi mita means "eat meat" which is also a positive expression or an expression of happiness. Yes, the hilichurl fainted out of bliss because their creator smiled at them. most of the words in () are rough translations you can find in the official hilichurlian website.

taglist: @fantasyhopperhea @rhoswen-drake @cchiiwinkle

[drchucktingle]

work of jordan peele is BIG influence on chuck this is correct. there are quite a few similarities actually, especially when you consider both of us are coming to horror from place of comedy (i personally do not see tinglers as comedy but obviously this timeline has placed them there and i am perfectly okay with this trot).

we are both creating horror stories for our own historically marginalized groups and in particular, writing stories that are SPECIFIC to those groups.

for example when thinking about QUEER HORROR there is plenty of queer horror where the horror itself has nothing to do with queerness, or the queerness is subtext. for instance you could have a slasher where the main characters happen to be gay, but their queerness is not necessarily part of the fear.

on the other hand, CAMP DAMASCUS is directly commenting on a queer issue

BURY YOUR GAYS is directly commenting on a queer issue

by the same token GET OUT is directly commenting on a race issue

US is directly commenting on a class issue which is, of course, going to be wrapped up in topics of race and marginalization

it should be said that the other kinds of horror where issues of the marginalized groups is more in the SUBTEXT are not wrong. there is a time and a place for that. the book that will likely be chucks next horror novel is about bi erasure, but it is much more about the subtext and symbolism. there is a bi lead, but also a monster that does not seem to be about bi erasure AT FIRST. it is much less direct. so there is a time and a place for both kinds of approaches.

but i think the biggest thing that is similar about jordan and chucks approach (and what has been a big influence on me specifically) is that our goal is NOT: 'how HORRIFYING AND TRAUMATIC AND MESSED UP CAN WE MAKE THIS?'

we are doing something else

processing trauma by exposure can be a common goal for horror AND honestly i think it is also totally dang fine to make art like this. there are some incredible pieces where trauma and tragedy is the goal. however (and i will speak for myself here) when you are coming from a buckaroo community that has been through so much of this trauma in real life, i PERSONALLY find that goal to be a little too boring.

my goal is more like this: how can we use this genre of fear and tension that i love to comment and explore and say something new? how can i pull apart an issue and deconstruct it in a way that is cathartic and maybe even changes minds?

so i cannot speak for jordan but i feel like our approaches are similar in this way. i see a LOT of reviews that make comparisons between CAMP DAMASCUS and GET OUT and i am always very flattered

[flameswallower]

THE BEST FICTION I ENCOUNTERED IN THE SECOND HALF OF 2024!!!

A much longer follow-up to this post. (Can you imagine how much I'd need to type out if I hadn't split them up???)

Once again, I'm not listing movies, TV shows, video games, etc. I AM listing some web fiction and comics/graphic novels, because I feel much more qualified to judge and recommend those things.

____

Novels and Novellas!

Failure To Comply, by Cavar (2024): Reading Cavar’s Failure to Comply, I couldn’t help but think of the recent David Cronenberg movie Crimes of the Future. Both deal with dystopias in which bodies and their modification are strictly regulated, and people with unauthorized bodies form a vibrant, perpetually imperiled subculture on the margins. Both use this conceit to speak metaphorically about the plights of trans and disabled people, although Failure to Comply’s characters are also presented as literally, textually disabled and trans. But, although Crimes of the Future is often accused of being a “weird movie,” Failure to Comply is undeniably much, much weirder. Cronenberg is super normal compared to this.

Maej, by Dale Stromberg (2024): a doorstopper I found difficult to put down and finished inside a week; a work of very unapologetic genre fiction that’s equally unapologetic in its intelligence and dedication to doing strange, creative things with language; a high fantasy story I actually liked. The setting is the city of Sforre-Yomn, in the country of Hwoama, whose culture combines elements from across the continents of Asia and Europe. But Hwoama is matriarchal: men are subordinate to women, who dominate politics, business, the military, and nearly all other professions. As a result of this fact, almost all the major characters in the novel are female. By turns this presents a fun, simple, mischievous inversion of maleness as the unmarked default state for fictional characters, and meaty commentary on the social construction of sex, sexuality, and gender. Stromberg has cited Le Guin as an influence on Maej and, in the most complimentary way possible, this influence is evident.

Lote, by Shola von Reinhold (2020) is a gorgeous, funny, moving academic satire/mystery and love letter to Black modernism. It’s also very queer/trans and (in my personal opinion, perhaps not intentionally) very autistic. The title refers to a possibly-mythical clandestine circle of artists/magic practitioners who style themselves after the lotus eaters and seek transcendence via experiences of sensory and aesthetic pleasure. As with many novels that stand out to me, you won’t read anything else like it. I especially recommend this one if you want a completely unique, intellectually stimulating work of fiction, but are put off by the aggressively experimental and opaque style of Failure To Comply and by the SFF-ness of FTC, Maej, and Leech.

Walking Practice, by Dolki Min (trans. Victoria Caudle) (original 2022; English translation 2024) is a breezy, sexy *, gender-bending Korean novel about a poor amorphous space alien stranded on Earth after a spaceship crash. Unfortunately for us, this alien soon discovers that 1.) the most suitable food for it down here is human flesh, and 2.) with a lot of pain and effort, it can squeeze itself into the likeness of a variety of different human beings. It figures out hookup apps pretty fast, too, and then it’s off to the races. This may sound like creature horror, but it plays more as an exploration of identity and humanity, and a satire of sex, romance, and contemporary hookup culture. (*possibly less sexy if you don’t have a vore/cannibalism/consumption thing)

Love/Aggression, by June Martin (2024) is a BANANAS mundane fantasy-comedy about two trans women who are kind of best friends, and kind of enemies. Zoe (actress) is an arrogant, cartoonishly unpleasant minor celebrity who thinks she’s much more famous and popular than she actually is— but Martin manages to show how her personality is in part the sympathetic result of dysphoria and experiencing a lot of transmisogyny over the course of her life, and how she used to be a much kinder person before fame went to her head. Meanwhile, Lily (freeloader and aspiring tattoo artist) is a sweet, spacy, passive daydreamer, and a far more immediately likable character— but Martin manages to show how she is not entirely blameless in the ongoing drama with Zoe, how her passivity is sometimes the result of immaturity and selfishness, and how even when it isn’t, it’s a character flaw that keeps landing her in situations which kind of suck for all parties involved. They live in a magical Pittsburgh that is, conveniently, located right next to Los Angeles. Their friends include a BDSM cult leader and a nonbinary person whose name becomes “Dicks” in the first chapter of the story and who is never called anything else. (This character also happens to be the…owner? Custodian?…of an infinite, maze-like, reality-distorting building that is probably the most fun and least scary infinite, maze-like, reality-distorting building in all of fiction.) There’s vore in this one, too! But don’t go in expecting a particularly cohesive plot: Love/Aggression is far more about characters, relationships, and gags.

Maybe the Moon, by Armistead Maupin (1992) was inspired by the too-brief life of Maupin’s real friend Tamara De Treaux, a little person who depicted the title character in parts of the movie E.T. Her literary equivalent, Cady Roth, is a sardonic, fashionable, thirty-year-old little person who depicted a magical gnome called Mr. Woods in a beloved, albeit treacly, children’s fantasy movie of the same name. But since she played the role inside a thick rubber suit, and since the director of the movie felt it would spoil the magic to give her any credit, almost nobody knows that. Ten years later, she lives in obscurity on dwindling funds and struggles to find work…until, out of sheer desperation, she decides to take a job with a troupe of children’s birthday party entertainers. Romance, escapades, etc. ensue. Both a very funny book and a very sad one; it’s quite frank about death, about the ways Hollywood fucks people over, about the many ways that, especially if you’re marginalized and/or an artist, your life isn’t fair and isn’t ever going to be fair and “happy endings” probably aren’t what the world has in store for you. I think ultimately it’s sentimental in a good way; it has a big heart.

Leech, by Hiron Ennes (2022) is a total banger to finish out this year with! So glad I picked it up finally! Absolute genre jambalaya, this one: sci-fi, stuff that reads as fantasy despite having or probably having a “sci-fi” explanation, horror, Gothic novel (but not, crucially, a Gothic romance), mystery, medical thriller, character study, philosophical novel about ideas of consciousness, selfhood, individuality, and free will…there’s probably something in here for everyone reading this. You’ll love it, almost guaranteed, if you love the Gormenghast books. You’ll love it, almost guaranteed, if you love any Star Trek series. You’ll love it, almost guaranteed, if you love the science fiction of Peter Watts, or the horror of Gretchen Felker-Martin. You’ll love it, almost guaranteed, if you love The Thing (1982). The prose is lush, idiosyncratic, a bit purple, but it’s nothing too baroque, it’s all perfectly easy to read. The complicated, antiheroic protagonist/narrator is delightful and memorable, and I think Ennes did a great job at conveying unusual states of memory/selfhood/cognition through it/them/her. (Some of these states are not ones with which I have, or even could possibly have ever had, real experience, but some are, and I am always pleased to find those replicated in ways I can recognize and feel as “truthful.”)

Short Story Collections!

Stone Gods (2024) and Worse Than Myself (2009) by Adam Golaski contained several of the very best short stories I read this year— especially Worse Than Myself, which is also a slightly more accessible/“normal” story collection and the one I’d recommend starting with. Golaski writes eerie, dreamlike, bizarre fiction that frequently crosses over into horror— even including time-worn horror genre tropes like zombies, ghosts, and vampires. But let me tell you, Golaski’s “The Man From the Peak” (in Worse Than Myself) is a BAD time, like give-you-nightmares scary, and it feels like nothing you’ve ever read before, even though it’s about A Nosferatu. Not just a vampire, but a vampire that is explicitly described as egg-bald with big pointy ears and two sharp buck teeth. That’s the antagonist. And it fucking works. He makes it new. Please, please read Adam Golaski, you guys. It is astounding and unjust that he’s not popularly regarded as one of the 21st century’s best authors of weird short fiction. I don’t actually know if he could have/wanted to publish more than two collections over fifteen years, but I kind of feel like maybe if a lot of people and public libraries buy those two collections, he’ll have more space and incentive to write short stories, and/or more publishers will be interested in picking up another collection of his short stories?

Brave New Weird vol. 2 (2024) was a diverse, entertaining selection of stories. Some I’d read, some I hadn’t. A pretty good overview of the mostly small press horror/sci-fi/Weird fiction scene as it stands right this minute.

All Your Friends Are Here, by M. Shaw (2024) is almost the opposite of the Golaski collections, in a way: Golaski frequently deals with themes of nostalgia, the past, cycles that repeat without end, and timelessness or being outside of time. Moreover, most of his stories feel like they’d be immediately comprehensible to a person fifty years ago or fifty years from now, if not even further into the past/future (with, perhaps, a few footnotes of cultural explanation). But Shaw’s stories are, often aggressively, Of The Moment. And that’s not a bad thing, even if it means they may seem completely dated in a few decades. Shaw is interested in speaking directly to their place and time; directly to us. They’re not going to pretend we’re not all online, that we don’t all know (if against our will) what Ready Player One is— the longest piece in the collection, and one of the best, is a suitably pop-culture-reference-laden dunk/riff/spoof on, and rebuttal of, Ready Player One! These stories are angry and clever and sometimes suffused with a kind of exhausted tenderness. There’s clearly a Bizarro influence on some of Shaw’s work, but their writing is more sophisticated and restrained than what I tend to associate with Bizarro fiction proper.

Individual Short Stories (That You Can Read Right Now!)

“EGREGORE” by Samir Sirk Morató (2024) = clubbing, hallucinatory, girl on girl

“The Spindle Of Necessity” by B. Pladek (2024) = trans academic suspects dead author may have been a closeted gay trans man

“A History of the Avodion Through Five Artists” by Eric Horwitz (2024) = Borgesian, arch, Jewish

“Mad Studies” by Cavar (2024) = loneliness, cats, autism…like Failure To Comply, this is by @librarycards

“Alabama Circus Punk” by Thomas Ha (2024) = robots, the nuclear family, disintegrating language

Comics and Graphic Novels!

Tomorrow You Don't Know Me, by Raven Lyn Clemens (2024) is a subtle, moving, and unsentimental graphic novel about being a middle schooler with problems, and how sometimes those problems just kinda...persist no matter what you do or try or want, and no matter if it's fair. Even if you summon a demon to help you! Clemens is really skilled at depicting emotion visually, at communicating both the absurd goofiness and the deep, genuine pain of the outsize negative emotions her characters experience. All of her characters are at least a little wretched, and she also handles them all with great compassion, affection, and understanding. Check out her artwork at @ravenlynclemens please; it's fantastic cartooning even without any detailed narrative.

In Fair Verona, by Val Wise (2024) is a VERY gory, VERY nasty piece of lesbian Gothic fantasy horror-erotica. I love Wise's art. The bodies she draws, regardless of gender and build, are top-tier sexy and beautiful to me, which means he's often able to get me on board* with kinks and scenarios that would usually be too "extreme" for my taste. (*Genteel euphemism for arousal)

A Guest In the House, by E.M Carroll (2023) is an equally nasty and mean, but far, FAR less explicit and bizarre, lesbian Gothic horror story, told with the visual panache and inimitable art style everyone knows and loves Carroll for. It's a worthy successor to their previous material, and if it doesn't necessarily make enormous leaps from their earlier work in its writing, the drawing and coloring has gone from "already really good" to "some of these splash pages will blow your eyes out the back of your skull."

Expiry Date, by Sloane Hong (2024) is another lesbian/queer erotica comic. This one's science fiction, and is FAR more up my usual alley of kinks. Which is to say that the lovers are quite kind/polite with one another (in a lot of ways it reads as a meet-cute), but also one of them is a hired killer who dispassionately agrees to torture the fuck out of the other one David Cronenberg-style.

Once again, all my comic recs are by queer trans people! I think I made a pretty hacky joke last year about gay trans mascs specifically ruling in this field, but based on recent data, you just have to be a marginalized gender and not heterosexual to make amazing comics.

Web Fiction!

The Frenzy wiki is a fan wiki for an imagined TV series, telling the story of both Frenzy, a popular late 2000s ensemble cast drama-adventure-SFF show drawing equally from the likes of Twin Peaks and Supernatural, and how the existence of this show was mysteriously wiped from the face of our reality-- save in the troubled dreams of a select few. I would estimate it takes a couple hours to explore the whole wiki. (2022 or 2023?)

3D Workers Island is the phenomenal, if less ambitious, follow-up to Petscop. (I don't mean it's a sequel; it's just by the same guy and covers similar thematic ground.) Like its predecessor, it's more about dropping tantalizing hints than letting you in on "what's actually going on," and more about giving you a creeped out and vaguely depressed feeling than about scaring or shocking you per se. It's really smart and well-crafted in an understated way, and does a great job replicating early internet content. I would estimate it takes WELL under an hour to get through this story, although you will probably want to immediately go back and look for things you might have missed or not understood properly. (2024)

Martin's Movies is conventional, compared to the other two. It's a ghost story. But it's a very creepy, effective, well-told ghost story rendered through the unusual medium of letterboxd reviews (of course, these become increasingly diary-like and Not About The Film as the story progresses). I would estimate it takes under an hour to read the whole thing, it's like short novelette length. (2024)

[burquillos]

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the final MHA chapter because the internet seems to be very divided

I waited till MHA officially ended! Long post ahead!! People being divided on the ending makes sense. Different people come to watch shows and read comics for very different reasons and with very different expectations for an ending in mind. Especially for a series like MHA which is a battle manga that seeks to subvert shonen genre tropes.

I think part of the reason why people are so divided on it right now is because of leak culture and reaction culture. People have to remember that comic books and manga are a storytelling medium. The author actually thinks about the arrangement of the panels, what’s in the panels, and how the combination of these things can form a narrative. Reading it from twitter thread/discords from people in a rush to translate to get the information to you as fast as possible is NOT the intended way to experience the story.

The “leak format” kind of encourages people to put too much focus on certain panels and roughly translated text that would otherwise feel very different when you are reading the story through the intended medium, and when you pair that with the highly reactive way people ‘consume content’ nowadays, the result is a snowball of very volatile emotions being thrown around without a moment for people to breathe, think, and wonder for themselves “Why did the author write it like this? Was there something I missed? How does this re-contextualize story? Have I actually missed the point this whole time?” etc.

That being said, I sort of have a philosophical way of approaching MHA?? When I got back to it again, I was hyper-critical of it especially because I just came back from reading One Piece (and the writing styles and messages are VERY different). I slowly learned to judge the writing for what it is rather than keep comparing it to other series and I learned it was more enjoyable to experience the story like that.

The ending is a very hard pill to swallow for a lot of people which is understandable, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. I mean, just look at the ending lines of "Do Not Be Defeated by Rain", the poem that inspired Deku’s character:

I am also a stubbornly optimistic person, and my number one rule is never to engage with anything in bad faith. I CHOOSE to see hope through the margins and the final chapter being so open to potential encourages that thinking of mine.

So even though I think there are some things that could be handled better (the villains) and storylines I WISH were explored (OFA vestiges my beloved) there’s no reason why it couldn’t be fixed.

There is this openness to it that leaves so much room for hope and imagination that I can’t truly be mad at it.

I might find MHA lacking as an entertainment piece, but I will defend it to the end as an artistic piece.

Horikoshi has said before that he doesn’t care if his manga is popular or not, MHA is basically a culmination of the stuff he enjoys, and I KNOW drawing whatever the hell you want despite knowing not everyone will like it takes a lot of guts and it’s what makes MHA so human.

All the traces of him are in there, flaws and everything, so you can endlessly turn it around, flip back and forth and there will be always something new to unpack, learn, and realize and the thought of what could've been will always haunt people (just like Star Wars, a series he also likes kajdbaldnlk)

[arliedraws]

All this anti-Remus talk is making me like him even more 😂

I love that he’s a character who is so fixated on image and how he comes off. He’s such a cold person! Detached! Won’t form close bonds! Like…his loving parents fucked him up by keeping him away from all other children until Hogwarts. I love how this plays into his character again and again and again.

I put the rest under the cut because it gets a bit tangential, but whatever, I was feeling a bit heated.

I feel like Remus doesn’t actually know how to make friends—he has let everyone come to him. James and Sirius formed their little group, and Remus has always been in awe of what friends will do FOR him. What did Remus do for his friends? Maybe Remus learns how to accept love, but he is not very good at giving it back.

It’s so interesting to me that Remus doesn’t become Harry’s go-to even after they spent hours together. Harry allows Remus to see his most vulnerable side, and Remus doesn’t reciprocate even after the truth comes out. At the very least, he could write Harry. He could visit Harry in the summer.

But I actually LOVE this about Remus. I love that he’s written as a warm, inviting sort of person when he’s actually someone who is terrified of forming close bonds. No one is allowed to see the real Lupin, and once someone has seen a part of himself he doesn’t like, he immediately detaches himself and disappears. Remus wants to appear in control of himself because he is concerned more about his image than doing the right thing. At the end of PoA, I’m sure he’s upset that he nearly killed Harry and co, obviously, but more importantly, he’s embarrassed that he lost control. If he really cared about the safety of students, he would have revealed Sirius’s disguise to Dumbledore as soon as Sirius escaped Azkaban.

The point of his character is “what you see on the surface is not necessarily what lies below.” It’s one of the most salient themes of PoA.

Anyway, it’s uncomfortable! So many people want to make Remus a “model of marginalization” - who, depending on the fanon, falls on one end of the spectrum which is “ohhhh poor disabled guy :((( he can’t do anything because he’s a pathetic baby” or “look how hot and tall and rational and intelligent he is despite his poverty/disability!!!!”

It’s SO INFANTILIZING. I don’t think Remus is a bad guy or a good guy—I think that his particularly negative character traits are a result of prejudice towards his condition, his upbringing, and his internalized prejudice towards werewolves. So I am not saying he’s a complete asshole. Obviously. My point, though, is that he has friends who support him in school, particularly James, who break the law and risk torture prison (and bodily harm from a werewolf) to support him.* And Remus…he does not do much to reciprocate that sort of love. The very least he can do for James is to check in on Harry (he doesn’t even need to say hi—just literally see that he’s ok!). James risked his life for Remus, and Remus won’t risk Dumbledore’s disapproval to reciprocate.

He continually does the LEAST for Harry. Harry has to beg him to teach him the Patronus Charm. And when Harry is clearly craving his parents’ voices as they’re dying, Remus doesn’t even offer a nugget of “ohhhh, gosh, Harry, let’s give you some good stories about your dad, ok?”

This is a cold, broken man who has convinced himself that being alone is safe because you can never be rejected. This is Remus’s greatest fear. He’s the teacher that needs to be liked but he hides behind professionalism when it suits him. His “nice guy” traits are a fucking ACT. I want people to explore more about his negative traits! He blames his condition when people get too close, and when people manage to climb his walls to try to get close to him, he pushes them away.

Chronic illness does not make you a good person—it just makes life harder. Remus accepts love and support from his friends—and yes, they SHOULD give him love and support because this is what we owe each other, but Remus also owes his friends love and support. It’ll look different from how James, Sirius, and Peter can support him, but you don’t get to just take from your friends without giving back. Your friends are not there to be your mommy. Sometimes, you’ll go through periods where your friends are holding you up and you just need to accept that they don’t resent you for it, but if you’re willing to accept help, you’d better be willing to return it later. As someone who has a few people in their life who take and take and give little in return, I can tell you, it starts to feel like your only purpose is to carry them on your shoulders. And man, it’s fucking exhausting. Sometimes I need to be carried too.

I have no idea how Remus behaved at Hogwarts regarding his friends on a day to day basis because Harry never sees evidence of this, but we see him as an adult who is unwilling to support his friend’s orphaned kid in ANY meaningful way…unless Harry begs him. In the end, Remus is still an autonomous adult and Harry is a child in need. In this situation, at the bare minimum, Remus has the power to pick up a pen and write.

So why don’t we see this more in fic? You all know I’m a Sirius stan, but I am CONSTANTLY critiquing Sirius’s relationship with masculinity. Sirius is my favorite character, and I LOVE exploring the uncomfortable parts of him—he’s cold when he perceives that he has been emasculated, even belittling Harry when he’s insulted. He’ll put himself in danger to protect Harry when all Harry really wants is for Sirius to be there for him (which Sirius can’t do in OotP). These are the bits that make me queasy—and I love exploring them!

Why not explore the ugly parts of Remus? You say you want interesting, well-rounded characters with chronic illness/disabilities/neurodivergence? Then let them be interesting. Make them complicated and embrace the icky parts of them. If you want, explore how society has created a cold, sad, wet noodle Remus and then GIVE HIM A PATH TO GROWTH. Like… if you don’t like these parts, give him scenarios so he can grow and become a better person.

Anyway, stop fucking throwing around words like “ableism” when you hear something you don’t like about a character. You don’t know the real person behind their username. Most of us here have some sort of disability/neurodivergence/chronic illness, etc, so stop fucking assuming we’re Chad Abled-Bodied or Karen Neurotypical, ffs.

It’s fucking insulting and infantilizing that we can’t discuss complexity in characters who are marginalized in their society. By excusing all of their less than cute actions, you’re essentially saying, “This is not a full human being with a full range of emotion and flaws—they are a perfect little baby who doesn’t deserve reproach, who can do whatever he wants!”

But that’s just me, I guess.

—

* (Also, side note, Moony the werewolf could have very well killed any one of them. Additionally, the theory that Moony couldn’t hurt them in Animagus form was ONLY A THEORY. It might not have worked at ALL and they risked their lives to test it.)

[reinanova]

i have a few scenarios for you to consider

~~~

character: “i’m not straight”

fandom*: mmmm but what if you were

~~~

character: is bisexual in the comics

fandom: well, character isn’t explicitly stated to be bi in the movies, therefore character is straight

~~~

writer: yeah character is pan and has a dating history with all genders (and this wasn’t shown bcuz of xyz)

fandom: well, it doesn’t matter what the writer says, character is straight bcuz they’ve only dated the opposite gender on screen

~~~

character: is gay (either implied or explicitly stated to be homosexual and homoromantic)

fandom: well, maybe they’re homosexual but heteroromantic**, therefore i’m only going to ship this character with the opposite gender

~~~

character: is a lesbian

fandom: well, lesbians can still have sex with men therefore i’m going to write f/m smut with this lesbian and a man. not as a “figuring out/exploring my sexuality” fic but just bcuz i can

~~~

queer community: hey this character is canonically queer, could you please be respectful of that?

fandom: how about you go fuck yourselves. this is so embarrassing to be asking for respectful representation, literally shut the fuck up

~~~

character: is canonically gay

fandom: well you can’t prove he’s not attracted to women so he’s straight actually

~~~

disclaimers:

* i’m talking about a fandom as a whole in this post, not a couple individuals who may do this. this is talking about if a large chunk (think half or more) of a fandom is ignoring a canon queer identity

** no hate to someone who may identify this way. if someone is this identity, kudos to them, but people shouldn’t just use this as an excuse to ignore someone’s queer identity

this is how you sound when ignoring aspec*** identities. do you hear how ridiculous this is?

*** aspec (the way i use it at least) includes the asexual spectrum (ace-spec) and aromantic spectrum (aro-spec). also your friendly reminder that people can be aro and not ace and vise versa but you can’t ignore one or the other to suit your fancy

there will probably always be people doing this (re: ignoring canon queer identities) in fandoms, however, not in mainstream and popular ships and not to the extent that aspec identities are erased. bcuz if you have a problem with the above scenarios but not when the character is aspec, an already basically invisible identity, you need to re-examine your thinking and deal with your hypocrisy

do you know how hard it is to prove a LACK of something? even if someone straight up says, “i experience zero sexual or romantic attraction to anyone,” someone else will be like, “well how do you know you just haven’t found the right person yet?”

is the idea that someone doesn’t want a romantic or sexual relationship that difficult to understand?

if you want to see your identity represented in a character headcanon, great! but do so in a way that doesn’t negate another marginalized and underrepresented canon identity

there are SO! MANY! straight characters at your disposal. use one of them for your queer headcanons until we reach the point where your identity is canon. then you’ll probably be fighting for representation the same way i am right now

it also sucks to see fighting within the aspec community. bcuz yes aro and ace identities are a spectrum. however, when there’s a singular character with an aspec identity, you physically cannot showcase that spectrum. so if an ace character is sex-favorable, allos will believe all ace people are sex-favorable and ignore aces who are not. same thing for sex-repulsed aces and so on. the only solution is to fight for more aspec representation so everyone can see themselves in media without sacrificing parts of an aspec identity to fit how you identify

i’m tired. i’m so fucking tired of fighting for an ounce of representation. this should not be an uphill battle for people to accept aspec characters. i shouldn’t have to fight the queer community and straight people for this

[sashayed]

have you heard that jordan peele said steven yeun's character is the one that has the most in common with him. have you thought about how most of his cinematic career has been built around discussions of race and the traumas that come from racism. have you thought about how any media handling real and personal topics is a sort of emotional self-disembowelment on the part of the creator. have you thought of the glory and horror of being Seen. have you screamed

Have I? HAVE i. Have I thought about how Peele has discussed being objectified and tokenized on set, especially early in his career? Have I thought about what it's like to suffer real-life trauma in a space created for make-believe? Buddy, I haven't thought about anything else for days!!

I think one thing that makes this movie so visceral to me is that it's an exploration by a great popular artist on the human cost of making popular art. To me, the connection between Peele and Jupe is a link between the auteur and the cult leader — both are people consumed & defined by stories, people who are compelled by a narrative and feel an urge to spread that narrative to an audience.

And I am really impressed by how hard Peele seems to work to reject the cult leader in himself as best he can — to make art that enriches the lives of ALL THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT. Every interview is about how collaborative and present he is as a director. Obsessed with this Q&A for many reasons but this moment sticks with me:

KEKE PALMER: There would be moments where we’re going through different parts of this script, this story, from when we first rehearsed to when we were actually on set, or when we had an idea that happened that morning. I would be listening, my head would be down, I’d be listening to what Jordan’s saying, I’m like, man this is deep. And I look up and there’d be just this one little tear falling. Man, this brother’s deep. JORDAN PEELE: I’m not afraid to cry as a director. KP: And he’s chill! He’d be like, “That’s what happens” and tears are falling. I’m like, “Are you all right?” But he keeps going and he’s like “Yeah, yeah. So that’s the thing.” And then he just walks out.

To me, that reads as a person who is NOT JUST super smart and deep and creative etc but who is also aware every moment of how lucky he is to be doing what he's doing, and who is not ashamed of his own reaction to that gratitude. What's to be ashamed of? It's incredibly fun! He is having an amazing time! He's hanging out with people he likes and respects and coating actors with goop in the esophageal tube! What a job!

I wonder if, to be that thankful and that aware (and that collaborative), you have to have experienced the flip side; if you have to have been Jupe, at least for a little while. I wonder if the process of -- to some extent -- commodifying your own suffering (as capitalism practically demands that artists do in order to survive as artists) leads, almost inevitably, to a moment where you think, "I survived this horror and became a Star because I am the main character of reality: I am more special than other people, I have a special ability to communicate, I have a special destiny." That is a powerful story and a seductive one, but if you don't leave it behind, it will eat you and the people around you alive.

It seems to me like an extension of what Peele is exploring in Us--the notion that your contentment is entangled with someone else's suffering. Why you? Why not the person with all your qualities who for whatever reason never ended up where you are? Especially for creators with marginalized identities, right? "Am I occupying a space that should belong to someone else?" You can avoid that question by deciding that you have special individual qualities that make you the Chosen One, as Jupe does. Or you can accept that the question will always haunt you, that luck (LUCKY THE FINAL HORSE??) has no logic, and you try to spread your luck out and open your space up to as many other people as you can. Which you see Peele doing all the time! Gah!!

[tossawary]

Watching a lot of "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" lately has me trying to articulate a personal rule of thumb for depicting competence. Very basically, if you want to convince me that characters and organizations are not incompetent, then they need backups.

So many of the episodes that we've been watching recently hinge too strongly on single points of failure. If this one element of a plan goes down, then everything collapses. Which is fine occasionally? Cascading failures from small mistakes happen. Shit gets weird sometimes. But the repeated absence of, like, more basic operating procedures like double-checks starts to get annoying fast if we the audience are meant to believe these people are very intelligent and good at their jobs.

After the first few times, Starfleet has got to stop beaming down away teams without a couple plans for what to do if the transporters and communications go down again. "But the chances of that happening on this routine mission are so low!" Don't care. Pick a nearby cave to hide from the ion storm in BEFORE you go. Beam down a little shelter pod with emergency supplies. Arrange a rendezvous with a shuttle. Check in every five minutes so that you know the instant you lose contact. Wear safety gear. Something! Anything!

Admittedly, "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" do this sometimes, which is nice to see when it happens, but not consistently enough. These characters should regularly be considering the worst case scenarios! They should be estimating their margins of error! And sure, unavoidable accidents happen sometimes, human error is definitely a thing, and maybe the backup plans will ALSO fall through for drama's sake, but I would be reassured by the indication that these people at least tried to prepare for things going to shit while exploring the mysterious pit.

"The Clone Wars" show has so far (first half-dozen episodes) been a nightmare of logistics and protocol. Okay, so you let Anakin make a flight plan / attack plan and then... no one checked it over first? Who signed off on this? Anakin: "We're taking X shortcut!" Supposedly more senior character who is on the same mission: "What? Anakin, X shortcut is dangerous because of Y!" And it's just like, "So, you guys just didn't do an actual mission briefing first, huh? Even if it was agreed upon that X shortcut was still the best way, it sure would have been nice to warn the poor background characters about the danger of Y before flying out..."

Yes, characters and organizations making plans at all is the first step of depicting any degree of competence. But the NEXT step as a basic rule of thumb should be them anticipating what can and will go wrong, and what to do about it. After the second time something goes wrong in a very predictable, easily avoidable way and the characters act all shocked about it, it's like, "Yeah, no, this is on you now. Please start making some backup plans in advance."

[criticalcrusherbot]

Crushbot: This feels less like a good-faith critique and more like someone searching for a reason to hate Vivziepop and her work. The parallels between Helluva Boss and Bojack Horseman are there, sure—but reducing Stolas’s arc to a “can I copy your homework?” moment reeks of a desperate attempt to discredit the show rather than actually engaging with what it’s doing.

Parallels, Sure—But Context Matters

Let’s talk about the alleged similarities. Yes, Stolas being hated by the imps after his banishment could look like Bojack being “cancelled.” Both happen after courtroom scenes. Both involve estrangement from a younger female family member (Octavia for Stolas, Hollyhock for Bojack). That’s where the similarities end, and pretending otherwise ignores the wildly different purposes these arcs serve.

Bojack vs. Stolas

Bojack’s arc is about personal accountability and the destruction he leaves in his wake. His estrangement from Hollyhock is well-earned; she discovers the ways he’s manipulated and harmed others, and she rightfully cuts him off. The public backlash against Bojack is a direct response to his moral failings, forcing him to sit with the consequences of his actions.

Stolas, on the other hand, is being punished specifically for lending Blitz his grimoire, an illegal act that threatens the power structures of Hell. The characters in power (the Sins and the Goetia) care far more about this rule-breaking and his vague proclamation of being the "mastermind" behind some heinous plot than about his personal failings—cheating on Stella or neglecting Octavia emotionally. And they certainly don’t care about his classism or his (unintentionally) demeaning attitude towards imps.

Stolas’s punishment in Mastermind reflects Hell’s oppressive hierarchy and its misplaced priorities, rather than serving as a reckoning with his true faults. Comparing these two situations as if they’re identical flattens both narratives, ignoring the distinct ways each show explores power, accountability, and personal flaws.

The Martyr Argument

The claim that Stolas is treated like a martyr and excused for his actions is laughable. Stolas is flawed; the show never pretends otherwise. We’ve seen him struggle with his poor decisions and their consequences—particularly with Octavia. But his punishment in Mastermind isn’t about absolving him; it’s about highlighting the misdirected anger of an oppressive system.

This misdirected anger mirrors the real-world reactions of oppressed groups, who often lash out at convenient but less culpable targets when they feel powerless to confront the true source of their suffering. The hatred Stolas faces from the imp community doesn’t stem from his personal failings—it stems from the deep, systemic inequities of Hell's hierarchy, a system Stolas has long benefited from. 

The idea that Vivziepop thinks Stolas is “blameless” feels like an intentional misreading. Stolas is far from perfect, but his arc is about redemption and growth, not victimhood. If anything, the animosity he faces underscores the show’s broader themes of power dynamics and societal injustice, emphasizing how oppressive systems perpetuate cycles of blame and resentment.

“Can I Copy Your Homework?”—Lazy Critique

Sure, you can find surface-level similarities between Helluva Boss and Bojack Horseman, but that doesn’t make one a copy of the other. The thematic goals are wildly different:

Bojack Horseman is a deeply introspective, human story about accountability and the lasting damage of selfishness.

Helluva Boss is a surreal, melodramatic exploration of power, marginalization, and complicated relationships within a hellish hierarchy.

If anything, the similarities between the two are evidence of Helluva Boss drawing from familiar storytelling beats to craft something uniquely its own. Accusing it of plagiarism or lazy writing misses the point entirely. Stolas’s arc is tailored to Helluva Boss’s world—a chaotic, exaggerated, and deeply emotional sandbox that doesn’t care about “grounded realism” in the same way Bojack Horseman does.

The Real Issue

Let’s be honest: critiques like this aren’t really about writing quality or thematic depth. They’re about taking perverse joy in tearing Vivziepop down. It’s less about legitimate criticism and more about manufacturing outrage. It’s exhausting.

The truth is, Helluva Boss does what it sets out to do: deliver a visually stunning, emotionally resonant, and often absurd story in a way that resonates with its audience. If some people are so hung up on surface-level comparisons that they can’t see that, maybe they’re not the intended audience—and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend their bad-faith critiques hold any weight.

[orange-coloredsky-archive]

The two most popular reads of the synth plight in Fallout 4 are that of the race allegory and the Red Scare/McCarthyist allegory. In the former example, synths get racialized in a similar way to Black Americans in the late 19th and early 20th century, but just barely. The Underground Railroad is quite literally remade, synths are subjected to slavery at the hands of their human creators and punished harshly for escape attempts. Others have likened synths to fears of immigrants or asylum-seekers from nonwhite majority populations. Synths in these imaginings of Fallout 4 are painted as needing to be saved at the same time as they are vilified and dehumanized – sometimes by the same character over the course of the story. This duality could be a great opportunity for a dive into how white saviorism tends to play out, but in reality it ends up being a messy, deeply uncritical exploration of the impact of race and racism in society. The factions doing the racialization and/or saviorism’s motives are never questioned, and there is a very clear depiction of “good vs. evil” being the end-all-be-all of anti-racism work (again, with no critical thought as to how the “good” side is made almost completely of non-racialized people making decisions on behalf of a marginalized group). Worse yet, it’s contrived. The android-racism analogy has been a thorn in the side of the science fiction genre ever since Isaac Asimov wrote the 3 Laws of Robotics. There’s very few iterations on the idea that have come from popular (white, Eurocentric) media that aren’t riddled with the same aftertaste of white guilt and fundamental misunderstandings of how racism plays out in day-to-day life.

The less common, slightly more agreeable interpretation is that of the Red Scare – which, given Fallout’s inspirations and the setting’s original critique of reliving America’s “good old days”, makes perfect sense. In this example, synths take the role of the Soviet spy: watching over everything Americans are doing and reporting back to a secret base that is plotting to overthrow the world as we know it. Psychological screenings as well as inhumane tortures are utilized to pick synth “spies” out from the good, red-blooded residents of the Commonwealth. A neighborhood is founded entirely around the protection of the “old ways of life”, complete with a white picket fence comically decorated with automatic machine gun turrets. While this is a more charitable analogy that’s grounded in a slightly-deeper-than-surface-level exploration of American history, the Red Scare interpretation is victim to the same pitfalls that plague the racism interpretation. Midway through the game, the player discovers that there actually is a secret base of evil villains hiding underneath our feet, plotting to annihilate our beautiful Commonwealth lives. People do get taken and replaced by synths, they are in our governments, there is an actual reason for synths to be feared. Sure, some synths are perfectly fine people with no wish to be made tools of the Institute’s tyranny, but that is greatly overshadowed by the fact that the Institute’s stated goal is to use synths to gain control over the Commonwealth. There is no real critique of McCarthyism, there is no ideology to be challenged, because the Communists are here and killing your loved ones in their sleep.

[anthurak]

Taiyang Xiao Long: The Latest in a Long Line of Fuckups

So there’s been quite a bit of discussion by this point from a number of people, myself included, about the idea that Taiyang Xiao Long isn’t actually the ‘Good Dad’ that much of the RWBY fandom has long seen him as. That he is in fact just as much of a dysfunctional fuck-up parent as Qrow, Summer, and yes, even Raven. There are a few different factors to this that others have gone into more detail on, but for me it really comes down to one core point in particular:

If you have checked out of parenting to the point where the two girls under your care can both state overtly and matter-of-factly that the older of the two raised the younger, then it frankly doesn’t matter WHAT your reasons were for checking out or how hard you may have been grieving. You have unequivocally, massively, FUCKED UP as a parent. The fact that the show has made it clear that Ruby considers Yang, her SISTER, to be her primary parent-figure does not speak well to ANY of Team STRQ’s parenting, Tai included.

However, with that said, I thought it would be worth talking about what all this discussion could actually mean in practice, ie; how might all this end up being actually explored in the story of RWBY itself?

After all, it’s not like Tai’s failings as a father have really been directly focused on or confronted or even overtly spelled out in the show thus far. The most direct we’ve gotten was during Yang’s talk with Weiss in the episode Alone Together, and even that wasn’t so much directed at Tai himself so much as describing how Yang was forced to take up so much slack in the family after Summer’s apparent death. Right now, discussion of Tai’s failings as a father is still very much ‘reading between the lines’.

And I believe that is all deliberate on the part of the writers. Thus far, the references to Tai’s failings as a parent haven’t meant to be overt and obvious to the audience. But rather they are meant to be hints and foreshadowing hiding in the margins and not immediately obvious to the viewer.

At least until it’s time to MAKE them obvious.

You see, I believe that Taiyang as a character is going to turn out to be all too similar to the likes of Qrow, Ozpin and Ironwood.

Men who are introduced appearing to represent noble and good-natured archetypes, but who wind up being revealed to have DEEP and extensive personal failings and flaws that wind up hurting themselves and all those around them. The warning signs of which turn out to have been floating around the margins, between the lines and just outside the audience’s field of view since practically their first appearances.

Consider for a moment just how characters like Ozpin, Qrow, Ironwood and Tai were/have been overtly presented in their early appearances. In other words, how the story at first wants us to view them:

The Wise Teacher

The Quirky Mentor

The Heroic Soldier

The Good Dad

And now let’s remember just how the first three wound up failing our heroines. And all of the hints we got that FORESHADOWED that failing:

All of the ‘Shady Oz’ behavior that people were noticing as early as Volume 2, and which only compiled and built over the subsequent volumes until being finally dragged into the light at the start of Volume 6.

Qrow’s rampant alcoholism, which he was outright introduced with in Volume 3 and later noted by Glynda to ALWAYS to be drunk. And shown later in Volume 5 when Ruby doesn’t bat an eye at Qrow showing up at their house near-passed out drunk.

And of course, ALL of the red flags that Ironwood was on the fast-track to fascism right from his first appearance when he showed up for the preparations of a festival celebrating peace and unity with a fleet of giant warships.

Now we have Tai, a character who turns out to have all kinds of indicators pointing to him actually being a complete dysfunctional fuck-up as a father once you start looking closely. From Yang’s multiple recountings of how Tai shut down and left HER to care for Ruby, to his shall we say QUESTIONABLE mentoring advice to Yang, to Ruby outright stating that it was YANG who raised her…

Really if you just start taking a closer look at Tai’s actions and behavior across the show, you can start finding plenty of hints and red-flags to his dysfunctional parenting hiding under a thin veneer of ‘expected’ character-archetype behavior, just like what happened with Ozpin, Qrow and Ironwood.

For example, just look at Tai’s ‘mentoring’ of Yang in Volume 4. At first glance, this scene is framed like a typical ‘hero gets tough-love advice and help from their wise and experienced parent’ situation, which is the takeaway most of us probably got on first viewing. Yet the moment you take a closer look and start unpacking what Tai is actually saying in this scene, it becomes clear, particularly in hindsight, that Tai is FULL OF SHIT. To the point of seemingly not even understanding how Yang’s semblance even works.

Or how about his claim that Raven ‘did a number of this family’, which if you actually take a minute to analyze, ESPECIALLY now in hindsight, makes no goddamn sense. How exactly can Raven have ‘done a number’ on the family when she’s been GONE from said family for the past 18 years? Particularly now that it seems like if any member is guilty of ‘doing a number’ on the STRQ, it’s actually SUMMER for going off on her super-secret suicide/martyr mission. We can’t even say that Tai can blame Raven for what happened to Summer because as Ruby’s Tree Vision made clear, Tai doesn’t even know Raven was involved. What this statement REALLY feels like is a shitload of projection and Tai blaming Raven for all of HIS fuckups as a parent.

HOWEVER, because none of this is directly framed by the show as being explicitly ‘bad’ and doesn’t present Tai with traditional/obvious ‘bad dad’ traits (see Jacques, and more on him in just a bit…) and generally couches his behavior with a veneer of ‘feeling baseline care and affection’, it’s easy to overlook on a first viewing.

Really, it feels all too much like how Volume 4 also presented Ironwood on the surface as the noble, heroic ‘only sane man’ among the authority in Atlas, all while slipping in NUMEROUS red-flags of him being on the fast track to fascism.

Speaking of Jimmy the Child Shooter, it’s been noted by a few people at this point that in hindsight, it’s pretty clear that Jacques Schnee effectively served as a red-herring villain to distract the audience from the growing red-flags surrounding Ironwood, both in Volume 4 and again in Volume 7.

Well, what if Jacques was also being used to distract the audience from TAI’s own parenting red flags in Volume 4? After all, it’s easy to be more forgiving of Tai’s sketchy parenting choices when the show keeps cutting back to Jacques’ brand of ‘parenting’.

Really, I think in hindsight Volume 4 is giving us three different looks at fatherhood: We’ve got the caring, nurturing father in Ghira, the abusive villainous father in Jacques, and the dysfunctional fuckup in Tai. A real ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ situation.

And finally, the simple fact that Yang raised Ruby. The biggest indicator of Tai’s, as well as the rest of Team STRQ’s, MASSIVE fuckups as parents which goes all the way back to Volume 1 when Gold framed Yang as a motherly figure to Ruby, outright comparing her to Summer.

It all points to Tai being set up for the same kind of big, subversive narrative rug-pull as Ozpin, Qrow and Ironwood. Men who are introduced as these strong, capable, ‘good-guy’ archetypes, only for it to be later revealed to both the heroines and the audience that these adults that they trusted are actually massive fuck-ups who have been making a mess of everything.

The only difference with Tai is that the story simply hasn’t decided to shine the light of narrative focus ON all of his numerous problems and fuckups and force our heroines to confront them like it already has with Ozpin and Qrow in Volume 6, and Ironwood in Volumes 7 and 8.

At least, not YET.

And wouldn’t you know it, the last RWBY Beyond episode set up what could be the PERFECT opportunity for that with Yang’s line about Tai being on ‘special assignment’.

Sure, people have been saying stuff like ‘Oh he’s gotta be doing something super important like guarding the Relic of Choice’, but this is RWBY we’re talking about. The show that ALREADY made a big point about how the ‘Daddy had a good reason for abandoning you’ trope is utter bullshit.

So frankly, I’d say there is NO WAY IN HELL that Tai has an actual ‘good reason’ for not having come to Vacuo to see his daughters.

And that this is instead the setup for Ruby and Yang to finally have to DEAL with all of their parents’ dysfunctional bullshit.